Social Media - Facebook Marches On

There have been two significant announcements involving Facebook this week:

(1)  MySpace’s “Mashup with Facebook” (If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em)

MySpace allows musicians and other performing artists to publish music, videos, gig lists and other information.

MySpace also provides a social networking capability. Anyone can set up an account, and then interact with artists and other people. However use for that purpose has been eclipsed by Facebook.

MySpace is owned by News Corporation, who have recently announced that the losses there are unsustainable, and action needs to be taken. Yesterday MySpace announced “Mashup with Facebook”. This provides links of Facebook information onto a person’s MySpace page.

Having dropped the strapline “a place for friends”, this announcement puts MySpace firmly into a role of publishing and entertainment. This leaves Facebook to be the king of social networking, at least at the personal rather than professional level.

(2) Facebook’s New Messaging System

Earlier this week Facebook announced what they say is their biggest development project to date. They are “soft launching” a new messaging service, based on the principles of simple Internet Messaging (IM) which is used for chatting. It will pool in email (by letting people use username@facebook.com addresses), and SMS text messages (at least outgoing ones). It will thereby potentially provide a nearly complete record of electronic communication with friends. Rollout won’t be immediate, but slowly over the coming weeks. Exactly how it works will then become apparent.

Incoming emails from friends will be more obvious than others, which will end up in a type of spam folder. Whilst Facebook management don’t see this killing off gmail, hotmail and the like overnight, there will be obvious attractions of changing to a @facebook.com address, at least for communication with friends.

Twitter tweets are actually shortened SMS text messages (140C instead of 160C), as Twitter was initially designed for use with SMS. Facebook’s messaging system could potentially replace Twitter for chat with friends, which is actually quite common on Twitter. Other uses for Twitter, such as following celebrities, are not directly affected. But as many such people also have a Facebook presence, the attraction of Twitter may diminish for them and their followers.

Consequences for Businesses

These two things are of more interest personally rather than for business, unless your business thrives in the consumer markets these systems best serve.

But these developments do highlight the sheer pace of change and competitive manoeuvrings with online tools. Worth keeping an eye firmly on the ball, for opportunities and threats that will affect your business

For businesses this means getting involved with all these leading tools. With each tool regularly introducing new functions and approaches, it isn’t necessarily clear which will dominate in the months and years to come.

Interestingly MySpace was a spin out from the social networking system Friendster, which was launched long before Facebook. Friendster is still very popular in Asia, but elsewhere it too has been eclipsed by Facebook. Again it highlights just how fast things can change. It also begs the apparently hypothetical question, what will eclipse Facebook and when?

Escaping Excel Hell – Unlocking Business Processes

You start a new business or activity. This may be within an existing business. The easiest thing to do is to log what happens in a spreadsheet, typically Excel.

The next thing you know is that there are a team of people tripping over each other trying to use the same spreadsheet. Copies are taken and you quickly lose track of what’s the latest. Changes are made to two different copies, so some changes get lost.

So you set up a set of spreadsheets which all link together. A right royal spaghetti.

Generating things like sales invoices will be difficult. If you want workflow, you won’t get it. If you want an audit trail of changes, you can’t have one. If you want a range of management reports, that will be tricky.

Sound familiar?

Time to move to a database, in one of three ways:

• Get a packaged application
• Develop and maintain a system in-house
• Get someone to develop a system for you

Each option can be done in-house or using a facility in the cloud.

Camwells has helped businesses make this transition, in areas such as order processing and business forecasting. In one case the new system unlocked purchase savings that doubled profits. We’d be delighted to help you.

Using Multi-Dimensional Software Tools

Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at various aspects of multi-dimensional software tools, often referred to as Business Intelligence (BI):

Choice in Multi-Dimensional Planning and Reporting

Business Performance Management - How Important Are Multiple Dimensions?

Escaping Excel Hell - Improving Month-End Reporting

Performance Management – Multi-dimensional BI tools  including a link to a recently written summary of the history of these tools

Camwells remains independent of specific software products. So over to you. What tools are you using and selling? What are their pros and cons?

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Cloud Computing – Clarification of Key Terms

As an end-user, the range of terms in cloud computing can be confusing. Here is a brief introduction to explain all the key terms in one place.

Cloud Computing covers a multitude of differing offerings. The Cloud Industry Forum defines it as covering any remotely hosted IT service of any  type, including multi-tenanted systems accessed via the internet. This is typically using a web browser on the user's computer or mobile device.

Cloud services are provided by a "provider", or a set of providers working together. Typically a software author will work with one or more hosting companies that "host" and run the system for them.

Cloud services are similar to traditional outsourcing, both legally and in practice. Use of cloud services, including  the relationship with the provider(s), needs to be approached in a similar manner.

You’ll also see cloud computing referred to as “On-Demand”, to distinguish it from the traditional way of running computing “On-Premise”. On-Demand is a marketing term that implies more flexibility than is really available, but refers to the relative speed of adding additional capacity, and the speed of selecting (if not implementing) cloud services compared to on-premise.

There are two ways of sub-dividing the market, which combine into potentially 12 forms of cloud computing. The “Public SaaS” combination is of most relevance to most businesses, and tends to be the focus of the cloud computing articles in this blog:

(1) By Type of Service

“SaaS (Software as Service)”: Packaged software for a specific application ("app"), such as Customer Relationship Management, payroll or accounting. This was formerly known as "Application Service Provision" (ASP)

“PaaS (Platform as a Service)”: Programming environment where apps can be developed and deployed

“IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)”: Raw computing such as processing and storage, and possibly network. The user typically controls the software systems and apps loaded and used (subject to licensing), much as they would otherwise do with on-premise equipment.

(2) By Type of Deployment

Each of the three categories above can be deployed in any of four ways:

“Public Cloud”: Multi-tenanted systems where various end-user organisations share the same hardware set and usually the same database. Usually adequate for commercial purposes, if the right functionality and security tools are available.

“Private Cloud”: A system dedicated to one end-user organisation, and customer/suppliers etc they wish to share with. This can be externally with a third party, or internally as a web-enabled on-premise solution. With SaaS, this is typically using the same app as is available in the public cloud. The private service, if available, is typically more expensive than the public one, as private ones require additional administration by the provider. The benefits of a private system are:

• To mitigate risks of disclosing confidential data (if segregation, encryption and other security techniques are not deemed adequate in the shared public system)
• Better control of administration, such as timing of upgrades and any recovery of the database (as control in these areas is rarely offered in a public system)

“Hybrid Cloud”: A set of applications run across a mixture of private and public cloud services

“Community Cloud”: Apps shared between various organisations or individuals in a community.

As mentioned above, most of the articles on cloud computing in this blog focus on Public SaaS, as this is of most relevance to most businesses. The significant benefits, and how to manage the risks, are covered in those other articles.

News Update - Monday 15/11/10

Here's the pick of the last week's news stories that are likely to impact your business:

The Law and Social Media: Two legal actions in the UK highlight the need to use Twitter and other social media tools well within the law. As there are also libel risks, there are training and other personnel implications.

Cloud Computing:

(a) How do Cloud Apps Compare to On-Premise? A survey of cloud users suggests cloud applications can be better, but also shows they can be worse in every category, even cost. As this was published by a cloud advocate, it confirms selection of cloud systems has to be done carefully.

(b) Cloud Popularity: Even a hardware vendor such as Dell is entering the cloud services market, with email

(c) BT’s broadband outage in the north carries on for many users. Highlights need for contingency arrangements for data telecoms

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