Over-thinking the Cloud

Many of you have probably spent a few days or possibly even a few weeks recently, lying on your back staring at the sky. With any luck there was just a sea of never ending blueness that made you relaxed and happy to be at the beach/pool/lake/mountain top or wherever your vacation dreams reside. However I suspect that during this period of unrelenting bliss, a few clouds showed up that made you think about the future of networking computing…unless that was just me..

With all the talk of cloud computing, when you actually look at clouds you will notice that the typical cloud that is used to depict the “Cloud” is usually a sizeable puffy one, fairly neatly formed and oval-ish. However, when you look at real clouds you will notice that clouds vary as much as people. No two clouds are alike. They all exhibit different personalities and traits.

During our relaxed state, the most welcome form of high-level cloud is not puffy at all, in fact, known as “Cirrus” clouds they are usually very thin and often wispy. Typically found at heights greater than 20,000 feet Cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals that originate from the freezing of super-cooled water droplets (I looked that up…). What we like about Cirrus clouds is that they generally occur in fair weather and don’t threaten to disturb our dreamy state of relaxation.

Those large,  puffy “Internet” clouds, also known as Cumulus (yep…the ones that start to look like rabbits and puppies after we stare at them for a while) tend to be mid to low level clouds that turn a gray color when they become “Cumulonimbus”. This is because they are reaching their capacity and are expected to be overloaded soon. The sight of a large looming cumulonimbus will motivate us to start rolling up the beach towel and head to the hotel for an early happy hour. However, their slightly less impressive half-brothers “Stratocumulus” that generally appear as a low, lumpy layer of clouds with breaks of clear sky in between generally make us hold off on the exit strategy but do have a tendency to ruin the mood. As you can see the Cloud world is very rich and diverse.

So, what is the point of all this? Well, as more and more companies talk about their “Cloud” computing strategy, I think we should be asking ourselves exactly what type of cloud they are building and is the term “Cloud” really meaningful as the Internet develops.  Is their cloud something that is large and looming that, as it grows, will eventually ruin our day, or something simple and un-intrusive that is far away and not likely to have a big impact at all on our lives? It’s actually probably neither.

Unfortunately, as someone who starts to pace relentlessly when he loses Blackberry connectivity for even 5 minutes, I think we really need to develop an all-encompassing analogy that depicts something that will entirely envelop us and completely change the way we think about computing, the web, the phone, networks, technology, vacations, clouds and everything else.

I propose that network diagrams should no longer show the Internet as a “Cloud” off in the corner with lines coming out of it -  they should start with a musty gray undeterminable background with all the stuff sitting right in the middle of the grayness, connecting not by clear lines, but via some ethereal mist-like form. I further suggest we no-longer use the term “Cloud” computing, but start using “Fog” computing. Simple, brutal, cold and in your face.

That way we will be much more honest with the public at large and all the confusion will be completely eliminated.

The W4’s of Search

When you think about Search today, most people simply “Google”. However Yahoo is trying hard to catch up and recognizing that the desktop war is over; they are focusing their attention on the mobile platform. Their belief is that Search will become much more of a mobile application in the future and that a good Mobile Search will be much more than just typing in what you are looking for and seeing a list of results.

At the Voice Search conference today, Yahoo presented the idea that Mobile Search involves the four “W’s”: What you want; Where you are; Who you are and When you want it. Yahoo has coined the term W4 to describe this concept to those of us who can’t keep up. Or to be more technical, you are really looking at four data types concurrently when performing a mobile search – Topical, Spatial, Social and Temporal. That being said, I think Google is already well down the path to W4 nirvana and Yahoo may be too late (again). Here’s why.

As an avid Google Maps user I can attest to the fact that my desire to “map” before I embark on a road trip (i.e. on my desktop and then print it out) has now been 100% supplanted by my ability to “Google Map” during the trip. Of course this presents its own set of challenges if I am driving.  Also I do find that Google’s sense of direction competes with my wife’s Garmin on a regular basis, resulting in lively discussions about which (i.e. who) is right. (The Garmin usually wins of course! )

However, Google Maps is a great example of a real product that exhibits W3 and possibly W4-ness. If you think about it, I am combining Topical Data (What is my destination) with Spatial Data (Where do I go to get there). I have recently added Google Latitude to my mapping experience which allows me to see where my wife and kids are at any time, assuming they have their devices on. So that’s Social Data, i.e. “Who”. So there’s W3 already. The only thing left to reach a state of W4-ness is Temporal (When). Is that hard to imagine? I can envisage that soon I will be able to ask Google Maps for “places to eat” and that it will only return those things that I could do at the time I asked them. It will show me lunch spots at lunchtime and diners at breakfast. It may only show me ones that have been recommended by my Social Data base if that’s what I want and perhaps only those that are within walking distance if it has ascertained from my GPS that I am in fact walking.

If you assume that Mobile Search is the brave new world of Search then the W4 concept is very compelling. The trick seems to be the one with the most data will win. Can I see myself “Yahooing” from my mobile device at some point in the future…no, not really.

Reducing your IVR footprint using Speech may decrease your risk of cancer and save the planet?

Datamonitor recently put out a report that talked about the value of hosted speech and describes the “IVR footprint”.

“At the end of 2004, revenues from the hosted and premise-based managed IVR market in North America were just north of $1.9 billion. As a result of its large IVR footprint, traditional IVR accounted for the majority, or 78.2%, of revenues. Voice-XML accounted for 21.8% of revenues”

When they refer to Voice-XML I believe they are referring to Speech-based IVR. So it tells me that old-fashioned DTMF based IVR is still in heavy use and Speech is slowly getting acceptance.

It got me thinking about how we are being told by Al Gore and the media that our “carbon footprint” is fueling global warming, polluting the air and generally destroying the environment. I did not come up with an immediate solution to this problem, but I saw a new report from the Univ. of Pittsburg this morning that declares yet again the theory that radio waves from cell phones may be causing brain cancer and I felt there might be a connection. Most people have already decided where they stand on climate change; some people fear cell phone radio waves (did you see the fake YouTube ads?).

Let’s assume that both have some modicum of truth - so how are they related and, you may wonder, how does Speech IVR play a part in the solution?

We can cycle to work (25 miles for me…) turn down the A/C, stop drinking bottled water from the island of Java and use speakerphones but how can we focus our business investments on solving these issues?

We know that IVR works well for routing calls to the right agents in a call center and capturing a limited amount of data. Does traditional IVR reduce call time? In some cases yes, in most cases maybe not. However we do know that using a well-designed Speech application in many cases will reduce call time significantly simply by allowing a more conversational interaction with the IVR, a more efficient presentation of the needed information and as a result very little, if any, agent interaction.

So here’s the basic theory: If we can reduce the amount of time a caller spends on the phone, which includes how long they spend with an agent, then they will be exposed to fewer radio waves from their cell phone. As a result of the reduced call time, companies will be able to use fewer agents which will mean smaller facilities, less people on the road and a reduced carbon footprint overall.

Does this sound either a bit off the wall or possibly too good to be true? Is there a catch? Back to that Datamonitor report:

“The relatively high costs of speech have deterred many businesses from investment. As a result, a number of these businesses have looked to hosting to leverage the benefits of speech without having to put forward the heavy upfront costs for a speech solution. For these businesses the hosted model minimizes cost, time and risk for speech application development, tuning and expansion”.

So there you have it! Help save the planet, reduce your callers’ risk of cancer and spend less money to boot. Take a look at your IVR footprint and your agent footprint. Would the simple implementation of a hosted Speech IVR solution reduce your call time by even 10%? It may well make a difference.

I’d love to hear some comments. Am I on to something here? After all a year ago everyone thought hybrid cars were weird and only for the tree-huggers…how times change!

Next time we’ll look to see whether Speech can turn around the economy, reduce the price of gas and get our troops out of Iraq…stayed tuned.

The 800 Pound Gorilla NOT in the Room

Last week I attended the CTIA Wireless 2008 Expo in Las Vegas. This event is the annual industry tech fest attended by anyone and everyone who makes a difference in the world of wireless. CEO’s and senior execs of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Lucent, Ericsson, Samsung, Microsoft, RIM et al were there making sure that their particular market angle was being hyped. What happened in Vegas last week definitely did not stay in Vegas!

However, embedded in the speeches and announcements was one popular theme – how nervous is the iPhone “ground swell” making everyone? Over 2.3M iPhones have been registered on the various carrier networks in the first few months it was released, a truly astounding statistic for any single wireless device. The fact that about a million more than that have been sold is an odd anomaly that is generally thought to be caused by Asian and European visitors to the US buying them in bulk using cheap US Dollars, taking them home and hacking them to work in their own country.

Well over 20M iPhones are expected to be sold before the year is out and by the end of 2009 close to 50M. I expect we will see iPhone 2.0 announced early next year. One of the biggest VC companies in the known universe, Kleiner Perkins, who has achieved cult status in the Valley over the years with home runs like Google, announced the $100 “iFund” specifically to invest in iPhone app developers. The iPhone has achieved a cult status in 6 months all on its own!

But, amongst all this incessant iPhone chatter - where was Apple? Not a single Apple booth amongst the 1,200 + in the exhibit hall, no senior executive making a key note, no representative in any of the conference sessions, not even an Apple sponsored offsite after-hours cocktail bash.

Maybe it’s me, but for such a game changer in the industry, this lack of presence was truly astonishing. I know Steve Jobs likes to control his world and buck the system, but it is almost like the planners for CTIA forgot to give him a call: “Hey Steve, since you are new to the whole Wireless world, you might want to know about our little conference, we’d love to have you show up and do your thing -its not like the boring PC industry; wireless is really cool and you’d really like the people.”

In the next few years, annual revenues from the wireless industry are expected to exceed $100B which will be bigger than the entire Sports industry ($96B) and almost as big as the Casino industry ($105B). Come to think of it, maybe those cool people at CTIA want to keep quiet about this for a little longer and hope that Apple does not crash their party quite yet.

Microsoft Sneaks Across the Rubicon

I remember several years ago Steve Ballmer (or was it Bill) said something along the lines of “if I could get $10 a month for every single Microsoft customer I would never need to sell another software license.”

Well I think that day may finally be coming. I attended a Microsoft Conference in a suburb of Chicago last week and amongst the Powerpoint overload and mumbled presentations by some newby Microsoftees they stated that they want to give the customer a choice of buying their hosted Microsoft solutions from a partner or direct from Microsoft. What…backup a minute…did you say direct from Microsoft. Apparently this had been announced a few months ago, but based on the subsequent “gulp” that emanated in the audience I can only assume they all missed the memo.

Well the MStees did have a legitimate explanation – “that’s what Google is doing” (oh and a few other like eBay and Facebook – huh?) so we have no choice – of course! Now for a company that prides itself on its partner programs this seems a little disingenuous, especially when they announced a couple of earlier slides how many hosting partners they had managed to sign up since they launched the program.

They have coined an interesting term to further obfuscate the concept – “Software + Services Channel” which sort of, kind-of, means “Software-as-a-Service through the Channel”, but clearly this was not the full story.

Anyway, most of the partners in the audience took it well. After all 1) they have no choice and 2) their customers would never buy direct from Microsoft. Why would they, I mean what would they get from the mothership that they could not get from Larry down the street. Of course people will pay a premium to shop locally, everybody knows that. Did somebody say Walmart…

Well it might take a while, but $10 multiplied by the entire population of the planet (other than the Chinese who use their own stuff) is a big number to be getting every month. Both Steve and Bill will be very proud one day.