Google Apps in the Enterprise

In reading the article, Google takes a more unorthodox approach to presenting it SaaS solution to enterprises. By focusing on making the enterprise apps simple and easy to use, they overlook the complex needs of many organizations. But, in googles defense, they are able to adapt and change quickly with the business environment.

The idea of dealing with chaos in the enterprise business environment baffles me. Google's approach is to just search to find things rather than organize them in a meaningful structure. For A type personalities and those that need this structure, this system will be difficult to adapt to. By organizing data, I think it is easier for humans to see relationships in data. By searching on random keywords, these relationships can get missed or be clouded from view.

Taking control from the organization will be a huge change for many. With "willy-nilly" realease schedules, or those schedules deemed by google, suddenly take control away from IT with regards to upgrades, maintenance, and downtime. And not having a choice on new feature sets will drive many organizations crazy!

A replacement for office you say? If organizations do simple word documents or excel sheets without anything fancy, I could understand this statement. A "lite" version may hit most users but Office 2007 can produce amazing business literature using fonts, formats, graphics, and templates. But, Office does not support collaboration of files (OneNote is the exception) whereas this is one great strength of Google apps. Google Apps has a long way to go if they are to complete with Microsoft as a replacement technology without being able to support all levels of users in an organization. But, for 1 year of development, Google is doing well.

The mobile office and working off-line are interesting concepts to consider. With the ability to work offline, users are free to work from wherever as long as they have an internet connection. Now if the organization loses their internet connection for a few hours, EVERY user must work offline. This is much more detrimental to an organization. And, like the article mentioned, reimbursing employees for internet can be quite costly.

The product strengths of GAPE are relevant and good selling points for Google. But, possible enterprise customers should really look into what GAPE will not do for the organization. With 99.9% uptime for email only, as a customer, this would make me nervous. If my business relies on these apps to do business, I would expect the same uptime for all applications. And the clause for "not responsible for lost data, profits, or revenue" would make me think twice. With my IT staff, I can at least ensure backups are performed at regular intervals. With Google, who knows!

Google does have one thing going for them- their name. Google is an innovative company that has branded itself as the new hightech king of the web. Google has partnerships that will allow the software to evolve quickly and fill in the holes where it's GAPE products are deficit. With their always new and innovative technologies, Google will allow GAPE to go in directions that Microsoft and other companies could only dream of.

The evaluation of a SaaS based framework was definately a good point. To compare apples to apples, organizations can evaluate SaaS products to see if they meet the business needs. A slow approach to the decisionmaking process and evaluating alternatives are a must before investing in a SaaS products. SaaS products can reduce the TCO for an organization by alleviating the headaches of maintenance and upgrades. Access to Googles API's and services like SSO are certainly good features that organizations should consider during the evaluation process.

Overall, an organization really needs to look at it's current infrastructure and business needs to see if Googles GAPE solution would work for them. Google's GAPE has great simple features that would cater to most business users but falls short in the richness and ability to cater to more complex needs and power users.

Wharton Chapter 3 - Technology Speciation

Technology speciation: The evolutionary differentiation of a pre-existing technology into one or more distinct technologies. The chapter discusses how existing technologies evolve to create
"new domain of application".

There are two critical features of speciation:

• "Speciation is not triggered by a transformation of the population within"
• "Speciation event allows the two populations of homogenous entities to grow quite distinct as a result of their now different selection environments"

Changes are not usually a result of revolutionary occurrances in the environment but more of a evolution over time. In the process, the technology is changed to adapt to a new environment. This new environment must have the resources to support the development of this change. As this technology grows, it may displace the older technologies. These new "lineages" of technologies may emerge as a result of combinging or "fusing" other technologies that are then synthesized or "converged". Sometimes, these technologies are not ready for a broad market and are isolated to a single purpose or "island of application".

The key is to find the right context or application for the emerging technology. Some of the key concepts when finding this application is

• view markets as being hetergeneous
• focus on market contexts and not the products that will fit into markets
• expand the criteria for the market as each company and case is different
• study users of the market
• "Learn by doing"
• Accelerate the evolution

There are numerous products that have come on the market that have gone through technology speciation. The PDA was a great technology but was expernsive and really catered to a small percentage of people. As the technology evolved, the PDA became the smartphone and the blackberry. Combining the functions of a mobile phone, calendaring, email, and the web, a new product emerged. Now, the iPhone builds on the the smartphone/blackberry by incorporating more multimedia features and improved use of it's GUI (through a touch screen).

I think the key element of this entire chapter is that new technology rarely just comes about one day. It's an evolution -sometimes slow but sometimes very quick, it just depends on the support structure and the resources of the environment in which it operates.

Gartner Hype Cycle on Emerging Tech 2007

The tera architecture is interesting in that it promises to reduce the cost of computing by 10%. With virtualization emerging in businesses and computing today, I find it hard to believe that it's so far off from now. Leave it up to Google to kick this one off and change the industry! I'm curious as to how this will revolutionize how we do business, the future of application development, and the computing possibilities of the future. More Power!

The 3d printing was an interesting concept. Drawings and schema's can have new life while changing the look and feel of business presentations. The 3d cad and 3d cutting of materials has been around for awhile and I am interested to see if this technology actually catches on. I think 3d modeling using holographics would be more interesting than a 3rd print.

I like gesture recognition and this technology can be seen in Apple's new iPhone. People are becoming more lazy and prefer small, simple movements to perform complex tasks (i.e scrolling with a mouse versus a touchpad on laptop computers). Image if more functions could be performed using other gestures like eye movements, simple movements of the fingers (i.e the tap tap of the finger to double click). The Wii has changed how we play and entertain ourselves.. I'm curious to see how they make games even more interactive for us and how we interact with others.

Web 2.0 -- the changes to the web to make our experience more interactive and more inter-connected have been a wonderful addition to my life. Through the use of collaboration tools for school work, social networks to catch up with old friends, I'm interested to see how this is going to evolve in the future with Web 3.0.

Wharton Chapter 2 - The Pitfalls of Emerging Technology

How do companies avoid the pitfalls of emerging technologies? The first half of the chapter covered the 4 traps a company might encounter with emerging technology.

1. The delayed participation -"watch and wait" theory. Carefully weigh the value of the project before jumping in
2. Sticking with the familiar -dislike of ambiguity and risk averse. If this system works, why change and go down a winding path of uncertainty
3. Reluctance to fully commit - resistance from channel partners, projected low returns from an emerging technology
4. Lack of Persistence - High levels in the company might not recognize the benefit and cut the venture. Emerging tech is known for it's failure rates - an easy target when money is needed

These four traps are very common for businesses to fall into. Emerging technology is ambiguous and contains high levels of uncertainty. For many companies, a wait and see approach allows them to reap the benefits of their competitors mistakes (but also has a chance of losing market share because they do not have the 1st mover advantage). Companies become complacent and enjoy working in comfortable environments. Emerging technology is seldom comfortable because of the levels of risk involved. Comfortability over time can also mean status quo. Companies can be reluctant to commit if the culture does not support the change or if the company is not ready to move in a new direction. Some companies treat emerging tech like poker: know when to hold 'em, some know when to fold 'em. When you fold, you lose your chances of winning the pot. Other companies lack the visionaries that can push and be persistent for emerging technology. A bottom up approach is harder to sell emerging tech than top down.

The second half of the chapter outlined "crafting solutions". Viewing emerging technology with the blinders off allows companies to move in new directions and see new opportunities. These new directions are sometimes hard to see but allow companies to shift in new directions and ways of thinking. How will this emerging tech benefit our customer and does it align with the companies strategic goals? This change when coupled with a learning environment allow for an openness of differing viewpoints within the company to help challenge the mindset and emerging technology projects succeed. When companies challenge the mindset and think outside of the box, companies can begin to experiment to provide new insights and possibilities of the technology. But, companies need to be both flexible and committed (the business paradox of emerging technology) to be successful.

Human Computation

This video was fascinating.. in fact I watched it more than once. I was showing this to some others and I was anxious to create a peekaboom account. I was astounded at the fact about the amount of time people play solitaire around the world (and also players that played ESP for more than 10 hours). I guess I underestimate other peoples time.

The CAPTCHA concept was an interesting segment and I also thought the remarks about "other" industries are using them for spam was very intriguing. I'm curious to see what other games will be created to capture more information about images and tags in the future. Perhaps these games could be marketed to inmates.. they have time to solve these simple problems.

If only we could use human computation to help solve world and economic issues...

Wharton On Managing Emerging Technologies

Summary:

Emerging technologies are the future for many industries and will tranform many existing industries. As defined in the preface, "Wharton Emerging technologies Management Research Program was established in 1994 and was comprised of faculty and senior executives to analyze emerging tech and develop strategies for its success across all lines of an organization. The preface defined 7 different priorities top help managing emerging technologies.

The first chapter talked about the disruption emerging technologies can have on an organization and that a required mindset and skillset are needed to be successful in the implementation process. Emerging technologies can do great things for companies and create new opportunities and competitive advantages. But, it can also destroy a business if not carefully planned. Emerging tech can have great complexity and uncertainty which create great challenges for an organization to manage. Understanding knowledge from experiements, experience, and how a customer uses the technology can help give organizations an upper hand with deriving and implementing emerging technology. But, learning from the mistakes is an invaluable lesson. The paradox a company must accept in order to be successful - commit but be flexible. There are few simple answers in emerging technology and learning managing the ambiguity can lead to the best rewards.

Comments:
Necessity is the mother of invention - pioneers are able to identify and understand the necessities and develop strategies to exploit these ideas. But, as the book stated, many pioneers fail. Companies should understand that implementing and investing in emerging technologies are risky but the rewards can be great. Apple didn't get to be #1 in the portable music device market by waiting to see what other companies were doing. They learned quickly from projects like the Newton handheld that if it doesn't catch on, try to reinnovate the product (i.e. the new iphone). I'm interested to see how the other chapters outline the framework for managing the technology and examples of how other companies have succeeded and failed.

WSJ - Don't Fence Me In

IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) are becoming more popular for businesess as they worry about the security of their data. These systems certainly have their place in business and the article mentioned the financial losses from cybercrime. I am sure that for the 1 company that reports cybercrime, there are 10 companies that don't. Cybercrime can destroy a business and I think coupling this technology with other technologies such as firewalls and other access controls is a must for every businesses. But, because all of these things put overhead on the network (including AV and other host based scanners) and speed will always be a tradeoff until processing capabilities can be improved.

False positives is and will always be an issue because the enviroment in which it monitors is so dynamic. I think education of users as to the dangers out on the web and how to protect yourself and the company can help eliminate many issues associated with IDS. Companies should also invest a good portion of the money for an IDS into the setup and maintenance. These systems are complicated to administer and become easily outdated without regular and routine maintenance.