Cloud-based Software: The Tipping Point Gets Nearer
January 16, 2012 by Yuval BriskerLast week Google announced a milestone deal with BBVA that should have people at Microsoft even more worried than they probably already are, and pure Cloud enthusiasts like my colleagues at TOA and I ever more excited and confident about the future of pure-play Cloud-based software.
BBVA is a major employer with over one hundred thousands employees. But this is significant not just because of the sheer number of new Google Docs and Gmail users – but mostly because of the network effect.
At TOA we have always ‘practiced what we preached’ and that means that we not only sell Cloud-based enterprise software (SaaS), we also buy and use only Cloud-based software. What that means for us is that we only look for SaaS solutions for our internal needs. We believe firmly that in order to understand the benefits, as well as the limitations of what we sell, we have to experience it like our clients do: as real bon-fide users. So we have been Google Apps users from the moment that these were available for the enterprise and moved our whole mail infrastructure to Google about two years ago. We have followed the evolution of the Google Docs Suite from the moment that Google bought Writely and watch closely as these applications have become more and more deep and more and more sophisticated and complete. In fact, from a classic enterprise users’ point of view , someone who is not crunching numbers or doing intense graphics and a lot of offline work, there is very little difference today creating text, presentation or spreadsheet documents on Google Docs in comparison to Microsoft Office. In fact, the most amazing aspect of the GDocs Suite is the strong native collaboration capabilities that make it absolutely a killer app for this purpose.
Only one serious gap remains that has kept us from adopting the GDocs Suite as our one and only productivity tool and that is robust, easy to use offline capability, access and storage –(full disclosure: I am writing this very post on Word – to be transferred later - because of that…I’m on a plane with no Wi-Fi).
The only other serious hindrance is people’s mindset.
Office is the standard and people are afraid of deserting the standard. But that’s where the network effect comes in. With companies like GM and BBVA adopting the G-Suite as their mail app and G-Docs as their primary productivity tool (even if for now for internal communications) we will begin to see the conversion of the masses and the tipping point will get ever closer.
RIM’s Year of Misery
December 17, 2011 by Yuval BriskerI loved BlackBerry.
Without BB, TOA would probably not be here. I know that’s a big statement but it’s really not far from the truth.
When Irad and I started TOA, we were immediately going after large corporate customers. We wanted to make them feel like we were big. We wanted to make them feel like we were there for them any time, any where – always available and accessible. “Always available” in 2004 was not a given. And being available AND being completely mobile at the same time (meaning travelling all over the country and the world to meet prospects and customers and getting our email with no problem) – considering there was barely a mobile internet (GPRS – not even EDGE – and definitely no 3G) and very little WiFi – these were almost mutually exclusive concepts.
When we realized the possibilities that BB offered – i.e. email and IM anywhere – we were blown away and quickly adopted it as our platform of choice.
Our first BB didn’t have a phone yet – so we still carried around a cheap Nokia for voice – but it made us seem instantly bigger than we were and we were in business!!! Using BlackBerry Internet Server to get our mail anywhere, using BB Messenger to connect with each other and our growing employee base – we were big even when we were small. And then we extended that to use BB to launch our first web-based mobility app; our people found many innovative ways to run and manage various technological aspects of our business using the BB platform…we were totally enamored by the power and the vision and, well, the rest is history…
So it is with much sadness that I look at the train wreck that is RIM today. Not only because our own evolution is intimately tied to BB, but because the whole history of web-based mobile business computing is intimately tied to RIM.
I am trying to understand the lessons learned: how it happened that they were riding SO high only 3 years ago and now they have fallen SO low: BlackBerry’s share of the smartphone market has dropped from 49 percent in 2009 to 10 percent (!!!) in 2011. What brought about such a decline iPhone and Android, of course, are the first reasons), but what were the other red-flags along the way? What were the decisions taken or not taken, the fault points not heeded? What were/are the lesson to be learned for business and technology leaders. Clearly a massive business case study and probably a few PhDs to be written on this.
To me, the biggest single miss on RIMs part was not seeing that even for hardcore business people, the iPhone was not just about a beautifully designed and executed device and OS, but that it was that they smartphone no longer was just about secure and guaranteed email. It was being blind to the fact that the smartphone was no longer just a mobile email device – but a fully versatile platform that merged every aspect of a users life – both business AND personal, both hardcore emailing and IM AND casual information gathering/browsing, gaming and social networking. That the business person was also a consumer a regular guy or gal. By not ever developing a truly usable fast rendering browser, not finding a way to incorporate a big enough and effective touch screen as well as a robust app network – these were the ultimate killers.
I recently decided to give RIM one last chance (it wasn’t just sentiment – I truly LIKE my physical keyboard) – so I changed my Bold 9700 for the new Bold 9900 with the goal of testing it out before I test the iPhone 4S and the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus to find out which of these is going to be my new preferred device. Well, so far, though the new Bold 9900 has some very good new features related to emailing and contacts (BB’s strength), it does not rank in terms of browsing and apps and it’s touch screen and OS are definitely behind in terms of usability. So I am probably going to move beyond BlackBerry and close a chapter on my own smartphone computing history and symbolically on Blackberry and RIM.
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Update:
Another article in the nytimes about Blackberry and RIM. It just keeps coming.
Google’s Siri Worries Grow
December 15, 2011 by Yuval BriskerI blogged about this a few weeks ago and it seems that Google’s Siri headache is not going away….
Here’s more fascinating stuff about what might be an even bigger battle than Android vs. iOS.
I’d be interested to read your thoughts and comments on this, so use that comments button!
Amazon Fire: Not Perfect
December 13, 2011 by Yuval BriskerThere was a lot of negative buzz in press over the past few days about the Kindle Fire and now that buzz has turned into scorching criticism. Jakob Nielsen, one of the world’s foremost experts on usability, issued an alert saying that “Kindle Fire…suffers from plain old bad UI design in many areas” and “a disappointingly poor user experience”.
The NYTimes prominently covered the issues saying that Amazon is having some real challenges with the Fire in an article that went straight to the number one spot on the Times’ Most Emailed List. In it, the Times cautioned all the naysayers not to count Amazon out, but nonetheless described the problems in detail and raised red flags for consumers.
We should not forget that while there was plenty of criticism of the iPhone when it came out (remember no ‘copy/paste’?) or the iPad (‘who needs it…’) it was first to market; and the sheer wonder of the new was enough to help people over the hump.
The Kindle Fire competes with the iPad, despite Amazon’s insistence that it doesn’t…I personally can’t see myself owing the Fire AND an iPad AND a Kindle eReader….I will choose one eReader and one tablet. And though Fire might be cheaper…given that it is not functionally on par with the iPad…I choose the iPad as my tablet.
Amazon, an inspiring company on many many levels, should have made sure that its product was perfect. It didn’t and the Fire’s future is not clear.
And here’s an update to this blog…a followup article in the NY Times.
