Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy & Others

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  • Future of analytics

    Analytics, simply defined, a discipline of analysis has been in use for centuries. I was invited to IT leadership symposium organized by secure24, a hosting provider vendor in Michigan, USA. The event was choreographed by Thornton A. May.   It was attended by selective senior executive IT leadership team from various industries in the region.  Event was kicked off with a great opening presentation by Mr. May. The presentation was basically a story telling on how IT industry evolved to add tangible business benefit with simplified historical and anthropology examples. I really enjoyed it.

    The second part (part II) of the event was panel discussion. The panel members provided very intriguing ideas, message and concept. I learnt few new things from the panel discussion.

    Third part of the event; each table was given a topic and asked to discuss about the topic and present it to everyone.  My table got the topic: “Future of analytics” and I was nominated unanimously to represent our table.  My contribution to the table topic was that the future will depend on the social media and social networks. Other’s contribution was mainly on geo-fencing and its role in the analytics.  Since I was nominated to represent the table, I was structuring my thoughts on how to represent our views while listening to other table topics. Mr. May run out of time and our table was omitted and our views on the topic was not heard. I decided to display my structured thought in my blog. This is how I would have presented.

    The panel discussion provided great insights and I learned few new things from the panel members. Top two things I fully agree with panel members are:

    1.  Successes of IT organization are measured by its capability and capacity to execute and innovate.
    2. Most critical differentiating factor of a successful IT organization is not adapting the latest technology trends like: cloud computing, mobile computing, service oriented architecture, integrated identity management. Most critical differentiating factor of a successful IT organization; “right people at the right job”. People are the one who make things happen in an organization.

    “Vision without a plan is a dream and a plan without a vision is run around”

    I would like to augment my view to the above points; vision without a plan is a dream and plan without a vision is a run around. People are the one who make things happen, not technology.

    To be futurist and strategist, these are the few concepts to keep in mind (a repeat from my last blog post)
    1. Timing is everything
    2. Learn history and study current (identify the driving factors)
    3. Unleash the core and its dependencies – Understand what really matters and its dependencies.
    4. Connect the dots

    Timing is everything:
    Imagine that if  iPhone was launched 12 years ago. We would have connected to the apple store via dial-up (AOL) to down load angry bird. Data plan would have cost us $500 a month and connection speed would have frustated a lot. All other external factors would have made iPhone under PALM category.
    Learn history and study current:
    As far we know, when Grog in 5000BC used two sticks and rocks to graph the upward trend in sales of his new invention, the wheel, the concept “analytics” was born. Almost took seven thousand years to make a leap in this area.  What did we learn from the history? Analytics played a significant role for a mega success like Romans, Henry Ford and others. Those who understand the deep meaning of analytics made everlasting impact. Current expectation is, let the system make decisions  and receive confirmation from end user to execute the plan.  Trust over the system and acceptance of system generated decision have been increasing. Adoption to this model is accelerating.  Navigation system in the car is a prime example for the current state.
    Unleash the core and its dependencies:
    People are the one who make things happen and in the most of the profit and non-profit organization, people are direct or indirect consumer of goods and service. It is extremely essential to understand people to define or approximate the future. How people view the world? People define the world based on what they see and hear. World is blue when they view through blue glass and it is red when they view through red glass. Deeper view: for decades, the world has been defined numerous times every day by each individual through the social network. Historically, the social network was through snail mail, family gathering, corporate functions, bars and other occasional events. With the advancement of the technologies like smart phones, global networks, wireless networks, software tools, the social networking happens instantaneously. We are defining, redefining our world based on the instantaneous connection through invisible cosmic social network fiber. It becomes an addiction because we wanted to know what is happening around the world we defined. So facebook is addictive.
    Connect the dots:
    Advancement of wireless network, mobile platform, social media, and end user computing devices led to higher sophistication and at the same rate people’s mechanical monotonic life style has raised up by few notches.  They don’t have interest or time to view the product or service’s sales offering when they don’t need or not in the mood. At the same, they want to make an instantaneous execution of a decision when a systematic analysis was already performed and a decision is presented with highest level of confidence.
    Conclusion:
    The future of analytics will be presenting decision to you and by click of a button (or slide of a screen) you can execute the decision. For example, based on the social interaction,system will identify a consumer interest and capacity and capability;skiing during January time frame, received  hefty bonus during x-mas time and carry over vacation from the previous year should be taken before first quarter. System will be presented an offer; 5 day ski trip to the best place with lowest possible rate, with best possible quality. Once you confirm the acceptance of the recommendation/decision, everything will be taken care by the system. Once the consumer enter Denver for skiing, geo-fencing will kick in and based on the interest, pattern, spend behavior the most suitable offers applicable at Denver during that vacation time will be presented by consumer’s car while the consumer driving from Denver airport to Breckenridge ski resort.

  • Unrest in technolgy industry

    Lot happened since I wrote my last blog: Steve Job left Apple’s chief executive office; HP came up with radically different business strategy; Facebook is working on a search tool; Google launched Google+; Google bought Motorola Mobility; Google bought IBM’s patents for undisclosed amount; Future of Android after Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility appears to be questionable; Microsoft continues to prove its copycat marketing strategy with Mango; It is more than obvious that personal computers migrating to legacy typewriter category; Oracle has the money and may have the desire to buy HP; Scientist found a planet made of diamond; gold deposits in earth were carried by asteroids – keep eye on those asteroid to monitor the gold value in financial market  and few other significant ones.

    For each one of these events, I wanted to write a blog but unfortunately after 24th hour of a day, clock is reset for the next day and cycle repeated. And today, due to the heavy rain in Michigan my pre-quarter final cricket game got cancelled and got free few minutes and hence this blog post.

    By watching the significant events in recent past, it is evident all the tech dinosaurs are roaming wild to avoid the next big tech asteroid.  In current market, it is a big business puzzle to predict the predator and prey due to growth acceleration rate in terms of consumer adoption in the technology segment. Lots of companies were formed in a garage with a simple idea and some of them were successful by simplifying the original idea and became a giant, and soon, it is worth for billions. Most of the overnight multi-billion dollar companies do not manufacture goods; do not provide a tangible service and hence very vulnerable for next big simpler idea.

    Recent trends have been proving the 200 year old economics theory needs fundamental change. The economic value is not only measured by goods and services but by a geo-cosmic fiber created by invisible social network.

    Dominant player in the technology company map is rapidly changing and player who is of size of a continent soon becomes unnoticeable island and vice-versa.  All recent activities in the technology segment are all about positioning to the uncharted journey of consumer trends. We wish we have a magic lens to preview the future but we don’t. We understand and agree no tool or process or person can predict the future precisely but people are capable of approximate or define it.

    How do we approximate the future?

    Keep in mind few concepts.

    • Timing is everything.
    • Learn history and study current.
    • Unleash the core and its dependencies.
    • Connect the dots.

    Using the above concepts, how do we approximate the future of disk storage market segment?  It will become a 30-40 page research report to completely answer the question. So, the approach is to scratch the surface to provide an idea how to approximate the future with an example.

    There are few dominant players in the storage industry like NetApp, EMC, IBM, Hitachi and etc. Today the storage is based on longitudinal magnetic recording or perpendicular magnetic recording. The limitation of this recording methods are competing requirement of read, write and stability. The size of storage unit using this technology ranges from 130 gb – 1 tb in square inch. The next generation recording will be based on shingled magnetic recording, bit patterned recording or thermally-assisted recording or combination of bit patterned and thermally assisted and over comes the limitation in the current recording methods. The storage unit size will range from 2 – 10 tb in square inch.

    All the current, future magnetic and thermal recording is done by set of semiconductors. There are set of companies manufacture those semiconductors that are used in manufacturing the storage units. The trends of semiconductors are based on the advancement in the quantum physics and solid state physics. The trends of the solid state physics can be studied by research made in academia by monitoring the paper published in journals and forums (like carbon based semiconductors are emerging and future electronic devices like iPad will have almost zero mass and can be folded and kept inside a shirt pocket).  Connect all the above to trends of associated technology (quantum computing), problems faced by end users, problem introduced by the associated new technology trends, and etc. Being exhaustive in each step stated above will approximate the future of the storage industry.

    All the current tech giants are performing the similar studies to define or approximate the future. They are defining their merger and acquisition strategy, corporate strategy, business strategy, collaborative strategy and competitive strategy. It has become more challenging due to fundamental change in economic valuation and hence the unreset in technology industry.

    Time only can answer the actual results of these strategies of technology giants.

    I wish I had more time to write less in this post.

  • Top Level Domains

    Currently there are around 300 approved top level domains. The top level domains are .com, .gov, .net, .in, .ca and etc. Top level domain is a part of internet name space to uniquely identify a web site in the internet. For instance, blog.prabasiva.com uniquely identifies a site in internet and top level domain of the web site is .com. 

    All internet name space are managed and controlled by ICANN and it is not-for-profit cooperation with participants from all over the world. The main objective is to develop policy on the internet’s unique identifiers.
    History was made in this week when ICANN approved an open name space for the top level domain. It means an internet name space can have top level domains like .bank, .school, .college, .university or trademark names like .td, .starbucks, .google, .microsoft or personal names like .gates, .raji, .darshan, .deepak and etc.


    There is around 350 page document published by ICANN on guidelines and procurement process to acquire new top level domains.

    Pros & Cons analysis:

    1. Security++++: Open top level domain name spaces will minimize web site phishing. In the current top level domain, there are lots of website phishing threats. In the current environment, it is easy to create a fake sites that impersonalize the legitmate site.  Retaining the ownership of the top level domain by the corporation completely eliminates the phishing threats.

    2.Social Network++:Provides a local platform to establish communities.  Brand based communities will be established within brand site. It may be linked back to existing social networks. As the adoption of the brand based communities grows, the social networking sites like facebook will be devalued.  Potential monopoly threat from facebook will be reduced due to the emerging brand based community sites.

    3.Startup+:Provides an opportunities for new start ups. Sites like .cars, .motorcycle, .banks, .autoloan will be owned by domain managers who already exist in the market (like godaddy.com) or new Startup Company can own these domains and sell the domain sub-domains. There will be intense land grab competition to acquire the common names like .cars, .computer, .tablet, .mobile and etc. It also provides an opportunity for new startup to provide full servicing in that space. For instance, if a new company owns .autoloan, they can sell the sub-domain to smaller banks, credit unions and also they can sell auto loan platform to them. It will boost the business cloud offering in the market.  There are numerous startup business opportunties.

    1. Cost—–The initial registration cost is $180K and yearly fees is around $25K. There is no gurantee that the application will be approved for all applicants and if the application is rejected the application fee will not be refunded. Cost may be affordable for fortune 100 companies to register their brand. The cost may not be affordable for a startup and it has a very significant risk to reach zero value for the initial capital investment.

    2.Historical data—-:.job top level domain was available for last few years. It didn’t make a significant impact to the jobs sites.

    3. User Experience–:Pagerank assignment to the existing sites will have an impact if the top level domains are changed. There are technical solution to redirect the existing domains to redirect to a new top level domains.  However, the non technical end user will be confused with new top level domains.

    Recommendation:
    1.Corporation to buy the top level domain to retain their brand identity in the internet.
    2. Corporations to buy the top level domains who are in the race to reach the dominance in a market place (like tablet, universal single sign on, and etc) to grab top level immediately.
    3. Service providers who are in  dominance in a market place (like autoloan) or close to dominance are to buy the top level domains to minimize or eliminate the future potential market risk.
    4. Startups who are getting into the  full service spectrum are to buy the top level domains.