Loading ...Are we ready for tomorrow’s user?
At Accenture’s Global Convergence Forum last month, the consulting company discussed how the high-tech, communications and telecommunications (HCT) industries are in for a 10x growth opportunity in light of an increasingly converging world.
Accenture said it expects the traditionally linear user experience equation will be complicated by new factors in this new converged world: new spaces, faces and places.
Not surprisingly, there will be the digital age user – born between 1978-2006 – who perceives IT as a natural component of their lives. But less obviously, citizens will play a role as they increasingly look to IT for work and recreation. Also, the middle-class will emerge alongside a diminished affluent market. And, markets like China and India will emerge.
But this predicted 10x growth can only be reaped by those businesses that know how to harness that opportunity. In particular, they first need to acknowledge that a converging world creates a new kind of user, and with that user comes a new set of expectations, and even challenges like diminished loyalty.
In theory, that sounds straightforward enough: acknowledge user needs and tailor products and services for those specific needs. But even today, before the linear equation has yet to become overly-complex, user expectations aren’t always met. The mobile market, for instance, often churns out gimmicky gadgets with cool functionality that satiates the hunger of the early adopter and technology enthusiast. But the early adopter and enthusiast form but a niche market. Yet handheld devices are a ubiquitous technology, and the average user is often sidelined by the vendor in an effort to go to market with cool products. Even today’s mobile developers admit the average user is an untapped market yearning for practical functionality for every day use.
If we can’t meet the more basic expectations of the average user in a pre-converged world, harnessing that golden growth opportunity that tomorrow’s world of new markets and new users promises may be trickier than we think. Perhaps figuring out how to conquer existing markets is a good way to prime oneself for a new world of complex emerging markets.
Related PostsPosted on April 18th, 2008 by Kathleen Lau and filed under Future Technology | No Comments »
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Loading ...Traffic shaping brings Net Neutrality debate to a boil
Last week, Howard Solomon’s story on ISP reaction to Bell’s traffic shaping policies — the throttling of P2P content whether it’s on Bell’s own Sympatico high-speed service or that of an ISP re-selling bandwidth bought from Bell — struck a chord with IT World Canada readers, becoming one of the most-read and most-commented article we’ve ever run. And while I’ve got a healthy respect for search engine optimization, I don’t think it was just the fact that we used “Bell” and “outrage” in the head that drove all that traffic.
(There are some words that are guaranteed to drive traffic when used in headlines, viz, “iPhone,” “porn,” and “Britney Spears.” Perhaps “Britney Spears iPhone porn outrage” is the perfect storm of a headline. But I digress.)
On Thursday, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers asked the CRTC for a cease-and-desist order against Bell, bringing the long-simmering Net Neutrality debate to a boil. Make no mistake — the CRTC’s decision on this matter will be precedent-setting. A CAIP victory could entrench the principle of Net Neutrality in Canada, without going the American route of trying, and failing, to pass legislation guaranteeing equal rights to the Internet backbone.
Reader comments on the story were uniformly critical of Bell, much of them along the lines of “typical monopolistic behaviour.”
“This level of anti-competitive behaviour from Bell should be expected,” commented Myrcurial. “Anyone remember the Centrex crisis from the mid-90s? The Canadian Association of Internet Providers was formed in 1996 as a direct response to Bell retroactively making significant changes to contracted services.”
“Does this move not negate any and every contract Bell has with any of its clients?” chimed in Samantha Vickers. ”Nothing I signed on for stated anything like this…I would not have agreed to it either.”
And Roland, from Surrey, added this heavy-with-bakery-analogies posting:
“I believe what’s really going on here is that Bell is trying to train it’s consumers on all levels to expect ‘less’ (all in the name of helping the movie/music industry and of course us from ourselves). So if the consumer expects ‘less’ of the pie than what they paid for that just leaves more ‘pie’ for Bell to re-sell, without having to bake more ‘pie’ (costly upgrades to actually service the client).”
Getting hungry now.
We’re interested in your two cents. Visit the story and add a comment, add acomment to this blog posting, or visit the Net Neutrality Resource Centre we’ve put together in response to the reader reaction.
Related PostsPosted on April 4th, 2008 by dave webb and filed under Internet | 7 Comments »
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Loading ...MS/Yahoo versus Google
A Microsoft/Yahoo marriage? There’s something to contemplate …
From a Microsoft perspective, this really is all about Google. Microsoft’s Windows Live ecosystem, positioned as a Google-killer, simply hasn’t gained the traction Redmond would have hoped, not even simply in the search field — people still “Google” each other, they don’t “Windows Live Search” each other, even if every browser upgrade installs a Live Search box in the menu bar. (Tangentially, why did Yahoo never push its identity as a verb? You never hear of someone “Yahooing” information. Serious oversight.)
Related PostsPosted on February 1st, 2008 by dave webb and filed under messaging, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
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Loading ...Your predictions for 2008
We’ve had our say … now it’s your turn. What will turn the tech industry on its head in 2008? Who’s buying whom? What’s hot and what’s hype? Share your predictions for the coming year in the comment roll below.
Related PostsPosted on January 24th, 2008 by dave webb and filed under Future Technology | No Comments »
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Loading ...Personality conflict
Prepping for an upcoming Network World feature, I had a fascinating conversation with Andrew Hillier, CTO of Richmond Hill, Ont.-based CiRBA. CiRBA writes virtualization analysis software that brings together configuration, attribute and utilization information for analysis using rule sets. Very funky stuff.
The subject of compute personalities came up in the discussion (or, more accurately, workload personalities). There are a finite number of these archetypes, according to Hillier, based on memory, read/write, I/O, CPU, etc., activity. A data warehousing system, for example, is predominantly read activity, with periodic bursts of write activity. OLTP has a more balanced read/write ratio. (Heavy duty number crunching, like calculating pi to the 10 kajillionth decimal place, doesn’t have much of either, but the CPU is pretty absorbed in the task.)
So one approach to virtualization, says Hillier, is to shack up complementary system on the same box, thus avoiding processes that spike at the same time and have a conflict over system resources. Makes sense. It’s the Odd Couple approach to virtualization; you can be reasonably sure that when Felix wants the duster, Oscar isn’t using it.
But there are other ways to make resources go further, says Burton Group’s Chris Wolfe. For example, identical VM images running similar tasks could share ROM pages, with the according performance and resource economy effects. (Call it the Conjoined Twin model.)
Both good arguments for some virtualization analysis software.
BTW, both Network World Canada and Computerworld Canada have new home pages within the IT World Canada site. Visit them.
Related PostsPosted on January 16th, 2008 by dave webb and filed under Computer Science | No Comments »
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Loading ...Google’s spectrum play
So Google will be a player in the upcoming 700 MHz U.S. wireless spectrum auction after all. Speculation’s been rife, but speculating’s easy, since Google guaranteed the Federal Communications Commission it’ll bid a minimum of $4.6 billion for a block of spectrum back in the summer.
The company has since announced a mobile development platform, Android, which wasn’t the branded mobile phone watchers were anticipating with bated breath, but still made you wonder: What are these people up to? Read the rest of this entry »
Related PostsPosted on December 3rd, 2007 by dave webb and filed under Future Technology, mobile, cell, Web 2.0, wireless | No Comments »
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Loading ...Not the death of WiMax
Sprint Nextel and Clearwire have walked away from a partnership that would blanket a third of the U.S. population in WiMax access, but it’s a bump in the road, not a major detour. (Or, as Iain Grant of SeaBoard Group puts it, “It’s certainly not the death of WiMax.”)
With no one in the driver’s seat at Sprint — CEO Gary Forsee having been nudged out a month ago — it shouldn’t be a surprise that the brakes might be applied to a deal this big for now. Expect both parties to be back at thetable some time soon. And don’t expect this to slow momentum in Canada toward more WiMax pilots and rollouts. Read the rest of this entry »
Related PostsPosted on November 13th, 2007 by dave webb and filed under Computer Science | No Comments »
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Loading ...Google these
Google’s Android announcement was not the branded mobile phone we were anticipating, but a development platform for mobile manufacturers and carriers to deliver more applications to the smart phone market. The company has always been about tearing up the rule book when it enters a market, and the ad-subsidized model for delivering smart phone apps is another example of what one analyst called a “game-changer.”
Gotta confess it was a zig when I was anticipating a zag, and it leaves me with many questions. If anyone cares to set me straight on them, hey, I’d be grateful. In no particular order: Read the rest of this entry »
Related PostsPosted on November 6th, 2007 by dave webb and filed under mobile, wireless | 1 Comment »
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Loading ...The technology that refuses to die
by Bradley Hughes, Senior Analyst, IDC Canada -
The first fax machine was invented in 1861 and, amazingly, the need for fax capabilities is still demanded by business today.
In the first half of 2007, the market for MFPs (or All-in-Ones) with fax capabilities has grown 25% from the first half of 2006. This is happening in a situation where the MFP market itself has only grown 5% over the same period of time. Meaning that nearly 40% of MFPs shipped in Canada in the first half of 2007 had fax capabilities.
Now there is a chance that end-users are finally realizing that there are fax capabilities within many MFP models (IDC does not track the stand-alone fax market) but the tenacity of fax technology and the fact that it is still relevant is incredible.
For some reason, scanning & emailing (or scanning to email) just isn’t cutting it. Perhaps people like hearing that familiar fax squelch when a connection is made. Or they enjoy that lonely time standing in front of the fax ensuring it goes through properly. I don’t know but to heck with the notion of the paper-less office, we’ve got to at least get to the fax-less office first.
Related PostsPosted on September 28th, 2007 by Brad Hughes and filed under Computer Science | 2 Comments »
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Loading ...Intel goes tick tock
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
“Our tick-tock strategy” – is how Intel CEO, Paul Ottelini, described his company’s game plan to alternate the latest silicon technology, with a new microprocessor architecture.
Otellini’s presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco was calculated to impress.
And some of the stuff he outlined did sound impressive.
For instance Otellini held up a plate-size wafer containing what he said were the world’s first 32-nanometer (nm) semiconductors.
There’s a huge gee-wiz element to this technology.
32-nm enables the creation of transistors so small that more than 4 million of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence.
Okay we’re impressed. But what’s the practical benefit of this super-shrink technology?
Intel is going to produce 32 nm-based commercially available chips in two years, and in the meantime, it says it will start shipping the industry’s first mass-produced microprocessors based on 45-nm technology Nov. 12.
So what’s the deal here?
Are we just witnessing another phase in the ongoing game of one-upmanship between Intel and arch-rival AMD, which has also announced plans to produce 45-nm and 32-nm chips in mid-2008 and 2010 respectively.
Related PostsPosted on September 19th, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science | No Comments »
