Global Forecast Sunny for the Cloud

Last month a Gartner report said the U.S. share of the worldwide cloud services market was 60 percent in 2009 and will decline slightly to 58 percent in 2010.  While barely noticeable, that two percent reduction may not be a sign of reduced interest in the U.S., but an important indication of global market share dilution as other countries accelerate their interest in the cloud


Signs of global adoption are emerging everywhere.


Two examples within the last week include an announcement that SFR, a leading French telecom operator, partnered with HP to offer cloud based services to their customers. The cloud services platform helps SFR offer IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with utility-based pricing to French companies. The HP-SFR partnership is based on the HP offering known as HP Cloud Services Enablement (CSE) portfolio for Communications Service Providers (CSP), which tightly integrates HP software, hardware and services to simplify and speed cloud services deployments. 


And just this morning, an article in the English language publication, Al Bawaba, said that heightened interest among businesses in the region has spurred the creation of a new, dedicated conference -- Cloud Confex -- for Middle East businesses to assess and compare cloud technologies.  Cloud Confex will also provide a vendor showcase and knowledge exchange.  Scheduled speakers include executives and technologists from Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority, EMC, HP, LiveRoute, Kamal Osman Jamjoom, Qatar Foundation, Sahara Petrochemicals, Saudi Aramco and The Executive Council, Government of Dubai.


These are just recent examples that illustrate the global emergence of the cloud. Gartner confidently predicts worldwide cloud services revenue will reach $68.3 billion this year --  a 16.6 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $58.6 billion.  


A FOUR YEAR BOOM
In four years, Gartner estimates global cloud services revenue will more than double to $148.8 billion.  The report cites cumulative growth in Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service and identifies financial services and manufacturing industries as the largest early adopters of cloud services followed by communications, high-tech industries and the public sector.


Geographically, the report indicates the U.S. share of the worldwide cloud services market will see 10 percent dilution over the next four years as other nations move to the cloud, decreasing the U.S. share to 50 percent in 2014.  


While this kind of growth in a troubled global economy is exciting, we wonder if it will accelerate even faster if the industry resolves concerns over security, availability of service and vendor viability and as the use of the cloud shows signs of maturation and build confidence in its capabilities. 


Additional information is available on Gartner's website “Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide and Regions, Industry Sectors, 2009-2014.” 

Content is King

In the past year an enormous amount of content has been generated around the topic of “content.” The web and blogosphere are full of discussions around content marketing, content creation, content optimization, content distribution, content performance, media content, corporate journalism and on and on. Here at 3Point Communications, our approach is based on the concept of content-centered public relations. Today, if you want to be successful in your marketing and communications efforts, you have to have a “content” plan; and for good reason. No longer can your company produce ad copy or press releases in isolation and then push them out to customers because there is simply too much information for customers to effectively absorb. If information comes at them unsolicited, customers either block it out intentionally, or miss it because it gets lost in the sheer volume of noise. If you want to reach your customers effectively you have to engage them in an ongoing dialogue. Your customers have to want information from you, and the only way they’re going to do that is if you provide them with a steady diet of thoughtful, entertaining and useful information. Essentially, you have to start thinking of your company as a publishing company. The good news is that your company has a wealth of content just waiting to be shared. Just think of all the PowerPoint presentations, plans, proposals, internal newsletters, sales literature, memos, videos and other materials you have inside your company. This myriad of corporate information can be turned into valuable content for your customers. But remember, you can’t just take this information, put a fresh coat of paint on it, and expect it to resonate with your customers. There are a number of factors you should consider when producing content for your customers.

Here are but a few: 1. What are your company’s business objectives? Does the content you produce align with your business objectives? Be specific because it will help you create better content. Increasing sales in Europe is too vague to be a useful business objective for content generation. Rather, try to refine it; increase sales in Germany, France and the Benelux countries by X% during the next year by selling our ABC software solution into the financial services market. The more detail you can include in your business objectives the better content you will produce, and the better you will be able to measure the success of your content-centered communications program.

2. Who, specifically, are you trying to reach with your content? While the temptation may be to say “whoever will buy my product,” if you’re going to maximize the impact of the content you generate you will need to be very specific about the people you’re trying to reach. For instance, you might narrow it to include CIOs and senior IT professionals at banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms and other financial institutions in your targeted European countries.

3. What do your customers need? If you can clearly define the needs of your customers, then you can develop content that will be meaningful to them. Your customers will respond favorably to your content, and come back to you looking for more, if you can, for example, help them identify key problems they may face in the future and how to solve them. If your content becomes a key factor in their decision making process, then your company will be viewed as a trusted business partner and not just a supplier or vendor.

4. What type of content does your target audience want? This is vitally important in the creation of customer-relevant content. If your customers want to read in-depth technical information about how you solved a problem for another company in their industry, developing a light-hearted video might not be the best choice as a delivery mechanism. Content comes in all shapes and sizes, from white papers and technical documents to video and podcasts to eBooks and online slide presentations, and covers an infinite number of topics. Therefore, it is critical to align the type of content you create, and the information it contains, with what your customers are looking for.

5. Where do your customers go to find their information? Some people love Twitter. Others are addicted to Facebook. Some are YouTube junkies. Many prefer email and web sites. Still others, believe it or not, still read newspapers and magazines. If you’re going to effectively engage your customers in a meaningful dialogue, you need to present your content where they typically look for information. Otherwise, they'll never see your brilliant content. These five factors are by no means all you need to know to develop a comprehensive content-centered communications program, but they are integral to any such plan.

Cleantech Pioneers Absorb the Risks Long Before Enjoying the Profits

Eco chic auto maker Tesla Motors Inc. screeched off the line on Tuesday, it's debut as a publicly traded company.

This IPO had nearly everything going for it: it's in the ever-hopeful cleantech market; a cool, new "I have to have it" electric Roadster in its line up; a partnership with the world's largest auto maker; tons of support from VCs and industry execs who witnessed the first cleantech IPO in the U.S. since last September.  And a who's who investor group including Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Elon Musk.

One has to like the seven-year-old company's chances for success.

On its first day of trading, Tesla's stock price soared even though global markets were tanking and even though the San Jose, Calif.-based company has yet to earn a dime (some analysts say the firm is years away from making any money).

Reminiscent of the dot-com IPOs of the late '90s, Tesla's stock price opened at $19 per share and jumped to more than $30 per share within the first 24 hours of trading.   Today, Tesla finished the trading day at $21.89 per share -- still above its offering price though well off the week's highs.

By some accounts, the Tesla IPO is breathing new hope into the cleantech sector, which is benefiting from the more than $2B (worldwide) that the VC community pumped into it in Q2 -- an investment level nearly 43% higher than the same quarter a year ago.  

Despite its status as hot area of venture funding, the cleantech market does have a few speeds bumps in the road ahead.

Take for example A123 Systems,  a Mass.-based maker of rechargeable lithium ion batteries for the electric car market.   A123 went public nearly a year ago, and like Tesla's IPO, the Massachusetts battery maker and its investors enjoyed an enviable start as a newly public company. 

A123 opened at $13.50 and soared to more than $20/share.

But today a share of A123 will cost you a smidgen over $9.  

The electric car market is still in its early stages.  I could count on one hand how many people I know even own a hybrid.  

For Tesla, A123 and other pioneers of the electric car segment and other cleantech areas, it will be several years -- at least -- before anyone can call these businesses successful.

But without the pioneering, albeit risky efforts from companies such as Tesla, A123 and others, the cleantech sector would be just another vaporware market.

Instead, we are seeing real products that solve real problems.

CAFL and the Uber Cloud

I think high schools and colleges should consider offering a new course called CAFL -- an acronym we invented for Cloud as a Foreign Language.  In it, students would learn words like IaaS (infrastructure as a service), SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), Virtualization, Virtual Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Public Cloud, Private Cloud and many more dynamic new additions to the language of the cloud that combine to make Ms. Connevey's high school French class all those years ago seem like un morceau de gâteau by comparison.

My suggestion for the final exam of CAFL would be to ask students to define the Inter-cloud.  

Oh yes, you marketers of the abstract, obtuse and occasionally ridiculous, the nascent cloud lexicon is already moving to the next level. 

Just for starters, here is how Wikipedia defines Inter-cloud idea: The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. 

Now, I could stop here, because I'm sure most of you completely appreciate the value of such a succinct definition.  Doesn't it stand to reason that the Inter-cloud would mean "cloud of clouds," "network of networks."   

But for those of you, like me, who might require just a smidgen more, let's push on to Lesson Two. 

In an April 2009 blog, this is how Cisco defined the Inter-Cloud:

• At some point in the not horribly distant future, some service providers will offer “virtual private cloud” services to allow “private clouds” to consume resources in the service provider infrastructure, while maintaining the illusion of being a part of the customer’s private cloud. This is simply extending “intranets” to consume services over the Internet without exposing the content to the general public–kind of like VPN? (Not a perfect analogy, to be sure.)
• In the meantime the set of public cloud services evolves, standardizes, and becomes a more open market. Not all will be virtual private clouds services; there will be other forms of interoperability. These sets of interoperable, interchangable clouds could be thought of as “open clouds”.
• In the early stages, however, there will be relatively tight coupling between the enterprise and any individual public cloud offering chosen; not necessarily lock-in, but the time taken to make a change is still somewhat onerous and involves direct agreements between the customer and the vendors involved. So “open clouds” are not yet the most elastic markets they could be.
• The network technology to enable the linkage of enterprises to all forms of public cloud offerings (not just virtual private clouds) in a way that takes the unique nature of cloud computing and running IT workloads in mind is called “cloud internetworking”.
• The final phase–many years from now–includes the introduction of publicly shared core services–very much like DNS and peering–into the carrier networks that enable a more loosely coupled relationship between customer and cloud vendors. This serves to greatly increase the elasticity of the cloud market, and creates a single public open cloud internetwork–the Inter-Cloud.

By now, I'm sure you have it.  But just to wrap this one, let's take one more crack at it just to prep for finals.

The Intercloud is really a futuristic concept of an uber cloud -- one all-encompassing cloud made up of the combination of all clouds -- thus a "cloud of clouds." It will incorporate the power and storage of all its member clouds. When one member cloud reaches capacity, it can use the combined processing and storage of the rest of the Intercloud (presumably for a fee). 

If I have this wrong, please let me know. I'm bucking for an A in CAFL and there are no Cliff Notes!

Cluelessness seems to be a global epidemic

What do BP, the French national soccer team and General Stanley McChrystal have in common? Answer -- an almost unbelievable lack of awareness about the power of the press. To sum up this week's blunders:

• a General was fired, or should I say resigned after he and his aides were quoted talking smack about their colleagues and higher-ups in the chain of command;

• the French Minister for Sports said the national soccer team, "tarnished the image of France" following their their first-round exit from the World Cup. During the tournament the media reported on much more than their poor play -- Nicolas Anelka, the striker, made headlines by cussing out the coach. He was kicked off the team which was followed by his teammates boycotting practice and the team captain almost coming to blows with a trainer -- all while the cameras were rolling.

• BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, went sailing while his company's offshore well continued to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Cluelessness seems to be a global phenomenon with an American General, a French soccer team and a British CEO all providing fodder for the news media. Haven't any of these folks had any media training? It certainly wouldn't seem so. If General McChrystal had, he would have known that his comments would wind up in print. If the French team had, they would have known that letting intra-team disputes become public they would all look like spoiled brats. If Tony Hayward had, he would have known that going off sailing during his company's biggest ever crisis was not a savvy PR move. When the rich and powerful do unbelievably stupid things, it makes us mad. And, with social media we can easily share the stories that made us mad and soon, the story is everywhere. This often results in action being taken -- a general resigning, sponsors abandoning French football players and a CEO... well I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Cloud Printing

For more years than I often care to admit, I was the global account leader for the Hewlett-Packard DeskJet and LaserJet businesses while I was working for a large public relations agency. During my tenure with HP, I was fortunate enough to work with some very smart people, ranging from visionary executives, brilliant scientists, creative product development and marketing teams, as well as some very strategic communications professionals.

Together with that team, I had the opportunity to help bring to market some of the most innovative technology products of the past 20 years, including the industry's first color inkjet printer, and later the first color laser printer, as well as the first all-in-one product (printer, copier, fax and scanner). I was part of the team when HP made its foray into the digital imaging market with a line of digital cameras, printers and scanners.

So I wasn't surprised earlier this month when I learned that HP was again breaking new ground on the printing frontier. Just a couple of weeks back, HP announced a new initiative, and a number of new products, that enable people to print from any device to a web-enabled printer using email.

Called HP ePrint, this new technology allows the printer's owner, and anyone they designate (such as family members, friends, work colleagues, softball teammates, etc.) to print from it via their smartphones, tablets, or any other device that allows it.

HP's ePrint builds off of Google's Cloud Print project announced a few months back. The new HP printers connect directly to Google Cloud using a touchscreen on the printer and enable people to print Google Docs without having to use a desktop computer. They can also scan documents from the printer directly to their Google Docs account, again, without the need of a PC.

Not only does ePrint make life simpler for people wanting to print documents, it opens new doors for publishers. MSNBC has signed a deal with HP whereby people can use the new ePrint technology to have customized "newspapers" printed for them each morning, for example, to read on the train during their morning commute into the city.

Application developers are also eyeing ePrint for new opportunities. HP already has entered deals with Facebook and MapQuest, as well as Crayola Crayons and PBS for coloring pages and educational materials for kids.

As we've discussed numerous times on the blog, the Cloud is changing the way people interact with technology, and with one another. HP and Google, and their partners, are now tapping into the power of the Cloud to make printing faster, easier, and more convenient.

Keep your eye out for other printer manufacturers -- from Canon to Lexmark to Kodak -- to look to the Cloud as a way to expand their market position and take advantage of the myriad of new Cloud-based applications.

No, I was not surprised to see HP view the Cloud as its next big opportunity. After all, they've been defining printing for longer than anyone else in the business. And they're willing to admit it.

Joining the Lists Parade: 5 Reasons Why A Company Should Hire a PR Agency

"4 Reasons Why PR Agencies are Failing in Social Media"

"4 Reasons Why PR Agencies are Taking Over Social Media"

"Five Ways Pay-for-Performance PR is Misunderstood"

 "Five Ways to Keep Current in Public Relations News & Trends"

..and last but not least...

"15 Ways PR Agencies Can Help Companies With Social Media"

By now, I hope you get the point that the average information junkie -- if there is such a creature -- is fascinated and perhaps addicted to lists.  We see such lists on nearly all social media sites, on sites dedicated to communications and media professionals, and especially on Twitter as links to blogs promoting the "Top 5 Things..."

David Letterman has been doing his "TOP 10" bit since 1985 and every night it's what his audience eagerly waits for.

It's probably because I'm a communications professional and an information junkie (in therapy), and by definition like many of you, I live on line, that I'm seeing a spike lately in the number of posts of the "lists genre" about public relations agencies.

Why a company needs one. ... Or doesn't need one. ... Why a  PR agency should handle a company's social media or should it be done in-house. ... Why you need a social media agency and a PR agency and why they should never meet. ...

I'm sure you have seen many of the same headlines.

The good news for the public relations industry is that it's at the center of these debates.  PR is prominently featured on list after list because PR (or PR 2.0) firms are winning their share of business vs. social media specialists agencies and advertising agencies who may also have a PR practice.  

The public relations industry is racing fast to stay ahead of the changes, brought on largely due to the development and broad acceptance of social media channels, that have transformed the profession.  As such, the PR industry earns its stripes and relevance everyday by putting enormous pressure on other types of agencies -- and subsequently, finds its way to the top of these lists.

So if you can't fight them, you might as well join them.  Thus, here's my contribution to the list mania that is sweeping across the communications world:

5 Reasons Why A Company Needs a  PR Agency

1. PR agency people who work on communications and social media programs are deeply passionate and knowledgeable about these environments. Because they typically work on multiple accounts, they are exposed to a broad range of campaigns and have greater knowledge about the field which they will deploy on a client's behalf.
2. When a company hires an agency, it's hiring a team -- not an individual.  This means the client enjoys the benefit of the vast network of influencer relationships that the account team, vs. what an individual, can bring to the client table.  Agency professionals build relationships with journalists and bloggers with two key purposes in mind: to assist the influencer in doing their job and to leverage these relationships on behalf of their clients.
3. A good agency doesn't let its staffers drink the client's Kool-Aid.  We will tell you if your stories are stale and will uncover new ones in your organization.  We will tell you if your new product is an also-ran and will help find ways to position it in a positive light without overstating the benefits.  A good agency staffer will tell a client when they're wrong, and how to make it right.  
4. Good agencies become true extensions of a company's internal team.  Once the agency team establishes strong, trusting relationship with the client, products and audiences -- aka, the brand -- they will deliver the same levels of authenticity and passion as do in-house team members and will do so without the distraction of in-house corporate politics.
5. A good PR agency person is a content creator at heart.  Agency people create client stories like it was their own to tell, and messages that cut through the B.S.  Also, agency staffers create blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, presentations and eBooks and last but not least, news releases.

So there you have my five reasons why a company needs a PR agency.  Please share your own reasons here on Beyond the Arc.  I know you're itching to make a contribution.

Has the Traditional ISV Model PaaS-ed On?

The cloud changes everything is a phrase we encounter a lot -- sometimes in present tense, but more often in the future tense, as in "the cloud will change everything."   That word will is potent because it automatically invokes the blinding transparency imposed by its cousin, when?  Answer that definitively and you are accountable and measurable.  Thus your powers of prediction, which seem to have a dramatic impact on one's potential to reach genuine guruhood, are either hailed or ridiculed.  

This form of risk avoidance leads to a stratification in the industry. There are companies that talk about services and the cloud, companies that embrace services related to the cloud and companies that straddle the fence.  One company that seems to get it is Intuit.  

It doesn't seem like that long ago that founder Scott Cook was peddling his wonderfully simple $9.95 electronic checkbook to anyone who would buy it. The blinding focus of technology on what once appeared to be a narrow but pressing need created a company that has remained Apple-like in its ability to build increasingly powerful solutions around simple accounting and tax preparation requirements of consumers and small-to-medium businesses.  For years, the sheer force of Intuit's forward momentum and speed shook off would be competitors like Microsoft Money  and others the way Adrian Peterson shakes off tacklers. Intuit was a poster child, then adolescent in the market space of ISVs. 

In recent years, a new breed of web-based competitors changed the game to try to level the playing field. Intuit responded in the way great competitors always respond -- they didn't just match what other were doing; they raised the bar with a range of web services appealing to their core target audience.  This included offering turnkey website design and hosting coupled with simple SEO.  All this in addition to QuickBooks, Payroll, Point of Sale solutions, Online Banking and a range of other online and offline services kept Intuit at the forefront of the market it created and dominated for years.

But what struck us most this week was a rather simple, easy to overlook statement in a blog in The DataCenter Journal.  In a reference to Intuit, the blog by Rakesh Dogra stated, "The company has grown from being a software manufacturer to a PaaS and web-services delivery firm."  The comment was nearly lost in the larger article on Intuit's recent cloud power outage, but it was striking never the less. Intuit is not a software company any longer but a PaaS and web-services delivery firm.  Now this comes as no surprise to Inuit, which has been touting PaaS for quite some time now.  But seeing it there in black white, written simply and definitively -- literally  as a matter of fact -- was as striking as if I read that Brett Farve was becoming a head coach.  There is logic to it and a natural migration path, but it takes a minute to digest the magnitude of the change.

PaaS changes the way software vendors do business. It creates an affordable infrastructure that simplifies the development and delivery of potentially disruptive point solutions from hundreds of vendors who would never have made it to market under the old, traditional processes and cost structures of product development.  So, it makes perfect sense.  But it is not an avenue available to every ISV, and we have to wonder who else might be able to make the transition and who seems destined to fall by the wayside as the shift accelerates.  

iPhone sold out before it goes on sale?

The iPhone 4 goes on sale in France next week and they are already predicting that it will be sold out. In fact, SFR, the number two moblile network operator in France, stopped taking advance orders for fear of not being able to fulfill all of the customer requests. Qu'est ce que c'est? Last week, I blogged about a study showing the widespread adoption of smartphones in France. Given the latest prediction of the iPhone 4 rush, it might be time for another survey. The question I have is if the iPhone 4 sells out will that be a blessing for Android phones? HTC, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEriccson all have multiple Android models on the market. Additionally, most of the iPhone 4 reviews that I've read mention Android as already having the functionality to have more that one application running at a time -- something new to the iPhone and a subtle plug for Android. The other question I have is is Microsoft too late to the smarthphone game? Steve Ballmer says to expect phones with Windows Phone 7 in time for Christmas but will there be in anybody left in France that doesn't already have a smartphone? Yes, there is the upgrade market but are users going to change OS unless they've had a bad experience with their current smartphone? Should be an interesting finish to the year.

Social and Collaborative Applications are Working Their Way into Enterprise 2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is taking place through Thursday of this week at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in the scenic Seaport District of the city.  As you probably guessed from the conference name, the focus of this tidy expo is collaborative technologies, Web 2.0 solutions, designed specifically to enable enterprises to become more efficient, productive and innovative.

Steve Wylie, the conference GM (you'll find tweets from the show at #e2conf), points out that while businesses are taking advantage of game changers like cloud computing and data center virtualization, applications that exploit these infrastructure technologies have lagged the application advances being made in the consumer market.

That's what e2conf is all about: examining and showcasing the latest developments in enterprise-class social and collaborative applications. And there's no shortage of talent at the expo.  Today I had the opportunity to spend a few hours listening to the keynotes, kicking tires on the show floor and asking a few questions of the software developers who were there.

As you might suspect, most of the exhibitors on hand are smallish, privately held software companies.  The big guys were there too, including Novell, IBM and Cisco.  But the vast majority are innovative, emerging companies developing very exciting social and collaborative solutions for business.

In one day it's impossible to get a close look at all the companies there, but I was able to take a look at quite a few.  From what I saw and heard, these three are my picks for the coolest companies at this year's e2conf:

• Doodle, in their own words, "makes scheduling virtually effortless."  Using Doodle, scheduling a meeting with busy coworkers is as easy as creating a poll, casting a vote for the preferred date and time, and informing participants of the outcome.  Doodle was founded in 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland and has about 10 employees.  And I love the name.  Do you Doodle?

• At the other end of the emerging company spectrum is Jive Software, a well-funded, well-established company with more than 2,500 customers (they claim).    Jive Software, now based in Palo Alto, Calif., (the firm was started in Portland, Ore.), is eyeing an IPO in 2011 and is led by industry veteran Tony Zingale, who led the sale of Mercury Interactive to HP four years ago.  I saw Zingale's keynote earlier today and he still turns it on.  Jive Software is partnering with heavyweights like Google and Twitter and looks to be well on its way to building an enterprise 2.0 company with staying power.

• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Baydin, a San Francisco-based company and winner of today's "Launch Pad People's Choice," a fun text message-based audience-participation contest pitting four newish companies against each other.  Baydin has an "Unsearch" product that's built into Outlook and hunts down or "automatically discovers" in your email, documents and colleagues who could help you with any given project.  I love this:  at Baydin, they talk about "the future of search...is not having to search."

I apologize for leaving out so many other cool companies and I'm already looking forward to the next edition.

Controlling Cancer for Pennies in the Cloud

You might know how bullish we are here about the potential of the cloud. You might even go so far as to think we believe the cloud could help cure cancer!  You might be right.

We came across an interesting story this week about an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico named Shuang Luan.  Professor Luan specializes in finding ways to apply computers to improve treatment for cancer patients. Last year, Luan's team decided to tackle an interesting treatment issue facing the medical community. Researchers realized the best way to treat cancerous tumors with radiation was to attack one damaged cell at a time. By doing this, they avoided collateral damage to adjacent healthy cells during treatment. 

They could reduce a week of calculations to less than 15 minutes at a cost of about .10 cents an hour for computer time.

But the math is a problem, specifically the complex Monte Carlo simulations required to figure out where each proton and electron from the treatment beam will travel during therapy. These calculations help medical physicists determine how much radiation should be used and at what precise angle it should hit the tumor. Of course the path of the radiation is indirect and different for every tumor.  The beam has to travel through muscle and fat and bone, all of which needs to be taken into consideration to map the target area to achieve the kind of pinpoint treatment envisioned by the researchers. Calculating this takes hundreds of hours, so the only viable solution was to use a super computer -- base cost about $150,000 before you pay for those pesky add-ons like peripherals and software. The time and cost required to apply this to every tumor clearly exceeds the scope of most physicians and insurance coverage, so the only alternative is to use far less precise short cuts in calculations. At least, that's what most physicians have thought. Professor Luan and his team realized you just need a credit card.

Physics graduate student Roy Keyes, a member of Luan's team, set out to tackle the problem in the cloud.  He created new treatment calculations while Christian Romano, an undergraduate computer science major on the team, determined how to run the calculations on 200 different computer nodes rather than one super computer.  They went to Amazon's web services with Luan's credit card and found they could reduce a week of calculations to less than 15 minutes at a cost of about .10 cents an hour for computer time.

The process won't be ready for every day use for a couple more years because the grad students need to get a medical license for their technique. But the promise is enormous. Keyes told KRQE TV in New Mexico that he thinks this is just the beginning of what medical research can do with affordable access to the cloud. In fact, he recently finished a presentation in Amsterdam on how the research and technology works and is scheduled to make other presentations. 

In a university press release, Professor Luan explained it like this: “In the Computer Sciences lab upstairs they probably have fifty or sixty machines, and a lot of students using them. You cannot just say I’m going to use them all today. But in cloud computing, we just basically type in a credit card number and say give us 200 nodes. And they give it to you in maybe five minutes.” 

So maybe the cloud actually can help cure cancer -- or at least dramatically improve the quality of treatment and reduce the risk of collateral damage.  If only it could clean up an oil spill.

Apple’s Forgotten Founder Living in the Nevada Desert

Have you ever heard of Dick Taylor? Dick Taylor, along with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was a founding member of the Rolling Stones. But Taylor decided to go back to art school, so the Stones hired bassist Bill Wyman to replace him just as they were preparing to record the band's first album. As a result, Taylor became one of the great “what if” stories in rock history. Have you ever heard of Ron Wayne? Ron Wayne is technology’s equivalent of Dick Taylor. One of the great “what if” stories of Silicon Valley, nay, the enter technology industry. Wayne was one of three men present at the “birth of cool” when on April Fool’s Day 1976 – along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – Apple Computer was launched. Not only was Wayne one of the founders of the new computer company, he was the guy who designed the company’s logo, wrote the users manual for the first Apple I computer, and drafted the company’s partnership agreement. That partnership agreement gave Wayne 10 percent ownership in the fledgling company. That tidy little slice of the pie that would be worth $22 billion today – if only Wayne wouldn’t have sold it back to Jobs and Wozniak 12 days after the company’s launch for a mere $800.

Ron Wayne

Wayne was 42 years old and working at Atari when he met up with 21-year-old Steve Jobs who was freelancing at the video game company started by Nolan Bushnell. Jobs had already met up with Wozniak and the two had created a prototype of the Apple I that they had demonstrated at the Homebrew Computer Club that met on the campus of Stanford University.

The Apple I

Jobs and Wozniak knew they were onto something with their new machine, but their wildly different personalities, and approach to business, threatened to kill their project before it could off the ground. They turned to Wayne for “adult supervision.” Wayne would give the two Apple partners counsel, help them resolve disagreements and provided business advice. For his valuable input, Jobs and Wozniak asked him to join them in their venture and carved off 10 percent of the company ownership for him. Once all three had signed the partnership agreement, Wayne took it to the county registrar’s office and Apple Computer became an official company. Almost immediately after becoming a legal entity, Jobs plunged the company deep into debt when he took out a $5000 loan and bought $15,000 worth of computer parts to fill an order for 50 computers for the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California. Wayne was impressed with Jobs’ salesmanship, but was nervous about the amount of money the company owed. Byte, an early Silicon Valley computer store, had a reputation for being slow to pay its bills and Wayne worried if Apple would get paid before their loan payment came due. Jobs and Wozniak, both in their early 20s at the time, were penniless. So if creditors came after Apple for its debt it would be Wayne that they targeted. Wayne just wasn’t ready for that type of risk, so less than 2 weeks after he helped launch Apple, Wayne asked Jobs and Wozniak to buy him out. It was back to the county registrar’s office for Wayne where he renounced his involvement in the company. For that he was paid $800. A year after Wayne left the company, Jobs and Wozniak filed the paperwork for incorporation and contacted Wayne asking him to officially forfeit any claims against the company. Wayne did so and received an additional $1,500, bringing his total payment from Apple to $2,300, almost exactly a millionth of what his shares would be worth today. Today, Wayne is living a simple life in the desert town of Pahrump, Nevada where at age 76 he supports himself by selling stamps are rare gold coins to supplement his government social security checks. But one has to wonder, what if?

French Innovation Meets Silicon Valley

Last evening I attended the 4th Annual French Tech Tour event put on by UbiFrance, the French agency for international business development. Out of many applicants, UbiFrance had selected an exemplary group of 15 emerging French companies to travel to Silicon Valley for the opportunity to engage the local Valley start-up ecosystem in a series of events and meetings. UbiFrance director, Gaëtan Gachet, and his team organize a great week for the selected companies, culminating in a Sand Hill Road reception attended by VCs, company execs and Francophiles. The evening’s program consisted of brief presentations by the 15 companies and a panel discussion featuring industry luminaries on what entrepreneurial foreign companies need to do to be successful when coming to Silicon Valley. This was followed by a reception where the participating companies informally presented and demoed their products. The panel was interesting, with good recommendations for entrepreneurs to be open, network extensively, listen and learn when they visit Silicon Valley. Among the participants, CRN Systems Editor, Damon Poeter, provided comments that most resonated with 3Point. “Get good PR. Make sure you engage the media in the right way. Be open, make friends. Tell a story and the whole story. Not only tell the technology story but the whole story of how you came to be and what you are all about.” 3Point agrees with Poerter that the story is key to any company's success and is why our focus is on helping our clients define and tell their stories through our Navigator process.

The 15 companies covered a wide range of technology categories. Some of my personal favorites among the companies included Lexip, which makes a very cool 3D mouse (CEO Eric Delattre pictured left holding his device), and Laster Technologies, which has a fascinating augmented reality solution (CEO Zile Liu pictured right explaining augmented reality). Other well represented categories included mobile -- Arkamys, which has developed technology to greatly increase the audio quality from mobile devices, along with MobileGov and Mobile Distillery -- and cloud computing -- LYaTiss and MLslate. Green tech was represented as well with EcoVadis, which took the top prize of the evening for its pioneering sustainable supply chain management solutions. Names the top start-up of the group, Ecovadis will receive a one-month, all expenses paid stay at the Plus and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley.

Check out all the companies participated: · ActivNetworks · AlphaUI · Arkamys · Avob · DelfMEMS · EcoVadis · LASTER Technologies · Lexip · LYaTiss · MLstate · Mobilegov · Mobile Distillery · Prim’Vision · Relaxnews · UbicMedia This representation of French innovation was fascinating and whets my appetite for a trip to France in coming months. For you readers out there, what other emerging French companies should we keep an eye on? Bon Weekend!

Smartphones a big hit in France

I came across an interesting article in Les Echos this week. According to a survey by GroupM and SFR, four million French connect to the Internet daily from their smartphone -- that's about one of every thirteen citizens over the age of 15. Mon Dieu! However, only 18 percent of mobile phone users have a smartphone. The moral of this story seems to be if users get their hands on a smartphone they will use them and use them a lot. Orange, with its recent announcement of a range of Android-based phones from Sony Ericsson, LG, HTC and Samsung for less than 49 euros, is well positioned to make customers out of the the 82 percent of French mobile phone users who don't yet posses a smartphone. If the smartphone market booms in France, as it appears to be primed, it will be a welcome boost for the economy overall as carriers, equipment providers, handset manufacturers, mobile content developers and advertisers all stand to benefit.

BP Ignored Lessons From The Past

Honestly, at this point is there anything BP can do to even remotely repair its deeply tarnished image resulting from the horror in the U.S. Gulf Coast?

The unnatural disaster is now more than 50 days old with environmental  ramifications that will persists for decades to come.  Like the war in Afghanistan and the on going challenge in Iraq, news of the the oil spill disaster along the Gulf Coast has fast become part of our daily lives.  The images of injured wildlife and interviews with business owners whose lives depend on the bounty from the Gulf waters appear daily on the 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. news broadcasts and all over the net. 

For most of us, the disaster is emotionally close but physically distant.  But for too many Americans, the oil spill is personally and professionally disruptive -- and with a long road until the finish line.

The massive oil slick  is one disaster.  And is one, it seems, that could have been prevented.

The way BP has handled the situation from a communications perspective is yet another disaster.  Also, it is one that could have been prevented from at least spiralling out of control.

You'd think that the brightest minds at BP would have known to not repeat the communications mistakes made by the many global brands whose own disasters preceded BP's.  BP had its pick.  There's the chapter on FEMA and Katrina.  Or the chapters on Tyco and Enron.  Barry Bonds or the Catholic Church.  And perhaps the grand daddy of them all -- Exxon Valdez.

The list goes on and on.  The lessons are there, in black and white.

The latest communication on BP's web site, appearing just today, is that the company is going to donate the net revenue from the oil it recovers from the Mississippi Canyon 252 oil well to restore the environment and habitats in the Gulf Coast region.

And if you don't think that fulfills BP's commitment to repair the damage done by the oil spill, well, you're wrong.  Because, as BP adds on its site, "The creation of this fund is over and above BP's obligations under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990."

That's right. The establishing of the fund is "over and above" what the law says BP must do in the wake of the accident.  Wow. Talk about a failure to communicate.

BP continues to communicate to the world about one of the the world's largest unnatural disasters on its own terms.  Even though the global world of communications professionals is at its disposal and almost begging to assist a brand that is sinking like a stone. 

What's past is past.  But if BP chose to listen, here are five ways -- from among many more -- it might have protected the brand it has been building for 100 years:

• Present an objective and honest assessment of the situation as soon as they had a good measure on things.  Tell the world this is a first for BP and the oil industry at-large and that they are unsure if known methods of plugging a massive oil leak will work in this particular situation.
• Don't create false expectations.  Tell the world a number of proven and untested techniques will be deployed and that the outcome, due to the uniqueness of the situation, is uncertain.
• Keep the lawyers at arm's length. While liability is certainly an important consideration, the company also has to think about its long term reputation and the viability of the organization.  It's not just about getting through the crisis at hand but is also about reputation recovery and sustainability.
• Put out as much information for public consumption as possible and not only the information the company wishes to control.  Transparency will earn trust over time. Most people can see spin coming from a mile away.
• Instead of insisting on CEO Tony Hayward as the primary crisis spokesperson, solicit the support of a trusted, honest communicator who would be perceived as more objective than a company executive drenched in the company's stock. 

iThis iTime iApple iDots iThe "i"

Apple is a great marketing company. And as Bill pointed out in his post here earlier today, they also make some pretty good products; the kind that sneak into your life and then become so integral to the way you live that you really miss them when they're gone.

For Bill it's his iPad. For me, it's the older, but just as cool, iPod. I have the 60Gb version loaded with more than 50 days worth of music. That's right. I can carry around 50 days worth of tunes in my shirt pocket.

But as great as Apple's products are, I have to admit that I'm getting really sick of the "i" nomenclature. Not everything in the world needs an "i" in front of it. Apple, however, disagrees.

Yesterday at its World-Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco Apple once again tagged everything it could with an "i". First, there was the new iPhone 4. Then there was its new operating system, iOS.

And guess what? This time around Apple wasn't iSued.

You see, three years ago when Apple first introduced the iPhone it didn't get permission to use the term "iPhone," which was a trademark owned by Cisco. The companies eventually settled out of court with the terms undisclosed.

This time around, Apple got the OK up front from Cisco to use the term "iOS," which Cisco has been using for more than a decade for its Internetwork Operating System.

For my money, I'd like to see Apple drop the entire boring iBrand and go back to creative names such as Macintosh and Newton.

iPhones, SmartPhones and the Coming Cloud Addiction

I'm not your typical early adopter, but I pre-ordered Apple's iPad and have used it endlessly since the day it landed on the doorstep of my Virginia farmhouse. Wherever I take it, I end up doing a sales pitch for the darned thing.  From waiters at the only good restaurant in town to kids and adults at the hockey rink, everyone wants to know about Apple's magical device. The question I answer most often is "What do you use it for?" My answer is about 100 different things, but not just one thing. There is no killer app.  For all its sizzle and hype, the iPad is a subtle device.  It works its way into your daily routines in a hundred ways until you end up having separation anxiety when your spouse sneaks off with it to read a book.  Weird, but true. Then again, isn't that what great products do?  They subtly work their way into our routines.  We don't know they have crossed the path from useful to vital until we don't have access to them for a period of time.  Then we panic.


A few years ago, I bought a car with a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT).  It wasn't why I bought the car.  Truth be told, I didn't even know what CVT was. I liked the car.  Five years later, when I went shopping for a replacement, I only considered cars with the smooth shifting CVT.  Marketers can fill Times Square with all the brightly lit messages they can afford, but unless a product delivers consistently every day until we are dependent upon it, the product ranks as fad not trend.


For all the fanfare surrounding the cloud, I suspect this is the way the cloud will enter our work lives -- slowly, steadily and subtly. We won't be aware of its integration into our lives until there is a problem and we can't access something. I think this is already happening on a much wider scale than we realize.


The savvy people over at ZDnet's CloudTweaks raised an interesting illustration of this point in their blog about yesterday's introduction of Apple's other wonder tool, the iPhone. Writing about the introduction of a whole new class of SmartPhones, from Apple, HTC, RIM Nokia, Motorola and others, CloudTweaks pointed out that "these devices are introducing cloud computing offerings to many who might not otherwise care. The folks purchasing these devices don’t really care about all of that, however. They just want a slick looking, highly functional device."  Exactly!


SmartPhone Apps have moved in one year from the novelty of Zippo Lighters to very functional network-based applications and services. And these are not just limited to apps of restaurants, maps and directions. There is an increasingly diverse set of corporate applications in areas like CRM, banking and communications.  The cost benefits and limited risk certainly make these applications appealing to SMBs.  But if employees start injecting cloud usage of their own accord via SmartPhones into the technology gene pool of large corporations, will their subtle reliance on the cloud accelerate the adoption of more mainstream cloud deployments?  How long will it take until the cloud wends is way into mainstream corporate usage?   For all the hype and marketing about the cloud, nothing will measure success in technology better than separation anxiety. In fact,  I think they call it addiction. Excuse me. HONEY, WHERE'S THE iPAD?!!!!!!

Innovation is not just for the USA

Readers of this blog have undoubtedly been following the ongoing controversy between Jim and Steve about whether Boston or the Bay Area is the most important center for technology innovation.

Jim and Steve, what about all the innovation taking place outside of the US?

Grenoble, France, where I happen to live, is located just under three hours from Paris and, much like Boston and the Bay Area, is home to some of the nation's leading universities, medical schools, research institutions and technology companies.

According to the magazine l'Usine Nouvelle, The Grenoble Institute of Technology is the second largest engineering school in France and is second in terms of research contracts awarded. The Grenoble Graduate School of Business was the seventh best MBA program in Europe, according a 2009 Financial Times report.

Research institutions include Minalogic and Minatec for nanotechnology, NanoBio and Nano2Life for biotech and Tenerrdis and the PV Alliance for solar and other forms of renewable energy.

Technology companies in the region range from established multi-nationals such as Capgemini, HP, Radiall, Soitec, STMicroelectronics, Sun and Xerox to dynamic start-ups like H3C-energies and UShareSoft.

The great thing about innovation is that anybody anywhere can have a great idea. And, given the right environment -- world class higher education, research institutions and an dynamic economy -- great ideas become great companies creating great products.

Get Ready for 4G

Tomorrow, Sprint Nextel will be the first carrier to announce the availability of 4G wireless technology with the release of its EVO. Then in the Fall, Verizon will roll out 4G service in 25 to 30 cities, and you can bet that they’ll market the heck out of that. Much smaller MetroPCS will announce a 4G phone around the same time.

And let us not forget that Apple will announce its iPhone 4 sometime this summer, although it’s unclear if it will be built to run on a 4G network or today’s standard 3G technology.

So prepare yourself for the marketing onslaught that will no doubt be great. You can count on TV, print and online ads to tout the benefits of 4G, as well as marketing efforts targeting you directly every time you receive a bill from your wireless carrier. “If you don’t have 4G, sign up now to see what you’re missing!”

But what exactly are the advantages of 4G over 3G?

First, let’s go back a few years to look at the truly quantum leap between 2G and 3G technologies.

Back in the old days of 2G technology, you could basically use your mobile phone for two primary purposes – making phone calls and sending SMS (text) messages. That seemed to be a pretty useful thing since up to then if you wanted to place a phone call you had to be at your desk using a landline or spend thousands of dollars on a mobile phone built on old military technology.

Then 3G came along at the start of the new millennium, and suddenly phones could do really cool things like real Web browsing, video and music downloads, and take high quality photos. Another advantage of 3G was the high speed of the network and the improved coverage and quality of reception. That is unless you have AT&T or T-Mobile where 3G coverage is only available in the highly populated parts of the country. If you find yourself in upstate New York, or even Napa Valley, forget using your iPhone.

And that brings us to 4G. Basically it’s a new way for mobile phones to access the airwaves designed from the start for the transmission of data rather than simple phone calls. This is accomplished by borrowing some aspects of the latest generation of Wi-Fi, the short-range wireless technology.

What users are likely to see is slightly faster access to data and streaming video that flows a little bit better, no stuttering, and higher resolution. That’s about it. No break through applications as we saw when we moved from 2G to 3G. Oh, one other thing, it’ll cost you more.

And to muddy the marketing waters even more, AT&T and T-Mobile are upgrading their current 3G networks to provide data-transfer speeds that will be actually HIGHER than the 4G networks from Sprint and Verizon.

What’s a customer to do?

Don’t let the marketing hype get to you. Ask yourself what you really need from your mobile or smart phone and how many applications you really use. Are those applications working for you now? If so, you probably don’t need the upgrade. And if you’re an iPhone or AT&T user, the upgrades to the AT&T network will provide you with more than enough power.

I’m already waiting with bated breath for 4.5G.

Five Things Corporate Communicators Must Consider Pre- and Post-IPO

Though stronger than last year, almost six months into the year and the U.S. IPO market has been nothing to write home about.

Yesterday, Zipcar -- the Cambridge, Mass.-based car-sharing service company -- became only the 108th U.S. company to file an S-1 in 2010. Although the active IPO pipeline boasts 153 companies, it includes companies who have filed registrations or amendments with the SEC in the last two years, according to Renaissance Capital, an independent provider of IPO research. Another 18 companies recently withdrew or postponed their IPO vs. six companies who did the same by this date one year ago, also according to Renaissance.

As of this posting, Zipcar is the only U.S. company in the month of June to have registered for an IPO.  Of course, it's only June 2 so there's still plenty of time for other companies to follow suit before the next round of holiday cook outs after which time the U.S. IPO market will likely take a summer hiatus.

Filing an S-1 prior to the kick off the summer holiday fun is actually a great strategy because the mandatory "quiet period" is easier to uphold during the summer season than during other "busier" times of the year.  Perhaps it's what the communications strategists at Zipcar had in mind.

So with Zipcar's filing as a back drop, here are five things corporate communications executives must be aware of pre- and post-IPO:

• Evaluate the company's communications capabilities.  Diverse skill sets and deep experience in navigating the pre - and post-IPO waters are required and differ greatly from the needs of a private company.
• From the moment a company whispers a plan to file for an IPO, new rules and expectations on how it communicates kick in.  The cost of noncompliance with quite periods and other restrictions, including Regulation Fair Disclosure and Sarbanes-Oxley, could break a company's back.  Communicators must be able to build company awareness while playing within the lines.
• Adopt a communications approach that addresses all stakeholders and encompasses all pertinent communications disciplines. 
• Function as strategic counselors to management; help them understand what "safe" media activity is inside of pre- and post-IPO quiet periods.
• Train company employees on the behavioral changes and expectations within a pre-IPO and newly public company.  A fully-informed employee is typically more motivated to put the needs of the company before the needs of the individual.