What a pivotal year in our industry! Mobile, Cloud and Social making new leaders

What a pivotal year in our industry! Let's face it, IT has been attesting more evidences that its tectonic forces at work did let emerge new leaders and previous ones fade.

• Mobile: now at the core of IT, Apple and Samsung getting much of the coverage and dominating the smartphone market - surpassing now regular phones - pushing Nokia to be acquired by Microsoft and RIM Blackberry to look for a shelter. For software vendors and CIOs, applications have to be designed for smartphone devices first, tablet second and desktop third. As evidences, PC sales are declining, Dell to become private again, Steve Ballmer retiring, Intel also changed CEO to deal with innovator's dilemma. Wintel once dominating this industry is fading.
• Cloud: depicted as a consumer or anecdotal phenomenon once, Cloud Computing is now center stage for the Enterprise and a key topic for CIOs strategic plans. CRM is paving the way with Salesforce.com becoming #1 CRM vendor all flavors combined (on premise, cloud), customer service and Marketing quickly following. Microsoft bending its Office model with Office 365 is trying to resist Google surge in cloud based productivity suites is another evidence of cloud computing importance.
• Social: with Twitter preparing its IPO, Facebook stock ticker finally getting traction thanks to its successful mobile strategy, Google acquiring Waze for $1B+, Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1.1B, Rondee for video conferencing and Xobni for Social Contact Management, Salesforce.com acquiring Buddy Media on top of previous Radian6, Social is another tectonic force at stake making or breaking new leaders.

Combining this to Big Data and associated analytics to get a modern business insight, let's attest we're already in a new world. Get ready if you're not already! CIO, CMO, CDO or CEOs, don't let your competition harness these revolutions before you get a chance to compete or lead: initiate change now.

Mobile computing is taking IT by storm: mobile world congress - iPad 3 announcement - Ray Ozzie interview

Without surprise it was the mobility week recently. With Mobile World 2012 just closing, this has been a week of announcements and research publications. As eWeek tries to summarize it, here are 10 hot mobile Trends to watch at Mobile World Congress 2011:

1. Bigger is better: it seems larger display are more desirable this year
2. Android Galore: without Apple around, Android was everywhere leaving Windows on the side for next year
3. Microsoft needs Nokia—desperately
4. Dual- and quad-core processors are everything
5. Fresh new designs aren't needed? No revolutionary designs introduced.
6. The "converged" device matters: smartphone bridging the gap with tablets
7. There's no changing carriers: disappointed if you wanted to hear some breaking news from Carriers though customer relations are in pain.
8. Companies think there's room for other operating systems: Mozilla announced its own mobile OS, Samsung did the same with Bada, running after Android and iOS.
9. iPad 3 fear reigns supreme: anticipated announcement on March 7, even Google had to admit via Andy Rubin that they're behind iOS.
10. The enterprise is an afterthought: Mobile World Congress is all about consumers. To be analyzed with CIO client strategy in the enterprise.

$GOOG Google Play replaces #Android Market, new source for apps, books, movies and music (funny video 1'30)engt.co/zYiIaf

The New Era of Computing bit.ly/xjxIfO

The announcement of the iPad HD, capturing all the buzz, is showing once again how much Apple is running the show. It looks like the entire industry is positioning itself regarding Apple and the impact of "The Barber Of Infinite Loop" on once the center of all attention Microsoft could be serious. Thus I encourage you to take a look at this Ray Ozzie interview video, the once Bill Gates visionary successor at Microsoft, who is starting a new venture and tells it very directly PC doesn't mean desktop PC anymore but Personal Computing in a variety of form factor. What a thrilling industry!

Apple's new iPad announcement: The numbers to know | ZDNet zd.net/ACGsNH

Video Q&A: Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates successor as $MSFT visionary on startups, Microsoft, ... states world is over the PC bit.ly/y4WY1s

The Barber Of Infinite Loop: How The #iPad Could Give Microsoft A Serious Revenue Haircut - $MSFT productivity apps tcrn.ch/wrrKC7

Week in review: Big Data's impact on the world - Enterprise Apps gold rush to the cloud

Big Data is pursuing to bubble up as the topic of choice for the beginning of 2012, even during Davos. Not surprising when one can attest that the cloud computing model is making significant progress all over the planet and even in my home country, France, where skepticism used to be the attitude regarding it. In turn, leveraging the cloud leads to Big Data, in a business context as well, to try to extract from all sorts of data streams meaningful business insights.

Big Data’s Impact in the World
Steve Lohr, in the New York Times, develops some examples in various areas and highlights some interesting numbers.

• Big Data, Big Impact: New Possibilities for International Development - World Economic Report 
• Cloud Computing to reach $270B in 2020 CAGR 30%: Kleiner Perkins said to eye “cloud” fund
• Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity - McKinsey Global Institute Report

I won't come back on Facebook IPO as the entire planet just twitted and blogged about it. But let's step back 5 years ago and remember how people where viewing Facebook back then. It changed big time, Facebook is no longer a youngster phenomena but a business eye opener. Amazing 180° view of the world for a company supposedly going to be valued more than $100B now. Don't you think? We're already in a new world. Social Media is now a reality to most businesses, Marketing cannot ignore it anymore and mobile devices are becoming rapidly the #1 entry point to it. By the way, what is the revenue Facebook is making on mobiles ;-)? (None for now, but stay tuned).

• The Web vs. Mobile Apps: How iOS and Android Are Disrupting The Open Internet 
• Google testing 'next-gen personal communication device'
• Interesting stats: Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] 
• $267B enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket: The 3 secrets behind the enterprise tech gold rush 

By the way, recently SAP acquired Successfactors for $3.4B, Salesforce.com did the same with Rypple and Oracle with Taleo for $1.9B and RightNow, check this out. The enterprise apps gold rush seems to be on the cloud.

As Larry Ellison said about cloud computing in 2008: "What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?" Not there yet apparently ;-)

So are you ready for Big Data, cloud computing, social networks and mobile internet?

We're moving from Desktop to Webtop

"Microsoft and IBM executives Wednesday admitted feeling heat from Google now that the Web search giant is trying to make inroads into the enterprise market with its hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools." says NetworkWorld.

Desktop productivity suites -- i.e. Microsoft and Open Office -- are beginning to appear as legacy apps for younger internet user generation. If you think about it, up to a few years ago, our desktop was application centric. You'd have to think about what application to use to either create, edit or read information. In this antic time, still valid for conservative users, Office was the place where we'd live on our desktop. Not anymore for Internet centric users, especially 15-24 years old.

Multimedia content, supported with the advent and success of Youtube, flickr, slide.com, and others not to forget podcasts, is paving the way to another information form factor. As a matter of fact, information streams to you via RSS feeds sitting on your desktop via Netvibes personal portal on the web and various widgets. Google apps are starting to give a clear headway towards SaaS collaborative "desktop" productivity applications, not to mention they've just completed another step in completeness with Tonic acquisition -- a presentation sharing and collaboration solution for Powerpoint slides.

To sum it up, I believe we've moved from Desktop to Webtop with several key implication:

• Our digital environment is no more sitting on our PC but on the network,
• Our environment is no longer application centric but user centric i.e. information is flowing your way whatever the application required to exploit it should be. Various alerts are pacing your information day from blogs, information sites, our mailbox and calendar,
• Users are empowered to design their environment, not software vendors!
  

Webtop is a personalized web hosted desktop that you can use everywhere, from any device, that no software vendor would design for you. This is pure Web 2.0 attitude: users are designing their webtop "app" aggregating various components in an iterative and collaborative way -- users recommend widgets and apps to others. Gone the day when software vendors were dictating their view of the world. Folks, we're in charge again. And webtop already have vendors, check out Goowy.

Microsoft colleagues, can you feel the heat?

Google Gears: last mile to a 100% web based application world?

In a meeting recently, in my new job at Sage, we were discussing with R&D about the client model in our new world. Interesting debate among specialists that are seeing the world through RIA (Rich Internet Application), RDA (Rich Desktop Application) and the fading 100% HTML or client/server models. It clearly shows we've been moving fast in a connected world were web based applications are weaving into desktop based applications.

Tectonic moves are taking place between Microsoft, with the Silverlight new cross-platform and cross-browser Internet platform, Adobe's Apollo run-time and the newly announced Google Gears Javascript API to let web applications work off-line. Read Information Week Why Google Gears Is Good News, Bad News For Microsoft article for a better understanding of the landscape and browse through the 92 news articles about it.

But now the non connected world enters web based applications and the very last argument pleading for desktop based applications is just going away, even before being connected to the Internet will be as natural as receiving daylight (a bit futuristic I must admit, but you know me by now I like to provoke). Give it a try and install it. Are you as curious as I am to see what the next Google/Microsoft battle is going to be?

One thing for sure: user's information environment is already partly on the web and on his desktop. I'm not a big fan of this as users need to decide before searching or operating where the information might be or be sure they carry a laptop with them at all times. My bet is user's information are going to move 100% on the web with a solid secure access and backup. The device we will be using to access and manipulate this data is secondary and might just be borrowed when we need it.

Microsoft finally strikes back

Even on holidays, I could not escape the news: Microsoft finally made its mind on how to enter the $125 billion Advertising Market, they acquired aQuantive on May 18th for $6 billion.

Interestingly enough, not only do they acquire one of the most powerful web media buyer but they also acquire web design services through its Avenue A/Razorfish division.

One thing is sure, as I was wondering after Google's DoubleClick acquisition in "Would you have Google as your middleman", Microsoft had an answer to the Internet titan move. Sad news for web ad agencies, competition and battleground have changed in your world within a few weeks (see chart). Read this Microsoft Storms Madison Avenue article in AdvertisingAge for more on the earthquake.

But folks, let me enjoy my vacation fully, I'll be back in June.

Would you have Google as your middle man?

First of all thanks to those of you asking me to write more often, much appreciated. One of the reason I didn't write too much recently lies in the fact that I started to work in a new company and I'm overwhelmed with new information to absorb and categorize. I wish I had a Wiki built in my brain, so everyone could contribute. But that would be brain 2.0 isn't it?

So fellow marketers, I'll be getting back to a better post frequency as soon as possible and of course I'll let you know rapidly what company decided to have me on board. The one thing I can tell you at this point is that I'm back to the Enterprise Application Software gang. It's going to rock there and I'll be writing about it in the near future.

I just wanted to drive your attention to this interesting joint Intel and Google announcement I read in Advertising Age: Intel, Google Join Forces for 'Virtual Marketing Storefront'. Let's get rid of the bells and whistles, Intel is agreeing to have Google as the middle man to manage partners co-marketing on-line (at least for on-line advertising for now). Strange move isn't it, and I don't buy it. If one vendor is serious about his ecosystem, one needs to manage it and not leave this to third parties having a biased interest that might hurt the vendor's strategy.
I don't have anything against Google, and I should say I praise them to have vigorously made Web 2.0 strong, but I would not let Google be my middle-man, instead I'd have Google be my ecosystem provider. Not to mention that Intel's partners would probably benefit from an integrated approach to their co-marketing experience with Intel. On-line advertising is far from being enough.

Apart from this, if you didn't notice Google's accelerated pace to expand their business footprint, here is a quote that says it all:

"This month alone, the company has announced its intent to acquire ad-placement giant DoubleClick; struck a deal with Clear Channel Radio to sell ads on its radio stations; added support from several major radio-station systems for its Google AdSense for Audio program; and partnered with EchoStar to sell TV commercials over the satellite broadcaster's Dish Network. " -- Beth Snyder Bulik, Advertising Age

Hey fellows at Microsoft, it's about time for you to react to try to grab some of the $125 billion advertising market Steve Ballmer claimed he was after.

What business are we in: Software or advertising? Google latest news

I just couldn't help but coming back on Google (GOOG) latest news, accelerating innovation and dominance -- read Google expands office software for more on businessweek.com -- attacking both Yahoo and Microsoft at the same time :

"Google announced Friday it would pay $3.1 billion to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc....Google announced the acquisition Tuesday of Tonic Systems Inc., a startup based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. The company specializes in collaborative presentation software and is expected to contribute to future versions to Google's productivity suite." -- businessweek.com

This InformationWeek Google's Deal For DoubleClick Could Be The End Of Yahoo article emphasizes the advertising acquisition even more, and finally here is what reported on earthtimes.org about the Google Clear Channel deal:

"Google Inc. and broadcaster Clear Channel Communications Inc. have signed a multi-year advertising sales agreement under which Google will start selling its advertising on radio stations, thereby making its entry into what is described as offline media -- radio, TV and even print publications."

If you didn't realize that Google is clearly moving on two fronts at the same time, SaaS dominance together with entering end-to-end advertising via the on-line door, you've just been living on an island without any kind of media access since January! No later than today, MediaDailyNews reports about how the ad industry major players are reacting about it: Google Looms Over Ad Research Summit, Seen More As Friend Than Enemy.

What business are we in folks? Software or advertising ... it may be both.

O3Spaces: open source SharePoint for OpenOffice

The open source world is about to welcome a competitor to SharePoint from Microsoft. In 2007, O3Spaces from the Netherlands will release its open source version of its integrated collaboration and document management application for workgroups and small businesses that use OpenOffice.org or its commercial sibling StarOffice. It is already available in its professional version, you can take a look at this quick tour to figure it out, and read a Sharepoint feature comparison here.

It is important as SharePoint is central to Microsoft Office 2007 launch. People Ready is all about collaboration and probably the most compelling reason to upgrade your office suite software. Web 2.0 drives this collaboration attitude, motivating all individuals to do it easily over the network and from very different devices, including our cell phones.

Let's not forget that desktop productivity software is also making its early steps in the Software as a Service (Saas) world. Just keep in mind what Google is doing with Writely and its online spreadsheet service, offering native web collaboration, all for free!

2007 will definitely be a very interesting time for the office suite market and probably give us some indications on whether customers are keen to stay only with the old licensing model or move partly to the open source model or the Saas one.

Google rides the wave, Microsoft follows, Yahoo is in pain

Following our question about where Microsoft business model was going - read Hey Microsoft, are you becoming Googled? - and now that all 3 Internet titans have published their quarterly results, let's stop for a while and understand who is ahead of the curve.

Assuming financial analysts and investors are doing their due diligence properly, we could rely first on their feel for it. So, looking at the comparison chart between all three stocks Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and Yahoo (YHOO) for the last 6 months, Google seems to ride the wave, Microsoft catching up and Yahoo heading south. Google even afforded to reach a new stock price all time high of $484.64 on 23 October, briefly surpassing $150 Billions for the first time! Remember, they acquired YouTube for $1.6B in stock... that's a dime.

I'm pretty in line with this view of the world as it reflects today's perception of who are the leaders in the on-line business. Here is a quote from AP on Monday supporting it:

"The third-quarter performance underscored the substantial advantage that Google has built over chief Internet rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., leading most analysts to conclude that the company will continue to dominate the online advertising market while it explores other potentially lucrative opportunities." -- Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer

But one should also keep in mind that very few players in this industry have the financial muscle to create and maintain huge architectures supporting Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery to the masses. We're talking $Billions fellow marketers, not VC money (sorry Netvibes fellows ;-) ).

Why should WE care? Well, if you only rely on search engine market shares to place your search marketing bets, the game is pretty simple: Google 49.2%, Yahoo 23.8%, MSN 9.6% according to Nielsen Netratings. Google market share surges even to more than 80% in some countries like France. The reason why we should care is Marketing 2.0 again. Search Advertising is powerful but not enough. Why would all these major players invest in Web 2.0 emerging companies otherwise? The question is for us to understand what are tomorrow's business models in a variety of industries like software, music, videos and what have you. If revenue is bound to come from on-line advertising in the future, it clearly means all other advertising form factors will decrease. Our marketing-mix, in a Marketing 2.0 era, will then significantly change and above all, marketing performance will be heavily impacted. To be digged.

"iPod ready": a new marketing gimmick

I went to Apple Expo on Friday. I missed the Mac ecosystem for long and it was refreshing to feel this relaxed vibe again. One could smell creativity, innovation and fun everywhere. I was impressed with the amount of business generated around iPod, up to the car manufacturer clearly using this European event to promote their latest innovation like Mini and Audi. Is iPod ready becoming of importance for cars manufacturer?

iPod ready devices were sparkling all around. This iPod ready screen from ViewSonic, announced on Sept 12, would tend to reinforce how PCs are not that important anymore. Plug your iPod and watch your videos, listen to the music or have your photos sliding in. USB connectors and memory card readers would let you use other devices as well. But take a close look at the icons, this is running MS Windows! Anyway, they're promoting a "Made for iPod" label. Road to success? Isn't Apple now the "iPod creator" company rather than the Mac one anyway?

iPod has become an icon for reinventing a fading company around a breaking through innovative product centered on a web 2.0 trend: sharing music on-line. Remain to be seen how Apple iTunes will respond to Universal SpiralFrog investment to turn music into an ad sponsored business. And what about this strange silence from Google about music except this very late announcement into the game: Google Music Search. Now that Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, is sitting on Apple's board of Directors, I'm sure I'll have something to blog about in a very short while about iTunes response to free music. Stay tuned and listen to SOMA FM music, as I do, in the meantime.

One final note. Customization is big when talking about web 2.0 business models, isn't it? Check out this special customized Mini limo -- yes a limo -- that was presented in front of the show -- see my pictures on flickr -- so cool. And what do you think about this gaming seat from Playseats as well?

Creativity is back. Hope and ambition are flourishing just as during the rise of the Internet bubble -- except VCs are still skeptical. Web 2.0 is a reality fellow marketers, Marketing 2.0 is on its way.

Sponsored Links allows Free Software

I was attending yesterday a comprehensive conference in Paris about e-commerce, looking for a solid update on e-marketing techniques. All major players in the on-line industry were represented - Yahoo, eBay, Google, and Microsoft - and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) shared with us the latest development of on-line consumers behavior. To let you discover how passionate these individuals were, I'm sharing with you one of the snapshots I took during the keynote. No obvious passion right?

I was expecting some breaking announcement about Web 2.0 related new techniques, even some marketing 2.0 concepts to flourish. Not only was I disappointed but furthermore, Yahoo's France General Manager just told us how he thought Web 2.0 was just a fad, no new news here he said. He referred to a Tim Berners-Lee statement to explain that he would call it Internet t.c, t.c. meaning "tout court", which would translate as something like "Internet period" as Tim defined the Internet as a way for individuals to communicate. Wow! I don't know how much corporate folks at Yahoo would appreciate it.

During the breakout sessions about sponsored links, I even heard professional marketers, especially from the major TV network in France, take some distance with blogging, coining it to a private non influential activity. I had to ask if he was afraid of blogs regarding his advertising business. You don't want to hear his corporate answer, believe me.

Fellow marketers, this is really the time for a marketing 2.0 manifesto to avoid for these wandering executives to ignore the paradigm shift we clearly are going through. As it always does during such eras -- read Innovator's Dilemma if you didn't already -- incumbents are trying to deny or ignore reality. This usually is announcing their business model fade if not their company's. As a result, brilliant and dynamic small companies are becoming the new category gorillas.

All these individuals might have missed this very interesting venture at spiceworks, providing an IT Management Software for ... FREE! What is their business model? They let you install and use their solution for free, recouping on sponsored links clicks-- especially Google's --. Yes: advertising is now funding software. They have attracted more than 5,000 companies since launch on July 31st. Read this for more. And this is not isolated, as Universal recently announced music was going to be free as advertising was funding it as well. Universal is backing SpiralFrog, a start-up we already mentioned before here.

Bite Marketing 2.0 before it bites you!