What's in store for Web 3.0?

It seems that the capabilities embodied by Web 2.0 are firmly entrenched in mainstream computing... even in corporate use. Blogs and Wiki's have found their way into corporate networks, and social networking sites have become marketing tools. Some organizations are even starting to use Twitter as a substitute for broadcast email. Clearly these tools aren't just for teenagers and college kids anymore.

So what's next?

Will the next phase emphasize convergence? We are already seeing how social networking sites, like LinkedIn and Facebook, have created partnerships to enrich their tools. Why not do the same with a corporate site? Why not create RSS feeds and Podcasts for internal and extenal communication? What about embedding an RSS reader into your customer-facing application? Wouldn't a podcast published as part of an intranet blog be more effective than a voicemail broadcast?

Will Web 3.0 feature multi-media? Podcasts are now being enhanced to include video. Will bandwidth and compression technologies advance to the point where a webinar is more than slide show and a disembodied voice?

Will Web 3.0 be all about mobility? Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, GMail, Salesforce.com, along with countless others, have adapted their applications for mobile devices. Some of these attempts are pretty barebones. Others, like Google Maps, are remarkable in their capability. The Sprint ad is spot-on... it's not a cell phone anymore. Imagine how CRM user adoption will be impacted when the salesman no longer needs to wait until he gets back to the office to update his files.

These are the times to be planning your strategy to take advantage of this nascent opportunity.

Virtual sabotoge gets real

In Connecticut, a fired contract network administrator logged in to his former employer's servers from home and sabotaged core IT resources. Fortunately, he was caught and is being sentenced to prison, has been ordered to pay some restitution and may face additional fines from the court. But how does something like this happen in the first place?

Why didn't the firm immediately change administrator access credentials when the contract was terminated?

To me, that is the most obvious failure in the entire episode. Surely, we are not going to improve human nature. As society continues its downward spiral, we must continuously challenge the assumptions that underlie security strategy and execution. But even if the assumptions are sound, and if the policies are prudent, all of it relies upon execution.

Somewhere along the line, someone failed to execute the most basic and fundamental of security procedures. There is no excuse for this. We all make mistakes, of course, and the person who made that one should be held fully accountable.

When was the last time your firm conducted a security audit? Have you reviewed existing network accounts to verify that terminated users no longer have any access? Are your privileged accounts protected by additional security measures? Has anyone checked lately to see if those security measures are carried out?

Addressing these questions need not be expensive or intrusive.
Failing to address these questions can be catastrophic.

News Story on CIO Magazine: Former Worker Sentenced

Into the clouds

As you probably know by now, Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) has launched Azure, their foray into cloud computing. In an important way, they have reverted to form in that they are piggybacking on the impressive innovations of nimbler, more creative companies, and then thrown considerable funding into trying to create a competitive product. This is what they used to do back in the 90's, when WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were household names. Word and Excel had been on the market since the early 1980's, released for the Mac OS, but no one took those products seriously. Microsoft wasn't even a recognizable brand, unless you knew what the MS in MS-DOS stood for. But the Redmond Raiders incorporated all of the features of the market leaders into their offering and took over the corporate desktop. Later, they used this strategy to put a big dent in Oracle's corporate database monopoly.

Now, Microsoft hopes to have the same results by competing against major cloud players like Google and Salesforce.com. They have released a version Office for the web, available for free. Its interface is very similar to Office 2007 and may be an effective defense against OpenOffice. Their press release indicates that Azure will include SharePoint services and CRM, along with support for .NET development and SQL Server. If the development community starts to create compelling applications for the platform, then the giant may earn back some of its swagger.

If you are looking for low-cost custom application development, let me know. This platform may be a great starting point, and our developers will be able to craft a great solution for you.

The Microsoft Press Release: Unveiling Azure

Verizon's performance starts to confirm the predictions

We have all seen it coming... the day when landlines actually become less prevalent than cell phones. In some developing countries, that day is already here, since the cell towers can be easier to deploy than hundreds of miles of wire stretched across an inhospitable countryside. However, in the US, the wire-based telephone is still the de facto standard for communication, as well as other consumer processes. 911 call handling depends on a land-based address for certain functions, as do cable TV and utility provision processes. When we call for a power outage, the automated phone system users the caller ID to determine the location of the service interruption. That doesn't work so well if I call from a friend's home across town using my cell phone. Even so, I know several people in around 30-ish years old who, when they moved out of mom & dad's place, simply did not see the need for a land-line.

Verizon recently announced their 3Q results, which finally start to provide some evidence for this theoretical trend. Their wireless division (a joint venture with Vodafone) saw a gross revenue increase of 13%, with a monthly per customer revenue increase of 0.9%. The land-line business, on the other hand, saw a decline in revenue of 1.7%.

In addition to some of the "infrastructure" processes discussed above, this trend has important implications for consumer marketing. Any phone systems that tie a caller ID to an address -- pizza delivery is an obvious example -- will have to be retooled to account for this. Response research that uses area code and prefix to identify a trading area will be less and less effective as people retain their phone number regardless of location.

And how will telephone companies respond to the fact that "long distance" is becoming a moot point? When a dad calls his daughter in college on her cell phone, he is calling a "local" number that happens to be physically located hundreds of miles away. What will businesses do with their wire-based phones? When a block of cell phones can be tied together as a virtual PBX, why will anyone by another legacy style phone system (switch-based or IP-based) ever again?

Just some questions I've been pondering...