Met regelmaat stoeien organisaties met de vraag. Met welke wet -en regelgeving krijg ik te maken als mijn organisatie een archief in wil richten? En wie is er dan verantwoordelijk voor het voldoen aan de daarvoor geldende normen?
Wet -en regelgeving in het kader van een DMS of archiefsysteem slaat in eerste instantie op die organisaties die vanuit wetgeving gehouden worden aan de archiefwet van 1995 (zie ook leesbare uitleg archiefschool) en de daarvoor opgestelde norm voor archiefsystemen NEN 2082 en die voor het beheer van archiefbescheiden voor archiefvormende organisaties NEN 15489. Eigenlijk spreek je indien je het hebt over een systeem wat voldoet aan NEN2082 ook niet over een DMS maar over een Records Management Applicatie (RMA).
Met andere woorden de 'klant' zal zich voor de inrichting van haar organisatie en de processen in haar organisatie rekenschap moeten geven van de eisen die aan haar gesteld worden vanuit de wet. Van toepassing is de NEN 15489. Indien een organisatie gebruik maakt van een archiefsysteem welke is gecertificeerd volgens NEN 2082 mag ze er vanuit gaan dat het systeem ingericht kan worden zodat deze de verplichting van de organisatie om de onder hen berustende archiefbescheiden in goede, geordende en toegankelijke staat te brengen en te bewaren, alsmede zorg te dragen voor de vernietiging van de daarvoor in aanmerking komende archiefbescheiden ondersteund.
Met nadruk kan, omdat vanaf het moment dat gestart wordt met de inrichting van het systeem de compliancy met wetgeving niet meer gegarandeerd is. Mogelijkheid is om het geïmplementeerde systeem vervolgens te laten certificeren tegen dezelfde norm zoals dat is uitgevoerd bij de gemeente Nieuwegein.
Het deel waar het gaat over het garanderen dat het systeem instaat is om een organisatie te ondersteunen met het voldoen aan de eisen van de archiefwet (NEN 2082) is de verantwoordelijkheid van de softwareleverancier. Maar let op indien dit systeem wordt geïmplementeerd door bijvoorbeeld een integrator is dat nog geen garantie dat dit ook 'goed' gedaan wordt en kan die garantie door een leverancier enkel geleverd worden door de implementatie zelf te laten toetsen door bijvoorbeeld de ECB. Het voorbeeld van Nieuwegein is in de wereld van de gemeenten uniek als het gaat over de toetsing en de bestpractice maakt onderdeel uit van een propositie die door Ricoh samen met QNH wordt gehanteerd. In diezelfde gemeenten is nog geen certificering volgens NEN 15489 uitgevoerd.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Are you being served? - Jeroen Bosch ziekenhuis Den Bosch
In het Brabantsdagblad verscheen zaterdag 22 jan 2011 een artikel rondom het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis in Den Bosch met de titel 'Wordt u al geholpen'. Het Jeroen Bosch heeft eind december 2010 de sleutel van haar nieuwbouw in Den Bosch ontvangen en heeft in de opzet van de nieuwe locatie goed nagedacht over het verbeteren van haar dienstverlening aan de patiënt.
Drie Musketiers
De samenvoeging van drie ziekenhuizen in de regio naar 1 locatie is een unieke kans geweest om er voor te zorgen dat het Jeroen Bosch beter is voorbereid op de ontwikkelingen in de maatschappij, waarin thema's als vergrijzing en de steeds mondigere patiënt grote impact hebben op de efficiëncy van de ziekenhuizen van morgen.
De patiënt centraal - 'patiënt vriendelijk en patiënt gericht'
Het idee is dat bij de inrichting van de dienstverlening van het ziekenhuis de behoeften van de patiënt centraal komen staan. Revolutionair? Nee, het is een ontwikkeling die al sinds de roerige jaren 60 gaande is en niet enkel in de zorg. Een ontwikkeling die er voor heeft gezorgd dat de relatie tussen arts en patiënt van ver verheven magiër is verworden tot een (meer) volwassen relatie, waarin de patiënt een rol in het geprek heeft gekregen.
Schaarste van kennis
De tijd dat de zieke mens volledig was overgeleverd aan de enkeling die de kennis tijdens een jaarlijkse openbare sessie (*) moest delen aan een exclusief groepje medemagiërs is voorbij.
Beschikbaarheid van informatie
Kennis in de context van het hedendaagse ziekenhuis gaat echter verder dan de vaardigheid om een aderlating uit te voeren.
Centralisatie van een patiënt vraagt om nog een stap verder in het beschikbaar krijgen van informatie. Dat begint bij het moment dat een patiënt een ziekenhuis binnenstapt. Het registreren van een patiënt of melden van de aankomst van de patiënt is de eerste stap.
Het Jeroen Bosch beschrijft het als een geheel nieuwe manier van werken en heeft daarvoor een instructiefilm voor patient en verzorgend personeel in voorbereiding.
De nieuwe werkwijze past in het digitale tijdperk, waarin er gewerkt wordt met een elektronisch patiëntendossier in plaats van een papieren dossier en ligt geheel in lijn met de ambitie om het meest patiëntgerichte ziekenhuis van Nederland te zijn.
(*) 1632 De anatomische les van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
Drie Musketiers
De samenvoeging van drie ziekenhuizen in de regio naar 1 locatie is een unieke kans geweest om er voor te zorgen dat het Jeroen Bosch beter is voorbereid op de ontwikkelingen in de maatschappij, waarin thema's als vergrijzing en de steeds mondigere patiënt grote impact hebben op de efficiëncy van de ziekenhuizen van morgen.
De patiënt centraal - 'patiënt vriendelijk en patiënt gericht'
Het idee is dat bij de inrichting van de dienstverlening van het ziekenhuis de behoeften van de patiënt centraal komen staan. Revolutionair? Nee, het is een ontwikkeling die al sinds de roerige jaren 60 gaande is en niet enkel in de zorg. Een ontwikkeling die er voor heeft gezorgd dat de relatie tussen arts en patiënt van ver verheven magiër is verworden tot een (meer) volwassen relatie, waarin de patiënt een rol in het geprek heeft gekregen.
Schaarste van kennis
De tijd dat de zieke mens volledig was overgeleverd aan de enkeling die de kennis tijdens een jaarlijkse openbare sessie (*) moest delen aan een exclusief groepje medemagiërs is voorbij.
Beschikbaarheid van informatie
Kennis in de context van het hedendaagse ziekenhuis gaat echter verder dan de vaardigheid om een aderlating uit te voeren.
Centralisatie van een patiënt vraagt om nog een stap verder in het beschikbaar krijgen van informatie. Dat begint bij het moment dat een patiënt een ziekenhuis binnenstapt. Het registreren van een patiënt of melden van de aankomst van de patiënt is de eerste stap.
Het Jeroen Bosch beschrijft het als een geheel nieuwe manier van werken en heeft daarvoor een instructiefilm voor patient en verzorgend personeel in voorbereiding.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Prototype this: Flying LifeGuard
Prototype this: Flying lifeguard.
Discovery channel Jan 19th 2011.
Great to see how the development team works together on solving complex problems in a limited amount of time. In this episode the team was told by the life guard how people are rescued and what critical moments have the biggest impact on success - Life or Death...
Most important is:
The link leads to a short version. Not shown in this version is the proces of solving complex problems and the way the team handles the pressure of time. The solution however for the short and long range rescue device is shown.
Discovery channel Jan 19th 2011.
Great to see how the development team works together on solving complex problems in a limited amount of time. In this episode the team was told by the life guard how people are rescued and what critical moments have the biggest impact on success - Life or Death...
Most important is:
- receive the destress signal,
- pinpoint location of the drawning man and
- time to get to the location
The link leads to a short version. Not shown in this version is the proces of solving complex problems and the way the team handles the pressure of time. The solution however for the short and long range rescue device is shown.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Google removes SLA clause that allows downtime of services, but is satisfied with 99.984% uptime
I stumbled upon a typical me too, I'm not able to set my own goals Google blog (again). Because it is the official Google blog, I presume this is a kind of official vision of the future of the user experience of availablity from Google. So, why this I'm better than everyone and Microsoft particular flavoured message?
Cut the crap! If you are convinced this is a good step to excellence (which I do agree on) just do it! Let competition decide by them selves if they need the public that care.
Providing the servicelevel is the USP, the crap behind that is NOT.
Google removes clause that allows downtime of services
Which is a good thing, but still mind that stating this ambition means that it is not acceptable to start with explaining that a little downtime - seven-minute average downtime a month represents the accumulation of small delays of a few seconds, and most people experienced no issues at all - is the same as a 100% uptime.
You can only buildup your reliability if you do not except that last seven minutes and promise to bridge that last gap to 100% uptime. The customer is not stupid you know. So take your ambition, but first of all the user a 100% serious.
added link to Blog post of Sytse van der Schaaf (Dutch) on IT executive: Apekool van Google
Cut the crap! If you are convinced this is a good step to excellence (which I do agree on) just do it! Let competition decide by them selves if they need the public that care.
Providing the servicelevel is the USP, the crap behind that is NOT.
Google removes clause that allows downtime of services
Which is a good thing, but still mind that stating this ambition means that it is not acceptable to start with explaining that a little downtime - seven-minute average downtime a month represents the accumulation of small delays of a few seconds, and most people experienced no issues at all - is the same as a 100% uptime.
You can only buildup your reliability if you do not except that last seven minutes and promise to bridge that last gap to 100% uptime. The customer is not stupid you know. So take your ambition, but first of all the user a 100% serious.
added link to Blog post of Sytse van der Schaaf (Dutch) on IT executive: Apekool van Google
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Remoddeling the realworld - The rise and fall of SEO
At the rise of Search the public couldn't believe that a single search box could ever return adequate results from all over the web at all. SEO evaluated enormous, but when it comes to results that reflect your needs more exact SEO is not the holy grail.
For example business apps do use other indexing mechanisme like metadata combined with a social distance in addition to ranking. I do believe the public gut feeling that SEO will not provide you with the right answer will become real in the end. At least a part of that feeling. I also believe that the quality of results could improve by adding the social component in SEO.
So is it time to redefine gravity and implement a new model to assure that we still will find relevant and authentic information in the future? I do think it is time to innovate.
Trouble in the house of Google.
Great article on this subject posted Jan 3 2011 on coding horror Blog by Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow, named Trouble in the house of Google.
In this article Jeff Atwood questions the practice of content syndication. Sharing knowledge including information in websites and blogs is not a problem and should be encouraged. But information has value and when shared, the origin should be included. Especially when the context of the information is relevant to the quality of the information. When your information is used and shared, you expect at least that the shared content is looped back to you as author. Not because this is good practice in sense of creative rights only.
When information and knowledge is your business and content syndication is turning into content piracy you go out and check the source. It is very disturbing if you find out that the very core structure of finding information on the web has no mechanism to prevent this ripping of sites.
It looks like the system has been broken and the problem lies in the core itself. Professional Sharecropping became the spam of SEO.
For example business apps do use other indexing mechanisme like metadata combined with a social distance in addition to ranking. I do believe the public gut feeling that SEO will not provide you with the right answer will become real in the end. At least a part of that feeling. I also believe that the quality of results could improve by adding the social component in SEO.
So is it time to redefine gravity and implement a new model to assure that we still will find relevant and authentic information in the future? I do think it is time to innovate.
Trouble in the house of Google.
Great article on this subject posted Jan 3 2011 on coding horror Blog by Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow, named Trouble in the house of Google.
In this article Jeff Atwood questions the practice of content syndication. Sharing knowledge including information in websites and blogs is not a problem and should be encouraged. But information has value and when shared, the origin should be included. Especially when the context of the information is relevant to the quality of the information. When your information is used and shared, you expect at least that the shared content is looped back to you as author. Not because this is good practice in sense of creative rights only.
When information and knowledge is your business and content syndication is turning into content piracy you go out and check the source. It is very disturbing if you find out that the very core structure of finding information on the web has no mechanism to prevent this ripping of sites.
It looks like the system has been broken and the problem lies in the core itself. Professional Sharecropping became the spam of SEO.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Move your business or move to the cloud
*************************
Moving physical information - the old days
In the old days moving to an other location was a hell of a job. The basement contained more than ten kilometers archive. Stored there for years to come. Most files are kept because of legislation. Although some files are kept to be sure instead of sorry.
Moving physical information - put it in the datacenter
In the last say ten years things changed. Is it possible to digitize these paper files? Can we store the data on disk to avoid the enormous growth of storage room needed? Indeed we can to a certain amount. Still legislations was a boundary or is it just us not wanting to change?
Another mind shift caused change. Why not (re)use the data? Make it available in a more profitable way to the organization? Technologie provided us with a portal, search engines to make data available. We even managed to interpreted the data and turned it into information and nowadays we taking steps to knowledge be reusing and recombining the retrieved information.
Still we suffer from cold feet. Security and access rights trow a spanner in the works. In order to satisfy our sense of security we want to keep the data closeby and keep information hidden for the organization.
I know it is not easy and can feel uncomfortable to embrace change, but you know, we have to in order to move forward. Consider the following story and decide for your self if this is what we wish to keep doing. Is this where we want to put our money?
Move your business - physically
The city of Den Bosch in the south of the Netherlands is building a new hospital. It is located near the new constructed center called 'Paleiskwartier'. In the end three hospitals will move from 6 locations to one new modern hospital in the center of the city.
Jeroen Bosch Hospital is moving to a new location
It will be close to the railstation and a lot of facilities you expect near to a modern hospital.
In order to manage information effective and efficiënt the hospital has there information about their patient digital available. The physician and the nursing staff have the needed information at hand immediatly when needed.
Down in the cellar their are no paper files left. All data is stored digitaly, even information is available to the organization. More than a year ago the hospital decided to move to this new location. A huge opperation with a big impact
Moving the archive (probably a more than 30km paper equivalent) which is digitized is a complete other kind of operation. The equipment where these files are stored have to be deinstalled from the original datacenter, shiped to the new location and installed in the new datacenter. This is far beyond normal operation.
System managers are used to fade out old equipement, moving data to new hardware and keeping systems operational. But once the equipement is litteraly going offline and is loaded in a truck other professionals are moved in.
Risks of moving
Moving this kind of delicate equipment, still mounted in their origional 19 inch racks with this huge amount of information installed, needs years of preperation. When the operation is started it has to be finished as sceduled till all equipment is installed, tested and proved operational in the new datacenter.
Taking out 'hibernating' information out of the safity of the datacenter is a risk for security, will interupt normal availability and continuity and therefore all aspects of risk are breached.
Moving the equipment physically will impact even more to the risk of loss. Ofcourse the data itself is backed up and the restore procedures are tested and proved. But these measures are invented in case of problems and these has to prevented in the first place. So the route from the old to the new location is analysed. Obstacles are removed, meaning litteraly removing bumps so the truck will move as smooth as possible.
The adjustments to the route made this operation complex and very costly. This made me courious. There is another way to move information from one location to the other, we use it every day. Why not removing every obstacle that is causing all these risks in the first place? The fact that the information is stored on these physical assets causes these complexity in the operation.
Moving your Business or moving to the cloud
If the retrieval of information, the collaboration services and the dossiers of the patients where located in a cloud, the operation described would take about a second. True, moving to a cloud based infrastructure is not a walk in the park. It is a big challenge and a lot of chief officers responsible for all aspects of secure and high quality information have second thoughts about moving to the cloud. But when you start planning and preparing to move your business, you might considering moving to the cloud.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Future of productivity - Office 365 walktrough and more
Since the official worldwide launch of the Microsoft productivity suite Office 365 by Kurt DelBene last October, there has been an enormous amound of information published on the web. Most of us saw some glimps of the product and its promising functionality, few of us had the privilige to experience its real power yet. Since Office 365 is not global available and only a 'few' countries are picked to do some beta for us.
Microsoft has published a paper with an overview of the functionality of the Office365 BETA.
So what things are changed since the predecessor BPOS and what does it mean for us?
That was yesterday
Office 365 is the succesor of BPOS. BPOS was the first released business productivity suite in the Online SKU. The suite included mail functionality with Exchange, a platform for storing and collaborating on information with SharePoint and communication with the OCS platform as most important components.
In Office 365 these functionalities are still there and are now based on the 2010 suites from the On-Premise SKU. This means that functionality is based on SharePoint Server 2010 and OCS is now called Lync Server.
High Fidelity of the Future of Productivity
Business Productivity is not only about storing, sharing and discussing about information, it is also about creating information with the usual means and in a familiar way. Leverage the skills already available and support optimizing these skills to produce information for the organization as a whole.
By adding Office Professional Plus to the online suite Microsoft lowered the differences in the user experience working Online or On-Premise.
So there you are. Four main functional online services for the end user, supporting Business Productivity.
The limitation of success
BPOS for me was a rather unexpected success due to the limitations of the suite. Well there are a lot of arguments to use the suite to support Business Productivity. The suite does deliver a competitive package of services in my opinion. Till now however the limitations will block the possibility to extend beyond the standard. So what did Microsoft to diminish these limitations and to seduce partners to use the suite more in the future?
Role based access and permissions
New to Office 365 is that this suite now realy is one suite of functionalities working together instead of a knotted together package of offerings. Access to Office 365 is now role based. Just one portal to all users and permissions based on the role. So an administrator has the functions available to manage the environment and a user can access his mail and accept a call or a task assigned to him.
Signing in
Office 365 has the abillity to use ADFS. This service provides a single signon access to the environment. No hassle with other user credentials and a lot better fit supporting business integration and security requirements.
Can I have one for my self?
Yes you can since Office365 is supporting the mysite which will give you a personal page. This page however is very more than just a personal siloed site to store some information. To support and encourage you to share, the user activity and the interests you indicate by rank a article or a document for instance, is collected and 'published' to your contacts. This means you will be helped with smart and fast access to the knowledge of the organization while looking for information based on your social distance and the relevance calculated through ranking, search results and so on. MySite will fullfill this information hub functionality.
Adding value
BPOS had this limitation which partner where quit disappointed with. The possibility to deliver their stuff on top of the Microsoft platform was not possible. You can extend BPOS but it is very limited. This has changed with Office 365. Why is this so important for the Microsoft Partner Network community and Microsoft too? The model Microsoft has chosen a long time ago is delivering functionality through partners. They add a huge amount of knowledge to the basic platforms and will be able to do so based on the On-Premise SKU as well as on the Online SKU.
Focus will be a requirement for the partners too. It will be difficult if not impossible to maintain a mixed business model in the long future.
From selling licences to providing business productivity services
Microsoft is aiming no longer on selling licences in the future. This change of business model is closely related to the move to the cloud. Claiming to be All In means also adjusting your supporting business model. Selling licences does not match with Cloud services. Cloud is NOT about technology or products at all, in my opinion. Providing services is another ball game and Microsoft is changing their relation with partner ànd consumer. Now today Microsoft is changing this partner and distribution model. Future focus will be on delivering these business productivity services in all aspects.
The Power to Think Big and Be Small, to Be Big and Act Fast
The standard edition of BPOS was limited to 30.000 users (I never had the pleasure to close a deal on that much users in a standard BPOS environment). This limitation is dropped. There is no max limit on the users. Being BIG is one thing, to be able to serve even the smallest organizations with the same top notch technology available for the big enterprise is something else. The minimal amount of users is dropped too! This means that everyone starting a business can use the functionality.
So are you going to have a webconference with your self? Well no, but are you doing business with your self?
I've embedded an video from the 2010 TechEd Europe session Office 365 walkthrough of David Anderson. You could watch and listen to this recording to get more insight than I cover in this Blog. (It is a recording from TechEd, so expect some Tech talk about administration and security and so on. Productivity in the eyes of David is the productivity of the IT Pro in first place)
Microsoft has published a paper with an overview of the functionality of the Office365 BETA.
So what things are changed since the predecessor BPOS and what does it mean for us?
That was yesterday
Office 365 is the succesor of BPOS. BPOS was the first released business productivity suite in the Online SKU. The suite included mail functionality with Exchange, a platform for storing and collaborating on information with SharePoint and communication with the OCS platform as most important components.
In Office 365 these functionalities are still there and are now based on the 2010 suites from the On-Premise SKU. This means that functionality is based on SharePoint Server 2010 and OCS is now called Lync Server.
High Fidelity of the Future of Productivity
Business Productivity is not only about storing, sharing and discussing about information, it is also about creating information with the usual means and in a familiar way. Leverage the skills already available and support optimizing these skills to produce information for the organization as a whole.
By adding Office Professional Plus to the online suite Microsoft lowered the differences in the user experience working Online or On-Premise.
So there you are. Four main functional online services for the end user, supporting Business Productivity.
The limitation of success
BPOS for me was a rather unexpected success due to the limitations of the suite. Well there are a lot of arguments to use the suite to support Business Productivity. The suite does deliver a competitive package of services in my opinion. Till now however the limitations will block the possibility to extend beyond the standard. So what did Microsoft to diminish these limitations and to seduce partners to use the suite more in the future?
Role based access and permissions
New to Office 365 is that this suite now realy is one suite of functionalities working together instead of a knotted together package of offerings. Access to Office 365 is now role based. Just one portal to all users and permissions based on the role. So an administrator has the functions available to manage the environment and a user can access his mail and accept a call or a task assigned to him.
Signing in
Office 365 has the abillity to use ADFS. This service provides a single signon access to the environment. No hassle with other user credentials and a lot better fit supporting business integration and security requirements.
Can I have one for my self?
Yes you can since Office365 is supporting the mysite which will give you a personal page. This page however is very more than just a personal siloed site to store some information. To support and encourage you to share, the user activity and the interests you indicate by rank a article or a document for instance, is collected and 'published' to your contacts. This means you will be helped with smart and fast access to the knowledge of the organization while looking for information based on your social distance and the relevance calculated through ranking, search results and so on. MySite will fullfill this information hub functionality.
Adding value
BPOS had this limitation which partner where quit disappointed with. The possibility to deliver their stuff on top of the Microsoft platform was not possible. You can extend BPOS but it is very limited. This has changed with Office 365. Why is this so important for the Microsoft Partner Network community and Microsoft too? The model Microsoft has chosen a long time ago is delivering functionality through partners. They add a huge amount of knowledge to the basic platforms and will be able to do so based on the On-Premise SKU as well as on the Online SKU.
Focus will be a requirement for the partners too. It will be difficult if not impossible to maintain a mixed business model in the long future.
From selling licences to providing business productivity services
Microsoft is aiming no longer on selling licences in the future. This change of business model is closely related to the move to the cloud. Claiming to be All In means also adjusting your supporting business model. Selling licences does not match with Cloud services. Cloud is NOT about technology or products at all, in my opinion. Providing services is another ball game and Microsoft is changing their relation with partner ànd consumer. Now today Microsoft is changing this partner and distribution model. Future focus will be on delivering these business productivity services in all aspects.
The Power to Think Big and Be Small, to Be Big and Act Fast
The standard edition of BPOS was limited to 30.000 users (I never had the pleasure to close a deal on that much users in a standard BPOS environment). This limitation is dropped. There is no max limit on the users. Being BIG is one thing, to be able to serve even the smallest organizations with the same top notch technology available for the big enterprise is something else. The minimal amount of users is dropped too! This means that everyone starting a business can use the functionality.
So are you going to have a webconference with your self? Well no, but are you doing business with your self?
I've embedded an video from the 2010 TechEd Europe session Office 365 walkthrough of David Anderson. You could watch and listen to this recording to get more insight than I cover in this Blog. (It is a recording from TechEd, so expect some Tech talk about administration and security and so on. Productivity in the eyes of David is the productivity of the IT Pro in first place)
Social Media can be powerfull - even for Social Media
A rumour started a chain reaction. Yahoo! will shutdown the social bookmark service Delicious. The tag #Delicious ended up as a worldwide trending tag. (however a lot of the tags are just about Delicious). The twitter account @delicious must have noticed, as they are claiming in their profile: The official Twitter account for Delicious from Yahoo!. We listen to people talking about Delicious, and we respond. Yay.
So Yahoo! discovered that their early introduced services is appreciated and responded by placing a blog post : Whats next for delicious. So it looks like this early public folksonomy service will survive.
Still wondering what will hapen to Yahoo! as a company. Early 2007 their was a serious rumour about a take over from Microsoft. In the same period Microsoft took over the highend search technology from FAST. The takeover did not succeed. However mid 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! ended up with an agreement - Microsoft will power Yahoo! Search.
Now December 17th an article describes how the employees of Yahoo! are reacting on these socialmedia attention.
Is Yahoo! preparing to sell just a little bit more than 'just' their folksonomy service?
So Yahoo! discovered that their early introduced services is appreciated and responded by placing a blog post : Whats next for delicious. So it looks like this early public folksonomy service will survive.
Still wondering what will hapen to Yahoo! as a company. Early 2007 their was a serious rumour about a take over from Microsoft. In the same period Microsoft took over the highend search technology from FAST. The takeover did not succeed. However mid 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! ended up with an agreement - Microsoft will power Yahoo! Search.
Now December 17th an article describes how the employees of Yahoo! are reacting on these socialmedia attention.
Is Yahoo! preparing to sell just a little bit more than 'just' their folksonomy service?
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Aan Het Werk! - Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
In Nederland worden bedrijven van 10 tot 250 medewerkers tot de groep MKB gerekend. Dat zijn er in Nederland een slordige 800.000 waar we met 7,5 miljoen mensen ons brood verdienen . Samen vormen ze een belangrijke economische motor voor Nederland.
Ondernemers in het MKB worden gedreven vanuit mogelijkheden. Het vermogen om mogelijkheden op waarde te schatten en het lef om de eerste stap te zetten en de mogelijkheid aan te pakken zijn de kern van hun succes. Elke onderneming is op deze manier gestart en is er vervolgens achter gekomen dat het tijd werd om het werk anders te organiseren.
Thuiswerken of op een andere locatie werken wordt als erg prettig ervaren, onderzoek toont aan dat de productiviteit alleen maar toeneemt. Maar is de organisatie hierop wel voorbereid? Het is niet alleen een kwestie van een laptop met een dongle beschikbaar stellen, of elk ander middels zoals een smartphone.
Zaken zoals informatie, in welke vorm dan ook, beschikbaar kunnen hebben en delen wordt dan cruciaal. Dossiers kunnen zich niet meer in kasten bevinden, je neemt niet zomaar een dossier mee naar huis of onderweg. Samenwerken terwijl je niet meer op het werk bent, maar Aan Het Werk!, is niet alleen een kwestie van faciliteiten, maar zeker ook een kwestie van cultuur, beleid en organisatie. Werk je nog wel als je niet aanwezig bent? Hoe wordt je verantwoordelijk voor je eigen output als medewerker en hoe wordt je aangestuurd? Wat zijn de kaders waarin Het Nieuwe Werken door de werkgever wordt neergezet en hoe ga je met elkaar om?
Voor elke ondernemer komt het besef dat dingen anders doen tot een beter resultaat kan leiden. Er zijn verschillende aanleidingen die tot dit inzicht leiden.
• Reputatie
• Inspireren
• Duurzaamheid
• Verhuizing
• Fusie
• Meer doen met minder
De kleine opsomming is zeker niet compleet, maar in het licht van de afgelopen periode waarin de crisis een zware druk op veel ondernemingen heeft gelegd zal elke ondernemer zich de vraag hebben gesteld waar het in de organisatie beter kan.
Factor4Index is een methodiek die het verbeterpotentieel van een organisatie in kaart brengt. Het geeft een organisatie een handvat, een start en een richting.
De methodiek kan grofweg opgedeeld worden in 2 krachtige stappen. Een set van 64 vragen meet zowel de huidige als de gewenste situatie. De vragen hebben betrekking op 4 categorieën:
Nadat de resultaten van de survey zijn verwerkt volgt een interpretatie. Gecertificeerde organisaties zijn opgeleid om deze interpretatie uit te voeren en zodoende tot het juiste inzicht en een goed advies te komen.
De eenvoud waarmee de survey kan worden gestart en uitgevoerd maakt de methodiek geschikt voor een heel brede inzet in grote organisaties, maar juist ook voor een heel snelle en laagdrempelige tool voor bedrijven in het MKB.
Het helder krijgen van de verbeteringen die met de hoogste noodzaak moeten worden opgepakt en de grootste impact hebben op het verbeteren van de productiviteit van een organisatie is één. Het doorvoeren en succesvol begeleiden van een verandering is een logisch vervolg.
Ondernemers in het MKB worden gedreven vanuit mogelijkheden. Het vermogen om mogelijkheden op waarde te schatten en het lef om de eerste stap te zetten en de mogelijkheid aan te pakken zijn de kern van hun succes. Elke onderneming is op deze manier gestart en is er vervolgens achter gekomen dat het tijd werd om het werk anders te organiseren.
Aan Het Werk!
Medewerkers vragen steeds meer flexibiliteit in de invulling van hun werk, in goede samenhang met privé . De economie draait maar door, en 24/7 beschikbaar zijn is allang vanzelfsprekend, zeker in het internationaal zaken doen. Dit legt druk op organisaties, terwijl ook nog eens efficiënt en tegen de laagst mogelijke kosten gedaan moet worden. De kosten voor huisvesting zijn hoog, terwijl daar niet altijd op de meest efficiënte manier gebruik van wordt gemaakt. Medewerkers willen meer verantwoordelijkheid in de uitvoering van hun werkzaamheden, en willen hun tijd zelf invullen.Thuiswerken of op een andere locatie werken wordt als erg prettig ervaren, onderzoek toont aan dat de productiviteit alleen maar toeneemt. Maar is de organisatie hierop wel voorbereid? Het is niet alleen een kwestie van een laptop met een dongle beschikbaar stellen, of elk ander middels zoals een smartphone.
Zaken zoals informatie, in welke vorm dan ook, beschikbaar kunnen hebben en delen wordt dan cruciaal. Dossiers kunnen zich niet meer in kasten bevinden, je neemt niet zomaar een dossier mee naar huis of onderweg. Samenwerken terwijl je niet meer op het werk bent, maar Aan Het Werk!, is niet alleen een kwestie van faciliteiten, maar zeker ook een kwestie van cultuur, beleid en organisatie. Werk je nog wel als je niet aanwezig bent? Hoe wordt je verantwoordelijk voor je eigen output als medewerker en hoe wordt je aangestuurd? Wat zijn de kaders waarin Het Nieuwe Werken door de werkgever wordt neergezet en hoe ga je met elkaar om?
Voor elke ondernemer komt het besef dat dingen anders doen tot een beter resultaat kan leiden. Er zijn verschillende aanleidingen die tot dit inzicht leiden.
• Reputatie
• Inspireren
• Duurzaamheid
• Verhuizing
• Fusie
• Meer doen met minder
De kleine opsomming is zeker niet compleet, maar in het licht van de afgelopen periode waarin de crisis een zware druk op veel ondernemingen heeft gelegd zal elke ondernemer zich de vraag hebben gesteld waar het in de organisatie beter kan.
Informatielogistiek
Informatielogistiek heeft zich hier op heeft toegelegd, de juiste informatie in de juiste vorm op het juiste moment presenteren aan de juiste persoon. Onontbeerlijk als je niet alle dagen op “de zaak”aanwezig bent maar toch je werk moet kunnen blijven doen. Efficiënter en productiever onafhankelijk van waar je bent en op welk tijdstip je die informatie nodig hebt.Factor4Index
Vanuit deze visie kunnen organisaties worden ondersteund met scans en onderzoeken. Onderzoeken waarmee organisaties meer inzicht krijgen waarmee ze Aan Het Werk! kunnen. Het wat en het hoe, maar ook het helder krijgen waarom deze stappen tot een productievere organisatie leiden.Factor4Index is een methodiek die het verbeterpotentieel van een organisatie in kaart brengt. Het geeft een organisatie een handvat, een start en een richting.
De methodiek kan grofweg opgedeeld worden in 2 krachtige stappen. Een set van 64 vragen meet zowel de huidige als de gewenste situatie. De vragen hebben betrekking op 4 categorieën:
- Inspiratie
- Organisatie
- Cultuur
- Technologie
Nadat de resultaten van de survey zijn verwerkt volgt een interpretatie. Gecertificeerde organisaties zijn opgeleid om deze interpretatie uit te voeren en zodoende tot het juiste inzicht en een goed advies te komen.
De eenvoud waarmee de survey kan worden gestart en uitgevoerd maakt de methodiek geschikt voor een heel brede inzet in grote organisaties, maar juist ook voor een heel snelle en laagdrempelige tool voor bedrijven in het MKB.
Het helder krijgen van de verbeteringen die met de hoogste noodzaak moeten worden opgepakt en de grootste impact hebben op het verbeteren van de productiviteit van een organisatie is één. Het doorvoeren en succesvol begeleiden van een verandering is een logisch vervolg.
SPIL
De Standaard Aanpak Informatie Logistiek (SPIL) is een beproefde methodiek die naast het ontwikkelen van een inzicht in de informatielogistieke verbeteringen, de concrete implementatie begeleid en het bereiken van de beoogde resultaten versneld.
SPIL omvat een set van scans, tools en bestpractices en is voor organisaties van elke omvang toepasbaar.
Toevoeging 13 januari 2011: Whitepaper over Het Nieuwe Werken - Aan Het Werk, met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Monday, November 01, 2010
The future of productivity - changing the game with Office 365
***
Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products with the latest version of our desktop suite for businesses of all sizes.
***
A new name of the (same) game
After Microsoft unveiled the new name of their online suit during a webcast Oct 19th, formerly known as BPOS (and later codename UNION), they launched their dedicated site about Office 365. Bringing together cloud versions of our most trusted communication and collaboration products, so what is available in this box?
Introduction of a revolution?
Betsy Frost Webb - who hosted the webcast where the new suite was unveiled, calls the introduction of Office 365 a game changer for all kinds of businesses all over the world.
I intend to believe it will shape the future of productivity. All functionality in this box is available today, but it is the way it is delivered that will make the difference. In an earlier blog about the future of productivity in small and medium businesses I mentioned that the only concern of the entrepreneur is spotting opportunities and turn them into succesfull business. The way most ICT is delivered to these businesses have proved themselfs to be quit complex to implement. These efforts are killing for productivity (a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input). Functionality from flagship products like SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010 are way too big because of this complexity for the small businesses.
If you can manage to take away the complexity of implementation and provide the right fit functionality right away, business can be productive from the start. That's exacly what Office 365 promises.
Technique without the technology
Organisations are looking for an 'easy' way to use technology to get more insight in their business. If you sell cookies, you want to know how much sugar and weat is needed for your next production batch. Selling cookies is not about technique, but a lot about technology to make it possible. It is not about backing a lot of cookies, but the right cookies considering production resources, market and taste.
You will be interessted in the developments of the prices of sugar and weat, the influences of the weather and European laws. To discusse this you want to be able to capture this information and to discusse these with your team, your suppliers and transform that information, share that knowledge within your organisation. In the end your success depends on the right information to make the right choices based on real knowledge.
If your business is helping other organisations to succeed, you do not need a productionline. You do have the need to capture the knowledge in your organisation, even if the organisation is just you. You do have the need to have insight in your business, who are my customers? What is happening in the marketplace? How can I get in contact, provide my customer with the right information, create a platform to share information with a partner and so on and so on.
Likely you are an expert in your field, more likely you are not an IT professional, do not know and do not want to know about networks, servers, mailprotocolls and security settings. The technology though is essential to your business.
"Office 365 is more than a new brand. It’s a progressive approach to cloud applications,” said Kurt DelBene (succesor of Stephen Elop), president of the Microsoft Office Division. “We designed Office 365 to work for a business of one – or a business of one million and one.”
"To date, only the largest businesses have been able to take advantage of modern, enterprise-caliber IT solutions. Office 365 changes that."
The Cloud? Are you serious?
If you question the intentions of Microsoft in getting this right check out my earlier blog on Cloud. Chris Caposella describes it as follows:
“Chapter one in Microsoft’s history was about putting a PC on every desktop. Chapter two was dedicated to transforming the enterprise data center. Chapter three is, without a question, devoted to bringing the power of the cloud to our customers and partners."
So what is in the box?
Key benefits for Office 365:
• Access to e-mail, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device
• Simple and secure collaboration with colleagues and business partners
• Works seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs people use today
• Business-class features including IT-level phone support, financially-backed 99.9% uptime, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and robust security and privacy controls and standards
• Comprehensive solutions including desktop productivity applications, portals, extranets, external Web site, instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, Web conferencing, e-mail, voice mail and unified messaging
• Pay-as-you-go pricing options which provide predictability and flexibility for all or part of an organization
Basic 'backbone' functionalities are mainly deliverd by three core platforms working together:
- Exchange Online
- Cloud-based e-mail, calendar and contacts with the most current antivirus and anti-spam solutions. Includes the ability to get e-mail on virtually any mobile phone and options for voice mail, unified messaging and archiving
- SharePoint Online
- Cloud-based service for creating sites to connect colleagues, partners and customers. Includes enterprise social networking and customization options.
- Lync* Online
- Cloud-based instant messaging, presence, and online meeting experiences with screen sharing and voice and video conferencing
- The world’s leading productivity tool on the desktop (Office Professional Plus) and on the Web (Office Web Apps) now seamlessly connected and delivered with cloud services – for the best productivity experience across the PC, Phone and Browser.
All these platforms are build to work together seamslessly. Functions are made available to almost every device from the cloud (three screens and a cloud).
On the technology part a lot more has changed. Partners are given the opportunity to add value to the platforms as they are when implementing on the customers location. Developing value add customer components will enrich the platform functionality dramatically.
Changing the game not only the name
Microsoft promisses these developments will change the game. Delivering the technology through services to all businesses realy is a change. To date implementing a enterprise business productivity platform was not a walk in the park for even big organisations. Now the infrastructure itself can be made available as simple as 1,2,3.
Business productivity is NOT about technology as I mentioned before. Having the right information and documents available to be able to make the right descision is more about information strategy. The larger your organisation, the more difficult the implementation or change of this strategy will be. This is why I am possitive about the changes in this game.
Smaller organisations will have the opportunity to setup needed infrastructure and are more flexible to use the power available instantly. The larger organisations will be able to choose for more business focus deminishing the burden of technology, knowing exactly what it will cost the organisation.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
The Future of Productivity - the sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions #li #il #yam
The worlThis post was published before july 2010. The information in this post was asked to take offline until now to make sure that Ricoh Innovations had room to wrap up the release of their first production version.
This year Microsoft World Partner Conference me and my collegue had the opportunity to meet Ron Barr of Ricoh Innovations. Our goal was to get to know each other since we are collegues in the Ricoh family and share some developments and ideas. Ron had this prototype with him of a Ricoh eReader. The device has a WIFI and 3G connection, the surface is based on the kindle technology on top of that a pen interface is implemented. Writing on the surface realy feels like wrinting on paper. Not to smooth, and a lot like writing with ink on paper.
Ron informed us that this was the first time he was able to show a prototype of Ricoh so upfront and I´m really glad we experienced the tablet. Some things are changing. As Steve Balmer announced several times now, The Cloud demands smarter devices and Microsoft COO Kevin Turner mentioned a sweet spot in their ´three screens and a cloud´ vision on the future of productivity during his WPCDC speech. An open space between the consumer focused space of the apple iPad and the fat desktop devices on the other end. Actualy he positioned the Kindle on the the far right end of the spectrum, but that is the kindle static ´read only´ interface. Well this Ricoh device rocks, it is able to go beyond the crisp display of books and is able to deliver support to business processes. The layer on top of the Kindle infterface is able to capture writen input and will integrate that interaction with business processess.
There will be a SDK available. We think it should be free of charge. The community will take care of the huge opportunity. We discussed the need in logistic processes and other paper and information appended processes. The possibilities are infinited. How should we price the product itself. Well in our opinion the added value of the product is not the issue, it´s the huge added value of the process behind that. Maybe free of charge is not the way to go, but look at the US eReader forecast and the prediction the prices of a stripped down device will drop to less than $50.
The device will launch in the US april 2011. We in the front line of Europe will try to support the device as soon as possible.
This year Microsoft World Partner Conference me and my collegue had the opportunity to meet Ron Barr of Ricoh Innovations. Our goal was to get to know each other since we are collegues in the Ricoh family and share some developments and ideas. Ron had this prototype with him of a Ricoh eReader. The device has a WIFI and 3G connection, the surface is based on the kindle technology on top of that a pen interface is implemented. Writing on the surface realy feels like wrinting on paper. Not to smooth, and a lot like writing with ink on paper.
Ron informed us that this was the first time he was able to show a prototype of Ricoh so upfront and I´m really glad we experienced the tablet. Some things are changing. As Steve Balmer announced several times now, The Cloud demands smarter devices and Microsoft COO Kevin Turner mentioned a sweet spot in their ´three screens and a cloud´ vision on the future of productivity during his WPCDC speech. An open space between the consumer focused space of the apple iPad and the fat desktop devices on the other end. Actualy he positioned the Kindle on the the far right end of the spectrum, but that is the kindle static ´read only´ interface. Well this Ricoh device rocks, it is able to go beyond the crisp display of books and is able to deliver support to business processes. The layer on top of the Kindle infterface is able to capture writen input and will integrate that interaction with business processess.
There will be a SDK available. We think it should be free of charge. The community will take care of the huge opportunity. We discussed the need in logistic processes and other paper and information appended processes. The possibilities are infinited. How should we price the product itself. Well in our opinion the added value of the product is not the issue, it´s the huge added value of the process behind that. Maybe free of charge is not the way to go, but look at the US eReader forecast and the prediction the prices of a stripped down device will drop to less than $50.
The device will launch in the US april 2011. We in the front line of Europe will try to support the device as soon as possible.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Pay with a tweet
Stumbled upon a way to promote products whitepapers and so on wih pay with a tweet. Worthwhile exploring and sharing.
Try the concept by downloading the whitepaper on Information Logistics
Try the concept by downloading the whitepaper on Information Logistics
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Cloud? It is truly amzing!
During a cloud event mid march 2010 organised by ICT~Office in Utrecht, Gartner analyst and VP Jeffery Mann unveiled his view on the battle field of the Cloud. Cloud computing in his opinion will be dominated by just a few big players. During this event only a few suspects where present: Google NL(Erik de Muinck Keizer) Microsoft NL(Peter de Haas) and Jeffery Mann from Gartner to give his opinion.
In the presentation of his analyses Mann predicts that a few big enterprise players are going to dominate the cloud vendor market: IBM, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Google is the young cowboy, they are trying hard and doing OK, but have some trouble getting there.
Google
Back then it was Security. 'China gate' dominated the news and Google tried to downplay the issue. Now mid October 2010 a new issue arrose about collecting WIFI data during taking pictures for Google streetview, again a big failure.
Google has "no plans" to resume the collection of WiFi network data via its world-roving Street View cars, according to a report by Canada's privacy commissioner reprimanding the web giant for collecting WiFi payload data as well as network info.
"Google still intends to offer location-based services, but does not intend to resume collection of WiFi data through its Street View cars," the report said. "Collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it."
IBM
In the last month I visited and studied the vision of IBM on their market and cloud in particular. IBM is a wonderfull technology company. They do understand what technology is comming, what technologyis needed... But cloud is NOT about technology! It is about technique withhout the technology, predictable services for predictable cost.
Mann thinks IBM will play a important roll as a technology leader in the future, but have no clear vision on cloud.
Microsoft
The best bet on Cloud leadership is Microsoft according Mann.
Seven Month Later...
Now October 2010, seven month later Microsoft launched their 4th evolution of SharePoint as part of their WAVE14 releases May this year. Just Five month later Microsoft launched the beta of Office365, the online suite, in 13 countries.
I never experienced such a rapid addoption of a new platform as with SharePoint 2010. Now just a few month later end users demand solutions based on this new version. Today just one week after the beta release of Office365 customers are asking for solutions based on the new generation of the online suite, even though it isn't released in The Netherlands yet as beta!
In their analysis presented in the "Cloud Computing: Changing the Vendor Landscape" presentation, two other Gartner analysts (David Cearley and David Mitchell Smith) predict that two vendors will be perceived as both leaders in cloud computing as in enterprise computing. That's a lot of market for two leaders!
Again Microsoft is part of this analysis and together with VMware, Microsoft is one of the two future leaders according to these analysts. In this analysis Gartner is looking for future leaders in this combined area of Cloud and Enterprise computing. Candidates are typically origine from one of these domains.
Overall, Crearly and Smith say only Microsoft and VMware have full lines, although their offerings are very different from each other.
Smith said Microsoft's choices were "insanely complex" as it offered all sorts of products in all sorts of ways. It is an enabler of cloud services within companies, a provider of its own services, and also sells services through third parties. It has products for both public and private clouds, and it offers lots of SaaS applications (some hosted, some really cloud-based, and some moving in the cloud direction), and its Azure products, which offer a hybrid of infrastructure and platform as a service.
Microsoft has "one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud," Cearley said. In some respects, he said, in a few years, you may think of their enterprise offerings as private versions of their cloud offerings. On the other side, he said, many of the specific offerings aren't fully mature yet. But Smith noted that software moves faster on the cloud.
That last sentence is what seems to happen at this moment. Even before changes are there or mature they seem to be addopted. It is truly amazing.
In the presentation of his analyses Mann predicts that a few big enterprise players are going to dominate the cloud vendor market: IBM, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Google is the young cowboy, they are trying hard and doing OK, but have some trouble getting there.
Back then it was Security. 'China gate' dominated the news and Google tried to downplay the issue. Now mid October 2010 a new issue arrose about collecting WIFI data during taking pictures for Google streetview, again a big failure.
Google has "no plans" to resume the collection of WiFi network data via its world-roving Street View cars, according to a report by Canada's privacy commissioner reprimanding the web giant for collecting WiFi payload data as well as network info.
"Google still intends to offer location-based services, but does not intend to resume collection of WiFi data through its Street View cars," the report said. "Collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it."
IBM
In the last month I visited and studied the vision of IBM on their market and cloud in particular. IBM is a wonderfull technology company. They do understand what technology is comming, what technologyis needed... But cloud is NOT about technology! It is about technique withhout the technology, predictable services for predictable cost.
Mann thinks IBM will play a important roll as a technology leader in the future, but have no clear vision on cloud.
Microsoft
The best bet on Cloud leadership is Microsoft according Mann.
Seven Month Later...
Now October 2010, seven month later Microsoft launched their 4th evolution of SharePoint as part of their WAVE14 releases May this year. Just Five month later Microsoft launched the beta of Office365, the online suite, in 13 countries.
I never experienced such a rapid addoption of a new platform as with SharePoint 2010. Now just a few month later end users demand solutions based on this new version. Today just one week after the beta release of Office365 customers are asking for solutions based on the new generation of the online suite, even though it isn't released in The Netherlands yet as beta!
In their analysis presented in the "Cloud Computing: Changing the Vendor Landscape" presentation, two other Gartner analysts (David Cearley and David Mitchell Smith) predict that two vendors will be perceived as both leaders in cloud computing as in enterprise computing. That's a lot of market for two leaders!
Again Microsoft is part of this analysis and together with VMware, Microsoft is one of the two future leaders according to these analysts. In this analysis Gartner is looking for future leaders in this combined area of Cloud and Enterprise computing. Candidates are typically origine from one of these domains.
Overall, Crearly and Smith say only Microsoft and VMware have full lines, although their offerings are very different from each other.
Smith said Microsoft's choices were "insanely complex" as it offered all sorts of products in all sorts of ways. It is an enabler of cloud services within companies, a provider of its own services, and also sells services through third parties. It has products for both public and private clouds, and it offers lots of SaaS applications (some hosted, some really cloud-based, and some moving in the cloud direction), and its Azure products, which offer a hybrid of infrastructure and platform as a service.
Microsoft has "one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud," Cearley said. In some respects, he said, in a few years, you may think of their enterprise offerings as private versions of their cloud offerings. On the other side, he said, many of the specific offerings aren't fully mature yet. But Smith noted that software moves faster on the cloud.
That last sentence is what seems to happen at this moment. Even before changes are there or mature they seem to be addopted. It is truly amazing.
Collaborating on content delivery and production
I stumbled upon a article by Kyle Studstill titled the future of content delivery and production published on PSKF. Thinking about future developments of content and the opportunities for new business models keeps me busy. The article focusses on the production and delivery of movies and the way Edward Burns is experimenting with new mediums like iTunes since the release of Purple Violets in 2007.
What cought me in this article was the way Burns experienced the opportunity's ahead.
Below are some key notes from the discussion on the future of content delivery and production, wich I copied from the article of Kyle.
When experimenting with these new models, you can’t immediately expect a home run just because you’re being innovative. The wins will be small hits, from which producers will learn what works and what doesn’t.
Indeed it will take some time and experiments to figure out what works. It looks like Burns is a believer and uses some kind of a mashup approache. The platform provided by the channel iTunes is a first step to figure out how the market on the other end of the channel looks like.
By distributing content on more fragmented channels, you can worry less about press and marketing concerns influencing the creative integrity of the film – you can just produce the content and let it find its own market.
I do not know about this one. Yes when posting a BLOG or a tweet the channel provides a mean to the message to find it's own audience. But when you take the concerns about press and marketing influencing the creative integrity of the film, can you worry less on these issues when distributing content on a more fragmented channel?
Digital distribution is indeed changing the filmmaking landscape, but it’s important to remember that big-budget productions are still going to have a place in traditional channels – it’s always going to be fun to watch a new film with 200 other people in a theatre.
Digital distribution is a mean to reach out to other markets, effecting the traditional market of film theatres. In this context it adds speed and ease to the digital distribution through the video tape and later carriers like DVD.
Platforms that allow for episode-by-episode releases open the opportunity for innovation in the way the story is put together; there’s the potential to allow the audience to impact the way future episodes unfold.
This remark cought my attention. Indeed in my belief using the possibility to collaborate on producing content (movies as well as music or documents) can add enormous vallue to the end product. The digital channel provides the needed reach and speed to make interaction possible. These talkback fases have some interesting effects. The story develops toghether with the audience. Every part as well as the end product is very unpredictable at the start.
By splitting up larger works that would normally exist as one film into smaller episodes, producers can now explore freemium revenue models where the first parts of of production are free, charging for future episodes further down the line.
Besides of the more creative approache of the former item this one is the money machine which could safe the movie industrie. Binding together the techniek to interact and collaborate and a creative revenue model is a start to earn money early in the production process. Even financing a production from the very start with a open model is one of the possibilities. The production of the film will make it to it's collaborative end product in a way the audience likes or won't make it at all.
What cought me in this article was the way Burns experienced the opportunity's ahead.
Below are some key notes from the discussion on the future of content delivery and production, wich I copied from the article of Kyle.
When experimenting with these new models, you can’t immediately expect a home run just because you’re being innovative. The wins will be small hits, from which producers will learn what works and what doesn’t.
Indeed it will take some time and experiments to figure out what works. It looks like Burns is a believer and uses some kind of a mashup approache. The platform provided by the channel iTunes is a first step to figure out how the market on the other end of the channel looks like.
By distributing content on more fragmented channels, you can worry less about press and marketing concerns influencing the creative integrity of the film – you can just produce the content and let it find its own market.
I do not know about this one. Yes when posting a BLOG or a tweet the channel provides a mean to the message to find it's own audience. But when you take the concerns about press and marketing influencing the creative integrity of the film, can you worry less on these issues when distributing content on a more fragmented channel?
Digital distribution is indeed changing the filmmaking landscape, but it’s important to remember that big-budget productions are still going to have a place in traditional channels – it’s always going to be fun to watch a new film with 200 other people in a theatre.
Digital distribution is a mean to reach out to other markets, effecting the traditional market of film theatres. In this context it adds speed and ease to the digital distribution through the video tape and later carriers like DVD.
Platforms that allow for episode-by-episode releases open the opportunity for innovation in the way the story is put together; there’s the potential to allow the audience to impact the way future episodes unfold.
This remark cought my attention. Indeed in my belief using the possibility to collaborate on producing content (movies as well as music or documents) can add enormous vallue to the end product. The digital channel provides the needed reach and speed to make interaction possible. These talkback fases have some interesting effects. The story develops toghether with the audience. Every part as well as the end product is very unpredictable at the start.
By splitting up larger works that would normally exist as one film into smaller episodes, producers can now explore freemium revenue models where the first parts of of production are free, charging for future episodes further down the line.
Besides of the more creative approache of the former item this one is the money machine which could safe the movie industrie. Binding together the techniek to interact and collaborate and a creative revenue model is a start to earn money early in the production process. Even financing a production from the very start with a open model is one of the possibilities. The production of the film will make it to it's collaborative end product in a way the audience likes or won't make it at all.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
BPOS became 'UNION' becomes Office365
Oct 19th 2010 Microsoft Unveiled the new name of their Microsoft Online proposition formely known as BPOS and codename 'UNION'. The new Name of the suite is Office365 and since the announcement a lot of content came available. Content about features, prices, markets, beta availability and roadmaps beyond.
Roadmap
The Beta came available for 13 countries/regions. These countries/regions include: Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States. The Netherlands is not amoung the lucky ones, looking at the roadmap I think a safe bet is that it will be general available within 6 mounths.
Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available.
Do you feel lucky?
Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available. So are those new customers lucky or why are existing customers sorry they have to wait a little longer?
Microsoft explains these questions as follows:
Q: Is Office 365 still BPOS?
A: Office 365 is the introduction of new online services and capabilities, new user experiences, and new online platform capabilities related to the introduction of new underlying “2010” server software into Microsoft Online Services datacenters as well as other major new service and platform investments. The name may be new and includes new offerings, but you are subscribed to the same service – just significantly enhanced. It will just give you a lot more features and functionality once you make the transition.
Q: I am not on BPOS now. Should I wait for Office 365?
A: The benefits of Microsoft Online Services are realized as soon as services are deployed, whether on BPOS or Office 365. Customers who do decide to purchase BPOS now should deploy BPOS with the new system requirements to make the transition experience as smooth as possible.
So Microsoft explains that Office365 differs from BPOS and that all these benefits will be deployed when available. Even when you feel like going online, do it now, no need to wait...
I have no experience with the transition from BPOS to Office365, besides a few from Microsoft nobody has. Still I wonder if this is entirely thrue. There are some ´system requirements`?!?! and Microsoft has a Transition Checklist that looks quite straight forward.
The biggest defects of BPOS may be the biggest guarantee to successful transition.
BPOS ´defects´
BPOS is a productivity suite. In this package of functionality SharePoint plays a major role as it does in the on premise based functionality stack. In this package SharePoint online is based on the 2007 version also called MOSS. The biggest complaint from customers and even more the Microsoft Partner is that there are very limited options for customization available. The gap between the feature set available in the online version and MOSS2007 is huge.
Since the SharePoint2010 release last may became general available the differences between the two versions, made the demand to the release of BPOSv2 even bigger. SharePoint2010 is the 4th evolution of the platform. It's much more mature, but in relationship with SharePoint Online, it is developed with Online deployment as a starting point!
Since the MOSS2007 was not, Microsoft had a lot of problems deploying BPOS in a shared cloud environment (multi-tenant). So what is the effect of this mindshift to the cloud?
Office365
Office365 looks promising in this area. A lot not all features are available or are expected to become available shortly in the SharePoint Online version.
The feature set available to the end-user became very rich. Nice integration with the Office Webapps, full fidelity across devices, real WIKI everywhere and so on and on. Again more important is that the Microsoft Partner finally will be able to deploy their added value solutions on top of the platform.
The starting point to develop the platform with a multi-tenant cloud for the SharePoint2010 platform (and all other 'members' of WAVE14) changed the way resources are are used and managed. Simply said, a buggy application of one company cannot hurt another, not even when they are deployed in the same infrastructure.
Management capabilities are also available to administrators in SharePoint2010 Online. This 'feature' was just very limited available to the Microsoft Partner in BPOS.
Roadmap
The Beta came available for 13 countries/regions. These countries/regions include: Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States. The Netherlands is not amoung the lucky ones, looking at the roadmap I think a safe bet is that it will be general available within 6 mounths.
Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available.
Do you feel lucky?
Notice that the existing customers (BPOS) will have to wait a little longer until transitions of services are available. So are those new customers lucky or why are existing customers sorry they have to wait a little longer?
Microsoft explains these questions as follows:
Q: Is Office 365 still BPOS?
A: Office 365 is the introduction of new online services and capabilities, new user experiences, and new online platform capabilities related to the introduction of new underlying “2010” server software into Microsoft Online Services datacenters as well as other major new service and platform investments. The name may be new and includes new offerings, but you are subscribed to the same service – just significantly enhanced. It will just give you a lot more features and functionality once you make the transition.
Q: I am not on BPOS now. Should I wait for Office 365?
A: The benefits of Microsoft Online Services are realized as soon as services are deployed, whether on BPOS or Office 365. Customers who do decide to purchase BPOS now should deploy BPOS with the new system requirements to make the transition experience as smooth as possible.
So Microsoft explains that Office365 differs from BPOS and that all these benefits will be deployed when available. Even when you feel like going online, do it now, no need to wait...
I have no experience with the transition from BPOS to Office365, besides a few from Microsoft nobody has. Still I wonder if this is entirely thrue. There are some ´system requirements`?!?! and Microsoft has a Transition Checklist that looks quite straight forward.
The biggest defects of BPOS may be the biggest guarantee to successful transition.
BPOS ´defects´
BPOS is a productivity suite. In this package of functionality SharePoint plays a major role as it does in the on premise based functionality stack. In this package SharePoint online is based on the 2007 version also called MOSS. The biggest complaint from customers and even more the Microsoft Partner is that there are very limited options for customization available. The gap between the feature set available in the online version and MOSS2007 is huge.
Since the SharePoint2010 release last may became general available the differences between the two versions, made the demand to the release of BPOSv2 even bigger. SharePoint2010 is the 4th evolution of the platform. It's much more mature, but in relationship with SharePoint Online, it is developed with Online deployment as a starting point!
Since the MOSS2007 was not, Microsoft had a lot of problems deploying BPOS in a shared cloud environment (multi-tenant). So what is the effect of this mindshift to the cloud?
Office365
Office365 looks promising in this area. A lot not all features are available or are expected to become available shortly in the SharePoint Online version.
The feature set available to the end-user became very rich. Nice integration with the Office Webapps, full fidelity across devices, real WIKI everywhere and so on and on. Again more important is that the Microsoft Partner finally will be able to deploy their added value solutions on top of the platform.
The starting point to develop the platform with a multi-tenant cloud for the SharePoint2010 platform (and all other 'members' of WAVE14) changed the way resources are are used and managed. Simply said, a buggy application of one company cannot hurt another, not even when they are deployed in the same infrastructure.
Management capabilities are also available to administrators in SharePoint2010 Online. This 'feature' was just very limited available to the Microsoft Partner in BPOS.
Monday, October 18, 2010
BPOS became 'UNION' becomes ? -
During a webcast Microsoft Office Division will announce changes a lot of partners are waiting for a while now. My biggest disapointment during my visit to Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington last summer was the lack of information in the area of BPOS or codename UNION.
My expectation was that the new name, functionality and more important the release dates would 've been unveiled during this biggest partner event of the Softies. Well the anouncement is there:
Announcement From Microsoft Office Division
Oct. 18, 2010
Microsoft Corp. will announce news from its Office Division, live from San Francisco via webcast, on Oct. 19 from 8 to 8:30 a.m. PDT. Check back here to watch the webcast live!
I do hope they will meet up the expectations.
My expectation was that the new name, functionality and more important the release dates would 've been unveiled during this biggest partner event of the Softies. Well the anouncement is there:
Announcement From Microsoft Office Division
Oct. 18, 2010
Microsoft Corp. will announce news from its Office Division, live from San Francisco via webcast, on Oct. 19 from 8 to 8:30 a.m. PDT. Check back here to watch the webcast live!
I do hope they will meet up the expectations.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Communicatie boeit toch niet! - Retail - #esmr
Boeien en Binden met Enterprise Social Media in de retail
'De uitdaging is hen te boeien en te binden. ‘Betrokkenheid is een grote uitdaging binnen onze organisatie. En de synergie tussen mensen van verschillende filialen en verschillende afdelingen kan beter.’
Een uitspraak van een retailer tijdens een rondetafel gesprek bij Microsoft Nederland over het gebruik van Enterprise Social Media in de retail branche.
Boeien! met communiceren
Voor retailers speelt het thema boeien vanuit een aantal invalshoeken.
De medewerker karakteristieken van een retailer zijn eenvoudig herkenbaar als je rondloopt door de HEMA, C&A, de Bijenkorf, de Blokker of bij V&D.
Veel dames, vaak van middelbare leeftijd bemannen de vloer. Zowat allemaal werken ze parttime. Dit is overigens ook het gevolg van het feit dat een retailer over elke week zo'n 50 uur open zijn voor publiek. Neem daarbij het uurtje voor de openingtijd waarin de winkel klaargemaakt moet worden en je begrijpt dat een 40 uurige werkweek niet goed past. Dit betekent dat personeel flexibel inzetbaar moet zijn en dat daar dus ook beleid op gevoerd wordt. Boeien en binden wordt dan een vak appart.
Het versturen van een memo in een brief vanaf het hoofdkantoor of de vestiging dekt een deel van de 'communicatie' af. Echt veel ruimte voor communicatie en interactie geeft dat echter niet.
De maandelijkse nieuwsbrief geeft personeel een platform om haar meer informele informatie en interesses uit te wisselen. Welliswaar heeft een nieuwsbrief vaak het doel om ook het geluid van de medewerkers te laten horen, interactief is het echter niet.
...en als het dan fout gaat?
Beide vormen van communicatie missen buiten interactie ook snelheid. Snelheid die beperkt wordt door enerzijds het medium maar ook zeker de gestructureerde organisatie die daarvoor is gekozen. Dit wordt helder als de zaak onder druk komt te staan.
De retail branche is in de afgelopen jaren nogal in beweging geweest, fusies, overnames en durfinvesteerders hebben management en medewekers nogal eens tegenover elkaar geplaatst. Daar waar de 'gangfax' rules in een kantoor, neemt de vrouwelijke medewerker van middelbare leeftijd het communicatiemiddel ter hand waarmee zij met haar vriendinnen in contact blijft - Hyves.
De koetjes en kalfjes die eerst onderwerp van gesprek waren veranderen in onderwerpen waarin serieuze zorg over de ontwikkelingen op het werk worden uitgesproken. Een kettingreactie van bijval, commentaar en discussies tot gevolg hebbende. Het sociale netwerk doet haar werk...
Er onstaan fora waarin op serieuze wijze collectieve meningen worden ontwikkeld. Bedrijf en management worden totaal verrast en erger, zijn niet betrokken in het geprek. 0-1.
Communicatie, maar dan anders!
Belang van communicatie die aanslaat, betrokkenheid in het gesprek, draagvlak. Het zijn redenen die de revue passeren als je nagaat waarom retailers nadenken over nut en onnut van social media. Bovenstaand voorbeeld geeft daarbij al aan dat betrokkenheid in het geprek een eerste vereiste is en dat eerder genoemde snelheid en interactie andere elementen zijn die van belang zijn. Opdracht tot onderzoek van de mogelijkheden komen vanuit bedrijfsleiding enerzijds en ondernemingsraden anderzijds. Engagement van het bedrijf bij de discussie blijkt een gezamenlijk belang te zijn.
Van Boeien naar Binden
Het medium wat gekozen is door de medewerkers zelf blijkt van een oncontroleerbare kruiwagen met kikkers verworden tot een kans om de communicatie van beleid vanuit het management en betrokkenheid bij vorming van mening vanuit het personeel bij elkaar te brengen.
Goede inzet zo is de overtuiging van deelnemers aan deze discussies kan zelfs helpen met een positieve bijdragen om het gevoel van eenheid, de uitwisseling van kennis te ondersteunen. Naast betrokkenheid, snelheid en interactie horen hier nog een tweetal andere elementen aan toegevoegd te worden, transparantie en vertrouwen. Helderheid wie communiceert en met welk doel, respect voor ieders mening vormen deze basis. Niet enkel in het klassieke communicatie proces, maar ook dubbel en dwars in sociale media.
Daamee wordt boeien binden.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
The Cloud? Are you serious?
Microsoft is claiming to be a very seriouse player in The Cloud Business. The latest campaign with a kickof at the Washington University by Steve Balmer is called 'We are all in'. So what is the status and where are they going?
Microsoft is well known by most people. Most of the people ever using a PC since about 1980 is a customer (paying or not) of this company. Most company's are using one or more software products of Microsoft. Over 6 million copy's of their most famous product Microsoft Office sold.
SharePoint 2010 is the 4th evolution of the product (products like Office are in their 10th or so) and is becoming very mature. Since the focus on online Microsoft decided to design and develop all of their products with The Cloud in mind.
Microsoft is expected to unveil more about the new name and changes in the new version Oktober 19th.
These changes are even more interessting for Microsoft partners because they will be able to add their added value solutions on top of the platforms and ship the total solution. Expectations are very high.
Also Microsoft recognizes the importance of differentiation in the markets. Live@edu is The Cloud offering based on BPOS targetting the Educational market, BPOS Federal is aiming on the US governmental market. BPOS Federal is told to be more secure.
If one desides to invest in such list of industry standard compliancy's this means they are pretty serious about their goal. BPOS Federal is available for US only. The list of additional industry standards apply to the normal BPOS offering.
Microsoft is well known by most people. Most of the people ever using a PC since about 1980 is a customer (paying or not) of this company. Most company's are using one or more software products of Microsoft. Over 6 million copy's of their most famous product Microsoft Office sold.
The world is changing
The way Microsoft is delivering their software to the users is changing. They do not actualy delivering software, but aiming to deliver services. Office delivered this way is called Office Web Apps. If you question the strategic move to The Cloud check out the succes: in the first 100 days it went live, Microsoft picked up 20 million users for Office Web Apps.More changes
Another BIG online area of Microsoft is productivity - 'Business Productivity Online Service' or short BPOS. BPOS encompasses products like Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communication Server (OCS) and Forefront. Microsoft is preparing to move into the Wave 14 with BPOS (now called codename Union). Exchange and SharePoint will move to the 2010 version, OCS and Live meeting are becomming Linc and the Office Web Apps are added to the offering.SharePoint 2010 is the 4th evolution of the product (products like Office are in their 10th or so) and is becoming very mature. Since the focus on online Microsoft decided to design and develop all of their products with The Cloud in mind.
Microsoft is expected to unveil more about the new name and changes in the new version Oktober 19th.
These changes are even more interessting for Microsoft partners because they will be able to add their added value solutions on top of the platforms and ship the total solution. Expectations are very high.
Are you serious?
So IS Microsoft serious? The focus on the online business is succesfull. BPOS has seen 3x growth this year, with now over 40 million paid seats. These seats are comprised of smaller businesses and many large enterprises. Well that's serious business.Also Microsoft recognizes the importance of differentiation in the markets. Live@edu is The Cloud offering based on BPOS targetting the Educational market, BPOS Federal is aiming on the US governmental market. BPOS Federal is told to be more secure.
Are you secure?
To be able to claim this more secure environment Microsoft has added up the suite with a set of industry standards:- International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001
- Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type I and Type II
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
- Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations
- Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2
- Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) compliance
If one desides to invest in such list of industry standard compliancy's this means they are pretty serious about their goal. BPOS Federal is available for US only. The list of additional industry standards apply to the normal BPOS offering.
After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?
“Since the dawn of time, humanity’s long journey has led us to countless discoveries,” “Yet with each leap forward for civilisation, more people have been left behind. But our quest has taken us to a completely new horizon.”
“History is about to be rewritten. This time human beings will be at the centre -- and the machines will be the ones that adapt. After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?”
These sentences where used on the E3 while introducing the Kinnect last June in LA. For those who do not know what Kinnect is: This product is the result of Project Natal, which aim is (was) a project that introduces full-body motion-sensitive controller. In other words: the controller is YOU.
The game industry is serious business estimated $48 Billion today, but potentially growing massively. When adopted by a large group not using games today because of the trouble of a controller as we know it today.
When I witnessed the Kinnect during the Microsoft WPC10 in Washinton DC I started thinking about the application of this technology in other areas.
How will the eXperience of a hotel guest change, when he is guided through the services available when entering the room for the first time. 'Real' interaction with a personal host, recognising YOU. Will a natural interactive interface change the way we will search for information, connect to our peers and share our knowledge? How will presentation of information change when we use this interactive interface browsing through the information sources. Remember the minority report, is the future now?
Me myself believe that this development will lead to a whole new way of using technology in daily life and business solutions.
“History is about to be rewritten. This time human beings will be at the centre -- and the machines will be the ones that adapt. After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?”
These sentences where used on the E3 while introducing the Kinnect last June in LA. For those who do not know what Kinnect is: This product is the result of Project Natal, which aim is (was) a project that introduces full-body motion-sensitive controller. In other words: the controller is YOU.
The game industry is serious business estimated $48 Billion today, but potentially growing massively. When adopted by a large group not using games today because of the trouble of a controller as we know it today.
When I witnessed the Kinnect during the Microsoft WPC10 in Washinton DC I started thinking about the application of this technology in other areas.
How will the eXperience of a hotel guest change, when he is guided through the services available when entering the room for the first time. 'Real' interaction with a personal host, recognising YOU. Will a natural interactive interface change the way we will search for information, connect to our peers and share our knowledge? How will presentation of information change when we use this interactive interface browsing through the information sources. Remember the minority report, is the future now?
Me myself believe that this development will lead to a whole new way of using technology in daily life and business solutions.
Friday, October 01, 2010
The Cloud demands smarter devices - looking for the sweetspot - ereader format on a laptop screen
When I returned from the Microsoft World Partner Conference wrote a blog which will be republished in a short while. Subject of the blog is the eReader sweetspot. Microsoft has this vision - three screens and a cloud. Steve Balmer mentioned the importance of these different devices but even more the importance of smart devices - The Cloud demands smarter devices. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner beliefs there is a sweet spot in the huge amound of screen devices.
The eReader is such device. I came across this blog by Julie Bort - Toshiba sells ebooks while Amazone puts Kindle in a browser. Wednesday, September 29, 2010
I do like the eReader for just the goal it is meant for. Read a book. It has to have the experience of a book. The Kindle screen technology gives the reader just that experience - except the smell of ink and paper.
With Kindle for the Web, bloggers and website owners can embed a book preview into their sites (a function Google Books has offered for a year). They'll earn referral fees from Amazon when customers take the bait and buy the full version for their Kindles. Kindle for the Web will include many a feature from the e-reader. Users can change the font size and line spacing, adjust the background color. And of course, they can help promote the book -- sharing it via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.
This part I do understand. Put a small example of the full product for free to lure a customer.
Toshiba has decided it's not to be outdone by the likes of Kindle, or of the bulging tablet market, e-readers all, or even by the new e-readers and bookstores planned by rival Sharp. On Tuesday, Toshiba launched its own e-book store, Book Place, and is offering a free Windows e-reader to all comers, available for XP, Vista or Windows 7.
Oké... It can be easy to have another device to read an ereader format book like say your laptop. Still the success of the eReader is the fact it reads like a book. A laptop does not. Not even close in my opinion. The strategy is ofcourse to make the ereader format available for everyone, even those people that do not have the device. That's smart for the business of those books.
However I do not understand the folks reacting on this article. Why should I buy an other device to read the book? In my opinion because you want to read a book and that's just the experience an ereader device will provide.
So what is smart about the device? And what about the sweetspot? I will explain in the blog article I mentioned, but picture the 'old world situation'. Paper was the most important infomation carier. I can assure you it still is in a lot of situations.
For example the forms needed to report tasks fullfilled by an engineer that need to be signed by the customer, freight documents etc. True, DHL uses those handy devices where you can sign for the delivered goods. It took the paper out of the proces, but a lot of information too.
Picture this eReader device and the forms that carry the information of the business proces and the same experience of the paper forms... That's a smarter device.
The eReader is such device. I came across this blog by Julie Bort - Toshiba sells ebooks while Amazone puts Kindle in a browser. Wednesday, September 29, 2010
I do like the eReader for just the goal it is meant for. Read a book. It has to have the experience of a book. The Kindle screen technology gives the reader just that experience - except the smell of ink and paper.
With Kindle for the Web, bloggers and website owners can embed a book preview into their sites (a function Google Books has offered for a year). They'll earn referral fees from Amazon when customers take the bait and buy the full version for their Kindles. Kindle for the Web will include many a feature from the e-reader. Users can change the font size and line spacing, adjust the background color. And of course, they can help promote the book -- sharing it via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.
This part I do understand. Put a small example of the full product for free to lure a customer.
Toshiba has decided it's not to be outdone by the likes of Kindle, or of the bulging tablet market, e-readers all, or even by the new e-readers and bookstores planned by rival Sharp. On Tuesday, Toshiba launched its own e-book store, Book Place, and is offering a free Windows e-reader to all comers, available for XP, Vista or Windows 7.
Oké... It can be easy to have another device to read an ereader format book like say your laptop. Still the success of the eReader is the fact it reads like a book. A laptop does not. Not even close in my opinion. The strategy is ofcourse to make the ereader format available for everyone, even those people that do not have the device. That's smart for the business of those books.
However I do not understand the folks reacting on this article. Why should I buy an other device to read the book? In my opinion because you want to read a book and that's just the experience an ereader device will provide.
So what is smart about the device? And what about the sweetspot? I will explain in the blog article I mentioned, but picture the 'old world situation'. Paper was the most important infomation carier. I can assure you it still is in a lot of situations.
For example the forms needed to report tasks fullfilled by an engineer that need to be signed by the customer, freight documents etc. True, DHL uses those handy devices where you can sign for the delivered goods. It took the paper out of the proces, but a lot of information too.
Picture this eReader device and the forms that carry the information of the business proces and the same experience of the paper forms... That's a smarter device.
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