04.23.08
Posted in Work at 9:30 am by JohnB
The problem with coming into a new community is that you really have no concept of what to expect and what is expected of you.
When you are introducing a new,and potentially disruptive, concept as part of that initial exposure that problem is magnified somewhat. It is very possible to push to far, too fast and lose your audience completely and equally possible to tread too carefully and fail to get your point across. This is the challenge I faced last week introducing the ideas of hosted, multi-tenant applications to a partner conference consisting of almost entirely on-site consulting-based business people.
I have to say I think I did OK, at least no-one threw anything or walked out!! The concept is now demanding some thought cycles and that can only be a good thing. The next step is now to make sure that the right strategies take shape in the right places to make everything come together.
- J.
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04.22.08
Posted in Home at 4:26 pm by JohnB
I find on the whole that people are generally OK. But occasionally I meet or see someone who falls outside of this norm.
Sometimes they are just ‘removed’ from the mainstream, either through personal choice or life circumstance and that’s fine. But occasionally I come across individuals who are simply stereotypes - sometime social, sometimes cultural and sometimes regional. The other day I came upon such a person… A French waiter. The indolence, the lack of any apparent care for any of his patrons, the overt impression that we were simply taking up his time - all of these were on display. It was actually quite amusing!!
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04.16.08
Posted in Work at 5:23 pm by JohnB
Attending the recent Microsoft service delivery event in Paris, this event is primarily concerned with the deployment and use of CSF (The Connected Services Framework) in service delivery models, I was involved in a number of conversations surrounding (not surprisingly) how the services consumed through CSF are delivered and by whom.
The whole concept behind CSF is that the services consumed, and subsequently aggregated and delivered to the end user, need not be located within the technical environment of that customers supplier. Indeed the perfect scenario is that the CSF owner (the supplier) does not actually ‘own’ any of the service technology, they simply consume the best of breed from the services network and deliver this as a product.
So, with this in mind what happens to the service providers we see today? Here are my thoughts… If you are a technology supplier and your core competency is the provision of high quality, data-centre based services (like hosted email, messaging or applications) then you would be best placed delivering these in a CSF consumable form. If you are a Telco or a hoster with core competencies in the delivery of complex or value-added solutions then you should be a consumer of CSF-ready services.
This means that I see an almost Amoebic split of hosters into those supplying and those consuming (please don’t slip on the cytoplasm!). So here is the big question… Are you investing in the right technologies for your future? Supporting questions are… Do you have a strategy for service delivery? Do you know where you want to be in this brave new future? Do you realise that even your simple web hosting products could be consumed in this way and are you able to enable this?
Today CSF is very Telco focussed. This is due to the history of the solution but will change over the course of time and is particularly obvious when you look at the majority of demos ad partner presentations which all revolve around mobile location tracking and SMS/MMS usage. But if you look at what CSF does then it’s easy to see how an end user service supplier would choose ‘leaf’ services from ISP’s (whoever thought THAT acronym would become relevant again) and aggregate these into customer products.This means that that today’s hosters needs not be involved in the NBT (Next Big Thing) race any more, they can concentrate on doing what they do best – and at being the best at doing it. Of course there will still be a market for direct sell of these technology services - a return to the good old days of hosting - and it would be a mistake to move too far away from that, but everyone should spend some time thinking about what they want to be and how they want to do business in the near future.
- J.
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