Blog: John Myers

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February 26, 2007

Where there's smoke... There's BAM

As I spend more time spreading the word about business activity monitoring (BAM) in the public domain, I am exposed to more and more of the firms in and near the BAM space. It is similar to the old adage "where there's smoke..." If you talk about an area of business, people will bring their solutions to your attention.

Last week at the Las Vegas TDWI Conference, I was exposed the operational business intelligence solutions from Syndera. Their solutions for financial trading markets are interesting. They have many the aspects that I consider important for a BAM implementation (note syndera doesn't consider itself a bam solution):

• Driven to the tactical user and not directed at the CxO suite


• Real/right time functionality


• Ability to relate current activities to past performance

With Syndera and other smaller firms starting to make a bigger play into the operational business intelligence landscape that includes BAM and business process management (BPM), the market will become an interesting place in the near future. Will one to three major players dominate? Or will more agile firms be the leaders? Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Syndera, Operational Business Intelligence, Business Activity Monitoring

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February 22, 2007

A rising tide lifts all boats

One of my favorite observations from productivity "experts" is how the United States, while overall one of the world's most productive nations, ranks behind other countries on a per "hour" or per unit productivity basis. Often times those experts point to the extended use of wireless devices in US business as the reason for that "reduced" per unit productivity.

I recently found an interesting study from McKinsey that indicates that for developing nations that the distribution of wireless devices is actually a lift to the overall economy. Since the study markets are India, China and the Philippines; it is probably not the retort that I want to bring to those who claim that the US economy is hamstrung by wireless devices. However, it does bring some interesting insight into how wireless infrastructure impacts developing markets.

Technorati Tags: McKinsey, Wireless Communication, China, India, Philippines

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February 20, 2007

BAM sparking debate

Yesterday, I presented at this year's Las Vegas TDWI Conference on the topic of business activity monitoring (BAM). I spoke on the same topic in August 2006 at the San Diego TDWI conference. However, at my most recent presentation, there crowd was significantly larger than it was in San Diego.

This could be attributable to a larger group of attendees or my more imagiative title between the two conferences. However based on the lively debate in regards to my content, I would say the in the world of BAM is starting to rise in significance in the business intelligence and data warehousing (BI/DW) world. From architecture to implementation, people are starting to ask questions and offer opinions. From that debate will come improvements and growth.

Technorati Tags: Business Activity Monitoring, TDWI

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February 15, 2007

Wireless VOIP Driver or Dud?

Wireless VOIP (wVOIP) is an interesting concept. Skype on your smartphone, or other wireless Internet connected device, is probably the best way to describe wVOIP (with all due respect to the folks at Vonage...).

Recently, I ran across two articles/posting with ideas about the drivers of wVOIP. One talks about how municipal wireless networks will be a key driver in the adoption of wVOIP in particular for public safety organizations. The other article talks about the CEO of T-Mobile International doesn't see wVOIP as being a particular driver for customer adoption, or rather competitor to voice mobile services.

In my opinion, both views could be correct. Municipal public safety organizations will probably jump on the opportunities offered on the build out of muni-WiFi networks. Also, in the short-term, mobile smartphone users will probably find the voice quality and service associated with true wireless voice services from the telecom service provider. However, in the long-term; I see the data services flexibility of smartphones creating competition for those voice services.

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February 12, 2007

Buy the Ticket. Take the Ride.

Today, I made an interesting observation about the programming on Starz. I was looking for the schedule for the Hunter S. Thompson documentary "Buy the Ticket. Take the Ride". It wasn't available in the schedule listing on my Tivo box. I then went to the Starz website. Again, the information wasn't available. However.... Starz did redirect me to Vongo for the opportunity to download the movie direct to my laptop for a nominal fee.

While I wasn't suprised that Starz would take the opportunity to provide me with a revenue generating opportunity, but I was suprised that this opportunity took place outside of my existing Starz/DirecTv relationship.

Technorati Tags: Starz, DirecTv, Hunter S Thompson, Vongo

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February 10, 2007

Finding your UI niche

When your market cap (note i hate using market cap as a 'metric', but it's a good as any for this discussion) is approximately 1/6 of the size of the market leader, you need to find a way to differentiate yourself. Alltel ($23b in market cap vs AT&T's $141b) has decided to go for a bold strategy relating to their user interface.

While Alltel isn't going as far as Apple is with the iPhone interface, this is a good way for a smaller player to start building a niche and providing a differentiated value to their customer base.

Technorati Tags: Alltel, Mobile User Interface

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February 7, 2007

Utopian Vision of Net Neutrality?

The Boulder Weekly is labeled as the "true independent voice" of Boulder County. For those who know Boulder, Colorado and the surrounding county, this is quite a boast. I mention this because I recently found the cover of the Boulder Weekly proclaiming a "speed trap" relating to how "Big Telecom wants to control the flow of the Internet":

In this article, Pamela White does a good job of presenting the Net Neutrality argument from the side of Google and others who favor Net Neutrality. It was an interesting contrast to an article that I wrote last year from the perspective of, I guess, Big Telecom.

While I don't have any problems with the other side of the Net Neutrality arguement (particularly with the thoughts and ideas of the 110th US congress...), I do have issues with the presentation of the Net Neutrality argument without a mention of how much bandwidth next generation Internet-based business models will require and who exactly will pay for the last mile of connectivity in a true Internet neutral world.

For example, if one wanted to download a large special edition video (imagine the special edition of the Lord of the Rings) from a vendor, like iTunes, it would take between 2.5 and 10.5 hours to complete the download of the approximately 56GB (12 DVDs at 4.7GB per DVD) of information depending on your download speed (note - this is assuming that you don't have any drops during that time period of downloading the content.... my service provider managed to have three glitches in my service while i was writing this blog...). Those speeds are assuming a relatively fast Internet connection and significant investment on the part of the telecom consumer over and above the investment in the actual content purchase.

Sooner or later, video, and possibly audio content, vendors are going to want a "pipe" with considerably faster speeds and higher quality of service agreements than those currently offered to enable the unforeseen/future Internet-base business models predicted by Pamela White. I am guessing that they will be interested in paying for that improved speed and quality of delivery option to develop a competitive advantage over other content delivery models.

While I could be wrong, I am guessing that "fast lane" (ie higher speed and quality of service) "pipes" may find a similar audience to Fred Smith's ideas about sending packages across the US overnight.... Doesn't that Yale econ prof wish that instead of a C, he had given Fred Smith seed financing to develop the business case that became Federal Express... :)

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, Business Plan

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February 2, 2007

Content is King...err...Super

In my opinion the realm of telecom service providers includes a wide variety of providers. An introductory, but not complete list is:

• Traditional (read landline) providers


• Wireless (read cell phone) providers


• Cable operators


• Satellite TV and Radio operators

With many of these, simply offering connectivity, or the “pipe”, to services was the first step to introducing their offerings. Think back to the wireless phones of five years ago… You probably were not playing video golf on them during boring meetings.

As the market for “pipe” usage matures, there is an increasing pressure to offer content that differentiates a telecom service provider’s offering from others. One distinct was is sports programming. While Mobile ESPN was probably over the top to wireless devices, sports content still drives many consumers and demands high dollars to deliver those downloads, eyeballs, viewers, listeners, etc.

A recent study details how this could be particularly troubling for IPTV. With deals for “Big 4” (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL…strike that… NASCAR) sports content going to existing and relatively widely distributed channels (see the exclusive deal between DirecTV and MLB), proprietary IPTV implementations may not have access to traditional sports content packages to boost their subscriptions to match projections.

Also, it should be noted that sport content is not a cheap item. Recently, Forbes ranked the most valuable sports content properties. Not surprisingly, the NFL's Super Bowl is the most valuable brand/franchise. At an estimated $379 million, the Super Bowl is more than twice as valuable as the next competitor, the Summer Olympic franchise/brand. Again, if IPTV is to gain access to these properties, it is possible that they will have to come up with imaginative offerings to the “Big 4” or lucrative contract offerings…. Based on the DirecTV deal, I would say that the money will talk the loudest.

Technorati Tags: IPTV, DirecTV, Sports Content, Telecom Service Provider

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February 1, 2007

Adventures in Billing

Supposedly and according to her water bill, my grandmother used 60,000 gallons of water during the month of January in Colorado. For those keeping track, unless she was "snow making" for all of Boulder County (based on the amount of snow in my yard she may have been...); she probably did not use all that water, but since the meter reading said so it must be so....

This example shows that, while there is an increased focus on operational improvement for all types of service providers, "three standard deviations from the mean" errors are still possible and even probable and almost alway make the local news (no my grandmother's water bill wasn't on the local news... :) ).

In the world of telecom, it is never fun to have your "dirty billing laundry" aired in public as I have just done with a local water company. However, a recent article about a problem with a Cingular customer's bill mirrors nicely with my grandmother's trials and tribulations.

Technorati Tags: Cingular, Telecom Billing

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