PRs and the Board

June 24, 2011 Leave a comment

I love PR (public relations)

Image by DoktorSpinn via Flickr

I received a mailer today from the CIPR (the outfit that represents a good chunk of the professional UK PR industry) and it contained the following entreaty to PR professionals:

If the role of the comms department is to move beyond being a glorified press office, it needs to take a more robust data driven/evidence-based approach to planning, strategic communications and reputation management…only then will that vacant seat at the board room table be filled.” (Andrew Bruce Smith, CIPR).

Well said Andrew Bruce Smith.

Here at Quadriga Consulting | Business Evidence we’re in the business of providing the “evidence based approach to planning, strategic communications and reputation management”.  So if you’re a PR professional and feel that you need to improve your prospects of getting a seat on the Board then give us a call.

Jeff Peel

Filed under Comment, News

CIOs Drive Cloud Mainstream

June 23, 2011 1 Comment

Cloud computing icon

Image via Wikipedia

A recent survey of IT leaders in the USA has concluded that cloud computing is ‘practically mainstream’.  The latest CIO Economic Impact survey of 291 IT leaders has found that nearly half (48 percent) of the CIOs surveyed said they have adopted a “cloud first” policy.  This requires cloud options to be given priority over more traditional computing solutions, for new information solutions.

The survey findings indicate that cloud budgets are beginning to reflect the shift, with 48 percent of IT leaders putting more money into cloud, up from 44 percent in November 2010 and 38 percent in August 2010. According to the report, “More than half (53 percent) of CIOs said they expect to increase their IT budgets overall, up 5 percent from a year ago.”

Are you interested in cloud computing and mobile cloud?  Our Mobile Cloud Summit event is taking place in September.

Filed under Comment, Trends Tagged with , , ,

The Twin Peaks of Video Gaming Fear

May 10, 2011 Leave a comment

I stumbled across this TED talk by David McCandless, just a moment or so ago. While some presentations on data visualization seem to focus on the visualization technique (big, animated bubbles etc.) David seems to love uncovering the hidden data.

At about 4 minutes into the presentation he asks why there should be “twin peaks” of fear about video gaming – in April and November.  Watch the video for the answer.

Filed under Comment, News, Trends

Who Needs Evidence?

April 28, 2011 Leave a comment

Tim Harford, Undercover Economist

This article by Tim Harford in Saturday’s FT generated more Twitter retweets than anything he has ever written. I can understand why.  Well said Tim. Here’s my favourite quote from the piece…

Evidence is the way to reduce honest doubts. Stuffed on a fattening diet of certitude, who has room for doubt? And if we have no doubts, who needs evidence?

This reminds me of a wonderful quote attributed to the Nobel Physicist Richard Feynmann: “It’s much more interesting not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”

Related Articles

Filed under Comment Tagged with , ,

Are Forecasters Quacks?

March 13, 2011 Leave a comment

Cover of "The Black Swan: The Impact of t...

Cover via Amazon

By Jeffrey Peel - Last month the watchdog that monitors the International Monetary Fund criticised the institution for failing to predict the global economic meltdown. The regulator pointed to a ‘group-think’ mentality militating against sensible thinking. However, it begs the question, are economists any better at predicting the future than anybody else? Or are they, in fact, quacks?

An entire cohort of professional economists, paid by governments, businesses, NGOs and global banks to predict the future are little better than the IMF’s own economists.  Indeed, according to Philip Tetlock, in his book “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” pundits and forecasters are little better at predicting the future than Joe Soap. Tetlock goes even further and suggests that the more quoted and famous a forecaster is the more likely that his or her predictions will be wrong.

In this review of  Tetlock’s book by the New Yorker Magazine, Louis Menand comments,

“People who follow current events by reading the papers and news magazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones.”

However, in my view, the best polemicist on the subject of professional forecasters in Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan. Here he is at his best on the subject of punditry, forecasting and serious people who wear ties and charge lots of money for their “expertise”:

It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future – but this is not necessarily a bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.

It is my hope some day to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known, namely that our highest currency is respect.

Related Articles

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , ,

Dealing with the Scissor Effect

February 11, 2011 1 Comment

Fiskars scissors

Avoiding the Scissor Effect a Challenge for Mobile Network Operators - Image via Wikipedia

Guest Post by Daniel Joseph Barry

Avoiding the so-called Scissor Effect is becoming more important for mobile carriers as bandwidth hungry users make greater network demands. The scissor effect refers to rising infrastructure costs and flat revenues – an unsustainable situation for any business. The scissor effect has already caused problems in fixed line networks and now mobile carriers face the same challenge in relation to mobile data services. Is it possible for mobile carriers to grow revenue per user in line with bandwidth usage? In this guest article, just a few days from the Mobile World Congress, Daniel Joseph Barry, VP of Marketing at Napatech, outlines some possible solutions.

Mobile carriers are fully aware of the Scissor Effect threat and have taken steps to respond with various solutions based on Deep Packet Inspection to manage traffic. This includes services where consumption caps are introduced.

These approaches are effective, but are they customer-friendly? An alternative approach is to build a strategy based on understanding and satisfying customer needs and providing services that reflect how they would like to use their mobile data services. The proposition is that by concentrating on providing exactly what customers want, they are less likely to switch provider and are more likely to pay more for the convenience and value their mobile data services provide.

The key to achieving this is intelligence. The first step is gathering intelligence on network and service usage, so we understand how customers are using their mobile data services and that they are receiving the quality of experience they require. With this intelligence, it is possible to tailor services to different types of customer usage scenarios. For example, some customers are more active during the day, others in the evening. Some customers use Facebook, others news or music download.

What is required is the establishment of a network intelligence infrastructure that can provide the data, in real-time, that is required to make this a reality. This investment need not be expensive. It is possible to build Deep Packet Inspection and Policy Server systems using off-the-shelf standard server hardware and commercial intelligent network adapters. This provides an extremely cost-effective hardware platform with high-performance. Since multiple systems will need to be deployed at critical locations in the network, it is important to base development on a cost-effective, high-performance, reliable and, most importantly, scalable platform.

Scalability is absolutely essential as mobile data traffic threatens to swamp mobile networks. The advantage of standard servers is that the underlying server chipsets are increasing performance by up to 60% each year. What’s more, these chipsets are based on multiple cores with higher densities available on an annual basis. The availability of more and faster processing cores each year provides an opportunity to scale performance as and when new standard servers are available.

Daniel Joseph Barry of Napatech

In short, for intelligent services, carriers need network intelligence based on systems that are built intelligently.

Daniel Joseph Barry is VP of Marketing at Napatech and has over 17 years experience in the IT and Telecom industry.  For further information visit http://www.napatech.com/


Related Articles

Filed under Comment, Mobility Tagged with , , ,

Review: Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation

February 9, 2011 Leave a comment

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the first human l...

Stalled R&D may be part of the American Stagnation Problem - According to Tyler Cowen. Image via Wikipedia

Tyler Cowen’s latest book (or, rather, extended essay) has a rather impressive title:

The Great Stagnation
How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better

Economists aren’t noted for their lack of verbosity.

But it’s an interesting read and I whole-heartedly agree with lots of it.

The (economic) core of his argument is that America (and not just America – but that’s his focus) has consumed most of the easy stuff and has now reached a plateau where not much innovation is happening. Growth has stalled and where technological progress is happening (the internet) it’s not really helping that much in terms of economic growth. The internet isn’t really employing too many people – and it’s keeping a lot of us occupied with stuff that’s not great in terms of revenue generation. (You’re reading this, aren’t you, and it’s free).

Politicians don’t really get it either. The discourse is still focused on growth and returning to growth – like the fruit can be consumed forever, just like it always used to be. But perhaps we need to recognise that the branches are bare and autumn is a long time away and some of the trees are dying. The debates still swing around the same things – tax cuts or spend-for-growth. The political dialogue is itself part of the problem. Politics is becoming dysfunctional.

And how did we get here? Cowen sums it up neatly – we all thought we were richer than we were.  He does a good job articulating how we might get out of the sorry mess (although the US, and other bloatfested ‘developed’ economies may have some time to wait).  The growth – a different kind and for a different purpose – will come from different types of economies with new and different work ethics and attitudes to technology.

But the lesson to be learned is that new expectations are required. Sometimes all that glisters is not gold.

Tyler Cowen’s book, the Great Stagnation, is published by Dutton (Feb 2011). He blogs at http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Filed under Comment Tagged with , ,

Ten Companies to Watch at Mobile World Congress

February 2, 2011 2 Comments

Mobile World Congress 2010

Image by Mark Bridge via Flickr

By Jeff Peel – I’m at that point – just two weeks before Mobile World Congress 2011 – where my head is beginning to swim given the volume of PR pitches from exhibitors. Sometimes wading through the barrage of hyperbole is a challenge. And I plan to meet with several companies in the limited time I have available at MWC11 to check out some of the claims.

However, for those of you who might be attending the Mobile World Congress this year and may want some guidance on companies to watch, I thought this Top 10 list might be of some interest. Or if you’re not attending, here’s what you might be missing.

I don’t need to make any disclaimers about this list – I have no financial interest in any of these companies. By the same token I have not undertaken any in-depth due diligence either. Rather, these are companies that appear to have interesting products and are able to articulate their product messages succinctly (always a challenge). Some are big, some small and their product focuses vary significantly.

The list is in no particular order.

Screenovate Technologies

This Israeli company connects smart phones to big screens. If you want to know what this means just check out the company’s web site – there’s a handy YouTube video right on the home page that explains the idea. The vision is an ambitious one (and the video is a tad cheesy) but the company is definitely onto something (if it can deliver).

http://screenovate.com/ or Follow on Twitter

OK-Labs (Open Kernel Labs)

OK – so it’s rather dull platform technology but important all the same. Chicago based OK Labs is well positioned to allow mobile phones to take advantage of virtualization technology for enterprise applications. Many of the leading market analysts say that mobile cloud is the next big thing – especially for enterprise apps – but the delivery of the mobile cloud depends on virtualization technologies.

http://www.ok-labs.com/ or Follow on Twitter

appMobi

Apple has established the concept of mobile apps for the iPhone. But the volume of apps is exploding and users are getting confused. Moreover, with multiple platforms going app-centric, app development platforms that are multi-platform is becoming a bigger deal. Enter appMobi – a Pennsylvania based firm with an integrated, cross-platform app engine.

http://www.appmobi.com/or Follow on Twitter

Synaptics

Synaptics is hardly a new company but with touch-screen becoming the definitive UI for mobile devices (and even static devices) there’s only one place for this company to go (provided it can continue to be innovative in the face of competition). The rune-stones look good and the company is offering lower price-point OEM products for lower end phones. Worth checking out in my view.

http://www.synaptics.com/ or Follow on Twitter

Abukai

This San Francisco based company is a bit of a one-trick pony at the minute – with a handy app for automating expense reporting – but is positioned to play in the rather sexier ‘augmented reality’ space. Augmented reality apps take dull spatial data and add value to it. ‘Dull but handy’ today could be tomorrow’s killer apps for business productivity.

http://abukai.com/ or Follow on Twitter

Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale is an industry stalwart and has been pushing hard into areas such as eReaders as well as its traditional stomping ground of the mobile sector. The company is heavily trailing a big announcement at Mobile World Congress – and I’ll admit to being a tad curious as to what it is.

http://www.freescale.com/ or Follow on Twitter

Gintel

Gintel has been around for years with its virtual PaBX solution – but perhaps 2011 is the year for the company. Everything is going mobile at the start of this new decade and it seems to me to be a no-brainer for mobile operators to offer centrex services for mobile devices. Because, increasingly, traditional PaBXs are bypassed by most employees who much prefer their mobile devices. Gintel has a proven solution but needs to achieve greater critical mass.

http://www.gintel.com/ or Follow on Twitter

myLanguage

Google Translate has helped tear down language barriers on the web and social media. myLanguage is attempting to become the lingua franca of translation apps across mobile platforms. The company claims it has the most powerful translator on any mobile platform and plans to announce several new features at MWC including “translate anything you can see or hear”.

http://www.mylanguage.me/ or Follow on Twitter

Poynt

Canadian based Poynt is one of a new breed of players to create location-focused search. This is likely to be a hot technology area over the next few years. Location is all when considering advertising and coupon-based sales promotion. Poynt’s targeted advertising model uses key word search and location to profile users in order to deliver relevant offers from restaurants and retailers nearby.

http://about.poynt.com/index.html or Follow on Twitter

Flash Networks

WAN optimisation is ten years old but cell based data optimisation is only really beginning to emerge. Flash Networks – another Israeli outfit – has a solution that it claims reduces cell congestion and improves users’ data experiences by reducing traffic bottlenecks. Not that sexy, I admit, but a big deal for operators reluctant to invest hugely in additional network capacity.

http://www.flashnetworks.com/ or Follow on Twitter

So that’s it – my initial 10 companies to watch at Mobile World Congress 2011. If you want to suggest others please feel free to comment with your suggestions – but don’t just post a URL. Please tell me why your suggestions are worthy.  Or let’s have a Twitter debate.

Related Articles

Filed under Comment, News Tagged with , , , , ,

Is Public Data Corporation Fit For Purpose?

January 18, 2011 Leave a comment

In true coalition government style a Conservative Minister (Francis Maude) and Lib Dem Minister (Edward Davey) today announced the creation of a new “corporation” to make available open government data. According to the announcement, “The Corporation will, for the first time, bring together Government bodies and data into one organisation and provide an unprecedented level of easily accessible public information and drive further efficiency in the delivery of public services.”

The coalition government seems intent to continue the process of opening up government data – a process started by the previous administration. The new Corporation, it is claimed, will more overtly create opportunities for businesses and social enterprises – even individuals – to create “social and economic growth” through the use of data.

There are many examples, of course, of very successful open data based initiatives that have resulted in social “growth”. MySociety.org has created many very useful websites based on open data models. And Tom Steinberg – the founder – is now advising the government. (Tom spoke at Quadriga Consulting’s Government 2010 event last year).

Whether the focus of the Public Data Corporation on the economic opportunities arising from open data is well placed remains to be seen. Open data models still require significant investment in terms of application/user experience building to make them useful – and the trouble with open data is that the barriers to entry (for developers) are quite low and opportunities for business differentiation are limited. Monetisation of apps built around open data is often very tricky as well.

Many consider that the greater opportunities for businesses in open data is for the government to have better, more fluid and more dynamic relationships with application vendors that could potentially build the government’s own applications. (And I’m thinking primarily of developers here rather than the big consultancies). By creating competitive markets between internal development teams and external development houses there is a significant opportunity to drive down the cost of delivering mission critical government applications. There is also a great opportunity to allow internal teams to create their own businesses – delivering services to government at substantially lowered cost.

The Public Data Corporation initiative is a good one but the focus of government – in terms of ICT development – should be on removing ICT dinosaurs wrapped around huge, legacy applications that are no longer fit for purpose in terms of cost or value. There is real opportunity to brush the dust out of government ICT and I hope that today’s announcement is just the start.

Jeff Peel

Filed under Comment, News Tagged with , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: