Category Archives: Technology

Internet World 2010 – Get big, get niche or get out!…

As the homepage for Internet World 2000 announced in lurid pink and yellow… It’s big – It’s brash – It’s bright – It’s beyond…  From my recollections of that time, this is an excellent summary of the atmosphere and sentiment of that dotcom boom peak period.

Click to compare and contrast IW2000 to IW2010

I remember this particular show well as I attended it in a somewhat ‘shellshocked’ state as I was immersed in the launch of ntlworld – NTL’s UK wide ‘free Internet service’.  I was also working on NTL’s shopbuilder project at the time with Intershop and remember the whole buzz about eCommerce, which again, is emphasised by the exhibitors back in 2000.  So many ideas before their time! – or at least before broadband made the user experiences vaguely tolerable.

Visiting IW2010 on Wednesday, I got a sense of deja-vu, particularly with all the talk about eCommerce. The recession has clearly put much more focus on the benefits of selling online but, given this is 2010 and the height of the social media boom, today’s eCommerce comes with a Social Media twist or two.

There’s talk of ‘Web 2.0’ eTailers usurping the long-standing ‘Web 1.0’ stalwarts by combining the latest WCM, Social Media and eCommerce developments to provide far better user experiences and greater conversion levels. I can see sense in this as the battles between the Rich Internet Application frameworks and HTML5 make online shopping a more pleasurable interactive experience and the growth in user generated commentary and reviews continues to help transcend the marketing bullshit. There’s certainly opportunity to implement eCommerce and integrate its vital content processes better, easier and faster than before.

Comparing the lists of Content Management System vendors from IW2000 to IW2010 shows I have observed the following…

  • The success of the .NET Framework over the last 5 years.  By my reckoning, at least 8 of the CMS vendors listed are focused on .NET based applications. Although the PHP versus .NET debates often reach a stalemate, one thing that is generally agreed on is that .NET based sites are often faster. When you see that ‘speed’ is an increasingly important measure in Google rankings this could take on even greater significance for those who’s search rankings are vital.
  • The ‘Class of 2000’ has moved on. Of the content management orientated vendors who exhibited 10 years ago, only the original Mediasurface product offering had presence a decade later via Alterian’s heavy and visible presence at the 2010 show.  Consolidation has played a big part in this in the upper tier and growth of the mid-market has made many of the original CMS vendors irrelevant at this type of show.
  • Few remain independent. Of the exhibitors in 2000, only Percussion and Day remain in their original independent states – but for how long?
  • The rise of Scandinavian and arrival of Eastern European vendors. The Danes and Swedes are coming to dominate the CMS mid-market through very successful offerings like EPiServer and Sitecore. A younger generation is showing through now too, with Sweden’s Onclick, Estonia’s Modera and Czechoslovakia’s Kentico (growing in popularity in the UK partner base)

So, as we progress through the next decade to 2020 and Content Management becomes more commoditised through the growth of Open Source, development of infrastructure beasts like SharePoint and gathering ‘Clouds’ of different shapes and sizes – how will the 2010 exhibitors fare and will they still be standing/showing in 2020?

Based on the last ten years, the odds are against it. In commoditised markets it’s said that only the ‘big’ and ‘niche’ survive. I’ve made some wild speculation below on what path the ‘class of 2010’ might take…

Exhibiting CMS Vendors 2000 Exhibiting CMS Vendors 2010 Will they be exhibiting in 2020???? (Some wild speculation!)
Autonomy Activedition No – Out by 2020 – Regular UK CMS exhibitors such as SiteKit, EasySite and Contensis were noticeable by their absence this year and I’ll wager that Activedition goes the same way in the next couple of years, swamped by the Scandinavian systems UK implementors are increasingly favouring.
Day Alterian No – Big by 2020 – With Immediacy’s roadmap now officially dead and a renewed focus on the former Morello product with the recent ACM-professional (a Morello-lite), Alterian’s positioning in the mid-market is still unclear. As a listed company they’ll continue to add value through acquisition then look to be acquired themselves.
EMC Ektron No – Out by 2020 – Acquired by Microsoft looking to reassert itself in lighterweight .NET friendly WCM
Eprise Corporation EPiServer No – Big by 2020 – With strength in globalisation and a favourite choice of the UK partner channel, these guys will be swallowed up by an increasingly desperate upper tier operator who can only seem to expand out of a saturated market by cannibalising those beneath them
Interwoven E-Spirit No – Out by 2020 – Acquired by Alterian looking to strengthen its international offering from the UK roots of Morello and Immediacy if focus remains on the Morello core
Mediasurface Kentico No – Out by 2020 – Low Eastern European cost base might keep it running for a few years but it’s late to the .NET party in the UK – could come onto Alterian’s acquisition radar to strengthen mid-market
Merant Modera No – Out by 2020 – Lower Eastern European cost base but late to the party in the UK – can shift its attention quickly to other emerging markets
Percussion Nstein No – Already out – Following acquisition by OpenText this is the last we’ll see of Nstein at IW
Tridion Onclick No – Out by 2020 – If their proposition becomes clearer than it currently is then perhaps they’ll be acquired by their big Swedish brothers to help UI evolution and/or a php based offering
Vignette Sitecore No – Big by 2020 – Another possible target for Microsoft if it looks to revisit WCM and must be coming onto the radar of the US giants
Squiz No – Out by 2020 – At the vanguard of commercialised open source but with an Aussie English language heritage – these guys will struggle against the rising tide of Drupal in the enterprise. May shift allegience to other open source offerings and develop as a UK open source implementation specialist
Telerik No – Out by 2020 – Niche development work on Silverlight components gets them swallowed up by Microsoft within 5 years
Vyre No – Niche by 2020 – Overshawdowed by others with Nordic history, they’ll return increasingly to a niche DAM position

What are your predictions for IW2020? Will we even be talking about an ‘Internet World’ in 10 years or will it have evolved into something very different? And will we still be talking about a ‘Content Management’ industry or will long heralded mass consolidation and commoditisation prevail?

London Comms Group Prezi…

Many thanks to the London Communications and Engagement Group last night for their kind invitation to present and discuss the area of Content Technologies. The Prezi is embedded below should others be interested in joining the conversation.

Promotion and credit given to CMS Watch (a service of the Real Story Group) and Kristina Halvorson for their great work on the Technology Vendor Map 2010 and Content Strategy for the Web

London Comms Prezi on Prezi

Talk and beer

What's the point of analysts?…

Or rather, what’s the point of analyst organisations? This is really a question that’s been raised for me by the debate about Forrester clamping down on its analysts producing and promoting personal blogs.

Reading this excellent article about Forrester’s action underlines the dilemma for many organisations thrown up by Social Media – who becomes the ‘authentic’ voice or voices of your organisation? Is the genie out of the bottle as far as this is concerned and by trying to pull the reigns back now will organisations face criticism in the way Forrester has about being heavy-handed and effectively limiting its analysts from establishing their own personal brands.

As this pyramid from SageCircle emphasises, Analyst Relations can be quite a personal thing and it’s not so much the analyst organisation itself who you are building the relationship with but often an individual who has specific experience and knowledge of your market sector and operations. The individualism of analysts has been brought into sharp focus by Twitter. Firstly it makes analysts, and the organisations they represent, more accessible but also more transparent. In the cut and thrust of everyday debate, you get to see fallibility more easily but likewise, knowledge and expertise shine through too.

I think what we’re seeing with the Forrester move and recent consolidation in the CMS analyst space is an exposed vulnerability of analyst organisations which have, in many respects, built their operations on inherently poor knowledge flows, communications and, primarily ‘conversations’ between organisations and individuals. To a typical analyst organisation, knowledge is power and wealth, that it benefits from being a gatekeeper to.  Twitter has been blowing this apart over the last year or so by enabling like-minded and/or commonly interested people to get together online and offline far more easily and effectively to exchange knowledge and information. With technology continuing to break down boundaries and facilitate conversation perhaps it’s more the case that ‘we’re all analysts now’?

Some learning from the Noughties…

Although the rolling passage of time makes a changing year somewhat irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, the turn of a decade is a useful milestone for reflection and looking forward. My biggest learning points from the last 10 years are…

The web has exposed what we really are…

Animals. There is no better illustration of this than the herd behaviour it has facilitated on a global level, which has been a repeated pattern of the last decade – from the dotcom boom and bust to the financial bubbles to Twitter. The latter is an appropriate name for something that induces ‘flocking’ or ‘swarming’. You can almost visualise this happening as a leading influencer changes direction or swoops down on something new.

So – is this a good or bad thing? I guess it depends whether, on balance, it has done more harm than good. It’s driven growth, that’s for sure – but has it been the right sort of growth? There would appear to be an even greater gap between rich and poor and it is becoming ever clearer that we have raped and pillaged our planet more in the last ten years than at any time before. The consequences of that could well be catastrophic if you believe the growing consensus of scientific opinion.

Bill Gates is right…

Well about one thing anyway. His soundbite from The Road Ahead about people “overestimating what will happen in the next two years but underestimating what will happen in the next 10” keeps playing out. Slightly ironic I guess that the biggest example from the last decade is the mobile market. When I worked on projects at the beginning of the decade to visualise the types of services 3G technology would bring to phone users I must admit that none of them looked much like a Microsoft approach. However, I had an underlying sense that the proprietary monolith would come to dominate the mobile world, as it had the desktop.

The big lesson here is that applying thinking and approaches from one environment to a fundamentally different one – is deeply flawed. Fresh thinking is needed. And Apple demonstrated that so well with the iPhone. Design a device and applications specifically for the context in which they are used rather than trying to get a phone to behave like a desktop PC. Lessons from my time at NTL in the 90s suggest exactly the same is applicable to the web and interactivity ‘on TV’ – in a communal, lean back environment, the context and approach must be relevant and compelling. Also lessons from spending half of the last decade in IT/software development roles also suggest that continuing to apply desktop thinking to an inter-connected always-on online world is also ultimately flawed.

Tony Blair was wrong…

Well, not about everything – but certainly in ‘his’ decision to commit the UK to an ill-conceived war and extremely badly planned peace in Iraq. Although I’ve highlighted the dangers of herd behaviour in the first point, there are times when ‘the wisdom of crowds’ is right – the challenge of course is to read the situation correctly. The largest demonstration ever on the streets of London and in other capitals around the world suggested that the majority of people felt uncomfortable with the reasons for going to war – even if they didn’t physically take to the streets. I’m sure that I and many others are having our own thoughts back in 2003 confirmed as the latest enquiries expose the degree to which we were misled. It is particularly galling to remember our prime minister telling us that we didn’t see what he saw in terms of intelligence reports and therefore he had to make the decision on our behalf.  There was a collective sense, more than anything I have experienced in my life, that this was wrong – I feel we had an innate understanding that we were being lied to but were ultimately powerless to stop the political machinery taking us to war. This matters deeply and it’s made me question everything I ever understood about ‘democracy’. If social media had been more prominent in the early part of the decade I’m wondering if things would still have happened in the way they did and if many hundred of thousands of innocent lives could have been saved?

There is hope…

If we can harness herd behaviour effectively in the next 5 years to help fix some of the damage we have done to our environment and promote more sustainable ways of living – then the web driven booms and busts of the Noughties will provide some consolation. But, and it’s a big but, we need to be convinced that those influencing the herd or causing the flock to change direction have thought about what they are doing and the effect such mass changed behaviour will have in the longer term.

If we can be brave enough to slow down, take a step back and look at things differently then the next decade could be full of exciting innovations that really would have the potential to change the world for the better. The challenge here is having the courage and vision to turn away from the herd and head for new pastures. I encountered the Blue Ocean Strategy a while back which, although it really is a post-justification reasoning, it does illustrate the thinking that has created some of the iconic gadgets of the last decade such as the Wii and iPhone. Perhaps a more appropriate title for this approach in the next decade would be Clean Ocean Strategy given the damage we are doing to the remaining Blue Ocean. In this, we would be looking to create new opportunities that didn’t add to the plastic, chemical and CO2 pollution that is turning our seas to an acid bath but also captured people’s imagination in the way that communications and entertainment have done in more recent years.

If we can use the technology to empower those who are repressed and discriminated against to gain a voice and learn for themselves that there are alternative ways to think and live, fundamentalism in all nations can be shown for what it is – a destructive, pseudo reality. For instance, if women had been in a stronger position in places such Afghanistan and Iraq, and likewise in the leading administrations of the Western world earlier this decade I doubt these complicated, entrenched and drawn-out wars would ever have started. Social media in its broadest sense offers the opportunities to make things more transparent expose hypocrisy and lies and amplify wisdom. Conversely, it could be manipulated unhealthily to amplify destructive forces and promote damaging herd behaviour. We have it in our power though to use it for good, rather than evil.

Let hopes rather than fears prevail in the next ten years

2020 here we come…

Information Management 10 years on…

I remember first attending the Information Management/Online Information Show, or a variation of it, at London’s Olympia back in the 90s. I haven’t attended for a few years but enjoyed my visit last week for some very selfish reasons.  For a start, it was very quiet – a welcome surprise for a deafie like me – and lack of footfall in the aisles meant I had some useful conversations and demos with a number of interesting exhibitors. The seminar theatres were quite small so I was thankful for good acoustics and being able to chat with some of the presenters easily.

I have a soft-spot for this show and I like the way it attempts to bring together age-old disciplines of information management with the latest online buzz – usually with some intelligent and well reasoned views of the latter. I’m sure there are some wise and seasoned information practitioners who look on with despair at the hype cycles that have passed by over the last 10 years or so and soldier on regardless until some common sense returns to the proceedings.

Unsurprisingly, social media was on the agenda in a number of the seminar theatres. I very much enjoyed a ‘pitfalls’ presentation by Sam Marshall from Clearbox Consulting a guy who has clearly ‘been there and done it’ in his roles with Unilever. You can see Sam’s presentations here and his list of very useful and common sense ‘pitfalls’ are…

1. Be ready to give up control
2. The price of entry is nearly zero for everyone
3. Be ready to follow up
4. If there’s a backlash, join the conversation
5. Keep looking out for a groundswell
6. Don’t feel you have to own the community
7. Be authentic
8. Match the approach to the channel
9. Don’t use social media to duck legislation
10. Tidy up

His examples from Dove illustrated very well that people hate hypocrisy and ‘social media’ is a great way of the people letting hypocritical companies know. The examples are also great lessons for brand managers in that very worthy comments about the downsides of the beauty industry look highly hypocritical from a massive FMCG organisation who benefits greatly from such an industry and who also has some responsibilities for heavy damage to the environment.

I also enjoyed Theresa Regli’s common sense keynote presentation about ‘Findability in the Web 2.0 World’ and her tour along the Red line of CMS Watch’s Content Technology Vendor Map 2010

With its focus on knowledge management from a librarian’s perspective and the challenges of legal, technical and medical publishing, IMS has a solidity about it. I’ve noticed many vendors in the Online Information side of things coming and going over the last 10 years (probably in direct correlation to the hype cycle) so it remains a useful barometer of the broader information management space and will probably be a lot busier next year when the social media hype dies down 😉