ReTweetMe

I am not a political blogger, by any stretch. We have the usual conversations at home with the kids, and try to get them involved. An 8 yo, 14 and 17, sometimes the conversation goes over the little one’s head - and I guess sometimes I make an incorrect assumption… I found the following on my keyboard after arriving home from a business trip, hand written by my 8 year old daughter:

Big, Bold Letters at the top - “War”

Dear President Obama,

My name is Emma Lieberman. I live in a small town in  Vermont. I am getting really sick of the wars going on. can you please help stop it. If you can put a stop to the end of the wars than thank you so much.

From Emma Lieberman

Thank you

You cannot blame this on Twitter, nor the companies who are just trying to stay ahead. But the fact remains that the “squeaky wheel” definitely gets the grease on Twitter.  On two distinct occasions today, people I follow were making their, not-so-great customer service experience known, in a public fashion. In the end, each was given preferential treatment by the provider. 3 ‘rants’ on Twitter, one big “Thanks” also on Twitter and everyone is happy - except me.

Twitter is enabling poor practices in CRM - but no one really has a choice right now

SocialCRM at its best

Also today, Paul Greenberg posted his “Is Twitter Social CRM, Nope” blog. I happen to agree with Paul in many ways. It is a channel - an important one - but simply one channel, or is it? But it is more than that - It is the single most relevant example of ‘customer service is your most powerful marketeer’ around. Yes, bad emails written poorly make their way onto the Internet (Blogs, Mail lists, etc.,…) but, Twitter travels much faster - and more broadly. The reason is that, as a social network, Twitter is more far reaching** than any other network.

**by far reaching I am referring to the breadth and depth on the social graph created by connecting the dots between and among users or keywords.

• I can ‘watch’ any user, anywhere who makes their tweets part of the public timeline -
• I can filter on any hashtag (all tweets for #comcast - for example)
• I can reply to a tweet to anyone, regardless of if I am following or not
• There is a willingness to follow/be followed like no other social site (age, relationship, location)

As Jeremiah Owyang suggests in his blog (also today) Twitter has some key components of CRM - but it does not have the key one - the relationship. A relationship is two ways. Twitter is a customer skewed relationship at the moment. Twitter does not have the ability to manage this relationship either. It is a great source of data. The key is turning the data into information.

How would this scenario go;  if in order to get your cable box fixed you needed to go down to the local office and stand in line for an hour or more. While in line, the person 3 behind you in line started to yell really loudly about poor service. They would either ask him/her to leave, or be quiet. Would we cheer if they were pulled out of line and helped first? On Twitter, this is exactly what happens - you just do not know who you jumped in front of in line.

Same scenario, except the line is not at the local office, but at a fair or conference of some sort. Lots of people there for many reasons. The line next to you is the sales line (get new service). Oh, and the vendors biggest competitor is a couple yards away. How would it go down? - I am not sure, but it makes you think.

No scenario can perfectly represent the Twitter scenario in real world. But how would feel if people further back in the queue were given preferential treatment because - no offense - they throw a tantrum? Are Twitter users playing the system or cheating the system?

As the Twitter user population grows as well as Facebook and others, the call center and help desk models will simply not be able to scale. They use predictive models to determine staffing and there only so many ‘A’ players (the ones the vendors are using to filter and watch Twitter). For now, ‘ranting’ on Twitter will get you attention.  Maybe more vendors will have to follow the Zappos model and find success, though I think it will be hard for other industries to follow suit, it is just not that simple.

I find myself using metaphors nearly every day. I wonder if this is because the things I focus on are actually complex, or that they are not all that complex, it just seems that way. Many blogger, Journalists and Marketeers are trying to help people to really understand what is hype and what is real, regarding Cloud. Personally, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter lately, mostly research, but I ‘Tweet’ as well - participation is required. A quick aside - TweetDeck is a great tool, allows filtering etc.,… Honestly, I can understand how people could get frustrated with Twitter, if such a tool did not exist.

Some slight drama around the house this week, nothing like family drama to help put things in perspective. One moderate snowboarding accident, and my 14yo has a broken Radius, and he is not happy about it (not because Snowboarding is done for the season, rather due to Soccer season now a few weeks delayed). He will recover, bone heal.

Spending a lot of quiet time at home. I needed a little distraction from worrying about my son.  The experience did - of course - suggest yet another metaphor for Cloud computing. The accident occured at Stowe mountain resort in northern Vermont. The ski patrol did a marginal job ( he boarded the rest of the way down the mountain and they did not do a though diagnostic).  They presented a few options for treatment, a local family clinic, a local hosptial and the Level 1 trauma center in Burlington (FAHC - who did a stellar job).

The first choice was the local one, seemed to make the most sense - but a 3 hour wait changed my mind. We decided on FAHC. It turned out to be a good choice, as the break needed to be reduced (re-set, I will spare details), which is complex, and requires expertise.

How is this is this a metaphor for Cloud computing or SaaS? The family practice, while necessary and local, and probably able to handle many situations, was not prepared for the ’spike in demand’ (apparently many kids had issues on Friday due to very hard snow). The clinic was overwhelmed. Even if they had been able to do the initial diagnoses, they did not have the expertise house to complete the treatment. This points out two very important characteristics of larger, centralized services:

• Spikes in demand can be handled as a matter of course
• The model allows for expertise to be centrally managed (not for everything of course)

My experience leaves out all the scenarios which would have played to the strength of the local practice, of which there are many. But it is another way to think of Cloud and Utility computing. There are certain areas which it makes a lot of sense to centralize and pool resources to gain a higher value.

In the words of the Dick Vitale of the CRM space, Paul Greenberg “No ‘baby!’”- From the definition of CRM 2.0 “CRM 2.0 (Which I like to call SocialCRM) is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform…” There is more, but I want to keep the focus. What ever CRM 2.0 is, really, is defined by the needs of  your business, it simply needs to be supported by technology and the platform is Cloud. What that means is that your optimal solution is almost definitely more than one product. The products and the services surrounding the solution does not define technology, they use it.

Information travels through unexpected channels, at speeds which make your head spin at times – you need to be prepared to act on it. You need a way to stay ahead, and in touch with your customers and prospects. This later point is simply that the combination of speed of information combined with Marketing hype makes things look bigger than they are.  Just like March madness, if I take all of those regional games and create a buzz, and put them on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU….suddenly you feel like you are missing out, if you do not watch the game!

As part of putting together this series, I used Twitter and TwitterDeck to search and watch (think stock ticker) through various categories (#cloud and  #SaaS for example). Twitter is more personal than Blogs, and people let  you know what they feel –there are lot of people with opinions. Twitter itself is going to be an incredibly important part of CRM, Social CRM and Social buying. No question! Facebook will certainly play in this space as well. The key here is to be able to stay on top of these fast moving channel – without having to stare at them like a ticker!

BTW – I know that I will catch a lot of grief for mentioning Vermont twice in this series – poetic license. I was also trying to think of a creative Dick Vitale type quote, though that may not end up being politically correct L!

When my boys were young (OK, I am not that old) we would enjoy the championship basketball games on Saturday’s in March (The regional tournaments and the NCAA I mentioned earlier). My boys would ask about the teams, the college, was it a good school? – usual kid stuff. They now know a WHOLE lot more about sports, players, rankings than I do, but that is a topic for another day. The fans did go all out, face painting, screaming dancing getting all excited at the buzzer beater shot. They did it then, we just see and hear about it a lot more now. “March Madness”, “Selection Sunday”

It brings up a few interesting points.

1. Who are the folks actually making decisions about Cloud Strategy? CTO or CFO
2. How much does experience have any impact on the decision making process? (hint: not enough)

So, why is this relevant?

1- We have all been using elements of what is now called “The Cloud” for years (On-demand, ASP, SaaS are all ‘prequels’) IT is not all that different, it just happen a lot faster  - A LOT FASTER

The Cloud and Cloud Computing are terms that can be useful to the informed, and confusing to the less informed. “Cloud” is a bit of a catch-all term  that references;  Grid, Off-site storage, Demand, SaaS, IaaS (Infrastructure), PaaS (Platform) and DaaS  (DataWarehousing). Most of us, have had a Yahoo account and/or LinkedIn account for many years. Then some of use moved to Gmail and now some of us are on Twitter – All would be considered Cloud applications now.

Did someone throw a switch, and suddenly they went from, whatever they were – to Cloud? (Except Twitter, which I would suggest was Cloud from the get go). I doubt it, that does not make sense.

Like any technology, a  good basketball team has a solid foundation and a grounding in the fundamentals of the game. It is also about balance and role players – You can’t put five 7 footers on the court, nor can you put five guards either – it is about balance. A balanced strategy, a balanced product suite and a balanced technology base, no single point of failure.  It goes without saying that during March madness everyone on the court needs to step up their game (Like UVM did in 2005) but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If you begin your search for the one perfect product that will solve all your Customer Interaction needs, including such information like SocialCRM and Financial Data, you will not find what you are looking for – period. What you need are the products that ‘play’ nicely with the external systems who have the additional data your business needs.

Next up:

Do we have to reinvent products to keep up with Cloud and CRM 2.0?

I live in Northern Vermont – the closest thing to a professional sports team is the local mid-major school, UVM (University of Vermont), known more for Hockey and Skiing than Basketball. The winner of America East (UVM’s division), more often than not, loses in the first round. However,  in 2005, UVM won the America East and  drew the mighty Syracuse as their opponent in the first round, who some picked to make it to the final four (more on that later).

UVM went on to win in overtime, and became the Cinderella of 2005. It was short lived, but fun while it lasted. For all of those who filled out their brackets, I would bet 98% had Syracuse picked.  Yup, I was one of the 98%. Shame on me – not really, I still cheered for UVM, the bracket choice was due to my aversion to risk.  As a quick aside, as I put the finishing touches to this post, Syracuse defeated UConn in a near record 6 overtimes to shock a higher ranked UConn team - go figure.

Back to Clouds and technology

The key is to carefully consider your providers and ask lots of questions. Analyze the SLAs and compliance offered by the provider (for development needs, this may not be required). The Cloud is a great place to try, before you spend too much money. Set up a program to try a few different providers, and the risk is minimal - a little time and a real litte $. Do not ‘go with your heart’ trust your business and professional instincts.  The little guy here can be a dangerous this - Even in my smal little state a local ISP just disappeared one day, taking a whole lot of data with them.

It is a easy as having a credit card

It is not too hard to try, just takes a credit card and it really is inexpensive, and has a high value quotient. Two examples – The RackSpace Slicehost folks will set-up a ‘slice’ (256MB - ram, 10GB-storage and 100GB – bandwidth)’ for $20 a month. It is raw, yes, but it works, and if/when you like it, it can grow! Amazon is also really nice as well. My first experience was almost scary, in that when I went to sign-up they had my credit card on file from the recent holiday shopping I did – odd overlap. AWS is a little more raw, even more so than Slicehost, but there are some good providers (that ecosystem I mentioned) that can help you get going – like CohesiveFT, JumpBox or rpath. I am not going to list the pricing scheme for AWS, as that part takes a little analysis. AWS is a pure utility model, pay for EXACTLY what you use – read the fine print.

Hope is NOT a strategy

Do not simply trust each providers own marketing materials. Take what I say, or anyone else with proper context trust what they are able to back the materials up with – references, experience and a sound strategy. With respect to infrastructure type services, think carefully about how to spread the risk across more than one provider. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hosting on one provider and doing your backups on another. For open source applications, the choices are numerous, and you are certainly not locked in, if you architect your solution correctly.

Coming up next - Is it really any different than it was 5 or 10 years ago, How new is the Cloud?

The Sports entertainment industry is nothing, if not opportunistic.  Again, a little backdrop is in order  If you are a US sports enthusiast, there is not a whole lot going on in March. Football (NFL) is done, Baseball is not really started, the NBA is resting players or trying modestly for home court, Hockey - which is not too bad this year - is mid-season still. OK - Some modest excitement in the EUFA Champions League but not many Americans really appreciate it.

Opportunity? Absolutely!

The media industry capitalized on the lack of ‘anything else to do’ and blows it right out of the water every March!  It is advertising revenue based, it has a massive audience (35 million, by some estimates).  Most (all?) of the online social networks are getting (have gotten?) into this as well. Facebook, ESPN** and  Yahoo jump onto any of them and see how easy  it is too find a group to join to fill out your bracket (a prediction of the tournament victors in each round).

** Try telling ESPN that they are not a social network. I am sure that Twitter will be ablaze with Tweets this season as well, the revenue model is still a little sketchy there - but we hear they are working on it.

Great, so what, where is the tie-in to technology? Consider the current economic conditions – IT budgets have been slashed, the phrase “do more with less” is driving us all nuts but we do have work to do.  Your Enterprise applications are not getting any younger, they need to be changed, updated and modernized – to add all the cool social networking stuff.  Work  still needs to get done, the competition is still moving ahead.

Opportunity? Absolutely!

The Infrastructure players mostly, and some SaaS players are trying to figure out how to monetize the investment they have been making for the past 5 years (Did you know Google has over a million servers?). In a strong economy,  Enterprise IT fights back the service model (computers not behind their 4 walls) shouting “risk risk risk” and they win (for a short while).

They also shouted the same thing about open source 5 years ago, they lost that battle and they are about to lose this one. Back to the economy, with capital budgets being cut, companies are still trying to figure out how to move forward. If they could only deploy new applications using operational budgets and stay within their means, they might be ok…Oh, wait, they can! It is all in place for Enterprise IT to capitalize on what many others have been building.

This is going to be a break-out year for Service delivery, which has been enabled by open source, in case you were wondering. If you do not believe me, just check out the US Presidents selection of a CIO, Mr Vivek Kundra.

Next on the agenda, “Cheer with your heart, make decisions with your mind.”

The central theme, of this first series on ‘ReTweetMe’ is focused on how to derive value from what people call “The Cloud” and to help Enterprise decision makers dissect hype from reality. The topic itself is moderately interesting, but given the time of year, using the March Madness, that is about to take center stage in the US, seems a good way to keep things even more interesting - Enjoy. You can follow Mitch on Twitter @mjayliebs

For those not in the US, or who do not follow sports the reference to March madness is an annual focus on the Men College Basketball. Each March there is a single elimination tournament (NCAA) to crown a College Basketball champion. During certain times within the tournament, games are during business hours and, well, let’s just say some folks lose focus a bit during the workday (by some estimates, the US workforce could lose $1.5B in productivity during the tournament).

You might say it is a stretch to try and relate a college basketball tournament to technology, specifically, Cloud computing and SocialCRM. I think that with some creative use of metaphors and hyperbole, we will be able to have some fun in relating these two topics. The madness that is March is dose of good competition, peppered with a  marketing campaign seeking to connect us with our long (some longer than others) forgotten college/university days. Do not get me wrong, the fans do get excited, but the rest of the country has some help.  If you would like more information about the tournament itslef, you can check wikipedia or HowStuffWorks.

So, what about Cloud - or “The Cloud”?

Cloud Computing is a very real value proposition for many folks in IT.  It is this strong push from the blogospere, the Press, your boss which makes us all wonder how and what we should be doing. The emotional play is based on the economy and reducing IT spend, without slowing down.

How to choose? Who to choose? What exactly do I need?

Back to Basketball -

The NCAA tournament has a few Cinderella’s  - you know, the David Versus Goliath,  the hopefuls that beat a higher ranked opponent when only a few gave them a real chance. Then, as victors, they become the disruptor, forcing bigger and better teams to figure out how and why they won. The viewing audience then starts to cheer for the Cinderella, and push them on to success. The media also jumps on the opportunity to keep the audience interested and watching and telling their friends - SportCenter will be sure to spend extra time on these types of games.

Another character in the story are the big names, the ones everyone loves  to hate (No names here – think a title of royals, in North Carolina, US). I bet a few of you have some ideas who the Cloud Provider analogies are here. The question here is, will anyone be able to challenge the dominance of Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Google, SUN or Rackspace from an Infrastructure perspective? Look for FaceBook to be a serious player here as well - or will Facebook simply be a platform play.

As we progress through the series, I will “peel back the Onion”, and show that the Cloud is a lot of things which unfortunately, too many people refer to ‘it’ when they really mean all that it represents. To a CIO, the Cloud is: infrastructure+platform+software available to me when I need it, where ever I am. SaaS is: an application, with access to storage and a network, available to my users when they need it, where ever they are.

We will leave the XaaS details for another day.

Helping you to choose wisely is an objective of this series. Some of the components are very mature – operating systems and databases, others are young with rough edges – pure Platform plays (Coghead), who did not last. It all depends upon your use and tolerance for risk.

Mårten Mickos observed, with respect to open source, that the community is willing to trade time to save money and the later community is willing to trade money to save time (customers). This seems to hold true in the Cloud space as well. The difference is free is not an option, but inexpensive is!.  In this respect, the Cloud and open source have a strong similarities.

This the first in the series, tomorrow the focus changes to the timing of it - Why Now?

With all that is happening in the IT world, I needed a venue to share my thoughts. My objective is to distill complexity down to understandable chunks of information that people can actually act upon. It seems that the only way to really explain modern technology is through Hyperbole and Metaphor. My goal is to see how far I can push it.

The focus of my musings will likely stay within the confines of Cloud and SocialCRM. SInce each of these has a half-dozen sub categories, there should be a lot to share.