Moving on...

I have decided to move my blogging self to the new address that is http://taavisepp.tumblr.com

Other than that, my face can be seen at http://about.me/taavi

Should Tumblr decide to go permanently offline, I will turn the time back and return here...

...something as a Service

I'm getting a bit frustrated now. The reason being - service providers. Two years ago on early days of Saas, nobody really knew what it really entails. It was another one of the keywords to whisper in every seminar / conference / private event... Hype, I would call it. Not the Software-as-a-Service itself, but the way it was adopted. Big players took on the vision, quantified it somehow and it was delivered as part of the Cloud Computing offering. One should ask where the term xxx-as-a-Service comes from. Mostly it developed from BS- and ITIL-ised way of thinking - treat everything your IT has to offer as service provision. To achieve that you need to define all the services on offer. Happy with it? Good.

What has emerged now, is the thingy-as-a-Service culture from the major service providers. Everything can be offered as a service (no news here!) and apparently should be defined respectively. Just came across EMC2 eBook that used term ITaaS (IT as a Service). What a loads of BS! IT has been treated as a service since ITIL was introduced! Or should I say - this is the way it should be perceived. IT as non-service dates back to 90's where Helpdesk was hot topic and web-based solutions were not conceived yet. IT-as-a-Service means nothing more than OUTSOURCED or mixed IS/IT service.

What the service providers should do is generate a service catalogue and include all the relevant serviced and offerings in it. Infrastructure, software and business services. Allow your customers to pick and choose what is required to enable their business to function and thrive. Simple managed services provision is not enough any more, service providers need to offer more to their customers. And the asking price should be fair,not subsidising other areas of interest.

I do hope to see some clarification in the marketplace where service providers try not to offer all IT services, but only the ones where they excel.

Smart stuff...

As it happened I was in IBM seminar yesterday that covered cloud computing and the future of service delivery as IBM sees it. No new ground breaking stuff, more of a reiteration of what people-in-the-know already know. Plus a couple of case studies and an external view. All in all a good day. After the event I found myself chatting with some of the IBM guys on the topic of smart systems and IBM's Smarter Planet initiative. Today I am reading about how Oracle Utilities is telling the utilities providers they (utilities, of course!) are not ready for the smart grid. All the talk from the utilities suppliers of how they are going to provide smart and accurate metering... and now this. As it turns out "/.../42 percent of the respondents said they had fully integrated their meter data management systems with customer care and billing, 50 percent with self service applications and 36 percent with asset management. Thirty-two percent have also fully integrated network management with their meter data management system." Now how good is that!? We are talking of 50 utilities providers in EMEA region who are implementing their smart grid systems. They should have infrastructure in place, so I can't see where the problem lies. Lack of investment? Willingness to help the customers?

One good point made by one of the IBM guys was his experience with one of the UK utilities company, that had set out to equip their meters with RFID to enable remote metering. Good idea? Yes, if the data is sent to the data centre, not collected by the engineers roaming around the country... as that was the initial idea. Bad!

Let's just hope by the time the utility players start rolling (pushing) out smart meters (to be re/charged to the customers), there is a sound infrastructure in place to support it.

Buttermere panorama

photoblog.com failed to show the full size, let's try here again.

Of paid and free content

Last week I had a conversation with a couple of colleagues over free / paid content online and in print. The discussion was mostly bearing around the value of paid content. It seems rather obvious - there is a tiny number of people willing to pay for the information when it is available for free. Why would anyone want to pay a huge subscription fee when the print edition is out of day by the time is gets to the reader?

As I seemed to oppose the rest in terms of value delivered by the paid content, I had to come up with the key points as I saw them.

1. Availability. The information is made available first to the readers who have subscribed to the content provider. Good examples would be sources like Reuters, Bloomberg, FT as those provide up to minute information that can give leading edge to the players in the stock market. Once the information is released to the "public domain", for the subscribers it is already "old, irrelevant and unusable" as it has become a common knowledge.

2. Validity. Information provided as a paid content (sometimes very expensive indeed) is most probably to be more valuable as it is valid. It comes usually from the trustworthy sources and and both the commentators and the publishers are not widely known for risking their reputation for the questionable news. Occasional lapses of quality control are more or less tolerable, until these are not too frequent.

3. Actual content versus advertising. I do like to read magazines that belong to a publisher who uses the following business model - free content paid by advertising and (nearly) ad-free paid quality content. Way too often I open a magazine that is a real page-turner. Unfortunately for the overwhelming amount of advertising, not for interesting or insightful articles.

A good example here is IDG Network. I read both Computer World and CIO. First is free and helped along by advertising (about 60% of content) where the second is paid content, that has a tiny proportion of advertising and is a rather more interesting read. That again depends on the focus group - if the Computer World is the only source for IT news, it is not too bad. For the readers who keep themselves up to date with tech-world by following blogs, twitter feeds and personal view articles, it is yesterday by the time it is published.

I prefer not to pay for the news, views and analysis, but in many cases it seems to be the only way. The model I have followed for last couple of years has been to read engadget daily either with Google Reader or iPhone and then read Computer World online edition (as PDF) and CIO on my leisure. Again, former is free, latter payable.

During the discussion I was asked why would anyone pay for anything that is available in the web anyway. My answer was - why would you pay for that Sun on your desk? It is latest gossip and in no way something that could be classified as a quality newspaper. Evening Standard is the same news, but free. Same amount of advertising, not available until lunch time. Metro in the morning and Lite in the evening - should you live in or commuting to London and City A.M. should you land near the Bank.

Want more? Well, then there is The Daily Telegraph - want it free (selection of news, though) - read on the web or in your iPhone. Want it on paper, pick it up from Boots as an unfortunate by-product to a bottle of water - all the joy for just £1.

Listening to Peter Day from BBC discussing on the topic of paid content the other day and it become quite clear that publishers had followed the idea or movement, if you like, of information freedom. What they did miss was the second part of the thesis - information can also earn you money. It would be highly advisable to listen to anyone who has doubts over reasoning behind paid online content.

To conclude the topic (hah!) I would like to see more initiatives where a quality newspaper or magazine (online or printed) does contain no more than 10% advertising and is priced accordingly. Publishers need to find a way to balance between the quality of content and means of generating income for the shareholders.

Your views are welcome. Just leave them as comments or wrap it up, slap it on the back and send to taavisepp78 [at] gmail dot com.

Sense and senility

Now, this is going slightly over the top - http://bit.ly/cqJBVW. People wondering around London are asked not to take photos. That is just silly.
What happened to the idea of pulling in as much tourists as possible?

Clear blue skies...

Kellegi telefonist laekus sõnum - "in terms of tackling immigration an Icelandic volcano has done more in five days than the Labour government in 13 years...". Mõnede arvates kõlab natuke rassistlikult, minu meelest küllaltki lõbusalt! Olles ise Inglismaale sisserännanu, ei tunne ma seda õeldes ka mingit vimma. Huumoriga tuleb elu võtta, vähemalt nii palju, kui võimalik.

Päikest!