Cloud computing and “Business of Software”

I am a firm believer that cloud computing has the potential to change business of software in more ways than one.

1. At an architecture level, cloud computing changes the way we think about enterprise architecture. See an excellent presentation below by Stuart Charlton on this topic. Cloud Computing and the Next-Generation of Enterprise Architecture – Cloud Computing Expo 2008
2. It also lowers the entry barriers for start up companies in various fields because now they no longer have to re-create the wheel of underlying infrastructure. This is a huge paradigm shift. Now it is within reach of start up companies to innovate even in the fields where large computing power or large storage of data is a necessity. Many bio-medical start ups are doing exactly this by taking advantage of huge computing power provided via clouds. This was not within small companies reach before and was the forte of companies like IBM!
3. Entire new business models are now possible with clouds. As an example look at SlideShare. They have created an useful service around sharing presentations while completely utilizing AWS for their storage needs. This also is a significant shift since companies like Slideshare now can focus on their core strengths rather than worry about how to service their ever increasing customer base.
4. Cloud computing will also change the tools and process landscape for software development. I have tried to capture some of it (many slides deleted due to confidentiality)  for the Application Lifecycle Management space, Cloud Application Development Lifecycle.

I am sure I have missed ways in which cloud computing will affect IT/Software industry in general. Please let me know about it via comments.

PS: As I finished this blog entry, I came across Cloud Computing UC Berkley Report. It talks about state and fate of cloud computing. It is definitely worth reading…

Getting hired as a product manager!

 

There is lot of confusion about the role of product managers. So much so that I had to design and deliver a complete course on Software Product Manager for a local MBA school.

Recently I came across this excellent article about “How to hire a product manager”. It is obviously written from hiring perspective but I think it is an excellent read for getting hired as a product manager. I really liked what Ken says about being expendable. He puts it very bluntly but it is indeed very true. In fact it is the reason and root cause for so much confusion regarding the role of product management. Because as Ken says, in absence of product managers, someone else always tries to fill that void.

 

experience is the product

Came across this wonderful presentation on product design by Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path. Please take some time to go through it as it will certainly be useful to you at some point in your career.

Here are my notes from the presentation. These points would be much more clear if you see the presentation where Peter gives some very interesting examples to support it,

• Don’t focus on technology or features. Focus on the experience that you want to create and then build a system that gets you there
• Technology as a product design strategy can be used on ly when the technology is disruptively new! e.g. First generation word processors were very difficult to use. You needed to remember many commands in order to work with it effectively. But because they were technologically far superior than the alternative “type writer” of that era, they became popular.
• Once technology becomes standard, we tend to compete on features. And there are numerous examples where competing on features has been taken to the extreme. One such example is Microsoft WORD. A very good example of this phenomenon is VCR. When VCRs first came out, for the first time they allowed people to record live TV. This made them very popular. As years passed by VCR got bloated with features. So much so that people could not even program it anymore. So adding more and more features actually caused the decline in VCR usage. (Then came TiVo that once again revolutionized ease of use when it came to recording TV programs!)

Some take aways from the presentation,

1. Designing from outside in…Christopher Alexander says, to design pathways first put the lawn in place, then see where people actually walk and then add paving!
2. Create an “experience vision” statement. e.g. Palm Pilot vision was,  a. Fits in shirt pocket, b. Syncs seamlessly with PC, c. Fast & easy to use and d. cost less than $299. Concise and clear vision that made Palm design a compelling one.
3. Leverage the System! This one is my most favorite! System as a whole does not get simpler however the experience of using the module of the system become much more enjoyable. e.g. iPod only allows you to do basic things like browse, play, rate audio songs. For everything else such as creating actual playlists you have to use iTunes. Thus Apple simply leveraged the system to remove unnecessary complexity from the everyday use of the product, iPod and the rest is history!

Experience Is The Product

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: petermerholz dconstruct2007)

Changing the world, one light bulb at a time!

Here is an invention that will boggle your mind. These are the new light bulbs that are use virtually no electricity and they last for 50,000 hours. (That is 6 years of continuous operation!)

The fins on the light bulb are actually designed to allow heat to dissipate. These bulbs are designed by the company LightingScience. Each bulb costs over $125 each!!! Before you jump to conclusion that you will never buy such an expensive light bulb, consider the fact that you will save enough electricity in 7-8 months to offset the price. In addition you will NEVER have to replace it! I remember solving industrial engineering stastistical problems that dealt with the cost of changing light bulbs for large companies. Because cost of changing light bulbs is very high, it is actually very routine to change them even when they are not completely worn out. This is a huge wastage! Using one of these bulbs you are virtually eliminating the need to change light bulb ever!

When I look at this new invention from my product management hat, it is such an iconic example of doing new product development. When doing new product development, it is very essential to have a fresh perspective and not hamper your creativity based on what exists today! Only when you avoid the trap of doing something similar to what you know or see around you, then you can create something truly disruptive and revolutionary!

Let me know if you think you would buy this product at this entry price tag. Do you love your planet enough to take the plunge?

Facebook kids on to something big for enterprise?

Facebook co-founder Moskovitz leaves to start group collaboration company

It is a long shot but I would be curious to track what these kids come up with next and how it affects Globally distributed ALM space! These guys could very well come up with the next disruptive phenomenon/paradigm that we so desperately need! And who better to do it than co-founders of Facebook? Click on the link below for the full article or just read the excerpt below

….and the new project requires a company built around it from the ground up, with the goals of efficiency and group collaboration embedded deeply into its DNA from day 1.So we’ve decided to leave Facebook (in about a month) and start a new company, to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite, along with a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web from the ground up.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/05/facebook-co-founder-moskovitz-leaves-to-start-group-collaboration-company/

NASSCOM Product Conclave Conference 2008

I had the pleasure of attending the second annual product conclave conference organized by NASSCOM. This year I was not only an attendee but a speaker too. The conference was held on August 11th and 12th at the Grand Ashok hotel in Bangaluru. This year there was much more participation than last year which was the inception year for product conclave conference.

This conference focuses on indian software product business and brings together luminaries from all known and unknown Indian product companies.

With slowing services sector and increasing VC funding there is lot of interest in software products business. However building a great software product requires a different set of skills and most importantly a different mindset. My speaking topic was centered around the same theme, “Product Development to Product Management”. I had the fortune of sharing the panel with VP of Product Management from Yahoo! India, VP of Product Management from iFlex software and a senior Marketing manager from Rational/IBM India office. I talked about the role of product management and how it gets confused frequently. As software product business takes root here in India, there is great need for educating and dissiminating this information. As such our session was very well attended and got great response. So much so, that I may be helping out NASSCOM further with creating/delivering “product management basics” course in future.

Suhas A. Kelkar
Vice President Product Management

Right way to build brand!

Google named world’s number 1 brand!

Google has been named the world’s number one and most powerful brand for the second year in a row, with an estimated value at $85,057 million. This, according to BrandZ’s top 100 brand ranking for 2008.

If you notice a company such as Nike is coming at #53. This is very surprising to me! I see lot more advertising and marketing done by Nike as compared to Google. These days every sport that you see on TV has Nike sponsorship! This holds true from US athletics to European soccer leagues to the latest Indian Premier League! You do not see any advertisements by Google at sports events, on billboards (except may be in Mountain view CA), or on TV! Despite that it is coming in at #1.

This talks a lot about the popularity of Google and it’s products. If you build the right product that solves right problems, people will notice you! Brand equity you build this way is long lasting and it is the right way to build brand awareness!

-Suhas A. Kelkar
VP Product Management, Digite

this is how buzz words are born…say hello to "synchromesh"

Ever wondered when/where buzz words are born…Recently Ray Ozzie had a keynote speech at the Mix 2008 conference and I was able to spot birth of a new buzzword, “synchromesh”

Ozzie teased the next evolution of his decades-long exploration of synchronization and collaboration, which he referred to as a “seamless mesh”–or what I’ll call “syncromesh”–in his Mix ’08 keynote in Las Vegas:

Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications. Imagine an app platform that’s cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we’ve had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub.

Mark my words, if Microsoft is successful in pushing their agenda, then you will be hearing more and more of the word synchromesh until it will be come part of the Oxford dictionary. Just recently I talked at a conference about SaaS and had made a slide that shows the logical progression of technologies. I guess now I must go back to it and add synchromesh

Firefox 3 five times faster than IE7…wow!

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is 5x faster than IE7, 3x faster than FF2 by ZDNet‘s Ed Burnette — The almost-but-not-quite-final beta of Firefox 3 (FF3 beta 4) is now available for download. The most noticeable improvement is speed. In some tests, it’s three times faster than Firefox 2 (meaning the test completes in 1/3 the time), and a whopping five times faster than IE 7: (Source: Mozilla Links) Other improvements in beta 4 include: Smarter [...]

Project Portfolio Management yields results

I have been involved with PPM domain for quite a few years now. I have seen the very beginnings of the project portfolio management when we had to not only write software that would enable PPM but had to go out and educate customers on the importance of PPM tool. That was the time around 2001-2002 when companies were strapped for cash. Also around the same time, Sarbanes Oaxley was just getting defined and corporate IT folks did not know what changes it really meant for them.

There were just a few players in the PPM domain and many of them simply grew out of their project management, rather than have a vision for top down portfolio management and setting up a PMO practice/processes.

Fast forward to 2008, and finally I am seeing studies that validate the usefulness of a PPM tool. See an in depth article, “ROI study: Product portfolio management yields results” posted to ZDNet.

The entire post on ZDNet is worth reading. But here is the most important section of it,

Key findings from the study include “savings of 6.5% of the average annual IT budget by end of year one and 14% (NPV) over a three year deployment period.” In addition, the PPM software examined:

• Improves the annual average for project timeliness dramatically by 45.2%.
• Reduces IT management time spent on project status reporting by 43.2%, reclaiming 3.8 hours of each manager’s workweek.
• Reduces IT management time spent on IT labor capitalization report by 54.7%, recouping 3.6 hours per report.
• Decreases the time to achieve financial sign-off for new IT projects by 20.4%, or 8.4 days.

Notice that not only it says that PPM tool will give you savings in terms of dollars but it also improves projects delivery by 45%. Sometimes people focus too much on the direct dollar benefits from a PPM tool and they miss out on the benefits such as increasing project timeliness etc.

I am very glad to see such reports coming out which validates my belief in the rigor of having PPM processes and tools in an IT organization.