The Orange Live event had several really great keynote’s with a particular highlight being Peter Sondargaard. A common theme through the keynotes was Social Computing and engaging with both customers and also generation Y as they enter the workforce. As a result Sondargaard pointed out, if you have any policy to block access to sites that encourage the conversation then you need to remove them pretty quickly.

So this almost constant mention of social computing and the importance of the conversation inspired some people to come along and check out the social media team at the event and find out what was happening and how. Several customers called in and asked to speak to people who could help them engage with their customers and we were more than willing to help. We also had a participant who owned the communication channel between his business and his top 35 customers and asked if we could help him engage and take the communication with his top customers to a new level, exciting stuff.

I’m sure we could learn more about social computing and having the 10 external bloggers who’ve links to initiatives such as Amplified, Organic and Media Aces it certainly helped me to expand my horizons as to what can be achieved and how. Maybe next year one of the breakout sessions will be social computing and we’ll get a chance to take the time to explain directly to the Execs present exactly what we’re doing at Orange Business, if you can’t wait till then get in touch or simply leave a comment.

The post a matter of trust in business sparked a few conversations which is awesome, one of the longer discussions was worth turning into a post to continue the conversation online and keep a record of it;

As email slides out of favor it’s being replaced by social computing, generation Y are starting to enter the workplace and we’re faced with a change in our communication behavior. We’re seeing email replaced by IM and microblogging, documents being created collaboratively on wiki’s or gen Y’s equivalent Google Wave. Right now internal tools are often poor relations of newer cloud based tools that gen Y are already using. As we just mentioned, the wiki is a prime example compare it to Google’s Wave product; one does collaborative editing by a sinlge user, one at a time and the other multi-user collaborative editing in real time, using a wiki after Google wave is like going back from the MP3 to the CD.

As result, social computing will break down the barriers between corporations and it’s customers, discussions will take place on blogs, Twitter, in Facebook, in the open which will and should involve collaboration from people outside the organisation.

Lot’s of big brands have engaged in social computing for their benefit, but in order to maintain the relationship, it’s important that the customers trusts the organisation. The example in the blog post, the pizza company, although not the greatest example there’s plenty of better ones, deomostrates that taking part in the conversation with customers can provide a clear benefit to both.

Therefore it must be transparent communication, no hidden agendas, as every fact can be checked quicker and in more depth that the corporate world can imagine. This conversation, this dialogue based on trust will turn customers into advocates for your products, look how many videos there are for products such as the iPhone on YouTube, most if not all are created by people who have a passion for the company and it’s products, not by the manufacturer.

How does this fit if you’re a services business like Orange Business and not a product based business you may ask, as a suggestion, I’d start be exposing the product guys to customers and encourage the conversation so that the new products are anticipated and eagerly awaited and are exactly what customers want and to do all this requires …trust.

photo from Benjamin Ellis

also posted here on Orange Business Live

A keynote from Peter Sondergaard SVP Gatner, ended with the phrase “may the computing force be with you” but spent a great deal of time covering the topic of social computing and trust. In terms of social computing and it’s clearly ‘much more than just adding a Facebook logo to your web site’ was a key message from Gartner, a hugely respected thermometer of trends, was “do not put in place a policy or technology to inhibit this”, those that do will be big losers.

The example of a major Norwegian packaged food manufacturer was used and a little know fact that 18% of Norwegians eat pizza on Christmas eve. The IT department had engaged with its consumers and was talking parts in conversations with them. As a result of engaging with it’s customers a signal was picked up that ‘paprika’ was not liked in many of its pizza products. This signal identified through trusting the IT department to engage led to the development of a product that excludes ‘paprika’. This paprika-less pizza has gone on to be the biggest selling product in the range.

The trend of social computing was the number one trend highlighted by Gartner, the ability to engage the consumer and allow them to contribute to the business is not to be ignored. Technology can enable trust to be managed, revisit behaviors as the world is changing

also posted on the Orange Business Live Blog

#orangelive10

The keynote of Gartner’s SVP, Peter Sondergaard, highlighted how the priorities of business have changed within a short period of time. Gartner identified that in 2009 the top 3 technologies were Virtualisation, Business Inteligence and cloud computing. Looking at the top three in 2010 brings a change in those technologies which are priorities to; Cloud Computing, Advanced Analytics and Client computing.

The first technology not to avoid is Cloud computing, a major technology trend is seeing huge investment, with Gartner expecting that within just a few short years, up to 20% of businesses will own no IT assets, highlighting a major shift to the cloud and managed services. Virtulisation of the client’s environment is becoming a route to cloud computing, so in affect is stepping stone to cloud computing.

Avoiding this second technology is a bad idea, Advanced Analytics. This is allowing businesses to realise that potentially the Meta data they have may be the most valuable asset. Gartner indicates that the current crops of business analysis models are outmoded and need replacing, as unstructured data becomes key data. The credit card business were highlighted as how the meta data they have is allowing them to make business decisions and subsequently offers to consumers not based on spend amounts, but how credit limits can be adjust by life style changes such as divorce even.

The third technology not to avoid is client computing; Peter Sondergaard challenged perceptions with the statement that by 2014 80% of users in western world and affluent users in emerging markets will have a smart phone. This shift to client computing requires businesses to change how they interact not only with it’s consumers but also its employees as they demand access to application to interact with the business via their Smartphone.

also posted on Orange Business Live Blog

We’re just days away now from people getting their hands on Apple’s latest product the iPad, a tablet device or appliance about twice the size of the iPhone. There is speculation that it’ll sell 6M units in 2010 which is a pretty huge number for what essential is a locked down appliance.

So where will all those devices go? Most if not all will go to the same people that (religiously) buy Mac books and Mac book air’s. I guess that most people will buy them to consume media whilst traveling or just sitting on the couch for instance watching episodes of Lost bought from iTunes, but who else could buy them?

We’ve seen the iPhone creep into the Enterprise at the expense of Blackberry (which ironically is creeping into youth culture with it’s built in IM app). How many emails do you now seen in your outlook inbox with the words ‘sent from an iphone’ at the bottom, I see a growing number. There is a view that the iPhone is a consumer device more so than a business supplied corporate handset, but due to it’s ease of use and the size and scope of the  “there’s an app for that” store, we’re seeing it creep in as the power users phone of choice.

The ability of the iPhone to encroach into the enterprise shows that the iPad may well enter markets that it’s not initially aimed at too. Take the Text book market, text books are expensive (or they were when I last bought one!) and they are heavy to carry around. We’re already seeing text book publishers’ work with software companies to bring their content to the iPad. So could we see School, Universities, and educational establishments in general take up the iPad as the device of choice to provide the educational content?

I’m not sure if iPad will creep into the corporate environment as a lot of content creation goes on and at the moment the keyboard is king. However, I can see Apple selling a lot more than 6m iPads over the next few years into a whole host of new markets as it’s an easy to use/manage/upgrade wireless appliance with what looks like a great screen. What does this mean for the Telco’s; it means yet more networked devices requiring a pervasive network and ubiquitous computing creeps ever nearer.

Yesterday Nokia issued a statement indicating that, Nokia Siemens Networks will manage, plan, expand, optimize and provide maintenance services for the Orange UK 2G/3G mobile network for the next five years. An interesting development and not un-expected with the CEO, Tom Alexander coming from an MVNO.

You can read the rest of the press relesease here

Once upon a time, employees had restricted access to the phone. When email arrived, users faced further restrictions- often, you could only email someone in the same company. Many organisations currently place restrictions upon access to Facebook – why?

Our methods of communication are becoming quicker all the time. We started with the letter, moved onto fax, then email, and we are now moving towards IM (and in some extreme cases microblogging applications such as Twitter). Even our news consumption is becoming faster and less centralised through the use of these tools, as we snub news sources such as BBC and CNN in favour of decentralised citizen journalists. (For example, the Hudson plane crash was ‘Twittered’ and pictures were also posted on Twitpic).

As we demand ever faster interaction, traditional methods of communication are used much less frequently- when was the last time you faxed anything, for instance? To some extent even email falls by the wayside in this era of instant messaging. Facebook takes advantage of the need for rapid communication and provides a platform to facilitate this. It allows IM, profiles and groups, along with systems which can invite people to take part in activities, share documents (including pictures) and even host conference calls for free.

I can see huge value in an enterprise tool that allows the employees to build a profile of their skills and interests, and update it with information about current projects. This tool could provide disparate employees with a platform to share pictures and documents and facilitate the formation of communities or teams working on particular tasks. It would allow people to easily find help from others with similar interests, or those who happen to be working on a similar (or worse, duplicate!) project.

Collaboration is one of the keys to success and the required tools are out there. So why aren’t organisations embracing Facebook – or at the least installing an internal version of it? Is it down to the same fears that restricted access to the telephone- perhaps a reluctance to trust employees to use their time and tools judiciously?

Also posted here: Orange Business Live

I listened to some of Leo’s TWiT today, the show with Kevin Mitnick when he talked about his recent experiences at the US boarder.

The points I’ll discuss below, become pretty serious in terms of crossing any board and especially entering the US post 9/11, for employee’s with company issue laptops who frequently travel on business.

There were two points raised in the conversation on TWiT 163 that struck a chord with me, the first was that you can encrypt data on your PC an refuse to provide the password. This was in the context of material protected by NDA’s.

The second point was of material stored on your PC and the question you get asked "is this your machine?" and the ownership or responsibility of the material on the machine.

So in terms of NDA’s,  I have material protected by non-disclosure agreements on my machine and as discussed in the TWiT show, is that if I had to hand over my machine to a customs agent without protecting the data, I could be sued for not protecting the information under the NDA. I don’t think that the NDA’s I’ve signed have an out that I can disclose the information without the threat of legal action if asked by a customs or any other agent of the state.

So I think I need to check out what the NDA’s I’ve signed say and what the companies policy is in crossing boarders with that information on the hard drive.

With the second point, my concern here is that with a work laptop, you can’t 100% guarantee what is on your machine, you just can’t. Your machine sit’s on a corporate LAN, that could have files dropped onto your machine if your firewall isn’t on. Files could also be pushed to your machine from the IT department, not that they would of course, but what if someone wanted to do something malicious. There’s also the sync that some machines do with network drives for backups,  someone could have accidentally synced files to a network drive that you sync too and subsequently get transferred across to your machine without your knowledge.

All this means that you can’t be 100% sure what’s on your work laptop, you don’t own it and you can’t control it, so should you say, when asked that questions "is this machine yours?"  -  "no it’s a machine supplied to me by my employer and I do not have control over the all of the files on it due to my employers IT policy".

I think these are two questions that I need to check my my employer before I cross another boarder, what’s our position on disclosing NDA information to law enforcement agencies and the IT policy for protecting data and recommended response to the question of device ownership, the moral of the story is know your companies policy before traveling and after, having your machine confiscated for 90 days could hamper your productivity.

What’s your position, do you encrypt all the data, remove it from your hard drive and then put a copy in the cloud, how do you deal with crossing the boarder?

I’m a tad late to the party with this one, but as we’ve migrated from Lotus Notes to Exchange/Outlook as our corporate email within Orange Business Services, it’s finally given me a change to try out Xobni. So far it’s pretty neat it’s made a difference while on a call, being able to quickly search for somebody and see all the files we’ve exchanged without having to hunt though the files. That’s a great plus as is the automatic transfering of the email you’re viewing moving to the xobni sidebar when you click on the calendar, it means no more flicking back and forth while you jot down details.

I’ve read the comments that it’s slowed people’s outlook down massively, I can’t say I’ve noticed anything as yet. It’s crashed once when I minimized it, it wouldn’t come back.

On the whole, it’s a good aid to productivity and I’d recomemd people give xobni a try.