Is Your Next Laptop a Smartphone?

The smartphone might not be one's first choice for spreadsheets and documents, but let's face it, everybody has one (in business, anyway, all over the world), and those that have one will buy a new one sometime in the next two years as cellular products and wireless technologies continue their rapid evolution. The level of capability in contemporary smartphones is remarkable and continues to grow.

Smartphones are as powerful as PCs from just a few years ago, with significantly better software, user interfaces, and flexibility. Smartphones won't replace the laptop for typical business users, but over the next few years, many people -- my guess is 12% to 15% of business users -- will be able to leave their laptop at the office and handle essentially all of their mobile computing and communications tasks with a pocket-sized device.

As you might guess, size here is both an advantage and a challenge. Smartphones need to be as small as possible for mobility while still maximizing the size of the keyboard and the display. The keyboard on a smartphone, be it physical or screen-based, is obviously never going to get bigger than is acceptable for the two-thumb typing technique, although I predict a surge in add-on Bluetooth and USB keyboards that can be quite effective for writing longer missives. The display is similarly constrained, although being able to connect (via wireless) to an external display with better resolution -- the TV in one's hotel room, for example -- should become quite popular in the future.

Networking, storage and processing aren't really issues anymore, as tiny devices can have lots of each, and a connection to the Internet addresses any concerns here in the same fashion as for computer users everywhere. A much bigger issue is battery life.

So, you might conclude at this point that there are really no showstoppers with respect to replacing a laptop computer of any form with a smartphone. But, should you conclude as such, you would be ignoring the effect of the culture surrounding the PC: From IT departments to enterprise users to just about every technology user on the planet, the PC is viewed as the mainstay of personal and corporate IT and thus a core requirement. But it is nevertheless very likely that we'll still be carrying both a notebook or Mobile Internet Device and a smartphone for some time -- well into the foreseeable future. I think that my 12% to 15% number above will grow over time, however, as Web services and cloud computing become the popular, if not dominant, model for enterprise IT.

For now the convenience of needing only one tiny device -- again, one that everyone needs to carry anyway -- is so compelling that more progress toward the single-device solution is certain. Personally, as one who lugs way too much technology around every week, I can't wait.

Amazon will be king of the cloud: Mark Shuttleworth

Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has said Amazon will emerge as triumphant in the battle for the cloud.

Shuttleworth told a BT open source event yesterday that Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, or a closely related platform, will become the cloud standard.

If alternative clouds are to compete, he said, they must offer open source implementations and be compatible with the Amazon EC2 platform.

For more, see Shuttleworth: Amazon will win cloud battle on ZDNet UK.

New Simple Cloud Storage API Launched

PHP/Zend, Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace, GoGrid and Nirvanix have launched a new low level cloud API for PHP called the "Simple Cloud API http://www.simplecloud.org/".

The API can best be described as low level storage focused API (An API for other API's). In a sense it's a way to create other higher level programmatic API interfaces such as REST or SOAP using an easy, yet portable PHP programming environment. The Simple API allows you to easily interact with a variety of cloud interfaces including support for File Storage, Document Storage, and Simple Queue services. The Simple Cloud API is not a web service; it is an API that exposes common operations in application services offered by different vendors, making it easier for PHP developers to build ‘cloud native’ applications.

According to the website http://www.simplecloud.org/, "The Simple Cloud API is here to bring cloud technologies to PHP and the PHP philosophy to the cloud. With it, developers can start writing scalable and highly available applications that are still *portable*. If you're looking for code to start playing around with immediately, you'll find the first file storage, document storage, and simple queue interfaces."

Interestingly the goal of API is not be a standard, but instead to foster an open source community that makes it easier for developers to use cloud application services by abstracting insignificant API differences. Another goal of this initiative is to define interfaces to be implemented as a new Zend Framework http://framework.zend.com/ component called ‘Zend_Cloud’. The Zend Framework will provide a repository of php appplication to host code for the Zend_Cloud.

Check out the project at http://www.simplecloud.org

Researchers find a new way to attack the cloud

From: Researchers find a new way to attack the cloud

Amazon and Microsoft have been pushing cloud-computing services as a low-cost way to outsource raw computing power, but the products may introduce new security problems that have yet to be fully explored, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cloud services can save companies money by allowing them to run new applications without having to buy new hardware. Services like Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) host several different operating environments in virtual machines that run on a single computer. This lets Amazon squeeze more computing power out of each server on its network, but it may come at a cost, the researchers say.

In experiments with Amazon’s EC2 they showed that they could pull off some very basic versions of what are known as side-channel attacks. A side-channel attacker looks at indirect information related to the computer—the electromagnetic emanations from screens or keyboards, for example—to determine what is going on in the machine.

The researchers were able to pinpoint the physical server used by programs running on the EC2 cloud and then extract small amounts of data from these programs, by placing their own software there and launching a side-channel attack. Security experts say the attacks developed by the researchers are minor, but they believe side-channel techniques could lead to more serious problems for cloud computing.

In the past, some side-channel attacks have been very successful. In 2001, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, showed how they were able to extract password information from an encrypted SSH (Secure Shell) data stream by performing a statistical analysis of the way keyboard strokes generated traffic on the network.

The UC and MIT researchers weren’t able to achieve anything that sophisticated, but they think their work may open the door to future research in this area. “A virtual machine is not proof against all of the kinds of side-channel attacks that we’ve been hearing about for years,” said Stefan Savage, associate professor with UC San Diego, and one of the authors of the paper.

By looking at the computer’s memory cache, the researchers were able to glean some basic information about when other users on the same machine were using a keyboard, for example to access the computer using an SSH terminal. They believe that by measuring the time between keystrokes they could eventually figure out what is being typed on the machine using the same techniques as the Berkeley researchers.

Virtual machines may do a good job of isolating operating systems and programs from each other, but there is always an opening for these side-channel attacks on systems that share resources, said Alex Stamos, a partner with security consultancy iSEC Partners. “It’s going to be a whole new class of bugs that people are going to have to fix in the next five years.”

His company has worked with a number of clients interested in cloud computing, but only if they can be assured that no one else is sharing the same machine. “I’m guessing the cloud-computing providers are going to be pushed by their clients to be able to provide physical machines.”

Amazon wasn’t quite ready to talk about side-channel attacks Thursday. “We take all security claims very seriously and are aware of this research,” a spokeswoman said. “We are investigating and will post updates to our security center.”

Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook Packs GPS, 3G, HDMI and...Windows

Nokia has finally confirmed its little laptop. Features include an HD-ready 10-inch display, Atom processor, built-in A-GPS (which works with Ovi Maps), Wi-Fi (plus 3G/HSPA option), HDMI, an SD card reader, and 12 hour battery.

The netbook will weigh about 2.75 pounds, and measure slightly more than two centimeters thin. Further details, including the flavor of Windows, specs, and pricing/availability won't be discussed until Nokia World on September 2



The mini-laptop also comes with an HDMI port for HD video out, a front facing camera for video calling, integrated Bluetooth and an easily accessible SD card reader.

Other premium features include the 10-inch glass HD ready display and integrated A-GPS which, working with the Ovi Maps gadget, can pinpoint your position in seconds and open up access for a truly personal maps experience.

The Nokia Booklet 3G also brings a number of other rich Ovi experiences to life, whether its access and playback of millions of tracks through the Nokia Music Store, or using Ovi Suite to sync seamlessly from your Nokia smartphone, to your mini-laptop, to the cloud.

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Six steps to adopting cloud computing services

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is becoming one of the next industry buzz words. Cloud computing overlaps some of the concepts of distributed, grid and utility computing, however it does have its own meaning if contextually used correctly. The conceptual overlap is partly due to technology changes, usages and implementations over the years.

Trends in usage of the terms from Google searches shows Cloud Computing is a relatively new term introduced in the past year. There has also been a decline in general interest of Grid, Utility and Distributed computing. Likely they will be around in usage for quit a while to come. But Cloud computing has become the new buzz word driven largely by marketing and service offerings from big corporate players like Google, IBM and Amazon.

The term cloud computing probably comes from the use of a cloud image to represent the Internet or some large networked environment. Cloud computing is associated with a higher level abstraction of the cloud. Instead of there being data pipes, routers and servers, there are now services. The underlying hardware and software of networking is of course still there but there are now higher level service capabilities available used to build applications. Behind the services are data and compute resources. A user of the service doesn’t necessarily care about how it is implemented, what technologies are used or how it’s managed. Only that there is access to it and has a level of reliability necessary to meet the application requirements.

In essence this is distributed computing. An application is built using the resource from multiple services potentially from multiple locations. At this point, typically you still need to know the endpoint to access the services rather than having the cloud provide you available resources. This is also know as Software as a Service. Behind the service interface is usually a grid of computers to provide the resources. The grid is typically hosted by one company and consists of a homogeneous environment of hardware and software making it easier to support and maintain. (note: my definition of a grid is different from the wikipedia definition, but homogeneous environments in data centers is typically what I have run across). Once you start paying for the services and the resources utilized, well that’s utility computing.

Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource. What goes on in the cloud manages multiple infrastructures across multiple organizations and consists of one or more frameworks overlaid on top of the infrastructures tying them together. Frameworks provide mechanisms for:

• self-healing
  
  
• self monitoring
  
  
• resource registration and discovery
  
  
• service level agreement definitions
  
  
• automatic reconfiguration

The cloud is a virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself. There are of course people resources to keep hardware, operation systems and networking in proper order. But from the perspective of a user or application developer only the cloud is referenced. The Assimilator project is a framework that executes across a heterogeneous environment in a local area network providing a local cloud environment. In the works is the addition of a network overlay to start providing an infrastructure across the Internet to help achieve the goal of true cloud computing.

Steps to adopting cloud computing services

1. Assess IT software assets, then consider putting commodity and standalone applications in the cloud. The IT team should built a chart showing business users which applications they thought were differentiators and which ones they thought were commoditized and explained why applications they viewed as commodities were better suited for cloud services like email for LiveOffice. Standalone applications like HR/benefits and sales analytics were also better suited for the cloud.
   
   
2. Reorganize IT teams according to application functionality rather than brand. To prepare for a virtualized/cloud environment, eliminate application silos such as those for Oracle or Siebel applications. IT thinks their value is associated with an application rather than a skill, so we need to change the mind-set to skills that we want in this new paradigm, like data management, business intelligence and analytics and the ability to do end-to-end business processing rather than skills tied to a particular application.
   
   
3. Get a handle on your internal IT costs. What does email, ERP and clustered storage cost you internally? You need to know this before you can validate what it costs you in the cloud. Engage the finance department from the get-go to validate these costs internally compared with a services model.
   
   
4. To socialize the cloud computing concept around the business, figure out the terminology that business executives and users are familiar with. When we heard that business users were reading The New Age of Innovation and using terms such as R=G for Resources are Global, he started to adopt the same terminology to explain the benefits of the cloud. You need to sync up the vocabulary around the cloud and virtualization with what the business users are hearing about it.
   
   
5. Engage IT staff members by giving them a role in the process. Make testing cloud services a game for IT. pick several cloud applications for IT to test like sales analytics and HR/employee performance management and have no ground rules. Test whatever service on whatever provider you like.
   
   I can tell you that there is no better motivation for IT than to see the CIO/CTO doing it himself.
   
   
6. Engage stakeholders throughout the organization. Information security, legal and finance are just a few of the groups that need to be involved.
   It took us two months to figure out security issues in the cloud -- with a lot of trial an error. The consensus in general is that security is ultimately up to you -- most cloud providers leave security parameters up to the customer, whether they be a need for encryption or beyond.

Cloud security depends on the human element

In a recent survey on cloud computing of 300 corporations worldwide by Information Technology Intelligence Corporation, 38 percent of respondents said that they are unsure about adopting cloud services, and another 47 percent said they are not considering the cloud over the next 12 months. The main reason cited for not using cloud services was security.

Though I am not sure that the numbers are indicative of the entire IT industry, I do agree that security is a concern. And of course, there are a few options that can reduce the security risk, including, in some combination, encryption, VPN, building an ExtraNet, SSL, and HTTPS, depending on the vendor and the type of data you are sending through the cloud. ITIC says 83 percent of survey respondents said they would require "specific guarantees" of the safety of their mission-critical data, and 62 percent would want multiple access paths. These safeguards wouldn't be out of the ordinary. And to make sure all possible protections are in place and satisfactory, a company needs to move slowly when adopting the cloud. A great place to start might be e-mail or CRM data.

Ralph DeFrangesco who teaches security at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. and is currently teaching Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity says, "Putting security aside for a moment, I feel that the cloud offers an excellent recovery option. Think about it: If something were to happen to your facility and you needed to relocate, you could still access your data with just a connection and no recovery effort. This benefit might be the one to convince IT folks who are not ready to place their trust in cloud providers for daily operations. The threat of one type or another of disaster is always present, but keep in mind, as Carl Weinschenk recently wrote, that we are in hurricane season."

The reality is that security is a concern whether you are using the cloud or not. If your company decides that it makes sense to adopt the technology, then put the solution in place along with the proper security measures.

A report published on http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/22/cyber.security/ suggests that instead of new technology the problem was with us – the people – as in us humans. The study suggests that we need more educated smart folks to thwart those evil hackers and prevent attacks.

Andras Robert Szakal in Cloud security depends on the human element says "many of the poorly constructed services, SOA, Cloud or otherwise are the result of poor design and a lack of architectural skill. The challenge here is that high value architects are difficult to grow and often more difficult to retain". He adds, "The fact is that most organizations have created an artificial barrier between IT professionals and business professionals. The line of business professionals, management and executives are more valued than the techies running the IT shop. Some headway has been made in the integration between IT and the business. But for the most part they still exist as separate entities. No wonder the cyber report suggests that prospective high valued cyber security specialists and architects don’t see a future in a cyber security career".

He offers some ideas to address the challenge:

First, ensure these folks have architectural as well as cyber security skills. This will allow them to think in the context of the business and find opportunity to move from IT to a line of business position as their careers grow. Ultimately, the IT teams must be integrated into the business itself. As the report suggests it’s necessary to establish a career path for technologies but more importantly technical career paths must be integrated into the overall career framework of the business.

Is your organization using the cloud? If so, let me know what you are using it for. If not, why not?

10 things about Technology every HR Manager should know

After spending a lot of time working on HR technology, I have collated some of the technology knowledge that every HR Manager should know.

1. The Era of Excel is over, its no more the most Powerful tool.

There was a time when Excel Geeks were highly in demand. Everybody will approach them for a solution. However, with the arrival of softwares like PeopleSoft, where HR can ask the software team to create personalized reports, Excel has been moved to the corner. With the amount of analysis and metrics that appear today, Excel is just insufficient. Added to it is the cost of acquiring MS Office. Open Office and Google Docs have appeared as the free alternatives to Excel. Sharing Excels sheets is fun with Google Docs. Though none of these serves as an alternate to customized HR software.

2. Locally developed softwares are out of fashion.

The technology is growing at such a pace that the small and one-room-run software vendors are unable to infuse the technology and dynamics that world of HR needs. Don't you remember the important updates that you required but your software vendor was unable to do. People are changing, become more tech savvy, blogs are swarming all over – so how can you expect your employees to appreciate your locally developed software. And then there is no need to worry, the latest SaaS technology offers high degree of customization to develop a system meeting your specific needs.

3. Web based Software is the new affordable tool

The huge success of Monster.com, Salesforce, EmpXtrack, SuccessFactors, etc. is enough to prove that the era of web 2.0 has begun. Most of these, especially, EmpXtrack provides updates to the software at the fly, the price of these softwares is unmatched and no need to keep in-house support staff. So why would anybody keep the old, poorly interfaced software in HR. Would you?

4. Books are not the only resource of knowledge

The web 2.0 has changed the way the knowledge was store. Gone are the days when you need to read a complete book to know what you need. There are blogs (like this one), forums, communities where you can interact with people of similar interest and read their articles, opinions and blah blah. The ones that I frequent often are Cite HR, TooStep and Recruitment Blogs.

5. Email is not the only communication tool

The nightmare of writing e-mails and then waiting impatiently for the response is over, and off course of missing an important e-mail id in your list. Thanks to chat software, blogs, SaaS software, twitter, forums – you can send your message to your employees, juniors, seniors seamlessly. Web-based softwares provide employee portals for easy communication of information like News and Events to employees. Use these to make your life better.

6. Virtual Office is no more merely a 'Good Thought'

Its a reality! Employees can work equally well from home using virtual office softwares, where they can share their important files, documents, projects with your team. With the rising cost of travel, why to bother your employee to ask them to travel to office daily, when they can do the same from their home-office.

7. There are freelancers exchange forums to get the job done.

Sometimes your project managers needs an expert to do a urgent job, that is not part of their regular activity. What to do? No matter whatever you did in the past, there are sites that allow freelances and the HR managers to interact. HR managers/ project managers can post their jobs or choose a freelance of their choice to do the job. Like Elance.

8. Job sites are not the only place to find right talent.

There are social sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Ecademy, communities like Orkut, yahoo groups, and blogs etc. where people post their portfolios. Try using these, they are an alternate to the conventional job sites. They are almost free.

9. New Generation employees are very tech savvy – catch up with them

The latest generation of employees is very tech savvy. They play with gadgets, iPods, write blogs, create communities and interact in so many ways. HR needs to catch up with them, else they will find a place that suit their tastes. Given them web based softwares, blogs, and forums to be engaged – it will energize them to use their creativity for the organization.

10. Technology cannot do magic! It is not a replacement for man.

Technology can do wonders but only to the extent of helping people to do their tasks better. It cannot replace the intelligence that man carries with him. Even the best technology cannot replicate the convincing HR manager who can motivate an employee to give his best, understand complex Human problems and provide solutions, show empathy to employees.

HTML5: The OS Killer?

By allowing the Web to become a universal operating system, and making mobile devices more powerful than low-end laptops, HTML5 (also sometimes referred to as Web Applications 1.0) is transforming IT more profoundly than any development since the advent of the Internet. As HTML 5 becomes the widely-adopted standard for authoring on the Web, it will radically transform the IT landscape.

The Web Applications 1.0 (WA1) specification updates HTML, but that’s not all it does. WA1 also defines several application programming interfaces (APIs) that have been de facto standards, and adds new ones. WA1 improves on the abilities to use the web as an application platform by adding things such as document state storage in the browser history, local data storage, offline browsing, drag and drop, copy and paste, undo and redo history, cross document messaging, and more.

Unlike XHTML2, which doesn’t have any support from browser vendors, HTML5 has support from all the major browser vendors except Microsoft.

HTML5 is almost the Holy Grail, offering the ability to run applications regardless of the underlying operating system. While the browser isn't more important than operating system today, Google this week firmly suggested it is only a matter of time.

At its developer conference, Google demonstrated HTML5 applications support inside future versions of its Chrome browser and the future Android 2.0 operating system. Mozilla executives also promised HTML5 support inside the forthcoming Firefox 3.5 browser.

Google demonstrated how HTML5 allows tighter integration of browsers and applications, such as its Google Web Elements. Developers will be able to add applications to web sites by adding only a few lines of HTML5 code, much as they already do with Google Web Elements.

The rate of browser innovation is accelerating, with new browser releases nearly every other month. The progress towards the level of UI functionality found in desktop apps through adoption of HTML 5 features in browsers has been quite rapid. It's also fascinating to see how mobile browsers are in the forefront of the innovation.

The technology is here even if the standards committees haven't caught up. Developers are taking notice of these new features, and aren't waiting for formal approval. That's as it should be. As workers on the web today, we reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.

Support by four major browsers adds up to "rough consensus" in my book. We're seeing running code at Google I/O, and I'd imagine the 4000 developers in attendance will soon be producing a lot more.

Never underestimate the web. We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. What was once thought impossible is now commonplace.

Java was supposed to raise apps above the level of the operating system, offering cross-platform "write once, run everywhere" applications that would break the coupling between an application and a specific operating system. Proponents predicted Windows would become less important with the rise of Java apps.

While Java has accomplished a great deal, it's potential as an OS-killer has not been realized. HTML5 has a better shot.

What does this mean for users?

HTML5 is a standard that is still being developed and is likely to remain so for several years. Its focus on running applications within the browser is an important driver of interest in cloud computing, where applications live somewhere off on the Internet and are delivered by the browser.

The focus of future browsers will shift from "going places" to "doing things." This will be a boon to free operating systems, which will increasingly be able to hide themselves under the browser user interface. While Windows and Mac OSX won't go away overnight, the pressure on them will be to innovate beyond the browser, perhaps through a common set of extensions for HTML5 applications to use.

It is too early to start betting against desktop operating systems from the major vendors. However, it is clear their role and importance is likely to change--and probably diminish--as browsers become dominant in users' lives.

Netbook: Evolving Category?

Laptops are evolving—and forcing the rest of the computer industry to change

A new class of cheaper, smaller netbook computers might upset the IT establishment this year and potentially usher in new players in a hotly competitive market.

Simple, low-cost laptops are not a new idea. There were several abortive attempts to make them in the 1990s, but big computer-makers soon dropped them for fear that they might undermine sales of traditional laptops. In 2005 a charity called One Laptop Per Child designed an ultra-cheap laptop for the developing world. That inspired Asus, a Taiwanese PC-maker, to develop one of its own, called the Eee PC, which it started selling in late 2007 for $250.

The timing was perfect. A few months later, the credit crunch hit. At the same time, Intel started selling its cheap and power-saving new processor chip, called Atom. By the end of 2008, Asus had sold nearly 5m Eees and all its rivals had jumped on the bandwagon. In total, 21m netbooks will ship this year, almost twice the number in 2008 and more than 15% of the entire market for laptops, according to Gartner, a market-research firm.

Yet as netbooks have become more popular, many of them have also become more sophisticated. Asus’s first Eee PC was a puny device with a screen measuring only seven inches (18 centimetres) diagonally, a midget keyboard and flash memory instead of a hard disk. It also ran Linux, a free operating system. But consumers in the rich world wanted more. As a result, most of the new devices on display in early June at Computex, a trade show in Taipei, boasted at least ten-inch screens, full-size keyboards and sizeable hard disks, and they ran Windows XP, an old version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. Many models now go for $600 a pop.

Though netbooks have acquired many frills and mutated into new forms, the theory behind them endures: computers do not need to be stuffed with the latest whizz-bang technology if they have a high-speed connection to the “cloud” of services available online. At Computex, a trade show in Taipei, firms showed devices equipped with WiMAX, a new wireless technology that allows for fast, ubiquitous wireless connections.

It is this combination of connectivity and cloud computing that makes netbooks and their successors so disruptive. Some mobile-network operators now throw in free netbooks if subscribers sign up for a mobile-broadband contract. This will put further pressure on prices, since mobile operators have more bargaining power than individual consumers, although it also opens a huge new distribution channel for computer-makers.

More important, netbooks and similar devices could weaken Microsoft and Intel, which have so far dominated the PC industry and extracted most of the profits. To keep Linux off most netbooks, Microsoft has had to discount Windows XP from $40-45 per copy to $10-15.

Intel, by contrast, has so far mainly benefited from the netbook craze, which has created a huge market for its Atom chip. The firm insists this has neither cannibalised sales of its other chips as much as feared nor put pressure on its lofty margins, since Atom costs less to make. Still, just as with Linux, there is a credible alternative to Atom: processors based on designs by ARM, a British firm, which already power most of the world’s mobile phones. Several Taiwanese PC-makers are working on a netbook-like gadget that would be powered by an ARM chip and run Android, a variety of Linux developed by Google for use on smart-phones.

At Computex, Acer announced that it would use Android together with an Intel chip. Other firms are expected to follow suit. Intel is also pushing another version of Linux, called Moblin. Its long partnership with Microsoft notwithstanding, Intel does not seem to care what operating system netbooks use, provided they contain the firm’s chips.

Netbooks are surging. At first, vendors thought of them as a way to sell cheaper, less powerful alternatives to notebooks, but netbooks have gradually come into their own—and now we're almost to the point where netbooks can be taken as seriously as their larger, weightier brethren.

It seems that netbooks, already hot, may benefit from improved functionality. It is unclear if the gradual improvements represent a new generation or simply incremental improvements as the technology evolves. Regardless, that the category is addressing some of the shortcomings of the past, such as “cramped” keyboards, small screens, slow processors, short battery life and too little memory.

The march of devices from consumers to businesses is occurring in the netbook sector. ADNH Compass, a 17,000-employee caterer in the Middle East decided to give workers Aspire One netbooks instead of full-size laptops. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is that the company’s ERP software manager is in the process of enabling the devices to access SAP applications via 3G wireless. This clearly shows that the netbooks aren't out of their league and are robust enough to support the heavier workloads demanded in business environments. IT managers who formerly scoffed at the idea of replacing laptops with netbooks are taking the concept far more seriously.

The netbook/MID/smartphone/laptop sector is perhaps the most interesting and fun to watch. For one thing, the sour economy means that nothing good is happening in many other sectors.

What do you think? Are netbooks the future? This industry always evolves toward smaller and less expensive. If netbooks can continue to harnass great computing power—as with the Acer AspireRevo—I think there's no stopping them. And that means a lot of PC manufacturers are going to see a lot of upheaval in their business models.

Successful Internet Business Models for SMBs

Technology has played an imperative role in business operations. The advent of internet has given a new methodology to conduct business faster in a cost effective way in a limited time and space. The economic downturn has increased the reliance on IT, and various companies are showing retroflexion.

Since our company, Business Mashups LLc, does web development work for Internet companies and web entrepreneurs, we have gained experience in understanding both the technological and business side of a web site. We believe the economic climate is favorable to companies like ours as we would be able to help most SMBs cut their costs, and become more efficient and help them in focusing on core revenue-generating aspects of their business. We have adopted a very aggressive approach to reach out to SMBs, and help educate them on the buying decision. We have also put a more concerted effort on simple tools that help businesses understand the savings associated with our model, and the associated tactical benefits that help them manage through the uncertainty using our scalable IT platform.

With the increasing capital constraints, most businesses are finding it hard to fund large up-front technology purchases and opt for a recurring cost model instead. The increasing regulation and compliance needs have actively propelled most businesses to make very conscious decisions about their infrastructure, and the outsourced model stands out to its advantages around cost savings, minimal capital expenditure, and flexible IT infrastructure.

How can you rate a successful e-business?

The outward signs of a robust and thriving business are:

1. Revenue increases
   
   
2. Ability to generate profits
   
   
3. Success in creating meaningful alliances
   
   
4. Success in expanding into new markets
   
   
5. Differentiating itself

Existing business models are of many kinds:

• Advertising - banner and direct marketing
  
  
• Subscription sites
  
  
• Customer services
  
  
• Directory services
  
  
• Content providers
  
  
• Product/Service sales

Most successful companies pursue several related but different models concurrently. They defy easy categorization by diversifying revenue streams and becoming hybrids in a cost-efficient way.

ORACLE

This software and service provider entered the digitized world only in 1998, and metamorphosed into a digital pioneer in the span of two years. Innovative products and services and integration of these services have brought them into the forefront of web innovation today.

Products like Biz Online Initiative that deliver simple and complete online services and a host of other tools that customers require in setting up an e-business have made them a one stop shop for e-biz today. Their built-in self-service system for customers, employees and suppliers improved productivity and accuracy and brought down costs by 100's of millions of dollars. Consulting services with major firms like Sun Professional Systems have established their reliability with customers.

Their business formula:

1. Innovative products and packages
   
   
2. Integration of internal processes
   
   
3. Exemplary customer service - a user friendly web site that connects customers easily
   
   
4. Fast online e-business services
   
   
5. Expert consultancy services

Another company in this league is Exodus Communications, an Internet data center that offers a range of web hosting services, bandwidth on demand, security monitoring. Their servers host leading web sites like Yahoo!, e-Bay and Merril Lynch. They allow these firms to deliver content and applications online round the clock without fail.

35% of their revenue comes from a very successful e-business consulting firm whom they have partnered with (Sapient). They are expanding from 19 data centers to 34 data centers this year.

CISCO

Cisco develops switches and routers for Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wireless Area Networks (WAN) and the related software. They have become the worldwide leaders in networking for the Internet today.

90% of their sales are conducted over the Internet. They offer expertise in planning and executing Internet enabled solutions.

The company has grown in the past 7 years with 71 acquisitions to its credit, the latest being its investments in an optical equipment company and speech recognition software makers. Their business model could be termed an acquisition one!

Amazon

The customer is King here! Amazon pampers their customers, tracks their tastes and uses this information to create a unique customer experience. This e-tailer cultivates relationships that lead to customers liking and trusting them. This kind of service surpasses the most brilliant technology in use today. Amazon brought in the world of successful one-to-one marketing, a personal touch from another era.

Recently though, they have suffered heavy losses, proving that any successful e-business strategy will survive provided it is based on a solid brick and mortar foundation, a la Barnes and Noble, another famous online bookseller. Although barnesandnoble.com and Barnes the Noble Ltd. are run separately, a customer tends to associate trust and comfort in a known and established brand.

To summarize, exemplary customer service, successful online advertising and special discounted offers made Amazon and books synonymous terms today.

Understand the risks of cloud computing

Cloud service users need to be vigilant in understanding the risks of data breaches in this new environment.

At the heart of cloud infrastructure is this idea of multi-tenancy and decoupling between specific hardware resources and applications. In the jungle of multi-tenant data, you need to trust the cloud provider that your information will not be exposed.

For their part, companies need to be vigilant, for instance about how passwords are assigned, protected and changed. Cloud service providers typically work with a number of third parties, and customers are advised to gain information about those companies which could potentially access their data.

An important measure of security often overlooked by companies is how much downtime a cloud service provider experiences. He recommends that companies ask to see service providers' reliability reports to determine whether these meet the requirements of the business. Exception monitoring systems is another important area which companies should ask their service providers about.

An important consideration for cloud service customers, especially those responsible for highly sensitive data, is to find out about the hosting company used by the provider and if possible seek an independent audit of their security status.

Best practice for companies in the cloud

• Inquire about exception monitoring systems
  
  
• Be vigilant around updates and making sure that staff don't suddenly gain access privileges they're not supposed to.
  
  
• Ask where the data is kept and inquire as to the details of data protection laws in the relevant jurisdictions.
  
  
• Seek an independent security audit of the host.
  
  
• Find out which third parties the company deals with and whether they are able to access your data.
  
  
• Be careful to develop good policies around passwords; how they are created, protected and changed.
  
  
• Look into availability guarantees and penalties.
  
  
• Find out whether the cloud provider will accommodate your own security policies.

Is VMware The New Salesforce.com?

Salesforce.com is more than simply the market leader for software-as-a-service (SaaS). While others (notably NetSuite) came to market sooner, Salesforce.com was the first company to successfully sell the idea of hosting software in its own data centers and delivering it as a service via the Internet on any kind of scale.

It did this by becoming the most vocal proponent of SaaS, and in so doing became arguably the biggest pole around which other SaaS vendors organized themselves.

VMware is in a similar position to where Salesforce.com found itself three or four years ago. It is the most recognized name in the industry, enjoys the largest market share, and has taken it upon itself to vaunt the virtues of the technology, which promises to lower customers’ power and hardware costs by replacing physical servers with virtual ones.

Like with Salesforce in those early days of SaaS, there is very little difference between talking up the virtues of virtualization and talking up the virtues of VMware. In the process, it is also helping niche vendors like Parallels, which specializes in virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).

There is a critical distinction, however, between the respective standard-bearers. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, tilted against the very idea of traditional on-premise software (even proclaiming the “death of software“), but didn’t have to worry about a huge rival breathing down his neck.

His enemies were either established software vendors like Microsoft, which tried to deride the idea of SaaS, or the likes of SAP and Oracle, which offered hybrid versions but were years behind in terms of producing code that could support reliable cloud-based services.

VMware, on the other hand, has long been aware that Microsoft was looming, despite Redmond’s setbacks with bringing Hyper-V to market on time.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Microsoft will become a significant player soon, and market research firm Gartner suggests it may even overcome VMware’s lead within five years.

VMware is using its head start by extending the use of virtualization all the way up the hardware stack, in many cases using partners to add expertise it doesn’t own.

Also like Salesforce.com, which created a business platform called the AppExchange to provide a venue for companies to sell complementary software service offerings, VMware is creating an ecosystem through alliances with the likes of Cisco and Intel that allow it round out its offering.

There is one important difference between them, however.

Companies that want to integrate their applications seamlessly with Salesforce.com’s platform have to develop programs using the company’s proprietary Apex programming language. Salesforce claims it needed to create Apex in order to improve its customers’ ability to customize their applications, but another consequence–whether intended or not–is that once customers build applications using Apex, they are less likely to defect to rival SaaS vendors where Apex is useless.

VMware, on the other hand, has committed to using standards-based technology to make it easier for potential partners to work with it.

This past week has seen rivalries in the space intensify, as VMware announced deals with Cisco and Intel, which Microsoft ally Citrix made news of its own by announcing that it would make its XenServer virtualization technology free of charge.

As the two companies start to lock horns in earnest, it remains to be seen whether VMware continues along a path of openness or succumbs to the temptation of circling the wagons by developing proprietary technology to lock in its customers.