Category Archives: Technology

Transparent Technology – 5 companies that succeed by hiding away!


A couple of week’s ago I finished work, poured a glass of wine and settled down to watch the livestream from Google Atmosphere which was just starting in Mountain View.  Google host the annual event and invite leading CIO’s to understand what Google is up to, and to build credibility that this is not just a search engine – this is a serious enterprise technology company.

I had tuned in because I wanted to see Dave Girouard presenting.  Dave is VP of Product Management and has been a driving force behind the Google Apps suite.

You can see the presentation below, but one comment really stuck with me – and that was about transparent technology.  You can jump right to it at 10 minutes 20 seconds in.  He relates a story of a carpenter doing some work in his kitchen.  He’s chatting with the carpenter and asks him why he uses one tool over another.

The carpenter replies that with the better tool he’s only thinking about the wood, whereas with the worse tool he is thinking about what’s in his hand.  Dave suggests that it should be the same with technology – you want a specific result, and any technology that you have to think about to get it is doing something wrong.

It got me thinking about technologies that I’ve experienced that have really done well at this:

MessageLabs: I spent 10 years working at MessageLabs, a pioneer in cloud based email security.  The service has many millions of users on it and they all receive clean email into their inbox.  As a user you have no interaction with the service which makes a massive improvement on having to update security software on your laptop every week.

Skype: My wife is South African and until we got Skype we’d have some pretty expensive phone calls for her to catch up with her mum every week.  Then we moved onto Skype and got the double benefit of video and no call charges.  It’s so easy to use that as far as we are concerned we’re just looking at a window into South Africa even though there is so much complexity in the background.

Amazon: How many times have you bought a book on Amazon even before you’ve really made your mind up?!  One click ordering makes the purchasing process so simple, and combined with delivery to your Kindle you are reading in seconds from when you thought “I’m going to buy a book”

Google Chrome:  This is my browser of choice, and primarily because there is nothing to it – it is so lightweight compared to my previous experiences of browsers – the focus is all on the content that you want to look at.

These are a few of my thoughts on transparent technologies.  What technologies do you love because they are not visible?  What products are the opposite and make you spend time working out how to use them rather than what your trying to achieve?

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New Preview Pane Lab in GMail


This post forms part of my regular Friday Feature series where I look at some cool features in Salesforce or Google Apps that you might not be using but could help your day.

Yesterday Google released a new Lab in GMail – Preview Pane.  If you remember your use of Outlook (or if you still use Outlook) then you’ll be familiar with the reading pane – being able to view your email as you scan down your inbox without having to open each one to see which is the one you are looking for.

To enable the Preview Pane just click the gear icon at the top right, select Labs (if your Administrator has enabled them) and then search for Preview Pane in the search box.  Select Enable and then Save.

Enable GMail Preview Pane Lab

Enable Preview Pane in Labs

 

You can then decide whether to have your Preview Pane visible on the right of your screen or below your inbox.

Preview Pane in GMail

Select where you want the Preview Pane to appear

 

All well and good you might say, and a feature that Outlook has had for years.  For me though it takes up too much screen real-estate and although I can drag the Preview Pane to reduce its proportion, I feel it clutters my screen..  I’ve had a play around and have now removed the Lab, rolling back to my preferred solution which is the Sneak Peek Lab.  This enables you to right click (two finger tap on a Mac) and bring up a preview of that email when you need and without having to give up all that screen space.

Sneak Peek in GMail

Sneak Peek saves screen space

 

The other Lab that reduces the need for a Preview Pane is Auto Advance.  This Lab enables you to open up your first email in the morning full screen, and then hit Archive once you’ve read it, automatically opening up the next one.  I for one receive lots of emails that I have asked for, but don’t necessarily need action on my part.  Auto Advance allows me to power through my email and clear up my inbox for the day ahead – so for my way of working I don’t need the addition of the Preview Pane.

GMail Auto Advance

Power through your inbox!

 

Have you tried out any of these Labs?  Which do you prefer?

I hope you’ve found this Friday Feature useful, if so, please subscribe in the sidebar and share with your network.  I’d love to know your comments in the box below.

Friday Feature: Inbox Zero in 30 Seconds with GMail


On Twitter I often see comments like “What a day – finally reached Inbox Zero!” – not the best way to spend a Saturday!

These tweets have often confused me. I’m a keen user of GMail so when an email drops off the first page (about email 40) then it disappears from view never to trouble me again unless I want to find it. This has served me well, alongside Priority Inbox that picks out the important emails, leaving the newsletters and Twitter updates to gradually drop off the page during the day.

My only niggle was my unread Emails number – I’d used a Lab in GMail to remove the unread number from my Inbox, but in Chrome, and on my iPhone the number grew ever higher. Earlier this week I hit 3000 unread emails, and when speaking to others I realised this might really stress some people out. I wasn’t worried because I knew that these were not important unread emails, but nevertheless I resolved to get to inbox zero.

I for one did not expect to reach Inbox zero in 30 seconds!

Step 1: In GMail type a filter such as in:inbox before:2011/03/25

GMail Create your filter

Create your filter

 

Step 2: Select All

GMail Inbox Zero

Select Al

Step 3: Select All Conversations

GMail Inbox Zero

Select All Conversations

Step 4: Archive!

GMail Inbox Zero

And hit Archive!

All that was left for me to do was have a look at the previous few day’s emails and action them and Archive. Within 30 seconds I had reduced over 3000 unread emails in my inbox to zero.

You might panic! ”But where did all the emails go – how can you do that?!” All Archiving does is remove the Inbox label from an Email. All week I have been happily accessing emails from way back just as I did before – by using the search box. But my inbox itself is left just for emails I need to action. Everything else gets archived the moment I have read (or not read) it.

When I used Outlook in a Corporate environment the software asked me to make decisions like which emails to delete, which folder to put an email into, whether I wanted to Auto Archive, and into which .pst should the email go. If you had asked me to drag out an email from 2 years ago I might have spent hours trawling .pst files and still not found it. I remember those emails – “Your Exchange Folder is full – please delete emails to continue sending”.

I haven’t deleted a single email since I started using Google Apps and check out how close I am to the limit:

GMail Inbox Zero

So far away from the limit!

At this rate I could continue clocking up email for 33 years before I needed to delete a single one.

That is Inbox Zero without losing a single email!

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5 integrations I’d like to see between Salesforce and Google Apps


Google Apps Logo

As a first time visitor to Dreamforce this year I am really excited to see Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will be making the Thursday afternoon Keynote.  For me Salesforce and Google are two of the most innovotive and exciting Cloud companies, and the potential for them to work closer together is really positive.

Today there are some neat integrations on both the Google Apps side, and the Google Adwords side.  You can track your Pay per Click campaign against actual revenues, and you can email from GMail by clicking on contacts within Salesforce.

Although I hardly think Eric will use his keynote to announce new integrations, here are a few I would love to see.

Native Calendar Sync

Although this was featured on the Salesforce.com site I am not sure it ever really existed.  The main contender is an AppExchange solution from Appirio.  Whilst this works well it does require maintaining passwords for both systems in Appirio Calendar Sync.  I’d love to see the ability to add events directly to my Google Calendar, and then choose which ones that are business related that I want to sync back to Salesforce.  For me the Google Calendar interface is really simple to use when creating invites and I’d prefer to do it that way.

In addition, if you do use Salesforce for invitations, currently it only provides the option to Add to Outlook.  Not very helpful if your recipient is on Google Apps!

GMail Send and add to Salesforce

I have a Google Contact called “Add to Salesforce” with my Email to Salesforce as the address.  I just BCC this contact whenever I am emailing a Salesforce Lead or Contact.  Simple.  But it would be nice to have a Lab that could be enabled giving me a “Send and Add to Salesforce” option to save me a couple of clicks.

GMail Salesforce Contextual Gadget

It would be really useful to have a Gadget/Widget that appears alongside or within emails that allows me to add a particular inbound email into Salesforce.  I’m assuming this would just be the single email and not the entire conversation.  At the moment I have to forward and inbound email to my “Add to Salesforce” contact.  Not too onerous, but it could be better.

Within this gadget we could see relavent information for that Contact or Lead – perhaps their phone number, value of open opportunities, open cases, lead status?  Anything that helps users to have relavent information served up in the system they are already using is valuable.

Task syncing

I already have a “NewVoiceMedia” tasks list in Google, so it would be cool if this synced tasks that I create in Salesforce.  As I tick them off in Google this could be replicated back to Salesforce.

Chatter/Google Chat integration

I love Chatter.  I love asking someone a question of someone, and then having others help out with the answer.  It would be great to have Google Chat presence enabled within the Chatter feed, so I could quickly fire up a chat session to get more detail from someone that has responded.  Perhaps there could even be the option to add that chat to the Chatter feed if it was relevant.

Summary

I would love to see these two businesses get closer over the coming months, but in the meantime there are a host of partners that are developing cool solutions to plug these gaps.  Take a look at Cirrus Insight who are due to launch soon and seem to have the GMail Gadget nailed.  I can’t wait to see it in action.

Are there any other integrations that would help you to work better?  Perhaps integrating Google Forms instead of Surveyforce, or exposing Dashboards in Google Sites?

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Some thoughts on “Where have all the good Admins gone?”


Over the weekend I read a great blog post by JP Seabury entitled “Where have all the good Admins gone?”  JP picks up on an interesting recent trend where some of the top Salesforce Admins have left their roles at companies that use Salesforce and moved across to consultancies that implement Salesforce.

I read quite a few blog posts each week, and normally I’ll find something interesting and move on – but this post has had me thinking about it for five days.  And I think its because I have two conflicting opinions about what it means.

It makes me sad.

Lets’ start with the downside!  Those of us in the Salesforce eco-system are passionate about the company, the product, and the possibilities for changing the way that a business functions.  There is huge input into the development of new features and we look forward to each release and feel proud to deliver these new tools into the business.  This is not just a ‘bit of IT’ – this is improving the way we run an entire Company.

So it is sad when the Companies that are using Salesforce cannot keep up with the pace of innovation.  For years businesses have complained that Enterprise software moves too slowly, that it doesn’t listen to customers, that its too difficult and costly to upgrade.  Well here is a firehose of development and some businesses can’t handle it.

I feel sad for Admins who see Salesforce advancing at a rapid rate, and yet their employer will not implement best practice and push Salesforce across their business (into Service, into Finance etc).  By definition you are falling behind and it will be even harder to catch up.  This has to get great Admins thinking about their options.

It makes me happy.

The post makes me happy because it reminds me of the first time I saw a Salesforce event broadcast live on the internet – Cloudforce New York just over 12 months ago.  Peter Coffee was interviewing people in front of a bustling crowd, Kings of Leon was playing loudly in the background, and then on comes Marc Benioff to cheers.  It was more rock concert than tech event.  I was sold.  I was bought into the culture and the community that Salesforce is building.

Whoever I have spoken to since then that has something to do with Salesforce, either as a customer, a partner, or developer has this magical dotted line into Salesforce.  Although they might work for their employer they feel part of the Salesforce community.   This is especially prevalent on Twitter, where Admins from across the globe use the hashtag #askforce to ask and answer questions from the each other. It’s easy to see that many in the Salesforce community have ‘gone native’.

Its only natural therefore that people want to get closer to this exciting, fast paced, community driven business and to spend time innovating with this platform every day instead of having to fight to release the smallest of changes.

I can’t believe that many people that implemented Sage, or Navision for their employer said “this is so awesome, I want to build my life around it.”

To see what I mean – check out Darth Garry @darthgarry getting ready for this year’s Dreamforce!

In Summary

I’m an optimist, so I’ll come down on the side of this being a positive trend.  Getting these great people to be able to touch more businesses, and spread the Salesforce message wider than they might have been able too before is a great thing.  It is exciting that this trend exists as it shows that implementation partners are bringing in experience which is something you cannot train in a week.  Customers will benefit, and the original employers can always hire them back in when needed!

Do you think this is a positive trend?  Have you experienced it in another industry or with another vendor?

I hope you have enjoyed this, and the JP Seabury’s original post.  If you have then please subscribe to the blog and share with your network.

How can supermarkets help you sell cloud to your clients?


Waitrose LogoIn this post I’ll explain how anyone selling cloud solutions can use real-life stories to help their clients get over the fear of the unknown.

Change isn’t easy.  No-one likes to admit to themselves, or others, that they don’t understand something.

Here in the UK we have a supermarket called Waitrose.  When you walk in, on one side you will see a big wall of Quick Check handsets.  People that know what they are doing go up to the wall, do something, and then go off shopping.

For years I’ve looked at the wall of Quick Checks.  Thought about it for a second.  And then decided that I’ve used shops all my life.  I know how they work.  I pick up the food.  I go to the till.  I put my food on the conveyor.  They scan them.  I pay.  I put the food in a bag and go home.

Why mess with the routine?

Those of you with kids will know that they don’t respect the relaxed shopping routine.  We have three kids under three.  They don’t get some basic supermarket concepts:

    • Browsing
    • Don’t touch anything
    • Don’t run away
    • Leave what is in the trolley in the trolley
    • Don’t cry
    • Don’t embarrass Mummy and Daddy

Taking three kids around the store can be a really testing experience and my poor wife has recently reached the end of her tether. So a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and decided to investigate Quick Check.

I went to the information desk, “Hello, I’m a numpty.  Can you tell me how Quick Check works?”

The really nice lady set me up on the system by swiping a bank card and taking my details, and explained that now when I come in the store I just swipe my card on the wall, and a Quick Check scanner will light up.  Take it, scan your shopping as you go round, and at the end come to the information desk, they will download your shopping and you pay for it.  No need to take your shopping out of your trolley and go through the till.

Waitrose Quick Check

The Wall of Quick Check!

That weekend we popped into Waitrose, picked up our scanner, and started scanning our items straight into the bags in our trolley.  Woo Hoo!  The kids loved being involved – almost as much as I did!  The scanner flashes up any offers so you don’t miss anything, and keeps a running total of what you’re spending so there are no surprises.

This is all great, but the killer feature is once you have a stacked trolley.  Instead of queuing for a till and then unloading everything you’ve just bought, scanning it, and repacking it (normally a 15-20 minute exercise and one that sends the kids over the edge) you just go to the information desk (no queue) where the nice lady asks if you had any issues, downloads your shopping from the scanner, and takes your payment.

It’s like flying First Class.  You look across at the lines of queuing, unpacking, scanning, packing people and quietly smile to yourself.  Why did it take so long for me to ask?!

Why am I spending so much time telling you about my shopping habits?

Because the number 1 reason I hear from businesses about why they wouldn’t use cloud solutions is because they fear the unknown (although they will bundle this up as security and connectivity concerns)

I hear things like:

We don’t want Google Apps because everyone knows how to use Microsoft Office.  We use Excel, we use Outlook.  Our customers use Word.  Our partners want Powerpoint Presentations.

We won’t use Xero because my accountant uses Sage and that is what we use.

We don’t need Salesforce because all we need is an address book for our contacts.

Learning something new does not display weakness.  It shows that you want to drive your business forward and give your employees, clients and partners access to the best systems available.

Action Points

As a Cloud sales or implementation partner I would recommend coming up with your own stories of when learning something made you feel uncomfortable, but ultimately left you in a much better situation:

    • Learning to drive
    • Learning chess
    • Learning a language
    • Learning a musical instrument

Then, whenever you come across individuals in your clients that are blocking progress I’d recommend using your story as an analogy for a migration to the cloud.  I’m using my Quick Check story and it really relaxes the conversation and gives your client permission to say “OK, I’m nervous because I don’t understand.”

I hope you have found this week’s post fun and useful.  I’d love to hear your stories, and the responses that you get back from clients.

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New features for GMail and Google Calendar


Yesterday saw a host of new features released into the full version of GMail and Google Calendar.

If you use GMail you may or may not be aware of Labs.  You can access Labs (if your administrator has given you access) in your GMail settings page.  Labs is a series of over 50 features that are not quite ready for mainstream but can provide great additional functionality.

It enables Google to test out new features, iron out any kinks, and get feedback from the community on what is popular and should be developed further, and what doesn’t fly and should be retired.

Yesterday three GMail Labs made it into the limelight and were promoted to the full version, alongside some great new features for Google Calendar.

Superstars

This was a Lab I hadn’t deployed yet and so I enjoyed testing it out yesterday.  You’ve always been able to Star a conversation and in conjunction with Priority Inbox keep it in full view until you’ve dealt with it.

GMail Superstars

Choose your stars!

Superstars gives you access to 12 possible icons, and you can choose which of those to be available.  Once you’ve made your selection you just cycle through them in your inbox to Star up your messages.  You might have one for Follow-Up, one for re-read and one for forwarding perhaps.

Nested Labels

GMail Nested Labels

Simple nesting

Labels rock.  The ability to label a conversation with multiple labels is a real time saver for me.  I shudder when I think back to the folder structure in Outlook and trying to remember where I put an email 6 months earlier.  But once you’ve been using GMail for a while your list of Labels can become quite extensive.  Nested Labels gives you the ability to create a hierarchy of labels, asking you for any new labels whether you want to ‘nest’ it under an existing one.

Speedy Meetings

Google Calendar also received a couple of neat additions yesterday, and a great example of how Google is business led, and not just a technology solution.

You can now change the default length of your meeting – so if you spend a lot of time in short 15 minute meetings then set this as the default.  It saves you precious time whenever you schedule a new meeting.

Google Calendar Speedy Meetings

Get to your next meeting on time..

You can also enable “Speedy Meetings”.  If you are constantly booking back to back meetings, then Speedy Meetings will auto-shorten 30 minute meetings to 25 minutes, 60 minute meetings to 50 minutes and so on, giving you precious time to prepare for your next meeting.  For me I love what Speedy Meetings says about Google Apps.  It says that they have a sense of humour, it says that they are thinking about users and not just technology.  It says that crazy ideas get into production.  I love that and can’t wait to see what else comes out the pipeline.

If you are a Google Apps user, or are considering using Google Apps, then I would recommend subscribing to the Google Apps update blog.  It gives you a great insight into the pace of development from this team and helps ensure you and your team are using the new features that get released each week.

I hope you have enjoyed this post, I appreciate any comments or questions you have.

Google Apps for Education – 3 ways Google is improving the learning experience


In this guest post, Zoe Ross, founder of DoDigital and Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer, discusses how Google Apps is being used in schools and colleges throughout the UK.

I’m delighted to have been asked to write this guest blog post in which I’ll discuss some of the ways in which Google Apps for Education is being used in schools and colleges to enhance teaching and learning. From giving students new and safe ways to share their work, to increasing communication between staff and reaching out to the community, Google Apps for Education has something for every educational organisation!

Increasing collaboration and communication amongst students.

There are many ways in which Google Apps encourages students to work together. My favourite tool from the Apps suite continues to be Google Docs which allows students to work on one document in real time. This means, if desired, an entire class can collaborate on one document. In Phil Bagge’s primary class, his pupils conduct cooling experiments, enter their data on one spreadsheet and then undertake analysis as a whole class using the built in graphing tools.

Add into the mix the in-built chat facility when working on a document and you have a really powerful way that pupils can quickly and easily collaborate. In my own, and other teachers’ experience, once students have got over the initial novelty of the ability to send instant messages and work on the same document at once in Google docs, they generally use it sensibly.

Subsequently, it can have an incredibly positive impact on the way they think about and self-assess their work as shown in Oliver Quinlan’s class. However, as James Mitchie’s experiences illustrate, even with the best of intentions, collaboration in this way is a new concept for students and takes time and careful planning to work effectively.

Another great way of increasing student collaboration is through a shared calendar on which they input their birthdays and other important dates. Responsibility for this can be shared amongst the entire class, or one or two pupils each half-term. Shared calendars are also a great way for schools to increase communication with parents.

Encouraging Parental Engagement

The ability to share and collaborate on multiple calendars means that schools can easily share important dates with parents. The calendar can be embedded into the school website, or another site, along with blogs, You Tube channels and other useful links as Helen Morgan has done in her department.

Google Sites are a very simple web design tool for children to use and Ian Addison’s pupils have been creating their own websites to share information about their local area. Many schools are also starting to use Google Apps instead of expensive virtual learning environments and Kevin McLaughlin outlines the process he went through to do just that here.
Furthermore, Google forms are also a superb way to find out what parents are thinking and collect anything from feedback on the school website to preferences for appointment times at parents’ evenings. The beauty of course with forms, other than the ease with which they can be created and shared via email or embedded into a website, is that the results are automatically collated into a spreadsheet, complete with timestamp. It is therefore hugely beneficial for schools who have been collecting such information via paper forms. Google includes some good instructions to using forms here.

Increase Teacher Productivity

Forms can also be used in many ways, to collect data and opinions and saving teachers time which they can then use to focus on teaching. There are some fantastic ideas from teachers all over the World in Tom Barrett’s fantastic ‘Interesting Ways’ series. Another great, time-saving way of using forms is to create self-grading quizzes for pupils. A detailed tutorial of how to do this is here.

Moreover, communication and collaboration between staff becomes easier using Google Apps. Sharing departmental or administrative documents is simple and they can be worked on by multiple staff simultaneously meaning less time spent on administration and more time for teaching.

Similarly, the ability to share calendars with different groups allows senior managers and departments to have their own shared calendars which makes arranging meetings or checking when people are available very straightforward. A school can also set up a room, or laptop trolly as a resource, making booking that room or trolley very simple and one less administrative task for someone to have to manage. Reminders can be sent via email, popups or text message, making life easier for busy teachers.

Indeed, the ability to access email, documents & all information from home & any device with internet connection means staff can access their work from anywhere and at anytime, if they choose to do so, and being able to publish calendar events directly to twitter is fantastic for a school that is trying to increase communication with parents. Danny Silva shows you how here.
Although I have really only been able to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with Google Apps for Education in this post, I hope I have shared with you how the Apps suite is offering great collaboration and communication opportunities for students, staff and parents alike. Put simply, Google Apps has real scope to enhance teaching and learning in any educational organisation. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to Go Google!

Zoe Ross is founder of DoDigital, a social enterprise which promotes the creative use of technology in education. A ICT teacher, Zoe is a Google Certified Trainer and together with other Google Certified Teachers is running a Google Apps for Education workshop on 8th June in London.

Cars didn’t always look like this! What can Technology learn from Motoring history?


I’m no petrol head.  I potter along enjoying the view with my wife berating me for driving so slowly.  I’ve only ever had one speeding ticket, and that was for 36 miles an hour in a 30.  When I buy a car I kick the tyres and look under the bonnet thinking ‘ooh, nice and clean!’

That said, I am an avid watcher of Top Gear.  I look forward to every new series, its a truly engaging programme – entertainment rather than pure motoring.  Its a perfect way to end a weekend on a Sunday night.

A year or so ago Top Gear did a feature on the evolution of the basic layout of a car.  Today if you buy a car in the US, Europe, or Asia it has essentially the same layout (although this may be mirrored).  Four wheels.  Gear stick in the middle. A key to start. Two or three pedals depending on manual or automatic.  This layout has been beneficial for drivers, who can jump into any car and get driving, and for the profitability of motor manufacturers who have been able to design two versions (left and right hand drive) and sell them across the globe.

Benz Patent-Motorwagen

Cars started out looking very different!

But cars didn’t always look like this.  As you view the feature you will see that the first car in 1896 was the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.  This vehicle looked very different, with tiller steering like you would get on a canal boat, and one front wheel.

In 1899 Royal Enfield, who are famously known for their motorcycles, developed a quadricycle – essentially a quad-bike which took on more of the form of today’s cars.

The design was tweaked and played with over the next 9 years, and it was in 1908 that the automobile went mass market.  The Ford Model-T was released as the first affordable car for the middle classes.  At the end of its production run in 1927 half the cars in the world were Model-T’s.  You would imagine that a market share of that size would have finally tied down the layout of cars for ever.  But market domination did not necessarily result from the best design.

As Jeremy Clarkson demonstrates in the video, in order to get going you need to depress the accelerator on the steering wheel, release the handbrake, and then press down on a heavy clutch pedal.  To keep going you need to keep this heavy clutch pedal depressed, and the only way to release it is to move up into top gear – and travel at 40mph, on wooden wheels with no proper roads.  Hair raising stuff!

And so despite the Model-T dominating the market, other designers went back to the drawing board, and reinvented the car.  In 1916 the Cadillac Type 53 was released.  The first car that had the familiar layout of today – a key start, a gear stick in the middle, and three pedals.  Although the Cadillac did not become a mass-market product, it’s design was picked up across the world and was the inspiration for the Austin 7 which became one of the most popular cars produced for the British market.

What can Technology learn from Automobile history?

Ford Model-T

Market domination doesn’t always mean better design

It is very easy for business owners to look around and think that market domination means the same thing as better design.  Microsoft is everywhere.  Most businesses use Microsoft Exchange.  Individuals use terms like Excel when they mean spreadsheet, or Powerpoint when they mean presentation.  If it is good enough for everyone else then it must be the right decision for us.  But the Ford Model-T shows us that the first product to go mass market is not necessarily the best design for the long run.

Innovative business owners should look at their own business processes first and then work back to the individual solutions – whether on-premise, or Cloud based, and make an assessment of what will help their business grow faster.  Backing the market leader blindly may end up being the more risky decision.

Fast forward 20 years and you can imagine your children or grandchildren sitting in front of the television on a Sunday night watching Tech Gear, with Jeremy Clarkson junior explaining ”In the 2000′s people used to send ‘attachments’.  This was were you took a copy of your sensitive data, made a copy of it, and then sent it outside of your network with no further control.  I know!  That is what they used to do!”

“And get this – if they wanted to have fifteen people add information into the same spreadsheet, they used to have to send it around each person, or worse still put it on a shared drive and arrange for each of them to go in one by one! Crazy!”

I hope you have enjoyed this post, and found it educational and entertaining!  If so, please feel free to share with your network.

The curious case of Microsoft, Google and the Giraffe’s neck.


Richard Dawkins is perhaps one of the most famous atheists, with his popular books, including The God Delusion becoming best sellers over recent years.  Last year he featured in a UK TV series called Inside Nature’s Giants in which a range of experts from numerous fields dissected some of our largest animals, from the Whale, to the Elephant, and also including a Giraffe.

The giraffe’s neck has intrigued man ever since the species was first discovered – how did it get so long?  Depending on your attitude to religion and evolutionary theory it was either created that way, or it has evolved over many, many years.

Richard Dawkins featured on the programme to help dissect the giraffe’s neck and demonstrate why he believes in evolutionary theory.  The laryngeal nerve supplies motor function and sensation to the larynx (the voice box).  It takes a slightly roundabout route going down the neck to the thorax, and then travelling back up to the larynx.  In most animals therefore it doesn’t have a huge distance to travel.

However, in Giraffe’s the laryngeal nerve travels a very long way, as the nerve leaves the brain, and goes all the way down to the bottom of the neck and then all the way back up again to the larynx – a distance of many metres.

Giraffe's Neck

Giraffe’s are like Microsoft!

Richard Dawkins’ assertion is that any intelligent design would have just drawn a short line from A to B.  Only evolution, taking place in very small steps, over many thousands of years would have gradually lengthened the neck, along with the nerve inside it – unable to see that the nerve itself should remain as a short direct link.

I see huge similarities with the technology industry today, as the massive Enterprises of the past decade try and evolve their business model into the Cloud.  Microsoft declare that “We’re all in the Cloud”.

In my mind I’m seeing the Giraffe’s neck.  As the market has developed, evolution has added more products to the Microsoft portfolio.  More features in each product, more complexity for end users, more cost for clients.

When I speak to customers of all sizes about Google Apps – more often than not I hear “Microsoft can do that.”, “We just VPN in”, “We’re deploying Sharepoint”, “We use Outlook Web Access”, “We’re looking at Microsoft Dynamics and BPOS”.

The evolutionary journey has meant that it is possible to get from A to B with traditional software providers.  At some point though business owners and their IT teams need to take a step back and ask “Is there a better, quicker, cheaper way of getting from A to B?”

I’m certain of this because of the number of times I hear “Well of course, if we were starting today we wouldn’t do it like this – we’d be looking at Google Apps.”  And pretty much every start-up I have met with over the past year is doing exactly that.

I certainly believe that over the next ten years there will be a massive transition as companies of all sizes step out, and look back into their business and realise that they don’t need the Giraffe’s neck anymore – they can get their business where it needs to go in a much better way using a Cloud vendor that was designed for the modern world businesses find themselves in.

Summary

I hope this week’s post has been enjoyable, and dare I say it, a little educational!  I really appreciate your comments and feedback below.

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