Token Ring Network Manifesto Attracts Little Interest from IT Industry

April Fool's Day Archive:

A recently leaked manifesto proclaiming to set forth "self-evident, immutable" principles for Token Ring Networks has elicited scant interest from IT industry press and analysts. The six-page document, watermarked with what appears to be the remnants of a frothy coffee drink, points out that networks have become essential for business, that businesses ought to be able to count on cables that are firmly attached to sockets, and network drivers really ought to be kept up to date.

Unlike the bolder, declamatory manifestos of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which called for the casting off of chains and the purification of society, this manifesto strikes a conciliatory tone, offering to "begin a conversation, not define it."

A copy of the manifesto was recently found lying on a table at the Church Street Starbucks in Cambridge, MA. Whether the document had been left there as part of a guerilla marketing campaign or simply out of a lack of interest on the part of a bored reader, was impossible to say.

Starbucks photo by dichohecho, some rights reserved.

Flying Blind with Regard to Application Performance

By now, these trends are pretty obvious:

• Organizations are becoming increasingly distributed, spanning remote offices, strategic partners, outsourced workforces, and ad hoc teams in order to take advantage of the most talent for the lowest expense
  
• Organizations are cutting headcount and trimming operational budgets, making employee productivity more important than ever before
  
• Networked applications are involved in nearly every aspect of business operations, including product design, production, sales, marketing, accounting, logistics, and customer service
  

It would seem prudent, then, for organizations to monitor the performance of their applications, since networked applications are 1) the tools most workers are using, and 2) at risk of reducing worker productivity through performance problems and application outages.

But many organizations don't systematically monitor application performance at all. This jarring revelation appears in a study about cloud computing just published by InformationWeek.

The study noted that 40% of respondents didn't have a system in place to monitor internal applications, let alone cloud applications. An integrator interviewed in the study remarked that fewer than 30% of his customers had application monitoring systems in place; in other words, more than 70% didn't monitor applications.

Given the rising popularity of video and voice applications, which require high-performance, low-latency network connections, and the rising popularity of cloud computing—in use or about to be in use at 27% of the organizations surveyed—the lack of application monitoring seems like trouble in the offing.

The InformationWeek article offers a number of helpful suggestions, including the use of WAN optimization for accelerating applications serving remote offices. Application performance monitoring solutions from companies such as Blue Coat, Fluke Networks, NetScout, and WildPackets can also be helpful. A new standard called Apdex, which attempts to measure the quality of service an application delivers, is gaining a following and also worth a look.

Disclosure: Blue Coat is a client.

SaaS Credibility Survey

As you probably know, many businesses are wary of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications because of concerns about security, reliability, and vendor lock-in.

In addition to building the absolutely best IT infrastructure possible, what can SaaS vendors do to assuage end user fears?

Take this short survey (2-3 minutes) and let your voice be heard.

Two Strategies for Putting Enterprise Social Media within Everyone's Reach

When Jive Software recently announced its new SBS platform, Dennis Howlett at ZDNet raised the issue of user adoption: in many organizations, it's difficult to get users to contribute content to social media platforms. Usage patterns typically follow a 1/9/90 rule. About 1% of users contribute heavily. Another 9% contribute periodically, while 90% of users lurk, reading content, perhaps, but not contributing any content of substance.

How can social media platform vendors overcome the 1/9/90 habits of the crowd?

One approach, which most vendors are taking, is to make the platform interface richly featured and easy to use. These vendors hope that rich features will spur the creation of rich content, which in turn will make enterprise 2.0 dashboard indispensible—that is, the dashboard will become one of the few windows users always keep open on their desktops. These vendors are taking other steps, too, such as offering consulting services to train users and inculcate useful social-media habits.

Another approach, complementary to the first, is to use widgets to embed social media platform interfaces in Web applications, such as Gmail, that are popular with users. Social media start-up Socialcast is following this route.

This second approach makes sense. Certainly it can't hurt to put access to the platform . If my Socialcast interface is right there in Gmail, I'm more likely to post something to it, perhaps in response to something I've just read or sent in email. I don't have to switch windows. The gadget lowers the amount of work, including context-switching, I have to do in order to use the software.

Socialcast has widgets for a few major applications available now. Many more coming soon in their next release. I look forward to seeing what they come up with and how their user community responds.

Monastic Ireland Provides Cloud Storage for Western Intellectual Capital during Cultural Blackout

During a cultural outage, now known as the Dark Ages, monks in Ireland copied important works by Aristotle, Galen, and others, creating essential back-up copies, which were later downloaded back to the Continent and used as intellectual capital to launch the Renaissance.

That's one story (recounted with different terminology in Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization) of Ireland's contribution to the world at large.

There are many others, and of course, there's an ever-growing, superb canon of writing, and wonderful music.

It's a shame, then, that here in the U.S., for children especially, St. Patrick's Day means so much time wasted on anything having to do with leprechauns.

I don't mind people talking so much about leprechauns on St. Patrick's Day, as long as, when the time comes to talk about German culture, they lead off with a discussion of poltergeists. Or when it comes to talking about England, they start with duergars, rather than Shakespeare. Or when surveying New York culture in the 20th century, they skip over the architecture, Abstract Expressionism, the poets at the Tavern, jazz, and the Met, and focus instead on the fortune tellers at Coney Island.

Have I made myself clear?

Good. Let's all have a round of Smithwick's and continue.

Irish culture. Today, we celebrate it. Wear green, pick up a good book by a fine author like John McGahern or Anne Enright, and listen to some fine music, like Martin Hayes below.

And if you've got kids, skip the leprechaun nonsense and pick up The Island of Horses, which I'm reading now to our 7-year-old, and which is a fine tale.











Erin Go Bragh!

Irish pub photo by nicksarebi, some rights reserved

How Good Is The Interface to Your Web Site or SaaS Application? Find Out Now

I've written before about the importance of customer experiences. When I look back on the companies I've worked with over a couple of decades in high tech, the quality of experience a product provided largely determined the success or failure of the product overall.

In the software market, user interfaces obviously play a major role in a customer's experience and, hence, in a product's success or failure. Complex, cumbersome interfaces confused users, prolonged sales cycles, and often limited buyers to sophisticated engineers working in solitary roles. Streamlined, easy-to-use interfaces, often developed in concert with customers, led to faster sales, more efficient operations, and greater business success overall.

There's a wealth of material available on the importance of user interfaces and customer-driven design. Jakob Nielsen, Jared Spool, and Steve Blank all have important things to say on these topics.

Of course, if you're in the middle of a product launch, or you're a product manager working to an aggressive schedule, or you're a programmer sweating to make your deadlines, you probably don't have a lot of time on your hands to do in-depth reading and learn a new set of best practices.

Nonetheless, you'd probably like to make sure the Web site or software you're building meets the needs of your customers to the greatest degree possible, since this is the most direct and cost-effective way to:

• ensure rapid adoption by customers
  
• shorten sales cycles
  
• reduce customer support calls
  

So, busy with development and probably short on time and money, how can you ensure you've got the best user interface possible? How can you nip a problem in the bud now, before it turns into a full-fledged customer support nightmare later?

Introducing Mad*Pow

You can take advantage of a new service I'm now offering with my new business partner, Mad*Pow.

I didn't want to merely write about improving customer experiences, wringing my hands without offering a concrete solution. Instead, I wanted to be able to help any interested companies address this problem quickly and directly. So I met with usability designers, explained what I was looking for, and ended up forming a partnership with Mad*Pow, a leading experience design agency.

They're great folks. They're based in Portsmouth, NH, and their clients include:

• Aetna
  
• American Express
  
• ESPN
  
• Google
  
• Intuit
  
• Journal of New England Medicine
  
• NBC Universal
  
• Starwood
  

You can check out some of their projects here.

Incidentally, Mass High Tech just named Amy Cueva, Mad*Pow's Founder and Chief Experience Officer one of its "Women to Watch" award winners.

The company was founded in 2000, and, as you can see from the client list above and from their Web site, they've clearly grown into a dynamic, successful company. I'm thrilled to be working with them to address the user experience problem.

Rapid Strategic Analysis of User Experiences

So what does our new service entail?

First, we’ll interview you to understand your business objectives and design goals. Then we’ll conduct a thorough assessment of your Web site or Web application. Our analysis will include:

• Heuristic analysis by multiple testers and designers to uncover usability weaknesses.
  
• Competitive analysis (2-3 competitive or comparative sites)
  
• Marketing and messaging analysis
  

We will then deliver an annotated slide deck and a written report detailing our findings, including:

• Analysis of content, navigation, design, brand, and messaging
  
• Vision for the future—suggestions for improvements in all areas analyzed
  
• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis summary of the user experience overall
  

Our report will answer these vital questions:

• Is your Web site or Web application’s user interface as easy to use as possible? Are any design elements confusing or cumbersome? How well does the interface serve its users?
  
• How well does the interface serve your various audiences?
  
• Does the interface support customers making full use of your offerings? Does it facilitate upgrades and cross-selling?
  
• How does the interface compare to those of your competitors?
  

In addition, you can ask Mad*Pow's design team to offer various design alternatives for your site or application.

We've designed this process to achieve quick turnaround: we expect to work from kick-off interview to delivered report in 5 business days. And we've priced it in fitting with the budgets that are prevailing in today's, um, wonderful economy.

You can read more about the service here. (PDF)

If you're interested in having our team kick the tires on what you're building, please contact us at experience @ bennettstrategy dot com.


Lightbulb photo by rpongsaj, some rights reserved.

Data Security for SaaS, PaaS, and Social Media

One of the most common objections to cloud computing is that cloud computing poses too great a risk for data security. Internal data that is being stored safely in an internal data center may be subject to interception in transit to or from a remote application. It might also be vulnerable when stored in the cloud itself.

Cloud vendors such as Amazon, Google, and Salesforce are going out of their way to demonstrate tight security controls to major clients. Nonetheless, a lot of CIOs, CSOs, and others have their doubts.

It's worth pointing out that, whether they realize it or not, most enterprises are leaking—nay, hemorrhaging—data to the public Internet. As I wrote nearly a year ago, summarizing some fine reporting in InformationWeek, P2P applications alone are responsible for massive data leaks even at large, public companies.

When InformationWeek reporters investigated P2P networks to find out just how much confidential data was being accidentally leaked by P2P networks, they were shocked at what they found. Users were inadvertently publishing "spreadsheets, billing data, health records, RFPs, internal audits, product specs, and meeting notes . . . files with the home and cell phone numbers of senators, confidential meeting notes, and fund-raising plans [for a state political party] . . . spreadsheets listing patients' names along with their HIV and hepatitis status . . . [and] a slew of court documents regarding a sticky divorce."

Fortunately, there's technology available to detect and thwart such leaks. Data leak protection (DLP) products, often available as network appliances, can scan data leaving the network and raise an alarm about confidential data leaking out. A lot of companies have jumped into this market; a few years ago, no less than 46 different start-ups were tackling this problem. A few companies have emerged as leaders. You can learn more about DLP at this informational site: www.dlpindepth.org.

Certainly it makes sense for any medium or large enterprise to have a DLP solution in place. Once it's in place, it should provide effective monitoring and control over data posted to the cloud.

DLP doesn't address the problem of security vulnerabilities in cloud storage, but it does address vulnerabilities in cloud communications, and it also enables enterprises to ensure they know what data is being posted to the cloud in the first place, regardless of whether the destination is Salesforce.com, AWS, Facebook, or some other app.