Blogs @ Northern Light

According to numbers from CTIA – The Wireless Association and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) cell phone use has grown steadily over the past several years and is now making inroads into the home. However, a report from IBM suggests that mobile device manufacturers (MDM), which have profited from cell phone sales, may have also shot themselves in the foot by flooding the market. Players in the industry, particularly device manufacturers, now face the challenge of finding new markets and of distinguishing themselves from the competition. Research from both IBM and Neilsen suggest that the mobile Web may offer salvation.

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IBM recently published its third Biennial Global CEO Study. The Enterprise of the Future is based on surveys of 1,130 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector and business leaders from around the world.” Throughout the report attention is paid to the actions distinguishing outperforming companies from those which underperform; for the most part the former is more aggressive and less risk-averse.

Based on the report’s summary the enterprise of the future mirrors the Web 2.0 world. (Not surprisingly the Internet is cited as one of the catalysts for change.) IBM sums up the enterprise of the future as hungry for change, innovative beyond customer imagination, globally integrated, disruptive by nature, and genuine not just generous.

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It has been just about a week since Apple’s newest iPhone went on sale. The new phone, dubbed iPhone 3G, boasts download speeds substantially faster than the earlier model (at least in areas supporting 3G). But that is not all that has changed. Apple has also opened up the iPhone API allowing third parties to create applications for its App Store, available through iTunes in the Apple Apps Store. The iPhone now also supports Microsoft Exchange, making the phone more acceptable for use by the business community.

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Last Thursday the News Corp. company MySpace released the application programming interface (API) for its Data Availability project. Releasing the API, which follows the project’s initial release a month ago, will make it easier for MySpace users to do more with the data they have entered into (and which tethered them to) their MySpace account. Users will no longer need to enter their entire profile at each network they join or site they visit: default profiles, photos, and friends lists will be able to travel with the user out of the walled garden of the social networking site.

If that seems like a giant leap forward – it is. If it seems too good to be true – ditto.

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The title of an IDC white paper released in May and sponsored by Nortel, A Global Look at the Exploding ‘Culture of Connectivity’ and Its Impact on the Enterprise, makes the content of the study apparent.

For the study IDC surveyed, “2,367 men and women across 17 countries in various industries, company size classes, and age segments.” All respondents were fully employed, over 17 years old, used a PC at work, and owned or used a PDA or mobile phone for either business or personal activities, and had access to the Internet.

From the survey results IDC distilled four distinct clusters of users. Barebones Users, Passive Online, Increasingly Connected, and Hyperconnected. Barebones Users, at the low-end of the connectivity scale are defined as: “Those who are online but pretty much stick to email, desktop access to the Internet, and cell phone use for voice calls.” The other end of the connectivity spectrum is reserved for the Hyperconnected: “Those who have fully embraced the brave new world, with more devices per capita than the other clusters and more intense use of new communications applications. They liberally use technology devices and applications for both personal and business use.”

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Even before it won its first SXSW award in March of 2007 Twitter has been making waves. Since then the messaging service has achieved a valuation, “pegged at way north of $70 million,” according to leading tech blogger Om Malik who also notes that its most recent round of funding raised the company another $15 million.

Originated as a browser-based microblogging tool allowing users to post updates of up to 140 characters to groups of followers (rather than just to individuals), Twitter has spawned a plethora of tools now piggybacking on its success; from desktop clients which free users from Twitter’s browser-based origin to those that allow searching of the stream of Twitter messages known as ‘tweets’.

Once the playground of ‘tech elite’ early adopters Twitter is now being utilized by businesses to monitor their status and brand among not only those early adopters, but among the rapidly growing number of more mainstream users now using the service.

Twitter is now on the way to rearing its head in full and in doing so has also become the center of one of Web 2.0’s greatest love-hate relationships.

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According to reports from McKinsey & Company and Forrester, adoption of the Software-as-a-Service model is on the rise. SaaS is moving beyond its place in the small and medium sized business (SMB) space and is increasingly being implemented in larger enterprises. “For platform vendors, the only falloff in interest comes at the largest enterprises, those employing more than 25,000 people. In short, nearly every company – or division of a larger enterprise – is a customer or a prospect for SaaS platforms,” states McKinsey’s 2008 Enterprise Software Customer Survey. This thought is mirrored by Forrester research: “SaaS use is growing across types of applications, companies, and user groups.” The momentum created by this movement is pulling in established software vendors and fueling quick-moving startups. As both vie for position, it is acknowledged that some will fall, but the model is predicted to survive.

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Forrester Research defines Web 2.0 as, “A set of technologies and applications that enable efficient interaction among people, content, and data in support of collectively fostering new businesses, technology offerings, and social structures.” According to Forrester’s research and blogs, everything is rosy in the Web 2.0 world. Recession or not, the space should continue to heat up for at least the next five years.
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The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recently published its seventh annual Internet Crime Report. The organization works in partnership with the White Collar Crime Complaint Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and serves, “as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime.”

Between January 1st and December 31st 2007 the IC3 processed 219,553 complaints: 206,884 complaints were received via their website (a drop of 0.3 percent from the previous year), the remaining 12,669 were referrals from other agencies. Though the IC3 tracks numerous types of complaints, those which come via the website typically, “do not represent dollar loss but provide a picture of the types of scams that are emerging via the Internet. These complaints in large part are comprised of fraud involving reshipping, counterfeit checks, phishing, etc.” 2007 was the second year in a row that the number of complaints to the IC3 website dropped; 231,493 complaints were received in 2005 and 207,492 in 2006.

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The Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, released last month, reports that of the 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees surveyed 82 percent expect to maintain current information technology staff levels in the second quarter of 2008, 14 percent expect to add to staffing levels, and 2 percent foresee reductions. Similar numbers are easily found; that there is to be growth in the IT sector is likely to seem obvious. Not so obvious is the difficulty IT departments may have in fueling that growth.

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