Technology for Privacy Preserving Data Analytics

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia. CISRO has developed a technology called Privacy-Preserving Analytics (PPA) that allows personal or commercially sensitive data to be statistically analyzed while protecting confidentiality and privacy. CISRO has clearly identified the need to balance consumer privacy and provision of enough information for decision making based on analytics. The CSIRO developed methods and demonstrator software perform statistical analyses in a secure environment, then filter the results delivered to the user so that confidentiality and privacy are protected. Similar technologies can be useful for retailers who want to perform customer segmentation and target marketing and at the same time maintaining customer privacy. It is basically a win-win situation, where a retailer's purpose of data analytics is served and also it would attract high volume of consumers to the retailer if they know that the technology used by the retailer would not compromise their privacy.
The original link is here:
http://www.csiro.au/solutions/PPA

Disrupting the Diploma

In Disrupting the Diploma, LinkedIn founder and now venture capitalist Reid Hoffman lays out his manifesto for education change. The dynamic diploma of the future stems from the model of "Certification-as-a-Platform". Educational experiences available as machine-readable information can be aggregated to a certification database and then searched and analyzed. 

Hoffman explains the benefits to all sides of the network:

"With certification as a platform, not just a product, the feedback loops between all parties will tighten. Education providers will have more capacity to track what employers are looking for and adjust their curricula accordingly. Students will have more explicit guideposts to follow, so they can invest their tuition dollars and time into developing skills that will truly increase their chances of transitioning successfully to the workforce. Employers will be able to use certification as a finding mechanism, not just a screening mechanism."

Mozilla is taking a strong position in Certification-as-a-Platform through its Open Badges standard. These are visual representations of our achievements, skills and learnings. They can be issued from many sources, easily displayed and much more measurable than current alternatives. 

The re-imagined diploma is no long a static document but always updated as you continue learning, gaining new skills and unique experiences throughout life. Education innovators like Khan Academy and Top Coder allow students to signal their progress and celebrate incremental learning goals rather than purely lumpy achievements like the traditional university degree.

Certification-as-a-Platform's earliest disruption will happen in liberal arts institutions stuck with a higher cost structure and facing competition from specialized content providers. And the platform controller stands to capture a lot of value through selling insights on which course content to promote to the right person, connecting the right candidates for the right jobs and data for intelligently designing the courses in highest-demand. 

cyber security

If internet control could be circumvented across boarders, the future of countries could evolve into giant companies with super technology power. Is this a fantasy or a near future reality? Nobody knows but Google is working on some security projects that enable internet insular countries to be penetrated. Will it work? Technically it will. But to what extent in reality? This is a question mark. The fundamental question should be asked about why Google wants to break those walls, what are the benefits that Google want to bring and to what extent, this endeavor will be appreciated by citizens in those countries.

The following article is an interesting read in the recent new projects Google has. Here is the source

http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20131023/googles-next-big-project-cyber-security.html

"Web Giants Threaten to end Cookie Tracking" - Or is it something much more?

“Web Giants Threaten to End Cookie Tracking”

What a great title  and spin on what is really going on here…brilliant really.

Today’s WSJ article discussed Microsoft’s, Facebook’s, and Google’s development of systems to control the flow of cookies across their respective browsers, applications, and operating systems greatly changing the $120B digital advertising industry; an industry that relies extensively on advertising company's use of cookies to gather user data which it in turn sells to businesses.   Now, these web giants are taking back control of cookies, hurting the ad companies, and its being spun as a step to increase user security.

To be fair, it could improve user privacy and security by controlling the amount of companies with access to user internet use, and in turn "everything about us" as we've been discussing, but there is something much bigger going on here. By limiting advertising company’s ability to track cookies, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook can now sell this information to businesses.  They have effectively integrated across the stack (again) by removing access to a level that they control (the OS’s, browsers and Apps).  Once again these companies will be able to garner revenues from a layer they were previously only providing access through at no cost. 

But what makes this truly beneficial (or perhaps diabolical), is that its being spun as a good thing for the consumer and overlooks another example of the tech world’s biggest companies taking more control of revenues across the stack.  Is this “fair”?  Does this strategy/marketing help ensure that advertising companies can’t wage a propaganda war on the tech giants?

LinkedIn's New Intro Feature Raising Security Concerns

This week LinkedIn launched a new feature called intro that pretty much had bloggers up-in-arms instantly. Basically, the new feature inserts your LinkedIn profile into your native Iphone app emails, giving those you email, instant access to your career information. The video below goes through the feature:

The issue the app runs into is that in order to get around Apple's closed policies, LinkedIn has you opt into a feature that basically has access to all your emails and adds HTML code to them in a man-in-the-middle manner. Unsurprisingly, this is causing some major criticisms including a few highlighted in this post and summarized below:

• Allowing a third party to access your emails could affect confidentiality of certain emails
• LinkedIn has had security breaches before, most recently last year
• If you use this with corporate email, you're almost definitely in violation of company security policy
• LinkedIn's privacy policy (much like most Web company policies is vague) and it get's modified as needed.

The intention behind the Intro feature is to add "cool" mobile functionality to LinkedIn, but with so much private communication going over email is anyone really comfortable giving LinkedIn that level of access?

Often users click through privacy and terms of service agreements giving easy access to data and content in exchange for convenient useful features--based on the reaction, LinkedIn intro seems to provide much more security concern than "must-have" usefulness. What do you think of the new feature?

LinkedIn's response to the criticism is here.

When does data collection go to far in Retail?

More and more retailers are watching you and you may not even know it.

The linked article above discusses the technology of RetailNext, which provides information to retailers on where people are in the store, their patterns as they shop, what they look at, what they miss, etc. Another company Euclid Analytics offers similar information but uses the Wi-Fi on your phone; even more invasive.

Knowing where customers go in a store and how they shop is great information for retailers to use, but is it too much to take that information and segment price to individual shoppers based on their behaviors and shopping history? What if they used facial recognition software to identify you as you walked in and you received an entirely different experience than someone else? Maybe you even see different prices on certain items based on your history and shopping patterns? Can that individual segmentation be stopped? It would certainly be more profitable for companies to maximize margins on specific items. There is a huge legal concern surrounding this as explained by this excerpt from the article:
"But even if most retailers are shying away from using facial-recognition software to its fullest potential, the chance that some are, without our knowledge, grows greater as the technology becomes more sophisticated and affordable. And because retailers are implementing this type of tracking on their private property, a consumer’s legal rights to privacy are very limited. But privacy advocates say that even if this kind of tracking can’t yet be legally stopped, consumers should at least be made aware of what’s going on. Says Dixon: “I think it’s absolutely crucial for these companies to come clean with the public and disclose what is happening.”

Where do you stand on this issue? Do you want retailers tracking your every move to give you an entirely customized experience? Even if it means sacrificing the best price on certain items? Where do you want the line in the sand to be drawn? A line, that is continually being drawn, erased and drawn again as we continue technological advancement. 

Teletherapy Startup Using Uber-like Model

An article on Xconomy.com recently discussed Breakthrough, a Silicon Valley teletherapy startup, which has raised $6 million to bring therapists and patients together, Uber-style. Breakthrough connects therapists and patients who might otherwise not find each other. And the data is compelling: 64 percent of its patients have reported that they would not have been able to get care if it wasn't for Breakthrough, says Mark Goldenson, CEO and co-founder of Breakthrough. 

Compelling? Yes. Innovative? Definitely, and not just in their tele-technology. Breakthrough succeeded where others have failed: they got insurance companies' buy-in. Says Mark Goldenson, former PayPal product manager, "We’re not saying, 'Here’s this cool technology and you have to go implement it and recruit providers, and make it secure behind your firewall.' We have the network. We've already trained them on the technology, you don't have to put it behind your firewall, just sign us up like an in-person practice group." The first contract with an insurance company took two years to negotiate, but now, with three in total, Breakthrough has 100 licensed psychiatrists and psychologists in four states. Says Mark Goldenson, "Our patients—if they have an insurer we accept—they’re looking at paying a $25 copay if anything.”

But it's not all about the money. Goldenson and his co-founder, former CEO of MCC Behavioral, Julian Cohen, think that online therapy can remove a lot of the roadblocks to mental health care, including the prohibitively high prices, the associated stigmas, and the difficulty of access. Those on Medicaid will find it to be particularly helpful, because they often face other obstacles to getting the therapy they need, like a lack of childcare, time off of work, or transportation. This is the next level: penetrating new markets that have typically avoided mental health therapy, because of geographic, social, or financial constraints. With the right amount of marketing, insurance company buy-in, and trust, this startup could make a real breakthrough. 

Amazon business model - trading the present for the future

Will Amazon be profitable? Or is it a question of when it will be profitable? Even with a lost of $39 million last year, investors have placed a lot of value on the company (AMZN $359.62). The attached articles and information blogs provides a little more insight into Amazon's strategy to "dominate" the global retail market with its' "profitless" business model.

I believe that Amazon approaches profitability with a long term perspective (Although no one knows how long is long term). To the extend that Amazon on makes only a small margin from the products it sells, and sometimes, even a lost, it does make up on customer acquisition. Amazon is slowly building and acquiring competencies while cutting off its competition. It understands that the customer is of most importance and is buying its time while it slowly weeds out the competition. Of course, the most amazing part is that investors believe in the future value that this would bring. But in the mean time, investors are sustaining Amazon's profitless business model.

Article links:
http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2013/10/25/amazon-and-the-profitless-business-model-narrative
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/8/8/amazons-profits
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-riddle-of-amazon/309523/

Insights from CIO of McKinsey, Mike Wright

For those of you who didn't get a chance to join CIO of McKinsey at lunch today, here were key takeaways that I found most interesting:

1. If you can't answer the question "What business problem does this technology solve?" then don't spend time or money on developing the technology.

2. Often having a liaison between your business and your IT departments to 'translate' can actually be detrimental because it shelters each side from knowing the truth (as is with most 'siloed' departments now.)

3. It is not enough to just solve current problems, but to also solve the potential problems, and anticipate needs. This is the only way to get ahead of competition.

4. Do what inspires you. Don't close yourself off to possibilities because you have a particular end point in mind. In the end, you will probably check all the boxes you want to anyway.

For the others that were there, what else fascinated you? What have I missed from this conversation that you think the others would want to know? In addition, what were the key takeaways from the afternoon panel?

Apple's Secret Retail Weapon

As part of the recent iOS7 release, Apple quietly included a new feature - iBeacon - that enhances device location services using bluetooth low energy technology.  Running iOS7, an Apple device is able to communicate with other bluetooth devices within a close range.

The technology enhances location detection in enclosed, smaller spaces and opens opportunity in the retail sector and beyond that had not previously been easily executed.  It can be used to direct customers through a space, provide location based information or even to enable hands free, in store payment options.  Retailers can use the technology to push coupons or other relevant messaging to consumers when they enter a store and look at specific products.  Major League Baseball is implementing a program that uses the technology to direct fans around ballparks and provides discounts on concessions.

In terms of payment, the technology will allow a consumer to walk into a store, pick and complete their purchase without going through a checkout.  Apple is not the only company to introduce hands free payment options.  Both PayPal and Square have recently introduced products in this area.  The companies are all playing in different levels of the stack.  Paypal has provided a hardware solution, software from Square and an OS solution from Apple.  It will be interesting how this technology is used in the future and what approach wins.

How do you think it will be used in your sector?  What approach do you think will win?

Netflix Stock Quadruples After Successful Quarter

Netflix has got a lot of attention from press and Wall Street after reporting third quarter earnings.

Company's stock soared yesterday, reaching record heights over $390 in extended trading yesterday and started a sharp decline today. That happened after the CEO, Reed Hastings warned of investors' euphoria around the stock.

As we analyze the IT disruption and new trends in Media industry, it is interesting to dig deeper into the success and possible issues for Netflix. This Bloomberg article elaborates more on how is Netflix passing HBO in US customer-base.

One of the most important contributors is creation of original content by Netflix. Emmy-winning 'House of Cards' helped the company to increase customer base by more than a million users.

In addition to that, Netflix is considering deals with cable companies such as Comcast to include their service on set-top boxes. Analysts argue on the possible outcomes.

What are your thoughts on the future of Netflix? What major risks do you see?

Practice Fusion Raises More Cash To Expand Its Two-Sided Market

According to a recent article in Forbes, Practice Fusion, which hosts a free-to-doctors cloud-based EMR system, has raised $70 million in its fourth venture capital round to provide funding for its newest feature called Practice Fusion Insight, which leverages patient data on 64 million patients gathered from its 60,000 physician accounts by selling it in aggregated, anonymized form to healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. Practice fusion claims to have data on 75 million patients, 60 million of whom will be "active" in the current year, meaning they will visit their doctor and generate a little more data.

This latest round of financing means that they have many VC's who believe in them (to date, at least ten), but it also means that their ability to generate cash the old fashioned way--by earning it--is not yet strong enough to keep the company afloat. Practice Fusion's value-add for one side of its market--the physicians and labs--is its price tag: it's free. Hence, Insight and the other side of its two-sided market: pharmaceutical companies and others in the healthcare space who are eager to learn more about U.S. patients' prescription use, health conditions, test results, doctor visits, and the like. This is a major advantage over Epic, the country's largest EMR software provider. Practice Fusion's cloud-based model gives it access to terabytes of patient data collecting in doctors' accounts. The company also has an advantage over AthenaHealth, a cloud-based but not-free service that hosts 8,800 physicians. Practice Fusion also uses advertising to generate funds, $10 million in 2011, according to another Forbes article.

But it's not all about the money. Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, believes Insight has altruism in its data-laden veins. Providing patient data to drug companies and others will improve patient care overall. According to Howard, "It’s the efficacy of the drugs. Does the drug actually work? What are the side effects? And it has comparative looks at how one drug competes against another." 

How IBM and GE are staying relevant with Open Innovation

Hi team - I think that GE and IBM compete based on open vs. closed innovation strategy.

My personal and professional research in the Open Innovation space has led to discussions with IBM's Boston team, since they've been experimenting with crowdsourcing to make decisions internally, as well as to GE. GE is on my radar due to their Open Innovation partnership with Quirky.com for new product development.

This discussion is relevant to our class chat on 10/16 because these are examples of how these large companies are innovating from the bottom up (not just top down). My purpose in posting this is to get us thinking beyond the stack in regards to corporate open vs. closed strategies. How open is too open?

IBM:
They've looked at kickstarter.com for motivation to build an 'internal kickstarter' to prioritize and fund new projects. Essentially, they've built a home-grown platform where IBM employees can review, comment on, and literally fund new projects across business units within the firm. Real money was put into this, so employees have actually decided what teams will work on next. This is very helpful for IBM to:

• -prioritize innovations within the firm
• -allocate funding based on idea potential + fit with existing products/services
• -diversify away from 'top down' decision making 
• -improve employee morale with Voice of the Employee (VoE) efforts
• -potentially develop an enterprise crowdfunding platform to sell to others

Here's the link to my Evernote post with more details on this project (from IBM) 
See Team 6 shared folder if this link doesn't work

Here's a recent HBR article on the project

Question: What do you think about IBM's efforts?

GE:
GE has partnered with Quirky.com to allow inventors to take GE patents and build their own ideas around them. This is groundbreaking because GE (traditionally closed) is opening their doors to outsiders in a way not done before (by any large firm). They're using GE patents as platforms for new innovations. Check out more details here

Here's a Forbes editorial on the pitfalls of this model


Key question: What do you think about the future of Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation for huge firms like IBM and GE? Do you think crowdfunding is just a trend or fad, or is this a fundamental paradigm shift for how companies make some of their decisions?



-Chris Kluesener

Complicated Courting of Amazon and IBM

Coopetition, anyone? While Amazon may have won a high profile court battle against IBM regarding cloud services for the government, Amazon still supports many of IBM's platform technologies. With the increasing overlap of partners playing in each other's layer of the stack while still maintaining a partnership, one has to wonder: will companies eventually breakaway from their partners in an effort to dominate more stack layers, or will we see more collaboration among historic competitors?

Glass half-full, I would suggest the latter. According to game theory in economics, if competitors work together, they can optimize the value of the market as a whole. Even though rivals won't see as big of a slice of the pie if they crush their competitor, companies as innovative and intelligent as Amazon and IBM must realize that collaboration is mutually beneficial and grows the market regardless of the occasional heated conflict.

What do you think? Thoughts, comments, rebuttals?

Fashion+technology

Apple recently announced abour hiring Angel Ahrendts for filling a senior operation position.This article reminds me one of our posts about the Google glass. Now we see one more example of fashion industry leaders stepping up to assume senior leadership in technology companies.This time it is about retail business, not the improvement of fashion look of a product. It is more about user experience in a retail environment. As a retailer, it is still a key issue to think about the added value it brings to customer and how to constantly improve that.This may be a measure that Apple takes to improve its customer experience at Apple Stores. Positioning as a high-end product, Apple is the luxury. Look forward to see what may happen to Apple stores when this new executive take the role next year.

Interested, read the article:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304561004579136642448489128?mod=Business_newsreel_1

Retail trend: Ship-from-store

“Amazon has already beaten most retailers on price and selection. The third battleground is location, and the smart retailers are not conceding that,” said Tom Allason, founder of startup Shutl, which helps retailers deliver online orders from stores.

This article talks about how big-box retailers are looking to take on Amazon - if only a by a little bit - by shipping products from store in order to reduce shipping and warehouse maintenance costs and move excess/unsold inventory. As someone who is largely interested in the retail industry, I wonder if these retailers have a chance at truly succeeding here considering the fact that you can get pretty much anything from Amazon.

Ship-from-store will indeed help stores sell more (I'd figure it'd be mostly unwanted inventory) and generate more profit from inventory movement, but I dont see how this will be a gamechanger for the industry considering the costs to implement this new product flow might make it all break even in the end. Investments would be necessary in creating this omnichannel (buzzword!) operation - supply chain/order management technology, employee training, delivery systems at each locale - and I wonder if it's all worth it.

For someone who likes metrics, I'd be curious to see how retailers would consider a sale - would it be online or in-store if it flows through this new shipping trend? How are employees incentivized? How do you measure omnichannel execution?

Man vs. Machine: GE's Industrial Internet, Job Creation, and the "Low-value Customer"

This article, an overview of the growth plans for GE’s “Industrial Internet,” includes a couple of interesting paragraphs about GE’s plan to revisit vertical integration and the implications of this move for GE’s global manufacturing operations and workforce. Though GE’s plans involve a ratcheting up of its US-based manufacturing, this will not necessarily result in more US-based jobs, because these new on-shore factories will be for the most part automated and robot-operated. In anticipation of criticism for moving facilities but failing to fill them with humans, GE has published a paper which explains that workers will simply be retrained in how to be more productive in interacting with the machines, but which fails to explain how it is that such retraining will not result in job loss. This is especially disconcerting given that the new form these jobs will take, according to GE, “will require lots more math and science skills,” which is a well-known deficiency in the US workforce.

The article above led me to this article about GE’s relatively recent investment in Pivotal, a VMware spin-off that will work to develop software for use in GE’s Industrial Internet. In it, Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz is quoted explaining some of the effects of universal interconnectedness on business strategy: “Soon everything will have telemetry…Cellphone companies will want to see if a radio tower is overcrowded, and then do what airlines do – kick off the lowest-value customer.”

As the world’s industrial giants become more automated and interconnected, and hyper smart software engineers figure out how to turn every customer into a data stream, here we begin to see two effects which may increase margins but will almost certainly hurt revenues: (1) fewer jobs, and a workforce insufficiently educated to fill the jobs that remain; and (2) an opportunity for goods and service providers to identify (and literally excommunicate) those customers the numbers say they should care least about. Projected out a few decades, are big tech companies putting themselves at huge risk here by figuring out more and more efficient ways to cut the human element out of the technology ecosystem? Forget customer service: the telecom company has decided whether or not you matter by the time you walk in the door. And if the greatest innovations of our time are those that make humans less necessary, at what point do we extinguish the incentive for humans to innovate at all? My bet is that the companies that figure out how to use these technologies to enhance human engagement – not minimize it – are the ones that will be most successful in the long run.

Quotes from Jeff Bezos

This isn't for participation-on-the-blog points - just quotes from Amazon's Bezos. For those of you who like to read about Bezos, or just like some words from the wise, take a look at these 14 statements. (They also give a high-level summary of how he runs Amazon.)

Amazon to release video device - Do we need another Box?

Amazon.com is reportedly making plans to release an over-the-top (OTT) set-top-box (STB) for streaming device during this holiday season. Will this be another me-too device following the steps of Roku, AppleTV and Chromecast, or would there be some radical innovation in this new box?

OTT margins of are thin. In addition, most telecos and video service providers subsidize the cost STB by charging consumers for content. What is Amazon's strategy for vertically integrating into video hardware by releasing its own device verses staying as an application on 3rd party hardware?

In my opinion, Amazon, the consumer centric company is looking to provide quality and convenience at a low cost to people. With this, how then would Amazon benefit? - In the long term, Amazon will get to know you better. This means that Amazon will be collecting valuable data about your consumption behaviors. It will also put Amazon as a major competitor for "owning" the living room.

Furthermore, Amazon just announced "Login and Pay with Amazon" as part of Amazon Payments services to provide convenient payment for consumers. (Watch the video here) Looking at the strategic direction that Amazon is heading, including its patents for mobile payment service (more info here), Amazon is closing the consumer journey loop.

Therefore, we need to view the Amazon's plans on releasing a STB as part of an entire system and not as a separate service that Amazon is offering. Amazon would now be in a good position to link online-commerce, mobile-commerce, television-commerce and in-store point-of-sales. What do you think?

Reference articles:
Amazon Readies Set-Top Box for Holidays
Analyst: Amazon's planned OTT STB could be a disaster
Amazon Patent Describes A Mobile Payment System That Keeps Transactions Anonymous
Press Release: Amazon Launches ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ for a Seamless Buying Experience

Bitcoin and Anonymous eCommerce

Although Bitcoin has been in the news frequently as of late, mostly for its remarkable fluctuations in value over the past year, two stories in the past few weeks provide a revealing look into the disruptive potential of purely electronic, and largely anonymous, currency and payment systems. Last week, an online marketplace known as Silk Road was shuttered by the Department of Justice one day after its owner, Ross William Ulbricht, was arrested in San Francisco.  Weeks before, in late September, a similar site known as Atlantis ceased operations, likely as a result of imminent action from law enforcement.

Both sites operated with complete anonymity for all parties, including their owners (until Ulbricht’s arrest, obviously).  Yet it is estimated that Ulbricht earned tens of millions of dollars in commissions from sales on his site, whose traffic consisted predominantly of trade of illicit drugs and other contraband.  In a time where companies know more and more about our online actions and transactions, these markets served as a platform by which buyers and sellers could interact in complete anonymity to one another and any third party.

The sites required that users employ Tor, a program and open network which makes it nearly impossible for regulators to trace the Internet activity of its users.  The sites themselves emulated popular online marketplaces like eBay, even allowing users to rate sellers.  Bitcoin, the "PayPal" in the scheme, is not truly anonymous (transactions are logged in Bitcoin’s ledgers), but through the use of simple laundering techniques these sites made it such that no transaction which occurred within the marketplace would be known to the outside world.  The sites themselves were hardly innovative, but were primarily successful as early adopters of Tor and Bitcoin as massively disruptive web technologies.  

Ultimately, these two marketplaces met their demise as a result of a lack of caution on behalf of their owners and operators.  Both groups had begun to get comfortable publicizing their platforms rather than operating in the shadows - Ulbricht had even recently given an anonymous (and somewhat arrogant) interview to Forbes about Silk Road.  

However, the underlying technologies remain, and it is inevitable that more sophisticated iterations of this model, and more cautious owners, will emerge.  Conceivably, a platform for anonymous, untraceable electronic payment may be adopted outside the Dark Web, particularly as cash transactions – the original form of anonymous payment – become fewer and fewer.  Such a model would serve as an interesting counterpoint to innovations like Google Wallet, which despite many cool features, exists predominantly to collect as much information about our transactions as possible.

Omni-Channel Logistics: eBay's Secret Weapon ?

Amazon & eBay: 2 companies that compete against each other but have remarkably different ways of going about it.
Long strategy short: - Amazon is perceived to be trying to dominate the retail space and kill the brick & mortar stores but on the other hand eBay is trying to use and empower the brick & mortar stores.
eBay and other retailers have realized that it is almost futile to replicate Amazon's infrastructure and fulfillment system due to which the average delivery miles per order is less than 80 miles. They are now looking towards Omni-Channel Logistics.  

As evidenced by the article, Walmart and other leading retailers are shifting towards BOPIS (Buy online, Pick up in store) and ship from store.
So, where does eBay fit in the picture ? eBay NOW !!
eBay has started to gradually roll out this service outside of San Francisco and Bay area. It has already received rave reviews and is touted as eBay's answer to Amazon lockers and same-day delivery.
With a 1-hour delivery window and initial $15 promotional coupons, eBay is hoping to eventually utilize the already existing 8,000+ retail stores within a few miles of majority of the US population.
To top it off, eBay recently acquired Decide.com. This startup was known for collecting data on past sales,deal and prices and recommend the best time to buy an electronic gadget.Now eBay has all this data and has shut down Decide.com's services. Why this might matter ?

So now eBay can inform you of the next flash 3-hour sale/Black Friday at Best Buy or Target and also which product will be the best bang for your buck. AND, if you are stuck in office or even worse - in a classroom, you can always use eBay NOW to get it delivered wherever you are !!

So what's next ?
As per the recent 2013 Cross-Channel Retail Executive Summit, one of the major insights was the remarkable increase in demand for customized products.
What if you need a pair of jeans urgently but you always have to get the length altered or the jeans customized in some way ?
This is where Omni-Channel commerce would be more useful than Amazon. You could place an order through eBay NOW or another app and get your customized product delivered within hours.

However, what if the product customization requested takes longer ? This might be because the product needs to be customized while being manufactured.
Here is where Amazon can theoretically bridge the gap since the delivery time will be the same.

This is just 1 use case. What others can you guys think of ?
What other pitfalls or benefits do you see with Omni-Channle logistics?
Can it actually pose a serious threat to Amazon ?

School bus GPS: Anti labor and employer abuse?

The big news in Boston this morning was the surprise strike by Boston school bus drivers stranding thousands of students and forcing the cancellation of all after-school athletic events. The bus drivers who recently signed a new contract are protesting measures taken by the city’s new transit partner, Veolia Transportation, that some of then believe impinges on their ability to do their jobs.

The interim school superintendent, John McDonough confirmed that a bus-tracking app, which uses a GPS system, was at least part of the issue.  “The union had objected to our implementing this type of technology,” he said.  The smartphone app was unveiled recently as a way for parents to know more precisely when the buses would be arriving and as a safety measure in case of accidents or other problems. But the drivers saw it as too much “Big Brother” control over them and demanded on their union Web site: “Stop employer abuse of anti-labor Global Positioning System spy devices.”

This is an interesting development to be aware of as we welcome tomorrow's guest speaker.  This article just touches the surface of this issue.  I am curious if the city involved the bus drivers in the decision to install the gps devices?  Could this strike have been averted with better communication or are the GPS devices really a manifestation of Big Brother? This is a developing story.....

Cloud Stack Strategy: Lock-in and Partnerships

I have been thinking (I would like to say 'a lot,' but who knows, really) about this idea of XaaS "anything as a service" and how the technology stack in that world stacks up. (Pun intended.)

It seems as though a hardware provider can couple itself to the other layers in the stack because hardware was developed to do whatever software wanted. Thus, we see have seen a successful integration of "Buy a Mac? Get Mac OS, Mac applications" etc. But even that is becoming blurred with increasing interoperability and cross-platform capabilities, even down to the hardware level (i.e. partitioning the Mac hard drive to run Windows.)

Now, in a cloud computing world, the path to linking an IaaS provider to its SaaS products is even more loose. How can a company like Amazon tie in their infrastructure to SaaS products? Can they create proprietary links between this new form of hardware and software, or should it continue to become an open source world? In an article from Forbes from 2011, Joe McKendrick voices his concerns to Thomas Erl (CEO of Architura Eduation Inc.,) asking:

"What if a good part of your application infrastructure resides with a single cloud provider? 
“When you put a lot of your resources, a lot of your data in the cloud, you want to know that, a year later, you want to be able to move that to another cloud provider,” Thomas says. “You want to know that you can move all that away to another cloud provider, or even bring that back on premises, if that’s the exit strategy.”"

An equally important question: Once they have figured out a pricing model that works with an open structure, how can companies compete and partner with each other all at the same time? A recent example of a failure in this realm is VMForce: a partnership between VMware and Salesforce.com to create a PaaS offering aimed at SaaS and web service developers. The problem is that both of them wanted to become dominant players in the PaaS market.

It sounds like a partnership model is problematic at this stage in the game, and staying in one layer of the stack will soon make you obsolete. So what should XaaS providers do? My theory (feel free to challenge): Whoever is the first to figure out how to own the entire stack, will be the victor, probably to the detriment of exit strategies for enterprises.



Forbes Source Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2011/11/20/cloud-computings-vendor-lock-in-problem-why-the-industry-is-taking-a-step-backwards/

Because I Missed A Class!

The rise of e-tailing over the past decade can be hugely attributed to the innovation and strategy being adopted by the two companies. Albeit what is interesting is that even though both Amazon and eBay have become highly successful in the e-commerce space they both have followed different growth trajectories. Let take a look at both of them:

eBay VS Amazon

Amazon

Jeff Bezos’s letter to the shareholders describes Amazon as an “internally driven company” committed to improving customer experience before it needs to. In the last decade Amazon’s growth has been fuelled by its ability to control its operations and make them more efficient. The focus has been on providing the best price, selection, convenience to the end consumer, ease of functionality, reliable fulfillment and timely customer service.

Amazon has a great device, a platform that connects it to ready user base and operational might. Amazon Prime had moved swiftly to become a top content provider and is evident from its recent tie-ups and agreements with major studios for licensing their content as well as developing original content. Amazon coins were also launched earlier this year to help the company have more control over payments. All this is an indication of Amazon’s long term plan of controlling the entire ecosphere for its consumers where maybe (speculation) it would use its superior device making ability(Kindle HD) to connect the TV in the consumers house to the content on Amazon Videos

eBay

eBay was never an operations company. It is a platform that connects customers to sellers and enables connected commerce. However in recent years eBay has been trying to find ways to provide an alternative to the operational might of Amazon. The Global Shipping Program (GSP) allows sellers from United States to sell their products to international customers in other countries without the hassle of going through customs, regulations etc. The GSP program has since its inception grown tremendously and has become a key focus area for the company. eBay is also betting big on mobile commerce and its investments in this space is a part of its long term vision of connected commerce. Steve Yankovich talks about some of the innovation being done by eBay in this interview. Also making consumers feel connected to the experience is also an important part of eBay’s 3.0 strategy.

Some questions to think about

1.     Will local shopping become cost effective?

2.     Will Amazon be able to successfully develop original content for viewers?

3.     Does Amazon have a viable alternative for Paypal?

4.     Can eBay copy Amazon’s operational effectiveness

Maybe I will answer these questions when I miss the next class (Just Kidding, or am I!)

Understanding the Blackberry Acquisition

Introduction
Anyone remember Research In Motion? Known as Blackberry today, Canadian device maker RIM was the pioneer of the smartphone device. In recent years, Blackberry has struggled to compete against Apple and the Android. The shares have dropped from a peak of 144+ in 2008, when Blackberry was its peak, to 8.03 today. Two weeks ago, Blackberry announced an intent to get acquired for $4.7B at $9 a share by Fairfax holdings. Fairfax already holds 10% of Blackberry. I am wondering what's in it for all the parties involved.

Blackberry today
Blackberry has struggled to hold a position in the market as companies such as Apple, Samsung, and HTC have taken over the smartphone space. BlackBerry has just reported a $935 million hit in Q2 due entirely to what it's calling a "Z10 Inventory Charge" -- in other words, a loss associated with creating a stock of flagship handsets that subsequently failed to sell. This single loss was enough to wipe out much of the company's quarterly revenue of $1.6 billion. Most of the new Z10 and Q10 remain unsold. For his part, Thorsten Heins says he's "very disappointed" with the results, but he claims the company saw growth in enterprise server (BES 10) customers and he insists there's still a future in that side of the business -- a future that could soon belong to someone else.

The Fairfax offer
BlackBerry has just announced that it's signed a letter of intent agreement for a sale of the company valued at $4.7 billion to a consortium led by Fairfax Financial (the company's largest shareholder). Pending due diligence that's expected to be completed by November 4th, the deal would see BlackBerry go private, with shareholders each receiving $9 per share in cash.

Prem Watsa and Fairfax
Prem Watsa is the founder, chairman, and chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, based in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called the "Canadian Warren Buffett" by some during successful periods of investing. It invests in everything from insurance to restaurants to sporting goods; the company owns insurers Crum & Forster and OdysseyRe in the U.S., as well as a stake in the Bank of Ireland.

Interest from Google?
A Reuters report late on Friday that the Waterloo, Ontario-based company is in talks with Cisco Systems, Google Inc and SAP about selling them all or parts of itself. I assume that this interest is based on the upcoming field of Enterprise mobility as more and more employees have started buying smartphones and tablets.
(Read more about Blackberry Enterprise Mobility @ http://www.benzinga.com/news/13/10/3970642/blackberry-offers-preview-of-cloud-based-enterprise-mobility-at-gartner-symposium)

Final Word
What do you think? Why does Prem Watsa or Google want to spend close to $5B on a failed Smartphone manufacturer?

Will Google Loon get off the ground?

I found last week’s mention of Google Loon to be very intriguing. The idea of bringing cheap, readily available internet to remote areas of the world without needing expensive physical infrastructure sounds great. Plus, it uses balloons! The concept is both accessible and non-threatening – so much so that Google used a kid's voice and simple animation in their official launch video for the project:

However, there are two big points that I can see getting in the way of Google’s grand plan to bring high-speed internet to the world. First, Google’s videos and press releases don’t mention how they plan to persuade countries around the world to let swarms of high-tech balloons into their airspace. An article from the Atlantic sums this issue up nicely: “What would Vladimir Putin think if he looked up to see an aircraft run by a U.S. tech giant -- one that occasionally shares data with the NSA, no less -- dangling overhead?”

Even in the U.S., the altitudes at which Loon would operate – at or above 60,000 feet – aren’t regulated.  In other words, laws don’t currently exist for how these areas can be used. On top of that, U.S. laws concerning the commercial operation of unmanned aircraft systems even at lower altitudes are just now being implemented (as noted in the “Release the Drones” post). Given that these balloons could easily drift across different countries’ borders and face a variety of different laws and restrictions, Loon will have a significant number of political hurdles to jump in order to realize its goals.

The second major issue with this project is the current global shortage of helium. Google is planning to launch hundreds, if not thousands, of 50-foot wide helium-filled balloons at a time when helium supplies are running out. Given that the U.S. Federal Helium Reserve – the source of 30% of the global helium supply – is already projected to be depleted by 2018, Loon could have a significant impact on the availability of helium for non-balloon-related needs, e.g. MRI scanners, semiconductors, and a variety of scientific research needs (since helium has the lowest melting point of any element).

So what do you think -- will Google find a way to get around these issues, or will Loon just be the latest of Google's "missteps," alongside Google Buzz and Google Wave?

Accenture and Philips collaborate to create first proof of concept for delivering vital patient data via Google Glass

I have always wondered what Google Glass can do and what it can't. I read some blogs and articles by early adopters and found out their reviews. One such article talks about its different features. However, this blog post is about another successful demo that uses Google Glass for the medical purposes. A few days ago, Accenture and Philips announced a new concept in a press release. This new concept allows doctors to monitor patient's vital signs and access surgical procedural developments through the Glass. This will allow doctors to operate in potentially hands-free environment where they can access patient information any time and any where. Doctors can simultaneously keep their focus on the patients and look at their information.

Philips and Accenture Technology Labs are currently exploring the potential uses of Google Glass to integrate it with Philips Healthcare solutions. There can be other uses of Google Glass for medical purpose as well but they are in the research phase. Other uses include: recording surgeries for training, accessing pre-surgery checklist, conducting live video-conferences with other surgeons, etc. 

New eBay Data Center Runs Almost Entirely On Bloom Fuel Cells

While researching on trends for alternative sources of energy I found this interesting article in: FORBES. Ebay's goal is to source at least 8 percent of their demand for energy from cleaner sources by 2015. At one of their core data centers located in Utah 75% of the required energy is generated by Bloom Fuel Cells that use natural gas. This has not only contributed to their cleaner energy goal but also in decreasing the risk of downtime for an important component of their commerce infrastructure. Vlad