Platforms. Start - but don't expect to finish soon

By Simon King

Platforms are BIG

Platforms are garnering a lot of attention these days.

New services in the cloud such as SocialGraph from Facebook, and Amazon's EC2 service platform are showing the potential value of such platforms. 

But it's not just as simple as steaming down the track to the platform, as other platform suitors have found to their cost.

Being first may land you last!

In an industry study by the Wall Street Journal, 14 of the 15 platform leaders they reviewed were NOT the first too market. Only SAP, in the integrated business software market has achieved that dominance from start to finish.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704007804574574211232106776.html

Entering the market later seemed to allow the followers to identify what really mattered at the First Mover's expense. The innovator spent all the money educating the market, but the Followers came in with faster, better solutions and took over control.

For a number of iterations, we have watched Apple time their product launches with more powerful devices, larger screens and new features - allowing them to take over the market initially owned by the BlackBerry.

Incremental and Continuous Innovation

Another key trend that the Journal observed, was that leaders  continued to develop their platforms - creating extensions which added value for their customers.

One of the most comprehensive demonstrations of such an approach was the way that DELL started with an initial concept of custom PCs. They innovated on cell manufacturing, creating a scalable way to for custom manufacturing. They expanded their channel through the web. Which generated more revenue.

The profit was re-invested in further refinements in vendor management and automation. They tried new models such as a stores, but backed away from them if the step wasn't a positive improvement.

For many years this step by step improvement in channel and then manufacturing allowed them to take control of the PC industry.

Do you have a platform strategy? How will you make sure that you're the ultimate winner?

Quantified self: Get ready for the future - NOW!

By Simon King

Remember the 'growth marks' you drew on the wall as a child?

Now you can do the same - but not just for height.


"You can't manage what you can't measure" - 
- Peter Drucker

Quantified Self is a movement in which people are tracking and quantify their lives.

They track data points such as

• Heart rate
• Steps taken today
• Amount of sleep
• Minutes spent web browsing

The idea is gaining traction.And there are many devices to track such aspects of your life, and applications to analyze the information.


"If you can measure it, someone will, and that somebody should be you."
- Chris Dancy

According to Chris Dancy we should be thinking about how our workplace is changing - and how we as employees remain relevant.

In this fascinating interview with Wired magazine, Dancy shares some of his techniques and insights.

Problem management - the Art of the Possible

By Simon King

According to Timothy Chou's book, Cloud, in 2004 Oracle reported to in it's Annual Shareholder meeting that they received 100m requests for service.

Most of us might assume that this would be 100m requests for fixes and patches.

The analysis was quite the opposite. In fact just 1/10th of 1 percent (0.1%) resulted in new software fixes.

99.9% were answered by knowledge already in a library, patches in a distribution system or knowledge in peoples' heads.

Uh oh! Report time

How many of you remember as a kid the trauma associated with Report time at school?

I'll never forget my report cards. The trouble was that my brother was incredibly smart and always had all A's across the board.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as effective at convincing my teachers that I knew what was going on. 'Nuff said.

IT report cards

When it comes to time for IT to report to the business we're not always that good at communicating in terms that the business understands.

As a result anecdotes about Outages, Software incompatibility and poor Performance prevail.

Absent a good set of reports covering the full range of services that IT provides to the business and  written in terms that the business can relate to, we leave ourselves exposed to the poor reputation that corporate IT often has.

Service Quality

I think there is a better way.

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it.
It is what the client or customer gets out of it."  Peter Drucker

Instead of focusing on specific activities (projects) and events (incidents and events), we need to talk to our customers about what they were expecting - a comprehensive view what they received and why. And changes expected to further improve service delivery and lower costs.

Talking in (customer) tongues

I'd like to recommend an enlightening IT annual report that highlights a forward  thinking way of sharing to Business customers what IT has accomplished.

Its very noticeable that Mark Settle (now IHS CIO) chose to lead with a description of the Services that his team provides to the business and how much they cost.

He then goes on to describe:

- How well Services are delivered
- Delivering new capabilities
- Service Desk performance
- Avoiding rework
- Asset utilization
- Automation

An informative read, and a lesson in how to communicate in business terms to our customers.

How does your IT team communicate with it's customers?