I was just reading Michio Kaku’s 2008 bestseller, Physics of the Impossible. He’s an excellent writer, researcher and scientist. For those that don’t know him, even if you don’t have a scientific or astrophysicist bent, you’re sure to find his writings stimulating. He draws from some of the greatest scientists in the world, so it’s not just his thinking.

In this book, he talks about three levels of impossibilities. A Class I impossibility is something that we can’t do now, but probably will come about in few generations to a few hundred years, such as teleportation and anti-matter engines. A Class II impossibility is one that may take man a few millennia to achieve – such as hyper travel, and a third level is way, way out there in the future –if at all. They sound like forever, but in universe time, it’s not even a blink of an eye.

As I was reading his book, I kept analogizing on a few things. One of which is, what does business look like in five to ten generations from now and what does it look like in a few thousand years when some Class II impossibilities start kicking in?

It’s difficult at least for me to think that far in the future. But let’s look at some Class I impossibilities and see where that leads us.

Suppose we solve three of the ten Class I impossibilities that Kaku proposes.

• Teleportation of inanimate objects
• Advanced intelligent robotics and nanobots
• Antimatter power sources

All three have projects in the works and are rudimentarily being done.

Now let’s take a look at these three in combination. Teleportation would ease the distribution of small quantities of objects worldwide or speed the movement of small critical items in the event of an emergency.  Advanced robotics could provide us with the ability to move large objects and quantities of materials safely and without intense human intervention. Finally harnessing anti-matter (or perhaps fission) as a usable and viable power further decreases our dependence on expensive and depleted fossil fuels. Businesses such as trucking and transportation could look quite different as well as construction if it employed nanobot technology.

I am also intrigued by how we will be marketing and selling products and services and how we communicate, distribute and record these events. Obviously computers will be a major element, but even computers may look or feel different when quantum computers take root. And what will be the effect of virtual businesses on our society and how we interact with another. It leaves me at least with a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of conjecture. But I’m not sure the Brave New World of Huxley in 2540 AD, some 500 years from now, withstands the acid test of future personal relationships anymore. I think there is more to hope for, a lot more!

Newsweek and Intel collaborated on this Global Innovation Survey that polled 4800 adults in the U.S., China, Germany and the U.K.

Two of the more interesting survey findings included:

While most Americans (73%) believe the U.S. is technologically innovative, more Chinese do (82%) and a significant majority of Chinese believe we are staying ahead of China when it comes to innovation as opposed to less than a majority of Americans (41%).

In addition, many Americans (52%) blame poor math and science education as the reason for our falling behind, while more Chinese than Americans (45% to 18%) believe that creative problem solving is more important to innovation.

Perhaps a majority of Chinese value creative problem solving and Americans math and science since these are each areas of complimentary necessities to create, innovate and invent. And of course it’s something that each of these societies wants more of.

Originally being schooled as a mathematician and engineer, and having worked at one of the great think tanks – Bell Laboratories – it always seemed to me that balance would ultimately prevail over one or another extreme. However, over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it is actually more important to be extremely great at both – not necessarily the same individual of course – and then build an organization through people that have a balance, using them to connect innovation to the real world, by continuously collecting business requirements, and creatively marketing products so that the economic engine behind the innovation remains continuously fueled.

One thing I’m sure of is that seed and venture capital are key to priming this engine and the world’s economy is quite dependent on our business risk takers.

I spent a couple of days at the big annual event for bankers last week in Boston hosted by BAI.  They also had some high quality speakers, two of whom, Jack Welch and Al Gore,  I’ve had the brief honor of meeting previously. The third was Ram Charan, noted author and educator, and as this is the first time I heard him in person, I must say that he was excellent. All of them are plugging their books and writings including AL Gore’s latest, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. But that is expected and I look forward to reading VP Gore’s latest.

What I thought was to a degree absent was a session on how cloud computing can assist banks, especially those that fall in the below $10B in asset range. These could be represented by banks, Savings and Loan’s (S&L) or Credit Unions (CU).

Here is what I thought was there and what was missing:

Some banks are using cloud computing for the traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) capabilities including sales such as Salesforce.com.

Some are using it to augment some of their infrastructure needs including data storage.

A few are using it to augment website capabilities.

What I didn’t hear was a bank or other financial or lending institution that started its core operations around cloud computing. And I think there are still a lot of valid concerns why this is not happening as rapidly as in some other areas of business. Let are my thoughts:

First, banking is highly regulated and likely to get more so, not less. Consumer and depositor data is closely monitored as part of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act. Cloud computing opens some doors to loss of data security.

Second, the OCC and OTS have considerable oversight in regular audits of large and small banks. Getting caught in a bad audit is not something anyone wants.Cloud computing may not lend itself well to an intense audit.

On the other hand banks, new, upcoming and traditional all can benefit from this approach. Traditional banks get to employ new services faster and quicker, while new banks don’t have to invest in a lot of Information Technology (IT) assets to get moving.

I would hope that next year we’ll hear more concrete stories of how banks are employing and deploying greater and wider services through cloud computing providers such as Amazon, IBM, Google, Oracle and Microsoft, as well as some of the outsourcers, Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) and bank services providers including FIS, Metavante, Harland and Jack Henry.

If you would like further information on this topic, please feel free to contact me at ralphs@rgsmanagement.com 

As I continue to talk to a number of technology companies about their winning strategies and best practices in building partnerships and alliances, I keep hearing about some of the critical tactics that will work in your behalf and hopefully keep you in your position.

Note that I said tactics – not strategies or best practices – that can keep you successful. I’ll leave strategy and best practices for another blog.

Here are 5 that I believe are important to help you keep your position.

• Target a 90 day win
• Target high and deliver in phases
• Target the largest customers in your market
• Target your sales force and your partner’s sales force
• Target maximum control

Now here is more of what I mean.

Thinking beyond 90 days in today’s economy is a recipe for disaster. Few companies can afford that luxury, not even the largest ones. While good alliance managers like to think strategically, this is not the time to put all your eggs in this long term basket.

Thinking big in terms of a win means delivering the highest value and hopefully highest revenue joint sale that is realistic and still fits in the 90 day-ish window. Thinking big also keeps you in front of all the right people – sales, management, marketing and customers. But think in chunks of deliverables that are realistic and that can show measurable and incremental success to everyone.

Thinking in terms of large customer deals means that you are targeting the highest end of your target market. If you need to target large companies and your partner is targeting companies in the mid bracket, you could have a disconnect. Make sure you’re both on the same track and can deliver with the same level of customer.

Thinking in terms of getting the buy-in and participation of both direct sales forces has always been important. This has not changed today and may be even more critical in making the right things happen. And if the right things don’t happen, having the sales buy-in may provide a little extra buffer for you in the event of problems.

Thinking in terms of maximum control means keeping control of as many of the elements of success as possible. If you expand your partnership beyond two partners, or if you require too many resources, or input from a third party, you will begin to lose control. That goes for complex projects or ventures that require too many pieces of your own organization to deliver on.

This is a tough market and alliance managers are under a lot of pressure. I’d like to hear what you believe are most critical to your immediate success.

Since I tend to frequently use what I suggest, I keep getting asked lately what technologies I’m suggesting to help some of my clients. This is not a simple question since it typically depends on the client. What’s good for one situation is not always good for the next. In a sense, I could answer this from different perspectives and to make this personal I’ll use my background as a backdrop. You could do the same since, particularly if you have a broad range of experience or have a specific knowledge base. 

From one perspective, as a former IT Architect at AT&T Bell Laboratories, I typically pushed the edge of applying and incorporating the latest technologies. Since there were legions of programmers around me, if the technology performed poorly, I or someone around me could probably fix it. This is the least likely scenario today in business and although the first to be mentioned here, is my last choice – unless - this new technology could provide you with a significant edge against your competition. This frequently occurred with some of the big capital markets companies like Citi or Goldman Sachs where a microsecond head’s start in trading can be everything (first mover always wins in that market).
 
From another perspective, as an end user of technology and former Risk Manager in the financial and insurance world, I can say I gravitated towards first fully understanding the software programs that I had access to and what their strengths and deficiencies were. I then tended to experiment with commercial off-the-shelf programs that I could manage myself. So I would sometimes try a new software program using a subset of the data and information that I had at hand. Since I knew the data intimately, I frequently tried running new software alternatives against that data to understand whether the new results were better, or more importantly I tried to discover whether I could gain some fresh insights into this old data. If the new program didn’t take me a lot of learing time and was easy to install, I knew I was on to something. As an example, I used this approach successfully to deliver just-in-time risk reports to our large customers using a software tool that no one was using at the time. It took me from a manager to an Asst VP early in my career.

Lastly, I think there is the case of smaller companies (under 200 employees) who simply can’t get too far down the track with new programs. With this set of users, and I have some, focusing on simplicity and complementary programs is the right approach. These tend to be Microsoft Office only shops – maybe with some specialty programs like CAD (Computer Aided Design) if they are an engineering design firm for example. In fact, the operative technique here is to use programs that easily fit together and have been integrated together by many companies.

In short, keep these in mind before adding new technologies:

• What are your business needs – first and foremost?
• What technology resources, capabilities and people do you have and will this drain them from doing other worthwhile projects?
• Does it complement and add value to what I’m doing? What are some complementary and low-risk technologies that I could use?
• Is there a short term ( < 6mos) bang for the buck? Long term ROI doesn’t make it with many managers today.
• Will it require a lot of integration with other programs?
• Can I get a business user to trial it quickly?
• How will it get supported (internally/externally)?

So what are some of the technology picks that I like for business? I have a number of them depending on your size and on whether you’re a wealth management company, a health care company developing its web presence, a small or medium size business grappling with the basics, or a large or small business trying to understand its customer base. I will outline some of these good ones in another blog – or feel to connect with me. Feel free to offer your thoughts, favorites or other comments as well. I’d love to hear them!

To me, this has become an important topic and one that I’ve spent some time on, consulting on virtualization and cloud computing. For those that read Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat, you might recall that “Virtual” was mentioned as part of his 10th Flattener. But what he was really referring to is what I wrote about in my last blog – virtualizing meetings and trade shows.

On the other hand, and in the context of this blog, virtualization is a set of techniques, processes and a good dose of software applications that allow IT departments to slice and dice their computer hardware (primarily computers and servers) and data storage into smaller, separately managed logical servers and resources. To the average non-techy, this is about as intuitive as learning Greek.

So I won’t discuss the How of doing this, but rather the Why.  The Why is simply about being able to squeeze more out of your compute and data storage purchases by optimizing their capabilities. Sounds easy enough. And of course the followup question is ‘why doesn’t what we already do work as well as this technique’ - that being the purchase of one software server license per physical server. Let’s just say that this technology and its best practices have really matured in the past few years, and until now IT has not really felt safe in fully deploying virtualization to run the core business. That is changing, and in the land of IT today virtualization provides a good deal of cost savings, while preserving and extending your previous investments in technology. This is a key result in a world economy that values economizing like never before.

Virtualization can also be an important ingredient and is frequently associated with the infrastructure behind cloud computing. There’s a lot being discussed on this subject and some actual business and products being developed and road-mapped. But I’ll address the marketing and sales behind this in another blog - since this is a much broader topic. But suffice it to say, that cloud computing and virtualization often appear together in the same context. 

There are a few major players in this arena, VMware and Citrix (through its acquisition of Xen) are the big ones. VMware is the most dominant commercial vendor maintaining an approximate 55% market share, while Citrix had its roots in the open source arena and has maintained a smaller market share. Microsoft, Sun and others have valuable components and versions of their own that work primarily with their operating systems. And of course there is a substantial partner, channel and vendor ecosystem that has developed for this market. 

Since what goes on at the top of these companies is so critical, part of the sales and business maturity process have become evident in the leadership of these businesses. VMware, which was owned and now spun off by EMC, recently went through a change at the top, putting in place Paul Maritz, a mature and seasoned veteran of building organizations by replacing one of the original founders, Diane Greene.  Why…EMC still owns a majority of stock of VMware (was about 90%) and those shares will likely become more valuable in an untethered company, one that is not “totally” beholden to EMC technology.  Xen has been managed the last few years by Peter Levine, an old colleague of mine via a UNIX International committee in the early 90’s and a veteran of Veritas (now Symantec),  and Peter put his stamp of leadership on Xen by selling it to Citrix – and remaining with Citrix as their EVP. Why…Citrix is not only a much larger company but is one that is highly complimentary to Xen, providing much of the software that allows us to create virtual conferences and connect to our remote compute resources (Go ToMyPC).

Since I’ve attended both physical (real and in-person) trade shows and events and User Group meetings from VMware, as well as virtual trade shows and on-line webinars, I’ve been impressed by their attempts to put virtualization into a decent ROI sale context. This is one of the top two keys to selling most technology and I would say that VMware has created a reasonably well-refined ROI template that you can use to judge cost-benefits.

However, I think the ability to sell virtualization’s ease of management, and safety and reliability have been less evident. Indeed, VMware has to rely too often on its partners to supply necessary “fail-safe” technologies (backup, disaster recovery, etc) to complement its offerings. True, this is changing, but it has delayed virtualization’s adoption. When I started in this business, it was all about how to get to five 9’s (99.999% uptime), which equates to 5+ minutes of downtime per year as memory serves. Virtualization will surely head further upstream in the eyes of CIO’s with more fully demonstrable and certifiable studies of uptime, MTBF (mean time between failures) and the many other quality metrics associated with running a data center. And these measures of reliability have to be associated with the level of training, processes, and other investments in order for the virtualization vendors to make a fully vetted case and to ensure a faster sale’s close cycle. One suggestion - try giving us a chart with the number of 9’s versus the level of effort (time, money and people) that I have to put in to get to that level of uptime. That is the true benchmark of ROI vs. safety that will propel and sell this technology that much faster.

Another – try adding in elements of data storage and desktop virtualization into a comprehensive ROI model and safety equation, and maybe throw in a chart on application virtualization.

There’s clearly a lot that has evolved in getting wider spread sales and adoption of virtualization, but there’s still a lot to be improved upon.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on some additional ideas.