I found this great podcast on the network world site today from Andreas Antonopoulos. Things like Web 2.0 and unified communication applications as well as virtualization all make securing an enterprise network more difficult. Nemertes’ Andreas Antonopoulos explains how security policies and systems need to become more flexible to fit the new ways we work.
Ken Camp who has been following the Unified Communications sector makes the point that Social Media is part of the new Unified Communications model or UC 2.0.
Ken writes…
..within months it became clear that VoIP was moving quickly through any disruption into becoming a mainstay of the telecommunications networking infrastructure.
Mobility solutions are converging as well. Integration of Blackberries, iPhones and other handheld devices into the business network (whether large enterprise or small business) is moving rapidly. We’re seeing more and more integration of the handheld into daily business workflows and processes. This isn’t just users cobbling together things they want to do their job. Today we’re seeing real integration and adoption of corporation-wide solutions that bring the power of both handheld devices and wireless services into the hands of business workers everywhere.
There’s another convergence zone that isn’t as widely recognized, but we see it as still being a part of unified communications - that’s the widening impact of what we call social media tools. These tools range from presence and status sharing (Twitter, Jaiku, Brightkite, etc.), to real networking managment sites (Facebook and LinkedIn), to the array of related and supporting services that add value to our daily routines (Jott, Phweet, Twitterfone, SpinVox) all come together under the umbrella of unified communcations as well.
We’d both take the position that today social media tools are an extended aspect of unified communications.
Look for more information from Ken. I think that Ken is spot on with his analysis. The notion of presence is now extended to these new web 2.0 platforms. As the user base continues to adopt social networks and tools like twitter look for disruption on the classic UC model.
I’ve heard a lot of buzz on social media and even mashups in the workplace. John would call it “sizzle”. And I say “Where’s the steak?”. With a few exceptions the enterprise is ignoring social media in the workplace. And, though it may surprise you, I tend to agree with that strategy. Although there are certainly some organizations where social media can provide substantial benefit I don’t think it fits into the critical business processes of most enterprise environments. In my opinion, where it does fit is in the startup environment. Building a successful startup is all about communication and networking. LOTS of both. I’ve been involved in a few and the “non-work” of networking and getting your idea out there can often take up more time than the actual work of building a product.
Although most of my clients are more established, the valley is filled with startups using a “by any means necessary” strategy to get noticed. If you’re one of those, I urge you to check out Chris Brogan’s post on Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss. I’ll repost here for you lazy folks that don’t want to click the link:
One thing’s for sure, there’s at least some money in social media. Check out this analysis on a user who tried to sell his twitter account.
Look for social networking and multivendor DNS problems to be a big part of the conversation. Just this month we’ve seen the DNS monster rise up. Also what isn’t as visable are the little exploits in the social media or social network fabric. Things like twitter spoofing, twitter attacks, and a entirely new definition of “Fake Friends”.
This week it’s Twitter’s turn to host an attack - one that is targeting both Twitter users and the Internet community at large. In this case it’s a malicious Twitter profile twitter.com/[skip]/ with a name that is Portuguese for ‘pretty rabbit’ which has a photo advertising a video with girls posted.
This profile has obviously been created especially for infecting users, as there is no other data except the photo, which contains the link to the video.
If you click on the link, you get a window that shows the progress of an automatic download of a so-called new version of Adobe Flash which is supposedly required to watch the video. You end up with a file labeled Adobe Flash (it’s a fake) on your machine; a technique that is currently very popular.
In reality, this is a Trojan downloader that proceeds to download 10 banker Trojans onto the infected machine, all of which are disguised as MP3 files. We first detected the downloader proactively as Heur.Downloader and then added a signature to detect it also as Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Banload.sco.
On other related blogging Adobe is seeing bad activity around their platform. From the Adobe web site “We have seen coverage from the security community of a worm on popular social networking sites that is using social engineering lures to get users to install a piece of malware. According to the reports, the worm posts comments on these sites that include links to a fake site. If the link is followed, users are told they need to update their Flash Player. The installer, posted on a malicious site, of course installs malware instead of Flash Player.”
Old infrastructure standards like DNS and new emerging environments like Web 2.0 provide a breeding ground for new security problems or black hat techniques.
Looking for a job - go into security. This will be a big growing area.
Scott Berkun wrote a great post about experimentation and asks if you’re doing it in your company.
Recently, there has been a ton of talk about venture problems and what makes the best venture architecture (bootstrap, venture backed, or corporate). Putting all that nonsense aside for a minute I want to talk about experimentation. In emerging markets where there are more unknowns then knowns (and no great use case scenarios) you need to run experiments to get information. We see this in Unified Communications and Web 2.0
Some senior management executive and venture capitalists confuse this tactic with their staff’s or founder’s overall business vision, strategy, plan, and metrics.
Get information and requirements to reduce your risk for the investment in a new opportunity or venture. I love talking to managers and entrepreneurs who have long range plans then run experiments to get more clear information.
Scott writes: “One of the most tragic things I hear in management circles is this:
“I want to make a breakthrough happen. I really really do. But I don’t want to take any risks. How do I do that?”
If I’m honest, and say “Well that’s nice. It’s just, you see, well, it’s fundamentally impossible.” They walk away in search of another author dude who’s willing to pretend it isn’t.
The principle at work here is knowledge capture: if an innovation is something new, or something you haven’t done yet, you have to capture the knowledge and skills needed to do it. An experiment is one of the few ways to capture knowledge you don’t have. If there are no experiments, you are repeating yourself, and can’t possibly be putting new ideas into practice.”
For all entrepreneurs and strategic managers Scott Berkun’s article is an important read. I would add that if you raise venture capital or pitch senior management ona new idea, make sure you’re executives or venture partner (the guy/gal AND the firm) are crystal clear on difference between your vision/plan and experiments.
Cofounder of Yahoo Jerry Yang can now get down to business. The Carl Icahn takeover saga is finally over. Icahn joins Yahoo’s board. I guess Carl has a lot of shares but his ‘lame duck’ board seat is a consolation prize for technologies version of “The Price is Right”. He lost. Last week we saw a final knock out blow to Icahn had him down for the count. Now we have peace.
“While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole company or the sale of its search business in the right transaction must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo’s valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders,” Mr. Icahn said in the statement. “I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship going forward.”
Finally Yahoo can get down to business and get the legal bull from Wall Street off their back. Expect a fast resolution to a Microsoft deal or other transaction (hmm AOL..). Yahoo has to move on now and get back to competing.
The market is in the toilet and Yahoo’s cofounder Jerry Yang is in charge again. Lets hope cofounder Jerry has some magic left.
I ran into this blog post by Ken Camp today that talks about what is happening in Unified Communications.
Unified Communications seems to be a hot buzzword for a new and improved VoIP sector or is it?
Ken writes.. “Unified communications is a buzz phrase like convergence. It means different things to different people. In today’s business environment, VoIP is prevalent. Jon asked is it really happening, but I’m often hard pressed to find places where it isn’t happening.
Unified Communitations is everywhere. Think about it. Voice services, video services and voice mail have converged onto a single unified platform - an IP network and our computers or other devices. Without unified communications, you have no social media - no Facebook, no Twitter, no comprehensive integration. Without unified communications, the web as we know it is a pipe dream. It had email and static web pages.
Web 2.0, the phrase we’ve all heard a million times is unified communications. Without UC, there could have been no Web 2.0. Unified communications, like VoIP, isn’t a product you write a check for and buy. It’s not a single product you implement and move on. It’s not as complex as vendors make it sound.
Unified communications in a foundation mindset of a single, integrated platform for doing business. Simple.”
Another blogger Alex Doyle at BroadSoft (not to be confused with BroadDev - this blog) weights in with a good analysis from my blog post on web 2.0 and Unified Communications.
This is a good conversation. I am suggesting that UC shouldn’t be a closed solution from one vendor. In fact I see it that the hosting piece is critical for the customers to define their service modules. Having a bolted on fully integrated services isn’t the future. The hosting side is very exciting.
Web 2.0 is not fully understood but from a practical perspective the ‘lock-in’ in UC isn’t viable long term.
BroadDev blog picked the categories to cover UC, Virtualization, Security, and Web 2.0 because to me UC cuts across all those areas. We are so beyond PBX solutions in this arena.
Companies shouldn’t be forced into a choice they should choose the best for their environment.
Kara Swisher, AllThingsD.com, reported last night that Yahoo would announce the big reorg. Well she was correct. Yahoo announced the ReOrg today. Not much to say other than what is already being reported.
Here is the detail as of today (thanks Kara Swisher) .. the structure will pivot on several key execs, reporting to President Sue Decker.
EVP of Yahoo’s Platforms and Infrastructure division Ash Patel as head of a new Audience Products group (its name was changed from Global Products); Global Partner Solutions EVP Hilary Schneider as the head of a new U.S unit; various folks running around the rest of the globe.
There will also be another strategy team group with a new head, who has not yet been chosen.
And Yahoo will name Scott Dietzen (pictured, right) to take over the job of SVP Brad Garlinghouse, running all communications and community properties and products under Patel.
What All This Means?
To me the big area that is critical for Yahoo is corporate *and* competitive strategy. These variables are not mutually exclusive. Yahoo has some big weapons but under their current condition they have limited energy, time, and people resource (know-how) to execute. Therefore, it’s a chess game not a frontal brute force battle. Yahoo has to be smart and execute with precision. Every move needs to be calculated in context to their corporate and competitive plan. Yahoo has been winging it for years - relying on their massive pageviews and audience subscribers.
Yahoo needs to be “all in” and compete. I am in the camp of pro-Yahoo (always have been). I’m cheering for them to pour it on AND compete.
How do you demonstrate the value of UC? David (don’t know his last name because msft spaces is tough to navigation) who loves hockey and technology writes a post on Demonstrating Value of Unified Communications.
David points to a survey that provides detailed research and analysis interviewing a variety of end users, examining how they use UC in their daily work flow, and how UC has made an impact. Here are some highlights of those results!
Executives, operations, IT, human resources, and marketing users were all interviewed for this study. The consensus was that UC has made a critical impact on their productivity.
UC is certainly a hot area but I want to see how the existing UC vendors are dealing with the new presence paradigm of environments like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, ..etc
To me I have yet to see the value ..as they say ‘Where’s the beef’
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