Apple, Sony and Nokia all have interesting retail outlet offerings.   But my last visit to the Nokia retail outlet was a puzzler, given the lines of people in queue for service.  All they wanted to do was ask questions, not touch the merchandise.  Given it was understaffed, I would assume these folks would go down the street to the local mobile shop and talk to their mobile operator at the same time.  But it appears we have a trend of differentiating between the product and the service. The demand for unbundling of the iPhone from only one telecom provider supports that theory. I can only see these retail outlets as extended customer service channels, versus new business promotion (except for Apple, and I believe Apple retail stores are a necessity to support the brand).

Now Microsoft is jumping into the retail outlet space….could this be a place for Dell to get closer to the consumer ?

In yesterday’s New York Times, they discuss Google Flu Trends, the new Web tool from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit.  As people search Google with flu like symptoms, Google can collect and collate the information to foresee trends.  Google suggests that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In using the Web as a research tool, it becomes a two-way flow of information. Not so bad, perhaps, if we are discussing colds and flu, but how far should this go?  If I go to a public computer (library, university) and want to search for info on a more serious illness,  is that the only place where I can be anonymous in my interests?

Cloud computing is a hot topic, given the spread in this week’s Economist.  But what about privacy and data protection issues? In May of this year,  the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada,  Ann Cavoukian discussed the changing landscape for individual information as software moves to cloud computing in the form of Web-based services from companies such as Google, IBM or Amazon. The issues include identity management software based on open standards; federated identity so that registering their information for one service will mean they are recognized elsewhere; as well as privacy audit tools to track what happens to user data; and data privacy protection policies that regulate how information will be used in a cloud.

“User-centric private identity management in the Cloud is possible, even when users are no longer in direct possession of their personal data, or no longer in direct contact with the organization(s) that do possess it,” she said. “Inevitably, we must also have sufficient trust in those organizations that would supply and accept our identity credentials and our personally identifiable information.”

Cloud computing experts in Canada agreed that privacy and security of personal information is emerging as the most important hurdle cloud computing vendors must jump in order to attract customers.

Reuven Cohen, principal with IT consulting firm Enomoly in Toronto, has suggested the term “geopolitical cloud” should be used to describe the kind of jurisdictional quandaries users could face, depending on the services they choose. “In a lot of ways, you’re limited by the sort of political constraints different countries place on their data,” he said. “The U.S. and their Patriot Act is just one example.”

It is interesting to compare with technical and legal approaches and restrictions already in place for third party financial and medical information exchange.

So is cloud computing just a new version of an existing issue around privacy?

The solution for the current market meltdown is simple:  stop (freeze) the U.S. stock exchanges for a limited period of time (1-2 weeks) and fix the underlying problem of counterparty risk first with a federated intermediary. Financial markets, banks, and the real economy are interlinked, so this has to be resolved before the rest can calm down.

Remember, this has to be done now as there is a possible U.S. policy vacuum during  November – January. In  the last Depression in 1933, the US banking crisis grew much worse during the five months between the election of a new president and his entering office.  Yes,  I did say last Depression, because guess what we are entering now….. When I hear (other) economists talking about Recession, I have to sigh, as it is clear we are beyond that….

The announced job cuts of 24,600 at HP  will take place over the next three years as it combines operations with Electronic Data Systems, the technology company it recently bought. EDS employees are expected to bear the brunt of the cuts.

First HP could not properly digest Compaq (although it always appeared to be the other way around), and now HP announces layoffs in terms of its digestion of EDS. IBM did a much better job with the PwC consolidation. But IBM had already made the internal mind shift to a solution provider, vs. a box shifter.

Perhaps for HP a diet of service, vs. product, is too much of a good thing (like dessert)?

This should be subtitled: IBM gets it, where other storage vendors are missing the boat. Data is costly and irreplaceable. With a drive towards SaaS in financial services and in CRM, and a real need for data risk and compliance implementation, a vision for integration and optimization of the data infrastructure is what business are looking for, not just products and services.

IBM on Monday announces a new initiative in the Enterprise Data Center space, with a combined view of storage, software and services. Their ‘Information Infrastructure’ announcement focuses on firm needs for information compliance, availability, security and retention. It was not just a storage announcement, although quite a lot of product was introduced, but also tools and services to address this vision. This will be supported by a center of excellence in Singapore and new Web portal to provide the necessary information and materials for this vision.

I really liked the Compliance focus, with the enhanced eDiscovery Manager tools, specifically as we are doing some work for clients in this area right now, and it is a nightmare.

See the IBM website for more details, or ping us after tomorrow for a talk on the subject.

I agree with the musings of Chris Preimesberger and Tom Valovic on the possibilities of Cisco acquiring control of VMware from EMC.  However, Chris does only briefly discuss the outcome of the what-if scenario — namely, what would Cisco do with VMware in its portfolio of acquired technologies. IOS anyone? Want my take?  Ping me, and I am happy to chat.

German insurance giant Allianz said Sunday it would sell the nation’s third largest private bank, Dresdner Bank, to number two Commerzbank for Euro 9.8 billion.  It will take place in two stages and be completed no later than the end of 2009, pending approval by regulatory authorities. In its statement, Commerzbank said it would eliminate 9,000 full-time jobs as part of the takeover, including 2,500 outside Germany (likely mainly in the UK).

Commerzbank is financially well positioned at the moment, and Allianz has so far failed to earn profits with Dresdner Bank. So the timing is right, and to keep Dresdner in German hands (vs. Chinese) the pressure has been on for this to occur.

In IT alone,  several millions of euros could be saved. Average costs per customer would fall significantly (over time!) and the merged bank would be more competitive internationally as well as domestically against Deutsche Bank.

We feel it will be likely that Commerzbank will be choosing the IT back office solutions going forward, as following the acquisition of EuroHypo, Commerzbank’s strategy was to consolidate trade data by integrating EuroHypo’s trade portfolio into Commerzbank’s existing trading system, Misys Summit. But time will tell, as in most bank consolidations in the last five years, that if it will be bank politics, data integration or required application functionality that will decide what application will become preferred going forward.

One of the more visible choices will be the choice of branch automation applications, as with about 800 branches in Germany to Dresdner’s 1,000, Commerzbank may be under heavy pressure to close some of them. If you compare this to consolidation here in Belgium with Fortis, ING and AXA, we had the same issue as to whose branch interface application is chosen, and how you retrain the branch tellers with the new systems, which can be expensive.

Watch this space for more….

Having read that Microsoft will be introducing privacy into the version 8 of IE, I am not that surprised, given the active interest of Caspar Bowden, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), and his team in EMEA, in user privacy issues.  He has been on the Reference Group for the EU’s PRIME project, where I have been involved, via Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam (EUR), in the economics package of examining the business case for privacy for both enterprises and users.

The real issue is awareness, as many users do not realise how much of their browsing is captured and described for data collection and use by others.  This is particularly relevant for insurance shopping, looking for information on message boards about diseases, and online gambling, which are some of the use cases we examined. PRIME has been a research project with both academic and industry participation (including IBM and HP Labs) on creating a truly open, user-oriented privacy management system.

We examined the enterprise point of view, in what would incentivise an enterprise to intall user-oriented privacy measures.   Happy to give people a longer version, non-blog, if there is interest — let me know.

I came across a blog from 2006, which summarises what SaaS really needs to get off the ground – hardware as a service (HaaS). Two years later, we are still at the same place, unfortunately.  The fundamental problem is the industry business and licensing models still have to be broken and re-born for this to take place.

What mobile enterprise users really need is a computing solution (HW, OS, apps), bundled and serviced by a provider. Internal, external — it really should not matter to the user, only to the one paying the bill!

This should be done as generically as possible, to enable a mobile worker to truly work where and when they need to. I noticed this several years ago, as I traveled overseas, that borrowing a colleague’s laptop meant more adaptation to the hardware than to the software.

With so many HW vendors becoming service firms, to quote a young child on a family car trip: “Are we there yet?”  Me thinks not, but I suspect there are a few firms covertly working on such a service as we speak…This then makes the SMB equally as competitive in terms of infrastructure than the large enterprise, and then knowledge and content would drive competition, not the size of the server farm.