Maybe D&B have it right — forget the traditional browser interface and go right to the iPhone App! After all, the App Store is expected to pull in $2 Billion in revenues this year (TUAW.com) while our entire niche space, from a software sales perspective, depending on who you believe, is only worth 3 Billion to 5 Billion (especially if you believe Ariba).
Check out today’s Dilbert strip. With the help of Dogbert and the Pointy Haired Boss, Scott Adams cuts right to the heart of the cloud craziness that has overtaken us.
Simply put:
| Dogbert (the consultant) | … Blah Blah Cloud. Blah Blah Cloud. … | |
| Pointy-Haired Boss | It’s as if you’re a technologist and a philosopher all in one! | |
| Dogbert (the consultant) | Blah Blah Platform. |
That’s exactly what I hear when people start blabbing about “The Cloud”. That’s exactly what any smart technology person hears when people start blabbing about the cloud. And I say this with confidence because even Larry doesn’t know what the cloud is. (What the Hell is Cloud Computing?) He’s one of the smartest technology guys out there … and if he doesn’t know what it is, how can your average technology genius know what it is?
The reality, and please say this aloud three times, is that THERE IS NO CLOUD. (THERE IS NO CLOUD. THERE IS NO CLOUD.) It is a myth perpetuated by sales people and consultants who don’t have anything new to sell, but who know that if they speak the truth, they won’t sell anything … so they go around talking about this mythical magical cloud in a wonderful and confusing manner until they get some of the more dimwitted middle managers with a budget to bite. Then these dimwitted middle managers start perpetuating the myth because they know that if there isn’t enough hype for the technology they just overspent on, they won’t be able to justify their decision, and they’ll look bad. Then everyone else starts playing follow the leader because they don’t realize that it wasn’t Organization X that bought “the cloud”, but some dimwitted middle manager with a silver tongue and a charming smile. And then we have another technology craze around technology that doesn’t exist.
If someone is selling you “cloud technology”, then, if you’re lucky, what they are really selling you is a multi-tenanted hosted SaaS solution with open APIs that allow you to upload, manage, transfer, and download your data at your convenience and to manage how much processing is done when. (Something you should have been able to do since day one, but couldn’t with most multi-tenant SaaS providers that knew that only way to lock you in was to lock-in your data.) That’s it. Multi-tenant SaaS with open APIs that interoperate with an open standard so that you can, if you wish, suck your data out of one “cloud” instance and spit it into another “cloud” instance that uses the same API. If you’re really lucky, it might also have some good graphical management software that you can access through your browser (instead of undocumented command line RPC calls that take expensive coders weeks of time to figure out).
If you’re unlucky, it’s a traditional hosted ASP provider that has implemented the basics of an API that, through a lot of sweat and manpower in the offshore development centres, lets them fake a multi-tenant SaaS solution if you don’t look under the hood (as the best these providers can really pull off is single-tenant SaaS).
And since multi-tenant SaaS and open APIs have been around for years, it’s not new, it’s not magic, and it’s definitely not a new fluffy magic box.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of multi-tenant SaaS (done right) and have promoted such technology for years. But I am sick and tired of this marketing BS. It’s a cloud all right — a cloud of smug produced by conceited marketing types. (If you don’t know what a smug cloud is, Trey Parker and Matt Stone produced a South Park episode that explains it quite well. If you are in the US, you can find video clips on the South Park Studios site. Warning: TV-14 to TV-MA, possibly NSFW)
The best predictor of a paradigm shift’s success long-term is how upset it makes people.
Stephen Wolfram, Interview with Christopher Meyer
I just realized something. A whole year has gone by and there has been nothing upsetting in the space. It’s been (well) over a year since I’ve seen anything that made me say “this is going to change things”. Sure, a lot of platforms have gotten better this year. For example, a number of e-Procurement and Supplier Relationship Management platforms have improved greatly in term of features, usability, or both, but there’s nothing fundamentally new on the market. And while a couple of platforms have embraced mobile computing, the functionality offered is minimal and not much beyond the information that can be sent in e-mail alerts (or approvals).
I shouldn’t be surprised, because many companies cranked back on R&D, or put it on hold, when the recession hit full swing. As a result, many companies haven’t been doing much R&D. However, some companies were smart enough to realize that a recession is an opportunity to be great, and kept going full steam ahead, but when you look at what they did, they just improved upon what they had. I really haven’t seen any new ideas in almost two years. As a result, there’s not much for me to be excited about, or much for the market to get upset about.
Now that the recovery, albeit a jobless one, is in full swing, hopefully things will turn around. But we also have to contend with the reality that some companies released great products and platforms in 2008/2009 that still haven’t reached their potential because many companies just stopped buying. In fact, in a few cases, at the current rate of market adoption, these companies are still about five years ahead. While I know a few of them will keep improving and keep innovating, what incentive do they have to release something entirely new if the market still hasn’t understood and adopted the powerful solutions they still have? One area where this is the case is decision optimization. Many companies still have not even tried this technology, even though it’s one of only two technologies repeatedly found to deliver double-digit percentage returns (with the other being spend analysis). And many companies who have are still not using it at its full potential. This is probably why, of the six true providers of strategic-sourcing decision optimization, only three appear to be moving forward with the technology, and, in my view, only two appear to be making real progress. What’s the incentive to move forward if the market won’t keep up with you?
But if 2011 doesn’t bring some new offerings that upset the market, I fear that the market will start to languish. And considering only half of CPOs have a seat at the table, we can’t afford this. So who’s going to upset the market in 2011?
StorefrontBacktalk recently ran a great article on how “it’s not so soft in the cloud after all”. On December 5th, the web site of U.K. grocery giant Tesco ground to a halt after a surge of customers tried to take advantage of a new loyalty-card promotion. This was AFTER Tesco had announced that Akamai would be offloading 90% of the load to make sure nothing would go wrong.
And, of course, once the site went down, the call centre got overloaded too. And what happened when the failure was investigated? Akamai blamed the failure on a part of the Tesco site that was not being supported by Akamai’s cloud services, passing the buck.
And if all transactions eventually have to pass through, or be recorded in your systems, the bottleneck will still be there and all the cloud will do is accelerate your failure.
That’s why I’ve warned you again and again and again that the cloud is not a fluffy magic box.
That’s right! Twenty years ago today, the first successful trial run of the system that would ultimately become the World Wide Web (which most of us couldn’t get through a day without a mere 20 years later) was completed.
Happy Birthday!