Quote of the Week

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."

Steve Jobs - Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

Paypal Mobile

This service really blows my mind. Finally, a killer app for cellphone payments.

So what makes it different from Wizzit, MTN Bank, ZA Bank Cellphone Banking? Let's explore...

It's simple
Every phone can make a payment (The carrier is SMS). Everyone else (except for FNB) is trying to make WAP/WIG work. Newsflash! WAP/WIG sucks!

Paypal customers are special
Paypal customers are tech savvy folk, who are used to making theses kinds of paymets. And the 'Opt IN' is there already. South African banks are trying to replace internet banking, instead of complimenting it. They are also trying to target low income groups, who are often illiterate, and not exactly interested in 'digital cash'.

It's cheap
No additional charges. Same as making a regular paypal payment (vendor pays). Unlike the R5 we pay here in SA for an INTERNAL TRANSFER!!! (ugh!).

It's safe
Hell, we pay so much for calls here in SA, I'm more worried about some loser stealing my phone and calling uzbhekistan than a reversible, refundable (limited) payment to a known person!

It's not here
Available in the U.S, Canada and the U.K.

What we should do in SA
Well, if the banks really had comsumer interests at heart, they'd create a SASWITCH-esque clearing house for text mobile payments (and I'll have to eat my hat). What they MIGHT do is create this functionality for Internet Banking users.

Lessons Learnt
It's time to stop flogging the WIG/WAP dead horse, time to stop basing business cases on mobile penetration, and time to start creating products which might. actually. work. Hell, if I had the option I would build a prototype TODAY.

More information
here, here, here and here

SOA or So Ahhhhhh!

Services orientated architecture - the holy grail of application architects that we have been striving towards is now within grasp. The web services world is alive and thriving! Are we about to see the same happen in the enterprise space?

Looking across all major platform suppliers we now see that SOA is being marketed as being the core of the strategy. IBM with websphere, SAP's ESA, Microsoft's .Net and oracle and Weblogic's BEA all play to this approach. The promise of open systems is clearly not happening as each of the companies platforms is increasingly proprietary! So much for the Java promise!


So have we arrived?

There are lots of articles and cases about firms adopting this approach and yet there are few stories about the challenges of this approach. They range from a single point of failure, contention management, challenges in terms of how granular to define the services in order to make them reusable, inter organisation sharing of services etc. The challenge of converting legacy, managing orchestration, middle ware selection and deciding on level of abstraction all present serious obstacles to this race. Creating repositories and tracking services changes over time and managing reuse and maintanability are additional problems.


This is clearly a journey of a decade or more. Most firms will have to extablish a multi generation strategy to putting this in. Its true that the person that starts this strategy in most firms will not be the person who finishes it! Have firms planned for this? Most firms have adopted on the journey without a clear understanding of this journey.

So my view on answers to some of the perenial questions.

So is it real? As real as any other ISV vapourware.

Worth doing / Asbsolutely

Guaranteed business case? Better to have than not have!

Crossing enterprise borders? Unlikely for quite some time, which is taken for granted in the web services space.

Will we have open systems? Probably not

Will u have vendor lockin? Duhhhhh!!!!!

The Citibank PIN Scandal

I'm sure by now you've seen the coverage of the Citibank PIN Scandal.

"But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam -- and scandal -- has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks, including ones in Oregon, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have re-issued debit cards in recent weeks".(link)

I obviously can't comment on the story - because I'm waiting for official comment AND I don't know enough about debit cards, but do I feel better after reading these articles (1)(2)(3).

I'm sure we'll see press releases from Herman, and from other South African banks today. Watch the Google News RSS feed (link).

BlackBerry Saved. Franco Ecstatic.

So by now you know that the BlackBerry/NTP litigation is finally over (link). BB stock surged 19 percent. And PALM is still in trouble. Meanwhile Microsoft extended the functionality of Exchange 2003 SP2 to include teleportation and cold fusion powered handsets.

HAS EVERYONE GONE MAD??? YOU DON'T NEED MIDDLEWARE!!!

Why are companies STILL buying BlackBerry? If you already have Exchange 2003 and your CIO just signed for BlackBerry, well...

I give up.

…all I can say is you probably deserve to be paying for it.

Look, I'll admit that BB has a great product. And a fanatical user base. But really, IT history is littered with vertically integrated (BB owns the devices, the server, the protocols etc.) products which were ousted by leaner, meaner, better integrated (can anyone say IBM compatible/UNIX/HTC?).

I never thought I would be making the case for a Microsoft product. But for cripes sake…

Don't buy BlackBerry/Intellisync/SeeBeyond until you've tried what you ALREADY HAVE.

sigh

Making the right choice

I’m an impulsive guy. Knowing this, I often try and take my time on decisions – usually up to a week. I ask the people around me what they think, and I debate as much as I can. I used to think this was the responsible thing to do.

But I'll always end up with the same conclusion as my initial reactive impulse. The extra week just adds complexity and overhead to the decision, and generally confuses myself – and the people around me. It’s quite destructive. If I’m not able to make a snap decision, I’ll probably never make it.

In my job, I spent a lot of time trying to help others make decisions. I don’t really enjoy writing motivations (Business Cases), because the really important criteria are almost always hidden within the complexity of the document (which is designed to mimic the environment). In other words, we try and address a complex decision with a complex deliberation process.

So this post is about changing my personal policy, and hopefully changing yours.

Having read ‘the Tipping Point’, I was quite stoked to see that Malcolm Gladwellhas started a blog. A quick read led me to his second book, entitled “Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”. The book deals with rapid cognition, and the benefits of using instant decisions to make choices in complex scenarios.

About “Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”
"Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more". (link) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

In his blog, Gladwell linked to this article:

On Making the Right Choice
The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect
Ap Dijksterhuis,* Maarten W. Bos, Loran F. Nordgren, Rick B. van Baaren
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) should be left to unconscious thought. Named the "deliberation-without-attention" hypothesis, it was confirmed in four studies on consumer choice, both in the laboratory as well as among actual shoppers, that purchases of complex products were viewed more favourably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation” (link)

Deliberation often destroys the value of a project - More examples

1. Lot’s of couples get married after only a couple of months. They don’t want to add complexity to the decision.
2. Then there’s also Design by Committee ("a camel is a horse designed by a committee”)
3. Not to mention the potential for bozosity

So What?
We need to learn to harness and USE our instant judgement. Make the complex decisions quickly (elevator pitch), and the simple decisions slowly (project process!).

For example in IT, projects kick off with an ‘elevator pitch’ motivation. No convoluted business case templates to facilitate complex decisons!

There's freedom in simplicity!

Looks like we should rename this blog to 'Future Branch'

Do it.

Google the phrase "Bank of the Future".

You'll notice that almost all of the top sites listed involve some kind of branch innovation.

"...branches are about to undergo a renaissance as "buying centres". The challenges financial institutions face include, making it more attractive to visit their branches, using time more effectively for advisory and sales activities, and displacing administrative activities into service areas. To do this, customers need to be offered a more positive shopping experience where personalised customer service is made a core issue, as is the trend in the retail industry. The way to achieve this lies with automating business transactions that have no relevance to sales, and providing systems-support for the advisory process that can make information and processes available that are tailored to individual customers' requirements."(link)

And this article ("...a play area for children equipped with electronic games...") reminds me of the IKEA store concept.

Accenture is pushing branch applications of RFID cards, here and here. Yuck. The last time I asked about privacy and RFID at a (SA) conference, the audience looked at me like I was a lunatic (people here need to get educated).

How about getting simple things right first? I still get bank mail sent to 3 different addresses. ( OK - I'm an edge case... I move around a bit). Or not having to fill in all my details multiple times, every time I go into a branch? Or not being allowed to make an appointment with a 'consultant'.

It's all about streamlining transactional banking, and improving the sales process.

You're cool in 2006 when... you're feeling lucky

You're cool in 2006 when your businesss card reads:

1. Go to Google
2. Type Matt
3. Press “I’m feeling lucky”

That's WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg’s buisiness card (from TopTenSources).

Don't underestimate the power of your google ranking!