How consumer tech is transforming IT: Meet The Bizumers

Originally Posted On Fortune.com
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/31/bizumer/

FORTUNE -- Today, business users are demanding a consumer-like experience at work. People are asking, "How come the technology in my person life is so great but, at work, it sucks so much?" Meet the new class of business technology consumers. You could call them "bizumers."

Where did they come from? Over the last five years, we've witnessed a consumer technology revolution led by Apple (AAPL), Facebook, Google (GOOG), Netflix (NFLX) and Flipboard -- among many others. As consumers, we are enjoying big breakthroughs in mobile devices, Web 2.0 services and, generally, simpler user experiences. Technology has never been more fun or effective.

Except at work. Enterprise technology seems bankrupt where simplicity and elegance are concerned. (There's no doubt the raw power and capability of enterprise technology -- from massive server farms to sophisticated algorithms -- is greater than at any other time.) The result has been the creation of a massive gulf between our personal and professional experience with technology.

Consider the typical knowledge worker's daily experience: a brick of a laptop, a lousy intranet, legacy ERP and CRP applications and ... Microsoft (MSFT) Office. Or, consider how bad old-line email is for collaboration relative to Facebook or Twitter's social experiences. (It's little surprise that the biggest innovation in e-mail in the last decade -- nested conversations -- came from a consumer application, Gmail, and only recently found its way into Office.) Even worse, at work it can be hard to get simple stuff done, like getting a travel request approved, an expense report paid, finding the right data, document, person, conference room, report or chart.

The average employee knows that consumer apps are user-friendly, easy to ramp up and do more to help them create -- all for less money than traditional enterprise IT. While CIOs have talked about the "consumerization" of IT, few have made inroads on this agenda. And yet, employees are demanding:

*Tablets
*Smartphones
*App stores filled with hundreds of small, lightweight, disposable, zero-training, mobile-style apps
*The ability to choose and use cloud-based "free-mium apps"
*Social collaboration

Forward-leaning IT organizations are re-structuring their architecture to reflect these desires by embracing new mobile platforms and cloud computing, while creating custom bizumer apps housed inside enterprise app stores. They are also letting people choose (or even bring in) their own smart phones, tablets and laptops. But to survive in the future, legacy enterprise vendors will have to atomize their monolithic modules into hundreds of smaller, more usable apps. Imagine a refashioned an accounting system like SAP (SAP) or Oracle (ORCL) as hundreds of enjoyable-to-use iPad-style apps.

These transformations are already happening. Services include:

*YouSendIt, which replaces the FTP site with a simple-to-use, web-based file-sharing service.
*Evernote, which stores docs, photos, pdfs and Web clippings on a mobile-accessible cloud.
*Egnyte (where I'm an advisor), a file-storage that is cloud-based an accessible across platforms.
*Chatter, a collaboration app from Salesforce.com, which uses a familiar social-media interface.

And there are many more. They more or less share important common characteristics:

*They are cloud-based, with a small footprint
*They are streamlined, with 3-5 major functions
*They require zero IT support
*They are the future

The bizumer revolution is on. With tech-savvy Millennials entering the workforce, resistance is futile. They are using a new style of consumer-like business apps to drive the biggest, button-up change in business computing in a decade. All inspired by how they use technology in their personal lives. It's not a matter of "if" it will happen, but "when."

Christopher Lochhead is former technology executive, now strategy advisor & partner with Play Bigger Advisors

Barack O' Blogger

Originally posted on CBSNews.com

Just like the Obama's date night shamed married men into taking their wives for a night out, the President is driving a surge in executive blogging. 
No surprise there as Obama is the first "iPresident" who used the Internet to beat his competitor John McCain, who admitted during the campaign to being a technology Luddite. 

Now the president is using social working and so-called Web 2.0 technologies to forward his agenda. He is an Internet marketing maven who has used YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to market his message to the Muslim world and to sell his new health care plan. As master of its own message, the newadministration has basically turned into its own Internet marketing platform. 

All this e-marketing is working. According to Gallup Obama's approval rating is 61%. There are three reasons this is a powerful strategy for the president: 

1) Love him or hate him, Obama has engaging ideas and is a very effective communicator. 

2) Social Media is ubiquitous, easy to use, and loved by young people. 

3) The president has surrounded himself with a masterful team of technology and marketing experts who have figured out how to use the medium to maximum advantage. 

Obama has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Internet is a seminal marketing device for the modern executive. But, according to SocialText company CEO's are lagging the president when it comes to this use of technology with only 12% of Fortune 500 companies blogging. 

Indeed, only, a few high-profile CEO's have been blogging for an extended period of time. Most notable among them, Mark Cuban,owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems. 

But the ice is breaking. ABC TV talk show host George Stephanopoulos just conducted a "twitterview" with Senator John McCain while Governor Sarah Palin is now a regular tweeter And the legendary Jack Welch (former General Electric CEO) recently penned an article on the virtue of using Twitter. 

Obama's Web success will surely cause a jump in executive and company blogging. The question is will this be compelling content or just a load of corporate PR crap? Unfortunately, chances are it will turn out to be the latter. What makes me think that? Just read the average company Web site or press release. Most make you wonder how stupid CEOs are if they think anyone with a brain would actually want to read their babble. These communications are full of confusing indirect language, business jargon, and legalese. Other than that, they are awesome. 

Clearly most Fortune 500 CEOs and their marketing chiefs do not understand the new social Web world. Unlike Obama, most spend little time thinking about how to use the Internet to create a competitive advantage. Never mind, how to author compelling blog entries. So most companies treat blogging at best, like an electronic newsletter. When was the last time you read a company newsletter and thought, `That was great. Can't wait to read the next one.' I know. These things are often long-winded and self-indulgent. Making matters worse, most company communications today are over-controlled by legal and public relations committees. These groups tend to sanitize, restrict, and script every word that comes out of executive mouths. 

So what should you look for in a good executive blog? Short, clear, compelling, posts. One company getting it right is Google, whose official blog was was named one of Time Magazine's Top 25 Blogs "Top 25 Blogs." Another example: Whole Foods whose whole story blog shares recipes, and tries to educate readers about food in an engaging way. 

In many cases CEOs of private or smaller companies feel freer to share their true thoughts and insights with their readers, or at least more so than their colleagues at large public companies. One example: My buddy, Mike Damphousse, founder and CEO of Green Leads, a marketing company has built a strong following by sharing free advice on his blog, Smash Mouth Marketing. 

And so as the president continues to use Web 2.0 approaches to market his policies, he will no doubt inspire others to do the same. The unanswered question is whether these new executive blogs be just another way to disseminate propaganda or a compelling new source of content from provocative movers and shakers? 

By Christopher Lochhead
Special to CBSNews.com

AOL, Is There Life After Love?

Remember when Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fell for each other in the film, “You’ve Got Mail”? Time Warner produced the 1998 date flick, which was basically an ad for AOL that coincidentally foreshadowed the love affair which consumed the two companies a couple of years later. 

In the 1990’s, AOL represented the Internet to tens of millions of people. Its dial-up service made the Web accessible and easy to use. The company did great marketing and by 2000 had built a huge following. Its stock price rocketed and then, in an act of Internet bad-boy hubris, AOL used its stratospheric valuation to woo and marry Time Warner. 

The new media mavens had officially taken over the old media stalwarts. The marriage costapproximately $160 billion, one of the largest acquisitions in history. But the honeymoon did not last long and by the end of 2000, the AOL-Time Warner romance was already on the rocks. 

Where do you want to start? Within months of the nuptials, the dot com economy blew up and took nearly ever company’s stock price with it. Executive egos at the merged entity got in the way as old media and new media cultures clashed. Over time, AOL also lost the battle for consumers on the Internet to Yahoo and Google, and more recently, Facebook and Twitter, among others. It seems that almost everything that could go wrong did. So it is that nowadays, the once mighty AOL is barely relevant. 

Now it's divorce time with AOL being spun-out of Time Warner to become a stand-alone, public company. The question is whether the newly-single AOL can make its own way as a solo act. 

Probably not. 

Most turnarounds fail. Regaining lost momentum is hard as time is a thief. And most turnaround management teams lack the Three C's - cojones, craniums, and cash - to make it work. What's more, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes may be planning to saddle AOL with some of Time Warner’s debt and that might stall AOL’s much needed mid-life makeover. So it is that many predict the likely outcome for AOL is a continued slide into the Internet graveyard with the company taking its place alongside that of fallen highflyers like Webvan and Pets.com. 

But if fallen Canadian heavy metal band Anvil can stage a comeback with a bold move - they made a heart string tugging, spinal-tapian rock-umentary that is gaining them new fans rapidly - why not AOL also? 

OK, so how could AOL thrive as a divorcée? Successful turnarounds need fresh thinking, energy, and experience. Hiring a new CEO is a good first step. In March Tim Armstrong an ad sales exec from Google came over to AOL/>. 

Unfortunately, AOL has lost a lot of its best people. Armstrong must immediately fire the dead weight and start promoting the smart, aggressive, risk-taking people. He also needs to go hunting for new top talent to infuse the company with creative ideas, products, and services. Some of this new talent needs to be very young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and AOL founder Steve Case were all kids when they created their first big innovations. History is repeating itself nowadays with young leaders at the helm at social networking companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. 

Additionally, Armstrong should reach out to Steve Case and ask for advice. Case is a smart guy who did it once and he might be able to help AOL. Making Case an advisor, or potentially an AOL board member, is also an option. 

Once Armstrong figures out the internal organizational issues, he needs to push AOL to take big calculated risks. One of the reasons that startups generate so much innovation is because they act like they have nothing to lose. So they go for it. Bigger established companies can become protective, so they tend to play it safe. AOL needs to act like a horny young startup, not an old jilted lover. 

To kick-start the process AOL should sell its Internet access business. It may be a major contributor to AOL’s revenue, but it doesn't figure as part of the company's future. AOL lost its battle for the Internet access market a long time ago, when it was slow to adopt broadband services. Get over it. Sell the business. Generate some cash and move forward. 

Next AOL needs a major revamp of its services. Its Web sites generally look dated. CEO Armstrong said recently after Time Warner's annual meeting, "We are first and foremost concerned with the consumer experience for AOL." 

No wonder. AOL needs to come up with a dramatic breakthrough in design, one that creates a new, easy to use Web browsing experience. Apple killed the competition in the MP3 player market by creating a whole new paradigm for buying and listing to digital music with the iPod. YouTube did the same in Internet vidoe by using Abobe’s Flash to create a new way to publish and consume video on line. AOL needs to do the same for the way we experience Internet content. 

Next, AOL should become more than a portal or search engine. It needs to aggregate everything you and I use on the Web into one central place. The truth is that the Web is still too hard to use and it takes too long. If they were able to become a personalized, uber-portal that manages everything we do on the Web in one simple front-end, new users would flock to them. It appears that Google may be taking a stab at this with its new Wave communication offering. Creating a new user experience needs to be done in the context of the social computing revolution. AOL must find a way to combine social networking, user-generated content, email/messaging and traditional media content so that we are compelled to use their services. 

“AOL needs to act like a horny young startup, not an old jilted lover.”

- Christopher Lochhead

Additionally, it's time to go shopping for some cool new companies. Today in Silicon Valley - and beyond - there are hundreds of small startups that are trying to make the Web user experience better. AOL should buy several and accelerate its ability to create the next generation user experience. With the explosion of mobile devices like the Blackberry and iPhone AOL must figure out how to become one of the top 10 mobile services on smart phones. So buying some mobile companies would also be prudent. 

Additionally, AOL also needs to forge strong partnerships. They should attach their brand to Apple’s ASAP. Apple, not Microsoft or Sony is defining the future of user experience for technology consumers. It should also explore content distribution deals with some of Time Warner’s competitors. 

After all that, AOL lastly needs to launch an aggressive marketing campaign to gain new users. It must also make us care about AOL again. And try their new services. In the old days AOL bombarded the public with zillions of startup CDs to get people to try the service. The CDs were so ubiquitous people called them AOL coffee cup coasters. Now it's up to management to figure out how to blanket the world again and to get us to try AOL 2.0. 

As I noted earlier, fixing a broken company is one of the hardest tasks in business. But if AOL can pull this feat off, anything is possible. At that point, maybe there's a chance Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan might even do a sequel.

Why Yahoo MUST Buy Twitter

(Originally posted on CBSNews.com)  This commentary was written by Christopher Lochhead, a former technology executive who now works as a strategy advisor.

Carol Bartz took over a dejected Yahoo in January. Talk about entering 

the lion's den. In her quest to restore the company to its former glory, 

she has to overcome years of blunders, a bad economy, and the continued 

beatings dealt out by Yahoo's dominant rival, Google. In this game of 

corporate survivor, it's going to take all of Bartz's moxie-and then 

some-gained during years as the successful CEO of software maker 

Autodesk. 

On the surface, at least, it appears that she signed up for Mission 

Impossible. Google has been body slamming Yahoo for years. It lays claim 

both to a superior search technology and a stronger advertising business 

model. As for Yahoo, well, think of Mickey Rourke's character in the 

film, `The Wrestler': a one-time star with fading looks and dwindling 

skills in search of one more win. 

Then, last year Microsoft's Steve Ballmer came calling. Microsoft 

offered to buy the company for $44 billion, a 62 percent premium over 

Yahoo's share price at the time. Like a drunk who won't go to rehab, 

Yahoo's board of directors said no. It was a bad bet. Today, Yahoo is 

only worth about $20 billion. 

But give Bartz, who came on board this winter,some credit for trying to improve the company's execution. She's not been afraid to make the tough decisions to reduce costs by laying people off and shedding dead weight. The company recently announced it would shut down GeoCities an early Facebook-like web site that Yahoo purchased during the Internet bubble. That's probably not going to be the end of it. Recent rumors have it that Yahoo plans to sell HotJobs(an online employment site that has consistently lagged Monster.com) as well as Yahoo Personals in an effort to get the company more focused on its core business. 

To be sure, Bartz has got a lot of work to do just to get Yahoo back into fighting trim. The company needs to improve search results and services like 

email, news, weather and sports-all the while reducing costs and 

improving results for advertisers. But that won't be all. Bartz also 

needs to make bold moves to get Yahoo growing. Specifically she needs to 

expand her focus on the future: social and mobile computing (the company 

is No. 1 in mobile search, according to 

rkStudyYahooinTopSpot.html m/>a new report by Gomez, Inc. and 

dotMobi. That's a good start but Yahoo still lags behind when 

it comes to the social revolution taking place on the Internet. To wit, 

Facebook now claims 200 million users. 

This is where Twitter comes in. Twitter has experienced mind-boggling 

1,382% year-over-year user growth, according to Nielsen Online. It's not 

just the geeks: Twitter has attracted the likes of Ashton Kutcher, P. 

Diddy and CNN et al. to the service. In the process, Twitter's got both 

Facebook and Google running scared. 

A Yahoo/Twitter combination-I hereby dub it, "Yatter"-would allow Yahoo 

to combine all of its email and messaging with Twitter into a modern, 

social communication platform. If done well, it would be a very 

compelling service where users could integrate all of their Web 

communications in one place. 

What's more, it would provide Yahoo with explosive new user growth, not 

to mention, a "Who's Who" of celebrity users, and an opportunity to 

cross-sell and up-sell Yahoo services to those tens of millions of 

Twitter users. Even in a recession, advertisers are salivating like 

starving dogs sniffing barbecue steak to get at all those tweets (the 

messages & postings on Twitter). For advertisers, the ability to sell 

ads around keyword searches and Tweets simultaneously could be 

irresistible. 

Buying Twitter would also rate as a savvy defensive move. If Google, 

Microsoft, or Facebook got there first and snapped up Twitter, it would 

leave Yahoo on the mat. Yahoo already missed out on buying MySpace and 

YouTube. Microsoft was first to do an investment in Facebook and now 

there are rumors that Apple might bid $700 million for Twitter. Yahoo 

can ill-afford to let another new Web sensation slip through its hands. 

Also, if the ultimate plan is to sell Yahoo to Microsoft, a Twitter deal 

makes good sense. Who knows? With a few more quarters of clean-up, an 

uptick in the economy, and a growing user-base fueled by Twitter, 

Microsoft may yet be inclined to pay a significant premium (again) for 

Yahoo. Given a second chance, Yahoo's new board hopefully will be sober 

enough to do that deal. 

By Christopher Lochhead