However, when a meeting room dials in and is shared between multiple people in a room, the physical to virtual is completely lost.  Yes you can see the room speaking, but identities are not prevalent and this is a problem, especially if you are not familiar with the personnel at the other end.

This leads me to believe that we are in a transition.  I believe that transitions are short periods of time that help us evolve to better methods of achieving or goal.  They also have their ups and downs until we get through it.  Do you remember the compact disc?  That was a transition.  It was a transition to where we are now with streaming media.  It was supposed to be more durable than vinyl with crystal clear clarity in digital form.  It delivered that, but in a short period, it has been superceded by music downloads and of course the mp3 player that not only offer the supberb quality in sound and vision, but also the simplicity to obtaining content.

Obviously every transition will have a start and an end.  In this case the start is a physical meeting.  Traditional in every sense, but now as we embrace and extend globalisation and boundaryless enterprises our colleagues and more importantly the knowledge pools are being pull together from far-flung places across the globe.  Technology has allowed us to do this, but we don’t always get it right.  Admittedly the physical meeting is king, but productivity can still soar using multiparty voice and the combination of both.  I think we’ve proved that as we continue to increase the usage of online conferences.

The goal however, is to emulate the physical meeting as much as possible and that’s where video has to be the answer…for now.  Not just any video but high-definition real-time video.  It is here today, but the usage is minor compared to voice and I think that is just a matter of time before video overtakes voice on the network as it becomes more affordable and the quality increases.

So, I have to keep reminding myself, not to dismiss what we have today, embrace it and accept that the transition to video is almost here.

And now a word from our sponsors 

Interesting content for sure and someone else somewhere can write about the opportunities, I simply love the illustration of such a complex set of metrics.

Back to this post.  I’ve been thinking about Unified Communications and Cloud services in fact UCaaS to be specific.

As we all know, UC is a collection of communication tools that historically were siloed.  The telephone, Email, Voice Mail, IM, Video Conferencing and so on.  In the last couple of years and more so this year, we have seen a massive increase in Software as a Service…services targetted at the Enterprise with some very tempting benefits.  Some have made the move successfully whilst others need time to build trust to embrace the concept.  This is particularly true in the finance sector where concerns about security and location of data referenced against local regulations makes it all the more difficult to entertain a move from on-premise to the cloud.  I’m sure this will change over time as richer and more secure services become available and of course the economies of scale kick in and make it a no brainer.

Email and IM in the cloud is nothing new, as consumers, we have been doing it for years, but what about the other services that make up the UC pie? Well this is where I get to the point of this post.  Moving telephony into the cloud… telephony as a service. Nothing new except the providers in the market today are not the traditional Telco.

Look at Cisco, Microsoft, Google and many others who want to provide UCaaS.  To provide 100% UC aren’t they going to have to provide a dialer in the sky? Today, out of the three I mention Cisco are the only one capable of providing on premise Telephony integration into their Saas (WebEx Mail/Connect), but that’s obvious as they are incumbant for Enterprise telephony.  What if an Enterprise wanted to move their PBX off premise and integrate it into their cloud based Email, IM etc?  Will the current big name UCaaS… service providers become Telcos and be regulated as such?

Will Cisco, Microsoft, Google etc now be competing with the likes of BT, Verizon, Singtel, France Telecom and so on?

Whilst watching RBS almost flat line yesterday on the excellent Google finance pages, I notice a few blogs slamming Mr Peston and his comments for market conditions.

Now, that has prompted me to post this response.

The fact that the BBC has chosen to seamlessly integrate Robert Pestons blog into their award winning global website has cause confusion I think.

Robert Peston’s blog is being taken as professional news broadcasts when clearly they are simply the opinion of an individual who is blogging and receiving comments which make his post living ‘unfinished’ articles.

He blogged recently that Sir Fred the shred approached Flash Gordon before the allocation of the bail out was announced and immediate wipe tens of millions off the value of RBS. I don’t believe he is accountable for that. The traders who digest information with little accuracy are clearly at fault.

Similarly, when CNN picked up the blog that started the rumour of a Steve Jobs heart attack immediately affected Apple’s share price.

It is important that we continue to understand the uses of web 2.0 components and ensure that the usage is somehow guided. Its easy to understand how email became so popular that it became abusive, offensive and dangerous in the wrong hands.

Blogs too are following this trend, because of the simplicity and speed.

So how can we rely on the accuracy of the information when so much of it is available and increasingly consumed?

The wisdom of crowds?  Comments please.

Virtual teams were created in the content and grew over time.  The fact that people contributed through their own interests was culture changing.  We took it a stage further by integrating presence into the wiki with the goal of creating a tacit knowledge base; meaning that you had the ability to communicate in real-time with contributors to extend the collaboration.

I’m now working on creating a similar platform (or repeating the success) with presence everywhere, but the technology part is easy, the challenge now is to introduce the culture of an open book into the organisation where everyone can publish, search, consume and converse.  That sounds very similar to my old boss JP’s vision of Four Pillars.

Well of course, that’s the culture I supported.

As usual during the growth stage of any product competition exists and in the case of email, this was around the protocols, standards and of course products.  In the case of email there hasn’t really been a dominant winner, but one thing for sure, the SMTP standard has emerged as the de-facto.  Surprisingly this technology although almost 30 years old is still being used today despite it’s shortfalls on security.  The success of email is simply its disruptiveness, the ability to replace cumbersome, complex and high cost alternatives of communications with a simple concept with a low cost of entry.

Email has created an industry within itself.  I chose to focus on it as an early career and many businesses have prospered and continue to on the back of the popularity of email. Archiving, Hosting, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, Security and Management, business functions too changed and adopted email as a formal and revenue generating service.  Specialist Marketing firms have emerged that provide mass emailers, agencies as their called now provide off-host email services and of course there are the scams that aim to dupe unsolicited individuals from their cash by using ‘phishing scams’ and spoofing.

Electronic communication has now become a high profile regulated communication medium worldwide.  Of course email is beneficial to both an organisation and an individual, it makes money, it saves money, and it can reduce risk.  On the other hand and more importantly, it can ruin your reputation, it can destroy your business, and it can drive you and your business into the ground.  Email grabbed the attention of everyone worldwide with its simplicity and power.  Email was becoming uncontrollable.

When I analysed our corporate usage at the time I noticed that 85% of received email was SPAM.  This was being stored and replicated throughout the organisation and creating a high cost and reduced level of service.  I needed over £1m to get us through the next 12 months.  Email usage was increasing.  80% of our communication was performed using email.  Almost everything down to arranging to go for a quick beer after work to transferring of confidential documents is based on email.

The term information overload appeared on the scene around 2003 as our productivity time was consumed by managing our inboxes, sorting the signal from the noise or the legitimate email from the unsolicited email.  The researchers were telling us we had to overcome ‘information overload’ and email had become out of control.  I somewhat agreed with that but I thought back then we needed to evolve email.  I remember getting excited when I found ReMail and instantly being disappointed that it was never pursued by IBM.

I began looking at some other early dot com ideas that went pop back at the turn of the century and started to chase the concept of a ‘white list’ email platform.  I found a product that was still in a development stage that weathered the bubble.  This was indeed a concept I felt was the next evolution of corporate email.  100% SPAM free, confidentiality guaranteed and storage optimisation through threaded conversations being written as single instance records.  This certainly would decrease the volumes of email we were generating.  Unfortunately still in development meant not fit for production and that was the end of that, but it’s certainly not the end of the search.

Fast forward to 2008, we now have social and professional networking sites popping up everywhere and without noticing we are utilising the inherent email features of these.  In Facebook and LinkedIn we are communicating with members of our network or white list.  Okay, not quite as feature rich as email (i.e. no attachments and no bcc fields etc) but that’s the right direction I think.  Corporate email turned into a corporate filing system that it was never designed to do.  Corporate email turned into a medium that bread under the covers espionage with it’s Bcc field and corporate email systems became a mission critical service so much so that without it businesses could not trade.  Organisations also became accountable for all the content transmitted across email and without any method of policing this email continues to be a mission critical concern.  Added to this we are now embracing Instant Messaging and Chat platforms and now talking about ‘unified communications’ by integrating voice and video (I know this is not new, but it still hasn’t gained the traction it needs) into every peripheral an employee can touch to keep in touch.

These methods of communications have become our identity, which we are and how we can be contacted.  This blog is all part of this too.  My ‘white list’ can communicate with me within LinkedIn or Facebook, whilst anyone can communicate with me on the many email addresses and phone numbers that advertise my identity.

Enterprise Facebook and LinkedIn?  Yes, of course, this is the next evolution of Enterprise messaging and Enterprise CRM, but not in the current consumer guise.  Many organisations are watching these technologies and are willing to embrace, but security is still a concern and could they have this delivered as a service rather than host and manage within the corporate boundary?  Maybe one step at a time, but I’m certainly keen on this direction.

Now if you look at that page, the results from Google are predictive to say the least, but one surprising fact about the page is that there is no sponsored links! Well there is one, sometimes, but there is no one making money from that page.

Now if your business model is based on advertising revenue and you are the number one search engine in the world with millions of hits per second, there’s no wonder you are a leading success and a global brand. Your revenue is based on selling advertising space, your clients pay for the benefit of reaching your vast audience and rely on you placing there ads on the first page in the right place. Of course you have competition, but being number one and staying at number means that you are smart, competitive and understand what the consumers want better than your rivals.

Staying two steps (or more) ahead of the rest means that they are all competing with each other whilst you are defining the next steps and not just waiting for it to arrive.

So who or what will threaten Google? This recent article in Business Week raises an interesting point.

You see according to the article, over two thirds of Americans have experienced Mobile Internet Services and of course this figure is growing. In Europe and in Asia we’ve been doing it for years and faster, but with wireless cities appearing, WiMax on the way, China and India exploding onto the scene and more recently, Cuba, there will be a shift from the traditional PC to the Mobile device. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t likely to be an overnight shift nor will it be a migration from PC to Mobile. What is happening is that more and more of us are experiencing better quality browsers and applications on the mobile platforms and we are embracing it.

According to Gartner, in 2006 there were just under 1 billion mobile phone units shipped worldwide and in 2007 this was around 1.13 billion. With Apple and RIM entering the market the devices are more attractive and functionally stable compared to the browsing experience on early Nokia and Motorola devices. These new devices really are becoming usable and I can at last see the day where I carry a single device.

With the increase in mobility the target audience for the ad execs is now mouth wateringly vast, BUT, the traditional banner ad and sponsored search ad will not do. The billions of mobile and wireless consumers will not accept the same content squeezed into a mobile device display. So, what’s the plan?

Enter Android. Develop a new mobile operating system that will allow your winning business model to thrive. So far, the advertising on Android is anyone’s guess, but personalisation and profiling seems to be the way forward. The recent launch of Blyk from Orange is a good example of how Google’s business model will continue to thrive on the mobile platform and some are predicting a coverflow type of interface that will contain target advertising as well as the content you request.