The Final Countdown

As I write this, we have 7 weeks and 4 days to go for the TFM&A Conference. At this point there’s a beehive of activity behind the scenes to put together the conference. Internally, we have different teams of people driving booth sales, sponsorships, strategy,  marketing, event promotion, social media, delegate sales (visitors), conference program, partnerships & affiliations, and operations. It’s akin to launching a space ship — teams of people at mission control working on a plethora of systems, in perfect coordination. Everything’s mission-critical and has to be perfect.

Looking around, I have to commend the hard work put in by my co-workers here at UBM India (Tech Media). All these folks have given it their best shot to put this show together — simultaneously working on other shows (like 4G World, INTEROP, IGD, and Cloud Connect India) that we do here at UBM Tech Media. I am proud to be working with such a talented team!

Our TFM&A website (http://www.tfmaindia.com/) looks beautiful with its orange, rust, beige, grey, and navy blue livery (logo and colors) — with all the speaker photos jumping out of the home page. Scroll down the page and read our speaker articles, or watch our speaker videos (more coming in the next few weeks).

Our speaker line-up is looking strong too. Do take note of the recent addition of keynote speaker Nellie Chan, Director – Marketing Solutions, South East Asia and North Asia, LinkedIn. We waited months for this to happen and the patience paid off!

I also welcome Varun Sharma, Industry Head, E-commerce, Google India, who has just joined our e-Commerce panel discussion that’s moderated by Deepa Thomas, eCommerce Evangelist, eBay India.

It’s also wonderful to have Romi Mahajan, President KKM Group,  Ankur Warikoo, CEO, Groupon India, and Kunal Bahl, CEO, Snapdeal. A few days ago Snapdeal received $50 million in funding from eBay. So I am hoping Kunal will elaborate more on this during his Fireside chat with Romi Mahajan, right after the first keynote.

Sundeep Kapur, Evangelist, NCR is also speaking on day 1. We had a warm long-distance chat the other day about different issues. Every time I speak to Sundeep, I learn something new — he has diverse knowledge and is well traveled.

Jessie Paul, the CEO of Paul Writer, is busy putting the finishing touches to her very own magazine for CMOs. I am happy to have Jessie moderate our CMO-CIO panel discussion. On one of my follow up calls to Jessie I learned about the challenges (and platform shortcomings) of launching a magazine on the Digital platform. Jessie also authored the book “No Money Marketing” on frugal marketing.

If you go through our conference agenda, you’ll notice that we have CMOs and Brand Managers speaking in the general sessions and on the panels. There’s also a session exclusively for CMOs on the agenda.

Conference Programme

If you plan to visit our conference, don’t miss our knowledge sessions in Theater Two. We have Aaron Kahlow from the Online Marketing Institute doing a workshop titled, “Global Social Media, Meet Local ROI: The Secrets to the Strategic Thinking & Tactics Driving Social Success Across the World“. And Pradeep Chopra, CEO & Co-founder, Digital Vidya is leading a workshop titled “Digital Marketing for Customer Acquisition.”

Pradeep tells me that organizations tend to use social media mainly for brand communication. But how do you use it to acquire new customers or to get repeat orders from existing customers? Attend this workshop and learn to use Social Media to analyze customer behavior and customer sentiment. The case studies that Pradeep is doing during his workshop are sure to throw light on many of the challenges that marketers face today with this medium.

Scroll to the bottom of the TFM&A site and you’ll see logos of all our partners, notably the CMO Council of India and DMAI (Direct Marketing Association-India). I also welcome our other partners.

Well, with the pace picking up and something new happening here every other day, I am sure I will have more exciting news to share with you in my next TFM&A blog — a fortnight from now. By then we’ll be much closer to launch, and our baby would be on the launch pad, all systems go!

(The Final Countdown is a song written and performed by the 80s band, Europe).

Brian Pereira

Conference Chair – Tech conferences

UBM India

Technology is coalescing into personal devices

Not long ago, one carried any combination of these devices as one commuted or travelled: personal digital assistant, calculator, pager, cell phone, wristwatch, glucometer, stopwatch, alarm clock, radio/CD player/Walkman/MP3 player, laptop, camera, handycam – and of course credit cards and a wallet.

However, it became too cumbersome to carry so many different gadgets/devices (not to  mention the risk of misplacing or losing these).

So R&D teams worked to merge these devices — pager functions were included in mobile phones (SMS), for instance.

You won’t carry credit cards or cash in future — your phone with Near Field Communication (NFC) and m-Commerce technologies will do the job.

Today, we carry a few devices that blend well into our personal effects — a wristwatch, smart phone, and perhaps a tablet.

All the gadgets/devices that I mentioned earlier are still there — in these three devices. But they are virtualized and available in the form of apps.

The next devices in your personal effects to undergo a transformation are the wristwatch and glasses. Sony has already launched a Bluetooth enabled smart-wrist watch. I am guessing that Apple will have theirs out this year (See: Why Apple’s iWatch will change the world!). And Google’s Glass (the future of eyewear) is now undergoing trials.

If you watched any of the Star Trek TV episodes (especially those from the 60s) you’ll see the widespread use of multifunction devices like Tricorders.

I think the next big apps for personal devices are personal healthcare monitoring systems — embedded right into your phone, watch or whatever else you are comfortable carrying around with you. These will of course communicate with servers in hospitals and clinics, to send back data about the status of your vital organs.

So don’t be surprised if your doctor calls you one fine day and tells you to go slow on that cheeseburger.

“Your LDL cholesterol levels are alarmingly high, Pete. You need to come over immediately!)

Oracle prepares for next-generation Cloud

Those tracking the IT industry will recall how IT moguls like Larry Ellison and Bill Gates once dismissed Cloud Computing, to protect the interests of their best-selling on-premise software. Well that was around the years 2005 – 2006. Today, both Larry and Bill have done a volte-face and changed their opinions about the Cloud. In fact Oracle (and Larry) suddenly began singing hosannas about the cloud at Oracle events in recent years. Then Oracle spokespersons began talking about their cloud strategy and the cloud enablement of products. Delivering a keynote at the Oracle CloudWorld 2013  event in Mumbai, Sandeep Mathur, Managing Director, Oracle India spoke about Oracle’s “next generation cloud”, shared the company’s cloud strategy, and spoke about trends in the market, and new Oracle solutions.

Mathur began his keynote by revisiting some of the current market trends that are driving cloud adoption. He alluded to the splurge in connected devices (9 billion), of which 2 billion are smart phones. And all these smart devices are generating data — posing a Big Data explosion. And by 2020, research shows there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet.

Mobility is also a trend that has accelerated in the last few years. As if to drive the point home, one of the Oracle speakers showed a photo of Pope Benedict’s election in 2005 — with crowd’s in St. Peter’s square. And then he showed a similar photo of Pope Francis’ recent election — this one with a lot of backlit mobile phone screens!

Another trend is social media. Customers are now on social and can express their views about your products and services on social media. Also, the young workforce is more comfortable communicating over social media, rather than email.

“There are 930 million mobile subscribers in India. By next year most enterprise applications within a company will support mobile. When you have close to a billion users (in India) in mobile, clearly your applications need to support mobile. And Social media is now driving one-to-one relationships between businesses and its customers,” said Mathur.

Mathur alluded to the declining average age of the workforce. He said the young workforce is used to a different experience (for instance young people  are using less of email and more of social media to communicate). And the platform for this communication is mobile.

“Enterprises continue to use applications developed 10 – 15 years ago, that are not ready to address these market trends; this calls for a new set of applications. Most businesses leaders believe that cloud is the way for us to embrace this change and make your organization more available,” said Mathur.

Product Strategy

Problem: There are too many best-of-breed products used in organizations. Integrating all these products and managing them using a plethora of management consoles is a nightmare for IT managers. Organizations also need to spend on R&D to integrate these products. Oracle (and other IT solutions vendors like SAP) are trying to simplify and reduce these costs — by offering one product with a suite of well integrated applications — all from the same company. Oracle believes this approach also makes it easier to manage the licenses and upgrades.

“We are going to keep reducing best-of-breed technology. We have 80 plus products, and are leaders with 60 of these. We will continue producing better independent products and then we want to make sure that we vertically integrate those products so that customers do not have to spend that cost on R&D. These products will be quick to deploy and make for agile platforms. And of course, these will be cloud-ready,” said Mathur.

According to Mathur, Oracle is spending USD 5 billion this year, just to ensure that its products interoperate well with each other. Oracle is also developing a new set of applications that are ready to run on the second-generation cloud. It is also acquiring companies that have the technology and products that match its application objectives. It believes that the current set of applications cannot cater to the needs of the next generation workforce, which will be using mobile devices and will communicate through social media.

“By next year most enterprise applications will support mobile. The new set of applications will be business intelligence aware and socially aware.  We are also acquiring applications, and acquiring the best of breed in those particular categories. Our applications will run on-premise, in a private cloud or on a public cloud,” said Mathur.

In March Oracle quietly acquired start-up Nimbula, a maker of cloud management software. Interestingly, Nimbula’s co-founder, Willem van Biljon, also helped build the Amazon cloud.

In the past Oracle produced large applications like ERP and CRM that were broad-based and general — for all verticals. Businesses bought these and then invested in R&D to tailor the application to its specific needs — a laborious, time-consuming and expensive affair. Oracle is also going after niche segments and bringing out “verticalized” suites that are tailored for niches like Human Capital Management (HCM), talent management, health sciences, taxation, banking & financial services etc.

Long innings

Oracle is the world’s largest provider of enterprise software and now also a leading maker of enterprise hardware used in data centers. It also offers systems and services to enterprise customers. The software behemoth entered the Indian market 20 years ago. To date it has more than 30,000 developers or R&D specialists based in India. It has grown its customer base to 8,000, and it enjoys a rich ecosystem of partners.

“India is an important market for us not just from a business standpoint but also for R&D, engineering, shared services — and you can expect us to be here for a long time,” said Mathur.

India contributes significantly to LinkedIn success story

With India’s top companies increasingly searching for talent on LinkedIn, and just 18 million of India’s 80 million workforce on LinkedIn, there is huge potential for the professional networking company to grow in its number two market

While companies are just beginning to talk about green shoots, professional social network company LinkedIn has been growing steadily in recessionary times. In fact LinkedIn is one of the companies to watch on the New York Stock Exchange — it beat analyst estimates for the seventh quarter in a row, and doubled its share price in the past 12 months. It has over 200 million members worldwide, adding two every second. In terms of subscribers, India is the second largest market for LinkedIn (behind the US) with over 18 million members from the sub-continent (a 400 percent growth over three years).

LinkedIn launched operations in India in 2009 and had 3.4 million members back then. Today it has three separate streams of revenue — which even Facebook and Twitter do not match. In appreciation for this stellar performance, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner recently gave away an iPad Mini to every employee. During a recent briefing with the LinkedIn India leadership, InformationWeek India probed the reasons behind this success (and no, it is not because individuals are logging in to LinkedIn to publish their resumes).

“About 64 percent of our membership comes from outside the US, so that gives a sense of where our members are,” said Nishant K. Rao, Country Manager, LinkedIn India.

LinkedIn does not share the region-wise breakup of revenue, but a significant portion of its global revenue comes from India. For Talent Solutions (the highest revenue earner), it bagged big ticket clients such as HCL, Wipro, American Express, BioCon, Volkswagon India, and Genpact. Talent solutions contribute to 53 percent to its global revenues, growing 90 percent year on year. According to Rao, companies like HCL Technologies hire 90 percent of its key employees through LinkedIn.

The other two streams of revenues are premium subscriptions (20 percent revenue) and marketing solutions (27 percent revenue). LinkedIn sees a 70 percent annual growth in premium subscriptions and 68 percent growth in marketing solutions.

“India is one of the more strategic markets for LinkedIn. In fact our first APAC office was in India. We now have over 200 people across four offices here,” informed Rao.

LinkedIn India has invested in engineering (R&D), operations, customer service & support, and sales & marketing.

In recent months LinkedIn made significant interface changes, withdrawing features like LinkedIn Answers and introduced new ones like LinkedIn Today (news), and updated features like Profiles. It has also turned its attention to mobile, launching its LinkedIn app for the iPad and smartphones.

“There has been a 3x increase in mobile traffic, which is now 27 percent of our (overall) traffic; that means our members are using us on the go,” informed Rao.

By certain industry estimates, India has 80 – 85 million professionals, out of which 18 million are on LinkedIn. So there is much scope for LinkedIn in India.

LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals and make them more productive and successful. And it does this through three tenets: Identity, Insights and Everywhere. Identity is about allowing members to connect, find others, and be found.

“We do 5.5 billion professionally oriented search queries on LinkedIn every year,” informed Rao. “LinkedIn is now your address book on the cloud. You don’t need a Rolodex, and you don’t need to manage all your business cards.”
One of the features that’s drawing more users to LinkedIn is Insights. This allows members to manage their professional identities online. And companies and universities scan LinkedIn profiles and analyze professional identities. So this is making resumes passé. When members log into LinkedIn they get insights about others on their network, the companies they follow, the people who look at their profiles, the latest news, and posts from influential bloggers like Richard Branson.

Contradictory to popular belief, jobs is not the main reason for people to join LinkedIn. According to Irfan Abdulla, Director – Talent Solutions, LinkedIn India, an internal survey revealed that job search is the fifth reason for being on LinkedIn.

“People are no longer updating their profile just because they are looking for work,” said Rao. “Rather, they value what they get in terms of Insights and this means they need an updated profile to get those relevant insights. That has been a game-changer for us.”

The resurgence of Sony

Ever since it began its operations in 1946, Sony Corporation (then known as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo), has been one of the world’s most admired companies. The company has been at the forefront of innovation with products like the first transistorized radio, first transistorized  television, first transistorized tape recorder, and the first IC radio. I personally bought and experienced some of their products such as the Trinitron television and their first Walkman (in 1979). And I keenly followed the development of their Walkman products (buying several of those along the years), CD players, and television sets. I can see that Sony products excel on the design and innovation front, and are built to last. But in the age of iPads, iPods, and Galaxy Tabs, Sony has fallen by the wayside and is trying hard to catch up. It was disheartening to learn that Sony faced its fourth consecutive annual loss this year, with its stock value dropping more than 50 percent since 2005.

But on the positive side, Sony just got a new President & CEO (Kazuo Hirai) who has a plan to turn around the ailing electronics giant. Hirai (51), who is famously known for turning around Sony’s Playstation business, says he wants to drive growth in Sony’s core electronic businesses: digital imaging, smart phones, and gaming devices. And he wants to revive the television business. As a first step to doing this, Sony recently severed alliances with Sharp and Samsung, who previously manufactured flat panels and other components for Sony television sets.

Undoubtedly, Hirai and his team have big plans to revive Sony. But in my opinion, I think Sony needs a revolutionary product (like the Walkman or Trinitron television) to make a comeback. That product isn’t going to be a smart phone or tablet, because there are already established market leaders in those segments. And it isn’t going to be a television either (no matter how great the picture or sound is). It could be a Smart TV (linked to the Net) with gesture controls — but Samsung (and others) already have that.

So let’s take a look at what Sony’s got, and then try to come up with concept products that use elements from each.

Sony has got a huge catalog of content, by way of movies, games and music. And we know that it is richness and variety of content that makes a device really useful. It’s happening with the iPhone and iPad (with a huge library of apps).

Sony Pictures Entertainment the television and film production/distribution unit of Sony, acquired Columbia Pictures and Tri-star Pictures in 1989, and the legendary MGM Studios in 2005. With that, it gained access to a huge library of classics and Oscar winning films, not to mention associated franchising and merchandising properties.

Sony Music Entertainment is one of the big four record music companies in the world. Sony Music acquired CBS records in 1987, and some may remember that CBS produced best-selling albums such as Michael Jackson’s Thriller. And in 2004, Sony Music merged with Bertelsmann to form Sony-BMG ( 50:50 venture). With all these properties Sony now has the richest music catalog, that includes best selling acts such as the Beatles (through its merger with ATV Music Publishing). 

On the gaming front, Sony has seen success with its Playstation series and games that are exclusive to this platform.

So you can see that Sony has some rich assets on the content front, and these can be directed towards a more personal entertainment product. I am suggesting a product for News and Entertainment on the go. Those who have experienced the in-flight entertainment system aboard Emirates (ICE) or Singapore Airlines (KrisWorld) would appreciate the variety and volume of entertainment content.

I am suggesting that Sony use a platform, maybe the Playstation or its tablet, and tie this with a service (similar to iTunes). They could partner with a local provider for bandwidth and networks.

Sony might also want to consider an alliance with a leading News broadcaster (or maybe multiple alliances).

Another revolutionary product to consider is portable satellite radio.

With its huge catalog/library of rich entertainment content, its expertise in hardware design, and its spirit of innovation, Sony needs to find a way to bring it all together –  the way Steve Jobs did for Apple.

Wi-Fi on Tap

Rates for 3G access plans in Mumbai have been slashed by 70 percent, yet I do not see our young workforce upgrading to 3G in droves. It may be a slice of high networth individuals that have gone 3G, but not a chunk of the smart phone user base. And 3G access continues to be spotty, with weak signals in the far flung areas of the city, but stronger access at the business hubs. I think Wi-Fi access would be a more viable option for the average smart device owner, but why hasn’t a service provider jumped at the opportunity?

I read Ajit Ranade’s article “STD booths as Wi-Fi hotspots” in Mumbai Mirror (14 July) with interest. In his Edit piece Ranade suggests that STD booths can be converted to Wi-Fi hotspots with a subsidy from the municipality. He recalls India’s first telecom revolution (1980s) and the proliferation of the PCO (Public Call Office) booths — (thanks to Sam Pitroda). Remember the bright yellow, dinky booths with the words ‘ISD-STD-PCO’ printed in bold letters? Well, that’s a rare sight today, and all that remains are chunky plastic coin-operated phones in local Kirana stores (who uses them anyway?)

Perhaps those booths can be resurrected, with the ISD-STD-PCO acronyms replaced with the ‘Wi-Fi Zone’ logo defined by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Another opportunity for Public-Private-Partnership?

Earlier this year, I was touring Silicon Valley in a mid-sized bus. I joined a team of tech journalists from Brazil and Mexico. The journey from San Francisco to Silicon Valley took around two hours. These journalists passed time by filing stories on their laptops. As I entered the bus, I noticed the ‘Wi-Fi Zone’ logo painted on the door, suggesting the availability of free Wi-Fi access on board! And it worked! Now, how did they manage that?

Some Indian airports offer free Wi-Fi access. I am also aware that airlines in the league of Emirates offer Internet access on board. And of course, you couldn’t miss Wi-Fi at a Starbucks café abroad.

When I visit companies in India for meetings, I notice that many offer Wi-Fi access with guest log-ins. That’s handy for quickly surfing the company site for some last minute preparation, while waiting in the lobby or reception area. And you can’t miss young executives with their shiny laptops in front of them at the food court at Inorbit Mall in Mumbai (a Wi-Fi Zone).

Well, that’s a good start. But I am hoping to see more Wi-Fi hotspots in our Indian cities and offices.

Is Email on the way out?

There was a time when it was considered hip to have an email address, never mind if it was something as cryptic as firstname.lastname@bom2.vsnl.net.in. Soon it became fashionable to show off one’s AOL or Hotmail or Yahoo! mail or Rocketmail or Gmail address on one’s business card. Eventually, email became an essential communications tool in the business world.

Last week I met the CEO of a global technology services company, and he complained about how much email he was getting. Apart from daily reports, there’s mail from business heads, and he is also CC’d and BCC’d on a deluge of mails. His company has now kicked off a zero email drive at a global level. The ‘zero’ is a visionary thing of course; even though the drive has been on for the past one and a half years, employees continue to write email — but the number of mails exchanged has reduced by 10 – 20 percent. I am assuming that a bulk of their mail is sent externally. For internal communication they use a Wiki platform and certain collaboration tools. This company is in the process of establishing an Enterprise Social Network, and direct messaging will be available on this platform.

A week ago I visited the CIO of a well-known media company (I’m not giving away names now; you’ll have to wait for my feature story in InformationWeek next month). He proudly showed me his new social intranet and all the shiny collaboration tools. When an employee in his organization sends email, it is intercepted at the mail gateway, and the domain in the email address is scanned. If the domain is the same as the company email domain, then the mail is redirected back to the social intranet, and the recipient gets it as a direct message in a social interface that’s similar to Facebook or Linkedin. A smart way to spare us Inbox flooding! And this method of communication evokes faster responses too!

When I need to get a quick response from a person I have never met, I first connect with him/her on Linkedin, and then send a direct message. Nine out of 10 times, I get a response the same day, often within the hour. That does not happen with email.

On this site, I reported how a company called MangoSpring is bringing a Facebook-like experience into the corporate world. It offers a Social Email solution, by way of Ignite, a plug-in for MS Outlook. Ignite links your Outlook email with SharePoint or some other data repository. It simplifies the process of saving email attachments to SharePoint — or picking up files from SharePoint and attaching these to email. When attaching files to internal email messages, one can simply drag the file from the central repository (shown in a window) into the body of the message. A link to file is included in the mail — the actual file is not attached. This saves bandwidth and prevents users from storing copies of the same file in their Inboxes. It also obviates the need to use file sharing services (a security hazard) and gets round the company file size limitation for attachments. And of course, it reduces the overhead of archived mail on the Exchange server.

While social media and collaboration tools (especially video collaboration), will reduce the number of emails (and physical meetings) in the organization, a corporate world with zero email is still some time away. But the workplace is definitely changing; a social layer is being spread on the enterprise network. With enterprise-grade tools for chat, presence, video conferencing, micro-blogging, task management etc coming into the enterprise, people will eventually use email less.