A Growth Strategy for Yahoo – the (Social) Enterprise ?

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Zia Yusuf

Yahoo is a company that has always intrigued me.  Over the past few years we have all read about the issues facing Yahoo – lack of a clear strategy, management challenges, the on again off again romance with Microsoft and a stock price that has gone from about $35 about 5 years ago to $16 today. And even todays stock price has built into it a significant value from China’s Alibaba.

Clearly Yahoo needs a growth strategy. So here is the “Right Question”  Should Yahoo develop and execute on a strategy to provide a comprehensive set of services for the enterprise ?  I think they should seriously explore this as an option.

Lets review what some of the current trends are in enterprise software – let me throw out some buzz words – cloud computing & SAAS, social media in the enterprise, social CRM, crowdsourcing, structured and unstructured data, Enterprise 2.0 and so on. In essence, many of the innovations in the enterprise are being driven or inspired by innovations in the consumer web.  This is the core of the Enterprise 2.0 approach.

On one hand you have the pure consumer focused companies – Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. On the other hand a new generation of enterprise focused companies are extending these new approaches and seeking to integrate them into the enterprise, SocialCast, Yammer, Ning, Jive etc.

Now lets take a look at Yahoo.  Despite its challenges the company is still a consumer technology leader.  Some ideas – if a consumer online store – Amazon – can create the leading cloud platform for the enterprise  Amazon EC2 then why cannot Yahoo leverage its data center and web management expertise to provide an enterprise cloud infrastructure and apps.  Yahoo Finance is a strong product and has interesting potential to be connected with other enterprise apps to provide integrated structured and unstructured information.  Yahoo knows how to build communities (maybe not as good as Facebook) but still good enough.  Yahoo can be a strong player in providing social media capabilities for the enterprise.  You can even consider integrating Yahoo Jobs into enterprise HR systems to provide an end 2 end business process for talent management.

I know that Yahoo has considered some of these options in the past and considered partnerships with enterprise software firms – but these plans never took off and the company focused on its consumer roots. Maybe some of these ideas are currently being discussed in the company – I hope they are.

So I don’t know if a more enterprise focused strategy (to complement the consumer work) is a viable option for Yahoo at this stage but I think it is certainly something that the Yahoo management should explore carefully – certainly if there is any truth to a private equity buyout of Yahoo this should be part of the strategy.

As usual, I appreciate your thoughts and comments – especially from current and past Yahoo employees and experts.

Thanks,

Zia.

Filed under: Consumer Technology, Enterprise Software, Innovation, Social Media, Social Media in the Enterprise, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Open Government – are Data.Gov and Apps.Gov delivering on their promise ?

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Zia Yusuf

There is certainly a long list of challenges facing the Obama administration – the economy, healthcare, and two wars just to name a few.  Regardless of your politics, I think there is one aspect of the Administration’s efforts that require further discussion and exploration.  On his first day in office President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.  The memorandum outlined a commitment to “creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government…” It promised to “ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”  My intent in this post is not to have a broader discussion on the topic of the Administration’s openness, but rather to explore two very specific components of that pledge – the launch of Data.Gov and Apps.Gov

As part of his focus on technology as a key driver of government effectiveness, openness and efficiency President Obama appointed two impressive and accomplished executives to lead this effort:   Vivek Kundra (Federal CIO) and Aneesh Chopra (Federal CTO).  I have had the privilege of meeting and talking to both Vivek and Aneesh and have been impressed with their plans to leverage technology, especially Web 2.0 and Social Media, to provide enhanced services to citizens.  Data.Gov and Apps.Gov are two important components of that effort.

Data.Gov was launched in 2009.  The stated objective of Data.Gov is to” increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.”  Data.Gov provides three kinds of data catalogs.  “Raw” Data Catalog: a catalog with instant view/download of platform-independent, machine readable data (e.g., XML, CSV, KMZ/KML, or shape file formats).  Tools Catalog: a catalog to provide the public with simple, application-driven access to Federal data with hyperlinks. This catalog features widgets, data mining and extraction tools, applications, and other services. Geodata Catalog:  a catalog that includes trusted and authoritative Federal geospatial data. This catalog includes links to download the datasets and a metadata page with details on the datasets, as well as links to more detailed Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata information. (source: data.gov faq)

Currently the data set includes 1,078 Raw Data, 484 Tools and 167,394 Geodata records.   A review of the data currently available” by Agency” provides some interesting insight.  The US EPA had 6,151 downloads of data the week prior to Feb 8th, 2010.  The Department of the Interior and the US Treasury came in second and third with 4,352 and 4,079 downloads,  respectively.  The US EPA also had the most raw data sets at 426 while the lowest number of data sets came from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission at zero (yes that is zero – somehow this made me a little nervous !).

The US Government and its many agencies produce massive amounts of data each year.  By providing academics, researchers and companies access to this data we may enable  individual researcher to find a cure for cancer or a college department to discover a weather pattern that can prevent natural disasters.  This is the power of open access to data – for the people, by the people !

Apps.Gov  is a very interesting and potentially powerful initiative.   Essentially this is a private cloud for the US Government.   Managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), Apps.Gov includes Business Apps, Productivity Apps, Social Media Apps and Cloud IT Services. The platform/exchange is similar to other successful private sector application exchanges such as the  SAP EcoHub , the Salesforce AppExchange and of course the  Apple Iphone App Store.

Apps.Gov provides government agencies a single marketplace to buy and use a broad range of applications.  In the Business Apps section for example  HP has 526 solutions listed, Microsoft has 65, VMWare has 716 and Salesforce has 67.  Several other companies have multiple solutions available.  Apps.Gov could have a profound impact on how the US Government buys and consumes software. 

So here is the Right Question:  Have data.gov and apps.gov delivered on their promise of fostering an open, efficient and effective government ?   Are they on the right track and what would you do different ?

I would welcome your views and opinions and especially your stories if you have used data from these sites or have any other experience related to this effort.

Thanks.

Zia.

Photo Credit: Ian-s

Filed under: Data & Analytics, Enterprise Software, Government, Innovation, Social Media, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Why words are killing the adoption of innovation !

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Zia Yusuf

Ruby on Rails is not a story about Ruby and her travels on a train.  A Desktop is actually not the top of your desk.  No, a Cookie is not something you would want to eat.  A Flash memory is not what you have when you have had a little too much to drink.   A Cloud  is not a something you will see in the sky, but likely in the basement of a building.  Enterprise 2.0 should not be confused with  Web 2.0, especially since we seem to be already experiencing Web 3.0. 

Actually, I would also like to take this opportunity to be the first person to declare the emergence of Enterprise 5.0  (a new mode of inter-enterprise communication where machines will talk to other machines using twitter and other social media tools - the age of social media for machines – this is Enterprise 5.0 (I did not want to loose out by not contributing to the terminology bandwagon).

There is no doubt that the pace of innovation in the technology industry has been staggering.  For this I congratulate all my friends in the technology industry across the world – you have made the world a better place to live.

However, what I have found amazing is that the adoption of some of these technologies and innovations is sometimes far less than than we had all hoped.  Now there can be many reasons for this – the technology just does not work, it does not met the needs of the customer or even that there is competing or new technology that provides a better solution.  All acceptable reasons.

But when you are not able to sell your software solution, or your brand new hardware gizmo,  it is to often because the customer simply does does not understand what you are talking about and is confused by the words and terminology being used.  The sad truth is that this happens far more than we would like to admit.

Our recent fascination with cloud computing is a perfect example.  I have seen companies change overnight (using a innovative technology called SAR – aka Search And Replace in MS Word) from being an OnDemand company to a SAAS company.  With the SAR technology, the move from SAAS to Cloud is equally possible in a short period of time.  In a way Cloud computing has been around with us a while – it is called the Internet – but that is the topic of a whole different discussion. Yes there are very important and signficant changes takeing place in how we develop and deliver software, but why not describe it in words that the widest group of people can understand.

I have had the privilege of talking to large cross section of  technology companies, service companies and enterprises and in my experience few are able to articulate the differences between a piece of software that is hosted, OnDemand,  in the Cloud or provided as a Software as a Service (SAAS).  Now the sad part is that if you really look into it the SAAS/OnDemand delivery model does have important innovations that will make the delivery of software cheaper and more effective.  But why do we have to make this such a difficult journey for our customers.

So to my colleagues in the technology industry, I would submit to you that words matter.  Clarity and simplicity of communication matters.  If we make it easier for our customers to understand what we are talking about, they will buy more of it and they will benefit from our innovations. 

I would like to close with quoting someone who knew a little bit about innovation and creating complex things.

 “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”  - Leonardo da Vinci

 

 Thanks for reading,

Zia.

Filed under: Big Picture, Enterprise Software, Innovation, Social Media, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Introducing “The Right Question” – a new blog about technology strategy, ecosytems, design thinking and anything else that I care about..

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Zia Yusuf

After so many suggestions from colleagues and friends that I start a blog, I finally decided to give it a try – so here goes.  Though I have been an active consumer of user-generated content such as blogs, wikis etc. I have not been an active contributor until recently. 

I started becoming active on Twitter a few months ago and found that medium to be an amazing source of insight and knowledge from some very smart people. I enjoy the debate and dialogue on Twitter and wanted to continue that conversation beyond the 140 characters. 

Why “The Right Question” ? Well over the years I have come to learn that it is far more important in your personal and professional life to be able to ask the right question – preferably at the right time – than be always ready with the right answer. There are to many times where mistakes are made, billions of dollars lost, or in the worst case lives are lost, because there was a rush to judgement on the answer and to few people had the courage or insight to ask “The Right Question”.

I hope that thorough this blog, and with your active participation and input, we can together ask the right questions and direct these questions to the people around the world who surely have the right answers.

The topics I will choose to discuss will be varied, though a large portion will relate to the software and technology industry, to how we can design and build customer centric ecosystems, to the use of social media and mobile technology in the enterprise, to the importance of applying design thinking in all aspects of business and finally, to anything else I care about !

So with this short note I am pleased to launch “The Right Question” and look forward to many interesting discussions and debates with all of you as we explore our exciting collective future. 

Thank you and Best Regards,
Zia.

Photo: Question Mark

Filed under: Big Picture | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

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