Beyond ERP: AnaTango’s New Technology Rises
Its the end of ERP as we know it and cloud-based business services companies feel just fine. But what’s behind this new way of business sea change that has some referring to the shift as a ‘mass extinction event’ in technology?
In geology a mass extinction event is a dramatic decrease in the diversity and abundance of life. The one you’re probably most familiar with comes from the late Cretaceous period (K-T event) when a space rock a few miles across slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula around 65 million years ago. The resulting blast and global cooling led to the rather abrupt end to nearly 75% of life on Earth.
What you may know is there is a similarly profound mass extinction event underway involving the way businesses run themselves.
Only in this case, the Earth-changing asteroid is what you call the internet. To get a little more specific, it really involves increasing array of today’s subscription-based cloud management platforms that are changing the business landscape at the expense of the doomed dinosaur known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
“…Much has been discussed about SAP’s pending $3.4B acquisition of SuccessFactors, and now Oracle’s $1.9 billion deal to buy Taleo. Rightly, SAP and Oracle have been praised for trying to bolster their cloud offerings with these moves. But, in a few years, I wonder if it will really matter. Because, while SAP and Oracle are obviously trying to get with the times by offering their services via the cloud, it may be too late. Why? Because, in short, ERP – enterprise resource planning software – is on its deathbed.
That’s right. ERP’s days are numbered. And it is because of a fundamental shift that is taking place regarding how people consume products and services driven by the massive growth of the cloud itself.” – Tien Tzuo, Zuora CEO from “The End of ERP”
As succinctly stated in this post by Tien Tzuo (who spent time previously as Salesforce.com’s CMO) the very survivability of ERP comes into question based both on today’s challenging business environment and explosive expansion of cloud-based business management tools.
Monthly Subscription vs. Buy It All & Manage It Model
Consider the rise of today’s cable, satellite dish and video streaming websites. All of these bring the best content providers like NBC Universal, CBS, Disney ABC/ESPN, etc. have to offer and all you need for access is a simple monthly subscription fee. Many of these providers use existing hardware to get you connected and any hardware/software upgrades are done remotely and largely free of charge.
If you were ERP, you’d believe this model makes no sense. You would rather purchase a broadcast network for yourself and manage the costs of maintaining it, upgrading systems and managing all of its employees and related costs. If you wanted another service, then you’d simply go out and buy another (software box off the shelf) cable network and add on all of the aforementioned costs all over again. If no subscription based service were available and if no alternatives were out there, then this ERP buy-it-all-manage-it-all world is the only one we’d be living in.
But much like the era of the dinosaur in the days post-asteroid impact, the times have clearly changed and there’s now constantly evolving and improving lineup of subscription based cloud business management tools available for today’s SMBs.
From “The End of ERP”
“…Why does all of this signal the death of ERP? It’s because the rigid ERP systems from SAP, Oracle and others were designed specifically for the 20th century manufacturing era rather than the 21st century services-based world. Because ERP was built to track products that can be put on a pallet, versus offering services that are consumed over time, subscription businesses using this legacy technology struggle over and over again with the fundamental questions:
Who are my customers? Try asking SAP or Oracle how many active customers you have at any one time. The concept simply doesn’t exist. Orders, Accounts, and Products? Sure. Ask your ERP how much up-sell business you’ve done, or how many customers have renewed in the past year – and you’ll get a blank stare. ERP is simply not built around customer-centric transactions. In a Subscription Economy, unless you can monetize customer relationships over time, you’re dead in the water.
How can I price this service the way I want to? Subscription services run the gamut from simple monthly recurring charges, to usage based charges, to one-time charges, to “all of the above.” Unfortunately, ERP systems force companies to resort to hokey workarounds to get their pricing right, like creating different products for every month of the year. “February Service SKU” anyone? And simple cost-plus pricing doesn’t apply to services. Instead, businesses want to do rapid A-B price testing when trying to gauge appetite for a new service or offering. Meanwhile, a single price change in an ERP system can take weeks.
Where’s the “Renew” button? Subscriptions are all about an ever-changing lifecycle as customers sign-up, upgrade, add-on, and ultimately renew their service. At their core, ERP systems only give you a “Buy” button for tracking transactions. They’re missing the critical tools you need to process this lifecycle over time.
Why can’t I sell to everyone? Subscription Economy companies like Salesforce.com and Box have found success by selling their services to everyone from individual users up through very large enterprises. They need tools for managing things like high volume recurring payments in the B2C world, as well as tools for managing high-complexity invoices and contracts in the B2B world. And those tools need to manage customers that may come through different channels such as web self-service, mobile devices, direct or channel sales or even Facebook. Legacy enterprise technology makes you chose one or the other, when what you really need is the ability to sell B2Any.
What’s going on with my financials? Subscription businesses live or die by their ability to measure the ways that bookings, billings, cash flow, and revenue are inter-related. Unfortunately, this data lives in different software silos. Bookings fall into CRM, billings and cash flow live in your GL or ERP system, and revenue is too often calculated in a series of complex spreadsheets. Good luck stringing all of that together…” – Tien Tzuo, Zuora CEO from “The End of ERP”
At AnaTango we believe we have done just that.
The AnaTango solution: The Evolution Away from ERP to AMI
AnaTango’s Adaptive Management Infrastucture (AMI) is at the core of AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite. To date this includes two powerful cloud-based SaaS applications including Anavation and the cloud-based enterprise platform known as Anavoy.
Both are offered fully malleable into the hands of our business partners who can choose from library of add-on features and enhancements which all are fully embedded within the system. Compatibility issues with old/new software products are never an issue unlike the older on-the-counter-box-top/ERP counterparts.
The CBMS doesn’t simply end with Anavation and Anavoy, rather these are the first two products in growing suite of products specifically targeted to the needs of different business environments and industries. The CBMS goal is to match the diversity of the SMB and multinational conglomerate marketplace and thrive in its new cloud-based environment.
SMBs: Should You Adapt or Have SaaS Adapt to You?
In this new era of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) the landscape of offerings is literally changing by the day. From business intelligence (BI) to customer resource management (CRM) there’s no shortage of companies with stock ticker acronyms out there that all say the same thing, “we can help your business outperform and achieve immediate return on investment”.
In most cases this is true, yet many of these formerly innovative companies are now taking a move from ERP’s old playbook. They would rather you fit into their system of doing business without you having the ability to adapt, modify or optimize it for your own needs.
This is where the landscape of cloud-based businesses who do offer this level of adaptive management becomes suddenly much smaller. Its like going from a continent the size of Asia down to islands in the Caribbean. And this is precisely where AnaTango rises from out of the ocean.
You have the keys to the high performance car but do you really know how to drive it?
Powerful software no matter the vendor is only as good as the knowledge of that product in the hands of the people who are using it. Many companies are content to drop a software upgrade or service into their customers’ laps and wait for the phone to ring on the customer support side later. While some companies thrive with customer support such as Apple’s Apple Care for instance, AnaTango takes a different approach to this partnership.
Meet AnaTango Consult/Connect/Apps
Maximizing the software in ways that bring immediate results should require a method of strategy deployment (aka a Strategic Deployment Plan). This is where goal setting, key performance indicator tracking and realizing revenue gains become reality. AnaTango not only provides you with the firepower to achieve this, but also deploys the field generals (Six Sigma Master Black Belts and executive team with decades of software experience) to guide SMBs to reach their goals. This also includes an overhaul of branding/marketing/networking services to leverage the benefits that social media and main stream media offer growing companies.
AnaTango also has hardware and IT experts who can adapt and enhance existing infrastructure and improve the speed/accessibility of cloud-based management. Lastly, new to AnaTango is the forthcoming Apps division that has the ability to create topic and task specific applications for companies looking to expand into iOS and Android environments.
Any new client to AnaTango benefits directly from the monthly subscription model in ways not thought possible before. This complete optimization of a SMB sets AnaTango apart from many of its competitors, because we feel this is the next evolution to cloud-based business management – an Adaptive Management Infrastructure (AMI).
This way your business from day one won’t be tied to an aging platform, rather one that was built to your needs and growing with your needs as new products in the CBMS come online to expand your business possibilities.
By planning for nearly every possible outcome, even the sight of an asteroid plunging through the atmosphere won’t make your business tremble.
Instead you will see it and be the first to react to it as a new opportunity.
Take that, T Rex.
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite under AnaTango Cloud. In his free time he likes to study and chase tornado-producing supercell thunderstorms. Seriously, he does that. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
Rob’s Bold and Not-As-Bold Predictions for 2012 in Tech
Top 10 predictions for 2012.
My forecasting skills are probably more finely tuned to weather patterns and producing daily forecasts. But as real fan and active participant in the development of some of today’s technology and software designs there does seem to be a changing of the guard heading into 2012 that should make for a very entertaining and exciting year.
Here are some of my bold and not as bold predictions for the year ahead, which I will gladly revisit at year’s end to see what happened and what clearly didn’t.
Remember, these aren’t forward looking statements and certainly nothing worthy of building your retirement portfolio around. But…I have a funny feeling that this may be what’s on the way in 2012.
SOCIAL MEDIA “NEXT BIG THING” IS…
Pinterest. Its addicting, unique and practically absorbs you into full-time collaboration with other users with its simplistic yet effective interface. Sharing ‘pins’ has some tremendous SEO and sales/marketing potential as well making this concept a strong one for being a revenue generator as well.
USER INTERFACES IN 3-D
We will wonder how we lived in a time when our desktops lived in a 2D environment. Right now the only real signs of this sea change are on gaming systems: Wii, XBox Kinect and PS3. But what happens when this technology is finally very usefully applied to business? Lift/Pull/Push moves to access files and data will be far more intuitive and reduce ridiculously absurd levels of drop down menus and mouse-clicking common to today’s software. 3D interface design is probably my second favorite best startup business plan for 2012.
BEST STARTUP BUSINESS PLAN: CLOUD SECURITY
Becoming THE security net to protect cloud-based services = wanting to become the fastest growing startup in years. Its a perfect storm of sorts in the cloud with a killer business plan. With a cascade of companies adopting cloud-based management/productivity services – protecting the internet pipeline/personal data for these companies has never been more crucial. In fact at AnaTango, its an issue we treat extremely seriously and design our systems and software infrastructure from the ground up with far higher security standards than our mainstream competitors.
Look for one or two companies to position themselves as the ‘cloud leader’ in guaranteeing bandwidth/pipeline performance will full time counter measures to prevent DNS and other attacks. Indeed, hacking and anxiety over security may be the primary reason why more companies are resisting to fully adopt cloud computing for all their productivity/management/IT needs.
HACKTIVISM TURNS TO THE DARK SIDE
Hacktivism Turns Dangerous – more sophisticated hacking begins coordinated attacks on power grids and infrastructure systems. As authorities have greater problems tracking down the sources, this will only embolden those who have the skill sets to perpetrate them.
CLOUD COMPUTING OUTLOOK: M&A ACCELERATION
Cloud builds momentum. With a recipe of saving money, increasing accessibility, transparency and collaboration the drive for businesses to utilize cloud services will likely continue seeing an exponential leap forward. However, rapid consolidation in the space seems likely as the big fish begin gobbling up the more talented and feature focused competition.
CLOUD/INTERNET BEGIN FULL ATTACK ON CABLE TV
YouTube’s move into original programming will be expensive but worth it. Remember when people used to shake their heads when HBO, Showtime, Starz, FX hired top talent to produce movie quality programming? In the new ‘cloud’ based always-on-demand world, YouTube stands to gain by simultaneously offering more free content vs. Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s pay for everything model. But Apple likely wins even with the higher monthly price because…
APPLE’S ATTACK ON CABLE TV
Apple’s TV (iVision?) debuts. Take one look at your cable box or dish remote and then look at your iPhone w/ Siri. Which would you rather use to quickly set/record/find programs to watch? No contest. In fact Comcast would be wise to begin working with Logitech to match Apple to the punch with a voice activated remote control.
The only problem I have with “iVision/Apple iTV” is forcing folks to accept the predetermined monitor size that comes with it. Here I think people could be missing something…Apple may not actually sell you the “TV” but rather the interface, like their Mac Mini or Apple TV. It would seem to be far more marketable (and far greater profit/unit) to avoid costly OLED panels and stick simply with making the Apple TV box matched to an iPod Touch voice activated interface. This would make Apple TV work immediately with ANY TV on the market, allowing the user to choose their favorite large screen TV or keep their existing one.
CONJECTURE: PLAUSIBLE PARTNERSHIPS & ACQUISITIONS
Microsoft buys Nokia and looks to buy ARM as well. Samsung tries to align with HP and invests in the open platform WebOS. Amazon considers making a run at RIMM/Blackberry to get into the cellphone/smartphone market only to be outbid by Google who buys RIMM to bolster its folder of smartphone tech in the on-going patent wars. Despite this Apple and the new iPhone 5 dominate until Google-designed Motorola mobile devices begin hitting the market. Apple also begins a transition to using iOS across its entire product lineup including laptops and desktops, running far more efficient ARM-based chipsets and flash-based RAM drives.
APPLE: THE RISE OF JONATHAN IVE?
With Steve Jobs last big project (TV) finally released – who will lead Apple to its next “big thing?” There is “another” as Yoda once said in The Empire Strikes Back (while of course no one can be another Steve Jobs) but the “other” I’m referring to is probably the one person at 1 Infinite Loop with that rare gift of indelible design, eloquent and museum quality “art ware” who we haven’t seen much of to date, but I think this time next year that should be about to change.
MUST HAVE GADGET OF 2012
Tie – iPhone5 and Apple iTV/iVision.
…ONE MORE THING
Long form Mayan calendar ends with hundreds of folks in attendance during the Winter Solstice at many of the ruins sites in Mexico. Then… in an instant comes a revelation! Nothing has changed. On to 2013.
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite under AnaTango Cloud. He does not break dance, at least not in public. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
Cloud Computing: “Top Investment Priority for 2012″
Is it a case study in how tough the economic environment is for today’s businesses or simply a great leap forward that levels the playing field for small businesses looking to gain the same transparency, efficiency and management tools that used to be reserved only for monster capital corporations? It would seem its both.
The move into cloud computing for business management needs seems to be more out of necessity now as opposed to novelty. Case in point this recent eWeek article “Cloud Computing Remains Top Investment Priority” that echoes what we’ve been hearing from prospective clients.
“…A survey has revealed that most businesses recognise that cloud computing will be their top investment priority in 2012. Fifty percent of respondents to a recent Unisys online poll said cloud computing is their top IT investment priority for 2012. This is the second straight year respondents to a Unisys poll named cloud as the chief priority for IT investments in the coming year.
In a similar poll conducted in December 2010 and January 2011, 44 percent of 262 respondents said cloud computing topped their IT priority list for 2011. The more recent poll, which drew 300 responses, was conducted on the company’s website in September and October 2011.
Other respondents to the poll listed cyber-security (21 percent), mobile/social computing (21 percent) and big data (8 percent) as their top 2012 IT priorities.”
Powerful Management Tools For Any Business
AnaTango’s own Cloud Business Management Suite (Anavation, Anavoy) is primed to fill this need by offering extremely powerful strategic, operation and inventory management that can continuously (and collaboratively) track key performance indicators down the individual assignment/task level for each employee. This level of business management common to Strategy Deployment Planning (SDP) was once something only larger companies with giant IT budgets could afford, normally through a miasma of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products folded together into a workable (yet inherently expensive) solution.
Compatibility issues aside, ERP amounts to the old way of doing things built in era where broadband/internet connectivity fired up with the sound of dial tones and pings (perhaps you remember those days of CompuServe, AOL or Prodigy?). Today’s ERP-based systems are still the norm for most businesses, but the price of admission (service contracts/seats) for most small/medium businesses remains a budget breaker.
This was the reason why AnaTango built its Cloud Business Management Suite from the ground up to the cloud to answer these challenges with a fully customizable, modular interface (known as Adaptive Management Infrastructure) that brings the full power executive-level SDP management into the hands of every business.
The “Big Fish” Are Taking Notice…
As seen in this article, large multinational corporations aren’t keen on sitting on the sidelines as SMBs lead the charge into cloud services.
“It’s no longer just SMBs that are keen on the cloud. Multinational companies want a piece of the action too
Cloud services are gaining momentum among large organisations, marking an expansion from the traditional user base of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), according to new research.
Adoption of cloud services within multinational corporations (MNCs) is up 61 percent from April 2010, with 45 percent of these companies now outsourcing at least some of their key IT services to the cloud. The research was carried out by analyst firm Ovum, on behalf of Cable & Wireless Worldwide, and surveyed more than 100 MNCs across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.”
Cloud Services Are a Necessity, No Longer a Novelty
Immediate return on investment with key performance indicator and cost management savings simply works in any economic environment. Even as the next great bull market runs again, the positives offered by cloud-based management services won’t lose their luster, rather we believe more businesses will spend even more to fully integrate it. – Rob Mayeda
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite under AnaTango Cloud. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
No Longer In The “Minority”: Gesture Technology Comes of Age
If there was one of the coolest tech moments seen in movies, Minority Report certainly had it.
At the time, it seemed more Hollywood movie magic than short-term reality. From the reactive mood lighting matched to a holographic interface that blended information, video and real-time communication, it just didn’t seem possible we’d see something like that for quite some time.
Intel’s whimsical commercial “dramatization”
However, those in the tech industry knew that major companies like Intel and Microsoft has b
een testing a 3D user interface for many years. The technology however was clumsy, oversized and over-priced and therefore no one had been successful in making it commercially viable.
Meet Wii
Then came along Wii. This is probably most of our first experiences with a “3D” style interface with a thoughtfully simple remote/game control that works in a virtual 3D space. This immersive experience quickly made Nintendo rich as Wii sales exploded and the new world of Minority Report-styled gaming user interfaces was officially underway.
Kinect-ing Possibilities
It didn’t take long for Microsoft to catch and pass Nintendo with their “Kinect” add-on to their popular Xbox 360 gaming system. Whereas the Wii made 3D UI seem somewhat cartoonish, Kinect certainly made if feel more real.
The explosion of mobile and tablet computing devices has made touch/swipe/zoom interfaces even more popular. While not holographic displays, the concept is essentially the same – forget your mouse and keyboard – navigation shouldn’t require typing and hitting the ‘enter’ key.
So is it possible that the mouse and keyboard will go the way of the floppy disk, 3.5” disk, CD/DVD drives? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Which brings us back to our ‘niche gaming systems that are now being looked at as a powerful new way of using business software. In fact, its leading to an entirely new way of thinking when it comes to designing entire operating systems.
Kinect Opens Windows
So there it is, a Windows OS where you can actually ‘open’ windows or a Mac OS where zoom/pinch takes you through space and time on your desktop.
This is the next big leap forward as today’s technology not only makes this approach easily affordable and viable. The future computer desktop will finally look like a real desktop. Where you most important items can lie in front of others and accessing key tools is as simple as moving up/over and around other items.
The speed and efficiency (while perhaps providing an added health benefit of exercise) ought to make 3D enabled user interfaces extremely popular.
At AnaTango, I can say we’re excited by these possibilities and thinking forward to the future. All our Cloud Business Management Suite apps work just as effectively on mobile devices and tablets as they do on your desktop. Without tipping my hand, its safe to say we’re also focusing on business application navigation/performance in new ways we hope is just as “cool” as what’s been shown here.
I can’t wait to see future OS’es take advantage of this technology in the future provided next generation passwords aren’t break dance moves.
In that case, companies may want to begin removing breakables from their office spaces.
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite under AnaTango Cloud. He does not break dance, at least not in public. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
“Ninja Class Mobile Workforce”
by AnaTango
IT and security administrators constantly struggle to protect “data at the edge”-data carried by mobile employees on laptops and mobile phones. Every security policy struggles with juggling the need to provide access and capabilities to these mobile professionals while unable to physically protect data that is not confined within the walls of the their building.
With mobile workforces ever expanding, security and access are at war. The battle rages between professionals who work from home or on the road against security concerns from their IT administrators. While the war is never over, a new weapon may change the field of battle. Enter the “Ninja Class Mobile Workforce.”
New hardware and software technology termed “PC on a stick”, essentially loads the entire operating system, programs and files onto a USB storage device (stick). Instead of providing employees with laptops, they can be given USB flash drive allowing them to plug into virtually any computer around the world and have instant, secure access to their own personal desktop and files. Since the operating system runs directly off of the USB’s flash drive, the users files never touch the borrowed computer and the device leaves no trace it was there. Since the PC’s hard drive is not accessed; any viruses, Trojans or spyware present won’t affect the flash drive. Even Internet browsing is private and won’t leave a trace on the PC.
Of course, all USB flash drives are not built equal. Several companies produce high grade flash drives that provide military level hardware and software protection along with remote policy management and remote data wipe capabilities. These USB flash drives also carry enterprise management tools allowing administrators to remotly monitor, control and manage their own security profile.
Imaging having to travel for business and instead of taking your laptop, cords, bag etc-you only need to shove your USB stick into your pocket. This is what somc could call a ninja class mobile workforce. The end result is a USB drive the size of a stick of gum allowing mobile professionals to have their entire desktop and corporate access from any PC worldwide, while feeling totally safe.
The global mobile (business) revolution
Some 25 years ago, while writing my own word processor program on my Apple IIe the last thing I would’ve thought to do was to plug in a phone line or ethernet connection to access the concept of a “world wide web”.
My first taste of gathering information and data over a network of archives came from scanning microfiche film reels in the library. This was still the case even as personal computers and laptop computers began to thrive during my undergrad years at the University of Arizona. The world wide web was more a resource for higher level academics as what we refer to today as Web 1.0 was simply just getting started.
“You’ve Got Mail”
My first real taste of the internet came with Prodigy (no not the technopunk band) but Prodigy Online, followed briefly by CompuServe and then the next really big thing America Online (AOL). (Again, I’m feeling pretty old admitting to that). Even though the wait time from dial tone to data chirping was maddening, yet the end result was an amazing experience of instant (or wait for it…wait for it…wait for it…downloads) information available as far as your Netscape or Explorer browser could take you.
Businesses as this point were wise to establish at least a presence in this ‘information superhighway’, and those smarter still rushed out for the great www-landgrab and reserved domain names that would be bought for thousands and hundreds of thousands years later by companies desperate for gaining access to an unlimited internet audience.
Computer hardware and internet connectivity advances rapidly enhanced this experience, changing the landscape so drastically it seemed as if all my AOL sign on names had become irrelevant nearly overnight.
Web 2.0 had arrived before most of us even knew it. A new frontier made possible with increasing broadband internet connectivity allowed software and even entire platforms to be hosted on the web. The information superhighway was no longer very ‘super’. It was simply now the avenue we took to access information 24/7 provided you were close enough to your home or business internet connection.
Soon after folks started to realize the importance of having internet connection via ‘wireless’ with new generations of laptops and desktops arriving with built-in internet connectivity without need for cables and cords. Now the internet could go with you, and soon business would follow suit.
iPhonevolution.
Palm, Blackberry and Nokia came before it but the iPhone and its app-centric fully web-enabled user experience changed the world of internet access and connectivity. The first iPhone and Android smartphones almost treated the internet experience as a novelty, while flash forward to today’s devices and you’ll find processors and chips inside that rival the power of many desktop computers.
This mobilization of technology from touch-screen phone to tablet computer is setting the stage for the next giant leap forward where the “future” reality of business may be “augmented reality” – that is using your smartphone’s HD camera to scan and report back to you business deals and opportunities down the street from your location.
Here’s a feature on the future known as “Web 3.0″ as seen via the Discovery Channel network. What will Web 3.0 be like?
These computer/HD videocamera/and video/voice communications hybrids are proving that business decisions both spur-of-the-moment and those well planned can be done literally at the touch and swipe of a finger at any place on the planet.
“[Mobile phones] are becoming the THE compute platform – giving you the power in the palm of your hand,” says ARM CEO Warren East. The processing power and power saving features of chips like ARM’s Cortex A7 are one of the reasons why its very possible smartphones or perhaps we should call them the new PC’s “palm computers” will be the one and only connection to the internet and computing power most of us need.
“We’re starting to see people using that increased compute power with a much more sophisticated user interface with the ability to be able to connect to multiple screens, with the ability to seamlessly move from one form factor to another and take one’s digital world with us as we go,” East explains. “It’s even turning into something that can do content creation – and that’s happening with the compute power that is in the palm of your hand.”
Having seen the next generation of Cortex chips in action, I would tend to agree.
These devices are not only providing power to business, but as we’re seeing in the advent of new social media outlets and communications platforms, our mobile devices are insuring the world will see every global revolution in near real-time and government censorship over its people will never be possible again.
This technology comes with incredible possibilities for the next generations of companies looking to thrive across all business platforms: web-based management applications empowered by some degree by the new business frontiers in social media.
“Business for Today and Tomorrow”
I’m thankful that a company like AnaTango came around at just this moment, where a unique Cloud Business Management Suite is precisely that, one that is fully ready and capable for this new mobile reality. I can imagine how difficult it might’ve been to try to adapt and evolve through the earliest stages of the world wide web to where technology has brought us today.
By offering the next stage of Adaptive Management Infrastructure (AMI), we are positioned to offer companies a forward-thinking alternative to some of the older Web 2.0 thinking and outdated, fragmented approach common to today’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
This is particularly exciting for me to be a part of. It seems like a different world looking back as once being the kid who once programmed for his Apple IIe on horribly inadequate floppy disk drives. Now we find ourselves in an era where technology can provide a business management suite of services fully integrated into the always available and unlimited data potential of the cloud.
What’s even more exciting is to think what’s next to come down the road for technology. We’ve got some really great ideas of where we think its headed next, and look forward to sharing these with you as our CBMS suite leaps forward to its next release. Stay tuned. – Rob Mayeda
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTango’s Cloud Business Management Suite under AnaTango Cloud. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
Remembering Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dead at 56
Apple co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs died today. He was 56.
Jobs had been suffering from various health issues following the seven-year anniversary of his surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in August 2004. Apple announced in January that he would be taking an indeterminate medical leave of absence. Jobs then stepped down as chief executive in late August, citing his inability to “meet my duties and expectations” stemming from his illness.
In a statement, Apple said paid tribute to its one-time leader as ” a visionary and creative genius” adding that the world had “lost an amazing human being.”
“Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple,” the company statement said.
Jobs had undergone a liver transplant in April 2009 during an earlier planned six-month leave of absence. He returned to work for a year and a half before his health forced him to take more time off. He told his employees in August, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
One of the most legendary businessmen in American history, Jobs turned three separate industries on their head in the 35 (April 1, 1976) years he was involved in the technology industry.
Personal computing was invented with the launch of the Apple II in 1977. Legal digital music recordings were brought into the mainstream with the iPod and iTunes in the early 2000s, and mobile phones were never the same after the 2007 debut of the iPhone. Jobs played an instrumental role in the development of all three, and managed to find time to transform the art of computer-generated movie-making on the side.
Video: Steve Jobs retrospective
Video: The charisma of Steve Jobs: From the Mac to the iPad
Steve Jobs steps down from Apple
Jobs and the Apple MacBook: The laptop that changed (almost) everything
The invention of the iPad in 2010, a touch-screen tablet computer his competitors flocked to reproduce, was the capstone of his career as a technologist. A conceptual hybrid of a touch-screen iPod and a slate computer, the 10-inch mobile device was Jobs’ vision for a more personal computing device.
Jobs was considered brilliant yet brash. He valued elegance in design yet was almost never seen in public wearing anything but a black mock turtleneck, blue jeans, and a few days worth of stubble. A master salesman who considered himself an artist at heart, Jobs inspired both reverence and fear in those who worked for him and against him, and was adored by an army of loyal Apple customers who almost saw him as superhuman.
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 to young parents who gave him up for adoption. Paul and Clara Jobs gave him his name, and moved out of the city in 1960 to the Santa Clara Valley, later to be known as Silicon Valley. Jobs grew up in Mountain View and Cupertino, where Apple’s headquarters is located.
He attended Reed College in Oregon for a year but dropped out, although he sat in on some classes that interested him, such as calligraphy. After a brief stint at Atari working on video games, he spent time backpacking around India, furthering teenage experiments with psychedelic drugs and developing an interest in Buddhism, all of which would shape his work at Apple.
Back in California, Jobs’ friend Steve Wozniak was learning the skills that would change both their lives. When Jobs discovered that Wozniak had been assembling relatively (for the time) small computers, he struck a partnership, and Apple Computer was founded in 1976 in the usual Silicon Valley fashion: setting up shop in the garage of one of the founder’s parents.
Wozniak handled the technical end, creating the Apple I, while Jobs ran sales and distribution. The company sold a few hundred Apple Is, but found much greater success with the Apple II, which put the company on the map and is largely credited as having proven that regular people wanted computers.
It also made Jobs and Wozniak rich. Apple went public in 1980, and Jobs was well on his way to becoming one of the first tech industry celebrities, earning a reputation for brilliance, arrogance, and the sheer force of his will and persuasion, often jokingly referred to as his “reality-distortion field.”
The debut of the Macintosh in 1984 left no doubt that Apple was a serious player in the computer industry, but Jobs only had a little more than a year left at the company he founded when the Mac was released in January 1984.
By 1985 Apple CEO John Sculley–who Jobs had convinced to leave Pepsi in 1983 and run Apple with the legendary line, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”–had developed his own ideas for the future of the company, and they differed from Jobs’. He removed Jobs from his position leading the Macintosh team, and Apple’s board backed Sculley.
Jobs resigned from the company, later telling an audience of Stanford University graduates “what had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.” He would get the last laugh.
He went on to found NeXT, which set about making the next computer in Jobs’ eyes. NeXT was never the commercial success that Apple was, but during those years, Jobs found three things that would help him architect his return.
The first was Pixar. Jobs snapped up the graphic-arts division of Lucasfilm in 1986, which would go on to produce “Toy Story” in 1995 and set the standard for computer-graphics films. After making a fortune from Pixar’s IPO in 1995, Jobs eventually sold the company to Disney in 2006.
The second was object-oriented software development. NeXT chose this development model for its software operating systems, and it proved to be more advanced and more nimble than the operating system developments Apple was working on without Jobs.
The third was Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA student who attended a talk on entrepreneurialism given by Jobs in 1989 at the university. The two wed in 1991 and eventually had three children; Reed, born in 1991, Erin, born in 1995, and Eve, born in 1998. Jobs has another daughter, Lisa, who was born 1978, but Jobs refused to acknowledge he was her father for the first few years of her life, eventually reconciling with Lisa and her mother, his high-school girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan.
Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, having convinced then-CEO Gil Amelio to adopt NeXTStep as the future of Apple’s operating system development. Apple was in a shambles at the time, losing money, market share, and key employees.
By 1997, Jobs was once again in charge of Apple. He immediately brought buzz back to the company, which pared down and reacquired a penchant for showstoppers, such as the 1998 introduction of the iMac; perhaps the first “Stevenote.” His presentation skills at events such as Macworld would become legendary examples of showmanship and star power in the tech industry.
Jobs also set the company on the path to becoming a consumer-electronics powerhouse, creating and improving products such as the iPod, iTunes, and later, the iPhone and iPad. Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world, and has a market capitalization second to only ExxonMobil, which Apple surpassed multiple times this past August.
He did so in his own fashion, imposing his ideas and beliefs on his employees and their products in ways that left many a career in tatters. Jobs enforced a culture of secrecy at Apple and was an extremely demanding leader, terrorizing Apple employees when he returned to the company in the late 1990s with summary firings if he didn’t like the answers they gave when questioned.
Jobs was an intensely private person. That quality put him and Apple at odds with government regulators and stockholders who demanded to know details about his ongoing health problems and his prognosis as the leader and alter ego of his company. It spurred a 2009 SEC probe into whether Apple’s board had made misleading statements about his health.
In the years before he fell ill in 2008, Jobs seemed to soften a bit, perhaps due to his bout with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004.
In 2005, his remarks to Stanford graduates included this line: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Later, in 2007, he appeared onstage at the D: All Things Digital conference for a lengthy interview with bitter rival Bill Gates, exchanging mutual praise and prophetically quoting the Beatles: “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.”
Jobs leaves behind his wife, four children, two sisters, and 49,000 Apple employees.
How Amazon Uses its Cloud to Turbocharge the Browser
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the web company’s first tablet. While it may run Android 2.3 on hardware not dissimilar to that of the PlayBook it has a completely different feel and feature set compared to any of RIM or Google offering.
Besides leaving its content delivery up to the cloud, the Kindle Fire also leverages Amazon’s servers in delivering a nice, fast web browsing experience. Amazon calls its browser Amazon Silk, and says that it introduces a “split browser” architecture that uses Amazon Web Services cloud (AWS).
The Silk browser software resides both on Kindle Fire and on the massive server fleet that comprises the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). With each page request, Silk dynamically determines a division of labor between the mobile hardware and Amazon EC2 (i.e. which browser sub-components run where) that takes into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content.
Any users of the Opera Mobile browser can attest to the benefits of having a big server do the work for you. A browser like Opera Mobile or Silk will also be of great use to those with limited data plans. Instead of downloading a full-sized image that’d designed for high-resolution desktop viewing, the server will compress the image to a suitable size for your device, saving on bandwidth.
According to Amazon, a typical web page requires 80 files served from 13 different domains. Latency over wireless connections is high – on the order of 100 milliseconds round trip. Serving a web page requires hundreds of such round trips, only some of which can be done in parallel. In aggregate, this adds seconds to page load times. Amazon boasts that its EC2′s connection can score a round-trip latency of 5 milliseconds or less to most web sites.
For a mobile browser, this makes a ton of sense. Even John Carmack of id Software endorses the move. Carmack tweeted: “I always thought some kind of remote aggregator made huge sense for connection-challenged browsing – Amazon Silk seems like a Good Thing.”
It will make even more sense whenever Amazon introduces a 3G model.
#VIDEO_6392#
- Amazon Makes $199 Android-based Kindle Fire Tablet
- Amazon Announces Three New Ultra-cheap Kindles
- Report: “Better” Amazon Tablet Coming in January
For more information, please visit: us.news-republic.com
Leveling the Playing Field
By Rob Mayeda
Everyone loves a great against-all-odds story.
From religious fables to present day sporting events we can remember nearly every instance. Perhaps it was the story of David armed with only a slingshot to take down the mighty Goliath. In the Olympics, there was the “Miracle on Ice” from 1980 where an unknown team of American hockey players first defeated the odds-on-favorite Soviet Union and later Finland for the gold medal. Another moment well remembered was Buster Douglas’ victory over Mike Tyson that knocked out the boxing world. And every year in “March Madness” we hear of a tiny school we never knew existed somehow toppling a heavily favored powerhouse. Just as I have witnessed with my Arizona Wildcats stopped by the E. Tennessee States of the world too many times.
As they say in sports, “…sometimes the odds simply don’t matter, it really comes down to how you play the game.” If only that were true in business.
For young, upstart small businesses that lack the capital, infrastructure and people power of their conglomerate counterparts there really has been no such thing as a level playing field. You simply took your great idea, ran with it and hoped it would strike big like a David/TeamUSA/Buster long shot.
Its a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts in business that mirrors Darwinian evolution.
The strongest, fittest and most financially sound companies adapt, thrive, survive, have children (spinoff companies) and can afford to stay in the game no matter how strong or weak the global economy was. Then a funny thing occurred on the evolution of business management.
The internet happened.
First used as a novelty to search and accessing product information, the new wave of innovators realized the day would come when hardware would become less important than the software that was running on it. Many operating systems and browsers later we find many software companies now finding themselves standing as dinosaurs in a new world of leaner, more efficient cloud computing-based business management platforms.
Whether you realize it or not, we’re now witnessing a wonderfully empowering tipping point in how businesses gather the tools they need to succeed. Cloud computing has managed to finally level the playing field.
No longer do you need the largest army of servers or a library of software to assign individually to specific tasks. This is where AnaTango likes to believe there are stories like “the Miracle on Ice” happening every day if not every minute once a new company jumps online with their business management needs.
The cloud not only enables young upstarts to have a chance to succeed, but can also help larger, well-established companies maintain a competitive edge by successfully making the transition to a fully integrated cloud-based management system. This too will insure that company’s lifetime of success won’t be lost in the next great leap of technological innovation.
With services like Anavation and Anavoy companies can consolidate all of their frequently outdated software into one cohesive platform. The Adaptive Management Infrastructure core can adapt, evolve and match your needs without needing massive IT departments, server purchases and costly software upgrades.
This means even today’s Enterprise Resource Planning users can easily adopt this new era of adaptive business management platforms built with forward-thinking functionality for tomorrow’s needs.
If your company plans on being around for the next 10 years, why would you rely on hardware/software that was designed for yesterday’s business? This old model never assumed we’d see the powerful mobile computing tools like tablets and smart phones. Again, this is where many cloud computing platforms are already optimized for business going fully mobile.
That’s the wonderful part of this great evolution. It not only will grant us the ability to conduct business in ways never thought possible before, it most certainly will allow anyone with a great idea the means to become successful provided they follow the advice of an NFL legend.
“Success demands singleness of purpose” – Vince Lombardi
At least now with the new cloud-era of business management, more than ever before your company can win the game. – Rob Mayeda
Photo: CMO Rob Mayeda enjoying the ‘ocean air-conditioning’ of the Laguna Beach office.
AnaTango’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Mayeda brings nearly 17 years of broadcast news/media experience to AnaTango and is a multiple Emmy-winning meteorologist and multimedia producer. Rob is a self-described technology ‘geek’ constantly researching and testing new software and hardware designs. Rob also leads the user-interface design and implementation for AnaTangoCloud. Contact Rob @ rmayeda@anatango.com
Are Sunny Days Possible in the Cloud?
Do you remember not too long ago hopping into your car, driving, across town (when gas was $1- something) to your local retail store and searching the computer department to purchase a cereal box that contained between 2- 8 3.5” (or are you “wise” enough to remember 5.25” floppy) disks? The disk contained software that would entertain us, make us more productive and educate. If you don’t remember that, how about going to the record store and perusing the aisles for hours reading the CD boxes that were twice as big as the CD.
Well those days seem long past; and inserting a disk in anything these days….well, seems a bit ancient.
Cloud
We’re now spoiled with the conveniences of iTunes, Salesforce.com, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo Mail, etc.. In addition, we’re all too familiar with the seemingly millions of applications that run on a myriad of mobile appliances. None of these programs run on our PC’s hard drive. They’re browser based applications that are essentially utility services which we share with thousands of users.
So, I began to ponder the question, “What’s the big deal about the Cloud in Manufacturing and Enterprise?”
Is Cloud right for Manufacturing?
Most of us do not really care where our software is coming from—we just want stuff that works… right? One thing the “Cloud” model produces is this proliferation of different service models. These would be the infamous “aa” models. Not to be confused, of course, with the model that contains 12 steps, but Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Everything as a Service (XaaS) in private or public deployment. The potential merits of these new service models are well chronicled, especially for the business enterprise. For example, the prospect of a simplified cost and consumption model, faster provisioning of systems and applications, ease of integration and flexible and resilient business continuity, among other things are always worth the development and risk.
Manufacturing and process applications are a slightly different animal than the typical enterprise network. It’s a big issue when you lose strategic sales data or have trouble accessing the data when you have to report your quarterly numbers to the Sales VP, but it can be a catastrophic condition when your SCADA network brings down a complete line in your semiconductor fab or methane production plant costing your organization millions of dollars per hour. Or worst posing significant physical safety issues to your employees as a result of network bandwidth issues.
So, can there be sunny days in the cloud? Or does security, and network resiliency concerns and hurdles produce more storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis impeding the intended merits of the “Cloud”? Another main concern is that these hurdles regulate “Cloud” deployment to batch processed or non mission critical applications.
Trust
Cisco believes that gaining the advantages of cloud computing in manufacturing and process environments revolve around establishing a trusted approach to the cloud. Without trust, the economics of cloud computing make little difference.
Trust in the cloud centers on four core concepts:
•Security – Traditional issues around data and resource access control, encryption and incident detection
•Control – The ability of the enterprise to directly manage how and where data and software is deployed, used and destroyed
•Service-Level Management – The definition, contracting and enforcement of service level agreements between a variety of parties
•Compliance – Conformance with required regulatory, legal and general industry requirements
I have this utopian dream where companies run their manufacturing and process applications from the Cloud. Can you imagine the disruptive technologies that would spawn from providing a “Cloud” network platform that:
- Produces a network that is faster than the control system
- Provides deterministic packet delivery
- Enables synchronization across the system
- Meets data throughput requirements for motion control applications
This would make for a sunny day indeed. Think it’s impossible? Well In 1995, I never thought I would be able to stream High Definition video through my home network connection.
For more information, please visit: blogs.cisco.com
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