Just walked in to the Institute of Directors on Pall Mall with 3 colleagues. Unfortunately their expresso machine is not working so no Café Latte, Café Cappucino or Hot chocolates.  Not the best start to the day. So to add some humour to the situation, I suggested we get a couple of coffees from the Café Nero or Pret a Manager next door. I was politely and firmly told that I could not bring anything in from outside.

 

Rules are rules.

 

But not according to an article on the IOD website title An awkward customer in the section Business Information and Advice > Marketing & Sales >  "If what the customer wants is actually reasonable, you will have gained a valuable insight into your marketplace. Small businesses don't typically have customer satisfaction surveys because they can't afford it. Customer complaints are a great source of information for improving your service."

So a bad situation got worse due to the attitude of the staff.

So how could this have been resolved? In order of outstanding customer service….

 

-    They could have offered to have got the coffees for us from Café Nero, charged us and put them in IOD cups
-    Less customer-centric, but still acceptable, we could have got the coffees ourselves from Café Nero, and they put it in IOD cups
-    We go somewhere else…   Where?

Obviously Café Nero which has friendly staff with a sense of humour, working expresso machines, cheaper cofee and free wifi.   So what exactly was the IOD membership for?

 

Public clouds could take decades to mature, says Gartner. Organisations should focus on private clouds in the meantime
Organisations are more likely to spend their money on investments in private clouds in the next few years despite the many benefits of public cloud infrastructures, according to analyst firm Gartner.

 

In a research note published today, distinguished analyst Tom Bittman argued that private cloud services would provide a stepping stone to public services, with the latter maybe taking decades to mature enough for enterprise use.

 

In a report by Phil Muncaster of www.V3.co.uk he discusses the findings.

But I’d like to question the assessment claim by Gartner. Decades is a long time in technology. 10 years ago a mobile phone was brick, a USB with 256K was pretty cool and the internet was pretty flaky.  10 years from now, what can we expect.  Already the most of the technology in Microsoft’s envisioning video is available – although not commercially in the market.

 

Plastic Logic, a client of Nimbus is launching an A4 reader as thin as paper next month.

Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure and Google all have offerings that have massive investments behind them and they are not aimed at just the SME or consumer.  They are architected and priced so that ISVs or enterprises can run their applications in the Cloud - reliably and securely - and I am sure that their business models do not assume 10-20 years to break even.

So maybe the reference is to the maturity of enterprise clients willingness to use public Clouds.  The revenue growth of Salesforce.com in the enterprise sector and a just one of many article in the computer press  "Chief information officers are more comfortable with the idea of cloud computing than they were six months ago" ComputerWeekly suggests that enterprises will take less than decades to adopt public clouds.

So maybe the jury is out - or Gartner are predicting in 'internet-years' where a decade is the same as one earth-year.


 

At a time when it seems every Apple product launch turns to gold (literally) and Steve Jobs has just been crowed CEO of the decade by Fortune, suddenly a few of the analysts are breaking ranks and starting to question Apple's untouchable status.

 

George F. Colony’s from Forrester’s article titled “What We Shouldn't Learn From Steve Jobs” asks whether Steve is exceptional and rather than try to become Steve clones we should question where his role model shouldn’t be followed. His article starts

 

”I don't know about you, but I am developing a major inferiority complex as I contemplate the achievements of Steve Jobs. In a decade that has been punishing and humbling for most CEOs, Steve has conjured victory after victory from the whole cloth of his vision, imagination, and singular focus on excellence. I am in complete agreement with Fortune Magazine's assessment that he is the "CEO of the Decade." -- I was already taking note back in 2004.

When confronted with a problem, a new favorite question of CEOs is: "What would Steve do?"

 

Don't get me wrong -- there will be many useful lessons from the Steve Jobs/Apple repertoire -- I expect a few great books will take on the task of revealing them. So I'll leave that to others.

But let's ask another question -- what shouldn't we learn from Steve Jobs?”

 

The areas he lists are
 - His lessons don't work in business to business environments.
-  His approach wouldn't work for complex products.
 -  Apple's fear-based management style wouldn't fit in people-intensive businesses.
 -  Steve is not just any CEO

 -  Apple is in a highly-specialized industry.

 

By the storm of comments in response to his article he has certainly challenged people’s comfortable thinking. But the article is worth reading and calm your initial (positive or negative) reaction and think more deeply about the questions.

The Rebecca Wettman at Nucleus Research (famous for the Siebel slap a few Xmas’s ago - see below) has asked “Is it time to short Apple (APPL) stock?” Her thoughts are below

 

“Maybe not just yet, but Apple is in danger of losing its superstar status. Legions adopted Macs when Vista was the future, but that was two years ago and Windows 7 delivers Microsoft redemption. The minimalist designed MacBooks are growing as tired as Ikea paper lamps and are, quite frankly, ridiculously overpriced compared to the latest wave of netbooks. Apple steadfastly ignores the business community, so no help with computer sales there. Sure, the iPods will sell, but adding a camera doesn’t make it worth an upgrade and users are starting to find other places to download music for iTunes. The iPhone 3GS launch delivered 1000 times more hype than substance while Google’s Android is likely to provide better synching in the cloud for our growingly connected and device-independent world. And lets not forget the treatment of iPhone developers who are subjected to a draconian approval process for their shiny new applications. That secretive process is nothing less than a sad commentary from the company that brought us that famous 1984 ad. So we’re starting to see the current Mac ads in a new light: That PC guy in a suit has a job while the Mac kid still lives at home with his parents.”

So how valid are her comments?  Apple is the past master at obsoleting its own products, a passion for detail in design and most importantly making products appear price-insensitive - that is to consumers. 

 

Take the watch you are wearing. You can get a reliable digital watch for less than $5, so why spend 10 or 100 times more? 

 

Some of the Apple products have reached “jewellery-status”.
But the challenges come when you start to attack the business market, where the CIO or procurement team care more about price/feature than sexy looks. Which is why the Apple products get the main reception into the corporation as prized personal possessions.

 

So one question being asked is “Is the iPhone ready for the enterprise?”  In a recent blog my view is the question is wrong. The question is “Is the enterprise ready for the iPhone?” And you could ask the same question of the MacBook.

Siebel gets a slap: Nucleus Research interviewed the Siebel cases studies on their ROI. Their summary, which got Rebecca crossed off Tom Siebel’s Xmas card list was

“Because the average Siebel deployment costs a company more than $18,000 per user per year, achieving a positive ROI means carefully assessing benefits and managing deployment costs. Sixty-one percent of customers interviewed do not believe they achieved a positive ROI from Siebel.”

Oprah Winfrey, when once asked what she wished she'd learned earlier in life said "I wish I'd known how to distinguish radiators from drains". 

 

She explained that "radiators" are people who give out warmth, kindness, love, honesty, positivity, energy, enthusiasm and all the good things which people need and respond to.

 

"Drains" are people who are negative, downbeat, suck the energy out of others and don't like themselves.
 
Life's to short to work with drains, ............... unless of course you're Dynorod.