Sony VP: We're Not Disadvantaged By Windows 8

"I wouldn't say it's a disadvantage," says Sony VP Steven Nickel. "I think the opportunity is just to see what Windows 8 brings in terms of mobility."

The day after Apple unveiled its iPad Mini, essentially the company's fifth-generation tablet, I trekked uptown to the W Hotel in New York's Union Square, where more than a half-dozen hardware makers had set up shop to showcase their competing devices. That week, Microsoft was launching its new operating system, Windows 8, the software breathing new life into mobile products from manufacturers such as Sony, HP, and Dell. At the same time, it's also the dependence these companies have on Microsoft that left them trailing years behind Apple in the consumer market. Wasn't such deep reliance on third-party software like Windows a disadvantage?

Below The Surface

Around Microsoft's launch of Windows 8 and Surface, Fast Company asks hardware giants tough questions about innovation, disruption, and their future.

Previously:

• Why Steve Ballmer Still Hearts Microsoft's Hardware Partners
• HP Explains Why You Don't Want The iPad, Surface
• Dear Windows 8 Hardware Makers: Stop All The Horribly Named Products
• Dell, Samsung On Why They Didn't Invent The iPad
• 5 Ways Hardware Makers Are Hurting Windows 8
• Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft's History
• Why Windows 8 And Apple's Tacky Philosophy Caused A Design Revolt

That's the question I posed to a slew of hardware makers that day, as part of our series on the disruption these OEMs are facing in a world increasingly dominated by smartphones and tablets--Apple, for example, now sells more iPads than these tech giants sell PCs. In candid conversations with top players from HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba, we discussed a range of topics including Apple, inflection points, and the innovator's dilemma. For Sony Vaio VP Steven Nickel, the answer to my overarching questions--whether Sony's reliance on Windows hurt the company--was a simple one. "I wouldn't say it's a disadvantage," Nickel says. "I think the opportunity is just to see what Windows 8 brings in terms of mobility, and how it opens up opportunities for new form factors. It still enables us to do things that are unique to Sony. So I don't see it as limiting."

Nickel's answers contrasted many of those given by others, including execs from Dell and Acer, who felt their partnerships with Microsoft and Google for software had its handicaps. Nick's answers also contrasted, in some ways, some of the products he was there to demo. When I ask whether the company is experiencing any sort of innovator's dilemma, Nickel, who tends to delve into corporate speak, says, "Well for us, mobility is in our DNA. Thin and light mobile products are something that we really built a heritage on. To be able to have the operating system and the support around it to further enhance that capability, and to bring the quality that you expect from Sony to it--it enables us to take it to the next level."

Yet for all his talk of mobility--of thinness, of light products--sitting in front of Nickel was the Sony Vaio Tap 20, a gigantic desktop computer designed for what he referred to as "in-home mobility," which actually sounds pretty immobile. It's ironic that the day after Apple rolls out the iPad Mini--a device as paper-thin as it is wafer-light--Sony presents what's essentially the Tablet Humongous. At 20 inches and 11 pounds, the Vaio Tap is a coffin of a computer, seemingly requiring pallbearers to, as Nickel describes, "use it upstairs in the den as a desktop PC, or go down to the kitchen, to set it up to look at some recipes."

But Nickel also praised Windows 8 for the new form factors it enabled, especially compared to Android. "Android is more entertainment focused--that's something we really drive through the Sony tablets," he says. "Windows 8 comes at it from productivity. We're trying to merge somewhere in between--this idea of duel uses. People are now using their PCs for entertainment and productivity, and ultimately, that's what Windows 8 enables us to do. That's why you see these new exciting form factors."

Yet, again, the products in front of Nickel told a different story. Of the three products Sony decided to demo (including the suitcase-size Tap 20), one was the Vaio T13 ultrabook, a laptop not even designed for Windows 8. The device had been released over the summer for Windows 7; the company decided to reintroduce the T13 for the Windows 8 launch, with the same form factor, though the product now included a touch-sensitive screen.

Which made his answer all the more backward when I asked Nickel whether Sony's PC business had reached an inflection point, given the massive growth of Apple's tablet business. (Only the day before, Apple CEO Tim Cook boasted to the world that Apple had just sold its 100 millionth iPad.) "No, because I think you have all these exciting new form factors," Nickel says. "We can bring things to these areas that no one else can."

And I found it particularly surprising that Sony didn't decide to unveil its own standalone Windows 8 tablet. Given the success of the iPad, given the attention paid to Microsoft's Windows-based Surface tablet, and given that Sony already makes Android tablets, you'd think the company would create its own Windows 8 slate. Nickel would only say, "I think there is room for both ideas: for the hybrid [PC] with the attached keyboard, as well as a standalone tablet form factor. There is a fit and customer for each of those different solutions."

Instead, Sony demoed neither solution that day: not a standalone Windows 8 tablet, nor a hybrid PC with an attachable keyboard. Rather, the company showed off the Vaio Duo 11 laptop, a bizarre notebook that looks like something wrong in the PC-to-tablet metamorphosis (or mutation) process. A thick slab of a keyboard is glued to the bottom of the expensive device, and slides out rather than detaches, making the device either a particularly immobile tablet or a particularly second-rate laptop. Even the way these components work together--with lots of visible moving parts--looks slipshod. As one reviewer put it, "The exposed ribbon cable that attaches to the screen also gives me pause; it gives the PC an unfinished look, and I have definite concerns about its ability to hold up over time."

Ultimately, of all the products I played around with that day, Sony's showcase was easily the least impressive. With so many weak products, lost opportunities, and uncreative form factors, Microsoft should be worried--it too is relying on hardware makers like Sony to make Windows 8 a success. And with observations like the following, Redmond should be especially nervous going into the holiday season: "Overall, from Vaio's strategic point of view," Nickel says, "We're betting heavily on the touch aspect of Windows."

Yes, because touch screens are what will really set Sony apart from every single Windows smartphone, tablet, and PC on the market.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

How Support.com Turns Data into Actions -- and Results

A customer represents two things: an immediate dollars-and-cents sales opportunity, and a store of valuable data, including buying habits, behaviors and opinions. Technical support company Support.com has some ideas on how to use this data to improve the way your employees influence customer experience.

When a Stranger Calls, Data Answers

We thought it was fitting to take a closer look to see how a tech support company uses data to improve the way their personal technology experts turn data into actions and the impact these actions have on customer experience and satisfaction. We spoke with Paul Vaillancourt, senior vice president of Contact Center Operations at Support.com to learn more.

Support.com provides remote technology services to consumers and small businesses directly via an online portal and channel partners (which include retailers and anti-virus companies). Personal Technology Experts must pass rigorous testing and training before helping customers.

Unlike other companies, everything at Support.com is analyzed. From the moment a call is answered to the moment the case is resolved, calls are recorded, scrutinized and archived on-site. Additionally, because one single system is used, data is instantly available, eliminating time it may take to transfer data from one CRM into another.

Influencing the Behaviors of Others

How tech experts are trained can determine whether companies meet their overall goals and whether customers’ problems get solved. As a result, when Support.com noticed a higher than normal attrition rate, they focused their attention on the training process to better understand how they can improve the effectiveness of tech experts.

First, they listened. Before tech experts get to answer actual customer calls, they undergo rigorous training and then a nesting period, during which they role-play. They listened to what those who decided to leave said in their exit interviews, as well as to feedback they received from others. They learned that experts were overwhelmed by the complexity of their tool set. As a result, Support.com changed how they introduced experts to calls, having them listen more to actual customer calls before they role-played (which they did more of as well).

Then they created a goal. Goals were actual behaviors, rather than a metric. Instead of saying that they wanted to decrease the length of the call by two minutes, they said: we want experts to solve problems quicker. In order to solve problems quicker, it was important to understand how experts could glean better information from callers. They determined that not enough probing questions were being asked. Sure, experts were active listeners, but they weren’t necessarily asking questions that could uncover useful information in a timely matter. Once experts were properly trained to listen for keywords and specific prompts, call times were shortened.

Finally, they give constant feedback. PTE’s are given score cards which contain six weeks' worth of data, including average call length, call disposition, contacts per hour, attendance and a quality score. The score card also compares an expert’s results to other experts as well as company goals, so individuals can see how their behaviors impact overall goals.

Creating a Culture of Intentional Actions (and Outcomes)

What Support.com’s process for listening, analyzing and producing actionable insights really highlights is the impact that a company culture built around data can have on customer experience. Every company says that they are dedicated to ROI — but not every company invests in the actions of their employees to really understand how behaviors translates into outcomes.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Social Activity Streams: Can They Replace Email?

I recently got the chance to get away from my desk for a few days and I used the opportunity to get in some hiking in the nearby high country. At one point I stopped for a rest on the bank of a mountain stream. As I sat there like Huckleberry Finn, idly watching the flotsam and jetsam float by, it got me thinking about social activity streams. 

Social activity streams are by their nature a constant flow of information and as you sit on the metaphorical river bank, viewing your activity stream, you get a point-in-time view of the information as it flows by. They are the potential gathering place for all manner of items — status updates, photos, documents, discussions, suggestions, system alerts, etc. — and are the communication medium de jour.

The phenomenal rise in popularity of public social networks and more recently of enterprise social networks have led many to consider that activity streams should be primary corporate communication medium and even that email is dead.

To the last point, few with a corporate email inbox would disagree that email overload is a considerable issue for your average information worker. But is another channel the answer? Or are we simply spreading the inflow across more bins we have to constantly check?

When Activity Streams Work

Certainly, activity streams bring some genuine benefits, for example:

• Team awareness — Status updates let us know what our teammates are working on and are akin to "working aloud."  It has lots of benefits, such as being able to quickly spot complimentary or duplicate activities. The working aloud benefit increases further where we can see the status of those outside of our team or business unit, or location.
• Finding and sharing knowledge — For those trying to find or share knowledge, expertise or ideas, a social activity stream will connect them to the widest possible group, providing maximum reach. Such communications work well in an activity stream, where they can be targeted, using hash tags (topics), at those most willing and able to respond.
• Open, accessible history — Content in an activity stream is discoverable to anyone with access to it and prior discussions, etc. Become part of an accessible history.

These are great capabilities and major for reason for why social tools are gaining momentum. However, I do not believe that activity streams are ready to be the sole — or even the major — enterprise communications channel. Let's do a quick review of some of the common areas of communication and collaboration in a modern organization.

Which Tools to Use When 

One to one communications

Instant messaging (IM) for 1-1 communications can be done using social tools, but there are some existing best-of-breed corporate IM tools out there, such as Microsoft Lync and Lotus Sametime, that perform this function perfectly well and with added capabilities, like online presence, desktop sharing and click-to-call. Even the French tech firm Atos, whose CEO famously declared a zero email policy last year, use Office Communicator (the precursor to Lync) as a key part of their collaborative tools mix.

The counter argument to using an instant messaging tool for 1-1 communications is that doing so removes the interaction from the social information pool, i.e. if John and Jackie discuss a business issue via Lync, then only they benefit from the discussion; if instead they discuss it via a social tool (using @ targeting), then everybody can derive value.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint Governance: Needed Now More than Ever

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Tweetjam about SharePoint. One of the topics that came up was the importance of Governance. In this article I want to dive deeper into this topic and stress how important governance is within your environment. 

Governance can simply be defined as a set of controls in place to ensure that your SharePoint environment remains stable, accessible and highly responsive. These are controls that you put in place to keep the environment from becoming the black hole of misplaced and misused content.

Governance in many cases, seems to be the latest buzz word, the thing that all environments have to have in order to get the stamp of approval for following best practices. The simple truth however, is that it doesn’t matter what you call it or how you manage it, as long as it is getting done.

Here are a few simple questions that I like to ask that help you see the types of areas that are typically covered in a governance plan.

1. Why SharePoint? What purpose does SharePoint serve in your organization?
2. If a user wants to create a new solution and they think SharePoint is a good fit for what they need, how do they go about creating one?
3. Who in the organization has attended SharePoint training?
4. Are there quotas in place within your environment to help control how large solutions can become?
5. How does the typical user within your environment use SharePoint?

In a nutshell, a Governance plan should outline what the intended use of your environment is and then provide guidance on how users can successfully use the environment as a tool to increase their success within the organization. Once the goals are set and the process is outlined, you then look at what needs to be put in place to ensure that the environment can fulfill its intended purposes. Governance is really nothing more than creating a roadmap and then building a road to successfully reach the final destination.

Starts with the Business

The first step to any good plan is knowing where we are going. In terms of SharePoint, this means we need to understand the goals of implementation. The goals will greatly determine how we move forward and should be the guide to all things we do.

These goals should generate within the business and should be based on business needs and not technology. If we based our plans on the technology alone, we can definitely miss the mark. The goals should be owned by a single point of contact, even if that contact is a committee that is working together. These goals will help determine what we configure within SharePoint, so they need to have strong backing and encompass a large vision of the organization.

The more these goals align with the overall goals of the organization, the more successful overall user adoption will be. This is due to the fact that users will more rapidly adopt the toolset because they can see how using the toolset will help them achieve the greater goals of the organization.

It Doesn’t End with the Business

Once the business comes together and works through a set of goals for the implementation, it is important for the business to continue to work with the system administrators and developers to help develop the actionable plan to move forward with the SharePoint implementation.

While it is true that the best governance plans start with the business, it is also true that the only truly successful governance plans include information from all areas of expertise. System administrators know better than anyone how to best maintain the environment to ensure long term usability and impact. By working together, the best of both sides meet in the middle, allowing for users to have access to stable, reliable systems that help them achieve real world goals.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

How Algorithms Rule The World

In his new book, Aisle50 cofounder Christopher Steiner counts the (many, many) ways digits have come to dominate. "If you look at who has the biggest opportunity in society right now," he says, "it’s developers."

When Christopher Steiner, the 35-year-old cofounder of Aisle50, a Y Combinator startup offering online grocery deals, set out to write the book Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World, (out tomorrow) he’d planned to focus solely on Wall Street. “There were a ton of good stories and then the Flash Crash happened. There was a lot to tell,” says Steiner. “But at some point I thought ‘Do people really care about the 13 different electronic training networks that were going on in the 1990’s?’” Instead the former technology journalist expanded his research to explore how the power of algorithms has spread far beyond Wall Street and now touches all of us--starting with today’s young innovators.

Fast Company: You say that those who design algorithms are “the preeminent entrepreneurs of this generation.”

Christopher Steiner

Christopher Steiner: If you look at who has the biggest opportunity in society right now, who’s the most upwardly mobile and could just build something out of nothing, it’s developers. It’s people who are able to write code, not just any code—you’re average developer’s going to make a nice salary—but if that person innovates with code that “solves a problem” the opportunities are huge. This is why places like Y Combinator and all these other seed funding enterprises are booming. If you have the skills, the startup costs are basically zero. It’s your own time. This is not rocket science to use that old cliché; it’s a skill you get by putting time into the medium. It’s not something you need to learn at MIT.

So what does this suggest for those entering universities and the job market these days?

I’m not Peter Thiel; I’m not going tell you not to go to college, but there are certainly many interesting options for those who are willing to take a bit of a beating and learn quantitative concepts. Frankly, once you build up a little base of knowledge it’s very easy to get a couple of jobs. The people who are in the sweet spot of the job market right now have 2-3 years experience in the newest coding languages.

Anytime you have so many layers of software--algorithms, really--nobody knows how one new layer will affect the other layers.

You title one of the later chapters of your book “Wall Street Versus Silicon Valley” Explain.

It’s incredible; people don’t realize how many software engineers Wall Street takes off the market. And in the past, when Silicon Valley companies went head to head with Wall Street firms, it was very hard to compete for the best engineers because the salary packages were so dissimilar, including the bonuses. And there was a prestige in working for a company like Goldman Sachs. So, I’ll just say, luckily for the economy some of that prestige has worn off. And I think that’s better all in all because the utility that someone with that kind of skill brings to the economy when they go to a place like Morgan is minimal--or even negative in the worst cases. Whereas if they go to a startup, they’re actually building the economy. They’re building GDP by affecting the most dynamic and growing segments of our economy. At Wall Street, they’re just moving money around.

It wasn’t always like that.

Yes, there were good things that happened within the algorithmic trading industry ten, fifteen years ago that changed the game for all of us. Like letting you and me trade stocks from our house for six bucks, which gave the normal guy liquidity, essentially democratizing the markets. But we’ve long since passed that type of utility. Now we are just moving around decimal points and in fact, building up the risk profile for everyone else. This is what we saw with the Flash Crash and at Knight Capital a few weeks back.

What went wrong?

It’s a software problem. Anytime you have so many layers of software--algorithms, really--nobody knows how one new layer will affect the other layers. That’s why good programmers and algorithm writers will create tests as they work. Google, for example, tests their algorithms a hundred million times before they ever hit the market. But at Knight, they wrote the program and sent it out. Apparently there were no tests because their algorithm just went bananas from the moment it was turned on. The danger with Wall Street, is that the whole thing’s so focused now on speed that there’s no time to write tests. This stuff literally happens every two weeks. Usually it’s not a $440 million loss, but there’s just so much risk built into the market right now that doesn’t have to be there.

And algorithms are doing a lot more than automating stock trades.

Most people don’t know that there are algorithms that decide how customer service calls get routed or how customer service requests will be treated. When people call these big companies like their health insurer or telecom company, they’re actually being categorized, sliced, diced and parsed by a bot. It’s incredible to think that the words someone chooses on a given morning will forever change how that company treats him or her. These algorithms don’t just affect people involved in computer science.

I was intrigued by your discussion of Jon Kleinberg, a Cornell computer science professor who devised an algorithm to identify the influencers in a given organization.

He was the guy who came up with the original method that Google eventually used to create their PageRank algorithm. His newest algorithm ranks people and their place in society by how they affect others through language. For example, if, in any given group there’s one guy who influences the others more strongly than anyone else, he tends to be the leader. This can be measured quantitatively. The schematic of how this works looks just like the schematic of how web pages are ranked. Whoever is linked and has more power over all of these trusted sites is who ends up at the top of the Google rankings. Same for people.

Much of this is still in the experimental phase but how might this play out?

The interesting thing is that at some point you’ll be able to drop this into applications like Facebook or Twitter and rank people by their command over others. Suddenly, the things we kind of know, like that this person is the leader of the pack, will be out there for everyone to see. That’s a little bizarre. That would make people uncomfortable, but the ability is there for these short lines of code--maybe 1,000 lines or so--to decide who the alpha dog is. Of course, people will learn how to game it. At some point employees will write emails a certain way to game the algorithm and then the algorithm will change because they know they’re getting gamed and it’ll change again. It’ll be this constant war of attrition of blogs talking about how to defeat your company’s algorithm-ranking system and this is totally going to happen.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Is Anxiety About Our Wired Choices Misplaced?

Instead of dialing up our anxiety about privacy in the changing online world, we should use it as an opportunity to question and test the security of everything--driver's licenses, plastic credit cards, paper medical records.

As an engineer and a millennial who has grown up with an Internet connection, I’m constantly connected to some device. I read email while I’m running on the treadmill. I built an app that knows where you are at all times, which more than two and a half million people opted in to using. Not everyone consumes technology as voraciously as I do, but nearly half of Americans tote around smartphones. As we become more keenly aware of these phones’ ability to track our every move, strangely almost in lockstep we find that we can’t live without them.

Why do we have so much anxiety about being found when we clearly choose to be wired?

If you want to live a truly private life, ditch your mobile, disconnect your Internet, pay with only cash, get rid of your highway toll transponder, forget about loyalty cards, stop answering the census, stop answering the door, build a bunker somewhere underground in New Hampshire (live free or die), drive a pre-2005 unregistered vehicle without a GPS (or better yet, a horse without a GPS), stock up on canned goods, become extremely paranoid--and don’t forget to hide from the IRS.

Unfortunately, going all Thoreau isn’t an option for most of us, despite our desires to keep our online identities under lock and key. And as the recent epic hacking of Wired reporter Mat Honan tells us, we aren’t entirely immune.

But, all things considered, we should be far more paranoid about the real-world constructs centered around identity that we’ve failed to question for decades -- sometimes even centuries. The problem is, we’ve grown up with so many blatant divulgences of personally identifiable information that we think are completely safe.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why don’t we question things like credit cards we carry around in our wallets that link our personal information to static and easily visible digits on a piece of plastic? We willingly hand this piece of plastic to strangers almost daily, allowing so many opportunities for massive fraud to happen. Not to mention we print our social security numbers on paper cards and sometimes even send them--unencrypted--over email.

I’d argue physical media (be it paper or plastic) is our identity’s public enemy number one. From medical records to mortgages, there’s so much paper in the world that exposes our identities to anyone who can open a folder in a filing cabinet.

To contrast, the online world that we understand considerably less is a far safer one. Technology is uprooting some of these decades-old constructs that just don’t work, and shouldn’t be status quo for our modern lives. But technological change understandably scares us, as most revolutions do.

That fear is not totally irrational. The trade-off here is one of scale of security breach. While storing your medical records on paper in a doctors office allows for easy data theft, the limit of that theft is the size of the office. It's easy to break into a doctor's office (I don't know this from experience -- promise!) but you can only get a couple hundred records. On the other hand, while digital storage is incredibly hard to break into, if you do make it in, the scale of the breach is hundreds of thousands of records.

In my opinion, this is a good tradeoff. The absolute value of data theft should decrease with intensely secure centralized storage. Yes, breaches are larger, but there are far fewer of them. The lesson here is that we need to take that natural scale of the Internet into consideration when designing systems that touch sensitive data. Encryption is critical. Human security perhaps even more so. But also old-school techniques like dividing the data across multiple systems with heterogeneous security systems and completely different architectures.

My hope is that consumers will simply be more aware of these tradeoffs. If it turns out that there is a more secure digital solution, let's analyze, optimize, then embrace it. Payments is a prime opportunity. If there isn't a better digital solution, then let's stick with the current physical solution until technology evolves to offer a better one. Driver's licenses are perhaps the most poignant example of this, and they are the last thing that still forces me to carry a wallet.

No matter what, I’m happy that we’re questioning technological changes and becoming more informed consumers. Maybe we should be using our anxiety about our changing online world as an opportunity to question everything, no matter how long we’ve managed to put up with it.

--Author Seth Priebatsch is the founder and chief ninja of LevelUp and SCVNGR.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com