Advanced Notification and Rapid Response Technology

Mobile NOC strategy - the financial benefits

2012-02-01T09:41:00.001+01:00

How can the financial impact of a Network Operation Center (NOC) mobilisation effort be calculated? What measurement criteria can be applied? What are the actual financial benefits? What the basis for an ROI calculation?

In my experience there is a good way of measuring the impact of a NOC mobilisation strategy. It’s a bit of a dry calculation but bear with me as the results are quite illuminating.

Results of a mobile NOC strategy are not limited to financial benefits

How expensive is your 24x7 NOC?

I suggest starting with a comparison of the NOC staffing levels. Assuming a move from a 24x7 to an 8x5 staffed NOC, one might think that the basic cost reduction would be a saving of two thirds of the original HR costs. However, staff salaries for out of business hours work is usually 50-100% higher than for regular office hours. Of course, employees on standby also earn an extra payment but are usually only paid a fixed rate plus the actual working hours in case of an incident that they have to respond to.

So, let’s do the maths and assume we start with a NOC that is permanently staffed around the clock with two people. Each operator earns about 3,500 EUR per month which is probably an average salary for an IT administrator in a larger organisation. It might be higher in some countries or lower in others. Staffing the NOC on a 24x7 basis would then require at least 6 people working in shifts. This would cost the organisation EUR 21,000 monthly PLUS the out of business hours extra payment.

Let’s further assume a 50% premium for out of business hours work. On top of their base salary these IT administrators would receive an extra payment for all hours that they work outside of the regular office hours during the week. These night and weekend shifts represent more than two thirds of the total working time. A week has 168 hours out of which 40 are 8amx5pm standard working hours. So, out-of business-hours accounts for about 76% of the total working hours. Each admin therefore receives 1,330 EUR extra each month. That makes extra payments of 7,980 EUR for the team of 6. Total monthly salary for the team would then be 28,980 EUR which translates into a total of 347,760 EUR annual salary for staffing the NOC.

Let's go mobile!

Now let us see how this compares to the cost scenario under a mobile NOC strategy for weekends and out of business hours. This would change the extra payment into a standby-bonus plus actual working hours related to incidents that an on-duty admin needs to take care of. Let’s assume a standby bonus is around EUR 300 monthly, i.e. 1,800 EUR for the overall team. With an hourly cost of 31.25 EUR and an incident-related workload of 32 hours, the total amount would be 2,800 EUR monthly.

This represents just 35% of the original costs related to out of office business hour NOC staffing. Over the year, an organisation could thus save 62,160 EUR, or about 18% of their total NOC HR costs!

Yet, this is only a secondary benefit. The larger effect is based on the sudden availability of 4 additional IT admins! It is not at all only about saving on the extra payments for NOC staffing - it is about setting free two thirds of these valuable NOC resources for other tasks and duties. The actual value of this is far higher than the salary that is paid to these people paid (which would be 168,000 EUR).

Financial impact (HR cost only) of a implementing a mobile NOC

66% cost saving - this is serious money!

The overall financial and productivity benefits by far exceed the pure cost saving and resource re-allocation effect of 230,160 EUR although there won’t be many companies that will ignore such a fantastic 66% cost saving.

This is mobile technology at its best! And I am sure a move to a mobilisation-enabled NOC strategy will be appreciated by IT admins who are freed up to spend more time with their families.

If you are interested in learning more about a mobile NOC strategy that meets your organisation, please feel free to contact me.

Please, also see my previous blog posts:

Imtech ICT implements a mobile NOC strategy

2012-01-17T15:10:00.002+01:00

Today, DERDACK issued a press release on the implementation of Enterprise Alert at one of our recent customer wins, Imtech ICT.

I personally visited Imtech in November 2011 and was very impressed by the way they were using and applying the notification capabilities of Enterprise Alert to realize a highly reliable information distribution method for their network operations center. It actually enabled them to put an advanced out of business hour regime in place, making the typical 24x7 NOC staffing obsolete. The implemented 24x7 alerting which is based on SMS text, rotating teams and the closed-loop notification methods of Enterprise Alert proved to be suitable for their critical incident communication. Imtech now considers implementing additional notification channels, namely voice and smartphone push. Smartphones will actually ease the entire alarm handling and enhance incident insight and analysis.

Imtech ICT is just a perfect example of how Enterprise Alert helps organizations to utilize enterprise notification technology to ensure the availability and uptime of critical IT systems.

You can read more on Imtech here.

24x7 Protection Without the Expense - The Mobile NOC

2012-01-11T13:36:00.001+01:00

It is common practice for many large and medium-sized enterprises to operate a 24x7 Network Operations Center (NOC). A NOC is designed to continuously monitor IT, telecoms and core operations enabling it to immediately respond to any critical events that might threaten business continuity. Permanent staffing at a NOC is standard practice. However, two factors put pressure on the long-term viability of this model.

Firstly, there is an overall the drive for cost reduction and operational efficiency in IT. A permanently staffed NOC requires a significant number of people to be dedicated to work tasks of relatively low intensity. Watching a computer screen for an entire shift with rare occasions of intense incident resolution puts pressure on justifying the HR budget. For operations staff, shift work can be an exhausting job with little personal fulfillment. In particular, the out of business hour shift heavily conflicts with daily family life; and yet it represents the majority of the time workers typically spend in a NOC.

Secondly, with the availability of a variety of mobile communication and collaboration technologies, broadband connections, tablets, notebooks and smartphones it is an anachronism to stick to the old NOC practices and principles which today still have analysts sitting in front of large screens monitoring the status of various system consoles.

Because smaller companies cannot afford to operate a NOC, they have been the forerunners in implementing smart practices. The approach most frequently used is based on a combination of monitoring and notification technology; mostly email or SMS text messaging. Albeit somewhat primitive, this system has proven to be sufficient for smaller organisations.

The reason larger enterprises have not followed this approach, is due to the overall business impact of a critical system failure or downtime. The more critical an IT system is the more its uptime is required to avoid a serious threat to business operations and continuity. Larger enterprises, especially those with 24x7 or follow-the-sun operations, simply cannot afford a slow, inaccurate or failed response to a critical problem. The solutions that small organisations have in place are simply not powerful and reliable enough for large enterprises with highly critical systems. In their scenarios, a single non-delivered text message can lead to the loss of a whole day of factory output.

Reliability of information delivery and alert messaging, especially outside of normal business hours, is the key requirement that enterprises need to address before they can change established NOC practices and enjoy the cost savings that comes with having operational staff work entirely ‘on demand’ or from home. Enterprises need a product that literally guarantees the delivery of any critical alert to responsible operators.

Derdack's EnterpriseAlert represents this new breed of software product that is capable of intelligently ensuring the delivery of alerts - and it provides far more than this. In combination with a powerful IT monitoring and management suite such as Microsoft System Center or IBM Tivoli, Enterprise Alert fully automates the overall alert procedure. No manual interaction is needed to deliver a critical notification to a responsible person or group. Based on policies, an IT alert raised in a monitoring tool is automatically delivered using a combination of Unified Communication channels (Instant Message, text, voice, push and others), the delivery and active acknowledgement is tracked by the system and it can automatically escalate to other people or teams in case of non-delivery. Once operators are informed successfully, EnterpriseAlert also provides the means to remedy problems through remote actions, e.g. by restarting critical systems such as VMs through mobile commands. It enables a highly reliable and automated alert-acknowledge-act procedure.

A rapidly growing number of enterprises understand that a product such as EnterpriseAlert represents the major foundation of a mobile NOC strategy and provides the reliability and speed in information delivery that is needed to ensure a rapid response to critical incidents. In the coming months we are going to share a number of customer stories on successful mobilisation of NOC operations. In one of my next blog articles I will also share some ROI calculations outlining the financial impact such a move can have.

If you are interested in learning more about a mobile NOC strategy that meets your organisational needs, please feel free to contact me.

2012's hottest technologies

2012-01-06T14:49:00.000+01:00

A Happy New Year to everybody! May 2012 be a prosperous, peaceful and great year.

Looking back at a very successful year for Derdack; I am now looking forward to a challenging but promising year 2012. We at Derdack will continue to deliver great software products for automated information distribution and rapid incident response. Our vision is to significantly improve both the personal and professional work life of many people, by providing solution for remotely managing and responding to critical incidents. 2012 will bring a number of innovations from us.

I'd like to share my views on technologies that will play an important view in 2012. It is a bit Microsoft-focused as it originally has been a publication in the latest issue of Prime magazine:

Gartner’s prediction of the top 10 technologies for 2012 include media tablets, mobile apps and mobile-centric user interfaces, cloud computing, app stores, data handling, storage technologies and the famous “Internet of things”. These trends, however, are driven by specific hardware and software technologies.

Windows 8
Windows 8 will be one of the biggest launch events of 2012 and it is of critical importance to Microsoft. It offers one operating system that covers multiple hardware platforms and form factors and will be a unique attempt at standardization. It is going to bring benefits to a broad community of computing device users - I was tempted to write PC users, but this isn’t the correct term any more! With Windows 8 comes a new level of usability. The overall user interface is based on Microsoft’s “Metro” scheme, a simplistic display concept derived from city and metro guides. Windows 8’s “Metro” will not only simplify user interaction, or make Windows “touch-ready”; it contains a new way for people to interact with computing devices. It has the potential to grant new user groups quick access to modern computers and will increase productivity for established users. Microsoft has clearly understood that user interface design is about creating, enabling and perceiving value.

Form factors and the "Internet of things"
Tablets & Smartphones will continue to cannibalize the PC and notebook market and will unlock new users and environments. Their unstoppable march and enormous success comes from their size, weight and form factor, convenience and ability to enable ubiquitous computing with ease. These devices will be the predominant interface to the “Internet of things”, the incredibly growing world of interconnected devices of our daily live.

Human-machine interfaces
But the development of human-machine-interfaces doesn’t stop at touch control. I am hoping to see more than just game consoles with motion control in 2012. So, I am looking forward to Microsoft making the Kinect technology available for the daily business. There is yet another technology still waiting for its breakthrough – voice control. This hasn’t made an impact on the way we control computer programs, machines or technical devices yet. It still seems to be a hard job to recognize a specific voice or to comprehend semantics of a spoken sentence. Apple has done a great job putting 'Siri' on their latest iPhone 4S and I am sure this is just the beginning. I am naxious to see the rumors about Apple's move into the TV market to materialize. I can't wait to see a voice-controlled TV in action. And I am convinced that a combination of gesture and voice control represents a true revolution to-come.

Cloud services
Meanwhile few people question the role of cloud services in the consumer world. However proprietary data and intellectual property are a highly prized target for competitors and criminals. Therefore security and protection of intellectual capital is a top, if not even the number one, priority for CxOs when it comes to migrating applications to the cloud. Cloud operators still have to respond to this challenge. “Private clouds” are not just a step towards the public cloud but will remain a highly important “walled garden” for business-critical application and data.

The non-predictable will have the biggest impact
In general, what we will see is growing interconnectivity between machines, services and humans. Technology will continue to make our lives more convenient and increase personal productivity and efficiency. And, naturally it will also help to preserve resources and our natural environment.
Looking ahead, it is likely that disruptive technologies that are not on the list of the big analysts will have the biggest impact in the coming years. As stated in one of my favourite books, "The Black Swan", predicting the yet unknown disruptive breakthrough that will have the biggest impact is just impossible. So, be aware.

Key factor 3: System reliability

2011-10-28T12:24:00.001+02:00

It almost goes without saying that system reliability needs to be very high. As the "last system standing", the enterprise notification software must be capable of running in a redundant configuration with high availability features. This will ensure that even as other systems or servers are failing, the notification hub can still send and receive critical notifications. An enterprise notification system is always regarded as a highly critical piece of infrastructure.

There is little value in investing in a notification system if it can be disabled by a power cut or hrd disk or server failure. Therefore you need to carefully establish that failover mechanisms are robust and the system can offer uninterrupted performance, for example by server clustering or by switching communication channels where necessary.

How does Enterprise Alert deliver?

Enterprise Alert has been designed for highest reliability from the very roots. This includes full redundancy in the first place. Enterprise Alert can be set up in a high-availability scenario with fully automated switching between servers in case of failure or downtime. In such configuration 3rd party APIs as well as notification channels automatically switch to a running server. Single-site as as well as multi-site failover scenarios are possible and have been realized with customers. Actually, most of our customers do decide for a redundant configuration.

Additionally, Enterprise Alert has built-in redundancy and failover for communication channels and further features to ensure notification message delivery. For instance, Enterprise Alert is based on route concept for notification message delivery. Routes consist of multiple communication systems in a failover chain.

Read more on Enterprise Alert

This is article is part of a series on key factors for choosing a proper enterprise notification system.

Key factor 2: Integration capabilities and hub concept

2011-10-18T14:43:00.003+02:00

Typically, the larger the organisation, the more monitoring and management systems are in use, each of which is capable of generating events. The implementation of notification software delivers best results when it is deployed in the form of a centralised notification hub that receives and manages the events from each monitoring system. This avoids ‘notification confusion’ while at the same time decreasing effort and costs of operating such notification infrastructure. Instead of managing, monitoring and maintaining multiple points with often limited notification capabilities a centralized notification hub provides significant operational advantages (however, with centralization of notifications onto a single piece of infrastructure comes a new requirement - the high-availability of such notification hub).
Evidence of proven integration capabilities should therefore be high on the evaluation checklist. The ability to rapidly and easily integrate the hub into the corporate IT environment depends on whether the proposed notification system offers industry standard connectors, e.g. to IT monitoring or IT management solutions from Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc. Also, generic APIs and customizable interfaces are especially useful when dealing with smaller niche systems such as fire alarms, temperature sensors and in-house developed applications.

How does Enterprise Alert respond to key factor 2?

Hub concept as a design principle

Enterprise Alert has been designed as an enterprise notification hub from the very start. It has the performance and architecture to handle a multitude of enterprise event sources in parallel. It efficiently consolidates and centralizes your notification infrastructure, your alert handling and the way alarms are managed and communicated. But is also provides utmost failure-resilience through built-in features and high-availability configurations. Working with the full spectrum of Unified Communications, Enterprise Alert provides access to all communication channels to all enterprise systems. All of its advanced notification features like automated escalations are ad hoc available to all enterprise systems that need to communicate business-critical information. This way Enterprise Alert helps to overcome typical limitations of notification features built into systems like IT monitoring.

3rd party integration with a plus

In order to ensure seamless integration into an enterprise environment Enterprise Alert comes with a wide range of standard connectors for common enterprise and IT management systems. Additionally, Enterprise Alert is shipped with smart connectors providing automatic plug&play configuration and encapsulating 99% of all configuration settings. While standard connectors are for instance used for BMC Remedy, Nagios or CA, smart connectors are already available for Microsoft System Center (Service Manager, Operations Manager), HP Operations Manager and IBM Tivoli Monitoring.

Events from enterprise and IT management systems are forwarded automatically to Enterprise Alert, containing all details and parameters. Status information on the delivery and acknowledgement of alerts are fed back into the originating 3rd party system.

Additionally, Enterprise Alert provides a wide range of open and customizable APIs ranging from SOAP and HTTP via e-mail to command line and ASCII file. These enable to integrate Enterprise Alert with literally any 3rd party system. On top Enterprise Alert comes with optional connectors for serial interfaces (RS232) and industrial systems (OPC DA and OPC A/E).

There is more to enterprise readiness

However, a truly enterprise-scale system is not only required to connect with event sources but also needs to deeply embed into the enterprise environment. Enterprise Alert fully and seamlessly talks to your Active Directory, i.e. to prevent you from painful manual user data maintenance. At the same time the Active Directory integration guarantees state-of-the-art security and features like single-sign-on.

Enterprise Alert is the most advanced notification system addressing the very needs of enterprises. You can call it simply "enterprise-readiness".

Read more on Enterprise Alert

This is article is part of a series on key factors for choosing a proper enterprise notification system.

Key factor 1: Persistent, closed-loop notification and real-time delivery tracking

2011-09-27T10:38:00.000+02:00

Customers today need a solution that goes beyond one way ‘fire and forget’ notifications which leave organisations open to a greater risk of interruption to business continuity. This is where products that use closed-loop notification technology really stand out.Closed-loop notifications allow notification delivery tracking, the use of automated escalation or find-me/follow-me procedures and automated response management for incident tickets, in real-time. This feedback element provides a greater level of certainty that critical information is delivered and that the event is going to be addressed before it impacts on the business.

Basic, "fire-and-forget" notifications are as good as no notifications

However, in most today's business environments we find "fire-and-forget" notifications which pose a serious threat to business continuity and operational excellence. My favourite example of a "fire-and-forget notification disaster" is the story of a biogas fermentation plant which was devastated by a gas explosion in 2008. Having a seemingly advanced monitoring and notification system in place it lived not up to the expectation. One morning the technician on duty received an urgent SMS text message on his mobile telling him about a serious excess pressure in one of the tanks. He kissed is kids and wife goodbye and rushed to the plant. When he arrived he was six hours too late. What had happened? When the critical condition was signalled at night, the alert system worked as designed and submitted the SMS text notification. However, the SMS text message got stuck in the network and as the system in place had no way of tracking the delivery nobody got informed. When the mobile network tried to re-deliver the SMS text in the morning it was all too late. The damage ran into more than 1 million Euros and the production was halted for more than 3 months.

Newspaper clip on the biogas plant incident

How does Enterprise Alert work in regard of key factor 1?

While most notification solution used provide only basic "fire-and-forget" notifications, Derdack’s Enterprise Alert incorporates automated tracking of notification delivery in real-time. Responses from notified persons are received and processed automatically as well.

Enterprise Alert automatically reacts upon failed delivery or missing responses, e.g. by trying different communication channels or by escalating to other staff members. Mobile updates on the status of such incident handling as well as information on the resolution progress are fed back into the original system that emitted the event information in the first place.

Enterprise Alert thus realizes a full closed-loop cycle and a fully automated notification workflow.

Read more on Enterprise Alert

This is article is part of a series on key factors for choosing a proper enterprise notification system.

The last system standing

2011-09-23T16:03:00.002+02:00

On Continuity Central I have just published an article discussing the top 10 factors or requirements to consider when looking for and choosing an enterprise notification system.

Here are the first paragraphs:

"Maintaining business continuity and IT service availability is a key goal for any organization and significant investment is often made in areas such as disaster recovery plans, data backups and IT monitoring systems. Rapid and reliable information on critical incidents in IT or business processes are essential to keeping enterprise systems up and running. Enterprise notification software can play a vital role in maintaining and increasing operational excellence by automating and accelerating the response to business-critical system failures or outages.
As PAC Berlecon analyst Dr Andreas Stiehler comments, “Enterprise notification software should be a cornerstone of the effort to maximise systems uptime and minimise disruption to business continuity and service availability.”

However, as your ‘last system standing’, finding the right enterprise notification system is critical to achieving this goal.
...
But there are a myriad of systems that have or claim to provide notification features. Not all systems are created equal and they can vary considerably in terms of their functionality for instance regarding the persistence of information distribution or the proper management of alarms in order to avoid alarm flooding.
When evaluating different notification systems, companies typically start with addressing their specific pain points, e.g. interruption to IT service availability or maintaining manufacturing and production output. However there are ten key factors that should be considered when reviewing which enterprise notification system is right for you."

In my upcoming blog post series I will go more into detail and outline how Enterprise Alert fulfills and matches these requirements.

Keeping you updated on what is going on with your enterprise systems

2011-09-07T12:21:00.001+02:00

Enjoy the new promotional video of Enterprise Alert.

message master® Enterprise Alert is an advanced alert notification and incident response software for enterprises. It utilizes 2-way voice, SMS, MMS, mobile e-mail, fax, instant messaging, Smartphone push, presence and schedule information to rapidly and persistently notify responsible people about critical events. It automates notification workflows and alarm procedures, e.g. using automated escalation procedures and provides remote incident management, e.g. using convenient smartphone apps. Enterprise Alert works with numerous applications like HP BTO software, Microsoft System Center, IBM Tivoli, factory automation software - acting as a central enterprise notification and alarm hub.

Derdack's Enterprise Alert 2011 provides smart notifications for IBM Tivoli Monitoring

2011-09-07T12:17:00.001+02:00

A new, free feature pack is available for the current version of Enterprise Alert. It contains a 2-way plug & play product connector for IBM Tivoli Monitoring providing a seamless and convenient 2-way integration with ITM. It not only provides closed-loop notifications via voice, SMS text, IM and email but also feeds status information, acknowledgements and alert responses back into ITM.
The feature pack also comes with exciting smartphone apps enabling both push notification and convenient trouble ticket management “on-the-go”. Initially, Derdack supports both the Blackberry and the Windows Phone 7 platform. While the WP7 app is available through the Windows Marketplace app store, the deployable Blackberry app is part of the download package.

Will it become hot or not?

2010-12-16T18:11:00.003+01:00

About new technologies that might determine how we live in a couple of years from now

Predicting the future is an impossible task. We are prone to unimaginable events in the future, good and bad ones, disruptive technologies, new market players and new ideas. But let’s do some guessing based on the foundation of evaluating what makes people’s life easier and more convenient. Throughout history this has been one of the strongest drivers of progress.

I personally believe that Microsoft’s latest and truest innovation for years - the Kinect - holds the potential for entirely and thoroughly changing the way we interact with machines. It is my favorite invention of the last few years. Kinect enables users of the Microsoft XBox game console to control game characters purely by gestures, body or extremity motions. And it is incredibly accurate for a first version. While it is currently limited to the XBox only I personally believe we are not far from a true revolution. Kinect’s technologies will change the way we control machines including computers, TVs and even maybe cars, our stove and apartment lighting. I look forward to the hopefully very near day when I will be able to shutdown or lock my PC with a simple gesture before leaving my office. I am convinced gesture control will become ubiquitous and part of our daily life.

As will another fantastic invention or rather re-appearance of the recent past - the tabloid PC with Apple’s iPad being the most dominant form. While one can claim that the iPad’s applications are still somewhat limited I believe in its perfect suitability for the occasional home user. Being tagged as the most expensive electronic device without any particular purpose I am convinced such tabloids will make their way into the majority of homes step by step. Because there is more to the story. The iPad - or any other similar tabloid device - is the perfect convenience engine, large enough to read news papers on the sofa, to watch movies or read books on the plane or the train, to occasionally surf the Internet to lookup daily-life infos. At the same time however it complements your home entertainment system as it can stream the very same movies you watched while traveling to your TV and the very same music to your hi-fi system. Applications like checking and controlling energy consumption of your home, ordering food and beverages and all these little daily searches on the Internet do not need a clumsy PC. In conjunction with cloud services tabloids like the iPad can become the very electronic center of your entertainment world and private living environment. They are perfectly designed for consumption. While Apple leads this market with Samsung just entered the stage I wonder when we will see the first Microsoft-driven device.

Tabloids will be accompanied by Smartphones and Microsoft has made an impressive comeback with Windows Phone 7 lately. Smartphones are and will become even more our premier on-the-go communicate- and connect-machines to stay in touch with colleagues, friends and family. Where a tabloid is too big, Smartphones will fit in. I can not even guess what the next innovation in this area will be but I am sure that something disruptive is already looming around the corner.

Interestingly enough above mentioned innovations made their debut somewhat in the consumer sector ("consumerization"). While they are shaped there int the first place their impact on our business life will be significant. The borderline between both worlds is fading anyway and while a tabloid can be used to find a pharmacy that is open on the weekend, it can also be the very device for a factory line manager to check the status of machines and robots while he is roaming through the plant. Smartphones are destined to be the links between highly mobile workers and the backoffice and business processes, e.g. receiving notifications and alerts.

Last but not least I am inviting you to a little experiment - next time you are traveling or are at work try to find out in which circumstances people use gestures to communicate. Also, have a look at what you do when you interact with a machine and think if gesture control could do a supporting job to make life more “natural”.

The last opportunity

2010-10-04T16:17:00.000+02:00

Microsoft’s announcement that it is to launch its new mobile phone operating system (OS) at the end of 2010 was a key statement of intent.

According to analysts, Microsoft’s market share in the mobile device and handset market has taken a steep downturn, with comScore saying that Windows Mobile user adoption dropped from 19.7 per cent to 15.7 per cent between October 2009 and January 2010. Add to that the recent debacle of the social network device KIN and you can see that Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up. Windows Phone 7 is therefore Microsoft’s last chance to overcome the continuing trend of its declining relevance in the wireless space.

There is no other option – Microsoft needs to get this right.

Read more in my Prime Magazine article on derdack.com

Derdack’s message master® xsp 7 addresses rapid growth of VAS

2010-09-07T10:30:00.003+02:00

According to telecom analyst Informa the global mobile VAS (value-added services) market is expected to continue growing rapidly. In 2009 the global market was worth US$ 200 billion and it is set to grow by 14.2% year on year reaching US340 billion in 2014. Among all markets the emerging countries are the strongest propellers of this incredible growth accounting for currently 28% of the VAS market. This share is estimate to grow to 36% in 2014.

Mobile messaging plays a vital and important role. Overall it accounted for 53.2% of the global VAS revenues in 2009. More interestingly, there are regional significant differences. While in Asia and Europe the 2009 share was relatively low, 46.7% and 53% respectively, in the Middle East and Africa SMS and MMS messaging account for 79.2% and 80.5% of the VAS revenues. SMS as a ubiquitous and all accessible communication tool plays a highly important role as reliable broadband and Internet connectivity is sparse in emerging markets.

For a mobile messaging software vendor like Derdack these facts and trends have a high impact on the design of VAS platforms. When designing the all-new SMS and MMS software message master® xsp 7 we thought through the implications the market is demanding.

We designed message master® xsp 7 with a strong focus on enabling a jump-start into the mobile messaging VAS business and enabling companies to quickly yet sustainably participate in the growth of VAS:

a highly intuitive user interface promises a steep learning curve and high productivity
plug & play service templates shall enable a rapid start
integrated services like Bulk SMS/MMS and Outlook Mobile Services guarantee revenues right from start
pre-installed services like Facebook SMS/MMS enable social networking via SMS and MMS
a drag & drop designer is intended to make service creation and customization a child’s play
full support for all major mobile messaging standards

Flexibility has always been one of the major USPs of the message master® xsp software and our aim was to make it even more flexible, yet easy to use at the same time. Release 7 will bring an entire new quality in this respect. Performance, reliability and scalability are a matter of course.

Overall, our idea was to give VAS companies a perfect tool to support their core business, i.e. designing great SMS and MMS services for their target audience. Putting the major chunk of technology into a standard software product, VAS players can focus on their customers rather than technology.

And finally, it is even less expensive than its predecessor. message master® xsp 7 is launched on September 15.

Microsoft kills KIN

2010-07-01T12:32:00.003+02:00

Wow, now this is quick. In April I wrote about Microsoft introducing the new KIN devices, two specially designed 'mobile phones' with a very strong focus on mobile social networking. Although I was pretty sure Microsoft's devices would only have a small target audience and questionable commercial potential I am surprised how quickly Microsoft has stopped marketing and selling KIN devices. Obviously, I was right to a larger extent than expected.

However, I trust social networking will play an essential part in mobile phone vendor offerings and as unveiled at the MWC earlier this year, Microsoft will add significant social network functionality to Windows Phone 7. Therefore whilst the speed of failure of KIN is a surprise it doesn’t signifiy diminishing importance of mobile social networking for the industry or for Microsoft's ambitions in this space.

What’s behind SAP acquiring Sybase - how far away is true enterprise mobility?

2010-05-26T12:01:00.001+02:00

When business software giant SAP announced its acquisition plans for Sybase it was yet further evidence that enterprise software and solution vendors have recognised the importance of mobility. Sybase, who were originally known for their database systems, has over the last few years become a major player in the mobility sector. A key product in the Sybase portfolio is a software platform that unifies the development of mobile device applications. Applications can be developed once and rolled out on a variety of mobile devices, such as Blackberry, Windows Phone or Google Android. SAP has recognised that this is a technology they need in order to bring their enterprise solutions to the mobile user.

In a recent report in March 2010, research specialist Gartner has outlined ten mobile technologies to watch over the next two years, these technologies will play a significant role in mobile business and mobile enterprise solutions. For both the end-user experience and for seamless connectivity, it is significant that an estimated 85% of globally shipped handsets will have a browser installed, and in Western Europe and Japan more than 60% of shipped phones will be smartphones by the end of 2011. Gartner also highlight the significance of a technology called widgets, which are typically a combination of Java Script and HTML. According to Gartner, widgets will provide an easy way for applications to access real-time services. Gartner regards platform independent application development tools as a top 10 mobile technology, SAP appear to share this thinking. Gartner also puts enhanced location awareness (which is highly important in many business scenarios, in particular around service dispatching), cellular broadband (still some way to go to make it ubiquitous) and M2M communication (growing at 30% annually according to Gartner) into the top 10 list.

Reliable high-speed data access, increasing processing power, and a convenient form factor with state-of-the-art touch screens; these are the foundation for mobile business applications. Within the next two years we will see a rapidly increasing number of software vendors making their business applications available on mobile devices. These applications will include CRM, service dispatching management, remote document access and management, remote control of machinery, and a lot more. SAP’s move to acquire Sybase and its mobility expertise is the latest signals that we are on the verge of an enterprise mobility breakthrough.

Do you think that true enterprise mobility is coming? Or are there some essentials still missing?

Why SMS is so important to Twitter

2010-05-04T14:25:00.003+02:00

When Twitter acquired the small startup firm Cloudhopper it was another logical step to unite the two brethren of information sharing and micro-blogging.

Twitter has been cooperating with Cloudhopper over the past 8 months in offering SMS tweet capabilities, i.e. delivering tweets to followers via SMS and sending tweets from a mobile phone. Cloudhopper provides the infrastructure to connect Twitter to mobile networks, i.e. the connectivity to SMS centers of telcos all over the world.

Making it a part of Twitter simply demonstrates how closely related mobile messaging and sharing of micro-information are and how relevant this mobile connectivity is to Twitter. Where SMS is the perfect and almost instantaneous tool for person-to-person information sharing in a mobile network, Twitter expands this to person-to-group social sharing.

Initially limited to the Internet world Twitter very soon realized that the true power of sharing small information pieces lies in making the delivery as fast as possible. This naturally led to the use of SMS enabling you to post your status wherever you are and regardless of whether you have Internet access or not. As sending an SMS is incredibly easy and can be done from virtually every phone on this planet, it is no surprise that Twitter now processes close to one billion SMS a month.

David Armano summed it up well on this blog on Harvard Business Review: “Social sharing is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century.” And I believe SMS and MMS do play a very lively and increasingly important role in this major shift. Twitter has connected SMS to the Internet. Or has SMS connected Twitter to the mobile world?

Volcano ash caused information chaos - would advanced customer notification systems have had a positive impact on airline's corporate image?

2010-04-19T15:20:00.009+02:00

Fallout from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull has grounded me. I was supposed to leave Berlin on Saturday to attend a conference in Las Vegas. Instead, I spent the weekend looking at a deep blue, cloud-free sky.

But what’s more troubling and frustrating is the almost complete lack of available travel information and the resulting uncertainty. Prior to my expected departure on Saturday I received no information from my airline on the change of flight schedules, cancellations or re-booking procedures. I pulled information on the cancellation of my flight from the airport’s web page. I received final confirmation from the airline after spending an hour in the queue at the call center. And still, I have no idea as to whether I will depart tomorrow on my re-booked flight and what’s more important – I am pretty sure that I will again need to take proactive action to determine if I have this final confirmation over whether I am going to depart or not.

So, like many other travelers, I feel quite lost.

Being in the “notification business” I was wondering if notification systems could help to deliver a better standard of service to airline customers in this scenario. Just imagine that you have received a notification via SMS or email that your flight was cancelled due to air traffic restrictions along with information on whom to contact, e.g. a dedicated call center number. Taking this further, imagine if you received daily updates on the general air traffic situation? This would almost certainly reduce the amount of stress and frustration that passengers are subjected to, and perhaps enable them to make alternative travel or accommodation plans where necessary.

At the same time airlines would also save an enormous amount of time in terms of inbound calls into their call center which in turn reduces costs. Satisfaction levels would rise significantly as customers would appreciate proactive communications and the airline’s efforts even though the overall situation is frustrating to deal with.

I am sure that incident-forward communication would have a highly positive impact on customer service and the resulting perception of the airlines. What do you think? If your travel plans have been affected please share your experiences with us.

Please, find some more info on incident-forward communication here.

European Southern Observatory implements SMS IT alerts

2010-04-14T11:45:00.006+02:00

Derdack today announced that the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the world’s most productive astronomical observatory, has selected message master® Enterprise Alert to increase availability for critical IT services. The installation in Santiago, Chile will add automated, mobile notification capabilities to existing network monitoring functionality provided by WhatsUp.

My personal comment
Constant availability of internet access for data transfer is vital to the continuing operation of the observatories. By introducing network-independent, mobile SMS notification capabilities, ESO will gain the ability to recover far more quickly from Internet and IT issues that affect service up-time and data transfer operations. I am very delighted to call ESO our customer and to support the scientific operations of one of the major astronomical research facilities in the world.

What ESO says
Andrew Wright, Network Specialist, ESO said, “We knew that message master® Enterprise Alert was already successfully integrated with WhatsUp at our headquarters near Munich, Germany. The latest version of Derdack’s software has powerful features for notification automation, in particular two-way closed loop notifications, the ability to automatically escalate alerts, assignment of ownership of alerts, and failover capabilities. It was a straightforward decision to roll out the software to our Chile operation.”

About ESO
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries.

Links
ESO
Derdack PR
Enterprise Alert

Microsoft unveils KIN - but will it be successful?

2010-04-13T22:05:00.001+02:00

On April 12 Microsoft unveiled project “pink” now renamed KIN – the first mobile device ever designed by Microsoft. This is a change of paradigm and falls in line with Google’s move of bringing Android to the market in 2009. But Microsoft does not need to release a new operating system, it can build on one.

Microsoft attempts to succeed with an entirely new concept, as KIN is not a multi-purpose phone nor is the operating system of particular relevance. KIN is focused on the very specific needs of mobile users, one could say – the very core needs – and this is staying connected. KIN does this by providing an extremely easy and intuitive way of sharing personal information with friends & family.

The whole user interface of KIN is centered around sharing information such as your personal status, location, photos and videos. Microsoft calls it “the social phone” and it puts the mobile social network experience to forefront of its functionality and intended usage. At the same time it brings cloud computing to the mobile space by providing seamless upload and storage of photos, videos and contacts as well as history of personal information (KIN Loop). KIN also brings Zune to the mobile phone. So, it could be regarded as a scaled-down yet more focused version of Windows Phone 7. In the end it an extended 'People Hub' of the Windows Phone 7 introduced at the MWC earlier this year.

Will it be successful? Well, the concept is striking and I trust it will be a lot of fun to use. For Microsoft’s cho-sen target audience, i.e. young people, it might be perfectly aligned. As it focuses on a specific target group I strongly believe that pricing of the device and related data tariffs will be key. It must be significantly lower than that of typical feature or smart phones. If not I trust a multi-purpose phone with a cool piece of information sharing software or app would do the same job for less money which would be appealing to what is going to be a price conscious group of consumers.

I also believe that other vendors, even app developers, might provide apps to aggregate sharing personal information across various social networks. And I wonder if KIN allows mobile apps as I believe the target group also has embraced the app concept and is hungry for games and device personalization. In the final analysis the ‘condensed concept’ might prove to be too condensed.

I believe KIN will find its audience in the target group but certainly not much beyond this. However it is certainly a valuable concept to be brought to the market and in any case KIN is another push by Microsoft into the “always connected world”. I doubt KIN will become a huge financial success - but does it have to?

Find more on KIN here.

Communication-enabled supply chains

2010-03-30T15:46:00.003+02:00

Managing just-in-time production and just-in-time delivery is a challenging task for most companies. As supply chains spread globally, a company’s role and status in these networks are both highly dependent on other network members and more vulnerable to interruptions and delays. Therefore, collaboration and information exchange between different players within the supply chain or network becomes essential. There is an almost untapped area of integrating multi-modal communication technologies, and enabling IT systems and staff managing and operating supply chains to get in touch more quickly and efficiently with other supply chain members, suppliers and customers. What's essential?

Shipment information to customers is a very basic example of supply chain notifications and higher customer satisfaction is just one outcome. Where full integration with suppliers’ IT systems is not possible or feasible, due to incompatibilities or security concerns, automated system-to-person communication will prove useful. Instead of cumbersome person-to-person communication, automated notifications from SCM systems to suppliers or logistics partners can be a lot more efficient.
Ideally, the individual members that make up a supply chain can freely choose their preferred method of contact. Whereas e-mail might be applicable for office workers, it might not be suitable for HGV drivers. And for many reasons, including legal ones, audit trailing of communication processes is mandatory.
In emergency situations, successful crisis management benefits from rapid and reliable notifications to all affected members of the supply chain. Communicating any issues, such as logistical problems or natural disasters impacting the supply chain, is necessary for efficient production planning and to prevent a negative economic impact on dependant supply chain members.

Would you agree? What else is of relevance in your opinion?

You can read the full article in Prime Magazine here.

MWC survey: SMS & MMS are back on centre stage

2010-03-23T12:44:00.003+01:00

A survey conducted by Derdack from randomly selected visitors at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, showed that the relevance of SMS and MMS messaging services and application is not in decline; rather the opposite is happening.

One third of the survey participants stated that they have SMS and MMS projects running while 31% say they have projects planned in the mobile messaging space. Of the planned projects 42% are new projects. This clearly proves the relevance of SMS and MMS in mobile business has not diminished and is in fact rising. 27% of participants stated that their organizations are planning to extend existing platforms and services. That includes 8% of organizations replacing existing platforms indicating that there is a healthy market for legacy replacement systems.

What are the promising and potential future services and applications in the mobile messaging space? Ac-cording to the survey 45% of the organizations believe that mobile marketing holds the biggest potential for growth. For 39% mobile payment & money transfer is a highly promising application of SMS and MMS tech-nology. 32% believe that social networks belong to the high-potential SMS/MMS application areas and it will be interesting to see how this figure changes next year given the continual ‘buzz’ around social networking. Almost one quarter of the survey participants sees huge growth potential in SMS & MMS-based rural and local community services.

Survey participant demographics were pretty similar to the overall MWC demographics with 50% coming from Europe, 17% from Asia/Pacific, 13% from the Americas, 12% from Africa and 8% from the Middle East. Similarly overall job function structure matched MWC trends with 16% of the participants C-level executives and 40% VP and Director-level.

While my first recent comment on this topic was rather driven by gut feelings there is now some hard evi-dence of a stronger focus of mobile business players on “good old” mobile cash cows such as SMS/MMS. Mobile operators are well advised to have a closer look on how to capitalize on mobile messaging with inno-vative applications, services and platforms.

Vodafone closes navigation venture - are telcos losing ground more quickly?

2010-03-17T09:54:00.001+01:00

Less than 18 months after investing US$30 million in acquiring the Swedish navigation company Wayfinder, Vodafone has announced it is to close the business and move existing customers over to new offerings, mainly provided by partners and handset makers. This move became inevitable after Google and Nokia be-gan offering free navigation services as part of the overall handset experience. Others now pay for Voda-fone’s initial effort in driving data revenues through navigation services. Hence this move might be a smart and logical step and could well save Vodafone unnecessary investment after the prevailing business model changed so radically.

You could take a different view at why this happened, though. Handset manufacturers have again proved successful in providing and controlling an important part of the user experience. It could be regarded as another setback in the struggle of mobile telcos to play a more important role in the rapid development of the mobile Internet.

Are mobile operators simply too slow to keep up with the speed of Internet giants and hardware manufac-turers like Apple and Nokia? What are the reasons for Vodafone’s failure to stay ahead of the curve and to lead the mobile revolution?

Derdack wins Network Computing award for enterprise notification project at Boehringer Ingelheim

2010-03-15T14:03:00.002+01:00

On March 4 Derdack's customer implementation at Boehringer Ingelheim Netherlands won a prestigious award from Network Computing UK. message master® Enterprise Alert helped the pharmaceutical firm save $0.5m in lost staff productivity and this achievement was recognised in the Private Sector Project of the Year category.

I am actually thrilled that the message master® Enterprise Alert project at Boehringer Ingelheim has won this distinguished award. This particular implementation of our product highlights the financial impact that can be achieved by minimising systems downtime through automated and reliable alert notifications. It validates the business model behind the enterprise notification concept, demonstrates clearly that a rapid return on investment can be achieved and is applicable to a wide range of industries.

Please, find more information and links to the product and the customer reference here.

Exactly a week earlier Derdack's product was already awarded with the prestigious European IT Excellence Award.

MWC 2010: Samsung's Bada and Wave debut

2010-02-18T19:24:00.004+01:00

On the last day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona I had another look at fancy mobile gadgets. While some famous handsets manufacturers like Nokia are missing at this year’s congress others left a great impression. Samsung was among them. I had a look at the new ‘Wave’ phone featuring Samsung’s brand new operating system ‘Bada’ (Ocean). I have to admit it was a little ‘wow’.

The Wave features a brilliant display, something you haven’t seen on a mobile phone. It is based on a technology Samsung calls ‘AMOLED’ – Active Matrix Organic LED. Fully touch-enabled, amazing colors and crystal clear.

Usability of the Wave is great. Animations are fluid. Actually, it is the only phone that keeps up with the iPhone in this regard. All applications you need seem available and the user interface looks great. To my surprise Bada and Wave feature parts of the hub concept Microsoft demonstrated on Monday. The ‘social hub’ for instance aggregates the same information, updates and data like Microsoft’s ‘people’ hub. Who was first?

While Microsoft demonstrated only an early prototype the Wave will be available shortly at half the price of an iPhone as I was told. The Bada OS makes a mature impression; the UI looks fun and the Wave phone is – though no revolution – some ‘I’d like to have it’ gadget. I believe that another relevant OS player has appeared.

MWC 2010: SMS and MMS are back on stage

2010-02-17T23:41:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya (Vice President of Growth, Mobile and International) announced an upcoming Facebook SMS service that is expected to deliver 90% of the Facebook experience via SMS. It would be a perfect tool to get people in less broadband-covered markets hooked up into the social network through a ubiquitous mobile experience. Already today, Facebook can send profile status updates via text messages through more than 80 mobile operators worldwide. This is just one example how even big Internet players embrace mobile messaging and recognize the relevance of it, in particular in emerging markets.

My general impression is that SMS and MMS are back on the stage. There is an abundance of players in the SMS and MMS ecosystem at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Offerings range from social network connectivity (e.g. MMS to Facebook), over mobile marketing to email push services. While mobile operators invest in broadband, Smartphones and expect growing data traffic, many of them also look more thoroughly at the role SMS and MMS can play in the future. Platform vendors, service providers and application developers have designed numerous services based on SMS and MMS and are paving the way for messaging 2.0.

It is time for mobile operators, not only in emerging markets, to have a closer look on how they can further exploit a well established medium and one of their cash cows. Both SMS and MMS have a huge potential of becoming one of the pillars in tomorrows service world.

Google goes "Mobile First"

2010-02-16T22:48:00.004+01:00

With Gartner predicting the mobile phone overtaking the PC as the premier device for web access by 2013, the big Internet giants put the mobile device into the very center of their strategies. Today, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, unveiled Google’s new strategy of “Mobile First”.

Not only because the majority of Google’s top programmers want to develop for mobile devices, Google announced their initiative called “Mobile First”. It simply means that new client software developments are done for mobile devices in the first row and than migrated on to the PC. Developers like to create applications for mobile devices because they are more personal, more attractive, location-aware and provide a lot more features. But above all a mobile device is a place of convergence - a place where services, information and content get together and create a new user experience.

Google demonstrated a couple of known and new applications like Google Voice, Goggles, Flash on mobiles, Goggles with text-recognition and translation and voice recognition in combination with Google Earth.

Little was clarified about Google’s move in(to) the carrier space except for Schmidt saying that Google needs mobile carriers with their high quality infrastructure and he was refusing to admit any ambition of becoming a carrier themselves. But the talk was rather on using and needing than partnering with mobile operators. Google seems to have a clear strategy and they will use mobile carriers only to the extent necessary.

Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 7 Series

2010-02-16T01:01:00.001+01:00

MWC 2010: The empire strikes back - Microsoft's answer to Apple and Google - the Windows Phone 7 Series

2010-02-15T18:50:00.001+01:00

Today, I had the pleasure of following the live press conference broadcast by Microsoft’s Steve Balmer and Joe Belfiore introducing the new Windows Phone 7 Series. I was astonished by the overall concept and how Microsoft plans to counter the recent success of Apple’s iPhone and possibly Google’s Android.

First of all, as you might expect given that Microsoft has fallen behind in the market, the user experience on the new Windows Phone is quite different. Microsoft has finally realized that the replication of the PC experience on mobile phones is not working well. Now, the user experience is oriented far more along contemporary concepts that have been established by their competitors.

For instance a new Windows Phone has just three buttons on the front panel (Start, Search and Back), it features so-called “Live Tiles” showing updates on people, social networks, messages, etc. And of course it is entirely touch-enabled. In one aspect Microsoft is going further than the iPhone and that is in customizing the home screen with quick links to people, pictures, web pages, etc. But these are all minor features compared to how the phone enables users to maintain links with social networking websites.

Microsoft has realized that there is a weak link in the current Application and AppStore concept resulting in fragmentation of content, social networks and user data. Each social network has its own app. But they are not linked and aggregated. That is one major issue that Microsoft has addressed. With the new Windows Phone 7 Series Microsoft is defragmenting all the networks and content. On the new Windows Phone, user connections, links, social network updates, pictures, etc. become aggregated through what Microsoft calls “hubs”.

For instance all social networks and address books are aggregated in the “people” hub. Pictures from all services and storage points are aggregated in the “pictures” hub. 3rd party Internet radios can become part of the “music and videos” hub. And so on. Microsoft refers to this approach as “no more in and out of apps”.

Where Apple for instance is channeling all content and services through iTunes and the AppStore Microsoft is countering with a far more open concept offering developers, social network providers and content companies the ability to plug into the “hubs” on Microsoft Phones. That is a strong conceptual differentiation.

I believe Microsoft has finally found a proper conceptual answer to its competitor offerings and I am looking forward to seeing the mobile operating system battle unfolding. I trust Microsoft has now significantly improved its chances of increasing market share and I would not be surprised if they eventually strike a winning blow in this competitive market.

Driving revenue growth with SMS/MMS Application Stores?

2010-02-08T17:38:00.001+01:00

Analysts have been discussing feasible future business models for mobile operators for years. Device manufacturers and Internet companies such as Apple and Google constantly evolve and push into telecom areas to increase their impact on end-user expectations and on how innovation is perceived. At the same time, for mobile operators, the strategy of compensating declining voice traffic through growing data revenue has only partly been successful. As a result, operators are in need of fresh concepts and visionary business models. While Western European providers follow a strategy of communication-integrated IT offerings and converged services, a more service-provider-like model would rather focus on end-user oriented value-added services.

Up until now so-called mobile value-added services such as logo and ringtone downloads have almost exclusively been offered through external providers. Apple’s success in pioneering the AppStore was copied by Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and others, but as yet this has not spread out to benefit mobile operators. They only indirectly profit from higher data volumes going through their networks and hence only occupy and control a small portion of the value chain. Very few mobile operators, e.g. Vodafone with their “Vodafone 360”, are actively working on participating through their own AppStore concept.

I am convinced that, when it comes to SMS and MMS there are better opportunities for mobile operators to control the value chain, profit from additional revenues and provide innovative content. Device manufacturers don’t have the same influence when it comes to the SMS and MMS market as they are available independently from the device type, whether a simple Nokia phone or a high end device like the iPhone is used.

The idea now is to modify the AppStore concept and to transfer it to the world of SMS and MMS services. One foundation for the idea’s success is that we are talking about services rather than classical applications. Respective SMS and MMS services don’t run on the actual device or phone but are operated and provided by a service delivery platform. To give you an example: for an MMS-to-Facebook application, that sends pictures via MMS to a user’s Facebook profile, no application needs to run on the user’s device. You take a picture or video and simply send a message to a dedicated Facebook short code. The service is provided by the mobile operator directly and the mobile operator has full control of end user pricing and traffic. When you consider that eMarketer estimate that over 600 million people will use their phones to tap into social networks by 2013, you can begin to see the potential for capturing a share of this vast potential revenue stream.

And similar to a classical AppStore, services can still be designed by external developers. The development and approval of the service are also managed by the platform running at the mobile operator site. Ideally the operator offers a “Sandbox” – a special development and test environment. Take Derdack’s message master® nx Sandbox this provides graphical tools that allow developers to more easily design applications and service work flows using an Internet-browser and simple drag and drop techniques. Once a service has been created and tested only the mobile operator can evaluate it and offer it to end-users after successful approval. The developer of the service receives a fixed share of the revenue generated, e.g. per SMS or MMS the service generates.

By implementing the SMS/MMS AppStore concept a mobile operator gains full control of messaging services, related revenues and revenue shares. It can further profit from integrating independent providers into a service development program and can make full use of their innovation potential. When it comes to SMS and MMS messaging the Application Store concept combines an extensive service offering with full revenue and content control.

Would you agree that an SMS/MMS AppStore is one essential building block of a service-oriented future telco business model or do you think mobile operators will never become more like service providers?

Can incident-forward communication cut call center costs and raise customer satisfaction?

2010-01-31T17:11:00.001+01:00

The concept of incident-forward communication is based on pro-active communication of emergency situations, system failures or downtimes. The moment a problem occurs that might affect customers, suppliers or staff, they are notified automatically, e.g. about the scope and impact of the problem, the expected downtime and a possible workaround. There are several key implications to such a strategy that need to be considered.

It requires failure-detection capabilities and ideally a link between the detection systems and systems for automated communication. In order to avoid any delays or human latencies, failures of any facility or service that impacts on a customer need to be communicated automatically to affected users or staff. Of course such a system requires filtering of events and pre-defined rules on which event is to be communicated and how to ensure the right communications are sent at the right time. In some cases an approval process for sending out such warnings and alerts to a broad customer base is seen as necessary but it may hamper the ability for rapid notification.

The system for automated notifications should ideally be based on Unified Communications, opt-in databases and options for users or customers to define their own notification medium preferences. This enables the use of the most efficient and convenient method of receiving notifications and the scope of information to be selected. Some people might prefer an SMS where others like to be notified via instant message or even through Facebook.

Evidence from numerous implementations of notification projects for customers indicates that when a system is in place to comprehensively and rapidly inform people of an issue, they are less likely to call a helpdesk or call center which can result in an enormous reduction in costs. Some estimates put the reduction in customer and user calls to be up to a staggering 90%.

At the same time satisfaction levels are raised significantly as customers or users that are pro-actively informed of any faults that might affect service or system availability are less likely to get frustrated. In enterprise scenarios incident-forward communication can have a positive impact on the reputation of the IT department and helpdesk and can also prevent productivity losses. Going beyond the enterprises boundaries, informing suppliers about disturbances or yields in production helps to optimize supply chains.

The concept of incident-forward communication is widely accepted in emergency situations but would you agree it can also work in less critical situations such as the examples described above? If you can see any flaws or limitations to the concept or have experience of projects that have used incident forward communications then why not leave a comment below?

How to achieve precision and ownership assignment when delivering business critical information

2010-01-24T14:34:00.000+01:00

Our investigations and those of our customers into the efficiency and performance of business-critical event handling and related notifications and staff alerts often show a lack of ownership assignment and precision. This is a common issue across all industries.

Basic notification principles in many organizations often rely on simple group distribution of critical information. By sending such relevant notification to a whole group of technicians or other people who can potentially help it is hoped that “somebody” in that group will neutralize or solve the problem.

Usually, quite the opposite happens. As each member of the team assumes that another will take care of the problem, nothing gets done until the problem is escalated and a team leader or member of the management team gets involved. The result of this type of notification scenario can be disastrous in many aspects ranging from productivity losses, customer dissatisfaction and serious downtimes of enterprise systems.

Modern solutions are based on a notification workflow concept to provide precision and automation in delivering business critical information to the right people. The notification workflow concept is based on the following basic principles:

Filtering of incoming event to determine who is responsible and shall thus receive the alert
Checking the relevance and severity of incoming events to determine the most suitable communication channel
Ability to deliver information through a user-preferred communication channel in order to improve the probability of the first delivery attempt
The use of escalation chains versus group notifications to ensure ownership of the communicated issue (escalation chains also result in a communication hierarchy)
Working with presence information as well as holiday and other absence data

We at Derdack believe that these principles have a major impact on the reliability and precision of informa-tion delivery. Would you agree? Or do you think there are other factors that should be considered first?

Driving operational excellence in the pharmaceutical industry

2010-01-11T19:48:00.006+01:00

Not only when manufacturing sites around the world produced swine flu vaccines at lightning speeds the requirement for utmost production continuity and prevention of unexpected downtimes became important to the pharmaceutical and life science industry. Enforced by FDA regulations, quality assurance and control play an important role as manufactured drugs, vaccines and other products have to meet strict standards. Even tiny tolerances and variances in output can trigger a full production stop. Production can only recommence if the problem is identified and solved. In the meantime the company loses money with every single second that passes. Therefore, a swift problem resolution is even more important than in other verticals.

The level of automation is already high in today’s pharmaceutical and life science industry. Manufacturing sites and installations are monitored and managed by Production Control Systems (PCS) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) around the clock. Any disturbances in the manufacturing process or problems are detected and communicated into an Operations Centre where they are usually made visible to the operational staff that monitor production on computer consoles.

In case of serious problems that impact the manufacturing process, for instance by a valve not opening or another motor defect, the operator initiates and follows standard operation procedures (SOP) to inform service technicians and suppliers and to provide “how-to-repair” information, etc. However, this is usually a manual process and requires human interaction.

This is the very spot where contemporary notification workflow software can have a big impact. It fully automates notification procedures, going beyond computer screen notification and extending notifications beyond the manufacturing site boundaries. Notification workflow software notifies service technicians, managers, any affected staff and operations team members in parallel and via a suitable communication channel such as voice or SMS text message.

The software automatically chooses the best communication method, taking into consideration availability and executing a ‘find-me, follow-me’ procedure. This alone saves an enormous amount of time and relieves the operational team from the time-consuming effort of tracking down people. Basically, the communication part of an SOP gets automated. Service technicians are on-site much more quickly and are in a position to solve the problem more swiftly.

At the same time alert notifications, e.g. to a mobile, can contain SOP information and how-to repair details. Using channels such as MMS images and video clips, repair instructions can be sent. Upon successful repair technicians report back the repair status report, e.g. via SMS text message to inform the Operations Centre to launch a final check before production can be restarted. Such automated closed-loop notification processes are far more efficient and reliable than person-to-person communication. The overall repair process is accelerated and downtimes are reduced from 1-2 hours to just 15-30 minutes which represents a significant cost saving.

The deployment of notification software in the pharmaceutical and life science industry of course puts specific requirements on these products. Notification software is always part of an overall alarming system and needs to meet the FDA alarm management standards. According to GAMP (”Good Automated Manufacturing Practice“) it will be categorized as a system with indirect impact. Therefore, certain tests and validation are required before it is put into action.

But there are further requirements a notification solution needs to address. In order to ensure reliability of delivering business-critical alerts it has to support more than one or two communication channels like email and/or SMS. A reliable notification solution has to be based on Unified Communications, i.e. it needs to support a multitude of communication options ranging from voice, email, fax, paging to SMS text messaging, MMS and instant messaging. All critical communication channels need to be 2-way and have to provide delivery tracking. A system that follows the ”fire-and-forget“ principle is as good as no system at all, as it will never be a true part of a business process and could only become a dead endpoint.

Automated escalations, schedules and true workflows have to be proven parts of any notification product to realise notification SOPs. The very basic prerequisite of notification automation is the ability to integrate with PCS and MES systems directly via OPC. And finally, full audit trailing, detailed alert and notification history, real-time tracking and comprehensive reports need to be an integral part of a suitable product.

Examples in the pharmaceutical and life science industry demonstrate that automating communication processes with the help of notification workflow software has a highly positive impact on production continuity, provides a rapid return-on-investment and supports the drive for operational excellence.

How deeply is Microsoft Azure going to change the ISV world?

2009-10-28T12:53:00.001+01:00

Microsoft is investing significantly into cloud services and two sales models of Azure services have been proposed: Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can either purchase basic cloud services from Microsoft and sell them on to their customers or they can let Microsoft sell the required base services such as Windows Azure, storage or Azure SQL directly to customers. However, we need to examine whether this new approach has serious implications.

In the not too distant future companies who use a number of different cloud applications based on Microsoft Azure will probably prefer a direct relationship with the software giant for purchasing Azure services and potentially accrue discounts based on the amount of computing power, database services, etc. This would see Microsoft start to build a direct relationship with the customer which would represent an entirely new approach. This is the first major change to the old ISV world.

It is likely that those customers might also like to purchase ISV applications through Microsoft, requiring Microsoft to act as a reseller for ISV applications (although some legal and SLA implications will have a significant impact on any reseller model). Either way Microsoft will most likely start to think about creating something similar to an application store. Naturally, such a store of ISV cloud applications will create enormous marketing and sales potential for ISVs . And it will ignite the second major change to the old ISV world.

Above all it provides Microsoft with the ability to make money from every single software sale in the app store but Microsoft is likely to require certification of the ISV applications. Microsoft and its partners already provide certification services today but more for ISV marketing and reputation advantages. In Azure it will become a prerequisite for an ISV to be certified in order to get an application listed in the cloud store. As customers might purchase cloud applications mainly through the store it will become a distinct necessity for ISVs to get listed.

Ultimately, this scenario, which in my opinion is likely, heavily extends Microsoft’s control over ISVs and their applications. It will be very similar to Apple’s control over applications in the iPhone’s application store (remember, Apple is still holding back Google’s Voice Application). However, the consequences in the case of Azure are much broader and more serious as we are talking about tens of thousands of business applications with millions of business and enterprise customers around the globe. It might lead the way into a new application distribution monopoly which would surely attract the attention of the regulatory authorities.

At this stage I am not sure if the advantages for ISVs outweigh Microsoft gaining more control, it would be interesting to hear other opinions, so please feel free to post a comment below.

Automated alerts and notifications are real-world examples of Gartner’s “Communication-Enabled Business Processes“

2009-09-29T18:14:00.002+02:00

Ever since the invention of unified communications and the appearance of technology-driven products for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) or instant messaging, vendors and analysts have been struggling with rather abstract business cases as well as vague Return on Investment and productivity increase calculations.

In January 2008, Gartner’s vice president Bern Elliot first coined the term “Communication-Enabled Business Processes” (CEBP) in his article “Understanding the value of unified comms”. The core idea of CEBPs is true embedding of communications into business processes, which requires automation of application-to-person communication.

In an effort to achieve higher business continuity enterprises were already looking into products and services for automating business-critical alert and notification workflows. Such products are today based on unified communications and represent a truly beneficial application case. Alert and notification workflow solutions combine multi-modal communication with presence, user preference and availability information in order to rapidly, automatically and reliably alert and notify service technicians, managers and users in the event of a critical situation occurring.

The alert process is directly initiated from a business process, for instance an IT application, and without human intervention. A product like Derdack’s message master® Enterprise Alert thus offers a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for seamless integration with IT, manufacturing and production management, CRM and other enterprise systems.

Hence, automated alert and notification solutions belong to the early real-world implementations of Gartner’s CEBP concept and realize benefits from unified communications. As they have direct impact on business continuity, disaster prevention and mean-time-to-repair their return-on-investment can be calculated more easily and a better business case made for investment.

I will be covering more on this particular topic in future blogs.

The 4th pillar of business continuity

2009-09-11T16:38:00.001+02:00

Business continuity is one of today’s major business areas that concern senior executives. It is widely considered that there are three major pillars of business continuity as described below and I would like to add a fourth one.

#1:
Maintaining business continuity starts with establishing proper methods and facilities to monitor business-critical installations and to detect relevant events and circumstances that potentially lead to a service disruption. With the help of modern IT systems huge progress has been made in this area.

#2:
Once critical events and conditions have been detected the next step to ensure business continuity is problem neutralisation and eventually problem resolution. This is often a manual process, performed by service technicians, IT administrators, fire fighters, security officers, etc. Ideally, the process from problem identification to resolution is handled automatically and without human intervention. This has been partially achieved in the IT industry, e.g. through failover scenarios and research on “self-healing” systems.

#3:
As you cannot fully prevent downtime, business interruption or even disaster on every occasion you need to have proven and tested communication policies, disaster management and recovery action plans in place. These must include how to inform all relevant parties affected by the unplanned event. In case a problem wasn’t detected or couldn’t be resolved in time these plans ensure that any impact on your business is minimal, customer satisfaction is not affected and - ultimately - human life is protected.

The 4th pillar of business continuity
Achieving business continuity largely depends on precise, timely, reliable and, ideally, automated communication. Firstly, you need to be able to proactively and rapidly respond to critical conditions and events. That covers communication to service technicians, users or customers. Secondly, in event of a disaster you need the ability to send emergency communications. Without proper alert and notification systems, business continuity becomes an unachievable task. Such systems:

a) make service staff more proactive in case a problem has been detected and lead to reduced mean-time-to-repair (MTTR)
b) inform the managers who have overall responsibility for the situation and who need to make decisions in real-time
c) notify users and customers on service interruption, problem neutralisation and resolution issues
d) rapidly inform anyone who might be affected in case of disaster or emergency situations

Whilst some might consider such alert and notification systems to be mere supporting tools in the effort to achieve utmost business continuity, I am convinced they should be seen as another essential pillar of business continuity.

Smart Pricing For Microsoft’s Azure Wanted

2009-08-19T10:44:00.000+02:00

The major topic at this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans was Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing OS. It is clear that Microsoft is shifting a majority of resources to support cloud computing.

Strategically highly important to Microsoft, Azure is however still in its infancy. At the conference Microsoft announced the first pricing details with a pay-as-you-go model, becoming valid from November 2009 on.

Unfortunately it left a number of open questions, in particular around predictability for ISVs and subsequently their end-customers. Many issues arise from the fact that the announced model is based on computing hour, web traffic, storage and usage of .NET services.

Above all, this leaves ISVs with a challenging job of finding a predictable pricing model for their customers. The pay-as-you-go model is only relevant to a few peak-performance applications where pay-as-you-go represents a monetary advantage over needing to have computing and storage resources at ones disposal for rarely used applications.

Microsoft is working on subscription-based pricing models but these are not likely to be available before late 2010. This surely will hold back partners and ISVs from quickly adopting Azure.

Microsoft needs to move fast to work out a smart model for a more predictable pricing of cloud applications in order to become the number one choice for ISV partners migrating their apps into the cloud.

Telco-Strategies To Achieve Competitive Advantage In The Mobile Business

2009-08-01T11:40:00.001+02:00

The incredible success of application stores for mobile handset vendors like Apple’s AppStore and Nokia’s Ovi indicates a shift in mobile business and adds fuel to the ongoing discussion on the future business model of mobile network operators.

It is common sense that mobile telcos are getting squeezed between handset vendors, media and content companies and highly innovative Internet players. Analysts see three major alternatives for sustainable business models ranging from dumb bit pipes over smart bit pipes with subscriber and billing ownership to ultimately application service providers.

Some analysts, however, believe that continuous service innovation, i.e. the service provider model, is the only chance for mobile operators to maintain current revenue and profit levels.
However, this requires a profound shift of the current business model and corporate culture of mobile telcos.

These company’s major innovations are currently mostly coming from small, external service providers or are even dictated by telecom equipment vendors, handset manufacturers like Apple and increasingly by Internet players like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. To date mobile telcos had little need for out-of-the-box and self-initiated innovation.

Now, it is becoming essential for mobile telcos to build the necessary know-how, to establish an innovation-centric culture, to automate standard business processes and to acquire the right software and process tools for efficient and continuous design and roll-out of new application and services.

Factory Automation Needs Super-Fast Man-Machine Communication

2009-06-02T11:43:00.000+02:00

The world‘s biggest industrial tradeshow - the Hanover Messe – just showed that the importance of software and IT for the manufacturing industry is growing rapidly.
The topic “Factory Automation” covered 7 halls alone and another hall was dedicated to the “Digital Factory”.

Process control, monitoring and automation require powerful software solutions to support the unmatched requirements of today’s industry regarding reliability, performance and real-time computing. But human beings are still the ultimate decision makers in unexpected situations – analogous to airplanes where pilots still rule. You cannot get away from man machine interfaces and in the manufacturing environment this requires intuitive factory management consoles.

But it also involves smart and super-fast communication solutions in the factory, e.g. for submitting alerts and critical information to field personal. Where the whole factory is real-time, man-made decisions need to be made quickly as well.

Software solutions like Derdack’s automated notification workflow software can provide the required speed as they deliver critical information based on presence of personnel, choose the proper communication channel and work with high-speed escalation chains in order to ensure the delivery of business-critical messages.

No more hype at the Mobile World Congress

2009-02-26T11:47:00.000+01:00

Mobile telcos and their vendors are trying to benefit from the wave of social networking. However, their only chance is to add mobility to the offerings of big Internet players, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, in order to get a little share of the revenues through covering the “on-the-go” part. Setting up closed telco-only communities is a doomed game.

With the hype times over telcos have also well realized that currently their major business is coming from classic communication services, mainly voice and (SMS) messaging.

Vendors in this field seem to be stronger than ever. Mobile instant messaging (MIM) is still on the screen with a few trials under way around the world but doubts are rising if it will ever take off – driven by a fear of cannibalizing the highly profitable SMS and MMS business.

Mobile marketing including SMS and MMS campaigning also belonged to the visible topics at the world’s largest mobile business show. Telcos and vendors believe there is still untapped potential in it.

Mobile phone vendors are desperately trying to catch up with Apple in two ways – copying (as far as patents allow) the great touch user interface of Apple’s iPhone (e.g. Samsung’s “Touch” claim) and Apple’s app stores concept with RIM, Nokia, Microsoft having launched or are launching similar offerings.

This is also part of the reason for optimism among mobile telcos, their hope is based on overall data usage picking up heavily, mainly due to the growing number of Internet-capable smartphones.

However, questions remain over whether this will turn into new business models for mobile telcos or if it just moves them closer to becoming the feared ‘dumb data pipes’.