Once your credibility has been called into question in the media … you are done for. And that’s that.

Consider Dominique Strauss-Kahn for a moment. He may be out and about again, but the events of the past few weeks have spelled the end of his political career.  Guilty or not, he has been convicted in the media and there is no way back, even if he is innocent.

So what do these politics have to do with technology …

Let’s turn the clock back to sometime in 2001, when Bram Cohen devised a data transfer protocol based on a highly distributed architecture. Put simply it’s the underlying technology of the most pervasive peer-to-peer file-sharing networks in the world.

Can a protocol be bad for that matter?

So, as you can guess, it is one of the driving forces of the piracy of software and media across the internet. So it’s really bad, isn’t it? Really? Can a protocol be bad for that matter? It’s been misused and subsequently garnered a really bad reputation. The net effect: It’s the biggest evil that the media industry has faced and it’s obviously been trialled found guilty in the eyes of the media companies, and naturally the public. Last week, I spoke to my engineering team about the feasibility of using BitTorrent to deliver changes and updates to our products, but the general consensus was that enterprises are going to be uncomfortable.

What the media and enterprises in general seem to be missing is that the BitTorrent protocol is actually amazingly robust. This is probably what makes it so successfull at transporting terabytes of illegal wares on a daily basis. So, Sony, Apple and Microsoft … out here in Africa we are getting better at using this thing called the internet, but we are still having teething problems especially when you consider that the access medium is not always wired (we use variations of 3G, and its EXPENSIVE). What that means is that disconnects and service interruptions are relatively common, and a real pain when you are downloading a 500MB+ update for whatever reason, because you have to do it three times over before you finally get some success.

Rather than fighting torrent usage, large software companies should welcome it into a legitimate paradigm and embed it into their update delivery mechanisms.This will not only save them on server infrastructure and bandwidth. Also, small business utilisation of shared software updates would be simplified without complex caching mechanisms.

Let me break that down a little, if these large software companies used some torrent mechanism, and your colleague sitting across the room from you downloaded an update, then you tried to fetch the same update, you would get it from him, while it is available rather than from the primary update servers.

Second chances are hard to come by. Let’s hope there is one for BitTorrent; it is its tenth birthday after all. As for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, well that’s an entirely different story.

Moore’s law firmly stuffed up the world. At least the computing world. And before you throw the brickbats at me, allow me to explain …

You see, before the Moore’s law was actualised, developers used to be called programmers. And with good reasons. The were optimising code to work on an extremely limited real estate, and even more limited fire-power (Anybody Remember old bill talking down the need for a machine faster than a 286?). And thus, this class of rare human beings was well remunerated. And while they were at it, they sent Neil Amstrong to the moon using the fire-power of a 286.

Enter Gordon Moore. He assures people that the speed of his intel chips will double every 18 months and everything else including the price of a neighbourhood visit to a brothel. From that point onwards, programmers figured that they could throw hardware at a problem. And along the way, they changed the name of their profession to developers. Kind of reminds you of the property developers in Fourways who left with a half-finished house but picked up the cheque for a complete house right?

I am given to understand that up to until recently, this rare breed of human beings (developers), was alive but endagered. They were working on SIM cards. Yes, the humble SIM card has some logic that needed to be coded. And that took all of 8K when GSM operations were beginning to pickup. But these clever chap at the SIM manufacturing companies caught on. They also started throwing hardware at a problem. It quickly went to 32K, then 64K and god know where else. In the meantime, they figured that they could outsurce the code to the handset, which was doing a better job at keeping up with the Moore’s law. So, to recap, they increased the memory of the SIM card and reduced the functionality. Out went all the SIM apps. So, I am afraid, the programmer there has also become a developer.

So, how does this affect life? Actually, not much. It means that the Taiwanese continue to mint it making ever bigger and faster Chips. The retailer have a new tech buzzword to bamboozle us and in the process separating us from our hard earned cash and Bill Gates has another billion to conduct Malaria research.

And the band plays on.

There’s absolutely no doubt that smartphones are on the rise. Gartner puts this figure at 1.6 billion units sold in 2010; that’s up on 2009 by 31.8%.

Smartphone Market Share Q1 2011

The clear winner has been Google’s Android platform, while Apple has also seen moderate growth. The other noteworthy players: RIM, Microsoft and Symbian have all seen significant levels of loss, with Symbian being the clear loser.

Nokia has moved the largest number of smartphone devices in the year, but its overall growth in this sector of 36.1% pales in comparison to their closest competitor Samsung. In the same period Samsung saw an increase in smartphone sales of 439.9%. HTC saw the second largest gains of 258.3%.

No doubt Nokia has seen the writing on the wall, and made the smart move (pun intended) to change OS. That said, it’s poured all of its hope into the proverbial leaking Microsoft bucket. Windows Mobile 7, has yet to prove itself in this segment and initial critical reviews may find Nokia gasping for air soon. Time will tell.

The more things change they more they stay the same. Well sort of … Technology trends tends to repeat themselves.

About 20 years ago while Mark Weiser was with PARC, he coined the concept of ubiquitous computing, which described the behaviour of human-machine interaction in everyday activities. It was quite hyped in the early dotcom days, when IPV6 was also making its rounds too. Remember, when everything from your toaster to your car would be interconnected (via the internet) and be intelligent enough to contact (ahem, spam) you with status updates.

Then everything went quiet. For a while anyway, until the Web’s second coming. Convergence was all the buzz. Your mobile would be your wallet, media player, newsreader, email device, etc. etc., oh yes … and your phone. Lets be fair, there has been traction here even in areas where we had not predicted. I cannot remember anyone predicting that satellite/GPS navigation would be almost defacto in most (high-end) mobile handsets.

So, it’s been a few years and we realised that we cannot do everything on our mobile phones. Or so Apple told us. And then there was the tablet revolution. Everyone has to make one, even if you haven’t figured out the best interface design or real use case. That said, tablets (and Apple’s sales performance) has shown us that that there is this need for a device that resides somewhere between our mobiles and notebooks.

Hmmm … sounds a lot like we are back to ubiquitous, especially when you consider those networked media playback devices in our homes.

Now there is a problem, and the key players in the space have obviously seen this too. And it is a reality of the universe of ubiquitous devices eventually making their way into our daily lives. Licensing.

Licensing of everything … especially media and applications (and surely application data is on its way too). Enter the App store.

Ah yes, so you bought that book/game/song/movie/application on your mobile. But wait, you don’t want to pay for it again on your tablet or media centre.

That’s the real use-case for electronic stores in any pseudo-convergent-ubiquitous-interconnected-device-universe. Okay, it also deals with piracy too.

As a typical consumer, its going to take a bit of time for me to but my next desktop application from an App Store, but at some point the multiple device licensing benefit is going to come to the fore. Hopefully application vendors realise that (like media ones have) end users cannot use the same application concurrently on four devices at the same time, so a single license should suffice to across our mobiles, tablets, notebooks and media centres.

Time will tell.

Choosing a CRM platform that supports both your tactical and strategic requirements is essential to ensure its longevity

- Rajesh Hari Parsad – TAUSPACE CEO

We had the opportunity to be interviewed by Business Management Middle East (BMME) on the effectiveness of CRM in the current market conditions.

You can read the entiew interview on BMME Website.

The Interview

BM. How can effective CRM initiatives allow organisations to boost productivity, better serve customers and lower response times to customer inquiries?

Rajesh Hari Parsad. By ensuring that the CRM initiative is driven by business issues and not technological ones. CRM is a business problem first, a technological one second. It is critical to understand how and where customers interact with their company and how CRM technology can provide assistance in automating and expediting those interactions to the benefit of both the customer and business.

Once the business issues are resolved, selecting and implementing a CRM solution that fits the processes and procedures that support your CRM initiative is critical. In short, the technology should support the processes, not visa versa. By doing so, business are leveraging a CRM solution to meet their customer’s needs across channels and outlets that are unique to that business and/or industry, and in a fashion that customers expect and are more satisfied with.

BM. What would you say are the common mistakes that people make with their CRM strategies?

RHP. In addition to the mistakes mentioned above, end-user adoption is one of the most common reasons for CRM failures. Adopting solutions with a intuitive, simple-to-use user interface, in addition to training, is critical for success. Failure to achieve executive buy-in is another common mistake company’s make. Having C-level support for a CRM initiative provides leadership and motivation, provides support at the management level, helps to solidify and achieve goals, and drives high end-user buy-in.

BM. We are currently witnessing a significant global economic downturn. How can CRM help to attract and retain customers, as well as gain a competitive advantage in these tough times?

RHP. During economic downturns CRM initiatives need prioritisation. Deferring these projects can lead to reduced customer satisfaction or acquisitions. Reducing customer churn is critical, since most research points to the fact that customer acquisition costs significantly more than retention.

CRM can be leveraged to track and maintain current relationships, identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and identify disgruntled customers for further service. In addition, analytics and reporting can give managers insight into different customer segments during a recession that can lead to increased sales and marketing opportunities.

Choosing a CRM platform that supports both your tactical and strategic requirements is essential to ensure its longevity. Web 2.0’s collaborative and viral nature should be exploited to extend the lifespan and effectiveness of your campaigns, especially when marketing budgets are dwindling.

BM. Could you explain about a recent CRM solution that you implemented for a client that you are particularly proud of?

RHP. Neotel is a converged telecommunications provider offering wireless and wire-line services across South Africa. SugarCRM Enterprise is used across the consumer and SME verticals within the organisation for sales force automation, customer support and order entry. Tied into a middleware and workflow engine, the solution provides a comprehensive mechanism to automate key areas of order entry, management and fulfillment, which is often complex and disparate in most telecommunications companies.

A unique trait of this solution is one that many telecommunications companies strive for. There is a single, profile driven business interface: SugarCRM. This simplifies internal training and the rollout into new sales channels. Every customer interaction is always captured and tracked in one place, which is unusual in a telecommunications company, where unstructured customer information is spread across many applications. Another feature enables business users to quickly build reports using a graphical interface to measure KPI’s or gather statistics.