Tim Howell’s Weblog

Some forms of data are finally becoming a commodity, although it sometimes takes a while for the data to be made available in New Zealand. Now Google has made available street level maps of New Zealand which is useful for a couple of reasons: it further commoditises this form of data in this country, and the supporting APIs – and mashup hype overseas – now become applicable for New Zealand.

Zoomin, a Wellington-based mapping startup which has a local lead in this area, has responded in the only way they could, by saying this is a positive move for the industry. For the moment the Zoomin community is a differentiator, however it will really need to build on this, and form additional partnerships, to maintain its momentum. Things may even get more competitive within the next 12 months as it’s likely MSN will also compete in this area locally.

You can never say the IT industry is boring, and with the recent high levels of M&A activity, industry watchers have had their work cut out for them just trying to keep up, let alone analyse what the latest deals mean. This hasn’t stopped a bunch of people trying to imagine what the next few rounds of mergers could mean, and some of them just might happen. I recall a Business 2.0 article (sub required) on this topic a couple of years ago, and one of their predictions – that of Yahoo! buying Overture – happened barely as the magazine hit the shelves. As they say, be careful about what you imagine - it may just happen.

Much has been written about Web 2.0, mashups and how there are a whole slew of opportunities made available using technologies that facilitate accessing and combining data from multiple sources.

No doubt there are new opportunities, but any entrepreneur needs to be wary about what influence they have over data for which they may become totally dependent. Typically, a third party - particularly an unknown one - will have virtually no influence over this data.

And not only may they become dependent on the availability of this data, but also its quality. If the data sources aren’t accurate, the integrity of the service suffers. And if more than one service is inaccurate, then the problem is compounded exponentially. Nicholas Carr recently discussed data accuracy and its importance in a recent posting.

The value of any of these services is ultimately derived from the raw data that is provided by the core services. Mashups, while innovative, should not get recognized for being anything more than what they are: aggregators and re-publishers of base data over which they have limited control. Any attention (or valuation) these companies receive surely must recognize these dependencies and risks, not to mention the likelihood of what they’re doing to be copied.

No doubt it’s an exciting area, but whether there’s a business model outside of advertising revenue remains to be seen.

Last week it was announced that Quest Software acquired AfterMail. For those of us involved since the early days, this was great endorsement of our achievement of developing and selling a leading software product from New Zealand. As part of Quest we now have the resources and complementary capabilities required to make our product a market leader in this space.

This deal has received some coverage in the New Zealand press, including:

• AfterMail sells to go global (Stuff)
• AfterMail sold to Quest for US$45 million (Computerworld)
• Quest snaps up AfterMail in $65m deal (National Business Review)
• AfterMail sells to US firm, for up to $65m (New Zealand Herald)

For other thoughts on the acquisition and what it means to the team, refer to Rod’s and Nic’s blogs.

Numerous reasons for the lack of postings lately, so I won’t go into detail. The main reason was a simple one: I was away at CeBIT. Rod and I made the journey to Hannover in early March, and spent a week at this show, the world’s largest for ICT. Rod has posted several time about what was there, and I won’t attempt to republish what is old news, suffice to say a few less time-critical points:

• IT and the technology industry is exciting at the moment. CeBIT brought together devices of all shapes and sizes, and while success may elude many of them, the range of technology for both consumer and business use was exhilarating.
• Hardware is innovating faster than software. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, but I was surprised. Not only were there devices of all shapes and sizes, there were Windows devices of all shapes and sizes. What was lacking was decent software to drive these, despite the comparatively low cost of development (at least compared to developing a hardware device). Conversely, the opportunity for software developers is significant, and the field for innovative applications looks wide open.
• HDTV is real - literally and figuratively. While I had read about HDTV and its promise, to view HDTV in action was amazing. I’m not a DVD or video nut, but could see the dramatic improvements delivered by this new technology.

With the release of version 1.0 of Google Desktop, the activity in this space has calmed in recent weeks, however a recent Washington Post round-up of desktop tools created a bit of a stir.

In the article, the writer stated: “These programs also shouldn’t exist: Their capabilities should be built into the operating system, something both Microsoft and Apple are working on.”

Several watchers agreed with the assessment, believing this is core functionality which should be part of the operating system. While I can see where they’re coming from, I also believe that regardless of what Microsoft or Apple, or whoever else, may do, there is always room for innovation.

While it’s inevitable improved search capabilities will appear, the existing desktop search companies will hopefully be able to add value around the fringes, by either incrementally improving the search capabilities, or presenting search results in different ways.

With the ever expanding web, and the significant growth of personal hard drives and corporate stores, there is significant opportunity to search, retrieve and present information in new ways. Afterall, we’re no longer going to be dealing with tens, or hundreds or thousands of documents – in the years to come we’ll be dealing in the millions, billions and trillions, if we’re not already there…

Recently we’ve become hooked on Skype conference calling. Not so much because it’s cheap - which it is - but because it’s so easy. Simply see who’s online, or make sure they are, and then set up the call - no telco to contact, no numbers or PINs to call, and of course this is free. Couple this with Skype’s paid for services like SkypeOut and SkypeIn, and you can expand the contact base even further.

Currently there’s a maximum of four conference call participants, but this could well change…

As Rod reports, IBM is the latest vendor to revitalise the concept of ASPs, making a couple of acquisitions to progress its On Demand strategy. Having been in the ASP business, albeit with limited success, the potential to deliver functional applications over the web has always existed. With the innovation of companies such as Salesforce.com, and the availability of broadband, amongst other things, this potential is starting to be realised.
On paper, ASP-delivered applications should be of interest to smaller organisations which have limited financial and IT resources. The issue is not so much about how much funcitonality is available, but more to do with return on investment and control: organisations need to be assured the financial cost of paying on a month by month or “per click” basis makes sense in the long term, and they need the ability to take things in house or have access to the data, should they desire. The leading ASP, or software as a service, providers are doing this and now becoming genuine competitors to the traditional vendors.
Taking this concept to the next stage, and coupling the investment of IBM with the activities of Google, for example, and it won’t be too long before the desktop is dead.

In the past couple of years, it appears that all of a sudden the promise of the web has started to be realised. I’ve always been a believer in “interconnectedness” and that there is huge opportunities for devices, web sites, organisations and just about everything with an IP address to be connected in some way shape or form. Convergence forms part of this, with the melding, for example, of phone and PDA functions in a PDA, or television delivered over IP. The web inevitably has a role to play, and it was exciting to read about A9’s “Yellow Pages” which extends Amazon’s A9 search engine with a pseudo Yellow Pages with images – you can effectively “walk down” streets and look at shop frontages for several large US cities.

What’s also interesting is how the service was technically achieved, as reported by Business 2.0: “In short, Manber and co. (urged on by Jeff Bezos, who Manber says was “very involved”) strapped GPS-enabled digital video camera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, then drove them around the commercial areas of major US metropolitan areas, recording what then became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. A9 took more than 20 million images of 14 million+ businesses across ten cities (more are coming soon), then created a local search application they call Block View.”