Author Archives: John Appleby

Sony Walkman W – Klout Perks Review

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So I got my Sony Walkman W in the mail on Thursday – read my previous blog about how Klout Perks sent one to me for free.

Their competition for the best social media content ended the day after, on Friday, so I guess I missed out on that! I haven’t had much time to try them out, but here’s my analysis so far:

Sony Walkman W

 

To set the scene – I’m a runner, and I do hate running with headphones – the wires get in the way, they fall out the whole time and it’s just not very liberating. So I have an open mind here. This is the Sony Walkman W Meb Keflezighi model, who obviously likes Orange.

Good – It’s much more compatible than I had expected

So it doesn’t sync with iTunes, but I can get music on relatively easily. I create Genius Playlists on my iPhone, download them on my Mac (I use iTunes cloud so quite often the music isn’t on my Mac) and then I drag the downloaded content from iTunes onto the Sony Walkman, which appears as a USB disk on my Mac.

So in 5 minutes or so I have 100 songs on it, which is enough for a workout. Admittedly I do like the flexibility of iTunes Match on my iPhone, where I can dial in a Genius playlist for the exact mood I’m in, but I usually listen to the same stuff anyhow.

Good – Fit

The fit is much better than the device looks it ought to be, and not having cables everywhere is a big win. I focus more on running and less on not getting tangled, which is more fun.

Good – Sound Quality

It’s not at the top of my list for workout headphones, but the sound quality is surprisingly good. Better, I’d say, than Apple’s iPhone 5 headphones. Not as good as a high-end Sennheiser or Shure headphone, but I can’t say I really care when I’m pounding the pavement. Bass is pretty awesome, which is a really nice in a workout headphone, and mid-ranges and trebles have plenty of detail.

Good/Bad – Noise Canceling

These headphones give you a really surprising amount of noise canceling effect. It does mean that if you’re on the open road, you need to make sure you pay extra attention because you may not hear cars and cyclists around you.

Good/Bad – Controls

The controls are on the bottom of the ear-pads and take some getting used to because you have to navigate them by touch and they are close together. The Sony Lady barks commands at you like “Shuffle Play” in a sci-fi style, which is pretty funny. As you use the device, they become just fine but they’re fiddly on first attempt.

Not so Good – Music Choice

You can’t really choose what you listen to. Sony say you can drag and drop your iTunes playlists but I can’t get it to work.

Not so Good – You look like Cheburashka

Need I say more? I tried it in the office and felt like a nerd. This headwear is acceptable only for work-outs!

Cheburashka

2) It’s not… integrated

I love the idea of sports headphones, but syncing music is sooooo last decade. I mean check out the Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor. That thing syncs with your iPhone via Bluetooth and takes a full ECG to your favorite Fitness App.

The Jabra Sport looks like it might be a very nice companion to a workout, as an alternative.

Conclusions

If Sony made a version of this that was a bit smaller on the ears, fitted slightly more comfortably, and worked with Bluetooth rather than using old-school USB technology, I think it would be way cooler.

Sony have done a great job of the Walkman W, and if you want a set of USB headphones without the wires, then these guys are just what you need.

It looks like they are positioning them against the iPod Shuffle and since I have one of those too, I’d say the Walkman W definitely wins.

Sony Walkman W – Klout Perks – first thoughts

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I was sat having a quiet haircut yesterday, responding to a few emails on my iPhone when up popped a notification from Klout:

You have a new perk from Sony, a free Walkman etc. etc.

In this society the initial reaction is 1) I’m being scammed 2) How did my phone get hacked 3) What’s the catch. As it turns out, Sony really is giving Sony Walkman W (is it Walkmans or Walkmen???) away to “5,000 active lifestyle influencers“. I’m feeling slightly pleased with myself that some social media marketing engine thinks I have an active lifestyle.

 

I’m actually a huge fan of the Walkman brand too. I’ve owned at least 6 of them, from the original 1980s tape, to a huge yellow waterproof model, to a MiniDisc one, two of the iconic Walkmans: the Professional WM-D6C and the Walkman WM-EX1HG (both of which I still have).

Sony WM-EX1HG

The last Walkman I owned was one of the early MP3 models in about 2000, called the Walkman NW-MS7, and there my love of Sony Walkman died. The software interface was painful, the proprietary MemorySticks were small and expensive (and fitted just one album at a time, so you carried around a bunch) and the battery life sucked.

Soon after this, I bought a generation 1 Apple iPod and my life was changed forever. I have owned probably 15 Apple devices in the meantime from the iPod classic to the Nano, Mini, Shuffle and iPhone. Yes, I’ve been accused of being an Apple Fanboy.

And that’s just it: my current work-out music player is my Apple iPhone 5. Why? Well it’s really the only device I have. I use Apple’s iTunes Match service to stream any of 100GB of songs to my ears, using the Genius product to create a personalized playlist depending on my mood.

Can a Sony Walkman W compete with Apple?

There are some drawbacks to the iPhone 5 and the major one is that even with the new headphones, which are pretty awesome, the headphones get in the way whilst working out, especially whilst running.

Sony Walkman W

And the Sony Walkman W sounds pretty interesting in that respect: there are no wires, so it sits on your ears and gets out the way of your work-out.

That said, it looks to be limited to a meagre 2GB of music, and I hope the jukebox software got better in the last 10 years. Actually I’m kinda hoping it will just work with iTunes and my existing playlists, but something tells me that is wishful thinking. Who knows how it will function with DRM and my existing MP3 collection? Will I feel like I look stupid in orange headphones?

According to the product page it should actually do all that and more. Interesting. Some reviews suggest the earphones come out when running, but I’ll judge that myself.

The fine line between genius and insanity

And that’s just it – is this social media marketing genius, or madness? Sony is offering the 5 most influential content writers an upgrade to the new waterproof version of the Sony Walkman W. It’s a gutsy move, because if the product sucks, they have 5000 whiney bloggers complaining about it and the backlash could be severe.

It’s especially a gutsy move because they seem to be shifting 5000 of the old product line which is being replaced by a better model. Is this because it doesn’t sell and they have a ton of them in the warehouse gathering dust, or because it’s a fantastic product and they believe in it?

I’ll let you know when it arrives.

Altruism is an illusion that will get you killed

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I’ve been pondering this for the last few days, and Mark Finnern brought it up at the SAP Mentor Monday Webinar today, so it seemed time to put pen to paper. Last month I wrote a blog post entitled “Top 5 Database Platforms – the Developer Experience Exposed.” The subject isn’t important for the purposes of this blog.

It was inspired by an unnamed source, which led me to do a detailed analysis. I wrote it because I thought that a wake-up call would serve the common good, and allow a positive discourse. It would give some people the air cover they needed to make change.

What I didn’t realize at the time was two things: first, that it would go viral, with 12k views in 3 days, not helped by a competitor picking up on the article, and riffing it. Second, it would also have a negative backlash. Some people felt betrayed, some felt I used deliberately over-emotive language some felt I was naïve in my comparison and others felt I’d got it wrong. Some felt that I’d been used and someone loaded a gun and put it in my hand.

Is it possible to have an independent voice?

Well in short of course not: we all have a bias.

But the irony of this situation is that it was the critical voice that I held within the SAP community that let me to have discourse, which led to relationships and eventually close friendships.

The irony is that once you have close friendships, your voice is compromised and this consequently diminishes your value to the community.

Altruism is an illusion

In writing this blog I’ve spent time pondering the nature and illusory nature of altruism. Nietzsche describes this in his book Beyond Good and Evil, where he points out that the strong do not delude themselves to believe that altruistic behavior can be taken at face value.

Instead there is usually a reason for our behavior – to further our own means, to feel good or for pride, or power. Even the TV show Friends gets in on the action with psychological egoism, or “there is no unselfish good deed”.

What should we do?

I don’t know. As someone told me the next day, altruism will get you killed. So in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, this one was written for me.

The true cost of our caffeine addiction and why Nespresso is not the answer

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Like 54% of the public in the US, I have a coffee addiction, and we have been slowly brainwashed to spending more and more on our daily Java intake in the last 10 years. Take some of these facts:

I don’t know about you, but I consume my coffee in a bunch of places, from coffee shops like Starbucks, to restaurants after dinner and also at home. I started to wonder how much this addiction costs me.

In a conversation with friend Nick Brown last week, we discussed the folly of buying expensive Starbucks lattes at $4 a cup every day. Even if you drink just one of these you’re incurring a $1000 a year habit. And with 2% milk, it will cost you 190 calories a go.

Nick explained that he had gone the Nestlé Nespresso route, which costs just $0.60 a capsule, thereby saving a large amount of money. The thing is, I’m not so sure it does. Nestlé and others sell premium coffee machines – typically costing about $200 or more. So let’s do the math.

I have a similar machine that brews Keurig K-Cups. I like Green Mountain’s Nantucket blend coffee, which costs $16.49 for 24 capsules – that’s $0.69 a shot. There are ways of getting this down to about $0.55 a shot (print a 20% off coupon and go to Bed Bath and Beyond for example) but let’s face it, it’s a hassle. What’s more, I go through an average of 5 of these a day (some decaffeinated, you will be glad to hear). That’s a $1200 a year habit.

What’s interesting is that Nantucket Blend costs $9.49 for a 12oz bag of beans. It’s tricky to make comparisons here, but a typical single shot of espresso weighs about 7g, so a 12oz (340g) bag of coffee can make 48 shots of coffee. This weighs in at about $0.20 a shot. But to do this, I’d have to buy an espresso machine. I had a Gaggia Classic some time back and it’s rusting in a cupboard. Too much mess, too much hassle.

What are we supposed to do?

The worst thing is that even if you have one of these single-cup machines like Nespresso or K-cup, it won’t stop you from spending in Starbucks. It’s a social thing, and I find myself in a coffee shop with a colleague, friend or business associate several times a week – spending at least $10 a week on average, or $500 a year, in addition to what you spend at home.

The only other alternative is an expensive Super Automatic machine – costing $699 or more for something like the Jura ENA 4 from the Seattle Coffee Company (I’m not affiliated with them, but I think owner Gail’s jacked-up-on-caffeine YouTube video channel is hilarious social media marketing). That’s an awful lot of capital outlay to consider. Let’s compare the costs over a 3 year period (a machine like this should last about 3 years before it explodes).

Starbucks Nespresso/K-Cup Super Automatic Espresso
Capital Outlay N/A $250 $700
Cost per cup $1.45 $0.69 $0.20
Cost over 3 years for 3 cups a day $4763 $2266 $657
Additional $10 weekly budget for coffee N/A $1500 $1500
Total annual cost over 3 years $4763 $4016 $2857

Shocked? I am – by two things. First, how much this addiction costs us. In the Starbucks case I took the cheapest coffee – if this was a $4 latte or cappuccino, this would have been much higher, and it is only for one person. In a family of two coffee addicts, it could be much worse.

Second, I’m shocked by the cost of the friendly Nespresso machine. You get into the espresso market at a lower cost, but the TCO is shocking.

The hidden cost of Nespresso

First, you don’t get as much coffee with Nespresso, so we’re not even comparing like-for-like. You actually only get 5 grams of ground coffee (28% less), so you (may) need 28% more, which brings the cost up to $4663 over 3 years (the same as going to Starbucks).

Second, $0.20 of the $0.60 is going to coffee, and the other $0.40 is going to make the plastic, and into Nestlé’s pocket. Since 42% of Nestlé is owned by the Swiss, most of the money is going out the country (yes, there is an irony that the Super Automatic machine I feature is also Swiss, I know).

Third, most of the Nespresso or K-Cup capsules go in landfill. Nestlé have sold 27 billion Nespresso capsules so far, which is a metric shitload of rubbish.

Fourth, the coffee is bad. I think Nespresso is better than K-Cup but even the best Keurig coffee is an unpleasant parody of a proper Italian coffee.

Think again

So if you were thinking to save money, like Nick, by buying a Nespresso machine, think again. If you think that spending $700+ on a coffee machine is ridiculous – do the maths based on your intake, because you may get a nasty shock.

And also take a look at the Coffee Review website, where you can search for local coffee roasters by location (just put it in the keywords). This means that if you purchase coffee from a local roaster at about $10-15 a pound, you will be feeding the local economy. That makes me feel good.

What’s more if you look at the International Coffee Organization cost of wholesale coffee, you will see that coffee has fallen in price over the last year to about $1.40 per pound, from highs of $2.73 in 2011. Did you see Starbucks drop its prices? Or Green Mountain K-Cups?

I didn’t think so.

SAP HANA: disrupting 3 markets, but does SAP have the stones to disrupt itself?

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I’ve been immersed in SAP HANA ever since I first heard about it, when Hasso Plattner talked about it in May of 2010. SAP HANA is an in-memory database that computes thousands of times faster than traditional database products.

There are two business lessons that I learnt in this time: first, amazing products are products that disrupt markets and create new markets. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPhone, for example. Second, as Steve Jobs said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”

What’s fascinating about SAP HANA is that it has the capability to disrupt four market categories. Even SAP themselves don’t see the full potential of HANA – and that’s fine, because the most disruptive technologies don’t always know their purpose in advance. Let’s get into the detail of these categories and what it means.

1) Database Market

This is the most obvious – SAP HANA is a database much like Oracle, but it runs entirely in-memory. This means it is 1000x faster for many operations and scales linearly. As SAP CTO Vishal Sikka told me this week – “If it runs in 100 seconds with 1 core, it can run in 1 second with 100 cores. That is the beauty of HANA”.

This matters because there are things you can’t do with Oracle that HANA can do. Cancer genome sequencing in seconds. Real-time monitoring of oil drills. Providing offers to customers at a till based on their basket and historic purchases.

In addition, SAP HANA can now be used as the database for all of SAP’s existing Business Suite install-base – 89,000 customers, and it’s a lift-and-shift simple process to move off Oracle. Once you’re on HANA, you can start to take advantage of things you couldn’t do before.

As of now, SAP is the fastest growing database vendor in the world, and overtook Teradata as #4 in June 2012. They booked $800m of database revenue in 2012 (see slide 37). SAP HANA is disrupting the database market.

2) Enterprise Hardware Market

Most Enterprise Software customers run software on expensive mainframe-style hardware. Individual boxes can run into the millions. So SAP built their HANA database on high-end commodity Intel x86 hardware. HANA will run on your laptop (if you have enough memory) and it’s supported by a number of the usual hardware vendors.

SAP expected to disrupt the hardware market, as well as the expensive enterprise storage market, which is based around selling outdated spinning chunks of metal. The market already moved onto solid-state storage and it’s known to be reliable (how many iPhones, iPads and Samsung Galaxies do you see?).

Unfortunately, the hardware vendors like IBM and HP saw SAP HANA as a means to sell yet more spinning disks, and so created hardware configurations with even more of them. SAP got annoyed and invested $50m in Violin Memory, a start-up that has a solution to this. No vendor has yet produced a SAP HANA configuration based on Violin, though I hear SAP bought a ton of them. [update, a colleague tells me that Fujitsu went live with a customer on a Violin appliance, but it's not officially certified hardware]

So this year I expect further disruption to the hardware market, perhaps with a new entry into the x64 Server market that knows how to do premium commodity. Lenovo, perhaps?

3) Services Market

One thing is for sure: SAP wouldn’t be where they are today without Accenture and IBM Services. Those guys pimped SAP R/3 in the 90s and made SAP the success that it is. In the process of this, they created an even bigger market for themselves – 6-8x larger than the Enterprise Software market.

This really annoys SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner and to quote SAP CTO Vishal Sikka: “we have this strong strategic need to not have the partners come in to implement HANA. If that happens, then we have failed, and Hasso told me that.”

I talked to Hasso about this last week and he was unrepentant: SAP have to solve the services market problem. I told him he had got it wrong and SAP as an SI was just the same as Accenture and IBM and the ratio is not decreasing for HANA projects. If SAP wants to disrupt the consulting market then it needs to do so by facilitation – like the Violin model.

Services disruption is of particular interest for me and I’m always pushing my consulting teams to innovate. I noticed that on a recent deal, the ratio was inverted: 10% Services, 30% Hardware and 60% Software. Of course, we will do more services work once the software is installed, but it gives you a flavor of how the services market might be disrupted, if we can scale our models.

Interestingly, SAP Global Head of Sales Rob Enslin just got put in charge of SAP Services, and he’s an ex SAP Basis consultant. I talked to him last week and he is changing the organization in ways that I believe will support this disruption.

Can SAP disrupt itself?

If you know anything about the Enterprise Software market, you are probably wondering why I missed the elephant in the room: The Cloud. I didn’t, I just left it until last. Here is SAP’s biggest challenge for 2013.

SAP HANA is sold in one of 3 ways. One, you can buy a runtime license for your Business Suite for 15% of your Software Application Value (total of what you paid SAP) per annum. Two, you can buy Enterprise licenses which are bought by the 64GB chunk of memory (minimum 128GB). Third, you can buy 60GB of HANA One on the AWS marketplace for $1 an hour (plus $2.50 an hour for hosting).

Now, Amazon are a very impressive company and they are creating bigger machines – 244GB systems were released last week. As of now, SAP haven’t announced if they will be supporting them and if so, what the cost will be.

However the problem is simple: HANA One doesn’t cannibalize on-premise sales, because you can’t buy 60GB of HANA from SAP on-premise. 120 and 240GB Amazon instances do, however, cannibalize the low-end of SAP HANA on-premise sales and this will have a negative impact on revenue perpetual license revenue.

But the fact is: the world is going cloud. As William Gibson said: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” – and whilst there are many companies who will run on-premise software for a very long time, companies as big as Pepsi are implementing cloud solutions (they just bought 300k Employee Central licenses from Success Factors).

My view is that in any case, providing a cloud subscription model for HANA can only be a good thing. It dramatically simplifies adoption and – at least for the medium term – there won’t be an option to do cloud HANA for large installations so customers will have to move on-premise at some later stage, and will probably then buy even more HANA. Moreover, Wall Street and thereby the shareholders put a higher value on recurring revenue (Workday is valued at P/S of 41x, whilst SAP is valued at 6x), which should help.

So as for me, there are two crucial questions here:

1) Does the SAP board have the stones to accept a short-term hit in revenue and move to the recurring revenue subscription model for HANA?

2) When will SAP enter the in-memory cloud market? For every $1 they take for HANA One, they are giving away $2.50 to Amazon for hosting. This is money left on the table.

2013 is shaping up to be a very interesting year.

10 tips for dealing with Immigration

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This one is for @NeilRaden, whose family member is having problems at UK Customs & Immigration in London. In my experience – and I’ve spent my fair share of time in immigration – there are a handful of things to do to make your life easier. Too late for Neil, perhaps…

1) Dress Smart

It doesn’t matter if you’re going through on a tourist visa to a one-off country, but if you are a frequent traveller or you have a working visa, then appearance matters. I happen to like to travel business-casual anyhow, and always wear a jacket. Don’t pre-dispose someone to judge you because you look sloppy. First impressions matter.

2) Drink coffee, not booze

Need I say more? It may be tempting to have some nerve-calming drinks on the flight, but you need your wits about you at immigration, especially after a long transatlantic or overnight flight when you will be tired. Have a cup of tea or coffee to wake you up.

3) Get prepared

If you turn up to the gate without your forms filled in, or filled in incorrectly, they will send you back to the end, and will judge you. You need to do everything you can to make the immigration officer’s life easier. He or she has enough hassle in a day. Turn up with your forms clearly and correctly filled in, and ask for help if you need it!

What’s more if you are coming on a stamped visa then bring documentation. You don’t have to slap it on the counter up front, but bring it all. Bring a letter from your company stating what you are doing. Bring a letter from your immigration lawyer if you have one. Memorize this information.

4) Wait your turn

So many times have I seen someone walk up to a counter without the immigration officer beckoning them – which often makes them really grumpy. Stand behind the line, wait your turn and they will beckon you.

5) Engage and be friendly

I always start by looking them in the eyes with “Good morning/afternoon/evening sir/madam, how are you today?’. Curtesy goes a long way. Usually, they smile and respond. All of these little things make a difference and predispose a human being towards you.

6) Remember that any border control officer can deny your entry to the country

I took this from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed and it is always important to keep in the back of your mind. It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong – they have the power to deny you or allow you in. Your behavior will control their discretion if there is a grey area. I have had situations where an immigration officer has said “I will let you in this time, but next time you need to do X”.

7) Always answer the question simply, clearly and do not offer excess information

When they ask you a question: “Why are you coming to this country”, answer it with the minimum information. “I’m going to the following conference”. Be specific, clear and brief. Whatever you do, don’t offer them your life story. They want you to go through as fast as possible too and if they need more information, they will ask for it.

8) Never, ever, think you are an immigration expert

Especially if you are coming in on a business visa, be very careful when you are asked the question “Why are you coming in on this visa?”. The answer is: I am doing X (the truth!) for my company, and this is the visa they applied for on my behalf.

9) If they send you to secondary inspection, smile and move on

If you travel a lot, you will go into secondary inspection. The primary officers will refer anything they are unsure about. If you’re not doing anything wrong, don’t worry about it. It’s a process and it can take anything from 30 minutes to 5 hours or more, depending on how busy they are. If someone is picking you up, text them when you land and let them know you are going into immigration. Let them know that you will text them when you are out and not to worry.

10) Be mindful of what is on your cellphone/laptop/social media/luggage

If you go to secondary inspection then never get your cellphone out. It’s forbidden in most countries and they hate it. But also be mindful that they may confiscate your cellphone or laptop and read the contents. So be mindful of what you text and email – even jokingly. I’ve seen people get in big trouble over this.

I added social media and luggage, which I should have pointed out. Neil’s family member had posted “Living in XXX” on Facebook and had a utility bill. If you’re a non-immigrant, these are a fast-track to getting deported. It doesn’t matter what you believe your intentions are, it matters what the immigration officer believes you intend to do.

11) Bonus tip: Never, ever, lie

I’ve spent my fair share of time in secondary inspections in various countries and there is a pattern. Every time I’m sat there, I overhear the same conversation. It’s someone who is lying about their travel and reasons for entering the country. Trust me – the immigration officers – especially the very experienced ones in secondary inspection – know their stuff.

They can see your travel history in most cases. They know everything you told them in the past. And they see people like you every day. So don’t insult them by lying or pretending you don’t speak their language when you do. They get really angry and usually deport those people.

Final Words

I hope this helps someone, some time. What are your tips?

 

The beginning of Apple’s slow demise has started

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Let’s be clear: I’m a big Apple fan. I have been since I was a teenager and I was first exposed to the Macintosh Plus. I’ve been enthralled by their focus on both design and functionality, sometimes without concern to profit, and of the tale of a company that almost went bust, a few times – and then turned into the most valuable company in the world.

But what goes up must come down and I believe that 2012 signaled the beginning of the end for Apple. This won’t happen for some time yet, because they are producing by far the best consumer electronics in the world. But here’s 5 reasons – and countermeasures.

Apple products are just too good.

This sounds like a stupid thing to say, but I own an iPhone 5, iPad 3 and MacBook Pro and they are (almost) the only consumer electronics I use. Each of these devices is almost perfect. Each device is lighter, faster, has better screens and longer battery life than its predecessor.

I love the longer screen on the iPhone 5, the Retina display of all devices and the fact that Apple (finally) ditched the DVD drive. They work seamlessly together and I never leave home with a charger when I go out for the day. They almost never crash.

But with this operational perfection comes a lack of innovation and a lack of soul. I don’t care what the next new thing is, and I’m not sure that it’s NFC, but Apple should be creating it. Apple should be edgy and shouldn’t be afraid to have a product which isn’t perfect. Innovation means taking risks and means cannibalizing your own market.

Proliferation of product lines

I count 4 MacBook Airs, 8 MacBook Pros, 3 Mac Minis, 4 iMacs, 3 Mac Pros, 8 iPod Shuffles, 8 iPod nanos, 4 old iPod touches, 12 new iPod touches, 2 iPod classics, 2 iPhone 4s, 2 iPhone 4Ss, 6 iPhone 5s, 2 iPad 2s, 6 iPad Retinas and 6 iPad Minis. That’s a total of 80 models! And that’s not counting accessories and applications.

Let’s take a simple example of why this doesn’t make sense. In the iPhone5, the cost of 16GB is $10, 32GB is $20 and 64GB is $40. In addition, the cost of an iPhone 4/4S/5 is barely any different. So Apple has a total of 10 models with barely any variance in cost, and a huge variance in retail price.

This might be good for Apple’s coffers but it’s not good for customers. When Jobs came back to Apple he drew a matrix of 4 machines: one desktop, one laptop. One home, one professional. Apple should slash and simplify product lines and get back to where it came from.

Reliance on two aging Operating Systems – OS X and iOS

Apple just put user experience under Jony Ive, who has been charged with creating a unified experience between desktop and mobile systems. The benefit is clear and it’s great in many ways. With each release, the laptop, tablet and phone experience becomes more similar and more intuitive.

The problem is simple: Microsoft, in particular, has created a system which operates how people think, in Windows Phone 8. The live tiles and stream-of-consciousness feeling of Microsoft’s system is the way of the future, and Google’s Android has mimicked this with Google Now.

But Apple, especially with iOS, has a system which creates walled gardens of apps, which you have to switch between. Integration between apps is minimal and you have a sense of being in a hallway with rooms, rather than a stream of consciousness.

Based on the design of iOS and OS X, Apple will never (in my estimation) ever solve this. Instead, they should now start writing the replacement to these two systems, to be released in 5 years. Don’t wait until you’re Windows ME before you create real change.

To innovate you must look out, not in

I don’t believe Apple has really innovated in the last 3 years. Ever since the released of the iPad in 2010, Apple has been obsessively making what it has better. As I said before, this has turned into the best and most polished consumer products ever made.

But the iPad Mini is a horrible example of what happens when you start innovating based on your competitors. It is a defensive play against Google’s superior Nexus 7, and horrible. It’s an iPad 2 in a smaller case, and Apple is capable of so much more, with its purchasing power. I hope they throw it out and start again.

And it is the case with everything they released this year, down to the beautiful new iMac with its impossibly thin edge. Beautiful, better, but not innovative. Apple may prove me wrong by reinventing a new market like the consumption of media, and the Apple TV would be a good place to start.

Charity begins at home

America’s Fiscal Cliff has gained huge global attention, and I believe it will cause a change in taxpayers behavior over the next few years. There will be an understanding that outsourcing manufacturing to other countries (usually China, in Apple’s case) is outsourcing jobs that could be performed in the local market.

When you combine the need to reduce government spending, an increased national debt and Apple’s $41bn profit in fiscal year 2012, I believe that consumers will start to mount pressure to move jobs back into the USA.

There is a sense that Tim Cook knows this already, as he is moving iMac production back to the USA - which is no doubt an attempt to put his toe in the water. There is a sense that with the inflation rates in China, combined with worker productivity, this may be a great plan all around.

Final Words

You may notice that I didn’t moan about the Apple Maps debacle. Such mistakes are human and Apple Maps gets better each day. I’m sure that Tim Cook is already all over creating rich apps that can compete with the quality of Google’s content.

What Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and Jony Ive have done with Apple is amazing, but there are warning signals that Apple has become an amazing company for supply chain and operations rather than a true innovator. And if that is the case, they will fall to the same fate befell that Nokia and Motorola. Good luck Apple!

Disrupting the IT Services market: Consultancy 2.0

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Some time ago I had dinner with SAP co-CEO Jim Snabe. Jim is a bright and talented individual and one of the topics we got into was the setting of unreasonable boundary conditions as a mechanism to get the best out of employees. The principle is that by asking for the unreasonable, you will cause people to come up with more creative, better solutions to problems. I was instantly fascinated.

However, it wasn’t until a late phone call with friend and mentor John Niland of VCO Global some weeks ago, that my thoughts started to finally mature on this. We discussed the topic of motivating contributors, and how you get the best out of those people who work for you.

I told Niland that my experience was that the best way to get more out of great employees is to ask more of them. As humans, we tend to be limited by what we believe is possible and this in turn restricts us. In an interesting twist, contributors are actually happiest, when pushed in this way. So I came up with an idea to test this theory:

The SI Smackdown

We took what would normally a 3-4 week SAP HANA technology project and I told a team of two that they had 2 days to complete it. Everyone thought it was crazy. To make it crazier, we orchestrated it to happen live, on a conference room floor, in front of 8000 people. And just to make it interesting, we used two Systems Integrators and turned it into a competition. Oh, and we used a real customer, Consumer Products giant ConAgra, with real data.

Because unreasonable boundary conditions – think back to the conversation with Snabe – were set, the SI Smackdown competitors found a way to make it happen. And then they blew my wildest expectations out the window by not just doing what was asked, but so much more. They demonstrated not just a better IT system running on SAP HANA, but radical ways to show ConAgra how they could change the was they run their business.

The thing that really interested me about this most was that the two participants from my team, once they had a few days off after the conference, were demanding when they could do it again. It turns out that they loved it.

Extreme Consultancy

And so it happened a few weeks ago that I was in a situation. We had committed to a UK conference to show a customer demo and we got the data 7 days before the conference to build the demo with. Worse, I had no resources that week spare to work on it and we had a good portion of our team out at another conference that week.

So, I wondered what would happen if we applied the two concepts above at the same time. Set unreasonable boundary conditions, and ask even more of our employees. So, I designed (OK… handwaved) a really cool solution based on the customer data, using technology that wasn’t available yet and would only be released the day before the conference. Note once again the importance of making the boundaries unreasonable.

Then, I emailed 5 very talented individuals, each of whom would bring an invaluable skill to the table, and asked them if they would be prepared to do the project in their spare time before the conference. Every one of them replied within an hour and agreed. They created the most amazing solution that showed how the customer, one of the largest Pharmaceutical companies in the world, how they could revolutionise their Integrated Business Planning process. Wow.

Managing Contributors

It’s worth jumping back to my conversation with Niland, because my second assertion is that if you want to get more out of your contributors then – I believe – you have to observe an interesting set of rules, which are even more important when setting unreasonable boundaries:

First, there has to be a purpose and you have to explain it. This becomes a shared vision for the contributors, who usually deeply care about actually making a difference. In both cases above, there was a customer scenario and a reason for creating the technology solution. Ensure there are unreasonable boundary conditions. If they think it’s possible, it won’t motivate them.

Second, you have to motivate them by providing them with what they want – and here’s a hint – it’s never about money. In both cases above, they got access to cool technology – a $400k appliance, plus access to software that wasn’t readily available and the request to do something that had never been done before. Be very mindful here because different things motivate different types of contributor.

Third, you have to give them other great contributors to work with, and clear the decks. Both by getting out the way yourself, but also by making sure they have access to get assistance when they need it – assistance from people they respect. Listen to what they need and provide for them.

Fourth, you have to look after their wellbeing because they will not. When you set unreasonable boundary conditions, I’ve often observed that contributors fail to manage their own wellbeing. Ensure they take a break when they need it, and they get days off after a high-pressure stint. But, don’t be confused into thinking that wellbeing is about a 37.5 hour week – that’s Eurobullshit. Happy people can work long hours. Stories of early Apple suggest 90 hour weeks were a regular occurrence and they were some of the most motivated workers I have ever read about.

Does the consultancy market need disrupting?

One of the things I lay in bed thinking about at night is the Consultancy business model. It was borne out of the large business process change and globalization models of the 70s and 80s and it made a lot of people at Accenture and IBM very rich, earning $2000 a day for poorly trained graduates. This got better after the markets crashed in 1999 and again after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the sorts of customers I deal with are very sensitive to getting value out of consulting projects. Many customers will now opt for fixed-price contracts, which is the right way to do consulting engagements.

But I still agonise every time I get a call saying “we need your help, XXX consultancy quoted this price to do this work and it’s way more than the customer will pay” – and I get a few of those every week. Surely there is a better way? Surely we don’t need 18 month projects that cripple business change and the ability to be agile? We have worked on ways – templates, agile methodologies and amazing people – to be cheaper, better and faster than our competitors but I don’t believe it is enough.

So, I’ve been working with friend and SAP Board Member Vishal Sikka, to try and challenge all of our assumptions about how we deliver consulting engagements (paradoxically, he helped me, by setting some unreasonable boundary conditions). Could it be that the consulting market is ready to be disrupted?

It’s cloudy out there

Cloud advocate Dennis Howlett often waxes that the solution is in the cloud, with companies like Salesforce and Workday offering much faster implementation times. This works great – even for integrated business processes, in the mid-market, but the processes that sit behind the Global 500 customers are so complex – with many languages, end-markets and integration points that if Workday and Salesforce do start to be able to offer a solution, it will probably be just as hard to implement as any other software product. And the consultancy gravy train will start afresh.

To add to this, there is no lever for Accenture or IBM to change – they have a lucrative model and while there is no alternative, they will continue to milk their cash cow. In most cases, I think the customers, particularly at the board level, are in any case not unhappy with the large consultancies and their business model.

Consultancy 2.0

So this is a call to action. Do you think Consultancy 2.0 needs to happen? Let me know your thoughts, publicly or in private. And if you work for a large consultancy, or if you are a board member of the sort of organisations I’m talking about and want to discuss this off the record, then let me know.

And equally, if you would like to help with this by co-innovating on a project together then let me know.

Thanks go to everyone I worked with on this, and particularly to Vishal, Jim, and John Niland for being the contributors and inspiration to this process and to Lloyd, Tristan, Anooj, Gary, DJ, Ollie and Brenton for being the contributors, unwitting guinea pigs and for creating unbelievably amazing solutions.

10 Tips on using the Apple iPad as your primary device

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I can be clumsy when overtired. And so it happened that I broke my laptop whilst travelling to a major conference, and couldn’t get it replaced for nearly 3 weeks. As it happens I then smashed the screen on my iPad, but that’s another story, and anyhow it carried on working.

For those 3 weeks, I had only my iPad as my primary computer. Here’s how I coped – and then ended up loving the iPad more than ever before.

1. Let go of trying to curate complex content

Question is – can you? With my job I often can for some periods of time, because content curation happens in fits and spurts. When a suitable powerpoint presentation is written, you can stick with it for some time.

2. Focus on Task Management and workflow

This was my next lesson – and there are some great software enablers for this on the iPad like OmniFocus. I love this because I can categorize and prioritize tasks – entering them as I think of them, and making sure I actually get things done. This is actually a huge boon for productivity.

I’ve also bought a bunch of apps – Keynote, Numbers and Pages to cover off displaying documents properly that others send me. GoodReader, which allows you to process ZIP files. And a bunch of free apps – Lync 2010, LinkedIn, Twitter, Skype, Facebook. I use most of these on a daily basis and they make a difference to productivity.

3. Buy an Apple Keyboard and an Apple Smart Cover

I’ve tried a bunch of iPad cases like the ones from ZAGG and Logitech, but they all SUCK. They are cut-size keyboards that cause you to compromise. Instead, buy a spare Apple Keyboard and carry it when you need to create content. Conveniently, the keyboard shortcuts also work.

For example, this blog is written on vacation, using the Apple Keyboard on my lap. I can type just as fast as on a desktop computer and I leave the keyboard in the hotel safe when I don’t need it.

4. Always carry the 10W Apple Charger

But only to your hotel room and never during the day. I charge the iPad every night, but never need to charge it during the day. That’s the beauty – on a tough day I get down to 10% battery but I’ve never run out. If you get desperate, you can always steal someone’s iPhone charger!

5. If you’re clumsy, look into AppleCare+

I think it’s only available in the USA so far – in the UK they were not familiar with it – but for $100 you get full phone support, plus accidental damage cover. If you drop, drown or destroy your iPad, Apple will provide you with a replacement on the spot, for a $50 co-pay. They’ll do this twice.

6. Use iCloud Backup

I got my iPad replaced just now after the cracked screen and it was an awesome experience. You back up the existing iPad using iCloud and then reset it. When you set up the new iPad you select “use existing iCloud backup” and it puts your iPad back just the way it was – apps, settings and data – including the latest versions of apps – in about 10 minutes. You can do it at the Apple Store when they replace your iPad. So convenient.

7. Focus on being in the present

That’s the great thing about the iPad – you don’t focus on the computer, you focus on the room. Gone are the days of meetings where people peer into their laptops like there’s pictures of naked ladies on them (get the Friends reference?). Instead, focus on discussing, sharing, creating and white-boarding ideas. Create something great together and then take it home to work on it.

8. Relax

Remember that you don’t need to do everything right now and this is a benefit. So long as you capture what it is you need to work on, you can do it later. But, to do this, you have to let go a bit – and relax.

9. Get focussed on your email activity

The iPad is an AWESOME email device because it discourages long and rambling email responses. Email is at its best when it is used as a mechanism to convey a shared opinion, to pass over a task to someone who is responsible and capable of doing it. It’s at its worst when used for rants, rambles, conversations and grenades – or to avoid a face to face conversation. Make sure you use your iPad as a force for good!

10. Enjoy

Sit back and enjoy what you get in return – no big bag to carry around, no chargers and cables. The simple and elegant tablet and how it simplifies your life. On my latest flight I carried a small slip that included the iPad, its charger, a few necessary documents and a toothbrush. No heavy wheelybag, and everything I needed for a week in technology. Not even a need to open an overhead bin.

Final Thoughts

I’m wondering as I write this whether the day of the desktop computer will return. More and more, my laptop is a tool that I use at home, to create content or do complex financial analysis. Provided it is in sync – and iCloud and Microsoft Exchange ensure that everything is – I just don’t need my laptop during an average day.

And I’d conclude that whilst I still need a desktop – the iPad has become my primary device.

The SAP HANA Career Guide – Part 5, SAP HANA BW Consultant

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Hopefully you have enjoyed the SAP HANA Career Guide so far. This piece focusses in on the SAP HANA BW Consultant. These guys are responsible for upgrading, migrating and HANA-enabling existing information on the SAP BW Enterprise Data Warehouse, as well as the creation of new Data Warehouse solutions.

Where do SAP HANA BW Consultants come from?

Well this one is easy! Any existing SAP BW Consultants – especially those who are more business focussed and don’t have the heavy hitting SQL skills that would make them great SAP HANA Performance Consultants – can make excellent SAP HANA BW Consultants.
This is largely because running SAP BW on HANA is broadly similar to running SAP BW on any other database. The modelling principles, business object principles and key considerations for things like stock or currency conversions remain exactly the same. So if you’re an existing SAP BW consultant then look no further.

What does HANA Thinking mean with BW on HANA?

There are a few important changes worth thinking about. The first are architectural. BW on HANA requires fewer objects – you lose Indexes, Aggregates and some of InfoCubes as well as being able to lose certain types of DSO and Master Data objects.

This means simplification of both the number of objects and with that, data loads and query management. And that brings with it a simplification of project design, methodology, reduction in load times and testing times. It completely changes the way that BW projects are run – reducing project timelines and increasing time-to-value.

How do I cross-train to SAP BW on HANA?

The SAP Customer Solutions Adoption team have produced an excellent course for experienced BW people called “LSA++ – THE LAYERED SCALABLE ARCHITECTURE FOR BW ON HANA“. As is the CSA style, this is designed for those who already have great BW skills and need the HANA specific stuff.

Here, they explain the difference in thinking between HANA and any other RDBMS, and what that means to architecture, design and the practicalities of Enterprise Data Warehouses.

What Classroom Education is available for SAP BW on HANA?

The classroom training is really limited in this example. SAP Education have a course called TZBWHA: SAP BW on SAP HANA - but it is twice the price and contains half the content of the SAP course. I understand that a new course is being written as we speak – hopefully it will contain the right content. In the meantime, I don’t recommend this course.

Where can I go to ask questions?

As before, here are two great places for this. First there are the SCN SAP HANA and in-Memory forums, where you can ask technical questions about all things SAP HANA. Response times are excellent.

Second, you can go to the Experience SAP HANA Discussion area, where there is a similar focus on assistance.