Crezzas' Musings

Microsoft Has Two Words for Apple: "Opposable Thumbs"

There have probably been other two-word combinations directed at Cupertino from Redmond over the past few years, but these two may prove the most effective.

If you’ve bumped into this blog in the past you will know I am self-diagnosed Apple Fanboy, so the following is particularly difficult for me to write. Indeed, it feels rather like a confessional.

Scalable, the company I work for, developed a Mobile Device Management module for its Asset Vision product a while back, initially with support only for iOS; no surprise there. Recently we’ve had several of our customers ask us what our plans are for Windows 8 mobile devices, specifically Windows RT on Surface.

So it was with an overwhelming sense of betrayal that I found myself lurking outside the Microsoft store in Austin’s Domain shopping center, just before Christmas. Crossing the threshold was harder than it needed to be; was anyone watching? Would they keep it to themselves? I switched my iPhone off to ensure my whereabouts couldn’t be tracked.

My initial sensation on touching Surface was guilt. Was I really doing this after all these years of being a one-brand guy? Obviously that feeling was not going to provide me with any objective feedback, so I shook it off and started enjoying myself a bit more.

Once the adrenalin rush had subsided the cash was quickly handed over; there was no way I was leaving a credit card trail. The well-formed Surface box was put into my rucksack and I snuck out.

Almost two months later and my iPad has only been used when Surface has been out of battery power or there was a particular App I needed. This was never meant to happen. It was only supposed to be a bit of fun…..

So how did this happen? Surface is not without its faults. In true Microsoft style you are helpfully informed from time to time that a reboot is imminent because a life-threating situation has been avoided by a new patch recently applied. Copy and paste is a complete mystery. The touch sensitivity of the display is not as good as my iPad 3 and I am certain the programmers were drunk when the mail app was developed – although the setup is very Apple-esque.

Surface comes with an Office 2013 preview – but you drop into the desktop layer to use it; I didn’t get the keyboard cover, as I’m a cheapskate unless the products carry a fruit logo, so Office 2013 was utterly useless to me – trying to use the Office menus without a pointing device redefines what it means to fat-finger a document.

The Surface was not designed for my use-case. Like most people I use my iPad in bed, or occasionally as an alternative to twiddling my thumbs. It is a content consumption device, definitely not a content creation device (with the exception of the odd email). The inclusion of Office 2013, a kickstand to hold the screen at angle similar to that of a laptop, and the option of an external keyboard, suggests Microsoft sees Surface as a content creation device; a laptop alternative.  

However, there are two aspects to Surface that actually make it a more satisfying content consumption device than iPad. Firstly, the screen is 16 by 9. Apple themselves acknowledged the virtue of this aspect ratio with the iPhone 5. Watching movies on Surface is way better than on iPad; the screen size seems vast in comparison.

The second strength of Surface became apparent when I picked up my iPad after an extended period just using Surface. The Surface navigation options available by swiping your thumbs in from either bezel make it incredibly fast and intuitive to switch between apps. A quick swipe in from the left and you cycle through all the active apps, a double swipe and the whole list of apps appear as selectable thumbnails. Swiping from the right brings you the context-sensitive search and home options.  Since we are all afflicted with ADD to varying degrees, being able to cycle to exactly which app you need without the bizarre (it now seems bizarre anyway) double-click of the home button, seems so much more sensible. The way Surface exploits opposable thumbs to switch between apps makes iOS feel old.

So would I swap my iPad for Surface if only allowed a single tablet? Heck no!!

App availability is not the problem, as that will be solved in time and, with a few exceptions, the most notable of which IMHO are Flipboard and Zite, you can get what you need in Microsoft’s App Store. The bigger problem for me is Apple’s ecosystem. iCloud, iTunes Match, Movies in iCloud, home automation, the list goes on. None of my stuff will work with Surface.

Unlike Android devices that seem to be quite derivative, Microsoft now appears to be thinking differently; quite an achievement for a company weighed down with such legacy obligations.

Although the complete Surface RT package is a long way from perfect, in a landscape full of barely distinguishable options, the Windows touch UI stands out as truly innovative.  

Apple Thinking Differently About Software Asset Management

With a well-executed press-embargo for 14 days, Apple announced to OS/X 10.8 Mountain Lion last week. 

Mountain Lion inevitably signals more convergence between OS/X and iOS. But it also introduces some features that are remarkably innovative in areas that are much closer to home for us Software Asset Management companies. Chief among these innovations is the way it offers the tantalizing prospect of closing the loop between software entitlement, allocation and inventory.

Matching inventory to allocation and entitlement has always been the holy grail of software asset management. “Inventory” is a technical challenge solved by ever-increasing sophistication in software discovery and recognition, while “allocation” and “entitlement” are process and data integration driven. Entitlement management involves getting procurement data and other proofs of entitlement from a variety of sources and normalizing them in ways that yield a valid license position.

 

The complicating factor is the disconnect between software purchasing and software deployment in traditional environments. The result is that the link between the purchase event and the software itself is not only broken, in fact it was never established in the first place.

 

Mountain Lion seems to have a feature that enables a barcode to be read at the endpoint, which unlocks the delivery of software package described in the barcode – the deployment being completed by the Mac App Store.  With Enterprise App Stores and Volume Purchase Programs already possible in the Apple universe, it does not seem too much of leap to imagine Software Asset Management in the OS/X world working in almost the opposite direction to the way it works in the Windows world. Specifically, software cannot be installed until a proof of entitlement has been allocated to the endpoint itself, with the installation being driven by the presence of the valid entitlement at the endpoint.

If this mechanism catches on the link between the purchase event and the software installation is preserved. Of course this will not address those licensing issues, which are becoming way more prevalent, where nothing is installed at the endpoint.

Does SaaS Remove the need for SAM?

“Why do we need to manage software assets when we use SaaS? We have nothing to install?” This question, or some derivative, is heard with increasing frequency among Scalable’s prospects and customers.  It’s a fair question.  It reflects, at once, a fundamental understanding of SaaS and a misunderstanding about the real benefits of Software Asset Management. (Of course it may also be a reflection of the capabilities first generation SAM tools).

There is no denying that SaaS eliminates some of the issues associated with managing ones compliance with agreements. However, if you are thinking you no longer need to worry about the use of software licenses in excess of the metrics defined in the agreements then read on.

The positive change for software asset management moving from a pre to post SaaS world is the software audit. SaaS eliminates the requirement for a forensic analysis of software use by an auditor commissioned by a software vendor. You’ll not be receiving those letters, which announce that in 30 days time an auditor will show up and expect unfettered access to your software inventory tools; in the world of SaaS the vendor knows exactly what you are consuming at all times. 

Another key difference is SaaS is much easier to provision than traditional on-premise software. Notwithstanding the kind of ad-hoc sharing of installation files that typically leads to uncontrolled software proliferation, it is actually quite hard for a company to have on-premise software spread beneath the SAM radar. Change management, software deployment systems, policy management and other systems have evolved to alert companies to such situations as the license metrics for on-premise software are quite easier to monitor.

In SaaS implementations, an administrator can easily add users without any trace of the additional license consumption being visible outside of the SaaS environment itself. However, this simple case, which I am sure many of you will rightly say you can control by other means, is just the tip of the iceberg.  We have seen license metrics for SaaS tools as diverse as: company division definitions in accounting systems; lead counts in marketing systems; customer logins in support portals; sub-function enablement; back-end database sizes and much more.  Pretty much all of these metrics can be exceeded without any evidence appearing outside of the SaaS system, and in many cases without a customer employee explicitly enabling anything. When coupled with the fact that many (but not all) SaaS environments do nothing to proactively alert you to the fact you have exceeded any limits, or stop you doing it, you have a recipe for breaching licensing agreements that far exceeds that of traditional on-premise software. However, the breach is a ‘soft’ breach insofar as it is usually catered for within the terms of the agreements. SaaS vendors will helpfully provide language that details exactly what you will be paying in the event you do exceed the initial terms of the agreement. Needlessly to say these ‘penalties’ are not far short of the kind of penalties customers find themselves on the end of in traditional on-premise software audits.

The net of this scenario is that Software Asset Management in the world of SaaS is less about being prepared for an audit, and more about ensuring and monitoring the consumption of the various license metrics for the SaaS tools in use. To monitor these metrics requires SaaS-environment specific technology as, other than simple user account counting, few seem to employ the same models; and certainly each SaaS implementation maintains such information in a unique way.

In summary rather than SaaS tools removing the need for Software Asset Management, they have actually made the whole discipline way more important in terms of cost-management and way more complex in terms of monitoring license consumption.

Mac everywhere at #sxsw

I just walked through the Hilton Hotel next to the SXSW convention center. It was packed. It would be a depressing sight for #hp and #dell executives; virtually everyone that was on a laptop was using a Mac. I'm wondering if it's now fashionable to use a Windows machine - you're certainly not thinking different anymore by using a Mac

OnLive Links iPad Users to MS Office, but With Potential Licensing Risks

This is the rather visible tip of the iceberg. Internal use CALs for Sharepoint, Exchange etc are likely to come under just as much scrutiny as tablets become a more mainstream desktop alternative within organizations.

Here's the original Gartner blog post...

On 22 February 2012, OnLive announced the release of a new consumer version of OnLive Desktop, a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offering. For $4.99 per user per month, OnLive Desktop Plus gives users access to a virtual Windows desktop running Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer (IE) 9 with Flash and PDF support.

via www.gartner.com

Continuous Builds - A Faint Whiff of Corporate Resistance

We've been experiementing with continuous build models and have just moved to a weekly build of our production systems to coincide with the launch of our community edition. Over the last couple of months, we've had an increasing number of discussions about production implementations with our enterprise customers. During those discussions the frequency of our updates, even though it's SaaS offering, appears to be a cause of concern. It seems the long arm of change control now wants to extend to SaaS, and the concept of something changing weekly is too much. Interested if any other vendors of SaaS for enterprise customer have heard something similar, and if so the best way to deal with it.

Veto for Democracy

What did David Cameron veto last week? At first blush he achieved very little for the UK. The EU can continue to impose financial regulation on the City of London under Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) and, to the extent the UK continues to honor the Lisbon Constitution Treaty the UK will just have to just suck it up.

The more I read around this subject the more it seems to me that Cameron was aiming for a far grander objective than simply protecting the interests of Britain’s largest single contributor to GDP; in short the veto last Friday was a vote for democracy. Of course the recent rebellion over an in/out referendum by about a third of his parliamentary party may have encouraged a more robust position at the summit.

The last 3 months have seen an unprecedented erosion of sovereignty throughout the Eurozone (not just the periphery).  At no point during these changes have the citizens of these countries been given a chance to decide whether they agree; the whiff of a plebiscite in Greece was brazenly crushed with its architect replaced by a Brussels appointee within days.  Even Teflon Berlosconi was unable to survive the desire of the EU to assert its control over the citizens of a sovereign state.  Sarkozy lays the blame squarely at the door of the Anglo Saxon bond vigilantes. However he neglects to mention that it was his country that first breached the 1997 European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) And, in a portent for democracy, France managed to sidestep the democratically approved sanctions that should have been visited upon them; what’s good for the goose as they say.

If Cameron hadn’t vetoed the Treaty amendments proposed last Friday citizens of 27 nations would have involuntarily surrendered the ability to remove by democratic means the arbiters of their nations fiscal policy. It would have turned Europe into the largest dictatorship west of the Ganges. Thanks to David Cameron, the leaders of these nations will now have to face their individual electorates as intergovernmental treaties outside of the existing EU institutions cannot simply be adopted without mandate; however given recent events don’t be surprised it the leaders try.

Steve Jobs

The tweets, the posts, the conversations; the sense of loss has come as more of shock than the loss itself to almost everyone.

Why do so many folks feel so bad because a Silicon Valley CEO has died? On a personal level I am really struggling with it. I find myself staring at the image on the Apple website, choking back the emotion. I know I am not the only one. I have never met Steve Jobs. So why is this so troubling?

As a Brit I saw a similar reaction when Princess Di died in 1997, and there were shades of it when Jackson went a few years back. However, the Princess Di analogy bears closer examination, as Jackson was way past his best when he shuffled off this mortal coil; not to mention the fact that his star had been dimmed for other well-noted reasons. Princess Di was at the peak of her celebrity; whatever your views are on that celebrity.  Steve Jobs was also at the very peak of his contribution to the world.  What makes its worse is that unlike Princess Di, whose contributions to the world were, if we are being generous, rather irrelevant to most people, Jobs’ team at Apple had genuinely changed the lives of a large number of people on the planet. And, as the back channels are increasingly reporting, Jobs really was the catalyst, the muse, the filter, and the ultimate arbiter. His contribution was disproportionate.  It really goes without saying that he was far from just the front man.

We all know folks that have not bought into the Apple religion, but no one can credibly dispute that there is no brand that generates such fierce adulation. The products are beautiful, profoundly useful and work effortlessly. And in the case of the iPod, iPhone and iPad (particularly the last two – and their imitators) have had a dramatic impact on people’s lives.

Every generation witnesses more profound technological change than the prior. With few exceptions Apple, with Jobs at the helm, has been in the vortex of that change, and in the last few years that participation had exploded.

Perhaps also, in recent years, Apple has been the only bright light in an otherwise very dim world. While all around us we see crisis, recession and chronicled misery, Apple would buck that trend. Every new announcement was at some level an antidote to the bleak reality of the economies of the west – the iPhone 4S being no exception. 

However more than his historical contribution what I think folks are really mourning is what the future has lost. Jobs had not finished.  There was so much more to come. And while Fortstall, Ive et al are clearly pregnant with talent that most of us can’t begin to understand, the suspicion remains that without Jobs that talent will not be channeled as effectively. And the future will not be as engaging as it might have been.

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome is the name given to those rare situations, where a captive begins to empathize with their captors. In more extreme cases, affection develops to the extent that the captive no longer feels they are being held against their will. What has this got to do with technology? Well I installed OS/X Lion on my Mac last week and, for the first time, the full extent of my personal Stockholm Syndrome was brought into sharp relief.

Those that know me will probably be thinking ‘well, duh; this has been obvious for years’, but I have clung steadfastly to the view that Apple products are a choice for me, and I can go elsewhere if necessary.

The problems started in 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini – “just to see what all the fuss was about”. Although mildly taken with its UI, I recall finding the lack of ‘knobs and switches’ rather frustrating. It quickly went to my daughter to help her with her computer studies, and I did not touch it for while (more on the Mac Mini later). A year later came the iPhone, after stamping on my useless WinMo 5 device in a bar one evening out of frustration at just how useless it was; it suffered from Windows Rot so badly that just trying to answer a call seemed to invoke a full parse of the registry. The iPhone was a delight, and I think it is reasonable for me to claim at that point my buying decisions were still entirely rationale. A year later I bought a 15” Macbook Pro when my Dell died. With hindsight, the syndrome was probably well-developed by now. I had no idea what an uphill battle switching to a Mac as a primary work machine would be for a Windows veteran, yet I happily laid down DOUBLE what a similarly equipped Wintel device would have cost. I hoped the purchase of the full Microsoft Office stack would make things easier and rather optimistically purchased a ‘Converting to a Mac’ tome to ease the pain.

After a month trying to use OS/X like Windows, something clicked and the full bliss of OS/X became apparent. Over the next year I upgraded to Snow Leopard the day it came out; bought the family a 13” Macbook to replace a lost Vostro; bought my wife an iPhone as a anniversary present and even paid for a family MobileMe account. Although it was clear that I had crossed the Rubicon at this point, in my mind everything seemed entirely rationale.

Then I discovered the Apple Airport Express.

For years I had dreamt of being able to pipe music to any room in my house using a remote control. Crestron, Savant Systems, Sonos and others all promised this utopia but the price was astronomical. I wasn’t prepared to sell a kidney just to listen to New Order in the back yard. The Airport Express was the answer to my prayers – and it was available in Apple white!! At $79 per room, plus the addition of a free app on my iPhone, I could now stream music from my Macbook to whichever room I wished. I promise you dear reader, I organized dinner parties just to show off this combination; and it never disappointed. What a crowd-pleaser. “Want to listen to U2 in the kitchen Carl, while we get another bottle of wine? No problem”. “Bit of Coldplay on the deck Nigel? Easy, it’s all doable from the iPhone”. How those long winter nights just flew by.

But wait, there was a problem. I ran out of disk space on my laptop. Having spent the best part of a week ripping every CD I had ever purchased onto the Macbook it now had only enough room to store the complete works of Wit and Wisdom by George W. Bush.

Once again Apple came to the rescue with a 1TB Airport Extreme wireless router. Obviously, I already had a perfectly serviceable wireless router, so I only really needed an external hard drive. But the Airport Extreme was available in Apple white, and I reasoned that it must be more efficient for the music to be stored on the device that would do the streaming, than on some non-white external hard drive. It has been pointed out to me subsequently that, from a networking standpoint, I know not of what I speak, but I consider that an irrelevance.

To complete the picture my trusty Mac Mini was removed from my daughters clutches and pressed into service as my iTunes server, together with a shiny new Apple cinema display to make the Album Art cover flow look really cool. Of course the full benefit of the cinema display required me to traipse my dinner party guests upstairs to the alcove where the Mac Mini was kept, but I’m confident they remained very impressed.

And so to 2011. My network now includes three Apple TV 2 devices. Space is now low on my Airport Extreme as it contains about 100 movies. Needless to say there is an iPad; and Time Warner TV is about to be given the boot in favor of all the content available on iTunes.

All of which brings me to OS/X Lion and the reason I am no longer in denial.

Lion inverts the way you scroll!

I have spent 20 years scrolling the display on a computer one way, and now I am required to do it 100% in the opposite direction; both vertically and horizontally. For knowledge workers there cannot be anything more instinctive than scrolling. I've heard the arguments about a Macbook now scrolling like the iPhone…but a Macbook IS NOT an iPhone - your fingers are not on the screen!

Apple being Apple have provided an option to return scrolling to normal, so there really is nothing to complain about. But…I’ve not enabled it. NO! I am going to persevere. I am virtually incapable of finding anything in a long document just now; the screen keeps going in the wrong direction., but I don’t care. It’s going to take time but I’ll not give up. I’ve upgraded every Mac in the house now to Lion so that I don’t have to swap back to the old method of scrolling, and therefore slow my progress to full conversion; a tension has appeared within the family (as they are clearly not afflicted) but I’m sure it will pass.

Changing the way one scrolls on a computer is so fundamental that it is bound to tie you more closely to the platform; this appeals. For some reason it feels right to make the switch. The guys in Cupertino are smart and I trust them to have given me this option for a good reason. Pity the poor folks out there that do not have the option of inverted scrolling, or give up on it too soon. They will be left to their first-generation track-pad gestures, or worse still a mouse, while my fingers glide across the glass surface in perfect man-machine harmony. Somehow the scrolling switch feels like more than just a greater commitment to OS/X, it’s a personal demonstration of my sense of oneness with my captors Apple developers. I know there is no longer any chance of escape, but I am perfectly fine with that as escape is not how I would see an alternative technology. Going back to old-fashioned scrolling now feels like a betrayal ….…aaaarrrgh. Nurse!!

Who Will Blink First

The seventeen euro-zone finance ministers, led by Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, remain committed to this game of chicken with the world’s bond vigilantes. It is hard to see anything other than a disastrous outcome as bond yields are now pushing 6% for both Italy and Spain and 17% for Greece. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), set up in May of last year with up to €750bn worth of funds to assist euro-zone governments that cannot cover their domestic spending requirements through normal fiscal means (borrowing and tax receipts), cannot possibly provide a safety net strong enough to support the needs of Spain or Italy. If you add into the mix the fact that Juncker has made it clear he favors a solution for Greece that involves existing bondholders rolling over the bonds that are maturing soon; a fact that the Standard & Poors rating agency are threatening to class as a default, you have a recipe for a breathtaking government-funding crisis in the euro-zone. None of this is news of course. The European elites, and most economic pundits, with no political skin in the game have been saying the game is up since the first round of Greek and Irish bailouts. So what is plan B and who is going to blink first?

A relevant and unique point about the euro-zone is that the individual governments cannot print their own money or set their own interest rates. The very fact that countries such as the UK and the US (notwithstanding the current debt ceiling debate in Washington) can create fiat currency at will makes de jeur default impossible; bond holders default risk on government bonds from countries with full monetary control is swapped for exchange rate risk. So how can those euro-zone countries, under attack by the bond vigilantes, fight back? The talk of exit from the euro-zone makes good press but the practical problems are almost insurmountable and unpalatable to both sides of the Alps. Germany would be saddled with either a soaring currency, as it jettisoned the weaker economies and capital flowed its way, or a crippled banking sector based on the banks ownership of worthless bonds from Greece et al. The social order would deteriorate rapidly in those countries that leave the euro-zone as capital flight left the governments bankrupt and totally unable to raise money. There is however a compelling argument that in the long-term, exit from the euro is the only realistic alternative; but to coin a phrase “you can’t get to there from here”.

One partial solution being promoted to this liquidity problem, which until the morning of 12^th July was explicitly blocked by the European finance ministers, is to use the EFSF to buy back existing bonds. Since most of the government debt for Greece, Ireland and Portugal is trading at a significant discount to its face value, this action would have the effect of reducing the scale of outstanding debt without triggering a default. All parties are eager to avoid a default as it would cause a payout on credit default swaps on a massive scale and threaten the viability of some French and German banks.

But bond buy-backs solve nothing other than short-term liquidity issues. Longer term, the real problem of solvency needs to be addressed. Each of the countries lining up for help from the EFSF really need some combination of labor market reform and a solid strategy for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI); in short the private sector in these countries has to support more employment. In most developed nations income tax raises about double the amount of money as corporation tax. To focus on Greece for a moment, since a solution there will certainly be an good indicator that things can change for the better elsewhere; if Greece could attract more FDI as a result of significantly lower corporation tax on FDI, labor market reforms and reduced public sector bureaucracy, the tax receipts would improve as more people left welfare for paid employment. FDI can make a difference quickly as companies are way more mobile than individuals, particularly in a currency zone that is as culturally and linguistically diverse as Europe.

The challenge that Greece has, in common with some other southern European countries, is that their labor laws and regulations do not make FDI likely – regardless of corporation tax rates. A primary reason why the situation in Greece has developed the way it has, is that Greece has seen real income increase faster than productivity over the decade since they joined the Euro. The austerity package just passed by the Greek parliament, at a cost of enormous political capital to PM Papandreou, is inadequate on its own. Until Greek workforce expectations are reset on many levels, and corruption and government bureaucracy is tackled, Greece will continue to lose ground to other countries using the Euro. Such productivity losses will eat into any benefits reduced corporation taxes would bring for FDI.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no appetitive in Greece to tackle some of these pressing issues, which indicates that a default is likely, even if kicked further down the road by bond buy-backs. There are some quite apocalyptic analyses of what follows a Greek default to be found on credible financial blogs. One of the most impactful games of financial brinkmanship is unfolding before us, and if it is misjudged it will dwarf the Lehman collapse.