• Sign up and activation was extremely easy few clicks away from Google Plus and it’s done (did not do credit card part yet )
• I tried a hard Artist to start with “The Only Ones” a fun a little known sub-punk group
• Google Music has only two albums compared to three albums in Rhapsody
• The interface of Google Music is cleaner but Rhapsody has nice features like “Artist Radio” which plays an automatic mi
  

  Google Music Review - The Only Ones

Rhapsody and Google Music The Only Ones

• The streaming in Google Plus seems to be faster to start
• Searching for Red Hot Chilly Peppers are actually produced better results for Google. RHCP is a hard band since they don;t allow most of their albums on steaming services.
• With Pearl Jam Rhapsody is a great winner. Google Music only holds 13 albums and Rhapsody has over 40 ! Almost every recording they ever did, including PJ20, The Latest.
• Pricing on Rhapsody seems much more attractive to me. for <$15 a month there is endless streaming. Could not locate this option in Google Music Yet. Buying Songs one by one is so iTunes. Possession is so 1990′s.

Video conferencing is going to hit mainstream – the technology and bandwidth are available for couple of years , but now the software and hardware are also ubiquitous.

Smart phones and new laptops have an excellent built-in camera and microphone built-in and all the new messengers have built-in Video calling.

I have been evangelizing video usage in EMC Beer Sheva new site, and while it takes some time to get used to , it is hard to go back.

Don’t be surprised if the breakthrough here would come from a new player  and not the traditional players.

Unified Messaging – while there is no technology barrier to get it done, I know very few people who actually get all their email, phone, cellular ,calendar, voice mail and SMS information in aggregated fashion,in the same location and accessible through multiple views and devices. This is quite weird since the technology is around for a long time.

Even my $300 Cisco smart VOIP phone is no smarter than the $100 Panasonic wireless phone at home or the $10 unizen phone. No integration with email and messenger, no integration with cellular , no video capabilities. This seems like a product management issue.  Again, who ever gets it right and create the “DropBox” of unified messaging would “surprisingly” create a huge company.

High (Normal) Quality Voice Conferencing – at least 50% of the voice conferencing I attend have a horrible sound quality. People drop of, people can’t connect , there is background noise from traffic, annoying echoes, low sound quality and the list goes on. While the market is “commoditized” in theory this is , IMHO, BS.  While there are many free conferencing solutions they all suck, pardon my French. To make matters worst , the paid services are just as bad. I would be very happy to pay 10$ a month for a great audio conferencing service that always works, has easy sign on,  great sound quality, built-in recording and email\SMS reminders.

BioHackers - discover Magazine

• The End of Aids in Discover Magazine
• GE is committed to spending $1 billion on cancer-related R&D over the next five years across different types of cancer.
• Dawn of the BioHackers , Discover Magazine
• The declining cost of DNA Sequencing 
• DNANexus Raises $15M from Google

In the 20th century the majority of innovation started as evil nations wanted to destroy other nations.

As a result, the evil (and peaceful) nations devoted large chunks of their tax money to the defense budget.

The flow of research money was the following:

Public (taxes) -> Government -> Defense Agencies -> Universities -> Private Companies (implementation)

Research Budget Flow

Many of the most important contributions to technology and science were created or commercialized through this path: the internet, GPS, atomic energy , satellites and plenty more.

The innovation flowed from the government to enterprises and only then into consumers.

Space and Aviation -> Military ->  Large Enterprises -> Civilian Government -> Small Enterprises -> Consumers

The early experiments or products were extremely  expensive  and sold in small quantities and required public financing.

In the 21st century the flow of innovation and new technology has reversed.

innovation Flow in a Consumer World

The recent launch of an iPhone into space with GPS tracking by civilians, is one amazing example.

The following stock chart provides more evidence. It plots the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Aerospace & Defense Index Fund compared to some major consumer oriented companies like Google, Sony, Amazon.

Chart of Defense Index Vs Consumer Companies 2006-2011

The new innovations are derived from consumer demand and consumer services or products : cellular phones, smart Phones, social networks,cloud computing, personal computers and online advertisement.

I believe this is the reason the Intel, Apple and Google are now the largest companies in the world, displacing companies like SUN, Nortel, Lucent, HP , IBM and similar companies more focused on enterprise and governmental markets. While IBM, Microsoft and Intel are still leading the patent table, one can claim it implies more on the inflation of patents , rather than true  innovation.

Top 10 Companies Patents ROI from MSN

The reversal of innovation can be explained by multiple theories:

Moral – the global society has become more civilian and democratic. Individuals have more civil rights, more control of the public spend and therefore there are fewer wars, less dictators  and less weapons. Unfortunately , I’m not sure all of the facts support this theory. I have found some evidence. For example, from 1988 to 2009 the global military spending share of GDP has dropped by 34% from 3.5% to 2.4% , global average. The number of conflicts decreased by 40% from 1992 to 2009.

Share of Military Expenditure as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product 1988 2099

Armed Conflicts by Region 1946-2009

Economics – In the end of the day we are all consumers and individuals. Economics are driven by numbers and since there are about 1 Billion consumers with a high standard of living, it is the largest market for almost any product. Selling a $300 product to every consumer translates to $300 billion market, this is equal to the global IT market spend. Selling $30 of advertisement to one Billion people …. you can do the math on your own.  Compare that with the cost of design and manufacturing of a new stealth plane.

The R&D alone would cost Billions  of dollars, and each airplane would cost $336M million dollars , if it the project is not aborted during the 20 years of development. Programming an amazing computer vision system for smart missiles would only be relevant to 20-40 customers. Delivering an amazing face recognition for  facebook generates access to 750 Million customers. The OCR domain is one example I already bogged about.

Sociological  – Open source software has allowed sharing of innovation and technology with zero cost of patents, licensing and removing many anti-competitive habits , either explicit or hidden that were common in past years. It also allows sharing of development costs across organizations. Younger generations are used to great user experience, and would not “go back” when entering Enterprise office. Cloud computing is also helping to build start-ups in 50 dollars.

The fact that Google and Amazon are hosting funding challenged public database of bioinformatics, that used to be funded by the government is rather  provocative.

To summarize, while there are still huge budgets in defense and commercial enterprises, there is strong trend driving innovation from the individual. Do you believe the trend is real?

Imagine that every day when you enter your office building you have to wait 20 minutes for the receptionist to let you in.

She is busy talking in her cell phone about last night’s episode of Dexter, smoking a cigarette or looking for a temp badge in the computer.

She is quite hostile all along in a passive-active-aggressive manner, forgetting to use “Thank You”, “Excuse me”, “How Can I help you”, and relevant phrases.

Once you pass the guard, you have to look for parking. The old, large, parking area is now closed off ,because the logistics department wanted to paint some barrels a few months ago.

As a result you end up parking in an illegal parking spot, wasting 15 minutes for the parking search and ten minutes walk to the office.

The implicit message is clear – your time is not valued here , the “chiefs” do not care about wasting your time.

While this story comes from a governmental faculties (“Shin Gimel is the hebrew acronym for an army  guard ), some high-tech companies send a similar message.

In one company I know the guests had no access to the restrooms or a proper sitting place  in the lobby. There are many companies without a proper parking arrangement or validation, even for customers.  In some cases the guards have lost the Israeli ID, that was given to them to vouch for the guest badge …

To contrast, having a courteous receptionist, well designed lobby, easy parking and efficient process send a clear signal to employees and customers.

Your time is important and we value your presence.

Confused Parking - Fail Blog

I came across my old unborn thesis proposal from the year 2000.  The gist of the thesis was to evaluate the economical value of cloud computing However, the proposal was rejected by my Professor as not “academical” enough.

This is sort of funny, considering that It was supposed to be in the Information Systems division  of the Management faculty.

Lucky for me. I went back to “Normal” MBA program and got the degree with just seven more courses.

Ancdotes for those who don’t read Hebrew:

• Google had 4000 server farm
• ASP Was the term for SAAS, AIP for IAAS . Not a big difference.
• 8*Single CPU server configuration was 6 Times cheaper than Single Dell 8 CPU Server

אספקת פתרונות AIP בעזרת מסה של שרתים מבוססי מחשב אישי

בשנים האחרונות זוכה תחום הASP לפריחה ופיתוח רב. אף על פי שיש הטוענים כי התחום הינו OUTSOURCING בלבוש נאה יותר, ניראה כי ההתקדמות בתחום האינטרנט והתיקשורת רחבת הפס , כמו עלות העסקת כוח אדם טכנולוגי בתוך הארגון יוצרים לו הזדמנות גדולה. תחום חדש יחסית הינו ה AIP – Application Infastructure Provider. הAIP אמון על הכנה , תכנון,אחזקה אבטחה וניהול של תשתית חומרה ותוכנה לטובת הASP. ההתמחות של הAIP היא בניהול חוות מחשבים המריצות אפלקציות בזמניות גבוהה מאוד ואילו הASP אמור להתמחות באפליקציות שלהן הוא נותן שרות בלקוחותיו. קיימת גם תפיסה המרחיבה את תחום ההתעניניות של הAIP ליצירת מיסגרת של שיתוף פעולה בין הASP השונים שמשלמים עבור שירותיו. כך יכול ה-AIP לספק ללקוחותיו ערך מוסף מעבר לשירותי המיחשוב .

עבודה זו באה לבחון את הישימות הכלכלית של שימוש במספר רב של מחשבי PC זולים לעומת השימוש בשרתים מרובי מעבדים. עבודה זו תתמקד בסביבה של אירוח אפליקציות ( ASP ) ובמספר רב מאוד של מחשבים. כדי לבדוק האם יש היגיון כלכלי כלשהו בהצעה יתמקד מסמך זה בהשוואת עלויות של שרתי 8 מעבדים ל8 שרתים בעלי מעבד אחד.

מוטיבציה : הרעיון הבסיסי בעבודה זו מגיע משלושה גורמים. המחיר הנמוך להדהים של מחשבי PC בשנים האחרונות הוא הראשון מבינם. עקב המעבר ליצור המוני של מחשבים אלו והשיפור המתמיד בטכנולוגיה ירדה עלות מחשב PC מצוין ל1500$. בנוסף, עקב התפתחות מהפכת החונמה ( FREEWARE ) ניתן להשתמש במערכות הפעלה, שרתי קבצים, שרתי דואר ושרתי WEB במחירים אפסיים. הגורם השלישי הינו קיומם של אפליקציות קלות למיקבול ולחלוקת עומסים, והפופולריות הגדולה של שירותי אירוח אפליקציות. השילוב של 3 גורמים הללו יותר מצב שבו עבור סוגי אפליקציות מסוימות היתרונות היחסיים של שימוש בשרתים מרובי מעבדים נעלמים, או מצטמצמים מאוד ועקב עלותם הגבוהה נוצר יתרון כלכלי משמעותי לשימוש במספר רב של מחשבי PC כאלטרנטיבה.

חיזוק מוצלח לישימות אסטרטגיה זו מצאתי במאמר שהתפרסם על אסטרטגית החומרה של חברת GOOGLE . המאמר מתאר אסטרטגיה דומה למתואר בהצעה זו, המיושמת כבר היום בחברה על כ4000 מחשבים.

יתרונות לארכיטקטורות השונות  : לשרתים מרובי מעבדים יש מספר יתרונות בולט על פני שימוש במספר רב של מחשבים בעלי מעבד בודד. נושא זה הוא, כמובן, רחב ועמוק וכאן נתרכז רק בהיבטים הפשטניים שלו. במודל חישובי מסוג SMP קיים שרת אחד בעל BUS אחד וזיכרון משותף בעל מספר מעבדים הנע מ1 ל 64 מעבדים. לצורך פשטות לא נדון כאן בשרתים מסוג CLUSTER, CC-NUMA ו MPP שהינם פחות נפוצים כיום.

האלטרנטיבות :

לצורך השוואה ראשונית בחרתי לבדוק מחשבים מתוצרת חברת DELL[1]. חברה זו נבחרה משום שהיא מציעה תמחור מדויק וקל לכל המחשבים שלה ומשום שקיימות תוצאות אמינות של מחשביה במבחני ביצועים. בדיקה מדגמית של מחשבי חברת IBM העלתה תוצאות דומות.

היישום שבחרתי לצורך ההשוואה הינו אחסון שרתי WEB הניגשים בעיקר למידע סטטי[2].לצורך הפשטות ניתן להניח כי אנו מאחסנים אתר אחד בלבד, אך זוהי הנחה שקל יחסית לתקן ללא השפעה גדולה על התוצאות.

בקונפיגורציה הראשונה (א’ ) שרת DELL 8450 בעל 8 מעבדים ו16GB זיכרון. השרת יריץ SERVER WEB  אחד . מחיר שרת כזה הינו כ 120,000$.

בקונפיגורציה השניה נשתמש ב8 שרתי DELL 2400 עם מעבד 1 ו2GB זיכרון. כל שרת יריץ  WEB SERVER אחד . כל השרתים יחברו בעזרת  SWITCH לשרת חלוקת עומסים של חברת RADWARE שיחובר לאינטרנט. שרת חלוקת עומסים מתוצרת RADWARE הינו שרת חכם מבוסס חומרה ותוכנה היודע לחלק עומסים של בקשות HTTP למספר שרתים בצורה דינמית. לשרת זה תכונות מתוחכמות ביותר כולל יכולת חלוקת עומסים גיאגורפית והתחשבות בתנאים שונים כמו URL ו COOKIES. מחיר הכולל של קונפיגורציה זו הוא כ 103,000$.

מדד הביצועים שבחרתי הינו SPECWEB . מדד זה בודק ביצועים של שרתי HTTP ומאורגן ע”י ארגון הBENCHMARK הניטרלי SPEC.  לפי מדד זה ביצועי קונפיגורציה א’ הנם 3000 SEPCWEB וביצועי קונפיגורציה ב’ הנם כ6000 SEPCWEB.

יחס העלות תועלת המתקבל מהשוואה זו הינו 2.1 לטובת קונפיגורציה ב’.

אם נרצה להקל מעט על התנאים ונסתפק במחשב בעל 768MB זיכרון בקונפיגורציה ב’[3] הרי שיחס העלות התועלת הינו 4.4 לטובת קונפיגורציה ב’.

בקונפיגורציה ב’ ניתן להחליף את מחשב DELL במחשב  NAMELESS  . מחיר מחשב כזה יכול לרדת עד לכ2000$ ויחס עלות תועלת יהיה  6.5 לטובת קונפיגורציה ב’.

ככלל, ניראה כי ניתן להשיג חיסכון כלכלי של בין2.1 ל6.5 ע”י בחירה בקונפיגורציה ב’. ישנם שיפורים רבים שיש להכניס במודל ומקומות רבים שבהם יושמו הנחות מקלות  אך השתדלתי להפלות לרעה את דפ”א ב’ כדי לקבל חסמים תחתונים לשיפור.

מסקנה מעניינת שניתן לראות כבר מניתוח זה שכמות הזיכרון הנדרשת ליישום הינה גורם המשפיע בצורה חזקה ביותר על עלות התצורות ויחס העלות שלהם. הסיבה לגורם זה היא העלייה הלא ליניארית במחיר כאשר מגדילים את הזיכרון ובייחוד  בתחום שמעל1GB .

ניראה כי היתרון הגדול של קונפיגורציה ב’ יהיה ביישומים הצורכים כוח עיבוד רב וזיכרון מועט עד בינוני.

‘

Abu Adham Humus Sign

Something seemed strange , as all the signs were gone, but the place was still operating and serving Humus. I suspected they lost the franchise and walked away to Humus Badunas , which is a franchise of the original location next to Check Point original headquarters in Ramat Gan.

It is a nice example of the power of the Brand. Not all Humus is created equal, the owner has to wake up at 4AM to get things done properly. The Pita has to be soft and warm. A good franchise monitors its franchisees , to make sure they are not destroying the brand.

The Humus was quite nice, by the way and checking at the web it does seem I was right regarding Abu Adhm in Ibn Gvirol.

And here is an interesting post(Hebrew) about Humus and Social resistance.

There are 196 countries in the world, but most seem to have better things to do than to write software.

This is a critical piece of information because “Software is Eating the World.”

India has  plenty of IT projects outsourcing companies , Japan has 200 video games companies while China has many hardware companies.

However, there seem to be very few software products companies In non English speaking countries (I count both  Canada and Israel as English speaking countries for in this blog context).

Germany has SAP and Software AG. France used to have Business Objects, but now it belongs to SAP so it is left with Dassau. Japan has Trend Micro, but that’s about it. China is not in a much much better situation with total of 29 companies listed in Wikipedia.

Try to think about a famous Spanish Software Company ( Hint : Anti virus that looks like a bear).

I’m not sure why this is the case , but can suggest a few ideas:

• There are a lots of software companies in other countries, but they are local to their markets an don’t bother to become international and big
• Since programming languages are in English, there is a huge advantage to English speaking countries
• Software development started form universities and the leading Computer Science universities are in the same countries
• Software development product companies have consolidated to a very few big companies and most are American
• Software products require a unique combination of strong engineering and “immature” first versions

Does anyone else have any explanation or counter data?

Any maybe it is less important these days. Our industry is moving into Software as a Service model in many use cases.

You loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win. You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline. How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin.

Leonard Cohen, First We Take Manhattan

1. Ask legal department approval. Legal counselors would almost always say no to any question that starts with”Can I do that?”. they lose nothing from slowing down the business and might lose something only if they permit you to do something that turns out to be “Risky”.

Internal lawyers are even worst than external ones. While the the external ones might bill by the hour, they know you can switch contractors. Lawyers always look for the exceptions and rare cases , trying to mitigate risks. Risks for them, not for you.

2. Treat all employees the same way. Once there is an employee or a business who is under-performing there is no point in treating him like the rest. It means that the hard-working, successful business units would develop antagonism toward you as a manager.Nobody like a coward who makes them suffer the results.

Tips for Bad Managers and Sitting on the Fence

3. Let Facilities make business decisions. Of course the facilities department would prefer an open space. They are not measured on employee’s productivity or product delivery. It is very easy to measure floor space per employee, but much harder to measure the reduced productivity. BTW, one just needs to read “Peopleware” and the “Furniture Police” chapter to get the numbers right.

4. Mix external reasoning to take bad business decisions. Keep using tax reasons as an important factor in organizational decisions. Buy bad or expensive  products from companies because you sell a lot of your products to them.

5. Try to optimize globally . Don’t empower your managers with budget ,priority and responsibility. Instead move the decisions to a central function, working remotely which is unaware of local conditions and business goals.

6. Say “Governance” five times a day. Can switch with “Liability” , “Risk Mitigation” , “Corporate Process” . These words are loved by developers and are sure to promote real innovation.

7.Publicly  punish employees  stray away from the process, it teaches the organization an important lesson.

This Dilbert study might be helpful as well