Resilient-it for Business Transformation

Travel 2.0: From dream (1998) to reality (2012)

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Travel 2.0, a new term coined in 1998, is becoming a reality in 2012.

The main drivers are:

Mobile - smartphone are now available everywhere in volume
Mobile can be powered by Voice - SIRI on Iphone or all the others on Android enable more easy interactions with mobile apps.
GDS 2.0 are emerging - built on top of ITA or Farelogix, this new Travel search engines are providing easy to use API, and are enhanced by great new Travel 2.0 site like HipMunk, Superfly, or Google Flight Search.
Tablet design (and couch surfing) are impacting web site. Kayak and TripIt recently rebuilt their web sites to match their IPAD User Experience. And by doing that they also prepare for Connected TV and Microsoft Kinect like interactions (death of the mouse...).
All corporate online booking tools are using hybrid mobile apps (HTML 5 + Native) and enable now (since Dec. 2011) policy compliant booking from mobile (Concur, KDS, GetThere). Only Aetm from Amadeus and Traveldoo from Egencia are lagging behind.
Suppliers are investing to become "Mono" OTA. Following the model invented by French rail company SNCF and its voyages-sncf site, they are building a B2B (corporation oriented) and B2C (aka. leisure) web site for direct booking and basic dynamic package (sell car, hotel for an air supplier).
Corporate Travel Policy will be less and less based on a stringent PDF document and more and more available dynamically by checking dynamically the "right" fare. Obtaining the right fare will be done through new type of providers and by offering spend transparency over the social network. Some OBT will not survive and OTA will try to extend their reach to corporation.
Gamification will also enter the game to provide leaderboards and clear statistics about who's playing well (and not) the corporate/family travel game.
Travel could be represented by a set of pre-defined events (booking, ticketing, expense mgt) and by alerts (delay, cancelled flight, strikes, etc.). More and more, the notion of timeline (Facebook with Wipolo, or KDS project NEO) or storyboard (Rearden DEEM platform). Others will push even further this concept and move the whole travel lifecycle within the calendar system.
The rise of Mega-platform will also leverage some solutions against some others. Next generation travel 2.0 solutions will be native on Facebook, on Apple IOS (named iTravel), on Google (Flight Search and Hotel finder) and also on... Amazon and eBay. And last but not least the last kids on the blocks: Pinterest is also able to revolutionize travel inspiration and booking, by promoting friends and local travel plans.
The final missing link to make the whole travel process smoother is Artificial Intelligence and big data, or the digitally enhanced wisdom of friends and crowd. Imagine a system that will book the room you will like in an hotel (non smoking, quiet room not near from Ice machine, with shower and not bath) or in a plane (avoiding the worse seats shown by a site like seatGuru).

Future is here, and we were never so near from a real Travel 2.0 offer that could disrupt the market ...

KDS Now 2012

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:13:00 +0000

Yesterday, KDS organised in Paris their annual event dubbed "KDS Now 2012" to introduce their strategy and new products.
The show began by an introduction made by Yves Weisselberger (Executive Chairman).

Followed by a talk from Pascal Boniface the funding director of IRIS. During its talk he stated that the world changed and that we should be ready to evolve in a multipolar world (an not a world only dominated by the USA). We will also have to consume differently, since water and energy will not be available for all.

Then, the KDS CEO made his speech. It was a great year for KDS, and especially for one product driving 80% of the sales: KDS travel & Expense (all in one offer). KDS invested also a lot in R&D and product innovations.

The KDS strategy was introduced by Oliver Quayle: Simple, Mobile, Smart
1. Simple
Simplicity is always redefined by innovations and especially in the travel 2.0 world. KDS said that companies need to rethink the user experience of their products regularly.

Some examples were given:

Before Booking: provide a summarised fare notes to clients before he/she pushes the "buy" button.
Mileage via mapping.
Easy Payment.

New product, to be considered as the first implementing the "simple" strategy part is the KDS Admin Tool and is available Now (previous one to be deprecated end of this year)

2. Mobile

KDS presented a new mobile app, enabling policy compliant booking and two new features: "get me to my hotel" and "book on mobile".

KDS claims that ""no integrated mobile apps exists today for travel and expense (end to end)". We can says that what KDS build is clearly leading edge in term of User Experience.

Hybrid mobile application (like Rearden and Getthere). Available on Android, and BB (with OS sup. to V6). IoS to be done soon (and I hope IPAD).
When you book three options: best, cheapest, earliest to simplify the UX. Then every segment outside policy is in another colour (visual guilt to show on and out policy). The UX is real great and innovative.

3. Smart

The capability to offer timely and accurate reports using online, offline, credit card, and clients data. The tool is able to provide slice and dice reporting, more than 100's KPI and some forecasting features.

The new product exemplifying the "smart" strategy is the KDS Travel Manager Suite and is available Now.

Innovation: Project NEO

Being able to book your end to end trip in 3 clicks, 2 screens, and 1 minute. KDS, like Rearden with DEEM Storyboard or Facebook with Timeline, is adopting a timeline approach. Only relevent offers based on the traveler type and user policy is shown.
For KDS: user experience is the best driver to policy compliance
Neo is not a product... Not yet.
Scott Gillepsie Keynote
Tranquility is the enemy of innovation. Scott predicts "best value" for traveler is the next step for creating traveler centric pgm. Cost transparency (what's my budget?) more than travel Policy compliance (what is my policy?). Deeper data relationship and smarter socializing will change travel policy.

Xtify or Capptain to pilot your apps?

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:10:00 +0000

Creating a mobile application , publishing it tothe store and counting the downloads are only the first steps of a mobile application lifecycle. We need more.
I found two different solutions to help maintain the link between my app and the downloaders.
CAPPTAIN and Xtify ...
The first is very popular in France and pretty cheap. TRhe second is very popular in North America and much more expensive. So, i'm looking for some help. Please comment this post and share your experiences.

Leveraging Transparency Through Social

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:10:00 +0000

Transparency is key to enable TRUST. Trust is needed to increase adoption of the corporate travel program objectives.

I'm convinced that social media could help corporate travelers be more engaged and offer the transparency required to make people more confident on the travel program. One of my key idea I have is to move away from complex and too technical travel policy that only traveler agents or booking tools could support, and to move to a crowd sourced socially powered control.

What is needed:

Simple and easy set of rules.
Corporate Social media to discuss and report on the travel policy usage and conformance.

In brief, enable anybody to see how you, your team, tou Business group travel and if your adherence to the company travel policy. Of course you need to preserve personal data privacy (impersonate some content) and there are always exceptions to rules, but this can be handled easily.

A small example.

Imagine that each time you want to go somewhere, you can use a trip planning tool and get a CAP (max price + accepted ancillary services).
Then you just need to make your booking and publish your Itinerary back to a centralized service. Your Itinerary will then be analysed and:

the corporate trip dashboard will be automatically updated
your trip will be used to build your travel policy scorecard to be published on the corporate social network
your trip will be used as a guideline (of what to do or not to do).

Of course some key "personal" or sensitive information will not be published. The idea is to have a real time, decentralized, crowd sourced control. Everybody could then see how many trips you've made and how much time you did not follow the policy and why.

The more we empower travelers (right tools, right training, inform them about the preferred suppliers, right best practices in context), the more they will be able to act. With gamification techniques, you could also imagine to reward them. That's where social is good at also ..

The End of corporate Travel as we knew it!

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:27:00 +0000

2011 Time person of the year in is "The Protester". People fighting for their freedom, mainly using CAR (Computer Assisted Revolution).

The corporate world, especially in country where the economic recession will put pressures on jobs and projects, will obviously be changed by this tidal wave. Transparency will become number one request by travelers in their companies, but guess what, it's not the number one for Travel managers. The more you dehumanize your travel policy (rules created and published without any explanations) the more the risk to have "protesters" in your company.

I want to choose my tools and devices

Travelers, travel arrangers will ask for using the tools they want on the device they want. They know how to perform and will not accept anymore choices made by others without being asked. They use tools like the ones created by Google, HipMunk, and Superfly with great user interface, and easy way to find what they need. We have to admit, corporate Online Booking Tools are still far away from their counterpart in the B2C world (even if recent improvements were done).

I also have the feeling that B2C online services in travel will kill (or force morphing) in the mid term pure B2B suppliers: Concur bought TripIt, Rearden moving to Deem and Traveldoo being bough by Egencia, (what will be the future for KDS?). Corporate Travel policy are so stringent and their revenue model so tight that Corporate Online Booking Tool can not survive alone in the B2B world.

Trip lifecycle needs to be humanized and customized to each traveler

Online adoption is linked to booking tool user experience, but also to the processes pit in place. Online is not always the best way to interact. More and more, travelers will prefers to talk to humans as some point in their journey.

Some, could not afford anymore, to spend hours on a tool to see all possible biased (by the travel policy) choices they have. They want to go straight to the point ... In the coming months, new solutions will be launched to ease corporate booking being done on B2C tools, reinforcing then the role of travel agents as "travel advisers and facilitators".

Travelers need travel agent answering their call in a reasonable time, speaking well their native language and able to answer timely and effectively all demands. Some road warriors will do everything themselves, but others will request help.

Revolution in Trip Planning and shopping

Trip planning and shopping will be done more and more with existing B2C web sites (Kayak, Orbitz, Google, etc.). Trip planning tools will be able to give travelers a CAP of their trip cost and propose some great tips based on how they want to optimize their trip (fare, time, agony, etc.).

So B2C tools will be used to find preferred flights or hotels. Then, their choices will be sent to an online (or offline) "travel policy compliance service" configured to implement the corporate travel policy. It could be a tool or a real human behind a computer or a phone. Then, in the next 15 minutes, travelers will get back a proposal compliant to the travel policy (preferred suppliers) and the corporate rates.

Booking will be eased, and ordering a trip will be only a click (or screen tap) away. Each trip segment will be then checked and validated in real time against compliance rules (and you got a sort of automated approval rule). Safety and security rules, plus warning information about visa and money currencies could be set immediately.

Booking direct or Booking through Travel Agents (aka through GDS)

At that moment, a new disruption is then possible. You can book directly to the airline or Hotel web site or use a travel agent (TMCs, OTA). Ideally, this should be defined in your travel policy. The next step being, of course, the capability to send this booking to the expense management tool, to avoid data entry.

Companies, due to hard economic time and talent retention needs, will not be spending time and money anymore on building a specific travel booking platform for their company. They will try to go with the flow and benefit from others. The Saas (software as a service) model is here to stay. This SaaS model will be then applied on the whole travel lifecycle to enable Business Process Outsourcing and best of breeds solutions adoption.

Impact of Mobile of the travel lifecycle

The travel industry is being transformed by Steve Jobs vision "there's an app for that". Every micro-need could be served by a dedicated app and a dedicated supplier. The travel industry being very fragmented, this is a great opportunity for local "champions" to emerge (like Uber for "black cars", high speed train apps, etc.). That's why new marketplace will emerge in the travel 2.0 industry ... That's also why B2B On line booking tools have no future. Power of the crowd is here to stay.

Corporate travel tools needs to move from a monolithic view where only one tool does all (the OBT), to a marketplace of micro-trip services offer (based on mobile app for example) across the travel lifecycle where the traveler can buy what he/she needs when he/she needs it with the device he/she wants and at the negotiated price (compliant to the policy).

And what about:

Global Itinerary? Well depending on the travel policy a company could rely on a travel agent for all bookings and in that case, it will be offered. If not, then the travel policy compliance service offered could be used for building the itinerary. Finally, tools like TripIT (most pervasive) or Wipolo (most social with its great Facebook integration) could do it.
Duty of care? Again, based on the travel policy, the duty of care service could be feed by the travel agent, the travel policy compliance service or could be done manually by the travelers. Most of the time these services are offered by third party companies (like Ijet or Myassist).
Expense Mgt. Expense capture will be done more and more on Mobile. Expense tracking could be done via credit card data transfer to dedicated tools. So Global New Entrants like Expensify or dedicated credit card tools will do the job.

Corporate Protesters and Transparency

Travel Policy is the cornerstone of the "Corporate travel", make it pervasive in the travel 2.0 world (best tools at the best moment on the travel lifecycle), explain the objectives behind the main rules of the policy (track and report on them internally to see if objectives are met), educate your travelers (preferred suppliers, tips and tricks, etc.).

Travelers needs to understand why the corporate travel policy was created, and what benefits for them and the company you are looking for. They also want transparency, to ensure that exceptions to the rules are not the golden rule. The rules should be the same for everybody, even if several travelers types could be defined (VIP, Frequent traveler, occasional traveler).

Exceptions should be created to make the corporate world more human. A travel policy, should take into account travelers age, health, travel/rest ratio (number of trips per month), average length of your travels, ancillary services they could benefit from, type of flights (domestic or intercontinental), etc.

The travel policy going hand and hand with duty of care, it should be clear to both parties what the company must do for its employees and what employees must do when then book and travel. For example:

frequent traveler should have a better Health / safety
security insurance while occasional traveler should be better supported at time of booking and trip planning
Better car should be rent in winter i certain zones
etc.

Some predictions to conclude

Social network will be used to document best practices and engage discussions. But also to document the ones not following the policy. Exceptions to the policy need to be tracked and reporting should be shared. Transparency is good, but you need to create some limits, for sure. Instead of reporting on people not following policies, you can report on teams (and reduce their travel budget for the next quarter), or comments on non compliant behaviors.

Gamification will be key to create fun around the travel policy and to reward the ones that "play the game"
Mobile and API will be used for and more for on the go, on demand travel policy compliance. Request for spend request could be created easily and approved more or less automatically. Best price or trip options will be found more easily. Travelers will use more and more mobile immediacy to request corporate Big Mother, and move away from their Big Brother fear.

Corporate Protesters will look for justice within their company since justice will be less and less visible and accessible outside. It is a great opportunity to engage the dialogue with employees to understand their needs and to use the travel policy as a way to define "the rules" and make them understood and applied by all.

Discussing Global Corporate Social Network Adoption

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:32:00 +0000

What is great with Yammer, a company offering a corporate social network SaaS solution, is that they had the bright idea to create a network for their own users. You can then ask questions, post your ideas and share your findings.

So, last week, I reacted to a post where somebody shared the fact that France an Germany users adoption of corporate social networks was pretty low. And in fact, some of us, discovered that we are all facing the same issues within our communities:

Asia Pacific (and especially Australia) and North America and Canada are early adopters and using the tool quickly and effectively.
Latin America users are pretty good adopters, but they tend to speak in their native language (aka not english) and the noise/signal ratio is pretty high.
France and Germany are far behind all the others in term of adoption.

Even if we can not draw generalities from several experiences we can nevertheless draw some conclusions:

Age of the employees as an impact on user adoption of a corporate social network. The older being the less confident in the tool (for political, social and technical reasons).
The language is often a barrier. English is not well spoken everywhere in the world, and it should not be.
Nomenklatura (or circle of power) exist in companies. This nomenklatura is the result and the combination of two distincts trends: "Knowledge is power" (aka hierarchy vs. network) and "Let me out of the Pleb" (I do not want to talk to share with people below me in the hierarchy). If you have ones in your company, then, consider the fact that a social network will make it more obvious to all.
Eastern Europe is open to corporate social network, but needs more "education". The great point is that they consider the corporate social network as a way to be part of the whole and join the "group". They really see it as a hook to the company world, ideas and ... possible future jobs or projects.
In France and Germany in particular, in the corporate world, people do not want to "write" or share ideas or thoughts that could be used against them. At least, they fear much more to be fired than their counterpart in other regions. In some regions, a simple social network chart is enough for everybody, in these two countries, people will wait the government to publish a law before using a social network ;)
The network and desktop computer used have an impact on usage. Think mobile ... Agile ...

If you want to deploy a corporate social network globally, you could benefit from the following lessons learned (of course it depends on your company and project!):

Begin by designing, building, and presenting the corporate social chart. Everybody should understand it, so it should be available in many languages. Depending on some countries, a social chart could not be enough ...
Deploy France and Germany at the end, when all others are on board. Like a startup try to grow quick, fast and follow the path of least resistance.
The main benefits of a corporate network are based on communication and dialogue. The more users, the more usage, the more data created, the more exchanges, and you hope at the end the more chance to create value to people or communities.
You need to be able to scale well (from 10 to 10000 users from 1 to 150 messages a day, etc.). IT cost could become unsustainable quickly. So think BIG since the beginning, and choose the right business model that will support your community for at least 3 years.
Choose social network tools suppliers based not only on cost and services, but also on their communities and the way they interact with them.
Document successes immediately and share them within your corporate social network.
Stay transparent, work for the mass with the mass. Avoid an elitist view of your communities except if it is dedicated to it.
Let people speak their language, in their communities. You just need to have community managers able to speak these languages to control what is going on.
Learn from others, adapt, evolve ...

As somebody said on Yammer, a corporate social network is a journey, not an end.

Rise of GWT usage in Google Services

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:32:00 +0000

Ray Cromwell recently shared the list of Google's newer services written using GWT. The list is awesome.

Here are some Google products that use Google Web Toolkit that you may not know about:

AdWords http://google.com/adwords
AdSense http://google.com/adsense
Flights http://flights.google.com
Hotel Finder http://www.google.com/hotelfinder
Offers https://www.google.com/offers
Wallet http://wallet.google.com
The New Blogger http://www.blogger.com/
Chrome Webstore https://chrome.google.com/webstore
Product Search http://www.google.com/prdhp?hl=en&tab=mf
Public Data http://www.google.com/publicdata/home
Google Takeout https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom
Google Pagespeed https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/
Google WebFonts http://www.google.com/webfonts
Google Tables https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=2049253
New Google Groups http://groups.google.com
Orkut http://www.orkut.com
Google Health (discontinued)
Google Wave (discontinued)
PlayN (basis of Angry Birds)

Is GWT then poised for success? Interestingly, it is still not yet widely adopted ...

LEWeb 2011

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:16:00 +0000

Interested by LeWeb 2011, this is the list of links that should provide you access to all material you need.

Pictures: http://www.fotopedia.com/magazine/leweb/
Posts covering the conference: http://chime.in/community/LeWeb
Video Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/user/leweb/videos
Video Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/leweb?feature=watch / http://www.youtube.com/leweb#g/u
Startup competition: http://leweb.net/2011/blog/congratulations-our-startup-competition-winners
Livesketching: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leweb3/sets/72157628304459791/

It was a great conference, eclectic and conventional at the same time. Big "Bravo" to Loic and Géraldine LeMeur.

SOLOMO - USA First ... Then what?

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:38:00 +0000

Not a week without a new announcement in the Social, Local, Mobile (SOLOMO). Most of them are in general associated with a mobile app release in the USA Apple app stores. And then, what about the others?
Everybody has to wait ...
How long? nobody knows ...

Some years ago, when a company was able to create a product and be the only one (exclusivity) to sell it for several months it was great. So the company tried to put immediately the product in all markets to benefit from this unique period.

In the SOLOMO world, there is a "de facto" hierarchy in the entrepreneurs world. USA first ...
Europe is so complex with different languages, legislations, etc ... but it is still second ... The key question is then for How long?

If you like games and console, it was always Japan first and USA second ...

This is creating a long tail of desired products and services that might or not reach the European consumers. This desire is participating to the current bad mood.

Nothing is more depressing for a customer to not be able to buy what he wants. It could be because he does not have enough income to buy, but we are in the heart of a financial crisis so that's understandable. He then thinks that he's not part of the middle class anymore ... Depression again.

Worse, if he can not buy what he wants just because he lives in Europe, or in France, then, this is creating a bigger frustration. That's why so many young people leaves France after their studies (studies paid by country taxes by the way). Fortunately, USA and their VISA regulations are preventing a more massive exode. So they are moving to countries were being young is an opportunity: BRIC countries ... and more generally, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The only solution is to make more innovations in Europe and to keep our talents in Europe. This means more early stage funding, and motivating young people to stay and innovate in Europe. Silicon Valley needs competition as Eric Schmidt said, the question is : is Europe able to build it?

Some recent evolutions of X-commerce platforms ...

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:50:00 +0000

Objectives are to help companies create unified customer experiences across channels - including those ever important new channels like mobile and social.

Oracle purchases e-commerce vendor ATG and FatWire (customer experience management company and provides tools for content management, community forums, analytics, digital asset management, etc.)
IBM purchases e-commerce vendor Sterling Commerce.
Adobe announced the Digital Enterprise Platform and new development platform around flash and Flex to create applications that will run on all mobile platforms.
ebay:

commerce platform : magento – buying tunnel
payments: paypal
Loyalty, listings and shopping list: where (location media company), milo (local shopping app), redlaser (QR code and listings) and fig cards
API to enable Mobile developers to use the platform

Mobile - After the technology shake, the xCommerce Tsunami

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:21:00 +0000

2011 is the beginning ... of the xCommerce tsunami ... X being t for tablet, s for smartphone, T for TV, etc. Every connected object will have the capability to connect you to a marketplace.

Google, Ebay, Amazon and Facebook are all finalising their platform to be available worldwide. War will begin soon.

In the travel industry, Rob Torres from Google gave some numbers:

Google reports 300K new Android activations per day and eMarketer notes that 50% of all new internet connections worldwide are coming from mobile devices.
The number of searches in the travel category via a mobile device continues to rise this year; the percentage of queries coming from mobile devices now makes up 19.5% of all hotel queries.
Quite notably, people aren’t just searching with mobile; they are actually completing transactions from their devices. The number of mobile bookings in the travel space has accelerated from $20 million in 2008 to over $200 million in 2010.
By 2012 we project that 8% of mobile users will be booking travel from their smart phones.

We all know that the tsunamy is coming, what we still do not know is the strenght of the wave. Some companies will suffer and may be dying ... Nokia, Sony, BlockBuster are perfect examples of what every company can experience in the coming quarters ... Iphone was created nearly 3 years ago ... And I do not even talk of the kinect technology ...

Mobile is just creating a never ending space where you can "touch" every consumers everywhere on earth but also at anytime in your value chain. Are you ready ?

Le livre de Florent Garin sur Android (2nde édition)

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Ce jour, je reçois un grand colis au bureau ... Qu'est-ce donc? Je n'ai rien commandé récemment.
Le dernier ouvrage de Florent Garin sur Android (2nde édition) ... C'est la première surprise ...
La seconde, je découvre un livre bien écrit, avec des chapitres courts, et un tour d'horizon assez complet ...
J'y retrouve des réponses à des questions que je me posais et auxquelles en général on me répondaient, faut pas faire ou trop compliqué ...
Par exemple?

Appeler un web service via SOAP à partir d'un terminal Android. Faut pas faire, ce n'est pas recommandé, etc. Ok, mais et si je veux le faire? Bon ben il en parle.
couchDB et NoSQL - il en parle (pas assez, encore, encore...)
la 2D et la 3D - il en parle, mais bon, la je pense que c'est impossible d'en faire le tour en quelques pages. J'aurais fait l'impasse ...
le chapitre réseau: il devrait être étendu, encore et encore. C'est là ou ça se complique dans les développements mobiles ... Allez chercher les services dans le Cloud avec de bonnes performances. Performance aussi concernant l'utilisation des ressources limitées du téléphone (batterie, etc.).
HTML5 et CSS3: il en parle ...
Sécurité - ça il n'en parle pas vraiment dans le chapitre 11. Ca mérite vraiment un chapitre (par exemple: oauth sur mobile android ca marche? si oui comment?).

N'étant pas un développeur expert, je pense que cet ouvrage est un très bon livre en FRANÇAIS pour comprendre les enjeux des développements mobiles et pour commencer à développer sur Android en particulier. Une fois les bases bien comprises, alors, vous pourrez étendre vos recherches sur le Web. Le problème avec les bons livres c'est que ça soulève d'autres questions quand on le lit ...

Mon seul et unique reproche - les photos et les copies d'écran sont moches et ternes ... Mais pourquoi donc? Je suppose que le but était de conserver un prix raisonnable ... Mais bon, quand même, Dunod, faut que tu te décarcasses ...

Bonne lecture ...

PS: si quelqu'un en connait un aussi bien et en Français sur iPhone, n'hésitez pas à me l'indiquer.

Online UML diagram editor with GWT generation

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:59:00 +0000

This project looks great ...

The gwt-generator project in an online UML diagram editor with generation features. This application is still in active development but you can already test it. Please note that this application only runs on modern browers : Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5+, Opera, Safari.

Features :

Create Uml diagrams : Class and Object.
Save and restore your diagrams.
Generate the code for your hibernate POJOS, annoted with JPA.

See this page for the full list of supported class relations and the java generated code.

I encourage you to test it here: http://gwt-generator.appspot.com/

The raise of the mobility bubble ...

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Seems like history is repeating ... remember the INTERNET bubble? Start-up, easy money, young people running companies growing fast, spending lots of VC cash ...
This time is back ... Mobility is the new bubble ...

What has changed now is: with tech democratization everybody can build its own company on the web for hundred bucks.

I never seen such an acceleration of innovation. Several global platforms exist (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Apple, Intuit, etc.) and companies are nurturing around or using them to attain hundreds of thousand (if not million) of customers. Add third party API to the mix and you can see how easy things can be done. And I do not even mention advertising or affiliation.

I remember a time where the ADA compiler was so expensive that it was impossible for a student to have one. Now, a student can choose the language, the platform, the dev tools and deploy it in minutes in the cloud. Look at greplin this new personal search engine for your data in the cloud. Great idea, great young guy... great VC also.

Of course there will always be tech Big Bang (disruptive innovation), but what is new is how quickly, globally and how big companies are created and grow around those Big Bang. Co-creation is now mainstream ...

The main issue is now to keep the customers attached to your brand, your apps. How to resist to new apps releases every day and from new devices released every year?

Companies should invest in their business platforms and their business API to:

leverage their legacy content and services,
integrate the best services powered by others via API,
adopt a multi-channel approach in order to attain all possible long tail segment, niches, etc.
create distinct user experience and business model for each segments

Mobility requires new business skills able to invent new business models, manage several evolving distribution channels, and to create versatile products (within very short delivery cycle). Having the technical skills internally is required ...

As Google CEO said at WMC 2011, "Put your best people on mobile, put them on mobile before desktop".

Fire walks with Me ...

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:46:00 +0000

An internal memo sent by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop broke out on the internet, just before the deal with Microsoft was announced. This memo presented Nokia company as a burning platform ...
When I read that memo, and do not ask me why, I thought at David Lynch movies "Twin Peaks" and "fire walks with me" !

Each company today should be ready for "creative destruction" identified with the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who adapted and popularized it as a theory of economic innovation and progress. Creative destruction means that you should walk with the fire around you and be ready for going through ... without being severely burnt or die.

I imagine then each company like a Mario Bros Game, trying to walk away from fire, from platforms to platforms, keeping what can be kept and "killing" what should be. Of course, the later you take the decision in front of fire, the more destructive it is. Two recent examples are "BlockBuster" vs. Netflix or "Borders" vs. "Amazon". In both cases the former companies died or are about to.

HP and Palm were able to make a great come back on the mobile world today. New innovative products, great technology and "whaow effect" at the mobile world congress. Apple is always trying to "walk with fire", by releasing new products/devices just in time ... Not too early, not too late and with a great marketing around.

All the recent highly successful companies have one point in common, they master somehow the full product lifecycle and the platform they use: from design, building, and up to digital or brick and mortar store. Facebook is also a great example ...

Company have no choice now, they should invest massively to walk with fire. Not easy for most of them... As Charlie Wollborg said on twitter: "If you think innovation is expensive, just wait until you see what a lack of innovation does to your bottom line."

This will also lead to hire/create new profiles in companies having the following capabilities:

Customer focused: mastering how to do mass market with Hyper personalization and respect of data privacy;
IT aware: you will still need to get the best of your legacy, aka. the content and the business core services. SOA was the term used some years ago, now we talk of API (light, easy, open, manageable, personalized) and Integration in the cloud.
Cloud native: leverage SaaS, IAAS, PAAS to the max.
Socially Innovative: co-creation, co-development of new services. Requires the capability to find the right suppliers around the world and to define a "sustainable" business model.
Multi-channel enablers: Designing apps/web site for smartphone, tablets, TV, PC,... but also fridge, cars, etc. (communicating objects)
Security and digital payment aware: At the end, it is all about money ... and secured exchanges.

One of the example of this new type of resource is called : "Marketing Technologist" (see this blog to know more for example). Their motto is "Leverage what's inside the company when still possible and associate it with the best new technology/products inside/outside the company in order to provide new/more revenues".

That is my job currently ;) and I can tell you ... "Fire walks with me".

2011 - the year of massive cloud computing adoption

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:50:00 +0000

2011 will be the year of massive cloud computing adoption. Let me tell you why.

1. Data Security

Because Amazon AWS has gone through nearly all possible security compliance procedure (SAS 70 type II, PCI compliance). So now, you can consider Amazon as a possible supplier for hosting your credit card data or any other confidential data.
It offers security from day one ... Compared to what some companies should invest to get the same result on time within their datacenter, this announce could be a major game changer.

2. Data Management

Several offers exist on the market and are preparing for a major shift:

Xeround, "The cloud database" offers mySQL in the cloud ... Easy ... Easy ...
Amazon SimpleDB, and Amazon Relational Database Service part of Amazon Web Services set of cloud computing products and offers. Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database, while Simple DB is a NoSQL offer.
Salesforce launched Database.com "Build for the cloud" yesterday.
Microsoft has a great offer with SQL Azure (SQL server like Database as a service) and Azure Storage solution.
Cloudant offers NoSQL data Mgt in the cloud.
Google is offering several solution for data storage as API: Big Table , Blobstore, and Google Storage (see a good description how how to use them here).
And a new one: clearDB.

Preliminary Comparison of Database.com and SQL Azure Features and Capabilities is available in this excellent article.

Oracle will jump on this market more later than sooner, in order to not kill its existing product portfolio and already offers to install its product within Amazon infrastructure. The recent exalogic cloud offer is another step in Oracle Cloud Strategy: making companies buy more hardware and software to build private cloud (see Oracle Exec Details Potential Pitfalls Of Cloud Computing).

3. Platform As A Service(PAAS)

Great news on the Platform as a service. Oracle recent decisions concerning Java are making companies and the open source community look for next generation platform, in the cloud.

This was a great gift for:

Google enhancements concerning Google AppEngine latest release, with 1.4.0 SDK. This SDK offers a Channel API, a bi-directional channel for communicating directly with user browsers by pushing notifications directly to the JavaScript running on the client, eliminating the need for polling). Android, Chrome OS, and Chrome Store will also be game changer in 2010.
Heroku (bought by Salesforce), Engine Yard, Morph Labs, and PoolParty will target the Ruby language developer community offering them dedicated PAAS solutions. Read DigitalHobbit’s more in-depth review of some of these Ruby-specific PaaS offerings.
Microsoft Azure Compute Service... with its impressive marketing power and its still amazing killer development IDE Visual Studio that integrates just fine with Azure. Microsoft also target PHP developers ...
Force.com. Developers familiar with Java or C# could use it easily. The platform was well suited for businesses looking to develop business applications that could easily integrate with the SaaS tools. But since this year, a real platform did emerge to support more company online services. Now you can benefit from: appforce ("the fastest way to build enterprise apps"), siteforce ("the fastest way to build data-rich websites"), VMForce ("the fastest way to build enterprise Java apps" based on SpringSource), ISVforce ("the fastest way to bring commercial apps to market").

Niche players also exist like:

WSO2 Stratos in alpha version offering only some specific services (identity service, portal service, gadget service).
No big player yet for PhP PAAS, but interesting solutions from CloudControl, Baobapp, etc.
JoyEnt’s Smart Platform is an open source, Javascript-based PaaS.
Tibco Silver (Not sure it is more than pure marketing ... Waiting for it since years)

4. Internet Service Bus (ISB) and Cloud To Cloud (C2C)

Now that your data and applications are in the Cloud, how to exchange data between them? You need cloud to cloud solutions. Again, the offer is maturing and you will find tons of solutions in the future. Today the offer is mostly:

Queue based messaging systems:

Integration Platform in the cloud

5. Mobile

To have great mobile app you need a great user experience and well defined services that you can call in JSON or REST (SOAP is not recommended for mobile com). That's why the new Mobile SDKs for Amazon Web Services could be a very good game changer ...

Two exist already: AWS SDK for Android and AWS SDK for iOS.

The Social Anti-virus

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 18:21:00 +0000

Do you like and use Facebook? So, you need a social anti-virus ...
Now you can protect yourselves with:

Bitdefender Safego a solution from a real antivirus software company that needs to be installed on your Facebook account.
a free Firefox plugin named Scanbook.

When your social graph will become portable, which is more sooner than later, I suppose that they will need an anti-virus also. In the social world, your connections, your applications, your post, your pictures, everything needs to be protected!

Web Scrapping: Search, Extract and Work with data from across the web

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 17:44:00 +0000

I read this excellent article from Marshall Kirkpatrick

Needlebase, Dapper and Extractive web tools are democratizing the ability to extract and work with data from across the web. They are to text processing what blogging was to text publishing.

For sure the now Yahoo-acquired Dapper, is may be the less impressive of the three tools. It enables to build an RSS feed from changes made to any field on any web page.

The brand-new Extractiv, is a bulk web-crawling and semantic analysis tool that seems very easy to use. It is free for up to 1,000 URLs per web crawl, 1 web crawl at a time and up to 1,000 docs/day. Other plans are not really expensive (99$ per month and 299$ per month).

Needlebase, sits in the middle, and its free. Needlebase was built as a side project of travel search company ITA Software (Google is currently in legal negotiations to acquire ITA). It is a great new point-and-click tool for extracting, sorting and visualizing data from across pages around the web. Needlebase allows you to view web pages through a virtual browser, point and click to train it in understanding what fields on that page are of interest to you and how those fields relate to each other. Then the program goes and scrapes the data from all of those fields, publishes them into a table, list or map, and recommends merges of cells that appear to be mistakenly separate. It's very cool and it lets non-technical people do things with data quickly and easily that we used to require the assistance of someone more technical to do.

Power is now on your side ...

Makara - Deploy, Manage, Monitor and scale your cloud resources

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:40:00 +0000

Makara, just bought by RedHat seems to be a great tool. It was created to help you Deploy, Manage, Monitor and scale your cloud resources.

It supports:

Software: Apache, MySQL, PHP, Java, Tomcat, JBoss
IAAS: Amazon EC2 and VPC, vCloud and Terramark
Virtual machines: Xen, VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation and ESX

Three editions and cost models are proposed:

Makara On-Demand Edition: for Amazon EC2 cost is per Hour per Server
Makara Enterprise Edition Private, Hybrid or Virtual Private Clouds (Xen, vCloud) and is based on an Annual Subscription
Makara for Service Providers Edition: Private, Hybrid or Virtual Private Clouds (Xen, vCloud) and you need to contact their sales rep.

Pour Noel, Offrez le Petit Prince

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:26:00 +0000

Le Petit Prince est de retour. Même message humaniste, superbes livres avec des personnages très bien dessinés et un DVD magnifique. Alors, pour Noel, offrez le Petit Prince ...

End of the OTA merchant model?

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:57:00 +0000

In a recent article Max Starkov, chief eBusiness strategist at Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (www.hospitalityebusiness.com) is claiming that we are near to the end of the OTA merchant model.

"Over the next five years the OTA Merchant Model as we know it will disappear. It will be transformed into a “Commission Override Model” where OTA commissions will be tied to booking volumes in the form of commission overrides above the standard travel agency commission that exists at the time."

It's demonstration is limpid ...
Take the time to read it if you're interested by travel 2.0 and the way the ecosystem is changing.

Recommended.

Linkedin BrandYou - my results

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:41:00 +0000

I made the test here at http://brandyousurvey.com/

I'm a Global Guru

Wow, you are recognised by your professional and personal network of contacts for your specific knowledge and deep experience. You actively communicate across all platforms, physical as well as online. You’ve got a proven track record in a defined sector or discipline. All that knowledge is reinforced by a range of audiences, both professional and personal. Impressive!

My take on the main trends related to innovation in the Travel Industry

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:27:00 +0000

I attented the Phocuswright Innovation Summit. in Phoenix. It was a great conference, well organized, with great speakers. There was 1100 attendees, and I had very interesting discussions there.
My fist shock was to see how iPad and iPhone changed the way people participate and interact during a conference. With my colleagues, It tried to use th wifi with my blackberry but never succeeded to do so. With my iphone, I was operational in 2 minutes. All information about the conference was available though an easy to use iOs or Android app (and a mobile web site for others sic ..). This great tool was developped and powered by Quickmobile.
It seems now obvious that a good conference should now come with a good mobile, real time, social accompanying app or web site. It was indeed very easy to ask questions to keynote speakers through email, twitter (with specific hash tag), etc. I hope next year real-time polling could be done also via the same approach, enabling also the keynote speaker to ask questions.

Google ITA and emerging new Travel Search Hub (or Aggregators)
Google/ITA deal was in all conversations. It seems that the Google-ITA deal has a great chance to be agreed. With metasearch engines and now Google entering the travel space, OTAs (Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) are looking for alternative ways to get their travel segment information content. This opens then a new market for companies like Everbread and Vayant, specializing in airfare search.
And what is true for air is also true for other domains like:

Hotel: see Hotelicopter or Gekko (200000 hotels from 41 suppliers + Tripadvisor content)
Rail: see Silverrail (winner of innovation summit trophy) and their QUNO site.
Ground transportation: see Limos.com or Groundlink
Cruise: see Cruiselabs

All of them are positioned as possible alternatives for shopping and booking.

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping
I was very surprised to see that so many companies are still innovating and investing in the shopping experience.Companies are trying to re-invent the way to make search, to make it easy, to foster travel inspiration.
Some were enabling shopping in social network (Bonvoy plugged to Amadeus and providing a way to split the cost of the travel to several Facebook friends), some are offering best of breed web 2.0 user experience (Voyavo and Inntopia providing dynamic packaging, Amadeus One and Flymuch presenting great way to use web 2.0) some are just looking for new ways of presenting information (HipMunk plugged to ITA with its agony way of showing air travel).
Another trends is the capability to do shopping and providing at the same time the miles (see Usingmiles, Mileblaster).

Share IS the new search

Phocuswright CEO in its keynote claimed that "Share IS the new search". People will relate more and more to others to find the best way to choose their trip. This new trend will be pushed by mobile. Mobile social web being the most powerful collaborative tool in history of mankind.

That's may be why Expedia bought the company Mobiata delivering one of the best mobile app for traveler (already connected to Tripit database, to flighstats, etc.) and filled for an IPO.

For some innovators, Share and social mobile best platform are available via Facebook. We've seen lots of innovations around this concept (like Bonvoy). But today, nobody knows. I do think that Linkedin should be the most promising platform for business travel (to implement the share concept).

Distribution War
The industry is now concentrated around improving or better controlling distribution. Travel suppliers want direct booking through their web sites (American Airlines, Jetblue, Hotels chains) or through aggregators (like the one cited above). This will include API, white labeled web sites and mobile solutions.

OTA and GDS are trying to defend themselves by suing company or by innovating internally or through acquisitions. In the future OBT will also suffer, even if they live in a protected market, the business travel ecosystem.

Distribution is also local and mobile. One company, named Movitas, is offering a platform for enabling any hotel property to create its own hyperlocal marketplace. Everything you can imagine available from the property could then be accessible or booked through a mobile, a tablet, hotel connected TV. Imagine if you could do hotel check in with your iPad and get the "digital key" through the air. No more queues ... And, if you do not own an iPad, the hotel will lend you one.

Content on the GO
Flightstats is widening its offering for real time content delivered on the go. They are getting data from more and more sources (airport, airlines, etc). Two products named TripAssist and TripTalk are provided as SaaS solutions for TMC's. Flightstats is becoming THE hub for real time travel segment alerts and notifications.

Conclusion

The winners will be the ones offering the best fare (fair?) comparison using different categories (travel agony, miles you can earn, airport with body scanners), the best shopping experience (on mobile, on web) AND the easiest (social, mobile) booking solution.

Google dominance on search changed everything and shaked durably the ecosystem ... The PANDORA gate is now open.

Travel suppliers (Hotels, Airlines, rail companies) and travel hubs will leverage direct connect to the max, enabling creation and distribution of new ancillary services and new fare categories.
OTA will have to increase their direct connect capabilities or invest in Hubs to avoid to experience again the Google/ITA deal issue. Some if them will invest massively in mobile to differentiate from the crowd.
TMC's will be impacted in their capability to deliver content if GDS are not able to increase (preserve at worst) their distribution capabilities (see travelport - American airlines dispute for example).

If you want to stay updated on new travel web sites check my Netvibes public page on travel 2.0.

Business innovation is not done by Commando

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:09:00 +0000

Following the post made by Forrester great analyst Randy Heffner called Build Innovation Zones Into Your Architecture, I decided to make some comments.

I'm still surprised that in 2010 people still thinks that business people are "immature" person that are doing unconsidered things in order to stay competitive.

Business innovation is not done by commando. Business innovation is needed and very often is realized through software product. Corporate IT was not always built to sustain business innovation, and is sometimes not able to cope with its specific needs (long planning cycle, specific highly skilled professional, reduced time to market).

So I do not see any issue of using external solutions (IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, etc.) to make business innovation. Innovation networking in a business ecosystem is key.

Now going back to the Enterprise Architect roles. For me, EA role is to head and support the business needs in providing governance, coherence and a digital quality seal. If they are experiencing "nightmares" with business innovations creations extending the IT landscape outside the corporate datacenter boundaries, it's mainly because they did not do they work! Defining interfaces and integration point with the external world (innovation zone) is one of their key roles.

Moving to cloud and XaaS is done especially to overcome LONNNGGGG IT cycles and high maintenance cost, but also to share the risks with other clients and benefit from innovation immediately available. Using a pay per use approach is a very effective financial and business strategic approach. It enables "digital Darwinism" at a reasonable cost. Instead of spending millions on a project to discover 3 years later that it's not adapted to your need anymore, you can select the right XaaS suppliers and follow/benefit your (and external) innovation cycles. For companies with great internal dev. shop, it is also a way to keep their troops motivated by using new technologies and languages that enables to develop and deploy more quickly.

IT people, EA architects should stop spreading the idea that business innovation is done by irresponsible business people that are only taking care of speed and will endanger the company by their decisions. More and more, business innovation is done by previous EA staff. That's also why you've got such an acceleration: having people in you business innovation team with both business knowledge and IT knowledge helps moving fast.

Of course, and as usual, pervasive innovation is not always easy. It depends still on many factors like the system type (less easy for a back office), its business and IT criticality, its capability to fit the needs, etc.

If business innovation is so Hard it is because:

EA failed to prepare for it, and may be it is a mission statement issue
IT did not listen to the business needs (in politically correct words, it is better to say "did not align"), and was operating and working in Silo. This case is very easy to detect. If IT told the business that the business is like a client in a restaurant. They should look at the menu and request existing or new (never made) dishes. IT is then the presented as the kitchen, where the business should never enter. The result is that if you ask for a hamburger, a new dish, then, the kitchen will tell you: "well, it's a new dish, so we will bring you the hot bread in 5 minutes, with tomato, but no beef. Then we will provide you the beef later". In order to do business innovation you need to avoid the V model.
business was changing too quickly, was not mature and did mature, or because they made mistakes and decided to change their way of doing things. That's the main advantage of business people thay can make mistakes, since the world they operate with is changing constantly! So in order to be fair, companies should allow also IT shops to change their mind and evolve. Budgets should be allocated for agility and for reducing the technical debt.
companies did not invest in training their IT people to new technologies, and massively outsourced their development. The best example today is mobile devlopment. Some companies are building new teams by considering that mobile development will be key for their business and that they should have talent internally. Others are building apps or mobile web site with external suppliers, asking their corpoaret IT shop to work on the integration points and provide robust interfaces (REST/SOAP API).
some non critical business features can be obtained immediatly, for a fraction of the cost needed for building it internally, with Saas suppliers.
you have great potentials outside your company and if you do not benefit from them, your competitors will.
none of the EA framework was built to support innovation and to optimize delivery time / cost / security of a system within an ecosystem. We can clearly state today that the EA team does not have today the methodology and tools adapted to their new missions.

OpenSkies Web SIte down ...

noreply@blogger.com (William El Kaim) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:19:00 +0000

How is it still possible in 2010 to have airlines not managing and monitoring properly their web site?
I was trying to access openskies web site and this is what I got:

I hope their plane are better maintained and monitored ...