Author: Frank Gilbane (Page 43 of 74)

Time to re-check your mobile development strategy

April 24, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The mobile platform landscape has changed dramatically in the last few months. So much so that organizations who even recently reached decisions on a mobile development strategy should re-visit their decisions. I’m not talking about HTML5 vs app development issues – though those decisions are just as important and directly related because of continued innovation in device and operating system capabilities combined with the need to protect content development and management investments – but about which platforms will be viable, or meet your level of risk tolerance.

What has changed? To over simplify: Apple’s dominance continues to increase and is unassailable in tablets; RIM is not a contender; Microsoft is looking like an up-and-comer; and most surprising to many, Android is looking iffy and is a flop in tablets with the exception of the very Amazon-ized version in the Kindle Fire. These are pretty general statements, but if you are in charge of your company’s mobile development strategy considering their impact is a good place to start a check-up for a possible course correction.

Another place to start is to read the excellent post by Tim Bajarin Why Google Will Use Motorola To Become Vertically Integrated. I won’t summarize because the entire post and the comments are really a must-read.

Making big data analytics accessible to marketers

March 28, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The recent announcement of SAS Visual Analytics highlights four important characteristics of big data that are key to the ability of marketing organizations to use big analytic data effectively:

Visualization is a challenge for big data analysis and we’ll continue to see new approaches to presenting and interacting with it. Better visualization tools are necessary not just because those who aren’t data scientists need to understand and work with the data, but because the increased efficiency and time-to-reaction to the data is critical in many cases – especially for marketers who need to react with lightening speed to current user experiences.
In case it isn’t obvious, visualization tools need to work where marketers can access them on web and mobile platforms.
In-memory data processing is necessary to support the required speed of analysis. This is still rare.
Big data is not only about unstructured data. Relational data and database tools are still important for incorporating structured data.

SAS is far from the only company driving new big data analytic technology, but they are the biggest and seem determined to stay on the front edge.

Marketing, big data, and content

March 21, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 2 Comments

“Content” in this context means unstructured data. The need to manage unstructured data is one of the main reasons big data technologies exist – the other being the need for dealing with scale and speed. This is why it is important for us to cover at our conferences. Not every company needs to build new infrastructures around Hadoop-like technologies… yet. But marketers need to manage the mostly unstructured content that is part of their world, and also process and manage the more structured analytic data that will rapidly become “big” for even small organizations, so big data technologies need to be on marketing organizations’ radar as they continue to increase their expertise and spending on technology. See yesterday’s post on Why marketing is the next big money sector in technology.

Why marketing is the next big money sector in technology

March 20, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Ajay Agarwal from Bain Capital Ventures predicts that because of the confluence of big data and marketing Marketing is the next big money sector in technology and will lead to several new multi-billion dollar companies. His post is succinct and convincing, but there are additional reasons to believe he is correct.

Marketing spending more on IT than IT

Ajay opens his post with a quote from Gartner Group: “By 2017, a CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO”. It is difficult to judge this prediction without evaluating the supporting research, but it doesn’t sound unreasonable and the trend is unmistakable. Our own experience as conference organizers and consultants offers strong support for the trend. We cover the use of web, mobile, and content technologies for enterprise applications, and our audience has historically been 50% IT and 50% line of business or departmental. Since at least 2008 there has been a pronounced and steady increase in the percentage of marketers in our audience, so that 40% or more of attendees are now either in marketing, or in IT but assigned to marketing projects – this is about double what it was in earlier years. While web content management vendors have moved aggressively to incorporate marketing-focused capabilities and are now broadly positioned as hubs for customer engagement, the real driver is the success of the web. Corporate web sites have become the organizations’ new front door; companies have recognized this; and marketers are demanding tools to manage the visitor experience. Even during the peak of the recession spending on web content management, especially for marketing applications, was strong.

“Cloud” computing and workforce demographics have also beefed up marketers’ mojo. The increased ability to experiment and deploy applications without the administrative overhead and cost of IT or of software licenses has encouraged marketers to learn more about the technology tools they need to perform and helped instill the confidence necessary to take more control over technology purchases. A younger more tech-savvy workforce adds additional assertiveness to marketing (and all) departments. Now if only marketers had more data scientists and statisticians to work with…

Big data and big analytics

Big data has not caused, or contributed very much, to the increase in marketing spending to-date. Certainly there are very large companies spending lots of money on analyzing vast amounts of customer data from multiple sources, but most companies still don’t have enough data to warrant the effort of implementing big data technologies and most technology vendors don’t yet support big data technologies at all, or sufficiently. I agree with Ajay though that the “several multi-billion dollar” marketing technology companies that may emerge will have to have core big data processing and analytic strengths.

And not just because of the volume. One of the main reasons for the enterprise software bias for back office applications was that front office applications beyond simple process automation and contact data collection were just too difficult because they required processing unstructured, or semi-structured, data. Big data technologies don’t address all the challenges of processing unstructured data, but they take us a long way as tools to manage it.

The level of investment in this space is much greater than most realize. Ajay is right to invest in it, but he is not alone.

W3C launches Multilingual Web Language Technology Working Group

March 13, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

W3C announced new work to make it easier for people to create Web content in the world’s languages. The lack of standards for exchanging information about translations is estimated to cost the industry as much as 20% more in translation costs, amounting to billions of dollars. In addition, barriers to distributing content in more than one language mean lost business. Multinational companies often need to translate Web content into dozens of languages simultaneously, and public bodies from Europe and India typically must communicate with citizens in many languages. As the Web becomes more diverse linguistically, translation demands will continue to grow.

The MultilingualWeb–LT (Language Technology) Working Group will develop standard ways to support the (automatic and manual) translation and adaptation of Web content to local needs, from its creation to its delivery to end users. The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group receives funding from the European Commission (project name LT-Web) through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Recent reports by Frank on mobile development and big data

February 7, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

While I was still at Outsell Inc, I started writing some reports on information technologies for our publishing and information provider CEO clients. I will most likely be writing a few more similar reports for Outsell this year. While special attention is paid to the interests of publishing and information industry CEOs, the topics are all (so far) about technologies that are important to all industries. These reports are available from Outsell:

Five Technologies to Watch 2012-2013, January 25, 2012

Mobile Development Strategies: What Information Industry Executives Need to Know, November 29, 2011

Big-Data: Big Deal or Just Big Buzz?, August 2, 2011.

Did you know there is a mobile track at Gilbane Boston?

November 2, 2011 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

We’ve been adding content about mobile app development and publishing for a couple of years. We will be adding a full track threaded through the entire conference to our next event, but this year’s Gilbane Boston has quite a few sessions covering aspects of mobile development and content management relevant to Web, marketing/business, IT strategists, and developers.

In fact, we have a sort of a stealth mobile track – stealth, because the sessions are spread out across other tracks. To make it easier to plan schedules for those of you specifically interested in doing more with smartphones and tablets, below are five sessions that are the most directly relevant to mobile. There are other sessions that also cover mobile topics, so be sure to check the overall conference at-a-glance schedule and session descriptions.

Stealth Mobile Track:

T1: Mobile Development: App, Mobile Web, or Hybrid?

Wednesday, November 30, 1:30 – 2:30

You know mobile is becoming the dominant channel, but of course it is actually multiple channels – multiple devices with multiple APIs, form factors, interfaces and capabilities. Do you optimize for each device? Do you try and build a mobile web application? Do you mix it up with a little bit of both? This session will help you understand the pros and cons of different approaches.

Moderator: Jon Marks, Co-founder, Kaldor Product Development Group

Jon Marks, Co-founder, Kaldor Product Development Group

Introduction

Ashley Streb,  Vice President, Technology, Brightcove

Hybrid Position

 Stefan Andreasen,  CTO Kapow

Browser Position

 Philip Ramsey , Manager, Technical Design, BNA

App Position

P2. iPad Publishing and UI Design

 Wednesday, November 30, 2:40 – 4:00

With smartphones and tablets exploding in usage, publishers are racing to deliver content to new types of users who are expecting rich, interactive experiences. Yet publishers are often dependent on third parties who can create these apps for them. This session delves into how some of the standard publishing apps work, and how developers create some of the more advanced features that users are demanding.

Moderator: Ned May, Vice President & Lead Analyst, Outsell

Jim Nasr , CEO, Armedia

 Best Practices for Developing Content Rich Applications for the iPad

Michael Mahoney,  Senior User Experience Specialist, Microlink

 Information as Design

T3. Is HTML5 the Future – If so, When?

Wednesday, November 30, 4:00 – 5:00

HTML5 enjoys widespread partial support. That is, the major browsers support some HTML5 functionality, and Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Apple support it politically. HTML5 promises lots of important new capabilities, but it is an ongoing development is scheduled to become a W3C recommendation in 2014. Many organizations are already using HTML5 for app development, but should they? Is it too soon?

Moderator: Richard Rubin, Principal Consultant, Professional Services, Innodata Isogen

Lubor Ptacek , VP, Strategic Marketing & GM, Microsoft Solutions Group, Open Text

Phillip Hyun,  CTO, EndPlay

E5. Thinking Beyond the Website – Mobile and Other Channels Deserve Your Attention Too

 Thursday, December 1, 9:40 – 10:40

As phones and other mobile devices get “smarter”, so must marketers get smarter about their multi-channel strategies. It used to be acceptable for brands to focus on their desktop browser experience, and then, at some point, dumb them down by removing flash, videos, and all the other extras so that prospective customers could view the website on their phones. But this strategy is no longer viable. The Splinternet Age brings not only smart phones, but also tablets, mobile applications, social sites, and wifi-ready televisions just to name a few. As more and more consumers seek to experience your brand through these mediums, having a strong multi-channel strategy is essential.

Moderator: Scott Liewehr, Senior Consultant, Web Content Management, Outsell’s Gilbane Services

  Arje Cahn , CTO, Hippo

Tom Wentworth,  CMO, Ektron

 New Reality – Mobile First

 Michael Assad , Co-founder & CEO, Agility

 Content Management for Digital Marketing: Thinking Beyond the Website

The day before the main conference we also have a pre-conference workshop covering important issues for mobile customer engagement:

Workshop B: Integrating Website and Mobile Strategy for Consistent Customer Engagement

Wednesday, November 29, 9:00 – 12:00

You’ve heard all the talk about web engagement management. You’ve read about web and content optimization for contextual consumption. You may even have preached to others about the rise of mobile-, social-, and personal-ization. We suppose you could even be doing some of these successfully, but we doubt it. These are just a few a few of the sexiest, most contemporary practices that everyone likes to talk about but no one is really doing… but they should.   In this workshop, renowned author and digital marketing expert Robert Rose teams up with industry analyst and web content management expert Scott Liewehr to teach you how to realize true web engagement across web and mobile channels for your organization. Robert and Scott will teach attendees how to integrate content optimization into the marketing process by pragmatically focusing on three of the primary aspects of web engagement: testing, targeting and contextual design. The workshop walk attendees through a step-by-step approach to each practice, focusing on both the marketing process implications as well as the implementation and operationalization aspects. Web engagement management is more process than technology, so while you may not be able to buy it in a box, you can learn an awful lot about how to implement it in three entertaining, fun-filled and educational hours.   Attendees will also receive Robert’s brand new book, co-authored with Joe Pulizzi: Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand.

Instructors: Scott Liewehr, Lead Analyst WCM, Outsell Gilbane, and Rob Rose, Chief Troublemaker, Big Blue Moose

Register for the conference, workshop, or both (speaking of mobile … note a Conference Plus registration includes the Workshop and also a new Kindle Fire tablet.

Keynote lineup for Gilbane Boston is complete

October 13, 2011 / Frank Gilbane

We are going to have fun with the keynotes this year with our new rapid-fire format. You won’t want to miss any of it so be sure to get their early enough for a good seat. Also, please remember that after seven years at the Westin at Copley Place we have moved to a roomier spot at the Westin Waterfront at 425 Summer Street. You could easily lose 45 minutes by showing up at the wrong hotel!

K1. Opening Keynotes: Big Ideas – Bold Statements
Wednesday, November 30, 8:30 – 10:00 & 11:00 – 12:00

Our keynotes are designed to inspire, provoke, and provide perspective on the big issues, trends, and shifting foundation of technologies, digital strategies, and channels for communication and engagement. Our keynote sessions this year will use a rapid-fire format. Each speaker will focus on describing a single big idea or making a bold statement that will help us think a little differently about our use or expectations of content and content technologies. Presentations are limited to 10-15 minutes with 5 minutes for Q&A. Use of slides will be minimal.

Moderator: Frank Gilbane

Christos M. Cotsakos, Ph.D.
Founding Chairman, CEO & President, EndPlay
Christer Johnson
Partner, North American BAO Advanced Analytics Leader, IBM Global Business Services
Georgiana Cohen
Manager, Web Content and Strategy, Tufts University & Co-founder, Meet Content
Maureen Chew
Chief Applications Officer, Information Technology Division, Commonwealth of MA
Stephen Powers
Principal Analyst & Research Director, Forrester Research
Tony Byrne
Founder, Real Story Group & CMS Watch
Scott Liewehr
Lead Analyst, Web Content Management, Outsell Gilbane Services & President, Content Management Professionals Assoc.

~~Registration information~~