Interesting musings…

During the last few days – I stumbled on 2 interesting thread.

One from Frank Scavo – where he summed up Nick Carr’s presentation on Cloud computing and how it is changing the IT landscape.  Not much new here from Cloud computing perspective – but I like how Nick uses historical analogy and compare it to the past trend in the Power industry. I have included Nick’s talk on Youtube here.

Second one is from Dave Kellogg – who summed up recent Tom Siebel talk and some of the initiative that he is working on. It is a good summary of some of the larger trends affecting our society in the current day and age. More and more folks are jumping in to help monitor and mitigate carbon footprint we leave behind on daily basis. This influx of both capital and intellectual power will help make the world a better place. It is also becoming good business as more and more bright people jump on the bandwagon to improve energy utilization and work towards providing better alternative sources.

Particularly, I like one of the link that point to Zerofootprint product offering. It has simple calculator that people can use to analyze how much we contribute to the CO2 emission and how we can be more conscious in our daily life reducing the CO2 footprint we generate. Also, it share up and coming enterprise applications for companies to measure and manage their own carbon footprint.   It is not only good from the social consciousness perspective – but also good business.

Enjoy!

Market-ing: Make it personal

We live in a time where communicating to broad audience alone one way has limited reach and stickiness. To make a message sticky and gain viral spread – you want to communicate through your audience. You want to foster a community of influencers who can help spread your message and communicate for you.

Ask someone who is running a business and they will more likely suggest that bigger risk they run is not getting adequate market recognition making sales cycle harder for them. Putting businesses in a position to not able to compete effectively in the market place. Unless you are doing some ground breaking invention – not many will cite they run technology/product risk as the primary reason to go out of business. Market risk usually trump over the product risk. Largely products adopts and evolves to follow customer/technology life cycle. At least until it meets a disruptive trend.

Several well known Marketing gurus have suggested how to effectively target marketing message to create the viral adoption taking “Marketing” from job function perspective to “market-ing ideas that spread” broadly. e.g. Seth Godin…around his thought process “Ideas that spread – wins” or Tribal management. or Forrester on its analysis around how to create Groundswell. Web is littered with such case studies and adoption stories – some more successful than others.

It is one of the reason - more businesses from the get go are increasingly embracing social media and encourage employees to rather share ideas broadly. Folks will invest from the start building community of developers/influencer/promoters needed to give business a market edge. Taking the discussion beyond Marketing department to engage every one involved in the endeavor to help promote your business; ideas; product; etc.

At the end of the day ask yourself – who best positioned to spread what you do best and all the creative ideas about your business than your own employees. So start the journey with your team and go get your ideas out…

Share your ideas – Social Media 101

I find myself in more situations lately educating others or asking others to embrace social media as part of professional life. It has become a norm for start up companies where social media is part of life. However, in established companies it is a journey: some leap forward and others need hand holding to get the journey started.

I usually find 2 stumbling block for the folks who have not done it before:

1. Overcome their own inertia or fear what does it mean to share ideas on the whole world wide web.
2. Not knowing how to get started – particularly how to keep personal and professional life separate and private as one deem appropriate.

I am not an expert but I have embraced few things as part of my daily personal/professional life. Here is what I do:

a. Facebook: It is my personal family/friend group. This is where I keep up with what is happening in the life of my family and close friends. I usually share personal/family stuff here. I am particular about whose invitation I accept on Facebook or who I invite to be my friend. You can find me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alok.tyagi

b. Twitter: This is where I microblog on what is happening in my professional life. Usually, I share organization thoughts that are important to me. I accept everyone who want to follow me on twitter – except lately I am finding blocking some people who seem to have find a way to push porn on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aloktyagi

c. Personal blog: This is where I speak my mind and share my personal/professional opinion on wide variety of topics – usually topics that are near and dear to my heart. You can find my personal blog at http://aloktyagi.wordpress.com

d. Company blog: This is where I represent my professional view as it pertains to the company I work for. You may want to check out your company policy. Some companies are restrictive on what you can say or not. Others are rather liberal and allows people to speak their mind. Anyway – it is better to know company policy as you blog on company site or forum. You can find my company blog at http://community.sagemas.com

e. LinkedIn: I don’t use it as much as others do. It is mostly my professional contact list and I usually use it to do quick reference check or know relationship when I meet someone new. I only accept LinkedIn requests from people that I know of or met recently at some conference/networking event. You can find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/aloktyagi

Anyway – there are various other avenues and some people use social media more than others. I suggest find your comfort zone and start the journey – whether to start on the personal end or professional end or both. What is important is to start the journey and be regular.

Business of software

While talking to few acquaintances who are in the business of building different kind of software (Attention based; consumer product; SaaS; or others) than on-premise enterprise software products – it is interesting to observe similar discussion. This is probably the core nature of software business. At the end of the day it comes down to 2 set of metrics driving business:

1. Acquiring new customers/members/subscribers/etc. More and more businesses now run calculations to understand the cost to acquire new customer/member. Cost to acquire new customer usually is much higher than many would guess, if they had no clue. It gets costlier in mature industry where traditional market is about replacing someone else’s product. Also, it can be costlier in the web world where there is now actual cost of  goods sold (think of all the IT infrastructure that goes around delivering a service) as opposed to the cost of CD.

Question usually gets asked: Beside product strategy to attract and differentiate offering from competitors – keep cost of customer acquisition in check; what other ways to generate traffic/leads; foster communities; target competition; create winning buzz; adjust pricing or terms; bundle products/services to make it more attractive; etc. Increasingly more web based product focus on marketing presence on the local/industry circuit from the get-go rather broadly within ranks via blog/communities to earn credibility. Increasing emphasis on Marketing too important just to leave it to dedicated few – every one has to play.

2. Retaining a customer. It is about understanding the likelihood of customers staying on the product. Generally a combination of understanding attrition rate (as some folks leaves the fold) and knowing life time value of a customer/member. Although harder to find, however, there are industry best practice metrics for the type of busines one can use as a guideline. These days businesses (particularly on the web) have a greater understanding of trends among its existing customer base. One suggestion: if you don’t already know about your customer trends – invest quickly and gain better understanding. By the nature of it -Web based businesses know well how many of their customers renew membership; what is their average monthly dues; what %age of customers usually don’t renew; on an average how long customers remain a member; what feature gets used most; demographics details; etc. Likewise, enterprise software products – SaaS or otherwise have similar metrics to help project maintenance or recurring revenue.

Question usually gets asked: What needs to be done to keep a customer happy using our product/services? What features to add (particularly that generate stickiness); what pricing lever to play; how to provide value without disrupting the apple cart; what promotion to have; etc. To find the secret formula that can help a customer retained longer paying healthy dues – is what makes a business sticky and profitable in long run.

So to remain growing – it is about adding more new customers than the customers leaving the fold. Visualize a funnel – add more while few trickle away. A math described easy but takes an organization with a winning attitude to achieve…

Me Inc.

Are you the CEO of your destiny who is  investing towards your future – learning and sharpening the game?

Great musicians never stop trying to improve; great athletes never stop trying to improve – so why should that not be true for everyone else.

However, it is rather common that many of us stop investing towards learning once formal education is over. Class room education may stop but quest for learning and keeping up with the changing landscape should remain high on the personal agenda. Whatever it is that one want to be better at – can be better – should a person keep hunger in the belly to learn and create opportunities to apply.

It remain a key difference that set apart individuals who succeed from others. Successful individuals never stop applying new learning. They can be gauged by their curiosity to learn and apply everyday. One key metrics – just check their book shelf. It is common for them to read several books a month.

So ask yourself – what is competing for your time that takes away personal obligation towards investing in yourself and learning?

One way is to make a commitment – find books/on-line material/social networking groups/etc. that are relevant to an individual profession and get started. Good books can be the single best personal investment and life mentor. 

I say let’s start today.

Is the world round again?

While no doubt we are living through one of the tough economic times – probably the most difficult we can remember in the recent time. But are the policies that promotes protectionism the way out of the current economic mess?

Here are some of the discussions happening at our policy makers circle:-

• Protectionism as part of the latest stimulus bill may spark trade war
• Microsoft layoffs add more fuel to H1-B fire 
• Stimulus bill barring H1-B hiring
• EU warns Obama on protectionism in stimulus bill

Seems like Europe is not far behind…it is all about protecting that we care most – our own first.

• Protectionism on the rise in Europe

This is not an easy question. Even in my family, my wife and I usually end up on the opposite side (and kids somewhere in the middle) of this discussion. She is more conservative in her thoughts than probably I am.

Let’s look at the other side of the discussion. Our world now is so inter-related that it is hard to untangle countries to shore up just by itself. Can you fix economy of one country at a time? Look at how the global market now work in tandem. This is a chart of DOW (New York), FTSE (London), Hangseng (Hongkong) and Nikkei (Tokyo) during the peak of market crash in Sept/Oct 2008.

In some regard, we are part of one big system with our own uniqueness and differences - knitted together. It is one BIG market that goes up and down together.

Current global recession is about choices that will determine how America and the world shapes up in the decades to come. Will we remain on the path of open economy, free trade;  global competition; etc. or we start to see the rise of nationalism and protective policies. Will we fight or flight? It is about the choices we will make. 

Thomas Friedman recently penned his opinion in New York Times discussing the same.  I like how he captured the spirit of America.

“Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.“

I say – let’s go stir and repeat…

Be a fisherman

While driving back home yesterday, I tuned in to the NPR as a routine habit. At that time, I happen to catch a story on Fishermen’s life – particularly how they deal with the highs and lows in their life. In fact it is the only way of life a fisherman knows. Various thought sparked in my mind and prime being – what a tough life!!! One would wonder how to tackle life when nothing is predictable or usual. To top off the story – it is amazing that fishermen encourage their kids to follow the same profession. It must be the love of fishing.

Anyway, I thought the story appropriate to share given current tough business environment. Check it out or listen to the audio.

(The audio is 5 min or so long)

3 thoughts, I picked up:

1. Cooperate and Collaborate – foster your community; commit to it, help and support each other

2. One has to love the line of business so much to encourage your kids to follow the same

3. Above all – have a positive ATTITUDE. It is THE difference

Find good people around you who share your enthusiasm and “can-do” attitude and let’s go to bat (fish) together. Enjoy!!!

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

Tough time present opportunities otherwise not available. Current economic environment is just one such opportunity.

Much depend on how we as individuals act and enable others to act to make the best of it. It is  our collective attitude that determine how an organization will fare as the rough weather passes.

Few thoughts:

1. Know yourself – recognize your strength and weakness. Position where your strength can make a difference

2. Work with people, regardless of their position, who share optimistic perspective on things (equally important shield yourself from individuals with negative attitude)

3. Know where you are going; bring focus on critical few; and make hard choices necessary to accomplish

4. Have sense of urgency to achieve. It should be driven out of what you plan to accomplish and not fear. Fear usually motivates but in the wrong direction

5. Roll up your sleeve and get involved directly with your customers, products or whatever your line of work. It helps appreciate perspective otherwise missing

Lastly –  communicate openly and candidly.

Remember, in the current environment – it is high time to demonstrate the winning attitude and make a difference. Opportunity is knocking at our door step – question is who is prepared to respond?

Innovation stumbling block

Innovation is hard. It is usually hard in an established organization. Why?

Top 3 reasons, in my mind, that hurt innovation in an established organization:

1. Knowledge – It is a double edge sword. While past experience helps but many smart brains get caught up to the learning or failed experiences of the past talking themselves (and unfortunately others too) out of good ideas prematurely.

2. Being perfect – On the other end, smart people looking for the perfection doesn’t help either.  Smart folks finding themselves rat-holing a conversation on obscure things making an idea too hard to conceive at the onset or too costly to tackle. Some time perfect is the enemy of good enough that stop conceiving a great idea from taking shape. Innovation evolves by shaping the idea one day at a time to its greatness.  

3. Afraid of failing – Smart people trying not to stick the neck out or taking chances that may make a difference because the potential of an effort may fail. It is our desire to act ordinary and remain on the proven path hence avoiding what best could have been achieved. It is amazing how conspiracy theorists (and they exist) attract smart brains keeping them just acting ordinary.

Weekend wrap

Few stories caught my attention as I wrap up the weekend:

1. Use of hologram during election coverage by CNN. I am not sure how many saw it during the telecast on Tuesday. It looked cool on TV. Although technology remains some what weak.  Also, some time back Cisco shared its telepresence initiative that is making buzz as well.

Anyway – Gizmodo has details on how holograms were brought to life during election coverage. Check it out.

2. Need entrepreneurs. While I am on the topic of election – I was reading an article on Forbes written by Sramana Mitra about President Obama and his promise to create 5 million jobs. Her point to create 5 million jobs will require creating 50,000 entrepreneurs. I agree. Listening to entrepreneurs and nurturing a supportive environment is what will take get economy back on track.

3. Is humility and ignorance a missing trait in business environment? This article from James Montier on investment captures the thought well. Somewhere along the line people start to appear know-all; can’t-fail, over-confident bunch. Anyway, few nuggets from the article that caught my attention: 

Quote from Confucius: “To ask a question is but a moment’s shame, but to live in ignorance is lifelong shame”

“…that we need to learn more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing…”

Well done is better than well said…

Earlier today, I was watching an interview of Arnold Schwarzenegger on ABC. In response to a question he quoted his belief around “Well done is better than well said”. I love it…

Action just speak louder than the words. It is great to be of creative mind and think new ideas. But the fun is in converting those ideas and making it real.

Which idea do you want to work on today?

PS: This quote gets originally attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Globalization: Rise of the rest

I just wrapped up Fareed Zakaria’s book titled “Post American World“. It is a good read and attempts to provide macro view of the world; discusses trends and perspective on things to come/shape future in the next couple of decades. Here are the excerpts from the book covered on Newsweek.

Here is Fareed’s interview on BBC providing glimpse on the book and his thought process.

If you need a short synopsis and key takeaway – here is Fred Wilson, a popular VC, sharing his key take aways.

Key theme that I pick on in the rise of rest is how citizens of growing nations are showing passion; having hunger in the belly to grow; risk taking; willingness to change; sense of optimism on what they can do and countries evolving to become more democratic in their own ways. It speaks to a lot of what had helped fuel America in its growth due to similar entrepreneurial nature and what we need to keep doing to remain in the leading position.

I like the closing of Newsweek article (quote from the book) that lured me to read the book:-

“Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world. We don’t want them to write that along the way, we forgot to globalize ourselves.”

Let’s keep our innovation edge going and growing…As Steve Jobs once quoted in his commencement speech at Stanford “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish“.

Social communities at its best

Someday you happen to stumble on a story that just amazes you. I happen to come across an article on Kiva.org. It is building a community that matches people who want to give with the people who could use some help around the world. Kiva has taken micro-financing to a new level by combining the power of Internet with the power of human spirit.

Personally, I like how Kiva identifies people as entrepreneurs who could use micro loan and help improve life of a family.

You can learn more about Kiva at its site Kiva.org. Following Youtube clip provide a glimpse of the Kiva goals. Become a lender.

Grameen Shakti

While browsing through “Sun & Wind Energy” – a magazine on Renewable Energy, I stumbled on an affordable renewable energy alternative article for the developing world. This has been near and dear to my heart for sometime. I suggested few of the requirement in an earlier post here.

So just like that – as I am browsing the magazine I come to know about Grameen Shakti. It is an organization in Bangladesh trying to provide electricity to the population that otherwise would spend their night around a kerosene lamp. This is another Grameen initiative from Mohammed Yunus and his team who started the concept of micro financing.

Here are some of the photographs:-  

    

This video on Grameen Shakti captures the mission of the organization well. I like the quote …[Grameen Shakti] not just lightning up the lives but expanding their ambition…

Having an affordable electricity source has such a deep impact on improving the lives of millions. It is a tremendous source of hope and possibilities as remote (and otherwise lost) part of the world connects to the modern infrastructure. This is a start to get everyone connected to the modern economy.

Here are some excerpt on Grameen Shakti’s accomplishment and its homepage.

Hope is alive that one day renewable energy will be able to power the world – including the ones that have yet to connect to the modern economy.

Evolving social communities

As Facebook evolves so does the promise of Facebook applications helping business users. This is the chasm Facebook need to cross as it attracts business users. CIO magazine recently published its list of 5 such widgets for business users.  

I like Wiki mono (think ability to collaborate and generate some kind of document say quote, proposal, etc. together) and Sticky notes (think on your face message as a way to follow up). I am excited about the potential here and what it means to the future of enterprise applications as these trends starts to unleash new wave of productivity and collaboration within the organization.

While I am on the Social communities topic, I landed on this humorous youtube clip describing what is “Web 2.0″. Although the picturaization is funny but the punch line remains what Web 2.0 stands for. Check it out…

Moderating an exciting Panel

Many of us who either moderate a session or be on the panel – I like the following two recommendation from Guy. Here is the one if you are moderating a session and this is another one if you are one of the panelist.

Bootstrapping

Entrepreneurs alike who are either looking to bootstrap their business or work with an investor will find reading “Bootstrapping” book by Greg Gianforte helpful. Greg is a serial entrepreneur and currently the founder, CEO of RightNow – which is a SaaS/CRM play in the enterprise arena. Although the book is written in the context of bootstrapping – but every entrepreneur should find it helpful.

Not having much to spend and being frugal teaches key life lessons. It forces an early startup to focus on the true priorities – taking care of customer, sales, quickly adjusting to the “need”, etc. Also, it takes away the general distraction that comes along with any investors and the need to keep them happy.

Bootstrapping is a harder run and not for the faint of an heart – but so is true about a persistent entrepreneur.

Check it out for yourself…

CIO Panel

Yesterday, I co-hosted a CIO panel session organized by the local TiE-Rockies group. We had quite an accomplished group of CIOs in the panel. It included:

• Kamalesh Dwivedi – CIO of TeleTech. A public company in global BPO space
• Tim Graumann – CIO of McData. A public company in Storage space.
• Kumud Kalia – CIO of Direct Energy. Growing energy firm in the North East and Canada
• Patrick Hellman – CIO of Mercury Company. A private company in real estate business
• Session was moderated by Jim Conboy, a partner at Wolf Venture and a local VC.

All are accomplished individuals in their own right and shared some insight of their challenges. Hopefully entrepreneurs were paying attention for opportunities that they can create to help ease CIOs pressure.

Some discussion – pay attention entrepreneurs, if you are looking for ideas or pitching to CIOs – were:

1. Challenge in keeping up with the turn over of employees in certain industries. Having a solution that can enable fast employee on-boarding and quick ramp up of knowledge will ease pain.
2. Integration with various suppliers and systems remains a challenge – particularly in the unregulated industries. Discussion was standardization, common vocabulary and integration. How to quickly enable 360 degree view of customer.
3. Skillset demand in the IT industry is shifting from programmer to more of an analyst who understands business process has business skills, knows/configures/tests the functionality, etc. is more in demand than a programmer.
4. If you are targeting CIOs to sell – don’t start with them. Start with their reports or managers so that you already have a relationship established with the people who will actually do the work and influence the approval process before reaching out to CIOs. This will help you since CIOs anyway will delegate the task of review/analyze to their reports. So start at the right level.
5. CIOs are going to be risk averse from the get go. They are hard at work balancing risk between keeping the business running on everyday basis (can’t stop the business and get fired) as well as ensuring their company can grow/launch/penetrate new market/product (can’t have systems that will prohibit company growth or get fired). So tailor your pitch to CIOs need rather than just another cool invention.
6. CIOs are not too concerned about outsourcing since much of the development anyway is done by Oracle, SAP and Microsoft of the world. They are typically configuring and using a system to the best use for their business processes – which is not a common skill to outsource. Also see #3.
7. CIOs are waiting and watching hosted/SaaS model. On one hand it is good for them as they have a service provider that can be held accountable and need to conform to their SLAs of quality, availability and security. On the other hand of loosing control – CIOs are just too good at deflecting question for now.
8. CIOs are increasingly confident of the secured perimeter around the company. It is strong and hold back external agents from penetration. They are more concerned about fraudulent use of company property by internal folks or company employees leaving their personal data outside of the company – like when visiting a doctor.

A good session with accomplished individuals – who shared their insight for budding entrepreneurs to understand and fulfill CIOs need.

Going Solar

Recently, Google announced its plan to go solar at its headquarters. Several wealthy individuals, investors, companies are deeply committed to the cause of making the environment better. But this is good corporate example where a company is going beyond contributing money or investing to the cause - to actually doing what it believes helps the environment. This is a fair size effort with a capacity of 1.6 megawatts – to the tune of generating enough electricity for 1,000+ homes. We will see how other follows to such a trend as there are good economic reasons to do this as well.

It’ll be interesting to see when would such energy alternatives become widely available as a bundled offering at cheaper cost to tip the scale for mass adoption at consumer level. I mentioned some of the needs earlier and will be willing to hear what others say on mass adoption.

Long tail of charity

I am sure we all look for meaningful ways to contribute back to the roots that provided us all the support we needed when we were growing up.

Recently, I come to know about Room to Read and instantly liked their model of engagement – both at the donor’s end and the recipient’s end. It is founded by John Wood who used to be an ex-Microsoft executive. He wrote his calling and how he started Room to Read in his book “Leaving Microsoft….”. In some sense, it is the “long tail” of philanthropy that has all the potential to scale and bring the systemic changes needed at the global level as macro business/technology trends continues to make this world smaller and smaller.

On donor’s end – having a transparent system with low overhead helps them know how their contribution is truly helping. No smoke screen or black hole where money goes and you have no idea who/where it end up helping. It is a great crowd puller where people can relate to the meaningful impact they are doing in the world at their own capacity.

Also, partnership model with the local community that is benefiting from the charity is a great way (possible systemic way to bring the change) to make any contribution successful. It brings their skin in the game needed to cultivate the proud ownership and a feeling of accomplishment on their part necessary to bring social change. At the end of the day charities that just hand out money to a cause without much community participation loose the luster and fail in bringing the systemic change.

I have always admired successful micro-financing model work in Bangladesh done by Mohamad Yunus. The model that Room to Read uses also reflects several similar aspect.

Bottomline – I am a believer that solving world literacy is the key to several of our modern day problems in the society today. Ironically, it is more visible in the populous part of the world. May be success of model like Room to Read has the potential to eradicate the world with such flaws.

From what I gather, Room to Read funds a girl education for a year at $250; builds a library at $2,000; builds a school in a village at $8,000. To help just reach out to Room to Read – I am sure they will be thrilled to hear.

PS: I am in no way associated with Room to Read program.

Startup Ideas

Anyone looking for startup ideas that will get famous VC backing – look no further. Here is a list of compiled startup ideas actually suggested by well known VCs that they would like to fund.

Enterprise 2.0

Much discussion is in progress about Enterprise 2.0 – including a large cry after “Enterprise 2.0″ was deleted from Wikipedia earlier. Here is my simple explanation of Enterprise 2.0.

Model every day enterprise users activity leveraging Web 2.0 based technologies (like Ajax, RSS, Wikis, blogs, IM, etc.) that can provide increased social interaction (like successful models of MySpace, YouTube, eBay, etc.) and enriched personal experience needed to build highly collaborative geographically distributed company/community (including employees, customers, partners, supply chain and other communities). A foundation that can help generate increase level of productivity necessary to manage both top line growth and bottom line control. Consider this along with other technology innovations (like RFID, SOA, etc.) and wider deployment choices(like SaaS, Licenced, BPO, etc.) – if anything enterprise industry is getting into some exciting time for innovation.

Enterprise 2.0 naturally enhances the current web based computing model that forces developers to think abstract application components rather than facilitating user interaction (say with your customer or salesforce) that is needed to provide the social experience of getting a task completed. BTW, this happens today although in a primitive way – today one person enters the info in a form that stores relevant data in one tableset that either a work flow or by some other trigger mechanism notifies other person who then picks the recordset from those tables; do some work; and put the modified recordset in another set of tables for another user to pick and do something about it. One can make this user interaction worse if you consider integrated legacy applications and best of breed suites in today’s IT environment – where users have to jump from one application to other hoping to find the relevent information needed to progress the work flow. Think about how this behavior of user interaction can be enhanced leveraging some of the successful and other upcoming future social interaction with the web when trying to accomplish a task.

Thre are other interesting scenarios as well that can be thought of as Enteprise 2.0 takes some shape. I can see much improvement in the CRM space to improve customer facing functionality. These new models will evolve in the time to come as technology gains wide spread adoption and as enterprise vendor catches on to capture social experince needed for them to continue to retain and grow their customer base.

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