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Of the synthetic worlds’ new ways
Over the past few years, synthetic worlds, like Second Life and some 50 others, have created a new way for people to socialize, entertain, innovate and transact business — in itself, this can be a harsh reality for many organizations.
Why is that?
Mainly because traditional inward-focused business models may not have the long-term sustainability to survive much longer, at least in the online realm.
If you’re new to this online phenomenon, consider that synthetic worlds are basically computer-based simulated environments that allow for multiple users to inhabit and interact with each other through 2D or 3D graphical representations of humanoids and other forms (also known as the “avatars”).
Also note that these virtual words resemble the real world with rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions and communication.
Businesswise, the typical process for a company to get some kind of value out of synthetic worlds starts with (1) a sound understanding of the virtual environment at hand, (2) the launch of a test (or prototype) environment followed by a (3) full implementation and hopefully, regular follow-ups.
Companies need to realize that, in these new virtual environments, self-organized consumer communities (think of them as ongoing uncensored “60 Minutes” shows on steroids) can lead to lucrative opportunities or, if the balance should swing in the other direction, present pretty self-evident (and dramatic) new threats such as when a business (or one of its products) gets on “the bad side” of one or many members, in a given synthetic world.
Taking a long-term strategic approach to assessing the pros and cons of virtual environments ensures, at the very least, that enterprises decide to venture into an environment based on a thorough evaluation of its possibilities… and its risks. As the consumer environment alternatives change, virtual environments offer new routes to market and since the traditional business model will likely be unable to cope with it, the opportunity is that much more significant.
As synthetic worlds stand today, companies that explore and understand these environments will likely win consumer buy-in along with better loyalty tomorrow.
Tags: synthetic worlds, virtual environments, avatars, socialize, entertain, innovate, transact, online
Fixing the IT skills deficit
Human resources executives and their IT counterparts are under the impression that finding the workers they need, featuring the right computer-related skills, is nothing short of a headache.
In fact, two recent surveys — one from Robert Half Associates and the other from the Society for Information Management — rank finding skilled IT professionnals as their most pressing issue. There’s no way around it, IT recruitment needs a fix.
It’s pretty common to hear IT execs blame universities for not producing a stream of IT graduates who are prepared to function in the business world. It’s no secret that executives like to focus on their projects and often end up treating (even skilled) IT talent as a mere commodity… which is NOT the way to deal with the current IT skill crisis.
There may exist countless solutions for resolving the apparent IT skills shortage but since we all need answers fast, here’s a no non-sense solution (Ah! The “S” word!) which is straightforward enough for all C-level folks to understand and it’s implementable in three easy steps:
- No matter how badly the economy affects your firm, increase training for your current IT employees;
- When recruiting from outside your company, be willing to interview capable IT pros, even when their skills aren’t 100% perfect match for the position;
- Bite the bullet and provide new hires with technical training.
Getting the IT skills you need is all about broadening your talent searches but also, it’s about creating the skilled workforce your company needs — waiting for a university do to te job for you might cost less (read: zero) but it’ll probably do very little to fix your IT skills problem.
Keep in mind that this strategy assumes that you plan to keep your IT employees for a long stretch of time while ideally emphasizing career development and true committment to employees. Companies that follow this approach are more likely to have adequate IT staffing levels and lower turnover rates.
In a perfect world, the “Recruitment & Retention” strategies would always include training because, among other things, with a highly trained and competent IT workforce, even the CEO ends up having (much) more money in the bank!
Tags: it skills, it employees, it staffing, tech workers, skilled workforce, business it, skills shortage
Business IT and cloud computing
IT executives, in organizations of all sizes, are growing more familiar with “cloud computing”, the made-up expression which illustrates a particular phenomenon where companies can run almost every information system they rely on without owning any tech equipment.
Businesses can therefore rent access to applications and IT infrastructure that reside on the internet, paying for them on either a subscription -or- a per-use basis while providing employees with access to information from anywhere, at any time, with nothing more than a connected device.
Wether IT folks are for the cloud or not, the very idea sounds great. No more headaches for software updates, no more server farms to monitor, no more growing storage requirements or any such “technical” worries. The cloud is sold as infinitely expandable so a typical “cloud-enabled” company can focus on what it does best while leaving the data management to the cloud-centric professionals.
In itself, this is a significant shift in the way the internet is used but the cloud story gets even more interesting when you consider it may hold the promise for transforming the role of IT within the business. Letting an external service provider sweat issues like server capacity, networked storage and bandwidth means the internal IT staff (on the company payroll) may shed some “hands-on” weight while filling new positions with IT strategists who worry more about data accessibility than adding more hard drives to the company data center.
This colossal shift isn’t going to happen overnight and chances are IT’s more technical bunch will likely leave companies to go work for the service providers, catering to the growing crowd of cloud-minded companies.
While we usually think of business computing as a desktop computer thing, cloud computing may also prove to be an ideal strategy for reaping the full benefits that mobile devices, when properly used, can deliver, namely by allowing companies to essentially push their IT environment out to employees rather than employees having to get access to the IT environment.
The cloud computing future may hold many promises but theory can sometimes hit a brick wall named “reality”. When it comes to cloud computing, just because it holds promises doesn’t mean it’s going to translate in practical solutions for real business tech challenges — at least, not anytime soon.
If anything, cloud computing serves as a reminder that computing models constantly evolve. As companies face increasing pressure to be more agile than the competition, they’ll be forced to adapt to changing computing models to stay competitive… and profitable.
For those who feel like cloud computing is their thing, there are security risks which can’t be swept under the proverbial rug. For instance, how would you feel if your companies’ data was dumped alongside other companies’ data? What happens if a technical glitch grants another company full access to your data? Will you even be warned it happened? Relying on strangers to handle your data is a typical C-level decision and it’s not just about the money savings, either.
Nevertheless, some companies are happy to deal with the glitches in exchange for the potential benefits of cloud computing. Big players like Salesforce (think: SaaS) and NetSuite (ERP, CRM, e-commerce), Amazon with its S3 and Elastic Compute Cloud offerings as well as IBM and Google (Google Apps, anyone?) are paving the way for a more dynamic cloud computing future.
The final on cloud computing might be that in the event this cloud thing sticks, it’ll help IT transform from a perceived technology cost center into a strategic business asset as companies likely apply hybrid models that lie between the proprietary data centers (for highly critical data) and the cloud (for everything else).
If anything, we’re seeing the cloud computing phenomenon unfold before our very eyes and for many venturing entrepreneurs, this, among other things, could come to be known as yet another web-related, big and fluffly cumulus-sized, opportunity.
Tags: cloud computing, outsourced hosting, servers, storage, saas, erp, crm, e-commerce, infrastructure
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