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“Doctor, I wonder if you’d turn that white-hot spotlight on yourself.”

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My previous entry in this space talked about a company rejecting pretty much every weapon in the interactive arsenal…then wondering why instead of growing the business, since around 2000 it’s been trading dollars, winning just enough new business every year to offset churn.

It’s not the path we would choose. It seems clear that resource-strapped companies of the 10-person variety would be the first to drink from the Internet’s potential fountain of life. Yet I accept responsibility for being unable to make the light bulb go on for them, and it got me thinking more broadly about how we as researchers and marketers need to approach the market if we want to help companies flip the switch on the extraordinary business-building energy that is interactive/digital marketing.

So taking a cue from the words of Jodie Foster as Special Agent Starling in the flick The Silence of the Lambs, we turn the spotlight on ourselves.

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“Recommended browser for the new WordPress”? AVANT

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Open letter to Che Anderson at Avant Force, makers of Avant and Orca browsers:

You have a serious image problem! I operate my own self-built website, and every time I make any change I bench-test the site on the most popular browsers:

Avant is the only one, and I mean the ONLY one, that captures every detail of every single page perfectly, identically to Internet Explorer. The difference is, Avant is light-years faster (OK, hyperbole but I’m using it to make a point) and easier to use. Continue reading

This election is all about (data) integrity

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With competition from every side, service providers must roll out a great many new services and features in the next few years to slake the thirst of overheated markets. We’ve talked about service delivery platforms (SDPs) that can slash the time, cost and risk of doing that, not just for today’s services but by providing a platform for services we haven’t even thought of yet. SDPs also lend a hand with the cost side of the equation, which is helpful because while service providers gamely strive to reach consumers and businesses with every conceivable service on every possible device, they must also improve operational efficiency to align their cost structures with revenues. SDPs help ease capex by employing more enterprise networking devices that on average are far less expensive than telecom equipment, and because their service-oriented architecture (SOA) structures enable service providers to leverage network capacity, content and other service components from a myriad of other sources instead of having to build it all themselves. Continue reading

Strange(ly familiar) BREW

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“Went looking for wireless apps and what did I see…an SDP looking back at me.”

Over the years the longest-running publications in our industry have done a lead story or two based on our research, not because OSS or BSS sent a Chris Mathews-style thrill up their leg but (of course) because of the services they enable. Well designed and executed B/OSS is truly a marvel to behold, but it’s a means to an end. If you don’t believe me you can ask the hundreds of hot software shops in our industry who met the cold front of market reality and whose businesses either came to a stormy end or were blown off their original course into entirely different industries. The elements upon which we build today’s networks are no longer dimwitted devices waiting to be managed, they’re rolling off the assembly line smarter and more self-managing than ever before, with more robust element managers built either by the manufacturers themselves or by the likes of Nakina Systems. Continue reading

“Hey, 2.0”: It’s STILL about reaching, connecting with and persuading people.

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My musical tastes flash across the spectrum from heart-rendingly beautiful symphonic movie soundtracks to some of the most deliciously vicious hard rock ever recorded, but somewhere in the median is a sultry, radio-friendly-yet-cult-favorite tune by Steely Dan entitled Hey Nineteen. And that’s as good a starting point as any from which today’s ravings about some of the madness inside the “2.0” methodology may flow.

If you thought I came here to unite us all around a starry-eyed vision of the wonders of search engine optimization/marketing (SEO/SEM), Web2.0, PR2.0 and whichever 2.0 buzzwords we can dream up tomorrow…oh, wait, the categories in our editing pulldown menus here on the staging site now include “Web3.0″…you’re half right. Continue reading