Go Figure

The "Go Figure" series will report on things that don't make sense to me. Perhaps a story that is unbelievable or incredible in some way. Demand for a product is down so the company raises prices or a person is cold so they turn down the thermostat. Sometimes there is more to the story than meets the eye -- either the reporter didn't get the entire picture or perhaps there is method behind what seems like madness. I hope readers find these short stories interesting.

Go Figure May 23, 2004 10:42 PM

Go Figure - Part 1

Ted Bridis at the Associated Press wrote a story last week called Executives Criticize the Tech Industry. The complaints by the Business Roundtable, a trade group for executives of 150 of America's largest corporations, reflect frustration over the "expense and hassle of keeping their computer networks safe for consumers". The group says that attacks by viruses and worms costs the American banks and savings institutions alone more than a billion dollars per year.

There were two things about the story that jumped out at me. First was that there was not one mention of Microsoft Windows. With a monopoly on the desktop, Windows is a prime target for the perpetrators. Microsoft hasn't historically had the best reputation for giving priority attention to security either. The second surprise was a quote from someone at the ITAA (Information Technology Association of America) saying, "Cybersecurity is everyone's responsibility, including the vendors, the users, enterprises and government agencies". No argument there -- it is a shared responsibility. But then the quote went on to say, "No serious commentary will say that the user has no responsibility. We all have responsibilities to lock our doors in our homes and to buckle up when we get in our cars." (read more)

Go Figure May 23, 2004 10:41 PM

Haggis, anyone?

Over the years I have been very fortunate to be able to travel to many countries around the world to talk about "The Future of the Internet", but for some unexplainable reason, I had never been to Scotland -- until this week. It was a wonderful experience for which I am thankful. The Royal Bank of Scotland held a conference at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and it was attended by nearly 500 of their information technology and business team from around the world. With a connecting flight at London Heathrow, it was a long trip. I arrived in Edinburgh on Sunday morning and Andrew was kind enough to drive me to downtown Edinburgh where I was to stay at the Scotsman Hotel.

As often happens with overnight flights to Europe, the hotel room was not yet ready so there was time to kill. Fortunately, the weather was spectacular -- blue sky and 70+ degrees. The first impression one gets of Edinburgh is that is a very old (and beautiful) city. In America we typically think of an "old" city as having been around for 300 years. I don't know exactly, but Edinburgh is roughly twice as old.

The Old Town of Edinburgh has been at the heart of Scottish history for centuries. The main thoroughfare is called the Royal Mile and it connects Edinburgh Castle with the Palace of Holyrood House. It is one of those things that is hard to describe -- you need to see it to believe it. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that Edinburgh is what Paris ought to be. (read more)

Travels May 20, 2004 06:49 PM

Local Fulfillment - Part 3

Thanks to Wolfgang Jung at IBM Deutschland GmbHR for telling me about how REI Inc., the outdoor sporting goods retailer, is using IBM E-Commerce Software for local fulfillment. It is great to learn that there are more retailers doing this than I realized. According to a story in Internet Retailer, REI’s in-store pickup is producing far more online sales than had been expected. REI Inc. introduced in-store pickup as a free-shipping option for online orders last June and received $26 million in orders during the next six months.The in-store pick-up service became instantly popular even though there was no advertising for it. (read more)

e-Business May 16, 2004 07:07 AM

Local Fulfillment - Part 2

Thanks to readers David Singer and Ken Corneliusen for pointing out that Circuit City is already offering a form of local fulfillment. They call it the "Express In-Store Pickup option" and it lets you buy online and pick up your purchases at your local Circuit City store "almost immediately". Express In-store Pickup allows you to complete your purchase online and pick up your product at a local Circuit City store near where you live. Circuit City has obviously concluded that local fulfillment is good for the customer and also good for them. As a customer, you pay no shipping charges for your purchase, you have the flexibility of picking up your purchase at your convenience, and your purchase is immediately available for pickup after you have completed your purchase online and received your order confirmation page.

Looks like Circuit City has also thought through the entire process -- end-to-end. If you used a credit card for your purchase, only you or someone you authorized is able to pickup the merchandise. The Customer Service Counter will ask you for your order number (which is on the order confirmation page you printed from the Web site after your purchase), your photo identification (just like at the airport), the credit card you used to pay for the online purchase, and your signature acknowledging receipt of the product. All of this is perfectly reasonable and good business practice. (read more)

e-Business May 12, 2004 09:46 PM

Local Fulfillment

The digital photography revolution is well under way, as we all know. There is a myriad of solutions for taking pictures and for storing, organizing, retrieving, posting, sharing, and printing them. For grandmothers and great grandmothers the 4" x 6" glossy print is still the preferred medium for sharing and discussing pictures. I decided to make the leap and buy a Canon i960 Photo Printer. The IBM Infoprint Color 1354 is the workhouse for my printing needs, including brilliant color for web documents and presentations, but the i960 is nice for easily printing high quality 4" x 6" prints.

The Canon i960 Photo Printer has 3,720 precisely machined nozzles eject microscopic-sized droplets on glossy paper producing a stunning edge-to-edge 4" x 6" borderless print with the look and feel of a traditional photograph in roughly 35 seconds. The resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi results in over 5.7 million droplets per square inch. The i960 replaced the Epson Stylus 2000P Photo printer. It prints very nicely also but is more oriented toward large color prints which I have not had many occasions to need. Like millions of others, when I have something I no longer need, I turn to eBay.

After the 7-day auction on eBay was completed, I received an email saying who the successful bidder was and that he lived in North Haven, Connecticut. Since this is less than an your from where I live, I sent an email to the buyer and offered him the option of picking up the printer if he wanted to save the shipping cost. We then made arrangements to meet near where I live. I packed up the Epson printer and fastened it on the back of the Ultra Classic Electra Glide and took a short ride to meet the buyer. The man from North Haven picking up his printer is an example of online e-commerce combined with local fulfillment. It is a much bigger idea than what was represented by this transaction. (read more)

e-Business May 11, 2004 09:57 PM

Virtually Real and Really Virtual

Last week, IBM announced a new technology solution called the virtualization engine. VE, as it will undoubtedly get called, turns a real datacenter into a virtual datacenter. This is a really big deal. CEO's, CIO's, and CFO's will surely like VE because virtual datacenters require fewer people, offer more reliability, and are much less costly to operate. Sounds good, but what is a datacenter and what is a virtual datacenter?

When you visit the web site of a company and click on something, a server in a datacenter somewhere gets the job of finding the web page or process you requested and delivering it to your browser over the Internet. A simple protocol called http (hyper text transfer protocol) describes exactly how the process works. With one user on the Internet and one server at the other end serving one web page it is quite trivial. With millions of users around the world visiting the web site at unpredictable times and making unpredictable requests for millions of documents, processes and transactions, it can become a nightmare for the people who are managing the datacenter. (read more)

e-Business May 4, 2004 03:18 PM

Japan 2004 - Day 5 (Traveling back home)

The Japan Airlines Flight #006 departed Tokyo International Airport in Narita, Japan exactly on time and landed in New York at John F Kennedy airport exactly on time. Upon taking off, the Boeing 747-400 headed north east, crossed the International Date Line, and a huge arc toward the top of the world and then south through Canada, across the Great Lakes, and on the east coast of America. Once again, the JAL crew made the passengers feel that they truly enjoyed serving. Upon leaving the airplane each crew member bowed and smiled to express their appreciation for having been able to serve. That is what I like about traveling to and visiting in Asia -- things just work the way they are supposed to, and the people are so polite and respectful.

It was a productive week with many discussions about trends and directions of the IT industry -- l certainly learned a lot and am grateful for the new friendships I was able to make. It was good to see that the Japanese economy is picking up after such a long recession. As always in Japan, technology is at the leading edge of the recovery. Like Korea, significant broadband capability is changing how people think and how they act. When the average person in a country has ten or more megabits per second of Internet connectivity, their perspective and their propensities change. This is very good for e-business -- if those e-businesses become "on demand". (read more)

Travels May 2, 2004 09:49 PM