Why is IE share dipping continuously – ?

According to recent market survey reports by Net Applications and Stat Counter, all’s not going too well for the IE browser over the last few years.

From an impregnable 67% (2/3rd) market share, IE seems to be on a gradual slide and currently down to just about north of 50%. There are some variations in the numbers put up by these two companies, but not more than a few percentage points.

One of the key contributing factors has been the landmark ruling by European Commission earlier this March, 2010 – which forces Microsoft to provide users with the option of choosing the browser of choice on their PCs instead of defaulting to IE. This was hailed by many rivals as a welcome decision that puts the control of lives back into the hands of the users. Currently IE holds just about 40%+ marketshare in the EU region.

The key gainer has been Google Chrome which has soared now into the double digits (> 11%), and overtaken Safari and second only to Mozilla. Interestingly, Chrome had just over 2% share a couple of years back. As the fight intensifies, Microsoft has been trying to buck the trend by releasing the latest version of the browser IE-9.

However IE-9 is still only in Beta, and besides it has to grapple with the fact that it only runs on Windows-7 which in turn commands a much lower market share. So tough times for Microsoft on the browser wars.

Personally, I’ve been very comfortable with Chrome for its simplicity, light weightedness and ease of use. I’ve found IE sluggish right from starting up, to opening pages and even in shutting down. Besides the list of questions that pop up are just endless. And it just seems to be so connected to other key services in the O.S making the system as a whole slugggish at times.

That said, it feels good be part of the worldwide trend – Go Chrome!

Micromax steps into the big league – billion $$$ valuation

Following up on my recent blog post about India’s handset market and Nokia’s position – just as a testimonial to the post here is a big news update about the 30,000 crore Indian handset market a key local player’s expansion plans.

Micromax which has been in the news as a sponsor for major sports events, has drawn up plans to raise capital through an IPO. It has really stormed the Indian market and some of its ads are just downright funny and contagious.

Looks like all the visbility and buzz creation has paid off, and they are actually planning to hit the market by end of year. Just for the numbers, they are talking about raising close to 430 crores INR (close to $100 USD) and has roped in some notable financial institutions to assist with its list – including Citigroup and Edleweiss.

Micromax is targetting revenues of close to 1000 crores up from 400 crores from the earlier fiscal – which is quite phenomenal by any reckoning. Its currently selling close to 500K handsets/month or about 6million sets annualy.

In order to scale up, its planing to raise about 400 crores which puts the overall valuation at close to $1billion. This is quite phenomenal considering that the company entered this business just 3 years back.

Well and truly this is a big leap for Indian companies not just in this space but the overall technology space.

What’s ailing Nokia marketshare in India?

Nokia’s market share has been on a down slope in the last couple of years. Its actually quite significant considering its dropped from about 2/3 to close to half (from 64% to 52%) in just 2 years!

Well in India Nokia did have a stong hold for quite a while and it was quite “cool” to own a Nokia phone – both affordable and reliable. Besides a good service network and resale value.

One of the key reasons is the change in the competitive landscape. The number of local players just went up from handful to 28 in these 2 years. Its no surprise that the relatively smaller players (Karbon, Spice and Micromax) have been making a splash by sponsoring big ticket events like the IPL. Their marketshare has gone up to 30% +.

But inspite of all the nibbling into marketshare etc., India is still quite a big market ~ 108 million handsets sold in the current year.

However, what’s really going on with Nokia’s strategy? On one side its really experimenting by releasing too many handsets in the hope that one or some could emerge to be an iPhone killer.

Some say Nokia might have got it wrong with its digital marketing strategy and some others opine that their smartphones aren’t really that great. One of the key factors for success of smartphones is also the open platform on which many 3^rd party applications can thrive upon.

Nokia however strongly contends some of the numbers published by IDC. For Nokia it is just a minor loss of marketshare and not the position as such as the leader in the handsets space. Anyhow, its wait and watch now for how things will head

Delivering Successful Projects – common pitfalls

Statistically speaking, only less than a third (<30% infact) of all IT projects get completed successfully – which means on time, under budget, meeting quality. That being the case, the reasons why the success rates are so low are actually based on several underlying issues which IT managers tend to oversee.

Am summarizing a few here from my own experience of having been in the industry for about 15 years. They are categorized into 4 broad areas below, the 3Ps and 1C – People, Process, Planning, and  Communication.

People: Invariably, most projects lack the right and adequate resources to run it. Getting the right people with right skills and at the right time is critical for kick starting and running it. This cuts across the layers and goes all the way from the rank and file to the project manager.

Process: Most project teams and organizations tend to confuse the processes that need to be followed in order to deliver a project successfully. The most essential concept of any process is that it should be repeatable and institutionalized. All people on the project should be aware of the essential things to follow for their respective roles.

You CANT be defining new processes and executing a project at the same time. So in my experience I have found the extremes, either people go too deep into processes and get caught into the details of templates, documentations etc. and kind of miss the bigger goal. Or they zoom out completely and try to get everything done in a haphazard way and make a mess of the project.

Planning: The most essential thing to any project is a clear definition of the business goals and the scope of those goals. These cannot be assumed, nor can they be loosely modified at will. This actually determines the size, complexity, effort, budgets, and other resource needs.

In today’s competitive landscape it is impractical to have scope cast in stone upfront, but then the stake holders need to have the maturity to understand the risks and also the necessary checks and balances to steer things when scope gets impacted. Or else very soon the project could be in a trap of endless re-scoping, re-planning, and shifting milestones, while the costs could be soaring.

Communication: All members on the team need to know on a regular basis if they have made “adequate” progress both individually and as a team. When people don’t know what is due and when, then you can’t expect things to be smooth.  The other key aspect is demonstrating and validating the understanding. Especially when so many projects are being outsourced etc. Most often there are disconnects between what is told and what is ultimately delivered.

Any processes and validation measures that are defined for tracking projects and progress should be based on the ability to track cracks in the above mentioned categories. By conducting superficial reviews that don’t go into the basics of problems would only throw up a different picture than the actual reality.

Cisco CRS-3 – futuristic? Game Changer?

Last week Cisco announced a high-speed router CRS-3 that can handle data speeds upto 322 Terabits per second. To explain this using analogies, there were comparisons to:

• how the entire collection of Library of Congress could be downloaded in a second, or
• how all the people of China could make a simultaneous video call or
• how every motion picture ever created could be streamed in a just few minutes.

Sounds really wow! But where Cisco wants to go with this router is unified delivery of Internet and Cloud services – next generation of unified networking. The router comes with data center intelligence which is the core of Cisco’s Data Center Services System (DCSS), which helps in more efficient routing of traffic between data centers and providing best path to content.

Today, traffic no longer moves plainly from users into the network and then outwards. There is an explosive growth of user-generated content and Internet video, and distribution mechanisms. All kinds of content providers, from the smallest to the large media houses are competing for viewership and multi-directional distribution.

This is where DCSS steps in and bundles together 2 important concepts:

• Network Positioning System (NPS)
• Cloud VPN (CVPN)

Just to give a quick idea of NPS, a big challenge in  cloud data access is moving content using the shortest path or in other words locating the target service in close proximity.

NPS essentially acts like a GPS where it is able to accurately position services within the shared network infrastructure.

It  differs from traditional routing, by computing the shortest path to the source from multiple destinations thereby making the routing more contextualized. It does this by aggregating network information from layer 3 to 7 and can span multiple autonomous systems including MPLS VPNs. This is a very powerful concept when we think of locating closest resources like files, videos, applications, other services etc.

And just as services are available over the cloud, the distribution of the services over shared infrastructure is also equally important.

As cloud resources are being accessed on demand, these access patterns could go through sudden surges resulting in online data transfer gridlocks.  Imagine traffic moving around a city where multiple Olympic sports events are being hosted.

Network Positioning and Cloud VPNs

Cloud VPNs help in making the overall distribution infrastructure more efficient by allowing elastic capacity in the IP network to which the data centers or cloud services are connected.

This eliminates the need for pre-provisioned bandwidth capacity. At the same time security, QoS, and multicast benefits of regular IP/MPLS network are also available. Service providers can tune their networks to handle dynamic, flash traffic patterns with Cloud VPN connectivity.

Considering the overall package of the CRS-3, it seems like Cisco is seriously looking at a seed and harvest strategy for the next generation of internet. They are certainly in the seed stage now. AT & T has already been trialling out this router for a 100 Gigabit backbone network distribution.

Green Home power – sunlight, water, technology

Renewable energy buzz got a big boost recently when a group of researchers from Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated generation of electricity from water using solar light.

The underlying principle is very similar to Photosynthesis, something that plants have been doing for millions of years. Plants can use solar energy to split the water molecules and store energy. The researchers have come really close to doing just that.

Storing Solar energy has been like the holy-grail of renewable energy research for many years. This breakthrough could now foster an era where water can be split into its component gases – Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O2) using a catalyst. Later the Oxygen and Hydrogen can be used in a fuel-cell to create carbon free electricity. This could power homes and/or even cars in the future.

Studies say that every hour, Sun bombards the earth with energy enough to sustain our planet’s energy needs for an entire year. If (or rather when) this technique becomes wide-spread the expectation is that homes have their own power-stations in the form of solar-panels and be able to cut down on energy costs through a green process.

For developing economies like India, this could be a big boon where there’s abundant sunshine throughout the year – provided the government also helps and rolls this out  in a cost-effective manner.

Landing Pages – bang for the buck

I suppose everyone’s quite familiar with landing pages. But just to clear things up, its the page that first shows up when you click on an ad that you see on some websites.  Typically the search term or the ad takes the clicker into this page.

So this being the first thing any user sees / interacts with before interacting with you/company, its highly imperative that you present the best possible face. Else, all the SEO stuff is going to get wasted and not result in the buzz or sales that you wanted and spent all the money on.

The first essential thing is relevance. If you don’t the content that’s relevant to what got the user to this page, then they’re going to lose interest very quickly. Remember the attention span is very very little online and its the first few glances that make the difference between an average and a popular, cool site. And there are tens of millions of pages out there and you have managed to get the user to look at your page. So grab your chance and make the point quickly.

One of the key things is the headline. These are very important because this tells the user instantaneously that he/she is at the right place for having clicked on that inbound link. Banners or bullet points also make this quite clear.

Next most important thing is how you transition from the headline to the first few sentences of you paragraph. If there’s very little connectivity or if the headline was just a gimmick and content didn’t match, then your visitors are going to get frustrated quite soon.

The next thing to focus is readability. This is extremely important and people spend hours and hours of research on this. But just for a quick example, here are some screen shots of how Amazon did some tweaks to their website and made the important content quite easy to read.

Amazon Page Earlier

Recent Amazon Page

Ofcourse then once you have your visitor going through your stuff, its time for action! You need to quick transition this into a win. So if its a product sale, then it has to be very visible and be available in very few clicks or even better on the same page. You should use action verbs that will prompt the user towards what you really wanted them to do, and quickly!

Finally, for tracking and analysis purposes, tag each available link to see which ones are most used. This is especially useful for e-commerce sites that use a multi-stage conversion process to generate sales, and may include tracking each segment or page to see where viewers are lost.