I now officially declare cloud computing a mainstream trend. I say that not just because corporate America is embracing cloud computing; Agatha Poon’s and Gary Chen’s June 2008 report, Is Cloud Computing a New Force to Disrupt the Telcos’ Business? says it is. But the data point that put me over the top was this Washington Post article noting that email SPAM-generating companies are now avid users of Cloud Computing.
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I had an interesting call with Rizwan Tiwana, the CTO of Wateen, a large competitive operator which recently rolled out a 802.16E WiMAX network spanning 22 major cities across the nation of Pakistan.   I was looking forward the call because Wateen sits at the bleeding edge of two next generation service and access network technologies, WiMAX and IMS.  Wateen also represents one of a small handful of operators with the combination of both technologies in commerical operation. 

As of today, there are approximately 25K Wateen subscribers who are using their WiMAX connections for both Internet connectivity and voice services.  That voice services are served up over an IMS control plane is a watershed moment for an industry that has seen some negative press on the viabilty of delivering voice over IP services over WiMAX.  So far, so good for Wateen and its WiMAX partner Motorola.  They are excited about ramping up the subscriber base even quicker when the next generation of CPE devices become available in the next half year.

I inquired as to what has made them successful and Mr. Tiwana boiled it down to this; setting realistic expectations and thorough network design and testing.  As he succinctly puts it…”WiMAX is not GSM or CDMA, you can’t just throw up towers and expect blanket coverage.”   Instead, they have taken pains to educate their users on what to expect in terms of coverage and ensure their sales channels also set realistic expectations in the market.  Its good to see a success story like this for WiMAX and IMS and I hope Sprint/Clearwire are paying attention. 

I’m not a big cereal eater, but I do like the occasional bowl of Wheatabix.  I’m not the only one who recognizes the value of a diet high in fiber.  I was in Europe last about 6 weeks ago and walked right into its on-going fiber debate (see this post).

This week, back again for various events in southern Europe, I got another dose. Everyone (except that banker in London who doesn’t know why British families need broadband) wants a fiber-rich network. The issues in the way are simple, but the permutations of solutions to each quickly become non-simple.

• Who builds it: The state? The incumbent network provider, forced then to share it with others? Many competing providers, creating redundant infrastructure?
• Who pays for it: The state? The incumbent? The providers? Customers? Utilities and other owners of rights-of-way where fiber is installed?
• Who gets to use it: …you get the picture.

A recent Yankee Group report by regulatory expert Dianne Northfield (from our Link global regulatory dashboard assessing broadband regulation in 45 countries) has stirred the pot, predicting that European next-generation (fiber-based) network regulation will become more granular, down to the sub-national level, rather than harmonized at the EU level, even while the EC attempts to create yet another regulatory body that oversees its member nations’ own regulatory agencies. Not that any further stirring was necessary, given the alphabet soup of associations (APDC, BSG, ETNO, and ECTA to name just a few) already pummeling each other with their argumentation and interpretations of EC directives.

A very senior exec at a European carrier erupted in frustration to me this week: “Someone needs to ask the EC why they’re so in love with the British regulatory model. Typical government types, missing the point. It might look good on paper, but exactly how has it sped up fiber deployment in the UK? The model the EC needs is the US. There, the FCC has stayed out of next-generation fiber network regulation… and Verizon has spent billions to build out a fiber-to-the-home network. We know we have to do this here, and there is plenty of competition to make sure it happens.”

The network is the raison d’etre of the flattening world. Freidman’s money-maker could never have been written without the network linking India’s call centers to the developed world. A state of the art network must evolve throughout Europe to keep the region from losing further ground economically. Making the sweeping over-simplifications that both CEOs and Americans are (in)famous for, my answer at an APDC dinner event in Lisbon this week was this: “Every day’s delay is an added cost. Make it fast and fair. But make it fast.”

My inner dork noted that the folks at the WebKit project have recently released a new development build that includes a new JavaScript engine called SquirrelFish. WebKit is the browser toolkit that powers Apple’s Safari and MobileSafari on the iPhone. It is also embedded into a smattering of mobile browsers offered by others, including Nokia and Google’s Android mobile OS. I’ve written about WebKit before, most notably my report The Web 2.0 Security Train Wreck.

Now, my computer science self could try and prattle on about what the WebKit team says the new JavaScript engine does better than the old one, or about the advantages of bytecode engines over  syntax tree walkers, and so forth. I could do that, but the article does that pretty well already. The most important things to take away are these:

•  It’s fast. How fast, you ask? 1.6x as fast as the current Safari 3.1.1 implementation. Faster than Firefox 3 and Opera too, if you believe these performance numbers.
• It probably uses less memory. Because speed is usually a function of the complexity of data structures in memory, faster execution probably means less memory consumption also. 

There’s a reason I mention all this. WebKit powers the iPhone, a memory-and-processor bound device. Anything that can speed up MobileSafari is good. If these numbers hold up, I think we can reasonably expect that browsing on the iPhone — which is already pretty terrific — is about to get a lot smoother and more responsive. It won’t be just Apple that benefits, either. The browsing experience on Android and certain Nokia and Samsung devices will improve a lot too.

The last point I’d make is that it’s clear that lever of browser innovation has tipped in favor of open source implementations and away from Microsoft. The WebKit project, Mozilla, and Opera, for example, have been engaging in a friendly competition to pass the Acid3 web standards test. All three of these are continually one-upping each other to be more standards-compliant than the others. This kind of virtuous, friendly competition is terrific for the web, and even better for the mobile web.

I am about to head to California, not for a long Memorial Day weekend, but for the Google Developer’s conference in San Francisco. But before we join the population celebrating our mobile freedom by oxidizing as many hydrocarbons as possible, both in vehicles and on barbecue grills, some events in the news today deserve noting for their timely Anywhere significance. Specifically:

• Microsoft is embracing a Windows “bring your own laptop to work” model. Coincidentally, Yankee Group CTO Jeffrey Breen and I had been talking about the business possibilities of this approach just a day or two ago, as he watched me running my Yankee Group Windows laptop image on my personal MacBook Pro. I remember seeing British Petroleum (in my opinion, one of the largest and smartest multi-national IT groups I ever met) roll out a similar program around 2000. I thought the idea was brilliant then, and virtualization makes it even more practical now. The concept is simple: companies don’t buy computers for employees, but simply provide them with a subsidy and a virtual desktop image that they use on whatever machine they want to buy. Expect us to write more about this trend in an upcoming Yankee Group Decision Note; in my opinion, this trend is going to become unstoppable for Anywhere Enterprises.
• From the “out of this world” desk, NASA will be streaming the Sunday landing of its Phoenix explorer robot on Mars using a variety of Web 2.0 technologies, including Second Life broadcasts. Not only will there be images posted as they arrive here on earth, but NASA will be incorporating a variety of user-generated content including blog comments, wikis, and podcasts. Further, those with Second Life avatars can dress up in virtual space suits, sit on virtual bleachers and and tour the virtual Mars landscape while watching the television broadcast, all at this Second Life virtual world location. How cool is that?
• Telstra plans bragging rights to the fastest iPhones on the planet. Anywhere consumers who live for mobile speed have known for years they have to go outside the US to get all the 3G megabits they crave. But the Australians seem to be taking this to a new height: A Telstra executive claims that the Australian carrier will have Apple iPhones available on its network that can move 42 Mbits/sec by Christmas this year. Given that iPhones on 2.5G EDGE already can load pages about as fast as a Nokia 3G phone does with that faster network, that means that Anywhere consumers down under may have the ultimate mobile Web experience in their pockets this year. That said, standing in line at the NYC Apple Store 17 days before the 3G iPhone is expected to be announced still makes no sense, and more likely reflects entrepreneurial demand for scarce first generation iPhones to unlock more than 3G lust. And in case anyone is wondering, no such line yet exists outside the Apple Store here in Boston.
• And finally, I always knew Google Maps changed the world, but I had no idea Google’s mark on the planet was this big.

See you in San Francisco.

When banking was about protecting touchable financial assets–stacks of gold coins and engraved stock certificates–the edifices built to contain them looked like fortresses, imposing and impregnable.

When the essence of banking is about transferring a few bits from one side of a digital ledger to another, banks can look like this:

This is a typical storefront in Kenya, where there are thousands of small entrepreneurs selling necessities packaged in the daily doses that many Kenyans’ limited cash can afford at one time. Yes, some of those Kenyans make up the world’s unbanked, but that’s not the point. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already seen retail banking outlets cropping up in the supermarkets of the developed world.

The principal raison d’etre of a retail bank–holding onto my money and letting me get at it from time to time–is going away. It just is, and the reason (you were expecting this, perhaps) is nothing less than ubiquitous connectivity. With a network wherever I need it, I can store digital money anywhere, as long as there are many physical devices that can help me transfer those assets when and where I need. So why would that physical place have to be a destination dedicated to that, as opposed to one that might also let me pick up a few groceries, pay some bills, mail a package, or anything else I need to do in life?

Vodafone’s intrapreneurial mobile transactions effort, called M-PESA in a clever adaptation of the Swahili word for cash and led by the impassioned Nick Hughes, has signed up over 2 million users in Kenya through the mobile operator Safaricom. It allows its subscribers to load digital money to their mobile phones, to transfer it to other people and institutions, and to offload it back to cash. “Only some of our users are unbanked. As a payment service, we’re really competing with the cash economy,” he told me. We talked last week at ITU Telecom Africa, in a quick meeting sandwiched in-between his mission to win banks on board for the expansion of the program in other markets. He admitted they’re a tough crowd to win over.

Dominic Endicott, a partner in the wireless-focused venture capital concern Nauta Capital, said something the other day that is probably supremely obvious, but potentially earth-shaking: “The wireless world can give us more information about the behaviors of its users than at any other time in the market.”

When mobile operators can easily and instantly move our money around for us, and can mine that activity to know where, how, and when we spend it–why on earth do I need a retail bank, reluctant or otherwise?

Media, both the industry and its physical representations–LP, tape, DVD, more–have been forever transformed by the move to bits. Retail banking, and indeed physical currency as we know it today, will go away. Blame–or thank–the network.

Didn’t the Bible liken ungratefulness to the sharpness of a serpent’s tooth? I suspect that those dealing with me and my ilk understand this well - particularly in the tricky matter of giving us corporate gifts.

After all, the gift can’t be too plush to suggest bribery, yet its purpose is positive brand awareness.

So what makes a gift transcend its usual destination: The rubbish bin, or ballast in a relative’s Christmas stocking? Here’s my 10 to remember:

1. Business card-sized magnifying glass (with integrated light). Score: 10/10: A gift from the African CDMA Forum whose representatives I met at the recent ITU Telecom Africa show in Cairo. Within 24 hours’ of landing home, it proved extremely useful in scanning my son’s hair for uninvited stowaways. A dose of Nitty Gritty did the rest of the job.

2. Armor-clad submarine cabling. Score 9/10. This mounted section of a trans-atlantic submarine cable from Cable & Wireless is a cherished possession. It’s a reminder of the company’s proud past, and a useful paperweight.

3. AT&T’s company history. Score 8/10: This nicely-produced booklet might become an eBay winner. That’s because I bullied various AT&T executives to autograph it, including outgoing CEO Ed Whitacre.

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Information security is a strange market segment. To outsiders, “security” is a simple thing: you are either secure or you are not. Many people also feel that security is a feature you can add to a product. These perspectives are simultaneously 100% right and completely wrong. They are right because at the and of the day, security should be something that customers expect their vendors will provide. Recent accquisitions by IBM, HP and EMC, for example, exemplify the broader trend of baking security into products and services. This is a good thing.

But, the reductionist view of security is also completely wrong because it masks the variety and subtleties of today’s marketplace, and of the threat landscape. There are probably 1,000 information security vendors in the market, all selling various cures for real and imagined problems. Here at Yankee, we have identified at least 35 individual market segments in the enterprise arena alone. The sheer number of market entrants and threat vectors ensures that security will never again be something so simple as a “yes-you-have-it”/”no-you-don’t” discussion.

But sometimes information security vendors get a little too… shall we say, fancy in describing the terrifying variety of threats to customers’ business assets and peace of mind. I speak, of course, of the medicalization of information security — how endless variations on simple threats get turned into a baffling array of multi-syllabic symptoms, diseases and maladies.

Today’s latest addition to the jargon lexicon is something called “phlashing,” a technique for messing with embedded devices, like your home wireless router. It was uncovered — and named — by an HP researcher with a fondness for cutesy verbiage. He called it “phlashing” to denote the target of the attack vector, namely against embedded devices’ flash ROM firmware. The “ph” is the obligatory geeky add-on that, if you are a security researcher, you feel compelled to add because “fl” is far too simple.

Information security professionals of all types have long moaned that they don’t have visibility to the corner office, and that they don’t know how to “align security with the business.” I would humbly suggest that the wasting disease of medicalized jargon is part of the problem. Can we all agree to stop creating exclusionary terms to describe Yet Another Threat Vector (YATV)?

Here are just a few of the terms I’ve run across in my three years as a security analyst:

• Virus
• Spyware
• Trojan
• Rootkit
• Keylogger
• Bot
• Botnet
• Backdoor
• Dialer
• Drive-by
• Dropper
• Packer
• Phishing
• Pharming
• Phlashing

…and my favorite, “blended threat.” Symantec loves to use this term, but to me it just means “hemlock smoothie.”

I guarantee that nobody outside the information security market knows that any of these things mean. All they do is provide fodder for eager marketroids trying to fleece gullible sheep. Are you worried about creeping rootkititis? Such a deal we have for you!

Let’s get rid of the jargon, please. HP marketing, are you listening?

Analysts like myself are Cassandras of the modern age; our predictions and insights are often not believed.

Cassandra’s gift of prophecy emerged after snakes in the employ of the god Apollo licked her ears clean so she could hear the future.

I have to rely on other methods.

Perhaps you expect me to say that the tools of my trade include C-level interactions, the crafting of S and J curves as well as time-series analysis of ARPU trends. And of course they do.

But in recent times, the analytical prism which also guides my assertions is a 52-year-old veteran of pan-European broadcasting - and where Abba launched its global career.

That’s right, it’s the Eurovision Song Contest.

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Big day for the future of wireless in the U.S. market yesterday — the announcement that Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner, and others have formalized their plan to collaborate in a nationwide rollout of a fourth-generation WiMAX network is nothing short of huge. This demonstrates how diverse the convictions are in the tech sector about the opportunity for an open, data-centric wireless broadband fabric, and it should end a great deal of debate about whether a Sprint-only effort to do that was going to succeed.

That’s progress of a very real sort. Just a month ago, April 2nd was a whip-saw day for wireless in the Wall Street Journal: The U.S. edition featured two contradictory stories cheek by jowl on one page. At the top, a report from Beijing on Intel’s splashy launch of so-called “ultra-mobile devices,” showcasing a number of new product concepts using a purpose-built low-power chipset and functionally offering something less than a PC but more than a phone.

But just below the fold, you’d have found a summary of the FCC’s reluctance, announced at CTIA, to force the U.S. wireless operators to open their networks to devices not authorized by the operators themselves.

The national WiMAX announcement, along with that first story on April 2nd, speaks to the opportunities we see at Yankee Group for an internet of devices well beyond today’s PC and phone approaches – although frankly I saw little in these early concept products to spark the demand that I do believe lurks in that gap.

That below-the-fold April story showcases the resistance of U.S. wireless operators to recognize one of the imperatives of the Anywhere revolution, which is for an open platform. The FCC thinks the operators are doing enough to open up their networks. But can a network be ‘kind of open’ any more than someone can be ‘a little bit pregnant’?

The good news is, we’re going to find out!  Onward and upward.