Archive for January, 2009

The Xbox 360 Experience

Monday, January 26th, 2009

It’s amazing to think of how far products have come in our digital generation. Before, consumers would purchase a piece of equipment with a sole purpose in mind, knowing that their experience of this product would be the same as the day they sent in their warranty card.

Oh how things have changed. We’ve moved into an era where via a software push, our user experience of a hardware solution can completely change and a product purchased with a set of expectations gets a re-vamp within seconds.

Case in point, Microsoft continuously pushes out firmware changes to their popular gaming console, the Xbox 360 to further improve the consumer experience. Back in November they released an update by the name of the
“New Xbox Experience (NXE)” in which, among many updates, they completely redesigned their user interface and revamped their navigational system to be more in line with the look and feel of Windows Media Center (although to many, it seems to be a bit closer to the look of Apple’s iTunes cover flow system). They also added fully customizable avatars for use in game play and now allow users to create custom skins for wallpaper backgrounds as an additional means to personalize the user experience. In addition to this, Microsoft partnered with Netflix to permit subscribers to watch movies on their Xbox 360’s.

Is there something to learn from the Xbox 360 Experience for businesses in other industries? How can traditionally static devices we encounter on a daily basis transform their user experience in the blink of an eye? What improvements can be harnessed via small iterative changes to an existing structure to how users have traditionally come to know your product? Is there a way to build in this agile approach within your industry?

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Adobe Announces LiveCycle ES via Amazon Web Services

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced “the immediate availability of Adobe® LiveCycle® ES Developer Express software,a full version of Adobe LiveCycle ES hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment. Using the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) technologies, Adobe’s offering provides a virtual, self-contained development environment where enterprise developers can prototype, develop, and test Adobe LiveCycle ES applications without needing to install and configure Adobe LiveCycle ES themselves.”

By combining Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF), Adobe Reader®, Flex® and Flash® technologies with the Amazon Web Services (AWS), developers now have an instant, ready-built sandbox to work in. The upfront costs, installation fees and maintenance hassles that traditionally follow when development teams begin work with a software package are eliminated with this offering.

LiveCycle ES via Amazon Web Services can also be very useful for the rapid prototyping of a solution that otherwise would require the installation of a LiveCycle server. The costs associated with the set up of a development environment or test lab are also greatly reduced. By taking a pay-as-you-go on a per-use basis approach, LiveCycle ES ensures that businesses don’t need to invest in large infrastructures on day 1 of their project.

We blogged about PaaS (Platform as a Service) a while back and praised the ability of this technology to offer on-tap applications available on an as-needed basis via a programmable environment presented as a rich Internet application (RIA). This Adobe / Amazon partnership is part of this kind of service offering. By making development tools and extensions available “on tap” is helping businesses such as INM integrate these offerings to better deliver rich user experiences. LiveCycle ES allows for a-la-carte use that scales up instantaneously to a large number of CPUs and provides plenty of storage space to deliver a rapid response (crucial to the delivery of a great User Experience).

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Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »

Building RIAs in the Cloud

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

One of the reasons that I joined the INM team this past September was to ensure the seamless operation of the Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that we build for clients. Seeing products such as INM Reach and INM eLibrary in action, I couldn’t help but think of the potential of building large-scale customized libraries of documents and other enterprise caliber RIAs.

However, businesses that are considering these types of projects inside their enterprise can very quickly run into growing pains. The volume of content that accumulates over time can grow infinitely. It becomes very difficult for businesses to predict and allocate the required resources to setup and maintain an infrastructure to accommodate the growing volumes of content and users.

This is where Cloud Computing comes to the rescue. It promises on-demand, scalable, pay-as-you-go computing power and storage capacity. There is a great special report in this week’s Economist that explains the concept of the cloud and how it changes the way companies do business.

At INM, we predicted this emerging trend and we are closely monitoring the (r)evolution of cloud computing in the industry. As the cloud options develop, we are studying them closely to determine which of the on-demand solutions best fits the needs of our clients.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first out of the gate with its Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Services (S3), which recently came out of Beta. Google followed soon after with its AppEngine. However, in recent months, everyone from Microsoft to Salesforce has jumped into the game. It will be interesting to dig-in and determine how each of these cloud service providers fulfills a different need and to see which ones are truly best-of-breed.

For INM Clients, some of advantages from these services can be:

  • Flexible pricing options for Software as a Service (SaaS) products
  • Gradual increase of SaaS infrastructure as demand grows
  • Outsourcing maintenance and support of SaaS product offerings

In future postings, we’ll dive deeper in some of these areas and analyze the impact of building RIAs in the cloud.

Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »

Amazon reaps the benefits of increased online shopping

Monday, January 12th, 2009

While experts predicted a decline in eCommerce sales this holiday season due to the current global economic downturn, Read Write Web recently reported, that Amazon’s 14th holiday season was its ‘best ever’ with the online retailer processing over 6.3 million orders worldwide (for one day – December 15th). Why was Amazon so successful where others weren’t? Well, it may be partly due to the company’s open adoption of new technologies to improve the shopping experience. Amazon was among the first to incorporate RIA elements into its site and today it continues this innovation with the recent addition of its Windowshop.com platform.

The market was fruitful for many retailers this year, with ComScore reporting that U.S. consumers spent almost twice as much online during the final weekend before Christmas as they did last year. However the question is will this continue?

Now that we’ve hit the post-Boxing Day season where it seems that the entire month of January has morphed into an extension of blowout sales, it will be interesting to see if retailers will begin to rethink their current eCommerce strategies and will reach out to Rich Media and RIAs as differentiators like analysts predicted last year. New methods of presenting products online, conducting transactions and delivering messages via support and sales are helping many businesses to weather the storm. Diversifying the means in which these companies spread information by reusing the tools they already have on hand such as catalogs, product guides and brochures all position them for success. As many experts have said before, the companies that integrate smart technology choices into their business model will be the survivors during this period of transition.

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Posted in Rich Internet Applications, eCommerce | No Comments »

INM President Judges MBA Case Competition

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

INM President and Co-Founder, Vahe Kassardjian, will once again serve as a judge for the annual John Molson MBA International Case Competition.

The 28th annual competition will bring together 30 teams of MBA students from the world’s top business schools, including groups from Canada, France,
China and India. This event provides these students with a unique opportunity to perfect their presentation skills and strategic thinking, while
formulating recommendations for real-world business cases. The theme of this year’s competition is “United in a Changing World” and focuses on the
challenges and opportunities presented by the reality of globalization.

Senior business executives lend their expertise to serve as judges, using their unique backgrounds, experience and perspectives to critically
assess the participants’ presentations.

The competition runs from Monday, January 5 through to Saturday, January 10, 2009 at the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Montreal.

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