iSPY - Something beginning with Coke

Designed by Ferrari, and incorporating the same touch technology as the iPhone, Coca-Cola launch their new Freestyle Coke Dispenser.

At first glance, the Freestyle machine just looks like a fancy beverage fountain. In fact, it is a lot more. It provides the customer with 104 different flavours to choose from. It borrows on technology used in the precision medical industry for dispensing drugs. The machine stores the flavours in ink style cartridges, and jets the chosen beverage to the customer instantly.

Its conception came from the company needing to combat the downturn in their North American sales so they designed the Freestyle. Apart from the customers sheer enthusiasm to use the machine, and the fact that this buzz is reconnecting Americans with the brand, Coke have another card up their sleeve with the Freestyle.

The cartridges inside the machine track what exactly is being dispensed in real-time. The data stream flows back to Coke HQ in Atlanta. They can see what is being sold everyday and at what times. It even enables Coke to see the various different combinations of beverage dispensed together in one sale.

The analysis of this data means that coke will be able to maximize profits from each Freestyle machine; placing the correct brands where they already know will sell. Also Coke buys a lot of small beverage manufacturers each year with the hope that one of these brands will be the next big drink craze. These new products can be placed in the dispenser and analysed each day for market spikes or upturns.

Coke really have designed a great product here. I find it so clever how they have built excitement with customers, whilst giving themselves a real-time look into the minds of those very customers.

Google Wave - Collaboration tool of the future

At Novembers Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, I have learnt that business software vendors, SAP, Novell, and ThoughtWorks have begun building on the wave platform. Google have promised an app store where these vendor plugins can be purchased by businesses, and integrated fully into Google Wave.

Not only is Google Wave a web-based communication tool, but it is also a platform. Wave can be extended through APIs and Protocol, and other programs can converse with Wave servers. Its real time communication is what enables effective online collaboration.

The guys at Google have done a pretty good job on explaining it, so if you are still a little unsure about what Wave does please check out their video.



The real aim here by Google is to deliver this collaboration architecture so that anyone can build upon it. Novell have designed a new enterprise product called Pulse around the Wave platform. It is due to be released by the middle of 2010. It gives enterprise a more secure version of Wave, with locks for group and profile visibility and defined user roles.

SAP are not far behind either. They have designed a Wave gadget called Gravity. Gravity lets members of a wave use the business process modeling functionality of SAP Business Process Management in near-real time. Similar to the SAPs Gravity, ThoughtWorks Mingle project management software can also be embedded within a Wave.

Both videos below are fantastic and show how easy it is to integrate each of the software's functionality into Wave. I believe this is a much better use of Wave than the Novell approach. If a user has already become familiar with Wave, Gravity and Mingle will be a simple extension of knowledge. Pulse on the other hand, even with the GUI similarities seems like a whole new system.

Gravity by SAP



Mingle by ThoughtWorks

Introduction

Hi, I'm Steve and welcome to my blog. Through this portal I will endeavor to analyze and report on new and exciting movements in the world of eBusiness. The web as we know it is on the cusp of great change. eBusiness is in perpetual motion, and you are the driving force of its future.