Digital Economy Bill - A Business Implication

Are the UK government ignoring the business cost of the Digital Economy Bill? Attention has been focused on consumers' internet freedom, but has the Bill business implications?

Digital Economy Bill 101:


Many businesses are arguing that it's not only ISPs and mobile network providers that will incur costs from Bill compliance. Estimated costs for ISPs could be up to £500m, the most of this coming from the implementation of technical measures to restrict internet access.

If one person is suspected of downloading illegal content within a household, the entire household can be disconnected. What if another from the household worked for a company that allowed home working? This could be a cost to business productivity.

The Bill is unclear whether businesses will be classed as subscribers or providers. If businesses provide free WiFi in canteens, and an employee illegally downloads copyrighted content, who's liable and responsible? If responsibility falls to the business, does this also mean that universities and hotels will be classed as providers and face disconnection?

Potentially, this could lead to a choking of innovation in the long-term with these types of providers been treated like ISPs and made responsible for traffic on their networks. Ultimately it is sure to create unknown costs to businesses, universities, and other providers like these in the UK's worst recession.

On the flip side. Could there be a potential solution for businesses? Could this Bill also see the generation of a new area of service? The outsourcing of the monitoring of businesses internet activity to a third party company. What cost would these subscriptions be? It could also see businesses partnering with new ISPs that provide monitoring.

This Bill is set out to protect innovation in the music, film and software industries, but will it in fact restrict innovation in UK schools, universities, and business?

A Letter to Peter Mandelson:

Sony 3D TV - Future Sucess or Failure?

Sony seems to be staking a lot on the belief that their 3D value chain will convince consumers to swap their current home entertainment for an additional dimension in viewing.

The Sony 3D Value Chain:

They aren't alone on the 3D bandwagon, with LG, Toshiba and Panasonic due to release sets this year. Last December, Avatar showed consumers that 3D viewing is not just an 80's novelty. The Bravia 3D TV is set for release in June, and will work in the same manner as how Avatar was viewed in cinemas.

To view your newly purchased 3D TV, you will need glasses. With the Bravia you will need battery operated “active shutter” ones. Will people want to sit in darkened rooms every evening to watch 3D Eastenders in the future? When watching 3D TV it will be near impossible to multi-task, so no tweets about the 3D football match from your iPhone or Laptop.

Sony seems to be riding on confidence gained by winning the hi-def format war with Blu-ray. Will consumers be willing to upgrade there newly acquired flat panels and blu-ray players? Those expensive HDMI cables will need upgrading.

There will also be a serious lack of content come release time. This may be argued by the fact that the Bravia will have built in links to Youtube, Net-Flix and Amazon's video-on-demand. A counter argument would be that 3D movies will be 50% larger than a Blu-ray. Your city would need to win Google's Ultra-Fast broadband competition to stream files of that size without frustration. Thankfully, in the short term broadcasting will see ESPN launch a 3D channel this year with Sony working with Discovery and IMAX to release channels in 2011.

Is this a premature format release for consumer consumption? Will Sony have 3D viewing in our homes by year's end?

Sony Video:

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.