I’ve just come back from a trip to Brussels and Frankfurt, delivering Collaboration training to some Channel folks within Cisco. I had 60mins to deliver an enthusiastic, meaningful, useful presentation that the audience could take away and use with their customers. I did my best but there is only so much you can do with Power Point; especially when you are the last slot of a very long day.

I really dislike using Power Point. I usually try and follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule on presenting, especially as my 60min slot usually gets squeezed down to 30mins due to other people running over.

On the way back from the Frankfurt Office to the hotel, I sat in the taxi wondering if my audience had learnt anything. Was this form of delivery the best way for people to develop knowledge? When I was at Microsoft I worked with some great Training Partners constructing a blended learning approach of part instructor led, part self learning with Video, examples and labs. This to me was a better way to learn.

From a personal experience, I started doing a Charter Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professional qualification last year based out of the University of Gloucestershire; in their Business College. I chose this route as I had assumed that the quality of lecturers and content would be the best that I could get. I had also hoped that the CIM would be a modern organisation that pushed the boundaries of education.

I was wrong on so many sides.

We had Power Point slides. Tonnes of them. We also had paper handouts stapled together. It was not a great experience and one that I had a similar experience with back in the mid 90s when I was last at University. How can nothing change in nearly 15years!?

Surely it’s time for Education Facilities to embrace Web 2.0 (or Education 2.0) and allow students to bring their own laptops, tablets, Smartphones and give them access to a course social portal. A portal that includes all the lecture notes, case studies, self learning activity and workspaces for students to engage with others to discuss the relevant topics. The Course Leader could then monitor the site, shape the discussions if required and check on the progress of the student’s self learning in-between lectures.

Young people now, are already fully skilled in collaborative working via Social Media and do not consume knowledge via the more traditional ways. They can multi task a lot better than their parents and get bored if there is only one form of media on offer.  By providing a blend of instructor led lectures and self learning you are more likely to keep them engaged and enthusiastic.

If the University of Gloucestershire implements something like that, then perhaps they wouldn’t need to cancel my CIM course due to lack of interest. Just saying..

If like me you adore Single Malt Scotch Whisky, then this Flavour Map should prove to be very helpful.  Not quite a Gartner Magic Quadrant, but certainly a lot more fun to research. Enjoy!

I have always really liked these Futures Videos from the marketing guys at Microsoft Office. Here is the latest one that really inspires your inner geek.

What is positive to see here are the Cisco pillars of Social, Video, Mobile, Virtual and Video highly evident throughout the clip.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces the Kindle Fire

Yesterday’s launch of Amazon’s new Tablet, the Kindle Fire, has stirred up all sorts of trouble for the other vendors in the same space.

Will Apple be hurting? A little bit, but it’s really RIM, Microsoft and the other Android tablets that are in for a tough time. Amazon seem to have created a lovely device and new web browser aimed at the mass market. There is plenty of people that want an iPad but don’t want to pay the premium for a Tablet. We all saw what happened when HP did a firesale on their Touchpads, the price point was just right for the mass market.

There are also plenty of people out there that love their Kindle’s and prefer the smaller form factor. I’m a new Kindle user. I read 4 books on holiday last week and loved the device. When my iPhone blew up I even tried out the Kindle browser. It wasn’t great, but it looks like Amazon have invested a lot of R&D to build their new Silk browser. It looks very slick and uses Amazon’s EC2 cloud to really optimize the user experience.

I think the Kindle Fire is really going to put huge pressure on Microsoft. Consumers are now seeing that you can buy really capable devices without having to spend the Steve Ballmer OS tax. Do users need Windows 8 and Office outside of the workspace? Not really.  And I think that the reality of this issue has hit home after the mass walkout during Ballmer’s speech at the Microsoft Company meeting last week.

But the key to Amazon’s success is going to be content. Their vast amount of books, magazines and music means that the Kindle is certain to be a must have device. Portable, slick, easy and powerful when on the Internet.  I have been trying to think what sort of people will buy one? To be honest at that price I think its pretty much aimed at everyone.  In today’s consumer market, it’s the content that is king. Amazon has that in bucket loads, and all on a device less than $200.

I am however, still a huge fan of Twitter. Or more realistically, I am a fan of Tweetdeck. Purely because I can split the people I follow into topic areas, Technology, Social Business, News etc. So depending on what I want to know at a particular time , I can find it or find someone who might know about it. But what Tweetdeck doesn’t do, is make the viewing user experience as pleasurable; I can’t preview photos or links so I’m sure I just skip over a lot that I may be interested in.

This maybe where Google+ will provide the happy medium? Ok, it’s not brilliant yet either, but it seems to be trying to be best both of both worlds. I like their use of circles and huddles so I can decide what information to view and with whom; it seems a more structured way of consuming the vast amount of content that is out there. At the moment thought, the users of Google+ seem to be more of a professional audience and not the GenY or Millennials that Google probably wanted. But is that a bad thing? Not for me.

As someone who is focused on Social Business Collaboration I can’t wait until we see Google+ as part of Google Apps. I’m a fan of software like Yammer and Jive that really allow employees to collaborate better. But it’s the ability to collaborate on documents that really allows social software to really enter the Enterprise. Software like Cisco Quad is where I think Social Business is really headed with the blend of social networking  but with the Enterprise ready document management. Google+ will inevitably have this is well, all in the cloud which makes it available to even the smallest company.  Then when you add in end to end unified communications such as IM and video, whether its Google Voice or Cisco Jabber, you create the optimal user cockpit for your employees.

Quad, like Google+, will also have the potential of their own  Apps Marketplace which will allow 3^rd party software vendors to build plugs such as Finance & CRM apps. The outcome of this is that the whole Business can embrace Enterprise 2.0 rather than keeping it in purely a GenY silo. So when Management say that Social Business is just like Facebook, you can be confident that won’t be the case.

However this Wave is new one for Forrester and it sort of shows; I dont think you can really compare Web Conferencing solutions with file storage. It doesnt really make sense. A list may work, but not a wave. Saying that its great to see Cisco still riding high with WebEx, its a great collaboration solution and works on pretty much any device. To me, thats the true meaning of Cloud Collaboration.

The decision to include only cloud-based apps is an indication that the future belongs to the mobile app Internet, which is application architecture defined as “an architecture of native apps on smart mobile devices linked to cloud-based services that provide a context-rich experience anytime, anywhere.”

Since I left Microsoft earlier this year, I’ve been having an on-going debate with an ex-colleague and friend of mine Lyndon. At Cisco we believe in providing a ubiquitous service across multiple devices, whether it be MAC, PC, iPhone, Android or Blackberry. Microsoft are talking about using their Skype acquisition to reach their Lync offering into iPhone and Android; but not Blackberry. Lyndon rightly said that Android was killing Blackberry and there was no reason to support it; another reason Microsoft is mainly focusing on Android is probably because due to their percentage share of sales due to patent agreements.

I first had a Blackberry about 8years ago, I loved the phone with his roller navigation. I have two mobile phones now, a Blackberry for business and my iPhone for personal. To be fair to Blackberry, I bought the iPhone when I was at Microsoft as my work Windows Mobile was awful and my Windows Phone 7  felt a bit Fisher Price. At Cisco, they allow you a choice of Phones to have, unfortunately my boss signed me up for Blackberry….it’s awful

So Blackberry used to be good, but is now falling way short of what Businesses and Consumers want. The employees love the company but feel that the Management are leading them down the wrong path; open letters have been written to the Board that seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Is there a way out to save the company?

I used to think yes! Blackberry’s strong support with Youth Culture due to the brand loyalty of Urban music artists like Jay-Z and Beyonce was where the brand should focus. Understand what these multi-million pound artists loved about the Blackberry and market the brand to be cool and aspirational again. However as we have seen in the London, Birmingham and Manchester riots over the last few nights, it’s the low end aspect of Blackberry that really makes it popular. The free Blackberry Messaging service (BBM). The rioters tool of choice could be the final nail in the coffin for RIM, the makers of Blackberry in the UK. The device as it stands now is far behind its rivals, including Microsoft in terms of user experience and functionality. To make this worse, it’s now tarnished as being a yob phone. Would you want one?

As you all know, I’m a sucker for a cool infographic. And I couldnt resist this one from BestVendor , as its also really interesting to see the different tools and applications that Startups and Small Businesses use across the company and not just Office365 or Google Apps.

Office365 vs Google Apps

Essentially Office365 is Microsoft’s answer to try and protect the cash cows of Microsoft Office and Windows Operating System from Google Apps. However Google doesn’t seem too worried about  Microsoft’s latest release claiming in their “365 reasons to consider Google Apps” blogpost that   Office365 isn’t really a team collaboration solution and is only optimized for Windows-based PCs.

Google Apps certainly has a better Collaboration experience and more reliable than Office365, however Microsoft has the edge when it comes down to their familiar interfaces and number of existing customers.

Is it Enterprise Ready?

Assuming it works as advertised, Office 365 may catch on with some large enterprises that want Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and other SaaS applications. However over the last 2years BPOS has suffered from frequent interruptions, and support could be spotty. Just last month, the BPOS email service was hit with disruptions and admins were left in the dark as their service dashboards also went offline. CTO’s are going to be nervous about putting their faith in Office365 and will more than likely be looking for a hybrid or private cloud solution.

Its not a Mobile Solution

Microsoft claims that Office365 works with Windows Phone, iOS (iPhone/iPad), Symbian, Android, and BlackBerry;. however there is a big difference between works with and works well. The truth is that the only part of Office 365 that is thoroughly compatible with a non-Windows platform is Exchange. InfoWorld stated that “outside of Exchange, Office 365 is largely limited to desktop Windows users, though some SharePoint features work with the little-adopted Windows Phone 7 platform — but for 99% of mobile users who don’t use the Windows Phone platform — Office 365 is irrelevant because it is unusable.

Its still not Partner Friendly

Can partners white label Office 365 and manage customer billing? No. And that’s a big concern for some channel partners. Generally speaking, most VARs and SPs (A) want to brand third-party cloud services as their own and (B) want to maintain the billing relationship with end customers. So far, Microsoft has not introduced either option which will encourage Partners to look at other options.

Hosted UC in the next opportunity

Generally speaking, it seems like email, storage and security are three of the top services that SMBs are shifting to the cloud. The margins for Hosted Email are getting squeezed and Partners are looking for new ways to increase their revenue. There’s plenty of dialog about hosted UC and cloud related VoIP services that Partners can white label as their own. Cisco’s HCS solution is well placed to help Partners capitalise on this opportunity and could potentially transform them into Cloud Services Providers while still maintaining direct relationship with their customers.

I found this cool Infographic that adds fuel to the fire that we are embarking on the Post PC Era