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:: 2003/04/04 ::

Jabber Inc. gets $7.2M in new round of funding: Intel gets aboard

Jabber Inc. announced a week ago that it raised $7.2M in a new round of financing. Form the trade press stories, looks like Intel's interest -- and thos of France Telecom, an existing Jabber investor -- are focused on Jabber technology as an element of wireless and other telephony applications.

Jabber Inc. has developed an XML transport capability, on which instant messaging and presence information can be transferred, but so can nearly any other information. Looks like this is a big shot in the arm for the company, but also for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) the firm has been pushing in the IETF as an alternative to SIP/SIMPLE.

I plan to close the loop with the folks at Jabber, and get their take as soon as possible.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/4/2003 10:57:42 AM [link] ::
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Osterman Research Survey: IM is Everywhere

Osterman Research released information on a survey of 102 companies with more than 1,000 employees, which was reported on by Tony Kontzer at InternetWeek. Nearly 93 percent respond that they're already using or soon to use IM on their networks. In an interesting bimodel distribution, 28 percent are blocking IM traffic -- which has some potential annoyances, since it may involve closing the HTTP port in the firwall, or installing finicky packet sniffing security solutions.

Only one-third have settled on one or more products as an IM standard, and are allowing the use of a variety of solutions.

What's this mean?

• IM is a powerful and effective communication device, and business people want it, how ever they can get it.


• Companies are accepting the inevitability of IM, and are moving toward standard solutions, although what to use and in what form -- server-based beghind-the-firewall IM versus hosted ISP services -- still is an issue to be resolved on a company by company, industry by industry basis.


• Some companies are blocking IM, but they likely will come over to the other side once their security fears are addressed

So, in the near term -- say the next 12 to 18 months -- nearly 100% of businesses will have moved onto a real time communication footing, and between now and then we will cross a tipping point.

Evidence shows that IM use leads to decreases in email and telephone calls, but once interoperability and voice-over-IP issues are addressed, the presence-based IM channel will become the preferred form of business communication.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/4/2003 09:41:50 AM [link] ::
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Real Time War

Patrick Lambe, in "The Perils of Knowledge-Based Warfare" (published at Knowledge Management), that "knowledge-based warfare" in the modern military is in some way a break with the past, an attempt to apply new technologies in a radical attempt to reshuffle the conduct of war. However, although technology is different, the goals of military leaders are consistent with past history. I responded to his piece, based on the invitation of the editor, Steve Barth, following the guidelines that we weren't arguing pro or con about the conflict Iraq, but the conduct of modern war vis-a-vis today's real time communication technologies and the lessons learned from business:

Ever since Sun Tzu, war thinking has been dominated by the value of knowledge. The Art of War, for example, includes a chapter on the value of spies to the war commander. And Clausewitz introduced the expression “the fog of war” to express the loss of clarity in understanding that arises from the flurry of individual events in a war theatre, obscuring the grand strategic picture that is critical to war leadership. And of course, these principles are generally true: in business, the value of competitive intelligence can be the difference between success or obsolescence, and the fog of war has its direct analog in the swirling activities of a fast moving and seemingly chaotic market.

The impact of real time situational awareness and analysis are not unique to war. As businesses today move onto a real time footing, the same critical factors come into play:

1. Volatility amplification -- the 'bull whip' effect that savaged the telecom suppliers a few years ago (remember the $2B in excess inventory at Cisco?) is the result of a 'lack of shared situational awareness' across a supply chain. The various constituencies across a supply chain each independently operate based on market information that is increasingly inaccurate the farther from the actual end customer. The result? Those farthest from the end user get bull-whipped by amplifications in market demand changes. Charles Fine details this in his wonderful Clockspeed, and tells us about the crush of the machine tools industry by swings of plus-or-minus 40 or even 60 percent based on automotive market swings of 6 to 8 percent. As information flow speeds up, partners across the supply chain are able to minimize this amplification, but only to the degree that the information is correct. The same is true in war, except the marketplace is the war theatre, and the supply chain is the war plan: mobilization and allocation of troops, materials, and support staff.

2. Fine also coined a new 'law': Clockspeed amplification. The closer you get to the end of the supply chain (closer to the end customer) the faster the basic pace of activities. A PC manufacturer may have products that are revamped every year, or less, while the chip manufacturer has products that have lifetimes of years, and chip fab machinery has a lifecycle measured in decades. But as real time planning across supply chain partners comes into use, even the slowest constituencies will find their clockspeed pushed. Likewise, in the war theatre, real time mobilization across the entire war machine will lead to a requirement for faster operational pace in even the slowest elements, in order to execute real time operations.

3. Real time communication qualitatively changes business operations, and likewise, the conduct of war. The response to threats and opportunities can be handled with less delay, and the decisions taken can be broadcasted to other groups with less delay. Real time coordination across groups -- getting the best minds to apply their thinking to live problems within an operationally limited period of time -- can dramatically decrease risks of making poor decisions, and keep others aware -- as early as possible -- of the potential outcomes linked to decisions soon to be made. As a result of these localized, accelerated communications based on real-time synchronous communications, parallelism across the extended business network (or war machine) is dramatically increased. This is how real time communication qualitatively changes how business (or war) is conducted. It is far more than the sum of the myriad small time savings -- it accelerated, but at the same time much more interconnected mode of operation. It does engender the 'shared awareness' that Patrick alludes to.

An additional side effect of the real time war that we are fighting (and the real time markets that we now experience in business) is the feedback cycles caused by nearly instantaneous reportage. The media are an additional source of information, and now, the commanders need to look to that information just as they have looked at their own intelligence. Volatility in public sentiment about war advances or market swings can be drastically impacted by speeding access to information -- both for the good and the bad. To minimize the bull whip effect in business, you determine what are the critical factors to monitor -- those that can have a deleterious effect on your business -- and you ceaselessly monitor them. You plan in advance what actions to take to minimize the impacts of market volatility, you try to get your clockspeed up to as close to the market's as possible, and you build an infrastructure that supports the highest possible speed and connectedness in communication that you can afford in order to gain the exponential increase in productivity that can come from a real time operational footing.

This is what our military has tried to put into place, as well. But, just as in business, you cannot predict how the market will move, you cannot control buying behavior, and you cannot compel your partners to take action: you can only influence these things. Just as any good chess player knows better to take actions based on 'knowing' what the other fellow will do, war strategists avoid this most naive of strategic blunders. Good chess players evaluate their options and move based on what's on the board, not what they imagine in the mind of the opponent.

To argue that we should turn away from the obvious advantages of gaining and applying the best knowledge we have, as quickly as we have, would sound -- at least in business -- at best academic, and at worst foolish. Even in the face of major market swings, who would argue to throw away the means to monitor the market. We can argue whether a business plan devised as a response to market shifts is good or bad, but not the basic stratagem of monitoring what is most critical for moderating volatility. It like tearing out your eyes because you don't like what you see.

(c) 2003 A Working Model

discuss Real Time War

:: Stowe Boyd 4/1/2003 10:47:37 AM [link] ::
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