Third world networkers wish for marketing departments

Life is hard, margins are shrinking

Oh well ... I'm seated here having done some kick ass projects. Some were/are fun, others not so much. If we were a factory producing raw material, we have produced it in excess. The capacity is there but hmm where are the damn users.

Let me re-tell this with an analogy of sorts. Most of our parents by the time they could afford to build or buy houses went out and bought huge/built 7 bedroom maisonettes hoping you and your siblings would live there forever.

Unfortunately for them you moved out/on , so did your siblings. Now they have all this idle rooms. A few entrepreneurial types converted the houses into guest houses and are making steady income from the house, others need someone like me- a true mugikuyu to talk to them about how to maybe get a return on that investment.

When you build a network or a data center and for some weird reason the dimensioning data came from somewhere other than actual customer requirements ie you make some assumptions, look at the budget and buy the biggest boxes, you risk having lots of idle capacity.

But what if you have a marketing dept. that looks at this capacity, adds value, packages it and sells it?  I think a really good marketing department should help planning and engineering teams figure out how to deliver product(s) that customers need and want. They should be directly involved in service definitions.

It starts with a deep understanding of what customers need and making sure the planning and engineering is getting continuous customer feedback and interaction data.  They also need an understanding of what we are building, how much it cost, how to maximize revenue off it maybe be by branding or product extensions (branding extension is for instance giving two customers 1Mbps links but throttling one link to 128kbps and selling it cheaper).

Thats the kind of marketing department (in whatever form) I'd like to work with in a technology company. In most such companies, engineers produce raw materials, marketers should take those and sell products. If you are in marketing, head over to engineering and look at the raw materials.

What I know from running a few businesses or seeing them run is in the end it is always about sales. The money. You can bullshit all you want but that is the bottom line.

So if for instance you outsource marketing end to end including product creation, packaging etc without having the expertise to judge or manage the results, you are pretty much screwed, learn the metrics to keep track of, your engineering team knows and can help. Be 'with it'. (My opinion has always been - outsource what you are an expert in unless you want to get conned').

Now what brought on this post????????????

Third world networkers guide to successful an almost succesful service model (cloud)

So there is a huge debate over at skunkworks mailing list home of an elite technical group. Someone raised a storm with some statements about cloud computing.

Now the term cloud has been abused several times. Over and over people keep bringing it up in contexts that I don't feel fit the word. Im not trying to clear that. Not today. In fact this post has nothing to do with cloud. More on that some other day.

I love the entire idea behind cloud. Public cloud from the likes of Amazon have been a huge game changer in the startup arena. I use the AWS for some services.

Private clouds will definately make a huge difference in our lives in Kenya if well priced and positioned otherwise I might very well use a public cloud elsewhere. I doubt a public cloud platform will happen soon here. I also believe cloud is not the main issue at the moment. Awareness is.

Security is of huge concern for me. I am especially scared of handing my data to a service provider that 'exports' my data to some 'cloud' hoping someone over there will keep it safe.I get scared if said person doesn't even ask me before handing the data over.

Another challenge is changing how managers and project managers think about processes.Cloud computing breaks most of the models in use today for a service portfolio. I can already see some confusion in meetings I attend. So for instance if you came from the ITIL Prince2 school of thought, the vertical blocks (cost analysis, business plan, service overview, technical plan, implement,operate) can't/won't scale.

Cloud computing gives you layered portfolios. Visualizing this can be a pain to comprehend for even experienced users. So for that mailing list the question really is how exactly is a novice regular user supposed to comprehend it and take advantage of it. How do you show value?

Start small, start by creating value services, created demand for a service, be open to audits, to discussions, let your technical people talk to the customers (note I said technical not your sales drones).

Personally I'd start from small communities like an estate of lets say 50 houses,Ensure each and every house has access to a 'community network either cable or wifi or whatever, show them how voip between your home and a sentry gate with a few IP camera's and community wifi can secure the 'estate'.Let kids have online multiplayer games, host a local movie database, or music, or photos, install a microphone, record your amateur guitar, stream it to your neighbor....

Have an estate site where users and home owners can access and check on their houses. host community bulletins online, maybe a 'for sale' board online, start engaging locally....and on and on and on....thats the kind of activism I want to be involved in...

Third World Networkers guide to 'culture' - not mine - netflix's

Culture

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Third World Networkers guide to 'startups'

Everyone In Kenya tends to be involved in one form of business or another. Whether you know it or not, all those 'trials' are startups. Most never make it. Sad.

I have no illusions. A startup is not yet really a business. it's more like checking out the market, getting customers, working towards structures trying to figure out a repeatable business model that when finally found should be able to replicate and keep growing ideally without much of the founders day to day baby sitting.

Since I work for a tech. company and really didnt feel like muddling the 'disclosure' waters, our first startup was a farm:-), because I love being in one. We've done some really crazy experiments, figured out how the local vs export market works for passion fruits, tomatoes and green beans (michiri:-)).

I know what a charcoal cooler is, I know how irrigation works, we have customers. Things look good over there. But how do you start transitioning this to a 'business'. It's two years down the line, the structures and processes are in place and you'll be surprised at how much a farming business is alot like umm a tech business (those lessons are coming in handy at another forum right now).

So anyway, we 'the founders/shareholders' had to come up with roles for each of us, remember this is a farm so one of us had to pretty much 'live there', I did the financials and other tech stuff - like arranging for irrigation, automating it where possible, we had one other partner dealing with our 'partners' and labor. It's worked well. We tried to 'follow a typical business' cycle - heck we even filled a business model canvas - more on this later ( and I'll never do any business again without fully going through the process).

Business model canvas - work with it!

Why this, why now - well, there's alot of hooha on startups and entrepreneurship in Kenya today. It's really awesome. Alot of it is noise and people hoping to make things work. Since there's a really high chance I'll be going 'that' way this time for a tech company, It is interesting to try and co-relate the tech and farm.

This will also form a guide on what I finally settle and decide to do academically! - don't ask....:-)The basics are the same.

They are both businesses, they both call on leadership skills - so the leaders ability to articulate the vision,The right kind of ambition and an ability to achieve the said vision. I'm still putting together a proper story (I like stories and believe if I cant tell a nice clear story about my plans, agenda then my vision and strategy are blurred and there's probably going to be a misunderstanding).

I just love the idea of creating a culture, setting clear objectives, manage expectations - all things I have been learning but can't really exercise where I work .... and Im also scared and worried - the usual....

Oh well...i guess just a filler post today....and not quite a guide now is it:-)

Third World Networkers Guide to End-2-End broadband Service

So lets take a typical user on the Safaricom network. He has a mid range phone, lets say a Nokia E72, or an IDEOS from Huawei.

He clicks on the you his 'buy this' Icon, selects a video somewhere on the internet, pays via MPESA, the processor screams and cycles around calls up a couple of routines, fires up the video player or browser, creates a moving object on his screen, he's happy. Now lets take a look at exactly what goes on in the background from the moment he 'clicks'.

For a network operator to offer really great service, they need to have full end to end control of the network, the enduser device and the content. The End 2 End view of the mobile service in this case the 'video' is best premised from the perspective of the user. His/Her ability to watch their movie in a frictionless manner after paying for it is the goal.

From an implementation perspective, severalservice providers are involved:

• - The Mobile network operator - lets say Safaricom.
• - The guy providing video,
• - The guys pocessing the payment

Does the consumer in most cases know of the multiple 'service providers' involved? nope! most don't, in most cases they shouldn't.

For most of us users, the mobile view we hold is that the operator is responsible for the access and content. Unfortunately the Operators 'span-of-control' is often limited to internal content or external content endorsed by the operator eg content served by Mobile network operators like bernsoft for Safaricom. Other than that there are multiple considerations involved in optimizing E2E service delivery.

While  a network operator will undertake alot of effort to ensure a memorable experience to the end user; maybe by using agreements sometimes commercial and standards, or sometimes co-operation with content providers, it is not always the case. Guys like Google and Facebook make alot of effort to co-operate with network operators. Others like CNN; not so much.

Components to consider if you want to have E2E QOS:

1. The UE - aka handset - Unless its a certified unmodified device, the operator can't claim control here.
2. RAN - Radio Access Network: On the one hand, the mobile service provider has full control over the nodes that make up the RAN. We now have QOS and standards defined to take care of this area.  On the other hand, there is another aspect of the RAN over which the mobile service operator has only very limited control: the literal, over‐the‐air portion.
3. Backhaul : If you own it, you control it.
4. Core Network: mechanisms can be implemented here that participate in network
   management and optimize the QoS since the operator almost always has control.
5. Operator Owned content like the safaricom portal content: Content includes both the applications as well as any digital media that are part of the customer’s service subscription. For this there is full control by the mobile operator and it is almost always optimized to as close to the user as possible.
6. Internet and other external content: Only at the point of Ingress/Egress. So if Facebook suddelny goes offline, don't expect the mobile/network operator to know or even care. Poorly written applications can introduce QoS issues not only for the user of the application,but for other users as well. I've seen and had to mitigate this several times on our network.
7. Branded content: It sometimes happens that external entities offer branded content. For this the operator has limited control.

Also consider mobility,viruses and general end user demand variations. All this add up to the complexities involved in running and optimizing a network.