Internet network to be tested in the next 5 years

From ITWire:

"A new study forecasts that demand for Internet bandwidth will grow by an order of magnitude in five years, straining current network architectures to the limit.

The study "World bandwidth growth over the next decade – is it viable? " was authored by David Payne of the Institute of Advanced Telecommunications, Swansea University in the UK and sponsored by CIP Technologies, a UK provider of photonics products, technical services and consultancy.

CIP's CTO, David Smith, said: "The Global Bandwidth Study demonstrates that current telecom networks will be unable to cope with the scaling demands for bandwidth. A step-change in technology is needed that can not only deliver this bandwidth demand at economic cost but also significantly reduce the amount of energy required to power and cool it."

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What does this mean - so as customer data continues to grow larger and more sophisticated in nature, as the interface with which customers manage their data becomes more personalised, again sophisticated and capable, as the marketing messages become either more targeted and/or immersive in nature, and as the competition for eyeballs increases between banks and even other industries, so too will grow the demand on the infrastructure that provides these experiences.

How will we combat this? How will we make our interactions simpler, smaller, less overbose, to enable clean, quick connections for our customers? Does web 2.0 in its current state mean smaller packets of data are transmitted, where dhtml, xml, rss and other code formats will replace html, flash, etc?

Interesting roundtable on lateral thinking

From The Banker:

In many parts of the world, the global economy is being driven as much by trade in information, ideas and services,as by trade in physical goods. Organisations that were able to achieve success and predominance through sheer productivity and massive scale are now fewer and far between. Increasingly, it is the ability to think laterally, to operate on an agile basis, to react to global trends quickly and, above all, to innovate that will determine the sustainability of an organisation in future.

The issues:

• The changing global consumer
• The role of technology
• Embedding innovation in culture
• The future of innovation
• The new operating model

Have a look here.

A new consumer segment - Digital Savvy

SmartCompany / Research Brief reports on a new consumer segment:

According to Research Brief, the digital savvy are defined by their ownership of hi-tech items such as high-def TVs and PDAs and common use of the web to perform tasks like banking, blogging, gaming and content downloading.

Scarborough Research identified the group by putting together a list of more than 20 techie devices and habits and asking people to indicate how many they own or do – those that ticked eight or more out of the 20 get the nod for being digitally savvy.

And, according to the research, they are precisely the sort of people you want to have walking into your shop or visiting your e-commerce website, being:

• 56% more likely than the average consumer to have a luxury vehicle.
• 175% more likely to have spent $US500 or more on business clothing in the past year.
• 49% more likely to own a second home.
• 132% more likely to have an annual household income of $US150,000, and 57% of this group has an annual household income of $US75,000 or greater.

And, unsurprisingly, the digital savvy spend big online, with 35% spending more than US$1000 online over the past year.

"They are early adopters when it comes to fully integrating new technologies into their lives,” Scarborough Research senior vice president Gary Meo says. “Their shopping patterns, demographics and lifestyles could presage behaviours of consumers across the country."

Microsoft, somehow, tells us how to be human in the year 2020

'Computer technologies are not neutral – they are laden with human, cultural and social values. We need to define a new agenda for human-computer interaction in the 21st century – one that anticipates and shapes the impact of technology rather than simply reacts to it.' Download this interesting presentation here.

eBay Australia's PayPal mandate has no chance…

Welcome to a new contributor - Montza joins TheBankChannel, and begins with this entry on eBays PayPal palaver:

I was sitting on a plane last night catching up on all this eBay Australia PayPal 'mandate' news. I now see that the RBA have jumped into the following the ACCC announcement to investigate this a bit further (perhaps on the back of some close public and media scrutiny).

To think that eBay Australia has a chance of mandating PayPal is beyond me. I will call it here and now on the record – it just won't happen. There are many good reasons for this.

What eBay Australia are trying to do is holistic control of the buying and selling process. Sure, there is good merit and arguably good intentions through PayPal's buyer protection, but at the end of the day, eBay are asking the ACCC to support banning any other form of transacting for eBay items on the basis of consumer protection/safety alone.

This does not cut it; we don't live in a society where we reduce consumer risk through eliminating consumer choice. If the buyer wants the protection of PayPal and the seller does not offer it, then the seller does not generate a sale… Pretty simple, if PayPal is so safe and protects buyers then consumer demand will organically drive uptake. For me, domestically, I am more than happy to pay my bank 20 cents for an internet banking transfer; it only takes 24hrs and costs the seller nothing – I've bought and sold over 400 times on eBay.

PayPal's first mover advantage is a good thing and should be noted. They have the jump in our market for online payments and the RBA are. The banks need to crack the whip on this whole EFTPOS online expansion thing; goodness knows how… Perhaps stored value is the way to go? After all, none of us have a pin and card swipe attached to our laptops [yet].

If they (eBay Australia) get this whole PayPal thing up, the ACCC is allowing a monopoly exemption which not only sets precedents for PayPal, it clears the runway for PayPal to take-off by expanding its footprint in the same direction it's pursuing in the US and Europe.

Let's cut to the chase, PayPal have a financial services to operate in Australia, and they provide a very convenient service for eBay buyers, sellers, and many other non-eBay users… But, they won't stop there, I believe PayPal have full intent of becoming a direct bank in this country, and the only barrier is a banking license either through application or [more probably] through acquisition of an undervalued Aussie bank.

For the record, I'm an eBay shareholder and I work for an Australian bank.

Thanks Mont - looking forward to reading your thoughts and ideas over the coming months.

Bank brands ranked by TheBanker

HSBC comes out on top of this global study of brands, as profiled in TheBanker magazine. HSBC leads this year’s ranking with a brand value of $35.5bn, moving up from second place in 2006. Citi slips from first to second place, with a brand value of $27.8bn. And Bank of America remains in third place ($25.4bn). The same banks took the top three places in The Banker’s Top 1000 World Banks 2007 listings based on Tier 1 capital, though in the opposite order: Bank of America first, then Citi, then HSBC (The Banker, July 2007). So shuffling of the chairs at the top of the tree. HSBCs global/local model is working as a brand, but I wonder if there is true integration between accounts and countries - I've heard otherwise.

The Future of Work

Wave goodbye to the nine to five, and say hello to virtual enterprise, says the Guardian:

"Jo Causon from the Chartered Management Institute on its study on the future of work
Within a decade millions of workers will be at home juggling their careers with caring for children and older relatives, Britain's leading management institute forecast yesterday.

Dreams of a future when technological advances would liberate us from the daily drudge and allow more time for leisure appear to be fading, with futurologists predicting less talk about "work-life balance" and more about "work-life integration".

A report on the nature of employment in 2018 predicts an exodus from the traditional workplace caused partly by environmental pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of commuting and partly by the demographic pressure of an ageing population, with fewer employees able to avoid looking after older relatives, leading to a blurring of boundaries between family and career."

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Rising use of Internet challenges its capacity

From IHT:

"Caution: Heavy Internet traffic ahead. Delays possible.

For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.

Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits passing through the Internet's pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000."

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A political education for business

From McKinsey Quarterly:

"A political education for business: An interview with the head of the Council on Foreign Relations

Government, many executives are quick to assert, would benefit if it were run more like a business. But can business learn anything from the way government manages a wide variety of stakeholders in a globalizing world? A great deal, thinks Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Today, as global companies joust on the international playing field, Haass sees increasing similarities between the management challenges facing business and government.

Business now constantly finds itself addressing new social and political demands. Social activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are taking a place, alongside governments, as de facto regulators of business. The savviest executives, says Haass, are those who understand the nuances of government and how to balance the concerns of broad, highly varied political and social constituencies.

A veteran foreign-policy expert, Haass, 56, is no stranger to the business world. To discuss some of the global issues and ideas Haass considers “ripe,” he recently met in the council’s New York headquarters with Drew Erdmann, a consultant in McKinsey’s Chicago office; Roger Kline, a director in New York; and Lenny Mendonca, a director in San Francisco."

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Yahoo Japan better than its parent

From IT Wire:

"Yahoo-Japan has a market capitalisation close that of Yahoo! inc, makes similar but growing profits and will remain a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock exchange, only 33 percent owned by Microsoft if the proposed acquisition goes through."

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Chinas increasingly important relationship with the internet

From The Economist:

"ONE of the more striking end-of-year statistics pumped out recently by the Chinese government was an update on the number of internet users in the country, which had reached 210m. It is a staggering figure, up by more than 50% on the previous year and more than three times the number for India, the emerging Asian giant with which China is most often compared. Within a few months, according to Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, China will have more internet users than America, the current leader. And because the proportion of the population using the internet is so low, at just 16%, rapid growth is likely to continue for some time."

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Microsoft and Yahoo to come together?

Apparently long in the wings, Microsoft has bid $44b+ for Yahoo, to tackle the market dominance of Google. It makes sense to buy such a strong advertising model, but I fear the old, surpassed Yahoo brand may not be sufficient or even survive under this new campaign to wrestle back market share. Microsoft have often predicted the strength of the internet, but the fact they're well behind Google in online services must disturb them.

Read this great article in The Economist.

This article in The Age analyses the impact here on the NineMSN relationship and Yahoo7 relationship - two rival tv stations with portal tie-ups - will they now have to split?

Firefox continues to eat into IE

From ITWire:

"The latest figures from French based Internet traffic analyst XiTiMonitor shows that the Mozilla's Firefox web browser has continued to take market share off Microsoft's Internet Explorer across the globe over the past year, with a significant spike in Firefox usage in December 2007.

Oceania, which includes Australia, New zealand and Papua New Guinea, is now the leading continent in Firefox use, with Firefox holding 31.1% marketshare, up from 29% in November. However, the far more populous Europe is not far behind with a signficant increase in Firefox share over the past 12 months. Firefox share across Europe averaged 28% in December 2007, significantly up from the 23.1% share the browser held in December 2006."

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McKinsey explores leadership and innovation

From McKinsey Quarterly:

"McKinsey research reveals a wide gap between the aspirations of executives to innovate and their ability to execute. Organizational structures and processes are not the solution.

Three approaches can help executives mount innovation efforts. First, senior management should actively support behavior that promotes innovation. Second, network analysis can identify where the capacity for innovation already exists within an organization and help it build more innovative networks. Finally, executives should seed innovative thinking by focusing on selected managers and projects."

High level senior management support is vital in customer experience too, so you can see that with cultural change, endorsement and momentum is required from high up.

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Another couple of interesting articles from 07 and 08:
Taking stock : Ten years after the Asian financial crisis
Making talent a strategic priority
The new role of oil wealth in the world economy
How companies are marketing online: A McKinsey Global Survey
Delivering software as a service
The new metrics of corporate performance: Profit per employee

Ciscos next phase of the internet

John Chambers from Cisco talks about the Future of the Internet as part of a Davos video project.

Davos is coming, and so is its YouTube page

Watch some interesting speakers at the Davos World Economic Forum January 2008 page on YouTube - say what you want about this group (rich nations discussing new ways to garner further riches from struggling developing countries, or an essential dialogue forum for all to understand and begin to solve global issues together???) this is an impressive event, that pulls the worlds business and political leaders together, rare indeed.

McKinsey takes a look at the banking industrys future

From McKinsey Quarterly:

Global banking may be passing through a major cyclical correction at the end of 2007, but new McKinsey research suggests that in the longer term the industry’s revenues and profits—poised to continue growing faster than the rate of GDP growth—will double by 2016.

Some of the visuals on show:

Exhibit 3: Developed countries still account for the bulk of banking activity.
Exhibit 4: The mix of banking business in different countries or regions varied significantly.
Exhibit 5: Key drivers of growth in retail-banking revenues differ dramatically across countries.

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Frontline looks at the future of news

I love these Frontline reports from PBS - this one on the Future of News is interesting - NewsWar. Drawing on more than 80 interviews with key figures in the print, broadcast and electronic media, and with unequaled, behind-the-scenes access to some of today's most important news organizations, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the challenges facing the mainstream news media, and the media's reaction, in "News War," a special four-part series.

Technology Trends & Financial Reflection from McKinsey

2 interesting articles from McKinsey Quarterly:

Eight business technology trends to watch
Eight emerging trends are transforming many markets and businesses. Executives should learn to shape the outcome rather than just react to it.

Taking stock : Ten years after the Asian financial crisis
The Asian financial system could become a full-fledged partner in the global triad of economic powerhouses, alongside Europe and the United States—but only if its regulatory systems, economic ministries, and financial institutions improve dramatically.

Latest from McKinsey Quarterly

Some interesting articles from McK:

Anticipating customer queries in call centers
An effort to determine the value of specific kinds of customer inquiries shows how companies should decide which channels are best for dealing with each of them.

Connecting employees to create value in investment banks
Leaders used to have few options for changing their companies, except focusing on financial performance and walking the halls. That’s no longer true.

Harnessing the power of informal employee networks
Formalizing a company’s ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value.