Google Consumer Surveys

Interesting new product from Google to conduct market research. Click here to learn more. This could become a significant tool for quick and inexpensive Market Research.

Obviously, it remains to be seen if Google can accurately target the right selection of consumers - potential use of the recently integrated profile that Google launched with its new Privacy Policy. Also, will media companies sign-up to embed these surveys on their sites?

Some sites are touting it as a "pay wall" replacement for media companies - I will be tracking that!

IT as a Service

Information Technology now plays a central role in the functioning of any business. Most, if not all, projects in a modern business have tasks related to technology. As product lifecycles have shortened and more and more business is conducted on-line, the volume of IT work has grown exponentially. IT departments have become a bottleneck in most companies. Business leaders are frustrated by the lack of agility and scalability of IT services and by the constant increase in cost.

Recent advances is Cloud services provide IT with a solution to deploy and scale technology infrastructure quickly and linearly with demand. Further, SAAS solutions like SalesForce and others have demonstrated that high-end technology solutions can be acquired as a subscription and deployed quickly. Further, these solutions are constantly updated with minimal additional cost. Given these experiences with IAAS and SAAS, business now expects internal IT solutions to be delivered in a similar manner. IT as a Service is a hot topic.

Over the past several years, we have developed a model to deliver Enterprise technology solutions as a service. We now have an organizational blueprint and an architecture template that allows us to develop and deliver new services quickly with no capital investment. I will share our experiences over the next several posts.

pic: our backyard, a couple of days ago!