With OS Project, Is Google Over-extending Itself?

As reported by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service.

Google’s decision to build a PC operating system could be a master stroke or a colossal blunder, depending on whether the company has the resources that such an ambitious and long-term undertaking will require.

Google plays in a variety of extremely competitive markets, serving a broad scope of demanding customers and partners. Although developing an operating system could yield big rewards, it could also distract the company and make it more vulnerable to rivals.

Of chief concern is Google’s continued reliance on a single type of advertising for most of its revenue, despite efforts over the years to diversify its business.

Google still makes most of its money from search pay-per-click text ads, a market that it dominates but where loyalty from consumers and marketers is thin, making the company vulnerable to the development by a rival of a significant technology breakthrough.

In short, if someone built a better search mousetrap — as Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com and a host of smaller players are trying hard to do — Google would suffer a sudden drop in search usage and consequently advertising, crippling its finances.

Google’s attempts to build alternative revenue streams from display advertising remain nascent, despite the costly acquisitions of ad services provider DoubleClick and video-sharing leader YouTube, two properties Google considers key to this effort.

Bold initiatives to provide print ads to newspapers and spots to radio stations both failed. The company continues its attempts to build a TV advertising business.

Google executives are the first to admit that the company dominates the Internet search market because it toils long and hard every day to continually improve its engine technology.

Yet, not content with waging battle every day in search, Google also provides enterprise search and business collaboration software, competing against the likes of Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Autonomy, and trying to win over business managers, IT managers and CIOs.

Read the entire story here.

Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 5

In Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4 of this series on performing a market analysis, I’ve covered the following phases:

• Phase 1 – Documenting the Requirements
• Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources
• Phase 3 – Vendor Invitation
• Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1
• Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2
• Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos

We are now on to Phase 7 – Final Scoring and Selection.

Phase 7 – Final Scoring and Selection

This phase will involve a final team review of the materials, demo notes and preliminary scoring, performance of joint scoring, determination of the finalist, and notification to the losers and the winner.

Final Team Review

Once all vendor reviews from Phase 6 have been completed and all after-the-demo meetings following each vendor demo have been completed and notes have been documented, then it’s time for the team to finalize scoring or ranking of each vendor in detail against the requirements or against groups of requirements.

Preferrably, and if time allows, give the team 3-5 working days from the last demo to do their own scoring before coming back together as a team.

Joint Scoring

Prior to holding a joint meeting, share all team scoring with each other and designate one individual to be the compiler/consolidator of all scoring info. If the number of requirements is too great, score the vendors on logical groups of requirements. At this point we’re only looking at 2-3 vendors so it shouldn’t be an overwhelming tasks.

During a joint session, perform final scoring of the vendors and discuss any concerns or contradictions. The goal is to come out of this session with a clear and agreed-upon winner. Anything less can lead to more lengthy discussions and working sessions.

Notifications

Once all discussions are over, clarifications and contradictions have been cleared up and a clear winner has been identified, it’s time for notifications. Now that this process is anywhere from 2-6 months old, the losers are going to need some detailed communication and debriefing. After all, they’ve put considerable time, effort and money into trying to win this work with you and your company, so it’s in your best interest to give them some details. Keep in mind, not all projects go well and if the winner performs poorly, then you may need to call on one of these runner-up vendors to step in…so part company amicably, if at all possible.

Notification of the winner should be much easier. However, there is one thing I left out that should be a part of Phase 6 unless the it’s already known or obvious – and that’s cost. As part of the Phase 6 detailed demos and presentation, the vendors should also submit project cost estimates which would include software costs, maintenance agreements, and implementation estimates. These must become part of the scoring and evaluation performed on the final 2-3 vendors because, as we know, cost is always a factor.

However, because you’ve been going through a very detailed and lengthy process to find the most qualified vendor, cost should not be inserted as a factor until you are down to your final selections. By this time, any of the 2-3 vendors could likely provide a suitable solution, so it’s appropriate to base your final decision, at least in part, on cost. To consider cost earlier in the process while some of the vendors still in the running may not be suitable, could be detrimental to the final outcome.

Now it is time to sit down with the chosen vendor and do the following:

• Negotiate a final price
• Provide an official Statement of Work
• Provide final requirements
• Define a draft project schedule
• Identify key milestones and deliverables
• Establish project team roles and members on both sides of the project
• Schedule a Project Kickoff

Summary

You’ve successfully completed a lengthy process to identify the best and final solution to your software need. Monitor the process closely early on so a switch in vendors can be made, if necessary, with minimal impact – both cost and timeline – to your company. However, move forward with confidence because at this point a considerable amount of effort has been expended by your SMEs to identify the best solution and you’ve found it.

Project Manager Needed

Location: Malaysia
Salary: £80000 per annum
Company: Leap 29 Ltd
Sector: Oil / Gas / Power
Job role: Civil engineer
Job type: Permanent

The client is one of the largest oil and gas production companies based in the Asian Pacific region and due to the increase development of one the key sites they are now looking to bring on board a project manager.

The appropriate candidate will be based in the region located close to Malaysia and this will be based on a rotation basis of denominations yet to be decided. A suitable candidate must be degree qualified and it would be advantageous if the candidate was a member of an engineering professional body.

The candidate must also have 10 years experience working within a project management position and this must be supported by experience of working within the oil and gas industry also. The candidate must exhibit and posses all the soft skills required of a senior program/ project manager, this included good analytical skills.

Due to the location of this project the client is only looking to bring on board a candidates that is of an Malaysian or Thai nationality and there is no room for movement on this prerequisite.
If you feel you are an eligible candidate for the above position, send a copy of your resume to the contact details below and I will be in contact in due course
Apply here.

Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 4

In Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3 of this series on performing a market analysis, I’ve covered the following phases:

• Phase 1 – Documenting the Requirements
• Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources
• Phase 3 – Vendor Invitation
• Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1
• Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2

We are now on to Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos, which will involve very deep dives into each remaining vendor’s product offerings against your detailed requirements.

Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos

At the conclusion of Phase 5, we narrowed the vendor field from 4-6 vendors down to a final list of 2-3 vendors. During Phase 5 you most likely laid out the remainder of the process of the 4-6 vendors you were still considering, but we’ll detail that here at the beginning of Phase 6.

In this phase, we will:

• Provide the vendors with a lengthy list of detailed requirements
• Setup detailed face-to-face vendor demos either onsite at the customer location (that’s us) or at a centralized location (really only necessary if the customer has a dispersed team)
• Meet as a team following each detailed vendor demo to perform scoring, compare notes, make preliminary decisions about the vendor

Detailed Requirements

If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to share a very detailed list of requirements with each of the remaining vendors. What you’re looking for in this phase is to witness a demo tailored to your final solution in as much detail as possible to help you and your team make the best and final choice of a vendor solution. This can really only be accomplished by giving them everything you can in the way of information about what you need your ‘to-be’ solution and processes to look like.

Try to stay away from giving them too much direction about what you want to see. After all, the winning vendor is going to be expected to fully understand your requirements, notice where they are week and ask for more info, and configure their solution to your needs. If you have to do the work for them along the way then they’re not the right vendor.

Face-to-Face Detailed Demos

Now is the time to meet the vendors face-to-face. You’ve given them every detailed piece of information about what you need and you’ve given them a period of time (probably 2 weeks or more) to put together a detailed presentation and demo that will be tailored – at least in terms of discussion – toward how they can meet your requirements.

If your undertaking is large enough and warrants the drooling that would go along with it, then it may call for asking the vendors to put together a working prototype of what they would implement in your environment. This could only be asked of the largest of undertakings where winning this contract could make or break the vendor. No vendor is going to go to this time or effort for a normal implementation – the costs would be far too high. And if you need to go down this route, understand that you will need to give the vendors months, not weeks, to prepare for these detailed demos.

My recommendation is to stay away from working prototypes if at all possible and ask the vendors to perform very detailed deep dives into their offerings while addressing your specific requirements along the way.

Post Demos Reviews

As a team, conduct post demos reviews, compare notes and do some preliminary scoring of the vendor’s ability to meet your specific requirements. Because your requirements list is very long at this point, this process will take a considerable amount of time and needs to be done immediately following each demo so the information is fresh in everyone’s mind. It’s a good idea to do this separately as individuals and then come back together to discuss and agree on final scorings for each vendor on each requirement or groups of similar requirements or come up with an ‘average’ score for each requirement or group of requirements for each vendor. This will be critical when doing the final comparison, scoring and decision-making in Phase 7.

Next

In Phase 7 we will discuss the process of performing final scoring, identifying the final selection, notifications across all vendors and what to do with the runner-ups.