Corporate Mac Attack

The May 12 issue of Business Week Magazine has an interesting cover story titled The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit. The story discusses how Apple computers are moving into the corporate market and has some interesting stats - here's a few listed:

• Mac computer sales have risen 51% over last year. This is three time the PC industry rate.
• Combining Mac, iPod and iPhone, Apple sales have risen from $5.2 billion in 2002 to $24 billion in 2007.
• Apple stock shares have risen 2,300% over the past 5 years
• Apple has predicted a 33% second quarter revenue increase, even in the face of economic slowdown.
• The Yankee Group, after surveying 250 companies, found that 87% have at least one Apple computer in their office. This compares to 48% two years ago.
• The average price of a Mac is $1,526.
• The average price of a PC is $963.

Macs are hitting the corporate world for a number of reasons - here's the top 5 according to the Business Week story:

1. Consumer Clout - more business people are looking at a Mac as a PC alternative.
2. Snazzy Software - Mac's operating system, OS X, is (according to many) superior to Microsoft Windows in lots of ways. Many also believe OS X is less vulnerable to hackers and viruses.
3. Web Computing - many believe (including myself) that desktop applications installed on hard drives (like Microsoft Office) will eventually be replaced by applications that run on the web.
4. Vista Debacle - Only 10% of the corporate world has adopted Windows Vista. This has created an opportunity for Apple.
5. Recruitment - Mac popularity on campus is rising. 42% of students surveyed by the Student Monitor say they want a Mac. This is up from 8% in 2003.

From an academic perspective I find Number 5, the recruitment item, most interesting. Are our classrooms and labs ready? Eric Well, managing partner for the Student Monitor says "Many of today's technology decision makers will ultimately be replaced by Mac users."

Pick up the latest copy of Business Week Magazine and read the entire article. For all of us in the academic world..... if we haven't yet...... it's time to start looking at including Macs in our curriculum.

Can You Name a Living Scientist?

The April 7 issue of Business Week has an interesting piece in the BTW section titled Science? What's Science? The piece discusses a recent poll of 1,304 U.S. adults by Harris Interactive.

Here's some detail as reported by Business Week:

When the adults were asked to name the most influential roll models for today's youth:

31% picked entertainers (3% named Britney Spears)
19% named an athlete
0% picked a scientist

When asked to name a living scientist only 11% could with the most mentions going to Stephen Hawking. Business Week believes - because a Hawking character recently appeared on an episode of The Simpsons - it may have helped.

3 of 4 adults admitted they do not have a good understanding of science but they would like their kids to do better.

8 of 10 adults believe science is not receiving the attention it deserves in school.

The Business Week piece comments this poll may explain why U.S. high schoolers ranked 16th out of 30 countries on standardized science exams.

Tiered Internet Services Coming?

On January 18, Business Week published an interesting article about a trial Time Warner’s cable division will be running in Texas later this year. Here’s a quote from the article:

Time Warner Cable plans to test a multi-tiered price system for high-speed broadband service later this year. New customers in the trial area of Beaumont, Texas, will be charged different rates based on the amount of data consumed in a month, much like a cell-phone plan charges based on minutes used.

Right now Time Warner is saying they will offer plans priced for up to 5, 10, 20, and 40 gigabytes per month, with middle-tiered plans running roughly the same amount average users currently pay (around $30 per month) for high-speed connections. The company also says they will allow customers to go over their limit but they will be billed for the extra.

This actually makes some sense from both a business and a consumer perspective – the ISP’s have always said 5% of users consume as much as 50% of network capacity downloading vast numbers of large files, such as movies, videos, and songs. I think of my parents who use little bandwidth to check email and occasionally surf the web and compare them to our house where my teenagers are often watching and uploading videos on YouTube, uploading to Flickr, downloading Mike Q and my podcasts , etc. I’m certainly not putting my kids in that top 5% but you get the idea – why are my parents paying just as much as us when we’re using a lot more bandwidth?

Companies looking to sell audio and video products on the web (NetFlix, Apple, Amazon, etc) are the ones who could ultimately get hurt. If I’ve used up my 20 gigabytes this month I’m not going to download that movie I wanted to watch on Friday night……… Here’s another piece from the article:

Another unintended consequence of tiered pricing is that it could discourage some companies from launching new services that require large bandwidth, consumer advocates say. The plans could also penalize early adopters whose heavy use of new services helps developers come up with refinements that use up less bandwidth……

According to the Business Week article, Comcast is considering a similar plan. Right now, Verizon does not appear to be.

I’ve written in the past about the Amazon Kindle eBook reader. The Kindle uses a cellular network connection to deliver books purchased by users. The cost of cellular service is bundled into the price of the book by Amazon - users do not need a cellular contract to make purchases on their Kindle. Perhaps the ISP’s should consider similar arrangements with companies selling audio and video products on the web.

Wireless Everywhere - Wireless Grids

A startup in Syracuse, NY called Wireless Grids is close to a trial on a very interesting project on the campus of Syracuse University. Here's a description of the project from Wireless Grid's website:

The project is researching issues associated with nomadic ad-hoc resource sharing, which is a effort to bind together developments in Grid, P2P Computing and Webservices along with ad-hoc and wireless networking. The ultimate vision of the grid is that of an adaptive network offering secure, inexpensive, and coordinated real-time access to dynamic, heterogeneous resources, potentially trversing geographc, politica and cultural boundaries but still able to maintain the desirable characteristics of a simple distributed system such as stability, transparency, scalability and flexibility.

Academic partners include Boston University, ETH Zurich, MIT, Northeastern University, Syracuse University and Tufts University. Business partners include Nokia, Cisco Systems, Fractal Antennas and Novell. The project has also been partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

The project concept is extremely appealing - here's a couple of quotes from an excellent article in the November 19 issue of Business Week:

The concept is that everyone should easily be able to access all of their own content, whether it is stored on a phone, a computer, or a personal video recorder. And users should be able to swap content among devices regardless of where those devices are located in the world. Even more radically, Wireless Grids says users should have the power to specify individuals with whom they'd like to share—and to decide who gets access to what. For this purpose, Wireless Grids says it has built in security measures that are all but hacker-proof.

Any device that can link to the Internet can download Wireless Grids' software, which will work across all types of networks or computer operating systems. Once the software is loaded, a menu pops up asking which things you'd like to share. The initial version allows users to share software files as well as computers, speakers, printers, cameras, and screens. Users click on an icon and select which files and devices they want to make available. The other parties can be located anywhere, as long as their devices also have the software loaded.

Cell phones, laptops, TiVo, televisions....... any device that can connect to the Internet will be able to share content with other attached devices after Wireless Grids software is installed on the device. The trial is scheduled to be launched in January with 40 students in a dorm on the Syracuse campus. It's pretty much a given these students will be posting on places like YouTube - it will be fun to watch the progress and see the kinds of creative applications these students come up with for this technology.

I can imagine all kinds of applications - sharing video with a student in one of my classes cell phone to cell phone, my daughter's cell phone communicating with my TV while I'm watching a football game telling me where she is with the car, my kids looking in real-time at video on a big screen TV in Massachusetts that I'm shooting using a WiFi video camera in California .....

Security and privacy certainly will be a challenge..... watch the Wireless Grids Project Blog and Wiki linked from the project website for trial progress and updates.

U.S. Presidential Candidates on Innovation, Science and Engineering Education

The November 15, 2007 issue of Business Week published an interesting special report titled Proposed Presidential Innovation. Here's a quote from the report:

Where do the leading Presidential candidates stand on the issue of innovation? The creation of new things that have value in the marketplace has always been a major force for generating wealth and power. But the rise of Asia is changing the geography of innovation, shifting it East, away from the U.S. and Europe.

Business Week asked selected candidates to define the word innovation and then asked them what their plans were to stimulate innovation in four areas (science and engineering education, green energy, the military and research and development) and asked for details on how the candidates would develop better methods to measure innovation. I've included the interviewed candidates responses to their definition of innovation and views on science and engineering education below, as quoted in the Business Week report. I've listed the interviewed candidates in alphabetical order and have left off their political party affiliations.

Hillary Clinton

Innovation: “Innovation...will be key to creating new jobs and rebuilding middle class prosperity.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Triple the number of National Science Foundation fellowships and increase the size of each by 33%; provide government financial support to encourage women and minorities to study math, science, and engineering."

John Edwards

Innovation: “Innovation means taking impossible tasks and turning them into reality.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Invest more in teacher pay and training; expand math and science education; strengthen high school curricula; expand the number and size of National Science Foundation fellowships."

Rudy Giuliani

Innovation: “America can meet its challenges through innovation...low taxes stimulate growth [and] spark innovation...”

Science and Engineering Education: "Establish federal school voucher programs; provide choice within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; give educational opportunities to military families; expand charter schools."

John McCain

Innovation: “Innovation is fueled by risk capital, skilled workers, incentives for entrepreneurs, a light regulatory framework, and open access to markets”

Science and Engineering Education: "Provide incentives for summer mentoring programs for high school and college math, science, technology, and engineering students; train science and math teachers."

Barack Obama

Innovation: “Innovation is the creation of something that improves the way we live our lives.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Increase science and engineering grads and minorities and women in science and technology; expand public school offerings in science, technology, engineering, and math."

Bill Richardson

Innovation: “The American Dream is a belief that we can make tomorrow better. Innovation powers that dream.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Create 250 math, science, and innovation academies countrywide for grades 7-12; fund 100,000 new math and science teachers."

Mitt Romney

Innovation: “Innovation and transformation have been at the heart of America’s success from the very beginning.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Focus on fields such as math and science so the workers of the future can remain competitive in the new global marketplace."

Fred Thompson

Innovation: “What we need is another spike in American creativity and innovation.”

Science and Engineering Education: "Review federal programs for cost-effectiveness, reduce federal mandates, and return education money to states; encourage students and teachers to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math."

Note: Other candidates, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who is moving in the Iowa Caucus polls, were not included in the report.

To read the entire excellent report including the candidates views on green energy, the military and research and development, follow this link.

Business Week: Keeping Jobs Onshore

In this blog I continue to take a look at the August 20 and 27 Business Week feature “The Future of Work”.

Let’s start today by taking a look at offshoring and let’s take it from the perspective of a 22 year old college student. That’s what Business Week Software Editor Steve Hamm does in his piece How to Keep Your Job Onshore. Hamm talks about Matt Cavin, a freshman Theology student at Valparaiso University who, one day while on a summer study program a couple of years ago in China, happened to be reading Friedman’s The World is Flat in a Chinese park. As Matt read it was as if a light bulb went off in his head – experiencing first-hand the intensity of Chinese students as they studied English, Math and Science – Friedman’s words about the movement of U.S. jobs off-shore really hit home.

Fast forward – Matt gets back to the U.S. and remaps his future – he ditches the Theology major and will finish a triple major next spring – International Business, Economics and Mandarin. Today Matt sees opportunity – he is not scared but he is running as fast as he can. Matt understands that today just about any job that can be done over the web can be off-shored. It’s not just the computer programmers anymore – it's lawyers, pharmacists, accounting, banking, medicine….. the list is almost endless.

In his piece Hamm also discusses “multidisciplinary skills” and mentions one of my favorites (likely because this is my background) – computer science/engineering and biology. He goes on to discuss how young people in the U.S. must really sit down and plan their careers, Hamm says they must break down their jobs into the tasks that are easy to move and those that are not. They must prepare and ensure that they are excelling in the areas that cannot be easily moved if they want to stay in this country and have successful careers.

Alan S. Blinder from Princeton published an offshorability index study last March. The study pdf is linked here and it's another must read. In the study he classifies 8.2 million current jobs in the U.S. as being “highly offshorable” and 20.7 million more jobs as being “offshorable”. According to Blinder the most likely white collar positions heading offshore are software programmers, data entry clerks, draftsmen and computer research scientists.

How do we react? How do we plan? For us academics – what do we teach? For our students - what do they study? What aspects/pieces of our respective disciplines are offshorable? What pieces are not? As we update our curriculum are we focusing on the parts and pieces that are not highly offshorable? How are we preparing tomorrows workforce?

Like Matt, the student at Valparaiso - are we (you, me, our colleagues, our students) running as fast as we can?

Business Week: Collaboration and Team Work

Today I’ll continue with the Business Week August 20 and 27th issue that focuses on the future of work. A recurring theme throughout the issue is collaboration and teamwork. Multi-national companies like IBM are hiring sociologists to connect people that have never met into virtual teams. Virtual world applications, like Second Life, with 3D avatars are being used to promote social networking and corporations are creating their own virtual “campuses”, offering thousands of online courses.

Cultural and generational "idiosyncrasies" are paramount as these virtual teams are constructed. Think about creating a virtual team that, for example, is a mix of Chinese, Eastern Europe, U.S. and Indian employees….. people that have never met in the real world, may not speak each others language…… and then mix in the difference in age – the digital immigrants versus the digital natives. Now bundle in the time differences between the U.S. and distant locations….. It almost seems impossible .......

Let’s dig a little deeper into the generational differences. Here’s some startling quotes from the article:

"Dow Chemical expects 30% of its 20,000 workers to retire in the next 5 years".

"Meanwhile, enrollment in U.S. chemical engineering schools is declining and companies like Dow are fighting against the oil and gas companies for a shrinking chemical engineering talent pool".

So what is a company like Dow doing? The company is trying to persuade older employees not to retire by offering flexible hours, three day work weeks and letting those that do retire know they can always come back. So now we’ve got a company like Dow creating teams of workers that may span over 40 years in age difference, probably have never met, speak different languages and work in different time zones. How different is this from a modern college “classroom”? Except for the time zone differences the scenario sounds a lot like a typical community college campus! How many languages is your college website available in? What are the age ranges of students in your classrooms? The next time you walk around campus listen - how many different languages do you hear students speaking?

How are employers dealing with these differences? Companies, like Nokia are looking for employees with a “collaborative mindset”. Nokia is very careful to build task forces that include a range of nationalities, ages and education levels. Members are encouraged to network online and share personal information like photographs and biographies.

And then there is IBM.... IBM’s Web-based services group has a 360,000 member staff that works closely as one big virtual team. The company has started an “innovation portal”, allowing any employee with an idea for a product to build online teams, organize resources and access company talent and other assets.

Corporations are working to create a “seamless global workforce”. We must continue to push and innovate in the academic community, following the lead of companies like Dow, Nokia and IBM, as we structure our modern “classrooms”.

Business Week: The Future of Work

The August 20 and 27th issue of Business Week cover story is titled The Future of Work and it is excellent. I’ll take a good look at some of the interesting content that is relevant to technology and academic communities over the next few blogs. I highly recommend you buy this issue and keep it close - in fact I would consider it to be a must read. Now let's get to the content.

Before we look ahead we need to get some perspective on where we have been and where we are now. Here's a few quotes from the issue:

"According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 34% of adult workers in the U.S. now have bachelor’s degrees, up 29% from 10 years ago".

"The modern workplace no longer resembles an assembly line – it now more closely resembles a design studio where the core values are collaboration and innovation".

"Talented people are still in high demand, and there is no evidence yet that work has become less interesting because of outsourcing".

"The rapid growth of broader, richer channels of communications – including virtual worlds – is transforming what is meant to be “at work”.

Good stuff so far right? Communication channels, collaboration, virtual worlds, future, doing things differently, risk, trying new things….. all the things Mike Q and I write about and have been podcasting about over the past couple of years. Here’s a few more interesting pieces:

"College tuitions have risen 60% since 2000".

"The percentage of 25-29 year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree has fallen during the last decade".

This is disturbing – could the next generation of Americans be less educated than the previous generation at the same time employers are requiring a higher level of worker education? Have 4-year institutions priced themselves of of the mainstream market?

Perhaps there is some gold here or those of us closely involved with the 2-year schools. Is this an opportunity for community colleges to provide the first two years of a 4-year degree? Translation - many 4-year schools may have priced themselves out of the market for much of the U. S. population. Community colleges are much less expensive and provide an opportunity for a student to economically obtain the first two years of a 4-year degree. We've always done it - it may be time to ratchet transfer up.

Now a little more:

"A Conference Board survey results found 47% of workers were satisfied with their jobs in 2006, in 1995 the same job satisfaction survey indicated 59%".

"Lynn Franco, consumer research director at the Conference Board, believes technology may have something to do with these results – specifically the fact that it is much more difficult to get away from “work”.

From a survey conducted by Beta Research Corp for Business Week: "36% of those surveyed believe they actually got more work done prior to email".

I find this last item incredible - let's think about it a bit - time warp your brain back 10-15 years if you were around then. How connected were you then? Did you have email? How dependent were you on technology to get you job done? If you are an academic - what kind of technology were you or your faculty using in your classrooms? Overhead projectors? Maybe you were one of those on the cutting edge and you had a document camera? Seriously - were you or your faculty more efficient? Personally my answer is no and I really hope yours is too. I'm guessing but believe that many of those who said they were more productive without email have not bothered to keep up with modern technology. Or perhaps they have not had sufficient support from their superiors......

Technology, globalization, communications, ubiquitous broadband, collaboration, virtualization….. exciting times for us in the academic world as we prepare our students for the new world of “work".