The End of the Company Office – A Microsoft Study

With the increasing popularity of mobile technology, social networking and most importantly, the impact that the recession has had on most of us, the undisputed run of the ‘company office’ is rapidly coming to an end. In a study conducted by Microsoft, a public sector think-tank and the Institute of Directors, IT departments the world over will be impacted greatly by these important changes to the way we work.

Whether it is the ability to work from home, on the move or to operate from shared offices, IT departments are increasingly being requested to support staff that falls into any of these three categories.

With more and more staff utilizing these three options, the concept of using fixed office space is rapidly diminishing in importance as it saves amount of money spent on purchasing office space, of which 45% is left unused at any given point of time.

Not only will this cut expenditure by a large amount, the approach of using shared bureaus will help employees share ideas with people from other companies, creating a win-win situation for both organizations sharing the space. The only thing that remains from the ‘office’ will be the presence of coffee, light, power and the proverbial water-cooler conversations that might not necessarily have anything to do with gossip.
Finally, the study also elicits advantages that social networking sites and collaboration tools can do for businesses and public sector organizations that can benefit from them, rather than blocking their use completely.

The Apple iPhone OS Vs Google’s Android – A Comparison

As of February 2010, Google claims that almost 60,000 cell phones with the Android operating system is shipped everyday. With the vision of building a versatile platform that will power several mobile phones, the Open Handset Alliance unveiled Android, an open source mobile phone platform based on the Linux OS. The first phone to run Android and that was made commercially available was the HTC Dream. Since then, the contrast in approach both by Apple and Google to the cell phone market has been in the news.

Fast forward to 2010, Apple just recently released the iPhone OS 4 in response to the Android’s 2.1, where the ability to ‘multitask’ has been the primary feature offered, and that is already available on phones using Android.

Where the Apple iPhone scores big is in its marketing, target audience and being able to provide the complete package through the iPhone App Store, where the iPhone has almost 100,000 apps for its users while Android has around 11,000 so far. Ideologically speaking, since the Android caters only to open source advocates and developers (which are not necessarily a large part of the market), Apple has successfully targeted its iPod and retail customers and Mac OS X developer base as well for the iPhone.

Another big plus for the iPhone is that virtually all apps will run on any model of the iPhone while the older Android phones cannot install newer versions of Android, and that seems to a big ding.

On one side, you have the ‘openness’ of the Android, and on the other, you have Apple’s strict standards in offering a finished product. Who will win?

Only time will tell, though.

India Placed Fifth in Cybercrime Worldwide Rankings

In completing its Global Internet Security Threat Report on worldwide cybercrime in December 2009, Symantec Corp. has attributed India’s rise to the fifth (as opposed to the seventh place in 2009 and eleventh place in 2008) place due to most of its cybercriminals being able to commit crimes without fear of prosecution in a country as it actively gains broadband access to the World Wide Web. Among the other developing countries on this list are Brazil, Russia, Poland and Vietnam.

In also describing the methods that hackers use to commit cybercrime, the approach has moved away from the email method of acquiring important personal information such as bank account and credit card numbers to social networking sites.

Symantec Vice-President David Freer says that social networking sites are fairly easy to victimize as most of the people in any particular online community (any social networking site) trust each other explicitly, and thus fall prey to malicious ware being downloaded onto a user’s PC once a file has been opened on the social networking site.

India ranks second in the Asia-Pac region, with an average of 788 ‘bots’ every day being deployed for the purpose of cybercrime along with China, Japan and Australia doing their fair share of damage as well.
Interestingly, using information on social networking sites, most hackers are now targeting enterprises from which large financial gains can be made on gaining access to the company’s intellectual property as well.
India only now is behind Brazil, China, US and Germany which hold the top spots for cybercrime worldwide.

Hewlett-Packard to buy Palm for $1.2 billion

The last two years have not been easy for anyone who is associated with Palm, once considered a leader in handheld devices, thanks to Apple’s iPhone which currently holds the lion’s share of the handheld devices market and Research in Motion’s Blackberry.

To make matters worse, despite the well-reviewed webOS released last year, Google Inc.’s Android software has yet again eclipsed its chances of getting back up on its feet as flagging product sales have only added to the woes of the company known for its pioneering efforts in the area of Smartphones.

With the only option of selling out, it was confirmed that HP and Palm has reached a formal agreement (and signed off by both boards) for the former to acquire the latter at an amount of $ 1.2 billion including debt, which is the current value of Palm based on its latest filings.

Although, this works as a ‘shot in the arm’ for Palm, this gives Hewlett-Packard a chance to make its entry into the smart phones market. Experts say that even with its inexhaustible funding and global reach (unlike Palm’s US-only distribution capability), HP will still not be able to turn things around when it comes to the vice-like grip that both Apple and Research in Motion have on the mobile market but it will definitely cause ripples amongst the likes of Motorola, HTC and most significantly, Nokia.
What remains to be seen is how HP will use the acclaimed webOS not only for its smart phones but also for the HP Slate that intends to give Apple a run for their money.

Google, IBM & Apple – Top 3 brands for 2010

According to a report by Milward Brown Optimor, which ascertains the top 100 brands annually, Google, IBM and Apple took the gold, silver and bronze in that order amongst non-tech players like Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Marlboro. Incidentally, Microsoft was placed fourth right behind Apple.

Also known as the ‘BrandZ Top 100 Report’, its fifth release for the year 2010 has seen the rise and fall of many companies in its rankings, thanks to the extended impact of the recession that has required companies to tighten their belts, so to speak.

In examining market data and consumer opinion, the study showed that the aforementioned top four companies all grew by approximately by six percent since 2009, based on continued spending by both companies and individual customers.

Brand loyalty to a particular company is decided by factors of sustainability, social responsibility and trust, and all the top companies spent more to drive brand loyalty as opposed to several other who cut spending due to the aftereffects of the recession. Another big factor that determined a customer’s loyalty to a product was the ability to personalize products/ services for every customer. And this is true of the top brands such as Apple iPhone and with Google offering its users the ability to create personalized home pages.
While Google has remained at the top for the past four years, IBM climbed up two spots and Apple climbed up three (with a consecutive increase of 30% and 32% increase in brand value from 2009), ahead of Microsoft and Coca-Cola which fell down two spots from their previous year’s rankings.

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