As we ended 2011 many people were asking me what I thought was next in the world of mobile and whether I had any predictions. My response was that companies should focus on getting the basics right first (develop a coherent mobile strategy, create mobile optimized versions of their websites) before even worrying about “what’s next”.

I’m a big advocate for creating native or hybrid apps, depending on the type of engagement you desire with your customer (a topic for a whole other post), but creating a mobile optimized website is pretty much a must these days, considering how much search and browsing is done on mobile devices.

It seems a recent report from L2ThinkTank bears out my view. The report, focuses primarily on luxury brands, what they refer to as the Prestige100 (though I’m quite sure how Macy’s makes the list; but I digress).  Though the report is limited to luxury brands, it’s my impression that the results are at least directionally applicable to the overall state of mobile maturity across various sectors. Their research shows that many of these brands are not yet mastering the basics, as indicated by this chart recreated by eMarketer:

Takeaways for the Travel Sector

As I am ensconced in the travel sector these days I wanted to highlight the results from hospitality brands.  In many ways the results don’t differ much from what I had noted 10 months ago in a post I wrote over at Tnooz.

The only companies that fit into the Prestige100 were luxury hotels (one might hav thought that airlines like Singapore or Emirates or luxury cruises like SilverSea might have made the cut, but alas, no).While Intercontinental made the “Gifted” class and as a whole, the “Hospitality” segment averaged a score of 86, which falls in the “Challenged” category.

The good news is that it puts Hospitality as the second highest rated industry, behind retail, but also shows there’s still a long way to go. And I would further speculate that the scores for the non-luxury hotels would come up even a bit lower still.

You can find the whole report from L2 available at SlideShare below:

…or at least July 2010.

With the announcement of the Open AXIS Group a few weeks ago there’s a lot of questions about the eventual role that it will play in setting messaging standards. Will it help move the industry forward or will it simply result in a fragmentation of messaging frameworks (vis-a-vis OpenTravel) that slows the industry down?  In the end, it’s up to the industry to decide.  So far it sounds like the Big 3 GDS’s want a single framework but haven’t made any official pronouncements on how they feel just yet.

But don’t wait for them to have your voice heard!

This blog, in coordination with Tnooz and Ness Software Product Labs has created a survey to find out what you think. Please take 5 minutes to fill out the survey.  The survey closes out at the end of the month.

We’ll be posting results in another week or so in Tnooz in a follow up to the original story.

Well I’m back from vacation and I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend.  So what happened last week? Let’s see:

1. The big news of the week is that finally, Google buys ITA Software for $700M. Here’s some “expert analysis” via Tnooz that somehow includes me.
2. Rumored last week, a new airline standards group called OpenAxis emerges, rallying around Farelogix messages. As they are also proposing XML-based messaging schema, I’m not quite sure how technically this will differ from OpenTravel. They say that perhaps they will be more agile and move more quickly than OpenTravel, but it’s easy to say when you have only a few founding members. Let’s see if they create traction and whether they can remain agile once they reach any sort of scale as an organization. As an aside, and maybe I’m dating myself, but any group that has “Axis” as part of their title makes me feel uneasy (see WWII). I’m not making any comparisons, I’m just sayin’ I might have chosen a different name. Perhaps Valyn will license the Captain America imagery for OTA
   

   Image Credit: Marvel Comics

3. If you’re going Cloud, having a billing engine that supports granular metering, pricing and billing is critical.
4. RockCheetah founder, Robert Cole’s presentation on Mobile Distribution from the HITEC conference.  Other than a few quibbles on slide 18 (in my view the walled garden on searchability is more about security of personal information than control, e.g. Facebook; Apple doesn’t block AdMob ads, just collection of personal information), a very good overview of the intersection of travel and mobile.
5. Via Tnooz, 4 Vital Social Media Tips for the Travel Industry. The most important thing to note is that the 4 steps happen in exact opposite order for the buyer versus the seller.
6. Not only does it appear that the Google-ITA Software deal has hit a snag, it seems that other potential suitors have coming knocking on the doors in Cambridge [Update see article #1. Always hard to prognosticate].
7. YouTube says that it still sees Flash as an important part of their distribution, but unlike how it’s been reported in some places, it’s not because of the video CODEC, but because of the granularity of control that the player provides.
8. Timothy O’Neil-Dunne tells us what we already know – travel websites leave a lot to be desired by the consumer – but gives some good context as to why. The question is whether the people who run the travel websites will ever do anything about it.
9. Good post on CloudAve about the disservice that many engaged in the Public v. Private Cloud debate are doing for the industry. I’ve commented on the post itself.  Take the time to watch the embedded video of Amazon Web Services CTO, Werner Vogels’ keynote at last week’s Structure 2010 conference put on by GigaOM.
10. Great article, bad news. Harvard Business Review talks about the problems being faced by the VC community (and by extension entrepreneurs) and the coming VC shakeout

Well this ought to be interesting. After many fits and starts the deal is finally done, pending regulatory approval. The question is what is coming.  Google’s ITA acquisition micro-site says all the right things, but what’s not completely clear is what the “enhanced” search tools will be.  On the conference call this afternoon with analysts and press both Google CEO Eric Schmidt and ITA Software President and CEO Jerry Wertheimer were very vague about the future direction of the ITA products and business, with Schmidt noting that while no definitive decisions have been made the new offerings would be “very different than anything available today”.

There’s a fair amount of information on the a Google microsite describing the transaction, much of it establishing a bulwark against any possible anti-trust concerns, making the case that there is no anti-competitive impact to the acquisition.  This seemed a natural move after recent rumblings that competitors would try to block the deal, or try to jump in before it closed.

But let’s look a little closer.  While seemingly promising to honor commitments to existing QPX customers and pledging to stay out of the online travel agency business, it does seem as if the door is open to become a meta-search provider.  The statement that they “…will drive potential customers to airline and online travel agency websites” is slightly less than “code” for we will sell advertising to airlines and OTAs.  Sounds like meta to me.

Perhaps the most telling statement was their promise not to “lock out” competitors. That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t compete with the current clients, just not shut them down.  So while the folks at Kayak.com, Orbitz and Bing don’t need to switch technology immediately, it’s probably prudent for them to evaluate alternatives post-haste.

However, if we let’s take a quick look at the way that Google views the travel industry, perhaps Google isn’t targeting meta-search and OTAs after all, but has the Big 3 GDSs in their sights.

How the future unfolds should be very interesting.

Last week I presented on a webinar alongside PhoCusWright analyst Bob Offut, entitled “Travel Innovation and Technology Trends: 2010 and Beyond”, sponsored by my company Ness Software Product Labs.  I’m providing links to both the PDF of the slides and the replay of the webinar via WebEx below.

In the webinar, Bob talks about the Top 10 travel technology trends, based on PCW’s report that came out in March (subscription required).  Then I pick up at the 45:00 mark (slide 81 in the PDF) to discuss the impact of Cloud Computing and Mobile on the travel industry. Some highlights from the presentation:

• Cloud Computing and Travel
  • Watch out for Cloudwashers. There are a lot of people who are either trying to prey on those still confused about Cloud, some of which are purposefully obfuscating their solutions to cash in on the trend.
  • Cloud can be an important part of a modernization strategy, but isn’t an end in and of itself. Evaluate the “Six degrees of Modernization” and think about how Cloud can fit within the direction you chose.
  • The Public v. Private Cloud debate is interesting, but it’s not necessarily and either/or proposition. Private Clouds do lack certain attributes and benefit of Public Cl0uds, but think of the difference as an evolutionary process, not alternatives.
  • Moving to the Cloud requires a change in perspective from mere software development to a systems engineering mindset.
• Mobile and Travel
  • Mobile Devices are Becoming the Center of Traveler Interactions
  • 5-step Framework to a successful mobile strategy. Understanding the use cases of your customer and the role that you want mobile to play in their overall experience with your brand is critical.
  • Determining whether you want to take an mobile web-oriented approach or an app-oriented approach, and what platforms/devices your target customer is likely using make a big impact on the technology choices you make.

Anyway, enjoy the presentations. I had a good time and I hope you find the information interesting and useful.  Please let me know what you think. Contact me directly  or add to the conversation in the comments.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Microsoft’s Pivot technology, developed in Live Labs, could potentially revitalize hotel search or travel search in general.  Well today Microsoft is using the technology to power Silverlight PivotViewer which is now available for download.  I’ve embedded the following video where Microsoft tries to give examples of how different sectors can use the Pivot technology (4 minutes).

In a TechCrunch article they highlighted Hitched.co.uk, a wedding planning site as one of the first websites to implement Pivot.

So with this very cool capability to visualilze data and search, who will do it first in the travel sector?  Will you?

It’s Tuesday, not Monday, but here’s your guide to the week that was. Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and took a moment to remember the men and women who lost their lives in defense of our country (at least those of you in the US).

1. Timothy O’Neil-Dunne divines Google’s travel strategy. Whether he’s channeling Google executives or not, it’s a reasonable and thoughtful articulation.
2. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber provides his reflections on the Apple-Google feud post the I/O conference. The upshot: Great week for Google, mediocre for Apple, not good at all for Microsoft.
3. IBM buys Sterling Commerce for $1.4B. Insight and analysis from Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang. All I know for sure is that the AT&T shareholders are happy to have a pile of cash where an ill-fitting piece used to be.
4. Hmmm. iPad competitors may face CPU shortages and miss the Holiday selling season. And worse (for them) it seems they will try to compete on hardware features rather than user experience. Add to that the announcement that Apple has sold 2 Million iPads in the first 60 days and I sense happiness in Cupertino.
5. Timothy O’Neil-Dunne strikes again, describing his conflicted feelings over the recent ATPCO announcement regarding standards to enable ancillary revenue sales across various distribution channels.
6. Attention Cloudwashers: Ray Wang is on to you. Personally I’m surprised that there’s still so much confusion on the syntax around SaaS and Cloud. But wait until the technical discussions of how to achieve it start. Hoo boy.
7. Lean v. Fat Startups. No surprise that VCs favor the former. The truth is that neither works unless you have strong management.
8. Excellent, interesting study of transaction processing performance based on different cloud architectures from Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
9. Excellent post by Lori MacVittie to show that while the recent VMWare relationships with SFDC and Google allow you to move your code from one Cloud platform to another, it isn’t the same as enabling cross-Cloud deployments.
10. Google had their week, but Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference is only a week away. The first major rumor has begun with the possible revitalization of Apple TV. Perhaps it is a hobby no longer.

Last week I listened to an interesting podcast by Forrester analysts Mike Gualtieri and Jeffrey Hammond entitled Talent Matters: Why Application Development Cannot Be Industrialized.   At first I thought this could have been an anti-outsourcing discussion, but after listening and thinking about it, it’s really about a deeper understanding of the importance of having exceptional talent in your software engineering organization.  And it’s a concept that any technology-driven business – including travel technology companies, travel suppliers and travel distribution and intermediaries –  need to be thinking long and hard about.

The conversation can be boiled down pretty simply: application development and testing professionals are not a fungible asset.  Deep down (maybe we don’t have to go so deep), we all know this is true, yet every development project is estimated using the productivity of an “average” developer.  And worse yet, they refer to them as resources.  And according to Gualtieri and Hammond, this is where it all goes horribly wrong.  And they’re right.

It doesn’t matter what estimation method you use – Function Point Analysis, analogy-based techniques, parametric models  – these methods are used to estimate the man-months needed to complete the project.  But not all developers are the same.  There are rock-stars, low performers and everything in between.   So while an excellent guide, the accuracy of the estimates really depend on who are the members of the development team.

Art v. Science

In fact the best developers are ‘artists’ to borrow a phrase from Seth Godin’s latest book, “Linchpin”.  The boys from Forrester talk about attributes of the best developers: creative, passionate, disciplined.  But while artists may be the best developers, not all developers are artists. So as an industry, we have tried to put some more structure around the science of software development practices and to make software engineering a “profession”.  We have also leaned on methodologies and tools to enable average developers to deliver above average results.  It’s helped the industry move forward and develop great software.

The fallacy of the software factory

But the mistake that perhaps many firms make is to think that these methodologies and tools would turn their software development teams into software factories.  Nowhere has this approach towards trying to create software factories been more pronounced than in the IT outsourcing business.  That’s because under the traditional outsourcing model success (i.e. margins) is achieved by trying to break any task down into its most basic components so that those activities can be completed by the most junior and cheapest resources (there’s that word again).

This is not to say that methodologies, tools, reusable libraries are not valuable and don’t make software engineering teams more productive. But they’re not a cure-all for having good software engineers. Tools and methodologies are more like guiderails to reduce mistakes and help less-seasoned developers accomplish more advanced tasks, but don’t necessarily guarantee well written, high-performance software..   So I’m in general agreement with their point of view.  But I think it’s important to talk about software engineering maturity.

Software Product Engineering versus IT Application Development

Now let me shift the conversation slightly from a basic application development perspective (which Hammond and Gualtieri were focusing on) to a software product engineering perspective.  Let me start by saying that I believe that software product engineering is a different animal than developing IT applications.  Software products and platforms – whether sold directly to customers or simply provide the infrastructure to deliver your products or services to your customers – requires a complexity, a thoughtfulness, in development, nay architecture and design, that are not often found in applications designed for internal users.  And Forrester agrees. In fact they have written a report about how some companies whose businesses are technology driven, but don’t sell software per se, are starting to try to re-organize their software development organizations in the image of an ISVs R&D organization. Forrester calls these companies ‘product-centric’ and more and more travel companies of all stripes fit this description.

If you need a rule of thumb, think about who’s using the software in question: is it a customer – who may choose to switch to a competitor if they’re not happy with their experience or the performance of the app – or is it a app or other computing resource used by an employee whose only alternative is to find somewhere else to work? If it’s the former, you’re probably talking about an application that needs a more developed software product engineering approach.

Software product engineering activities differ from IT organizations because:

• They are more mature in software engineering practices when measured against maturity models like CMMi
• Adhere to formalized software engineering practices and use of common coding practices
• Recognize, appreciate, and adhere to release schedules
• Quality is of supreme importance.  Testing is important, but quality is designed in.
• QA teams use test planning, test strategy, as opposed to an ad-hoc approach to testing

I do want to avoid painting all IT organizations with too broad a brush. Some IT organizations are more mature than others and have put more investment into putting software engineering practices, focused on architecture and enforced adherence to coding standards across the organization.  However, it’s more likely that you’ll see that with teams whose code is tied closely to generating revenue or supporting the delivery of the company’s product or service to their customers.  They adopt a “product-centric” approach, as Forrester would say, to software development because they realize that bad software negatively impacts the company’s performance.

Talent Is Even More Important in Software Product Engineering Organizations

My firm, Ness Software Product Labs, is not the same as the big ITO firms. Our mission is to help extend and enhance the capabilities of software product engineering organizations – helping companies build and test software that drives revenues – rather than managing internal IT applications and infrastructure.  To accomplish that goal, Ness SPL believes that it requires a different philosophical approach from what you see from the large ITO firms. It informs the type of people we hire, the way we collaborate with our clients and the kinds of relationships and engagement models we employ.

But in the context of this subject, I want to focus on the talent issue again.  Software product engineering is not ITO.  Architecting, designing, building and testing products that are tied to revenue, that require high levels of performance, scalability and resiliency is not a task to be done by lowest-common-denominator individuals. We believe it requires highly talented individuals…artists with discipline.  We spend a lot of time developing best practices, solution accelerators, and identifying the best tools to use.  We spend at least as much time finding the right people and developing their talent and offer them challenges that most ITO firms can’t.  We don’t try to create a software factory, we try to create an environment where talented engineers can thrive.

And the crucible in which we do that work is not for the faint of heart.  We are part of the software engineering organizations of some of the leading technology firms on the planet: Amadeus the number one travel technology provider in the world; NAVTEQ, the leading mapping and location-based services platform, PayPal the leading alternative payments platform, OpenText a billion dollar Enterprise Content Management firm. And the list goes on.  Our approach and the talent that we hire is borne out by the clients who choose us to be a part of their R&D organization, not to run the plumbing.

Well perhaps this week’s installment should be 10 things that happened at Google I/O. It surely dominated the conversation last week. But a few travel items make it as well including a post from FareCompare CEO Rick Seaney. news on Amadeus and Travelport and Google’s Friday acquisition of Ruba.  And in honor of the last episode of Lost, a bonus #11. 

1. Farecompare’s CEO breaks down the airfare pricing rules that seem to make no sense to the average traveler. And it’s just getting harder to make any sense out of it with all the airline fees (or as they call it ancillary revenue).
2. Bob Warfield talks about the huge lead that Amazon has in the Cloud derby and the barriers of entry that they’re creating. However, the recent moves to integrate the VMWare SpringSource technology into Google and Salesforce’s Cloud offerings should make those considering Cloud/PaaS provider take a second look.
3. Travelport becomes the first GDS to buy a meta-search player. I wonder whether this will be the first of several transactions and how much the rumored acquisition of ITA Software by Google is creating a sense of urgency among the GDSs.
4. Big announcements from Google I/O: the Chrome Web Store, Google Wave ready for launch, the open sourcing of the WebM video CODEC (see next item), Google partners with VMWare for AppEngine.  And that was only day one.
5. Google open sources WebM video CODEC, which may throw a monkey wrench into the H.264 bandwagon.  However, perhaps WebM won’t be royalty-free for long, says AllThingsDigital’s John Paczkowski.
6. Netflix jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon with both feet.  And the Wall Street Journal notes that Apple is winning ground in the fight against Flash. Although much of that gain may be given back in light of Froyo and other announcements from I/O.
7. On its face, Google TV looks to be a very big deal. It’s everything that many hoped AppleTV would be.  Although Mashable thought that there’s little here that’s not already in TiVo. But since only about 8 people on the planet own a TiVo, this will be pretty cool to most everybody else. Some think this isn’t so much a shot across Apple or other set-top box maker’s bow, than it is to TV providers.  Here’s some more info, but I’m not sure how much adoption it will see if you still require a cable/satellite set top box.
8. Amadeus making gains with US Travel Agents. Very interesting stats around financial incentives given to travel agents by the GDSs.
9. A good point about the importance efficient software development made on the Ness Software Product Labs blog that I hadn’t really thought about before: Cloud Computing puts a premium on efficient code.  Less efficient code requires more CPU cycles and therefore incurs higher costs in the pay-by-the-drink world of Cloud Computing.
10. Google takes another step on its journey into the travel industry with its purchase of Ruba, the online travel guide and travel community. Ruba’s visual search approach is apparently what caught Google’s eye.  Looks like it will be integrated into iGoogle, at least for now.

And in tribute to the Lost series finale which aired last night…

• A fabulous review of the Apple-Google rivalry by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler…even more so if you’re a “Lost” fan like me.

Last week Dennis Schaal wrote an article pondering the question of what travel companies should do with their mobile and web strategies in light of the Apple/Adobe feud over Flash.  Dennis got input on whether to continue leveraging the Flash platform or wait for HTML5 to mature from several prominent individuals involved in the travel industry including RockCheetah’s Robert Cole.  And Robert got it exactly right…only backwards.

But I don’t want to bury the lead.  Let me state up-front: You should not stand on the sidelines and wait for the Adobe-Apple kerfuffle (nod to @jangles) to sort itself out.  This will take years.  Instead, be thoughtful in establishing your web and mobile strategy and get moving today.

Now let me outline where I have disagreement with Robert’s views.

Different platforms require different modes of presentation based on different usability strategies

Robert worries that uncertainty around the winner of the Flash debate will result in the “dumbing-down” (Dennis’ words, not Robert’s) of sites or the need to invest in multiple sites to support different technology platforms.

In fact, trying to provide the same experience over different devices or platforms is the epitome of dumbing-down.  “Write-once, run anywhere” is a siren’s call that can cause many apps to crash on the shores of poor usability and blandness.  Different devices have different use cases and capabilities.  If you don’t take that into consideration you’re making a fatal mistake.  Let me elaborate.

• Think of the use case: In software development, just like in web design, nothing is more important than the use case. For example, prospective travelers are more likely to conduct their primary research during the trip planning phase on their desktop/laptops, but are more likely to use their mobile devices post-booking and while in-situ (e.g. itinerary changes, alerts, making a dinner reservation).  So the kind of information that you present and how you present it should differ in each case. While the information you provide the “travel researcher” can have a lot of text, high-res images, and video, the information and options you give the mobile traveler need to be much more streamlined and transactional in nature.
• Consider the device capabilities: First of all you must remember that the desktop paradigm is based around the traditional WIMP (windows-icon-menu-pointer) construct while most smartphone and mobile devices are touch-based.  This changes almost everything about the way you need to present your information.  In a touch-based paradigm mouse-overs don’t work because you can’t physically do it.  The precision of ‘pointing’ is constrained.  Finally, and most obviously, not every device has the same screen size or can automatically switch from portrait to landscape mode. To not adapt for the different devices is to leave a lot of potential improvement to the user experience on the table. More importantly, why bother creating an app for a device if you aren’t going to take advantage of specific device capabilities like accelerometers, locators, calendars, or phonebooks?

Finalization of the HTML5 spec will take years, but won’t hinder adoption

It is true that the finalization of the HTML5 spec is not anticipated until 2012.  But that’s a very different point than saying that no one will be adopting it until the spec is finalized. If nothing else the web is fluid and reacts quickly.  Every desktop browser of note either supports HTML5 currently (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera) or has pledged its support (Microsoft for the upcoming IE9).

And the same goes for mobile browsers, which are increasingly based on the WebKit standard.  Check out this chart from a post in the O’Reilly Radar:

Overwhelmingly mobile browsers already support HMTL5 (with Microsoft pledging support in the future) and TODAY, none of these mobile browsers (nor really any mobile device I’ve heard of) supports Adobe Flash.

Add on top of this the fact that by all accounts over two-thirds of videos on the web – and perhaps as high as 90% – are available in the H.264 standard used by HTML5-powered sites, I’d say that video content isn’t a deal-breaker anymore.

Let’s get real about “Open Source”

Lastly there is the debate as to who is more open.  Is it Adobe or Apple? I think that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber (no relation) says it well.

“Open” is one of those terms that means a lot of different things to different people. Most should be able to agree, though, that open-vs.-closed is a continuum — shades of gray, not just black and white. A light enough shade of gray is “open”, dark enough is “closed”. The arguments are over where those thresholds lie.

I, for example, would argue that HTML5 is open, and that Flash is not. HTML5 is open, to my eyes, because no one vendor defines or controls either its specification or its numerous implementations. The specification is being written and decided upon by consensus by two standards groups, WHATWG and the W3C.

You can argue whether or not Apple’s policy regarding AppStore approvals make any sense and you probably have a good argument.  But I don’t think it’s fair at all to say that Apple is closed from a technology perspective.  Apple’s web vision is based on HTML5, CSS, Javascript and H.264 video — all industry standards that they do not control.  Adobe on the other hand freely licenses the Flash player, but not the platform. Adobe can make whatever changes to Flash of their own choosing and on their own timetable.  They may claim to take the desires of the development community into consideration in developing their product roadmap, but they are not required to. In the four years since Apple’s iPhone ushered in the age of the web and media driven smartphone there has been no mobile version of Flash available for any device and consequently no mobile device has supported Flash in all that time and we have lived to tell about it.

In my view, Adobe’s entire argument is merely a matter of timing. Only now when Adobe is finally planning to release Flash Mobile 10.1 (anticipated to be launched next month on the Android 2.2 OS…backwards availability or compatibility not assured…and H/Pre’s WebOS) after years of delay are they protesting.  How much longer should they have expected the rest of the industry to wait before they moved on to a standards-based approach? It’s important to remember that months prior to the release of the iPad and the announcement of iPhone OS4, it was Google who was the most vocal proponent of an HTML5-centric view of the future of the web.  Only recently has Google begun to embrace Flash on mobile devices driven by their “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” strategy against Apple.

Yes, Adobe’s products have long been a favorite of designers (let’s not forget that it was Apple who helped them achieve that position), but they’re certainly not the most “open” company and there are plenty of alternatives for web and mobile app development to Adobe’s Creative Suite.

OK, one last thing. While Tnooz highlighted the largely sarcastic and self-serving ads by Adobe to show how much they love (i.e. loathe) Apple at this moment, I feel compelled to share a faux-ad that I found on TechCrunch created by an Apple fan that I found truly amusing