Software Accessibility

'Accessibility' is a key success factor in software;

There are 3 major aspects to accessibility;

1. How accessible is the product to developers?
2. How accessible is the product to end users? (usability)
3. How accessible is the product to service providers? (license cost / structure / support)

Taking each point in turn;

1. Software that is freely available to developers means that their is a high availability of skills in the market compared to software that is proprietary and not freely available for developers. Many companies such as Sun, IBM, Borland etc. realized this some time ago and actively encourage developers to play with their products. As well as ensuring the availability of skills for customers / end users this also facilitates a valuable feedback loop for vendors and thus significantly improves the quality of the software.

Organisations who restrict access to their software to only those who license it create a significant problem for themselves. There is a lack of available skills; those resources that are available demand a premium for their services. The lack of skills availability and the higher cost of implementation leads to lower adoption of the software.

This is one of the major reasons that FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) is becoming ever more successful.

2. The ease with which users can access the software is also a major factor in the success of the software. If the software is difficult for users to use then this also presents a significant barrier to adoption. Usability / Accessibility is becoming ever more important for organisations as they seek to differentiate themselves through class leading Customer Experience.

3. The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and the quality / cost of support available for production systems built using the software is also a major factor in the success of Software adoption. Even if there is good / cost effective skills availability and even if the software offers a great user experience, if the production license costs and support costs are prohibitive then adoption of the software will be low.

Currently commercial software still has the edge over FOSS as there are generally usability issues with FOSS software; the products are generally built by highly technical communities and fail to address usability and accessibility. However, this trend is slowly changing and there is still a tendency amongst many software vendors to keep theoir systems closed and charge high fees for their solutions. These vendors, I suspect, will struggle to grow and thrive over the longer term unless they find a way of changing their business models to become more open.

Hothousing vs. Greenhousing

I now have a new role, which involves coming up with new product and service ideas, defining the go-to-market strategy and then working with the Sales, Marketing and Pre-sales teams to turn the ideas into real business.

I have been working in an environment for the past few years that takes a Hothouse approach to the development and implementation of ideas. This is an approach that I have always struggled with as I do not beleive that it necessarily delivers the best results. An approach that I much prefer and one that I am adopting again in my new role is that of Greenhousing.

For the uninitiated, here is a quick one-line definition of each approach;

• Hothousing is a competitive environment where ideas compete, are rapidly evaluated and dismissed; the winning idea is then implemented.
• Greenhousing is a nurturing environment where ideas are focussed and invested in; ideas are protected and given time to mature before being evaluated and taken forwards to implementation.

In Hothousing there is a very real danger that potentially successful ideas can be killed before they have had an opportunity to develop and prove their worth. There is also a risk that the rapid timescales involved in Hothousing mean that the problem is never really understood (often the problem you start working on is not necessarily the one you end up having to solve). There is also the risk that the evaluation criteria may be based more on the strong personalities of team members in the winning team than on the proposed solution. Early commitment is made to a solution and a course is set that then becomes very difficult to change if the solution starts to look a little shaky.

In Greenhousing specific ideas are focussed on and nurtured; given time to develop and protected until their true value can be assessed. This means that the assessments are based more on the merits of the solution than on the team presenting it. Also, if there are flaws in the solution their is opportunity to identify and remedy before any final decision is made. This approach can be seen as more risky because it requires investment and comitment to specific ideas that may not work out; however the approach does offer a greater degree of success and a better end solution than Hothousing. If you take a medium to long-term view then this approach does offer a greater return for the commitment.

Mobile 2.0 Tipping Point

Many apologies for the lack of activity on the blog over recent months. I have been entrenched in the final throws of a major delivery for a client and it has taken every waking moment to push it over the line.

I have moved into a new role in the last couple of weeks and now have at least a little time to reflect. I have just come back from a Mobile Marketing Forum; I was trapped in a room full of marketing and media types for a whole day which was something of an ordeal for a techie. I was mildly surprised by what I heard.

The basic gist of the discussion was that Media / Advertising folks are surprised and confused at the lack of investment in and usage of the mobile internet. In listening to the various debates it became apparent that these folks think that the mobile internet equates to users with mobile phones using wap browsers to access wap sites! What I found even more surprising is that they are anticipating a growth in this area over the next few years!

I have five 3G enabled devices; a laptop with a 3G card, a PDA, a tablet, a high-end mobile phone and a Blackberry. Four of these five devices access the regular internet using a regular browser; the only device that relies on WAP is the Blackberry, and guess what? I don't use my Blackberry to browse the web. Here is the thing, there is significant convergence between networks and devices. Users demand a certain level of user experience (one that WAP does not deliver). Users will never adopt en-mass a technology that does not meet their needs; they do not want diluted content that harks back to the first days of the internet.

With the launch of Android devices planned for later this year, this trend can only accelerate; Android provides capabilities to support full browser functionality; you can even access AJAX enabled sites on an Android device. Android is aimed to support even modest handsets so does stand a very good chance of becoming a wide-spread technology very quickly (as opposed to iPhone which is high-end niche).

The days of the mobile internet are numbered; this was always a nasty hack to get around the limitations of early devices and the sooner it dies a death the better. If the mobile marketing and media folks want to tap the mobile user market, they need to realize that they should be looking to the regular internet sites. What they need to be doing is augmenting existing content sites with additional functionality to identify users coming in with mobile devices and offer the additional functionality that this enables.

This all comes around to the marketeers desire to tap the location based information provided by mobile devices to combine with user profile data to better target advertising and therefore maximize revenues. With the convergence of networks and devices there is no-longer an internet and a mobile internet, there is just the web and a bunch of different access devices with different capabilities.

The tipping point for mobile / location based services will come not when there is a critical mass of content and users on the mobile (WAP) internet but when there is a critical mass of regular web sites that have been augmented with functionality to exploit mobile users. With the shift from fixed line to wireless broadband this is going to mena pretty much every user, even those with PC's in the home.