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Babson Alumni Technology Council

Event Recaps

Did you miss the October meeting on President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Package, which featured a panel of government and industry experts discussing where, how and when money will be spent to stimulate demand?  Given the criticality of information technology to today's business and organizational environment, knowing how the stimulus will affect the world of IT could make or break many businesses, entrepreneurs and those in transition. Click on the podcast: http://www.babson.edu/podcast/2009-10-28BATC.mp3

A full recap will appear in this space ASAP.  

April 15, 2009

Cloud Computing: Embracing the Cloud and Emerging Trends

The topic for the April 2009 BATC breakfast was the emerging field of Cloud Computing, with speaker Wilson MacDonald, CA (Computer Associates) VP and Principal Software Architect for Office of the CTO The term “Cloud Computing” means different things to different people. An audience of more than 100 people attended the event to hear Mr. MacDonald speak and to gain more understanding about this topic. Terri Monjar kicked off BATC breakfast, with a quick overview and introduced the speaker. In his role, MacDonald provides support to product groups across Computer Associates (CA), as well as engaging in strategic planning, and research into emerging technology and technology trends, such as SOA, SaaS and Cloud Computing.

MacDonald provided a compelling presentation about Cloud Computing, discussing the possibilities and opportunities available in this emerging domain. He mentioned that the benefits of cloud computing are too significant to pass up and summarized as follows:

• Easily Scalable (support for concurrent users)
• Easily Scalable (support for concurrent users)
• High Availability (with data reliability)

Mr. MacDonald explained how the capital intensive projects such as testing labs at CA benefit from the Cloud computing initiatives. He stated that without the deployment of an internal cloud, operationally and financially speaking, it would have been very difficult to ramp up with the kind of testing that was required on various operating systems and product version. CA’s “Labs on Demand” team had seen dramatic reductions in the costs with Cloud Computing while making the computing and storage resources available via the cloud to various users within the organization.

To illustrate the scalability and high performance nature of the Cloud Computing services, Mr. MacDonald gave a couple of industry examples such as Animoto and Facebook. He mentioned that the Animoto has designed its products and services on the Cloud Computing model. When the need arose for Animoto to handle 750,000 signups per day versus the previous rate of 5,000, the underlying framework was able to handle and support this surge without any performance or user experience issues.

To wrap up the presentation, the speaker mentioned three cautionary areas and the remediation that is required to address these areas.

Scale: Users must monitor the services and increase resources as needed.

Security: Focus on the weakest link and take measures to mitigate any issues that may crop up.

Service Level: Negotiate with the service providers so that the right amount of service can be provided for business needs.

In the Q& A period, questions revolved around the security of deploying applications in the Cloud and the challenges around the licensing and how the applications access and deployments can be controlled. The role of the internal cloud versus the external cloud and the tools and customization that is required of the existing and new applications for the cloud deployments were discussed.

In summary, the audience left the event understanding more about the rewards of embarking on Cloud Computing and the role of Cloud Computing in the industry, their businesses and how other are using to their advantage.

Listen to a podcast of this event:

http://www.babson.edu/podcast/2009-04-15BATC.mp3

February 4, 2009

Business & Social Media: New Paradigm or Fleeting Trend?

The world of social media is varied and deep. Everyone has questions and experts vary in their answers. One thing is sure: social media is here to stay and will captivate business audiences for a very long time.

It was standing room only to hear a panel of experts present their opinions and perspectives on social media at the BATC Breakfast Event—Business and Social Media: New Paradigm or Fleeting Trend?

After a brief introduction by moderator Glenn Gaudet, CMO of Treedia Labs, the panelists presented their definitions of social media, along with what they thought was the single most important thing the audience should know about the field. C.C. Chapman, CEO and Founder of www.TheAdvanceGuard.com firmly believes there is no “silver bullet” when it comes to business and social media. The key is to experiment and figure what’s right for your company. Todd Van Hoosear, Senior Analyst and Director of Client Services for SocialSphere, was more specific. He thinks social media is a subset of Web 2.0 and is exclusively the media side—news, magazines and bloggers. Lin Miao, Co-Founder and CEO of Tatto Media comes at social media from a purely money-making perspective. When he started Tatto, he only focused on trying to monetize the web better than anyone else. He sees an increasing trend in the field. When he started Tatto three years ago, 1% of the traffic on his site was social media. As of the last six months, 20% of his traffic is now social media.

The rest of the program was highly interactive and informative, with many strategic and tactical questions fielded by the panel from the audience. Although the panel differed on their definitions and perspectives on social media, several helpful suggestions were agreed on by everyone:

• If you get a request to join a service or group, you should accept, even if you only put in the most basic information. The reason: you can protect your name because you never know whether that site will become the next Facebook. You can also use these sites as beachheads to link back to your site, driving more traffic there.
• Social media is not a bubble; it is here to stay. That said, there will be companies that will fail, not because of the technology, but because of weak business models.
• If you decide to use an application within your organization, design measures and build in ways to gauge performance up-front. An example is using different URLs for different media to track results.

There were also several recommendations to the BATC audience to help them get more familiar with social media and the technologies:

• Look at the Hubspot blog to see its CEO’s comments on measuring social media results
• If you are on a limited budget, check out www.kluster.com for inexpensive web 2.0 solutions.
• Run a Google blog search on Obama web 2.0 lessons.
• Check out a book called: Barack Inc.
• Run a Google blog search on social media system to see what people are doing to consume using these technologies.
• Note that Google highly values blog and Twister mentions in reporting search results

Perhaps the last line of the morning by C.C. Chapman delivered the most important lesson of all: “I’m all for unplugging at the end of the day. This stuff will be here tomorrow. Work-life balance is important.”

Listen to a podcast of this event:

http://www.babson.edu/podcast/2009-02-04BATC_56k.mp3

October 29, 2008

Information Technology and Healthcare: Creating a New Industry

Moderator

Tom Boyle: VP, Market Strategy, Computer Associates Inc.

Panelists

• Liz Boehm: Principal Analyst, Forester Research
• John Cullinane: Founder, MainMessage; Founder, Cullinet Software; Founding Chairman of the MA Technology Leadership Council
• George MacGinnis: Technology Program Lead, Connecting for Health, National Health Services, UK
• Doug McClure: Technology and Operations Manager, Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health

This panel discussed how two of the world's largest industries—IT and Healthcare—are coming together to create not only new opportunities, but also new markets. The intersection of Healthcare and IT is attracting the attention of startups and Fortune 10 companies alike, all of whom want to participate in what IDC says will be the fastest growing IT segment for at least the next 5 years. The merging of disparate technologies and sciences that IT provides is expected to bring advances not only in extending lives but also in dramatic cost reductions. There may be no greater business and social reward than in determining how to capitalize on its power and potential. Companies from all sectors are developing business plans and offerings in attempts to participate.

Panel members focused on the IT aspect of the healthcare industry and presented their individual points of view. They discussed developments in the areas of IT systems, data standards, and the business of healthcare.

As an introduction, each of the panelists offered insights on the topic. Liz Boehm has indicated that every choice that we make in our lives has a healthcare aspect and she believes that technology is the solution as there is a shortage of resources and “it is going to be that way”. Boehm stressed three aspects—misaligned incentives at provider and payer, electronic medical records (EMR), and interoperability related to standards and data—that are making it difficult for the technology and healthcare to work together.

John Cullinane talked about telemedicine and how technology and the Internet can help this part of the healthcare system grow in the coming years. Cullinane also highlighted the problems related to the standards and interoperability. He indicated that the work being done in Massachusetts by Partners’ Connected Health and other organizations is making great progress in tele-medicine and tele-mentoring. Cullinane indicated that hospitals should consider outsourcing all of IT.

George MacGinnis spoke about healthcare in Great Britain and particularly his experience with National Health Services (NHS). He described how market mechanisms were working in the NHS to drive up the service, quality and innovation. The successes that NHS has seen with technology in improving residential care for an aging population with chronic diseases via remote monitoring were discussed. MacGinnis emphasized supply side collaboration to improve the interoperability and better management of information.

Doug McClure, a member of one of the biggest organizations in the Boston area, talked about the revenues that are generated by care delivery for Partners Group. He talked about Partners efforts and the initiatives that are underway to change care delivery to better treat patients and improve the business model. McClure mentioned some of the efforts that are underway at Partners to work on data standards with the academia, government and the industry.

Boyle and the attendees followed up with questions to the panel. The questions revolved around the data and information standards in the healthcare industry, technology adoption of the healthcare professionals, the role of entrepreneurs in developing technology businesses, and the role of government in developing and establishing standards. The panel made it clear that the system is broken and opportunities abound for technology professionals to start working on business models without waiting for standards to evolve around the healthcare information. The market is growing around the world, the need is there, and there will be opportunities for entrepreneurs to build businesses around this need. It was also suggested that telemedicine and remote monitoring have huge potential and will be a way of the future in Massachusetts and around the globe.

September 26, 2008

How Technology & the Internet Are Revolutionizing Financial Services

The first joint meeting of the Babson Alumni Technology Council and the Babson Financial Services Career Affinity Group, was also one of the first events of the Back-to-Babson homecoming weekend.

Moderator

Peter Gordon, Partner, e-Com Advisors

Panelists

• Joram Borenstein, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Identity and Access Assurance Group, RSA
• Stuart Vaeth, Chief Security Officer, Diversinet
• Tom Yurkstas, GM EVP Consumer & Business Loans, Virgin Money

New technology is driving the need for new products and services in the financial industry and industries that support it. With over 40 people in attendance, Peter Gordon kicked off this BATC breakfast, with an overview of new technologies and their impact on the financial industry. After providing a foundation for the discussion by drawing on his experience of starting a local bank and working with internet and mobile technologies, Gordon shifted the focus to the panel for an overview of each of their organizations and their views on new technologies and creating ways of doing business and driving revenue.

Stuart Vaeth was first to take the baton and spoke about secure mobile solutions. He presented examples of what is happening at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Pennsylvania, P2P and B2B open networks, contactless payments over cell phones, and secure access to digital information in a mobile vault. Tom Yurkstas provided an interesting overview of Virgin Money and private lending. Joram Borenstein wrapped up the overview part of the program by discussing RSA and its view of security and mobile fraud.

Gordon then walked into the audience to elicit questions and create a discussion between the panel and attendees. Questions ran the gamut from exploring the possibilities of mobile technology, to deeper questions about organizations represented on the panel, to trends in the industry. Most agreed the role of paper-based transactions and information storage in the financial industry was changing rapidly—most efforts are around getting needed information to hand held devices. The panel and moderator were unanimous: paperless is the way to go. The trends in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) to move financial transactions to consumer mobile phones was also discussed. The interactive part of the program ended with a question on the business models of companies working in this space.

It’s clear the panelists and moderator believe huge changes are coming to the financial industry and that technology-enabled change will lead the way to greater efficiency and an enhanced customer experience. The current upheaval in the markets and the industry will prove, sooner rather than later, whether or not they are correct.

Listen to a podcast of this event:

April 17, 2008

Clean Technology: Business & Investing Opportunities

Clean technology and clean energy are some of the hottest buzzwords in business and investing today. Are there real opportunities for revenue? Significant returns? What regulations will drive new business? These questions set the stage for one of the best attended BATC events.

Guest speaker Dr. Candida Brush, Babson College, Paul T. Babson Chair—Professor of Entrepreneurship and Division Chair—Entrepreneurship, kicked-off the program with an impassioned overview of entrepreneurship at Babson. Social and economic values are the keys to social entrepreneurship at Babson, she explained. Both the “people and the planet” need to be beneficiaries. Anyone interested in learning more about entrepreneurship at Babson should feel free to contact her at cbrush@babson.edu

After the overview, Dr. William Huss, Executive Advisor to Concentric Energy, former SVP/COO of XENERGY Inc., and Babson College lecturer, took the helm and moderated the main program. He set the stage for the panel by presenting his view of a “perfect storm framework” for the green challenge: rising oil prices, climate change and security against terrorism. Each panelist then presented perspectives from the public and private sectors, as well as the investment community.

Ann Berwick, the first-ever Massachusetts Undersecretary of Energy made the initial comments. She believes we need to focus on clean technology for three main reasons: climate change, the rise of air pollution, and the fact that the world is running out of oil. Massachusetts, in particular, has a stake in developing clean technology initiatives because they will help our economy and provide relief to our high electricity rates. The biggest challenge to significant gains in this area: the status quo. Government intervention is needed, she believes, because there is no other mechanism or entity better-suited to challenge the belief the world can continue solely on already-established forms of energy.

Karl Jessen, Economic Development Officer from the Massachusetts Technology Council Renewable Energy Trust was up next. He spoke about building green, affordable housing, sustainable energy, rebates, and policy. He hopes to create an R&D cluster in the state to attract further investment, and discussed a seed fund to invest in university and industry collaboration. He expects between 20-25% growth in the clean energy sector with job growth in solar, fuel cells, deep water and bio-fuels.

Sheri Brodeur, Strategic Program Manager for HP Labs at Hewlett-Packard, took the baton from Karl and discussed taking IT and applying it to contribute to a sustainable world. She is working on an open innovation office at HP to do research and consulting. The starting point is a data center with a green signature. At HP, they believe there is true business disruption coming with the move to being green. Sheri and her colleagues at HP want to help their customers keep their environmental costs down and stay ahead of the wave.

Trent Yang, Associate from Globespan Capital Partners, rounded out the panel discussion with the assertion there is no bigger opportunity for investment than energy. He cited a sense of urgency in the form of policy advancement and infrastructure development as reasons people are now investing in clean technology and clean energy. Alternative electricity, alternative transportation and energy efficiency and systems are the main three areas of investment today. The biggest challenge is finding people with entrepreneurial experience and aptitude to contribute to the field.

February 6, 2008

The Future of Telecommunications, 2008 and Beyond: Consolidation and Convergence

Presented by Michael Krutz—Vice President, IP Core Engineering and Development Home & Networks Mobility, Motorola

Imagine voice, cell, TV and internet on one converged network. Imagine being able to seamlessly move communications among each. Is this the latest telecomm fad or could it be a real time saver for your business and personal life? Will there be new revenue streams for those companies positioned to take advantage of these new opportunities? What will be the effects on an organization's intranet? With his son, a current Babson student in attendance, Michael Krutz captured the attention of the BATC audience of over 80 while answering these questions and others.

A self-described “business person by disposition”, Mr. Krutz began an energetic and informative BATC breakfast presentations with a “consolidation and convergence” focused overview of telecom today. The first he described as people finding new ways to work together that otherwise might not, the second the result of paying closer attention to what users look for. Mr. Krutz pointed out what he thought were the two drivers of both consolidation and convergence: demands of the end-user and the search for revenue by providers. He specifically discussed six attributes of end-user demand: multi-tasking, technology is my friend, the plug and play expectation, connectivity is constant, and cross-technology interoperability. He punctuated his list with one last point about demand—the fact that every generation will expect more.

Regarding revenue, he pointed out that the major shift is around sources moving from voice to data applications and services. The balance of his presentation was a deep dive, first into consolidation, then into convergence.

Throughout the presentation, Mr. Krutz presented example after example of consolidation, making the point that consolidation as a trend will continue. From a humorous video of Stephen Colbert talking about AT&T to the more informative examples of new entrants Apple, Google, Yahoo and a host of Chinese providers, Mr. Krutz came back several times to what was perhaps his most meaningful point about consolidation: “The challenges are not technical. The challenges are on the business side and figuring out all the relationships.”

After discussing consolidation, he went on to convergence as a trend, stating that the challenges are here to stay. To further make his point, he presented what he called his Six Paradoxes of Convergence:

Mr. Krutz took a few questions from the audience on topics from the business case for new telecom models, to the effects consolidation and convergence will have on communications. His answers all reinforced the concluding message of his prepared remarks. No matter what happens, there will be more offerings, more services and more choices. The ultimate winner will be the consumer.

December 5, 2007

Beat the Competition Through Analytics: How New Methods of Decision-Making and Business Intelligence Can Turbo-Charge Revenue

Presented by Tom Davenport, Author of Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

Companies have long used business intelligence for specific applications, but these initiatives were too narrow to affect corporate performance. Now, leading firms are basing their competitive strategies on a new way of analyzing business data. Instead of a single application, they are building broad capabilities for enterprise-level business analytics and intelligence. Their capability goes well beyond data and technology to address the processes, skills and cultures of their organizations. They are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance.

Peter Gordon of BATC introduced Prof. Tom Davenport to a capacity crowd at Babson’s Olin Hall. Prof Davenport described analytics and its origins beginning with “IT doesn’t matter,” referring to when businesses utilized IT resources mostly for mitigating risks and ensuring compliance through “The Return of Upside of IT.”

Prof. Davenport stated that 200 of top executives at Fortune 500 firms listed Business Intelligence as the #1 item for IT spending. Organizations are amassing immense amounts of data. While it is guarded and stored meticulously like “gold”, it is frequently never touched again. If Analytics are used effectively, questions such as the following can be answered:

• What is the best that can happen?
• What will happen next?
• What if the current trends continue?
• Why is this happening?

Davenport also discussed successful businesses that compete on analytics. For example:

• Marriott: Pricing is not only based on location, time and traffic, but also on loyalty level, food and beverage spending.
• Harrah’s (Las Vegas): Room rates are lower for repeat customers.
• Tesco: In an industry where coupons typically have a 1% redemption rate, analytics allow targeted coupons providing a 25–50 % rate
• Capitol One: This company has become the #3 credit card issuer. Each envelope in a mailing is a controlled experiment, as analytics suggest what rates should be offered to each potential customer
• Amazon: This on-line retailer’s feature "People who bought this book also bought…" increases sales dramatically
• Netflix: Customers are rate movies suggested by Netflix 10% higher than ones they choose themselves

Excerpts from Q & A:

Q: Why aren’t analytics used more in the B2B world?
A: It may be due to fewer customers. Some are doing B2B pricing analysis. Boeing is using analytics to decide on the next model of airplanes.

Q: Could Amazon be responsible for popularizing analytics by placing it on its webpage?
A: Amazon bought this capability from Net Perceptions, It may have some effect to increase analytics use in other businesses

Q: How soon do organizations see results from analytics?
A: It needs a lot of CEO-level push. In the right organization, you may see results really quickly. Harrah’s showed results in one year.

Q: What about Privacy Concerns?
A: More focus is in Europe, in US there is no privacy! “Get over it!”

October 10, 2007

Deconstruct Your Business!

As part of the Babson Alumni Technology Council’s Breakfast Series, the October 10, 2007 event featured a panel discussion on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT Outsourcing. Panelists discussed how deconstructing your business and IT processes and sending the work “where it wants to go” can drive business performance, making companies more agile and profitable.

The panel included:

• Rajeev Agarwal, SVP, State Street, IT Strategy & Outsourcing
• Aaron Green, President/Founder, PSG Offshore Resources and Professional Staffing Group
• Bala Iyer, Professor, Babson College—Researching Outsourcing
• Ravi Krishna, General Manager—Strategic Client Relations, Wipro Technologies
• Moderator: Kavin Moody, Executive Director of Babson College's Center for Information Management Studies (CIMS)

The discussion showed that outsourcing is not going only to China and India but to all over the world. The focus is not on the least expensive but the best value: fit/functionality and price. Sometimes the work ends up coming back to the US. So, today, the model has changed from the stereotype.

Rajeev explained that State Street is the outsourcing agent for many investment management firms. It is important to understand one’s “core” business and not outsource that capability. Complexity has increased with the selection of multiple vendors to provide total solutions. Physical security and employee background checks including on-foot investors continue to be very important.

Aaron Greene’s company helps middle and smaller firms looking to supplement with one or more resources. Uncertainty and concern is resulting in some members of these organizations continually seeking new markets.

Bala described three “Mega Trends”: Dynamic Sourcing, Business Models, and Multisourcing He emphasized that key among “Lessons Learned” were to understand core competence, understand the ecosystem of your company and vendors, and to select the appropriate model: BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing), or ADM (Applications Development & Maintenance). Companies should also ensure that they own their IT architecture.

Ravi discussed how global partnerships can result in many regional outsourcing centers. It is important to find the right model for each company.

May 23, 2007

How Foxwoods Uses Technology to Deliver a World-Class Customer Experience

Presented by Gary Border, Sr. Vice President of Property Marketing at Foxwoods

How does Information Technology help casinos and resorts increase revenue and profits? Gary Border discussed the technology behind the gaming industry and how Foxwoods Resort & Casio in Connecticut uses data mining to leverage its powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) tools. He described the customer segmentation results of their research.

Advanced Information Technology is also used to reduce cumbersome high-volume coin operations; optimize gaming machine performance and location; and provide eCommerce solutions to compete with on-line gaming competition.

The Q&A consisted of rapid-fire questions from the audience. Clearly, Gary tapped into significant interest from our Babson Alumni audience. He also presented an overview for the reasoning behind developing a new property, located adjacent to Foxwoods. This new property, one of the largest construction projects in the world, will be open in mid- 2008 and will be called the “MGM Grand at Foxwoods”.

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