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2014: When The Enterprise vs. Consumer Distinction Will Die

Well, that was a fun year for the enterprise. What will 2014 have in store? More of the same, to be sure, but there might be some surprises on the horizon. Microsoft Splits-ville? As my colleague Michael Singer pointed out, 2013 was very much about watching As The Clippy Turns at Microsoft, with Steve breaking up with Bill and the rest of the board, as the mysterious stranger from Finland breezes into town to save the day or burn the whole town down. It's hard not to watch Microsoft and wonder what the heck will happen in Redmond. Like Apple, it's typically one of the first software companies that users of all stripes—consumer and business alike—first became familiar with. Microsoft is one of those iconic companies, and its influence on our technological advancement is deep and profound. Earlier this year, I wrote, with not a little emphasis, that Microsoft's decision to become a devices and services company was likely to scare the bejeezus out of its enterprise users. See also Microsoft, Split Yourself Up—Or Your Enterprise Customers Are Going To Walk I stand by this assertion. If Microsoft continues to define enterprise software as a separate class of software that needs its own engineering, support and sales channels, then it should assure enterprise users of SQL Server, Windows Server and SharePoint that its dalliances with Nokia and Windows Phone aren't going to take attention away from the enterprise customers who are forking over big bucks for Microsoft-licensed software. If enterprises think they're getting the short end of the stick with Microsoft, the company may have little choice but to split—or at the very least, sharply define the focus of its business units—so enterprise customers know they are getting what they are paying for. But what if this perception is all wrong? In The Cloud, No One Cares If You're A Suit As Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and OpenStack-based cloud services continue to flourish amid explosive growth in the use of mobile services, the dividing line between "consumer" and "enterprise" software users will continue to blur. Consider the now-ubiquitous phrase "consumerization of the enterprise." This term is a neat little way to describe the way users have asserted far more influence over corporate IT by personally adopting hardware and software that they want to incorporate into their business workday. "Bring your own device" is one popular trend in consumerization of the enterprise, as is "provisioning with plastic"—i.e., using a credit card and an Amazon account to spin up instances of servers in minutes rather than waiting days for IT to do it. What a lot of people tend to forget—myself included—is that this trend is a two-way street. It's not just about how consumer devices and apps influence the enterprise, but how the enterprise influences consumers as well. Data management, security, online storage, social collaboration—these are all elements of enterprise software that are bleeding into the consumer realm. As consumer software continues to be "uplifted" with enterprise-class features, the line dividing home and business users gets much blurrier. Very soon, we may come to realize that there is little to no difference in the code of enterprise versus consumer services, and that what really matters is the context. How is the data being used and who has the greatest influence? Companies like Facebook and Google have already made this conceptual jump: Who sees data at a given point makes a huge difference in how that data is used. But we tend to look at companies like Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle through the lens of the old boundaries: enterprise software is serious and consumer software is the manna for the masses. One Prediction To Rule Them All Back to Microsoft. If the company in fact get ahead of this trend—which ReadWrite editor-in-chief Owen Thomas calls "enterprisification of the consumer"—then it may come out of its current tribulations poised to be a company that can serve users in whatever context they have to be in: personal use to business workloads. This prediction, with some variations, can also apply to all of the legacy enterprise companies. IBM, SAP and Oracle aren't getting called to split up like Microsoft, but they are undergoing trials of their own, working to adapt themselves to a world where users can flip their roles like a switch in nearly any location. That is the holy grail for the enterprise in 2014: To stop thinking in terms of enterprise vs. consumer and realize that it is all the same. Once enterprise vendors make that conceptual jump, then life might become a little bit simpler and success easier to find.

A Year In Bitcoin: Why We'll Still Care About The Cryptocurrency Even If It Fades

In mid-December 2013, Bitcoin took one of its most dramatic nosedives yet. Following a crackdown on yuan-to-bitcoin deposits in China, the price of one bitcoin dropped below as $540, less than half of its all time high in late November, $1,242. (It's since bounced back to around $730.) Bitcoin’s true believers aren’t treating its latest gyrations as a cause for panic. It’s not the first time Bitcoin crashed hard, and it’s not going to be the last. But it’s a further reminder, in case you needed one, that Bitcoin is volatile, and what it’s supposedly worth today may bear no relation whatsoever to what it'll be worth tomorrow. It’s been a big year for Bitcoin, the unlikely currency that started as a fad for cryptology nuts and ended as a mainstream obsession that had many of us all closely following its rollercoaster highs and lows. But the biggest impact of Bitcoin so far has not nothing to do with its actual value. Rather, the year of Bitcoin we've just been through has fundamentally changed the way we think about money. Growing Legitimacy In 2013, Bitcoin’s hold on the mainstream was undeniable. Even the most Luddite media organizations could no longer ignore the popular cryptocurrency. Each time Bitcoin crashed—first in April; then, after the Feds cracked down on Mt. Gox; and once more, after the Feds closed illicit marketplace Silk Road—it soon came back stronger than ever. As mainstream coverage grew, an increasing number of small businesses hurried to accept Bitcoin, in part because it requires far lower transactions fees than credit or debit payments. On this year’s Bitcoin Black Friday, held the same day as regular Black Friday but with Bitcoin, nearly 300 merchants participated. BitPay, which processes Bitcoin transactions for business, processed more than 6,000 plus transactions in a single day and called it the most popular day in the history of Bitcoin commerce. See also: Why Small Businesses Have The Most To Gain From Bitcoin On January 1, 2013, the price of a single Bitcoin was $13.51. As the price fluctuated into the thousands over the course of the year, speculation drove the price and coverage into a frenzy. Stories of Bitcoin millionaires, who’d found forgotten, unspent wallets of the cryptocurrency, only spurred an increasing number of newbies. When I bought Bitcoin in person, my seller told me that the higher Bitcoin’s profile, the more beginners enter the community. “The membership [of the Bitcoin Users’ Group] probably has a mathematical correlation between the number of attendees and the price of Bitcoin,” he said. In an age where people fetishize technology and convenience, banks are one of the stodgiest parts of our infrastructure. Bitcoin appealed to people who don't see why we should still wait over the weekend for a bank to process a transaction, or why the government can deny your donation to Wikileaks. At its most successful, Bitcoin changed our global conception of what makes up a currency. Why Bitcoin Can’t Do It Alone However, for all the strides Bitcoin has made forward, 2013 has also shown that world governments can easily squelch the currency’s growth. Proponents of Bitcoin are drawn to the cryptocurrency because it was designed to act outside of any governing body’s jurisdiction. Unlike dollars or yuan, which are printed and controlled by governments, bitcoins are mined by their users. And thanks to the blockchain, a ledger of every bitcoin transaction that has ever taken place, there’s no mystery about how many there are or where they’ve been. Bitcoins are private, but they aren’t secret. But, if you’re not mining bitcoins yourself, you need to acquire them by exchanging government currency at a Bitcoin exchange such as Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, or BTC China. And when government money is involved, government cooperation is required. Bitcoin got its biggest wake-up call in mid-December, when the People’s Bank of China froze yuan-to-bitcoin deposits to China’s largest Bitcoin exchange. The price plummeted. Bitcoin has every ability to recover if BTC China is able to come to a compromise with the PBOC. Unfortunately, China isn’t the only country that has rejected Bitcoin as a currency. Germany, France, Korea, and Thailand have all looked unfavorably on Bitcoin. The European Banking Authority, Switzerland, Poland, and the U.S. are still undecided. Even if Bitcoin isn’t in their hands, their decisions on cash-to-bitcoin transfers could affect its future. The U.S. indecision has already caused difficulty for Bitcoin ATMs and vending machines. While a Robocoin ATM for bitcoins is operating in Canada and a Lamassu bitcoin vending machine is now functional in Finland, neither maker has yet complied with necessary U.S. financial regulations. The companies blame the lengthy regulatory process. See also: How To Sell Bitcoin—Legally In October, the first U.S. client to buy a Lamassu obtained legal counsel and began the process of registering as a money transmitter, but is still caught up in legal limbo. The Senate’s November Bitcoin hearings helped to improve Bitcoin’s standing with lawmakers, but still proved only that government regulation is inevitable. And at its worst, Bitcoin has given lawmakers reasons to question it. According to a 2013 users' survey, 16 percent of Bitcoin spending went toward narcotics and other illegal goods. A Bitcoin assassination market has popped up to target world leaders—so far, fortunately, without any result. (Though you know the Secret Service must be taking a keen interest in that.) Bitcoin has been accused of being a bubble, but it doesn't exist in one. Outside factors could easily bring it to its knees. The Legacy Of Bitcoin 2014 may not see the end of Bitcoin, but it will certainly see the end of Bitcoin as we know it. Soaring valuations have made Bitcoin more of an investment asset than a transactional currency. Why spend your Bitcoin if it’s just going to increase in value the next day? And indeed, whether they’re being hoarded or lost, a full 64 percent of bitcoins have never been spent. See also: What The Bitcoin Bubble Really Says About The Cryptocurrency This just makes crashes like the mid-December one all the more upsetting to investors. Bitcoin has little intrinsic value and is backed chiefly by people’s belief in it. If that belief were to falter, investors would be left with nothing. If you read Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper on Bitcoin, it’s apparent that today’s inflated bitcoin-as-investment model is never what the anonymous founder(s) intended. Bitcoin was designed to be a peer-to-peer cash system with no third party arbitrator. Bitcoin wasn’t designed to be an investment asset, and it won't last as one. According to Andreas Antonopolous, founder of cryptocurrency company RootEleven, many of Bitcoin’s staunchest supporters believe Bitcoin is in for a change, and that’s not a bad thing. In his opinion, Bitcoin is either going to stabilize at a far lower value, or it will fail—clearing the way for a successor among the many hundreds of altcoins waiting in the wings. See also: Bitcoin Fever Has Spawned 100+ Copycat Cryptocurrencies Even if Bitcoin as a currency experiences more crises, he said, the invention of the blockchain—the universally shared record of all Bitcoin transactions—can support future currencies and other applications, forever changing the global culture of money. “A trans-national currency without borders, without government interference and without political controls is now possible. As more people become aware of this, it changes the relationship between money and the state, money and individuals and eventually between individuals and their government. Bitcoin as an invention will survive even if Bitcoin the first currency fails.” In this reporter's opinion, Bitcoin itself won't last. But the innovations that Bitcoin has brought to our financial transactions—increased privacy, a public ledger, censorship-free cash and freedom from a stodgy third party—are what it will truly be remembered for. Years later, when we're using the latest and most stable digital currency yet, these inventions will still be going strong. No matter what happens in 2014, Bitcoin has already left its mark. The cryptocurrency is not without its many flaws, but it has brought one major success: our concept of what a currency is has changed forever.

Important Apps That Shaped Mobile In 2013

Snapchat (iOS/Android) See also: Why Snapchat Is The Perfect App At The Perfect Time Love it or hate it (or love to hate it), Snapchat captured one of the mobile Web’s most fascinating pivots: the shift from archiving toward intentional ephemera. Snapchat forgoes Facebook’s reign of the cohesive narrative in favor of brief, chaotic social snapshots that literally self destruct. The app is enough of a threat (or a fascination) to have piqued Facebook’s interest to the tune of $3 billion, after all. Snapchat’s moment may fade as quickly as one of its frenetic missives, but 2013 will always be remembered for the rise of the Snap. Yahoo Weather (iOS/Android) It might just be for checking the weather, but Yahoo’s reinvented app manages to encapsulate everything about the big Y!’s Mayer-era makeover. Bright, fluid and playful, it’s everything the old Yahoo’s mobile presence wasn’t. Remember back when Yahoo had literally 70 different apps? Yeah, those days are long gone. If This Then That [IFTTT] (iOS, Android in the works) It might not be a household name (yet), but IFTTT is the multitool of mobile. A playground for productivity nerds, IFTTT invites users to craft simple formulas that text you when it’s about to rain, call you when the rent is due, back up your Instagram photos to Dropbox … and just about anything else you can think up.

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