Insight Community

Two big topics these days are SaaS and wireless. Obviously the two are on a converging path. Already, Blackberry email is considered an essential wireless SaaS offering. What other opportunities do you see coming into this space. If you were investing in wireless Saas, where do you think the biggest opportunities are today?

Mywaves has created a unique embeddable video player (available at http://www.mywaves.com) with complete mobile capabilities. In addition to all the usual features of embedded players, it's designed to integrate with mobile phones and can be used as a viral marketing tool. With mywaves, users can send content from the web to their phones or to their friends' devices. Videos can also be uploaded directly from mobile phones and sent right to other users' handsets, as well as the web.

Mywaves is interested in the following feedback about its player:

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?
2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?
3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?
4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?
5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

If you had to bet on one single wireless technology to dominate in the next five years, what would it be and why?

The telecom space is facing an interesting convergence challenge, between mobile technologies, broadband technologies and VoIP. Recognizing that the trends for these technologies is inevitable, as a traditional telecom firm, what's the best strategy to embrace these technologies without completely destroying our core telephony business?

The computer security game seems like a continuous tug o' war, with security firms reacting to each new trick from malicious hackers. Can there be a better way to design security so that we're not always one step behind?

Developing applications for the mobile world is incredibly tricky. Unlike the PC world, where the choices are pretty obvious, the complexity level for mobiles is exponentially more difficult. You basically take carriers multiplied by OEMs/handset vendors multiplied by operating systems multiplied by development platforms to set the base level of complexity. Add to that the rapid churn rate of users, and it becomes even trickier.

So, for a company that's developing mobile applications, and wants to maximize coverage while minimizing integration costs, what is the best strategy? We recognize that it may be different for enterprise apps and consumer apps -- but are interested in both areas, so please give thoughts either on both markets. Feel free to think outside the box, but hopefully the answers are practical. As a secondary question, if the strategy is to attack one platform at a time, what sequence of carriers/platforms/vendors makes the most sense, for each of the consumer and enterprise markets?

Salesforce.com recently launched their Apex programming language for developing on-demand applications to run on their hosted environment. Is this a compelling offering? If not, why not? If so, why? What might you use it for?

In the last few months, the online service Twitter has taken off. There's some debate if this is something really important, or merely a fad. Without necessarily rehashing that debate, discuss how a consumer packaged goods company might make use of Twitter (or similar tools) in innovative ways.

For context, in the early days of the web, plenty of traditional companies ignored the web and later blogs as passing fads, only to realize much later that they could have benefited from embracing such trends early on. As a consumer packaged goods company, we're trying to understand whether Twitter faces the same curve and if it makes sense to make use of it now, and if so, how could it be useful (if at all).

Now that Apple has finally announced the iPhone, plenty of attention has shifted to the potential for Google to make its own revolutionary mobile device. If you were in charge of such a product at Google, how would you design such a device? What features would it include? How would it work? What would you do to make it a valuable addition to the Google product portfolio?

Cisco has recently purchased two different sets of social networking technology (FiveAcross and assets from Tribe.net). What do you think Cisco's strategy or thought process is in making these acquisitions?

Samsung recently came out with its Blackjack handset for Cingular, targeted at competing with RIM's Blackberry device. Can it really compete? If not, why not (and what can it do to compete)? If yes, why?

Wireless broadband is coming in one format or another. When the world shifted from dialup to broadband, it opened up plenty of new applications and uses (many of which were not widely foreseen). What new and different uses will widespread wireless broadband allow? Will they be bottom up (designed by users) or top down (designed by carriers) and why?

The traditional enterprise software business is being attacked from two directions, open source technologies and hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Do these represent a real threat to the incumbent software providers, and if so, what is the best way to deal with it?

There's been tremendous consolidation lately in the computer security space, with many of the big firms (Symantec, McAfee) gobbling up the smaller players. Is this trend likely to continue over the next 18 to 24 months? Why or why not? Either way, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the overall IT security industry and why?