Servicing information not software

While I have been a strong advocate for software as a service I have recently begun to modify my views. It is not software that is the driver but rather the information that is processed on behalf of the customer that is critical. Software is just a tool - if we processed the information faster, for less cost and more reliably using a slide rule no one would really care.

To do the job better as a service you need to build deep domain knowledge and continuously develop best practices based on customer involvement. This provides the economic model to make a service model work, not providing software.

As we move into this world software is going to become a non issue as it is becoming essentially free (or close to as a percentage of overall costs), it is now a well defined tool. The number of options for tools and platforms is large and the differences are shades of grey.

The real value of a service based model is going to come from those companies who build services to process information faster, cheaper, and more reliably by using the tools more effectively to process information not the builders of tools and platforms.

Public versus Private Interfaces

For the past several weeks I have had my head down coming up to speed on .Net and getting new customers up and running. The most interesting thing I have noticed about being heavily involved in real world large scale complex integration is how we naturally approach interfaces.

For most private interfaces we stay with XML Schemas and essentially REST style interfaces for simplicity and ease of development. For customer facing interfaces we always go with SOAP style web services for formalization of definition and reducing the impendance. If you communicate that your are exposing web services that comply with the WS-I basic profile it eliminates a lot of discussion. Similarly if we consume services that are defined the same way it reduces discussion.

Perhaps REST versus WS is really about private and public interfaces.

Looking for a few good engineers...

The new venture I am part of InStorecard is growing and looking for a few more great engineers the job descriptions are posted here. In general what I look for is smart, articulate and motivated people who know done is binary.

If you are interested feel free to contact me directly at either my work or personal email.

It is still about identity

Even though I have shifted industries (slightly) a lot of the big issues are still around identity. Now I am dealing with consumer identity rather than service interface or corporate identity. The issue now is really around tying multiple identities together to create a whole person.

As a consumer I have several identities that are not necessarily connected, I have a physical identity, I have a web identity and in a store I have another identity, which can be specific if I use a credit card or anonymous if I use cash.

The trick we are solving at InStorecard is to bring all the identities together into a single usable solution to retail loyalty and CRM

What is a good loyalty program

A key part of our business is delivering programs (as a service) to merchants that enable them to provide better service to consumers and hence encourage them to use the merchants services more. Thinking through what makes a good experience for the consumer is critical. Too many merchants treat personalization as pasting a users name on a standard piece of collateral. This is still mass merchandising, to reach the goal of speaking to each consumer as a unique individual with unique needs requires a lot more than that.

I draw a lot from my formative years when I worked in my family's retail stores. There the staff knew almost every customer by name, there shopping history and something about them and worked to make the shopping experience positive. To translate this to the modern world there are three things a good program does for the consumer:

1. Speaks to individual users differently and in a way they resonate with


2. Makes the users life easier in some way.


3. Provides clear reciprocal value for the personal information delivered.