Knowledge_as_a_Service (KaaS) - cumulusIQ Blog!

The Open Collaboration Desk

When disruptive innovation occurs it is human nature to call it something familiar -- think “horseless carriage” or “talking pictures” -- until the point of reference seems more out of date than familiar.  That may be the case with “virtual helpdesk.”  Users do come to the cumulusIQ platform for help.  But is it “help” when a product designer reaches out to social networks for new ideas -- a model more generally recognized as open collaboration?  And is it only “help” when an SAP business user wants to enable a new workflow than the one originally envisioned by SAP developers? 

Yes, the questions we get are indeed for help -- such as to fix a technical glitch or learn how to use a particular product feature.  But often the question is really about how to do something new and innovative -- even if just a little.  In those case the virtual helpdesk becomes an ideal platform on which to conduct incremental innovation in an open collaborative way.

What got me thinking about this is an excellent article by Anrea Gabor titled, “The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration” (Strategy+Business, Autumn, 2009, Booz & Co.).  The article cites “seven key strategies that pioneers of open collaboration have used to succeed….” One of these, “cultivates continuous improvements,” speaks to incremental innovation as inherent to both open collaboration and sustainable competitive advantage.  It produces products that are of higher quality, are better suited to what the user needs now, and carries lower risk of failure.  

This is another reason why our model is different from a remote helpdesk run by a consulting or SI firm.  Like them, we can handle the traditional fix-it question.  But we also support collaboration -- and incremental innovation -- that is open to anyone.

What Is a Cloud Service?

I was naturally interested in Monday’s InfoWorld Story titled “Startups take SAP consulting to the cloud” that discusses cumulusIQ and another company.

One of the questions I wish had been answered in greater detail is: What makes a service cloud-based?  Is it just technical support over the network?  That’s not new.  In 1980 Digital Equipment Corporation introduced remote system diagnosis over a network (for the VAX 11/750).

What’s different and exciting about the cloud is that it delivers Knowledge as a Service (KaaS).  KaaS is the culmination of the most important Web 2.0 concepts, like crowd sourcing, software as a service, virtualization, long tail, pull versus push, and on-demand.

In KaaS, users are not hardwired to a single group of consultants and are not even buying consulting from a vendor (unless you call the individual consultants vendors). That would be far too limiting.  Instead, users buy knowledge from sellers in a global marketplace in real time.  Any number of people can participant -- consultants to make money and gain recognition; users to acquire knowledge when and where they need it without paying for “extras” like onsite visits they don’t need.

One further comment on the story:  Jon Reed is quoted as saying that cloud services are a “creature of the recession.”  How negative is that?  It implies that our customers use us because they’re broke.  But obviously there are many situations when obtaining knowledge on-demand from a global pool makes more sense than getting it from a hardwired resource (whether onsite or remote).  It is more accurate to say the cloud is a “creature of innovation.”

Crowd Sourcing a Community

Almost since the web was created, people have talked about “stickiness” -- that it is not the number of visitors the count, but the level of commitment they show in terms of time, money and other forms of engagement.  When stickiness reaches another level, it’s called community.  People don’t just visit, have a good time, maybe spend money and leave.  They keep coming back -- not so much to engage with the site but to engage with each other.

In classic marketing, this is an “affinity group” -- a self-identified bunch of people brought together around common interests and affiliations, which in web communities are formed mostly online.  When communities happen it’s less about the website that hosts the community and more about the people.  If you’re sticky, you have a great website.  If you have community, you have great people.

So where does crowd sourcing fit in a community?  Can you have both a crowd and a community at the same time?  Crowds are generally large and anonymous -- not how most people would define a community.  But crowds are also a huge source of ideas and information -- the raw materials from which KaaS is built.

But without a community, the knowledge is just that -- raw material.  It takes a community to build KaaS.

When knowledge providers are successful they become known as experts. Users keep coming back here because the experts’ knowledge has value.  They also come back to share knowledge with other users.  Affinity happens because of personal affiliations, personal recognition, and the psychic and monetary rewards that come with helping people

So, yes there is a KaaS community here. You could say we crowd sourced it. 

Pricing Should Be “Open” Too

One thing you can say about KaaS -- and many other cloud services -- most customers tend to pay the same for the same service.  One example: our “SAP Helpdesk in the Cloud,” where each customer pays a flat per-answer fee for each consulting question they pose.

Other crowd sourcing offerings -- on this site and others -- may employ other pricing models, such as cash awards for custom software solutions -- awards that can be set by the buyer, the seller or the site.  Regardless of the particular formula, however, the price tends to be two things:  1) open, in that everyone knows what it is, and 2) the same for everyone.  Of course, the fact that the price is open also tends to make it consistent. 

But other factors also favor a level price -- like the need for efficiency. KaaS sites are successful to the extent they attract lots of traffic.  Providers will come only if there are lots of customers.  And customers will come only if there are lots of providers.  Both are more likely to come only if buyers and sellers can move in and out of the market quickly.  And if users must negotiate a price for every transaction, that will just slow them down.

But if you look at more traditional ways knowledge gets sold -- for example, as software or as software support -- helping people move faster seems like much less a priority.  

Take SAP’s pricing policies.  As Helmuth Gumbel recently observed, there is a contradiction between SAP’s endorsement of openness when it comes to service oriented architectures and the extra licensing fees it charges when you actually allow non-SAP apps to use SAP services.  Depending on how much clout you have, SAP may classify those non-SAP apps as “technical users” and require you to pay extra.

Let’s just say that if you can make it worthwhile to SAP -- say, by buying more licenses -- SAP may cut you a special deal.

That kind of nonsense is less likely to happen in KaaS if only because the pricing really is “open.”  It has to be for this model to work, and because the old models don’t let you move fast enough.

 

 

The Knowledge Singularity

Well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil has written extensively on the impact of rapid change -- with obvious implications on the need for Knowledge as a Service℠ .

According Kurzweil, the rate of change predicted by Moore’s Law — and, in fact, the history of all human progress — is just one segment of a much longer line plot in which both the X- and Y-axes are logarithmic.  This effect of ever-accelerating rates of change is called the technological singularity.  If you take 15 well-known lists of major historic events — extending from the present back to before life first appeared on Earth — they all roughly fall in a straight line on a double-logarithmic graph.

Take, for example, the Human Genome Project.  In 1990, when the $3 billion project was funded, experts predicted it would take over a century to map the entire human genetic code.  It actually took until 2003.  Today you can have yours done in a week for under $1,000.

The reason for the name “singularity” is because the effect is a complete disconnect with how people predict the future — which is to say, linearly.  According to the American Society of Training and Documentation the total amount of knowledge in the world doubles every 18 months — the same rate at which the number of transistors on an integrated circuit increases, according to Moore’s Law.  However, both assertions assume linear progress.  We know already that the rate of both computational power and storage density are actually growing faster than Moore’s law predicts -- and accelerating -- as new technologies replace miniaturized transistors as the basic computing unit.

And as information technology grafts onto other technologies, notably biotech, you’ll start to see the same effect of increasingly accelerated change in human development as well.

The singularity’s implications are obviously profound and perhaps for the most part unfathomable.  But one thing is fairly clear.  That’s the growing need for just-in-time knowledge delivery.  As rates of change accelerate at ever-faster rates, just-in-time knowledge delivery will be key for helping people keep up.  As change increases exponentially, it creates a Knowledge Singularity.  People can’t predict what they will need to know to do their jobs before they need to know it. 

 

What’s So Funny?

Did you hear the punch line to Jay Leno’s joke Tuesday night about today’s Windows 7 launch?  It went something like:  “Great, now I get to spend an hour talking on the phone to technical support!”

Like any good joke, this one had some truth that the audience immediately got.  And that’s what’s interesting -- not about the software -- but that this presumably non-technical audience (not to mention the millions watching at home) found it funny.

The pain of suffering through early versions of a software release is now an everyman experience — kind of like a fraternity initiation.  People eagerly stand in line (at least virtually) to get the next “hit.”  (Windows 7 preorders were at the top of Amazon this week.)  Isn’t that hilarious?

Everyone also gets that technical support lines aren’t much fun either.  First, there’s the frustration of the product not doing what it’s supposed to; then the self-doubt that perhaps it’s “my fault;” then the long waits to get help; then the “fixes” that mess up something else on the computer -- and so on and so on.

The lesson here is that the total cost of technical support is not just out-of-pocket.  Lousy technical support can be psychologically debilitating -- especially for knowledge workers under pressure to produce.  Want to see people get emotional?  Give them truly great technical support.  No kidding.

To Grow Cut Costs, Increase Innovation

We are currently in the middle of third-quarter financial reporting season.  And as more companies report their results, the key question market watchers are asking is this:  Will top-line growth return?  If not, then the current record-setting rally may not be sustainable.  Wall Street experts know companies can’t cut their way to growth.  In order to grow they have to, well, grow.

That’s a point CIOs apparently understand as they allocate IT maintenance budgets. Third-party maintenance providers cut costs, obviously.  But that’s not where growth comes from.  Growth comes from innovation -- and having more money to spend in areas where innovation will count.

Switching to third-party maintenance usually means putting off technology upgrades.  So what does that say about ERP?  Remember business process re-engineering?  Remember process silos?  Apparently that is all yesterday’s news.  Despite accelerating rates of change everywhere, enterprise software has apparently hit the wall as an enterprise change enabler.

Or it could mean that some ERP companies have hit a wall?  Today’s ERP leaders were much younger when they saw the need to tie disparate company activities together into a unified force.  Their growth strategy was certainly not to maintain the status quo. They were out to radically change the status quo.

That’s something else CIOs might wish to consider as they allocate IT maintenance budgets.  Reduced maintenance costs can’t mean reducing the flow of innovation -- of new knowledge -- coming into the company.   Growth-oriented support solutions must provide for both.

Driving the Knowledge Economy

What is Knowledge? Defined as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; fact and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Knowledge, and skills are different but related sorts of things. Knowledge has to do with what you know; what you are aware of and what you understand about how things work and how things fit together. You may have come by knowledge first hand through life experience, or you could have taken it from books, websites and other means of recording. Skill or ability, on the other hand describes your ability to influence things; to take what you know and apply it so as to cause a real effect to occur.[1]

Knowledge Vs Information: Knowledge is not just information. It must be usefully available to the system, though that system may not be conscious. The system should be dynamic and self-organizing (unlike a mere book on its own). The knowledge must constitute some sort of representation of "the outside world", or ways of dealing with it (directly or indirectly). There must be some way for the system to access this information quickly enough for it to be useful. Knowing something intellectually is a very different thing than knowing how to make practical use of knowledge.

Knowledge Gap: In the service sector the spread of knowledge remains confined to an individual or a company the knowledge workers interacts with.  The concept of recycling and reusing knowledge and releasing its full potential to the masses remains largely untapped. It is because the current systems operate in closed arena, providing access to knowledge only to those who interact with these knowledge providers directly or indirectly.

Why is access to knowledge important?

• Increasing integration of every individual into a global trade system
• Information knowledge based economy
• Rise of networked information society
• Gradual ascendance of human rights, the human dignity; development as freedom

Access to Knowledge is therefore central to human development as right to freedom and justice is. [2]

Knowledge Systems:

There should not be a barrier for anyone to acquire either the knowledge to become a professionally trained service person or the opportunity to deliver the professional knowledge regardless of geographical boundaries and the knowledge once delivered should not need to be recreated and the knowledge once discovered should be available for sharing; when we have an infrastructure like the internet.

An open and transparent self-organizing system where knowledge can be pooled, sold, traded, distributed, recycled, reused by many and created by many is practically non-existent. In recent years a lot of new initiatives (Wikipedia, YouTube, Scribd, etc.) on moving towards open and self organizing systems (where knowledge can be pooled, collaborated on, shared and distributed in a self organizing way) have taken place on the internet. What we now call Web 2.0 companies. However most of these initiatives still operate as a free source for distributing knowledge and do not operate like marketplaces.

Knowledge Marketplace as a Knowledge System

SPINACT™ Knowledge Marketplace not only organizes information producers as well as the knowledge systems, it is also a platform where Knowledge can be freely traded across the board as a commodity, making it universally accessible, but also the viability of that access possible through driving a Knowledge based economy.

[1] Changing Your Knowledge, Skills and Abilities and Credentials , Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. and Jolyn Wells-Moran, Ph.D.

[2] The Idea of Access to Knowledge, Yochai Benkler

Knowledge as a Service (KaaS)

   

Here is an interesting article on Knowledge as a Service (KaaS). Thei Geurts illustrates how KaaS can help support an agile enterprise in a networked knowledge economy.

Key theme:

"Knowledge as a service

For “being able to use knowledge” the knowledge should be offered to the user as a service. This is in line with both Web 2.0 and SOA technologies which re-conceive software as services. A knowledge service supports not only the day to day process; but also accelerates learning and capability building and establishes effective performance feedback loops.”

Hello World!

Welcome to SPINACT World! In next few weeks we will be introducing you to SPINACT team that has helped us shape this idea into a remarkable product and concept.