By Sandra Sieber, IESE professor
If the existence of imaginative and brilliant competition is the best stimulus for innovation, Microsoft should not complain: Google is at full throttle in the online technology race, this time pushing the possibilities for online collaboration to the limit.


Read

Date: May 2009
Source: AETIC
Abstract: With this tool, AETIC helps professionals and human resources departments to continue making progress in the areas of wages, working conditions and employment trends in Spain's ICT sector. According to the latest edition, the best-paid employees are sales managers, who have seen a 5.06% bump in income since 2005, and now average 96,940 euros annually. The report also shows the growing number of women working in the sector, who now account for 40% of the total ICT workforce. The majority (57%) are degree holders, predominantly coming from computer science, followed by telecommunications. Most do split shifts, though there is a growing percentage of professionals with flexible working hours. Permanent contracts, which were already the norm, now account for 85%. The average age is between 33 and 40, while the most sought-after degrees are: computer science, which has been around 30% since 2005, telecommunications (20%), economics (9.5%), and industrial degrees (7%). The most surprising piece of data, which seems to contradict the general economic trend, is that more than half the companies surveyed expect their staff to increase in 2009.

This study is based on the information supplied by the human resources departments at 70 companies, which employ a total of 67,046 people in 80 professional categories, and work in the following departments: sales, administrative, technical/development, administrative/finance, operations, maintenance, purchasing/logistics, and plant operations. 
 

Read more (spanish)

Title: Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast and Methodology, 2008-2013
Date: June 2009
Source: Cisco Systems
Abstract: Internet usage continues to skyrocket worldwide in terms of the number of users, the utilization of its resources and the growing sophistication of its services. Hence, speculation abounds as to the implications of all this. One way to get a better handle on such calculations would be to refer to the annual report by Cisco Systems, one of the Internet's most experienced players in this field. The most recent edition of this report forecasts that the current economic crisis will have only a slight effect on Internet traffic growth, which by 2013 will reach nearly four times its current total. Annual global IP traffic will exceed two thirds of a zettabyte (667 exabytes) in four years. A zettabyte (ZB) is equivalent to one billion terabytes (TB), or 10²¹ bytes.

Between 2008 and 2013, traffic will grow 40% annually and quintuple by 2013. The white paper is available in PDF format and includes tables of the global IP traffic, broken down by type, segment, geography, and year. It also underlines the important role to be played by video in that spectacular traffic growth, which will be fueled by the availability of numerous devices boasting ever-increasing screen sizes. In 2013, almost 64% of the world's mobile data traffic will be video applications, from IPTV, video on demand (VoD), ambient video, video calling, and many other multimedia elements.

Read more 

The recent wave of smartphones put out by Nokia, Palm and Apple has narrowed the gap between the end consumers and the service and applications providers, a trend highlighted in a recent issue of our Newsletter in "Mobility Opts for Direct Sales.” Moreover, these new models represent a new step toward eliminating the barriers between telecommunications and IT.

In its recent article titled "Apple y Nokia desenvainan sus nuevos smartphones" ["Apple and Nokia unveil their new smartphones"], Cinco Días calls attention to the rivalry between Nokia, the world's leading handset maker (thanks to its market share of 36%), and Apple, the sector's emerging powerhouse. According to the Spanish newspaper, the firms' respective new launches, the N97 and the iPhone 3G S, are a couple of "bona fide computers" whose battle for supremacy "will benefit the entire sector." The article bases its statements on forecasts made by Jupiter Research, which expects to see a 95% growth in smartphone sales to reach 300 million units in 2013 and take 23% of the overall market share for handsets worldwide. The piece also includes a section on the Palm Pre, a device that features the new webOS operating system and which made its market debut on June 6 in the United States through the wireless carrier Sprint. Meanwhile, Le Monde states that this "battle of the nomads will be won at the operating-system level, just as Microsoft won the battle of the desktop PC with Windows two decades ago.” Its article titled "Quand smartphones et mini-PC ne feront plus qu'un" ["When Smartphones and Mini PCs Become One and the Same"], the French newspaper cites the decisive role of platforms in the convergence of the smartphone and the mini PC, and not only outlines the most well known (Nokia's Symbian, Apple's iPhone OS, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Google's Android and Palm's webOS) but also reviews the new generation of projects that are bursting onto the scene in hopes of being the ideal bridge between the handset and the PC.

Articles in Europa Press (spanish), BusinessWeek, PCWorld, and Technology Review (spanish)

On the Internet, complete privacy cannot be guaranteed and social networks are certainly no exception. Late last year, The Guardian took note of an interesting case in point. Our newsletter from the second half of February featured the article Warning: privacy attacks can seriously harm the image of their perpetrators. In March, the New York Times pointed out the privacy risks entailed by a problem that affected  Google. As issues of this type escalate, so too have the claims and warnings by forums and specialized organizations. But when it comes to social networks and their repercussions on a professional's online reputation, it is often recommendable to use only pseudonyms or remain anonymous. However, according to "Desenmascarando a los usuarios de las redes sociales" ["Unmasking the Users of Social Networks"], this practice does not ensure privacy either. The article, published in Technology Review, echoes a recent study conducted by the University of Texas, which concludes that it is possible obtain important information about the members of social networks by using the connections existing between the users—even if have eliminated most of the names, addresses and other forms of personal identification. "Through a series of tests performed on the photo-sharing site Flickr and the microblog service Twitter, the Texas researchers were able to identify a third of the users that had accounts on both sites.” The algorithms used by the researchers gave a margin of error of just 12%.

Another related article (published in the same magazine), "Las redes sociales esconden la privacidad en el armario" [“Social Networks Keep Privacy Hidden in the Closet”], discusses a paper that defends the argument that there could be "an economic reason to explain why it is so difficult to locate and make changes to the privacy settings of many social networks.” According to Cambridge Prof. Joseph Bonneau, one of the study's authors, "for the social network, the more information you share on the site, the more valuable you are.” The study shows that "Bebo, LinkedIn and Gaia Online have the best practices for privacy, Badoo, CouchSurfing and MyLife have the poorest (...) and Facebook and MySpace are right in the middle.” To illustrate that different practices are indeed possible, Bonneau cites the business network XING, which encrypts all of the site's interactions. Still, though, Bonneau remains realistic: “one safe way to use the Net is to assume that everything we post will become public sooner or later.”

Amy Shuen is an internationally recognized authority on Silicon Valley business models and innovation economics. She has taught high-tech entrepreneurship, strategy and venture finance at Wharton and Berkeley in the U.S., and is currently Professor of Management Practice at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai. Her bestselling book, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, explains how managers can integrate Web 2.0 practices and transform what they do according to the new business paradigm, which will improve their bottom line.

In May 2009, Shuen visited IESE Barcelona to deliver a seminar on the “upside in the downturn” based on her research of business innovation models in China and the U.S. During her visit, she was interviewed by Sandra Sieber, associate professor and chair of the Department of Information Systems.

See interview