It’s nothing new for companies to threaten Microsoft’s business model and in particular its dominance of the desktop operating systems where it has over 90% control. The line of prior contenders include IBM’s OS/2, mis-marketed and mispriced, Apple’s early operating systems, too expensive and incompatible, Linux and Open Source, to geeky and incomplete, Sun’s Java, never gained critical mass on the desktop outside browsing.

But things have changed a lot over the last 20 years and this time it looks like Google may have enough pieces of the puzzle, ready to assemble and at arm’s length, to create a real threat. The growth of the Internet has standardized and commoditized network access (TCP/IP), information sharing (XML/SOA), content presentation and many elements of data storage and functionality (HTML, JavaScript, XML, Flash etc). Google has critical mass in the information aggregation and search market, has a decent installed browser (Chrome) and the financial strength to fight a lengthy and costly battle with the most successful technology company of all time.

Google has already stated that they plan to start with cheap Internet ready laptops a market segment where low cost, low features products can expect to gain more and more traction and have all the hall marks of disruptive technology. But it’s been tried before with other low cost, low function desktop appliances and alternatives and everyone but Citrix’s technology has effectively failed. It’s also an area where traditional market players are less likely to focus and presents an opportunity to gain a competitive foothold from which to grow a business.

These changes will present exciting new opportunities for companies with the strategic vision and execution ability who can get in front of this opportunity. What does that mean? We think it means starting to talk to Google about how to become an app vendor for this new platform, much as companies have done with Apple’s iPhone platform. There’s a huge opportunity for early adopters to get a free ride on Google’s marketing and distribution machine and as one of the first players, you’re going to stand out in the market before the rush of ‘me too’ competitors get there to.

From a technology perspective, we already know that it’s going to be an open- source (Linux kernel), web-based platform that most likely builds on the capabilities of the Chrome Browser and Android handheld platform. From here we can only speculate that Google will start building more network enabled operating systems drivers and features into this code base as it quickly grows to become a true Internet oriented operating system. What are the APIs and features going to look like, we don’t know yet, but start by taking a close look at Chrome and Google’s other software and it may provide clues for the future.

Our best guess is that Google Chrome OS 1.0 will look something like this…  Take the Chrome Browser as it appears today and include a series of enhancements aimed at improving the capabilities of Google’s existing ‘Science Project’ technology.  Add some client side improvements for Gmail, Calendar, Search, Images, GoogleDocs, Mapsand make them run very fast.  Expect that the new OS will start-up really fast, I’m thinking in a few seconds vs. a few minutes for Windows.  Image a basic series of file system, print, sharing and collaboration built into a series of browser pages.   Then a series of new third party and Google applications as they look for a ‘killer application’ which they need to drive excitement and rapid adoption for some niche of new customers.

If you want to capitalize on this oppurtunity, start a strategic planning discussion around what this opportunity means for you and how you can effectively position your products and services to take advantage of Google multi-billion dollar machine.  Is your product or service, something that would work well on a light-weight, low cost, web enabled lap-top with a fast, new browser based operating system?  If so, keep a watch for Google’s announcement for third party app providers and be ready for some late nights!

Latest update 7/12/09:

With a post to the official Chrome blog Wednesday afternoon, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory said its hardware partners include Acer, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

Googe are going to Open Source the software later this year, which will drive adoption and support.

The price is going to be free.  Expect to see something 2H 2010.

An good article on the topic from HBR Google’s Chrome OS: A ‘Nuclear Bomb’ or Just Noise?

Remember January – It’s over. Not the recession, but the concern that we might be headed into the next great depression. Now it just looks like the worst recession in decades.

After a heavy focus on sharp cost cutting many organizations are now starting loosen up and restart the strategic programs that were cancelled and delayed earlier in the year. For IT this means that the pendulum is about to swing in the opposite direction as companies respond to the strategic move of their competitors, rapid mergers and acquisitions, operations consolidations, changes in customer behavior, product mix & government stimulus.

I expect that there will be a wave of new business demands that the IT organization will need to address in order to maximize the opportunity that exists as we move from expected depression, stagflation, and recession to slow to moderate growth. These challenges will be hard to address with staffing thin, strategic programs stalled and resources focused on short term ROI initiatives.

Here are 5 ideas to help you prepare for the next wave of IT investment:

1) Hire to the bench

Preemptively hire key skills and talent, taking advantage of the current job market.

2) Implement strategic and tactical vendor relationships -

with service providers with critical high demand skills such as Business Intelligence, BPM & SOA

3) Work with HR and the executive team to create innovative staff retention strategies for key IT team members.

If your staff has experienced salary caps, reductions, 401k match eliminations, tuition reimbursement eliminations then they may be lured away by competitors who can make them whole again. (Think GE’s rapid stimulus funded growth in electronic medical records?)

4) Loyalty is an emotion.

Get on the floor and tell team members how much you appreciate their hard work and commitment during the last 9 months. Take them to lunch and spoil them!

5) “Just did it”

Create a culture of action and results and reward accordingly.

IT organizations are under increasing pressure to align investments and operations expenses with the needs of the business, and in many cases this has become a reality. But the results are frequently disappointing. So what comes next?

I believe that the goal of IT & Business alignment is to ensure that all IT investments and operations activities are oriented towards creating and maximizing value-added products and services for the end customer. The IT organization should have a process driven focus on the systemic identification, reduction and where possible elimination of non-value add processes and activities.

In most businesses the IT organization predominantly serves internal customers who act as proxies for the end customer. One of the challenges with this approach is that it assumes that the business correctly understands the stated and unstated goals and desires of customers and is able to translate them with high-fidelity to the IT organization for action. Similarly it assumes that the IT organization can correctly hear and determine the goals of the customer as echoed by the sales/marketing/product management organization.

I have seen many examples where this is not the case. The end result is an investment or process change that is implemented on-time, on-budget and with good quality that misses the mark in the eye’s of the customer. When these situations occur it’s useful to identify if anyone from the IT organization actually spent time face to face with the customer to determine their goals, priorities and motivations. Frequently, this did not happen.

Today’s IT Strategy

Today, many IT strategies are striving to implement Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based technical strategies, but these efforts run the risk of delivering sub-optimal business results due to a lack of strategic alignment with the customer.

While SOA and BPM provide ways to reduce development and maintenance costs, reduce time to implement changes and enable new features and functions, the benefits will not be realized if the IT strategy does not accurately take into account the current and future goals and aspirations of end customers. There are important strategic considerations that are being decided within the IT organization on prioritizing and selecting and scheduling these investments and unless there is a planned customer orientation it’s very likely that the investment won’t translate into the desired customer benefits.

If you are planning to implement SOA or BPM or already have these investments well under way, but are concerned about the lack of end results to the business, The Pennell Group can help. We will assess the current status of your IT strategy and deliver creative, value added solutions that maximize the impact of these investments.

The Pennell Group will take you from here:

IT Business Alignment -> SOA & BPM -> XXX MIXED RESULT XXX

To Here:

Strategic Customer Alignment -> SOA & BPM -> BUSINESS SUCCESS!!!