Cloud Computing: Can Networks Keep Up?

http://www.peak10.com/blog/post/cloud-computing-can-networks-keep-up?utm_source=News&utm_medium=cpc-pk10mkto-2988&utm_campaign=datasecurity2#.UzvNt6iSyTM
Ken Donoghue, Peak 10 Contributing Writer 

There is strong evidence that cloud computing and cloud storage will experience big growth spurts this year. The cloud has more to offer than ever before, and competition among providers for mindshare is producing highly differentiated products with real appeal to businesses of all sizes and types, particularly in the mid-market.

Three contributors stand out. The cloud offerings have matured mightily over the past few years, particularly in the area of security and compliance, making the cloud more attractive all around. Maturity in the cloud storage arena has been accompanied by a massive expansion in data generation and data analytics; it all has to go somewhere. Early adopters who sampled the waters with test and development in the cloud and those compelled to pay attention because of technology consumerization are finally moving into real production implementations, having run out of excuses.

Every good story needs a protagonist and an antagonist, right? In this story, the antagonist is the network, both the internal network infrastructure and the Internet pipes through which all data should flow unimpeded back and forth to the cloud.

Maintaining connectivity to the cloud service provider is the customer’s responsibility. So is making sure connections are sized properly to give you the performance you need and expect. Don’t expect the condition and reliability of existing network hardware and connections internally to magically improve by moving to the cloud; thoroughly review and test systems and components beforehand. There’s nothing quite like a migration to the cloud to unearth buried network skeletons.

Network dynamics will change with cloud adoption. Scalability and data access in the cloud alter bandwidth considerations. Applications can perform differently and latency imposed may be too much for some applications to accommodate. Taking time to understand how the cloud will affect networks and applications and the people who use them will minimize fire drills later.

Prepare for Success

There never seems be enough bandwidth to satisfy everyone. That is almost certain to be the case with the cloud. Size your bandwidth requirements appropriately, and understand that they will only continue to increase as your company’s relationship with the cloud matures. At the same time, evaluate the condition of firewalls (and firewall management practices) and routers for the new demands to be placed upon them.

Depending on the capabilities of your chosen service provider and the products you will be using, this may also be a good time to upgrade security monitoring tools and data privacy compliance systems, particularly with regards to data encryption.

Uptime and reliability – always a big concern – take on major importance as more services come to rely on Internet access. Simple redundancy is better than none. Tripling your Internet connections and service vendors will provide added insurance to help keep your company online and productive should one supplier’s connection suddenly go dark.

The Supplier Side of the Equation

Now that you’ve prepared things on your end, be sure the cloud provider is equally well prepared to provide you with an excellent customer experience. Can your provider upgrade rapidly in response to your requirements? How about their own growth requirements? You want to be doing business with a growing and going concern; continued economic viability is a very important criterion in the selection of a service provider. Have them explain their strategy and their metrics for ensuring ample bandwidth overhead to accommodate expansion … theirs and yours.
Expect your provider to be a model of best-in-class network features, boasting redundant carrier-class infrastructure, dynamic routing, route optimization and flexible resource allocation. Ask who their vendors are. Determine their aggregate network capacity and aggregate Internet capacity. Determine the options available to you and that will best meet your particular requirements.

It’s also good to know the proximity of your service provider to an Internet exchange point, the connection nexus for large numbers of Internet backbone routers and their carriers. The closer the cloud provider the better their Internet performance and speed will be, and the less latency you can expect between you and the service provider. 

Is Anybody Out There?

Self-reliance and self-service are admirable. Many cloud service providers are happy to see you go it alone, or to provide on-line resource guides to help you sort things out. Expect this, however, to be a journey without end. The goal is not simply to get into the cloud. Using the cloud and all its resources to drive your business forward with new products, services and customer experiences is where the true power resides. Consider stepping off on the right foot by finding a trusted partner with whom to make this journey. There is no need to go it alone, and there is safety in numbers.

We give special thanks to our technology partner, Cisco, for this blog.

Why Gmail and other e-mail services aren't really free

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/31/tech/web/gmail-privacy-problems/index.html
Heather Kelly

(CNN) -- Gmail doesn't cost any money to use, but it's not free.

Google's popular online e-mail service, which turns 10 Tuesday, may not charge for its Gmail accounts. But the company is still collecting payment in the form of massive amounts of personal information about the people who use it.

With an estimated 500-plus million users, Gmail has grown to dominate the Web-mail world. It has also repeatedly found itself in hot water over privacy. Gmail is facing multiple privacy lawsuits in the United States and Europe, some accusing the company of illegal wiretapping for scanning the content of e-mails.

Google reported $16.86 billion in revenues for the last quarter of 2013 alone. One way it makes money from Gmail is by automatically scanning and indexing messages and using the data it mines to show relevant ads to its users.

"The basic premise of Gmail is, we'll give you a robust e-mail service and in exchange we want to display ads alongside our e-mail and we're scanning your e-mail to decide what ads are most relevant," said Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

Scanning and ads

Gmail looks for keywords that identify topics of discussion based on things such as frequency and context, then matches the e-mail up with related ads. A conversation thread about meeting up at a spinning class, for example, might trigger an ad for a weight-loss product.

Data gathered through e-mail scanning can also be used to create user profiles for future ad targeting.

What many consumers don't consider is that companies such as Google can create a comprehensive profile of each user based on information from different products such as search, maps, e-mail and Google+, its social network.

"Nothing in life is free, and as a result it is important for people to understand what value they bring to a free service of any kind," saidBehnam Dayanim, a partner at the law firm Paul Hastings LLP in Washington.

When people send and receive messages using a free e-mail service, they are sharing details about their interests, who their connections are and what their finances look like. That information might seem mundane on the surface, but when extracted and organized, it's incredibly valuable to marketers and advertisers.

All the major e-mail providers, including Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo, benefit one way or another from offering a free service. The provider might serve up general or targeted ads, generate a user base for marketing other services, or just use the e-mail service to build brand recognition.

And while Gmail may have popularized it, targeted ads based on user data has become the primary business model for many tech companies. It's how social media companies such as Facebook and search engines such as Bing make money as well as a huge number of apps that scrape contact and location information from users. It's also led to a number of similar privacy lawsuits against other companies, including LinkedIn, Yahoo and Facebook.

Any company that collects personal information has to advise its customers what it is doing with their information and comply with any relevant privacy laws, Dayanim said. These are usually laid out in the lengthy terms and conditions and privacy policies that customers barely skim before hitting "agree."

However, many of the details about how exactly Google's program works have been kept confidential. And critics say the service doesn't adequately disclose what it is doing with customers' information.

Legal action

When Gmail made its debut in 2004, it was upfront about the fact that it would show contextual ads targeted to match the topic of e-mail threads. People still lined up to be accepted as early beta users of the service because it was slickly designed, included ample amounts of storage, and was excellent at filtering out spam. And it didn't cost anything to sign up.

One problem is that not all the people affected have agreed to Google's privacy policy. One group of plaintiffs in a recent class-action lawsuit were non-Gmail users who sent messages to Gmail accounts. Google responded that non-Gmail customers had no expectations of privacy when sending e-mails to people who did use the service.

Google has defended its e-mail scanning program by pointing out that it's automated and handled by computers picking out keywords. Google's employees aren't personally reading through e-mails for the latest lovers' spat.

Google also says the scans are necessary to cut down on malicious e-mails and spam, and for features such as Priority Inbox and the tabbed view that filters e-mails into different categories.

A federal judge dealt a blow to the case this month, ruling it couldn't proceed as a class-action lawsuit because the different groups weren't cohesive enough. A class-action lawsuit could have cost Google trillions of dollars in damages.

A changing landscape

When Gmail debuted in 2004, the rules for collecting user information were looser. But the privacy landscape has changed drastically over the past 10 years.

Several U.S. states have passed laws that restrict the use of personal information, the Federal Trade Commission has been more active pursuing privacy violations, and the industry has adopted best practices about what's acceptable.

One thing that hasn't changed is the federal law with the biggest impact on how and when companies can share data with third parties. The Electronics Communication Privacy Act is a dusty piece of legislation passed in 1986, long before the era of cloud-based e-mail. Many legislators and technology companies (including Google) have lobbied to have the law updated to reflect the times.

Meanwhile, consumers must increasingly weigh the value of using a free e-mail service such as Gmail against their personal privacy.

10 Gmail innovations

We may take it for granted now, but email has changed the way we interact with one another. Ten years ago Google launched Gmail, a free web-based email service (at first invite-only) that has grown into the world's most-used. Here's a retro-flavored look at 10 innovations Gmail has led since its April 1, 2004, launch.

Storage:

 Gmail initially offered 1 GB of storage, which was massive at the time. The standard, from competitors like Hotmail, had been around 2-4 MB. Cloud storage now lets Google offer 15 GB of free storage across its services, meaning users never have to delete an email if they don't want to.

 With all that storage, it could be a task to dig through your inbox to find an old message. Gmail was an innovator in search, through, allowing the user to type in a keyword or two and pull up all their emails that contained them.

 It didn't take long for us to start clogging up our email accounts. Whether it's spam, social-media notifications or offers from companies with whom we've done business, a lot of our messages aren't exactly urgent. With Stars, and later the Priority Inbox, Google made it a little easier to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Unsend:

In 2009 Google gave us a chance to take it all back, at least if we act fast. Improved and more widely discovered the following year, this feature gives you 30 seconds (originally just five) to click "Undo Send," ending that sick-to-your-stomach feeling when you realize that nasty note *about* your boss was accidentally sent *to* your boss.

Social networking: 

Google Buzz didn't last, and Google+ has been more about creating close-knit communities than becoming a Facebook killer. But when Google linked up Gmail with Buzz in 2010 and Google+ the following year, it signaled the company's goal of pulling all Google services together under one digital umbrella.

How's this for forward looking? In 2005, nearly two years before the world met a gadget called the iPhone, Gmail was available as a mobile app. Obviously, most people didn't have a smartphone then. But even the feature phones of yore could let you check your messages with this feature.

Experiment away:

In 2008, Google launched Gmail Labs, letting users pick and choose from any number of in-house experiments the company was working on. Some, like bookmarking certain messages, would work their way into the product for everybody, while others would just disappear.

Calendar integration:

One of our favorite Gmail syncs is one of the simplest. By tying in the user's calendar to Gmail, important dates that you receive in messages -- invitations and the like -- show up on your calendar without you having to do anything. One less excuse for forgetting your anniversary, folks.

Sometimes we chat with the same folks for years, or chat with a lot of folks at once. It can be tough to keep up with it all. A lot of e-mail services now offer "threaded" conversations, but it was Gmail that popularized the concept. In Gmail, replies, replies to replies and, yes, replies to those replies are displayed in one place, in order, making it easier to follow the entire conversation.

OK, this one was just funny. Sometimes, 30 seconds isn't enough to save us from ourselves. So, in 2008, an engineer came up with Mail Goggles. If you enable it, it defaults to the hours you're most likely to be ... uh ... festive, and makes you answer a set of math problems before you can send a message. With Mail Goggles, if you still go ahead with that 3 a.m. declaration of love for your ex, it's totally on you.

Leadership Is About Emotion

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/12/15/leadership-is-about-emotion/
Meghan M. Biro

Make a list of the 5 leaders you most admire. They can be from business, social media, politics, technology, the sciences, any field. Now ask yourself why you admire them. The chances are high that your admiration is based on more than their accomplishments, impressive as those may be. I’ll bet that everyone on your list reaches you on an emotional level.



This ability to reach people in a way that transcends the intellectual and rational is the mark of a great leader. They all have it. They inspire us. It’s a simple as that. And when we’re inspired we tap into our best selves and deliver amazing work.

So, can this ability to touch and inspire people be learned? No and yes. The truth is that not everyone can lead, and there is no substitute for natural talent. Honestly, I’m more convinced of this now – I’m in reality about the world of work and employee engagement. But for those who fall somewhat short of being a natural born star (which is pretty much MANY of us), leadership skills can be acquired, honed and perfected.

Let’s Take A Look At Tools That Allow For Talent To Shine:

Emotional intelligence. Great leaders understand empathy, and have the ability to read people’s (sometimes unconscious, often unstated) needs and desires. This allows them to speak to these needs and, when at all possible, to fulfill them. When people feel they are understood and empathized something, they respond PERIOD and a bond is formed.

Continuous learning. Show me a know-it-all and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t have a clue about being human. Curiosity and an insatiable desire to always do better is the mark of a great leader. They are rarely satisfied with the status quo, and welcome new knowledge and fresh (even if challenging) input. It’s all about investing in yourself.

Contextualize. Great leaders respond to each challenge with a fresh eye. They know that what worked in one situation may be useless in another. Before you act, make sure you understand the specifics of the situation and tailor your actions accordingly.

Let Go. Too many people think leadership is about control. In fact, great leaders inspire and then get out of the way. They know that talented people don’t need or want hovering managers. Leadership is about influence, guidance, and support, not control. Look for ways to do your job and then get out of the way so that people can do theirs.

Honesty.  Not a week goes by that we don’t hear about a so-called leader losing credibility because he or she was dishonest. Often this is because of pressure to try and “measure up” and it’s not coming from a place of being real – often this relates to fear of not being accepted for your true self. We live in age of extraordinary transparency, which is reason enough to always be true to your core – your mission will be revealed, your motivations will show by your behaviors. But it goes way beyond this. It’s an issue that sets an example and elevates an organization. If you have a reputation for honesty, it will be a lot easier to deliver bad news and face tough challenges. Are you inspiring people from your heart? 

Kindness and respect. Nice leaders (people) don’t finish last. They finish first again and again. Ignorance and arrogance are leadership killers. They’re also a mark of insecurity. Treating everyone with a basic level respect is an absolute must trait of leadership. And kindness is the gift that keeps on giving back. Of course, there will be people who prove they don’t deserve respect and they must be dealt with. But that job will be made much easier, and will have far less impact on your organization, if you have a reputation for kindness, honesty and respect.

Collaboration. People’s jobs and careers are integral to their lives. The more your organization can make them a partner, the more they will deliver amazing results. This means, to the greatest extent possible, communicating your organization’s strategies, goals and challenges. This builds buy-in, and again is a mark of respect. People won’t be blindsided (which is a workplace culture killer) by setbacks if they’re in the loop.

Partner with your people. As I said above, people’s careers are a big part of their lives. That seems like a no-brainer, but leaders should have it front and center at all times. Find out what your employees’ career goals are and then do everything you can to help them reach them. Even if it means they will eventually leave your organization. You will gain happy, productive employees who will work with passion and commitment, and tout your company far and wide. This an opportunity to brand your greatness.

Leadership is both an art and a science. These tools are guidelines, not rigid rules. Everyone has to develop his or her own individual leadership style. Make these tools a part of your arsenal and use them well as you strive to reach people on an emotional level. Be Human. This Matters.

Meet The Top 30 Social Salespeople In The World

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2014/03/19/meet-the-top-30-most-social-salespeople-in-the-world/
Meghan M. Biro

“Never underestimate the fondness of people and organizations for the status quo,” Enterprise 2.0 author Andrew McAfee warns businesses. People are naturally resistant to change, and while that’s not always a bad thing, I’ve encountered my fair share of people resistant to the massive changes and opportunities that social media is creating in business and the workplace.

Salespeople, in particular, seem to have a set of rules and values that they are adamant about sticking to, which seems a bit counterintuitive to me, given that today’s buyers complete some 70% of their purchase before contacting a sales representative.  Those in the know recognize that social media offers talented salespeople the ability to get to know today’s buyers better than ever before. These unique skills are becoming critical for HR and Talent Management pros to be aware of.

My own encounters with reluctant salespeople are backed up by new research from KiteDesk, an intelligent prospecting and social selling platform provider, which tells the story of an industry on the cusp of massive change. Apparently, less than half of frontline salespeople are using social media for prospecting, monitoring conversations, interacting with customers or gathering intelligence. Meaning, the majority of salespeople are ignoring social to help them relate to, and engage intelligently with, buyers.

With this in mind, KiteDesk commissioned influencer marketing agency Evolve!, Inc. to research the best and brightest in social sales, in order to give salespeople ready access to the people who do social selling well. Their research uncovered the 30 most influential social salespeople online:

 

I’ve gathered five lessons from these top social salespeople to help those who are still afraid of the transformative powers of social media take steps towards becoming more effective, efficient social sales professionals.

Lesson 1: Meet your prospects on the networks they actually use

To join the ranks of these trailblazing social sellers, you’ve got to use the tools available to you to connect with prospects where they are on social media. Koka Sexton, Senior Social Marketing Manager at Linkedin, says: “Look at any of the prospect’s social media profiles, like Twitter, LinkedIn, and maybe their blog. During the buying cycle, don’t rely only on email and the phone to stay connected. Engage people through social media as well to make sure you are covering them from all sides.”

Lesson 2: “Socially surround” prospects using all the tools at your disposal

Millennials, Gen X and Gen Y professionals, are now buyers.  “Even if they are not using social media as a place to participate, they grew up on social networks and are definitely influenced by it,” said Green Leads CEO and CMO Mike Damphousse.  “We practice a strategy called ‘social surround’ where we use multiple sources of social media and even online advertising on social media to influence and gain intelligence about a prospect. Once we feel they have been sufficiently influenced, we engage them one-on-one.” Social sales evangelist and entrepreneur Jill Rowley has mastered the art and science of using social media networks strategically to find, listen to, relate to, connect with, engage and amplify a potential buyer, the buying committee and their sphere of influence.   She explained:  “I will connect on LinkedIn, follow on Twitter, RT and/or favorite a tweet.  I will figure out whom my buyer trusts and learns from and I’ll #SociallySurround them as well.  I leverage the technique of ‘I see you tweeted about Jay Baer’s awesome book Youtility, did you happen to also read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk?’ I use Google alerts extensively to track mentions of both my potential buyers and customers.  I want to stay engaged with my customers because they are my best source of leads, referrals and ADVOCACY!”

Lesson 3: Not all social media is created equal – choose your networks carefully

Front line sales people know that peers using social to sell are leading the pack. But getting them to actually engage or do research on social media prior to a sales call is challenging because it’s so time intensive. “So much so,” added Jeb Blount, CEO at SalesGravy, “that I have watched salespeople spend tremendous amounts of unproductive time on sites like LinkedIn with nothing to show for it. Sales managers fire salespeople that don’t sell. So it doesn’t take salespeople long to get a clue about where they should be spending their time.” Jeb sees the lack of education –the know how to get the best return on their time investment -and a lack of easy-to-use, at-your-finger-tips tools that provide intelligence for lead generation, prospecting, and engagement as the two biggest impediments to social selling across an organization.

Lesson 4: Get your higher-ups on board

Sales trainer and author Shane Gibson adds another barrier to social sales adoption: c-suite executives. “Executives who come from another era of marketing, communications and leadership…don’t understand the value of empowering entire teams to be social communicators – they just see the risk or they outright see it as a liability.”

Lesson 5: Measure and hype your success stories

So how do you overcome these barriers?  According to Sean Burke, Chief Revenue Officer of KiteDesk, “The holy grail to social sales adoption within an organization is a combination of evangelizing success stories and the ability to track the reach, efficacy and business impacts that social selling delivers.” The Top 30 social salespeople were culled from a list of more than 500 social sales evangelists, which was vetted and scored using a proprietary formula that considered things like engagement, social footprint, popularity among insiders and more. You can take a look at the top 100 social sales experts on KiteDesk’s blog to learn more from the social selling pros.

on Bede Moore

Bede Moore Aims to Bring Online Retail to Indonesia

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/archive/bede-moore-aims-to-bring-online-retail-to-indonesia/

Indonesia, as well as the rest of Southeast Asia, remains a hot spot for technology startups and e-commerce. Both local and foreign forces are eager to take a shot at the e-commerce business in a region largely untouched by industry giants such as Amazon.com.

Indonesia has a few e-commerce websites, such as Rakuten, Gmarket, Tokobagus and Blibli. 

The latest player comes from a German company called Rocket Internet, which recently launched Zalora and Lazada Indonesia. Zalora is a fashion e-commerce site, while Lazada is a general retail site with a focus on electronics and gadgets.

Lazada has also been launched in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, making its focus to the Southeast Asian market obvious. As a promotional strategy, Lazada is offering free delivery to customers’ doors.

Sydney-born Bede Moore is the co-founder and managing director of Lazada Indonesia. 

Moore was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group when Rocket Internet made an approach in November last year to start the e-commerce company in Jakarta. Moore, a Harvard graduate with a major in Indonesian history, said he always wanted to work in Indonesia, so he accepted the challenge.

While still at university, Moore shared his room with a rather well-known tech personality: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. At the time, Facebook had not been invented yet, but Moore did get a chance to see how Zuckerberg, a computer science student, built something that people had never seen before.

Having seen how his former roommate changed the way the world communicates was a valuable experience. Moore, however, says in developing Lazada, the challenge really lies in providing acceptable payment methods and accurate logistics, which has become his obsession. 

The Jakarta Globe spoke to Moore about starting Lazada from scratch, how to handle skeptics and — of course — about his famous former roommate.

The small number of credit card owners would seem a particular challenge to getting an e-commerce business going in Indonesia. What are your strategies?

Yes, we [Lazada] are in five countries and I think I am in the best one. Indonesia is the most interesting market to be operating in. I think probably the Philippines and Indonesia are the most difficult. The difference is the Philippines has a couple of islands whereas Indonesia has more. The part of this business that I run is operation and customer service. These are the most difficult ones in terms of this market because there are a lot of Indonesians who are online and active, but the difficulties is the payment and how you get packages on time.

How do we bring the level of customer service that we believe in. In terms of the time that we have been around, the changes are already seen in the market. We have cash on delivery in 104 cities across the country. That really didn’t exist before as a customer option. We introduced that and it’s really popular with our customers.

Are your products going to be different from those on other e-commerce sites?

The real advantage is the range. We are not just electronics. We have eight different categories ranging from home living to cosmetics. It should be an online single shopping experience. We are making all of these products [available] to people in Indonesia now who have the money but can’t get access to them. We are making that possible.

Orders are delivered by Ningrat and First Logistics. Are these part of your company?

No. They are partners. We are working with these companies to make flawless execution. We are building a new mode of commerce in this country, and if you look at successful commerce across the globe, it has something to do with delivering the goods correctly. JNE has also come aboard to support us. To be honest, most of them are smaller products, getting products to people in Balikpapan, and we are also able to get a treadmill to a man in Papua. The challenge is to make sure that every part of the delivery works flawlessly. And to do that in a country where no one has done it before, obviously you’ll have difficulties.

Seeing that payment methods can be tricky, why did Lazada decide not to use PayPal?

PayPal is nominated in US dollars here, so if I were an Indonesian consumer and saw that my purchase is being converted to US dollars, I might be more unsure about it, right?

How do you handle criticism that Lazada is a copy of Amazon.com?

It’s not something that particularly concerns me. I think what we are trying to do is to be a general retailer online. If being a general retailer [means that] people think we’re Amazon, that’s fine, it’s their interpretation. What I think we are doing is getting hold of a bunch of products and trying to bring those to various people in this country. You can call it Amazon, I think that is retail. We are just doing it online.


Tell us about your former roommate.

It’s a funny story. It’s a good time for our room. There’s Samyr Laine, who is an Olympic triple jumper who is going to compete in the Olympics in a couple of days. It’s unfortunate because I contacted Mark 10 days ago, I wrote to him and said, ‘We have to go to the Olympics and watch Sam jump.’ It was a very interesting experience, I was his roommate in my first year. We were very different. I started at Harvard as a student of general history, and then I moved into colonial history. Obviously Mark was doing computer science, and Sam was doing government.

In freshman year he was working on another big project, Synapse, a music player app that learns about your listening habits. Back in 2002, it was a very interesting thing. He was negotiating with various companies about whether or not he was going to pursue that. In sophomore year, he roomed with Chris Hughes, who is in the film [“The Social Network”] and that was when he came up with Facemash and Facebook.

Did you know that you were going to work at a tech startup?

No. I get it from my writing days in ABC in New York in 2006. I found it fascinating to see with five huge monitors to track Web traffic. Obviously I have known the behind-the-scenes story of Facebook, and I know it’s a business phenomenon. It’s new, compared to palm oil, it’s a new commerce. I thought it’s great because I can be in a country where I want to be, in a new industry with new, young people.

Entrepreneur Profile: From Harvard to Indonesian E-Commerce with Bede Moore

http://www.powerretail.com.au/insights/entrepreneur-profile-harvard-indonesian-e-commerce-bede-moore/

• 22ND JANUARY
• CAMPBELL PHILLIPS
• 
  

Bede Moore’s professional and educational history has seen him travel the world. Now running his own e-commerce business in Indonesia, Moore explains how he went from sharing a room with Mark Zuckerberg to starting businesses in South-East Asia.

Australian ex-pat Bede Moore is the kind of entrepreneur that combines practical savvy, a deep business education and a penchant for the intrepid.

Moore’s journey has taken him from sharing a room with Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, to starting retail brands for Rocket Internet in Indonesia. Now he’s started his own company, Vela Asia, which aims to provide services and solutions to other retail brands operating in the region.

While he was perhaps best known for his prowess as a rower during the Harvard years, Moore went on to work for Boston Consulting Group before being picked up by Rocket. His story typifies that of the worldly entrepreneur, and one can only wonder what project Moore will set up next.

Recently, Power Retail conducted an interview with Moore to discover a little more about his story.

Bede Moore

·      Australian Businessman and Entrepreneur

·      Managing Director and Founder, Vela Asia and Director of the Australian Indonesian Youth Association

·      Previously: Managing Director and Co-Founder, Lazada.co.id

What led you to consider moving to South-East Asia to pursue your career?

I studied colonial and Indonesian history, first during my undergraduate degree at Harvard and then for my MPhil at Leiden, where I was awarded honours. While I was studying in Leiden, I was looking at Australia’s relations with Indonesia during the Independence period, and I became really interested in the country and its history. I did research trips to Indonesia and decided I wanted to return at some point.

After my masters, I decided I didn’t want to go into academia, so I started working for the Boston Consulting Group (alongside Iconic co-founders Adam Jacobs and Cameron Votan) and did a lot of work for them in retail and industrial goods. My partner and business co-founder, Susie Sugden, was also working for BCG, and we asked them to move us to the Jakarta office in 2011. We worked briefly at the BCG office in Jakarta and were then headhunted by Rocket Internet to launch the local version of The Iconic, Zalora Indonesia. We then moved across to found Lazada Indonesia, which is now one of the largest e-commerce players in the country.

Rocket was an excellent experience and we learned a great deal, and it inspired us to become entrepreneurs. In late 2012, we decided to launch our own business, Vela, which provides end-to-end e-commerce services for brands, manufacturers and retailers.

Were there any major challenges you had to overcome in making the move?

Absolutely. In my experience, it is very easy to underestimate the difficulty of operating in these markets. Customs and expectations are very different from the West and it takes a great deal of time to understand them and be sensitive to them. Given my academic background, and a brief period working for BCG here, it was certainly easier to start operating as an entrepreneur, but it’s a never-ending process of learning. I think the biggest challenges in e-commerce have been the industry’s novelty, the lack of critical infrastructure (eg payments) and the immaturity of the logistics market. These are issues which directly impact all e-commerce entities here.

Our advantage as a company is that we have now got more experience operating in this environment than almost anyone else. It is simply through time and experimentation that we have come to understand how to work here, what things work and what things don’t. This is the value we bring to our clients: we know more about how to do e-commerce in Indonesia than almost anyone else.

What were your initial thoughts about the South-East Asian market, and has this changed over time?

We knew from the outset that Indonesia was going to present a huge range of opportunities. In fact, one of the things that surprised me early on was how few people have tried to come here and to take advantage of what is occurring. I think that’s because they are nervous about entering, which was part of the driver for setting up Vela – we knew foreign brands and manufacturers would want to work with a company that could provide them international levels of service in a developing market. The interesting thing is how quickly attitudes are changing.

Two years ago when we first started working in e-commerce, people would say, “Oh, Indonesia’s not ready for e-commerce. It will be at least ten years until it works here, if ever.” Now we are run off our feet speaking to major retailers who want to find out how quickly they can get online. It’s been an amazingly rapid change and it has certainly confirmed our earlier convictions.

Timeline:

• August 2011: Moved to Indonesia with BCG
• November 2011 – September 2012: Co-founded Zalora.co.id and Lazada.co.id
• September 2012 – present: Launched Vela

What is Vela and how did the opportunity come about?

Vela provides end-to-end e-commerce services to both local and international clients. We offer turn-key e-commerce services to Indonesian and international companies operating (or desiring to operate) in the Indonesian market by providing all the functions a business requires to operate in e-commerce – we offer website development, online marketing, order management, warehousing, distribution and reverse logistics. Companies can pick and choose specific assistance they require (eg. online marketing or warehousing and distribution) or they can simply outsource their full e-commerce sales channel and we will operate it on their behalf. We also provide market entry assistance to companies looking to enter Indonesia for the first time.

In terms of the opportunity: my co-founder, Susie Sugden, and I were both working in e-commerce in Indonesia and we saw that there was a huge gap in the market for companies who needed help establishing and operating their e-commerce presence. The market is still quite young and there is a capability shortage, and we recognised that companies would require assistance navigating a new mode of commerce. It’s been an incredible ride.

What technology or other challenges have you overcome in creating this business?

As you might expect, Indonesia is a developing economy across all fronts, and technology here is no different. In building Vela we have focused on developing new technological solutions that address critical gaps in the market and which ensure a better experience for our clients’ customers. We’ve developed two market-leading products: Hari Ini (“same day”) and DART (Distribution and Retail Tracking). Hari Ini is the first real-time package tracking system in the country and it is used by our own courier fleet inside Jakarta.

One of the big problems caused by bad infrastructure is that deliveries are often late, and this bad customer experience is compounded by the fact that none of the major couriers are able to offer real-time tracking. By having our own couriers and providing up-to-the-minute information about packages, we are directly dealing with one of the key customer experience challenges in Indonesia. 

Likewise, our DART system provides our clients with real-time information about their orders, their inventory and our performance. This was another huge problem working with local suppliers – it’s impossible to get reliable, quality information about how your vendor is performing. We think that transparency for our clients is a vital part of the service we offer them, which is why we developed a tracking system to all them to see what we’re doing at any moment.

What unique aspects of Vela are there that may not appear in an equivalent western market business?

In building Vela we have tried to bring internationally-competitive levels of service and transparency to our clients, which is a unique approach in this market. What makes us different from a services provider in the West is that we also need to accommodate for the unique challenges presented by the local market. The best example is probably courier management. In Indonesia, courier performance is patchy and unreliable and On Time Delivery (OTD) is very low compared to developed markets.

One of the specific services we offer is to manage the distribution providers (including doing many of our own deliveries). This means managing multiple couriers, identifying their strengths, trading volumes between them to ensure optimal performance – it’s a data-driven and time consuming process that is not really necessary for e-commerce players in developed countries.

What challenges are you currently facing and how do you predict this may change in the next 12 months?

I’m not sure if you would call it a ‘bad’ challenge – we are growing very quickly and need to be nimble to address all the needs of our various clients. This is a great challenge to have and we feel confident it’s not going to change anytime in the next 12 months. If anything, the growth is only going to get faster.