nathanfish.com » Business

Data Portability

nathan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:52:47 +0000

This Wired article touches on the issues associated with SaaS and data portability. The problem extends into the enterprise further, with significant business decisions being based on the lack of data portability. Business will many times build a solution in-house, investing significant time and money in a non-core business component because of the importance of the data long term or the strategic nature of the data. Data portability is far from being solved and while much of the discussion is around consumer data, we should not forget the significance of data portability in B-to-B based SaaS business models. Businesses talk about lock in as a strategy, but is that really a business strategy? The goal of a business is to offer value to the end user at an acceptable price. Lock in is nothing more than a feeble attempt to retain customers. In fast it most likely does more to prevent them from becoming a customer in the first place. A quick look through the Data Portability member list shows the limited representation of data portability thought leaders in the B-to-B SaaS space.

MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs

nathan — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:26:04 +0000

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/may2009/ca2009055_933788.htm offers good insight into the the difference between MBAs and Entrepreneurs. It fails to mention how much the MBA curriculum accounts for these differences. During my MBA experience the curriculum focused on measurement, planning, and forecasting. You were given a specific goal and had to come up with the best way to achieve that goal, it was repeated over and over. There are classes in entrepreneurship but are they enough? Which raise the question, is an MBA worth it in today’s world? I believe the current MBA has value (lots) but the curriculum could probably use a refresh at many schools.

Transparency, Trust, Authenticity

nathan — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:33:12 +0000

Being transparent with your customers is important for success. It is simple but sometimes overlooked. Honesty, integrity, transparency. But at times transparency can be dangerous. It’s important that your customers trust your actions, and believe you are acting in their best interest. That can only be done by building trust through a history of transparency and authenticity. The recent set of events in the OAuth community highlights this.

The community has shown its strength and value. Twitter’s management was a very active and valuable participant in that community. Their actions have increased my trust in their decision making and I will be more tolerant of future decisions they may make when I don’t agree with them.

A security issue was discovered. The issues was brought to the attention of the OAuth folks. They quickly discussed the issue with key customers (Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Plaxo, others). They worked as community to come up with a short term solution. They short term solution was distributed to broader customer group. The solution was implemented. A major risk was adverted.

The official post is here http://blog.oauth.net/2009/04/22/acknowledgement-of-the-oauth-security-issue/.

I am more confident in the OAuth community and its ability to provide a very important solution to the API ecosystem. I also have to give a major amount of credit to the Twitter team for their actions, they took a lot of heat at a time when they are being scrutinized by everyone.

Negative press here http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/22/twitter-oauth-temporarily-disabled-leaves-developers-hanging/

Twitter’s post issue post on the problem and why they handled it the way they did http://blog.twitter.com/2009/04/whats-deal-with-oauth.html

The OAuth more the OpenID is critical to the growth and opportunities API’s provide online. The success of OAuth and its adoption are critical to data portability. Hopefully the events will increase the development communities confidence and accelerate its adoption.