Cubic Compass Software | Web Interaction Management Solutions for Salesforce.com AppExchange

"Livin' On the Edge" - Amazon Announces CloudFront

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:56:53 GMT

(With respect to Aerosmith)

Amazon just announced CloudFront; an Akamai-like service for hosting web resources closer to end-consumers of websites and portals.

How can CloudFront improve my i-Dialogue hosted solution?
i-Dialogue solutions are hosted in Plano, Texas and the Pacific NorthWest. When a visitor to your site in Europe requests a web page or document, that file must travel half-way around the world to the requesters browser (where it is typically cached for future requests).

CloudFront allows commonly accessed files, such as images, cascading style sheets, and javascript libraries, to be hosted and cached at various locations around the world to minimize the distance travelled to serve these resources.

How do I get started?
This service is currently in beta. We will initially pass through Amazon's CloudFront subscription costs directly to subscribers (setup and configuration fees may apply). Contact info@cubiccompass.com to learn more and get started.

How does CloudFront impact the content publishing process?
We are still researching how CloudFront impacts a typical content publishing workflow and what extra steps will be required by content publishers.

The long term goal is to manage CloudFront as a black box and any files/images copied to a specified folder on the i-Dialogue CMS are immediately replicated to CloudFront.

Dynamic pages will still be hosted on i-Dialogue and real-time data will still be retrieved from their content source (such as Salesforce, Google, or Microsoft services).

Where are the edge network locations?
Here's the info from Amazon's website on available network locations:

The Amazon CloudFront Network

To deliver content to end users with lower latency, Amazon CloudFront uses a network of edge locations world-wide. Amazon CloudFront uses the following edge locations:

United States

Ashburn, VA
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL
Newark, NJ
Palo Alto, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO

Europe

Amsterdam
Dublin
Frankfurt
London

Asia

Hong Kong
Tokyo

Don't Recede In A Recession

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:41:15 GMT

In times of economic pressure, web developers commonly take one of 2 paths.

Option a) Recede with the recession and fall back on known technologies and solutions (such as open source CMS's, databases, HTML, Javascript). (ie "Play it safe" or "ride it out")
Option b) Make progress, learn new skills, and invest in the next wave of technology.

Unfortunately, the majority of Developers chose option A, not realizing how diluted their skills become by competing with a global marketplace taking the same strategy.

Those investing in new skills during a recession are best positioned to capitalize on the inevitable next wave.

A recent Forrester Research article highlights the oncoming commoditization of Enterprise 2.0 applications and foreshadows the need for developers to leverage services outside their organization. Web developers must start adding value to their organizations by looking beyond the capabilities of a single CMS or portal. We live in a service oriented world and horizontal integration with other services on the web is often times only a cut-n-paste away.

So what will be the next $100K+ salaried position in Web Development? "Mashup Developer" may be a contrived and temporary term, but it correctly communicates in spirit where the market is going and what skills will be in demand.

Web developers need to work in cross functional teams across all business lines and enable online communication between customers, partners, and employees using a multi-dimensional Internet navigation framework, so to speak (ok... shameless plug for the origin of "Cubic Compass" :-) ).

Cubic Compass developers that are investing in mashups involving "Google/Salesforce/StrikeIron/Amazon/OpenID" will emerge as the next CTO's and CIO's when the economy rebounds by chosing "option B" and investing in new skills.

Some recommended next steps for capitalizing on this opportunity:

Understand Open ID
Learn Dialogue Script
Learn a new language, such as Python
Apply your Python skills at Google Apps Engine
Get a Salesforce Developer account
Create an Amazon Web Services account

Managing the BMW Lifecycle

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:44:16 GMT

Great article here on BMW's 7 year product lifecycle and how they manage their brand. Very innovative and progressive culture. (Detroit... are you taking notes?).

If i-Dialogue were a car, it would be 5 series BMW :-)

Cloud Computing - Fixed or Variable Subscriptions?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:34:54 GMT

Amazon Web Services is one of many cloud computing providers leading the way with a variable payment utility model. Similar to an electric bill, the amount you pay per month varies depending on your usage.

However, several software-as-a-service solutions built on top of this infrastructure are commonly available at a fixed price per month (including our own solution).

These two service models are not in parity with each other.

First off, I understand the benefits of a fixed price model. Marketing and Support professionals often tell me they are seeking budgeting approval from their CEO to use our service. "You're positive there are no hidden costs. Correct? If I get approval for $X thousand dollars in 2009, will that be sufficient to address my goals?", is a common inquiry.

Fixed pricing offers reassurance that a service will not exceed an agreed upon budget. However, fixed pricing subscriptions usually have a ceiling and associated overage fees.

Variable pricing may have a lower initial cost but spikes in usage are reflected in monthly invoices. A customer may budget $500 per month for a software service. Just like an electricity of phone bill, some months the actual cost will be lower. Other months the cost will be higher.

I'm interested in this topic because we are at an inflection point. By hosting our solutions on Amazon Web Services we now have the ability to offer a variable price subscription service and outsource the billing to Amazon. This means a $595 per month portal subscription could be offered initially at $295 per month with a variable pricing component based on bandwidth and storage used (in excess of some nominal values).

I'm interested in community feedback. Am I making this a more complicated decision than it needs to be? Please let me know:

"Yes. I want lower monthly subscriptions and will pay for variable overage costs"

"No. I want a fixed fee per month"

Dreamforce 08 Wrap-Up

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:55:06 GMT

The focus of the Day 1 keynote was the announcement of Salesforce "Sites", which is the ability to allow anonymous, public access to VisualForce pages.

Evangelizing the need for tighter integration between websites and CRM has, at times, seemed like an uphill battle for us the past 3 years. This announcement brought Customer Experience Management to the forefront and shifted the conversation from "build or buy" to "which cloud platform" to use for web development almost over night.

The timing of our ".NET As A Service" announcement was extremely relevant and we had many interesting conversations with visitors to our booth in the expo hall.

The keynote then shifted to a discussion with Neil Young and his LincVolt project. With the pending bailout of Detroit auto manufacturers looming, it was inspiring to see this "Single Man with a Vision" story as Neil revealed a multi-fueled (primarily battery powered) converted 1959 Lincoln.

Foo Fighters played the Monday night Gala (the temporary loss of hearing was well worth it).

"No servers" and "No software" continued to be the mantra through the Day 2 keynote as Salesforce demonstrated a real-world use case of how Dell is using Salesforce for channel management and using customer Ideas. In typical contrarian style, Michael Dell came out on stage and proceeded to promote notebooks, servers, and SCSI array configuration software (gotta love this guy).

Suppressed from this years Dreamforce event was any mention of Venture Capital or the $400+ Million invested in Salesforce partner solutions to date. The partner summit on Wednesday had a much more pragmatic tone that revealed the true lower cost to entry made available by Platform-As-A-Service and the ability to get going without equity investment.

Another contrast from last years message was Salesforce's emphasis to "double down" on horizontal CRM platform services and empower partners to build native vertical applications.

In conclusion, my general sense is that the current economy is forcing a process of retrenchment around the world. Cloud computing is benefiting from this paradigm shift because of its demonstrable cost reductions and efficiencies of scale. One of my favorite quotes from a CIO at the event said "By this time next year, the leader in your market will be leveraging cloud computing. I hope that company is yours."

Getting Ready for Dreamforce 08

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:24:55 GMT

Well, we're just about 24 hours away from kicking off Dreamforce 08. This will be my 4th Dreamforce (tire kicker/user in '05, presenter/sForce hero in '06, sponsor '07, sponsor '08).

I'm sure the blogosphere and tweets will be on fire throughout the week, but I'll do my best to post the latest here.

Some key areas I'll be focusing on:

Campaign Influence reports. Making Salesforce Campaigns the primary hub for managing internet campaigns and automatically updating responses from multiple channels
Advanced reporting. Several of our clients are sitting on tons of web event information and the reporting/mining inquiries are getting increasingly complex. Hoping to learn some new tricks in this area
MetaData API. Ability to provision i-Dialogue more quickly. Reduce repeated manual configuration of adding custom objects/fields.
Google API. In particular, exporting our web events to Google Spreadsheets and using Google Charting and Visualization tools

Please come up to booth #211 and introduce yourself. Bryce Hamrick, our Implementation Services Project Manager, and I are looking forward to meeting you!

Microsoft's Foray Into Cloud Computing

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:30:35 GMT

I applaud Microsoft's foray into cloud computing with the Azure server, but it still leaves me puzzled. Having been a part of the Microsoft culture for so many years, I can see what is going on. There is this perpetual nagging drive to deliver more features and create new waves, when what is needed now is to leverage existing assets and ride the waves of consumer demand.

Microsoft is sitting atop a cloud computing gold mine today with the ultimate software-plus-service "Windows Update".

The old-school mentality is to deliver shrink wrapped software as a one-time transaction for a low price. They then give away monthly security updates, ongoing patches, and lot's of free development tools.

Because of the rate of change in todays networked world, there is now more value in subscribing to an evolving software service than in a one-time "buy and forget" transaction.

Most households would probably think nothing of paying $4.95 per month for Windows update if there were no upfront costs. That may seem like small change, but over 5 years that subscription model yields almost $300.

Plus consider how many bootlegged copies of Windows are running out there (50%+). By minimizing entry costs, demonstrating continual value, and associating key features with genuine installations will encourage more consumers to subscribe.

Businesses, likewise, would find a $10 subscription for Windows and Office much more attractive than a one-time purchase.

But here's the thing that really has got me puzzled. Why is Microsoft building it's own datacenters and talking about becoming a centralized service when it has built an army of loyal and eager partners that will install, deploy, and manage Internet nodes for them?

Google is a fantastic company, but their ability to scale is limited by their ability to raise capital and dedicate internal resources to building datacenters.

If all Microsoft Internet Node Servers (MINS) shared a common API, if all applications written for MINS were portable, and if all existing Microsoft datacenters and partners filled their racks with these servers, Microsoft would not have to spend a dime building datacenters. They could then return to their core competency of writing OS software and applications and leverage the power of their channel partners to scale.

(Alright, so maybe Microsoft Marketing could come up with a better acronym than MINS... but letting partners be their cloud computing 'minions' should be implicit :-) ).

Revenue from Microsoft Internet Node servers would far surpass consumer windows subscriptions within 10 years if this model were deployed.

As an example, I just signed up for Amazon EC2 today to deploy a new email server. I don't know how much of the $0.125 per hour Amazon charges me gets kicked back to Microsoft, but it makes me wonder.... why is Amazon having to develop new Windows OS extensions to make their provisioning model work and why is Microsoft building datacenters like they're going to compete with Amazon?

It's just all backwards. The obvious win-win scenario is for Microsoft to develop a provisionable server OS and partner with the Amazon's and Rackspace's of the world to do the hosting.

Release Notes for October 2008

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:53:50 GMT

Summary of October changes rolling into production over the next few days:

ADDED: Support for IronPython in Dialogue Script editor
ADDED: CLR library interop support in Python script
ADDED: Chat-to-Case has improved formatting of chat transcript in Case Description (32KB max storage limit in Salesforce)
ADDED: Ability to map custom pre-chat form fields to Salesforce Lead/Contact fields
ADDED: ETL Object Map for Leads and Contacts now auto-populates properties from API metadata
FIXED: Improved page caching algorithm that prevents concurrent access to cache during startup (issue primarily only occurred in large portals. Caused infrequent object graph corruption under high load)
ADDED: Visibility of all administrative tree controls now externalized to configuration settings
ADDED: Ability to log a custom web event on dialogue script View or PostBack event (previously only PostBack supported)
ADDED: Ability to globally enable/disable private messaging in discussion forums
ADDED: Ability to support "|" as replacement character for "?" when generating dynamic redirection URLs (Example: signon.aspx?returl=somepage.aspx|param1=1&param2=2)
ADDED: Support for YetAnotherForum package (open source forums)
ADDED: Upgraded blog package to DasBlog 2.2
ADDED: Upgraded ComponentArt library to latest release
ADDED: Upgraded ScrewTurn open source Wiki to latest release
ADDED: Support for all ASP.NET controls (previously limited to subset)
FIXED: Bug where <asp:ListItem> would not properly render
FIXED: Bug where some Email web events were not properly correlating with their respective Salesforce Campaign
FIXED: Bug where sending a test email from Email Campaign editor would change the Salesforce Campaign status to "Sent"
FIXED: Bug where objects deleted in Salesforce were not deleted in portal if deletion occurred during a long running ETL process.
FIXED: Validation error message in password reset form that incorrectly reported repeat use of old password as identical login name.

Cubic Compass Announces 2008 Navigator Award Winners

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:35:18 GMT

Congratulations to this years Navigator Award winners! There were so many to choose from and we ended up adding a couple extra categories to showcase some truly magnificant i-Dialogue solutions.

PORTLAND, OR (October 27, 2008)

Cubic Compass Announces 2008 Navigator Awards

Cubic Compass, a provider of on-demand web content management solutions, today announced the recipients of the 2008 Navigator Awards. Navigator Awards recognize organizations who have made significant contributions to enabling one-to-one online "dialogues" with their customers, partners, or employees through the use of CRM and the i-Dialogue Web Suite.

Best Overall Solution
www.LeftHandNetworks.com

LeftHand Networks (LHN) utilizes the i-Dialogue Web Suite for their main website, partner portal, customer portal, and product discussion forums. The portal staging and high-availability capabilities of i-Dialogue Unlimited Edition are employed to apply a disciplined multi-stage content publishing process that ensures the right information is available to the right person at the right time.

As an early adopter of Salesforce, LHN defined all facets of their business using custom objects in Salesforce and needed a highly customizable CMS to leverage their existing CRM investment. LHN's internal staff used the i-Dialogue API to develop a variety of online web applications, such as event management, license management, product pricelists and quoting, and a site-wide search engine.

LeftHand Networks was acquired by Hewlett Packard in October 2008 for $360M and continues to be recognized as an industry leading provider of iSCSI SAN solutions.

Best Web Design
www.ConfigureSoft.com

ConfigureSoft makes use of rich multimedia and informational collateral to provide an interactive and personalized experience for their Customers and Partners.

Other online features deployed by ConfigureSoft include webinar event registration, discussion forums, partner portal, and customer portal.

Best B2B Portal
portal.iGrafx.com

iGrafx manages the entire customer life-cycle using i-Dialogue; from demand generation and lead cultivation to providing an online eStore and customer support forums.

iGrafx automates the lead cultivation process by providing self-service to case studies, user guides, and product downloads then follows up with automated emails using i-Dialogue drip email marketing. All online interactions and downloads are captured in Salesforce and used by Marketing and Sales to gauge customers interest in online resources.

Best Partner Portal
Planar

Planar has grown in recent years through the acquisition of new businesses. Planar deployed a partner portal for their digital signage business unit in 2007 and continues to expand their channel marketing efforts in 2008 by deploying partner portals for their home theater and control room business units.

i-Dialogue Premier Edition allows Planar to deploy multiple, uniquely branded partner portals that provide channel partners with 24/7 access to product marketing materials, news, events, software updates, and training resources.

Planar IT staff were early adopters of Dialogue Script and leveraged their in-house web development skills to create a dynamic and well organized online experience.

Best Non-Profit Portal
www.RISENetwork.org

RISE - Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators

RISE is a national nonprofit organization that helps K-12 public schools in low-income communities attract and retain experienced, talented teachers so all students can achieve at high levels. www.RISENetwork.org facilitates online dialogues between Teachers and Schools using i-Dialogue and Salesforce to manage contact identities, applications, and workflow processes.

Online features include application management and screening, Job Search, Application Search, Google maps, Survey response metrics, teacher-school communications, and Job/Teacher interest level tagging.

Best Consumer Web Solution
my.ColoradoPlasticSurgery.com

Like most small business and practice managers, Dr. Nick Slenkovich of the Colorado Plastic Surgery Center, was inundated with solicitations from pay per click and referral networks promising new Leads. Most referral partners provided information on how many leads were referred, but Dr Slenkovich required more insight into what kinds of Leads and Opportunities were produced from each referral source.

By using Salesforce Pro Edition with Campaigns integrated with i-Dialogue, Dr. Slenkovich deployed an intelligent landing page management solution and created unique tracking codes for all referral partners that resulted in detailed campaign influence reports in Salesforce. Google AdWords, banner ads, and referral partner marketing expenses are all now evaluated by the quality of opportunities they produce instead of the quantity of Leads.

Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:07:29 GMT

Jakob Nielson posted an interesting article on Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages.

In a Salesforce CRM context, this basically boils down to the subject and message contained within Web-to-Lead and Web-to-Case email auto-responders.

On the Lead side, I recommend a series of informative emails, aka an email drip campaign, that are conversational and informative in nature (even though Jacob advises against message sequences in an order shipping scenario, they are very effective when applied to Lead cultivation).

The email should appear as if it were sent from an actual person and not an automated response.

Example:

Subject: Follow-Up To Your Case Study Download
Hello {!Lead.FirstName},

Thank you for your interest in [product/service/organization]. I thought you may also be interested in the following resources:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

Please feel free to reply to this email with any questions.

Regards,

Personalized Signature
With complete contact information

For Web-to-Case, the best advice is to simply acknowledge receipt and describe what next steps are being taken to resolve the customer issue.

Subject: Support Ticket Received
Hello {!Contact.FirstName},

We received your trouble ticket. A service representative will review your case and respond within X hours.

The following online resources may be useful in resolving your issue.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

Notice both emails make use of bullets to break up the monotony of raw text and run-on paragraphs.

For case management, these links should also be published directly next to the web-to-case form to encourage self-service to FAQ'a and solutions prior to submitting a case.

Windows In The Cloud

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:52:32 GMT

Great news from the Amazon EC2 team. They've dropped the "beta" designation and are now rolling in full production.

They're even hosting Windows instances in the cloud for $0.125 per hour (SQL Server is also available).

That's about $85 per month for a fully managed Windows server instance. Not too bad.

Welcome to i-Dialogue Customer Portal

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:49:53 GMT

Now that your i-Dialogue portal is installed, you may start publishing news headlines using RSS.