Killer on the loose

It`s safe to say that the concept of a killer app is over-hyped. Between industry analysts, vendors, ICT consumers and even journalists, millions of dollars are spent every year trying to figure out where the next big ICT wave is going to come from. And most of the time we`re all wrong.

A number of red herrings confuse identification of the rare beast. Firstly, there`s no shortage of technology out there. For every vendor, there are a few potential good ideas that look like contenders. Secondly, sure bets that seem obvious often fail to leave the starting gate. WAP, Web services, IP over powerlines - they all looked good in the breeder`s stables, but failed to perform on the day.

A third factor that makes spotting the next killer app really difficult is that it often comes out of nowhere. Even Microsoft almost completely missed the Internet wave, dismissing it as unimportant. Customisable ringtones, changeable covers and built-in cameras were the cellphone`s true killer apps - not wireless Internet connectivity or better reception, as logic would dictate.

The term "killer app" is often misunderstood. It is not a technology application, but rather an application of technology. For instance, the Model T Ford was not a killer app. At the time, low-cost motoring was the true wave that swept the world. Ford happened to get there first.

Business agility requires the ability to translate strategy very rapidly into action.

Simon Carpenter, marketing director, SAP Africa

Killer apps are easy to spot when they`re in full swing: they look a little bit like a comet, pulling a long tail of glittering dust comprising other technologies, vendors and applications in their wake. In the motoring example, cheap cars were definitely a killer app for tar makers, civil engineers and the technological concept of a highway.

Because a killer app is required, by definition, to bolster the fortunes of other apps and vendors, it requires some kind of standard attached to it. The unsurpassed success of e-mail - the killer app for the Internet - is due in part to the standards laid in the very foundations of the concept. This allowed a host of vendors to offer both e-mail servers and clients that could all talk to one another in a standard way, whether using Pine, Microsoft Outlook or Ximian Evolution; or connecting to a Unix, Microsoft or Lotus server.

Despite the vast amounts of money thrown at technology by vendors, the IT sector`s killer apps usually come from alternative sources. Academia sprouts killer apps like flowers in spring - we`ve got MIT and Stanford to blame for killer apps like e-mail, networking and computer games. The US military is another culprit, coming up with concepts like the Internet, first conceptualised by US military agency ARPA.

While the military`s clandestine nature makes it difficult to spot any potential killer apps that may be lurking in some underground R&D laboratory, academia is more than happy to share what it`s working on at all times. Unfortunately, every IT post-grad with a half-written thesis has some new idea, and the noise-to-signal ratio is high.

The propensity for US universities to pop out killer apps without warning has led to a great deal of funding for technology students by the likes of Intel. Intel gives them a lab with every toy an IT student could desire - usually just off campus - and in return Intel gets to incorporate new technologies before the competition.

There`s also a new force in the market that has the potential to produce the next killer app, and it shouldn`t be overlooked. Open source software developers are simply voracious in their production, and formal enterprise is looking more and more towards this market for an edge on the next big wave. Investments in open source development by everyone from IBM and Novell through to Mark Shuttleworth point to the fact that open source software is a potential breeding ground for major IT trends.

It could be argued that open source software development is already a killer application in itself - after all, the vast majority of Web servers run on open source technology already, with the Apache server totalling 68% of the market, according to Netcraft. That`s right: for all the money, marketing and effort expended on the Internet by the top software vendors, the Internet is run on open source software.

The potential killer applications discussed in this article have all been nominated by South African vendors and resellers. The statistical chance of any of them hitting the big time is low, but in terms of nominations, business process management, or BPM, is the hot choice among the South African IT community. We advise readers to take these technologies with a pinch of salt, due to the nature of the nebulous art of picking killer apps.

Business processes are hardly new. Every business - in its simplest form - consists of repetitive processes that combine to produce whatever product or service that business offers, while other processes support the company`s core competency. An event at one end sparks off a business process, and a result emerges at the other end.

While the business process is immutable, the way business thinks and feels about business processes certainly has changed over time. The industrial decades viewed business processes as task-based, and a great deal of effort was spent ensuring each step in the process was optimised. The 1990s was the period of business process eradication, where businesses tried to cut down on the amount of processes, or at least rebuild them from the ground up. Needless to say, a fair amount of business process chaos ensued.

Today, it`s all about technology. In the majority of enterprises, technology forms the basis of most business processes, with single or multiple applications; and data stores put into use whenever an order comes through the door. It only makes sense that technology is also used to manage the creation and execution of those processes.

"I would describe business process management as workflow that`s grown up," says Trevor van Rensburg, business unit manager, best practices, Software Futures. "It`s a solution for automating, managing and controlling mission-critical processes in an organisation.

"In the past, workflow used to move paper around, connecting up various people and systems with lists of activities. BPM allows you to map a process and automate the execution of that across multiple systems, applications and people. The Nirvana that BPM hopes to reach is the ability to gain business agility to change processes and re-deploy applications on the fly," says Van Rensburg.

According to a recent note from researcher Gartner: "In late 2000, Gartner predicted that BPM would become the next big phenomenon. The 'thought leadership` expressed then has been reflected in the current popularity of business modelling. We have seen demand grow from 15% of our client base (which primarily involved businesses with planning cultures) to more than 35% of our client base across all businesses, regardless of their cultural tendencies."

BPM promises all kinds of good things, including more automation of "idiot work", staying ahead of the ever-growing compliancy requirements, and trouncing your competitors. Whether it`ll actually deliver on these promises depends, as always, on how enterprise uses it. The BPM software coming into the market today is really just another business tool, and - like all business technology - correctly implemented it might give you a business edge.

"For me, the next big thing is business process management," says SAP Africa`s marketing director Simon Carpenter. "It is rapidly gaining a foothold for a simple reason: it helps companies squeeze more value from their existing software infrastructure. But we have to approach it from the right angle. Consultants say BPM will bring order to corporate chaos, increase speed to market, and quickly adapt to an ever-changing business environment. Software companies offer solutions they claim will help link technologies, business processes and the people touched by them. These applications have been described as the next killer application.

"Business agility requires the ability to translate strategy very rapidly into action - before the strategic window closes. Web services and BPM come together to enable this. BPM helps the company define how strategy will be executed (ie, the processes that do the work), while Web services enable the business to architect appropriate systems to support the process."

One of the benefits of BPM is that it is, by definition, technology independent. This allows companies to jump the gap between departments and applications, creating processes that aren`t only people-specific, but cognisant of the underlying applications needed to complete those processes.

IBM`s Intra-Enterprise Business Process Management Red Book describes BPM as "the next step in a three-tier environment", where BPM takes care of the middle tier - the business logic layer.

"Business logic and business rules, now encapsulated in the business logic tier, are extracted from that tier and presented in a workflow-based environment, which shows graphically the different steps of a business process. At each node, business rules are used to select the next node and business logic is executed," says IBM.

"As a consequence, the business rules have become explicit, visible and rapidly changeable. This allows a company to react more quickly to changes in the marketplace where it operates."

A true BPMS has a number of key components. It needs to provide the technology to rapidly implement a change in a process; the effects of a change must be measured and measurable; business processes must be defined, implemented and changed in a consistent manner; and it must separate the "what" and "how" of a business process while remaining process independent.

A typical BPMS consists of numerous technologies, including a resource manager, an audit manager, a security manager and a scheduler. The most important part of a BPMS is referred to as the "process engine", which is used to implement a process and manage the beginning and end points of that process, while not actually imposing on how a process is implemented.

The nature of BPMS means it`s only really viable for the larger organisations at this point. Van Rensburg notes that while it costs less and is faster to implement than a CRM or ERP solution, it does require a serious commitment from an organisation.

For a business wanting penetration, [SMS] is almost the only communications portal.

Barry Prinsloo, sales manager, SMS Cellular Services

If the organisation relies on hundreds of manual processes to run its business, if it`s in a position where it can differentiate its business through unique or complex business processes, if it has a number of legacy applications in place, or if it wants to mitigate risk or achieve deadlines, it can get a result from BPMS. Those criteria dictate that an organisation needs to be of a medium to large size to see the benefits of a BPM solution.

We were quite surprised to see SMS nominated as the next killer application for business, but Barry Prinsloo, sales director of SMS Cellular Services, gave us quite a convincing argument.

"With 3G and MMS, it`s possible to send attachments over the Internet. Yet simple text is where SMS is at. But it goes a lot further than that. For a business wanting penetration in the broader South African demographic, it is almost the only communications portal.

"I have e-mail, but a lot of people don`t," says Prinsloo. "A lot of people don`t even have fixed addresses or PO boxes. That`s not conducive to timeous communications."

Prinsloo believes SMS could be the solution to the broader communications barriers facing enterprise and - more specifically - government in SA. As the "lowest common denominator", according to Prinsloo, SMS makes sense for broad-based low-cost communications.

"The kind of things we see coming down the line include informing people on their status of social grants, housing applications, or applications for employment. Currently, people have to use airtime or a phone booth - or even travel to government departments - just to get told to come back next week. We could improve the lot of a lot of people."

Having made its mark as a highly successful communications technology already, the inhibitors for SMS as a communications technology are well known and well understood. The biggest detractor is the lack of any service level guarantees. SMS was originally designed for sending technical messages across the GSM network for technicians. In typical killer app fashion, no one at the time predicted that SMS volumes might one day surpass voice data on the cellular networks.

Without any guarantees on how long a message will take to get where it`s going - or if it will get there at all - SMS is simply a "best effort" technology. That`s fine if you`re texting your buddies to join you at the bar, but not as appealing for business.

Yet Prinsloo says SMS is being used for mission-critical applications, such as at the air traffic control centre at Johannesburg International. "If at any point a message doesn`t go through, they need to realise the reliability of their communications system is compromised, and they need to make an alternative arrangement," says Prinsloo.

The method Prinsloo advises for corporate users is to use delivery reports to verify that messages have been delivered, and to follow up with alternative technologies - such as fax or phone - if the SMS fails.

"No system in the world works 100%, 100% of the time. You need to know when it`s not working, and that there are alternatives."

SMS Cellular Services` clients include financial services, healthcare companies, call centres and services-oriented industries. But Prinsloo believes SMS will be most successful in government.

"With a voice communication, you`re looking at R1 to R2 for a short communication. You can send a message out for 20c. That`s an 80% saving. Can an employee save R800 a month? Absolutely."

There is the risk that SMS will become inundated with unsolicited messages, and the industry has taken cognisance of this fact and has started an association to develop a code of conduct for wireless application service providers.

"The association is not going to have that many teeth, but it certainly is a starting point. We strongly recommend to our customers that they subscribe to the code. If a user is spammed, he can contact us or the industry ombudsman."

Further regulations expected from government should also keep the SMS inbox fairly protected for both casual users and wanted business or government services.

According to Prinsloo, business SMS is growing fast. "I think consumer use will always be the bulk of SMS, but we`ve experienced, as a company, between 10% and 20% growth month-on-month, in terms of volume, the number of clients and the level of services required by clients."

The market is very ignorant at the moment.

Migal van As, CEO, Intervate

Smart documents are the way of the future, believes Intervate CEO Migal van As. Introduced by Microsoft in Office XP, "smart tags" use Web services to link documents to real-time data in a database, thus creating a "smart document" - a document that is constantly changing as the database changes.

"You use a service-based architecture to dynamically pull and push information into the document. The document becomes part of a process," explains Van As.

The concept does sound very leading-edge, and it has the potential to make a significant impact on business. But, as mentioned earlier, a killer application is an application of technology, rather than a technology application. Smart docs and smart tags are extremely Microsoft-centric, which should technically disqualify them as a potential killer app.

"I agree that, with killer apps, it is the norm to not define a particular package as a killer application, but what Microsoft has is the pervasiveness of Office," says Van As. "It has a captive market, and it`s quite hard for vendors to compete with them in terms of the office suite."

Smart documents have rung in many changes in terms of who you get your Office applications from, and how. Previously, an infrastructure provider - or the IT department itself - would roll-out an MS Office installation. Smart docs, however, need to be integrated with databases, workflows and processes. Suddenly, Microsoft Office starts to look more like an ERP installation than a simple desktop app.

"The infrastructure partners that deploy Office don`t have development skills, and companies like ours that develop don`t have roll-out capabilities. We`ve got to convince other partners of the potential of smart documents, and it is quite a challenge, particularly in the South African market where there`s a fragmented partner model," says Van As.

Education is also a major inhibitor in terms of clients, he says. "It`s going to take time. The market is very ignorant at the moment. There`s a lot of education that needs to be done. Microsoft is having problems convincing customers to upgrade. Customers haven`t been willing to assess the new capabilities of the new Office systems."

Helping Van As`s cause will be Microsoft`s anticipated enterprise-level instant messenger. While IBM has traditionally ruled the niche enterprise instant messenger market with its Lotus offering, Microsoft intends to get its security and logging capabilities up to date next year, and with links into smart docs, intends to drive both offerings through their combined features.

Van As explains the concept as follows: a tender document is being written by a multinational, and an author needs some technical information on a specific term in the document. He clicks on the smart tab in the document and all the experts on that topic within the organisation pop up. He clicks on one, and is immediately put into live contact with that person, whether by cellphone, instant messenger or e-mail - depending on the expert`s "presence" (the IM buzzword for availability).

"It will take a certain number of high-visibility solutions, and two to three years before we see major adoption. It won`t be the killer app of 2005. But I think the benefits are so compelling that it will become the natural course for IT users and the IT departments that service the users."