Power of the Ecosystem

The US election is around the corner. 2008 saw a seismic shift in the World view of American politics. The world is watching even more closely this time around. Politics is unforgiving – you are as good (or bad) as your last victory (defeat). The unforgiving nature of a for-profit entity is in the fact that it doesn’t change much as the business and generations evolve – at least for the traditional ones like manufacturing or industrial production. In the Internet era, decades are as good as generations in terms of the amount of churn that happens in technologies or experiences in a fairly short span. Prior to the iPhone’s debut in 2007, not many would have placed their bets on App Stores driving mobile phone sales, or the platform having as much of an impact. Even the most hard core of Android fan boys would rue (in private, of course!) the seeming divide between the iOS and Android app stores. You look to the third and fourth best – Windows Phone and Blackberry – they would literally even bet their futures on App Stores being the sole reason why they aren’t market leaders today. Leaders and Laggards usually have different reasons for their place in history but never has the ecosystem played a more prominent role in predicting a product’s success or market adoption, however technologically proficient or adept the product or service may be. You bring in a networked realm like the Cloud and the importance of the ecosystem, the reliance on it cannot be quantified enough. Forget the time to market advantage; one cannot hope to be better than and outlast / outclass each chain of the Cloud workflows as there as enough established players that have made a niche mark for themselves. You better embrace your ecosystem – the Cloud after all, has no place for Jack of all, master of none! As the African proverb says: Walk fast if you want to walk alone; walk together if you want to walk far. Success in the Cloud space is about how best you fit in the ecosystem and provide the best of what your partners have to offer and differentiate where the workflow and experience matters. The sum of the parts should be greater than the best of the parts themselves – that alone, is where true differentiation can occur.

Move over Context...Content is the real King

The Internet revolution of the 90's literally changed the way people lived lives. Once the power of a networked world became apparent, adoption was merely a question of when, not if! The famous Moore's law of the semiconductors, was put to test as semiconductor vendors could not keep up with chip manufacturing advancements (as process nodes fell as quickly as the famous stock markets crash of late 2008) in catering to the massive processing demands of the Internet infrastructure. Being the late-summer-early-fall season of hurricanes and cyclones catching attention across the world, I will happily borrow the terms one can relate to! While the whirlpool of the Internet backbone revolution was prominent, the real tsunami happened at the application level. Design aesthetics were suddenly the norm, with Apple and Samsung proudly brandishing form factors with packed performance to exploit the internet, that couldn't have been dreamed of even half a decade ago. In between these systems, there was a small storm brewing on the Content vs. Context front. Put simply, to a lay man, Content is what is being presented and Context is the relevance of what is presented in the circumstance. The world is said to be a cyclical place where trends come and go. Today, the fashionable trends are said to have been borrowed from the 70's. Likewise, Content and its value which played a very prominent role --- and people were willing to pay a premium for quality content --- were suddenly lost in the noise as the camera gadgetry (wizardry?) in smartphones coupled with the Youtubes of the world created plenty of consumption avenues. Suddenly, there was so much content that it became hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Context came in, and was touted as the next best thing to happen to mankind. Every Tom, Dick and Harry would talk about Context in the same breadth as Strategy and Elevator pitch, which no doubt the folks on Menlo Park and Wall Street happily basked under. However, the time tested truth emerged fairly quickly - you can have the best of Contexts being identified, and content automated to suit that context, but at the end of the day, you had a user hooked not based on the relevance, but the actual Content itself, and the value it ultimately provided! In management parlance, you are as good as your last successful product. In Media parlance, you are as good as your Content! After all, the grub at the end of a long day is dependent on how well and how efficiently the content is monetized. Long live Content!!!

Aloha!

They say Hawaii is the land of the Sun. There is also an adage that says behind every successful man is a woman. One might ask - what does Hawaii have to do with an age old proverb? Well, the Sun personifies 'bringing light to life' and the adage personifies acknowledging the spirit behind success. A true student of the Cloud computing school of thought would rephrase the above adage to say - "There is a Sun in front of every Cloud!!". We intend to leverage the best of our cutting edge Media technologies and Codec expertise, and couple that with the power of the Cloud in shaping Web3.0 trends - catering to seamless online video experiences. farmOTT is the brainchild behind this dream. With multiple connotations - Content Farm , Over The Top delivery, Aggregating Content - the name has been chosen to best reflect the "experiences" of our customers, than a product or service. We at farmOTT want to change the way Media is processed and consumed via the Clouds. Our goal is to be the gold standard for connecting Content creators and consumers via the Cloud! Welcome to farmOTT!!