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It is hard to be a Tech Product Manager, but it is even more difficult to be an effective one

Background Nobody is born a product manager. In the technology space many of us have grown into the product management role after being software engineers, software architects, marketing specialists, or similar roles. Different academic backgrounds can help in the role, some product managers have engineering degrees, others business degrees, and there are numerous examples of product managers coming for many other disciplines. The challenge is that Product Managers require to pay attention to a wide range of concerns around the product, ranging from market research, to business analysis, to software/hardware development, to UX design, to project management, to pricing, to commercialization, and others. Making it difficult to strike a good balance between wide visibility and deep expertise. We will talk about this in the following paragraphs but my experience tells me that the secret is to dynamically switch gears on-demand between the high-level wide vision and deep-diving in
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Informal Catalog of Business Models for Internet of Things (IoT)

This article mostly contains public knowledge, however seeing the data compiled all together in this way may help to rationalize it and apply it in a more rigorous way. I hope this express catalog helps others the same way it helps me. By running new hypothetical product concepts or existing offerings through these "filters" helps to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Which monetization models would you add to the following list? Selling IoT devices for end users I this case the device in itself delivers the key functional capabilities, with enough customer value to pay for its price tag. Many time these products leverage existing infrastructures such as Wi-Fi, a Smart Phone, etc. Even if this model centers around the IoT device, a software and/or cloud service may be necessary as a companion for a rounded UX. Software and/or services put more pressure on R&D and ongoing operational cost, and consequently in the product margin; which usually has alread

Cloud, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS Adoption Trends and Forecast

At this point it is clear that the term "Cloud" transcended the buzz word and is already the label of an attractive $100B+ market. Cloud Computing represents the top enterprise IT spending in 2015, even beyond other hot growing technologies like Mobile and IoT. Not just that, budgets for Cloud offerings may even double in 2016. And if we talk about the other two hot tech trends, it is not a surprise that about three quarters of the IoT and Mobile offerings have also a Cloud component. Let me share with you my own direct experiences and my interpretation of some key Cloud Computing statistics over the last few years as well as the trends for the next two or three. In every case contrasting the numbers with qualitative data points and insights. Let's then dissect the Cloud universe in the typical 3 tiers, starting from the bottom... Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) In 3 years IaaS will represent: ~35% of cloud use cases (compared with a ~65% of PaaS + SaaS)

Wearables: The quest for the missing killer app?

I am a happy Fitbit user for more than a year and a half now, recently my family gave me a Samsung Gear S as a present, so at this point you can already subscribe me to the list of the ones who bought into the wearable computing promise, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the Internet of Everything (IoE). Source: Fitbit.com I use my Fitbit band almost all the time, I also use a very often its excellent smart phone app and the linked cloud service. I use the band/app/cloud trio mostly for everyday health tracking and casual sports. I believe that this device is a clear, simple, and pragmatic example of the the Internet of Things (IoT) potential. Fitbit has very active community of third party developers creating even more and specialized value for Fitbit product owners, check the list of cool and useful Fitbit apps in their Partnerships page. The FitBit's OTB mobile app is already a killer app, and many of the third party ones too, making the whole device + apps + service

Real Cloud or just Virtualization? or Hosting? or only a Web Application?

At this point, I am sure that you are as saturated as I am about hearing the term Cloud used in the wrong places.  I often find myself explaining to customers that the software that those vendors want to sell them is not technically Cloud. This post represents my attempt to get us all on the same page on what is true Cloud Computing and what is not; what is IaaS and what is isn't; what is real PaaS and what is fake PaaS; and what is SaaS and what is just a Web App.  All my points below are absolutely debatable, and I am sure that many readers may disagree in some of the gray areas, but at least, this is how I (and many others in the Cloud space) understand this paradigm labeled as "Cloud".   News Flash Technology Vendors: It is perfectly OK to have a software or hardware solution that has nothing to do with Cloud!  You do not need to claim to have a Cloud solution in order to get legitimized.  My advice to the traditional hardware or software vendors would be

Interviewed by Richard Morrell in his iTunes Podcast

I had the privilege of being interviewed by the cloud legend Richard Morrell also found in twitter as @EMEACloudGuy  or in his great blog http://cloudevangelist.org . I was part of one of his neat podcast series available in iTunes . We covered the state of the cloud landscape with more emphasis in Platform-as-a-Service PaaS, with even narrower focus, obviously, on my product: OpenShift . There is a lot exciting stuff going on in the Red Hat and OpenShift worlds these days, and I tried to share that excitement with the audience through concrete announcements, facts, releases, features, plans, and many other pretty interesting data points. I hope you find it useful and enjoy it as much as I did. Here it is the link of the interview's audio: http://cloudevangelist.org/2012/12/12/podcast-juan-noceda/

Cloud Video: Juan Noceda and Matt Hicks at Summit 2012 on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Present and Future

In June 2012 I had the pleasure of giving this talk at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, together with Matt Hicks , we covered the present and future of Platform as a Service (PaaS) through the eyes of OpenShift , the cloud product that I manage at Red Hat . Since OpenShift moves very fast you may want to complement the info on this video with the content of this OpenShift Roadmap blog post that I added a few weeks ago on OpenShift.com . Fore even more frequent updates follow me on Twitter . The content of the video can be helpful for the non-technical person that just want to know more about the benefits of Cloud, Big Data, and PaaS, as well as for the Developer or IT Manager that wants to know the technical details: features, how OpenShift works, the open source project OpenShift Origin, and more. Watch the video by clicking here Stay up to date on this and related topics by following me on twitter: @Juan_Noceda