Nov

10

Watching the Future Take Flight

Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, data analytics, Financial services, healthcare, Industry Analysis, internet, mobile content, Search, social media, STM | Leave a Comment

Lets start with the Flight. At the end of last week came that rare luxury and respite – the NOAH show! For two whole days, since 2009, the investment community have been able to lounge in Old Billingsgate and make up their minds about what is likely, what is imminent and what wont happen in eCommerce and Internet services. On three stages and in front of some 600 investment outfits, over 500 early growth players say “its me you were really looking for”. The cases, the comparitive performance, and the real knowledge on display is hugely heartening. Something tells me that London as the start-up centre of Europe is now a bit off the top of the curve. NOAH advisors, who run this show, have opened a Berlin show and intend one as well for Tel Aviv next year, and if I were them then I would also be looking at Barcelona when the current crisis subsides. But location is not the most important thing here. Innovation in services cultures in a networked society goes viral – and comes out of a global market to start with, as the Dallas, Texas, based founder of Bumble demonstrated as she appeared on stage with her Russian tech partner, Badoo. They were interviewed by the founding partner of NOAH, and its Master of Ceremonies, Marco Rodzynek, in a session. That reminded me that behind the apparent strength of seemingly impregnable network market leadership like Facebook there always looms a lither, smarter competitor who grows very quickly, and who must be emulated or acquired if seemingly impregnable positions are to be maintained.

Then if you waited till the end of Marco’s Show you got to fly. Featured there were Volocopter and Lillium, a full week before NASA and Uber announced their deal, adverting the glories of investing in autonomous air taxis. Lillium, a vertical take off jet solution, can land on a tennis court and can take you 300 km at 300 km per hour. Volcopter, as its name suggests, is driven by a ring of small rotors, is also battery driven but shorter in range. Both are German, both do huge information-based navigation work, and Lillium has been extensively experimented with in urban conditions in Dubai. Although they were a surprizing find in this context, for those of us who lead a screen based existence, they were a welcome reminder of the real world significance of all the data crunching going on around us. And as I rode home comfortably on German owned Chiltern Railways, I reflected on leaders in my country prepared to invest $75 billion on a new railway line, not yet begun, which will, when it opens in 2033, clip a life and job saving 22 minutes off the train schedule between London and Birmingham. Mercifully I shall not be here to see it – I shall be in the air taxi!

Another visionary with a loaded gun full of ideas at NOAH was Ali Parsa, the founder of Babylon healthcare. Within days of the show he had announced another big leap forward in supporting Britain’s overworked healthcare system with voice and video medical practice extensions, allowing computer supported diagnostics for those who cannot or need not get a consultation in person. as this gets better and better, and has more intelligent systems support, it offers the only real hope we have of getting the NHS back on track as a national free-at-the-point-of-use system. And as the network gets better the diagnostic session will improve, and the analytics will deliver more insight. Listening computers will be able to prompt the doctor with more questions, and produce a range of answers and probabilities, and a treatment schedule for the doctor to consider and turn into prescriptions, patient notes and records for the regular GP. By using this for minor ailments the system may survive – if we do not use it outside of London then it certainly won’t, but it does point again, in a tiny country like Britain, towards a need for equality in what is rapidly becoming a human rights issue – access at home to superfast broadband. We should be giving every citizen regardless of where they live at least 40 megabits of upload and download. The fact that we are not (yet the South Koreans are) was graphically demonstrated by the village in Devon who, on 5th November, the traditional Bonfire Night , burnt in effigy not Guy Fawkes, but a British Telecom Superfast Broadband van. Not much diagnostics down there, then, and not even a high speed train in 15 years time to take them to the next NHS bottleneck much quicker. The future is here, as William Gibson so wisely said, but its not very evenly spread.

Much more to say about journals and funders and scholarly communication next week. After the Great Debate at the Stationers company this week, we all decided that regulation under Brexit was only going to get worse, and as we thought of data regulation and copyright we felt better off where we were than where we might be going. And I am chairing the session on “whose Research is it Anyway” at London Information International on December 5-6. More warming than mulled wine, I assure you!

May

16

Of Stable Doors and Acquisitions

Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, Financial services, healthcare, Industry Analysis, internet, Search, semantic web, Uncategorized, Workflow | Leave a Comment

Are we seeing the emergence here of a new truth? Or just an old lie tarted up? The sale of BvD ( Bureau van Dijk) by EQT to Moody’s for $3 billion is either a great celebration of the need for data in a data analytics business ( aka IBM Watson and Trueven Analytics in the Healthcare sector, or Verisk and Wood Mackenzie in energy ) or the need to persuade wary initial users that the analytics they are getting are backed by the familiar brands of the research databases on which they were formerly reliant . And if it is the latter then large database companies would be well advised to sell their data to emerging analytics companies now , because sometime soon users are going to discover that data searched on the Open Web now is often equal in value and sometimes throws up startling new insights when compared with the hoarded and highly curated stuff we have been relying on for years . But it is the stuff from the research databases that has the total credibility

Think of it this way . BvD have been building databases since the early 1980s . As the Belgian member of my board in the Eropean Information Providers Association , Marcel van Dijk was openly sceptical about the future for research databases , a sideshow in his computer bureau business , and a hobby of his colleague , the luminary Professor Bernard van Ommeslaghe. The latter built a business that was bigger than the Bureau at Marcel’s retirement , and started the chain of wealth enhancement that led through Candover and Charterhouse and ended with EQT , in successive deals that have grown from $600m to $3billion over a ten year period . And has BvD grown commensurately with that value ? Well , it is a highly profitable $280m company well plugged into corporate research , especially around credit , risk , compliance , M&A , and that great money earner of our generation , transfer pricing .By the time we entered the age of Compliance the company was already in PE hands and getting expensive , but much of its data was available from public sources and its much vaunted private company data was as good as private company data can be – patchy , and increasingly easy to research , and in markets where you really wanted to know (China) fiercely defended by someone more powerful ( People’s Bank of China ) .

So they did the right and obvious thing to do . While van Ommeslaghe tuned the search engine a decade or so earlier as his response , they now went for the “new wave ” and started an analytics based solutions business , launched in each of their sectors and branded “Catalyst” . I have never seen the figures though I have constantly asked market analysts who know everything about one of the most intensively researched companies in its sector and they change the subject . No mention of this was made in the sale release either , where analytics was concentrated around the ability of the Moody Analytics division to transform BvD . I draw my own , possibly erroneous , conclusion: not for the first time internal re-invention failed to convert a successful team to a new sales pitch and a new business model .

Which would be a good point at which to sell , especially if Moodys Analytics division is as hot to trot as its press releases suggest . And do not forget that these are critical days for the rating agencies . While performance at Moody , S&P and Fitch has returned to pre-recession levels – almost- there are still critical regulatory issues and continuing disquiet about the role the se agencies played , or didn’t play , in that crisis . And for the first time for years there are competitive threats : governments and regulators wonder if there is a better way , while start-ups like Credit Benchmark in the banking sector suggest that aggregating the research and decisions made by all banks can produce valid choices and rating decisions for individual players . In short , we are now removed from the glory days when this market was a “license to print money ” and we are back to the struggle for survival . Will Analtyics be the Get out of Jail card?

Let’s then go back to Marcel and Bernard and the risk decision they made in in or around 1985 . Suppose Marcel says ” Look , are you sure that there will ever be enough librarians and information managers to justify renting them space on our computers ? The IBM PC means that our outsourced bureau service running payrolls and utilities business is in decline but we are competitive , we know how to sell and we can still hold our own “. And Bernard responds ” No , the new business is just like the old one , except we are storing content for the individual use of the endusers of our clients , the business model ( then ) is the same – time based access – all we need to do is learn how to sell access ” . Life is not perfect – as it turned out there was not enough bandwidth in 1980s phone lines , so they ended up succeeding on CD ROM . But there were enough intermediary users . Today cost conscious employers want to cut out the intermediary librarians and deliver solutions directly into the workflow of the ultimate user . Do Moody Analytics , or any of us for that matter , yet know enough about pricing , selling or distributing these solutions . The gap between the decisions made in the 1980s and the decisions that need to be made now is much greater . It is no good retaining the Marcel belief that somehow the good old business will just go on , but that investors and customers will only appreciate the “Change ” badge on your lapel if you spend a very great deal of money on it ( and how did they come by that valuation ….. !)The purchase of BvD takes Moody’s revenues over the billion mark and adds to its margins , so it ticks some analysts boxes , but the horse that lived in the BvD stable has long since bolted , and it is hard to believe that a new incumbent is ready to graze that data – or find some better stuff in the open pastures of the internet

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