Digital Brand Media and Marketing Group Inc (DBMM)

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US Trip – Part 2, Technology
http://www.reggiejames.org/2011/11/trip-part-2-technology/

Posted by Reggie James | Filed under Music Marketing, RTG Ventures

So, I mentioned in my last post some of the structural changes that were being made. I wanted to take this opportunity to share and update you on some the changes to our technology platform.

In doing so, it is important to put things into perspective and to understand that the review process, which has been both a positive experience and crucial to realign the company’s vision toward a meaningful market, which in turn leads to revenues.



Square Pegs, Round Holes

CloudChannel was born out of a concept that would look to change the way streaming media was monetized online. Aimed at rights owners, the idea was to disrupt the blanket media license model that exists today. Why? The idea for the platform was created back in 2010 and the evolving landscape has put paid to many of the good ideas that were to be developed.

With the growth of ‘the cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’ that was defined as ‘computing as a service’ as well an accessible storage area that houses applications such as data and the like, the name was beginning to look cumbersome and at best, a little confusing.

On top of the name, CloudChannel had become an unwieldy beast that was adding on new features at a rate of knots that was akin to a juggernaut heading toward stationary traffic.

As alluded to in the recent audio interview, it has been a busy time trying to unravel CloudChannel’s first phase alongside the plethora of different elements that had to be built in moving the platform forward.

As the commoditization of micro-payments and streaming technology became commonplace, the various delays and market changes meant that CloudChannel would be playing catching-up in certain areas and trying to sell a new concept in others. In many ways, creating more layers, parallel to what already existed and was extensively being used.

Development time to make the platform viable was also becoming an issue. Software that would allow scalability alongside application developments would have become challenging, in the original framework architecture. Alongside this, the application of Social Media into the platform was sadly more of an afterthought than a core consideration.

When one also looked some of the disparate elements of the project, it was also clear that when looking at the reporting capability of the technology, there would be a challenge to pull data into logical segments that would make sense. In other words, the management capability was being focused on but not the important reporting layer that made sense of the data.

In short, the sentiment of CloudChannel was there but it would have created another hoop to jump through before using the strong channels that existed already and have any deep penetration and engagement.

Again, though the above may seem harsh, as I mentioned earlier, it is important to put this into a rational perspective. Through a direct approach, it is vital to understand, It is not a lesser technology, it’s a real technology that has huge scope (beyond music) compared to the CloudChannel concept that no-one understood, was confusing and which meant something different to everyone I spoke to. More importantly, it allows us to focus on deliverables and revenues.



Deconstruction

A brief and un-scientific straw poll into the market showed that that the world was moving to the beat of a different drum. That drum was driven by Social Media and it was becoming crucial to all aspects of business. From the corporate Fortune 500 to the music and entertainment buying public, engagement was the name of the game.

Having to re-engineer a software platform is never easy, doing this with an incumbent piece of technology made the challenge stronger still.

Head in the Clouds to finger on the Pulse

The delivery of the new technology is based on stripping out all that is unnecessary and non-actionable and moulding the product around need.

Taking the DC pragmatic approach, it was agreed that a fast scalable platform would be used to ramp-up development and ‘ruby-on rails’ was the weapon of choice.This would also allow for first stage shaping of the platform for tablets and mobile apps.

So, where are we today? Well, testing of beta in a controlled environment has started and we hope to roll this out to selected partners at the tail-end of January. I mentioned in my last post, the quote from Eric Ries, author of the Lean Start up, “The goal of a lean start-up is to move through the build-measure-learn feedback loop as quickly as possible.” Well, given where we started 12 months ago and the review and application of much needed changes, we have come a long way, quickly.

I hope that gives some insight into what has happened over the last few weeks. As much as I would love to say more, it would be wrong of me to do so at this stage, mainly due to commercial restrictions.

In my next post, I will outline some of the meetings and feedback of the new approach and discuss some of the exciting forward looking plans for 2012 and beyond.

Permalink | November 30th, 2011