Last month was a really busy month for us.  We migrated our system to Azure,  and we turned on the switch to all our of customers’ databases to point to Azure in early November.  Then we get an invitation from Microsoft to participate in a few activities at Microsoft PDC (Professional Developer Conferences) 09 in Los Angeles.  The first day of the PDC we announced our public beta availability of Guppers running on Azure. It was great to meet people around the industry who were as passionate as we were building cloud computing application.

By running on Azure, we cut down our down time so far quite a bit.  No longer we’re dreaded of network maintenance notifications from our ISP. And as many of our customers are in different part of the world, Azure allows us to scale geographically as well.

In addition, we allow our customers to create their own cloud account as such that it has more control over the computing resources that they would like to ‘rent’, even more privacy and co-branding.  

I also put together Cloud Computing overview presentation. Enjoy.

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On Nov 7, 12:55 AM GMT, we completed a full migration to Azure. The system was down for a few minutes, and up again, and now is pointing to Azure data center.  We’re running two instances of Web Role, one instance of Worker Role, utilizing Azure Blob heavily, as well as Queue.   In the near future, we’ll support Azure .NET Service to access our service.  Running on the cloud allows us to add more capacity easily, as demand increases.

As people woke up in East coast, it’s great to know that our customers didn’t know that we have switched, and in Asia, we had business as usual day (yes, we warned them a few days back before the big switch)  It was a great day!

For more information about Azure - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

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Cloud Computing is one of transformational technology shifts which recently gains momentum. As the economy suffers in the past years, business started looking at ways to reduce costs and boost the productivity.  There are so much buzz about Cloud Computing, I’ll try to explain in much simpler term as possible, but it hopes still gives you helpful information.  My experience derives from my experience developing a few applications on the cloud platforms.  It gives me some interesting perspective from developer point of view.  Interestingly, Guppers is built on the cloud the computing platforms.

Given, there is so much confusion about cloud; I’ll divide the presentation into two.  The first part (today), explains the cloud platforms and the second part (next post), we’ll explain how to take advantage of this transformational technology change.

My advice is,   although cloud is still early in the game, but it’s worth looking at it given its potential benefits.  You can proceed with cautions; deploy it at the small departmental level.  If you’re a small business, you can even try to jump now. I hope you enjoy the presentation.

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Consider these staggering statistics: 3.4 billion text messages are delivered, and 4 billion cell-phones are actively in the hand of subscribers, and the growth is still very healthy. What interesting is the usage of texting in business is very limited, if any, especially in the US. While younger generations in US are embracing texting, the use of texting is hardly exist in the workplace. This article unveils how texting/SMS could actually boost productivities in the workplace.

Let’s look at the major issues the prevent business from using text messaging as part of their daily solutions:

• Text messaging considers a P2P technology
• Text messaging considers too intrusive in many business settings.
• Text messages are prohibitively expensive in the US and Canada, even though that’s not the case in most countries.
• Integrating Text messaging channel into information technology is difficult. A short code needs to be established and approved, and the approval process to work with telephone providers can take months. In addition, supporting SMS protocol (SMPP) put burden in IT resources.
• SMS users are isolated from the rest of company. In US, many of us use e-mail as the primary communication.

Before we discuss the solutions, let’s look at what Text Messaging (SMS) will provide us:

• Virtually any phone is capable of texting. Old and new, cheap or expensive.
• There is no need for a data plan.
• Much greater mobility. User can roam anywhere in the world and start using SMS immediately.
• While people frown at the 160 character constraints, it has been proven that brief, essential messages are more effective and less time to waste. Compare this to a 2 page long of email.

To fill these gaps that outlined above, today, few services address the texting deficiencies in the workplace. The mobile phone providers now aggressively encourage user to sign-up for unlimited text message plans for as little as $5 per employees. Consider a few scenarios that you could enable today:

• You’re at the client site; you’d like to retrieve the inventory level of product #XL9204. This can be done by sending a text message to a service.
• Your ability to send messages to your team members, regardless if your co-workers using email/blackberry, SMS, or online. The ability to communicate seamlessly using one’s communication preference tool.
• You can get a stream of business activities on your phone. For example, even on the go, you’ll be first to find out that Julie just joined a company; Peter just modified inventory data.
• In addition to query, your team member can update the data directly into the database using only SMS. For example, your workers can send a text message command with the information to the service, and the service will update the database.
  While you’re choosing a service, the following is important criteria to consider:
• Make sure that you should not have to deal with any deployment. Zero installation is the best.
• Make sure you don’t have to change your existing infrastructure, in order for the service to work.
• In this economy climate, it’s wise that we don’t have much access capacity. Pay as go services are preferable over fixed cost services.
• Addressing IT security concerns that the data can be locked down in the services.
• If you plan to do some business soon, ensure that the service is available globally as well.

Guppers is one of few services that provide end-to-end multi-channel collaboration solutions for business, and SMS is one of its important features. Unfortunately, many other services today are mostly focusing of mobile marketing; pushing information to the (potential or existing) consumers. I believe the mobile marketing model is over, and user should be in control as far as information sent to their mobile phone. Twitter allows many companies to do just that. In addition, Twitter is a great service to be used as part of social media efforts for a company. Other services focus mostly narrow band of problem space, such as group messaging only.

If you’re interested in learning more details as far the user experience, you can browse the presentation below.

In summary, the business texting solutions exist today that enable many of new scenarios which may result in dramatic productivity increases while keeping the cost low to operate.

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So, the news of the day is we re-launch our service which primarily focuses on providing business solution platforms.  We’re lucky to have a few pilot customers that use our services on their day-to-day operation. We launched Beta on June 8, 2009; and we had couple press coverage on TechFlash and Puget Sound Business Journal. 

Guppers Overview

So, what is this new Guppers, really all about?

Guppers provides necessary IT platforms for the business to run in the cloud.  For start, Guppers is built with the focus on existing communication tools that business or users have accustomed to, such as Email, SMS, Browser. No installation, no data plan required; it requires just couple minutes to set-it up. We believe that we should not put the burden for the user to learn a new system.  If they know how to use to their Email, SMS, then they already know how to use Guppers.  In the future, it is easily extended to any other communication service such as Twitter as it gains popularity in the US, or Linked-in or Facebook.  

Next, Guppers provides business to a core business platform services to build on, which includes:

·         Conversation.  Organization members can use Guppers for group or organization communication. It can also be used for person to person communication using their preferred communication channel.  For example, Mobile workers may like to use SMS and Email, while office worker may prefer Email and Browser.  In Asia and Europe, it is likely those people would prefer to use SMS, while US workers may use Email primarily.   A social media expert may use Twitter to receive this information.

·         Documents.  User can post documents to share and collaborate via Guppers Portal, or even from straight from Email.  When a new or revised document is posted, all members of organization optionally can get the notification automatically on their preferred communication channel.  

·         Data.   Business has a lot of data that need to be shared.  Guppers makes this easy to do.  A price list, customer list, inventory list can be created easily and upload to Guppers.  And this data is update-able, query-able, even from SMS. For example, a salesman could easily retrieve company’s most up-to-date pricing using SMS.  

·         Time Management (coming soon).  Planning/scheduling is one of critical aspects of business. Guppers will provide a time management platform for business to build on, but it won’t provide specific solutions.  An example that you could expect is a notification when a work item is due can be sent to the work item’s owner via their preferred channel.  

·         Business Activities.  Business is moving into transparency to boost productivity and morale.  Social computing technologies are proving to be effective in consumer space and adapting to business space makes sense if it’s done correctly.  Guppers offers a mini-feed stream of all the business activities happening on this service.  For example, when someone updates an inventory list, others will be able to see his activity.  

In the next a few blog entries, we’ll explain a few real-life scenarios in which Guppers are used in the daily operations. We’ll also go into detail how exactly you can set this up, step by step.  

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Today, Guppers is open for a limited public beta testing for Asia and Europe.  Thanks to many of you who participated in private beta testings, also for those who signed up for public beta notifications.  We’ve been using Guppers for quite sometimes internally as well, and we’re excited to share it with you.  We’re looking forward to making Guppers available in the US and Canada (hopefully in Oct 2008), we’re still dealing with paperwork to get approvals from mobile service providers in the US. It takes a lot longer than what we thought originally

Today marks the beginning of many perpetual incremental releases. Please do leave feedback (use the “I want to…” menu).

Sign up , be A Gupper today, and happy texting �

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(For a 60 second introduction to Guppers, please click here)

Well, it has been a few weeks since our last post. We had been busy preparing to go live.  One of our release live criteria was to use Guppers day to day.  We use it heavily at work, and personally I use it  to communicate with my family that spans across different countries.  

I must admit, I use email all the time. If you want to reach me, that’s the fastest way.  And I must admit, I’m a slow typist when it comes to typing SMS messages. Most of my SMS replies are only 4-5 words (”Yeah”, “Sure”, “Nope”, “We’ll do that tomororw”).  On the other hand, my mom who lives in Jakarta, uses SMS 24/7. She does not use email because no-one around her family, friend circle does email for communication. All of them are communicating using SMS.  The price of sending SMS in Asia country is ridiculously cheap compared to US.  In Indonesia, for example, to send a local SMS message is less than 1 cent, the same in China, and most other countries.  In US,  on the other hand, unless you subscribe unlimited SMS plan, both sending and receiving SMS message could cost $0.15 each.  Worse, there is no such thing is International unlimited SMS plans.  Between mine and my wife’s last month SMS bill is closed to $40, just for SMS international charges.

So, how do I normally communicate with my family back in Jakarta?  It’s normally via voice. However, we loose “at-the-moment”, “respond at your convinience”, “more-casual” types of conversations.  It would be great if she could communicate to me the way she does comfortably with others (via SMS), and the same way I communicate with others (via Email).

Enter Guppers in the picture. Guppers allow user to select one more communication channels to communicate. In my case, I’ll use email for me and SMS for my mom. This way, we communicate in more natural way, and I don’t have to pay for International SMS, since I’ll be using email.  In addition, I could also invite my other family members to join our conversation.

The following chart explains in high level what I’m trying to do.  Guppers as a service in the cloud will broker all communications between us.

High Level Overview

Keep in mind, this is just one of scenarios that Guppers can support. I promise to add more and more scenarios in this blog.  As of today, 9/1/08, while Guppers services can send/receive SMS to/from the rest of the world, unfortunately, we have to wait for another month or so  for US access, since the paperwork is more involved than we originally thought.  

So, let’s get down to business.  

Step 1: Join Guppers
Go to www.guppers.com and sign up for an account.  If you’re using phone primarily, you can exclusively use phone to interact with Guppers services.

Once you complete the sign-up, Guppers will need to verify your email address. Open your email, and click on URL to complete the registration.  Note: Some mail servers are aggressively filter email messages, and sometimes Guppers’ notification email goes to Junk-Mail folder.  

That’s it!  Congratulation - You’re a Gupper!

Step 2: Create A Group

I would like to create a group for my family members.  From the “Group” menu on the top section and  select Create Group. 

Create A Guppers Group

Notice that you can make the group private or public.  If you’d like to keep conversation private among yourselves, you can set the group as private.  Otherwise, you conversations in this group can be read by others.   I created a private group, and I named it “MyFamily”.

Step 3: Invite Others

Once you create a group, it’s time to invite others to group.  You may want to invite them based on the communication channel that they use day-to-day.  For example, for my mom, I’ll use her phone.  For my brother, I’ll use his email.  Guppers architecture is extensible, in the future we’ll add more and more communication channels; currently we support SMS, Email, and IM (GTalk only for now).

Guppers Invitation

Step 4: Others join Your Group
So, here is what going to happen when the invitation is sent to the phone from Guppers:

Getting Invitation

Now, what she needs to do is just to reply to this SMS, “Join MyFamily”.   An invitation will also be sent to my brother via email as well. All he needs is to click on the URL link and sign-up to become a Gupper.

 Step 5: Let’s talk!

At this point, we can start communicating.  My brother and I have a choice to use my email and Guppers web site to communicate; while my mom can use her phone.

Using Guppers Web Portal to send message
This is as easy as type a message and hit ‘Send’ button.

Guppers Send From Portal

Using Phone to send message

It is easy to send message from the phone. Send it is using the following syntax: <GroupName>, <message>.   For example:  MyFamily, Hi guys let’s do video conference at 9:00.

Reply from Phone

Using Email to send message

The same syntax applied when using email to send a message to Guppers (Note: in the near future, you’ll reply the same as you reply a regular email).

Send From Email

Reviewing your conversation

All your conversations are recoded on the web portal.  If you select a private group, only the member of groups can see the conversations.  In fact, the group membership is also private from outsides. However,  if you select a public group, your conversation can be accessed by anybody.

OK Great. How much does it really cost?

In this scenario, all standard rates that my mom agree to the local phone provider applied. In Indonesia, for example, sending an International SMS is less than $0.05 while receiving is free.  Guppers number that she’ll be using to communicate with Guppers is a UK number(+447797800301).  On my end, receiving messages for me or my brothers using email is always free.  The question is how much is going to cost us if we send a message to this group from email?  Given that Guppers has to send an SMS message to my mom, Guppers only charges 5 Guppers points  (it’s around $0.05).  In the future, as we work with local phone providers, we expect to pass savings to our customers, it will be even less that 5 points.  WIth a traditional solution, one round trip 2 way communication costs $0.30, with Guppers solution costs only $0.05.  The savings are even more dramatic if I add more family members or friends from both ends of the world.  

The good news is, Guppers is giving away 200 points for anybody joins during this beta program; and we’ll be evaluating if we should continue this policy, even giving credits every months to loyal customers.  In addition, you could purchase Guppers credits.   The net result is not only I communicated with my (extended) family now daily, but it also saves us money. Instead of paying $40 for International SMS charges, with this solution, my cost will be $6.50 . We’re one happy Guppers family… :), inching closer toward Guppers mission.

I hope this blog entry explains one of scenarios where Guppers can be used. We would love to get your feedback. Or you can also personally send an email message to me to a n d y -a t- g u p p e r s . c o m  (please remove spaces, and replace it with @, I’m trying to avoid spam).

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With the advancement of technology, the world is increasingly connected, complex, compressed in time and space. Communication to the other side of the world can be done a few clicks away and we no longer tolerate waiting for a response in days; more often than not, we expect instantaneous answers. As Thomas Friedman argues in his book that in this digital revolution era, it is possible to reach millions of people in short period of time; it is more and more common that any citizen participates in a global project. Soon, in the digital world, everybody will be in equal footing. The world is, indeed, getting flatter every day.

This is an exciting period time, but we barely scratch the surface. While multinational, medium size, even small businesses increasingly interconnected globally, at a personal level, individuals aren’t as interconnected to the other side of the world. Social Networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are very popular in the US, while CyWorld dominates market share in South Korea. What surprising is, in some countries with advanced communication infrastructure, the social network services are almost non-existence, even though their population is highly social. Why?

Continue reading this entry…

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Well, it started out from here:

Then, it evolved into this:

Anyway, based on what is defined in couple of urban dictionaries, we can sort of sum up Guppers as Yes, Happy, and a Big Family. So, it is very much what we have been trying to do. We want to create a very simple, affordable, and accessible utility (even without the Internet) which allows a group of people with a common interest to stay connected and getting on well with each other as a mean to achieve more happiness.

To get there, we were out to create a unified group messaging utility that would support not only the most commonly used communication channels, such as email and Instant Messenger (IM), but also one that can work on a most widely owned personal communication device - the wireless mobile. That is the core of Guppers - enabling social messaging for everyone in the world, even without the computer and Internet.

We were eager to show how Guppers works in action and made the following video at the spur of the moment. I must admit the shooting quality reflects the work of an amateur. Still, I hope it can effectively convey the core feature of Guppers to you. Thanks!

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