February 27, 2008
John Gallant, Network World, Inc. – Digging in Deep with Customers
Dean Whitney, Digitas – 5 Things to Consider When Planning a Web 2.0 Solution
Paul Gillin, Paul Gillin Communications – Why Fears of Online Customer Negativity are Overblown
Elyse Tager, Elymedia – Using Web 2.0 for B2B Marketing
(part 2)
Jean Romeo, Research Concepts, LLC – Market Research: Print in Today's Media World
Digging in Deep with Customers
John Gallant , CEO, Network World, Inc.
One of my favorite ways to spend a free moment is reading about military history or watching documentaries about the pivotal battles and campaigns of the past. I’m fascinated by stories of great leaders and armies who turned the tide at critical moments – like Col. Joshua Chamberlain of Maine whose defense of Little Round Top ensured a Union victory at Gettysburg, or the Navy dive-bomber pilots who – nearly out of fuel – tracked down and sunk four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway, or Gen. George S. Patton, who raced across Europe with the German Army collapsing before him to the Rhine in World War 2. Running through these narratives are the key decisions and analyses that enabled one force – often undermanned and facing difficult hurdles – to defend a homeland or capture a beachhead against long odds.
I bring this fascination with strategy and battle planning to the IT marketplace in which we’re all engaged. I love to watch how established vendors maneuver to defend their positions – through product innovation, sales tactics, pricing, M&A, marketing, etc – and I’m fascinated with how newcomers to markets prepare their assaults on entrenched providers. In fact, a lot of the language we use reflects the theme of battle – from entrench itself, which means to dig in for defensive purposes, to price wars, turf wars, new product salvos and launches, and strategic alliances.
Over 20 years as a journalist, I spent a lot of time talking to executives of large and small IT companies about their market strategies and tactics, trying to understand what it takes to win business and establish a dominant market position. Much as I love technology, I enjoyed those discussions much more than conversations about speeds and feeds and hot new features. (For example, I recently was able to engage Juniper CEO Scott Kriens, during the launch of Juniper’s new switch line, on what it would take to dislodge Cisco from IT shops.)
While most of the questions were mine in these discussions, it wasn’t unusual for these business leaders to turn the tables and ask me – based on my work with IT buyers – what I thought it would take to dislodge a market leader or protect an entrenched position from new competitors.
There are no pat answers to those questions. The responses change based on the maturity of the market, the cost and strategic importance of the technology, economic conditions and many other factors. Analyzing what’s required to win new business or, equally important, maintain account control may be the single most important success factor for IT suppliers. There’s a graveyard full of startups whose shiny technology couldn’t open doors and win dollars. But those premature victims of the bruising IT wars lie beside some grizzled old veterans who once dominated the landscape but fell prey to nimbler, craftier companies.
One of the goals I set for myself and Network World upon becoming CEO was to establish a research program to help our marketing partners, advertisers and exhibitors to understand what it takes to get entrenched and stay entrenched, and I’m pleased to report that our first survey initiative is underway. Using our 10,000+ member research panel, we’ll be exploring what makes customers choose suppliers in a wide variety of vertical market segments – i.e., security, servers, storage – and what takes a vendor from being just a supplier to a true strategic partner. We’ll also explore what makes buyers swap vendors out and try another solution. We’ll explore customer perceptions of many IT companies – probably yours included – and find out whether customers believe you even want their business, among other things.
Our first survey is focused on the security market and we look forward to sharing those results with you, our marketing partners. Stay tuned to ITiki as we dig deep into these issues.
Thanks. JG
5 Things to Consider When Planning a Web 2.0 Solution
Dean Whitney, VP/Group Director, Digitas
Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way online solutions are being developed. The popularity of social websites like Flickr, MySpace and Youtube and technology that promotes collaboration such as blogs, wikis, tags and widgets have made Web 2.0 functionality an important consideration for enterprise development. When planning these solutions there are many things to consider. Recent technology advancements have resulted in a flurry of solutions in many categories. The tree will eventually shake out; standards will evolve. Will your project stand the test of time or go the way of the Betamax? Here are 5 things to consider when planning a Web 2.0 solution.
1. Social Networking Standards
There are so many social networks and online communities, social shopping and recommendations, sites for sharing content, and each one with a process to register and manage your profile, interact with members and content. Each site with its own language or application programming interface (API). It’s difficult for developers to learn site specific API’s and then build and maintain applications for multiple sites. A common set of API’s that work across sites would provide a greater use and distribution of applications. Developers could then build and maintain a single application.
Google has created a solution called OpenSocial. This platform provides a common framework developers can use to deploy applications on any social network that chooses to participate. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
The APIs make it easy for developers to build applications quickly using quality code. You can build complete applications that can be either hosted on the Google network or on your own server. There are three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks: 1. Profile Information (user data), 2. Friends Information (social graph), and 3. Activities (events, updates, rss feeds).
When planning solutions that include registration functionality; social tools and/or consumer generated content be sure to look at OpenSocial. Even if you are building an enterprise solution or do not intend to leverage 3rd party applications it’s important to keep your options open, you never know how your business requirements can change in the future.
2. Online Identity Management
If you are like me you’ve registered on several sites; Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr etc. Clearly it would be convenient if there was a way to claim that profile, make it portable and maintain relationships across other social networks. How many usernames and passwords do you have? Many people use the same relatively easy-to-remember and worry about how much havoc a malicious hacker could reek if they cracked their code.
OpenID is a decentralized system to manage your identity. With OpenID enabled sites you do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead you only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider" (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.
OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are hundreds of millions of OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins. When developing your next solution you should consider this as an alternative for password and account management.
3. Mobile devices
There are more mobile devices in China than there are in the U.S., and in there are 2.6 times as many devices than there are computers in North America; over 30% have accessed the internet. Beyond mobile phones, personal entertainment devices such as the iPhone open up a new venue for consumers to engage content.
There are numerous businesses and solutions geared toward mobile device formats such as mobile advertising, gaming, mobile social networks and mobile widgets. There’s a large contingency advocating creating experience optimized for the small screen. There are technical solutions that provide this today: compressing/down sampling proxy servers and micro browsers, like Opera Mobile, which can tailor any website to small display (using Small Screen Rendering technique).
Mobile browsers must still download an entire page (with graphics and other related files) which, if not optimized for mobile phones, can be time-consuming and expensive to download. dotMobi (.Mobi) is a foundation dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices with the premise being sites provide an alternative experience (www.bmw.mobi) optimized for the small screen. There’s a free testing tool to check your website for mobile readiness called Read.mobi. Should you be considering an alternative small screen version?
With the success of the iPhone touch screen technology and increasing mobile bandwidth will there be a need to provide small screen experiences in a few years? As we see with phones and cameras by integrating the user controls into the touch screen the entire face of the device and be a screen, resulting in a much larger viewing area. When planning how the solution will leverage the mobile channel you need to consider if it’s a long-term or short term solution before designing functionality for devices to ensure the investment will pay off.
4. Technology Selection
Business owners typically define business requirements and IT selects technology that will support the features. There are many robust frameworks and 3rd party applications that provide impressive out-of-the-box functionality. Often these solutions when presented to stakeholders can get the gears turning and influence the overall design. Additionally the projects can benefit significantly when they leverage existing functionality. There is less customization, reduced issues, and ultimately a much faster time to market. By getting the solution to the end-users sooner you can leverage real consumer insight to plan incremental enhancements.
We need to also consider new ideas in system architecture. A pillar of Web 2.0 is service-oriented architecture (SOA). Large scale start-ups leverage the web as a platform using distributed services such as Google’s Open Social, Amazon Web Services, OpenID, and many SaaS solutions. One example is USAtoday.com. When the site was redesigned as a social network news site they used white label social networking platform Pluck. From the user perspective the functionality is part of the site, but functionality that allows users to register, comments on articles, add tags, promote and demote news stories and manage their profiles are all provided from the Pluck services via a JavaScript proxy.
Centralized services provide the opportunity for your applications to exist in a highly scalable environment. If you tried to replicate the elastic cloud computing services provided by Amazon it would cost millions of dollars. Because of the business model allowing a high volume of subscribers to use the service the service is provided at a very low cost. This model has been a disruptive force allowing high profile websites like Meebo and Twitter to provide scalable services at a fraction of the traditional infrastructure costs.
Additionally there are options for delivering rich media content. If your solution depends on large format video or delivering Flash applications there are providers that can dramatically improve your delivery resulting in much higher quality experience that the end user doesn’t have to wait to download. Bitgravity offers impressive high-definition content delivery services and a live broadcast solution with a different approach than popular CDNs (content delivery networks) such as Akamai and Limewire.
5. What’s Next? Web 3.0…
Anyone that has searched on Google knows there’s a lot of web content out there and it can be a challenge to find what’s relevant to our needs. Researchers at MIT, Silicon Valley and around the world are feverishly working on artificial intelligence that will make the interface smarter and deliver a better experience to users. The question is will that interface be in context of a site or be an aggregate of internet content and services?
Today navigation is often site specific; better navigation, taxonomies, ontologisms, user generated tagging, better search functionality. One example is the powerful Endeca guided summarization technology. This engine powers almost half of the top 100 commerce sites today. It delivers layered navigation that allows users to quickly filter content down to a finite set of results. It can do this by consuming all kinds of disparate data sources and indexing them using their proprietary MDEX engine. The theory being that the search results experience should be no different than the navigation experience. Look at the following sites, navigate to a sub-topic level and then try entering that topic name into the site search to see how that works: www.forrester.com, www.homedepot.com, www.buzzilions.com.
What if the content didn’t have to be indexed? What if the content could be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily? That is the Semantic Web theory as first defined by internet inventor Tim Burners-Lee. There has been lots of buzz but there haven’t been any mainstream solutions. One Semantic Web tool that is close to market is a called Twine, a venerable Wikipedia on steroids, this information platform provides a glimpse into what’s possible. Another example is Exhibit, a semantic web application framework developed from the research in the Haystack group and the User Interface Design group at MIT CSAIL, and maintained by the SIMILE project.
If you are building a solution that is more than a simple content site; that will serve up a large amount of content, data, records and grow significantly over time; you need to look into leveraging Semantic Web technologies such as RDF, EBML, OWL, SPARQL, XSL, GRDDL etc.
In Conclusion
With low cost hardware and storage and new technology frameworks allowing rapid development there has been the equivalent of a land rush of new technologies and concepts. The result has been an explosion of new solutions and it’s a matter of time before patterns evolve and standards emerge. It’s important that business owners and IT managers analyze trends and plan solutions that will provide the longest life for the investment. Considering the speed of technology today by the time you have read this conclusion this far less than complete list may be in need of an update. What do you see as potentially disruptive forces in the near future?
About Dean Whitney
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media evangelist. He is an executive with global digital marketing firm Digitas where he works with leading brands to develop and implement online strategies. You can read his blog at www.deanwhitney.com.
Why Fears of Online Customer Negativity Are Overblown
Paul Gillin, Principal, Paul Gillin Communications
No one has more reason to be suspicious of social media than Dell Computer. The company has been the target of three prominent blogger attacks. In 2005, Jeff Jarvis unleashed his famous "Dell Hell" attack on Dell's customer service. The next year, the blogosphere helped expose problems in Dell's laptop batteries, leading to an expensive recall. And late last year, a confrontation with the consumer advocacy site Consumerist.com turned into a PR black eye.
So why is Dell now being hailed as a social media innovator whom Jarvis himself recently praised in BusinessWeek? It’s because, in Michael Dell’s own words, “[Online] conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not…[Y]ou can be a better company by listening and being involved in that conversation."
If only more companies were so open-minded. In my recent discussions with marketers and publicists, the issue of negativity has repeatedly come up as a reason to avoid engaging in online conversations with constituents. These fears are understandable, but they’re also overstated. Here are some reasons why.
Like it or not, customer conversations are probably going on right now about your company and its products. As Michael Dell said, these discussions will happen with or without you, and if they turn negative, your silence will only work against you. Most companies have a few dissatisfied customers. Unless those people tap into a much deeper well of negative sentiment, there’s little damage they can do. And even when they do turn negative, an open and constructive response is the best defense.
Angry customers usually just want to be heard, so listening and responding works wonders. Last fall, AT&T had a minor crisis when one of its customer service representatives insisted that a couple pay for a satellite dish that was destroyed, along with their home, in the California wildfires. The story logged more than 40,000 views on Consumerist.com and became a top story on Digg.com in just a few hours. However, AT&T issued a clarification and a retraction within just six hours and the story quickly died.
Negativity isn't always a bad thing. When channeled constructively, it can lead to insights that make products better and can even help identify new markets. After all, most people learn more from their mistakes than from their successes.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly discovered that in late 2006, when he proposed on the Southwest blog that the company might do away with its controversial open seating policy. Hundreds of customers took the time to tell Kelly that they thought that would be a very bad idea. Southwest listened and, in the process, avoided a customer relations gaffe.
The quickest way to blunt criticism is to show that you take it seriously. That doesn’t mean doing what your critics want. It does mean showing respect for their opinions.
Finally, keep in mind that negativity isn't all that common. While a few high-profile incidents have attracted attention, research studies have established that bloggers are six times as likely to recommend businesses and products as they are to criticize them. Even when negativity does crop up, loyal customers will rally to your side with amazing speed. People understand that companies can't please everyone, and they're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for doing your best.
Just two months ago, the Transportation Security Administration launched a blog. Few organizations have a more thankless mission, and response from angry travelers was swift and predictable. But the TSA was ready, and its open and constructive response has already started turning around the critics. TSA appears committed to using the blog to explain its policies and to demonstrate that there are real reasons – and real people – behind its decisions. I predict it will have much success.
Paul Gillin is a writer, speaker and content marketing consultant specializing in technology and new media. He specializes in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing. Paul is a veteran technology journalist with more than 23 years of editorial leadership experience. His book, The New Influencers, was published in 2007. His website is www.gillin.com and he blogs at www.paulgillin.com.
Trend Report — Using Web 2.0 for B2B Marketing (Part 2)
Elyse Tager, Founder and Principal, Elymedia
Part 2 of our series on how the business community is using Web 2.0 will cover blogging, video and podcasting. How is the business community utilizing web 2.0 for their marketing activities? We have been surveying our clients and attending webinars and trade events on the subject to cull the salient points for our readers.
Blogging
Typical objectives we hear from clients and colleagues are engaging their audience by engaging in dialog, educating the market on issues that are relevant, and creating thought leaders. While easy enough to start, there are a few tips we would like to share.
If you are blogging for a company, or from an organization, be sure the check on corporate guidelines before starting out. Keep the format short, one or 2 screens long, and always use an engaging title. Engage the readers by providing take-aways, asking questions, and provoking exchange of information or opinion – invite comments. The purpose is truly about dialog, not monolog. Link to other sites, authors, publications and especially other blogs to further the collaborative and educational aspect of the blog. Use a subscription form to get updates through RSS and email.
Podcasting/Videocastings
These require the biggest commitment of resources and time. Podcasts are best suited to product demos, sales training, virtual conferences. Video is best suited for product demos, intensive discussion or client testimonial, or establishing thought leadership.
Format is important. Keep it short – no more than 5-7 minutes ideally for a podcast. Videocasts are best in even shorter forms – 3-5 minutes will hold your audience’s attention. Commit to some frequency – a weekly or monthly series will build momentum. Use 3rd party sites and services for delivery (i.e., YouTube, blinkx.com, ifilm.com and others) along with posting these on your own site. Costs will vary based on quality. Handheld camcorders, mikes and minimal staging will create inexpensive but perhaps less effective marketing tools.
Elyse Tager is founder and Principal of Elymedia, an online and traditional media agency that has worked with many of the world’s most recognizable brands from Microsoft to PowerBar. With twenty years of executive marketing experience in direct response, coupled with ten years in Internet marketing, Elyse has gained a thorough understanding of both media and how they interact. This depth of experience and knowledge has benefited her clients as they strategize marketing objectives in the online and offline worlds. Elyse can be reached at elyse@elymedia.com, or (510) 864-1892.
MARKET RESEARCH: Print in Today's Media World
Jean Romeo , Partner, Research Concepts, LLC
With the Internet available to research any topic and a myriad of handheld devices and portable PCs to access the Internet (and at faster speeds than ever before), you have to wonder, is there still any value in getting information in print? This question especially rings true for technology professionals, who are usually the first to adopt trends in the digital world. Do IT professionals still read print publications for technology-related information? Do print publications get noticed when they arrive in the mail? Do IT professionals make the time to read print publications or are they relying on their laptops, PCs, handheld devices, etc. to get information?
In order to provide insight into these questions, Network World commissioned Research Concepts, LLC to conduct a research study focused on how IT professionals use the print edition of Network World. The study was fielded in December 2007 among Network World print subscribers. A total of 514 respondents completed the survey and they represented a diversity of job functions, industries, company sizes and ages.
First, we found IT professionals are still reading print. In fact, they make the time to read it. Respondents indicated they spend an average of 61 minutes reading Network World. Interestingly, the time spent with the publication has doubled over the past 10 years – from an average of 30 minutes in 1998 to 61 minutes today. We discovered six main benefits related to getting information in print and they are summarized here.
#1: Readers Can Concentrate
Network World readers are dealing with technology issues all day and are often at their computer. The value of print, we learned, is that they like “disconnecting” and taking the time to really read. They told us that when they read print, as opposed to getting information online, they “concentrate,” “absorb” and “focus.” Many readers take the print publication home and enjoy reading it. The results found that 75% either “Strongly agree” or “Agree” that they read Network World outside of work. Quite a few of the respondents use the word “relax” when they describe their experiences with print.
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"The print edition allows me to "unplug" and I usually take more time to read/review the articles because I've already blocked off time for that portion of my day."
– Security Compliance Manager, Carrier
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"I can disconnect and concentrate on reading."
– Executive Level IT, Health Care Services
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"I can take my time and devote my concentration to specific issues."
– Executive Level IT, Financial Services
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"I can read it in away-from-screen time, e.g. at home while also listening to stereo."
– IT Management, Utilities
#2: Readers Like the Portability of Print
Another benefit to print is its portability – readers are taking the print edition of Network World with them wherever they go. It is being read at home, on planes, when commuting on trains and buses, waiting for appointments, on soccer fields, etc. Many readers like the fact that they don’t have to rely on power and Internet connectivity to get technology information.
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"I can take it anywhere, on trips, home, work, clip pages for others to see."
– Network/LAN Management, Manufacturing
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"I can relax with it at lunch, waiting for someone, or relaxing on the couch."
– Executive Level IT, Manufacturing
#3: Print Gets Noticed when Passed Along
A unique benefit of print is that IT professionals like passing along something tangible to their colleagues. They believe that when they hand someone the print edition with a note attached, it will get noticed, whereas a forwarded link may or may not be clicked on. Our results found that more than half of the respondents pass along an issue of Network World to someone else.
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"I cut articles out to give to others which are usually read versus sending them the link, which isn't as pressing and usually doesn't get done."
– Architect/Engineer Management, Education
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"I can hand it to someone with a post-it note attached. That is still a big deal."
– Executive Level IT, Manufacturing
#4: Accidental Discovery in Print
Almost 9 out of 10 respondents (89%) said they read the print edition of Network World to learn about new products and solutions they might not otherwise know about. In addition, 82% either “Strongly agree” or “Agree” that they are more likely to notice information outside of their current focus when reading Network World print articles than when reading online articles. It is evident that print provides “accidental discovery” and IT professionals read print to get information they would not get anywhere else. In addition, 84% said the print edition of Network World is useful to gain awareness of new products from vendors they already know about and 76% use print to gain awareness of new vendors.
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"The knowledge that the columnists bring to the articles that they write keep me informed about things that I might otherwise not know about."
– Network/LAN Management, Process Industries
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"I get information about new technologies that I might not think to search for otherwise."
– IT Management, Process Industries
#5: The Print Trust Factor
While there is a lot of buzz surrounding the usage of Web 2.0 technologies, and many technology-related blogs, podcasts, etc. are available, IT professionals want credible information and they trust the information they read in print. Results to this study found that 92% of the respondents either “Strongly agree” or “Agree” that they trust the writers/editors at Network World to expose them to pertinent technology information.
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"I have been subscribing/reading Network World for 12 years, so I trust the editors and writers there more than most online sources of information that are not associated with a print publication."
– Network/LAN Management, Manufacturing
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"I trust Network World to deliver up-to-date and trustworthy information. Every issue is packed full of interesting news that I like to read about."
– IT Management, Utilities
#6: Print is Timely
Usually, we associate online with the most up-to-date information. Yet, the respondents in this study told us when they do research online they often find information that is quite old. With the print publication arriving on their desk weekly, they know the information is timely and this is important. Over 9 out of 10 respondents (93%) rate Network World either “Very useful” or “Useful” with staying up-to-date with the latest technologies. A total of 78% said they read Network World to stay informed of vendor and supplier news.
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"I don't have to be on-line to stay up-to-date."
– Executive Level IT, Transportation
The Value of Print
While the digital world will continue to grow, traditional mediums like print continue to play an important role. In fact, one of the main benefits of print is that it gives IT professionals a break from the digital world. The fact that IT professionals are reading Network World when have the time to truly focus on the information shows the value they place on it. The important implication is that when we can connect with information in a relaxing setting and are not distracted, we are more likely to remember that information.
Find out more
For the complete results to the 2008 Network World Print Subscriber Study, contact Sandra Kupiec at skupiec@nww.com or at 415-267-4510. Jean Romeo can be reached at jromeo@research-concepts.com or at 978-443-9042.
IDC Insight: SWA Market
Brett Waldman, Research Analyst, IDC
IDC has sized the worldwide market revenue for software appliances (SWA), for the first time, in 2007 at $16 million. This emerging market has barely even lifted off the ground, but IDC is forecasting the market to grow to almost $700 million by 2011. Until recently, the ground swell for SWAs has been built up by VMware and small startups focused on the opportunity like rPath. Now application and operating system vendors are starting to realize this market is for real and are starting to join the fray.
We predict the following trends in the software appliance market, in no particular order of importance:
- The required infrastructure is quickly becoming in place to support software appliances.
- Mature virtualization deployments and a movement away from hardware appliances to a software form factor mean the pieces of the puzzle can now be snapped together.
- Linux will be the runaway operating system of choice because of its flexible subscription model, and even more so because of its availability as a subscription- and cost-free solution.
- Novell will need to respond quickly to Red Hat's recent announcement of the Red Hat Appliance Operating System and its associated development kit, or be left behind.
- Despite Windows having the broadest application portfolio today, which in theory makes this widely used operating system a prime candidate to be incorporated into software appliances, Windows is a nonstarter in this market because of licensing and packaging restrictions.
- Early software appliance adoption will follow a similar trend to hardware appliances - Security, Storage and IT Infrastructure.
- Software appliances will start pushing the boundaries of virtualization and start to utilize unused infrastructure capacity.
- First movers will not be guaranteed success, but late entry could be spell disaster.
Brett Waldman is a research analyst for IDC’s System Infrastructure research group. In this position, he drives the research agenda for IDC's software appliance marketplace. He is responsible for forecasting the opportunity associated with software appliances as well as monitoring the trends impacting adoption of the emerging form factor. He also conducts research on the developing software appliance ecosystem analyzing the emerging roles, numerous participants, and disruptive business models. Additionally, he provides research and analysis on server and client operating environments including Linux, Windows, Unix, Netware, OS/390, and OS/400, as well as related infrastructure software.
Prior to joining IDC, Mr. Waldman was an equity analyst at Kaufman Bros. L.P. covering Security Software and Enterprise Applications. Mr. Waldman also brings with him several years of industry experience as an IT consultant for small and medium sized businesses.
Mr. Waldman holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Master’s of Business Administration from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.