new dog old trick

Big Tech Deals: Oracle/Siebel and eBay/Skype

Two big tech acquisitions got announced today.  One I understand; the other not so much.

Oracle took out Siebel in a deal that has been rumoured several times over the past months.  This may well be the last big acquisition in the wave of consolidation that has been underway in the enterprise application software market for a couple of years now.  There will be more deals before this wave of consolidation ends, but they will likely be smaller, more vertically-focused extensions and add-ons to the product lines of the remaining major players.  All two or three of them.  This must be bittersweet for Tom Siebel.  Larry Ellison has just added to an already massive multi-dimensional integration project: integrating organizations and integrating product lines and technology from Peoplesoft, Retek, ProfitLogix, and I-Flex with Oracle.  Still, this transaction takes out the largest single player in the high-end enterprise CRM application market and continues Oracle's drive to best SAP as the leader in applications.  They are not there yet but they are clearly on a mission. 

The other transaction, and the one I must admit I don't grok the logic of, is eBay's acquisition of Skype.  People who have thought about it include Om Malik, James Enck, and Ross Mayfield.  Ross says the logic is simple - I still don't quite see it.  One thing does seem clear to me though.  I've read some things indicating that the Skype management team and investors had a choice of a totally up-front buyout or a deal structure with up-front cash plus a performance-based earn-out.  They took the earn-out, with $2.6B up-front and the potential to earn another $1.5B over the next 3 years.  If it's true that they had a choice and settled for the earn-out, then it's clear that at least those folks see the logic and potential in the combination of companies.  It will be interesting to track the performance of this combination over the next couple of years. 

Can IT stunt your growth?

InformationWeek > IT And Growth > Top Execs Say IT Can Inhibit Growth > August 26, 2004

Well, I don't remember mama telling me that Information Technology (IT) would stunt my growth. There were some other things, but not IT. But apparently that's what some C-level executives believe according to this new survey by Bain & Co. (think they'll use this to drive selling some consulting bidness? nah, I'm sure this is a public service on Bain's part).

According to the survey:

But 60% of C-level executives and other senior managers say that IT, at times, inhibits growth, and that attitude could limit IT spending, according to a study released this week by management consultants Bain & Co.

I'm sure that revelation doesn't come as a shock to anyone who's been around IT either as a vendor or a user. It can be very aggravating when you can't roll out some initiative as quickly as you'd like because it's going to take more time than you'd like and more time than you think it should to make the changes to your system or because you're in the middle of upgrading your release of SAP or because you have to expand network capacity first to handle the increased traffic or whatever.

But if the survey is as muddled as this article appears to be, it's not clear what the message really is.

Take this quote:

"Hopefully, the survey is a wake-up call for CIOs when 60% of business executives think IT choices have been obstacles to achieving growth," says David Shpilberg, Bain's global IT practice head.

Yep, that's what CIOs needed - a wake-up call. Jeez, CIOs already have a shorter life expectancy than my son's goldfish used to have.

Two out of three ain't bad...

I posted about a month ago about Onfolio, a new software product that I was trying. Since then I have downloaded two additional products: ActiveWords and Ecto. After using all three, I've decided that two of the three make the cut for purchase and future use, one gets uninstalled...

trial post - ecto

Just loaded the ecto weblogging client on my mac. This is my first test post. Looks like a nice tool once I figure out all the bells and whistles...more later.<

Listening to Two Trains Running from the album Lone Star Shootout by Brooks, Charles, Hunter & Walker

Driving to Laptopia

Driving to Laptopia

Doc Searls, one of the weblogging gods and certified cluetrain guru, is trying the LOTL (Linux on the laptop) experience. I think he is right that if the LOTL experience becomes accessible to "suits" (that's me - I used to be a software engineer but we're about 10 years past the "use by" date on most of my hands-on technical skills) that Linux actually has a chance at starting to displace Windows among non-geeks. As he says:

If you want to talk hardware sex, at least to suits like me, you have to talk laptops. The problem is, you can't leverage nonsexy desktop technology into sexy laptops, not entirely anyway. They're too different, not only in size and performance requirements, but in nature and purpose. This difference goes far beyond form factors and cosmetics.

Desktops are appliances. Laptops are instruments. The difference between a Dell desktop and an Apple PowerBook is like that between a Kenmore washer and a Fender Stratocaster. And by that I mean no offense to the Dell. What I want here, by making that comparison, is to motivate Dell to make an instrument of similar quality and utility. For all I know they already do. I have friends who swear by Dell laptops. But Dell makes those laptops, the stickers on them tell me, to run Windows XP. I want one that's made to run Linux or one of your favorite distros. Whatever. Just get serious about it, guys. Now is the time

.

He's using an IBM T40 ThinkPad as the hardware platform. The T40 is a sweet machine so he's got the hardware dialed in if he's looking to build a LOTL Stratocaster. I've used about six different makes of Wintel laptop - Dell, Compaq (RIP), Gateway, Toshiba, IBM, and Sony - and ThinkPads are the best, without a doubt. And his basis of comparison for LOTL is not Windows on a ThinkPad, it's an Apple OS X PowerBook.

Clearly, PowerBooks are the instruments to beat. And that's exactly what I'm hoping to see happen with this new ThinkPad. No, I don't expect it to do everything the PowerBook does. I expect it to do more. Eventually.

If LOTL can even get close to the OS X/Powerbook combo then MSFT better start worrying. Of course, today it ain't even close. Read the whole thing and subscribe to Doc's Linux SuitWatch newsletter to get the updates on the project.

Onfolio

I posted a day or two ago about a new software product named Onfolio and that I thought it looked like an interesting product. Well, I took my own advice and downloaded it so I could check it out. I used it for a while this afternoon to gather information off the web in support of a little research project I was doing for a friend.

I'm impressed with Onfolio so far. At this point, all I've used it for is collecting info from the web. I've stored away links, I've stored away entire pages for offline reading and reference, I've stored one image, and I've grabbed a couple of snippets to save quotes rather than grab the entire page. It's very easy and intuitive to use. I sat through the tutorials and thought that they were well done and provided a very complete overview of the product. At this point I haven't had to do a lot of organizing or structuring of the material I grabbed nor have I tried the "reporting" (publishing) features of the product, although they look good.

Onfolio looks to be a real bargain at $30. This is one product I'll be purchasing well before the 30 day trial period is up. It's really great to see a nice new PC product come out - I guess all software product niches haven't been filled yet. Good job by the guys at Onfolio.

Interesting new software product

Someone pointed me to an interesting new software product - Onfolio. Ever had the experience of browsing the web while researching some topic and wanting a way to save links, images, snippets of text, and other little bits and pieces of things that you had found in one organized place? That's what Onfolio does. Last year I experimented with an online service called Yellowpen that did some of the same things and thought that it was interesting but I remember wishing that it was available as a product to run on my PC. Onfolio looks like an interesting complement to your search engine(s) of choice - check it out. Now, if they'd just release a version for the Mac.

Demo conference blogging

Jeffrey Nolan at the SAP Ventures weblog has posted a couple of great posts (scroll down to the feb. 17 post on day two of the conference and then scroll some more to the feb. 16 day one post) from the Demo Conference. Good mention of all of the presenters. Demo has been one of the top two or three technology conferences for years - sorry I couldn't be there this year. Sounds like some pretty cool technology this year.

The Fastap Keypad

The Fastap Keypad | Overview: The Fastap Keypad. David Kirkpatrick's most recent Fortune newsletter talked about the Fastap Keypad. I had not seen this before but am impressed by what Kirkpatrick has to say and by what I read on the Fastap website. As Kirkpatrick says:

When I heard that someone had found a way to add all the keys of a computer keyboard to a normal cellphone keypad without reducing the numbers to the size of poppy seeds, it didn't seem possible. But when I actually saw how it's done, I had the proverbial light-bulb experience. Like that guy in the AT&T Wireless commercial who texts to make up with his wife, I felt like keying "I am an idiot." Of course! This is how it should be.

Exactly.

And I really like the catch phrase on the the Fastap site:

Ease-of-use = USE.

This could get me away from a Blackberry and onto a phone for text messaging/email. Very cool.

Group seeks political power for P2P | CNET News.com

Group seeks political power for P2P | CNET News.com. Another interesting development in using the internet as a political vehicle as well as another front in the war on the entertainment industry. I've just come across this article so as yet I haven't had a chance to check out exactly what the organization is advocating, its sponsorship and membership, etc. You can check it out too here.

Just off the top of my head, I'd guess the question of success for this movement will hinge on the positions this group takes. If this is nothing but cover for the extremist slashdot/open everything/rip off the music industry crowd, it won't attract enough support to have any clout - certainly not enough to provide a viable counter to the power of the RIAA and its ilk. If the positions taken are based on more reasoned advocacy of openness, the fair use rights of consumers vs. the evil empire of the RIAA, the need for change based on new enabling technology, and protection of the intellectual property rights (including the right to be compensated) of artists/creators then I think that an organization like this could pick up some real momentum.