Archive for the 'Business' Category
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Ohio Linux Fest registration extended
If you can be in the Columbus Ohio area Sept 10-12, head over to Ohio Linux Fest! Registration has been extended to Sept 8th. IBM is a sponsor again.
http://ohiolinux.org
Monday, October 5th, 2009
The FTC decides to regulate blogging (sponsored blogging)
Interesting news out of the FTC. They’re going to start regulating blogs as they would an advertisement – though it doesn’t seem 1:1 in terms of advertising claims regulations and blogs. I do think this is a good move (perhaps overdue). Some bloggers like those at Redmonk have been disclosing their possible (even remote) conflicts of interest with clients for a long time (as financial analysts would be required). IBM bloggers all have disclaimers on their websites. It looks like blogs are “growing up”.
How long will it take for WordPress users to create a “sponsored by” plugin ;-)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/05/technology/AP-US-TEC-Bloggers-FTC.html
The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.
The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. The guides are not binding law, but rather interpretations of law that hope to help advertisers comply with regulations. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could result in various sanctions including a lawsuit.
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
Why Circuit City failed; a comparison to B&H
This article over at inc.com nails it. If you’ve ever been to B&H in NYC, it’s perfectly clear.
I don’t buy the argument that the economy caused Circuit City’s failure. Take one look at its competitors, and you know that the market for consumer electronics and computer equipment remains strong, even in this economy. You can walk into any Apple Store and see large crowds of people lining up to buy computers and iPods. But enough has been said about how wonderful Apple is. I want to tell you about another first-class consumer electronics retailer — a much smaller business you probably haven’t been to, unless you live in New York City or are a professional photographer or an avid hobbyist. It’s called B&H.
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Will we finally see a broader implementation of open, mobile platform?
I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony in the topics this Register article touches on, but a couple points struck me as particularly important.
Adobe, yes Adobe, is now proposing an open platform (built on a mobile version of Air) that would run applications from any carrier’s platform (albeit all those, closed). Now I’m intrigued. Will we finally see a shift from closed, single carrier channels to open if carriers adopt this strategy? And will Adobe of all companies actually lead the way?
Note, this does not mean the applications themselves or the governance of the channels by the carriers would be open, but at least the platform they run applications on could be. This would be a major change in an industry thus far plagued by closed, private and a thousand “one-off” generation implementations. Heck, even Linux mobile adoptions have been “one offs”.
I suspect the challenge here will come in testing these applications across an amazing number of devices and revisions, but if Adobe can replicate its strong Flash success on mobile platforms, perhaps we won’t be stuck in a Silverlight world ;-)
Meanwhile, Adobe is set to follow rival Apple into the mobile apps game, but is seeking to provide a common platform that will be supported across stores from many operators and vendors, rather than creating its own portal. The Flash maker, whose dominance of mobile video streaming is dented by Apple’s refusal to support the technology on the iPhone, will launch a mobile version of its Air product next year.
This will allow the same application to run across many cellphones, unlike its current mobile product, Flash Lite, which varies in implementation between different platforms. Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s CTO, said at Web 2.0: “Of all the technologies on mobile phones, none of them has more than a 50 per cent reach. As a developer, you have to implement your content about 400 times right now. That is a complete mess.”
Another point of interest is Adobe’s royalty free proposal. Adobe … will incent implementers to redistribute their implementations back? Adobe has seriously evolved its attitude… for the better.
For companies that agree to keep their implementations of Air open, so apps can be used from any online site, not just designated store, Adobe will eliminate royalties.
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
We had a recession, great. Can we get over it now?
I swear the media talked us into a recession last year. Now the GDP figures are looking positive. One reason is that it’s become comparatively “cheaper” for foreigners to buy US exports, which then stimulates demand. The IT sector majors haven’t even hit a bump except for possibly Sun Microsystems. Can we stop talking about doom and gloom economics now? Just fix the banking situation and we should be done here. The housing market will always correct itself. Speaking of which, I’m buying a house – I’m contributing to the housing comeback.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26436824/
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product, or GDP, increased at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. The revised reading was much better than the government’s initial estimate of a 1.9 percent pace and exceeded economists’ expectations for a 2.7 percent growth rate.
The rebound comes after two dismal quarters. The economy actually shrank in the final three months of 2007 and limped into the first quarter at a feeble 0.9 percent pace. The 3.3 percent growth in the spring was the best performance since the third quarter of last year, when the economy was chugging along at a brisk 4.8 percent pace.
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
McKinsey: “The next step in open innovation”
There’s a great article over at McKinsey Quarterly’s website on the next step in innovation. It offers a peak into where companies are headed now that they’ve (well some at least) established basic means for tapping into open innovation through communities. To access the full article you need a login.
For most companies, innovation is a proprietary activity conducted largely inside the organization in a series of closely managed steps. Over the last decade, however, a few consumer product, fashion, and technology businesses have been opening up the product-development process to new ideas hatched outside their walls—from suppliers, independent inventors, and university labs.
Executives in a number of companies are now considering the next step in this trend toward more open innovation.1 For one thing, they are looking at ways to delegate more of the management of innovation to networks of suppliers and independent specialists that interact with each other to cocreate products and services. They also hope to get their customers into the act.
I was particularly interested in the hurdles to evolving towards a more participative value chain model. These are the four hurdles McKinsey identified:
- Attracting and motivating cocreators
- Structuring problems for participation
- Governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation
- Maintaining quality
I would add a fifth challenge which is maintaining visionary leadership. The challenge is that when a company open up to such participation, it’s too easy to justify investment in innovation to solve what customers, suppliers, etc are asking for today. What’s difficult in an environment with tons of user input is to also step back and recognize where you *should be* beyond what’s being asked for today. Think of Apple. If Apple had asked and listened to its customers about what to do next with the iPod next, customers would have posted a million points about X, Y, … N feature enhancements they’d like to see. What Apple did instead is look beyond what was right in front of everyone and set a strategy to take over the mobile device people carry with them. Apple looked further ahead and built an SDK platform for enterprise applications. They set a brilliant strategy that has now resulted in the iPhone becoming the next generation of what was just a music playing device. How many people will carry and iPhone and an iPod? Now look at the boost to Mac sales and you can see Apple has executed this strategy very well.
This challenge is also present in open source communities. Often the community will set many resources to what gap is in front of someone willing to speak up and complain or advise. The challenge is for that community to look a step ahead and identify what are the needs your users will want 3 years from now, not today.
I’ve diverted from my starting post, but while I thought the article was great, I felt compelled to add my personal addendum. The bottom line is that I think companies need to build into their open innovation model a means to capture this longer term vision either from the community if possible (without community NDAs) or through internal means.
Monday, May 26th, 2008
A massive energy innovation bubble on the horizon?
I can sense it – energy innovation will be the biggest bubble for investment – and the greatest economic challenge over the next 5-10 yrs. We all know “things are happening” even today, but a couple datapoints this weekend confirmed for me this really is going to be huge. One thing I’ve noticed continually happens is that a major issue like energy will likely see over-investment which drives exuberated expectations and which will lead to the pendulum swinging too far with a market correction to follow. But the pendulum is swinging and that’s a good thing for the world economy. I only hope the changes are not too late.
If I get time this week, I’ll explain more, but I even just noticed James Governor is expanding the Greenmonk analyst team. Follow the money is always a good model for investing in growth :-)
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Open Source VC Funding Does a 180 Turnabout in 1Q08
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/04/01/vc-funding-for-open-source-hits-an-all-time-high/
Very interesting twist in what I thought was a dying field… apparently “open source” funding in 1Q08 really took off after a dive in late 2007. Not only the highest quarter of funding, but also the most deals done. Thanks to Raven for sending the heads up.
Friday, March 28th, 2008
McKinsey’s 8 Business Technology Trends to Watch
Do any of these sound familiar?
Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
Managing capital and assets
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
Leveraging information in new ways
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making businesses from information
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Motorola gives into Icahn; splits ala Palm
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9903426-7.html?tag=nl.e703
I’m sure Carl has something big in mind, but if you look at Palm or many others, these moves don’t seem to have great track records. Interesting move, but I’m not sure this was the best option for Motorola to turn things around…
The Mobile Devices business will handle the designs, manufacturing, and sales of mobile handsets and accessories, and will license a portfolio of intellectual property. The Broadband & Mobility Solutions business will handle voice and data communication solutions and wireless broadband networks for enterprises and governments. It will also handle IP video, cellular, and high-speed broadband network infrastructure, and cable set-top receivers.
Monday, March 10th, 2008
A business school case study unfolding before our eyes
The new unlimited calling plan competition unfolding over the last week will be an interesting case study sometime in the future. Will this end with all market players racing to the bottom and losing profits to the benefit of consumers, or will Verizon’s first mover advantage give it a boost in competitive share gains – or will they all win with consumers paying for more than they consume? Only time will tell but it will be an interesting dance to watch and provide plenty of fodder for future corporate strategy textbooks …
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23564206/
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
Linux is an example of successful “mesh innovation”
Interesting conclusion by Steve Hamm:
There’s already a clear example of mesh innovation working. That’s open source software. Linux, Mozilla, and other incredibly successful software programs were created and are constantly improved by people scattered all over the world. So it’s a powerful model for innovation.
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Was the Terminator powered by Linux? The US military is gung-ho for Linux and “Future Combat Systems”.
This is a strong testmament for why I always tell people… it’s guaranteed that in the long run, Linux will win. The only OS out there that will remain competitive is Windows (IMO). And Windows will compete and be successful for the opposite reasons Linux will. That’s ok, if Linux dominated the market, it would be a monopoly – although a nicer one than we currently have :-)
Some analysts tout open source software as one of the next great technology waves, comparable in its disruptive effects to personal computing and the Internet. That future is already partly here for the U.S. military, with programs such as the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) and organizations such as the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) using open technologies.
http://www.military-information-technology.com/article.cfm?DocID=2326
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
When will the M&A market wake up?
I hate seeing business mistakes that happen over-and-over again and each time someone tries to make up a justification for the same trend. In the late 90′s it was Netscape and then AOL, AOL, AOL. Now those failed ridiculously – there’s always a hit platform of the day – something as fleeting as the popular bar of the week in a major city. Now it’s MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook, and this nonsense continues. To be worth extraordinarily high multiples, a company has to generate revenues – hear me? Revenues; yes, that means money.
Sorry, just a rant of the day, but think about how similar some of these “Web 2.0″ acquisitions and valuations can be compared to AOL. It’s a platform for social networking – and social networks change. Perhaps they’ll be popular in certain crowds for some time, but how will they generate revenue? (ads is the only obvious one… and those are predictable revenues). Beyond that, what justifies such a ginormous valuation? The user population may grow, but even at a peak estimate, what is the revenue stream? Does it match the valuation? Revenues are simple and any company has good average estimates to predict ad revenues. The formula is simple: $/click * average clicks …. not too difficult.
I get the scary feeling M&A activity in some IT circles has become too much of a billion dollar dartboard game. Bet on this new hit platform, that exploding platform, next year’s hottest platform… nonsense, bet on revenue streams that you can predict. If you have some other business model, so be it, but any decent analyst can predict the 3 yr future. If you’re using over 5 years to justify a high multiple valuation based on what should be a predictable revenue stream… come talk to me and I’ll help you spend it wisely on something else.
And with that backdrop, think about Yahoo! and Microsoft…
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Microsoft puts the IP threats to UK company streaming Office
Microsoft has said that the Internet service provider Fasthosts, which has started offering a hosted version of Microsoft Office 2007, is infringing on the software giant’s license regulations.
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
Check out Dealipidea.com
This is a really cool site that I saw just started up covering business deals in a Wiki for a great historical buildout of information. Michael Robertson started it up and explains his rationale here.
You can find it all at Dealipedia.com
After continually getting frustrated that I couldn’t find historic data on business deals or easily keep track of new deals without reading a dozen different publications I decided to remedy the problem by launching Dealipedia – a business wiki for mergers, acquisitions, venture investments, IPO and other deals. We’re launching with nearly 20,000 deals, but also never before revealed info like how much Yahoo paid for Flickr, how much Google paid for Grandcentral and how much the founders of Myspace made in their sale to News Corp.
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Apple… the company just baffles me…
I really, really don’t get what Apple is trying to prove here… companies trying to build business apps onto the iPhone and getting slapped with the DMCA because the Apple browser lacks Java and Flash support (e.g. it sucks)? Seriously Apple?
And it’s not just Web 2.0 start-ups making the noise. SAP, the world’s largest supplier of business applications, has pitched in, saying Apple gave the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as the reason it can’t install its software on the iPhone.
SAP had hacked its code onto an iPhone as a proof of concept, which is now on hold.
Monday, February 4th, 2008
IBM’s Bob Sutor responds to Microsoft’s… nonsense and whining
Saw this article over at Ars today:
We spoke to Bob Sutor, vice president of standards and open source for IBM, who responded to Microsoft’s recent claims regarding IBM’s involvement in the OOXML dispute. “IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,” Sutor told Ars. “If ‘business as usual’ means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we’re proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.
Monday, February 4th, 2008
A processor market “I told you so”
It’s always interesting to see predictions like this one on processor innovations, volumes and success/failures actually coming true.
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
McKinsey Quarterly Interviews Mitchell Baker from Mozilla
I was stunned to see McKinsey Quarterly interviewed Mitchell Baker. I was even more stunned to find it was a very insightful article despite everything I’ve already read on Mitchell. Unfortunately I think you need a subscription to see the full article, but if you have one…
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=2098&l2=21&l3=35&srid=17
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