Author Archives: admin

Desktop Drift

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Seems everyone is aiming for the desktop. Some are drifting slowly, trying to grind away Microsoft’s dominance. Others are planning a full frontal assault. Yes, Larry Ellison is in the latter category. The slow motion mob is of course Linux. Nearly a decade ago I was helping SuSE peddle the first competent Linux desktop distro. The Microsoft hurdle was steeper then than now, and we knew advising CIOs to conduct forced march migrations was folly. But CIOs were interested in researching alternatives, clearly disgruntled at being held captive by Bill Gates and his nerdy desperados. We advised a piece meal approach. Since our study of CIO attitudes concerning Linux showed that they wanted their IT staffs to be Linux literate, we suggested migrating just IT to Linux desktops (sans Microsoft support teams who both needed Windows on their PCs, but would also attempt CIO assassinations if they were forced to … Continue reading →

Black Java

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This year’s JavaOne is a conference stood on its head. A number of elements indicate that Java is thriving, but in odd tangents and with uncertain bearing. I’m sure it was only coincidental that all Sun employees on site were wearing black shirts and near-death experience expressions. Sun staffers looked like people who woke up in a casket at their own funeral. Or in Hell if they believe the rumors about Larry Ellison and his cloven hooves. Exhibit floors are where you find the real pulse of an industry. Forget keynote fairytales which are often more about FUD than fact. When companies drop thousands of dollars on booth space and staff time – when spending shows their intent – that is where you learn how to place your bets in any industry. After touring JavaOne, I’m buying more stock in Apple. No, Apple was not demoing nor did the spirit … Continue reading →

SaaS Survives

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We may be in a recession, but SalesForce.com has decided not to participate. Last week SalesForce submitted financial reports covering the three deepest months of the current downturn. From February through April, SalesForce saw their revenues rise 23% and their net income nearly double, climbing 92%. They also announced that SalesForce is the U.S. economy and that Marc Benioff would ascend to the papal throne. Defying economic gravity is considered a miracle on Sandhill Road. We should not be surprised by this quarter’s occurrence. When in recession, companies and consumers alike reduce risk while attempting to expand opportunity. SaaS offers a reduction in risk for implementing a CRM system. Since SalesForce is currently absconding with nearly 10% of all CRM revenues and is thus the undisputed heavyweight of the SaaS CRM industry, 3,900 new customers instinctively turned to them in early 2009. Another angle is that in tough economic eras … Continue reading →

Segmenting Inside

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Once in a great while you see a company doing what would be sane in other markets, but might be a Herculean improbability in their own. Yes, this has to do with the Linux market. Specifically this has to do with the embedded Linux market, a realm so fragmented that ‘chaos’ is too polite a description. It is also one of Linux’s silent success stories. Odds are that you are within five feet of one or more devices that have embedded Linux inside. Glancing about my office I count three (a printer, a router, and a cell phone, though I suspect the hub and print server at Linux-based as well). The embedded Linux market is fragmented along several vectors. The primary vector of discord is the application. Router makers and printer makers and cell phone makers have different interest and needs with embedded Linux. A while back my neighbors at … Continue reading →

Open Assaults

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IBM knows how to club competitors. Using Open Source for the betterment of your products is well understood. Using Open Source to grind your competitors face into the dirt is more of an art. Yet when done well it accomplishes the primary objective of competitive marketing – attacking your opponent’s strengths. For technology marketing tyros reading this, understand that attacking your competitors weaknesses is a losing game. Weaknesses are typically marginal worries to consumers. If your competitor’s weakness were serious then they would have never become a competitor. Even if the weaknesses were important, they can be corrected and thus your assaults will be short lived. Attacking their strengths however is to eat their souls. Your competitor’s strengths are what made them successful. Any time you can assault their strengths you attack the very foundation of their prosperity. Successfully making their strength into a weakness will do more harm than … Continue reading →

Mobile Mayhem

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Silicon Strategies client DeviceAnywhere has the good sense not only to employ us, but to take the pulse of their own industry on a regular basis. Knowing that trends change over time helps companies know how best to serve their customers – to anticipate their needs DeviceAnywhere surveys examine what technologies mobile applications developers design for, how DeviceAnywhere services are used and most interestingly what kinds of mobile applications are being written. This last bit says everything about how the mobile application market has shifted and what consumers really want. They want the Internet in their pocket. The Internet is a success because it is Darwinian in nature. Every mutant content provider self-formed out of the digital muck, rapidly mated in orgiastic enthusiasm, and new species of content and application are perpetually being delivered. Go forth and iterate. The reason a Darwinian Internet creates is popular is that every possible … Continue reading →

Opening Clouds

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Where is your cloud and how do you manage it? I toss that question at an occasional CIO and get borderline lucid answers. Most don’t yet use clouds but lust after them. Others leverage public clouds for non-privileged and mission-uncritical work. A scant few have cobbled together their own private clouds (p-clouds). P-clouds and rentable clouds are as similar to Sherman tanks and kangaroos. The promise of agile clouds is that you would be able to establish your own internal p-cloud and extended it ad hoc to external, rented cloud resources. Currently this requires either a significant amount of home grown engineering or adherence to one or another public clouds tools and management protocols. Either approach is anathema to IT. All radical growth spurts in IT technologies have occurred when open standards were popularized. UNIX killed MPE, VMS and other also-rans. Likewise Linux is slowly killing proprietary UNIX and blocking … Continue reading →