December, 2007 |

iYear

Posted on 2007/12/18 by admin2013/07/03

2008 will be the iYear, and no that doesn’t mean Steve Jobs gets another gazillion dollars for inventing a new gizmo with more cool than function. The ‘i’ in iYear stands for “integration.” I see on the horizon signs showing that IT is shifting priorities and now faces an exaggerated form of post-consumption integration indigestion. First, let’s be honest — the IT market goes through some predictable cycles. When the economy is good and customers have larger budgets, they buy technology that offers to give them competitive advantages. Sometimes this advantage is immediate, and sometimes it is long-term, and sometimes it is just hype. Regardless of the time frame in which the alleged benefits of the stand-alone technology should arrive, real business efficiencies come when that point technology is integrated with other technology , via integration , streamlines business operations. I have already noted that there is a tech industry … Continue reading →

Errant GPS Ad

Posted on 2007/12/17 by admin2007/12/17

Upon occasion marketing professionals are under such onerous deadlines that even they make mistakes. Here’s a good one. The photo to the right was scanned from a Sunday newspaper circular by Office Depot. Like a lot of folks, OD is peddling GPS units, this year’s hot gift. They had a pretty good price on this model that was advertised in a San Francisco newspaper. It might have been so cheap because it evidently has road maps of Europe and not America (despite the ad claiming maps of the U.S. and Canada). But unit above is clearly giving directions in a Germanic language (“Ungarn- auf Louise-Schroder-Platz” translates to “Hungary at Louise Schroder place” according to Bablefish). The turn distances are in meters, not yards, and the arrival time of day is labeled “Ankunft.” Now, you and I know some harried intern or first-year graphics employee likely grabbed an image from the … Continue reading →

Wireless Wedge

Posted on 2007/12/11 by admin2007/12/11

Closed systems make money. Open systems make money. And the two dynamics are co-exists … for a while. I’m pondering these realities as I comb through reports in the wireless market, where Silicon Strategies has a new client. The evolution of the wireless market will soon make a shift and the smarter vendors are rapidly adapting to the inevitable. First, a musing on closed and open markets. In closed markets, the vendor has control by virtue of either a monopoly or through customer lock-in due to the high cost customers face in switching to different technologies. The IT technology industry was a closed market for a seeming eternity until the folks at Berkeley began porting and promoting their flavor of UNIX (which could be considered the original computer virus). When Sun Micro and other vendors began using open standards (like UNIX) as a wedge into the market, the closed system … Continue reading →

Downturn

Posted on 2007/12/04 by admin2017/02/22

The stock market has correctly predicted 12 of the last seven recessions. Should we have more faith in Goldman Sachs, Gartner, IDC, Regent, MGI Research, the Financial Times and others in forecasting financial apocalypse? No, we shouldn’t. But fail to put the two together and you’d be dumber than my cousin Earl, a man with an IQ so low he can only find employment as a congressman. Businesses and consumers alike change their spending priorities when times are good and when they are not. The world economy is still absorbing the effects of high oil prices (driven as best as I can tell by pure speculative fervor). These inflationary pressures are just beginning to leak their way into the free economy maelstrom as the market bottoms out from a sub-prime induced credit crunch. The net effect is that everyone is beginning to rein-in their spending, with the glaring exception being … Continue reading →