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Why not? We have Software as a Service, Platforms as a Service, and a host of others. How about Service as a Software? That's what all the backup guys are really offering – not Software as a Service.
This "asS" acronym might be my final undoing. Lemmings, you all are. Why can't we simply say what we do? Why do we feel compelled to jump on any passing bandwagon in some pathetic attempt to reap rewards that invariably end up causing customers confusion to the point of giving up and taking a job mowing lawns?
Mozy is a backup service. No one in their right mind considers it "Software" – it's backup. Connected (Iron Mountain) sells me services – they back my stuff up, and give it back when I need it. It ain't software. If I wanted software, I'd buy it. The whole point is I don't want software - I don't even necessarily want a service – I want backup.
Do we call online banking BaaS? Retail shopping online RaaS? Is a train really Transportation as a Service?
5 years ago if you used the word service you were ridiculed. You couldn't fund a service company to save your life. GlassHouse might be the biggest "in your face" to the establishment in twenty years. They were told they were nuts to even think about a service play, that they could never raise a dime, and they could never have a legitimate company. The establishment was full of crap (as a service, which would be CaaS).
Now services are way back in vogue. So what do we do, we ruin them by grabbing the latest moniker du jour and shoving it on top of our ill advised product. Can a tow truck company use Jack as a Service – or Jack aaS?
I am totally fine with the "aaS" descriptor and even the concept used properly. "aaS" is a way to enable different consumption models for technology and products for customers, and therefore expand the reachable markets for these technologies and products. I think that's great.
Coming up with new out of the box thinking around go to market models that enable us to put our value into more markets is great. Creating new unique ways for customers to do business with us is fantastic. "aaS" in the pure sense – the Salesforce.com model – is exactly the right play. They knew people failed in their CRM endeavors most of the time. They knew it failed because the promise of CRM was littered with a minefield of noisy, competitive offerings that ended up requiring a huge time and expertise investment on the part of the customer – who had better things to do. Salesforce took away the biggest obstacles to consumer consumption – they offered the stuff as a service. By doing so they took away that whole "IT problem", took away the capital cost/budget problem, and also took away the complexity by only giving people what they actually needed versus all the marvelous bells and whistles they might have normally jammed into their product in order to differentiate it.
It ain't about the moniker people; it's about the business model. Do business the way your customer wants to and good things happen. That's $aa$.
….of Silicon Valley tech companies, that is. A depressed dollar, a booming Chinese economy flush with more cash than the U.S. has debt (which is a lot, in case you are wondering), a superbly educated, low-cost work force, ultra-low cost technology development and manufacturing expertise already in place and an internal market capable of dictating the new rules could mean big changes are coming.
I've been spending a lot of time attempting to really understand the Chinese market over the last few years – as a consumer of U.S. (predominantly) data center products – which I figured was a good idea considering that's how I make a living. Everybody knows China has been the world's hottest economy, so everyone wants to sell their stuff there. Here are some of the things you should know or at least consider:
- The China IT market doesn't operate like U.S. or Europe – at all. Most of the economic growth in China has been recent, so prior to the last 10 years there was no real overall data center infrastructure in place – at least not widely. That's good and bad – mostly good. No previous infrastructure means that while they are "late" to the market, they also aren't burdened with 57 generations of staggered, incompatible legacy bets to contend with. For the most part, the Chinese are able to start from a clean sheet of paper. The bad news on this front is that the IT consumer market has to be educated at every level. As capitalism and decentralization have taken a foothold for Chinese business initiatives, there has been very limited local senior IT talent with any long term experience, and as such it is only natural that Chinese IT leadership is forced to learn on the fly. If someone has never experienced the pure joy of making the decision to dump the mainframe for the mini-computer and adopt DECnet as a networking standard, they simply are not armed with the experience to see some potential pitfalls. This is why global system integrators like Accenture have done so well in China, and more global brands have grabbed big market share.
- The opportunities have only just begun. For example, because of the Olympic Games, China has a massive push to move their thousands of pure analog cable operators to bypass straight digitalization and move directly to HDTV – all within about 9 months. I figure the storage capacity requirements for this little endeavor will eclipse 2 exabytes – to start. As business grows in China, so will their IT needs. The only way to circumvent practical experience is to buy your way to success – and that is what the Chinese are doing.
- The decision makers for the majority of IT opportunities are not internal IT people – they are the system integrators. Chinese SIs – which really are more like VARs in the N.A. and Europe – are the perceived (and often real) knowledge experts, and as such command more influence in the Chinese market than anywhere else on Earth that I can think of. That will change as the IT community becomes more strategic and skilled, but for the foreseeable future if you want to sell into China and don't have a huge global direct presence, you better figure out who the SIs that control your accounts are. If they say no, you don't sell anything.
- The Chinese government still has deep influence and ownership in most commercial enterprises. For example, there are about a dozen major global banks in China, and all of them are owned by the government. They operate fairly autonomously however, and the government has been a very large supporter of commercial expansion and modernization.
- The Chinese are in it for the long haul. They are spending and building infrastructure that is second to none. From cell phone systems to WiFi, the Chinese are ready for whatever is coming next. They have the economic strength to afford to do it right and the centralized power to force it to happen. This will be the largest consumption market globally for IT products for at least 15-20 years I think. It really has only just begun.
Myself, and I think most industry people, have correctly viewed China as a land of unabashed opportunity. We think of China as the recipient of the things we bring to market – and for the next 5 plus years that will certainly be true. Sooner or later, however, the Chinese are going to reverse the roles – they are going to be the ones globalizing their own tech companies, and acquiring ours and others along the way.
A year ago I was introduced to H3C, a Chinese mega-company that came about after its predecessor, Hua Wei, effectively had to halt their own global initiatives due to a major IP piracy suit leveled by Cisco. After years of legal wrangling, Cisco and Hua Wei came to terms. Along the way the Chinese realized that they didn't need to steal and copy to design and build world-class technology products. They have the money, the market, and the manufacturing to take anyone on. They set up a joint venture/merger with ailing 3COM in the U.S. and went on to form H3C. H3C took all the internally developed IP and left behind anything that was challenged. The company now builds its own high-end core switching products, GSM infrastructure, storage products, security, and slew of other things. They sell their networking and core infrastructure products outside of China – mostly in Europe and South America thus far, and the rest has been captive to the local Chinese markets. Hua Wei does billions of dollars in revenues, and H3C over $700M, but no one has really heard of them in North America or most of Europe.
I became interested in the company when Jon Oltsik told me that technology and capability wise he felt that Hua Wei/H3C could pose the only true legitimate second choice to Cisco globally. How could a company I've never heard of threaten Cisco? His logic, which I agree with, is that there really is no true number 2 – that as great as the next level of big guys all are, if you add them all up they still don't come anywhere close to Cisco. We know from history that N.A. and European IT buyers like to always have a number 2, if for no other reason than to try to keep number 1 honest. It happens with servers, storage, and every other area of IT, but as a general rule not at the core network. With the right technology, built to be sold profitably at a huge discount to Cisco, and enough marketing money, Jonny figures they could grab significant overall global share even if they never even really threaten Cisco – just to let Cisco know that the IT guy has an alternative. I like the argument. Human nature is a tough thing to beat. With billions in revenues already, clean IP that works (they have over 700 patents), and a bankroll big enough to pull it off, the only remaining question is does H3C really want to be a global provider?
If we assume the answer is yes, then H3C – who is widely watched by a lot of other Chinese tech companies who would love to be able to follow in their tracks – is only missing one piece – a go to market strategy and execution plan. Just like U.S. vendors have often totally misunderstood the Chinese market and how it differs wildly from N.A. and European markets, so too do many of the Chinese. The difference that I have seen, however, is the Chinese appear willing to learn whereas Americans tend to take a more 'ready, shoot, aim" type of strategy, only to clean up the messes we make well after the fact.
I met with the President and several executives of H3C's Storage business in Orlando a few weeks ago. They were on a quest to better understand the markets here. What impressed me most about them (besides their tenacity – I think I met with them 4 times) was that even when I abruptly suggested that they had some basic fatal flaws to their core assumptions, it didn't set them back. (Yes, I made sure they knew what I was saying, and yes, I had a smarter person than I attending to see to such things). They really seemed to want to learn. I found it interesting to finally realize that cultural differences are bi-directional. In China a VAR controls the deal, but in the U.S. or Europe the VAR fulfills most of the time. In China a "partner" such as H3C can bring huge revenue opportunities to foreign companies. In North America and Europe, unless you are an OEM you probably are not going to be in a position to really move the needle for H3C. We all know that getting a major U.S. or European OEM is no easy task.
To be ultimately successful internationally, however, the Chinese will have to learn exactly what the rest of the tech world learned the hard way – that you will need to be "American" to really succeed in the U.S. and "European" to succeed in Europe. A transplanted national fresh from Beijing won't be any more successful running a European operation than a kid from Boston College sent over to Belgium. If you don't believe me go ask the Israelis, or the Japanese. It took Hitachi many years to move control of HDS to the U.S., but it was the only way to ever become a true competitor in the U.S.
If and when companies like H3C begin their international quests, it is only logical to assume they will do so both organically, and by acquisition. They will require localized market capabilities, which mean they will buy up VARs, service providers, and other manufacturers. They will make mistakes, and they will learn. Since they have incredible amounts of cash and answer to very few, they have the ability to buy just about anyone they want. They also have the capability to act faster than most U.S. entities. In order to create a global consumption base, why not just buy someone who has already done the heavy lifting? There are very, very large deals that are possible in this scenario. China owns the largest oil company in the world (Unocal) – by acquisition. They own property throughout Europe and South America, and have been slowly entering joint ventures and making equity plays in the U.S. markets. They have the money and opportunity to be global players in any industry they chose, so it's probably naïve to assume they aren't going to start buying up chunks of Silicon Valley. People will start complaining about anti-trust issues, etc. but let's face facts – the world runs on the economy, and while we will continue to be paranoid about allowing sensitive security oriented technologies to go, at the end of the day can anyone really prevent anyone else from getting to whatever end they want if they have the means? It's not as if we aren't getting hacked and attacked and defrauded by every other country on the planet already. At least the Chinese provide N.A. and European companies an opportunity to sell their goods – which is more than I can say for the 7 eastern bloc hackers who just stole another million credit card numbers. We used to fear the Japanese in the same way, but now the global economy wouldn't survive without them.
For what it's worth, I had one of my American Express cards compromised two weeks ago – and yesterday I found out that the replacement card had already been stolen. I don't know how, but besides being annoying, this has got to stop. Thankfully AMEX is great about situations like that – others, not so good. We freaked out every time the Russians did anything a few years ago, but now we welcome their security companies openly (Kaspersky Lab). Hermes in Slovenia develops OEM code for just about every major software/hardware person on the planet. U.S. companies send out development to everywhere from India to the Ukraine and everyone is fine with it. Perhaps we should rethink our outdated ideas about who we will do business with and why – since the ability to control anyone from sending a hunk of data to anyone else anywhere went away a long time ago. I think we should mandate protection schemes and encryption policies, since clearly the other ways don't work. Look at the public relations mess our friends at Hannaford, the grocery chain in Maine, got into – and they did everything right. They followed the credit card PCI rules to the letter, still got hacked by people stealing data in flight before it even hit their systems, and have done nothing but be stand up people since it happened. They didn't try to hide it, they brought it out. They didn't blame anyone else, they took responsibility. They spent more money encrypting data at the source – which isn't mandated by anyone – just to try to ensure it doesn't happen again. They have done everything right – and are still getting slaughtered by the local Maine media – who would really be appalled if they had any idea how often this happens and how most companies hide from it.
Is simply smoking hot. The numbers are killer, and I don't care how much you hate them, right now you want to be them. Smoking hot. Annoyingly hot perhaps.
What macroeconomic downturn? The hedge strategy they put into effect in 2002ish is paying off in spades right now. Can they sustain this level of execution across the board? Probably not – but man, oh man, talk about prime positioning. If the economy really tanks globally, they are actually in a position to increase overall share simply due to the fact that since data growth never abates, the (as ridiculous as this sounds to us old timers) fact that EMC has an end to end consolidation/ROI story is working superbly. They are absolutely attackable in individual areas but hold the majority of the deck of cards overall. It's the old IBM play – when the going gets tough, shoot excess vendors.
I'm not suggested that never-ending revenue and earnings growth like this is feasible, but am suggesting that even if they dip they will steal share and dip less than the collective competition.
Glad I left in '89. I knew they would crash and burn.
XIV, Files-X, and now Diligent. It's been a busy month for big Blue.
First, allow me to take full credit for calling the Diligent play. I said "Diligent will be the next to go - with the run on bulk storage plays designed to support the new era of digital content, a big honking de-dupe data protection play for big data centers like them will get scooped up this year" in this blog – back on January 8th. I should have said "this quarter" and I would have looked smarter.
XIV is being left alone, heavily funded and encouraged, and has begun to start the war. They thus far are building an EMC 1986 sales force as far as I can tell, which I still haven't figured out is a good thing or a bad one. Clearly that genre knows how to sell storage, but I'm afraid they may point at the wrong battle – namely "Kill the Symmetrix at all costs!" which won't work, of course. Sooner or later they will get their market position sorted out and then it will be really interesting. I can't see how IBM can do anything but benefit by the effort eventually. It may ruffle a lot of feathers, but I'm a big fan of ruffling.
I probably should have seen the Diligent move as inevitable. Mr. Yanai and Diligent CEO Doron Kemple are pals from the days no one openly talks about if you are Israeli, and just looking at Doron you know he can kill you 11 ways with a Q-Tip, while never losing that disarming smile. Both these guys come from big iron, big data center pedigrees and IBM was a natural spot to end up even without the fact that Yanai is now there and the band seems to be getting back together in Haifa. Most interesting is that Diligent was an EMC spin out (formerly the Copy Cross team). I wonder how much EMC got on the deal.
Files-X I can't really comment on, other than to say I hope my permanently 9/11 bonded friend and founder Jacob Herbst got out with some money. Somebody must have had pictures of somebody else to get that thing sold for the rumored $50M – but we are talking about people good at taking pictures. I'm not sure where it even fits, as this was a Tivoli deal.
SANRAD, Continuity, and StorWize are still standing, but for how long? Like most Israeli companies, they don't emphasize little things like Marketing very much, so few know them, but they all have killer stuff. If they go, who's left? And, as it just so happens, all three would fit nicely into the New Blue world. SANRAD has some of the best packaged up storage virtualization services out there and is a killer play with server virtualization for DR (I'm doing a webcast soon on the subject). Continuity is helping big shops discover the holes in their DR (a wonderful little tool to be used by IGS to keep tabs on how well they are meeting SLAs – or for them to see where some products are not working – or for some customers to use to keep IGS honest). Finally, StorWize has hardware acceleration/compression technologies that enable de-duplication type functions for primary storage environments – even hard ones like database. IBM has big plays in all these areas.
Is there such a thing as some anti-competitive regulation if one buys all the tech companies in an entire country?
The story hasn't been told all too well, but the parts fit perfectly.
F5 is the king of "useful virtualization" for IT in a Web 2.0/SOA world. Hear me out.
F5 has made a living by doing intelligent web load balancing – virtualizing web servers to the outside world in order to dynamically optimize performance and eliminate any downstream effects of failure. From there a web server – which may be in itself virtual (VMware, VI, Citrix, etc.) might like to speak to an application. F5 also load balances/virtualizes Application environments. The web server talks to the app server via the F5 virtualization layer. VMware can make one physical server look like 98. F5 can apparently make 98 physical servers look like 1. That's killer.
The network is virtual by design – it's IP. The missing piece of the pie was the data layer – which is exactly why they bought Acopia and exactly why it's brilliant. Now from the first instant a web request comes in all the way to the file sitting on some disk the entire stack can be dynamically virtualized and optimized. As you add lower level virtualization to the components under the higher level F5 architecture, you can start to draw a picture of exactly how life is supposed to be.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but this was an epiphany for me. Plus, the CEO is a Scotsman, and lord knows this business could use a few more of them if you ask me. IT could use a bit more FREEDOM! Either that or blue face paint and kilts.
Everywhere. Sorry for the blog delay people. I'm in SFO, again, for 28 hours. Red eyes might be the equivalent of cruel and unusual punishment. I'm on American. I used to be someone on American – not anymore. It's ok, the biggest airline ever will be Northwest/Delta – neither of which I fly or enjoy. That deal is just like two drunks holding each other up in a bar if you ask me. Now there will be less choice, more cost, and crappier service by really old belligerent people. Cool. Jet Blue is the only one who should survive.
The valley was 85 degrees and sunny, surprisingly. It will be 14 degrees and sleeting when I land in 4 hours. The only flight that ever lands early is a red eye – because that's the only flight you don't want to land early.
The Santa Clara Marriott might be the real ground zero. Unfortunately, because I was there and irony is my middle name, the Internet didn't work. Too funny really. I also had no toilet paper, which one only realizes way too late as one might expect housekeeping to keep house on such things. No need to continue on that path.
Had a very nice dinner with some ESGers and Ash from HP (founder of AppIQ and a wonderful, not tall, person) at something in Palo Alto. Nice Greek place. I had been there before, many years ago, with Jerry K. of Riverbed and Chris Schaeppe of Lightspeed (VC but don't hold that against him). Chris gave me a bottle of Harlan, which I drank too soon. Jerry couldn't figure out what possible value I brought to anyone. Smart man that Jerry.
Last week I was in Orlando at the vendor love fest called SNW. I never left our suite. I will be the last one to leave that show as it's fantastic for me. It's great for vendors who want to do a bit of biz dev too. Why anyone else goes is beyond me, but guess what? 11,549,993 IT professionals were in attendance! A new record. They were invisible, which is why you couldn't see them, but they were there. Trust me.
I saw the sun for the first time in well over a decade. It was great – my wife and 75% of my kids came down for a few days. In another classic ironic bit of my life, the geek show left town, I went to the pool, my kids came by, and just when life was good – 8,000 teenagers checked in to the hotel. The Florida Key Club – some sort of good samaritan thing I'll never quite get – invaded the hotel. I don't even like my teenagers that much, let alone 8,000 other ones.
There are a LOT of acquisition deals in play right now, none of which I can tell anyone about. 7 that I know of. I am not only speaking of the Moshe/IBM "buy everyone who has ever been in Israel" kind of buys – some are really big. Of course I'm not supposed to know about any of them, so I shall now go get on the most uncomfortable plane ever and be accosted by a flight attendant.
This comment was posted on an earlier blog trail I started from a gal named Catherine.
"Comment:
Well I now have proof that the Marshalls (a TJX Company) is screwing over people. I shop at the Marshalls in Redwood City California and everytime you bring a "Name" brand piece of clothing to the counter that is on sale they dispute the sales price and tell the customer it is a mistake. This has happened to me 6 times in the last 2 months. The most recently today and when I went back to purhcase the garment at my lawyers urging it had been sold. Well guess to who........to an employee. I think something strange is going on.........."
Awful. You'd think they might be trying to be pure and sympathetic to the nightmare they have caused many, but clearly they aren't either.
Instead, I'm now watching New England supermarket chain Hannaford being dragged through the coals for a similar incident – only Hannaford didn't really do anything wrong. They were hacked the old fashioned way, and as soon as they found out, they shut it down and told everyone. They, unlike TJX, followed the Visa credit card security guidelines perfectly – which shows you that no matter what, if bad folks want to do bad things, they will find a way. Hannaford didn't even save credit card numbers – these hackers somehow stole them real-time during the transaction – not by breaking into the database where the payload sat – there was no payload.
Perhaps it's because they are from Maine, but Hannaford did everything right, both before, during, and after this event, yet they are being sued and dragged through the news almost daily. TJX got away with doing everything wrong and got a slap on the wrist. Why is that, I wonder? Public company versus private? Lying works better than the truth? Politics? Hmmmm.
Hang in there, Hannaford.
Big giant companies bore me normally. They tend to have more bad than good, so they rarely reach their potential. Having said that, since they are giant companies, reaching their potential doesn't usually matter because they tend to make lots of money despite themselves – at least until they go out of business.
Every company has dysfunction. Big giant companies simply have more of it, since they have more people. Of course Microsoft is the most hacked/attacked operating system, there is more of it to attack and hack than any other. Older, big companies tend to have the deepest dysfunction simply because human nature is such that people don't like change, so if they did something one way in 1975 they probably still do it the same way now. HP has been around for a long time.
In the HP Carly years, I looked at HP as the next DEC – clearly running themselves into the ground attempting to cling to the way things were instead of dealing with the realities of the way things are. The fact that people were still talking about what color Taurus they were going to get and how great it was that everyone is in a cube (really ugly 1970's looking cubes) instead of asking why the storage business went from 98% world domination in the midrange to just another marginal player or why Dell was squishing them in PCs had DEC written all over it. It's a good thing that HP tends to have 1-story buildings or people would have been tossing themselves off of them.
Then Mr. Hurd came along. I still haven't met him, but certainly have been watching him. When they first hired him I thought he was the "Bob Palmer" of HP – the guy to sell the place to the next biggest guy in line. He came from NCR. NCR? Cash registers? Aren't they in Nebraska? I was meeting one of our clients in NY, who is a hedge fund manager, when they announced Hurd was the CEO. I said "Who?" He said, "Wow, the guy is an absolute rock star." He was right.
So Mr. Hurd went about his business and in short order not only stopped the bleeding but righted the ship. He cut costs and grew at the same time – no easy feat. According to Randy Mott's presentation at their analyst day yesterday, HP is saving $2B a year in IT alone by consolidating data centers and implementing virtualized commodity hardware. $2B here or there can add up to real money. Yikes.
The server business turned around, the PC business turned upside down, the services business has been booming (although I personally think this is one area that hasn't even come close to reaching its potential and is the key area for growth in the new world order), and of course they still sell a few printers and ink cartridges. Storage, on the other hand, has been one business that has continued to perplex me.
HP StorageWorks was the undisputed king of midrange storage – and yes, it came from DEC. Tom Burniece built the business at DEC with a stellar cast that featured Richie and Ellen Larry (Richie is the guy who looks like Kramer you see at storage shows – mega genius, Ellen is the normal looking person next to him) and Mark Lewis (now an EMC mucky muck – which was a huge defection at the time), and many lesser known industry folks like all the newly rich people from Equallogic. Then, when sold to Compaq (and then HP), they added folks like Darren Thomas (Dell), Howard Elias (EMC) and more. Clariion was inside of DG and just starting to make a run at StorageWorks, but the DEC stuff ruled the world in the mid-market. When EMC bought DG it basically shelved Clariion for a year or two until Mr. Tucci took control, and StorageWorks kept on chugging, but people started leaving and engineering started getting cut, and some products started getting a bit old, and so on. When EMC decided to make a real run at the market, HP wasn't in a position to react, so Clariion ate up their share on the block side while NetApp continued to destroy any aspirations of a NAS business. Bob Shultz was able to slow the death spiral and stabilize the business, but it didn't grow. Last year Dave Roberson took the reins and growth is back on the agenda.
In the meantime, things have become a bit easier on the market attack front. Intel/Windows is the server to attach to. HP sells a few of those. Linux is the next, and yes, they sell a fair bit of those as well – on the same hardware. The world is moving to a commodity based, scale-out, low-cost, virtual infrastructure place – so who better to capitalize on that set of realities than HP? Roberson, a 547 year Hitachi Data Systems man (26, but it might as well be 547) who was running the show at HDS and definitely could have hung out there and retired, somehow got introduced to the opportunity and to Hurd, and a deal was done. I'd like to think that I would make a move like that if presented the opportunity, but I'm not sure I would. Most would probably have stayed put in a nice comfy job with big pay and a relatively easy ride (not to diminish the job or insinuate anything, but hell, after 26 years there can't be many secrets). I don't know Roberson well enough to consider him a pal, but certainly well enough to know he's one of the very few, very senior storage industry execs that has been through it all. He's not the "chase the shiny object" ADD type. He's sort of boring, really, and I mean that as a compliment. Thus it is an interesting situation all around. HP represents chaos compared to HDS – thousands of products versus three. In chaos, there is opportunity for sure, but to head into a great unknown like that is a risk I'm not sure many would take – which is probably why the job took so long to fill. Dave didn't take it for the money (I'm surmising) or for job security, so he must actually be looking for real change. Hurd is a change agent if nothing else, and HP has so many parts that are leveragable, that if they really want to do something different it has the potential to shake things up dramatically. Since I have ADD and love chasing the shiny object, I'm hopeful that we'll see some massive disruptive forces at play – but I'm also semi-realistic and don't expect to see Mr. T commercials at HP anytime soon. HP is boring. Hurd isn't a public, in your face, attention grabbing guy, and Dave isn't exactly Liberace, so if they are going to shake up the establishment, it will start behind closed doors and folks like me will have to try to piece together what's really going on and what it will mean. It would be cool if they can do it as it's pretty rare that big old companies ever reinvent themselves, but when they do, it gives us plenty of stuff to talk about.
The first sign of change hit me in the head last night. Dave now has German guys doing marketing. There are plenty of jokes and wisecracks to be made with just this line alone, and suffice it to say you should assume I made them. Having said that, I spent some time with Director of Marketing Patrick Eitenbichler last night, and had one of the most unexpected, interesting market conversations I've ever had with anybody at HP. The guy is nothing that one might expect (forget the German part, just think HP marketing) – he didn't even quote a market share number. He talked about Web 2.0. He talked about the fact that server virtualization is great, but needs to be connected into the virtual layers of the rest of the infrastructure. He talked about how people use stuff, not how fast stuff is. He talked about the market as it will be, not as it has been. It was quite surprising. And it made me think that it just might be possible for an old dog to learn a few new tricks after all.
I'm having a surprisingly difficult time finding folks who are attending the spring show – even the usual suspects are blowing it off. I'm going anyway – if I don't see the Sun soon I'm going to start evolving into a subterranean creature.
If you are an IT person, and you are attending, send me an email (steve.duplessie@enterprisestrategygroup.com) and let me know. I'm looking for a casual impromptu cocktail-based get together to run a few ideas by and ask a few questions of some real people – ideally Monday afternoon or evening. I'm buying. Vendors, VARs, or other vagabonds need not apply.
Thanks!
Tony Asaro is back in the blogosphere. I particularly like his comment that Citrix (Xen) doesn't have a fully functional product. Say what you will about Mr. A, he ain't shy about tossing a bomb or two.
Bear Stearns is gone (and what a deal that was, the government insured the debt and the building alone is worth 4X what the company sold for). What's interesting is that Wall St. IT has always been considered the king of all that is IT – they have the most dough, the best people, etc. Guess what? It ain't true anymore. They still have the most dough, but the crown of IT gods lies now firmly in those who have mastered the wacky world of Web 2.0. Google and Amazon do way more interesting stuff with way less money and "talent" to drive value out of their IT operations. Why? Because instead of retrofitting legacy architectures and processes to work in the world of unknown value, totally unpredictable growth, and "make it work right now, not in 4 months" demands, they did they opposite. They started with those requirements (adding on "I want it free") and retrofitted those principals onto their business and distributed systems. People think Google runs its billing operations on loose components they pick up at Radio Shack, but they don't. They run the same transaction systems as you do. Their marketing and engineering folk don't use systems with wires sticking out of them; they use the same stuff you do. They just do it from a different perspective.
Speaking of Amazon, S3 is getting way more traction and attention than I would have thought possible. Since it's so non-core to their real business, I figured it was just a way for them to try to monetize their IT development efforts, but trends are pointing positively for them. They should split that business out, however, if they want to compete long term.
It's spring in New England. You can tell by the frozen flower buds, and that Manny Ramirez already spent 35 minutes watching his Japanese homerun that didn't exactly make it out of the park instead of running around the bases.
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