Strategies for SaaS, Cloud Computing, Governance and Sustainability

Blogs, to large extent, have supplanted the static websites that were staple of the web in the early 1990s. Most people think a corporate blog is an extension of the company website. There is merit to that. But using some simple strategies companies can alleviate those opinions and benefit from blogging.

Technology shifts into SaaS, Cloud Computing, Mobile have driven a multitude of changes in the way companies conduct business. Business models, technology delivery, customer support, pricing strategies all have been put through the blender to accommodate the new demands. But one of the biggest changes that has companies struggling to cope with is in the [...]

The recent acquisition of Sybase by SAP got me thinking. Is it me or most leading large companies, thanks to their acquisition binge are beginning to resemble the erstwhile General Motors? Take a look at Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM and CA, the top 5 pure play software companies (granted IBM is a little service heavy [...]

SAP announced today that it is acquiring database vendor Sybase for USD 5.8B dollars seemingly throwing a punch back at rival Oracle for all the intrusion it has made into the application space. SAP has been under sustained pressure from multiple fronts for a while now. With Oracle making inroads into application space with a [...]

URL shortening is the fashion these days. Every second url you get in your email or social community activity stream you will see URLs encoded into a short cryptic URL with some arbitrary domain name like http://bit.ly or http://is.gd or http://bit.me A long url like – http://www.thisisthelongsitedomainname.com/category/link-baits/you-are-a-sucker-if-you-fall-for-this/ easily gets shortened to http://bit.me/b4Ido A little bit [...]

Earlier this week a mega event happened in the technology arena without much fanfare. No it was not another mega acquisition deal that Oracle or Cisco announced. Neither was it another scandal or high tech executive bolting to another company as his company stock continued to sag. If you have not guessed it by now, [...]

As companies continue to make great efforts to connect with their customers, partners through their social media efforts including executive blogging, twitter, wikis and videos, Oracle pulled a switcheroo by yanking a popular employee blog that augmented Oracle Support. The blogger’s crime, apparently, was that he provided an avenue for community users to interact and [...]

After 4 months of wrangling and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the lawyer’s kitty and finally the European Competition Committee seems to be closer than ever before to approving Oracle’s $7 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. When all is said and done it will be a case of much ado about nothing.  Sans the [...]

Making lofty claims is nothing new in the technology sector. Every company claims they are the leader in their space. Over the years we have seen many a over-the-top marketing quotes from technology executives  deriding their competition or showmanship in highlighting their “greatest-product-since-slice bread” over their competitors. But Microsoft executive Ron Markezich outdid all of [...]

I just completed a quick consulting assignment with a company back in the East Coast. It was a Oracle E-Business Suite Implementation and specifically implementing one of the products (Oracle Procurement Contracts) that I managed and had a big role in building while at Oracle. It was one of those interesting cases of implementations. Unknowingly or [...]

The recently filings by the company, disclosed that, its chief Larry Ellison would be drawing a salary of $1 for the year of 2010. It has been a practice (or some call it publicity stunt) of CEOs to take $1 salary and cash in on other perks like stock. Most notable ones in the recent [...]

Customer support has always been a thorny area for both the companies providing the support and customers availing them. With the advent of the social communities and tools, customers have used them as alternate means to voice their grievances. I came across this really great video through which a customer was voicing his displeasure of [...]

R “Ray” Wang of Software Insider blog recently wrote an interesting piece on how companies should consider and pursue resale of their unused, shelf ware they licensed or acquired as part of an acquisition. This he felt was an opportunity for companies to effectively manage their spend on software. Shelf ware to those who are [...]

Time Warner announced today that it will spin off AOL as a standalone company. This completes a full circle to a 8 year old saga that was filled with controversies from the beginning to the end. Talk about a marriage that was never meant to be. Dubbed as a merger of equals, the $147 billion [...]

In what amounts to a groundbreaking (atleast in recent times) decision, the courts of Massachusetts have barred EMC executive David Donatelli from joining HP. As most of you might have heard that EMC had filed a case against Donatelli in MA invoking the non-compete clause in his employment contract. California does not allow, honor such [...]

It has been a week since the news of the mega deal about Oracle acquiring Sun broke. In the week that went by every body and their cousin has written about this deal. It might even be the most searched term in Googlosphere. In the meanwhile I have met with many people who have been [...]