deal architect

HP-EDS?

HP could use a better services arm - while it has some marquee clients like P&G, it is inconsistent in most outsourcing deals. EDS could use a layer of cover. The company which just about defined outsourcing has been running hard to stay even - flat growth over the last decade. So, at a macro level the potential combination announced today makes sense. Actually mouth watering at a price of just 0.5 EDS revenues for a blue chip client base. (HP is trading at 1.2x)

But EDS is not Accenture or PwC (which IBM acquired) or TCS or Infosys. Its major strength is still in infrastructure outsourcing (though it has been growing its application and BPO capabilities nicely). HP's outsourcing is similarly more skewed towards infrastructure. So, it is a scale play. But the timing is risky because infrastructure outsourcing is being challenged by data center consolidations, a secular decline in processing, storage and network charges and emergence of utility and cloud computing models. Not the world either EDS or HP grew up in. Talking about world - HP's hardware business has seen significant success in a number of emerging economies - running that infrastructure as a service does offer some unique opportunities.

Unlike Microsoft, HP does not not have lots of cash-on-hand. Only about $ 10 bn. If I was Mark Hurd, I would spend $ 5 bn towards a smaller infrastructure player like ACS (or even better one with footprint in emerging markets) and spend the rest (plans to spend $ 12 bn on EDS) on a BPO and an application outsourcing play. In fact around infrastructure, I would think even smaller and buy a cloud computing player and use HP's vast channel to build market on top of it.

But I am not Mark Hurd. If I was, I would my print ink at a huge discount :)

The Real Deal: James Taylor on Raising your Enterprise Application IQ

This continues a series of guest columns from practitioners and bloggers I respect. The category - The Real Deal describes them well.

James Taylor is co-founder of Smart(enough)Systems and co-author of a book with the same name.

"While almost anyone who has to use one of today’s typical enterprise applications probably has a long list of things that are wrong with their particular application, there is at least one thing that is common to almost all of them: they are dumb. Now that’s a pretty strong statement but think about it. A typical enterprise application, whether custom or packaged, let’s you put in data, stores it for you and regurgitates it when you ask nicely. 

Such an application relies entirely on people for any intelligence, for any decision making. This reliance:

• Limits straight through processing in any but the simplest processes.
• Means that 24x7 operations require 24x7 staffing.
• Reduces the ROI of event processing or business activity monitoring

More than anything, it means that none of the data in these systems is being used to improve their response to your customers, suppliers or partners. The data simply gets stored and then shows up in reports – past behavior and results do not inform the next transaction. And if your data is not being used to improve your operations then you are failing to use one of your most important assets – the unique visibility you have into your own business. Traditional BI approaches are focused on delivering insight to knowledge workers – they are not going to work for automated systems or high-volume, operational transactions.

Fortunately there is a well established path to improving the value of enterprise applications and taking more advantage of your data. This approach is known as Enterprise Decision Management (or Business Decision Management or just Decision Management). Here’s a definition:

Enterprise Decision Management is an approach for automating and improving high-volume operational decisions. Focusing on operational decisions, it develops decision services using business rules to automate those decisions, adds analytic insight to these services using predictive analytics and allows for the ongoing improvements of decision-making through adaptive control and optimization.

Identifying the critical operational decisions that inform, personalize, target and control the transactions within your enterprise applications can make those applications smarter – not intelligent, but smart enough to be useful. Instead of offering every customer the same price, your application can take a pricing decision. Instead of telling a customer someone will get back to them, your website can determine the risks and tiers for a policy and underwrite it. Instead of adding a generic cross-sell offer to the call script, your call center application can customize the script to maximize the value of this conversation with this customer. Instead of an account manager starting their day finding a message that a delayed shipment might upset a key customer, your system can re-route deliveries across customers to minimize the cost impact based on service level agreements. And so on.

When you focus on these decisions there is a way to add insight from your data. The pricing model can be based on an optimization model that uses historical trends, the underwriting decision can use risk scorecards that turn past behavior into future probabilities, the cross-sell can use data-driven segmentation to target customers. Suddenly the data you have can be put to work making your operations smarter.

The technology to do this exists today. Not only are there a number of decisioning platforms, there is a strong market for business rules management systems, plenty of data mining and predictive analytic tools, optimization products and growing integration between them. Processing power, data storage and virtualization, integration technologies and SOA have all helped make this approach cost effective and practical. 

It’s time to end the era of dumb applications and start making your computers do more of the work."

Read James's blog at http://www.smartenoughsystems.com/wp

Telecommuting Trends

Hush - don't tell my boss, but it is 10.30 Monday morning and I am on my exercise bike watching TV -  Gerri Willis of CNN talks about telecommuting.

I remember Verizon pitching telecommuting to clients as a buffer against an avian flu epidemic a couple of years ago. Did not help. But gas at $ 4 a gallon just might. But as Gerri counsels - present it from an employer's perspective. Don't demand it. Offer to see more local customers. And only ask for it 2-3 days a week. And assure your employer about your home comm's infrastructure. Larry Dignan has more on the topic.

Of course, I am biased on the topic. Since Gartner (reluctantly) allowed me 13 years ago, I have had a home office. Back then remote workers got  a first generation multi-function copier. And an additional line for dial up access to the network. We have come a long way since then. JetBlue's work at home reservation agents and Offshore firms delivering 75 to 80% of work from thousands of miles away are proof of that.

I can tell you all about the joys and the drawbacks of telecommuting - odd hours, proximity to fridge, kids and dogs saying hello at awkward times, and no office water cooler influence :)

Of course, my commuting with Gartner also significantly increased my air travel. A pattern which I have not successfully managed to break years later. So to me the big excitement is around telepresence technologies. Especially since there is already starting to be disruptive alternatives to Cisco's lofty expectations.

The China Quake

I learned about the major earthquake in Western China from Scoble who posted about it ahead of most news media. New Scientist recently had an article that I wrote about on the New Florence blog titled Emergency 2.0 - about how social media is trumping traditional information sources when it comes to disasters.

But this is not about bragging about Twitter.

It is nice to see the Chinese leaders immediately declare an "all-out" relief effort. Contrast this to what the Myanmar leaders have been doing with their disaster and some would argue how badly we handled Katrina.

"Generational Archaeology"

My mind was still buzzing with the Tom Brokaw generational speech I wrote about here, when I saw Karen Beaman's post about multi-generational talentforce. While you can argue about her generational classifications, it occurred to me an archaeologist would be fascinated to find the layers of generations in companies as people in the West work longer, and younger employees find more opportunities as companies "onshore" more. You can see the huge differences (not just related to party affiliation) of Obama and McCain - and they are only 27 years apart. In some companies, the gap between oldest and youngest employees can be 50 years.

While there are clear HR management challenges in managing these layers it affects several other disciplines. We also have IT, product design, marketing opportunities and challenges - as the younger crowd comes with different expectations of devices and user interfaces, where as the aging base has its own unique technology needs. 

It could also affect global competitiveness in the next couple of decades. The US is uniquely positioned to take advantage of a broad spectrum of generations. In comparison, India and China have a much younger workforce, but not as much depth in middle and top management talent. On the other hand countries like Germany and Japan have more of a challenge filling the younger roles as their low birth rates and relatively closed immigration policies conspire.

B for Blackberry and Bold and Business

Caught in a world where Motorola got caught flat footed, and facing global competition from the likes of Apple, Nokia, Samsung and HTC RIM is coming out blazing to protect its corporate turf. It recently announced an initiative with SAP, is launching a $ 150 million developer fund, and unveiling a new device, The Bold which has GPS, and consumery multi-media features as well. Not just boring corporate email any more.

Hope to make it to WES2008 in Orlando for a few hours this week. That should be total immersion on everything Blackberry. I am going with my HTC/AT&T Tilt.

Bold of me, eh?

"Nothing earth shatteringly new"

Dennis being kind discussing Oracle and its plans for "Enterprise 2.0"

Honestly, there is so little Oracle has had to show around Fusion or next-gen apps for the last few years that even this pre-announcement deserves a mention.

Of course, Oracle had already declared itself  a leader in the space back last Fall...

Whither SAP Verticals?

While several bloggers reported good progress from Sapphire last week in a number of SAP horizontals - Jason Busch on SRM,  Jason Corsello on HR, Brian Sommer on Business Objects and other analytics, and Paul Greenberg on CRM, I was disappointed to not see much coverage on non-manufacturing verticals such as banking, utilities, insurance, healthcare etc.

I asked 2 SAP executives - Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bob Stutz - at Sapphire about such verticals. Jim acknowledged legacy, typically custom developed vertical applications have been tough to displace particularly in the US.  In a few deals where I have seen SAP vertical proposals, I can tell you the "displacement" is tough because SAP's TCO (particularly those of its SI partners) has not been compelling - you could custom develop that functionality again for cheaper. Just maintaining the legacy apps is even cheaper.

Bob told us they were planning a CRM onslaught on several verticals. But overall, I did not see not much more on specific vertical functionality.

It would be nice to validate SAP' claim it is  is "strong" in 24 verticals when for the most part sells core ERP modules outside of its manufacturing base. Here's typical SAP-speak - Bill McDermott talking to AMR Research last month "The subject then turned to hot verticals. He immediately cited banking and retail. On the banking side, companies are starting with financials. The plan is to move them to more of the ERP suite and then on to core banking applications." 

That's horizontal functionality, my friends till (if) those customers get to implement those core banking apps.

Problems like those at Waste Management occur because of ambiguous definitions of "wall to wall" coverage in many non-manufacturing markets. If not SAP, its SI partners are pretty loose with definitions of vertical maturity.

Next time, I go to a Sapphire I hope to request Mike Prosceno to stack my schedule with non-manufacturing vertical sessions. I promise to also stay longer than a day :)

Update: Frank Scavo provides another POV

Weekend Stuff: AT&T and Mother's Day

What I wanted to get for Mother's Day :)

My kid's overruled me. My son said - she's our mother! Estee Lauder, Lindt and Barnes and Noble won out.

My AT&T rebate paid for it. Yup, finally arrived. For those curious - Supervisor Larry never called. Seriously, why would any one  at AT&T  reach out and touch someone?  That's for us consumers to do and pay for.

PS - Louisville Slugger has partnered with MLB to donate $10 per the special bat above sold to the Susan G. Komen Foundation to help find a cure for breast cancer.

Weekend Stuff: More on Myanmar tragedy

Living in Florida, I am keenly interested in hurricanes. I have written before about technology which is going into tracking those monsters. So I was curious how much advance notice the Myanmar government had before the catastrophic Nargis hit.

This New Scientist map shows 5 days.  The Indian Metrological Department appears to have given their Burmese (Burma was previous name for Myanmar) peers several warnings of the storm's track. 

What a shame if the government was as uncaring in preparing its citizens as it now appears to be after the strike.

Weekend Stuff: World's Most Worthless Money

Ok, enough self-pity about the sinking US dollar.

This gallery at Portfolio.com shows we still have plenty to be grateful for

What is an analyst?

3 decades after Gartner was started, Carter Lusher (formerly of Gartner) asks the question and many in the industry jump in with their opinions.

No question the role/definition of an analyst is changing. Compared to their hey days in the 90s, today an analyst is only one of many influence points that buyers leverage in their IT decisions. 

I read his post in a week where I spent time with Mike Prosceno who runs blogger relations at SAP. At Sapphire this week, I saw him equally comfortable with analysts, bloggers and journalists. Through his career he has dealt with all 3 categories. Now if he would spend some time in sales he would also understand buyers. Increasingly, peer input is a major influence point.

But short of that, Mike is the closest I would suggest to someone with the broadest understanding of the changing influencer landscape. 

The Poor Man's MacBook Air?

Popular Science catalogs how hackers are starting to soup up the Asus EEE PC with more memory, more USB slots - and installing Mac OS.

Of course, see the bottom. "Installing an Apple operating system on non-Apple hardware is a violation of the End User License Agreement, which is legally a breach of contract."

Where have we seen that recently? Oh, yes the Psystar. The EEE is just a bit portable - like the Air.

What would the Jesus Phone do?

Of course evolve to JP2 - er, Jesus Phone 2,  oops, next version of iPhone - with features this Popular Science gallery asks for.

Wait - my AT&T Tilt already says yes to all 10 items in the gallery.

And the new HTC Diamond does even better - FM radio, 3.1 mp camera, eGPS, better display...

Well, ok I stretched the truth - my Tilt does not support A2DP to stream music to a Bluetooth headset.

Something my kids basic Nokia 6085 can do - that you can buy refurbished for about $ 20. I have a feeling given the humility of the Man, that would be the JP.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore"

So we got the mandatory "No comment" as we asked Dr. Henning Kagermann of SAP about the TomorrowNow matter. I followed with what he thought about Rimini offering maintenance to his customers. He nodded his head - not sure he was aware of the announcement that morning.

Next topic, I figured.

But he spent the next few minutes painting scenarios without mentioning names or specifics.

The bracketed words are mine, but it went something like:

Customers need choices (of third party maintenance). But depending on the outcome (if Oracle wins) not sure other large companies (like SAP) will ever offer it. Only smaller firms (like Rimini) likely will. The wild card is how customers react. How customers react to the outcome will determine the future of such services.

He emphasized the part about customers.

I interpret that to mean (Oracle) customers should do this.

Who will tell the people?

Whatever you think of Tom Friedman or the New York Times, read this.

SAP's US enigma

I deal with a number of multi-national clients where the HQ is somewhere a few thousand miles away and it is always interesting to hear perspectives from the "other side". Every Sapphire, you get to hear that from the 747 full of SAP folks who come over - about its US market.

To start with the US is SAP's largest market - no one complains about that - except when the dollar is weak, of course.

But SAP's market share in the non-manufacturing verticals (like banks and utilities) continues to be much smaller than in Europe. SAP's customer base upgrade to ECC 6.0 is going much slower than in Europe. SAP TCO in the US tends to be much higher because its SI partners tend to sell a lot more "change management" and other soft services - at least in German speaking Europe, the outside help in typically much more tactical and product centric. The US middle market is very fragmented and very diverse - very different from the "mittelstand" co-CEO Leo Apotheker invoked in one of our conversations with him this week.

Bill McDermott, President and CEO of the Americas was recently added to the SAP AG board. I imagine there will be much more nuanced discussions about the US market and the state of the dollar in that boardroom for the next few years.

More Innovation

On the New Florence blog

Blockbuster's makeover

Refinery City

Maker Faire

HP's Memristor breakthrough

Babbage comes to the US

Innovation in the Heartland

More on SAP's "Hidden" Innovations

Had I not shared a ride with Denis Browne, head of SAP's Imagineering Lab and heard what his group is doing, I could have sworn innovation was a banned term at Sapphire. When I asked co-CEO Leo Apotheker what he is  hearing from customers as he transitions in to his new role, he said they want SAP to keep their businesses running. In other words, boring but predictable.

I have written before SAP does not do a good job showcasing what it has in the labs. But this Sapphire seemed particularly barren - other than some discussion around its BPM strategy and the mobile CRM announcement with the Blackberry (which RIM, not SAP, is leading the R&D investment in) I scanned the press releases for product innovation after I left Sapphire and did not see much. Indeed, as Charlie Wood points out SAP even had "iPhone amnesia" after announcing it last year.

Later in a social setting, in a discussion about his hometown, Paris,  Leo described a growing set of  its citizens who commute on a weekly basis to New York and other global cities - the ultimate trend setters. Here's hoping he brings that imprint to his products. He did say he wants his engineering group to build products that "delight".

Update: Susan Scrupski on SAP's investments in Web 2.0

MISO Plotting a joint SaaS offering?

Oracle, in conjunction with the other large software vendors  — IBM, Microsoft and SAP among them — is plotting to launch a salesforce.com and Google competitor...so reports Om Malik.

NOT!..but he does report a rumor that AT&T - along with British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom and NTT among others — is plotting to launch a Skype competitor.

If true, how ironic would that be after years of ignoring/fighting VoIP offerings? If that happens MISO banding together to offer SaaS may not be that far fetched - would it?

Burning Question: Is SAP walking a mile in customer shoes?

So, at Sapphire SAP presented reasons for delay around its BBD SaaS offering. Most explanations centered around SAP "learning and optimizing what our customers have been doing" with hosting, applying SAP fixes, Basis support, upgrades, user support - various aspects of application management.And SAP automating many of these expensive, manual tasks. 

Privately, some SAP employees have told me the BBD journey has been a revelation how much its SI and outsourcing partners charge its clients, and now SAP is driven not just to improve economics for future SaaS customers but also for existing on-premise customers.

To which I go - Yeah! Why has it taken so long?

Then the other part of me goes - in bits and pieces SAP has offered services like this for years. Its consulting, systems integration, help desk and outsourcing groups know the effort and economics around SAP implementations and support and those in its large services ecosystem.

What do readers think? Has SAP embraced a new religion or is it just spin to explain away BBD delays?

Welcoming WiMax

The Sprint-Clearwire off again/on again WiMax offering is back on again. And that is welcome news for consumers as Verizon and AT&T dominate US telecoms. The fact that Comcast and Time Warner are also investors will mean more "bundles"via cable competition. Stakes in the venture from Intel and Google show increasing convergence between the historically open technology and historically protected telecom sectors.

Who knows what will happen between now and 2010 as Verizon and AT&T roll out their own 4G networks and T-Mobile looks to acquire Sprint and on.

But for now let's savor this news as our telecommunications try to catch up with many others around the world.

COST: The New MISO

Fellow EIs Phil Wainewright, Jason Corsello and Bob Warfield anoint the leaders of SaaS:

Concur, Omniture, salesforce.com and Taleo.

All I have to provide is the acronym COST .

All the current market leaders - MISO orMicrosoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle - had to do was be tardy with their own SaaS. And, of course, keep persisting with their TCO, to make the COST moniker appropriate.

On-shoring!

Stanley Bing at Fortune reveals that in the middle of the recession why there are plenty of entry level jobs right here at home.

Fortune also has a Faces of the Future gallery profiling the next generation of employees - all in their 20s - at several Fortune 500 companies across various industries.

The Greatest Generation?

I did not spend long at Sapphire - but in a 24 hour period I felt like I had borrowed a time machine which allowed me to span a century.

Tom Brokaw, the former NBC anchor, a featured speaker brought tears to my eyes as he described "the greatest generation" - the subject of his best seller. The generation which grew up during The Great Depression, then fought the Second World War, and then instead of expecting to be pampered after those major sacrifices brought the world the post-war boom. (He also wove in how the country's turmoil in 1968 was so similar to what we face today)

His speech made me wonder how my generation will be viewed by future ones.

I kind of got an answer from a conversation with Dan McWeeney, one of the youngest Enterprise Irregulars. He is a wunderkind who worked for Colgate, got assigned to a tour at SAP Imagineering and now works for Adobe. Dan sees what corporate America has done to my generation - used and abused it - and is wary of long-term corporate life. But Dan has a certain way about him, that you just know he will do fine no matter what twists and turns his career takes.

I got a very different perspective as I shook Dr. Kagermann's (SAP co-CEO and long-term steward) hand for probably the last time as he heads to retirement. Over the last 15 years I have met him on several occasions and always appreciate his open and even-keeled approach (within the bounds of his fiduciary responsibilities).

2 generations separate Dr. Kagermann from the one Brokaw described. Another two separate Dr. Kagermann from Dan. It is rare I get to appreciate in a 24 hour period fine specimens across that wide a spectrum of generations.

Auction 73 - Part 2

So, I wrote the outline for a movie script around the recent FCC wireless spectrum auction.

Now Google is helping develop the script for a follow up. It is asking the FCC to ensure Verizon will indeed honor the open-access rules it promised to when it was awarded the C-Block licenses. Verizon had initially sued the FCC for mandating it, then went along while competitors such as AT&T chose to pay more for the the other blocks which did not require open access.  So it would be brazen for Verizon to now not comply.

But it would make for nice drama.

More New Renaissance

On my innovation blog

50 years of NASA

Beijing's Giant New Terminal 3

Yahoo rolls out mobile voice search

Virtualization of Mobile Devices 

Camcorders - Basic and Crossovers 

Wanted: Bicycle mechanics

Channel Champions

To sell in the SME market you have to think channels...

Computer Reseller News (CRN) catalogs its annual survey of channel perception of tech vendors in 26 categories from business applications to various peripherals. See the gallery here

Next, Business Solutions Magazine names its champions - innovative channel players which take core product from vendors above and add their own value added services - such as leveraging RFID and Bluetooth to help a police department track evidentiary assets.

Innovation in the heartland...

The Silver Lining from SAP BBD delay?

Several of the Enterprise Irregulars are spending time with SAP executives at Sapphire. The issue of delays around Business ByDesign (BBD) came up in separate meetings this morning with co-CEOs Dr. Henning Kagermann and Leo Apotheker.

They clarified several items. The slowdown in BBD investment is more around the global rollout, not in the R&D. The initial deployments showed unique customer configuration and other issues they had not anticipated in the labs. Those drove the need to automate more of the application management and upgrade processes - which in turn has fed enhancements to NetWeaver. In turn, it made sense to have BBD rollout slow down to leverage these NetWeaver enhancements.

While the delays buy its SaaS competitors more time, I am excited about this increased automation of manual processes that its current, on-premise users can leverage.

For a while now, I have advised my SAP clients to seek SaaS pricing around application hosting, management and support by making their outsourcers propose SacS economics. If SAP can automate and cannibalize more of the labor intensive tasks, that should make SaCS economics even more attractive. 

SAP reiterated BBD pricing would not change much from the $ 150 a user a month previously announced. Both Henning and Leo reiterated the 10X reduction in TCO.

Of course, you can hear the excuses lining up from the SAP ecosystem - wait till BBD is mature, it will not scale beyond the current small BBD user footprint. 

OK, may be not 10X reduction - even a 3-4X reduction in on-premise TCO would be delightful to the current customer base.

Can a leopard change its spots?

So I am reading in Fortune that Ford is betting on another "world, small car". Do you get a sense of deja vu? I thought they already had Focus, Fiesta etc around the world. But their DNA is about big -  cars, trucks, SUVs. Loaded with bunch of options. They even, subtly and otherwise, mock small and fuel-efficient. Not blaming them - they clearly have a core customer group which keeps asking for that. But there is an even bigger world which makes them every few years realize they need to embrace the "small" religion.

I see something with the bigger outsourcers. At the turn of the decade when things were not so good, IBM was talking "on-demand". Now that things are a bit better, it mocks "cloud-computing". Their version of  "small and fuel-efficient". My friend Charlie Bess at EDS - on a  blog which is supposed to be about innovation - points to more potential negatives around cloud computing.

Don't worry. When it suits them - especially when the chips are down or when the customer absolutely insists - they will parade out their own version of "small and fuel efficient". But try getting that without any options - the utility computing version. They will give you the whole sales pitch about why their integrated GPS and bluetooth option is worth another $ 3,000 and why Garmins and other options are just not good enough for a fraction of that cost.

Because their DNA is similar to Ford's - it's mostly about big and lots of customized options. And at least a few customers keep wanting that. A shrinking few customers.

SAP's "New" TomorrowNow Issue

SAP is battling Oracle in court over its TomorrowNow subsidiary.

But as it kicks off Sapphire in Orlando this morning, it is also facing its own version of "TomorrowNow". Rimini Street, which has offered such services around several Oracle applications, is announcing third party maintenance around SAP products.

While many software vendors consider third party maintenance a threat to their manhood, it is really about customer choice. SAP, in particular, will have a tough time saying third party maintenance is not right for its customers when it has been offering it to Oracle customers. In the past it has dodged the question why it does not offer its own customers a basic maintenance option.

Rimini's offerings should be of interest to "end-of-life" and budget-constrained customers - those that do not want to migrate to ECC 6.0, or those that just cannot justify SAP maintenance at full rates.

As I have written before on many occasions, just because you bought a Porsche, does not mean you have to go to the company dealers for all services.

Making AT&T Cool

I have a love-hate relationship with AT&T. So do most of my corporate clients. But it is good to see Fortune profile AT&T's (relatively) new CEO Randall Stephenson as he and his team reshape the behemoth.

Days like Friday where I spent another 30 minutes (was disconnected twice) trying to reach the supervisor who promised me dupes of my rebates which after months have not arrived, I dislike the company. When I finally got to another supervisor called Larry, he told me to give it another few days. When I asked him if he would call me coming week to check if they had arrived (I offered to pay for Fedex but they insist of only sending rebates by bulk mail!) and save me the hassle of navigating through his call center again, he seemed shocked. Call a customer? What a novel idea to reach out and touch someone. He finally agreed to when I told I have been an AT&T Mobility, Worldnet, Long Distance, Calling Card and who knows what else customer for over 2 decades and spend thousands with them each year. We will see if he does call - and if the rebates arrive.

Days when I see what my clients get charged per minute when they roam overseas or on their monthly WAN charges, I get energized to beat them hard in negotiations. 

But I like what they are doing with their stores. Even though they need to drastically reengineer its TCO, you have to admire what they did to win the iPhone business.

Besides trying to make the company cool, as it becomes more global - and importantly as his customer base becomes more globally savvy - he has to make his products much more competitive on price/performance.

And for pete's sake improve customer service. Like making supervisor Larry call me to check on something which should have been done months ago. And if you are going to sell on Sunday, open up customer service on Sunday. I bet a few of those 60+ million wireless customers would find that cool.

More New Florence

on the innovation blog

Enterprise RSS Day of Action

Cosmic Collision

IT-Olympics

$100 Genome

See-saw to power African schools

The Ultimate Fashion Contest

Weekend Stuff: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

Two readers sent me stuff about unintended consequences:

a) How "green" campaigners have actually led us to a different set of issues - "ecophobia"

b) on a lighter note, the consequences of honking at a senior citizen

Back to customer focus

So the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal appears finally off.

Kudos to Yahoo! for not just caving in - even though it will get crucified in the media and on Wall Street. I realize I am one of the few in the tech industry that believes that are multiple paths to shareholder value, not just M&A. As I wrote about BEA while it was rejecting the first offer from Oracle:

"We have created this hysteria that independent sw (and broadly tech) companies are doomed. Where is most of the innovation and productivity coming from in the industry - not the big guys, but the Google's, the salesforce's. We should be pushing the guys in the middle like BEA to benchmark themselves more against the innovators, not push them to get consolidated in to the expensive laggards."

As for Microsoft, I hope it ploughs at least some of the $ 40+ b into what its CIO customers would like to see more - SaaS, cloud computing, virtualization, enterprise search, better product quality. They fund most of Microsoft margins only to see much of that being invested in games, ads and other consumer areas. Paying some of that back to buyers in lowered maintenance - an innovation dividend - would be even better. Even though nvestors would then also crucify Microsoft.

To which I say - after the market melt down of the last few months, even more reasons to get our cues from Main Street, not Wall Street.

Weekend Stuff: "It's a big hairy deal..."

..."making the TIME 100—after all, some 6.7 billion people were left off..."

says Richard Corliss, the renowned movie critic, in his write up of the Coen (No Country for Old Men) brothers for the Time special issue on influential people.

Highly recommend a few minutes and go through the gallery of Time's 100 - some good folks, some you may consider evil but each influential. Plenty of surprises - and each has a write up from someone  who could themselves be candidates for the list.

Mobile CRM - a no-brainer

SAP and RIM announce CRM on the Blackberry. 

Salespeople are inherently mobile so it is good to see this from SAP. salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM  and others have offered the feature for a while.

But will going native on the Blackberry slow SAP down from replatforming (other software vendors have reported it is not a trivial task to then port to Symbian, Windows etc)? Especially when mobile browsers are becoming more viable with improving network speeds and more powerful devices.

In any case, it will be interesting to see SAP executives at Sapphire next week play up mobile computing while downplaying SaaS. When I wrote about SAP's "hidden innovations" last Fall, I had hoped to see SAP show progress in both. And a few other areas of innovation.

Weekend stuff : The bureaucrats get tech-savvy

New York says even a single in-state web site (of even an affiliate) qualifies for all sales in the state to be taxed.

The US Customs considers your laptop no different from your other luggage. Make sure you have no photos of Cuban cigars on it.

So I guess they will not mind our taking write-offs for our expenses and donations of our avatars in Second Life :)

Weekend stuff: Be afraid. Very afraid.

Compliments of the Software 2008 and InterOp show organizers I stayed at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas. While I do not know what they paid for the room, I imagine it was reasonably steep.

What was scary was just about anything you touched in the room drew bunches of additional charges. A toll free call - $ 3.50 (glad it was not a toll call). Wi-Fi $ 14 a day.

And god forbid you got near the mini-bar in the room. 375 ml bottle of tequila $ 5o. Cashews $ 10.

Of course, they had this intimidating message above the mini-bar (which presumably is filled with sensors.)

"Please do not use the refrigerator for personal items, as you will be charged for any items removed"

They provide a number where you can rent your personal fridge for the stay. I was tempted to call the number and ask for better toilet paper (for the quality of the hotel it was pretty rough) but decided to pass on another likely charge.

Fittingly, the mini-bar also offered a CD with "sounds of the hotel" for $ 20 - produced by the Thievery Corporation!

In meantime, Dell tries its own "service innovation"

So I wrote about IBM's service "innovation".

Now Dell announces a new support plan, which the WSJ reads to mean - pay more and get to speak to an American.

Now, I am all for giving people choice and if a caller wants to speak to an American, fine. But paying more for that privilege? Only if Dell delivers SLA measured type service that it offers its outsourcing corporate clients. Not more of the typical poor quality consumer focused call centers with a different accent.

Poor call service has little to do with accents. The single best thing a call center can do is to give the lowest level employee some power, not just a script. Combined with good training , good follow-up/escalation process and decent case database and trouble ticketing systems. The majority of call center calls are not exceptions. They have been handled many times before. Aim for 90+% first touch resolution.

I am shocked how many call centers do not tell consumers their case ticket number. How many do not allow their reps to call customers back. How few companies have tried to tackle the massive staff turnover which plagues consumer call centers - partly because they do not have a SLA which dings them on staff turnover.

Consumer oriented call centers clearly need innovation. But it goes way beyond accents. They need to adopt a much more corporate call center orientation.