deal architect

SaCS baby steps

A few weeks ago,  Lawson announced its version of "SaaS". Ok, so it is not multi-tenant, and it is only one application, but I was impressed with IBM's pricing of $ 75 per user per month for the hosting and application management services.

I have written before incumbent customers of SAP, Oracle, Lawson and other enterprise apps cannot just toss their existing implementation and just move to a NetSuite. They would be better off with what I call SaCS.

Of course, in the same announcement Lawson says customers would need to "purchase maintenance contracts as they do currently". My definition of SaCS includes significantly lowered maintenance.

In the end what Lawson and IBM charge together has to be competitive with the single consolidated price of NetSuite or salesforce.com.

Still a ways to go.

Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2007

James McGovern, an enterprise architect at an insurance company, critiques Gartner's list for 2007 and provides his own.

I do need to ask him what John Kerry has to do with the list -)

MIT Technology Review - 2006 Emerging Technologies

The MIT Technology Review lists its top 10 emerging technologies. The May 2005 list was here.

Epigenetics -detecting cancer early by monitoring subtle changes in DNA
Cognitive Radio - exploiting unused radio spectrum
Nuclear Reprogramming - a more ethical way to derive stem cells
Diffusion Tensor Imaging - for brain imaging
Universal Authentication - for a safer Internet
Nanobiomechanics - measuring tiny forces acting on cells
Comparative Interactomics - maps of body's molecular interactions
Nanomedicine -to guide drugs directly into cancer cells
Pervasive Wireless - making all wireless gadgets get along
Stretchable Silicon - teaching silicon new tricks

Building the A380 in 7 minutes

Courtesy of Sadagopan I saw this 7 minute video on the process to produce the mammoth new Airbus. I love big birds. With all the travel I have done over my career, I still look forward to flights on Boeing 747-400s.

Of course, the A380 is even bigger (555 passengers in all double decker format) (click on this interactive site to compare it to the 747 or to a VW Golf and an elephant), can fly further (8,000 nautical miles), embodies more technology advancement (from composites to engine efficiency to over billion lines of software) and has more creature comforts (from entertainment systems to even showers). Read about them here and here.

A big annoyance: Not one major US airline has signed up as a charter customer. In the days when Pan Am was a dominant international airline, it was a charter for the 747. Nowadays, the global leaders are Singapore Airlines and BA while our majors struggle for survival. 

Frequent flyer miles are not going to be enough to make me fly on a Delta 767 when the competing choice is A380. With the world getting flatter, the A380 is going to be the bus for the changing trunk routes around the world.

Orgasmic about Origami...

...not

Om Malik
Tom Foresnki

yawn.

apparently Microsoft realized the buzz had got out of hand...

"In an interview yesterday, Mika Krammer, a Microsoft marketing director involved in the project, explained that Origami was merely meant to be the code name. She said the volume and breadth of buzz created by the cryptic Origami campaign caught the company by surprise."

But credit Scoble at Microsoft for creating the buzz and feeding it in blog world (though  on his blog he deflects the credit/blame). There is a new channel out there (courtesy of Google!) and Microsoft is learning how to use it.

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids

..in fact it's cold as hell...

Rocket Man, Elton John

Sir Elton wrote that in 1972.  The US Government would like to make Man on Mars a reality by 2030. That and a number of other factoids and other space opportunities show up in Business 2.0's cover story on The Entrepreneurs Guide to the Galaxy. Tech  billionaires such as Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos are funding  some of the space  startups.

For a picture gallery of likely opportunities from Asteroid Mining to Space Hotels to the Moon again (as a prelude to the Mars manned mission) page down in this article.

Maybe by 2050 we will be as cynical as Elton's Rocket Man, but for the next couple of decades space looks pretty exciting.

March Madness in Hanover

CeBIT. The world's biggest technology show with 4 million square feet of floor space.  As CNET reports both Microsoft and IBM will show off new products. And may be I will shut up for a while about the low productivity from their combined $ 12+ billion a year in R&D.

The World Cyber Games Euro Championships are also happening at the same time. No games planned on Microsoft's hush hush Origami. Or on the EA NCAA March Madness 2006.

Cancel home phone line - and broadband?

The New York Times reports technology for WI-FI to go. Basically, these are devices from Kyocera, Junxion and Top Global that can convert cellular signals (e.g from the Verizon EVDO card) to a WI-FI signal that can be shared by multiple laptops or accessed by Apple or other machines which do not have the card slot for the EVDO)

What caught my attention was:

"Other people are canceling their home D.S.L. or cable modem service altogether. Instead of paying twice for Internet access — for a cable modem and a cellular laptop plan — they use the cellular card at home and on the road and save a lot of money."

As we know many consumers have cancelled home lines and made their mobile number their only line.

More Sticking it to the Men?

The Next Net 25

Business 2.0 (subscription required) lists 25 hot Web 2.0 start ups in 5 categories

Social Media - Digg, Last.fm, Newsvine, Tagworld, YouTube
Mashups and Filters - Bloglines, Eurekster, Simply Hired, Technorati, Trulia, Wink
The New Phone - Fonality, Iotum, SIPphone, Vivox,
The Webtop - Jotspot, 30Boxes, 37Signals, Writely, Zimbra
Under the Hood - Brightcove, Jigsaw, salesforce.com,SimpleFeed, Six Apart

17 of the companies are in Silicon Valley, another 2 in rest of CA. Should Arnold take credit?

Update: Jason Wood questions the list. As have many others. When there are so many more Web 2.0 start-ups,  any list like this is bound to.

Mashup creativity

Dan Farber reports from MashupCamp. How can you not be impressed?

Still want to budget $ 10+ million for your Fusion or SAP SOA upgrade? Hire some of these kids before Accenture or Infosys does - at a fraction of the likely cost.