deal architect

Damn Yankees!

George Steinbrenner lives in Tampa and owns several businesses here. He also owns the New York Yankees. The Tampa team, the Devil Rays with one seventh of the Yankees payroll have "owned" the Yankees this sesaon winning 9 out of 13 games. George hates it. With several future Hall of Famer players like Sheffield, Rodriguez, Posada, Johnson, Jeter - he has every reason to be mad at the Yankees performance.

I thought about this as I read this transcript of Clyde Prestowitz's speech "Three Billion New Capitalists". India and China are like the Devil Rays and the Oakland As.  We in the US have an unbelievable advantage in so many ways - why are we not doing better? So like George, Clyde is angry.

Unlike Lou Dobbs, though Clyde is not suggesting we take the ball and go home and close our borders. He wants us to continue playing ball, but playing to win.  Like George, no reason not to live in Tampa AND expect the Yankees do better than 4 out of 13.

Maybe the other George in Washington needs to scream and rave and rant for a change. The US team could use some shaking up. We have some overwhelming advantages, but the rest of the league is getting better, cheaper, faster all the time. We cannot hide from them. We have to play better...

RSS: Things should be as simple as possible...

...but no simpler" - Einstein's enigmatic quote is so descriptive of the tech industry. Every layer of "simplification" only increases complexity.

So along comes RSS - Really Simple Syndication...something most bloggers have heard about but to the rest of the business world is just a TLA...but one they will hear more  and more of

First, if you want a definition turn to the ITScout who can simplify any complex concept - Jeff Tash

Then, see Chris Selland's conjecture that from a CRM perspective it may be bigger than email...

Then, if you want a overall business applicability perspective, read David Kirkpatrick at Fortune

RSS could end up as a nice building block for companies to innovate around  - along with WI-FI, RFID, GPS and a series of  other core, affordable Lego pieces.

Now about the simple part...go to back to Jeff's site and read his Part Three on RSS. Not quite that simple, (and this him as an individual - wait till you get into corporate world) but really promising...

Technology Urban Legends

These two should make the "Rumor Has it"  - Snopes site

1. Claim:  Software executives cannot make it in Services and vice versa

Status: False

David Girard, of JDE and D&B Software background, just became COO of just under $ 1 b services firm Ciber. Eileen McPartland has gone back and forth between software and services vendors  several times. George Shaheen, ex Accenture now running Siebel. Oracle has historically had a number of services executives - Ray Lane (ex EDS, Booz Allen), Robert Shaw (ex PwC) and others. Infosys spawned Yantra, Accenture had Mac Pac, i-Flex blends both packaged software and services.

2. Claim: Analysts cannot run vendor operations

Status: Gartner probability of 0.2

I have heard this from a few analysts who say when they have expressed interest they have not been considered (at least not seriously)  for senior operational positions at vendors.   Hopefully, Charles Phillips at Oracle, Art Mesher and Chris Jones at Descartes are changing the image. And several ex-analysts are running their own entrepreneurial businesses. Most senior analysts come to the analyst world after operational stints at vendors. They will always be analytical - that is often not bad to balance out prima donna sales, stubborn engineers and egotistical partners in service firms. There is a reason why Bill Gates has often gone OUT of the tech industry to recruit - Steve Ballmer from P&G, Bob Herbold , also P&G and now Kevin Turner from Wal-Mart.

Technology Innovation and Xcel Energy

I am fascinated by how different companies are using technology to solve their "last mile" issues - laying cables, delivering boxes, scheduling field engineers etc. so I enjoyed this article about how Xcel Energy is using technology for its dispatch function ...but there is more.

What is interesting here is how the company pushed 5 of its vendors - IBM, Indus, SPL, Mercury and Itron - to more than deliver their packaged solutions but instead to work with each other and innovate.

This is encouraging because as I have been writing my innovation series and talking to a number of CIOs,  the feedback has mostly been the innovation teams have been internal and those teams have taken off the shelf (though early) technology like WI-FI or RFID and run with it.  When I asked one executive what role a certain systems integrator played on his innovation project, his answer was very direct - "We are the brains, they are the hands".

If vendors expect innovation v/s utility pricing, they will have to step up like these vendors did for Xcel.

BusinessWeek on "Chindia"

BusinessWeek's latest issue is almost completely devoted to China and India - over 70 printed pages and more on-line. Their huge potential, their appetite, their challenges. I have met two of the prime authors - Pete Engardio, based in NYC (but spent years in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia) and Manjeet Kripalani, based in Mumbai - and they know their stuff and have covered the 2 countries for years now.

As I leafed through the issue and some of the data they quote (from various research firms) I found my mind brimming with burning questions:

1) Is the West prepared to absorb $ 2 trillion in exports from the 2 countries expected in 2010, almost triple what it is today?

2) Are China and India prepared to import at least $ 1.8 trillion a year in return so we do not end up with massive trade wars or dramatically reduce 1 above? (By the way a $ 1 trillion in Middle Eastern oil imports would not be a good answer to this question).

3) How many US and European companies are aggressively innovating and moving up the "stack" in their product value chain?

4) How many US and European companies are gearing up to aggressively export to these countries as GE is?

5) What are government and corporations doing to retrain western  labor force to support 3. and 4?

6) Can western labor for "utility" (as against innovation) work be made more competitive with technology (like Jetblue with VoIP) or as wage inflation grows in India and China?

7) What impact will India's projected 1.3 billion people in 2015 (up almost 40% from today) on its already poor infrastructure?   

8) Will Indian and Chinese companies learn to quickly build strong management teams in US and Europe? (It took the Japanese a while to find the right "mix".  Even now vendors like SAP are learning about multi-national management. I find many of the Indian firms micro-managing from India when over 75% of their revenues come from the US and Europe)

9) If China is so far ahead in exports and GDP compared to India, could it not just afford to buy a few Indian services firms and acquire market share, rather than build that capability itself?

10) If China and India were emerging technologies, not markets, where would Gartner put them on its "hype cycle"?

Lots of questions - hopefully lots of people smarter than me around the world are asking similar questions and coming up with answers. We have to thank Pete, Manjeet and the rest of the BW crew for stimulating this discussion.  And introducing the term "Chindia" to Google.

Author's Note: Manjeet Kripalani  at BusinessWeek corrects me  and says  they did not come up with the term "Chindia" - see  her comment below. Nice  and modest of her.

"GoogleNet" and free WI-FI?

Wow!...see this article in Business 2.0 by Om Malik ... Ivan Seidenberg may have to quit sniping at municipalities and start worrying about something far more potent.

Innovation v/s Incumbent ..round 9...

While we are speculating - let me throw out another possibility. What if Google tuned its search engine technologies and re-purposed them for corporate databases - read and write? The next generation RDBMS and SQL.. at price points we can only dream of.

Romesh Wadhwani: Software Captain

You have to read this blog - it summarizes Romesh Wadhwani’s impactful keynote speech at  the Enterprise Conference  I attended last week.  Bruce Richardson at AMR wrote his perspective on the conference, and so did I.

Romesh is a remarkable industry leader with fingers in a a number of enterprise software companies.  Symphony Technology Group, his holding company has stakes in IRI, Intentia (recently merged with Lawson), GERS Retail Systems, and Symphony Services. The Services group in turn outsources R&D development for a number of software companies like Siebel, Manugistics, Autodesk and others.

Prior to his role as investor (and industry leader), Romesh had a huge hit when he sold his company Aspect Development to i2 at the peak of the internet bubble.

What I liked about Romesh's speech (and the blog) was it had a senior adviser tone. Yes the industry has challenges, here are some new ways to approach things. Not everyone in the audience agreed with every one of his 10 themes - but every session referenced at least one or two of them. That's a measure of a good keynote speech and a man who knows the industry very well.

Technology Innovation and Baseball

I ran in to one of my young neighbors, Kristin Martin at the sandwich shop today. She was all bubbly and excited. Would you not be if you had just won the Senior League Softball World Series? She plays second base for the Citrus Park (Tampa) team which beat the Puerto Rican team in Delaware yesterday.

Women have had a long, interesting path in baseball. Technology, in contrast, has not had much of a track record in baseball - especially when compared to technology in American football I recently wrote about.

You see, baseball - America's pastime since the 1850s - is nothing if not traditional. The only technology allowed in the baseball dugout is the telephone used to call relief pitchers in the bullpen. I think the Amish use more modern technology. While the NFL has tried variations of instant replay for two decades now, baseball resists (though see this speculation that a buzzer was used to alert the umpire to review a  play during the highly charged Yankees-Red Sox series last year).  Diehard Baseball fans still draw their heliographs on paper baseball scorecards.

Baseball is also full of superstitions.  The famous Curse of the Bambino supposedly kept the Red Sox from winning a World Series since 1918.  Wade Boggs, recently enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame, epitomized quirky routines. 7 out of this list of 10 most superstitious athletes come from baseball.

Traditional and superstitious - sounds hopeless for a technology salesperson. Well, not completely.  Unlike the NFL, which has salary caps and tries for parity, baseball encourages competition for players.  The payroll at the richest team is 7 times as much as at the lowest one. The poorer teams are willing to experiment to get an edge - and technology can help.

Baseball gathers more statistics than the census bureau. This has allowed for an analytical discipline called "sabermetrics" to influence many baseball team strategies. It was written about in the bestseller Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game by Michael Lewis, which celebrates the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane. Beane has managed to scout and recruit a series of inexpensive players and put several seasons of impressive team performance. Of course, other teams have noticed and have adopted similar disciplines and recruited Beane's staff. Many use scouting and player tracking software like ScoutAdvisor. The Red Sox even broke the "curse" with its help. 

Attracting fans through websites offers significant CRM opportunities. Major League Baseball uses SAS technology to analyze the billion visitors it gets to its site www.mlb.com and to those of the 30 teams in the league. This allows them to share an amazing array of player performance statistics on their web site with avid fans. It also allows fans to participate  in electronic balloting of All-Star players

One growing revenue source is live, streaming video to fans.  This article is a fascinating description of how MLB is avoiding "channel conflict" with its TV network partners  and tracking each IP address  using Quova's GeoPoint technology  before they accept them as customers for the on-line service.

One area where baseball has used technology extensively is in player training. Technology to help understand the physics of baseball, to measure ball speed and other areas.  Of course, more basic DVDs and videos allow for sharing experiences with aspiring Little Leaguers as well.

Baseball stadiums are a hive of technology gadgets and innovations. They allow for extensive and interactive fan involvement, wireless deployment and a number of other areas. And of course, "sportstainment" - the elaborate use of sound effects and video technology that baseball stadiums have become famous for.

A few years ago, a promising technology was an Umpire Information System developed by QuesTec. At the end of each game the umpire was given a CD which analyzed every ball thrown and whether the technology decided it was in the strike zone as against what the umpires called. Questions about product accuracy and financial problems at the vendor have stalled this innovation. Not to mention it challenges baseball's tradition of respecting umpire judgment calls.

Some day, young girls like Kristin may again have a League of their Own.  Till then, MLB will hopefully offer them growing technology opportunities.  As Yogi Berra would say many will gladly take that fork in that road.

All the News that's fit to Blog

Look at Sadagopan's Google/Yahoo catch! The gman and gmail...

check this from Dennis Howlett on Systems Union. Well, duh...

and Chris Selland on Accenture's views on CRM...oh? Where can clients sign up for a refund?

or Jeff Nolan on this stadium (maybe the NCAA was also planning to banish the Seminoles to a reservation on that island?)

Keep it up eagle eyes!

This insight plus 6 quarters may, possibly buy us a cup of coffee at Starbucks...but if not, still gives us something to look for in the morning.

The Software Circle of Life

"...But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round.."

- Elton John, from the theme song of Lion King.

The software industry is similar to a natural ecosystem. When CA was on a buying spree in the 90s, Larry Ellison commented something along the lines of "every ecosystem needs a scavenger". Oracle is now on a buying spree and has started a stampede called "industry consolidation", but probably prefers to be compared to a lion or a leopard. 

When you safari in Africa you look forward to its "Big 5" - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo. But there are hundreds of other species which survive and thrive. Herds of gazelles and zebras are not the endangered species - efficient fighting machines like the gray wolf and the Asian tiger are the ones more threatened around the world. Software and animal ecosystems have their own checks and balances.

Every year, like clockwork, wildebeest put on a spectacular trek through the Serengeti - and not everyone in that herd survives. The software "consolidation" cycle is similarly cyclical and almost as predictable. SSA bought InterBiz - which was CA's collection of application acquisitions in the late 80s/early 90s. SSA also bought Baan, which acquired several companies in the late 90s. M&A is a healthy part of the software industry - fragmented as it is. But M&A has gone on for decades. Like solar flares - at times they are just more active but they happen on a continuous basis.

In the wild, lions which typically need 10 to 15 pounds of food a day, can gorge up to 100 pounds at one sitting - or 20 to 30% of their body weight.  But when they do, they fast for many days. They spend much of their time resting—often up to 20 hours per day. While they rest, lesser species prowl and the deer graze.

As the larger vendors rationalize their acquired architectures (Oracle trying to move PeopleSoft, JDE, Retek, its own products to Fusion; Microsoft its Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, and Solomon and other acquisitions) they rest and become inwardly focused and allow others in the ecosystem to survive and thrive. Oracle by paying 3X to 6X revenues for its recent acquisitions has raised the bar and potentially slowed down other deals in the industry which are priced lower.

"...There's more to be seen than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done.... "

There is a reason why the software industry supports over 2,000 companies...there are hundreds of vertical, geographic, process and other opportunities.  In 1995, SAP was telling every vertical it had "wall to wall" functionality. In the decade since it has had to add APO, BW, CRM, SRM and a number other modules. Even today it cannot service more than 25% of business process needs in banking, insurance and a wide variety of other verticals.  Niches and watering  holes abound. RSS, Predictive Analytics, visualization, security and so on.

"..But all are agreed as they join the stampede
You should never take more than you give..."

In their consolidation moves, Microsoft and other larger software companies are sowing the seeds of even more industry fragmentation.  Buyers know they can do better on software pricing, implementation, quality and support. This is opening up opportunities for open source, SaaS, BPO vendors, offshore vendors, third party maintenance vendors.  Evolution continues.

The software industry has whipped itself in to frenzy about consolidation. But we have seen earlier consolidations, and every wave of consolidation just opens new opportunities.

Time for the industry to relax to the Zulu lullaby -The Lion sleeps tonight. Tomorrow is a new day to explore a whole bunch of new pastures. As the song says the jungle - the industry - is the mighty one, not the lion.

Wimoweh..