deal architect

InformationWeek on Change Agents

InformationWeek identifies 8 folks who in different ways have influenced technology or its deployment - not household names (ok, other than last one) - but kudos to the magazine for identifying what Tom Peters would describe as "mavericks"

Scott Kveton, of Open Source Lab at Oregon State
Dr. Blake Caldwell who does "biosurveillance" at the Center for Disease Control
Mile Lynn, now at Juniper, who was sued by Cisco for his work around flaws in their security
Dianah Neff, CIO of City of Philadelphia, for her pioneering municipal WI-FI effort
Bruce Perens, for his efforts to protect open source code from patent challenges
Robert Scoble, the Microsoft blogger with a cult like following
Rep Lamar Smith, from Texas for his work on patent reform
Peter Drucker

The Blog Year That Was

I started my blog earlier in the year as a way to organize my articles/presentations. In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined I would end up with 37% of my visitors from around the world – at last count from 102 countries (though many had a medal tally of 1 - so probably just stumbled into my blog). Most I have never met or talked to but who I now hear from more than my friends (someone psycho-analyze that, please). Or what I wrote over the year when exported into Word is over 250 pages in length. I never thought I had the stamina to write a book! Google Print, feel free to scan and catalog every page.

So, as I look back at the blog year, several thanks are in order. To Google, MSN, Yahoo, Technorati, Six Apart  - thanks for providing the affordable platform to reach so many folks. To my favorite bloggers (many identified in this post), thanks for the inspiration. To my readers – thanks so much for the time and the feedback.

And one of you asked me – do I have a favorite post from the year? Not sure about favorite – but can I share my most enjoyable, most impactful and most read?

Most enjoyable – I love writing about applied technology innovation - CIOs who take early technologies and give them to small “tiger teams” and deliver huge payback. Like at Steelcase,  Hertz, Jetblue. Michelin can rate restaurants. I like to write about “home cooks” and their “recipes”. These folks make mockery of the question “Does IT matter?” They are the Medicis who are funding the new Renaissance.

Most impactful – to free up more innovation budgets for CIOs, I write about fat in incumbent, utility IT spend. The Giant Crunching Sound. Utility Computing – wish it was so easy. I have not received too many holiday cards from IBM, Microsoft, EDS, SAP, Oracle, Verizon, Accenture – vendors that provide most of the utility spend that eats up 60 to 80% of IT budgets for basic, keep-the-lights on, IT spend. But you should see the kudos I have from CIOs for helping them crunch this spend. And those from newer technology companies with innovations and hunger to show what they can do even with crumbs from the budget table. Lots more to do. And even new, low cost vendors need to be watched as I wrote about offshore vendors in “The Economics of "Cheap"”

I am glad I challenged Larry Ellison about software industry consolidation earlier in the year. Now as we can see SaaS, Open Source, Web 2.0 vendors and of course, Google are generating a fair amount of excitement in a so-called consolidated “software” market. 

A topic which makes many people uncomfortable – is that of global competition. My philosophy is summarized in China/India – Shouldn't we be worried? Sure I am worried. But it is also an exciting new world as I wrote in Generation G.

Beyond IT, I believe we have clogged a number of our business processes. If we are worried about global competition we should listen to the customer POV and conduct Business Process "Angioplasty" on “plaque” that comes from expensive technology, people, security and compliance.

Most read -  I wish I could tell you there was a consistent pattern around what your favorites are. Earlier in the year, it looked like my post on the research firms – Analyze This! – was going to be a runaway winner. Not exactly sure why since that is only an occasional topic for me. But over the last few months, many more posts have gained in readership. Some blog software seems to allow for a listing of most reed posts - mine does not.

Sorry, you asked a simple question – what is my favorite post and I started to write another book!

So I have a better answer – since my tracking software can cannot give me a clear answer, I would love to hear from you about YOUR favorites. (My tracking software does tell me all kinds of other useless informatuon like 28% of my readers use Firefox, the time most readers access the blog is between 1 and 2 pm eastern, and the slowest day is Saturday)

Thanks – and keep reading, commenting, arguing.

Happy holidays!

First CSC, now ACS

Texas Pacific, Blackstone and Bain, three private equity funds are said to be discussing taking ACS private, after talks with CSC fell apart.

The deal will likely be at 2X revenues. They are buying a company with an impressive growth rate over the last decade and almost 10% better margins than CSC, which would likely have been valued at less than 1X. While ACS looks twice as pricey, if they can increase the ACS revenue growth up from 25% last year, and if gross margins can be improved from 33% last year to the 40s...the valuation could be closer to the 10X that Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant command.

Texas Pacific hired Vivek Paul from Wipro earlier this year. They are also said to be leading the consortium. The formula seems predictable...the question is why is ACS not doing it on its own? Or why CSC management does not execute to it to get its valuation up significantly?

When bad things happen to good men

Tony Dungy is a good man in every sense of the word. The Big Coach in the Sky is being very, very cruel to him. This loss is so much worse than losing the possible perfect season earlier in the week.

AMR on Enterprise Software 2006

Bruce Richardson writes about what he believes will be 2006 themes  in enterprise software.

1. More consolidation
2. Microsoft Office 12
3. The Google economy
4. Collaborative trading apps
5. SOA - not ready from prime time in 2006

Pretty blase outlook for someone who is generally positive on this market sector.

No mention of Oracle Fusion, SaaS, Open source, Web 2.0 integration with enterprise apps.

Sounds like he needs a trip west to get him more excited. AMR has an event in January in the Bay area. A little time away from the Boston snow and on the golf course will get this cheerleader for the sector back in the saddle.

WSJ Top 25 clicked stories

High tech dominates a list compiled by WSJ on its most read stories in 2005.

Google and founders shows up in item 2 and 3. iPod in 4 and 24. The UN /US  "battle" over control of the Web is item 5. Video blogs are item 6. Carly at HP is 8. Silicon Valley high schools are profiled in 10. Amazon takes 12, Microsoft 19.

Lynyrd Skynyrd and "Free Bird" show up as item 11 - a fun read I wrote about a while back.

NY Blue and Green

I was not very happy yesterday. A meeting at Laguardia Airport went well, but a meeting in Manhattan, a dinner and the holiday lights in Manhattan  were nixed due to the transit strike. While the union will get most of the blame, it brought out the worst of so many. Taxis gouged - my seat mate on the flight out told me each of the 3 passengers were charged $ 40 each, when the total fare should have been $ 30. The TSA security line took 90 minutes - excuses ranged from the strike to the holiday rush to a damaged X Ray machine. Then I was fit to be tied when my zone 1 boarding pass became the last zone to be boarded. With Christmas presents you can imagine what the carry-on space was like for the last zone. More excuses from Delta this time - including the strike.

As the plane took off I quit feeling sorry for myself and started to feel sorry for the average New Yorker. They deserved better than this misery in the cold - especially  just before the holidays. So glad for them the strike is over  (or at least postponed as negotiations resume)

Now I can go back to feeling sorry I missed out on Rockefeller Center in December.

Lou Dobbs - Offshoring Accelerator!

Everest Group - its CEO Peter Bendor-Samuel - has issued its top 10 events/trends in global outsourcing in 2005.

While I have written about most of the trends over the course of the year, item 1 - the one on Lou Dobbs is ironic. Lou, according to the report, may have accelerated offshoring! I wrote in May in Lou Sobs, oops Dobbs that he had harped too long on the topic.

Peter has been a long time watcher of the outsourcing market. He ought to have his own blog! But first, I am sure an invitation to debate with Lou awaits.

Brazil's first CMM Level 5 site

Stefanini, a Sao Paolo based IT services firm has qualified for Level 5 of the SEI-CMM model - a definite gold standard in the world of IT process maturity. NASA was the first to be so certified. Then in 1994 Motorola's Bangalore center qualified. Then Indian services firms took it to heart.- with Wipro being the first to be certified in 1999, and today over 60% of all level 5 sites worldwide are in India.

While Indian firms may yawn about this Brazilian qualifier, the rest of us should celebrate. Just yesterday I was talking to a CIO and he jokingly said he would qualify at level 1. You want your vendors to be much better than you. It shows commitment to quality and continuous improvement that none of the major US software companies have chosen to be certified against. Some US services firms like EDS and Accenture do have some of their sites certified.

With any process discipline like Six Sigma there is overhead. The results show up better over time. Short term to move clients from lower levels to level 5 driven standards there is often elaborate knowledge capture and documentation required.

Brazil is blossoming nicely as an offshore alternative. It has historically had a strong engineering talent pool, and at least from a US perspective offers time zone advantages. Rio is also a beautiful city to visit, though I must admit Sao Paolo is as chaotic as many Indian cities.

Microsoft BS - Business Solutions, that is

Dennis Howlett does some sleuthing around Microsoft's efforts around Great Plains, Navision et al.

If true, I hope Microsoft cleans it up. The middle market needs its stable support of these products and the VARs ecosystem that provide the implementation support - at much more reasonable costs compared to the systems integrators in the larger enterprise market.

Oracle could have a similar mess as it tries to rationalize multiple product lines and cutomer bases as I wrote here - and this was before the Siebel acquisition.