deal architect

Let's go to Marshall, Texas

Let's go to Luckenbach Texas
with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us fueding
like the Hatfield and McCoys

- Waylon Jennings

400 miles northeast of Luckenbach is the town of Marshall, TX where a number of patent Hatfields and McCoys end up.

MIT Technology Review writes about  "rattlesnake speeches" in Judge Ward's courtroom. NY Times writes about the "rocket docket".

I am racking my brains about where I remember Marshall from.  From one of John Grisham's books? Or one of Hank Williams' pain songs?

Thank You, USA...

...for letting me come to New York this week and lambaste your President and call him the devil over and over. Same for my buddy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In my country, I would have been arrested and jailed for violating Article 147 of our Penal Code:

"Anyone who offends with his words or in writing or in any other way disrespects the President of the Republic or whomever is fulfilling his duties will be punished with prison of 6 to 30 months if the offense is serious and half of that if it is light."

In Mahmoud's country, political bloggers better watch what they say.

Mahmoud and I had a great time in NYC . I was hoping to take him to a Yankees game had they been in town. We love America, just not your devil.

BTW - Thank you for continuing to buy our oil. "

Hugo Chavez,
El Presidente
Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela

"97.5% Businesses"

Courtesy of Sadagopan I saw this interview with Stephen Tame, CIO of Jetstar, a low cost offshoot of the Australian airline, Qantas.

"It means I can experiment with DSL connections, CDMA connections. I can experiment with all of these technologies that you might argue is not a 99.9 percent solution, but I don't have to achieve that result. So as well as giving me the flexibility to give the business their tools, and saving me cost, I'm achieving some results. That 2.5 percent -- you'd be surprised at how much that locks you in, and how much that costs. That last 2.5 percent is really where the big dollars are, where the big resourcing requirements are -- and it's like a ball and chain."

In the 90s,  SAP and Oracle and EDS and IBM and Verizon urged customers to implement their  "vanilla" versions to lower TCO. But they have become the 2.5% Stephen talks about and he is finding new flavors  of "vanilla" to dramatically lower TCO in a number of technology areas.

Stephen's airline flies to New Florence.

Turning CapEx into OpEX

A subtle economic shift is happening in the industry. IT has for a while now been the single biggest capital investment for many companies. But the move to SaaS and HaaS is allowing them to start thinking of buying more of IT as an operating expense. And on a variable capacity basis. As companies consolidate data centers and use more virtualization, they squeeze even more out of capital investment. While there will continue to be be exceptions like UPS building out its delivery infrastructure or banks continuing to invest in large card or mortgage transaction engines, for most general commercial applications,  the shift towards Opex is  clear.

But this is pushing the onus of capital spending to the vendor community. Google's grid. Microsoft's grid.  21st century pyramids as Mark Anderson calls them. Outsourcers will find fewer data center deals in corporate world, but many more co-location and predictable service needs in vendor world. Software vendors will discover the need to deliver to stringent SLAs not just release software, buggy or not. They will learn what customer due diligence visits mean around security, scalability and business continuity. Telcos which intrinsically understand large capital spend management will find IT services an even more attractive market to diversify into (Verizon is learning with MCI, AT&T  recently acquired USi). Wall Street will learn to accept Microsoft and Google's large capital needs as it acknowledges the shift in the capital spend from consumer to producer.

IT as a dial tone. May sound boring but lots of companies would like it with that reliability, scalability and predictable cost. But to get there the industry will see massive change - a lots more pronounced than going from CA to O on the annual corporate budgeting forms. And a lots more CA in vendor world.

Team McClaren Move?

SAP sponsors Team McClaren Mercedes.

But Oracle is the one making the moves as it reports a second consecutive quarter with 80% application license growth over previous year.

I wish Oracle executives would not have used the press release to brag so boldly. After all the 80% growth was on a base of just $ 127 m in application licenses in 1Q05.

The reality remains as Dave Stephens's analysis last quarter pointed out. Oracle has spent a lot of money on PeopleSoft, Siebel etc and still has a ways to go to overtake SAP.

Just a few more laps.

Ariba at 10

I can recall meeting Sam Kinney, founder of Free Markets (which Ariba later acquired) in a Delta Crown room in 1996 and hear him expound on the joys of reverse auctions and "near commodities". I remember a number of conversations with Paul Melchiorre as he left SAP to run sales for Ariba in 1998. He was always unhappy with Gartner's coverage of the embryonic e-procurement market. I can remember walking the halls at Ariba a few times in 2000-2001 to discuss alliances with the marketplace company I had co-founded.

So it was nice to catch up this week with Craig Federighi, CTO of Ariba. We did not talk much technology. We did talk about how "SaaSy" his company has become. How vibrant their supplier communities continue to be. How Free Markets has expanded its intelligence on commodities and suppliers with staff in E. Europe and China.

And how SAP and Oracle continue to win when they sell the broader technology integration story. Take it from a sourcing consultant. Commodity and vendor landscape knowledge trumps integration by a long payback shot.

It defined the category a decade ago, It continues to do so.

SAP Enterprise Search

Charlie Wood reports from SAP's TechEd about SAP's Enterprise Search. I am glad to see Nimish Mehta head its EIM group. Ex-Oracle, he also did a stint at Stratify when it was a broader vendor around unstructured data management.

If history holds, though, SAP will not be able to convince its own customer base to use the analytical capabilities exclusively. Over the years, SAP has rolled out a mind-boggling set of report writers, business intelligence and other analytical tools. Net result:  SAP has had to continue to support a large ecosystem of "BI buddies". Google win join that list, with or without SAP's encouragement.

If more of history holds, SAP has never been able to convince many customers outside its customer base to buy its analytical, development, BPM or other tools. When it comes to enterprise search, you think its buddies IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are going to let it just walk away with the market?

Of course, in a young market there is nothing wrong in SAP following Paul Kedrosky's advice - declare victory early ...

Built to Delight, Not Last

I exchanged emails with Brian Gillooly, who organizes InformationWeek events. He was telling me I missed (he had invited me) the buzz last week as Mark Hurd of HP keynoted their conference while his board was debating how to handle the "pretexting" scandal.

Well, it would have been titillating to be there for that.

But honestly, I am sorry I missed Tom Peters presentation on Innovation at the conference.

Tom makes a fascinating point. "My number one company is Netscape. It was born, changed the world and died in 72 months."

"General Motors had 25 good years," "The Japanese started attacking in 1970. General Motors is still around but there isn't anybody staying awake at night worrying about what GM's next move is going to be,"

"There is no proof that any company can be built to last past two decades, although there are a few exceptions, such as General Electric and at one time Kodak."

Sam, Mark, Ivan, Ed, Steve, Hasso and Larry probably scoff at Tom's 20 year run comment - but they represent almost $ 500 billion a year in "built to last" IT and telecom budgets when Tom is telling their customers to focus on "built to delight" innovation...what gives?

I exchanged emails with Brian Gillooly, who organizes InformationWeek events. He was telling me I missed (he had invited me) the buzz last week as Mark Hurd of HP keynoted their conference while his board was debating how to handle the "pretexting" scandal.

Well, it would have been titillating to be there for that.

But honestly, I am sorry I missed Tom Peters presentation on Innovation at the conference.

Tom makes a fascinating point. "My number one company is Netscape. It was born, changed the world and died in 72 months."

"General Motors had 25 good years," "The Japanese started attacking in 1970. General Motors is still around but there isn't anybody staying awake at night worrying about what GM's next move is going to be,"

"There is no proof that any company can be built to last past two decades, although there are a few exceptions, such as General Electric and at one time Kodak."

Sam, Mark, Ivan, Ed, Steve, Hasso and Larry probably scoff at Tom's 20 year run comment - but they represent almost $ 500 billion a year in "built to last" IT and telecom budgets when Tom is telling their customers to focus on "built to delight" innovation...what gives?

Technology Drives More Travel?

As I start a period of too much travel, I read this NY Times article which focuses on the joys of web conferencing  in the days of  toothpaste driven security checks and other travel hassles.

But an interesting quote jumped out.

“As technology has advanced, it increases the need for face-to-face travel,” said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, a group that advocates lower fares and better conditions for passengers. “In 1990, you and I might have managed 100 relationships, and that was a lot,” he said. “Now with e-mail and instant messaging, you and I may manage 1,000.”

Don't forget blogs and resulting relationships are also feeding curiosity about meeting more people face to face. I am looking forward to seeing some fellow bloggers at Office 2.0 in San Francisco and SAP's TechED in Amsterdam in October.  Of course, wouldn't you know it - the need to be with clients in other cities is threatening both.

But just as important reading posts like this from Thomas Otter about S. Africa and Tom Peters from around the world has got me excited again about traveling to countries I have not been near.

I have a cousin who is part of the "100 country" club (I think he has been to 125). I am stuck at 40. I think I added 5 new ones in the last decade.

Just assure me they have toothpaste - since it will likely be taken away at the originating point.

Why all this hand wringing?

Couple of weeks ago, poor Ismael took all kinds of hell for not having enough women on the Office 2.0 conference agenda . Now, Chris Messina laments the "white boy clubs".

Where does the fear, loathing and guilt come from?

While I am hard on the big tech vendors for not delivering enough value for money, I am damn proud of our industry's racial, sexual, and even age related diversity.

Our industry laughs at Lou Dobbs as we let Indian, Israeli, Malaysian companies compete for our business. You go to a TiE conference and you see a United Nations of entrepreneurs and VCs. We are ok with Chuck Phillips, John Thompson and other blacks at the top. And Meg, and Pattie and Safra and other qualified ladies. And a bunch of 25+ year old companies (with aging founders and executives) continue to dominate industry revenues.

I hope I never see the day where tech conferences have to use EEO formulas so they are sex, age, race ratio compliant.

If you think tech is bad, go spend some time working in the diamond trade or in Chinatown...