deal architect

Microsoft-SAP?

Microsoft should buy SAP. So counsels MIT Professor Michael A. Cusumano. Forget Yahoo! Be like Larry and buy deeper into enterprise software.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet talks about challenges like EU approval around such a transaction.

My question is more basic. As I have asked before why are we in such a hurry to consolidate software?  In the last 15 years, there have been 200+ enterprise software acquisitions done by Oracle, IBM, CA, HP, Microsoft, Infor and Sage.

How have buyers benefited from this? Where are the volume discounts as contracts get consolidated, SG&A gets squeezed, products get rationalized, customer service gets streamlined...the promises that industry M&A makes to a CIO?

Microsoft has still not finished rationalizing its earlier enterprise application acquisitions - Great Plains et al. Why do we think it will digest SAP any easier? SAP and Microsoft have been collaborating on Duet for years now. Gives you an inkling into the likely productivity and innovation likely to come from a combination of those two

If money is burning a hole at Microsoft and Yahoo! gets away, I would like to suggest better uses of the funds. No, not another investor dividend. They have already got over $ 100 billion over the last few years.

Fix Vista.  Invest much more in various existing enterprise products from SQLServer to virtualization.

And lower maintenance to enterprise customers. Somehow, I have the feeling they could put that dividend towards far better innovation projects.

Weekend stuff: Welcome, Ralph!

Ralph Nader commences his fourth straight Presidential campaign.

The Democrats think he will be a spoiler again. To which Ralph goes "If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."

What drives a man with such long odds? Again and again. Ego? True love for the country?

Whatever it is, if we truly believe we need change in the country, we should welcome Ralph. He is about anti-establishment as they come. And if he keeps both parties focused on issues more than talk, that can only be good.

As he says ""great changes in US history have come through little parties that never won any national election."

More in New Florence

More innovation

Tech Highlights in the Federal Budget
NanoArt
Cisco's Massive New Switch
Turn your mobile phone into a hotspot
Micro-zoning

Update on Rebates Processing

So I get a text message from AT&T Wireless acknowledging they have received my rebate request.  And I go - progress!  I wrote earlier about Rebate processing as an angioplasty opportunity. Good to see rebate processing become more automated. More retail stores are printing the rebate forms at point-of-sale. Buy.com links your on-line receipt to a PDF copy of the rebate form to facilitate the printing.  Many manufacturers also acknowledge receipt of your rebate form by email.

But the back-end process is still way too manual. Too many rebates are rejected because supposedly there is no proof-of-purchase, there is insufficient personal information on the rebate form, or they are not received in the narrow rebate time frame.  Once that happens, the chances of a buyer winning an appeal are pretty slim.

Then there is processing time. The AT&T text message above says the rebate will take 8 weeks to process. 8 weeks to do what?

Finally, rebate checks have all kinds of poorly spelled names and addresses. So even if the rebate arrives, the bank may balk at cashing a check addressed to someone who kinda, sorta sounds like you. Others are sending rebate debit cards, which you have to  call in to validate. Another potential point of failure.

Overall, some progress, but still a process with plenty of plaque.

What if gas cost $ 5,000 a gallon and your fuel tank leaked?

Printer Ink costs that much (and more) and often we throw out cartridges before we need to and waste printed materials in so many other ways.

So here's how some businesses are responding :

a) Changing Employee Behavior. The CIO at Biltmore Hotels has consolidated  number of printers  down and instead added  high-end copiers which allow for easier scanning and distribution to multiple users in digital format. He also has a paperless HR department. Some companies encourage their employees to use, for internal use printing, their printer's Draft mode. (Other printers offer FastPrint, General Office Color Mode,  monochrome and other lower resolution print). Also, 2 sided copies and 2 printed pages on one can bring more savings for internal use copies. Others do not allow their remote employees to buy print supplies at retail stores, but instead order from a pre-negotiated catalog. (I recently needed a drum for my Brother laser. Office Depot wanted $ 175 after tax. Buy.com shipped to me for under $ 100 within 3 days.)

b) Changing Procurement behavior. Some are moving to "disposable" printers. In the "blades cost more than razor" economics in print that often makes sense. Others are encouraging smaller remote offices or work-at-home employees to swap laser printers for inkjet printers whose consumables are far more expensive. Still others are outsourcing print management at aggressive price per page metrics. If the outsourcer cannot offer significant economies of scale in print consumables, it may be just "paving the old cow paths".  Others keep print in-house but buy "compatible" consumables. They do so in spite of significant FUD (that alternatives have poor quality, negate printer warranty etc) from the OEM. I was shocked to read a Dataquest analysis which shows compatible and gray market consumables exceed those from the OEM in a growing market like India. I knew it was growing, but not by that much.

c) Changing Marketing/Sales behavior.  The numbers on marketing junk mail are staggering . "This year, your mail slot will accept roughly 572 pieces of it, and every letter carrier in America will slog nearly 18 tons of junk mail—roughly the weight of four adult elephants—up to the mailboxes on his route. In order to crank out each year's 4 million tons of junk mail, 100 million trees will have to be cut down, 3 million cars' worth of energy consumed and 30 billion gallons of polluted water will circle the drain." Most of this junk mail does not even get opened. Then there is management of  color brochures, other collateral and business cards. And negotiated rates with local printers so field sales people do not always print at last minute prices at Kinkos. As 3D printing starts to take off - expect even more waste. Unless they behave like the apparel company I know which has been moving away from samples of new shoes to 3D graphical depictions.

There are plenty more individual "best practices" which show companies are increasingly focused on the leaky print fuel tank. It's good to see companies going green while also saving green on printing costs.

IT Titles are so boring

I wrote about likely IT titles in 2010

Compare this to some of the speakers presenting at this week's TED conference - neuroanatomist, memeticist, animal behaviorist, paleoanthropologist, and scholar of randomness.

When I grow up I want to be a... -honestly,  I just cannot decide between the career choices this Monster.com ad offers -)

At HIMSS next week

As I prepare to spend a couple of days at the healthcare tech conference in Orlando next week, I notice Lawson is a sponsor. I also notice Lawson announced today it is acquiring VasTech, a healthcare focused workforce management vendor.

One of the people I am looking forward to meeting is Dave Watson, who used to be CTO at Kaiser Permanente and recently moved to Medefinance, which specializes in analytics for the healthcare vertical.

Plenty of other vendors to see there...healthcare is seeing an amazing range of new technologies as I have cataloged from time to time on innovation focused New Florence blog. 

Burning Question: What do YOU do with unlimited phone time?

So, as mobile companies rush to offer unlimited call plans, I wanted to ask my readers what creative and zany things they have done or seen others do when they are invited to a buffet by the Duke of Decibels...

My 3 stories:

a) Back when we had airphones in planes, GTE (now Verizon) ran a $ 20 promotion - one rate per call, no time limit. Usually it cost around $ 4 a minute. This fellow spoke non-stop for 3 hours. He switched between English and his native tongue (I think Nigerian). He screamed into the phone, then would sing in to it. All of us around laughed, cringed with his cadence...all the way.

b) In the UK when they had a similar unlimited mobile minutes promotion a few years ago, a man told me he used his and his wife's cell phones as a baby monitor - all night and every time the baby had a nap.

c) I heard about a gentleman who on the road calls his wife on Skype and they keep the call on all night long (Skype to Skype calls are free). It's comforting to both, apparently.

Readers, other stories?

Rollover, Sucker!

How would you feel if you bank tells you, gosh you did not renew your CD so we have to halve the interest you earned on the last one? How would you feel if an airline said your miles are good, but because you bought a cheap ticket, we are going to dock you 10,000 miles?

AT&T Wireless has a nice feature called "rollover minutes" - unused minutes can be carried forward 12 months. Looking at my balance, I figure I could reduce my monthly minutes and use up my rollover minutes over the next few months. The rep tells me - you sure you want to do that? We will have to retire a prorated portion of your rollover minutes. And I go - wait a minute, I earned those minutes. I paid for them. Sorry sir.

Sure enough I check language on its site

If you change from one rollover plan to another rollover plan, any accumulated Rollover Minutes in excess of the new plan's number of monthly anytime minutes will expire upon such change. If you migrate a single line to a FamilyTalk plan, or should a subscriber join a FamilyTalk plan for which your line is the primary line, any accumulated Rollover Minutes for all lines included in the new FamilyTalk group's Rollover Minutes in excess of the monthly Anytime Minutes for such group shall expire upon such change.

Oh and by the way, many such changes extend your contract 2 years.

I guess everything is stacked in favor of the telco. Any wonder Consumer Reports says cell service is the lowest rated service it surveys every year. Has been for 6 years running.

Defending Aberdeen

I am a buyer advocate, so my friends will think I am nuts for coming to the defense of Aberdeen which for years has been called a vendor "pay for play" analyst firm - a sentiment recently echoed in a WSJ column

I think most buyers have become savvy to analyst firm revenue models - and importantly, they have learned to balance out the influences- as I wrote here there are a thousand points of influence in a complex decision. Whether a direct vendor white paper  or one summarized by Aberdeen or a research paper from Gartner - they all play an influence role. A small one, but a role.

IDC is almost completely vendor funded. So is the former Dataquest, now part of Gartner. And their products are mostly consumed by vendors. Relatively few buyers read their stuff. If Aberdeen stuff is being read by buyers to me that's goodness - even if they have a vendor funded model.