deal architect

Weekend Stuff: Travel Arbitrage

In the 80s when I zipped around the world a lot more than I do now, I knew all the bucket shops to get good international fares from, I would buy tickets which originated and ended in London, because that worked out 20-40% cheaper than buying tickets in the US.  At any given time, my briefcase would have multiple tickets. A big risk, since all tickets were paper-based back then. But a risk worth taking given the travel arbitrage opportunity.

I happened to read in Frommer's BudgetTravel that you can play those arbitrage games with on-line reservations now. As the article describes though, some eager beaver airline or car rental employee could ruin your trip. As the Hertz rep says "It appears that a customer could get a better rate by pretending to be from a different country, but there's no guarantee that at the time of rental, that rate would be honored"

On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog. But man do they get all huffy when they find you are a German Shepherd not a Siberian Husky :)

Update: Jeff Nolan points to another form of arbitrage - and for airlines to lose more money. For years now, Southwest has hedged its fuel economics. So during the recent oil price run up, United did too. Except it did at over $ 111 a barrel and now prices are down considerably!

Weekend Stuff: Mohawk Madness

OK, baseball fans, you may have never seen the Tampa Rays play, but you will over the next few weeks since they have finally made the playoffs after consistently being at the bottom of the AL East in their 11 year history (not tough with the Yankees and Red Sox in the same division)

So let me prep you for some goofy stuff. Like Mohawks on every player - and seemingly every other fan. Like the catwalks on the top of our dome - we have some really special ground rules. Like fans who drive you nuts with their cowbells. And the wave (yeah, it's still alive here). And the goofball mascot, Raymond

Snicker all you want. They have the best home record in MLB. Will likely end regular season with as many wins - 96 - as they had losses last year, The team has 11 walk-off wins so far.  All 5 starting pitchers have 11+ wins. It may have the AL Rookie of the Year. The AL Manager of the Year

The team is young. The team is underpaid - their entire payroll would not cover the salary of the top 2 Yankees.

So call them goofy - but they have overcome all kinds of adversity all season round. Get used to the darned cowbells.

Weekend Stuff: Dilbert on the Presidential candidates

Scott Adams

"Moneywise, I can't support a candidate who promises to tax the bejeezus out of my bracket, give the windfall to a bunch of clowns with a 14 percent approval rating (Congress), and hope they spend it wisely.

Unfortunately, the alternative to the guy who promises to pillage my wallet is a lukewarm cadaver. I'm in trouble either way."

So he surveys a bunch of economists on what they think of Obama and McCain's economic and trade policies. While they cannot fix the mess on Wall Street, they do have opinions on the candidates.

PS: technically, my title was misleading. Not Dilbert, but his creator. Actually not even Scott, but a bunch of economists. But in a campaign focused on race, sex and age, it's good to see even a bit of focus on some of the issues.

Good restaurants in Walnut Creek, CA

Dave Duffield of Workday answers a number of questions Bill Kutik poses him in this interview - but not the one about quality of restaurants in Walnut Creek.

I can recommend Maria Maria - at least page 1 of the menu. I do not remember our group getting past the really interesting blends of appetizers, salads and soups. A bit noisy though. Not a place if you want to discuss multi-tenancy in SaaS.

The last time I saw the two together, though, was in an even noisier place: The French Quarter in New Orleans during a PeopleSoft conference in the late 90s. Dave and Bill have both been fixtures in the HR software market for a long. long time and you can tell that in the ease in which the conversation flows in the interview.

"The Skype phone makes us more margin than any other phone..."

so says Frank Meehan, of O2 in the UK in a panel on mobile carrier strategies :

"So we basically told people, if you spend 10 pounds a month and top it off every month, you get Skype for free. That’s driven incredible loyalty to the device. We have a huge level of top-offs and we’re seeing growth on voice and text on those devices. So we built everything into the address book and you’re always logged into Skype and everything is integrated so that ease of use is integrated, and that’s driving usage. It works and it’s very profitable for us."

In the US, Skype has to complain to the FCC because the carriers are not allowing users networks open to VoIP.

Two nations separated by a common dial tone?

When Wall Street sneezes

Dean Bubley makes an interesting point "And I've been watching tech & wireless stocks escape with (comparatively) little damage. Who would have thought, 7 years ago, that it would be banks' and insurers' turns in the firing line?"

When an industry spends over 10% of revenues on tech and is hit so hard, tech is bound to also suffer. Larry Dignan summarizes the likely ripples.

Actually, even within tech vendors the exposure is varied depending on how much comes from manufacturing and other services rather than financial services . So, IBM is a bit more exposed than HP. Infosys more exposed than HCL. SAP (at least in the US) less exposed than Oracle.

Of course, the cycles happen on Wall Street all the time, but this time there is way more (forced) consolidation going on, and that will lead to more secular changes - and opportunities - in tech spend.

"100% SaaS"

I saw a press release from Intacct which invoked those words. I see fellow Irregular Susan Scrupski describe how her firm nGenera is 100% SaaS. The Office 2.0 conference I took part in recently had a session on Going 100% SaaS...and the conference itself was 100% SaaS. It was disorienting to not have agendas or slides anywhere but in the cloud.

I see Symphony,  which offers outsourced R&D to many an on-premise software vendor, offer a seminar on how software vendors can transition to SaaS world - doing their part to make the world 100% SaaS.

Come to think of it, 100% SaaS should be easier than the 100% paperless world we have promised for ages...

RIP: Dr. Michael Hammer

I have been remiss to not blog about the passing of "Mr. Reengineering" two weeks ago.

My vivid memory is him presenting in a large auditorium and his booming voice reminded me of Neil Diamond's Brother Love "And when he lets go half the valley shakes".

The next time I saw him was in a much smaller room, he was much more subdued and seemed very aware that many mass layoffs in the 90s had been justified using his book. As he told the WSJ, "I was reflecting my engineering background and was insufficiently appreciative of the human dimension"

There is one nugget I picked up from his writings and speeches. Look at any business process from a customer POV. If the customer does not see value in a process step, obliterate the step. Screw what the accountants or attorneys or engineers say about the step being critical. Look at the process coldly from the customer's eyes. That nugget inspired me to have a category on this blog "Business Process Angioplasty" .

I rededicate that portion of the blog, to you, Dr. Hammer.

"Open" is to vendors what "Change" is to politicians

Skype sends a letter to the FCC complaining (once again) about “.. lip service to the goals of open networks..carriers continue to require their subscribers to limit the applications and devices that can be used on their networks”

Next: one of the best things about the iPhone is its App Store - its rapidly growing application ecosystem made up of hundreds of mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. So why is Apple risking that goodwill and being mean to some applications that kinda, sorta touch on something they already offer? Does that small business threaten Apple in any meaningful way? And by the way, did you know the iPhone SDK supposedly disallows applications "designed or marketed for real time route guidance" - meaning Garmin, TomTom, Magellan etc.?

Why should we be surprised? Remember when Open meant UNIX - except every hardware vendor had its own variation of AIX, UX etc. I think politicians in DC started promising "change" around the same time.

Open...as wide-open as a bear-hug...

The HP job layoffs

Black Monday - HP's job cuts only made the banking doom and gloom worse.

I am not a fan of big layoffs. To me they conjure weakness - and images of our auto and airline industries. But Wall Street seems to expect them and companies play along.

While there are plenty of analysts who will parse what this means to HP stock, I am more interested in what this means to HP/EDS buyers.

As I wrote here, the strength of both HP and EDS is still more in infrastructure outsourcing, less application or business process outsourcing. Those markets are more capital than labor intensive. As we move in to the new world and economics of cloud computing will the  job cuts help HP compete better with amazon's storage pricing of 25c a gb a month?

HP is planning to hire about half of that workforce back - presumably in low cost countries. I would like to see how it does better than what it and EDS have done over the last few years. EDS acquired MphasiS almost 3 years ago, and HP has had labor pools in China, India and E. Europe for a while. In proposals I have reviewed from both, the global delivery model is choppy - and the economics uncompetitive.  Let's not forget EDS was the first Western firm to "discover India" as far back as 1996 and blew that first-mover advantage. Why will it be different this time around?

Mark Hurd has had a golden touch at HP, so I imagine the job cuts are just the beginning of major transformation of the services business. I have a feeling it will consume much of his attention for the next few years.  Even with EDS, HP will only have a 6% market share in the fragmented services market. Very different from the hardware and software market HP is doing well in.

Should be interesting to watch even as I try to forget how much the cuts remind me of US airlines and auto companies.