Thursday, November 30, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Who wants an easy life anyway? - CRN
Who wants an easy life anyway? - CRN
Despite the hard work and stress, all of those who make this year’s A-List wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. Simon Meredith looks at what motivates some of the industry’s leading figures
Despite the hard work and stress, all of those who make this year’s A-List wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. Simon Meredith looks at what motivates some of the industry’s leading figures
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Nvidia Strengthens Mobile Focus With Deal to Buy PortalPlayer
This strategic agreement focuses on growth opportunities beyond the PC. PortalPlayer's proficiency in audio combined with Nvidia's mobile video expertise will position Nvidia for video-focused, portable multimedia devices.
Nvidia Strengthens Mobile Focus With Deal to Buy PortalPlayer
Nvidia Strengthens Mobile Focus With Deal to Buy PortalPlayer
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Microsoft may launch Office tools online (FT)
Bill Gates hinted that Microsoft would launch simple online versions of some of its Office desktop software tools as he hit back at suggestions that new internet services from Google and others might start to eat into one of his company’s core businesses.
His comments followed a rash of new services from Google and other internet companies to handle things such as word processing, spreadsheets and online calendars.
Google also changed course last month by starting to combine some of these its applications into an integrated package, echoing the “suite” approach that helped to turn Microsoft’s Office into the dominant desktop software application.
Mr Gates told the Financial Times that Microsoft would itself match services such as those offered by Google. He argued strongly, though, that this would only ever represent a small part of the market.
Asked whether Microsoft planned to launch online “productivity” tools like those in Office, he said: “We’re going to cover 100 per cent of the productivity needs – our track record is to keep innovating.”
Mr Gates said the present generation of e-tools were still at a very basic level and broadly comparable to Works, a collection of simple applications that Microsoft sells for PC users, and so did not threaten the core Office business.
“The web-based things aren’t an advance over what Works has been for a long, long time,” he said. “We don’t think the market will shift to a Works-like level.” Works is only estimated to account for a small percentage of Microsoft’s “information worker” business, which produced overall sales of $12.4bn last year.
Until now, Microsoft has steered clear of launching web-based productivity applications in direct competition with Google.
Its “Office Live” service, which is due to come out of its test phase later this month, is a collection of tools for small companies to create and run their own websites, rather than being related to the desktop software suite whose name it bears. While maintaining that most office workers would continue to use full versions of the Office desktop software, Mr Gates suggested that they would in future find it easier to access their work from any machine – one of the advantages of the online services.
“There’s a difference between actually running an application on a server versus letting a document be found on a server,” he said. “We’re going to make a push to let you keep documents on a server.”
Since most office workers use full-functioning PCs, it made sense to take advantage of that local computing power with applications such as those in Office, even if their documents are held centrally, he added.
His comments followed a rash of new services from Google and other internet companies to handle things such as word processing, spreadsheets and online calendars.
Google also changed course last month by starting to combine some of these its applications into an integrated package, echoing the “suite” approach that helped to turn Microsoft’s Office into the dominant desktop software application.
Mr Gates told the Financial Times that Microsoft would itself match services such as those offered by Google. He argued strongly, though, that this would only ever represent a small part of the market.
Asked whether Microsoft planned to launch online “productivity” tools like those in Office, he said: “We’re going to cover 100 per cent of the productivity needs – our track record is to keep innovating.”
Mr Gates said the present generation of e-tools were still at a very basic level and broadly comparable to Works, a collection of simple applications that Microsoft sells for PC users, and so did not threaten the core Office business.
“The web-based things aren’t an advance over what Works has been for a long, long time,” he said. “We don’t think the market will shift to a Works-like level.” Works is only estimated to account for a small percentage of Microsoft’s “information worker” business, which produced overall sales of $12.4bn last year.
Until now, Microsoft has steered clear of launching web-based productivity applications in direct competition with Google.
Its “Office Live” service, which is due to come out of its test phase later this month, is a collection of tools for small companies to create and run their own websites, rather than being related to the desktop software suite whose name it bears. While maintaining that most office workers would continue to use full versions of the Office desktop software, Mr Gates suggested that they would in future find it easier to access their work from any machine – one of the advantages of the online services.
“There’s a difference between actually running an application on a server versus letting a document be found on a server,” he said. “We’re going to make a push to let you keep documents on a server.”
Since most office workers use full-functioning PCs, it made sense to take advantage of that local computing power with applications such as those in Office, even if their documents are held centrally, he added.
Waiting for the new web revolution (FT)
When it comes to corporate technology, the internet services revolution cannot be rushed.
That, at least, is the message from Bill Gates. A year ago he and Ray Ozzie, now Microsoft’s chief software architect, laid out a radical new vision for Microsoft, one that was based increasingly on delivering software-enabled services rather than traditional software packages.
Yet for much of the software that companies use – from desktop “productivity” programs such as Office to the back-office applications that underpin their marketing departments, supply chain operations and other parts of their business – this is still a long way off, according to Mr Gates.
Speaking this week to the Financial Times, Mr Gates sketched out a vision for corporate software that looks less radical than that promoted by many others in the software and internet industries.
The danger, if he is wrong, is that Microsoft risks squandering its entrenched position in corporate desktop software, as well as its ambition to turn back-office applications into its next big growth business.
“What Microsoft faces today is what happened to the mainframe,” warns Joe Wilcox, an analyst at Jupiter Research – that it will be replaced by a lower-cost, more efficient model of computing, this time based on the internet.
It is represented by companies such as Salesforce.com, whose back-office applications are delivered online, and by Google, whose suite of productivity and collaboration tools for office workers has been multiplying.
According to Mr Gates, tech companies have made the mistake before of believing in overnight transformations. At the beginning of the decade, for instance, all the talk was of “application service providers”, companies that would deliver services online as if they were water or electricity. “Intel was going to build all these datacentres, there were tons of start-ups,” he says. Most foundered.
When it comes to back-office “enterprise resource planning” applications, he adds: “We’ll have some things on-premise, some things published out on the web. We think few companies will be purely on-premise, or purely on the web.”
Getting the balance right will be key to success for one of Microsoft’s most important new businesses. Its business applications business, started through acquisition five years ago and now generating revenues of about $1bn a year, is “something that will grow faster than the rest of the business for many, many years”, Mr Gates says.
“Like every Microsoft business in the first few years, we’re learning, we’re putting the pieces together.”
So far in this area, Mr Gates is following a classic Microsoft game plan. Part of it involves tying the applications more closely to Microsoft’s main asset – its desktop software. By using the Office suite of desktop tools as a way to access back-office applications, Microsoft hopes to stimulate wider usage, particularly among the smaller businesses that are its main target.
Microsoft is also playing the same “fast-follower” role it has in other markets where other companies have set the early pace.
For instance, when it comes to Office Live – a collection of online services for small businesses – “it looks like they came up with many of the ideas after they looked at the Salesforce.com website”, says Bruce Richardson, an analyst at AMR Research. Yet this me-too approach has worked for Microsoft in other markets before.
The shape of this services-and-software vision for corporate software has yet to come fully into focus, though Microsoft continues to inch forward. Earlier this week, for instance, it announced plans to make its customer relationship management software available as a service in the second half of next year, with other software to follow.
It also laid out more ideas for how small businesses would be able to combine both on-premise software and internet services (supplied by Microsoft) to create new composite applications – or “mash-ups”, in the jargon of the Web 2.0 internet movement.
For instance, a marketing executive, reviewing details of a client relationship on his Microsoft software, might link directly into a hosted “collaboration” service to start a conversation with colleagues, then connect to Microsoft’s online keyword advertising system to launch a campaign.
“There are a lot of pieces in motion that haven’t landed yet,” Mr Wilcox says.
Mr Richardson adds: “Everything is still in a state of flux.”
Microsoft’s growing range of software and services for smaller businesses are “all aimed at the same desktop, and it gets a little confused”. He says, though: “That’s the way Microsoft likes it.”
In other areas, Microsoft has shown a similar desire to attack on all fronts at once. In its assault on the digital living room, for instance, it has spread its bets across the Xbox 360 games console, set-top boxes and special “media centre” PCs.
As the shape of corporate software and technology services evolves, that may prove a smart strategy – though it risks leaving Microsoft at a disadvantage to pure internet-based companies in at least one respect. “The Salesforce.com story is pure and unencumbered,” Mr Richardson says.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
That, at least, is the message from Bill Gates. A year ago he and Ray Ozzie, now Microsoft’s chief software architect, laid out a radical new vision for Microsoft, one that was based increasingly on delivering software-enabled services rather than traditional software packages.
Yet for much of the software that companies use – from desktop “productivity” programs such as Office to the back-office applications that underpin their marketing departments, supply chain operations and other parts of their business – this is still a long way off, according to Mr Gates.
Speaking this week to the Financial Times, Mr Gates sketched out a vision for corporate software that looks less radical than that promoted by many others in the software and internet industries.
The danger, if he is wrong, is that Microsoft risks squandering its entrenched position in corporate desktop software, as well as its ambition to turn back-office applications into its next big growth business.
“What Microsoft faces today is what happened to the mainframe,” warns Joe Wilcox, an analyst at Jupiter Research – that it will be replaced by a lower-cost, more efficient model of computing, this time based on the internet.
It is represented by companies such as Salesforce.com, whose back-office applications are delivered online, and by Google, whose suite of productivity and collaboration tools for office workers has been multiplying.
According to Mr Gates, tech companies have made the mistake before of believing in overnight transformations. At the beginning of the decade, for instance, all the talk was of “application service providers”, companies that would deliver services online as if they were water or electricity. “Intel was going to build all these datacentres, there were tons of start-ups,” he says. Most foundered.
When it comes to back-office “enterprise resource planning” applications, he adds: “We’ll have some things on-premise, some things published out on the web. We think few companies will be purely on-premise, or purely on the web.”
Getting the balance right will be key to success for one of Microsoft’s most important new businesses. Its business applications business, started through acquisition five years ago and now generating revenues of about $1bn a year, is “something that will grow faster than the rest of the business for many, many years”, Mr Gates says.
“Like every Microsoft business in the first few years, we’re learning, we’re putting the pieces together.”
So far in this area, Mr Gates is following a classic Microsoft game plan. Part of it involves tying the applications more closely to Microsoft’s main asset – its desktop software. By using the Office suite of desktop tools as a way to access back-office applications, Microsoft hopes to stimulate wider usage, particularly among the smaller businesses that are its main target.
Microsoft is also playing the same “fast-follower” role it has in other markets where other companies have set the early pace.
For instance, when it comes to Office Live – a collection of online services for small businesses – “it looks like they came up with many of the ideas after they looked at the Salesforce.com website”, says Bruce Richardson, an analyst at AMR Research. Yet this me-too approach has worked for Microsoft in other markets before.
The shape of this services-and-software vision for corporate software has yet to come fully into focus, though Microsoft continues to inch forward. Earlier this week, for instance, it announced plans to make its customer relationship management software available as a service in the second half of next year, with other software to follow.
It also laid out more ideas for how small businesses would be able to combine both on-premise software and internet services (supplied by Microsoft) to create new composite applications – or “mash-ups”, in the jargon of the Web 2.0 internet movement.
For instance, a marketing executive, reviewing details of a client relationship on his Microsoft software, might link directly into a hosted “collaboration” service to start a conversation with colleagues, then connect to Microsoft’s online keyword advertising system to launch a campaign.
“There are a lot of pieces in motion that haven’t landed yet,” Mr Wilcox says.
Mr Richardson adds: “Everything is still in a state of flux.”
Microsoft’s growing range of software and services for smaller businesses are “all aimed at the same desktop, and it gets a little confused”. He says, though: “That’s the way Microsoft likes it.”
In other areas, Microsoft has shown a similar desire to attack on all fronts at once. In its assault on the digital living room, for instance, it has spread its bets across the Xbox 360 games console, set-top boxes and special “media centre” PCs.
As the shape of corporate software and technology services evolves, that may prove a smart strategy – though it risks leaving Microsoft at a disadvantage to pure internet-based companies in at least one respect. “The Salesforce.com story is pure and unencumbered,” Mr Richardson says.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Beauty parade for Web 2.0 start-ups (FT)
Beauty parade for Web 2.0 start-ups
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: November 5 2006 20:27 Last updated: November 5 2006 20:27
A “crowdsourcing” company that lets software developers vote on which product they will create next, a “social sharing” start-up that promises to get to “the very end of the Long Tail”, a maker of online Post-it notes.
These may sound like parodies of new internet companies emerging from Silicon Valley’s latest bout of internet euphoria. In fact, they are all start-ups that will be paraded this week at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, an annual event that has turned into a celebration of the Valley’s recovery from its post-dotcom slump.
While promoters of the new wave of internet start-ups claim this is not turning into another bubble, it is reminiscent of the last boom in at least one respect. “There is a great deal of hype,” says Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad, a Valley venture capital firm.
And where there is hype, opportunism flourishes. Many of the companies emerging from this start-up wave, like the last, look as if they were created with an eye to being sold on quick. But this time the aim is not to “flip” them to Wall Street investors, but to sell them to a Google or Yahoo.
With the mania in full swing, the amount of venture capital money finding its way into US internet companies has jumped to levels not seen since the boom.
Defining exactly what it is that characterises this new wave of internet euphoria, however, is not easy. “Web 2.0 means so many things to so many people,” says Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft. “There’s a technology aspect, a community phenomenon, an advertising business model.”
The new internet companies are built on low-cost technologies such as open source software and cheap commodity hardware. Many – such as photo-sharing site Flickr – employ tools designed to stimulate online community behaviour. Also, thanks to the rise of online advertising networks, the new start-ups often have a way to generate revenue immediately.
Young internet companies once rushed to see how much cash they could raise, much of it to be spent on advertising. But the new entrepreneurs boast instead about how little they need. In spite of that, the sheer number of new arrivals suggests there will be many casualties. “For every YouTube, there have probably been 20 or 30 companies funded that won’t be worth anything,” Mr Kertzman says. “If a company doesn’t take off virally and get ‘hot’ on its own, the only tool you have is consumer marketing, which is very expensive.”
Meanwhile, the cash flooding back into consumer internet start-ups has had an inevitable effect. Geoff Yang, a venture capitalist at Redpoint – which backed MySpace – estimates that valuations of private internet companies have risen 30-40 per cent in the past six months.
However, the public markets have not experienced similar upswings, and the dearth of initial public offerings in the US suggests that few of these new companies will ever make it to Wall Street. Once Google and Yahoo tire of acquisitions, the Web 2.0 hangover could be acute.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: November 5 2006 20:27 Last updated: November 5 2006 20:27
A “crowdsourcing” company that lets software developers vote on which product they will create next, a “social sharing” start-up that promises to get to “the very end of the Long Tail”, a maker of online Post-it notes.
These may sound like parodies of new internet companies emerging from Silicon Valley’s latest bout of internet euphoria. In fact, they are all start-ups that will be paraded this week at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, an annual event that has turned into a celebration of the Valley’s recovery from its post-dotcom slump.
While promoters of the new wave of internet start-ups claim this is not turning into another bubble, it is reminiscent of the last boom in at least one respect. “There is a great deal of hype,” says Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad, a Valley venture capital firm.
And where there is hype, opportunism flourishes. Many of the companies emerging from this start-up wave, like the last, look as if they were created with an eye to being sold on quick. But this time the aim is not to “flip” them to Wall Street investors, but to sell them to a Google or Yahoo.
With the mania in full swing, the amount of venture capital money finding its way into US internet companies has jumped to levels not seen since the boom.
Defining exactly what it is that characterises this new wave of internet euphoria, however, is not easy. “Web 2.0 means so many things to so many people,” says Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft. “There’s a technology aspect, a community phenomenon, an advertising business model.”
The new internet companies are built on low-cost technologies such as open source software and cheap commodity hardware. Many – such as photo-sharing site Flickr – employ tools designed to stimulate online community behaviour. Also, thanks to the rise of online advertising networks, the new start-ups often have a way to generate revenue immediately.
Young internet companies once rushed to see how much cash they could raise, much of it to be spent on advertising. But the new entrepreneurs boast instead about how little they need. In spite of that, the sheer number of new arrivals suggests there will be many casualties. “For every YouTube, there have probably been 20 or 30 companies funded that won’t be worth anything,” Mr Kertzman says. “If a company doesn’t take off virally and get ‘hot’ on its own, the only tool you have is consumer marketing, which is very expensive.”
Meanwhile, the cash flooding back into consumer internet start-ups has had an inevitable effect. Geoff Yang, a venture capitalist at Redpoint – which backed MySpace – estimates that valuations of private internet companies have risen 30-40 per cent in the past six months.
However, the public markets have not experienced similar upswings, and the dearth of initial public offerings in the US suggests that few of these new companies will ever make it to Wall Street. Once Google and Yahoo tire of acquisitions, the Web 2.0 hangover could be acute.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Thursday, November 02, 2006
My Own Private Google (Line56)
Google offers ways to personalize the search experience; part of a recent pattern of experimenting with search
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Google Boosts Stake in Web Collaboration With JotSpot Wiki Buy (Gartner)
JotSpot's technology and organization fit well with Google by providing a key collaboration piece for Google's Web 2.0 workplace strategy. But JotSpot users should prepare for some disruption during the next 12 months.
Google Acquires JotSpot (Line56)
Google acquires wiki application company; product fits into collaboration portfolio, but model isn't necessarily proven
Google has acquired JotSpot, the wiki software company, for an undisclosed sum.
While Google's recent blockbuster acquisition of YouTube focused attention on video search and sharing, the JotSpot acquisition puts the focus on another part of Google's strategy: collaboration or, as Google calls the larger category, "communicate, show, and share." This category already includes tools for blogs, calendaring, document processing (including spreadsheets), G-mail, photo sharing, and more.
Google has acquired JotSpot, the wiki software company, for an undisclosed sum.
While Google's recent blockbuster acquisition of YouTube focused attention on video search and sharing, the JotSpot acquisition puts the focus on another part of Google's strategy: collaboration or, as Google calls the larger category, "communicate, show, and share." This category already includes tools for blogs, calendaring, document processing (including spreadsheets), G-mail, photo sharing, and more.
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