FT.com / Technology - What’s on CIO wishlists?
What’s on CIO wishlists?
By Alan Cane
Published: December 5 2007 04:40 | Last updated: December 5 2007 04:40
Aligning technology with the business, while dealing with the pressure on space and power in the data centre and addressing green issues are the priorities for many chief information officers next year.
Security is now so critical that it automatically figures near the top of every agenda. Steven Bandrowczak, CIO for Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications manufacturer, points out that a security contingency plan is there to prevent a breach of security that can badly damage a brand.
A thoroughly unscientific straw poll of CIOs, principally from the US and UK, revealed, nevertheless, that a few other themes come to the fore. Steve Bozzo, CIO of New York based online florist 1-800-Flowers.com, places business alignment at the top of his list.
“For 2008, as always,” he says, “companies will be most successful if IT is strongly aligned with the businesses it supports” going on to point out that companies must migrate to an “agile” architecture if they are to bring products to market that will have a meaningful impact on earnings and revenue: “Migrating to a Services Oriented Architecture will be the only way to accomplish this.”
This is in line with preliminary findings on 2008 priorities by research firm Gartner, which shows CIOs seeking to focus on aligning IT with growth and innovation. “Looking at costs is straightforward but prioritising growth and innovation is much more challenging,” says Dave Aron, a Gartner analyst looking at CIO issues.
Guy Lidbetter, chief technology officer for the big European computing services group Atos Origin, agrees, noting that the CIO agenda is being driven by a need for managed innovation.
He emphasises the importance of demonstrating to managers the value that IT investments bring to the business and ensuring IT is agile enough to support changing business needs. “In the context of infrastructure, standardisation, virtualisation and automation will deliver. In applications, enterprise architecture, service-oriented architecture and – potentially – Web 2.0 and collaboration will deliver.”
Note how quickly methodologies such as “agility” – developing software in a quicker, less formal way – and “service-oriented architecture” – ways of persuading legacy systems to work with the smart, new stuff – have moved from “might have” to “must have”.
Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer of Savvis, a US-managed service group, says, however, that to make the most of virtualisation, businesses need to invest in a secure and robust IT infrastructure. He says: “Both vendors and organisations are embracing new, virtualised technologies to yield more flexible and cost effective solutions. As it continues to mature, I predict it will become less of a differentiator for businesses and more of a commodity.”
Rorie Devine, chief technology officer for the online gambling organisation Betfair, concurs: “Virtualisation is definitely part of the mainstream now.”
Mr Devine’s chief priority next year will be to execute the business plan while helping to shape the business strategy. The processing load will be substantial: “The number of transactions we process will again be more than all the other years of our existence added together.”
Web 2.0 and social networking may be becoming candidates for the mainstream, although some CIOs have their reservations. Bob Worrall, for example, CIO of Sun Microsystems, reckons to have talked to well over 100 of his contemporaries over the past year and believes that social networking represents a new threat. “There is a lot of information out there on blogs and wiki, but there is no easy way to harvest that information and make it available to the organisation” he says.
Sun, however, has created a virtual Californian building in cyberspace and is experimenting with its use as a meeting place for remote staff.
Mr Worrall says that every CIO is struggling with the problem of power and space in the data centre. Sun itself is downsizing from seven corporate data centres to three, aided by a combination of new, more powerful servers based on novel chip technology and virtualisation – running several operating systems and/or applications on the same server.
Brian Jones, a former CIO for both the spirits group Allied Domecq and Scottish Power, says that IT in large companies often grows in an uncontrolled fashion. “There is often a need to remove the complexity that has grown up over time and set a simplification agenda directly linked to the objectives of the business overall,” he says, arguing that this latter aim can often be lost if the transformation is poorly focused.
He expects pressure on IT costs will not ease and that CIOs will be forced to balance the need for innovation against tightening budgets. “One trick that CIOs are going to have to learn, if they have not already, is how to take advantage of the latent value in their suppliers.” Suppliers have often spent millions on research and development which could benefit a company. While at Allied Domecq, for example, he formed a partnership with the telecommunications group that transformed Allied’s messy, “basket case” of a communications network, while reducing costs by £3m a year.
Mr Bandrowczak of Nortel, is using virtualisation and centralisation to get more efficiencies out of the IT assets the company already has and the investments it has already made. “That’s my first big trend. Second is how to integrate all these disparate and separate technologies. One trend I am driving at Nortel is unified messaging, handling voice, text and fax in one mailbox, so it can be retrieved by any device. Moving between applications causes inefficiencies – I call it business latency.”
His ambition is to combine a single log-on with authentication, so that if an individual was on the road and logged on, and another individual in the company wanted to share information with them, the system would indicate he or she was travelling and therefore available only by SMS but that they had the time to discuss that particular issue. “But we’re not there yet,” Mr Bandrowczak says.
RM, the supplier of IT to UK schools, places collaboration and mobility at the top of its list. Chris Clements, the CIO comments: “Our vision for collaboration goes beyond our employees and includes our customers. We have a large candidate list of opportunities to add value to our core systems by providing tools that will enable customers directly to influence product development and enable them to do business at any time of the school day that is convenient to them. One of the biggest challenges is to evaluate Web 2.0 opportunities and select those which will add real value to the business.”
And the green agenda? A study by Symantec (see “Vendors’ View”, Page 4) suggests organisations are not yet successfully rolling out green centres.
But the bandwagon is on the move. The consultancy Quocirca thinks companies will finally make better use of advanced communications capabilities such as web 2.0 and videoconferencing to reduce travel. But it concludes a little wearily that style will defeat substance in some cases. “There will still be those who want to be seen to be green but who do not really take the issue on board and resort to half measures such as carbon off-setting.”
One thing all those questioned agreed on, however, was that it is going to be an interesting year.
CIO priorities, based on Alan Cane’s informal straw poll:
1 Business alignment and strategy
2 Hiring and retaining the best staff
3 IT innovation/new methodologies
4 Security
5 Collaboration technologies
6 Controlling costs
7 Compliance and regulation
8 Virtualisation
9 Customer service
10 Mobility (Green issues came 11th)
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Friday, December 07, 2007
Die neuen Idiotae Web 0.0 - Computer - sueddeutsche.de
Die neuen Idiotae Web 0.0 - Computer - sueddeutsche.de
Das Internet verkommt zu einem Debattierklub von Anonymen, Ahnungslosen und Denunzianten. Ein Plädoyer für eine Wissensgesellschaft mit Verantwortung.
Von Bernd Graff
Seit fast einem halben Jahrzehnt gibt es das "partizipative Web". Das klingt nach Leistungskurs, meint aber neue Formen der Beteiligung und der Berichterstattung im Internet. Diese Formen werden von engagierten Zeitgenossen genutzt, weil sie - sei es aus Idealismus, sei es, weil sie sonst keine Beschäftigung haben - eine Rolle in der allgemeinen Informationsbildung übernehmen wollen. Man spricht auch schon von "Bürger-Reportern" und "Graswurzeljournalisten".
Eine Art: Vierte Digitalgewalt? Schlaue Menschen werden darauf hinweisen, dass das Internet immer schon ein Beteiligungsnetz war, und dass die Ansätze zu dieser Berichterstattung wesentlich älter sind als fünf Jahre. Leider nun sind jene Schlauen, die wir aus unserem gut gewärmten Mainstreammedia-Bett heraus und hinein in ihr debattenknisterndes Web grüßen: das Problem.
Das Internet verkommt zu einem Debattierklub von Anonymen, Ahnungslosen und Denunzianten. Ein Plädoyer für eine Wissensgesellschaft mit Verantwortung.
Von Bernd Graff
Seit fast einem halben Jahrzehnt gibt es das "partizipative Web". Das klingt nach Leistungskurs, meint aber neue Formen der Beteiligung und der Berichterstattung im Internet. Diese Formen werden von engagierten Zeitgenossen genutzt, weil sie - sei es aus Idealismus, sei es, weil sie sonst keine Beschäftigung haben - eine Rolle in der allgemeinen Informationsbildung übernehmen wollen. Man spricht auch schon von "Bürger-Reportern" und "Graswurzeljournalisten".
Eine Art: Vierte Digitalgewalt? Schlaue Menschen werden darauf hinweisen, dass das Internet immer schon ein Beteiligungsnetz war, und dass die Ansätze zu dieser Berichterstattung wesentlich älter sind als fünf Jahre. Leider nun sind jene Schlauen, die wir aus unserem gut gewärmten Mainstreammedia-Bett heraus und hinein in ihr debattenknisterndes Web grüßen: das Problem.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Alfresco setzt Maßstäbe für Open Source Social Computing
Alfresco setzt Maßstäbe für Open Source Social Computing
Alfresco präsentiert erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen
Alfresco Software, Anbieter von Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Lösungen, präsentiert die erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen. Die neue Lösung integriert die beliebte ECM-Software von Alfresco mit führenden Web 2.0-Tools und Services wie Facebook, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki, TypePad und WordPress.
Alfresco präsentiert erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen
Alfresco Software, Anbieter von Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Lösungen, präsentiert die erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen. Die neue Lösung integriert die beliebte ECM-Software von Alfresco mit führenden Web 2.0-Tools und Services wie Facebook, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki, TypePad und WordPress.
Alfresco setzt Maßstäbe für Open Source Social Computing
Alfresco setzt Maßstäbe für Open Source Social Computing
Alfresco präsentiert erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen
Alfresco Software, Anbieter von Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Lösungen, präsentiert die erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen. Die neue Lösung integriert die beliebte ECM-Software von Alfresco mit führenden Web 2.0-Tools und Services wie Facebook, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki, TypePad und WordPress.
Diese erweiterte Version der Alfresco ECM-Plattform stellt benutzerfreundliche Tools für die Entwicklung der nächsten Generation von Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), für Mash-Up und Präsentation von internem und externem Content und für die Integration von Social Networking in die Arbeitsumgebung zur Verfügung. Dabei kann sich der Anwender einer Reihe erstklassiger Open Source-Tools bedienen und damit die Sicherheit und Kontrolle auf Enterprise-Ebene sicherstellen.
Alfresco präsentiert erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen
Alfresco Software, Anbieter von Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Lösungen, präsentiert die erste Open Source Social Computing-Plattform für Enterprise-Anwendungen. Die neue Lösung integriert die beliebte ECM-Software von Alfresco mit führenden Web 2.0-Tools und Services wie Facebook, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki, TypePad und WordPress.
Diese erweiterte Version der Alfresco ECM-Plattform stellt benutzerfreundliche Tools für die Entwicklung der nächsten Generation von Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), für Mash-Up und Präsentation von internem und externem Content und für die Integration von Social Networking in die Arbeitsumgebung zur Verfügung. Dabei kann sich der Anwender einer Reihe erstklassiger Open Source-Tools bedienen und damit die Sicherheit und Kontrolle auf Enterprise-Ebene sicherstellen.
FT.com / Technology - Security Matters: Identity theft is all too easy
FT.com / Technology - Security Matters: Identity theft is all too easy
Security Matters: Identity theft is all too easy
By Ken Munro
Published: December 5 2007 04:40 | Last updated: December 5 2007 04:40
Talking to Peter Whitehead, the Digital Business editor recently, I started ranting about social networking as a means of identity theft. He challenged me to prove my point, confident that his real identity would prove hard to crack.
For the purposes of the challenge, I was armed only with his name and occupation, a laptop and a broadband internet connection. Within three hours I had discovered his full name, date of birth, address, home telephone number, route taken to work, the schools and universities he attended, his career history and his long-harboured passion for rock music, golf and tennis.
Perhaps more worryingly I was also able to find out his daughters’ names, ages, dates of birth, the schools they attend, names and pictures of their friends, along with personal information on his wife and other family members.
I began by searching Peter’s own articles. A quick search of FT.com identified an extensive list, including some he had authored in a travel writing capacity. Reading these quickly established he has two daughters, their names, ages and a family interest in winter sports.
He also helpfully described his route into work – from the fact that he commutes into London via train to the same station every day right down to some of the buildings he passes on the way into the office.
It is, of course, true that only a small number of people are likely to have such information published in the media. But millions do so through social networking sites and blogs. Hence my next stop – Facebook, MySpace, etc.
To my disappointment, the target was not accessible on any of the currently popular social networking sites. But a search of Friends Reunited was more successful. There I learned he is married, the town and county where he lives, the schools and university he attended, along with dates he attended them (and therefore his likely year of birth) and publications he worked on prior to joining the FT.
Armed with this information, a few searches on 192.com yielded his full address, home telephone number and the full data from his daughters’ birth certificates including their dates and places of birth.
But it was only the results of a five-mile charity run that allowed me to make the link between Peter and his wife. Also a journalist, she writes under her maiden name but gives away no personal details in her writing.
A travel article on skiing by Peter yielded the fact that one of his daughters uses a shortened version of her full name. I was then able to go back to the social networking sites. A well-populated profile existed on one site which provided the school she attends, her friends’ names and photos and identified a couple of likely cousins.
Her mother and sister, however, proved much more elusive, neither apparently having succumbed to the lure of virtual socialising.
It is scary stuff for three hours’ surfing but what could you do with this information? I used only the tools any other person with a passing interest in genealogy or a curious streak would be aware of and would have access to and spent only the time I could assign in between running a business.
An attacker with malicious intent towards our target would have both time and a wide range of internet sites on the fringes of legality at their disposal which would, for example, very quickly and easily yield a date of birth and banking history. Or they could simply have hung around his house and raided his bins for non-shredded correspondence (even the day his bins are emptied is available on his local council’s website).
I did not find out bank account details, but I could have paid for and downloaded Peter’s credit report from a credit reference agency (this is unlawful, so I did not pursue this avenue, but a fraudster would have no such qualms). I could then open a bank account, take out a loan or mortgage using a correspondence address to cover my tracks and keep extending the credit for years. Or this information could be used to set up bogus social networking sites to incite others to disclose information.
These same methods can also be used to target businesses. By researching a senior executive using the techniques outlined above, an attack could crack system passwords more easily, gaining access to invaluable corporate data.
Passwords continue to be typically comprised of hobbies, loved ones’ names and dates of birth. Targeting a person in a specific role with a specific level of seniority is a fantastically efficient way of ensuring a good return on investment for an attacker.
It is not just individuals who are at risk. Organisations face industrial espionage or confidential information leaks and those responsible – from employees to suppliers to customers – may not even realise they are doing it. Management is often unaware of the risk. The main concern is over-use of the internet and the impact of social networking on productivity, rather than the security risk it poses.
Sensitive corporate information concerning security arrangements or impending merger or acquisition activity is frequently disclosed on blogs or social networking sites. If someone is targeting a specific organisation – for example for potential information to guide stock market decisions – they can decode references to long hours, management changes, upcoming restructures.
Similarly, any organisation involved in industrial action or complex employee or commercial litigation cases is at risk. Indeed, we consider this such a threat that we advise businesses on how to carry out a social networking audit in order to determine just how much information has already leaked.
Just as there are multiple motives for wanting to access information, there are infinite ways of extracting it if someone wants it badly enough. Much of what’s valuable is out there already, free.
Ken Munro is chief executive of SecureTest
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Security Matters: Identity theft is all too easy
By Ken Munro
Published: December 5 2007 04:40 | Last updated: December 5 2007 04:40
Talking to Peter Whitehead, the Digital Business editor recently, I started ranting about social networking as a means of identity theft. He challenged me to prove my point, confident that his real identity would prove hard to crack.
For the purposes of the challenge, I was armed only with his name and occupation, a laptop and a broadband internet connection. Within three hours I had discovered his full name, date of birth, address, home telephone number, route taken to work, the schools and universities he attended, his career history and his long-harboured passion for rock music, golf and tennis.
Perhaps more worryingly I was also able to find out his daughters’ names, ages, dates of birth, the schools they attend, names and pictures of their friends, along with personal information on his wife and other family members.
I began by searching Peter’s own articles. A quick search of FT.com identified an extensive list, including some he had authored in a travel writing capacity. Reading these quickly established he has two daughters, their names, ages and a family interest in winter sports.
He also helpfully described his route into work – from the fact that he commutes into London via train to the same station every day right down to some of the buildings he passes on the way into the office.
It is, of course, true that only a small number of people are likely to have such information published in the media. But millions do so through social networking sites and blogs. Hence my next stop – Facebook, MySpace, etc.
To my disappointment, the target was not accessible on any of the currently popular social networking sites. But a search of Friends Reunited was more successful. There I learned he is married, the town and county where he lives, the schools and university he attended, along with dates he attended them (and therefore his likely year of birth) and publications he worked on prior to joining the FT.
Armed with this information, a few searches on 192.com yielded his full address, home telephone number and the full data from his daughters’ birth certificates including their dates and places of birth.
But it was only the results of a five-mile charity run that allowed me to make the link between Peter and his wife. Also a journalist, she writes under her maiden name but gives away no personal details in her writing.
A travel article on skiing by Peter yielded the fact that one of his daughters uses a shortened version of her full name. I was then able to go back to the social networking sites. A well-populated profile existed on one site which provided the school she attends, her friends’ names and photos and identified a couple of likely cousins.
Her mother and sister, however, proved much more elusive, neither apparently having succumbed to the lure of virtual socialising.
It is scary stuff for three hours’ surfing but what could you do with this information? I used only the tools any other person with a passing interest in genealogy or a curious streak would be aware of and would have access to and spent only the time I could assign in between running a business.
An attacker with malicious intent towards our target would have both time and a wide range of internet sites on the fringes of legality at their disposal which would, for example, very quickly and easily yield a date of birth and banking history. Or they could simply have hung around his house and raided his bins for non-shredded correspondence (even the day his bins are emptied is available on his local council’s website).
I did not find out bank account details, but I could have paid for and downloaded Peter’s credit report from a credit reference agency (this is unlawful, so I did not pursue this avenue, but a fraudster would have no such qualms). I could then open a bank account, take out a loan or mortgage using a correspondence address to cover my tracks and keep extending the credit for years. Or this information could be used to set up bogus social networking sites to incite others to disclose information.
These same methods can also be used to target businesses. By researching a senior executive using the techniques outlined above, an attack could crack system passwords more easily, gaining access to invaluable corporate data.
Passwords continue to be typically comprised of hobbies, loved ones’ names and dates of birth. Targeting a person in a specific role with a specific level of seniority is a fantastically efficient way of ensuring a good return on investment for an attacker.
It is not just individuals who are at risk. Organisations face industrial espionage or confidential information leaks and those responsible – from employees to suppliers to customers – may not even realise they are doing it. Management is often unaware of the risk. The main concern is over-use of the internet and the impact of social networking on productivity, rather than the security risk it poses.
Sensitive corporate information concerning security arrangements or impending merger or acquisition activity is frequently disclosed on blogs or social networking sites. If someone is targeting a specific organisation – for example for potential information to guide stock market decisions – they can decode references to long hours, management changes, upcoming restructures.
Similarly, any organisation involved in industrial action or complex employee or commercial litigation cases is at risk. Indeed, we consider this such a threat that we advise businesses on how to carry out a social networking audit in order to determine just how much information has already leaked.
Just as there are multiple motives for wanting to access information, there are infinite ways of extracting it if someone wants it badly enough. Much of what’s valuable is out there already, free.
Ken Munro is chief executive of SecureTest
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
FT.com / Technology - Doing what comes naturally
FT.com / Technology - Doing what comes naturally
Doing what comes naturally
By Alan Cane
Published: November 20 2007 14:44 | Last updated: November 20 2007 14:44
People collaborate naturally; the internet has simply added a new dimension to this most human of characteristics.
“If collaboration hasn’t happened in the past, it’s mostly because barriers got in the way – geography, time zone, position in the corporate hierarchy, language and so on,” says Graham Oakes, founder and head of the IT consultancy Graham Oakes Ltd. “Most technology does not really help collaboration so much as reduce the effect of barriers.”
These technologies enable individuals and groups to communicate easily across time and space, sharing data and the “same version of the truth”.
Jen Wachtel, senior product marketing manager for Vignette, a collaboration tools developer based in Austin, Texas, says that, to her, collaboration means “allowing people to connect across their organisations where before they were siloed by geography, department or status.
“It enables omnidirectional communication. Products get to market faster because the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ enables you to make quicker and smarter decisions.”
Not everybody agrees, as will become evident later in this article, but there is, nevertheless, a cornucopia of collaboration software tools on offer, ranging from the large and complex to the small and simple, from the heavily professional to the consumer-oriented.
Dassault Systèmes’ Enovia product set represents the top end of the market. It is used by Boeing to co-ordinate the design and production of airliners, most recently, the US aerospace group’s giant 787 Dreamliner.
John Squire, vice-president of Enovia marketing for the French software group, says supporting the development of the 787 is the most complicated commission Dassault has undertaken and “uses everything we have”.
Boeing describes it as a “global collaborative environment”. Mr Squire says it is a way to bring together the 40 partners sharing the risk of creating the 787.
“It’s the people who build the engines, the fuselage components, the avionics and so forth,” he explains. “Three years ago, before the airplane ever existed, Boeing could bring all the parts together in a three-dimensional digital model and ensure they fitted together before they had to worry about manufacturing those parts. They could check for tolerances and conflicts between parts early in the development phase when the cost is much lower.”
Mr Squire says the trick in collaboration is to allow engineers to have access to the parts they are responsible for, allow them to see the parts around it, but deny them access to parts for which they do not have clearance.
“We use 3D as the universal language. Even if you don’t speak the same language as a Japanese engineer, you can share the screen with the guy and point to a problem area. Using a few words of broken English over instant messaging you can communicate what needs to happen.”
Dassault 3D software is used to collaborate in the design of everything from airliners and rocket engines to yoghurt cartons and mobile phones. At the other end of the scale, there is a growing market for simple collaboration tools using nothing more complex than the telephone and a web browser.
MeetingZone, for example, a fast-growing UK-based company, has introduced a high level of automation, and therefore economies of scale, to the simple concept of conferencing by telephone coupled with screen-sharing over the internet.
Tim Duffy, co-founder and chief executive, points to the disadvantages of conventional business meetings: “No one has the time, no one wants to put up with the expense and inconvenience of travel and everybody is looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
“We think good collaboration tools that enable people to do business without travelling are vital requirements for most businesses these days.”
While still small, MeetingZone, Mr Duffy says, has achieved 67 per cent average annual growth for the past three years, suggesting his analysis is accurate.
Sun Microsystems, the US group whose server technology underpins much of the internet, prescribes collaboration and takes its own medicine with a full set of collaboration tools.
According to Heather Garrett, head of human resources for Sun in the UK, the intention was to enable staff to work any time and anywhere. She says the result has been a 30 per cent improvement in productivity with impressive savings on travel, real estate and a lower carbon footprint. Sun staff are in favour of electronic collaboration, she says.
Ten years ago, the company started with a collaboration site, a shared work and information space, and added a collaboration dashboard, a way of tracking progress in projects, so individuals can see what has been achieved and what has yet to be delivered.
Jay Huff, head of Sun’s UK marketing department, says the company has taken to wikis in a big way. A wiki involves software that allows users easily to create, edit and link web pages. According to Wikipedia, the Delphic oracle on all things wiki, they are: “often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets”.
This is their function at Sun, where Mr Huff says all the company’s engineers and systems architects work in a wiki environment. Wikis are also popular with the marketing people: “Wikis are where we talk about work in progress so we can get feedback quickly,” Mr Huff says.
“The aim is to stop the tremendous amount of e-mails you would normally have associated with one of these projects where everybody responds to everybody else with 20 to 30 e-mails on the same subject.”
E-mail jail is an example of the kind of dangers that lurk in the over-enthusiastic use of technology to promote collaboration. Dr Oakes, the IT consultant, warns that many people are driven to respond to e-mails and instant messages 24 hours a day. “Eventually they will burn out and be lost to collaboration altogether,” he comments.
“This happens because they have not developed ways to control the technology – it is controlling them. Helping people take back this control, perhaps by developing appropriate etiquette within their networks, is probably necessary for most companies to push collaboration to the next level.”
Sun Microsystems is unusual in that its management encourages – but does not mandate – staff to make use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Ning and Twitter where it makes sense to do so – to distribute information before a conference, perhaps, or photographs of attendees.
There are dangers, of course. Global Secure Systems, an IT security consultancy, faced spending several thousands of pounds upgrading its internet access provision until it discovered that about a quarter of its bandwidth was being swallowed up in social networking: “After locking down this traffic, we found we didn’t actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all,” says David Hobson, GSS managing director.
He now advises his clients to block access to social networking sites. “They are just trouble all round and have no place in the modern business environment, even during legitimate staff breaks,” he said.
However, Scott Petty of Dimension Data, an IT services group based in South Africa, argues that social networking sites, used carefully, are both valid and necessary business tools.
He says: “Our younger engineers straight out of college are much more comfortable with tools such as Second Life and Facebook than senior managers. They would think we were quite a strange company if we didn’t allow
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Doing what comes naturally
By Alan Cane
Published: November 20 2007 14:44 | Last updated: November 20 2007 14:44
People collaborate naturally; the internet has simply added a new dimension to this most human of characteristics.
“If collaboration hasn’t happened in the past, it’s mostly because barriers got in the way – geography, time zone, position in the corporate hierarchy, language and so on,” says Graham Oakes, founder and head of the IT consultancy Graham Oakes Ltd. “Most technology does not really help collaboration so much as reduce the effect of barriers.”
These technologies enable individuals and groups to communicate easily across time and space, sharing data and the “same version of the truth”.
Jen Wachtel, senior product marketing manager for Vignette, a collaboration tools developer based in Austin, Texas, says that, to her, collaboration means “allowing people to connect across their organisations where before they were siloed by geography, department or status.
“It enables omnidirectional communication. Products get to market faster because the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ enables you to make quicker and smarter decisions.”
Not everybody agrees, as will become evident later in this article, but there is, nevertheless, a cornucopia of collaboration software tools on offer, ranging from the large and complex to the small and simple, from the heavily professional to the consumer-oriented.
Dassault Systèmes’ Enovia product set represents the top end of the market. It is used by Boeing to co-ordinate the design and production of airliners, most recently, the US aerospace group’s giant 787 Dreamliner.
John Squire, vice-president of Enovia marketing for the French software group, says supporting the development of the 787 is the most complicated commission Dassault has undertaken and “uses everything we have”.
Boeing describes it as a “global collaborative environment”. Mr Squire says it is a way to bring together the 40 partners sharing the risk of creating the 787.
“It’s the people who build the engines, the fuselage components, the avionics and so forth,” he explains. “Three years ago, before the airplane ever existed, Boeing could bring all the parts together in a three-dimensional digital model and ensure they fitted together before they had to worry about manufacturing those parts. They could check for tolerances and conflicts between parts early in the development phase when the cost is much lower.”
Mr Squire says the trick in collaboration is to allow engineers to have access to the parts they are responsible for, allow them to see the parts around it, but deny them access to parts for which they do not have clearance.
“We use 3D as the universal language. Even if you don’t speak the same language as a Japanese engineer, you can share the screen with the guy and point to a problem area. Using a few words of broken English over instant messaging you can communicate what needs to happen.”
Dassault 3D software is used to collaborate in the design of everything from airliners and rocket engines to yoghurt cartons and mobile phones. At the other end of the scale, there is a growing market for simple collaboration tools using nothing more complex than the telephone and a web browser.
MeetingZone, for example, a fast-growing UK-based company, has introduced a high level of automation, and therefore economies of scale, to the simple concept of conferencing by telephone coupled with screen-sharing over the internet.
Tim Duffy, co-founder and chief executive, points to the disadvantages of conventional business meetings: “No one has the time, no one wants to put up with the expense and inconvenience of travel and everybody is looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
“We think good collaboration tools that enable people to do business without travelling are vital requirements for most businesses these days.”
While still small, MeetingZone, Mr Duffy says, has achieved 67 per cent average annual growth for the past three years, suggesting his analysis is accurate.
Sun Microsystems, the US group whose server technology underpins much of the internet, prescribes collaboration and takes its own medicine with a full set of collaboration tools.
According to Heather Garrett, head of human resources for Sun in the UK, the intention was to enable staff to work any time and anywhere. She says the result has been a 30 per cent improvement in productivity with impressive savings on travel, real estate and a lower carbon footprint. Sun staff are in favour of electronic collaboration, she says.
Ten years ago, the company started with a collaboration site, a shared work and information space, and added a collaboration dashboard, a way of tracking progress in projects, so individuals can see what has been achieved and what has yet to be delivered.
Jay Huff, head of Sun’s UK marketing department, says the company has taken to wikis in a big way. A wiki involves software that allows users easily to create, edit and link web pages. According to Wikipedia, the Delphic oracle on all things wiki, they are: “often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets”.
This is their function at Sun, where Mr Huff says all the company’s engineers and systems architects work in a wiki environment. Wikis are also popular with the marketing people: “Wikis are where we talk about work in progress so we can get feedback quickly,” Mr Huff says.
“The aim is to stop the tremendous amount of e-mails you would normally have associated with one of these projects where everybody responds to everybody else with 20 to 30 e-mails on the same subject.”
E-mail jail is an example of the kind of dangers that lurk in the over-enthusiastic use of technology to promote collaboration. Dr Oakes, the IT consultant, warns that many people are driven to respond to e-mails and instant messages 24 hours a day. “Eventually they will burn out and be lost to collaboration altogether,” he comments.
“This happens because they have not developed ways to control the technology – it is controlling them. Helping people take back this control, perhaps by developing appropriate etiquette within their networks, is probably necessary for most companies to push collaboration to the next level.”
Sun Microsystems is unusual in that its management encourages – but does not mandate – staff to make use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Ning and Twitter where it makes sense to do so – to distribute information before a conference, perhaps, or photographs of attendees.
There are dangers, of course. Global Secure Systems, an IT security consultancy, faced spending several thousands of pounds upgrading its internet access provision until it discovered that about a quarter of its bandwidth was being swallowed up in social networking: “After locking down this traffic, we found we didn’t actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all,” says David Hobson, GSS managing director.
He now advises his clients to block access to social networking sites. “They are just trouble all round and have no place in the modern business environment, even during legitimate staff breaks,” he said.
However, Scott Petty of Dimension Data, an IT services group based in South Africa, argues that social networking sites, used carefully, are both valid and necessary business tools.
He says: “Our younger engineers straight out of college are much more comfortable with tools such as Second Life and Facebook than senior managers. They would think we were quite a strange company if we didn’t allow
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2007
Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2007
The portal product market continues to mature, with most enterprises evaluating the products provided by a core group of commercial enterprise software vendors. Several horizontal portal vendors are leveraging Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to further differentiate their products.
The portal product market continues to mature, with most enterprises evaluating the products provided by a core group of commercial enterprise software vendors. Several horizontal portal vendors are leveraging Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to further differentiate their products.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Knowledge-Management im Zeitalter von Web 2.0 und Open Source
Knowledge-Management im Zeitalter von Web 2.0 und Open Source
Neue und innovative Technologien und Ansätze im Umgang mit unstrukturierten DatenKnowledge-Management muss aufgrund seiner interdisziplinären Natur mit einer Vielzahl von Applikationen im Unternehmen integrieren und koexistieren, sich schnell an neue Bedürfnisse anpassen lassen und gleichzeitig maximalen Nutzen bei minimalem Aufwand für die Benutzer erzeugen. Eine Reihe von neuen Standards, Technologien und Lösungsansätzen helfen beim Bau und Betrieb derartiger Lösungen.
Neue und innovative Technologien und Ansätze im Umgang mit unstrukturierten DatenKnowledge-Management muss aufgrund seiner interdisziplinären Natur mit einer Vielzahl von Applikationen im Unternehmen integrieren und koexistieren, sich schnell an neue Bedürfnisse anpassen lassen und gleichzeitig maximalen Nutzen bei minimalem Aufwand für die Benutzer erzeugen. Eine Reihe von neuen Standards, Technologien und Lösungsansätzen helfen beim Bau und Betrieb derartiger Lösungen.
Knowledge-Management im Zeitalter von Web 2.0 und Open Source
Knowledge-Management im Zeitalter von Web 2.0 und Open Source
Knowledge- und Information-Management ist eine Disziplin, die Informatik-Spezialisten und -Benutzer schon lange beschäftigt, doch erst mit neuen Technologien aus dem Open- Source- und Web-2.0-Umfeld scheinen die schon früh geweckten Hoffnungen erfüllt werden zu können.
Knowledge- und Information-Management ist eine Disziplin, die Informatik-Spezialisten und -Benutzer schon lange beschäftigt, doch erst mit neuen Technologien aus dem Open- Source- und Web-2.0-Umfeld scheinen die schon früh geweckten Hoffnungen erfüllt werden zu können.
Goethe-Institut wählt zur Erstellung von Sprachinhalten für E-Learning das Learning CMS von Eedo
Goethe-Institut wählt zur Erstellung von Sprachinhalten für E-Learning das Learning CMS von Eedo
ForceTen ermöglicht dem Goethe-Institut, über eine komplexe und globale Organisation hinweg, das Verfassen von Inhalten zu dezentralisieren und dabei die Kontrolle über Qualitätsstandards und Best Practices zu bewahren
Eedo Knowledgeware meldete, dass das deutsche Goethe-Institut Eedo ForceTen(TM) als seine Hauptplattform zur Herstellung von auf E-Learning basierender Sprachausbildung gewählt hat. Das Goethe-Institut wählte ForceTen, weil es eine komplexe Reihe von Anforderungen zur Erstellung und Verwaltung von Inhalten unterstützen und auch integriertes Lernen fördern kann.
Das Goethe-Institut ist eine gemeinnützige, deutsche staatliche Organisation, deren Mission die weltweite Förderung der deutschen Sprache und Kultur ist. E-Learning nimmt bei der Initiative, das Angebot an hochwertigen Sprachkursen zu erhalten und auszuweiten, eine zentrale Rolle ein.
"Wir benötigten ein System, dass das Verfassen von Inhalten für E-Learning über eine komplexe und globale Organisation hinweg dezentralisiert und trotzdem die Kontrolle von Qualitätsstandards erlaubt", erklärte Marcus Biechele, Leiter des Multimedia -Entwicklungsteams.
"ForceTen mit seinem Datenbank-basierten, objektorientierten Inhaltsmodell und seiner reichhaltigen Menge an Verwaltungsfunktionen erlaubt uns den Zugriff und die Wiederverwendung von Media Assets, Fragen oder ganzen Modulen, egal wo sie erstellt worden sind. Damit wird es uns ermöglicht, Inhalte schneller und kostengünstiger zu produzieren", fuhr Biechele fort.
Das Goethe-Institut bietet Module für E-Learning als Teil eines integrierten Lernkonzepts an, das zur Erweiterung seines Angebots an Sprachkursen entwickelt wurde. Die Module werden auch zur Förderung langfristiger Kundenbeziehungen über das typische Kursmodell hinaus verwendet werden.
"Das Goethe-Institut hat die anspruchsvolle Aufgabe, die internationale kulturelle Zusammenarbeit zu fördern und benötigt dementsprechend eine verständliche und skalierbare Lösung für das Lehrgebiet Deutsch als Fremdsprache, um seine Ziele zu erreichen", erklärte John Hudson, Präsident und CEO von Eedo Knowledgeware. "Unsere beeindruckende Erfolgsgeschichte in staatlichen und internationalen Organisationen sowie auch unsere Präsenz in Deutschland beweisen, dass wir ein starker und zuverlässiger Partner für solch ein schwieriges Projekt sind."
Im September gab Eedo bekannt, dass das Unternehmen seine deutsche Präsenz ausgebaut und seinen deutschen Hauptsitz nach Berlin verlegt hat. Von Elearnity, Europas führendem unabhängigen Unternehmen für Lernanalyse, wurde Eedo, in einer diesjährigen Studie, als ein etablierter Unternehmer im europäischen Markt bezeichnet. Die Studie, die sich auf den Markt für die Verwaltung von Lerninhalten konzentrierte, bestätigte ForceTen auch als eines der klassenbesten Managementsysteme für Lerninhalte (LCMS - Learning Content Management System).
ForceTen liefert ein effektives Mittel zur Entwicklung, zum Einsatz und zum Erhalt von Bildungs- und Trainingsprogrammen. Die dynamischen Fähigkeiten der Produkte des Unternehmens ermöglichen es Organisationen, Inhalte einfach zu aktualisieren und wieder zu verwenden und dabei flexible Lernprogramme zu liefern, die sich an die individuellen Nutzerwünsche, -anforderungen und -vorlieben anpassen lassen. ForceTen ist eines von mehreren Produkten, die Eedos Wissens- und Learning-Suite verbinden.
28.11.2007, Eedo Knowledgeware
ForceTen ermöglicht dem Goethe-Institut, über eine komplexe und globale Organisation hinweg, das Verfassen von Inhalten zu dezentralisieren und dabei die Kontrolle über Qualitätsstandards und Best Practices zu bewahren
Eedo Knowledgeware meldete, dass das deutsche Goethe-Institut Eedo ForceTen(TM) als seine Hauptplattform zur Herstellung von auf E-Learning basierender Sprachausbildung gewählt hat. Das Goethe-Institut wählte ForceTen, weil es eine komplexe Reihe von Anforderungen zur Erstellung und Verwaltung von Inhalten unterstützen und auch integriertes Lernen fördern kann.
Das Goethe-Institut ist eine gemeinnützige, deutsche staatliche Organisation, deren Mission die weltweite Förderung der deutschen Sprache und Kultur ist. E-Learning nimmt bei der Initiative, das Angebot an hochwertigen Sprachkursen zu erhalten und auszuweiten, eine zentrale Rolle ein.
"Wir benötigten ein System, dass das Verfassen von Inhalten für E-Learning über eine komplexe und globale Organisation hinweg dezentralisiert und trotzdem die Kontrolle von Qualitätsstandards erlaubt", erklärte Marcus Biechele, Leiter des Multimedia -Entwicklungsteams.
"ForceTen mit seinem Datenbank-basierten, objektorientierten Inhaltsmodell und seiner reichhaltigen Menge an Verwaltungsfunktionen erlaubt uns den Zugriff und die Wiederverwendung von Media Assets, Fragen oder ganzen Modulen, egal wo sie erstellt worden sind. Damit wird es uns ermöglicht, Inhalte schneller und kostengünstiger zu produzieren", fuhr Biechele fort.
Das Goethe-Institut bietet Module für E-Learning als Teil eines integrierten Lernkonzepts an, das zur Erweiterung seines Angebots an Sprachkursen entwickelt wurde. Die Module werden auch zur Förderung langfristiger Kundenbeziehungen über das typische Kursmodell hinaus verwendet werden.
"Das Goethe-Institut hat die anspruchsvolle Aufgabe, die internationale kulturelle Zusammenarbeit zu fördern und benötigt dementsprechend eine verständliche und skalierbare Lösung für das Lehrgebiet Deutsch als Fremdsprache, um seine Ziele zu erreichen", erklärte John Hudson, Präsident und CEO von Eedo Knowledgeware. "Unsere beeindruckende Erfolgsgeschichte in staatlichen und internationalen Organisationen sowie auch unsere Präsenz in Deutschland beweisen, dass wir ein starker und zuverlässiger Partner für solch ein schwieriges Projekt sind."
Im September gab Eedo bekannt, dass das Unternehmen seine deutsche Präsenz ausgebaut und seinen deutschen Hauptsitz nach Berlin verlegt hat. Von Elearnity, Europas führendem unabhängigen Unternehmen für Lernanalyse, wurde Eedo, in einer diesjährigen Studie, als ein etablierter Unternehmer im europäischen Markt bezeichnet. Die Studie, die sich auf den Markt für die Verwaltung von Lerninhalten konzentrierte, bestätigte ForceTen auch als eines der klassenbesten Managementsysteme für Lerninhalte (LCMS - Learning Content Management System).
ForceTen liefert ein effektives Mittel zur Entwicklung, zum Einsatz und zum Erhalt von Bildungs- und Trainingsprogrammen. Die dynamischen Fähigkeiten der Produkte des Unternehmens ermöglichen es Organisationen, Inhalte einfach zu aktualisieren und wieder zu verwenden und dabei flexible Lernprogramme zu liefern, die sich an die individuellen Nutzerwünsche, -anforderungen und -vorlieben anpassen lassen. ForceTen ist eines von mehreren Produkten, die Eedos Wissens- und Learning-Suite verbinden.
28.11.2007, Eedo Knowledgeware
Sunday, November 18, 2007
IBM, Microsoft, SAP lag behind on Web 2.0 | InfoWorld | News | 2007-11-08 | By Jon Brodkin, Network World
IBM, Microsoft, SAP lag behind on Web 2.0 | InfoWorld | News | 2007-11-08 | By Jon Brodkin, Network World
Big vendors still lag behind smaller rivals in the market for blog, wiki, and content collaboration tools
Big vendors still lag behind smaller rivals in the market for blog, wiki, and content collaboration tools
Friday, November 09, 2007
Facebook Makes a Large Bet to Reinvent Advertising
Facebook Makes a Large Bet to Reinvent Advertising
Facebook bills its new initiative as the future of advertising. Success is far from certain and depends on subtle implementation details and uncharted areas of consumer behavior.
Facebook bills its new initiative as the future of advertising. Success is far from certain and depends on subtle implementation details and uncharted areas of consumer behavior.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Google Takes First Step in Face-off With Facebook
Google Takes First Step in Face-off With Facebook
The OpenSocial initiative launches Google's long-awaited counterstrike to the Facebook challenge. This limited-scope specification is just an early step in what will be a prolonged battle in the social-platform market.
The OpenSocial initiative launches Google's long-awaited counterstrike to the Facebook challenge. This limited-scope specification is just an early step in what will be a prolonged battle in the social-platform market.
FT.com / By sector - Study urges IT valuation rethink
FT.com / By sector - Study urges IT valuation rethink
Study urges IT valuation rethink
By Pan Kwan Yuk in Paris and Philip Stafford in London
Published: November 4 2007 23:52 | Last updated: November 4 2007 23:52
Companies need to dramatically rethink the way they manage and value their information technology assets if they are to extract better returns from these investments, according to a study published on Monday.
Describing IT hardware and software as the “last remaining hidden corporate asset”, the study, commissioned by Micro Focus, a UK software developer, said core IT assets should be valued with the same rigour and discipline as other corporate assets such as brand and goodwill.
Insead, the Paris-based business school that carried out the research, said that while IT now plays a vital role in driving corporate performance, companies have continued to treat their IT not as assets for value creation but as an expense item to be minimised.
“It’s astounding,” said Soumitra Dutta of Insead.
“While firms have long focused on creating value from physical assets such as factory or store space and intangible assets such as brands, IT assets as a vehicle for value creation have remained largely ignored.”
One problem, according to Prof Dutta, is that even though companies spend billions on IT every year, few boardrooms know the value of their hardware and software and the contributions that they make to their business.
In a study released last month, Micro Focus and Insead found that of the 250 chief information officers and chief finance officers surveyed from companies in the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy, fewer than half had tried to value their IT assets, while 60 per cent did not know the worth of their software.
“When it comes to technology, people tend to get lost in jargon and focus on the new and shiny,” said Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Micro Focus. “Very little thought goes into the benefits that result from the new system and almost none to deriving maximum value from it.”
Yet Prof Dutta said that the potential savings for companies who take the time to analyse the value of their software assets could be huge.
“Think of a house,” he says.
“Would you knock down an entire house when what you need is to update the kitchen? No.
“Yet we see companies spending millions of dollars to build a new IT system every other year when, in many cases, what they needed was just to update the existing one.”
One way Prof Dutta says companies can measure the business value of their core IT assets is through conjoint analysis, a statistical technique used in market research in which people make trade-offs across different attributes.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Study urges IT valuation rethink
By Pan Kwan Yuk in Paris and Philip Stafford in London
Published: November 4 2007 23:52 | Last updated: November 4 2007 23:52
Companies need to dramatically rethink the way they manage and value their information technology assets if they are to extract better returns from these investments, according to a study published on Monday.
Describing IT hardware and software as the “last remaining hidden corporate asset”, the study, commissioned by Micro Focus, a UK software developer, said core IT assets should be valued with the same rigour and discipline as other corporate assets such as brand and goodwill.
Insead, the Paris-based business school that carried out the research, said that while IT now plays a vital role in driving corporate performance, companies have continued to treat their IT not as assets for value creation but as an expense item to be minimised.
“It’s astounding,” said Soumitra Dutta of Insead.
“While firms have long focused on creating value from physical assets such as factory or store space and intangible assets such as brands, IT assets as a vehicle for value creation have remained largely ignored.”
One problem, according to Prof Dutta, is that even though companies spend billions on IT every year, few boardrooms know the value of their hardware and software and the contributions that they make to their business.
In a study released last month, Micro Focus and Insead found that of the 250 chief information officers and chief finance officers surveyed from companies in the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy, fewer than half had tried to value their IT assets, while 60 per cent did not know the worth of their software.
“When it comes to technology, people tend to get lost in jargon and focus on the new and shiny,” said Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Micro Focus. “Very little thought goes into the benefits that result from the new system and almost none to deriving maximum value from it.”
Yet Prof Dutta said that the potential savings for companies who take the time to analyse the value of their software assets could be huge.
“Think of a house,” he says.
“Would you knock down an entire house when what you need is to update the kitchen? No.
“Yet we see companies spending millions of dollars to build a new IT system every other year when, in many cases, what they needed was just to update the existing one.”
One way Prof Dutta says companies can measure the business value of their core IT assets is through conjoint analysis, a statistical technique used in market research in which people make trade-offs across different attributes.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Google hat neuen Spurt-Partner | Wirtschaft | Deutsche Welle | 02.11.2007
Google hat neuen Spurt-Partner | Wirtschaft | Deutsche Welle | 02.11.2007
Zwei wichtige strategische Entscheidungen für die Internet-Ökonomie sind gefallen: Der Internet-Konzern Google wird mit MySpace zusammenarbeiten und ein eigenes Google-Handy auf den Markt bringen.
Zwei wichtige strategische Entscheidungen für die Internet-Ökonomie sind gefallen: Der Internet-Konzern Google wird mit MySpace zusammenarbeiten und ein eigenes Google-Handy auf den Markt bringen.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
By Ben Fenton
Published: October 31 2007 02:27 | Last updated: October 31 2007 02:27
It is not so much a cool internet community as a hip replacement for a social life: today, maturity’s riposte to Facebook comes of age.
If you want to get in with the gin crowd, it seems you should sign up for Saga Zone, which even in its secretive trial stages has enthralled thousands of silver surfers.
On Wednesday night, “zoners” will not be sending each other virtual vampire masks or Hallowe’en superpokes like Facebook friends. They are more likely to be swapping recipes for pumpkin soup.
But that does not mean customers of Saga, the insurance-to-holidays group owned by the Permira, CVC and Charterhouse private equity houses, are the shrinking violets of the web. Alongside the forums discussing topics such as “over-wintering begonias”, there are groups for “mature dating” or debating the relative sexual allure of pouches and thongs. When Zoners discuss “contacting my ex”, they are not proposing a seance.
Already, 13,000 of the 650,000 Saga magazine subscribers have signed up to the trial Zone and this vast database of experience is well ahead of its youthful counterparts in innovation.
“Very early on we had a virtual party,” Rupert Miles, chief executive, publishing, said. “About two dozen zoners arranged to ‘meet’ online. The girls got together first to ‘dress up’. Everyone was allowed a virtual guest – Helen Mirren was popular with the men and George Clooney for the ladies – and just spent a few hours gassing about nothing, as you would at a party.”
The Saga Zone has already had its first “flashmob”, a meeting organised online, but held in real life. It was conducted, however, at a comfortable hotel in Malta.
May Murray, a 64-year-old zoner from Glasgow, said: “It has certainly expanded my social life. I switch it on every single morning. I think my children, who are in their 40s, are quite envious and would like to join, but they can’t because they are too young.”
The generation gap strikes again.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
By Ben Fenton
Published: October 31 2007 02:27 | Last updated: October 31 2007 02:27
It is not so much a cool internet community as a hip replacement for a social life: today, maturity’s riposte to Facebook comes of age.
If you want to get in with the gin crowd, it seems you should sign up for Saga Zone, which even in its secretive trial stages has enthralled thousands of silver surfers.
On Wednesday night, “zoners” will not be sending each other virtual vampire masks or Hallowe’en superpokes like Facebook friends. They are more likely to be swapping recipes for pumpkin soup.
But that does not mean customers of Saga, the insurance-to-holidays group owned by the Permira, CVC and Charterhouse private equity houses, are the shrinking violets of the web. Alongside the forums discussing topics such as “over-wintering begonias”, there are groups for “mature dating” or debating the relative sexual allure of pouches and thongs. When Zoners discuss “contacting my ex”, they are not proposing a seance.
Already, 13,000 of the 650,000 Saga magazine subscribers have signed up to the trial Zone and this vast database of experience is well ahead of its youthful counterparts in innovation.
“Very early on we had a virtual party,” Rupert Miles, chief executive, publishing, said. “About two dozen zoners arranged to ‘meet’ online. The girls got together first to ‘dress up’. Everyone was allowed a virtual guest – Helen Mirren was popular with the men and George Clooney for the ladies – and just spent a few hours gassing about nothing, as you would at a party.”
The Saga Zone has already had its first “flashmob”, a meeting organised online, but held in real life. It was conducted, however, at a comfortable hotel in Malta.
May Murray, a 64-year-old zoner from Glasgow, said: “It has certainly expanded my social life. I switch it on every single morning. I think my children, who are in their 40s, are quite envious and would like to join, but they can’t because they are too young.”
The generation gap strikes again.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
FT.com / In depth - Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
FT.com / In depth - Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
Published: October 11 2007 15:01 | Last updated: October 11 2007 15:01
This was one of six books shortlisted for the 2007 FT/Golman Sachs business book of the year award. Read the shortlist, plus synopses, reviews and judges comments. You can also vote on the best business book ever, as selected by top CEOs and other experts.
Call them the “weapons of mass collaboration.” New low-cost collaborative infrastructures—from free Internet telephony to open-source software to global outsourcing platforms—allow thousands upon thousands of individuals and small producers to co-create products, access markets, and delight customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past. This is giving rise to new collaborative capabilities and business models that will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust. The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down. Once a bastion of “professionalism,” credentialed knowledge producers share the stage with “amateur” creators who are disrupting every activity they touch. Tens of millions of people share their news, information, and views in the blogosphere, a self-organized network of over 50 million personal commentary sites that are updated every second of the day.2 Some of the largest weblogs (or blogs for short) receive a quarter of a million daily visitors,3 rivaling some daily newspapers. Now audioblogs, podcasts, and mobile photo blogs are adding to a dynamic, up-to-the-minute stream of person-to-person news and information delivered free over the Web.--
Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and other resources to create a wide array of free and open-source goods and services that anyone can use or modify. What’s more, people can contribute to the “digital commons” at very little cost to themselves, which makes collective action much more attractive. Indeed, peer production is a very social activity. All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy. These new collaborations will not only serve commercial interests, they will help people do public-spirited things like cure genetic diseases, predict global climate change, and find new planets and stars. Researchers at Olson Laboratory, for example, use a massive supercomputer to evaluate drug candidates that might one day cure AIDS. This is no ordinary supercomputer, however. Their FightAIDS@home initiative is part of the World Community Grid, a global network where millions of individual computer users donate their spare computing power via the Internet to form one of the world’ most powerful computing platforms.
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive. A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Consider some additional ways ordinary citizens can now participate in the global body économiqe. Rather than just read a book you can write one. Just log on to Wikipedia—a collaboratively created encyclopedia, owned by no one and authored by tens of thousands of enthusiasts. With five full-time employees, it is ten times bigger than Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly the same in accuracy.4 It runs on a wiki, software that enables users to edit the content of Web pages. Despite the risks inherent in an open encyclopedia in which everyone can add their views, and constant battles with detractors and saboteurs, Wikipedia continues to grow rapidly in scope, quality, and traffic. The English-language version has more than a million entries, and there are ninety-two sister sites in languages ranging from Polish and Japanese to Hebrew and Catalan.
Or perhaps your thing is chemistry. Indeed, if you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A. G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces matching scientists to R&D challenges presented by companies in search of innovation. P&G and thousands of other companies look to these marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.
Media buffs are similarly empowered. Rather than consume the TV news, you can now create it, along with thousands of independent citizen journalists that are turning the profession upside down. Tired of the familiar old faces and blather on network news? Turn off your TV, pick up a video camera and some cheap editing software, and create a news feature for Current TV, a new national cable and satellite network created almost entirely by amateur contributors. Though the contributors are unpaid volunteers, the content is surprisingly good. Current TV provides online tutorials for camera operation and storytelling techniques, and their guidelines for creating stories help get participants started. Viewers vote on which stories go to air, so only the most engaging material makes prime time.
Finally, a young person in India, China, Brazil, or any one of a number of emerging Eastern European countries can now do what their parents only dreamed of by joining the global economy on an equal footing. You might be in a call center in Bangalore that takes food orders for a drive-through restaurant in Los Angeles. Or you could find yourself working in Foxconn’s new corporate city in the Schenzen province of China, where a decade ago farmers tilled the land with oxen. Today 180,000 people work, live, learn, and play on Foxconn’s massive high-tech campus, designing and building consumer electronics for teenagers around the globe.
For incumbents in every industry this new cornucopia of participation and collaboration is both exhilarating and alarming. As New Paradigm executive David Ticoll argues, “Not all examples of self-organization are benign, or exploitable. Within a single industry the development of opportunities for self-organized collaboration can be beneficial, neutral, or highly competitive to individual firms, or some combination of at least two of these.” Publishers found this out the hard way. Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.
Publishers of music, literature, movies, software, and television are like canaries in a coal mine—the first casualties of a revolution that is sweeping across all industries. Many enfeebled titans of the industrial economy feel threatened. Despite heroic efforts to change, they remain shackled by command-and-control legacies. Companies have spent the last three decades remolding their operations to compete in a hypercompetitive economy—ripping costs out of their businesses at every opportunity; trying to become more “customer-friendly”; assembling global production networks; and scattering their bricks-and-mortar R&D organizations around the world.
Now, to great chagrin, industrial-era titans are learning that the real revolution is just getting started. Except this time the competition is no longer their arch industry rivals; it’s the uberconnected, amorphous mass of self-organized individuals that is gripping their economic needs firmly in one hand, and their economic destinies in the other. “We the People” is no longer just a political expression—a hopeful ode to the power of “the masses”; it’s also an apt description of how ordinary people, as employees, consumers, community members, and taxpayers now have the power to innovate and to create value on the global stage.
For smart companies, the rising tide of mass collaboration offers vast opportunity. As the Goldcorp story denotes, even the oldest of old economy industries can harness this revolution to create value in unconventional ways. Companies can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, firms that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchically organized businesses.
For individuals and small producers, this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy. Mass collaboration across borders, disciplines, and cultures is at once economical and enjoyable. We can peer produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role.
............................................................................................................................................
Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
Published: October 11 2007 15:01 | Last updated: October 11 2007 15:01
This was one of six books shortlisted for the 2007 FT/Golman Sachs business book of the year award. Read the shortlist, plus synopses, reviews and judges comments. You can also vote on the best business book ever, as selected by top CEOs and other experts.
Call them the “weapons of mass collaboration.” New low-cost collaborative infrastructures—from free Internet telephony to open-source software to global outsourcing platforms—allow thousands upon thousands of individuals and small producers to co-create products, access markets, and delight customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past. This is giving rise to new collaborative capabilities and business models that will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust. The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down. Once a bastion of “professionalism,” credentialed knowledge producers share the stage with “amateur” creators who are disrupting every activity they touch. Tens of millions of people share their news, information, and views in the blogosphere, a self-organized network of over 50 million personal commentary sites that are updated every second of the day.2 Some of the largest weblogs (or blogs for short) receive a quarter of a million daily visitors,3 rivaling some daily newspapers. Now audioblogs, podcasts, and mobile photo blogs are adding to a dynamic, up-to-the-minute stream of person-to-person news and information delivered free over the Web.--
Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and other resources to create a wide array of free and open-source goods and services that anyone can use or modify. What’s more, people can contribute to the “digital commons” at very little cost to themselves, which makes collective action much more attractive. Indeed, peer production is a very social activity. All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy. These new collaborations will not only serve commercial interests, they will help people do public-spirited things like cure genetic diseases, predict global climate change, and find new planets and stars. Researchers at Olson Laboratory, for example, use a massive supercomputer to evaluate drug candidates that might one day cure AIDS. This is no ordinary supercomputer, however. Their FightAIDS@home initiative is part of the World Community Grid, a global network where millions of individual computer users donate their spare computing power via the Internet to form one of the world’ most powerful computing platforms.
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive. A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Consider some additional ways ordinary citizens can now participate in the global body économiqe. Rather than just read a book you can write one. Just log on to Wikipedia—a collaboratively created encyclopedia, owned by no one and authored by tens of thousands of enthusiasts. With five full-time employees, it is ten times bigger than Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly the same in accuracy.4 It runs on a wiki, software that enables users to edit the content of Web pages. Despite the risks inherent in an open encyclopedia in which everyone can add their views, and constant battles with detractors and saboteurs, Wikipedia continues to grow rapidly in scope, quality, and traffic. The English-language version has more than a million entries, and there are ninety-two sister sites in languages ranging from Polish and Japanese to Hebrew and Catalan.
Or perhaps your thing is chemistry. Indeed, if you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A. G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces matching scientists to R&D challenges presented by companies in search of innovation. P&G and thousands of other companies look to these marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.
Media buffs are similarly empowered. Rather than consume the TV news, you can now create it, along with thousands of independent citizen journalists that are turning the profession upside down. Tired of the familiar old faces and blather on network news? Turn off your TV, pick up a video camera and some cheap editing software, and create a news feature for Current TV, a new national cable and satellite network created almost entirely by amateur contributors. Though the contributors are unpaid volunteers, the content is surprisingly good. Current TV provides online tutorials for camera operation and storytelling techniques, and their guidelines for creating stories help get participants started. Viewers vote on which stories go to air, so only the most engaging material makes prime time.
Finally, a young person in India, China, Brazil, or any one of a number of emerging Eastern European countries can now do what their parents only dreamed of by joining the global economy on an equal footing. You might be in a call center in Bangalore that takes food orders for a drive-through restaurant in Los Angeles. Or you could find yourself working in Foxconn’s new corporate city in the Schenzen province of China, where a decade ago farmers tilled the land with oxen. Today 180,000 people work, live, learn, and play on Foxconn’s massive high-tech campus, designing and building consumer electronics for teenagers around the globe.
For incumbents in every industry this new cornucopia of participation and collaboration is both exhilarating and alarming. As New Paradigm executive David Ticoll argues, “Not all examples of self-organization are benign, or exploitable. Within a single industry the development of opportunities for self-organized collaboration can be beneficial, neutral, or highly competitive to individual firms, or some combination of at least two of these.” Publishers found this out the hard way. Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.
Publishers of music, literature, movies, software, and television are like canaries in a coal mine—the first casualties of a revolution that is sweeping across all industries. Many enfeebled titans of the industrial economy feel threatened. Despite heroic efforts to change, they remain shackled by command-and-control legacies. Companies have spent the last three decades remolding their operations to compete in a hypercompetitive economy—ripping costs out of their businesses at every opportunity; trying to become more “customer-friendly”; assembling global production networks; and scattering their bricks-and-mortar R&D organizations around the world.
Now, to great chagrin, industrial-era titans are learning that the real revolution is just getting started. Except this time the competition is no longer their arch industry rivals; it’s the uberconnected, amorphous mass of self-organized individuals that is gripping their economic needs firmly in one hand, and their economic destinies in the other. “We the People” is no longer just a political expression—a hopeful ode to the power of “the masses”; it’s also an apt description of how ordinary people, as employees, consumers, community members, and taxpayers now have the power to innovate and to create value on the global stage.
For smart companies, the rising tide of mass collaboration offers vast opportunity. As the Goldcorp story denotes, even the oldest of old economy industries can harness this revolution to create value in unconventional ways. Companies can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, firms that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchically organized businesses.
For individuals and small producers, this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy. Mass collaboration across borders, disciplines, and cultures is at once economical and enjoyable. We can peer produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role.
............................................................................................................................................
Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Monday, October 29, 2007
sueddeutsche.de Zeitung und Internet Wir brauchen eine Debatte - Kultur
sueddeutsche.de Zeitung und Internet Wir brauchen eine Debatte - Kultur
Nicht das Internet ist der Feind des Journalismus, sondern das Kalkül. Vom Pulsschlag des Textes: Ein Plädoyer für ein Jahrzehnt des Qualitätsjournalismus.
Nicht das Internet ist der Feind des Journalismus, sondern das Kalkül. Vom Pulsschlag des Textes: Ein Plädoyer für ein Jahrzehnt des Qualitätsjournalismus.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Facebook Wins Big as Microsoft Validates Social-Platform Value
Facebook Wins Big as Microsoft Validates Social-Platform Value
The emerging social-platform wars ratcheted up a notch when, in a long-awaited development, Microsoft struck a deal to invest $240 million in Facebook.
The emerging social-platform wars ratcheted up a notch when, in a long-awaited development, Microsoft struck a deal to invest $240 million in Facebook.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
ECM-Anbieter tummeln sich im Sharepoint-Umfeld
ECM-Anbieter tummeln sich im Sharepoint-Umfeld
Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007, kurz MOSS, ist die neue Version der Portal-Software aus dem Hause Microsoft, die im Vergleich zur Vorgängerversion, die noch unter dem Namen Sharepoint Portal Server lief, erhebliche Fortschritte gemacht hat. Auf Grund der massiven Weiterentwicklung positioniert Microsoft selber den MOSS jetzt als ECM-Plattform.
Nimmt man die Definition zu ECM von AIIM, so stellt man fest, dass der derzeitige MOSS mit den Hauptkomponenten Capture, Output, Delivery, Store und Preserve nichts zu tun hat. Bei den Managementkomponenten deckt er die Bereiche Dokumenten-Management, Records-Management, Web-Content-Management sowie schwerpunktmäßig Collaboration ab.
Der Einsatz von Sharepoint-Lösungen scheint sich auszubreiten, es ist eine deutliche Zunahme der Nachfrage im Markt zu spüren, obwohl die Microsoft Lösung bekanntlich einige Lücken aufweist. Gleichzeitig haben immer mehr ECM-Hersteller Produkte im Angebot, die diese Lücken, zumindest im Bereich der Archivierung, zu schließen versuchen. Dieser Artikel versucht einen Überblick über vorhandene Lösungen, offene Punkte und weitere Möglichkeiten der Integration mit Sharepoint zu geben.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007, kurz MOSS, ist die neue Version der Portal-Software aus dem Hause Microsoft, die im Vergleich zur Vorgängerversion, die noch unter dem Namen Sharepoint Portal Server lief, erhebliche Fortschritte gemacht hat. Auf Grund der massiven Weiterentwicklung positioniert Microsoft selber den MOSS jetzt als ECM-Plattform.
Nimmt man die Definition zu ECM von AIIM, so stellt man fest, dass der derzeitige MOSS mit den Hauptkomponenten Capture, Output, Delivery, Store und Preserve nichts zu tun hat. Bei den Managementkomponenten deckt er die Bereiche Dokumenten-Management, Records-Management, Web-Content-Management sowie schwerpunktmäßig Collaboration ab.
Der Einsatz von Sharepoint-Lösungen scheint sich auszubreiten, es ist eine deutliche Zunahme der Nachfrage im Markt zu spüren, obwohl die Microsoft Lösung bekanntlich einige Lücken aufweist. Gleichzeitig haben immer mehr ECM-Hersteller Produkte im Angebot, die diese Lücken, zumindest im Bereich der Archivierung, zu schließen versuchen. Dieser Artikel versucht einen Überblick über vorhandene Lösungen, offene Punkte und weitere Möglichkeiten der Integration mit Sharepoint zu geben.
FT.com / Companies / IT - Subprime boost for Autonomy
FT.com / Companies / IT - Subprime boost for Autonomy
Subprime boost for Autonomy
By Maija Palmer, Technology Correspondent
Published: October 24 2007 03:16 | Last updated: October 24 2007 03:16
Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, said the search and archiving company could see a boost to business next year if financial services groups started facing litigation over their exposure to US subprime home loans.
The company provides software that helps companies retrieve e-mails and other electronic records and said its systems were often used by companies preparing for lawsuits. Autonomy increased its exposure to the legal market earlier this year with the $375m acquisition of Zantaz, which supplies nine of the world’s top 10 law firms.
Mr Lynch said the company had won new customers “all along the financial services chain” who were preparing for litigation related to the subprime problems. The company also supplies software to the New York Stock Exchange and the Serious Fraud Office.
“It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good,” said Mr Lynch.
However, shares in Autonomy fell 44p to 911p as it reported third-quarter results in line with estimates.
Revenues were up 49 per cent at $89.6m for the three months to the end of September, while pre-tax profits rose 38 per cent to $18.3m.
Roger Phillips, analyst at Evolution Securities, cut the stock from “add” to “reduce” and said: “There were no horrors in this. Autonomy have repeatedly beat expectations and this time they are in line. But the stock is just too expensive – to maintain the valuation you need constant outperformance.”
Autonomy also announced the acquisition of Meridio for £20m ($40m) in cash and shares.
FT Comment
●Autonomy shares have doubled over the past year and trade at 50 times this year’s earnings estimates – well above the rest of the software sector. It is natural for the market to worry about whether this is justified and panic at any sign of weakness. Autonomy’s revenues rely on selling big licences to big companies and this may slow in a downturn, while eventually it may face market saturation. However, there is little sign of that yet and in spite of there being little in the latest results to propel the shares higher, Tuesday’s correction looks overdone.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Subprime boost for Autonomy
By Maija Palmer, Technology Correspondent
Published: October 24 2007 03:16 | Last updated: October 24 2007 03:16
Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, said the search and archiving company could see a boost to business next year if financial services groups started facing litigation over their exposure to US subprime home loans.
The company provides software that helps companies retrieve e-mails and other electronic records and said its systems were often used by companies preparing for lawsuits. Autonomy increased its exposure to the legal market earlier this year with the $375m acquisition of Zantaz, which supplies nine of the world’s top 10 law firms.
Mr Lynch said the company had won new customers “all along the financial services chain” who were preparing for litigation related to the subprime problems. The company also supplies software to the New York Stock Exchange and the Serious Fraud Office.
“It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good,” said Mr Lynch.
However, shares in Autonomy fell 44p to 911p as it reported third-quarter results in line with estimates.
Revenues were up 49 per cent at $89.6m for the three months to the end of September, while pre-tax profits rose 38 per cent to $18.3m.
Roger Phillips, analyst at Evolution Securities, cut the stock from “add” to “reduce” and said: “There were no horrors in this. Autonomy have repeatedly beat expectations and this time they are in line. But the stock is just too expensive – to maintain the valuation you need constant outperformance.”
Autonomy also announced the acquisition of Meridio for £20m ($40m) in cash and shares.
FT Comment
●Autonomy shares have doubled over the past year and trade at 50 times this year’s earnings estimates – well above the rest of the software sector. It is natural for the market to worry about whether this is justified and panic at any sign of weakness. Autonomy’s revenues rely on selling big licences to big companies and this may slow in a downturn, while eventually it may face market saturation. However, there is little sign of that yet and in spite of there being little in the latest results to propel the shares higher, Tuesday’s correction looks overdone.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Interwoven to Boost E-Marketing Capabilities With Optimost
Interwoven to Boost E-Marketing Capabilities With Optimost
Acquiring Optimost will enable Interwoven to add marketing-friendly multivariable testing and Web optimization techniques to its content management offerings.
Acquiring Optimost will enable Interwoven to add marketing-friendly multivariable testing and Web optimization techniques to its content management offerings.
FirstSpirit 4: Neue Version des Content-Management-Systems zeigt Größe
FirstSpirit 4: Neue Version des Content-Management-Systems zeigt Größe
e-Spirit hat mit FirstSpirit 4 die neueste Version seines Content-Management-Systems veröffentlicht. Kern der Entwicklungsarbeit ist die konsequente Ausrichtung auf die wachsenden Anforderungen im Content-Management-Markt...
e-Spirit hat mit FirstSpirit 4 die neueste Version seines Content-Management-Systems veröffentlicht. Kern der Entwicklungsarbeit ist die konsequente Ausrichtung auf die wachsenden Anforderungen im Content-Management-Markt...
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Nuxeo releases version 5.1 of its open source ECM platform with a focus on SOA, scalability and support - Nuxeo open source ECM
Nuxeo releases version 5.1 of its open source ECM platform with a focus on SOA, scalability and support - Nuxeo open source ECM
The updated platform provides a powerful and flexible infrastructure that meets the needs of large scale enterprises investing in SOA, with first implementations in the media, energy and defense sectors.
Paris, 18 October 2007 - Nuxeo, the pioneer and leader of open source ECM (Enterprise Content Management), announces Nuxeo Enterprise Platform 5.1, a new version of its ECM platform. This release is largely distinguished by its service-oriented architecture (SOA), scalability and flexibility. A high level of support is also available - delivering enterprise-grade functional & technical support, certified software patches and updates, and management tools that are available during every stage of the application lifecycle.
The updated platform provides a powerful and flexible infrastructure that meets the needs of large scale enterprises investing in SOA, with first implementations in the media, energy and defense sectors.
Paris, 18 October 2007 - Nuxeo, the pioneer and leader of open source ECM (Enterprise Content Management), announces Nuxeo Enterprise Platform 5.1, a new version of its ECM platform. This release is largely distinguished by its service-oriented architecture (SOA), scalability and flexibility. A high level of support is also available - delivering enterprise-grade functional & technical support, certified software patches and updates, and management tools that are available during every stage of the application lifecycle.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream
Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream
NEW YORK
Mainstream Internet users are employing simple tools to personalize their Web experiences, though they are skipping some of the popular totems of Web 2.0, according to a newly released survey.
Avenue A/Razorfish, the digital agency owned by Microsoft, released research that shows some Web 2.0 staples such as video sharing and personalized Web pages have gone mainstream.
NEW YORK
Mainstream Internet users are employing simple tools to personalize their Web experiences, though they are skipping some of the popular totems of Web 2.0, according to a newly released survey.
Avenue A/Razorfish, the digital agency owned by Microsoft, released research that shows some Web 2.0 staples such as video sharing and personalized Web pages have gone mainstream.
The e-Spirit Company GmbH ist jetzt eine Aktiengesellschaft
The e-Spirit Company GmbH ist jetzt eine Aktiengesellschaft
Neue Rechtsform unterstützt Expansion in internationale Märkte / Bilanz 2006: Umsatz steigt um 80 Prozent
The e-Spirit Company GmbH zieht mit einer 80-prozentigen Umsatzsteigerung eine überaus positive Bilanz für 2006 und stellt die Weichen für das kommende Geschäftsjahr: Der Hersteller des Content-Management-Systems FirstSpirit änderte die Rechtsform und firmiert nunmehr als Aktiengesellschaft. Den Vorstand der e-Spirit AG haben Jörn Bodemann und Christoph Junge übernommen.
Mit der Änderung der Rechtsform verfolgt e-Spirit die gesicherte Fortführung des Unternehmenswachstums der vergangenen Jahre. Ebenfalls stützt der Schritt die nachhaltige Produkt- und Geschäftsentwicklung. Das Dortmunder Unternehmen blickt auf ein erfolgreiches Geschäftsjahr 2006 und ein sehr gutes erstes Halbjahr 2007 zurück. In 2006 konnte der Umsatz im Vergleich zum Vorjahr um 80 Prozent gesteigert und die Mitarbeiterzahl um 10 Prozent erhöht werden. Insgesamt haben sich allein in 2006 über 20 namhafte Großunternehmen für FirstSpirit als Content-Management-Plattform entschieden. Eine Fortsetzung dieses Trends zeichnet sich für 2007 bereits ab.
Dazu der Vorstandsvorsitzende der e-Spirit AG Jörn Bodemann: "Der Wechsel der Rechtsform sowie die damit einhergehende Umfirmierung wird dazu beitragen, die für unsere Geschäftsentwicklung nötige finanzielle Flexibilität zu gewährleisten. Neben den nationalen Geschäftsbeziehungen haben sich auch unsere internationalen Aktivitäten im vergangenen Jahr weiterentwickelt. Wir wollen diese Internationalisierung mit den Möglichkeiten einer Aktiengesellschaft noch schneller umsetzen."
Jörn Bodemann ist langjähriger Geschäftsführer des Unternehmens. Der diplomierte Informatiker bleibt weiterhin für die Geschäftsbereiche Unternehmenskommunikation, Vertrieb, Professional Services sowie Produkt- und Geschäftsentwicklung verantwortlich.
Als zweites Vorstandsmitglied ist Christoph Junge für die Geschäftsbereiche Finanzen und Recht zuständig. Er ist damit Mitglied des Vorstands bei der adesso AG und bei der e-Spirit AG.
Als Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats wurde das adesso-Vorstandsmitglied Michael Kenfenheuer berufen.
11.10.2007, e-Spirit AG
Neue Rechtsform unterstützt Expansion in internationale Märkte / Bilanz 2006: Umsatz steigt um 80 Prozent
The e-Spirit Company GmbH zieht mit einer 80-prozentigen Umsatzsteigerung eine überaus positive Bilanz für 2006 und stellt die Weichen für das kommende Geschäftsjahr: Der Hersteller des Content-Management-Systems FirstSpirit änderte die Rechtsform und firmiert nunmehr als Aktiengesellschaft. Den Vorstand der e-Spirit AG haben Jörn Bodemann und Christoph Junge übernommen.
Mit der Änderung der Rechtsform verfolgt e-Spirit die gesicherte Fortführung des Unternehmenswachstums der vergangenen Jahre. Ebenfalls stützt der Schritt die nachhaltige Produkt- und Geschäftsentwicklung. Das Dortmunder Unternehmen blickt auf ein erfolgreiches Geschäftsjahr 2006 und ein sehr gutes erstes Halbjahr 2007 zurück. In 2006 konnte der Umsatz im Vergleich zum Vorjahr um 80 Prozent gesteigert und die Mitarbeiterzahl um 10 Prozent erhöht werden. Insgesamt haben sich allein in 2006 über 20 namhafte Großunternehmen für FirstSpirit als Content-Management-Plattform entschieden. Eine Fortsetzung dieses Trends zeichnet sich für 2007 bereits ab.
Dazu der Vorstandsvorsitzende der e-Spirit AG Jörn Bodemann: "Der Wechsel der Rechtsform sowie die damit einhergehende Umfirmierung wird dazu beitragen, die für unsere Geschäftsentwicklung nötige finanzielle Flexibilität zu gewährleisten. Neben den nationalen Geschäftsbeziehungen haben sich auch unsere internationalen Aktivitäten im vergangenen Jahr weiterentwickelt. Wir wollen diese Internationalisierung mit den Möglichkeiten einer Aktiengesellschaft noch schneller umsetzen."
Jörn Bodemann ist langjähriger Geschäftsführer des Unternehmens. Der diplomierte Informatiker bleibt weiterhin für die Geschäftsbereiche Unternehmenskommunikation, Vertrieb, Professional Services sowie Produkt- und Geschäftsentwicklung verantwortlich.
Als zweites Vorstandsmitglied ist Christoph Junge für die Geschäftsbereiche Finanzen und Recht zuständig. Er ist damit Mitglied des Vorstands bei der adesso AG und bei der e-Spirit AG.
Als Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats wurde das adesso-Vorstandsmitglied Michael Kenfenheuer berufen.
11.10.2007, e-Spirit AG
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
» Gartner’s top 10 technologies for 2008: SOA precursors; fabric computing; Real world Web; WOA | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
» Gartner’s top 10 technologies for 2008: SOA precursors; fabric computing; Real world Web; WOA | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
Gartner outlined its top 10 strategic technology areas for 2008 and many roads lead to service oriented architecture.
Gartner outlined its top 10 strategic technology areas for 2008 and many roads lead to service oriented architecture.
Day optimiert SAP-Integration
Day optimiert SAP-Integration
Marktführer für Content-Integration baut Unterstützung für SAP NetWeaver Portal aus
Day Software, ein Anbieter von Global Content Management Software und Content Infrastructure Software, gab heute bekannt, die Content Mangement Plattform Communiqué um eine Integration mit SAP NetWeaver Portal 6.0 erweitert zu haben. Mit der bisher schon verfügbaren Anbindung an SAP R/3 durch den Einsatz von BAPI-Connectoren (Business Application Programming Interface) sowie RFCs (Remote Function Calls) bietet Communiqué eine umfassende Content Management Lösung für die SAP-Umgebung. Mit Days Unterstützung für SAP NetWeaver Portal können Unternehmen ihre geschäftskritischen Inhalte und Funktionalitäten mühelos in die Umgebung ihres SAP NetWeaver Portals integrieren.
SAP NetWeaver Portal ist eine Plattform, die es Unternehmen ermöglicht, umfangreiche Business-Anwendungen zu erstellen. Aufgrund von Offenheit, Flexibilität und Anpassungsfähigkeit vertrauen weltweit führende Unternehmen auf SAP NetWeaver als Grundlage für ihre unternehmensweite, Serviceorientierte Architektur (Enterprise SOA).
Days erweiterte Funktionalitäten bieten Out-of-the-Box-Portlets, die es ermöglichen, verwalteten Content, der dynamisch mit dem SAP NetWeaver Portal verbunden ist, über iViews anzuzeigen. Die Präsentationsfunktionalität wird unterstützt durch den Einsatz von iViews, Themes und External Facing Portals. Darüber hinaus stehen Integration in die Portal-Navigation sowie TREX-Suche zur Verfügung. Day erhöht den Wert des verwalteten Contents durch Unterstützung von Mehrsprachigkeit, Inter-Portlet-Kommunikation, Content Sharing und Personalisierung. Eine nahtlose Integration in das Portal-Framework wird durch die Unterstützung von LDAP und Single Sign-On ermöglicht.
Mit Days Technologie erhalten Unternehmen Zugriff auf ihre wertvollsten Informationen und Dokumente für ihre spezifische Geschäftstätigkeit, ihre Prozesse, Produkte und Kunden, die zuvor in herstellerspezifischen Repositorys lagerten. In Zusammenarbeit mit führenden Unternehmen wie EMC, IBM, SUN und Oracle hat Day den Industriestandard für Content-Zugriff JSR 170 initiiert und vorangetrieben. Unter der Leitung von Days CTO David Nüscheler wurde auch JSR 283 (Version 2.0 des Content Repository für Java Technology API) erfolgreich für den Public Review freigegeben. Diese nächste Version des Standards wird dazu beitragen, die Kompatibilität zwischen Content-Anwendungen und Repositorys zu verbessern.
09.10.2007, Günther Kanzler, Day Software
Marktführer für Content-Integration baut Unterstützung für SAP NetWeaver Portal aus
Day Software, ein Anbieter von Global Content Management Software und Content Infrastructure Software, gab heute bekannt, die Content Mangement Plattform Communiqué um eine Integration mit SAP NetWeaver Portal 6.0 erweitert zu haben. Mit der bisher schon verfügbaren Anbindung an SAP R/3 durch den Einsatz von BAPI-Connectoren (Business Application Programming Interface) sowie RFCs (Remote Function Calls) bietet Communiqué eine umfassende Content Management Lösung für die SAP-Umgebung. Mit Days Unterstützung für SAP NetWeaver Portal können Unternehmen ihre geschäftskritischen Inhalte und Funktionalitäten mühelos in die Umgebung ihres SAP NetWeaver Portals integrieren.
SAP NetWeaver Portal ist eine Plattform, die es Unternehmen ermöglicht, umfangreiche Business-Anwendungen zu erstellen. Aufgrund von Offenheit, Flexibilität und Anpassungsfähigkeit vertrauen weltweit führende Unternehmen auf SAP NetWeaver als Grundlage für ihre unternehmensweite, Serviceorientierte Architektur (Enterprise SOA).
Days erweiterte Funktionalitäten bieten Out-of-the-Box-Portlets, die es ermöglichen, verwalteten Content, der dynamisch mit dem SAP NetWeaver Portal verbunden ist, über iViews anzuzeigen. Die Präsentationsfunktionalität wird unterstützt durch den Einsatz von iViews, Themes und External Facing Portals. Darüber hinaus stehen Integration in die Portal-Navigation sowie TREX-Suche zur Verfügung. Day erhöht den Wert des verwalteten Contents durch Unterstützung von Mehrsprachigkeit, Inter-Portlet-Kommunikation, Content Sharing und Personalisierung. Eine nahtlose Integration in das Portal-Framework wird durch die Unterstützung von LDAP und Single Sign-On ermöglicht.
Mit Days Technologie erhalten Unternehmen Zugriff auf ihre wertvollsten Informationen und Dokumente für ihre spezifische Geschäftstätigkeit, ihre Prozesse, Produkte und Kunden, die zuvor in herstellerspezifischen Repositorys lagerten. In Zusammenarbeit mit führenden Unternehmen wie EMC, IBM, SUN und Oracle hat Day den Industriestandard für Content-Zugriff JSR 170 initiiert und vorangetrieben. Unter der Leitung von Days CTO David Nüscheler wurde auch JSR 283 (Version 2.0 des Content Repository für Java Technology API) erfolgreich für den Public Review freigegeben. Diese nächste Version des Standards wird dazu beitragen, die Kompatibilität zwischen Content-Anwendungen und Repositorys zu verbessern.
09.10.2007, Günther Kanzler, Day Software
Monday, October 08, 2007
Übernahme von Business Objects SAP befeuert Software-Krieg - Wirtschaft - sueddeutsche.de
Übernahme von Business Objects SAP befeuert Software-Krieg - Wirtschaft - sueddeutsche.de
Im Duell mit Konkurrent Oracle rüstet SAP auf: Der deutsche Softwarekonzern stemmt für knapp fünf Milliarden Euro die teuerste Übernahme seiner Geschichte.
Im Duell mit Konkurrent Oracle rüstet SAP auf: Der deutsche Softwarekonzern stemmt für knapp fünf Milliarden Euro die teuerste Übernahme seiner Geschichte.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Google Ups Enterprise E-Mail Stakes With Free Hygiene Services
Google Ups Enterprise E-Mail Stakes With Free Hygiene Services
Postini spam-, virus- and content-filtering services will be available to enterprise Gmail users at no additional cost, demonstrating Google's rapid rate of innovation and willingness to sacrifice revenue for market share.
Postini spam-, virus- and content-filtering services will be available to enterprise Gmail users at no additional cost, demonstrating Google's rapid rate of innovation and willingness to sacrifice revenue for market share.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
SOA-ready: Intrexx Xtreme mit Web Service Modul
SOA-ready: Intrexx Xtreme mit Web Service Modul
Nachdem der Portal und Application Builder im letzten Release schon ein komplettes Prozess Management Modul eingepflanzt bekommen hatte, kommt Intrexx im neuen Release 4.0 nun mit einem Modul zur Orchestrierung von Web Services. Damit lassen sich noch smartere Anwendungen für das Intranet erstellen. 75 fertige Applikationen zur sofortigen Nutzung sind ebenfalls auf DVD enthalten.
Nachdem der Portal und Application Builder im letzten Release schon ein komplettes Prozess Management Modul eingepflanzt bekommen hatte, kommt Intrexx im neuen Release 4.0 nun mit einem Modul zur Orchestrierung von Web Services. Damit lassen sich noch smartere Anwendungen für das Intranet erstellen. 75 fertige Applikationen zur sofortigen Nutzung sind ebenfalls auf DVD enthalten.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Demystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog
Demystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant | The Intelligent Enterprise Blog
Demystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant
Posted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
10:34 AM
Inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) is believed by vendors to have a very positive impact on sales. In the 2007 MQ for Enterprise Content Management, published late last month, it's clear that little (in Gartner's view) has changed in the ECM world. Well, we beg to differ: 2007 has been a period of major change! And so rather than harping on perceived weaknesses in this highly influential document, let's point out where the analysis in the CMS Watch ECM Suites Report differs from Gartner's.
1. CMS Watch recognizes that there are valid and increasingly plausible and popular open source options for ECM making an impact on the market as a whole. Alfresco, Nuxeo, Knowledge Tree, Jahia and InfoGrid are all credible options. Yet not even a mention of Alfresco (which has been almost ubiquitous in the press this year) has made the Gartner report.
2. We see regional richness and diversity among ECM suppliers around the globe. Examples include the impact of NewGen in India, Asia and the Middle East, and Saperion in Europe. Neither vendor gets a mention in the MQ.
3. We don't grade vendors on the size of their revenue, rather on their viability and the quality of their products. Many vendors make less than $20 Million a year (a criteria for inclusion in the MQ), yet are profitable, stable and produce very high-quality products.
4. We differentiate vendors by scenarios, i.e., by where its product would be best suited. For example Cimage, Spescom and Formtek (only Cimage is included in the MQ) might all be prime candidates in an Engineering DM situation. Vendors have both domain expertise and products that have been designed to excel in some situations but not others. We think it's important that you know those differences and are able to compare like-for-like products before selecting a shortlist based on vague concepts such as "leadership and vision."
There are other things about this report that baffle us, like why SAP is included in it (when even the report itself states that they do not have an ECM Suite) when others that do sell ECM Suites, such as those we mention above, are excluded. It may seem unfair to pick on another analyst firm — and, for the record, the authors of this particular report are all experts we have great respect for — but the importance of the MQ in the buying process is so huge that it demands a critical assessment and evaluation.
If there is a problem to identify, it is likely a business model that hinges on such charts, and a public's demand for ever simplified information, along with the vendors' addiction to getting the "right" placement in the chart. It is both the beauty and the curse of the MQ that it dramatically simplifies a marketplace. But ECM tools and choices are far from simple. In short, buyers of ECM beware.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe is a principal analyst at CMS Watch. Write him at aps@cmswatch.com
Demystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant
Posted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
10:34 AM
Inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) is believed by vendors to have a very positive impact on sales. In the 2007 MQ for Enterprise Content Management, published late last month, it's clear that little (in Gartner's view) has changed in the ECM world. Well, we beg to differ: 2007 has been a period of major change! And so rather than harping on perceived weaknesses in this highly influential document, let's point out where the analysis in the CMS Watch ECM Suites Report differs from Gartner's.
1. CMS Watch recognizes that there are valid and increasingly plausible and popular open source options for ECM making an impact on the market as a whole. Alfresco, Nuxeo, Knowledge Tree, Jahia and InfoGrid are all credible options. Yet not even a mention of Alfresco (which has been almost ubiquitous in the press this year) has made the Gartner report.
2. We see regional richness and diversity among ECM suppliers around the globe. Examples include the impact of NewGen in India, Asia and the Middle East, and Saperion in Europe. Neither vendor gets a mention in the MQ.
3. We don't grade vendors on the size of their revenue, rather on their viability and the quality of their products. Many vendors make less than $20 Million a year (a criteria for inclusion in the MQ), yet are profitable, stable and produce very high-quality products.
4. We differentiate vendors by scenarios, i.e., by where its product would be best suited. For example Cimage, Spescom and Formtek (only Cimage is included in the MQ) might all be prime candidates in an Engineering DM situation. Vendors have both domain expertise and products that have been designed to excel in some situations but not others. We think it's important that you know those differences and are able to compare like-for-like products before selecting a shortlist based on vague concepts such as "leadership and vision."
There are other things about this report that baffle us, like why SAP is included in it (when even the report itself states that they do not have an ECM Suite) when others that do sell ECM Suites, such as those we mention above, are excluded. It may seem unfair to pick on another analyst firm — and, for the record, the authors of this particular report are all experts we have great respect for — but the importance of the MQ in the buying process is so huge that it demands a critical assessment and evaluation.
If there is a problem to identify, it is likely a business model that hinges on such charts, and a public's demand for ever simplified information, along with the vendors' addiction to getting the "right" placement in the chart. It is both the beauty and the curse of the MQ that it dramatically simplifies a marketplace. But ECM tools and choices are far from simple. In short, buyers of ECM beware.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe is a principal analyst at CMS Watch. Write him at aps@cmswatch.com
Microsoft's Software + Services Offerings Target Google
Microsoft's Software + Services Offerings Target Google
Microsoft's Software + Services enterprise offerings are a response to Google's and others' push toward Web-based office applications.
Microsoft's Software + Services enterprise offerings are a response to Google's and others' push toward Web-based office applications.
Monday, October 01, 2007
FT.com / Home UK / UK - End of an era in Germany as Stoiber steps aside
FT.com / Home UK / UK - End of an era in Germany as Stoiber steps aside
End of an era in Germany as Stoiber steps aside
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin
Published: October 1 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 1 2007 03:00
An era in German politics ended at the weekend when Edmund Stoiber exited national politics, leaving the future of wealthy Bavaria in the hands of the country's toughest law-and-order -politician.
Mr Stoiber, premier of the southern German state since 1993, was central in building one of Europe's most powerful regional economies, attracting thousands of hi-tech, engineering and media companies and reducing unemployment to half the national average.
Delegates from his Christian Social Union gave him a warm send-off at a weekend congress in Munich even though his departure - first announced in January - was tinged with anger. He was forced to step down earlier than planned after mishandling a scandal and alienating many CSU members.
The 66-year old urged the party to remain the "flag-bearer" in Germany of conservative, pro-family values.
Mr Stoiber - who in national elections in 2002 came within 6,000 votes of toppling former chancellor Gerhard Schröder - is due to take up an unpaid post heading European Union efforts to cut red tape.
He will be replaced as premier by Günther Beckstein, Bavarian interior minister since 1993, who is well known for his regular calls for tougher security laws and tighter controls on -foreigners.
Mr Stoiber handed leadership of the CSU to Erwin Huber, the Bavarian economics minister, who won a rare election run-off for the post, fending off bids from Horst Seehofer, national farming minister, and Gabriele Pauli, whose anti-Stoiber campaign in January triggered his exit.
A smooth political transition in Bavaria is crucial for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and her Christian Democrats - the CSU's larger sister party - if she is to win re-election in 2009. The CSU regularly gains more than 50 per cent of votes in Bavaria, compared with 30-40 per cent for the CDU, but support dipped this year after the turmoil over Mr Stoiber's departure.
The chancellor praised Mr Stoiber at the CSU congress, but will be relieved that one of her most powerful political irritants has stepped aside.
Mr Beckstein - due to be elected premier on October 9 - promised "continuity" with Mr Stoiber's mix of liberal economic policy and arch-conservative social values.
In the short term any changes will be more in style than substance. Despite his tough image Mr Beckstein has a more genial, inclusive approach than the austere Mr Stoiber, who lacks Bavaria's famous joviality. Mr Huber, a former tax inspector seen as competent but uncharismatic, promised to retain the CSU's absolute majority, in place since 1962, in state elections next year.
In the longer term the two men - rivals until a few months ago - may struggle to maintain Mr Stoiber's impressive record. His decisions in recent years to sell off most of the state's assets and introduce long-term austerity measures leave them with only limited room for manoeuvre. Mr Stoiber's pledge, only days before stepping down, that Bavaria would help build a high-tech rail link from Munich airport to the centre of the regional capital could also prove costly.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
End of an era in Germany as Stoiber steps aside
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin
Published: October 1 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 1 2007 03:00
An era in German politics ended at the weekend when Edmund Stoiber exited national politics, leaving the future of wealthy Bavaria in the hands of the country's toughest law-and-order -politician.
Mr Stoiber, premier of the southern German state since 1993, was central in building one of Europe's most powerful regional economies, attracting thousands of hi-tech, engineering and media companies and reducing unemployment to half the national average.
Delegates from his Christian Social Union gave him a warm send-off at a weekend congress in Munich even though his departure - first announced in January - was tinged with anger. He was forced to step down earlier than planned after mishandling a scandal and alienating many CSU members.
The 66-year old urged the party to remain the "flag-bearer" in Germany of conservative, pro-family values.
Mr Stoiber - who in national elections in 2002 came within 6,000 votes of toppling former chancellor Gerhard Schröder - is due to take up an unpaid post heading European Union efforts to cut red tape.
He will be replaced as premier by Günther Beckstein, Bavarian interior minister since 1993, who is well known for his regular calls for tougher security laws and tighter controls on -foreigners.
Mr Stoiber handed leadership of the CSU to Erwin Huber, the Bavarian economics minister, who won a rare election run-off for the post, fending off bids from Horst Seehofer, national farming minister, and Gabriele Pauli, whose anti-Stoiber campaign in January triggered his exit.
A smooth political transition in Bavaria is crucial for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and her Christian Democrats - the CSU's larger sister party - if she is to win re-election in 2009. The CSU regularly gains more than 50 per cent of votes in Bavaria, compared with 30-40 per cent for the CDU, but support dipped this year after the turmoil over Mr Stoiber's departure.
The chancellor praised Mr Stoiber at the CSU congress, but will be relieved that one of her most powerful political irritants has stepped aside.
Mr Beckstein - due to be elected premier on October 9 - promised "continuity" with Mr Stoiber's mix of liberal economic policy and arch-conservative social values.
In the short term any changes will be more in style than substance. Despite his tough image Mr Beckstein has a more genial, inclusive approach than the austere Mr Stoiber, who lacks Bavaria's famous joviality. Mr Huber, a former tax inspector seen as competent but uncharismatic, promised to retain the CSU's absolute majority, in place since 1962, in state elections next year.
In the longer term the two men - rivals until a few months ago - may struggle to maintain Mr Stoiber's impressive record. His decisions in recent years to sell off most of the state's assets and introduce long-term austerity measures leave them with only limited room for manoeuvre. Mr Stoiber's pledge, only days before stepping down, that Bavaria would help build a high-tech rail link from Munich airport to the centre of the regional capital could also prove costly.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
FT.com / Companies / Telecoms - Nokia takes big step into mobile content
FT.com / Companies / Telecoms - Nokia takes big step into mobile content
Nokia takes big step into mobile content
By Robert Anderson in Stockholm and Paul Taylor in New York
Published: October 1 2007 19:44 | Last updated: October 1 2007 23:55
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile telephone manufacturer, is to take a giant step into the fast-growing mobile content and services market by acquiring Navteq, the leading provider of digital map information, for $8.1bn in cash.
Nokia, which is trying both to diversify away from handsets and offer customers more reasons to buy its handsets, will pay $78 in cash for each Navteq share, a 34 per cent premium to the price a month ago when takeover speculation started to push the shares higher.
The deal is the biggest in Nokia’s latest spending spree. In recent months, the Finnish handset maker has announced plans to acquire Loudeye, a digital music company, for $60m, Twango, a social networking community, for a reported $100m, and Enpocket, a mobile marketing company, for an undisclosed sum.
Analysts suggested the price was expensive, given that TomTom, the market leader in car navigation devices, recently agreed to pay €1.8bn ($2.6bn) for Tele Atlas, the number two in the digital map market.
However, they noted that Nokia might have been forced to raise its offer to outbid potential buyers, rumoured to have included both Google and Microsoft.
To justify the price, analysts suggested Nokia would have to work hard to ensure that Navteq retained its customer base.
Nokia believes location and content services will be key in future mobile services, allowing users to find restaurants and locate friends nearby in real time, while providing opportunities for targeted advertising.
US-based Navteq, which was founded 22 years ago and is headed by chief executive Judson Green, has 3,000 employees and reported revenues of $582m last year, creates the digital maps and content that power GPS navigation and location-based devices in cars, on websites, mobile phones, and for governments and businesses.
Nokia will finance half the acquisition, expected to be completed next year, from its €8.3bn cash pile and half from loans.
Nokia’s shares on Monday closed down €1.54 at €26.23.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Nokia takes big step into mobile content
By Robert Anderson in Stockholm and Paul Taylor in New York
Published: October 1 2007 19:44 | Last updated: October 1 2007 23:55
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile telephone manufacturer, is to take a giant step into the fast-growing mobile content and services market by acquiring Navteq, the leading provider of digital map information, for $8.1bn in cash.
Nokia, which is trying both to diversify away from handsets and offer customers more reasons to buy its handsets, will pay $78 in cash for each Navteq share, a 34 per cent premium to the price a month ago when takeover speculation started to push the shares higher.
The deal is the biggest in Nokia’s latest spending spree. In recent months, the Finnish handset maker has announced plans to acquire Loudeye, a digital music company, for $60m, Twango, a social networking community, for a reported $100m, and Enpocket, a mobile marketing company, for an undisclosed sum.
Analysts suggested the price was expensive, given that TomTom, the market leader in car navigation devices, recently agreed to pay €1.8bn ($2.6bn) for Tele Atlas, the number two in the digital map market.
However, they noted that Nokia might have been forced to raise its offer to outbid potential buyers, rumoured to have included both Google and Microsoft.
To justify the price, analysts suggested Nokia would have to work hard to ensure that Navteq retained its customer base.
Nokia believes location and content services will be key in future mobile services, allowing users to find restaurants and locate friends nearby in real time, while providing opportunities for targeted advertising.
US-based Navteq, which was founded 22 years ago and is headed by chief executive Judson Green, has 3,000 employees and reported revenues of $582m last year, creates the digital maps and content that power GPS navigation and location-based devices in cars, on websites, mobile phones, and for governments and businesses.
Nokia will finance half the acquisition, expected to be completed next year, from its €8.3bn cash pile and half from loans.
Nokia’s shares on Monday closed down €1.54 at €26.23.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Recommind
Recommind
Recommind als Top - "Visionär" im Magic Quadrant of Information Access 2007 platziert
Rheinbach/Bonn, 28.09.2007 - Recommind GmbH, einer der weltweit führenden Anbieter intelligenter Suchmaschinentechnologie und Lösungen zur vollautomatischen Indexierung von Dokumenten in Expertenqualität, konnte in diesem Jahr abermals seine Platzierung im „Magic Quadrant of Information Access 2007“ des global anerkannten Analysten Gartner Inc. verbessern und setzt damit seine Erfolgsgeschichte fort.
Das Marktforschungsinstitut Gartner Inc. mit über 45.000 Kunden in 75 Ländern setzt zur Visualisierung der Ergebnisse seiner Marktanalysen sogenannte Magic-Quadrants ein, die verdeutlichen, wie Anbieter sich innerhalb eines Marktes positionieren. Die Einordnung erfolgt in einer der vier Quadranten: Leader, Visionäre, Herausforderer und Nischenakteure.
Recommind hatte neben der neuen Version 5.0 seiner Kernplattform MindServer™ in den letzten Monaten die neuen Produkte Axcelerate eDiscovery™ und Decisiv Email™ vorgestellt, die nach eigenen Angaben Meilensteine im Bereich der rechtssicheren Ablage und der automatisierten Email-Archivierung sind. Daneben konnte Recommind sowohl im europäischen als auch im US-amerikanischen Markt mehrere bedeutende Vertragsabschlüsse erzielen.
Der herstellerunabhängige Gartner-Report bietet eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf den derzeitigen Stand eines Unternehmens hinsichtlich Markt- und Kundenverständnis, der Fähigkeit, komplexe Projekte zu realisieren, der technischen Weitsicht und der zukunftsorientierten Pläne des Managements. Gartner Inc. spricht keine Empfehlungen aus.
Recommind als Top - "Visionär" im Magic Quadrant of Information Access 2007 platziert
Rheinbach/Bonn, 28.09.2007 - Recommind GmbH, einer der weltweit führenden Anbieter intelligenter Suchmaschinentechnologie und Lösungen zur vollautomatischen Indexierung von Dokumenten in Expertenqualität, konnte in diesem Jahr abermals seine Platzierung im „Magic Quadrant of Information Access 2007“ des global anerkannten Analysten Gartner Inc. verbessern und setzt damit seine Erfolgsgeschichte fort.
Das Marktforschungsinstitut Gartner Inc. mit über 45.000 Kunden in 75 Ländern setzt zur Visualisierung der Ergebnisse seiner Marktanalysen sogenannte Magic-Quadrants ein, die verdeutlichen, wie Anbieter sich innerhalb eines Marktes positionieren. Die Einordnung erfolgt in einer der vier Quadranten: Leader, Visionäre, Herausforderer und Nischenakteure.
Recommind hatte neben der neuen Version 5.0 seiner Kernplattform MindServer™ in den letzten Monaten die neuen Produkte Axcelerate eDiscovery™ und Decisiv Email™ vorgestellt, die nach eigenen Angaben Meilensteine im Bereich der rechtssicheren Ablage und der automatisierten Email-Archivierung sind. Daneben konnte Recommind sowohl im europäischen als auch im US-amerikanischen Markt mehrere bedeutende Vertragsabschlüsse erzielen.
Der herstellerunabhängige Gartner-Report bietet eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf den derzeitigen Stand eines Unternehmens hinsichtlich Markt- und Kundenverständnis, der Fähigkeit, komplexe Projekte zu realisieren, der technischen Weitsicht und der zukunftsorientierten Pläne des Managements. Gartner Inc. spricht keine Empfehlungen aus.
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007
This Magic Quadrant assesses content management vendors and their enterprise content management product suites' completeness, maturity and integration. As firms deploy content infrastructure and some core functions become commoditized, these aspects will be crucial.
This Magic Quadrant assesses content management vendors and their enterprise content management product suites' completeness, maturity and integration. As firms deploy content infrastructure and some core functions become commoditized, these aspects will be crucial.
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft to release search update
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft to release search update
Microsoft to release search update
By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: September 27 2007 05:21 | Last updated: September 27 2007 05:21
Microsoft, which has the third ranked US web search service, will release on Thursday a major update in an attempt to win market share from Google and Yahoo.
The company said the changes to Live Search represented a significant advancement in its core technology and the consumer experience.
The new version has specialised content in the entertainment, shopping, gealth and local categories. The company said up to 40 per cent of searches fell into these “verticals.”
“Our engineering focus is on the areas that matter most to our 185m consumers who use our service every month,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice-president of the search and advertising platform group.
“With the core platform in place, we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time.”
Google had a 56.5 per cent share of searches in the US in August, up 1.3 percentage points on the previous month, according to comScore.
Yahoo’s share was 23.3 per cent and Microsoft’s was 11.3 per cent, followed by Time Warner, including AOL, and Interactive Corporation’s Ask network, which both took 4.5 per cent.
Microsoft said the index of web pages on the new Live Search was four times larger and more relevant results would be returned. They would be easier to read in a new, cleaner user interface.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Microsoft to release search update
By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: September 27 2007 05:21 | Last updated: September 27 2007 05:21
Microsoft, which has the third ranked US web search service, will release on Thursday a major update in an attempt to win market share from Google and Yahoo.
The company said the changes to Live Search represented a significant advancement in its core technology and the consumer experience.
The new version has specialised content in the entertainment, shopping, gealth and local categories. The company said up to 40 per cent of searches fell into these “verticals.”
“Our engineering focus is on the areas that matter most to our 185m consumers who use our service every month,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice-president of the search and advertising platform group.
“With the core platform in place, we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time.”
Google had a 56.5 per cent share of searches in the US in August, up 1.3 percentage points on the previous month, according to comScore.
Yahoo’s share was 23.3 per cent and Microsoft’s was 11.3 per cent, followed by Time Warner, including AOL, and Interactive Corporation’s Ask network, which both took 4.5 per cent.
Microsoft said the index of web pages on the new Live Search was four times larger and more relevant results would be returned. They would be easier to read in a new, cleaner user interface.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wissen und Fachkräfte in einem people_ready business
Wissen und Fachkräfte in einem people_ready business
Als Unternehmen vor Jahren versuchten, die Erfahrungen und Kenntnisse ihrer Mitarbeiter zu nutzen, sammelten sie diese Informationen in großen Datensystemen, wo sie zum Abruf bereitstanden. Doch kaum jemand griff auf das digitalisierte Wissen zu. Zu unhandlich, unstrukturiert und mit überflüssigen Informationen beladen kamen die Datenbanken daher. Zudem fürchteten die Mitarbeiter, überflüssig zu werden, wenn sie ihr persönliches Know-how dem Unternehmen und Kollegen zur Verfügung stellten. So blieb dem sogenannten Knowledge-Management der durchschlagende Erfolg verwehrt.
Als Unternehmen vor Jahren versuchten, die Erfahrungen und Kenntnisse ihrer Mitarbeiter zu nutzen, sammelten sie diese Informationen in großen Datensystemen, wo sie zum Abruf bereitstanden. Doch kaum jemand griff auf das digitalisierte Wissen zu. Zu unhandlich, unstrukturiert und mit überflüssigen Informationen beladen kamen die Datenbanken daher. Zudem fürchteten die Mitarbeiter, überflüssig zu werden, wenn sie ihr persönliches Know-how dem Unternehmen und Kollegen zur Verfügung stellten. So blieb dem sogenannten Knowledge-Management der durchschlagende Erfolg verwehrt.
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - Google verspricht Tausende neue Jobs
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - Google verspricht Tausende neue Jobs
Google will seine Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeit in Europa kräftig ausbauen und auf US-Niveau bringen. Deshalb will der Internetkonzern europaweit zusätzlich mehrere Tausend Techniker und IT-Entwickler einstellen.
Google will seine Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeit in Europa kräftig ausbauen und auf US-Niveau bringen. Deshalb will der Internetkonzern europaweit zusätzlich mehrere Tausend Techniker und IT-Entwickler einstellen.
Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2007
Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2007
The portal product market continues to mature, with most enterprises evaluating the products provided by a core group of commercial enterprise software vendors. Several horizontal portal vendors are leveraging Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to further differentiate their products.
The portal product market continues to mature, with most enterprises evaluating the products provided by a core group of commercial enterprise software vendors. Several horizontal portal vendors are leveraging Web 2.0 technologies and concepts to further differentiate their products.
Monday, September 24, 2007
4. abaXX Kompetenzforum: Portale und Business Process Management in der Praxis
4. abaXX Kompetenzforum: Portale und Business Process Management in der Praxis
Zum vierten Mal lädt der Softwareanbieter abaXX Technology AG am 24. Okt. 2007 zu einem Kompetenzforum nach Stuttgart ein. Anwender aus unterschiedlichen Branchen, etwa die BMW Bank AG, berichten über aktuelle Projekte aus dem Bereich Portale und BPM
Zum vierten Mal lädt der Softwareanbieter abaXX Technology AG am 24. Okt. 2007 zu einem Kompetenzforum nach Stuttgart ein. Anwender aus unterschiedlichen Branchen, etwa die BMW Bank AG, berichten über aktuelle Projekte aus dem Bereich Portale und BPM
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
“Folksonomy, Keywords, & Tags: Social & Democratic User Interaction in Enterprise Content Management"
“Folksonomy, Keywords, & Tags: Social & Democratic User Interaction in Enterprise Content Management"
An Oracle Business & Technology White Paper
Updated July 2007
An organization’s production of content is only as effective as its ability to find the right information. Businesses are faced with the challenge of relevance – the ability to provide the right content to the right people at the right time. Many of the tactics that solve the continuing challenge of relevancy include ECM (enterprise content management) technology that incorporates folksonomies and tagging, a fully realized and unified approach that is able to be utilized across the ECM framework.
Is your organization buckling under the growing weight of the information explosion? If so, you're not alone. Read about the state of today’s information relevancy problem and how Oracle Universal Content Management’s folksonomy offering establishes a complete solution.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
MKBnet
MKBnet: "7-09-2007 Tweederde Europese bedrijven zoekt begeleiding voor mondiale samenwerking Tweederde van de Europese bedrijven zoekt begeleiding om de mondiale samenwerking efficiënter te maken. De belangrijkste technologieën om dit mogelijk te maken zijn `enterprise search` en virtuele werkplekken. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van Coleman Parkes Research. Het onderzoek is uitgevoerd in opdracht van het internationale consultancybureau Avanade. Deze Europese bedrijven willen met een partner naar manieren zoeken om effectiever mensen met elkaar en met informatie te verbinden. De meerderheid van de bedrijven zet reeds e-mail, videoconferenties, intranet en extranet in. Ze willen echter een stap verder gaan en een combinatie van e-mail, stem, tekst en aanwezigheidstechnologie realiseren. Andre Huizing, general manager bij Avanade Nederland bv, stelt dat een volledig geïntegreerde benadering van digitale samenwerking de hoogste prioriteit heeft bij organisaties. Volgens Huizing werd het grootste deel van de projecten betreffende informatiedeling uitgevoerd als testproject op afdelingsniveau. Tegenwoordig wordt 67% van de collaboration technologieprojecten uitgevoerd op het niveau van senior management en bestuur. Hij stelt dat een scheiding tussen communicatie en IT niet meer nodig is, aangezien het gebruik van voip-netwerken naar verwachting groeit met 61%."
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Autonomy Gains 'Leader' Position in Gartner Report
Autonomy Gains 'Leader' Position in Gartner Report
Keeping you fully abreast of the analyst reports germane to your chosen lifestyle, we can report that Autonomy Corporation plc, a vendor of CRM and other infrastructure software, has announced that industry analyst group Gartner (News - Alert) has positioned Autonomy in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2007 Information Access Technology Magic Quadrant Report.
Keeping you fully abreast of the analyst reports germane to your chosen lifestyle, we can report that Autonomy Corporation plc, a vendor of CRM and other infrastructure software, has announced that industry analyst group Gartner (News - Alert) has positioned Autonomy in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2007 Information Access Technology Magic Quadrant Report.
AUTONOMY POSITIONED IN THE LEADERS QUADRANT OF THE 2007 INFORMATION ACCESS TECHNOLOGY MAGIC QUADRANT
AUTONOMY POSITIONED IN THE LEADERS QUADRANT OF THE 2007 INFORMATION ACCESS TECHNOLOGY MAGIC QUADRANT
Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, Calif. - September 12, 2007 - Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced that industry analyst group Gartner, Inc. has positioned Autonomy in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2007 Information Access Technology Magic Quadrant Report(1). The analysis is based on Autonomy's "Ability to Execute" and "Completeness of Vision".
Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, Calif. - September 12, 2007 - Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced that industry analyst group Gartner, Inc. has positioned Autonomy in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2007 Information Access Technology Magic Quadrant Report(1). The analysis is based on Autonomy's "Ability to Execute" and "Completeness of Vision".
IT does matter – gerade im Enterprise 2.0 - IT-Strategien - computerwoche.de
IT does matter – gerade im Enterprise 2.0 - IT-Strategien - computerwoche.de
Auf dem "European ICT Forum" von IDC erläuterte der Trendforscher und Buchautor Don Tapscott den von ihm geschaffenen Begriff "Wikinomics".
Auf dem "European ICT Forum" von IDC erläuterte der Trendforscher und Buchautor Don Tapscott den von ihm geschaffenen Begriff "Wikinomics".
Thursday, September 06, 2007
IDC konstatiert großes Interesse an Web-2.0-Technik und grüner IT - Produkte + Technik - Hardware - computerwoche.de
IDC konstatiert großes Interesse an Web-2.0-Technik und grüner IT - Produkte + Technik - Hardware - computerwoche.de
Die Entscheidungsträger beschäftigen sich zunehmend mit umweltverträglicher Informationstechnik und dem Thema "Enterprise 2.0", so die Marktforscher.
Die Entscheidungsträger beschäftigen sich zunehmend mit umweltverträglicher Informationstechnik und dem Thema "Enterprise 2.0", so die Marktforscher.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
FT.com / Companies / IT - Race for ‘next big thing’ in Silicon Valley
FT.com / Companies / IT - Race for ‘next big thing’ in Silicon Valley
Race for ‘next big thing’ in Silicon Valley
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: September 5 2007 20:15 | Last updated: September 5 2007 20:15
Silicon Valley’s annual coming-out season for tech start-ups is about to turn into a stampede.
In the next few weeks, the wraps will be removed from some 150 new companies and products at a handful of events in California competing to identify the tech industry’s Next Big Thing.
The race to find the Valley’s hottest new idea reflects growing investor interest triggered by the high prices paid for recent internet start-ups such as YouTube, as well as the increasingly fierce Darwinian struggle among the newcomers to get noticed.
The large number of companies formed around hot trends such as web search, social networking and online video has added spice to the importance of the autumn events, according to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
“At this stage of the frothiness, it’s extremely difficult to get attention,” says Munjal Shah, founder of Like.com, an image search engine.
“The capital cost of starting a business today is very low,” says Chris Shipley, producer of Demo, one of the first tech events. “We’re seeing a lot of ideas make it from the spare bedroom to a showcase or the marketplace very quickly.”
Like.com was the sole start-up featured two years ago at a party thrown by Mike Arrington, whose widely read TechCrunch blog has made him the Valley’s latest kingmaker.
For his first formal conference this month, Mr Arrington has just doubled the number of companies presenting to 40 because, according to his website, there are “just too many strong start-ups”.
Other events that hope to unveil hot companies and products in the coming weeks include the Web 2.0 conference, the event that gave its name to the latest wave of online innovation, and Demo, which has expanded to two events a year.
The scramble for attention is another symptom of Silicon Valley’s latest start-up boom. The amount of venture capital being invested in the US is at its highest level since 2001 and it has led to a rash of “me-too” companies.
The flood of copycat companies is a sign of the over-heated phase of the investment cycle, according to observers.
However, for most of those that make it to the big showcase events, the attention from being in the spotlight is likely to be fleeting.
Being named “the coolest, hottest thing” can produce a “drug-induced traffic high” as users rush to try out the latest websites.
Once that initial surge of interest falls off, the hard work of building a lasting business really begins.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Race for ‘next big thing’ in Silicon Valley
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: September 5 2007 20:15 | Last updated: September 5 2007 20:15
Silicon Valley’s annual coming-out season for tech start-ups is about to turn into a stampede.
In the next few weeks, the wraps will be removed from some 150 new companies and products at a handful of events in California competing to identify the tech industry’s Next Big Thing.
The race to find the Valley’s hottest new idea reflects growing investor interest triggered by the high prices paid for recent internet start-ups such as YouTube, as well as the increasingly fierce Darwinian struggle among the newcomers to get noticed.
The large number of companies formed around hot trends such as web search, social networking and online video has added spice to the importance of the autumn events, according to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
“At this stage of the frothiness, it’s extremely difficult to get attention,” says Munjal Shah, founder of Like.com, an image search engine.
“The capital cost of starting a business today is very low,” says Chris Shipley, producer of Demo, one of the first tech events. “We’re seeing a lot of ideas make it from the spare bedroom to a showcase or the marketplace very quickly.”
Like.com was the sole start-up featured two years ago at a party thrown by Mike Arrington, whose widely read TechCrunch blog has made him the Valley’s latest kingmaker.
For his first formal conference this month, Mr Arrington has just doubled the number of companies presenting to 40 because, according to his website, there are “just too many strong start-ups”.
Other events that hope to unveil hot companies and products in the coming weeks include the Web 2.0 conference, the event that gave its name to the latest wave of online innovation, and Demo, which has expanded to two events a year.
The scramble for attention is another symptom of Silicon Valley’s latest start-up boom. The amount of venture capital being invested in the US is at its highest level since 2001 and it has led to a rash of “me-too” companies.
The flood of copycat companies is a sign of the over-heated phase of the investment cycle, according to observers.
However, for most of those that make it to the big showcase events, the attention from being in the spotlight is likely to be fleeting.
Being named “the coolest, hottest thing” can produce a “drug-induced traffic high” as users rush to try out the latest websites.
Once that initial surge of interest falls off, the hard work of building a lasting business really begins.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft loses Office software standards vote
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft loses Office software standards vote
Microsoft loses Office software standards vote
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: September 5 2007 00:38 | Last updated: September 5 2007 00:38
Microsoft has failed in its initial attempt to have some of the key new technology in its latest Windows and Office software recognised as an international standard.
However, the software company claimed strong momentum for its efforts and predicted that it would overcome the remaining hurdles by early next year.
Microsoft is seeking recognition for the formats for documents and spreadsheets contained in its new Office software, known as Open XML.
Winning approval is considered essential since many governments are otherwise expected to balk at the new Microsoft technology, opting instead for the rival ODF format, which already has international recognition.
Though technology standard-setting efforts like this seldom attract much public attention, Microsoft’s push is seen as a vital part of its attempt to win broad support for the latest versions of its key desktop software products.
Also, the company’s controversial international campaign to win support, by getting supporters of its position to take part in national-level discussions about the issue in many countries, has drawn allegations of abuse from rivals such as IBM.
The International Standards Organisation said Tuesday that only 53 per cent of countries that voted on whether Microsoft’s technology should be adopted as a standard had supported the move at this stage, short of the two-thirds majority needed.
Also, 26 per cent had voted against the plan, while under ISO rules an initiative cannot be approved if more than 25 per cent vote against.
Microsoft will get the chance to propose changes to its application at a meeting in February.
If those changes prove insufficient, it will be forced to follow a slower application process that could take as long as two to three years to complete.
Even a delay at this stage is likely to discourage governments from moving ahead to buy new Microsoft software, claimed Marino Marcich, managing director of the rival ODF Alliance.
However, Tom Robertson, general manager of inter-operability and standards at Microsoft, denied that the delay would hit sales.
He claimed that the initial ISO vote was “a very positive sign of momentum” towards ultimate support.
He said that standards bodies in some countries, such as Ireland, had indicated their support in principle, even though they voted against at this stage, suggesting that Microsoft will be able to achieve its objective.
Microsoft’s opponents, meanwhile, claim that the company will have to make substantial changes to its application before gaining full recognition, for instance by tying the formats less closely to its other software.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Microsoft loses Office software standards vote
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: September 5 2007 00:38 | Last updated: September 5 2007 00:38
Microsoft has failed in its initial attempt to have some of the key new technology in its latest Windows and Office software recognised as an international standard.
However, the software company claimed strong momentum for its efforts and predicted that it would overcome the remaining hurdles by early next year.
Microsoft is seeking recognition for the formats for documents and spreadsheets contained in its new Office software, known as Open XML.
Winning approval is considered essential since many governments are otherwise expected to balk at the new Microsoft technology, opting instead for the rival ODF format, which already has international recognition.
Though technology standard-setting efforts like this seldom attract much public attention, Microsoft’s push is seen as a vital part of its attempt to win broad support for the latest versions of its key desktop software products.
Also, the company’s controversial international campaign to win support, by getting supporters of its position to take part in national-level discussions about the issue in many countries, has drawn allegations of abuse from rivals such as IBM.
The International Standards Organisation said Tuesday that only 53 per cent of countries that voted on whether Microsoft’s technology should be adopted as a standard had supported the move at this stage, short of the two-thirds majority needed.
Also, 26 per cent had voted against the plan, while under ISO rules an initiative cannot be approved if more than 25 per cent vote against.
Microsoft will get the chance to propose changes to its application at a meeting in February.
If those changes prove insufficient, it will be forced to follow a slower application process that could take as long as two to three years to complete.
Even a delay at this stage is likely to discourage governments from moving ahead to buy new Microsoft software, claimed Marino Marcich, managing director of the rival ODF Alliance.
However, Tom Robertson, general manager of inter-operability and standards at Microsoft, denied that the delay would hit sales.
He claimed that the initial ISO vote was “a very positive sign of momentum” towards ultimate support.
He said that standards bodies in some countries, such as Ireland, had indicated their support in principle, even though they voted against at this stage, suggesting that Microsoft will be able to achieve its objective.
Microsoft’s opponents, meanwhile, claim that the company will have to make substantial changes to its application before gaining full recognition, for instance by tying the formats less closely to its other software.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007
Microsoft Expands IM Functions With Parlano Buy
Microsoft Expands IM Functions With Parlano Buy
As part of its aggressive drive to propagate its instant-messaging system, Microsoft has filled a functional hole by acquiring Parlano, a vendor with strong tabbed and group chat capabilities.
As part of its aggressive drive to propagate its instant-messaging system, Microsoft has filled a functional hole by acquiring Parlano, a vendor with strong tabbed and group chat capabilities.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Recommind
Recommind
MindServer 5.0: Recommind stellt neue Web 3.0-Generation intelligenter Suchmaschinen vor.
Patentiertes Verfahren ermöglicht noch effizientere zentrale Informations-kategorisierung und relevanzorientierte dezentrale Suche über alle Datenquellen und –formate in komplexen, auch standortübergreifenden IT-Systemen.
Rheinbach/Bonn, 28.08.2007 - Recommind GmbH, einer der führenden deutschen Entwickler von intelligenten Suchmaschinen, stellt heute mit der Version 5.0 seiner Kategorisierungs- und Suchplattform einen Quantensprung in der automatisierten Informationsverarbeitung vor. MindServer 5.0 basiert auf den jüngsten wissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen der „machine learning“-Forschung und ermöglicht die höchste Qualität im Bereich der Content-Analyse, die es derzeit am Markt gibt.
"Die fehlende Komponente beim Information Retrieval ist Kontext. Woher weiß ich, was der Inhalt eines Textes ist? Was macht genau diesen Text besonders wertvoll? Ist dieser Text für mich als individuellen User wichtig? Das alles sind Fragen, die von der überwiegenden Anzahl an Tools, die am Markt erhältlich sind, nicht einmal im Ansatz beantwortet werden können." So fasst Dr. Jan Puzicha, CTO und wissenschaftlicher Leiter der Recommind, die Lage im Bereich Informationsmanagement zusammen.
MindServer 5.0 identifiziert unabhängig von Sprache und Themenbereich automatisch Konzepte, die ein Dokument beschreiben. Mit der MindServer-Plattform ist es möglich, menschliche Experten-Qualität in Bezug auf Suchergebnisse und Content-Strukturierung bei gleichzeitig höchstem Automatisierungsgrad zu erreichen, wie auch eine Fraunhofer-Studie belegt.
"Unternehmensinterne Informationsstrukturen sind schon heute so komplex, dass es den Knowledge Managern schwerfällt, Millionen Informationen in dutzenden unterschiedlichen intern gewachsenen Systemen effektiv zu handeln" so Dr. Puzicha.
Die MindServer-Produktfamilie, die bereits erfolgreich bei u.a. dem ZDF, Bertelsmann, der Bauer Verlagsgruppe, Novartis Pharma, U.S. National Library of Medicine etc. im Einsatz ist, verschlagwortet interne und externe Informationen automatisch nach frei definierbaren Kategoriensystemen, reichert die Dokumente mit zusätzlichen Metadaten an und stellt sie der zentral über alle Datenquellen aufgesetzten Suchmaschine für die patentierte, kontextuelle Suche zur Verfügung. Aufwändige manuelle Vorarbeiten zum Training des Systems sind beim MindServer 5.0 nicht mehr notwendig.
Die künstliche Intelligenz der Suchmaschine versetzt den Anwender trotz kurzer 1- oder 2-Wort-Anfragen in die Lage mittels Smart-Filtering die Ergebnismenge der Suchanfrage in wenigen Schritten von mehreren zehntausend oder gar millionen Dokumenten auf die wenigen relevanten, von ihm gesuchten Dokumente herunter zu brechen.
In unseren Tests bot MindServer schnelle, treffende Suchergebnisse, nahtlos über die Informationsquellen hinweg. MindServer wird unsere Dokumentenspeicher öffnen, sie einfacher durchsuchbar machen und unsere Anstrengungen unterstützen, Information global verfügbar zu machen. Ich glaube, dass schnelle, intelligente Abfrage unserer internen Dokumente kritisch dafür ist, unseren Klienten Rat und Anleitung rechtzeitig und in hoher Qualität zur Verfügung zu stellen.," – Brant Freer, Senior Counsel bei Miller Canfield, Chairman des Information Systems Committee und Vorsitzender der Knowledge Management Aktivitäten.
Mit Single-Sign-On und dem integrierten Security-Modul, das sämtliche User-spezifischen Zugangsberechtigungen der „darunterliegenden“ Datenquellen einhält und überwacht ist MindServer 5.0 als Lösung für vielschichtige, komplexe Systeme mit verteilten Datenquellen und -formaten konzipiert und kann nahtlos in bestehende IT-Landschaften integriert werden.
MindServer 5.0: Recommind stellt neue Web 3.0-Generation intelligenter Suchmaschinen vor.
Patentiertes Verfahren ermöglicht noch effizientere zentrale Informations-kategorisierung und relevanzorientierte dezentrale Suche über alle Datenquellen und –formate in komplexen, auch standortübergreifenden IT-Systemen.
Rheinbach/Bonn, 28.08.2007 - Recommind GmbH, einer der führenden deutschen Entwickler von intelligenten Suchmaschinen, stellt heute mit der Version 5.0 seiner Kategorisierungs- und Suchplattform einen Quantensprung in der automatisierten Informationsverarbeitung vor. MindServer 5.0 basiert auf den jüngsten wissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen der „machine learning“-Forschung und ermöglicht die höchste Qualität im Bereich der Content-Analyse, die es derzeit am Markt gibt.
"Die fehlende Komponente beim Information Retrieval ist Kontext. Woher weiß ich, was der Inhalt eines Textes ist? Was macht genau diesen Text besonders wertvoll? Ist dieser Text für mich als individuellen User wichtig? Das alles sind Fragen, die von der überwiegenden Anzahl an Tools, die am Markt erhältlich sind, nicht einmal im Ansatz beantwortet werden können." So fasst Dr. Jan Puzicha, CTO und wissenschaftlicher Leiter der Recommind, die Lage im Bereich Informationsmanagement zusammen.
MindServer 5.0 identifiziert unabhängig von Sprache und Themenbereich automatisch Konzepte, die ein Dokument beschreiben. Mit der MindServer-Plattform ist es möglich, menschliche Experten-Qualität in Bezug auf Suchergebnisse und Content-Strukturierung bei gleichzeitig höchstem Automatisierungsgrad zu erreichen, wie auch eine Fraunhofer-Studie belegt.
"Unternehmensinterne Informationsstrukturen sind schon heute so komplex, dass es den Knowledge Managern schwerfällt, Millionen Informationen in dutzenden unterschiedlichen intern gewachsenen Systemen effektiv zu handeln" so Dr. Puzicha.
Die MindServer-Produktfamilie, die bereits erfolgreich bei u.a. dem ZDF, Bertelsmann, der Bauer Verlagsgruppe, Novartis Pharma, U.S. National Library of Medicine etc. im Einsatz ist, verschlagwortet interne und externe Informationen automatisch nach frei definierbaren Kategoriensystemen, reichert die Dokumente mit zusätzlichen Metadaten an und stellt sie der zentral über alle Datenquellen aufgesetzten Suchmaschine für die patentierte, kontextuelle Suche zur Verfügung. Aufwändige manuelle Vorarbeiten zum Training des Systems sind beim MindServer 5.0 nicht mehr notwendig.
Die künstliche Intelligenz der Suchmaschine versetzt den Anwender trotz kurzer 1- oder 2-Wort-Anfragen in die Lage mittels Smart-Filtering die Ergebnismenge der Suchanfrage in wenigen Schritten von mehreren zehntausend oder gar millionen Dokumenten auf die wenigen relevanten, von ihm gesuchten Dokumente herunter zu brechen.
In unseren Tests bot MindServer schnelle, treffende Suchergebnisse, nahtlos über die Informationsquellen hinweg. MindServer wird unsere Dokumentenspeicher öffnen, sie einfacher durchsuchbar machen und unsere Anstrengungen unterstützen, Information global verfügbar zu machen. Ich glaube, dass schnelle, intelligente Abfrage unserer internen Dokumente kritisch dafür ist, unseren Klienten Rat und Anleitung rechtzeitig und in hoher Qualität zur Verfügung zu stellen.," – Brant Freer, Senior Counsel bei Miller Canfield, Chairman des Information Systems Committee und Vorsitzender der Knowledge Management Aktivitäten.
Mit Single-Sign-On und dem integrierten Security-Modul, das sämtliche User-spezifischen Zugangsberechtigungen der „darunterliegenden“ Datenquellen einhält und überwacht ist MindServer 5.0 als Lösung für vielschichtige, komplexe Systeme mit verteilten Datenquellen und -formaten konzipiert und kann nahtlos in bestehende IT-Landschaften integriert werden.
Windows Live Deal Benefits Microsoft and Nokia, Not Operators
Windows Live Deal Benefits Microsoft and Nokia, Not Operators
Microsoft and Nokia have agreed to bundle Windows Live services on some Nokia mobile phones. The deal is good news for these two companies and their customers, but cuts network operators out of the value chain.
Microsoft and Nokia have agreed to bundle Windows Live services on some Nokia mobile phones. The deal is good news for these two companies and their customers, but cuts network operators out of the value chain.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Talking Exit Strategies With Montgomery & Co. | AMR Research
Talking Exit Strategies With Montgomery & Co. | AMR Research
Best valuations: must-have products and infrastructure vendors
We switched from exits to valuations. In our 2005 interview, Mr. Cooper said valuations had been holding at “1.5 to 3.0 times last-twelve-months (LTM) revenue.” This still holds true, though there are two exceptions. Some buyers will pay any price for a strategic acquisition. As proof, look at Citrix’s $500M offer for XenSource, a virtualization vendor said to have less than $5M in LTM sales. That’s a 12.5 multiple over the $40M the VCs put in, and more than a hundred times LTM revenue. The second exception is the desirable infrastructure that vendors are going for three to five times LTM revenue.
We closed the call with a discussion of the hot and cold M&A sectors. As for the hard to sell, security software tops the list of frigid. There was a sense that market had already consolidated.
Best bets: governance and compliance, SaaS, analytics, “platform extensions”
The hot list began with governance and compliance, albeit with a twist. This is a highly-converged offering that consists of content, business intelligence/performance management, and business process management. This was followed by SaaS, analytics, “platform extensions” (software adding to or building off of platforms by Google or salesforce.com), virtualization and data center optimization, and tight, vertical-specific offerings for financial services (such as credit card transaction processing) or healthcare IT.
Best valuations: must-have products and infrastructure vendors
We switched from exits to valuations. In our 2005 interview, Mr. Cooper said valuations had been holding at “1.5 to 3.0 times last-twelve-months (LTM) revenue.” This still holds true, though there are two exceptions. Some buyers will pay any price for a strategic acquisition. As proof, look at Citrix’s $500M offer for XenSource, a virtualization vendor said to have less than $5M in LTM sales. That’s a 12.5 multiple over the $40M the VCs put in, and more than a hundred times LTM revenue. The second exception is the desirable infrastructure that vendors are going for three to five times LTM revenue.
We closed the call with a discussion of the hot and cold M&A sectors. As for the hard to sell, security software tops the list of frigid. There was a sense that market had already consolidated.
Best bets: governance and compliance, SaaS, analytics, “platform extensions”
The hot list began with governance and compliance, albeit with a twist. This is a highly-converged offering that consists of content, business intelligence/performance management, and business process management. This was followed by SaaS, analytics, “platform extensions” (software adding to or building off of platforms by Google or salesforce.com), virtualization and data center optimization, and tight, vertical-specific offerings for financial services (such as credit card transaction processing) or healthcare IT.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Open Text Extends Alliance With Microsoft, Announces New Comprehensive Solution for Law Firms
News - Open Text Corporation
Open Text Extends Alliance With Microsoft, Announces New Comprehensive Solution for Law Firms
New Offering Enables Law Firms To Utilize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Matter Lifecycle Management, While Mitigating Legal and Compliance Risks
Open Text Extends Alliance With Microsoft, Announces New Comprehensive Solution for Law Firms
New Offering Enables Law Firms To Utilize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Matter Lifecycle Management, While Mitigating Legal and Compliance Risks
Monday, August 20, 2007
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint > Information Management > Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint > Information Management > Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint
The new product, available next year, would would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint.
By Antone Gonsalves
Open Text on Monday said it would offer law firms a content management system based entirely on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The new product, unveiled at the ILTA legal conference in Orlando, Fla., would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint. Open Text currently sells its own product for the legal market called LegalKEY.
SharePoint is used by law firms for broadly used intranet, extranet and collaboration capabilities, while Open Text technologies have been tailored to specific law firm processes, Open Text officials said. Under the combined offering, SharePoint could become a firm's central content repository, and lawyers and staff could use its interface to access Open Text's practice-centric views of content and virtual file cabinets.
The integrated product is expected to help firms manage new business and potential conflicts of interest, establish ethical walls separating client cases, and provide records management and archiving that meets compliance requirements. In addition, users can perform federated searches across matters, and automatically assign metadata to allow correct classification of documents and pre-population of relevant content. The single point of content management through SharePoint also means that firms can apply retention schedules across repositories in a consistent and centralized manner.
Open Text two years ago launched an initiative to combine Microsoft productivity tools with its enterprise content management software and vertical-market expertise. Earlier this year, Open Text launched software integrated with SharePoint for managing U.S. Department of Defense-certified records. The company also launched a joint SharePoint-Open Text product that life sciences companies could use to manage documents that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
The latest integrated product is scheduled to be fully available to law firms by early next year. Pricing was not disclosed.
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint
The new product, available next year, would would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint.
By Antone Gonsalves
Open Text on Monday said it would offer law firms a content management system based entirely on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The new product, unveiled at the ILTA legal conference in Orlando, Fla., would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint. Open Text currently sells its own product for the legal market called LegalKEY.
SharePoint is used by law firms for broadly used intranet, extranet and collaboration capabilities, while Open Text technologies have been tailored to specific law firm processes, Open Text officials said. Under the combined offering, SharePoint could become a firm's central content repository, and lawyers and staff could use its interface to access Open Text's practice-centric views of content and virtual file cabinets.
The integrated product is expected to help firms manage new business and potential conflicts of interest, establish ethical walls separating client cases, and provide records management and archiving that meets compliance requirements. In addition, users can perform federated searches across matters, and automatically assign metadata to allow correct classification of documents and pre-population of relevant content. The single point of content management through SharePoint also means that firms can apply retention schedules across repositories in a consistent and centralized manner.
Open Text two years ago launched an initiative to combine Microsoft productivity tools with its enterprise content management software and vertical-market expertise. Earlier this year, Open Text launched software integrated with SharePoint for managing U.S. Department of Defense-certified records. The company also launched a joint SharePoint-Open Text product that life sciences companies could use to manage documents that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
The latest integrated product is scheduled to be fully available to law firms by early next year. Pricing was not disclosed.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
FT.com / Home UK / UK - Microsoft shakes up online services arm
FT.com / Home UK / UK - Microsoft shakes up online services arm
Microsoft shakes up online services arm
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: August 14 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 14 2007 03:00
Microsoft on Monday shook up the organisation and management of its online services business following its $6bn purchase of advertising services company Aquantive, marking its latest attempt to catch up with Google and Yahoo.
The overhaul included a new organisational structure that closely resembles one that had been planned at Yahoo by Terry Semel, its former chief executive officer, although Yahoo has since turned its back on the arrangement.
Microsoft said it had split the management of its online services business, giving control of all its advertising activities to Brian McAndrews, the former chief executive of Aquantive. Advertising had previously been overseen at Microsoft by Steve Berkowitz, the executive in charge of its internet group, who will now head only the part of the business that is responsible for attracting the company's online audience.
The split between advertising and audience groups would create a clear division of responsibilities that would let both sides focus more clearly, said Mr McAndrews, adding: "It makes perfect sense to me."
Yahoo recently abandoned a similar plan after naming Jerry Yang as its new chief executive, saying at the time that it was unnecessary.
Mr McAndrews' appointment also marks the arrival of an injection of new blood designed to make Microsoft more than an also-ran in the advertising business. The senior management team for Microsoft's new advertising group is made up of former Aquantive executives, with the exception of Satya Nadella, who will be responsible for the advertising technology platform. Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's former chief advertising strategist, had been appointed to a new role as senior vice-president in charge of strategic partnerships for the company's broader platforms and services division, Microsoft said.
Integrating Microsoft's AdCenter search engine advertising business into the other Aquantive online operations would position the new division for the changes that now are likely in online advertising, said Mr McAndrews.
While the growth of search had been the big trend in the first part of the decade, he said, advertisers were now interested in a broader mix of display, rich media and web video, and search was set to take its place in these more integrated online campaigns.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Microsoft shakes up online services arm
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: August 14 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 14 2007 03:00
Microsoft on Monday shook up the organisation and management of its online services business following its $6bn purchase of advertising services company Aquantive, marking its latest attempt to catch up with Google and Yahoo.
The overhaul included a new organisational structure that closely resembles one that had been planned at Yahoo by Terry Semel, its former chief executive officer, although Yahoo has since turned its back on the arrangement.
Microsoft said it had split the management of its online services business, giving control of all its advertising activities to Brian McAndrews, the former chief executive of Aquantive. Advertising had previously been overseen at Microsoft by Steve Berkowitz, the executive in charge of its internet group, who will now head only the part of the business that is responsible for attracting the company's online audience.
The split between advertising and audience groups would create a clear division of responsibilities that would let both sides focus more clearly, said Mr McAndrews, adding: "It makes perfect sense to me."
Yahoo recently abandoned a similar plan after naming Jerry Yang as its new chief executive, saying at the time that it was unnecessary.
Mr McAndrews' appointment also marks the arrival of an injection of new blood designed to make Microsoft more than an also-ran in the advertising business. The senior management team for Microsoft's new advertising group is made up of former Aquantive executives, with the exception of Satya Nadella, who will be responsible for the advertising technology platform. Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's former chief advertising strategist, had been appointed to a new role as senior vice-president in charge of strategic partnerships for the company's broader platforms and services division, Microsoft said.
Integrating Microsoft's AdCenter search engine advertising business into the other Aquantive online operations would position the new division for the changes that now are likely in online advertising, said Mr McAndrews.
While the growth of search had been the big trend in the first part of the decade, he said, advertisers were now interested in a broader mix of display, rich media and web video, and search was set to take its place in these more integrated online campaigns.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Microsoft Move Will Drive Enhanced Online Search Privacy
Microsoft Move Will Drive Enhanced Online Search Privacy
Gartner believes Microsoft's new privacy principles are targeted primarily at increasing regulators' and consumer groups' pressure on competitor Google. But this is still a welcome development in online privacy protection.
Gartner believes Microsoft's new privacy principles are targeted primarily at increasing regulators' and consumer groups' pressure on competitor Google. But this is still a welcome development in online privacy protection.
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