To Use Cloud Or Not?
Last week when Twitter announced that they are building a datacenter I wrote a post wondering why companies move out of the cloud as they grow big. Even though I don’t have many examples of startups building their own datacenters after growing big, many folks in the startup world told me that they wouldn’t mind [...]
OSCON Week: Microsoft And Interoperability
Using Microsoft and Interoperability in the same sentence makes me chuckle every time. Well, partly it could be due to my open source bias and I am not denying that. Off late, Microsoft has been making half-hearted attempts to embrace open source. I use the term “half-hearted” here because they do show some serious willingness [...]
Cisco Just Kicked iPad Out of Enterprise Market With Cisco Cius
Cisco Live is going on at Las vegas and I just watched the keynote by John Chambers, their CEO. The turn around by Cisco is impressive and they are really onto something with their video strategy. Today Cisco announced their new tablet strategy bringing telepresence to the reach of Joes and Janes like myself and [...]
Zuora and Azure Hook Up to Bill the Cloud
And here was me thinking the cloud was all about altruism – no folks, it’s about money, pure and simple. Saving it at the buy-side, making it at the sell-side. News today from Zuora (see disclosure) that they will join the Microsoft Windows Azure Technology Adoption Program (TAP) as the first on-demand billing and subscription [...]
Box Takes on Desktop Sync, the Space Gets Ever More Crowded
I’ve written before about a number of desktop sync products I use – these products help me to keep my life organized across multiple devices (see my Syncplicity posts for example). The fact is that, for me at least, I live on three different laptops, a desktop from time-to-time and one or two mobile devices [...]
On Bootstrapping. And Big Bucks. And Organic Growth
Recently there have been a few posts about growth through funding and growth through organic means. Tony Hsieh from Zappos told his tale of woe about the expectations of VC’s in terms of good exits. On the other hand, Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho (disclosure – Zoho is exclusive sponsor of CloudAve) wrote an excellent [...]
Integration is Good… When You Actually Do It (Part Two)
A month or so ago I wrote a post critical of the integration one vendor had made with the Google apps marketplace. Yesterday I was perusing Twitter when I came across this tweet: I’m actually a user of Xero for three of my businesses, so I was looking forward to seeing what their inclusion on [...]
A Tale of Two Generations – Sage Languishes while Financial Force Innovates
Software is undergoing a generational change – I thought I’d pull out an example to show what the old generation is doiing and contrast that to what the “cool kids” are doing. I was interested to read Dennis Howlett’s post about Sage recently. In his post Dennis reflected on the signals he’s getting from his [...]
Suite vs Best of Breed – Let the Battle Begin (Yet Again)
A month or so ago I sat in a room with a small group of bloggers discussing the enterprise software space with NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson and one sentence he said stuck in my mind: The same was is playing out in this space all over again. And just like last time, the suite’s will [...]
On Google’s Analytics Gallery, Terms and Conditions, Software Ownership and Responsiveness
This starts out as a chastisement for Google and ends up congratulatory. Read on for details. So Google launched an app gallery for Google Analytics – how interesting can that be you ask? Well quite interesting from a “who owns my stuff perspective” but first an intro about the gallery. In announcing the gallery, Google [...]
There’s a Reason It’s Free – Get Over It…
I’ve been mulling this post around in my head for quite some time now – an eight hour flight across the great Australian Desert seemed as good a time as any to finally put pen to paper (fingers to keys?) and write this post. We’ve been hearing much lately about privacy concerns with free services [...]
Skunk Works Junkies Pt 3 – How to hang on to your Skunks…
Once you’ve got a “stench” of skunks (yes, that is the collective noun for skunks), keeping their interest is a challenge. If you haven’t read my last post, on how Gist nurtured their beta-tester network, go back and read it- they did it right. And deploy the measures below… Top Ten Skunk Works Junkies Retention [...]
Banking 2.0, The Cloud and Safety in Numbers
A while ago, Alex Williams posted about a consortium made up of three banks – Bank of America, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Deutsche Bank – that was specifically set up as a buying alliance to source cloud infrastructure. Alex’s take on it was that this move was made because of a frustration on the [...]
Skunk Works Junkies – Part Two – The Care and Feeding of a Beta-Tester
Skunk Works Junkies (SWJs) ears perk up if they hear, “beta invite,” and like anything exclusive, jump to snatch it up. The reality is, start ups can’t get enough beta-testers, or at least keep them consistently engaged once the party starts. In this highly-transparent, thought-leadership oriented, authentic series, you’ll hear first-hand from a beta-junkie what [...]
Media Relations is an Ongoing Process. Sage Seems to Forget That.
A year ago I wrote a post congratulating Sage on an increase in communications they’d had with me. As I said at the time: So I give Sage significant kudos for reaching out and contacting some of us, but I’m also mindful that they’ve created an air of expectation, the hope of an organisation that [...]
