Rethinking Board Observers – The Role of the “Silent Observer”
It has always surprised me that founders were so quick to fight over how many board members there were and so quick to agree to have as many board observers as people wanted. I have always been vehemently against board observers and wrote some of the reasons in this previous post. But over the past [...]
A Preview of VMworld–On VMware’s Cunning Plans
In a couple of weeks I’ll be in San Francisco for VMware annual conference, VMworld. This will actually be my first time attending the even in person and I suspect I’ve chosen the best year to be there – there are some seismic shifts occurring in VMware’s business and I
Should You Really Sit on Other Boards When You’re a Startup Founder?
I recently read Brad Feld’s thought provoking piece encouraging founders to sit on the board of another startup company. I found it thought provoking because I’ve always believed startup founders need extreme focus on only their company to succeed. We live in an era where the press espouses the entrepreneurs who have five startups. I’m [...]
Big Data–Over Hyped Buzzword or Enterprise Focus?
Of all the myriad of terms that the tech industry throws around at the moment, none is as often subverted for marketing spin as “big data”. So much so that few people can actually agree on what big data is. For me, I’ll revert to Wikipediaand it’s definition which states; big data is a collection [...]
The Shift has hit the Fan – Microsoft, Facebook Slides, Google Rises
In what seems to be from the lower paleothic period but in fact was about a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about the Mean Girls phenomenon and Shakespeare. This in turn was not actually about mean girls or Henry IV, but about the interesting relationship of…
Boundary Delivers Application Monitoring–For Free
Boundary, the application monitoring company that promises super-quick implementation time is today announcing a bunch of new capabilities that it is hoping will see it increase uptake for its offering. Included in this release is an interesting new tool that creates visual representations of application topology and tracks changes in
Trello versus Asana
For the past several years I’ve undertaken many initiatives to “get more organized,” which basically means to make another attempt at implementing and running a solid task list that I can share with others with whom I collaborate. I seem to be really good at kicking off well-structured lists, but less good at “working them.” I [...]
CloudBeat is back – and the call for papers is open
Right at the end of November, we’ll once again be doing what we can to assemble a stellar cast of cloud companies and their customers at the Sofitel in Redwood City, just south of San Francisco.
Misconceptions About Federated Clouds
As I promote the idea of federated clouds (previous CloudAve coverage), there seems to be some misconceptions among readers and other bloggers. I thought I will use this post to clarify these misconceptions. For beginners, please check out this post on the definition of federated cloud ecosystems. Federated clouds is pushed as an alternative to [...]
Salesforce Launches Chatter Communities
Salesforce is this morning announcing a new product, Chatter Communities, that aims to take the engagement aspects of its social tool Chatter out to specific verticals within organizations. Chatter Communities allows an organization to set up a specific community quickly – as an example it could be used to create
TechCrunch Wrote a Post, Oracle got Pissy. Sigh
So Alex Williams (a great guy, good friend and awesome cloud pundit) wrote a post a week or two ago entitled “Why The Open Cloud Wins And Oracle Loses When IT Gets Virtualized.” (subtle huh?) Oracle wasn’t overly happy at Alex’s comments and counter posted saying that “TechCrunch is Clueless about Oracle Cloud.” So… some [...]
2012 Digital Workplace Trends Report
Every year since 2006 Jane McConnell releases her report on digital workplace trends which is quite an in-depth piece of work. The most recent one clocking in at over 150 pages of information with online survey data from over 456 organizations around the world! Her most recent report looks at both the consumer and employee [...]
Premature Dell Obituary?
Last week, Pando Daily had an obituary written for Dell (previous CloudAve coverage) based entirely on their dismal performance in the consumer sector. In a week and a half, Dell will announce its second-quarter earnings results. Expect a bloodbath. In the first quarter, back in May, Dell gave the market a goose egg — analysts [...]
East & West Coast PaaS, Being Polyglot, Reply to Dan Turkenkopf
Dan (he’s a good guy, check him out on Twitter @dturkenk), your “East Coast vs West Coast PaaS Psychology. And Why It Matters.” is great write up. Loved it! I’ve got to say, I’m pretty much in agreement with almost every single thing you’ve written here. Matter of fact I’m staunchly in agreement with a [...]