GoDaddy… Go… Gone
Today the Godaddy servers have been hit by a simple DDOS – a distributed denial of service involving a few dozen clients or servers that fire off hundreds or even thousands of requests a second at their servers. It’s a simple attack, and very effective. It’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop, standing in the [...]
The Misstep of Quora and The Importance of Trust Amongst Your Community
You know the old saying about trust … “It takes years to build and seconds to destroy.” And once destroyed it is very difficult if not impossible to repair. You need to be the guardian of your own reputation. You need to constantly ask yourself whether your actions in rapidly scaling an online community are [...]
Why I am leaving Smugmug. Hint: it is not just about the money
About seven years ago, a friend of mine who was helping me get into photography recommended that I check out Smugmug, and a wonderful relationship was born. I love, have loved, and will appreciate Smugmug even as I am walking away from the web site. Over the last three years I have shoved some 853,000 [...]
Scale Out vs Scale Up – ProfitBricks Aims to Challenge the Current Thinking for IaaS
One thing that few people argue about in the move to the cloud is the accepted view that the best way to achieve scale is by throwing together lots of lightweight commodity machines with relatively low specifications, and stringing them together to achieve scale. It’s a compelling story and one
Should Investors in the Same Round of Financing Ever Get Different Prices?
If you were on Twitter on Saturday you might have noticed a lively discussion with Dave McClure, Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon and myself. And a few others. Luckily there are tools like Storify – so you can actually see a synopsis here. I recently wrote about my views that startups rounds should be priced. If [...]
In My Dreariness, I Installed Cloud Foundry and extended it with Iron Foundry
Morning! I put together a video late last night based on setting up a Cloud Foundry instance with Iron Foundry extensions. It’s a little long, since I’ve mostly *not edited* it. The instructions have been available for a while but I thought, why not make a video and publish it. In the very near future [...]
Alcatel-Lucent Open Sources its API Management Engine
I remember when OpenStack was announced – the creation of an open source solution in a formerly entirely proprietary area was something of a bomb shell. Regardless of your thoughts around open stack as a product (or, more correctly a series of product), it’s hard to be critical of an initiative that at its core [...]
Adam & Krishan Got Me Motivated Today… to toss the trash conversations
I was speaking with Krishan Subramanian (@krishnan) and Adam Seligman (@adamse) today. I love talking to these guys. They’re both smart, intelligent and upbeat guys. They see the positive things we’re all working toward and accomplishing in the technology space, specifically around PaaS, Cloud Computing and around the cultural implications of stronger technology communities, involvement …
IT Central Station Launches–A “Yelp for Enteprise IT”
This one from the “trying to bring something from the consumer world into the enterprise but failing” category. IT Central Station is launching and billing itself as the first tech product review site for the Fortune 1000. The idea is simple – much like Yelp, people can list and review products – but in this [...]
Marketing Your Collaboration Initiative Internally, a Lesson from Yum! Brands
We underestimate the crucial role that marketing plays when it comes to enterprise collaboration initiatives. I’m not necessarily referring to the marketing department but to how the organization notifies and encourages employees to participate. When companies release a new product or service they spend a considerable amount of time and resources behind marketing, messaging and branding. [...]
B2B Social Networking | What’s In a Name?
The term “social media” clouds our thinking about social networking with advertising concepts. In particular, when it comes to B2B social networking, the term “B2B social media” misses the mark entirely.
SUSE’s OpenStack Cloud Is Good For The Ecosystem
Last week at CloudOpen 2012, SUSE (previous CloudAve coverage) announced the availability of SUSE Cloud, a commercially supported private cloud solution based on OpenStack. SUSE Cloud is a cloud management platform built with OpenStack and integrates with existing SUSE products like SUSE Studio and SUSE Manager. This will essentially allow their enterprise customers to deploy [...]
The Truth About Convertible Debt at Startups and The Hidden Terms You Didn’t Understand
Ah. We’re back to discussing convertible debt again. This time by the efforts of Adeo Ressi to introduce a new kind of structure called “convertible equity.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to [...]
SaaS Metrics FAQs | What is Churn?
A little over two years ago, I published a series of well received articles on SaaS metrics that culminated in the SaaS Metrics Guide to SaaS Financial Performance. Since then, I’ve received numerous inquiries regarding the many practical quirks encountered in day-to-day SaaS metrics implementation. In response, I’ve decided to revisit the SaaS metrics topic [...]
In the Quest for TCO, We Lose Sight of the Real Issue–Part One
While it is undeniable that in the majority of cases cloud will be cheaper than traditional models of delivery. The benefits that cloud brings in terms of agility and flexibility far outweigh the cost benefits – looking at TCO alone is a race to the bottom of the cost-cutting hill.
