OpenStack Infighting: Will It Affect The Project?
It has been 2+ years since OpenStack was launched and the project is slowly maturing as organizations are exploring the use of OpenStack for their private cloud needs. As money gets into the ecosystem, it is natural for bickering to start among the ecosystem players. In fact, naysayers of the project has been saying this [...]
The Database Deluge… Who’s Who
These are the top NoSQL Solutions in the market today that are open source, readily available, with a strong and active community, and actively making forward progress in development and innovations in the technology. I’ve provided them here, in no order, with basic descriptions, links to their main website presence, and with short lists of [...]
Acquisition News – Cloud Sherpas Broadens the Franchise and Moves Into ITSM
I’ve been covering Cloud Sherpas since its inception – I’m particularly interested in this new breed of services brokerage that is proving successful despite deriving its revenue from a small sliver of a very small annual charge – this in comparison to the traditional on-premise world where companies enjoyed massive consulting fees for implementation project [...]
CloudPassage Cloud Security Survey
CloudPassage was kind enough to share with me the raw data from their latest cloud computing security survey. In many ways this is what you would expect to see in a survey of companies that are still working out exactly what they want to do in the cloud and the approaches they want to take [...]
A Method for Applying Jobs-to-Be-Done to Product and Service Design
Say you’re designing something new for a product or service. Of course, you have your own ideas for what to do. But, how informed are you really about what is needed? This is a question I faced in thinking about game mechanics used in a social platform. A common product approach is to work up [...]
If You Want to Get Funded – Dude, Make It Easy On Them
Lately, I’ve noticed that some of the absolutely smartest, sharpest folks I know trying to raise early/early-ish stage capital are struggling … and they are sort of amazed how other folks they know who, well, aren’t quite as sharp are mopping up that venture capital. What’s the issue? Seems like it’s always the same. You [...]
What is MRR Churn? | SaaS Metrics FAQs Part 2
Why measure SaaS MRR churn? Show me the money! SaaS MRR churn is an important SaaS metric that measures the financial impact of churn. While customer churn is an important operational metric, CFOs always prefer MRR churn. In this second SaaS Metrics FAQs article, I explore ways to analyze SaaS MRR churn.
Irked by IRQs
PCs use interrupt requests known as IRQs to manage various devices such as sound cards and modems. When the device has a need for processing power, it sends an interrupt request to the processor. It’s a silly design as the mere request is an interrupt itself. This is my day. It’s like when someone says [...]
Amazon Web Services Programming Tool Kits
Amazon Web Services provides a number of Software Development Toolkits (SDK’s) that will help the programmer make the most of Amazons exposed APIs for the various services that they provide in the cloud. While the AWS (Amazon Web Services) console is good for day to day administration and control over the services you have set [...]
Because Old School Retail is Dead–NetSuite Acquires Retail Anywhere
NetSuite’s acquisition of Point of Sale (POS) vendor Retail Anywhere creates a powerful offering that allows retail businesses to compete in the face of a challenging environment.
Sandy Hook Promise and Tech Activism
The tech community has become more politically active over the past 5 years and this is a good thing. We live in a representative democracy and organizing, having a voice and expressing views is critical to our functioning democracy. One of the most visible, active and admirable leaders of this movement is Ron Conway and [...]
The Law of Attach Rates, And Why Partners Can’t Really Move the Needle For You (Directly)
I want to spend a little time on some learnings about Strategic Partners in SaaS. First, let me be clear — to make it in SaaS, you’re probably going to need to achieve real success with Strategic Partners. Because it takes a Village. And because your partners will likely, through integrations in particular, make your [...]
Using Amazon Web Services IAM
Using Amazon Web Services IAM IAM (Identity and Access Management) from Amazon Web Services is a tool to create users, groups, roles and permissions. This is a 10 minute video on how to use IAM (Identity and Access Management) services to provision users and groups within the Amazon Web Services infrastructure. IAM is a blunt [...]
I’m Back. Why I Love January
It’s January. Happy New Year! My last post was December 17 – nearly a month ago. I miss blogging because it serves as a great repository for me of my current thinking, as a way of organizing my thoughts and clarifying what I think and as a conversation started with so many of you (as Hunter [...]
SAP and HANA: 5 Points of advice for CIOs
Following a significant announcement from SAP, here is advice for Chief Information Officers.
