Enterprise software and the curse of vendor sameness
Enterprise software vendors talk in pithy, some would say pseudo-sophisticated, language designed to impress prospects, customers, and influencers in the market. Almost all enterprise vendors use terms like the following as symbols to convey broader meaning, despite offering little or no content to the reader: Time to value Continuous innovation Accelerated solutions Big data Mobile first Increase [...]
Massive Java Update available you should apply it
And you should do this update; Oracle has finally gotten around to pushing a massive 50 vulnerability fixing update to Java. The bad part is that most of us have decoupled Java from our browsers, and I am wondering if this is too little too late. With Mozilla (Firefox) dropping Java support from its browser [...]
BATNA, And Oracle’s $811m Purchase of Eloqua
It may seem strange to see Oracle acquire Eloqua for $811m just a few months after their IPO. But it’s not strange at all. I am 95% sure talks at some level were going on for quite some time, long before the IPO. And 80% sure, a soft offer of less than $500m or [...]
A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more)
Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it [...]
Why Competition Is So Bitter in SaaS: Oligopolies and Dominant Strategy Equilibriums
Perhaps the oddest thing about the Apple-Google “go thermonuclear” strategy to SaaS guys is that it is so odd at all. Competition-to-the-almost-death seems the norm in SaaS. Just look at Larry Ellison or Marc Benioff. You can see the blood lust in their eyes, in every speech, in a way you never really saw/see in [...]
The Workday IPO and ‘F You Money
The other day, a VC asked me about a founder he was thinking of investing in. He asked me if this founder had, quote, ‘F You Money. {I learned how this was spelled when a Businessweek article this week used the term, btw}. I wasn’t really sure if he meant this as a negative, but [...]
Questions To Ponder: Services World And Integrated Stacks
I have decided to start a new series called “Questions To Ponder” which I will push out on some Fridays. The idea is to take a controversial topic and ask a few relevant questions so that CloudAve readers can ponder about it on their weekend. The first in this series is about the role of [...]
What really is Open Source Software and what’s this community nonsense they ask…
Open Source Software (OSS), Why Some Fail At It OSS has won the war. It has been over for years now. Microsoft has ceded, Oracle, VMware and many others have stepped up and attempted to embrace the open source community. Sometimes they’ve been successful, sometimes they haven’t. They’re slowly changing their models to play well [...]
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 …
CAMP: Will It Be Relevant?
Last week at CloudOpen 2012, a group of vendors in the platforms space announced a new set of specifications to help simplify management of applications in the public and private clouds. Called CAMP, these specifications are submitted to OASIS to develop it as an industry standard. The initial reaction from the industry and some cloud [...]
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 [...]
Why Workday Is Different by Design, and Why It Matters
We use the object model to define both the structure of our applications (classes, relationships, and attributes) as well as the logic of our applications (methods). All parts of the object model are defined as metadata. Instead of the thousands of relational tables and millions of lines of code used to define traditional enterprise software, Workday applications consist of millions of metadata definitions
Silicon Angle Interview–What’s New and News in the Cloud
While I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago I took the opportunity to sit down with Alex Williams, Cloud editor of Silicon Angle, and Stu Miniman from Wikibon, to film a video interview. The interview cam at an interesting time – in the space of 24 hours we’d seen some large Cloud-related announcements [...]
Trash talk and FUD harms the Cloud industry
Over here we are anticipating this year’s Cloud Computing World Forumin London, but over in the US Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and CEO since 1977, has pivoted his position on the Cloud along with “crossing a line” to trash key competitors. Elsewhere old guard software giants like IBM are mis-communicating the Cloud messages. How does [...]
Microsoft Does It Right And Oracle Claims They Are Right
This week saw cloud related announcements from two software behemoths from the traditional era, Microsoft and Oracle. Microsoft rebooted Windows Azure making it more palatable to modern day developers and started playing nice on the interoperability game. Oracle re-announced their public cloud strategy and, in the process, tried to convince users that they should see [...]
