Find the data, aggregate the data, make the data useful
I was in New York in March, taking part in GigaOM’s Structure:Data event. As usual on these trips, I spent the day before the event walking around the city, soaking up some air, getting rained on, using coffee to stay awake, and meeting with a number of local companies. Of the companies I met that [...]
How Should You Best Launch Your Product at SXSW?
It’s February now. That means a slew of companies will be preparing to launch their new products or announcing their companies at the annual SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. I get asked often how to best launch at SXSW. What strategies to use, how to get attention, how to become “hot.” I get asked many [...]
Big Data as Core, Big Data as Context, and Big Data as Buzzword Bingo
It’s neither particularly newsworthy nor insightful to suggest that ‘Big Data’ gets everywhere these days, but two recent items reminded me of the gulf between credible execution of a big data play and the more questionable tacking of the big data meme onto an otherwise useful product. Christmas is coming. Which means skating, and pantomimes [...]
4 Good Reasons Not to Start a SaaS Start-Up
There’s been one huge change in “entrepreneurship” IMHO over the past 10 years. >> No, it’s not that it’s cheaper than ever to do a start-up. That’s not even true. In the old days, when software came on a disk, or a CD-ROM, it was even cheaper. You didn’t even need a single server to [...]
And So Begins the End of this SaaS M&A Cycle
… and hence the acquisition dies due to excessive capital requirements. It’s almost impossible to blend a profitable entity with a new acquisition that is burning tens of more millions per year, unless it’s a total make-the-company bet like Android.
Nothing Stops the Box Bunny
OK, so I ‘m abandoning my pictorial post schedule, as Box-mania just broke out, and I feel compelled to jump in. But the skipped NetSuite post is coming soon… I’ve been following Box longer than probably most observers and some of the old memories are worth sharing – from an admittedly subjective point of view. [...]
Analyst? Commentator? Advisor? Investor? What’s In a Name?
For awhile now I’ve been thinking about how best to describe what I “do”. I run Diversity, a pretty diverse (hence the name) operation which covers a bunch of different things – I spend time evangelizing about Cloud Computing, I opine on the technology landscape, I consult to large technology
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.
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…
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 [...]
OpenStack Seeing the Light of General Availability
The last few weeks have been interesting around the OpenStack ecosystem. We’ve had HP moving object storage and Cloud CDN to general availability. We had Morphlabs introduce an interesting combined hardware and software offering called mCloud Helix. The product is powered by OpenStack, and combines that with SSD-powered nodes to deliver a compact rack mount [...]
Cloud – It’s About Flexibility
While at OSCON in Portland recently, I took part in a panel alongside Rishidot Research founder and principal analyst Krishnan Subramanian and TechCrunch writer Alex Williams – the panel was an attempt to get some industry observers together to discuss the future of the cloud. Krish has written about the session here at Cloudave. In his post [...]
How Yammer Should Have Responded to the TechCrunch Ad Hominem
I can’t help but laugh at the TechCrunch gang’s corporate ad hominem last week. It seemed more of a personal attack than any real attempt to provide a product review. TechCrunch didn’t merely reproach their building mate, they reprimanded them. Stranger, most of the article really didn’t say anything at all, because they were not [...]
Fusion Garage (of CrunchPad-Joo-Joo Fame) Drops Grid 10 Price by $200 – Only $200 More to Go
Some things just can’t die. Like the zillionth incarnation of what was formerly known as CrunchPad…. then after a messy divorce from TechCrunch became the Joo-Joo (sold a few dozen units), and now it’s back as the Grid 10. I have a funny history with this device. I was a major advocate of the [...]
Of Kindles and Business Models and Stuff
Over at TechCrunch, MG Siegler’s 2 September post on Amazon’s new Kindle has generated quite a storm. All across the web, media, bloggers, pundits, analysts and the rest are pointing to MG’s post, getting terribly excited about a new tablet that might actually challenge the iPad; something that so many others have patently failed to [...]
