I had two interesting conversations in the past two days. One was with a new SugarCRM customer, the other with an analyst at a top tier firm. Both shall remain nameless… What struck me was how their thoughts diverged so sharply when it came to “replacing technology.” The analyst was asking me questions in a … Continue reading »
Posted in January 2008 …
When it Rains Cash, it Pours…
My old chums at the 451 Group have been keeping my attention. Their open source blog, CAOS Theory, has become daily reading for me. A post today by 451 analyst Matt Aslett points out that open source funding is on the rise, at least in Q1. In fact, in the first 22 days of January, … Continue reading »
Benioff’s Misguided Views…Ala Tom Siebel
In a Q&A interview in today’s Wall Street Journal (there’s no link because the article isn’t posted), Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff spoke to the importance that Internet-based software platforms, such as his company’s own Force.com, will play in creating the “virtual office” of tomorrow. It was an interesting article that addressed many of the trends … Continue reading »
SugarCon speakers, and some self-congratulations…
Putting together conferences is hard…as an analyst I was at a different conference every other week it seemed, and I think I took for granted all the hard work involved in putting together not only a seamless event, but also getting cool and relevant speakers. So, when we started planning our SugarCon event to be … Continue reading »
Government – A Closed Source Entity?
Over the weekend I read an interesting article in the New Yorker that reminded me of a post I made the other day about Google wanting NASA to open up a little more. This article noted that events like the fall of the Soviet block and other “intelligence” snafus in our recent history would have … Continue reading »
The Main Reason for Open Source M&A?
My old associates at the 451 Group put together a great report about open source M&A (ironically released a day before the Sun/MySQL deal was announced). For non-451 clients a great summary is on the group’s open source blog. The report posits the following reasons for open source M&A: Entrance into new markets Portfolio expansion … Continue reading »
Social Networking Meets Open Standards
One Washington-based software company is doing a great job of making the Web, and social networking solutions, more open. Ohloh, a community site for open source developers, is making its tools open source. The Ohloh site collates information from public open-source version control systems, creates a database of the productivity open source projects, and the … Continue reading »
Open Source Space Travel?
Google’s Eric Schmidt just gave a speech in Washington that posits that agencies like NASA should be collaborating more with the private sector, and learning from open standards being developed in open source communities. Makes sense…I think there are already some good examples (Google Earth being the most obvious) of NASA and consumer technology merging. … Continue reading »
Sprint’s Hall of Shame Performance
If there’s ever been a better example of how NOT to handle your customers, it’s Sprint Nextel. Today, the company announced that it would cut approximately 4,000 jobs and close about 8 percent of its stores amid the continued migration of thousands of customers fed up with Sprint’s spotty coverage and poor customer service. Sprint … Continue reading »
First SaaS….Next Open Source
A new Research and Markets study outlined the continued adoption of open source within enterprises across multiple categories, such as operating systems, databases, and development tools. In particular, the study found that …open source software’s presence will increase from approximately 10 percent of key user on-premise software in 2007, to between 15 percent and 20 … Continue reading »
