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St Barth 2007 – Part II

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IMG_4665

I have published my last post about Saint Barth for a while… It was exactly on May 28, 2007. Quite a long time ago! On the other side, in 25 days, we will be again in Saint Barth for about 3 weeks. So, I should really now begin to enter this “period”, step-by-step.

I know that I am making some of you quite nervous with my “Saint Barth” posts. Sorry guys, nobody is forcing you to read them ;-)

In the Part I, I have introduced our travel and talked about the “terrible” weather there ;-). In the coming posts, I will write about our villa (part II), the beaches (arrgggg, part III), the restaurants and the shopping (part IV), the fauna and flora (part V), the harbor and some boats (part VI), some sunsets (part VII) and a conclusion (part VIII).

If you would like to have a look at my flickr-set about this travel, you can go there. 113 pictures, also available in their original size (3072×2304).

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The villa TEO

Last year (in 2007), we have decided not to go in a hotel as the first two times (Hotel La Banane and François Plantation). Not that these hotels were bad or something like that. This time, we wanted to test a stay with a villa renting. There are quite a lot of possibilities and different renting agencies. We have decided us for the “historical” real estate company of St Barth, called SiBarth. Huge choice of villas on the wimco website, very precise descriptions which correspond to the reality. Very good service.

We were at the villa TEO, which is quite new and absolutely beautiful.

Top ten reasons to come and stay in villa TEO:

  1. It is very comfortable, charming and private
  2. The views on the ocean, the boats, the Corossol Bay and the offshore islands are just TERRIFIC. We are missing them…
  3. The infinity pool is just great! So cool in the afternoon after some hours on the beach.
  4. The wood terrace is amazing, open, with dramatic 180° views.
  5. The sunsets are just … spectacular!And different every day.
  6. The little garden is welcoming you, with beautiful and colorful flowers, and its very nice fountain.
  7. The BBQ (a Weber…) is just great.
  8. We have seen one iguana (a grey one) many times. As some colibris. Cool experience.
  9. The kitchen and overall furnitures are modern, stylish, comfortable.
  10. Thanks to the orientation of the villa, the whole terrace is “under the sun” about the whole day.

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Back to 2007, some Lessons Learnt

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2007 was a very turbulent, chaotic and exceptional year for me. A year full of lessons learnt and learnings, as intensive as my 2 years at EM Lyon for my MBA.

As I have heard again at leweb3 and from our business and VC friends and colleagues, it seems that there aren’t so many successful cases of spin-out in Europe with innoveo. And with Nick and the whole Team (and the support of Helvetia), we did it!

So, without any prioritization, I would like to share some of my thoughts with you:

  • balancing the “shit” with positive experiences: the work was not always just for fun and very pleasant, we really had some tough times, for sure. For me, it was again important to find a balance between this brutal reality and some “compensations”, as having some great lunches and dinners (yes, including good wines) with friends, having fun to drive my car, taking some pictures (more and more), buying my first “big” watch, and for sure, being able to go on holidays regularly with my wife and my son, specially when we can travel to Saint Barth ;-)
  • solving a very complex issue: needs time and patience. And sometimes a clear massive increase of the complexity to be able to find out a solution! Thanks for this one, Nick ;-)
  • when you think it is finished: it is not finished! If you stay resilient. It can even get worst ;-) Or a solution can suddenly appear in the darkness! Staying tuned and opened for all the opportunities seem to be very relevant, as always playing with worst case scenario. When you have identified this worst case scenario and you know how you will react, then you are really prepared. And normally, the worst case is not happening. More or less, always something “in between”, in the “gray zone”.
  • friends and family: were absolutely essential during this phase. Gosh, it was not an easy time at home for my wife and my son… I was terribly not present mentally, completely focused on the spin-out. And when present, exhausted, or in a terribly mad mood. Let me mention two friends, among others, who were very important for me and gave me the faith to move on with this crazy idea: Manu and Marc. You were both very supportive and very decisive, and perhaps also the two only ones who *really* thought that we had a chance ;-)
  • co-managing a company: I have learnt further on to share and to manage the company with Nick. It is a long journey, specially for me (not really my personality ;-), to co-manage and cross-delegate the company responsibilities. On the other side, I definitely  wouldn’t have been able to manage the spin-out process without Nick. I am deeply convinced that we are working in a very interesting and efficient way. And this deep collaboration was the base for the birth of innoveo, with the support of our Team. We are learning more and more how to work and to benefit from each other, all these, with positive consequences for the company. Even if we know that this “co-managing style” doesn’t correspond to some leadership “best practices”. Specially the ones coming from the military experience. That’s ok for us. And disturbing for some people :-)
  • believing in our values and our dreams: it is very interesting to confront your values and dreams with the “brutal reality”. Always easy to speak about that if you are in a stable phase ;-) Let’s try to do it in a very unstable process, as our spin-out. This brings real and deep learnings about your internal drivers. For me, personally, it was essential to know if the values I believe in since years are really stable and consistent, also in the adversity. This spin-out phase was a good and valuable “proof-of-the-pudding” for that. Also to be sure with Nick that we are sharing the same values fundament. It was absolutely fantastic to see how far this was/is the case, although we were challenging in this field each day of the last year! This is very strong and powerful. And reassuring to know that not all the people just believe in money and carrier.
  • the value is in the team / first who then what: I was always convinced that we had a special team-spirit and that we were sharing the values that Nick and I were sharing, but across the *whole Team*. Always easy to say. Also there, it was really a wonderful and fantastic experience to see how far the Team was compact and stable, despite all the turbulences and uncertainty during about 6 months! And this, at the same time as a huge and difficult delivery time. I will *never* forget some of the most important meetings we had together. Guys, you were so supportive! In a sense, I have felt again how far it is central to share a vision with some guys and how far *they* are much more important to implement this vision.

So, all in all, a bunch of great experiences, more positive than negative ones, this big step with our spin-out of innoveo, some absolutely fantastic confirmations and…new challenges that are coming in 2008 (stabilization and first developments of innoveo).

So, I can just say “thanks” for this great year. It will be difficult to have a more challenging year, although….

:-)

INNOVEO: At leweb3 conference in Paris

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Laurent and I are still at leweb3 in Paris. We had again to wake up quite early … so early that we were alone in the metro. Strange feeling!
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Afterwards, for chance, we could have a real breakfast.
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Laurent and I, with our innoveo TShirts, in front of the leweb3 conference room. It seems that Laurent had a good idea, the marketing is working, almost everybody is having a look at our TShirts ;-)
leweb3

PICTURES: Testing direct posting from Flickr

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IMG_4501, originally uploaded by didierbeck.

Picture taken in Saint Barth in March 2007. On the beach of Corossol, one of the few villages where you can still find some native people ;-)

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PICTURES: Cauldron of stars at the Galaxy’s center

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via Spitzer Space Telescope

A marvelous picture from the NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Absolutely fantastic!

This dazzling infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy. In visible-light pictures, this region cannot be seen at all because dust lying between Earth and the galactic center blocks our view.

In this false-color picture, old and cool stars are blue, while dust features lit up by blazing hot, massive stars are shown in a reddish hue. Both bright and dark filamentary clouds can be seen, many of which harbor stellar nurseries. The plane of the Milky Way’s flat disk is apparent as the main, horizontal band of clouds. The brightest white spot in the middle is the very center of the galaxy, which also marks the site of a supermassive black hole.

The region pictured here is immense, with a horizontal span of 890 light-years and a vertical span of 640 light-years. Earth is located 26,000 light-years away, out in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Though most of the objects seen in this image are located at the galactic center, the features above and below the galactic plane tend to lie closer to Earth.

Scientists are intrigued by the giant lobes of dust extending away from the plane of the galaxy. They believe the lobes may have been formed by winds from massive stars.

This image is a mosaic of thousands of short exposures taken by Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), showing emissions from wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange), and 8.0 microns (red). The entire region was imaged in less than 16 hours.

The center of the Milky Way galaxy: milky way galaxy [click to enlarge]

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech)

 

INNOVEO: Multitenancy

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via Leo and Wikipedia

“Mandantenfähigkeit” and Multitenancy

We had on last Tuesday an internal discussion about our innoveo product and we discussed, among others, the fact that our components are “Mandantenfähig”. This term is a German word and we had quite a long discussion within the team to explain in English what does that means. Because we didn’t know *any* translation in English and/or in French.

I had a look at LEO (the best way to translate properly from German to English and vice-versa), no translation but quite a lot of discussions in their forum. And finally a very good proposal for the translation with
a link to Wikipedia and the explanation and definition of “multitenancy” (adjective : multitenant). I haven’t heard this term (or read it) but it is exactly the definition of “Mandantenfähigkeit” ;-)

Multitenancy – what is that?

Multitenancy refers to the architectural principle, where a single instance of the software runs on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor’s servers, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). Multitenancy is contrasted with a multi-instance architecture where separate software instances (or hardware systems) are set up for different client organizations. With a multitenant architecture, a software application is designed to virtually partition its data and configuration so that each client organization works with a customized virtual application instance.

Multitenancy – Economics

Cost Savings
Multitenancy allows for cost savings over and above the basic economies of scale achievable from consolidating IT resources into a single operation. This is largely because of the licensing costs of the underlying software (such as operating systems and database management systems). Put crudely, if you can run everything on a single software instance, you only have to buy one software licence.

Complexity
Because of the additional customization complexity and the need to maintain per-tenant metadata, multitenant applications require a larger development effort than applications designed using a more isolated approach. But, because they can support more tenants per server, their ongoing operational costs tend to be lower.

Multitenancy – Requirements

Multitenant applications are typically required to provide a high degree of customization to support each target organization’s needs. Customization typically includes the following aspects:

  • Branding: allowing each organization to customize the look-and-feel of the application to match their corporate branding (often referred to as a distinct “skin”).

  • Workflow: accommodating differences in workflow to be used by a wide range of potential customers.

  • Extensions to the data model: supporting an extensible data model to give customers the ability to customize the data elements managed by the application to meet their specific needs.

  • Access control: letting each client organization independently customize access rights and restrictions for each user.

Conclusion – innoveo product

First, it is really cool to have found a translation after years of tries.
More seriously, it is absolutely crazy to read this Wikipedia definition because we got the feeling to read…a definition of what we are doing at innoveo! The economics are very clearly described and after 7 years of experience with such kind of development, I can tell you that these descriptions are completely representing the reality. Also from a requirement point of view, they are really greatly defined and summarized in these 4 bullets above.

So, if you are searching for a real proven and solid multitenant solution for your development, please take contact with us, we can definitely help at innoveo!