Tag Archives: strategy

Seesmic has acquired ping.fm

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Loic LeMeur, the CEO of Seesmic, announced yesterday that his company has acquired ping.gm. As a “happy-user” of both services, I find this acquisition definitely interesting ;-)

I am using Twhirl as a Windows Twitter client, and the ping.fm service to spread my updates to LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo and FriendFeed.

We’re happy to share with you very big news if you have not heard. We’ve acquired Ping.fm. Get ready to update 50 social networks from Seesmic.

[…] Ping.fm has more than half a million active users who post daily from any device just by sending an email, a text message or chat – simple tools that existed since the early stages of the Internet are available on all connected devices. This is why Ping.fm is extremely easy to use and access -just send an update and it can touch on 50 social networks including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, WordPress, TypePad, Yammer, Status.net and many more. Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which is why it has become so successful among thousands of users. 

[…]

Thanks to its powerful and simple API, more than a hundred applications already use Ping.fm to update all the main social networks and Seesmic commits to maintaining and improving the Ping.fm platform. Not only has Twhirl supported Ping.fm for about a year, but we are also preparing to open Seesmic apps with our own plug-in architecture so we understand and care about the developer community. Ping.fm co-founders, Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough, are joining the Seesmic team full time and will keep improving Ping.fm as well as integrating it with our Seesmic applications. The number one request from Ping.fm users is to have more powerful clients support postings to their social networks, so they should be pleased to know Seesmic applications will be adding this functionality.

Seesmic is also welcoming ping.fm angel investors as shareholders and advisors Joi Ito (@joi), Reid Hoffman (@quixotic) who was already a Seesmic shareholder and Mohamed Nanabhay (@mohamed). Seesmic applications on Blackberry,  Android,  Web,  Windows  and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration very shortly and therefore will instantly support 50 social networks.

[via Loic’s information mail]

Full employment

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via Seth Godin

So true…

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

  • Sales
  • Additive effort
  • Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you’ve produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor’s office–she’s just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you’re the person who can initiate useful action, if you’re the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

Vincent Bolloré

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I have the chance to be a member of the “Four Seasons Club” (in French: le club des quatre saisons), which is a private business club founded in 2003 and based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is a French-speaking club, gathering personalities from the economical, political, academic, cultural and media worlds.

The number of members is limited to 120. For me, a quite unique opportunity to speak French, my mother-tongue, and not (broken) English or (broken) German!

The Club is also an opportunity to see and to meet extremely interesting people, coming from different horizons, and not “just” the business.

On last Wednesday, we could see, listen to and meet Mr. Vincent Bolloré (wikipedia):

Vincent Bolloré (b. 1 April 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France) is a French industrialist, corporate raider and businessman.

He heads the family investment group Bolloré and is ranked 451st richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated fortune of US$1.7 billion. He is married, with 4 children.

Vincent Bolloré is from a well-off family from Brittany, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from Université Paris X Nanterre. Bolloré started his investment career as a bank trainee at investment bank Edmond de Rothschild.

His personal investment career began when he took over the reins at his family-controlled conglomerate Bolloré, which deals in maritime freight and African trade, and paper manufacturing (cigarette and bible paper). The company he leads today employs 33,000 people around the world.

He is a well-known corporate raider in France who has succeeded in making money by taking large stakes in French listed companies, in particular the building and construction group Bouygues, where he left with a sizeable capital gain after a power-struggle.

In late 2004, his investment group started building a stake in advertising group Havas, becoming its largest single shareholder. He mounted a coup and replaced Alain de Pouzilhac as Havas Chief Executive Officer on July 12, 2005.

In 2005, through his family company, Bolloré expanded his media interests by launching the Direct 8 television station. Towards the end of 2005, he began building a stake in independent British media planning and buying group, Aegis. As at 19 July, 2006, his stake in Aegis stood at 29%. Direct Soir, a free newspaper, was launched in June 2006. In January 2008, he manifested interest in becoming a shareholder of famed, but troubled, Italian car manufacturer Pininfarina.

He is a close personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

I haven’t known any detail about the Bolloré Group before this meeting. Actually very interesting! As Vincent Bolloré, a very charismatic and fascinating person, with quite a lot of distance and humility with his business successes. And a definitely not common strategic approach (“we do what the others don’t want to do”), with a very diversified group founded in 1822!

It was also the last day of the very long Indian Summer in Zurich.

VMware/SpringSource – About PaaS

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VMware announced on August 10, 2009 its willingness to acquire SpringSource for $362 million in cash and equity, plus $58 million of unvested stock and options (press release). The process should be closed in Q3 2009.

How can this acquisition be interpreted? What are the goals of VMware/SpringSource?

Some interesting inputs and analysis found on Internet.

A post from Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource

About the merge itself

[…] We have signed a definitive agreement with VMware, who will acquire SpringSource. Subject to regulatory approval, we expect the transaction to close in Q3. SpringSource will become a division within VMware. I will continue to lead SpringSource, reporting to VMware CEO Paul Maritz.

About the opportunity

[…] But the broader transformation in IT goes beyond Java frameworks, tooling and runtime infrastructure. The way in which people think about software stacks is changing. Virtualization is reshaping the data center, and cloud computing is set to drive far-reaching changes. Significantly, cloud computing blurs the division between development and operations, bringing new power (and responsibility) to developer.

And so the question becomes, what is the most simple, powerful, pragmatic way of utilizing SpringSource technologies in the data center, and in the cloud?

About the vision

Working together with VMware we plan on creating a single, integrated, build-run-manage solution for the data center, private clouds, and public clouds. A solution that exploits knowledge of the application structure, and collaboration with middleware and management components, to ensure optimal efficiency and resiliency of the supporting virtual environment at deployment time and during runtime. A solution that will deliver a Platform as a Service (Paas) […]

About the vision (said in other words)

The next chapter of our work at SpringSource is tackling those challenges: Building on our Build/Run/Manage solution to provide the industry’s best solution from developer desktop to cloud deployment. Bringing Spring’s power and simplicity to enabling the millions of Java developers to benefit from the full power of cloud computing. […]

About the representation of this vision

SpringSource Build/Run/Manage and VMware Cloud

About the open source community

Our commitment to open source practices, licenses and traditions will remain unchanged. We expect our contributions to open source to increase. Our open source projects will retain their commitment to enabling user choice. Spring will retain the portability between deployment environments that empowers users. […]

An analysis from 451 CAOS Theory

Part I

[…] VMware is clearly in need of a story beyond virtualization, even if we are still relatively early on in enterprise adoption. Still, looking into the future, it sees clear skies, and that does not fit with the multi-billion dollar opportunity shaping up in cloud computing. Thus, VMware is willing to invest a significant amount in SpringSource, which does represent a crossover in customers without much, if any, crossover in competition.

Part II

VMware is working to address its increasing competition from all sides. While it may seem somewhat odd for VMware to want to get involved in enterprise Java application development and deployment, it may want to take advantage of SpringSource’s relatively quick climb in the enterprise Java development and support business. VMware may also be looking to offset any gain in enterprise Java influence and control by Oracle, which may do so with its more than $7 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Part III

VMware is also facing increasing competition from OS vendors, including Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat, which is among SpringSource’s biggest competitors with its JBoss business. Again, SpringSource may not seem the most likely suitor for Java application development, but VMware may see this as an area where it can most effectively integrate its own technology and talent to differentiate in virtualization and cloud computing.[…]

Open source?

Although SpringSource’s open source nature has been critical to its developer reach and success, this is likely not as important to VMware, which may view SpringSource more as a subscription software company than as an open source software company. Either way, it seems VMware, similar to Oracle, may have somewhat limited vision when it comes to open source software, seeing it for its development and time-to-market advantages, but missing other community benefits — including user and customer communities, feedback and contributions — that help make things work.[…]

Disclosure: Innoveo Solutions is using Spring in its Innoveo Skye™ software product.

cross-posted on the Innoveo blog.

Lifelong learning & “growth mindset”

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via Jeff Busgang

I personally like the idea that we are all able to learn during our entire life, thanks to our family and private life, thanks to our social and business activities.

I am also convinced that it is extremely important to be able to change your goals (without being frustrated) and, at the same time, to be very resilient, which is totally antinomic :-) A question of balance perhaps.

Anyway, super food for thoughts from Jeff!

[…] If you aren’t facile at adjusting your goals, and they’re overly ambitious goals, it can lead to depression.

[…] As investors, we VCs are always attracted to entrepreneurs who set big, hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).  Who wants to invest in an entrepreneur whose pitch is, “I’m going to make a nice living in a small niche,” as opposed to, “I aspire to achieve world domination”?  Yet are those entrepreneurs more susceptible to depression and defeatism when they’re unable to achieve those outrageous BHAGs?

To reconcile these two views I am reminded of an excellent book I recently read by renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, called Mindset .  Dweck’s research shows that successful people in business, sports and life have “growth mindsets” rather than “fixed mindsets”.  The “growth mindset” is one in which a person believes that one’s world view is less about ability and more about lifelong learning.  “Growth mindset” individuals feel they can always learn from experiences (failures and successes) and develop resilience because they’re focused on personal growth rather than achievement tied to rigid objectives.  When a “growth mindset” individual faces adversity, they focus on the learnings and the self-improvement opportunities that come from adversity.

I have seen in my own work that the best entrepreneurs do set BHAGs, sometimes outrageous and unattainable ones (create a $100 million company in 5 years from scratch?  Is that really possible?), and push themselves to achieve excellence.  But the ones that really distinguish themselves are the ones who embrace the “growth mindset”.  They embrace life long learning, no matter how great their achievements, and allow themselves to occasionally hit the reset button and adjust their goals […]

IBM Rational conference

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via Judith Hurwirtz

Judith has attended to the last IBM Rational Conference and is sharing with us some noteworthy aspects of the “changing landscape of software development”.

  1. Rational is moving from tools company to a software development platform. […]
  2. More management, fewer low level developers [were attending the conference] […]
  3. Rational has changed dramatically through acquisitions. […]
  4. It’s all about Jazz. Jazz, IBM’s collaboration platform was a major focus of the conference.  Jazz is an architecture intended to integrate data and function.  Jazz’s foundation is the REST architecture and therefore it is well positioned for use in Web 2.0 applications. What is most important is that IBM is bringing all of its Rational technology under this model. Over the next few years, we can expect to see this framework under all of the Rational’s products.
  5. Rational doesn’t stand alone. […] What I found quite interesting was the emphasis on the intersection between the Rational platform and Tivoli’s management services as well as Websphere’s Service Oriented Architecture offerings. Rational also made a point of focusing on the use of collaboration elements provided by the Lotus division.  Cloud computing was also a major focus of discussion at the event.[…] The one area that IBM seem to have hit a home run is its Cloud Burst appliance which is intended create and manage virtual images. Rational is also beginning to deliver its testing offerings as cloud based services. One of the most interesting elements of its approach is to use tokens as a licensing model. In other words, customers purchase a set number of tokens or virtual licenses that can be used to purchase services that are not tied to a specific project or product.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Mark this day :-)

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Yesterday (Thursday) was an absolutely important and central milestone in the life of our company – Innoveo.

I am very proud, totally exciting for the coming steps, exhausted, and also in a way – relieved. First confirmations that our vision, strategy, and tactics are not sooo bad ;-)

As usual, a bit of luck, plus a great help and support from very smart people (hello René), and from our Team!

I remember a thought of one of my former boss, saying that:

Good stuff needs time to mature

This is absolutely true ;-) I would just extend it a bit:

Good stuff needs time AND a lot of energy to mature

Nick, mate, a big thought in your direction, you did such a great job!

Coming challenges are big, again, but first … there are coming! And second, they are super interesting!

A last one now, about “vision” :-)

(© Despair, Inc)

 

But gosh, now, I just want to sit down with a good grappa, and to appreciate this moment.

Software maintenance

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via Judith Hurwitz

Judith is bringing, as usual, interesting feeds for thoughts, this time in the field of software maintenance fees.

[…] As the world slowly moves to cloud computing for economic reasons there will be a major impact on how companies pay for software. Salesforce.com has indeed proven that companies are willing to trust their sales and customer data to a Software as a Service vendor. These customers are also willing to pay per user or per company yearly fees to rent software. Does this mean that they are no longer paying maintance fees? My answer would be no. It is all about accounting and economics. Clearly, Salesforce.com spends a lot of money adding functionality to its application and someone pays for that. So, what part of that monthly or yearly per user fee is allocated to maintaining the application? Who knows? And I am sure that it is not one of those statistics that Salesforce.com or any other Software as a Service or any Platform as a Service vendor is going to publish. Why? Because these companies don’t think of themselves as traditional software companies. They don’t expect that anyone will ever own a copy of their code.

The bottom line is that software will never be good enough to never need maintenance. Software vendors — whether they sell perpetual licenses or Software as a Service– will continue to charge for maintance. The reality is that the concrete idea of the maintenance fee will evolve over time. Customers will pay it but they probably won’t see it on their bills. Nevertheless, the impact on traditional software companies will be dramatic over time and a lot of these companies will have to rethink their strategies. Many software companies have become increasingly dependent on maintenance revenue to keep revenue growing. I think that Marc Benioff has started a conversation that will spark a debate that could have wide ranging implications for the future of not only maintenance but of what we think of as software.

Interesting!

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog.

Oracle buys Sun

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via Between the Lines

As everybody already knows, Oracle is buying Sun for about $7.4 billion, including Sun’s debt ($9.50 a share in cash). Some interesting thoughts from Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet.

  • [Oracle] added that the acquisition of Java “is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired.”
  • Oracle also becomes a full-fledged hardware player.
  • Oracle and Sun have been long-time partners. […] “More Oracle databases run on the Solaris Sparc than any other system,” said Ellison, noting Linux was second. “We’ll engineer the Oracle database and Solaris operating system together. With Sun we can make all components of the IT stack integrated and work well.”
  • Oracle with Sun appears to be the Apple of the enterprise. Indeed, Oracle President Charles Phillips noted that the company is looking to offer everything from apps to the disk.
  • Oracle’s stack of IT stuff now includes:
    • Java;
    • Solaris;
    • Enterprise applications ranging from CRM to ERP to business intelligence;
    • The database (Oracle and MySQL);
    • The middleware;
    • The storage hardware;
    • Cloud computing services;
    • And servers.
  • Art of War approach:
    • Oracle gets to annoy IBM—and own Java—over a few pennies a share more than Big Blue was willing to pay.
    • Oracle gets to kill MySQL. There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database. MySQL at best will wither from neglect. In any case, MySQL is MyToast.
    • Sun has a big installed base. All the better to upsell applications into.
  • Sun was relatively cheap compared to Oracle’s other acquisitions. The price was above the Hyperion buyout but below PeopleSoft and Siebel.
  • Oracle saves Sun management from what could have been a complete debacle following the IBM takeover talks. The Sun board had been split on the IBM deal. Today, it’s all roses.

The official Oracle press release can be found here.

It is clear that this deal will change the IT landscape quite massively. And the consolidation is definitely not finished…

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog.

Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun

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via 451 CAOS Theory

It seems that SUN will not communicate on that, but Marten Mickos, the former MySql CEO, is leaving SUN, after about 1 year… I remember one of my post in February 2008 with some explanations about the “why” of this merge, directly from Marten. Outch. Something didn’t work as planed there.

Some more information below.

I just got news that Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun amid a reorganisation of its infrastructure and database business units. Don’t expect an announcement from Sun on this, but the news is confirmed.

[…] Marten will be transitioning out of Sun by the end of the company’s (current) third quarter.

Marten’s departure is a big loss for Sun and follows quickly after the departures of Monty Widenius and David Axmark.

[…] Matt Asay is right, Marten’s departure “is likely to lead to an exodus among MySQL’s deep talent pool”. This needn’t be a complete disaster – the same thing happened at JBoss and Red Hat has recovered from that, but this is going to be a serious test for Sun’s ability to maximize on the potential of MySQL and its other open source assets.

Matt also writes that “Mickos was the backbone of MySQL’s rising revenues, as an open-source pragmatist and visionary. He was the face of MySQL, but also of the rising open-source industry.” This is true, and for that reason I hope it’s not too long before we see him taking charge at another vendor.

Good luck to Marten, hope to see him asap in a new role!