Analysts See Trouble Ahead for India’s Outsourcing Sector

Financial results for Indian outsourcing firms in the latest quarter are decidedly mixed, with the companies reporting financial gains but lowering future guidance in the face of continued problems with the rupee’s strength against the dollar, a softening U.S. market and difficulties finding enough employees. There is no question that this is going to be very challenging for the Indian business, Indian companies are hit with shortage of talent, increased wages, strenghtening rupee vs. US dollar and European market has become more lucrative for Indian companies as Euro is very strong. Mexico, Latin Americas, Eastern Europe is becoming more lucrative for many companies.

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Apple Continues to Tout Web Apps for iPhone, Sascha's Take

For a piece of hardware that was initially hailed as giving its users a sense of freedom not previously known in the infamously restrictive world of telecommunication, the iPhone sure has a bad habit of locking things down, between the bricking that resulted from unlocked handsets and the general lack of support for third-party downloadable apps.

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SAP, Business Objects Deal Leaves Market in Turmoil

SAP's announcement on Sunday [Oct. 7] that it plans to acquire business intelligence software vendor Business Objects for $6.8 billion has left the software industry in turmoil with conflicting prognostications coming from industry watchers and investors alike. I commented in my blog that the question remains whether SAP will continue developing Business Objects as a separate unit or whether BO will become just a part of the SAP gorilla organization.

Todays eWeek article discusses whether Business Objects will be tightly integrated into Netweaver and this could become a problem for Business Objects customers in the long run. Forrester analyst Ray Wang says that Business Objects clients should ask half a dozen questions from SAP:

"Will Business Objects users be forced on to NetWeaver in the long run? Can users ensure that they do not have to use NetWeaver? Will key management change and who will replace them? What impact will the acquisition have on post Business Objects XI releases? Does being a "separate company" in the SAP group work like the way the TomorrowNow works (theoretically, with no sharing of data or technology between the companies)? And how will SAP continue to support non-SAP users?"

Aberdeen Group analyst David Hatch is also saying that there are lots of Business Objects clients currently asking very had questions specifically as Business Objects has acquired eight companies in the past three years. These are Inxight Software, Cartesis, nSite, ALG Software, Firstlogic, Infommersion, Medience, and SRC.As I stated in my previous blogs, I believe Microsoft and other vendors such as Microstrategy and smaller ISV's will benefit from this turmoil.

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Google, Random House move closer on book search

October 12, 2007 (Reuters) -- FRANKFURT -- Random House, one of the world's biggest book publishers, is considering joining a book search project run by Google Inc., once considered an enemy by the paper publishing industry. Getting books more readily available for people is a huge plus but obviously authors and publishers want to protect their interests. I have been working on my book now for almost two years, lot's of sweat and tears so I do understand that this question is not a simple one for the parties.

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Oracle offer will freeze new BEA business, analysts say

October 12, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Oracle Corp's $6.6 billion bid for BEA Systems Inc. will effectively freeze the latter's efforts to gain new customers and force Oracle to face questions on how it will handle overlapping middleware product lines, analysts said today. It is fascinating to see how the enterprise software market continues to consolidate and players such as BEA will have no other choice than to sell itself as the rumours will continue to persist otherwise. I think Cognos and other BI vendors that are not part of the market gorillas will face the same dilemma: Sell yourself or become stagnant non-growing organiztion.

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Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

October 09, 2007 (Computerworld) -- ORLANDO -- Gartner Inc. has put "Green IT" at the top of its list of 10 strategic technologies for next year, and the research firm says that if businesses don't improve data center energy efficiency, the government may force them to do so. I am very excited about this latest report as it happens ot be part of the strategy for a company that I am a Director for (in the Board of Directors). The company Ravensoft, Ltd has innovated a cool product suite Greensnapper that enables organizations to do considerable savings in the electricity costs as Greensnapper turns desktops and laptops off during the hours that they are not used. This is definetely the trend that people are taking going forward and as CIO you will have to pay attention to this trend.

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Google Buys Finnish Mobile Software Maker Jaiku

Internet search leader Google Inc. said Tuesday that it has bought Finnish startup Jaiku, which makes a mobile phone application people can use to send short messages about where they are and what they're doing. Based on the local Finnish press, this company has never made any money, has no sales but I am sure the deal was sweet for the Finnish owners. There has been quite a few Finnish companies that have been bought the last year or so. It could be a sign of either these companies having good technology, being cheap or both.

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Pentaho Open-Source BI Release Is Meant for Customers - it is not for everybody!

After 11 months in development with the latest iteration of its software, open-source business intelligence software company Pentaho announced the 1.6 version of its namesake Open BI Suite. While a point release, the upgraded version is really the company's entrée into corporate accounts, according to analysts. I have exposure to open source from both commerical as well as academic perspective and have mixed feelings about the whole thing. People assume that open source is free, but it is completely the opposite. You will have to have a staff that understands open source and how to deal with it and in most cases, you do not have anybody to call if something goes wrong.

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Google executives on the run - they have made their share of money of Google?

Today, it was confirmed that more Google executives are on the run. This time Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer that has been responsible for teh Google ecommerce efforts. A few days ago, another Google big shot, very well known Google (former Borland, Microsoft) guy Adam Bosworth left Google to form his own company. But what makes this interesting is that Ling is leaving to join Facebook.com and follows therefore the former Google CFO of YouTube Gideon Yu .

Ling will be heading Facebook platform development and its software architecture and this is very exciting stuff as I have had a chance to play with Facebook for a while now and it is almost addictive as it has so many cool applications you can build with. Yesterday I linked my TELLUS Analytics Blog to my Facebook profile, so each time I blog, it will be automatically shared with my friends without them having to go anywhere. I can also share books and other stuff of choice.

Cognos Does Not Rule Out Sale Of Company - of course not as everybody else has been sold already

Software maker Cognos has not ruled out a sale of the company, an executive told Reuters on Tuesday, after Germany's SAP said it planned to buy another rival. This is only logical and to me, IBM would be the logical choice or even HP that recently acquired Knightsbridge that is a BI consulting organization.

As former IBM business partner and BI independent software vendor, I think Cognos would fit well into IBM's strategy even if the Cognos acquisition would be on a larger scale than they usually do.

Former acquistions such as Alphabox etc. have been in the IBM's target group. I also believe these acquisitions will benefit Microsoft as they are building/have built a solid foundation their relational database technology. Also, with the release of PerformancePoint 2007, Microsoft will have a better chance of competing in the business performance management, budgeting/forecasting and dashboard implementations. It looks like that the large independent business intelligence players are going away and will become part of the large ERP vendor offering. The big question will be how the market is going to look like after this? I have an idea and will blog about this later.read more digg story

Indigestion-for-SAP: technology integration will be a challenge for SAP

The integration of technology and processes will be difficult as SAP digests Business Objects acquisition, analysts warn. Warnings of integration challenges and technology conflicts have already begun, as analysts warn SAP's $6.78 billion acquisition of Business Objects will be hard to swallow. I have been in technology management for almost 20 years and it is very unlikely that all of the clients that Business Object has today will be happy about this. A merger to a large ERP vendor means tighter integration to SAP architecture and this means typically less integration to other platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics. It is going to be interesting to see how Microsoft relationship with SAP will evolve as Microsoft has an ongoing project of integrating its Office technology to SAP platform.

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SAP Touts Synergies in Business Objects Deal - What else would one expect?

CEO Henning Kagermann says the $6.78 billion acquisition of Business Objects will bolster SAP's BI efforts, and denies the deal is a reaction to Oracle. What can I say... I would not expect anything else from SAP leadership team. It puts a smile in my face when I see this type of comments from these big players. Everybody knows that their is a huge competition between Oracle Larry Ellison and SAP leadership. I used to be Retek shareholder and I was very amused to get every week a letter to my house explaining how they have oubidded each other.

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What is going to happen to Business Objects Customers

The BI space is getting smaller and smaller and today's announcement of SAP acquiring Business Objects will fuel the confusion of the BI space. The question that each client should pose now is: "What is going to happen to the technology and how much emphasis is SAP going to put on its development to get BO integrated to its suite of software? The second question is whether SAP will drop some of the tools that BO has in favor of its own stuff.

Forrester has predicted consolidation for a while and in today's blog, they conclude that there is going to be some interesting scenarios specifically within the business performance management space for the company (multiple overlapping technologies). I have been involved, and part of mergers & acquisitions and there is ALWAYS some turmoil whatever the executives will tell you. BO and SAP clients will have to keep hold of their hats for the next coming months as the two companies put together their strategies.

SAP's Business Objects deal means big overlap in performance management app

October 08, 2007 -- SAP AG's plan to acquire business intelligence vendor Business Objects SA for $6.7 billion will result in significant overlapping performance management software that creates questions about a future product road map, analysts said. I have monitored the business intelligence market for the past few years and even commented in my blog that traditional vendors such as Business Objects will run out of gas at some point in time.

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Nokia Deal May Spell Death for GPS Devices - Finland on the go!

Nokia's recent $8.1 billion purchase of Navteq is evidence of continued consolidation among map data providers, and will pave the way for cell phone-based GPS systems to replace portable and vehicular mapping devices, according to analysts and industry executives. I just bougth Garmin Streetpilot 2730 for my Honda Goldwing motorcycle. I do not believe in GPS devices that are used from a mobile phone... it is just too small UI to make sense... For personal use yes, but not on vehicles.... But the big scheme that Nokia is working on is to become the standard in automobile industry.

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Skype Co-founder Zennstrom Bows Out - sign of trouble?

Niklas Zennstrom is stepping down as CEO of Skype to concentrate on video-over-the-Web startup Joost. We moved over to Microsoft Messenger when Skype was down, I just could not wait for them to fix it. My company has been very happy with Messenger.

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