Dr. Petri I. Salonen's Publications and Book Reviews

My second book project on its way

2009-05-23T06:54:00.003-06:00

I am currently in Finland and will be meeting with my publisher to discuss about my upcoming book that will be my second book from the same publisher. I have been thinking/contemplating and pondering about the content and it is pretty much in my head now and I have to get it on paper as well... I am very excited about this new project and the content will be very timely for many of us!

Amazon Debuts Bigger Kindle

2009-05-06T19:10:00.002-06:00

New larger Kindle to the market soon. I have the first Kindle (1) and Kindle 2 and might be buying this one as well.

"Amazon Debuts Bigger Kindle"

Amazon unveiled a $489 Kindle electronic-book reader that has a larger screen geared toward textbooks and newspapers.

The agony of an author and the joy of having a clear picture in one's head

2009-05-02T11:52:00.000-06:00

I am sitting in Helsinki, Finland and writing on my second book (first one was released in December 2007) and I have been contemplating on this book for quite a while and during the long first of May weekend here in Helsinki, everything became so clear to me. I know exactly the why's, to whom, and the rest and now I am just getting everything written.... The agony of a writer and the joy of getting things cleared in one's mind are mysterious....

Book review of books within social media domain, January 04, 2009:

2009-01-04T22:11:00.000-06:00

I maintain three blogs, and this blog has not got much attention as I have been focusing on getting the content right in all three blogs. They are

Global Software Business, which focuses on topics around software business including software business models and such.

Dr. Petri I. Salonen's Publications and Book Reviews is going to be more of books that I review and buy on regular basis. Most of my reviews and tips will be in video format.

Onnistu suuressa maailmassa blog is in Finnish and was created for my business book that I published in Finland with Talentum publisher. This will also include video snippets of book reviews.

The review below is a collection of a few interesting books in social media. They are as follows:

Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek

Marketing for Rainmakers - 52 Rules of Engagement to Attract and Retain Customers for Life by Phil Fragasso

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Advertising 2.0 - Social Meida Marketing in a Web 2.0 World by Tracy L. Tuten

Always on - Advertising, Marketing, and Media in an Era of Consumer Control by Christopher Vollmer with Geoffrey Precourt

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Grown up digital - how net generation is changing your world by Don Tapscott

I am using a beautiful service (software-as-a-service) called libratything.com that enables me to tag my books and collect them and review just having an internet browser. My profile can be reviewed by anybody.

Status of new book project for the Finnish marketplace

2008-10-18T22:42:00.001-06:00

This is my second book to the Finnish marketplace. My first book, Onnistu suuressa maailmassa was published in December 2007 and I hope that this second book will be written by Christmas 2008 and maybe published first quarter of 2009.

Bookreview of online communities and such

2008-09-02T18:20:00.002-06:00

I have been deep down in investigating online communities and how to make money with them. I think the book from David Silver Smart Start-ups is well written and includes examples of different types of online communities and how people could make some money. Another one is from Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore Communities Dominate Brands. I also bought two books about influence marketing: Influencer Marketing from Duncan Brown and Nick Hayes and The Psychology Influence of Persuasion from Robert B. Cialdini. Finally, Clay Shirky has written a book Here Comes Everybody that explains the power of organizing without organizations. I have included a few comments in Youtube.com video as well.

Experiences of Harvard Business School by a student: Ahead of the Curve by Philip Delves Broughton

2008-08-17T10:16:00.002-06:00

I have always been fascinated about university campuses, whether it is my own school (Helsinki School of Economics) or University of Paris, Sorbonne. These campuses has a magic into it and I find my own internal piece among the mostly beautiful buildings that they have. A British journalist Philip Delves Broughton has documented his experiences in Harvard Business School during his 2 year tenure. His experiences not only of the school, but also the teaching and other students has been narrated in the very interesting book "Ahead of the Curve" that is now available either as a Kindle book or as a hard copy. I own both versions. As I have been doing some book reviews in Finnish in my Finnish blog, I decided to share some of these video clips also in English. Stay tuned for more.

Professor Randy Pausch has died in pancreatic cancer

2008-07-26T11:09:00.004-06:00

When I woke up this morning, I read from Wall Street Journal that Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University has passed away 04.00 AM am local time in his own house. Professor Randy Pausch made a decision to document as much as he could of his final months so he could leave a legacy to his very young children. His famous speech "The Last Lecture" has been one of the most viewed Youtube videos, his book has been listed as bestseller for weeks and his home pages have been visited by millions and millions of viewers.

What Randy Pausch brought to us was the lesson of living each and every day to our fullest. Let's remember this when we go with our business on a daily basis. We tend to stress about the small things when there are people around the world that suffer and have huge issues on their hands. I try, even if it is hard, to remember this when stress or other issues creep up in my life. I was reminded about this personally in 2003 and therefore I know what I am talking about. The world famous cyclist Lance Armstrong that almost died in testicular cancer is educating people around the world about how to battle cancer and how to live your life.

I have created a new blog for global software business

2008-07-13T19:16:00.005-06:00

Blogging is like writing a book. You are trying to figure out what your audience will be and this blog http://www.telluspublications.com/ was intially built to review books and other interesting things in my own core competence areas. However, my background is heavy in software development and my passion is to work with ISV's around the world. Of this reason, I decided to create a new blog purely to track what is going on in the world of software. This blog http://www.globalsoftwarebusiness.com/ tackles issues and questions of different things such as earnings models in software, and other international issues that entreprenours have to face on a daily basis. This blog will stay more like a review of books and other literature related stuff. My Finnish blog http://www.onnistusuuressamaailmassa.com/ is built from ground up in Finnish and I will keep maintaining that as well. These are the three blogs that I will continue maintaining and the forth one is a blog that I maintain with experiences of my travel.

Microsoft's Hosted Services: A Turning Point for Partners?

2008-07-12T18:02:00.002-06:00

Microsoft at WPC today unveiled its hosted service offerings and pricing -- something that has been deferred, to partner unease, for about two years.Redmondmag.com reports about the accouncements from Microsoft Worldwide Conference in Houston this week. In his keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was clear: the market is changing and Microsoft partners needs to change with the market. It is very clear to me that classic Microsoft partners have to do drastic changes in their business models as otherwise they will not be able to compete in the new SaaS world.

read more digg story

The Future State of the CRM Market

2008-07-12T17:52:00.002-06:00

Tough economic times for North American enterprises will create uncertain, challenging environments for corporate CRM systems, according to an AMR Research report. Here's what you need to know about the CRM market and the vendors who will be left standing in 2012. The market is very interesting at the moment with lots of companies moving into software-as-service environments. This market will continue to grow and niche players will be able to compete in selected verticals. It is about the value that the vendor can provide to the end user organization.

read more digg story

Microsoft Acquires MobiComp: got to love the competition

2008-07-03T21:16:00.001-06:00

The new deal expands Microsoft's mobile platform to include backup services focused on social networks.Microsoft continued to expand its mobile portfolio June 26 with its acquisition of MobiComp, an open-source cloud computing company that specializes in storage, backup and restoration of mobile data. Microsoft declined to reveal the financial terms of the deal. What makes this acquistion interesting is the fact that the company is based on Braga, Portugal and according to eWeek.com, the company is bought due to the strong skills in research. Whatever the cause, the competition in mobility is heating up with Nokia taking over Symbian and others also trying to figure out how to be part of the competition. I love this type of market evolvement.

read more | digg story

Randy Pausch and his battle of pancreatic cancer

2008-07-01T21:12:00.006-06:00

I read about Randy Pausch, Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who has been struck with terminal pancreatic cancer. Professor Pausch is a very well known and liked lecturer that you can see from the included video clips from Youtube.com
I immediately googled the lecture from youtube.com and ordered his book as physical copy and I also ordered a Kindle version so I could start reading it immediately. Professor Pausch decided to make his story remembered, not because he wanted us to feel sorry for him, but to make us remember that each and every day is a gift to us and we should make sure we take advantage of that.

I was reminded of our short stay on this planet by a friend and colleague of mine recently. A former colleague from the past has recently passed away in another form of cancer and it is hard to accept that a person that I have spent numerous hours with different clients and internal meetings is no longer with us. Each and every day that we live, we need to make sure that we celebrate our living and live our lives to the fullest.

Another person that survived cancer and decided to spend time to educate the public about cancer is Lance Armstrong who had a sever form of testicular cancer with poor prognosis of survival. He survived and has spend a tremendous amount of time educating people around this topic. He has a foundation to help to raise the awareness of cancer and this work is tremendously valuable. Each and everybody of us have friends and family around us that will sooner or later face cancer and the more we are aware of it, the sooner we can help these people to cope with the battle of cancer. The Lance Armstrong Foundation LiveStrong blog has discussions and entries about people from all walks of life and I have to say that this type of work is tremendously valuable and I appreciate the people doing this type of work.

I flew to witness Lance Armstrong to get his 7th Tour de France win in France (we spent a few days in Paris). Lance has been interviewed many times in different medias, one of the latest ones was in CNBC by CNBC's maria Bartiromo (I like her reporting style). Wall Street Journal made a story of Professor Pausch final lecture as can be seen below:

The full lecture can be see below:

These will show to the listeners that fight for cancer has to continue and we all need to be reminded of. Let's live our each day to its fullest!

Ten Blogs You Should Be Reading DAILY

2008-07-01T21:10:00.002-06:00

The countless amount of blogs in the cyberspace makes our lives difficult but PCMag.com has listed the top then that everybody should track on a regular basis. We live in a world with too many blogs and news channels and we try to find ways to list them in a way that we can track the most important newsfeeds of choice. I used del.icio.us as of source to make sure I remember sites, but I am sure there are many others that people use. Regardless, we have our own choices and the list of 10 blogging sites from PCMag.com is just one view of one editor.

read more digg story

Market leaders:Your position might not be there forever

2008-06-27T11:37:00.006-06:00

I would not like to be in WMWare's shoes now. Microsoft has now released its virtualization software Hyper-V that Microsoft released before its planned schedule. Based on an article from Redmond Developer News, the beta had more than 1.5 million downloads. What makes this a killer is that it is priced retail for $28 and this is something that WMWare is going to struggle with as their comparable solution is between $7000 to$14.000 based on an article from Tietoviikko.com. WMware has been the gorilla in this market and now Microsoft is going to take a stab at this market by going with pricing that is a fraction of what WMWare is asking. This is yet another case where assumed marketleaders can face competition beyond their dreams. Mary-Jo Foley (author of Microsoft 2.0 book from Wiley).

Salesforce strengthens ties to Google: competition of the cloud is getting heated

2008-06-26T22:00:00.001-06:00

June 25, 2008 — Building on their recent linkup, Salesforce.com and Google are aiming a new toolkit for Google Data APIs at developers. Salesforce released last month the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs,which helps to build software programs that could run on Salesforce’s platform-as-a-service offering. The competition is getting heated and the rules of sofware development with it. I truly believe that there is a huge shift in mental attitude towards how software is built and how clients/end user customers sees it. The new generation (10 year olds) are the ones that will not even question whether things are done in the "cloud" or old tranditional way. Vendors have to be looking at this new generation.

read more | digg story

Salesforce.com Aims to Grow Into a Utility Computing Power: is it going to be like electricity?

2008-06-25T20:08:00.002-06:00

Salesforce.com will stake its future growth for the next decade on delivering a computing platform as a service. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff wants to change the landscape by moving from software as a service to "platform as a service" and this means that Salesforce.com wants to contentrate on delivering data center and application development services, including server capacity, storage, management services and the labor that goes with it to businesses of every size. What I have heard is that Salesforce.com is not very friendly to its partners and wants to do all of it themselves. This is to the contrary to Microsoft that is trying to fill in the pipeline for its business partners. Regardless, the competition is going to heat up and during my doctoral defence in 2004, I said that software will change to utility computing like electricity is today. Maybe this trend is finally here?

read more digg story

Microsoft's 'Oslo' to implement modeling alternatives: Is this a good fit for domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages?

2008-06-24T15:07:00.001-06:00

June 4, 2008 — ORLANDO — If you can’t beat them, absorb them. That seems to be Microsoft’s theory as it prepares its big entrance into the modeling arena by talking up extensibility here at the Tech·Ed Developers conference.According to Steven Martin (director of product management in Microsoft's connected systems division), "Oslo" modeling language will be a low-level language, one to designed to work withi domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages as well as BPEL and Unified Modeling Language (UML). Furthermore, Oslo will be have an XML base and Microsoft will provide a roadmap for its support of other modeling languges later this year. According to Martin, "Oslo technology will feature a repository that is meant to capture all necessary information related to an application, such as its business logic, deployment, and identity and governance policies". Furthermore, another Oslo component, known as Architecture Explorer, is a graphical environment for model design. Based on the article, Microsoft will reveal more at this fall's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles.I have been working with different companies, their prouduct development strategies for quite a while and it surprises me how far we still are of having an unified environment for developers. Based on the article, Oslo is according to Microsoft standards based on horizontal approarch, not vertical like domain-specific approach assumes. DSM is geared to take care of domain-specific things, which helps developers to grasp the issues and architecture of what they are trying to solve. It is going to be interesting to see where Oslo takes the development community.

read more | digg story

Tech job moving abroad? Offshore yourself with it!

2008-06-23T16:48:00.002-06:00

If your job is moving overseas, maybe you should move with it. Many American IT workers have looked with increasing worry as programming and datacenter jobs shifted to India, China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, with companies seeking cheap labor and Internet connectivity making offshoring a plausible business option. I like the approach that this article proposes. First of all, there is a lot of skills in the US that countries would benefit from and there is no return from the fact that work is global today. In my book that came out before Christmas 2007 in Finland, I urge Finns to view the world from a new global perspective using a new framework of mind. The ones that understand this, will be the winners of next decade.

read more digg story

Interesting debate from Salesforce.com Marc Benioff and SAP Hasso Plattner

2008-06-22T21:57:00.000-06:00

I run into an interesting debate from YouTube where Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and SAP Hasso Plattner debate about enterprise software.

Strong statement from Nokia: Open source developers should play by our rules

2008-06-20T15:43:00.002-06:00

"We want to educate open source developers. There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks, and subsidized business models," Jaaski told attendees of the Handsets World conference in Berlin. In other words, the open source community needs to learn how to keep things closed.I have been blogging multiple times about the ins and outs of open source movement.

A few days ago, the Finnish IT weekly journal Tietoviikko puhlished a story where the director responsible for Nokias software Ari Jaaksi defends Nokia's approach to open source development. Tietoviikko got the article from InfoWorld's Neil McAllister who asks how come Nokia can dictate concludes in his blog how Nokia can dictate open source movement. This type of discussion is natural as nobody really understands the true foundation of open source and how companies can protect their IP both in the short and long run.

read more digg story

Microsoft Buys Navic to Add TV Ads to Web Campaigns

2008-06-18T16:16:00.003-06:00

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the third-largest seller of Internet ad space in the U.S., will add television spots to its advertising system by acquiring Navic Networks, stepping up competition with market leader Google Inc. This move takes Microsoft to a new area and Microsoft will get clients such as Wal-Mart Stores, Nissan Motor Co and Allstate as its clients in the television commercials domain. It is fascinating to see how the competition changes the landscape of our daily lives. It is good for everybody.

Haven't bought a Macbook Air yet? Try the HP ENVY!

2008-06-11T08:08:00.001-06:00

For all you Macbook Air holdouts, HP has just announced its ultra-thin HP Envy which is actually thinner and more powerful than the Macbook Air. At just .70 inches thick, the Envy still packs a 1.8/1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo along with an 80 GB hard drive or a 64 GB SSD. Here's the cool part, the power brick doubles as a wifi router.

read more | digg story

BI steps into the cloud: are we getting closer to reality? How about ETL, OLAP cube building and Data Warehouse

2008-06-08T14:43:00.001-06:00

Business intelligence functionality has made its way into cloud computing as Panorama Software on Thursday unwrapped PowerApps. The SaaS model is becoming a strong contestant in the business intelligence space and Panorama is the first one to really push it. This will create huge competition between the main players. It is going to be interesting to see how BI can play in highly intensive data integration initiatives and data loads. I believe that reporting/dashboarding can be done in SaaS world, but how do one create effectiveness in extraction, transformation, load (ETL) processes and data warehouse/cube building.

read more | digg story

Redemption Time for the UMPC: is it worth now

2008-06-08T14:17:00.001-06:00

Due to early flops, the Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) started out with a bad rap. Recent models are going a long way to remedy that. I have been looking to buy an ultraportable laptop for almost a year, but the models from Samsung and Sony has not been what I expect them to be. Soon, the right type of device is here. Based on the article frmo PCMag.com and also my reviews from other models, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and Fujitsu LifeBook U810 seem to be taking first place. Also, last week, I saw the first time the upcoming Dell model that is pretty sweet.

read more | digg story

Ballmer: Software makers face big challenges

2008-06-04T21:45:00.002-06:00

Software makers need to create natural interfaces, simplify programming tools, and create better search tools for a new computer revolution to happen, Microsoft CEO says. Furthermore, "Ballmer also suggested that software development is still too complex, and integrating separate computer systems still too difficult. The complexity of software development is still the "bane" of the IT industry, he said. I have been part of teams developing software products to the international marketplace and I fully agree with Ballmer. Until we find more abstract ways developing software, we will not get out the productivity that is required. Domain-specific modeling (DSM) is the way to go if the company is in the process of modeling and creating a languge for a given domain.

read more digg story

Tech-Ed: Gates' Farewell to Developers Focuses on Silverlight, Velocity, Oslo

2008-06-04T16:33:00.004-06:00

Redmond Developer News reports from Tech-Ed: Gates' Farewell to Developers Focuses on Silverlight, Velocity, Oslo. One of the key areas where Microsoft is focusing on is to enhance its development tools to enable richer and more enhanced user interfaces, more capable data-driven applications and better management of enterprise-scale software projects. The article also portays how Gates discussed new tooling to help developers model and architect applications. New architecture tooling in Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) lets developers check application flows, drill down into the architecture layer and validate program code against the architecture design. Harry also noted that VSTS will let developers automatically check for architecture design violations at check-in. I am pretty sure that the development tool industry will focus more on providing higher abstraction levels for developers to avoid laborsome, code intensive development. Developers and achitects should be enabled with tools that enable development such as has been the case with DSM (domains-specific modeling) and DSL. It remains to be seen where the trend of development tools takes us.

Microsoft Windows 7: What the Future Holds

2008-06-04T11:24:00.001-06:00

PCmag.com submitted an interesting article about upcoming Microsoft Windows release 7.0. According to the article, Microsoft is preparing a modular kernel without a graphical user interface (GUI). This would Microsoft allow to use the kernel across different hardware devices such as mobile phone and other embedded devices. Intresting stuff..... I am sure there is going to be lots of "leaks" going forward about what the strategy might be for the new upcoming Windows platform.

read more | digg story

The Best Media Extenders according to PC Magazine.com

2008-06-03T21:53:00.001-06:00

I have been researching the next generation wireless technology to my house... not only for music playback but also for video streaming. This article describes well the options that you have to do things. I invited the "professional team" from Bestbuy to suggest to me what I should buy and install to my house and when I asked a question what they would suggest as media server, both technicians looked at me and said "we typically get only questions about flat panel tv's and we do not know anything about any servers". Needless to say, I threw these guys out from my house. They were useless. So, if you have basic understanding of wireless technology, media servers etc., do not invite anybody from a "generic" retailer to your house. They do not have a clue. I have now tested them multiple times and found this to be the case.

read more | digg story

Open source: is it so open as we think (ISV's need to be careful)

2008-05-28T07:55:00.008-06:00

In today's Finnish IT publication online article, the CEO of MySQL (now part of Sun) openly discusses of open source code and the need to keep some of the parts closed. I have discussed in multiple occasions that it is naive to think that fully open source will create a good business if you sole purpose is to be an independent software vendor. If you combine this with services like IBM does, you might make some money. As an entrepreneur, I have studied this topic and even participated in an academic article "Internet-enabled co-production: Partnering or competing with customers?" where my part was to view open source from an entrepreneurial perspective.

The article today in the Finnish Tietoviikko explains that MySQL was in the process of getting listed (IPO) and part of the plan was to have software modules that would be fully closed and this tells me that open source without some proprietary software modules is just fantasy. My recommendation for entrepreneurs is to be very, very careful using open source in core IP (intellectual property) specifically if the company does not understand the different licensing models.

Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era

2008-05-26T20:20:00.004-06:00

I am in the proces of reading an interesting non-authorized book by Mary Jo Foley that has been tracking Microsoft for the past 25 years. I am in the beginning of the book, so I will get back with a new blog post when I have completed reading the book. What was interesting is that this book can not be purchased using Amazon.com Kindle device. I wonder why Wiley and Amazon.com did not make that possible? In the beginning of this book, there are some interesting comments on the blog called Mini-Microsoft that nobody knows who maintains the blog itself. Stay tuned!

BlackBerry, iPhone Raise Mobile Stakes

2008-05-26T20:17:00.002-06:00

RIM and Apple are eyeing each other's turf as new smart phones blur the line between enterprise and consumer devices. The market is getting heated and Apple, Nokia, Microsoft and RIM are going to fight for the same clients, both consumer as well as enterprise. Only time will tell who is going to be on the winning side.. I have my own suspicions on that...

read more | digg story

The New Age of Innovation by management Guru C.K. Prahlad.

2008-05-23T10:18:00.001-06:00

A new book from the Bottom of the Pyramid guru lays out the new landscape of business, driven by consumer co-creation and service customization. Yet another very interesting book from Prahlad and I just purchased using my Amazon.com Kindle device. This way I can have my hundreds of books with me whereever I go in the world and specifically now when my airliner American Airlines has started to nicle and dime travelers like me for everything we do. I am not specifically happy of the announcements that American Airlines did yesterday with the changes. I do understand that they are bleeding, but the way they are making the changes will make my travel even harder. I have close to 3 million miles on them, so I know what it is to spend time on the road and planes.

read more | digg story

The iPhone is No BlackBerry Bold

2008-05-15T13:34:00.002-06:00

I really like the way the compare iPhone to BlackBerry. The perception of business users not having a keyboard is unbelievable. I travel, I need to make emails and this is not going to happen without a keyboard. That is why Apple will never get my attention as corporate phone.

read more | digg story

Microsoft Launches On-Demand CRM Software into a Crowded Market

2008-04-30T14:08:00.001-06:00

Microsoft is trying to reinvent itself as an on-demand provider of software services. And with its Dynamics CRM Online product, it's going hard after well-established players like Salesforce.com, SAP and Oracle. After having used Dynamics CRM 3.0, I am sure that the competition has to do something about it as the amount of Outlook users in the world is huge and Microsoft marketing engine will take over to push it to the global markets. What I really like in the Dynamics CRM is the ability to customize on the fly, make changes and publish to the database. I used to be a client of Goldmine Client/Server and that type of functionality did not exist.

read more | digg story

American Airlines loses $3.3 million a day - how can they make it?

2008-04-29T06:17:00.002-06:00

How can CEO Gerald Arpey run a carrier that's losing money like airplanes burn fuel? My company does international business whereby I both spend money on flights and the crews on board. The last year, I must admit that it is very noticeable that the tension within the airline employees has increased and the upcoming labor negotiations are going to be brutal. In today's Finnish newspaper, the CEO of the Finnish airliner Finnair Jukka Hienonen expects more mergers and bankruptcies going forward. The last month or so, 4 airliners have already declared bankruptcy and American Airlines is loosing 3.3 million dollars every day. How can one survive in that kind of environment. American Airlines CEO Gerald Arpey does not have anything to cut anymore as the cost cutting has already gone very deep in the organization. Also, as a frequent flier, the plans of American Airlines are very old and needs to be updated.

read more digg story

What's Driving Microsoft's Strategy: Virtualization, Software as a Service, Unified Communications, Online Collaboration

2008-04-28T20:34:00.002-06:00

At a briefing in Redmond, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner explains how business demands for advances in these four key areas guide Microsoft's strategy as it creates a software and services roadmaps. The change in business models is also going to impact large vendors such as Microsoft and I believe the biggest change is going to be among classic, traditional Microsoft partners that only sells infrastructure solutions such as email, collaboration without providing any additional value for end user organizations. Software plus service, cloud computing and the rest is going towards commodization where money is made in a different way.

read more digg story

Microsoft Launches Dynamics CRM Online

2008-04-23T19:41:00.002-06:00

Microsoft rolled out its Dynamics CRM Online platform today as a generally available service. The rollout represents a challenge to Salesforce.com's hosted customer relationship management (CRM) offerings. It also represents a milestone in Microsoft's general "software plus services" strategy. This release is long due and is finally there. The price is very competitive and will be a hard competitor to Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. Also, Microsoft is hosting this themselves and will include quite a lot of features and functionality such as 100 workflows in the product.

read more digg story

Will MySQL Keep Lighting up LAMP? Open-source is still commercial even if people do not realize it.

2008-04-21T13:25:00.002-06:00

MySQL leader Marten Mickos tries to calm Linux leaders' fears of MySQL abandoning the Linux market. I still keep wondering when people say that open source is free. I have been told that "there is nothing such as free lunch" and this applies to things such as MySQL as well. Now when MySQL founders and venturists have made one billion dollars in selling the RDMS to Sun, there is some feat that LAMP will become SAMP based on Sun's own operating system. If I were Sun, that is exactly what needs to be done, focusing on Sun's own application and operating system stack. I expect to see more of these transitions going forward where open source vendors get acquired by somebody that has a commerical interest in making money on the "community".

read more digg story

Five Essential RIM BlackBerry Keyboard Tips and Tricks - I just love it

2008-04-09T16:02:00.002-06:00

Add another notch to your Research In Motion BlackBerry black belt with these great smartphone keyboard tips and tricks. We have many gadgets and it takes time to learn all the small things that make our lives easier. Fortunately these types of articles remind us how to become better gadget users.

read more digg story

Heading South - More entrepreneurs discover Latin America

2008-03-05T14:16:00.001-06:00

Jon Morris, chief executive officer of Rise Interactive, a 15-person Internet advertising company in Chicago, shifted his outsourced design and Web development staff from India to Costa Rica in 2005. He still attracted highly skilled computer people for far lower salaries than he would pay in the U.S. And he no longer has to deal with the 11 1/2-hour time difference between India and the Chicago offices of his $2.5 million company. Now Morris is hiring full-time staff there, including senior account executives. "It's been great on so many levels," says Morris. "It's the quality of work, the lack of a time zone difference, the proximity. I'm beyond ecstatic." In my latest book I complained about the fact that Europe does not see Latin Americas (LATAM) as a good marketplace. I have and will build a business where LATAM is a major part of. No question about it!

read more | digg story

The trouble with Steve Jobs - interesting review of Steve Jobs and his career the past 25 years

2008-03-04T23:53:00.002-06:00

CNN Online released an interesting article about Steve Jobs and his value to Apple. Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.By Peter Elkind, editor at large Apple CEO Steve Jobs mingled with the faithful at this year's Macworld Expo. Steve jobs is full of passion and I have read most of the books written about him. This article sheds some additional light on the past 5 years.

read more digg story

Ballmer Outlines Vision For Next Computing Revolution

2008-03-04T22:45:00.003-06:00

HANOVER, GERMANY -- ChannelWeb reports in its recent article The rise of PCs, graphical user interfaces, the Internet, and MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, the computing revolution that's about to take place will tie up all the loose ends from previous ones. There are fundamental changes going on in the software ecosystem and these changes are also impacting Microsoft and Steve Ballmer is outlining the the forces behind the changes: computing power in the hands of users, expansion of storage technology, access to wireless networks and renewal of user interface technology. I have to say that my own use of technology is changing and my HSPDA wireless connection, my very portable Dell XPS M1330 laptop has impacted my virtual working tremendonsly.

Microsoft To Offer Online Services To Businesses Of All Sizes

2008-03-03T21:23:00.005-06:00

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) will make its Microsoft Online Services available to businesses of all sizes, the company announced Monday based on a ChannelWeb web news bulletin, possibly bringing it into conflict with channel partners who resell Microsoft's Web-hosted applications to small and midsize businesses. Monday Microsoft also unveiled Web-hosted versions of its Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 collaboration applications in a move that's sure to step up the competition with software-as-a-service products offered by Internet rivals Google and Yahoo (NSDQ:YHOO). The competition is heating up and this will be good for the customers. Another article apperead in eWeek Channel Insider where the discussion is questioning how the channel partners will be impacted of these new offerings. The software business models are changing and we need to be reflective to these changes and adjust our businesses accordingly. If we rely the market to go as we want it to go, we are for sure going to loose.

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

2008-03-02T21:01:00.002-06:00

I recent article by Wall Street Journal explains why Finnish kids rank among the top in international tests. It was very nice to read specifically as the country of my origin is getting so much attention in the educational system.

Microsoft Launches Key 2008 Products in Los Angeles

2008-02-28T19:06:00.001-06:00

Redmond literally rolled out the blue carpet for the 4,000 IT professionals, developers, staff and partners who attended its official launch event for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in Los Angeles. The new SQL Server 2008 will be very interesting from a business intelligence/data warehousing initiatives.

read more | digg story

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007: BI Worth the Price?

2008-02-26T11:46:00.002-06:00

Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a strong contender in the overall BI market and what makes Microsoft especially strong is that they include all three major pieces of analytics in one architecture: reporting, analytics and planning. I have had the chance to get exposed to this for a while now and with my almost 20 years of BI, I am impressed. With the consolidation wave in BI/data warehousing, I think Microsoft is a solution end user organizations should check out.

read more digg story

Lucky 14 Executives Win Promotions in Microsoft Shuffle

2008-02-19T14:17:00.001-06:00

Microsoft promotes 14 executives in a broad reorganization that affects many of the software giant's corporate divisions. Feb. 14 proved to be a lucky number for 14 Microsoft executives promoted to new positions in a company reorganization aiming to focus the company's leadership around its expanding portfolio of products and technologies. Every company has its own lifecycle, and Microsoft is identifying its own upcoming business models that will enable them to compete effectively in this marketplace. Business models around SaaS (Software as a service, or Software + Service as Microsoft calls it) will become a deciding factor of loosers and winners going forward.

read more | digg story

Lenovo ThinkPad X300: A new perfect laptop in the horizon?

2008-02-17T21:57:00.003-06:00

I subscribe to BusinessWeek and the latest BusinessWeek had a new interesting story relating to a new laptop that Lenovo is releasing 26th of February according to the rumours. I have a pretty new Dell XPS 1330 laptop (ranked very high in different magazines), but I have to admit that the new one is of interest to me. This new laptop, Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is less than 3 pounds and has all of the goodies that one can expect. When it comes out, I hope to be able to check one out whether that is going to be my next one. I have owned multiple ThinkPads in my past and they have all been very good. They still seem to keep the traditional black color... to be very businesslike.

Gartner Group releases its new Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant

2008-02-15T18:26:00.003-06:00

The consolidation wave within the BI and data warehousing domain is also showing its own impact on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. The latest report demonstrate that vendors such as Microsoft has moved to leader position in execution and is well positioned to move itself on the visionary quadrant as well. It is obvious that the players in the niche players quadrant will have a challenge to compete and some older players such as SAS, MicroStrategy, Information Builders, SAP and many others have to re-evaluate their positioning and future strategy. Some of these players such as Microsoft has money to put in development and recent acquistion of Cognos by IBM and Business Objects by Oracle will only make the plays for niche players even harder. Time will tell who survives and consultants have to pick the ones that they think will be there for the long run.

Gates Talks Up Declarative Modeling Language Effort

2008-02-14T12:00:00.001-06:00

The main goal of the plan is to make customizing applications much easier by reducing the need to code.Bill Gates from Microsoft Speaking at Microsoft's 2008 Office System Developers Conference in San Jose, California talked about declarative language project that would take programming to the next level and not having to deal with procedural languages. Gates acknowledged work was afoot on such an endeavor, although he described the effort as a five- to eight-year project. With the declarative language project, the goal is to make programming declarative rather than procedural. "Most code that's written today is procedural code. And there's been this holy grail of development forever, which is that you shouldn't have to write so much [procedural] code," Gates said. "We're investing very heavily to say that customization of applications, the dream, the quest, we call it, should take a tenth as much code as it takes today." Domain-specific modeling (DSM) has already been proved in the industry to attack specific domain-specific issues and it would be nice to see how DSM and this declarative modeling language effort compares.

read more | digg story

A Warm Welcome for Android based on the amount of downloads of the software development kit

2008-01-27T09:34:00.001-06:00

The mobile software platform was late to market but has won a strong developer following, thanks to its flexibility and Google's financial might. The competitition in the mobile market is definetely going to be a heated one and as the BusinessWeek article suggest, Google will be aggressive with this platform. My interest has always been in product platform development, so it remains to be seen how this is going to do in the larger ecosystem.

read more | digg story

Tools for doing research when writing books, articles and such

2008-01-26T18:28:00.001-06:00

I think I have found the most effective way to write books when it comes to software tools and applications. I used to be fond of a software application called Bookcollector but got tired of having to make sure to take backups and other related maintenance stuff. I run into a site thelibrarything.com that enables me to maintain and research books that I own using tags. Today, I am listing books that might be part of my upcoming book by using a tag in Finnish "selvitymisopas" that really does not expose what I am up to and it is just my internal keyword for me to find the books of interest to me. Besides using thelibrarything.com services, I use Microsoft Onenote and Mindjet's Mindmanager Pro to explore and take notes. Both of these work really well in what I need to do. All of my book revisions go to hosted Microsoft SharePoint Portal whereby my work keeps safe even if something happened to my laptop. Sweet....

Sony Portable Reader PRS-500 is gone, welcome the new Amazon Kindle

2008-01-26T17:43:00.000-06:00

I did what I should not have done. I bought the Sony Reader PRS-500 a year and a half ago and spent probably 500 dollars in different types of books. Now, with the new Amazon Kindle, I am faced with a new question. Should I continue investing in the Sony line, or should I go with Amazon Kindle. The form factors of the Sony device is very, very nice and the Amazon Kindle looks like a toy. However, where I believe Sony has failed is in its book selection. They do not publish out books that would be the ones that I typically read and Amazon's selection is already twice of the size of Sony's. Now, if Amazon just could deliver me the device... I think it has been very popular and Amazon did not foresee the success.

Cognos` Rob Ashe: Working Under the IBM Umbrella

2008-01-24T15:32:00.001-06:00

Cognos President and CEO Rob Ashe talks about competition and product differentiation in a consolidating market. The consolidation in the BI market is causing lots of questions to large enterprises and this discussion will continue for a while as we can see from the recent eWeek article. This confusion gives many vendors an opportunity to play in the game and I also believe there is going to be work for BI consultants as organizations will try to figure out how to consolidate their BI and data warehousing architecture to become more standardized.

read more | digg story

My Finnish business book "Onnistu suuressa maailmassa" is finally in Finnish bookstores

2008-01-13T19:36:00.000-06:00

My book project with Talentum (a Finnish book publisher) is finally over and the book has been printed and delivered to bookshops in Finland. The book is a guide for entrepreneurs of how to view the new global economy and how to setup your company. I am very encouraged how much positive feedback I have received by some readers and I hope that it will bring joy for many others. I have started a blog in Finnish for the book and topics related to it.

Introduction of Spock.com service by Spock.com co-founder Jay Bhatti

2008-01-13T19:33:00.000-06:00

Today, I got an invitation to Spock.com and found following interesting link that demonstrates the value proposition of the service.

China may be losing its edge, survey says

2007-12-16T13:57:00.001-06:00

Rising costs, product piracy could be taking its toll on China's competitiveness, according to American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.China may be losing its competitive advantage, mainly because of rising costs, according to a survey of companies compiled by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. I have seen this trend happening on multiple fronts and identified when discussing with business executives doing business in China. Cost inflation, people jumping from one job to the other because of better pay has become a real problem in China and I do not foresee this to change any time soon.

read more digg story

Who is Who: The World of Wikinomics - The New 2.0 World

2007-11-11T20:11:00.001-06:00

Keynote from Don Tapscott about Web 2.0 and other relevant stuff.

read more | digg story

Microsoft To Slash CRM Hosting Subscription Fees For Channel Partners

2007-11-06T22:31:00.001-06:00

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) will cut by 40 percent the subscription licensing fees it charges channel partners that host its Dynamics CRM applications. The price cut, effective Jan. 1, 2008, will turn up the competitive heat against Salesforce.com and other suppliers of on-demand CRM apps. This is a very good move from Microsoft as it gives solution providers a good foundation to compete against Salesforce.com and other players with a SaaS solution.

read more | digg story

Microsoft-Formalizes-Enterprise-Partner-Planning

2007-11-06T12:39:00.001-06:00

The software giant has put together a three-part approach to create a stable environment for its enterprise partners.Microsoft is formalizing an approach for working with its 8,000 enterprise partners to add a sense of stability in what the vendor says is a dynamic and shifting marketplace.

read more | digg story

Analysts See Trouble Ahead for India’s Outsourcing Sector

2007-10-22T21:14:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-16T17:32:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

SAP, Business Objects Deal Leaves Market in Turmoil

2007-10-16T14:15:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

Google, Random House move closer on book search

2007-10-15T18:12:00.001-06:00

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.

read more | digg story

Oracle offer will freeze new BEA business, analysts say

2007-10-15T14:52:00.001-06:00

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.

read more | digg story

Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

2007-10-12T14:02:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

Google Buys Finnish Mobile Software Maker Jaiku

2007-10-11T18:08:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-11T12:03:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-10T17:45:00.000-06:00

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

2007-10-10T10:51:00.001-06:00

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

2007-10-09T11:38:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-09T11:31:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

What is going to happen to Business Objects Customers

2007-10-08T11:57:00.000-06:00

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

2007-10-08T11:05:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-05T13:52:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

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

2007-10-03T10:14:00.001-06:00

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.

read more digg story

Download Duel: IBM Lotus Symphony V. OpenOffice - Digital Life Blog

2007-09-21T08:21:00.001-06:00

Hilarious comparison of how to download IBM Lotus Symphony vs. OpenOffice... Maybe IBM will learn from this article.

read more digg story

Facebook quietly offers storage service to developers

2007-09-18T16:34:00.001-06:00

"Facebook has quietly started offering beta testers access to the latest version of a new storage service, according to Computerworld's Brian Fonseca. The wiki does warn users that the page is still in development and that users should make sure that data used in testing the service is properly backed up. Facebook.com seems to gain traction even among executives. My feel is that the way Facebook has built the platform is state-of-the-art and many others claiming to have Web 2.0 applications should be ashamed of themselves.

read more digg story

Yahoo Shells Out $350M for Zimbra

2007-09-18T16:25:00.001-06:00

Yahoo said it has agreed to purchase open-source e-mail and collaboration software maker Zimbra for $350 million. I guess somebody can make money on open-source after all.... I would not bet my business on open-source today. I have had my fair share of it. It is very interesting to see that these open-source vendors are eaten up by either by the big search engine vendors or traditional vendors... Open-source... for whom?

read more digg story

Outsourcing I.T. To Unlikely Places, Like America

2007-09-12T20:20:00.001-06:00

BUSINESSES, especially big ones, began outsourcing information-technology operations nearly a decade ago. But compared with the earliest efforts, corporate I.T. outsourcing today is far more precisely calibrated. The article by David Strom is a very thought provoking summary of what is going on. Enjoy reading it!

read more digg story

A nice blog with Web 2.0 related information

2007-08-19T16:40:00.000-06:00

I run into a very nice blog that has a nice collection of links and Youtube.com stuff in it.

Skype Outage Leaves Millions Speechless -- VoIP -- InformationWeek

2007-08-19T13:21:00.001-06:00

Popular voice over IP provider Skype experienced an outage on Thursday, possibly leaving millions of subscribers without phone service. I am very glad this happened as my company could now explore alternatives. We can not be without phone service for 2 days and now Microsoft Messenger (the new one) is what we will be using.

read more digg story

Can Social Media Save Red Herring?

2007-08-12T20:38:00.001-06:00

Red Herring, the tech industry’s essential source for Silicon Valley venture capital news and buzz during the go-go ‘90s but since fallen on hard times, has just rolled out a new beta online platform that it hopes will reduce computing costs and attract new readers and advertisers through the addition of a number of social community-building features and a new video channel. This publication is something that I used to track closely during the dot.com boom in late 90's, early 2000.

read more | digg story

The Role of AJAX in Web 2.0 Apps: Schmidt vs Owyang

2007-08-12T12:01:00.001-06:00

As he consumed Eric Schmidt's press briefing during the Google CEO's mid-week stopover in Seoul, web strategist Jeremy Owyang posted a note on Twitter saying that he was "Laughing at Eric Schmidt's definition of Web 2.0..." – "He says that web 2.0 is AJAX. ROFL" Owyang wrote. The discussion about Web 2.0 and technologies around it is getting heated and all of the big gorillas are trying to put in the Web 2.0 space. Very heated and interesting indeed.

read more | digg story

The manuscript of my upcoming book is ready for the publisher to be reviewed

2007-08-11T16:01:00.000-06:00

Finally, the first phase is over and I am ready to turn my manuscript over to my publisher Talentum. You can view my comments and feelings from the embedded video. This video is recorded during a very beautiful Dallas, Texas morning with 106 Fahrenheit outside. That translates to +41 celcius.

Microsoft Partners Question Commerce Server Roadmap

2007-08-10T11:14:00.001-06:00

On Wednesday, Microsoft said it has formalized a partnership with Cactus Commerce, an Ottawa-based ecommerce specialist with which the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor has been working for nearly a decade. Microsoft also revealed that the next version of Commerce Server, code-named Commerce Server 7, will be released in mid-2010. The speculation was that Commerce Server would be absorbed by Biztalk Server.

read more digg story

Perspective: Web 2.0 and the CEO - Whether it is a Bubble or not, you have to understand it!

2007-08-07T13:31:00.001-06:00

Forrester Research CEO George Colony says today's boss can't afford to remain clueless about the burgeoning world of Web 2.0. I love this comment and this is one of the main point of my upcoming book as well. Regardless of whether Mr. John C. Dvorak declared in a recent PC Magazine article that Web 2.0 is a bubble, there are still some meritsto understand how it is going to impact your business.

read more digg story

Plaxo aims to turn electronic address book into social network

2007-08-06T21:09:00.001-06:00

August 06, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Plaxo Inc., which until now has focused on its electronic address book application, announced plans today to allow users to receive feeds of content created at sites like YouTube and MySpace by their friends and family. This is a very good example of how Web 2.0 is playing out where traditional means of networking and social networking using Web 2.0 is integrated with each other. Cool stuff and I need to check out how this pans out!

read more | digg story

‘Fake Steve’ Blogger Comes Clean

2007-08-05T21:58:00.001-06:00

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 5 — For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and one of the world’s most famous businessmen. No he has been exposed.... I have personally never read his stuff, but this is pretty interesting story.....

read more | digg story

Mobility is everywhere - inclucing here in the Caribbean islands

2007-07-22T10:26:00.001-06:00

I wrote in my previous blogs that it is time for independent software vendors to start innovating around mobility. It is obvious to me that people around the world are just waiting for more applications they can use to drive business. I was amazed last year how widespread the cell use and GRPS was on the Caribbean islands.... This year it is even more obvious with lots of new handheld devices.

Borders bookstore wants to go out of business?

2007-07-21T15:18:00.001-06:00

I am amazed how badly Borders bookstore keeps it premises. I thought it was just one place in Dallas, but the one here in San Juan, Puerto Rico is worse and to the point that I do not want to visit the place anymore. Borders will lose its clients at least that I represent.

The management should go and visit their stores to see that it is understaffed and dirty all over the place. Barnes & Noble rocks!

iPhone gets attention from a SaaS vendor - but can it compete in enterprises?

2007-07-16T11:49:00.000-06:00

ZdNet UK wrote today that the new version of NetSuite, 2007.0 will be supporting the new iPhone from Apple. On Thursday NetSuite issued a statement revealing that this iteration of the software-as-a-service platform would function through Apple's Safari browser, making it usable on the iPhone handset. Personnaly, having seen the new hardware phone models from HTC and other vendors. They are completely integrated to technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange 2007 environments.

My hardware and software tools when working on my book

2007-06-16T16:34:00.001-06:00

Having lots of books and references when writing a book is not fun…. I think I have now found my tools of choice when it comes to my technical working environment. I have a Dell 30 inch monitor, running Dell XPS M1210 laptop with Microsoft Office 2007. The two key components of my work are Mindjet LLC's
Mindmanager mindmapping software and Microsoft OneNote 2007 software. MindManager lets me view things visually from a relationship perspective and OneNote let's me place text, group things copy things from the web and many other things in a very easy way.

Domain-specific Modeling on the Rise – New resources in Product Platform Approach

2007-06-16T10:49:00.001-06:00

The way we have been working and designing software specifically in the case of software product families has not been very effective. Domain-specific modeling combined with a robust Product Platform will give a competitive edge to companies that want to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. My doctoral dissertation reviewed analytical application software solutions in the light of software product platforms. This work was founded in original product platform research within physical products and I am very happy to let you know that product platform concept is growing as we speak and evidence of this is a book from Springer "Product Platform and Product Family Design – Methods and Applications" and also another very interesting book also from Springer "Growing Modular – Mass Customization of Complex Products, Services and Software". The latter book mentions specifically Domain-specific Modeling (DSM) and this is very good even if the book is heavily geared towards physical products.

Content synchronization, the next fight between Microsoft and Google

2007-06-09T15:50:00.001-06:00

Good article about the fight between Google and Microsoft to implement universal synchronization. If Google gets synch right before Microsoft, it would extend the relevancy of the Web platform back to the desktop on its terms. If Microsoft gets synch right, it can drive desktop relevancy the to the web. Synch of content is the next big thing!

read more | digg story

Cyberspace Battle Royale: Google vs. Microsoft

2007-06-04T19:52:00.001-06:00

Microsoft and Google are locked in an epic struggle for supremacy over the Internet. From Web search services and e-mail to do-it-all personal portals, the two companies have traded blows like a pair of heavyweight fighters in a brutal championship bout. This battle is interesting to be watching and it is good to the end users as the companies have to continue innovating.

read more | digg story

Motorola is not doing well

2007-05-30T18:07:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Schaumburg, Ill., telecommunications-equipment maker Motorla said it intends to cut 7,500 jobs and reduce annualized costs by $1 billion through the end of this year and next. In January, the company had said it planned 3,500 job cuts and $400 million in annual cost savings this year. It said yesterday it is on track to reach those 2007 goals on time.

My feel is that these vendors are going to face tough challenges in the future as well and Motorola is not alone with this.

Norton Internet Security is out - Windows Live One Care is in

2007-05-16T20:25:00.000-06:00

I have been a longtime user and client of Norton products. As an entrepreneur, I have spent money right and left on them and for the most part, I have been happy. Let me tell you what happened the last two weeks or so. My Norton Internet Security 2006 started crashing on me (yes, I did buy two years of maintenance) and it started to become a hassle to me. I have been watching Microsoft to enter this space, but have so far hold off. The big time switch was made 2 days ago when I visited a local Best Buy store. I could get 3 Windows Live Onecare licenses for $29,99 so I decided to buy three packages and uninstall EVERY laptop and computer I have from Norton. Microsoft is a new player.... but what I have seen so far, the product is pretty slick and will be good enough for my company and my family. Also, I read an interesting article from Ziff Davis PC Magazine that somebody else had done the same thing. The change is done now.... good or bad, but I will be sticking with my decision.

SAP fills gaps with two Nordic acquisitions - is there an end to the acquisitions

2007-05-16T15:31:00.000-06:00

In line with its acquisition strategy to fill technology gaps, SAP has purchased two privately held Scandinavian software companies according to InfoWorld web. The big software companies continue buying smaller ones and now two of the targests are from the Nordic countries, one from Espoo Finland. The buying spree is impacting end user organization behaviour as well.... whom should they trust to be on the market after five years?