@bkuhn sorry for late dent on "orc ale" but did you catch the NYT article about Noreen's hard work? http://nyti.ms/bQVQ6E

esdaniel: Thought for the weekend.. I need to be in 'n' places at the same time. Right now I've not got a slick approach to that, must try harder ;-)

Media 2.0 Social “Me”dia and the Evolving Twitter Egosystem - http://www.briansolis.com/2010... yesterday from Brian Solis - Comment - Like

Media 2.0 Social “Me”dia and the Evolving Twitter Egosystem - http://www.briansolis.com/2010... Friday from Brian Solis - Comment - Like

Execution wins. Not ideas

Open...and Shut Businesses aren't built on ideas. They're built on execution. Google didn't win because it was the first to the search market. It won because it did search better than anyone else, and devised an ingenious way to monetize it.…

(author unknown)01713945872591578027

esdaniel: @jobsworth re: WEF do you follow @nouriel ?

esdaniel: Spending day in central Paris helping entrepreneur get their IT systems in working order... CRM / ERP / ITSM - looking forward to lunch :-)

esdaniel: Web gets more fun with #HTML5 http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire/

Like any Drupal themer, I've done my share of grumbling about the frequently ridiculous level of nested divs with dozens of classes. I'd heard some people mention a module called Semantic Views, but I never really understood what it was for until I found this video. If you don't understand what the big deal is either, take the four minutes to watch. It's a total "ah-ha!" moment. I'm happy to say that I just used Semantic Views for the first time on a client site, and it's just as awesome as everyone says. It saved me a ton of work and let me get exactly the markup I wanted, even while working around Chuck's nested views.

(author unknown)09641497811774122646106677880843224095310026113901692776419213756805213926389561

A few days ago, we noted that Diaspora was three weeks away from unveiling their open-source Facebook alternative. But a small update today clarifies one important point. On September 15, Diaspora will release the open source code for the project. But it won’t be until October that the first consumer-facing alpha is available.

This isn’t a major hiccup, it’s just an update to make sure people aren’t expecting to be able to use Diaspora on September 15. Instead, at that time, developers will have a chance to tinker around with what the team has come up with in these past several weeks — with the $200,000 they raised from 6,500 people through Kickstarter back in June.

But the October alpha could end up being the more important time for the project. While all the open sourcing and distributed network stuff sounds great, it sounds great to a group of a few thousand developers and uber-nerds. If Diaspora really wants to get any traction, they’re going to need a killer front-end that gives people an actual reason to use it instead of Facebook. (Or they’ll need someone else to make that based on their code — but that will obviously be months away, at the earliest.)

Luckily, it sounds like the team is saying the right things in this regard. Here’s the key part of their update from a few days ago:

We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that’s a hard UI problem and we take it seriously. The publicity and money that you have given us has let us work with great designers like Janice Frasier, through her new program LUXr, whose constant reminders that we are not the user have kept us honest and focused. Pivotal Labs has also helped us prioritize, and we have pushed back more technical features like plugins and APIs in favor of simple and high value features. Our original goals remain the same, and these features are still in our timeline.

I personally can’t wait to see what they have come up with.

Here’s their full update today:

Addendum (8/30): To clarify, September 15 will be our open-source developer release. At that time, we will open up our github repository, publish our roadmap, and shift our development style to be more community oriented. We intend on launching a consumer facing alpha in October. Join our mailing listto get an invite.

CrunchBase InformationDiasporaInformation provided by CrunchBase

IBM and Oracle take note

Two of the brains behind the disruptive open source application server JBoss are building platform services for Java coders.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

(author unknown)

esdaniel: Sales channels learning from open source developers? Maybe: http://twitter.com/repbuilder

Software giant Adobe is among those shaking heads at Oracle and its strategy, or at least lack of tact, with the open source software, including its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, killing off OpenSolaris and Java lawsuit against Google over Android.

It wasn’t that long ago that Adobe was thought of similar to how it’s portraying Oracle: as an opponent of open source. I would agree that Oracle is putting itself in the position of a top open source enemy (an unenviable title for which Apple, Microsoft and others, even Adobe, have found themselves, as well). By launching the Java suit and ending support for OpenSolaris without any counterbalance of message to illustrate that it is indeed not attacking open source software in general and actually has a good appreciation of its development and market power and benefits of participation, Oracle has put itself in an adversarial position. Sure organizations such as Adobe and Microsoft, formerly viewed as foes of open source, stand to benefit from having somebody else be the bad guy, but it is interesting to look at these cases and how the villains are typically tasked with improving their image.

By looking at Adobe and its open source story, we get a better sense of Oracle’s and others’ opportunities to change these perceptions and successfully earn goodwill among open source software communities. There have been times when Adobe was on the top open source enemy list, and it continues to be questioned and accused of ‘co-opting’ the open source brand.

However, as covered in our recent Spotlight report on Adobe (for subscribers or trialists), the company has come to realize the significance of open source and the utility of leveraging it to build and grow its own software, communities and ecosystems (something Adobe is pretty good at). One good example is its recent acquisition of WCM vendor Day Software.

We understand that while it was certainly among other factors, including paid subscription revenue from Day’s non-open source software, the open source and community involvement and activity by Day, also covered in a 451 Group report, helped to drive the deal. In particular, Day’s work with the Apache Software Foundation and what one Adobe official called ‘the technical brand recognition’ that came with Day’s work on open standards and open source software, such as the OSGi Java framework, Apache Felix (an open source implementation of the OSGi framework) and Apache Sling (an open source web framework for Java). It will be interesting to see what happens now, but indications are these Apache projects may serve as the basis for expanded open source efforts under Adobe. We highly doubt that they will be turned into a licensing vehicle for Adobe, serve as the basis of legal action or get killed off, which is what we are seeing from Oracle with its open source assets, illustrating the idea that Oracle does not fully understand or appreciate open source software.

Adobe, Microsoft and many others we’ve covered and talked to are frequently in the position of moving, transitioning and changing from open source enemy or foe into open source participant and supporter. There is no question these vendors are making these moves for their own benefit and future more than their interest in benefiting or contributing to communities and others. However, Adobe and Microsoft have learned they must contribute to communities and others beyond their own brand and interests for open source to work. Their efforts in open source software also show that it is difficult and often thankless work, takes resources and remains precarious indefinitely, when even when you contribute and participate, there are still some folks calling you the bad guy.

Updated

Even big, traditional tech-companies like IBM are interested in social media nowadays. The company just announced that it’s launching a new initiative to help train its business partners about how to use tools like Facebook, Twitter, and wikis.

The move is supposedly a response to a recent survey of the company’s business partners — namely the resellers, distributors, integrated systems vendors (ISVs), and system integrators of IBM products. Of the 1,000 respondents, 45 percent said they are experimenting with social media as a business strategy, but 74 percent said they are looking for more education on how to use these tools to drive sales.

To that end, IBM said it’s creating new resources for its partners, including:

• online training sessions and a social media guide
• a webcast and podcast series on social media opportunities
• virtual and in-person workshops

IBM itself has been experimenting with using social media to improve its relationship with this community, by launching its own social networking site for business partners last year — the IBM PartnerWorld Community.

Update: I asked an IBM spokesperson for more background on why the company conducted the survey. Here’s the response:

Several of our IBM Business Partner executives and leaders from our team developing training for partners have consitently heard from partners about their interest in and use of social media. IBM sees social media as a significant way its partners and customers can grow their businesses and was interested in getting a pulse on their use of social media as part of their business

And here’s a video of IBM’s Sandy Carter talking about the five most common mistakes businesses make when experimenting with social media.

[image: Flickr/Intersection Consulting]

Tags: IBM PartnerWorld Community, Social Media

Companies: IBM

25/08/2010(author unknown)

Revenue in the worldwide server market hits $10.9 billion in the second quarter, up 11 percent from the prior year's quarter and the fastest quarterly growth since 2003, says IDC.(author unknown)

First, it was a swoop on Japanese government bonds in May. Then a modest but intriguing spree in the Spanish sovereign bond market in July – all amid a steady sell-off of US Treasuries....

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Microsoft was the company we all loved to hate as it fought and lost claims of monopoly. The mid 2000’s was the period where Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra came back to haunt it. As we move into the 2010’s is Oracle picking up that dubious mantle? If so I wonder about the potential impact on the enterprise landscape.

The Oracle v Google lawsuit has set many tongues wagging, mine included. At stake are issues that polarize developers, buyer and sell side advocates but which speak to broad issues of importance in enterprise land.

The financial dimension

If we focus on the purely financial aspects, some see the lawsuit as a logical development of Oracle’s long term strategy: acquire and leverage assets as best it can. Viewed through that lens, it makes perfect sense and is to be admired. Oracle is not a charitable organization but accountable to its stakeholders, which often appears to be narrowly defined as representing its shareholders. They rightly demand a return for their investment and Oracle does all it can to avoid disappointment. Unfortunately, life rarely comes in a single dimension.

In the post(?) recessionary 2010’s, many are questioning the definition of ’stakeholder.’ (PDF link) For my part, I take the position that stakeholders should actively embrace the concept of sustainable business but even then definitions become troublesome (PDF link ) when considered alongside the current fashion for CSR. In IT developer organizations I take that to mean a demonstrable commitment to reinvestment as part of a relentless focus on delivering customer value.

Reinvestment and customer value. Those are terms requiring careful definition and even then are debatable. Oracle says that its financial results reflect its focus on customer service. But does it? If you agree with Bob Evans, then Oracle has an unsustainable business. He takes the position that so much of Oracle’s profit depends on its maintenance revenue stream and that it is playing a dangerous game of ‘chicken:’

…it is also possible that Oracle customers feel that at this time they don’t have viable options to switch away from Oracle, and that while they are frustrated by the 22% fees and do not feel they’re getting good value in return, the lack of options is forcing them to bide their time.

From many many conversations with CIOs, I believe this latter scenario is the real story. If that is indeed the case, then Oracle’s playing a dangerous game of “Chicken,” hoping that no viable alternatives emerge in the near term while dawdling its way along with its own leisurely cloud initiatives, which are most unlikely to provide the fantastic financial returns that the on-premise model currently does.

Oracle could easily counterbalance any revenue hitch by taking its foot off the marketing gas. Yet the IT industry seems dependent upon the relationship between revenue and marketing as a way of driving long term maintenance. It’s a Catch-22 with no apparent get out of jail card.

My erstwhile colleague Vinnie Mirchandani regularly bemoans the fact the enterprise IT industry seems set on a course that puts less store on genuine innovation designed to improve value and more on pleasing Wall Street. He views the drifting down of R&D and stubbornly high GS&A numbers as evidence. It is a point well made. However, Oracle scores high marks for its financial probity, something few other tech vendors seem capable of matching. One argument might be: go after the slouches rather than pouring scorn on Oracle. I’d much rather Oracle set the bar higher by accelerating innovation. The long term wins would be huge for everyone.

Vinnie will also tell you about the cost of printing as evidence of how customers are being taken for a ride that makes the price of perfume or champagne look cheap. Not that it seems to make any difference to broad buyer behavior. But more of that later.

The roll up power game

Nothing more graphically illustrates Oracle’s acquisition history than the following graphic - courtesy of Stephen Jannise.

It demonstrates how Oracle has used its financial muscle and massive cash flow to roll up large parts of the IT industry as part of a broader strategy that harks back to the days of Tom Watson’s IBM and the single stack play. Is this ‘evil?’

History teaches that when IBM tried to play the stack game it came unstuck. The same need not be true for Oracle. In IBM’s day, it was the global Big Dog that got too close to the firepit of monopoly regulation. Oracle will argue that despite its acquisitions, the market across each of the stack categories remains competitive. It will also argue that if it was acting in monopolistic fashion then regulators would not allow it to pursue its course.

I regard that last argument as flimsy. I have yet to see any evidence that regulators have considered Oracle as a whole, preferring to view each transaction on isolated merits.

It is only after the event that things become clear and of course by then it is too late. Check this alleged leaked memo from Oracle about its intentions for Solaris. The key point:
From a business perspective, the purpose of our investment in Solaris engineering is to drive our overall server business, including both SPARC and x64, and to drive business advantages resulting from integration of multiple components in the Oracle portfolio. This includes combining our servers with our storage, our servers with our switches, Oracle applications with Solaris, and the effectiveness of the service experience resulting from these combinations. All together, Solaris drives aggregate business measured in many billions of dollars, with significant growth potential.

Anyone doubt that Oracle has a clear domination strategy? Of itself, that doesn’t make Oracle ‘evil.’ What is worrisome is the presumption that a stack play IS the best choice. We can have a ‘best of suites’ and ‘best in class’ discussion all day long but when one provider controls enough of the stack to make a persuasive buying argument then you have to wonder whether competition just took a dump while vendor lock in just scored a winning goal.

Does it matter? That depends on a range of factors. Examples include:

• If one vendor’s control is soaking up a large chunk of your IT budget then you have to ask whether the risk of their applying pressure in one direction might have a knock on effect on another?
• What happens if they fall behind when you need to accelerate technology change?
• What happens if they fail to deliver on technology upon which you have made plans?

If you are in the camp that is prepared to make the one size fits all judgment call and your vendor doesn’t deliver as you anticipated then you might well consider them ‘evil.’

Oracle Fusion has been promised for so long you have to wonder if it will ever be delivered. In 2009 we were promised 100 days of innovation. Some of us sarcastically parsed that as 100 days of press releases. Looking back, I don’t recall 100 days of anything substantial beyond the middleware announcements. Rumor has it that Oracle Open World will see the announcement of an imminent release of Fusion HR but there are big questions around capability and what that means for eventual PeopleSoft replacement for those customers thinking of moving on.

Open source anyone?

When Oracle announced its intentions to buy Sun plenty of people expressed concern about the future of Java as an open source language. Did it stop anyone from continuing to write Java code? Of course not. Is Oracle’s future tied to Java? You bet. Now that Open Solaris has been canned, many will be wondering (again) what’s next for the open source chop.

Whatever anyone might think of Oracle it has been careful not to directly antagonize the open source community. Or has it? Returning to the Oracle/Google lawsuit, it has got people head scratching and thinking that open source is under attack.

Stephen O’Grady knows a thing or two about open source. He also knows a thing or two about licensing issues. His exhaustive examination of the lawsuit concludes with:

Whatever the real reason, this is a surprising decision even for a firm as aggressive as Oracle. The only thing more surprising is how quickly it turned Google â excoriated around the web for their questionable net neutrality proposal with Verizon â back into the good guys. Even if you speculate about differences in Oracleâs evaluations of its own assets â that Oracle believes that Java has peaked in popularity, for example, and that this is a one time opportunity to cash in on an asset that must, inevitably, decline â the calculus of this move fails. Nothing in Oracleâs product roadmaps hint at such a realization. Nor would a one time windfall, however large, be sufficient to offset the costs of a significant decline in Oracleâs Java related products.

As for predictions, Iâll make only one: whoever wins will also lose. This suit is going to negatively impact â probably substantially â Java adoption. The enterprise technology landscape is more fragmented by the day, as it transitions from .NET or Java othodoxy to multi-language heterogeneity. Oracleâs suit will accelerate this process as it introduces for the first time legal uncertainty around the Java platform.

And therein lies the rub…”whatever the real reason” At this very early stage it is hard to know and Oracle isn’t telling. It could play the good guy by making its intentions clear but it is the opaqueness that gets everyone fretting rather than the direction. I’ve tried several times to get Oracle to speak but it chooses not to do so. At least not with me. That should not be a surprise since I would almost certainly take a partisan position where it would prefer objectivity.

Anything that Oracle does which is perceived to be an attack upon open source will get tarred as ‘evil’ but would enterprise organizations care? That’s an interesting question.

Last week I was asked whether there was much demand for open source databases in SAP environments. Not as far as I can tell. SAP entered into an alliance with Oracle a long time ago that is thought to provide Oracle with over $1 billion in database revenue each year. That’s significant. In talking with end user organizations three things emerge:

• The investments in database are too large to rip out
• Who will support an open source offering?
• Are open source databases sufficiently mature for us to risk our business upon them?

The use of data is so important to business that once an investment path is taken it is extraordinarily difficult to consider alternatives without exposing high cost and risk. Now that Oracle ‘owns’ MySQL would it open a support business for that database as it did with Red Hat Linux? The short view would be no unless it fancied opening the door to validating MySQL as capable of running Oracle Apps in any environment and potentially eviscerating its main income stream. The long view might see a different tack where Oracle could lower cost to a new class of mid-range customer. On the maturity question, it all depends. For the large enterprise buyer, Oracle DB or SQL Server are almost no brainers. That doesn’t make Oracle any more ‘evil’ than Microsoft. It just means organizations have voted with their wallets.

So Oracle’s not ‘evil’ then?

To say that Oracle is a tough competitor is a bit like saying Mt Everest is tall. It has set the tone for much of what defines the Silicon Valley business ethos. As an outsider, I find that at once both thrilling and uncomfortable. I am thrilled that there is so much invention and innovation arising out of the Valley but am less comfortable with Oracle’s tactics. Too often the company seems bruising and unnecessarily aggressive. The general tone of conversation with customers suggest it creates a level of discomfort that impacts customers’ ability to sensibly negotiate deals. On the maintenance issue there is no negotiation as far as Oracle is concerned. Hands up those buyers that think that’s a great idea?

Infoworld asks the ‘evil’ question in the following terms:

Such evildoing rivals a monster round of Goldman Sachs bonuses. But does Oracle in the archvillain role have legs? Outside of the tech world, nobody hears much about Oracle apart from its acquisitions: PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun. Otherwise, Oracle keeps a pretty low profile for a $113 billion company.

Messing with the popular Android consumer play changes that a bit, particularly if the lawsuit drags on for years in the public eye. And there’s plenty more, beginning with the Sun acquisition and subsequent brutal layoffs. That’s part of a pattern: Around Silicon Valley Oracle is known as the Bermuda Triangle of predators, devouring all sorts of companies with promising technologies and being less than gentle with their personnel. Throw in a combative CEO, exorbitant software maintenance fees, and a hardball company culture, and might we have a winner?

Infoworld thinks not, believing that Oracle plays in a barren category that’s no longer that interesting or stuffed full of Big New Ideas. I’m sure that will please the execs at Oracle no end. However, assuming that ‘evilness’ does not apply to less fashionable categories is a logically flawed argument.

Martin Luther King once said: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. ” In IT terms, too many times customers fail to stand up for their rights and then wonder how things went wrong. When we call out Oracle for one thing or another we should at least recognize that customers are often complicit in allowing the company to get away with something we see as distasteful.

When SAP tried to impose a 30% price rise in the teeth of the recession, some of us protested loudly and frequently. That drew attention to the problem and made us a thorn in SAP’s side. But it was only when customers realized they have genuine bargaining chips that things started to change. It’s a lesson from which all large software companies should learn.

So difficult a frontier is the Chinese market for India's pioneering outsourcing groups that their leaders would sooner talk about the potential of Latin America than the world's fastest-growing large economy(author unknown)

esdaniel: Useful post from JRuby's Charles Nutter @headius re: Oracle vs Google (Android) http://bit.ly/dmqSQx - thanks Charles!