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Gary Edwards

Why Microsoft is building HoloLens - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/dware-ibm-pc-windows-10-2016-3

interoperability

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Jumpstarting the future The iPhone and Android have a stranglehold on the mobile market. Apple has ridden the iPhone to becoming the most valuable company in the world, while Google's Android is now the most powerful operating system in the world. Microsoft missed that boat. And Microsoft, going forward, has to decide if it wants to keep throwing good money after bad into its struggling Windows phone business while it tries to force the next big thing to happen. 
  • Microsoft has decided to build the devices it wants to see in the world. And with PC sales shrinking, Microsoft is looking to more science-fictional concepts. The tone was set in 2012, when Microsoft launched the Surface, its first tablet. That was followed up by the Surface Pro laptop/tablet hybrid, and eventually, the Surface Book, Microsoft's first full-fledged laptop.  
  • And in all cases, those cloned devices are running the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Building a computer (or a hologram headset, or a car) is labor-intensive, requires a lot of specialized parts, and takes time to make each and every unit. Dell's margins hover around 3%; Ford's are around 7%.  Meanwhile, one of Microsoft's big advantages has always been that software is a much higher-margin business than hardware. In 1999, right at the height of its powers, Microsoft's operating margins were 51.7%.
  • Microsoft's smart move was to make profitable software, and let companies like IBM, Dell, HP, and Compaq build their low-margin, "IBM Compatible" PCs. After all, they all still needed buckets of pricey Windows licenses, no matter what they charged for their computers.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 16
     
    The key to the Microsoft Empire has always been that of controlling the "interoperability layer". It's something Bill Gates learned in 1980, when he opted to forgo royalty payments from IBM for DOS, in order to control all rights to DOS. "Probably the smartest choice Bill Gates ever made came in 1980, when he decided not to hand over the copyright for Microsoft's first-ever operating system to IBM.  In 1980, IBM contracted a startup called Microsoft to deliver DOS, an operating system for its forthcoming IBM PC, on a tight deadline. The IBM PC came out in 1981, and soon became a smash hit, surpassing the leading Apple II. A horde of competitors rushed to build their own "IBM Compatible" clones that could run all of the same software and use all of the same hardware upgrades. But to build those IBM clones, they needed DOS. And if they wanted DOS, they needed to fork over cash to Microsoft. Microsoft kept the rights in lieu of royalties from IBM. DOS put Microsoft the very center of the PC revolution, even through the era of Windows, and even after IBM left the PC market, eventually selling off that business. 36 years later, it's been a long time since the IBM PC moment. And with the Apple iPhone and Google Android ruling the all-important mobile market, Microsoft missed its shot at the mobile operating system revolution.  That's why Microsoft, which keeps boasting about how much it loves selling cloud services and subscriptions, is suddenly investing so much in hardware like the HoloLens and the Surface. If no new IBM PC will come along like in 1981, Microsoft will just have to build it itself. "
Gary Edwards

IBM and IBM and Oracle may be the biggest losers when it comes to shifts in IT spending... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/o-shifts-in-it-spending-2017-6

Cloud-Computing Cloud-Productivity-Platform IBM Oracle

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 17
     
    Chart comparisons detailing the success of Amazon and Microsoft in the Cloud, and the decline of Oracle and IBM regarding IT future Spending.
Gary Edwards

Learn from past mistakes to avoid Amazon lock-in: Office 365 - 0 views

searchaws.techtarget.com/...stakes-to-avoid-Amazon-lock-in

Office-365 Vendor-Lock-in

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Dec 16
     
    Hey David! The horses have left the barn. Unlike the last great platform transition, the move to the Cloud involves moving billion and billions of existing data bits and documents. Much of this content (data + documents) is valuable "in-process" information vital to the current operations of legacy business systems. The last time there was a platform shift it was from the Mainframe-workstation era to the PC client-server era. Digital information was in its infancy. Today the volumes of digital business information is enormous. Meaning, the horses have already left the barn. The lock-in is set. Volumes of document content is locked into Microsoft Office applications, and can only be "worked" by either Microsoft Office, or Office 365. No business is going to move their systems to the Cloud and leve these billions of "in-process" documents behind. Another aspect to consider is the productivity equation which says that collaboration = the integration of communications and content (data + documents). ALL THREE must be integrated!!! Meaning if Microsoft apps have billions of documents locked up, an enterprise cannot make a decision based on best communications or data integration. They must choose Microsoft's Cloud where all THREE aspects can be integrated. This is the hook that has made Office 365 the most successful Cloud mover ever (85 million subscribers with an annual run rate of $13.5 billion - and all this after only two years in the marketplace) Quote: "The majority of IT decision-makers believe that vendor lock-in prevents their companies from maximizing the business value of public cloud. IT leadership often chooses not to move applications to the public cloud because they believe investing in just one cloud provider will hinder flexibility. Several studies reinforce this conclusion, stating that the overwhelming market dominance of public cloud players, like AWS, is negative for the industry. Even when using core services, such as Amazon Elast
Gary Edwards

The biggest threat to patent reform: The Apple/IBM/Microsoft coalition | VentureBeat | ... - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...ew-appleibmmicrosoft-coalition

Patent-Trolls Patent-Reform

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The cost of trolling, on the other hand, is minimal. Trolls also typically render themselves litigation-proof by creating shell companies with no assets, should they fall into legal trouble from a wrongful suit.
  • Fee shifting It is nearly impossible for a startup to find the resources to fight a patent suit. The promise of seeing some of that money back at the end makes securing the resources easier. Meaningful fee shifting will discourage the most egregious actors — those without meritorious cases — from suing in the first place; and joinder provisions are necessary to make sure that the real party in interest — the one that really owns the patent — can be held liable for the trolling activities of shell entities are also essential. In other words, no more hiding behind shell companies.
  • Heightened pleading Patent trolls benefit greatly from asymmetry of information. They are able to file suits with vague and limited information, leaving companies with no choice but to consult a lawyer about the scope of the threat they face. Most startups don’t have an in-house lawyer at all, let alone one who specializes in patents. Those bringing suits should set forth the basic framework of their case — who owns the patent, what product allegedly infringes the patent, and what parts of the patent are at issue. This would, at minimum, give startups a basic and common-sense understanding surrounding the threat, allowing them to make more informed decisions on how to proceed.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Fee shifting It is nearly impossible for a startup to find the resources to fight a patent suit. The promise of seeing some of that money back at the end makes securing the resources easier. Meaningful fee shifting will discourage the most egregious actors — those without meritorious cases — from suing in the first place; and joinder provisions are necessary to make sure that the real party in interest — the one that really owns the patent — can be held liable for the trolling activities of shell entities are also essential. In other words, no more hiding behind shell companies.
  • Heightened pleading Patent trolls benefit greatly from asymmetry of information. They are able to file suits with vague and limited information, leaving companies with no choice but to consult a lawyer about the scope of the threat they face. Most startups don’t have an in-house lawyer at all, let alone one who specializes in patents. Those bringing suits should set forth the basic framework of their case — who owns the patent, what product allegedly infringes the patent, and what parts of the patent are at issue. This would, at minimum, give startups a basic and common-sense understanding surrounding the threat, allowing them to make more informed decisions on how to proceed.
  • Discovery reform Discovery is one of the most onerous and expensive parts of patent litigation. When startups face companies solely in the business of licensing and litigation (e.g., oftentimes a patent troll), they find themselves facing outrageously expensive motion practice that has little to no impact on their adversary. Reasonable limits on initial discovery will help incentivize startups to fight the trolls in court. This will, by default, incentive those trolls to only bring meritorious suits.
  • Demand letter reform Patent trolls are legally able to send vague licensing demands, full of threatening legalese, and startups are again left with no information to understand the scope of the threat they face. Demand letters should include concrete information on the patent holder’s claim to give recipients needed information; and demand letters sent in bad faith should be actionable. Those senders should not be able to take advantage of the patent system and extort money from high-growth companies that are rebuilding the economy.
  • Customer stay exception Startups can sometimes find themselves facing expensive litigation for a product they obtained from someone else, or they might find their customers facing suits for using their products. In either instance, startups need tools — like robust stays — so manufacturers and suppliers can step in and join the defense. The harm resulting from the patent troll epidemic does not just impact startups; it creates an environment where startups have a negative impression of the patent system and are therefore significantly less likely to positively engage. A recent study from the National Sciences Foundation found that in the information sector (which includes software, Internet, and Data processing) only 10 percent of companies found utility patents either “very” or even “somewhat” important. We need comprehensive patent reform to level the playing field for all innovators so they are no longer victimized by a litigation system stacked in favor of trolls. The legislation must realign the patent system with its founding principles — to incentivize innovation and the progress of technology. This includes protecting patent owners’ rights along with the rights of those facing patent threats. To be clear, there is nothing in the Innovation Act, or other proposed legislation, that would stop a legitimate patent holder from bringing a meritorious case for infringement.
  • Final word So why are companies like Microsoft, IBM, GE, and Ford trying to slow down this legislative process? Simply put, spending millions of dollars on patent resources has proved a good way to make money and to shut out their competition — high-growth, disruptive, and nimble startups. We must not let these entrenched interests get in the way of fixing a broken system.
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16
     
    "There's a new coalition in D.C., and big players like Apple, DuPont, Ford, GE, IBM, Microsoft, and Pfizer have all signed up. Unfortunately, launched on the day the Senate was supposed to take up the latest effort to reform the patent system, the coalition's sole purpose appears to be an effort to derail the important strides we've made toward fixing the patent troll problem via the proposed Innovation Act legislation. So what is it about the Innovation Act (and other legislative proposals being discussed in the Senate) that this coalition thinks will harm both their businesses and ability to build innovative products? These companies were all startups themselves once, and protecting startups that cannot afford to protect themselves from patent trolls is at the heart of the Innovation Act. The startups being targeted by patent trolls have less than $10 million in revenues. They are in no position to hire a patent lawyer to understand the scope of the threat they face - let alone pay the millions of dollars it would cost to take case to court. Even worse, startups are too often short on talent, so they do not have the luxury of using their current employees to read and understand vague patents with "fuzzy boundaries". Today's trolls send out scores of demand letters that make vague assertions of patent infringement while requesting "licensing fees" of $100,000 or more. The cost of trolling, on the other hand, is minimal. Trolls also typically render themselves litigation-proof by creating shell companies with no assets, should they fall into legal trouble from a wrongful suit. We need real reform that will stem the tide of the troll epidemic, while maintaining protection for patent holders to enforce their legal rights. This is precisely what the current proposals would do."
Gary Edwards

Stacking up the cloud vendors: AWS vs. Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google, Oracle | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...rosoft-azure-ibm-google-oracle

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 17
     
    "It's not easy tracking the girth of public cloud providers amid run rates, as-a-service sales projections, and a lack of transparency. Here's how AWS stacks up against Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google, and Oracle." Good comparison with stats
Gary Edwards

Teaching Google to Sell 'Cloud' to Companies - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-cloud-to-companies-1450921990

Cloud-Computing Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • In its latest effort to catch up, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., GOOGL -0.35 % is turning to Diane Greene, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built VMware Inc. VMW -0.24 % into a corporate-computing powerhouse. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai is giving Ms. Greene unusual authority over the company’s cloud efforts, including oversight of engineering, sales, support and marketing.
  • Her most important role at Google isn’t on the organization chart: teaching Google how to sell to companies.
  • Amazon has adopted the latter approach. Amazon worked with General Electric Co. GE -0.39 % for four years to help the industrial conglomerate reduce internal applications to 5,000 from more than 9,000 and move them to Amazon and other cloud services over time. That will allow GE to eliminate 30 of its 34 world-wide data centers and roll out new applications in as little as five minutes, Jim Fowler, GE’s chief information officer said at an Amazon conference in October. Last year, Amazon introduced a consulting business that has worked with Kellogg Co. K -0.27 % and Merck MRK -0.25 % & Co., among others. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The result: Amazon has a big lead in the $11.5 billion market for “cloud infrastructure services,” such as selling metered access to computers and storage systems. Google ranks fourth, also behind Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.27 % and International Business Machines Corp. IBM -0.21 % , according to Synergy Research Group.
  • To bring Ms. Greene on as an employee, Google acquired Bebop Technologies Inc., a secretive startup she founded in 2012. She remains tight-lipped about technical details, but said Bebop is developing technology for building more-powerful and easier-to-use business-software applications. That work will continue. Last week, Google closed the acquisition with most of Bebop’s 39 employees joining Google.
  • Sebastian Stadil, CEO of Scalr, a cloud-computing firm that works closely with Google.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Dec 15
     
    "Google operates one of the world's biggest networks of computers. But its business of renting time on those computers to others-a concept known as cloud computing-lags far behind Amazon.com Inc. and others."
Gary Edwards

Werner Vogels: Amazon builds it own tech - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/azon-builds-it-own-tech-2016-3

AWS Cloud-Computing

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • To decode that a little, he's saying that by using AWS, businesses turn their IT into a monthly operating expense. But Amazon still has to cough up huge chunks of capital-expense cash in advance to outfit its data center, so it's motivated to find ways to do that as cheaply as possible.
  • That's already playing out with Facebook's OCP project. Although Amazon hasn't publicly said it is working with the OCP, just about every large cloud company has signed up, including Apple, Microsoft and, more recently, Google. And so have some very large enterprises like Goldman Sachs.  While vendors like Dell and HP are involved in OCP, they aren't in the driver's seat. For the first time, that seat is filled with the companies who are using the equipment, not the vendors selling it.
  • Vogels believes the move to the cloud will get even more intense (and most market researchers agree with him).
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • It has already reshaped how startups are launched. AppleThese days, all you need to launch a startup is a laptop."The startup world is radically different today than it was 10 years ago. A typical investment 10 years ago, to be able to get a business off the ground that needs to scale in one way or another, was around $5 million. Today, for $50,000-$100,000, you can get yourself a pretty good businesses started ... the rise of the whole startup culture is largely driven by cloud." The same thing is happening now to established companies, even those who previously ran their own private data centers. "Moving over to the cloud allows them [companies] to have their engineers focus on things that matter for the business," he tells us.
  • "If you look at other cloud providers in the market, there's quite a few of them still sort of in the phase where AWS was five, six years ago — in 2010 — at the moment we were still much more focused on the infrastructure side of things than the sort of rich collection of services."
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 16
     
    "There's no question Amazon is turning the screws on the $140 billion data-center-tech industry. Amazon has grown to become the largest player in the rapidly growing cloud industry as its cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), celebrates its 10-year anniversary.  And in the process, AWS has sent shockwaves through the traditional enterprise sector. In an interview with Business Insider, Werner Vogels - the CTO of Amazon in charge of AWS - explained why hardware companies aren't going to get any respite any time soon. Hardware builders are getting squeezed out the game Right now, instead of buying all of their own computers, networks, and software, businesses large and small are opting to rent it all from cloud-computing vendors. That spells bad news for companies like IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, Cisco, the hardware makers selling companies the servers, storage, and management software."
Gary Edwards

You Want to Build an Empire Like Google's? This Is Your OS | WIRED 16 hours ago ... Now... - 0 views

www.wired.com/...t-build-empire-like-googles-os

google-BORG Kubernetes Meso CoreOS

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Container Revolution The move comes amid an enormous revolution sweeping information technology, one in which big-name companies and startups alike aim to recreate Borg for the rest of the world. Alex Polvi, who runs one of these startups, CoreOS, describes the revolution with a hashtag: #GIFEE, or Google Infrastructure For Everyone Else—which is even catchier. In addition to Mesosphere and CoreOS, a company called Docker is pushing this idea alongside the biggest names in cloud computing: Amazon, Microsoft, and, yes, Google.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16
     
    A fascinating explanation of the secret Google OS known as the BORG. Meso and CoreOS are efforts to emmulate the BORG, but in 2014 Google open sourced the BORG foundation in a project known as "Kubernetes". What makes the Borg so incredibly more efficient then "Virtualization" is the use of "containers". Containers can run on the bare metal BORG OS, or, they can run on top of a Virtualized OS.
Gary Edwards

New Study Shows AWS Losing Ground to Azure in Enterprises -- Virtualization Review - 0 views

virtualizationreview.com/...d-to-azure-in-enterprises.aspx

Microsoft MS-Azure AW Azure-AWS

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 17
     
    "Although Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) still maintains its lead in the public cloud space, Microsoft's Azure platform may be turning the tide in larger enterprises. A new survey lends credence to that perception. The survey comes vio Sumo Logic, examining "The New Normal: Cloud, DevOps, and SaaS Analytics Tools Reign in The Modern App Era." Sumo Logic, which describes itself as a "machine data analytics service," contracted UBM to survey 235 IT operations, application development, and information security professionals at companies with at least 500 employees, with about half of the respondents working at companies with 5,000 or more employees. At that high end of the enterprise spectrum, the survey found, Azure actually beats AWS. "In the early days of the cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took the lead as the cloud computing vendor of choice," the survey report said. "But the survey revealed that as the cloud matures, organizations are becoming more comfortable with vendors other than AWS and are using multiple cloud vendors. In fact, while other reports show that AWS still has a lead in cloud market share, the top cloud vendor in this survey -- which included only organizations with at least 500 employees -- was Microsoft Azure. [Click on image for larger view.] IaaS and PaaS Vendors (source: Sumo Logic) "When asked which IaaS or PaaS vendors they were using (with multiple responses allowed), 66 percent of respondents cited Azure. Interestingly, more than half of the Azure users were from organizations with more than 10,000 employees, which suggests that Microsoft's cloud is particularly popular with large enterprises. AWS came in second with 55 percent of respondents, followed by Salesforce App Cloud (28 percent), IBM Cloud (23 percent), and Google Cloud (20 percent).""
Gary Edwards

Everyone wants to reinvent email, workflow: Here's what we really need | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...flow-heres-what-we-really-need

email-productivity workflow Cloud-Productivity-Platform collaboration docflow-conversation

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Here's where all these efforts fall flat: These products are all pitched as magic bullets to simplify your work life, but in reality are just another item to sell or keep current customers in the fold. Another reality: These applications are trying to tackle human issues with collaboration and communications. Tech isn't going to fix those communication quirks or cure humans' need to try and keep up.
  • We don't need another tool. We need less of them. We don't need another app to aggregate tech functions. We need to simplify tech functions starting with a bunch of check boxes marked delete. We don't need technology to help us communicate. We need to be taught how to communicate. And we sure don't need more messaging. We need to turn our damn phones off so maybe we can really get some work done or look up and actually talk.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 15
     
    "In recent weeks, email and other collaboration and workflow tools are being re-imagined with new interfaces, social components, integrated video conferencing and easy swipes to dismiss messages. To wit: IBM launched  its Verse effort with a snazzy interface that combines, social, email, analytics and mobile nicely. Google floated Inbox , an app designed to help you manage your email better. For the most part, it's effective. Cisco's Project Squared is an app that runs on its collaboration cloud and integrates video conferencing, messaging and other tools. Facebook is pondering Facebook at Work with a news feed and doc sharing. We could go on, but the list of tech vendors trying to deliver a workflow leapfrog is long. And we're not even counting efforts by Workday, Salesforce and others to include collaboration with core business functions. WHAT'S HOT ON ZDNET Windows 10: You've got questions, I've got answers Windows 10 ​How to use Google's new My Account, the one-stop control center for all of its services Security Apple Watch or Android Wear? Neither. Why smartwatches aren't ready for prime time Mobility The tech of Computex 2015 in pictures Hardware Here's where all these efforts fall flat: These products are all pitched as magic bullets to simplify your work life, but in reality are just another item to sell or keep current customers in the fold. Another reality: These applications are trying to tackle human issues with collaboration and communications. Tech isn't going to fix those communication quirks or cure humans' need to try and keep up. We don't need another tool. We need less of them. We don't need another app to aggregate tech functions. We need to simplify tech functions starting with a bunch of check boxes marked delete. We don't need technology to help us communicate. We need to be taught how to communicate. And we sure don't need more messaging. We need to turn our damn phones off so maybe we can really get some work done or look up a
Gary Edwards

This 26-Year Old Box.net Founder Is Raising $100 Million To Take On Giants Like Microsoft - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/lion-to-slay-the-giants-2011-8

Box.net Visual-Documents Cloud-Computing Cloud-Productivity MS-Live Google-Docs The-Great-Transition

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Within the enterprise, if you compare Box to something like IBM Filenet, or Microsoft SharePoint, you get almost a 10x improvement on productivity, speed, time to market for new products. So we saw an opportunity to create real innovation in that space and that's what got us excited
  • We think the market for enterprise collaboration will be much larger than the market for checking into locations on your phone."
  • What you saw with the suite product from Microsoft [Office 365], they're trying to bundle ERP, CRM, collaboration, e-mail, and communication all as one package.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • If you go to the average company in America, that's not what they've implemented. They've implemented Salesforce as their CRM, Google Apps for email -- a large number of them, in the millions -- they'll be thinking of Workday or NetSuite for their ERP.
  • best-of-breed aspect
  • social
  • Time is on his side -- and working against Oracle and Microsoft.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 11
     
    Good interview but i'm looking for ways to short Box.net.  I left lots of sticky notes and highlights on this page - all of which are under the Visual Document list since i didn't have a Cloud Productivity list going.  I spend quite a bit of time studying Box.net, DropBox and a ton of other early Cloud sync-share-store operations while doing research for the Sursen SurDocs product.  Also MS-Live/Office/SkyDrive and Google Docs Collaboration.  No one has a good bead on a Cloud Productivity Platform yet.  But Microsoft and Google clearly know what the game is.  They even have a plan on how to get there.  Box.net, on the other hand is totally clueless.  What are these investors thinking?
Gary Edwards

VC: Dropbox's recent moves show why big companies fail to innovate - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/-often-fail-to-innovate-2016-3

Cloud-Productivity-Platform Dropbox

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The stack fallacy Sharma first came up with the term "Stack Fallacy" in a blog post earlier this year. Soon the theory was picked up by Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims and Andreessen Horowitz investor Steven Sinofsky. Sharma describes Stack Fallacy as "the mistaken belief that it is trivial to build the layer above yours." In plain English, there are many "stacks" of technology that sit between the foundational server and the end customer. So the server would be one stack, the network would be one, the database and app would each be one, and so forth. Sharma says that a lot of companies often overvalue their level of knowledge in their core business stack, and underestimate what it takes to build the technology that sits one stack above them.
  • For example, IBM saw Microsoft take over the more profitable software space that sits on top of its PCs. Oracle likes to think of Salesforce as an app that just sits on top of its database, but hasn't been able to overtake the cloud-software space they compete in. Google, despite all the search data it owns, hasn't been successful in the social-network space, failing to move up the stack in the consumer-web world. Ironically, the opposite is true when you move down the stack. Google has built a solid cloud-computing business, which is a stack below its search technology, and Apple's now building its own iPhone chips, one of the many lower stacks below its smartphone device.
  • Sharma argues that companies fail to move up the stack because they're too familiar with "the building blocks of the layer up," mistakenly believing they have it all figured out to create a better product. On the contrary, it's far easier to move down the stack because companies are already a customer of the lower stack product and understand what the customers want in that specific layer of technology.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "The bottleneck for success often is not knowledge of the tools, but lack of understanding of the customer needs."
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 16
     
    "Dropbox made a number of headline-grabbing moves over the past few weeks, but Storm Ventures partner Anshu Sharma's more concerned than impressed. He sees a company that's failing to figure out what customers truly need - falling for what he calls the "Stack Fallacy," a term he coined to describe how successful companies in one area often overvalue what they know and misjudge what they need to build next. "Companies fail when they take the 'what' for granted," Sharma told Business Insider, referring to companies that falsely believe that they already know "what" customers want. "
Gary Edwards

Gigaom | 'Work Processing' and the decline of the (Wordish) Document - 0 views

gigaom.com/...work-processing

Work-Processing Documents Visual-Productivity Cloud-Productivity

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Chat-centric work management, as typified by Slack-style work chat, is getting a tremendous surge in attention recently, and is the now dominant form of message-centric work technology, edging out follow-centric work media solutions (like Yammer, Jive, and IBM Connections).
  • Workforce communications — relying on a more top-down messaging approach for the mobile workforce — is enjoying a great surge in adoption, but is principally oriented toward the ‘hardwork’ done by workers in retail, manufacturing, transport, security, and construction, and away from the ‘softwork’ done by office workers. This class of tool is all about mobile messaging. (Note: we are planning a market narrative about this hot area.)
  • Today’s Special Advertisement Today, I saw that David Byttow’s Bold — a new work processing app — has entered a private beta, with features that line it up in direct competition with Google Docs and the others mentioned above. Bold raised a round of $1 million from Index Ventures in January 2016. Advertisement The competition is hotting up.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Work Processing Will Be The New Normal Advertisement What I anticipate is the convergence on a work processing paradigm, with at least these features: Advertisement Work processing ‘docs’ will exist as online assemblages, and not as ‘files’. As a result they will be principally shared through links, access rights, or web publishing, and not as attachments, files, or PDFs, except when exported by necessity. Work processing apps will incorporate some metaphors from word processing like styling text, manipulating various sorts of lists, sections, headings, and so on. Work processing will continue the notions of sharing and co-editing from early pioneers (Google Docs in particular), like edit-oriented comments, sharing through access-control links, and so on. Work processing will lift ideas from work chat tools, such as bots, commands, and @mentions. Work processing will adopt some principles from task management, namely tasks and related metadata, which can be embedded within work processing content, added in comments or other annotations, or appended to ‘docs’ or doc elements by participants through work chat-style bot or chat communications.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jun 16
     
    "I've been exploring a growing list of web-based tools for the creation and management of what most would call 'documents' - assemblages of text, images, lists, embedded video, audio and other media - but which, are in fact, something quite different than the precursors, like Microsoft Word and Apple Pages documents. The big shift underlying these new tools is that they are not oriented around printing onto paper, or digital analogues of paper, like PDF. Instead, they take as a given that the creation, management, and sharing of these assemblages of information will take place nearly all the time online, and will be social at the core: coediting, commenting, and sharing are not afterthoughts grafted onto a 'work processing' architecture. As a result, I am referring to these tools - like the pioneering Google Docs, and newer entrants Dropbox Paper, Quip, Draft, and Notion - as 'work processing' tools. This gets across the idea that we aren't just pushing words onto paper through agency of word processing apps, we're capturing and sharing information that's critical to our increasingly digital businesses, to be accessed and leveraged in digital-first use cases. In a recent piece on Medium, Documents are the new Email, I made the case that old style 'documents' are declining as a percentage of overall work communications, with larger percentages shifting to chat, texting, and work media (enterprise social networks). And, like email, documents are increasingly disliked as a means to communicate. And I suggested that, over time, these older word processing documents - and the use cases that have built up around them - will decline. At the same time, I believe there is a great deal of promise in 'work processing' tools, which are based around web publishing, web notions of sharing and co-creation, and the allure of content-centric work management."
Gary Edwards

Gartner shows two-horse race in IaaS cloud: AWS and Microsoft Azure | CIO - 0 views

www.cio.com/...d-aws-and-microsoft-azure.html

Cloud-Computing Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 May 15 - No Cached
  • AWS and Azure are the only two vendors in the “leaders” quadrant of the report, with AWS clearly taking the top spot. A series of other providers – including Google, CenturyLink, Rackspace, VMware, Virtustream and to a lesser extent IBM’s SoftLayer received fairly high marks, but none have clouds that rival those from the big two. Between AWS, Azure and all the other vendors, there are significant differences, though, so Gartner says it’s important to pick the one that most closely aligns to your needs.
  • AWS was the first to market with an IaaS offering, based on Xen-virtualized servers and hasn’t looked back. It is the “overwhelming market share leader,” is “extraordinarily innovative, exceptionally agile, and very responsive to the market,” and holds a multi-year competitive advantage over Microsoft and Google, Gartner says.
  • AWS can be complex though. Pricing structures can be confusing and opaque – it charges individually for some services that other vendors bundle. This leads many AWS users to employ a third-party management vendor to help manage costs and deployments.
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  • Azure – the clear second choice Microsoft’s significant market share in the enterprise IT market combined with its continual investments in Azure make it the chief competitor to AWS. The company has a compelling bundled offering: Its public cloud integrates closely with its on-premises management tools, such as Windows Server and Systems Center. While it’s not at the scale of AWS, Gartner estimates that Azure has more than twice as much cloud IaaS capacity all the other vendors in the MQ, other than AWS.
  • If there are any cautions against Azure, it is that some features are not fully production ready. For example, Azure has been plagued with significant outages – something AWS battled a few years ago – so Gartner recommends that customers using Azure for mission-critical workloads employ a secondary, non-Azure disaster recovery backup plan.
  • The vendor perhaps most likely to take on the leaders in public IaaS cloud is Google. It has a massive data center footprint that it uses to run its own operations, which it now makes available for customers to use. This approach has allowed Google to quickly offer a compelling IaaS without significant investment. But the company is not an “enterprise vendor” in terms of its sales, support and partner offerings. “Google needs to earn the trust of businesses,” Gartner says.
  • A company like IBM has somewhat of an opposite problem from Google, Gartner says. It has a broad set of initiatives in the cloud (through SoftLayer), including managed hosting, application development (through BlueMix), SaaS and bare-metal provisioning. But Gartner says they are not bundled well. Rackspace is another company that has a strong set of offerings – from public IaaS cloud, to managed cloud, hosted private cloud and even bare-metal services as well. But the company no longer specializes in self-service public cloud and instead is targeting customers who are looking to take advantage of its support expertise in deploying applications, limiting the company’s reach.
  • VMware is having trouble with adoption as well, Gartner says. VCloud Air is its public IaaS cloud, but Gartner says the most likely advocates of that platform are VMware administrators, not business managers and development leaders who may be in better positions to drive cloud strategies. Those VMware administrators may be more comfortable building out a private-cloud than using VMware’s public cloud. CSC offers its own public cloud offering but it also provides consulting to help customers choose the best IaaS platform. A lack of investments in value-add services have led CSC advisers to recommend competitors clouds more than its own, Gartner says. HP was dropped from the Gartner report this year because it’s focusing on a hybrid cloud strategy and its public Helion cloud division doesn’t have enough market share to qualify.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 May 15
     
    "Research firm Gartner's annual report card on the public IaaS cloud computing market shows there is one clear leader - Amazon Web Services - and another clear challenger - Microsoft Azure. And then there is everyone else. "The market is dominated by only a few global providers - most notably Amazon Web Services, but increasingly also Microsoft Azure," Gartner researchers say, giving Google Cloud Platform an honorable mention. "Between them, these three providers comprise the majority of workloads running in public cloud IaaS in 2015.""
Gary Edwards

Two types of fear, or how to win in the next stage of the cloud | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...in-the-next-stage-of-the-cloud

business-process-management workflow Productivity Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • For years, big software providers like Oracle, SAP, IBM, and HP have been taking their big software solutions for managing business processes and slicing them into industry-specific solutions. And, of course, they'll also send an army of consultants who can help you customize those solutions to your specific company--for a big fee. All of these big software providers are now trying to transition their solutions to the cloud, or offer private cloud or hybrid cloud solutions. They usually aren't in a hurry to make this switch because it means swapping lucrative licensing and maintenance fees for software-as-a-service subscription fees. But, customer demand is driving the move to SaaS, and so is a host of new competitors--smaller, industry-specific vendors who can better cater to the needs of specific industries and sub-specialties.
  • Many of these smaller vendors are SaaS-first or have been able to navigate the transition to the cloud must faster because they are smaller and more narrowly-focused. We refer to this emerging movement as the "industry cloud" and we recently released a joint ZDNet-TechRepublic special feature on the industry cloud to delve into how it's affecting businesses of all sizes and in various industries and to give our readers some guidance and best practices for navigating it. If you're faced with the decision of sticking with a traditional vendor or trusting an upstart cloud company with your company's most important applications and data, then I'd definitely suggest reading our special feature to understand all of the nuances involved, as well as the drawbacks of going with an upstart cloud provider.
  • But, I'll also boil down the decision-making process for you. In this type of decision, there are two types of fear. And, it depends on which one motivates you more. If you have a solid market advantage to protect and don't need to innovate so much as simply remain steady and stable, then you should probably stick with your traditional vendor. Your biggest fear is making a mistake that could rock the boat.
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  • On the other hand, if your biggest fear is getting lapped by a competitor because you can't move fast enough, then you should give some serious consideration to the industry cloud upstarts, who can give you some important shortcuts and more hands-on service. They can also enable you to punch above your weight limit.And just to give you a little perspective on how the industry cloud is suddenly reshaping things, take a look at the following data point from the original research we did as part of our special feature:
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 15
     
    ""The real opportunity is moving mission critical systems in the cloud. [Industries] are the biggest hold out. We see that as the biggest opportunity." That's how Stephan Scholl, co-president of Infor--an enterprise software company that specializes in solutions for specific industries--explains what he sees when he looks at the cloud market. For all of the endless hype about cloud computing over the past five years, most companies have remained slow to move their most important applications to the cloud. Sure, the cloud has been good enough to run a few experiments and save big money on licensing fees with less critical apps like HR and collaboration and some overly-glorified shared address books. That's because if those services go down or get hacked or employees have a slow internet connection then it's no big deal because people can still get their work done. It's different when it comes to the software that your whole company is logged into every minute of the business day. That was the conventional wisdom. But, it's starting to change. PINBOX The Industry Cloud: Why It's Next Read More Large enterprises, SMBs, startups, and everything in between are now taking a hard look at moving their core business applications to the cloud. While that obviously includes software like ERP and financial systems, the even more interesting story is the software that's specific to each industry--insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, real estate, etc. These industries all have specialized needs because they all have very different kinds of business processes. In many of them there are even sub-specialties within industries that have even more specialized needs. "
Gary Edwards

Microsoft: A 'Significant Disruptor of Collaboration' - Post - No Jitter - 0 views

www.nojitter.com/...ant-disruptor-of-collaboration

Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • In a release on the findings, Synergy attributes Microsoft's overall gain in the collaboration market to the widening of its lead in the hosted/cloud segment, as well as to its continued strong premises positioning. Calling Microsoft a "significant disruptor in collaboration," Jeremy Duke, Synergy founder and chief analyst, said the company's "aggressive embrace of all things cloud is opening up ground for further disruption and market share advances." Is Microsoft's cloud gambit lifting all boats? Synergy's 1Q data shows that, for the first time ever, total quarterly revenues from hosted/cloud solutions are higher than those for premises deployments. Hosted/cloud revenues are up 10% year on year, compared to a 2% loss in premises revenue. Among hosted/cloud options, Synergy's research showed that contact center, voice and UC as a service, video, and enterprise presence/IM enjoyed "particularly strong growth" in the opening quarter of 2015. At 51%, hosted/cloud solutions now account for slightly more than half of the total collaboration market, the firm reported. Microsoft stands to gain as enterprises become more amenable to getting communications and collaboration from the cloud. "We believe that if Microsoft is successful in rolling out Skype for Business in Office 365, it could take its collaboration opportunity to a whole new level," continued Duke, in his press release statement.
  • His thinking is similar to that of frequent No Jitter contributor and Enterprise Connect speaker, Brian Riggs, an analyst with Ovum. In an April post, Riggs said he considers Microsoft's Skype for Business Online to be a game changer for everybody -- customers included -- in the Microsoft ecosystem. With a commitment to adding PSTN connectivity and Enterprise Voice in Skype for Business Online, Microsoft has finally taken the first step toward delivery of a full-featured hosted UC service, as he explained. (Certainly Microsoft's hosted/cloud story will be a topic of interest at the Enterprise Connect Tour on implementing Lync/Skype for Business we have planned for the fall. Get more information Enterprise Connect Tour here. Join us in a city near you.) But, of course, nobody expects Cisco to sit still as Microsoft nibbles away at its toes -- and it isn't. "... such threats are not going unnoticed and we see Cisco continue to refresh and reinvent its collaboration strategy," noted Duke, pointing to the recent Tropo acquisition and Spark rollout as examples. Dismissing Cisco certainly would be foolish -- it showed strong quarterly growth, at 6% year on year to a 14% overall stake of worldwide revenues, for its premises business, and as Duke suggested, its collaboration initiatives are really starting to heat up now. I know many industry watchers, myself included, are eager to see where Cisco heads now that it has a passel of communications-savvy developers under its purview, for example.
  • Of course, Cisco and Microsoft aren't the only companies in the market. Avaya and Google hold the third seats in the premises and hosted/cloud segments, respectively, while IBM, Polycom, Verizon, Citrix, AT&T and Mitel also hold leadership positions, Synergy said. Overall revenues for collaboration products, "were once again well over $8 billion in the quarter."
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Jun 15
     
    "Latest Synergy Research data shows Microsoft lapping at Cisco's heels in the overall collaboration market, and well ahead in the hosted/cloud segment. A couple of primary tussles characterize the collaboration decision today: Cisco vs. Microsoft, and cloud vs. premises. So it behooves us to ask, then: What impact might we expect Microsoft's big push into the cloud, a la Skype for Business and Office 365, to have on each of these critical enterprise decision points? Will Microsoft push ahead of Cisco as it makes cloud the center of its collaboration universe? And will its Skype for Business/Office 365/voice story make the cloud an easier choice for enterprise communications professionals trying to determine whether to ditch a premises installation? This is certainly one way to think about the latest collaboration market data from Synergy Research Group, released this week for first-quarter 2015. The Synergy research shows Microsoft trailing Cisco ever so slightly in the total collaboration market, but well ahead of its chief competitor in hosted/cloud collaboration, as displayed in the graphic below. "
Gary Edwards

Google cloud chief on tackling the enterprise | CIO - 0 views

www.cio.com/...n-tackling-the-enterprise.html

Google-Cloud Google-Cloud-Productivity

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Now that companies can store all the data they want in the cloud for as little as $0.01 per GB per month, figuring out what to do with it all is a significant challenge, according to Greg DeMichillie, Google Cloud Platform's (GCP) director of product management, who spoke with CIO.com at the GCP user conference last week. "It's the needle in the haystack," DeMichillie says. "Companies are drowning in data that they know, or that they suspect, there's value in ... but they don't know how to get the value out of it."
  • "You don't replace a well-functioning application just because there's newer technology," he says. "You replace when the business need drives a need to modernize the application." 
  • Web serving technologies, data and analytics, archiving, storage, and developer tests tend to be the lowest hanging fruit for most companies, according to DeMichillie, because they're the easiest to move and deliver the quickest ROI. Businesses should try to shrink the footprint of legacy IT with the goal of moving all future development in the cloud, he says.
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  • Google's own products also benefit as the company open sources more of its technical infrastructure for GCP customers. For example, GCP shares a lot of underlying technology with Google for Work, including identity and access controls, users provisioning, and synchronizing with on-premise Microsoft Active Directory, according to DeMichillie.
  • Many enterprise cloud customers use a mix of offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM, GCP and other providers. "We have customers who are very multiplatform as a design principle," DeMichillie says. "They say, 'Look, I remember the '90s, I remember picking a vendor, then 10 years later being stuck.' We want to build not just on-ramps, but off-ramps.""If you are deeply unhappy with Google, you should be able to move off of us," he says. "You should stay with us because you're happy, not because we've put a bunch of hooks into the system that make it impossible to leave."
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Mar 16
     
    "Google is looking to strategically tackle the enterprise cloud market by open sourcing some of its internal technologies, embracing a multiplatform design principle and setting what it thinks are reasonable expectations for what its customers should move into the public cloud. The company hopes to continue making strides in the crowded market, which Amazon dominates, by helping enterprises identify business processes that can rapidly transition to the cloud and deliver the fastest ROI. Download the March 2016 digital issue Inside: What you need to know about staffing up for IoT, how cloud and SDN set Veritas free & much more! READ NOW Now that companies can store all the data they want in the cloud for as little as $0.01 per GB per month, figuring out what to do with it all is a significant challenge, according to Greg DeMichillie, Google Cloud Platform's (GCP) director of product management, who spoke with CIO.com at the GCP user conference last week. "It's the needle in the haystack," DeMichillie says. "Companies are drowning in data that they know, or that they suspect, there's value in ... but they don't know how to get the value out of it.""
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