Cloud Productivity Platform Wars

Operational Transform project for JavaScript implementation

"Either way, customers win. In early November Microsoft announced a new product called Microsoft Teams. It's a way for groups of people, typically colleagues inside a company, to communicate with each other over multiple, simultaneous conversations. It will be part of the software giant's online Office 365 product, the "productivity" subscription program used by 85 million "knowledge workers" around the world. More than a billion additional customers use the offline version of Office. A relatively small group of people-4 million, to be precise-will recognize something familiar about the new Microsoft offering. That's because it's more or less what a San Francisco startup called Slack does. Microsoft is adding a few bells and whistles, including easier-to-follow threaded conversations and video conferencing. Slack, which took the charmingly old-fashioned step of buying a newspaper ad to "welcome" Microsoft to its game, has said it will match those features. (Fortune, like many journalism organizations, uses Slack; after a year of steadily increasing usage, I've grown to like it.) This isn't the first time Microsoft has unveiled a "Slack killer." In fact, it is becoming something of an annual event. What's more, Slack is growing fast. It has 4 million users, up from 1.25 million a year ago. About 30% of those customers pay either $6.67 or $12.50 per month for the product, depending on which features they use. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of Slack's annual revenue, assuming all customers pay the average of the two price points, is around $140 million. "You're pretty close," Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield told me just before Thanksgiving. "

"Amazon's purchases of Twitch and Elemental Technologies appear to be only two parts of a bigger strategy at the company to move deeper into video services through acquisition. Last year, the marketplace and cloud computing giant also quietly acquired a startup out of San Francisco called Biba Systems, which develops and operates video messaging apps aimed at business users. Sources say that Amazon has been working on its own video messaging service, which it plans to unveil during its re:Invent AWS conference later this month. News of Amazon's possible purchase of Biba Systems first surfaced last week, when GeekWire found some Delaware filings that spoke of a merger with an entity called "Justin Acquisition" in September 2015. There was no direct mention of Amazon in the Justin Acquisition document, but the filing included the name of a paralegal employed at the time by Amazon. Amazon never responded to our request (or GeekWire's, it seems) for comment on the story. So we decided to do some digging of our own. We discovered some direct links between Biba and Amazon that point to both Biba's technology and employees now being part of Amazon. We found that Biba had filed and received two patents, one related to video conferencing, and another related to audio streaming. Both of these patents transferred their ownership to Amazon Technologies in the last two months. Furthermore, we've been able to trace active Amazon work email addresses to current Biba employees. (We are not publishing those here.) "

"Software, software everywhere and not a drop to drink.  Every day it feels as if a new app is released into the digital workplace ecosystem which promises to make employees more productive, more efficient, more valuable. Yet headlines and studies continue to sound alarms with reports of stagnating growth and slowing productivity. Could it be that we're measuring the wrong things? That the value today's knowledge workers (among others) provide isn't actually being recognized?"

"If you are a UI or UX designer, then you are probably aware of some of the cool design suites and packages there are available for you to work from.  However, there are also probably a few that you don't know about and that could save you valuable time and money. Check out the below for a quick run through of some of the best available tools on the market that will improve usability and user experience."

"Want to learn how to plan, publish, and promote viral infographics? You're in the right place. But let's start by making something clear: If you're thinking, "I'm not a natural designer" or "I've never made an infographic before," you're not alone. However, instead of making excuses, answer this: Have you ever made a presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote? Great. Believe it or not, you've got the skills to make an infographic. And now that I know you can do this, I'm here to walk you through the seven steps that I take when creating infographics. The plan is to cover each of those steps in detail so you know exactly how to create and launch infographics for your business as well. Let's dive in. How to Create Shareable Infographics Using PowerPoint or Keynote"

"The missing piece of your content marketing stack. For the jargon lovers: welcome to collaborative cloud-based content creation. For the rest of us: now you can plan, write, edit and ideate on ebooks, blog posts and long content with your team from anywhere, on any device. RESEARCH AND WRITE AS A TEAM. Some of the best data points, images, graphs, anecdotes and testimonials are sitting on your coworker's desktop. But they belong in your team's documents. So invite your team to Airstory, and not only share your research but also invite your team to collaborate on your drafts."

"Shortly after the start of the millennium, Microsoft stated a goal to be the go-to enterprise platform for the data center. Many in the industry scoffed at the idea that Microsoft could dominate in a market traditionally led by Unix. Today, there are few enterprises that don't have a significant investment in Microsoft servers and infrastructure. Five years ago Microsoft launched Office 365 and, right now, we're seeing a parallel in their move to lead the cloud office application sector. Office and the enterprise applications that support Office 365-Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business - have become ubiquitous in the market. In July this year, it was reported that Office 365 is used daily by over 70 million enterprise users. However, Microsoft hasn't achieved this success without challenges. In 2013, many industry pundits saw Google Apps for Enterprise as the heir apparent for cloud and productivity, but things have changed significantly in the last three years. Under Satya Nadella's leadership, Microsoft has rebranded to support its 'mobile-first, cloud- first' go-to-market. The move to support Office on the Apple and Google platforms has strengthened its position in the market. Following this success, their next ambition is to enable customers and partners to move to Office 365. Earlier this year, Microsoft launched a number of initiatives to help clients consume Office 365 licenses more effectively. One such program is geared towards securing the license base by motivating renewals and preventing-churn versus a completely new sale. Once a client activates and consumes the licenses on Office 365, they receive ongoing upgrades, renewals, and new features as part of an evergreen service. Employees experience the latest across all their devices. This compares favorably to the historical process of waiting every three to four years for the on-premises Enterprise Agreement to be signed and subsequent refresh of a laptop with a new office applica

"In the engineer-glorifying culture of Silicon Valley, salespeople are often an overlooked breed. But there's a man who's quietly built his legacy by mastering the art of selling business software. Meet Dave Rudnitsky, senior VP of enterprise sales at Insidesales.com, a software startup that was last valued at roughly $1.5 billion. Although he started in finance, Rudnitsky soon made the jump to sales and carved out an incredible 30-year career, helping grow some of the most groundbreaking tech companies, including Oracle, Netscape, and Salesforce early on - even earning a separate chapter about his prolific sales skills in Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's 2009 book, "Behind the Cloud." "If you're going to build the greatest product in the world, you're going to need the greatest engineers in the world. But if you can't execute on it, you're going to fail," Rudnitsky tells Business Insider. "And executing means selling." Finance to sales Rudnitsky first got into sales for a simple reason: money. In his first job out of college, with payroll software company ADP's finance team, Rudnitsky realized his peers in sales were getting paid a lot more than he was.  "At a minimum 3 times more," he recalls."

"SAFE FINANCING DOCUMENTS The safe (simple agreement for future equity) is intended to replace convertible notes in most cases, and we think it addresses many of the problems with convertible notes while preserving their flexibility. In addition to being simpler and clearer, we intend the safe to remain fair to both investors and founders.During its development the safe was positively reviewed by many of the top startup investors. We believe it's a positive evolution of the convertible note and hope the startup community finds it an easier way to accomplish the same goals. Features of a safe: Unlike a convertible note, a safe is not a debt instrument. Debt instruments have maturity dates, are typically subject to certain regulations, create the threat of insolvency, and can include security interests and sometimes subordination agreements, all of which can have unintended negative consequences for startups. Because the money invested in a startup via a safe is not a loan, it will not accrue interest. This is particularly beneficial for startups, but also better embodies the intention of investors, who never meant to be lenders in the first place. As a flexible, one-document security without numerous terms to negotiate, a safe should save startups and investors money in legal fees and reduce the time spent negotiating the terms of the investment. Startups and investors will usually only have to negotiate one item: the valuation cap. Because a safe has no expiration or maturity date, there should be no time or money spent dealing with extending maturity dates, revising interest rates or the like. A safe still allows for high resolution fundraising. Startups can close with investors as soon as both parties are ready, instead of trying to coordinate a single close with all investors simultaneously. There are four versions of safe, corresponding to the four types of convertible note: Safe Primer Safe: Cap, no Discount Safe: Discount, no Cap Safe: Cap

"A startup that needs a small amont of cash (usually under $1.5-$2m or so) will find two typical structures to consider: a "priced round", where the investor and the company agree on the purchase of a certain amount of equity in the company for a given amount of cash.  The investor has a known fixed percentage of the company they own when the financing has closed. a convertible note, in which the investor gives cash in exchange for a discount on the next round of funding (which will typically be a priced round).  In this case, the investor does not know what % of the company their cash will eventually have bought and, consequently, the entrepreneur doesn't know how much dilution has occurred. There are advantages to each, but to start with, it's worth pointing out that you will rarely see convertibles used in seed financing for amounts greater than $1m or $1.5m.  (exceptions do exist).  Above that range, the investor typically wants to know what percent he or she owns of the company, so a priced round is far more common. Here's an attempt at a simple explanation of a convertible-note financing and why it is used:  If the concept is new and it proves challenging to agree on what the value of this company could be, a convertible is sometimes an easy way of the two parties saying "we're just not sure how to value the company yet until we see some traction or release the product, so let's set aside valuation until we get further down the road."  The investor gives cash, and in exchange gets a note (debt) from the company to pay back the amount (plus interest) or convert it to stock in a later round (usually the next financing).  Of course the seed investor is betting early and is therefore putting their money in with greater risk, so to offset that risk, they negotiate a discount rate on what their money will ultimately buy at the next round.  If the convertible note holder invested $500k in a convertible note, assuming the company wasn't able to pay off the n

"Today's Windows Mobile is Microsoft second try at an OS with that name. Despite having an early first mover advantage with Windows Mobile in the early 2000's Microsoft's lead folded like a bad hand of cards when the iPhone and Android arrived on the scene in the second half of the decade. We have not heard much about the reasons for this failure from inside the company, until a few weeks ago, when Christian Hernandez, who worked as a developer in the division, spoke out about his experience of this period in a Medium post. He revealed that Microsoft did anticipate the upcoming evolution of mobile phones into internet-connected computing devices and that initially things were looking good, due to Microsoft having the following advantages: A solid and stable embedded OS code base with WinCE and a growing PDA platform in PocketPC which integrated familiar apps and user experience to the desktop A relationship with chip manufacturers and OEMs which should allow it to copy the model of the Wintel era onto smartphones where Microsoft provided the OS, reference designs and marketing dollars and OEMs built the hardware and took it to market A well managed and broad set of application developers who lived and died by Microsoft and would surely support its new shift towards a mobile platform. This also included Microsoft's own apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer and XBox assets. A lot of money in the bank to buy customers and market share"

"Dropbox Paper, which was announced last October, is now in open beta. Given that the collaborative writing tool is going head-to-head with well-loved apps like Google Docs and Evernote, I couldn't wait to get an early look. Though Paper is clearly still a work in progress, I'm impressed with its simple design, thoughtful features, and especially its ease-of-use. Here are five features that are especially promising."

"A new player has entered the enterprise productivity race. For decades, Microsoft reigned as the market leader in enterprise productivity - until Google pushed into the space with Google Apps. Now, with the acquisition of Quip, Salesforce is joining Microsoft and Google in the race. The implications, however, extend far beyond productivity and CRM. Recent developments in enterprise software - including Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite, Microsoft's purchase of LinkedIn and Salesforce's acquisition of Demandware and Quip - point to a shift in the market. Enterprise software (not just productivity apps) can no longer be siloed applications bolted together with varying degrees of integration. Today's tools are expected to be cross-functional, with native integration, real-time collaboration and smart communication at their very core. Enterprise software giants across different verticals are moving in the direction of end-to-end solutions in an attempt to own more of the workflow - Salesforce's acquisition of Quip will only intensify the competition. For enterprise software startups, it's indicative of more mergers and acquisitions to come."

"Six years ago, we surveyed our employees with the goal of determining the optimal place for each of them to work in terms of maximum efficiency and productivity. What we quickly determined was that no one wanted to work in the office. Workers Can't Concentrate in the Office When asked to identify the best place to get work done - specifically work that requires maximum concentration and creativity, such as designing a web page, programming new functionality for software, developing a financial report or writing a sales proposal - not a single member of our 34-member team chose the office. Rather, they selected: An extra room at their home Their favorite coffee shop A train or airplane Our finding wasn't an anomaly. In a much larger study based on 2,600 interviews, FlexJobs concluded that 76 percent of workers prefer to avoid the office when they have important work to do."

But nobody is saying that the output of this technology can't be combined with the output of facial recognition technology to let them monitor you individually AND track your emotions. Fortunately, others are fighting back with knowledge and tech to block facial recognition. http://goo.gl/JMQM2W

Aug 4, 2016 at 18:30 GMT Everyone knows that Amazon is the current leader in the cloud infrastructure market by a huge margin. But it is not just about cloud infrastructure (IaaS), enterprises need SaaS, PaaS, and several others for a complete solution. Microsoft today highlighted that they are the only vendor recognized as a leader across Gartner's Magic Quadrants for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions for enterprise cloud workloads. Microsoft is in a unique position with their extensive portfolio of cloud offerings designed for the needs of enterprises, including Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings like Office 365, CRM Online and Power BI and Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). And Microsoft's cloud vision is a unified story that we're executing on with the same datacenter regions, compliance commitments, operational model, billing, support and more. The ability to deploy and use applications close to data with consistent identity and a shared ecosystem, means greater efficiency, less complexity, and cost savings. Take a look at the table on the top, Microsoft is a Leader in almost 18 different cloud solution categories while Amazon is a leader in only three of them and Google in none."

"Here's something funny. While most complain that WebRTC isn't suitable for the enterprise, it is probably the next best thing happening to enterprises. And it is all because we're in the midst of a digital transformation. WebRTC is a five-year-old technology, so it is rather new to the scene. At its core, WebRTC enables adding real-time voice and video communications to any website without the need to download a thing. Need to get a customer on a quick support call? Just send him a URL. The naysayers dismiss WebRTC because it still isn't available on Safari or Internet Explorer. While that is true, it is changing. Support already exist in the new Microsoft Edge browser with reassuring rumors about Apple and Safari's plans towards WebRTC. Ubiquitous WebRTC support everywhere is on the horizon. Which brings me to enterprises. Enterprises today are going through a digital transformation. In each and every vertical, businesses are being redefined by having the information that runs through the enterprise turned into digital assets that are then used to drive business processes and analytics. This takes shape in many different ways: enabling customers to use self-service channels instead of using human operated contact centers, using big data and data lake projects to deduce insights and personalize services, streamlining sales processes through marketing automation, etc."

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