20030721
Hmmmm.... Could it be that Siebel/IBM are feeling a little pressure from the emerging salesforce.com juggernaut?
How about this? Compared to client/server models, the ASP model is a superior business (subscription-based revenue and scalable datacenters), it adds more value to the customer (by removing burdens on IT) and it preempts the 'utility' computing paradigm (that won't work anyway because we care about applications, not hardware). ASPs allow companies to stop being data collectors and start being data analyzers... Isn't that the whole point?!
Question to self: What value do these analytics (aka 'business intelligence') vendor's provide over and beyond simple Excel spreadsheets? I'll tell you what drives me nuts about Excel... combining data from two different data sources (e.g. CRM and finance). You have to make sure the account names match up (is 'MS' Microsoft or Morgan Stanley?). Also, you have to figure out what to do about duplicate entries (drop or average). If these companies solve that problem, then I'm sold. Otherwise, give me access to the data sources, a copy of Excel and I'm golden.
Certainly, they don't claim to discover 'knowledge' out of the data. That would be interesting.
Business Objects to acquire rivalThe business-reports software company will buy Crystal Decisions in a deal valued at $820 million, the latest in a series of buyouts reshaping the business software market.
[CNET News.com - Enterprise]
Funny, I was just talking to our data center people about application-layer management akin to SNMP for hardware. I guess this is it... Now will all the vendor's bite; what will make all the vendor's bite?
HP kick starts Web services planThe IT and computer products company submits a Web services management specification to a standards body, in a step toward making products from different providers interoperable.
[CNET News.com - Enterprise]
20030713
Customer relationships are a tough nut to crack, especially in enterprise software. Who would have thought that PeopleSoft's investments in its relationships with its customers would pay off in this way?
The article ends suspecting that PeopleSoft may be fishing for the most loyal customer and those customers' opinions may not represent all customers. "PeopleSoft has more than 5,000 customers. It's not that difficult to find five or 50 that are going to be very vocal in supporting you. With Oracle (customers) you can find the same or more supporting Oracle's approach," he said.
Well, you could resolve this issue by asking all of PeopleSoft's customers where they stand on the take-over bid. It may be that the best way to put a valuation to this take-over bid is by assessing the value of customer loyalty.
20030712
Ok, I don't mean to harp on this point but jeez... Ernie, why does Congress need to act when you've taken care of the problem yourself. Congress! They should worry themselves with stimulating the economy and balancing the budget. Leave my inbox to myself.
The WashPost's article is in their archives so I wasn't able to read it (and no I'm not going to pay to have access to one newspapers archived articles... can't they all get together and offer a low cost 'master' archive?). Anyway, witness: "Regarding arguments from marketers who claim the right to email customers with whom they have continuing relationships, the legislative counsel for Consumers Union comments, 'some companies, like psycho ex-boyfriends, tend to see relationships where they don't exist.'"
I'd much rather receive 'spam' from companies that I've done business with... At least I know who they are and I have a sense of the quality of their products. Also, in some cases I have a vested interest to keep up on what they're up to. As long as those companies have an easy opt-out process, I'm not sure there is a problem.
Why do we confuse the "enlarge your penis" SPAM messages and unsolicited email that might be of interest to folks... Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Jon seems to think SpamBayes works perfectly fine without eliminating all unsolicited emails.
20030711
The review points out that this book by Fred Reichheld makes an economic justification for "taking the high road".
