Packaging SOA: What serves the customer?

I was talking to a CIO the other day about the whole area of Service Oriented Architectures. It was one of those interesting probing discussions around key players, emerging technologies and the like. One of the interesting topics that came up was around packaged software. This CIO was confused about a major [...]

The Google Sneak Attack: building a software giant under the radar

Google is a unique software organization. A lot of their success in the market is different than a traditional software company that creates software, tests it, markets it and waits for momentum to create a successful ecosystem of partners and customers. Read any marketing book and the process is well documented. Google, [...]

Is there a Link Between Social Computing and Business Networks?

While there were many interesting product announcements at Lotusphere, I was intrigued by some of the innovations and experimentation in collaboration. One example is a project that comes out of a IBM research. I attended an interesting talk by Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Director, of and Joan DiMicco, Research Staff [...]

Lotus: the next generation

So, here I am at Lotusphere. Whoever invested Disneyworld should be sent for many years of therapy. It is not a happy place. But I digress. Lotus is at a interesting transition in its history. I have a warm feeling for Lotus. I was first introduced to Lotus Notes in 1988 [...]

Sun Microsystems and Commercial software: postscript

I have had several comments on my posting about Sun and its acquisition of MySQL. While it is nice that Sun has a software strategy, I would like to point out an important fact — Sun Microsystems is a public company. As a public company, Sun’s management has a responsibility to its shareholders [...]

A business process mess at United Airlines

The other day I had to fly from Boston to Denver when it became clear that there was going to be a sizable snow storm in Boston. Once it became obvious that if I tried to fly out on Monday I would probably not make my Monday night dinner meeting and my Tuesday consulting [...]

Oracle plus BEA…Sun Plus MySQL

Just when it began to look like BEA might take itself private, the company gave into the mounting pressure and became the latest Oracle acquisition. A few months ago I wrote about my thoughts on the potential acquisition. While on the surface it might appear that Oracle is going after the customer base, [...]

Can Experience and Performance Management Transform Business?

Just as I finished writing my last entry about how complicated it was to install my router I met with a company called Knoa that focuses on the customer experience. That got my attention.
The company was started by two engineers (Yee-Ping Wu and Dr. Philip Lui) in 2003 with experience in the consumer market. [...]

Do I really need to be an engineer to install a router?

The other day my wireless router at home failed. Like many of us, it is hard to envision life without wireless connectivity so I ran out and bought a new router. I took the device out of the package followed the directions and tried to get on line. It didn’t work. [...]

Twitter: Does the emperor have no clothes?

I decided the other day that I would be cool and sign up for a Twitter account. OK, so I did it. I even added a few entries and looked at some entries of people I know. So, here is my question: why? Maybe I am too old to get this. In [...]