EMC’s Innovation Journey: from storage to information centric computing

Today I am at EMC’s annual analyst meeting. Just like IBM, EMC’s theme is innovation. EMC is on an interesting journey from its roots in storage managment. EMC has been on a journey for a number of years with acquisitions in information and content management (Documentum and eRoom) and security (RSA, Verid), management [...]

And the winner is Cognos

This has certainly turned into an exciting M&A season. First SAP announces that it will buy Business Objects and now IBM announces that it will buy Cognos. I am actually not surprised. While Cognos does sell traditional business intelligence tools (i.e., reporting tools), it has expanded over the years to offer a wide [...]

Can you measure and monitor your user experience?

Since the web has increasingly become the platform for interacting with customers, partners, and the like — the notion of managing the online experience has skyrocketed. The term “user experience” is confusing. I have traditionally thought about this in terms of how the user interacts with software.  But I am finding that the [...]

Five cool things about Master Data Management

Ok, so you never thought that Master Data Management (MDM) was cool. Well I just returned from IBM’s Information On Demand conference and found that IBM has gotten MDM fever in a big way. In fact, they were handling out cool MDM buttons. Now, MDM has been around for a long time. Customers are [...]

Will Oracle win BEA? And what next?

It has been quite a week. First, SAP sets its sights on Business Objects and now for about the same amount of money, Oracle is ready to swallow BEA. Indeed, it looks like the world of enterprise software is continuing to consolidate. So, what do I think? I actually think that Oracle’s decision [...]

Why is SAP buying Business Objects?

The first time I made contact with Business Objects was in 1992 when I was hired by a venture capitalist to conduct due diligence on Business Objects. At that time the company was still emerging. At that time Business Objects was a tiny Paris-based that offered a windows based reporting product designed for use [...]

My View of the World of Software

I have been in the software world for several decades now. The purpose of my blog is to provide interested readers with my view of what’s happening both with customers and vendors in various areas of enterprise and collaborative software. I will provide insights into my meetings with various vendors. I will [...]

E-Commerce Gone Bad: How Orbitz Lost My Business

“There are always consequences to our mistakes,” No this is not a saying from a fortune cookie. It is, in fact, the answer that a member of our team received when trying to correct a mistake made in a hotel reservation made through Orbitz, the online travel service. She had made a hotel reservation [...]

HP ready to rock and roll with a new improved software strategy – bound for Australia

I am about to embark on a trip tonight to Australia. My first time. I will be speaking at HP’s Asian Software Universe conference. The first one since the newly constituted software group that now includes Mercury Interactive. There is clearly reviewed energy and excitement around the HP’s software organization these days. It will [...]

Progress Software: the survivor

I recently attended a Progress Software industry analyst meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I love it when I have to travel 20 minutes to a meeting rather than getting onto one of those buses in the sky. I think it is interesting that Progress Software has survived when the companies that it competed with in [...]