
M&A The HP Way – Why the Autonomy deal was doomed, and what can’t be done to save HP
The latest debacle at Hewlett-Packard involving the allegations of accounting wrong-doing at Autonomy make for a particularly sticky wicket for CEO Meg Whitman. While there have been some attempts to blame her predecessor, Léo Apotheker, for the decision to buy Autonomy, it’s impossible for Whitman to avoid taking ultimate responsibility for the deal. And when […]

Weaving the Unifying Fabric: The Warp and Weft of Microsoft, Windows 8, and the Enterprise
The backstory to the launch of Windows 8, Windows 8 Phone, the Surface and all the other recent announcements from Microsoft is more than just a little interesting for Microsoft Dynamics, the enterprise software sub-division of Microsoft and one of the smallest pieces in the software and hardware company’s vast portfolio. Indeed, the backstory for […]

The cool kids grow up: Box.com and the SharePoint Shift
Levie is still funny and outrageous, and Box is still young and hip, but the company’s focus is clearly on making sure that growth and new markets are characterized by an astute reading of market forces, and not just on being cool and hip.

iPads, Consumption and Creation, and the Future of Enterprise Software
Several months into my experiment with Windows 8 on a Samsung Slate tablet, I now have answers to three important questions about the past, present and future of tablet computing, the so-called post-PC era. They’re questions worth asking, as the R…

Put the Open Back in Oracle Open World: Why Oracle Needs to Influence the Influencers
I was finally enlightened as to why I find Oracle’s annual customer event, Oracle Open World, to be an increasingly frustrating and largely unfulfilling experience. For the last few years I have been laboring under the misperception that one of the goals of this event was to inform the influencers about key Oracle technology and […]

Salesforce.com, Enterprise Platforms, and the End of the End of Software
Do all companies build refrigerators when their product sets get too complex? That was the question I was asking myself as I sat in the audience during the partner keynote at Dreamforce last week, as a slide showing off the different parts of the company’s SaaS platform hove into view. Memories of SAP’s NetWeaver danced in my […]

Making HP Matter Before It’s Too Late
It’s a sad day when the bar is set so low that a company’s most successful endeavor in recent memory involves a new slogan and ad campaign tied to the Olympics, and the best news to date is that it won a lawsuit it should never have had to engage in. Such is the state of Hewlett-Packard today, a […]

Dell Does Software: The How To List
Dell Software last week held what it promised was the first of many media days intended to describe to analysts and the press how the erstwhile PC and server vendor plans to become a software powerhouse. Breaking the historical mold is a common theme these days, with software companies like Oracle and Microsoft looking for […]

It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Can’t Go Ca-ching: Microsoft’s Win 8/Metro Challenges
I’ve spent the last few days test-driving a Samsung Slate PC running Windows 8, quite similar to the Surface Pro tablet that Microsoft announced this week, and it’s clear to me that the concept of a tablet that can run … Continue reading →