
Larry Ellison
I was going to write a post about Larry Ellison leaving Oracle after he announced his retirement on Thursday but it is probably pre-mature. Ellison will become the executive chairman while Safra Katz and Mark Hurd run the shop as co-CEO’s and I have a lot of doubts. It’s not that Safra and Mark are […]

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 […]

The Month IT & ERP Permanently Changed
It’s been a busy month of software events. But, taken together, they point to several major and permanent changes that will shape IT and ERP for decades. This (originally seven part) look at these changes spans hardware, HR software, the ERP leaderboard, changing buyer sophistication and more.

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 […]

Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-06-30
Highlights of enterprise software and solutions news from the past week: Microsoft gets kudos for tablets and mobile strategy. RIM does not. Microsoft does not get kudos for price paid for Yammer. Google holds I/O conference, reveals next version of Android, gives away goodies. Great tech companies to work for include Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Apple, […]

Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-06-24
Highlights of enterprise software and solutions news from the past two weeks. Oracle America sales head leaves after trashtalking Mark Hurd and HP online. Larry buys Lanai. Oracle wins nothing in lawsuit vs Google. Oracle’s results fail to impress. BTW, @larryellison still has just one tweet … Enterprise 2.0 Gets Down to Business (SAP) “I […]

Oracle Touts Simplicity, Wants to Be Last One Standing
At Oracle Spring Analyst day last week, Mark Hurd spoke about simplification and about how the industry needs to reduce complexity, a good message. But he equates simplicity with reducing the number of vendors that a corporation works with — at least in IT. However, history shows this is not the path to simplicity. It’s […]

Good for HP (with a but!)
Last week the IT industry had a major bombshell. HP announced it’s intention to get out of the PC business, drop it’s WebOS smartphone and TouchPad products and buy enterprise software company Autonomy. If you don’t recognize Autonomy they are a major success story born out of research at Cambridge University. Founded in 1996 they […]

Netsuite SuiteWorld 2011, Making ERP Social
I spent time this week in San Francisco with the Netsuite team and a good cross section of customers and partners at its first annual global user conference. The conference was well managed and very well attended with over 2000…

NetSuite the new Applications Unlimited
I was struck by a small gesture by Mark Hurd of Oracle as he presented at the SuiteWorld event. He got off the stage and came to the level of the audience and talked about NetSuite’s importance to Oracle and Exadata. It came across humble whether intentional or not. Later in the evening Larry Ellison […]