
Dell in Deal to Go Private
Just last week I was writing about the importance of sometimes ignoring Wall Street analysts whose focus on quarterly earnings can force a company into neglecting its best interests. Bowing to the demands of quarterly reporting (and profits) reflects short-term thinking that might prevent long-term success. Today Dell decided to go private in a $24 […]

Dreamforce Day One
It’s sort of like the funny story about a young person discovering that Paul McCartney was in another group before Wings. Marc Benioff had another company sandwiched in between his Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) days and founding Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM). So for those of us who knew that, Database.com had the same kind of retro vibe […]

News Analysis: Oracle and IBM Partner On Java
Collaboration Puts Java In A Safe Place On October 11th, 2010, both Oracle and IBM announced an alliance to collaborate on the future development of Java. A quick assessment shows that: Oracle and IBM intend to drive Java innovations. Oracle initiated a call to IBM to discuss collaboration efforts around Java. As a result, Oracle […]

Is Oracle An Apps Company that Sells Hardware, or a Hardware Company that Dabbles in Apps?
It’s open season in the punditocracy on Oracle, as the move to put Mark Hurd in Oracle’s corner and jettison Charles Phillips makes a helluva welcome-back-to-work present for anyone who actually took Labor Day off from their daily labors. What’s obvious from where I sit is that Oracle is now more firmly a hardware company […]

Alliances, Referrals, Kickbacks, Reselling â Whereâs the independent advice in this?
Can you be a consultant and still accept referral fees from a hardware or software manufacturer? Can you do it if you disclose these monies? The answer depends if you are a consultant or a reseller. It also depends if you are truly independent and objective.

The IBM/SAP/Oracle/HP Show: ALM and the Struggle for Lower TCO and Better Account Control
Big company battles, like real-world battles between countries, often center around obscure points of friction. The Austro-Prussian war had its Schleswig-Holstein, the Vietnam war had the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and enterprise software has application lifecycle management. ALM today is a relatively obscure point of friction between giants that holds the promise of igniting global […]
Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers – March 2010
PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES* As always, thanks for your emails and alerts. If you’ve got a change or know of a promotion, keep dropping me a line! If you need a referral, and we’ve worked together in the past, don’t hesitate to reach out to me via Linked In. Ashesh Badani became Sr. […]

Oracle Promoting Microsoft Bing? Microsoft Paying Oracle and Subsidizing Java? Cats and Dogs Living Together???
Today, I got an alert from Java that an update was available, so I clicked “OK” to install. Imagine my surprise when I got the following prompt during the installation procedure: Is Larry Ellison aware that Oracle (which now owns Sun and its Java products) is promoting Microsoft Bing? By the way, a colleague told […]

My Favorite New Old Blog…
Image by TechShowNetwork via Flickr My new favorite old blog is former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, blog. It’s at the old URL, but has a new title: What I Couldn’t Say… The “About” section says: I think I’ve said pretty much everything I could say as CEO of Sun Microsystems. The more interesting stuff was […]