Recently in Business aspects Category

Let's take a look at the Oracle acquisition of Sun. Big news, that came out of nowhere after IBM tried to do the same. Big bucks for sure ($5.6B). But does it make sense?

Years ago, I picked up two slogan buttons- you know the kind that vendors hand out at tradeshows.

"Hardware makes software happen".

"Software makes hardware useful".

I picked these buttons up at a time when minicomputers and mainframes were king, and vertical integration was the norm. Since then, a significant amount of hardware and software commoditization has taken place, with these linked through vendor agnostic operating systems such as Windows or Linux.

Take the telecom industry. Telecom used to be a hardware centric vertically integrated world. With the exception of Cisco that thinks that apps should be vertically integrated with network hardware, the industry at-large is rapidly evolving towards telecom as a set of Web-Services-enable software applications running on commercial off-the-shelf servers. This eliminates the network (hardware) from becoming the bottleneck in application innovation, for example, when integrating communications into business applications and processes.

So why did Oracle buy Sun (Sunacle)? Beats me. My prediction- they will learn an expensive lesson, integrate the good stuff and end up divesting the hardware business.

Bo Gowan wrote a nice piece on yours truly, but the picture (vintage 1980) needs some explaining.

I'm thinking particularly of the device covering a good part of my desk. This was a VuCom 1 made by Control Data Corp. It was basically a CRT screen and a keyboard. It was a very heavy and very thin client connected by a 1200 bit/s async circuit to the cloud, actually a Nortel packet network.

This 'dumb terminal' knew nothing about packets, in fact, it only knew characters typed, including control characters such as carriage return. Packet processing was relegated to a shared device- a terminal server or, in the standards community, a Packet Assembler Disassembler. Terminal servers took individual characters and strings of characters, sped them up onto a 56Kbit/s 'high speed' circuit, and mapped them into packets with appropriate headers.

What could I do with such a device- surf the net of course. I could access first generation email systems and corporate directories, print off reports, and even access the National Library of Medicine (if I wanted to access thousands of medical abstracts).

This was soon to be replaced by a Mac;)

I'm behind in my podcasts, but here's an interesting one I just listened to including an interview with Geoffrey Moore, of Crossing the Chasm fame. It comes from OCRIRadio and is over a year old, but still insightful.

Some interesting quotes (my paraphrasing):

His top 3 venture capital opportunities:

#1: "Clean technologies.... Green is no longer a cause, it's a market". In today's economy, this is driven by opportunities for increased energy efficiency. So get the facts.

#2: "Healthcare technologies...Healthcare used to be concerned about the dehumanizing impacts of technology, but this has now changed through e.g. Web2.0 and wireless." If you are a healthcare institution, you don't need a VC-funded start-up. There are plenty of ways to improve the delivery of healthcare today.

"Consumerization of digitization.... IT technology still dominates VC funding but this is huge." And sometimes we take consumer technology and apply to solve business problems. Take gaming software for example.

Finally, "Communications used to support computing.... Now computing supports communications". That's why the IBMs and Microsoft's of the world are getting into communications, and why the future of UC is as a software application. Just like our SCS solution.

This is the title of an article by Tara Seals of Xchange, based on an interview she did with yours truly.

Thought you might be interested. If you're wondering about our partnership with Intel, this was in error in the article.

After ITExpo, I took the opportunity, while I was in Miami, to meet with three customers, two Nortel voice shops and one "very happy" Nortel data shop.

Let me share with you some sound bytes from the two CIOs and an IT Director, with whom I spoke.

"I now better understand Nortel's filing is a solution to a problem".
"Nortel is well positioned in these economic times with their investment protection story".
Striking an alliance with Microsoft was "Nortel's best move", and should really help us.
"I am interested in web.alive for e-learning environments", web.alive being a proof point of our continued focus on innovation

I came away understanding that these customers will be sticking with Nortel. Thank you.

More broadly and since the announcements on January 14, the Nortel Enterprise Solutions business unit has had success in continuing to win new customers and securing contracts on a global basis. This goes beyond routine projects and includes the addition of hundreds of new wins across a variety of industries, including the world's largest hospitality network install; two world-renown universities; two of the world's largest financial services providers; an international airport; as well as leading medical centers and banking institutions.

Draw your own conclusions.

It's old news now. Last week, Nortel filed for creditor protection to undertake a business and financial restructuring. This process will put Nortel on sound financial footing once and for all, and represents the fastest and most effective means to do this.

Some people confuse what's going on (seeking creditor protection), with going out of business or liquidation as is happening, for example, with Circuit City.

Brian Riggs of Current Analysis does a good job distinguishing, between US Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (what Nortel is undertaking), and Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (what is happening to Circuit City). He cites the example of Kmart which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in Jan02, concluded that process in May03 and went on to acquire rival Sears, Roebuck and Co in 2004/05.

For Nortel, it has sufficient liquidity to run its operations and restructure its business while continuing to deliver innovation to customers.

The end point? Nortel plans to emerge more focused, financially sound and competitive.

Sam Palmisano, IBM Chairman and CEO. recently spoke on the reality of global integration. While he didn't explicitly mention Hyperconnectivity, he did say that "we are all now connected--economically, technically and socially."

Hyperconnectivity not only brings together people, but also the physical and digital worlds. This transformation can help us manage assets better, whether these assets are energy, or fresh water, or a supply chain or the delivery of healthcare. It can also help work smarter together, avoiding travel and associated environmental impacts.

But things don't change just because the technology exists.

The good news, according to Palmisano, is that citizens, governments, small business and large enterprises alike are all starting to see the need to make it happen.

On commenting on the speech, Frank Dzubeck raised the question: will technology drive global recovery?

I sure hope so and with that positive thought I wish you all the best for 2009.

"In the area of B2B virtual worlds ..., Nortel is the company to watch." So ends a report by Rich Tehrani. What excites Rich is a recent demo we gave him of Nortel's web.alive, a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application for enterprise use that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics.

I have covered web.alive (known as project chainsaw) in previous postings, but here I want to expand on where I see web.alive resonating with enterprises.

There are 3 areas, all of which fit with the participation culture of new millennials, whether customers or employees:

1) e-Commerce: Significant reduction in abandoned shopping carts resulting in increased sales, and higher customer satisfaction, all through a seamless migration from a company's portal into a 3D virtual store front.

2) e-Learning: Significant reduction in travel and environmental impacts through a very effective classroom and campus experience, recognizing that learning takes place as much from other students as it does from the instructor.

3) Collaboration: Improved quality and time improvement in group deliverables for planned and ad hoc interactions; ad hoc interactions particularly resonate with customers that have seen web.alive.

Stay tuned as we announce a number of trial customers in the New Year.

Today's Wall Street Journal article on Nortel raised some eyebrows and a formal response that "no bankruptcy filing is imminent" and a reminder that there are other, more positive, views in the industry.

My personal reaction was a little bit like that of Mark Twain who it is reported to have responded to a gratuitous obituary, "The report of my demise has been seriously exaggerated".

Just under a month ago, I wrote up a blog posting on another headline- "Nortel-Aggressive Measures to Weather The Storm"- that likewise greeted my morning coffee.

You may be interested in my thoughts then and still now, in which I concluded that "I think Nortel is better prepared than it was even a few weeks ago to come out stronger in the end".

I have got to agree with Forester on their perspective on IT in these economic times. They say "execs will clamour more and more for IT projects that reap real value". Absolutely- CIOs need to align their investments with the business needs... and develop metrics that illustrate progress towards this objective.

So let me look at two important investment areas.

The network. Sure it's critical for the business to have one that is not a bottleneck to running the business. But how is it beneficial to the business to spend twice as much as you need to by relying on one dominant vendor, or spending 65% more on power. Nortel data networks not only have a lower TCO and energy needs, but also deliver 20x the performance and 7x the reliability.

So the business objective you are delivering is freeing up critical resources to really move the business forward.

Having freed up resources (money and people), where should you invest?

Process Acceleration. There are of course many areas, but one that is receiving a lot of attention is UC- not just in improving personal productivity ( a poor business case in most cases) but in optimizing business processes. Accelerating approval processes, patient discharge times and problem resolution can reap real business value, while enhanced collaboration tools can immediately reduce travel costs.

So set aside talk of Recessions and take action to convert your IT investments into ROI.