Some tech and political discussions from Day two of the show but really day one for me
I had a great set of meetings at Interop today and the energy at the show was quite inspiring. Talk of sales gains and the potential for acquisitions were common. In many of my discussions there was concern over the current administrations direction in terms of burdening small business owners. A repeated theme was doesn’t the Obama team realize small businesses do most of the hiring n this country. Why are they trying to hurt them?
A few small business owners confided in me that they aren’t growing as fast as they like because their financial people have told them to set money aside for increased taxes next year as well as potential increases in healthcare and energy costs due to cap and trade.
Trends which have been consistent as of late are cloud computing, virtualization, bandwidth increases, Ethernet, and a new one, solid-state storage – an area where a few new companies have entered into.
I won’t mention specific companies in this post as I don’t want to correctly or incorrectly link them to political comments they don’t want on the record.
Still, with all the headwinds being created by politicians, the increasing need for technology by the marketplace coupled with massive amounts of mergers and acquisitions have led us to a point in tech where companies are performing better than they have in a long time because they could be the next to get acquired and “cash out” so to speak.
In addition, VC money is beginning to flow once again and the balance of power is now heading in the direction of the entrepreneur meaning more of them will hopefully come up with ideas and start new and innovative companies.
Based on what I have heard, I am optimistic about tech in 2010 but some of my major concerns are: Will the administration continue with policies that business owners consider hostile? Will there be a war with Iran (even if the US isn’t involved in it)? And will the US government continue to spend/print money until the US dollar is worthless?
