Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz

Dissecting the AT&T memo on the iPhone limit of one to a customer

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-05-15T10:34:52-08:00

By making a few assumptions here and there let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on behind the scenes at AT&T and Apple as it concerns their iPhone strategy. The internal memo, shown on the AppleInsider site says that customers may onlly purchase one iPhone at AT&T stores. The prior limit of three iPhones is no longer in effect." In addition the memo states that effective immediately "customers may only use credit or debit cards to purchase their iPhone. Cash or Check will no longer be ac-cepted!" What does all this mean? The most obvious answer is that... READ MORE

IT benefits from big vendors' slow on-demand plays

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-05-13T03:00:00-08:00

I won't exactly eat the words I wrote when I said the spate of BI acquisitions a several months back meant boutique vendors were on their way out, leaving IT with far fewer choices in the future. Instead, due to the fast maturing SaaS side of the software industry, I will amend those words, somewhat drastically. To refresh your memory, the accelerated pace of acquistions such as SAP's purchase of Business Objects, IBM's Cognos play, and Oracle's buyout of Hyperion led me to believe point solutions were fast becoming an endangered species. Now, I have to agree with Josh Greenbaum,... READ MORE

Laws to allow hands-free use of cell phones while driving will increase accidents

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-05-12T08:31:13-08:00

After watching a driver blithely drive down the wrong way on a one-way street while said driver was also talking on the phone, leads me to believe people aren’t as multifunctional as they would like to believe. So it is with grim terror that I report San Francisco just passed a law requiring hands-free use of mobile devices for drivers. Terror because this law will do nothing to curb the abuse of talking on the phone while driving, the main culprit behind accidents involving cell phone use in cars, and will in fact encourage fools to keep on talking while... READ MORE

Outsourcing: Breaking up is hard to do

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-05-06T03:00:00-08:00

A few months back, I blogged about getting more value from your outsourcing strategy: Rather than sign a single $1 billion-plus deal, break your services up. Smaller deals, focused on smaller projects or services, may be the new way to go, I conjectured. After all, outsourcing everything to a single vendor and making a long-term commitment -- often as long as 10 years -- can lead to problems down the road, especially when it comes to business process innovation. I concluded, with the help of Peter Lowes, principal at Deloitte Consulting and leader of Deloitte's Outsourcing Advisory, that breaking a... READ MORE

Meeting demand in the on-demand era

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-29T03:00:00-08:00

Everything is in place, the ducks are lining up nicely. We have the great generational change from humans raised in an analog world and artificially inseminated with a digital gene to real live humans naturally born and bred into the digital age. Out of this comes an entirely new approach to how these digital beings analyze their surroundings, solve problems, and conduct business. And finally, we have the technology, both in terms of major shifts like Web 2.0 but also in the nuts and bolts like IBMs first server product line designed to work the way Web 2.0 works, moving... READ MORE

India to trap outsourcers in tax net

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-22T03:00:00-08:00

Events unfolding in New Delhi could have far-reaching repercussions, as the Indian parliament deliberates changes to its tax code that could deeply affect businesses here in the States. Whereas some believe the pending legislation is "business-neutral," one specialist I spoke with said that the proposed changes could cost American businesses with Indian subsidiaries or Indian outsourcing initiatives a significant amount of money. [ For more on recent trends in outsourcing and offshoring, see The ins and outs of outsourcing and offshoring ] Don Jones, partner at BDO Seidman, an accounting and advisory firm, sees the potential changes as part of... READ MORE

You get no bread with one meatball...

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-17T10:47:02-08:00

The little man felt ill at ease, He said some bread sir, if you please. The waiter's voice roared thru the hall, You get no bread with one meatball. So the song by Ry Cooder goes as it talks about what you can't have. Well this song came to mind today when dealing with Comcast, God bless'em. My service went down again, this time it wasn't my VoIP or broadband for the Internet but my On Demand service. For a few days I have been unable to access any on demand shows or movies. No access of any kind.... READ MORE

Salesforce and Google ally -- for now

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-15T03:00:00-08:00

SaaS favors Google over Salesforce

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-08T03:00:00-08:00

To say that strategy and technology are finally becoming interlinked in business is pure BS. It has always been thus. I'm certain that when the first cash-register salesman convinced the first general-store owner to buy a cash register, the sale went through because he was able to convince the owner that this new technology would improve the general store's bottom line. SaaS as strategy Even when companies bought and failed to successfully deploy technologies for technology sake in the late '80s and early '90s, you'd have to say they were well-intentioned. By that I mean, no company decided to spend... READ MORE

Swallowing Yahoo may make Microsoft want to take a nap

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-07T12:43:42-08:00

If Microsoft succeeds in buying Yahoo for $40 something billion I got to wondering how long will it take Microsoft to achieve ROI on the acquisition? Well, last year Yahoo's gross profit was a bit over $4 billion. If revenue and profits continue at that rate in a mere 10 years Microsoft will have made back its money, not profited mind you but broke even. Okay, I'm not naïve, that's not why Microsoft wants Yahoo. Then why do they want them? Believe it or not the idea of market share did not die with the bursting of the Internet bubble.... READ MORE

ISO approves OOXML as standard

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-02T07:34:15-08:00

Are you also known by the company you don’t keep? Here is a list of the countries either disapproving or abstaining on the vote to accept or reject the Microsoft OOXML file format as a standard. This is how it breaks down according to the story posted on the InfoWorld Web site. "Of the 87 countries that voted, 61 approved, 10 disapproved and 16 abstained. Among the P-members, 24 approved, eight disapproved and nine abstained, ac-cording to the document." For the complete list see the story. For the story on what OOXML is all about read the InfoWorld feature on... READ MORE

Maintaining integrity on the Net

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-04-01T03:00:00-08:00

Call it what you want, it [the Internet] is all about ratings now. We can argue that what makes a blog important is the nature of the content, but who are we kidding? We hide what we really mean by calling it "page views," "impressions," "unique visitors," "click-throughs," "time spent on site," but it is all the same. From now on, I'm just going to lump it all together and call it ratings. If you don't think everyone on the Web, including me, is obsessed with getting good ratings, take a look at this Reality Check headline which I wrote... READ MORE

Microsoft caves, in part, to online computing

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-03-28T07:19:30-08:00

There’s nothing more satisfying than an intelligent observation about life or business that communicates a real truth. So it is with great pleasure that the following observation... "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win," attributed to Mahatma Gandi is also true about high tech vendors and how they react to upstart competition. Here’s today’s headline, actually an email I received this morning, Friday, March 28, from Microsoft public relations. "I want to let you know that Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s on-demand service, previously referred to as "CRM Live," will be launched under... READ MORE

Eyewitness to H-1B scammers

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-03-27T06:23:14-08:00

In a series of blogs earlier this month I wrote about how the H-1B visa program is being gamed by outsourcing companies. If you recall I noted some statistics that said, 8 out of the top ten companies that win the H-1B visa lottery are not U.S. firms that say they need to bring in foreign nationals on an H-1B to complete a project. Rather most of the H-1B visas are awarded to Indian outsourcing companies. A couple of weeks later I wrote about how these companies don’t even keep their employees who have the H-1B visa in the States.... READ MORE

Social networking hits the bar scene big screen

Ephraim Schwartz — 2008-03-26T12:41:12-08:00

Consider: just about everybody now carries a cell phone in their pocket, belt clip or pocketbook. Add to it the fact that monitors, big screens and small, are popping up everywhere. Mix with that the phenomenon of social networking where people would rather talk to each other anonymously--see the movie Denise Hangs Up-- than in person, and you have the makings for some innovative business concepts. Enter Sanjay Manandhar who realized there was a cool way to create a business out of the intersection of all these trends. What Manandhar created was Aerva, a technology and a company that allows... READ MORE