Tech's Bottom Line | Bill Snyder

Out in the cold: small businesses' ERP deficit

Bill Snyder — 2008-05-08T03:00:00-08:00

It took the United States just 45 months to defeat the combined forces of Germany, Japan, and Italy. It has taken SAP 48 months to get Business ByDesign, its SaaS (software as a service) play for the SMB market, off the ground. And it still isn't ready for prime time. Oracle, meanwhile, doesn't even pretend to care about smaller businesses; CEO Larry Ellison has repeatedly said that it costs too much to go after a relatively low-margin market. And Microsoft? It has a tentative SaaS offering, and just for CRM at that. So small businesses' on-demand ERP options are limited... READ MORE

Don't be a cheapskate, Steve: Keeping XP won't hurt Microsoft's bottom line

Bill Snyder — 2008-05-01T03:00:00-08:00

Virtue may be its own reward when you go to church. But, like it or not, virtue generally takes a backseat to profit in the corporate world. But isn't it nice when the two come together? Case in point: Windows XP, an operating system whose time has not yet passed. At least, we hope not. InfoWorld, of course, has been leading the charge to save XP, and I'm not going to repeat all the reasons that's a good idea. [ If saving XP is revenue-neutral for Microsoft, keeping XP could mean actual big savings for users, argues Galen Gruman. ]... READ MORE

Why enterprise mashups aren't as prominent as the hype

Bill Snyder — 2008-04-24T03:00:00-08:00

I still think "cloud computing" will win the coveted Snidley Buzzword of the Year award, but after checking out the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, it looks like "enterprise mashup" is running a close second. Don't get me wrong. There's an important trend here. But as John Musser, the founder of ProgrammableWeb.com put it in a well-received presentation at the Expo Wednesday, "Beware the hype, but don't ignore." [ Learn more about AJAX and other rich Web app dev tools often used in mashups in our Test Center guide. ] What is a mashup? In essence, it combines multiple... READ MORE

What to do when developers take code snippets with them

Bill Snyder — 2008-04-17T03:00:00-08:00

Every good carpenter has a box of tools he carries from job to job: a hammer of just the right weight, a selection of drill bits, and so on. As he gains experience, his toolbox gets heavier with new, and sometimes specialized, equipment. Similarly, programmers accumulate their own tools as they move from job to job, but these tools are digital and often include snippets of code written over the years. And that can create a problem, says Vishwanath Venugopalan, an enterprise software analyst with the 451 Group. These snippets are often reused unintentionally in a simple cut-and-paste operation without... READ MORE

Battle brewing in the cloud

Bill Snyder — 2008-04-10T03:00:00-08:00

Amazon, better known for peddling books and CDs than selling leading-edge technology, surprised much of the tech world by rolling out, and actually attracting customers to, its version of cloud computing. Sure, there's still plenty of reason to be skeptical -- indeed, cloud computing is one of those technologies that can sound more like a buzzword than a solution to real-world IT problems -- but other players are jumping into the game. And that's good news for business. Competition will force vendors to keep prices low, improve the technology, and, more importantly, prove once and for all whether cloud computing... READ MORE

Open source databases: the 97-pound weakling

Bill Snyder — 2008-04-03T03:00:00-08:00

Linux, Apache, JBoss, and other open source technologies are kicking sand in the faces of the big boys on the operating system and middleware tiers, but when it comes to the database world, open source is still a 97-pound weakling. And despite some heady growth numbers, that's not likely to change anytime soon. One big reason: Tool vendors have yet to catch up. "We advise clients that unless they have very strong IT resources, they should wait at least two years to think about deploying an open source database for mission-critical applications," says Colleen Graham, Gartner's longtime database market analyst.... READ MORE

Multi-core to leave developers in dust?

Bill Snyder — 2008-03-27T03:00:00-08:00

Multi-core chip rivals AMD and Intel have been beating their chests as of late, but to what end, I wonder, as developers labor to keep up. AMD, for one, has fixed the embarrassing flaw that delayed the quad-core Barcelona chip. As Terry Malloy put it in On the Waterfront, so what? Meanwhile, Intel and Microsoft pat themselves on the back because they've donated $20 million to UC Berkley and the University of Illinois to found the Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers. Well, it's about time. Why so negative? The dirty little secret (and it's not all that secret) is that... READ MORE

Cloud computing begins to emerge from the haze

Bill Snyder — 2008-03-13T03:00:07-08:00

I hate technology buzzwords. And when I hear one, my impulse is to bat it away like an annoying mosquito. But before you do the same about one of this year's hot buzzwords -- cloud computing -- give it a little more thought. Cloud computing, a concept that can be as airy as its name suggests, is piquing the interest of forward-looking IT execs and attracting sizable investments from players like IBM, Amazon, Akamai, Sun, EMC and Salesforce.com. Sure there's a big helping of hype and plenty of reasons to be skeptical, but a growing number of startups -- and... READ MORE

Is desktop virtualization's promise overstated?

Bill Snyder — 2008-03-06T03:00:00-08:00

Citrix Systems, EMC's VMware unit, Microsoft, Symantec, and other big dogs have shelled out more than $2 billion on acquisitions related todesktop virtualization in less than two years. But now that they've got the technology, it's not at all clear that customers will buy it. Indeed, analysts and surveys of big IT buyers point to different conclusions about corporate appetite for the technology. "Desktop computing, as it is practiced in enterprises today, is broken. Windows desktops are not secure. They are plagued by email-borne viruses and other malware. For this and other reasons, they are too costly to manage," says... READ MORE

Can Ballmer pilot Microsoft through a changed tech course?

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-28T03:00:00-08:00

Under pressure from Wall Street, European regulators, users, and a host of nimble competitors, Microsoft's brain trust is trying hard to steer a new course. It won't be easy. Microsoft faces pressure, threats from all sides A decade after the United States dropped any serious inquiry into Microsoft's business practices, the E.U. continues to fine Microsoft to make it change its cowboy competitive ways. Just yesterday, it fined Microsoft another $1.3 billion for anticompetitive practices, for a total of $2.5 billion to date. Customers have responded to Microsoft's long-delayed Vista desktop operating system with a resounding "no thanks," and the... READ MORE

Is counting open source code contributions really useful?

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-21T03:00:00-08:00

If you're active in the open source world, Ohloh probably knows you. The Bellevue, Wash., software company has a database of some 70,000 developers working on nearly 11,000 of the world's major open source projects. After a year of building up its community of open source developers, Ohloh (whose backers include former Microsoft big wig Paul Maritz) has begun trying to cash in on a database that attempts to measure the productivity of open source projects -- and evaluate the developers working on them. Is Ohloh measuring developers in a useful way? Ohloh's developer evaluation approach raises a significant question:... READ MORE

Novell's open source collaboration play

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-15T13:35:57-08:00

Now that Novell has stopped bleeding and has put away some cash (nearly $1.9 billion), the company is looking to acquisitions as a growth strategy. Earlier this week it purchased SiteScape, an open source team collaboration outfit. Novell did not divulge the price, but given that analysts at The 451 Group estimate that SiteScape was on a run rate of about $10 million, it couldn’t have been very much. Novell has had an OEM agreement since last year with SiteScape for its open source ICEcore team collaboration and Web conferencing software. The Novell Teaming + Conferencing product, which is based... READ MORE

Microsoft's mobile mistake

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-14T03:00:00-08:00

Buying Danger won't make Microsoft competitive with Apple and RIM in the phone zone By the standards of its $45 billion offer for Yahoo, Microsoft could have found the $500 million it is rumored to have paid Danger in Steve Ballmer's couch. With no disrespect to the smart folks at the innovative Danger, a decade-old developer of a Java-based "hiptop" operating environment used in the T-Mobile Sidekick and other devices, Microsoft's return on the investment will probably be commensurate with what it spent: not much. By that, I mean Danger isn't likely to help Microsoft gain much traction in the... READ MORE

Salesforce.com for sale?

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-11T11:25:08-08:00

Interesting rumor making the rounds this morning that Salesforce.com has approached Oracle and offered to sell itself for $75 a share. Wall Street is paying attention; shares of Salesforce.com have been trading as high as $10 a share above Monday’s opening price. If true the offer would be a huge premium over Friday’s closing price of $50.87 a share. The rumor apparently started with a blog posting by Tom Foremski on his Silicon Valley Watcher Site. Foremski, a former reporter at the Financial Times and a reputable guy, attributes his scoop to a “reliable source.” No way to know if... READ MORE

Is Facebook the new Hula Hoop?

Bill Snyder — 2008-02-07T03:00:00-08:00

Social-networking sites are fun and even useful. But when it comes to attracting advertising dollars -- or the interest of IT mangers and other execs -- fugetaboutit. Sure, social networking is hot. Most of us get more invitations to make a connection on sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook than we have time to manage. And you don't have to search very hard to find a news story touting the political impact of YouTube and viral marketing. Not on IT's horizon But if you worry that your enterprise will ask IT to support social-networking software and functions, you can relax... READ MORE