- Analysts say Microsoft takeover most likely future for Yahoo
- As VC flows toward China, Valley resembles days of bust
- Google employees trade on optimism
- Google, Cisco going toe to toe for Valley's most valuable company
- Microsoft plus Yahoo -- not so scary
- Google-DoubleClick: Dangerous monopoly?
- InfoWorld folds print mag to focus on online and events
- BEA stock option audit detailed
- Feds crawl toward encryption
- H-1B may face Senate vote Friday
April 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Analysts say Microsoft takeover most likely future for Yahoo
Despite Yahoo's ostensibly deft maneuverings this week, analysts suggest that being swallowed by Microsoft is the most likely fate for Yahoo.
Just yesterday, Yahoo said it is testing Google search ads, a deal some interpreted as the latest move on Yahoo’s part to avoid a hostile takeover by Microsoft.
Now, news outlets large and small are reporting that Yahoo is in talks with AOL to discuss a merger of sorts that many see as yet another avoidance tactic.
Ah, but the plot thickens once again, as Microsoft, too, is in discussions with a potential partner: News Corp. might band with the software giant in its acquisition bid.
A story by the Associated Press, Ahead of the bell: Yahoo's options, on Yahoo's Finance page no less, quotes from a note that Citi Investment Research analyst Mark S. Mahaney sent to clients: "Yahoo's maneuvers 'clearly signal' its 'determination to explore all strategic options versus accepting Microsoft's $31-per-share bid.'"
Mahaney goes on to say that a Microsoft buyout is "the most likely outcome," though it will probably happen at a higher price than the current $42 billion proposal.
Either way, for Yahoo to be in irons, as the sailing expression goes, and forced to choose between Google and Microsoft is anything but ideal.
Benjamin J. Romano of The Seattle Times posts another analyst's opinion in this blog entry:
Christa Quarles, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, broke out the Homer in her latest assessment of the deal, also reported by the AP. "Choosing between Microsoft and Google must seem like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis for Yahoo," Quarles said in a note to clients. "Though given independence seems to be the overarching goal, tacking toward Google may be the better short-term solution."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 10, 2008 07:58 AM
April 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
As VC flows toward China, Valley resembles days of bust
The situation is not that dire just yet, but signs are beginning to emerge that Silicon Valley is not immune to the difficulties affecting the U.S. economy. And whereas Valley VC's once tended to primarily act locally, they're now eyeing global markets.
"During the first three months of the year, only five companies backed by venture capital investors went public on Wall Street, the National Venture Capital Association said last week. That is down from 31 in the fourth quarter of last year, and is roughly the same level as at the nadir of the dot-com bust," The New York Times reports in Economy has become a drag on Silicon Valley.
The Times story continues that, "there was also a sharp falloff in the acquisition of start-up companies by bigger corporations. Microsoft is making noise with its effort to take over Yahoo, but elsewhere things are quieting down. There were only 56 acquisitions in the first three months of the year, down from 83 in the fourth quarter."
Indeed, Silicon Valley won't always be the center of the technology universe, at least according to Rebecca Fannin, author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race.
Fannin, in this Q&A with Forbes, explains that, "it's going to be years before it becomes very pronounced, but China is slowly emerging as the next Silicon Valley. If you look at venture capital money flowing in, it's a phenomenal rate."
Fannin's work, by the by, is part of a cadre of new books examining China as an emerging commerce powerhouse, eight of which The Guardian reviewed in Here be dragons.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 9, 2008 10:56 AM
January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google employees trade on optimism
A recently released study of trades undertaken in an internal predictive market in place at Google surfaced a quantifiable can-do spirit among the company's employees.
Analyzing the predictive market trading behavior of 1,463 participating Google employees from April 2005 to September 2007, Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz, economists at Wharton and Darmouth, respectively, along with Google economic analyst Bo Cowgill, found that "internal markets overpriced securities tied to optimistic outcomes by 10 percentage points."
Meaning, in essence, that participating Google employees were, on the whole, willing to pay a 10 percent premium to place a bet on success.
[ PDF download: "Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google" ]
Part of a larger trend attempting to glean insight from the wisdom of crowds, predictive markets allow participants to perform trading-style transactions on the outcome of various short- and long-range conjectures. Participants are given tokens -- in Google's case, "Goobles" -- to place bets. The flow of this currency is believe to provide a credible prediction engine for future events -- more accurate, some believe, than knowledge gleaned from polls and surveys. Much of this accuracy is attributed to the assurance of vested participation in the form of financial compensation for individual participants' predictive accuracy -- for Google, this took the form of a $10,000 prize budget pool per quarter.
[ For a deeper look at predictive markets and crowdsourcing, see "Mob wisdom means business" ]
Google's market, which the authors believe is the largest such company market in operation, has been up and running for four years. Similar markets are under way at Abbott Labs, Arcelor Mittal, Best Buy, Chrysler, Corning, EA, Eli Lilly, Frito Lay, GE, HP, Intel, InterContinental Hotels, Masterfoods, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Pfizer, Qualcomm, Siemens, and TNT, according to the authors of the report.
Conjectures ran the gamut, from demand forecasting (number of Gmail users at the end of a particular quarter), performance (Google Talk quality rating), company news, industry news, decision markets (will users of feature A use feature B more), to plain-old fun (how many rotten tomatoes will Star Wars III get?).
In all, 270 such "markets" were opened at Google, each with between two and five bet outcomes.
Participants in the Google market, who were more likely to be programmers at the Mountain View campus, exhibited a bias toward outcomes linked to a positive outcome for Google. Moreover, the economists found a measurable correlation between bullish predictive market behavior the day after Google's actual stock price experienced a better-than-average boost.
According to the economists, such optimism is akin to what is known as the "entrepreneur's curse," in which "firms are started by those most overly optimistic about their prospects." Such optimism, the authors conjecture, is desirable for leaders and employees in such environments, as it generates motivation, leads to risk-taking, and "makes employees cheaper to compensate with stock options."
Optimism, according to the study, was correlated most prominantly with more recent hires, as experienced employees tended to be less likely to overspend on optimistic outcomes.
Also of note from the study was a correlation of like-mindedness with physical proximity, as strong correlations in trading were found among employees with 10 to 20 feet of one another in a shared office setting, suggesting that being on the same page means being in the same environs.
Moreover, trading correlations were also found among employees sharing the same "three-levels-below-SVP" manager, which at Google, usually means working on the same broad set of products, according to the authors of the report.
Analysis of holdings and trading activities is used to determine how an organization processes information.
Interestingly, the authors did not find friendship to be a strong correlation factor in Google's predictive market. Apparently, work-farm architecture and workforce organization have a demonstrable effect on siloing information.
Organizations looking to foster cross-departmental collaboration, take note.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 9, 2008 01:41 PM
June 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google, Cisco going toe to toe for Valley's most valuable company
Hey, our lives are busy. Who among us has the time or the wherewithal to sit around staring at Google Finance and comparing the market capitalization of different tech firms? Fortunately, though, we've got the folks over at venturebeat.com to do that for us. And, lo and behold, they noticed something very interesting: Google -- for a while anyway -- ascended the mount to become Silicon Valley's most valuable company, knocking router giant Cisco off its long held perch, with a market cap of $159.76 billion compared to Cisco's $159.73 billion.
Alas,the folks in Mountain View didn't have long to savor their victory, with Cisco trading up today, around 2.4 percent, and Google up only around 1 percent, Cisco is again on top.
Not to say that Google's executives are wasting their energies worrying about beating out Cisco in the market cap category -- they've got plenty of _real_ competition from the likes of Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com. But is it just a coincidence that caption for the stock ticker lookup at Google Finance has two suggestions: "CSCO" and "Google"? Maybe. Maybe not.
Posted by Paul Roberts on June 8, 2007 01:45 PM
May 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft plus Yahoo -- not so scary
How can this be? A Google-DoubleClick conglomerate scares the pants off me, even makes me cry "monopoly," while a proposed Microsoft-Yahoo marriage doesn't.
Five years ago, such a reaction would have been naïve, counterintuitive, even preposterous. Microsoft was reveling in its role as the evil empire and Yahoo was, well, "Yahoo!" -- the mighty pioneer of Internet search. Ah, how time and competition have re-shuffled the deck.
Certainly Microsoft plus Yahoo would create a force to be reckoned with. But, even so, they'd still be just a big fish in an enormous pond -- with plenty of other big, toothy fish fighting it out for control of the intercontinental swimming hole. Google-DoubleClick, on the other hand, creates a behemoth of a different sort: one that could threaten our privacy and give the combined company uncomfortable visibility into the inner workings, financial models, and business practices of its many partners (who are also competitors for ad dollars). I won't rehash my earlier argument. I'll simply note that despite the advice from one commenter that I take a "chill pill," I remain worried about the deal.
In the U.S., at least, I don't see Microsoft-Yahoo as anticompetitive. It's certainly strategic, though. At a recent conference entitled The New Software Industry: Forces at Play, Business in Motion, a panel of venture capitalists was critiquing Yahoo. One of them, I believe it was Bill Burnham from Inductive Capital (pardon me if I've misattributed; my notes are unclear on the speaker) noted that "Yahoo is an entertainment company. It's run by LA types, and they're doing a good job of it. But they're not a disruptive force in the software business like, say, Google."
Exactly right. Despite having solid technology, Yahoo has really shifted to becoming a media company. Microsoft, which is very much a technology company, supplies the tech piece that Yahoo covets. Yahoo, on the other hand, adds media-biz know-how, Silicon Valley influence, and a bit of glitz to the mix. It makes sense for both parties, without severely limiting choice for U.S. consumers. True, the big get bigger, and possibly better. Yet vast size alone doesn't constitute a monopoly. If old media -- as in some of the flagging (but still potent) newspaper chains -- were to team up with MS-Yahoo to offer exclusive content on a mega MS-Yahoo portal, that might create some difficulties for U.S. regulators. That scenario is not part of this deal, however.
Now, a colleague of mine, a fellow with deep Australian roots, sees it differently. According to him, this partnership could create a virtual media monopoly. In Australia, Microsoft has a joint venture with Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, operator of Channel 9, Australia's biggest TV station, while Yahoo7 -- another joint venture, between Yahoo and the Seven Network -- is the clear No. 2. In the case of a merger, users' freedom of choice could take a severe beating. So perhaps the real controversies will arise overseas.
The upshot: If this deal happens, don't expect the DoJ to stop it. But outside the U.S., all bets are off.
Posted by Steve Fox on May 4, 2007 11:58 AM
April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google-DoubleClick: Dangerous monopoly?
Google already scares the pants off many Web site publishers. Yes, the sites love the traffic -- can't live without it, in fact. But they compete with Google for advertising dollars, often chasing the same ad dollars. To add insult to injury, it is those same Web sites' ever-expanding content base that allows Google to do what Google does.
And now, the crushing blow: Google buys DoubleClick, the service that serves up ads on a fantastically high percentage of major web sites. DoubleClick has a stranglehold on the digital advertising market, just as Google owns the search market.
I smell monopoly here, one that could be disastrous for many Web site publishers --and ultimately bad for Web consumers as well. Here's the danger: Google already knows a tremendous amount about the traffic it sends to individual Web sites -- where it comes from, what people are looking for, even some basic demographics. With DoubleClick in the fold, they will also know what ads are being served on any given page. That gives Google unprecedented insight into publishers' business. And remember, those publishers may be partners, but they are also competitors, often trying to woo the same advertisers as Google.
Web sites live and die based upon ad revenue and on charging advertisers a certain rate based upon the number of pages served and the quality of their readership/user base. I could imagine a not-entirely-paranoid fantasy in which Google can run the numbers, turn around, and offer better rates to advertisers for a similar audience. Let's say you run a fashion site and charge $100 CPM, or cost per thousand, meaning an advertiser would pay you a hundred bucks for every thousand page impressions. Google/DoubleClick may not know your CPM (though they could take a good guess based upon your traffic). But they will know who they've sent your way and how many ads you've served. With a bit of calculation, they could easily offer a slightly better deal to a fashion advertiser, offering up $90 CPMs to anyone who types in "fashion," "couture" and "Prada." Long-standing rumors that Google will soon enter the banner ad market further fuel these fears.
An ad ops guy I know who chooses to remain anonymous notes that DoubleClick has been exploring a product that would establish auctions to sell surplus ad inventory. DC wants to open an auction for those transactions. Google has also expressed interest in the remnant ad market, making Google potentially a full service media buying agency -- picking the audience, buying the ads, etc. As a combined entity, Google and DoubleClick could undercut publishers' ability to set their own CPM base, "allowing the market to set those prices."
Clearly this prospect would terrify publishers because it commoditizes advertising and ultimately makes it hard for sites to compete. That might sound great to advertisers for a while -- at least until sites started folding because they could no longer afford to stay in business.
DoubleClick has assured customers in a memo that a "change in ownership will not affect your ownership of your data. Your data remains your property and subject to the terms of your contract." That's a lovely sentiment, but I am by nature suspicious. I'm thinking many publishers will be as well.
I would not be surprised to see this one smacked down by antitrust law. Or at the very least, I'd expect DoubleClick customers will insist that a firewall be put in place that will keep the two sides of the Google/DC house from merging and mining their data.
When one company owns the railroad tracks, the trains, and the ticket office, customers may benefit in the short run. In the long run, monopolies are bad for everyone, unless you happen to own stock in the monopoly.
Posted by Steve Fox on April 13, 2007 04:22 PM
March 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
InfoWorld folds print mag to focus on online and events
Yes, the rumors are true. As of April 2, 2007, InfoWorld is discontinuing its print component. No more printing on dead trees, no more glossy covers, no more supporting the US Post Office in its rush to get thousands of inky copies on subscribers' desks by Monday morning (or thereabouts). The issue that many of you will receive in your physical mailbox next week -- vol. 29, issue 14 -- will be the last one in InfoWorld's storied 29-year history.
But let me dispel any other rumors. InfoWorld is not dead. We're not going anywhere. We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism --the Web -- at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You'll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) -- something more than a million of you already do every month.
Frankly, the editorial staff foresaw the demise of print from a long way off and began making preparations for that inevitable day. Now that it is here, InfoWorld is well positioned to serve our readers, both through InfoWorld.com and our burgeoning events business. Keep in mind that for several years now, we have been posting all of the magazine's content online first, sometimes as early as six days before the print issue arrived anywhere. But that content was just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the articles we had prepared for print, our staff and contributors create and post the equivalent of a full magazine online every day, featuring 25 blogs, bundles of daily online-only news stories, columns, articles, regular videos, slideshows, and podcasts. The limited confines of a print magazine, with 32 pages of editorial content each week, simply couldn't begin to address the needs of an information-hungry IT audience.
Now, I don't want to sound glib about print's demise. I've worked on print publications for nearly 30 years, and I enjoy the physical feel of a magazine, its portability, the way you can spread it out in your lap and dog ear pages for future visits. Online bookmarks may be more efficient, site searches retrieve information faster, but it's hard to beat a magazine for its tactility and visceral thrill. On a personal note, I'll miss creating covers, working with my art director and other editors to develop a concept, then reviewing the sketches and tweaking until everything works. And it's hard to imagine I'll never have to create another InfoWorld "coverline" -- the only-in-magazine-style type that graces each cover, combining equal parts information and tease. For an editor, few jobs are as satisfying, especially when the finished product arrives, all shiny and new.
InfoWorld, though, is a for-profit business not unlike the businesses many of you run or work for. I am an editor, which means I answer to the readers, not the advertisers. That will never change. Nonetheless, I also know how the business works, or in some cases, doesn't work. The ad-driven economic model that supported print magazines for years (publishers deliver a steady stream of highly qualified readers, and advertisers pay for the privilege of putting ads in front of them) is unraveling. Given the alternative, advertisers want more immediate gratification and measureable results than print can afford them. On the Web, they can know who and how many people are viewing their message; they can target specific audiences and know exactly what they are getting. They can engage potential customers directly in ways print magazines never allowed. There's no more guesswork.
And what if advertisers want even more intimate face-to-face contact? They can sign on as sponsors for events, which puts them in front of several hundred influential, spectacularly targeted attendees. InfoWorld.com is benefiting greatly from this business shift; InfoWorld Events is also prospering. InfoWorld print simply couldn't keep up with the rest of our product line.
So this is publishing's immediate future, and I expect other trade publications will be following InfoWorld's lead soon enough. Some things shouldn't change, however: The basic principle of separation of church and state -- that advertisers must not influence what editors say, write, or cover -- is still sacrosanct. We remain committed to holding that line and serving our audience, whether they are readers, video viewers, podcast listeners, or conference attendees.
I'd like to make this more of a dialog than a soliloquy. So tell me what you think, or share any memories of InfoWorld print here. Let the conversation begin.
-- Steve Fox, Editor in Chief, InfoWorld
Posted by Steve Fox on March 26, 2007 06:00 AM
February 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
BEA stock option audit detailed
High-ranking BEA Systems executives will be repaying gains received from stocks, after an audit of the company's stock option grant practices found a multitude of issues.
The company in August 2006 announced that its board of directors had asked its audit committee to review BEA's stock option practices; BEA is one of many companies entangled in the issue of back-dating of stock options, with Apple Computer being another.
BEA expects to restate financial statements from fiscal 1998 through fiscal 2007 and that it will record non-cash compensation expense on a pre-tax basis of between $340 million and $390 million. The majority of this expense relates to grants made in fiscal 1999 through fiscal 2002.
As a result of the myriad of findings, a new human resources leader will be recruited at BEA and the current senior vice president of human resources will remain with the company through a mutually agreed-upon transition period. BEA did not name this person in its press statement on the matter and could not be immediately reached this morning.
Key BEA executives' names came up in the company's statement on the issue.
Alfred Chuang, a company co-founder BEA CEO since October 2001, realized a pre-tax gain of approximately $2.4 million on his partial exercises of approved grants made to him in 1998 and 1999. While the committee did not find Chuang was involved in mis-pricing of these grants, he has agreed to re-pay BEA all after-tax gains from these options. The audit committee and the BEA board of directors expressed continued confidence in the leadership and integrity of Chuang and the current executive leadership team.
Chuang also has agreed to a re-pricing of all of his outstanding options to prices determined by the committee. He has not realized any other gains as a result of option mis-pricings and will not realize any such gains in the future, BEA said.
William Coleman, also a co-founder who was BEA CEO from 1995 through October 2001, has agreed to pay BEA after-tax gains realized on options that the audit committee determined were mis-priced. The amount of such gains on a pre-tax basis was about $260,000.
William Klein, who served as chief financial officer from February 2000 through Feburary 2005 and as executive vice president of business planning and corporate development since 2005, has agreed to repay BEA after-tax gains realized on options resulting from mis-pricings. He had realized about $34,000 on a pre-tax basis.
Klein will no longer serve as executive vice president but will remain as vice president of business planning and corporate development.
Mark Dentinger, BEA executive vice president and chief financial officer since February 2005, has agreed to a re-pricing of outstanding options to the prices determined by the audit committee.
BEA's general counsel, also not named in the press statement, will no longer serve in this position but will remain as a vice president in the BEA legal department. The general counsel's stock options will be re-priced.
All current independent directors of BEA who received options have agreed to re-price all outstanding options to the price associated with the current measurement dates as determined by the audit committee. These directors did not realize any gain from the exercise of any mis-priced options.
BEA in December acknowledged it had been facing a delisting by the Nasdaq stock exchange for late filings of required reports, with the lateness tied to the stock option investigation. The BEA statement on Wednesday made no mention of Nasdaq.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also is looking into BEA's stock option grant practices, BEA said.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 15, 2007 09:22 AM
December 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Often it takes a high-profile disaster to get the wheels of government moving toward preventing a repeat.
Such appears to be the case with this year's infamous data-leak episode of millions of U.S. veterans' private information last May, which prompted the White House to issue a presidential mandate [PDF] requiring all agency mobile laptops and devices storing sensitive data to have fully encrypted hard drives.
Slowly but surely, the encryption-project ball is rolling, notes the Web site Full Disk Encryption: The government has posted RFPs (request for proposals), giving vendors a chance to line up and make their case for their respective encryption wares. "As with any other encryption product being used by Federal Government, the selected FDE product must have FIP 140-2 certification." (You can read the rest of the technical requirements here [Doc].)
Interested companies include Seagate, Mobile Armor, Pointsec, SafeNet, and Credant. According to Full Disk Encryption; the evaluation is expected to end in 90 days.
It will be interesting to see how much this encryption ends up costing, as well as just how effective it turns out to be. Hopefully it will help the Feds fare better than a D+ the next time its data security competence is assessed.
Meanwhile, perhaps more companies will follow the governments lead, given the rash of data leaks we've seen at corporations like Chevron, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, and others over the past couple of years. If they're not sure where to start, they could check out InfoWorld's encryption special report from earlier this year.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 28, 2006 03:06 PM
December 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
H-1B may face Senate vote Friday
It looks like Senator John Cornyn, Republican, Texas, is still trying to push through the SKIL [Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership] bill, as of late Friday, December 8th.
Pro H-1B visa law firm Siskind, Susser, Bland, immigration law specialists, posted notice on Friday that "a strong push is still being made to address green card shortages for nurses," and "too few H-1B numbers…"
At the same time opponents are trying to rally the troops to stop any last ditch effort at getting it brought to the floor of the Senate tonight.
A blog at Web site, Common Sense Junction, is telling its readers that Microsoft lobbyists are behind the big push to get this through the Senate before the Senate adjourns.
According to the post, "Late last night it was rumored that [Senator] Frist was considering bringing it to the floor today in spite of the holds."
It seems Senate colleagues of Frist tried to put a hold on it coming to the floor.
At another site opposed to increasing the numbers of H-1B visa applicants allowed in the country, a blogger calling herself Cowgirl, from Texas, had this to say.
"A swarm of Mircorsoft loggyists, surely reeking of musty giant wads of campaign contributions--buzzed and stung their way through Senate offices Wednesday, demanding that they and others of their ilk be given hundreds of thousands more foreign workers next year."
If passed the SKIL bill will double the number of H-1B visas next year and then increase that by 20 percent each succeeding year if the quota for the preceding year is filled.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 8, 2006 12:48 PM
November 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Everyone knows it's impossible to be all things to all people, but you have to give Yahoo credit for trying. But save some credit for Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse who made it clear in an internal memo that, as a result, the company had lost a "single cohesive strategy."
In the document published Saturday in The Wall Street Journal, Garlinghouse writes, "We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone." That could certainly be good news because, as everyone also knows, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
However, it appears the situation is not going to be good news for everybody, at least not in the near-term. In the memo Garlinghouse calls for "decisive action," including reducing headcount by 15 to 20 percent across the board. He also urged for an end to duplicative efforts across departments, where "there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it's not clear if anyone is in charge."
The memo has been dubbed the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" because of Garlinghouse's metaphor stressing that the company's allocation of resources had been spread too thin. To remedy the situation, company officials said in its quarterly financial conference call last month that they planned to invest smarter in three key areas: search, generating ad revenue, and multimedia ventures, which may include video, mobile technology, and social networks.
Posted by Richard Gincel on November 20, 2006 12:46 PM
November 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google Checkout free for the holidays
In a move that could be viewed as an early holiday gift for online merchants and a heaping lump of coal for eBay, Google Wednesday announced that it will process payments for free through Google Checkout, its rival service to PayPal, until the end of the year.
Google announced the news in its Google Checkout Blog. "With the holiday season quickly approaching, we wanted to do something to say 'thank you' to our merchants. To help out during this very busy shopping season, we are processing all of our merchants' Google Checkout sales for free during the holidays," wrote Product Marketing Director Gavin Chan.
The regular fees for Google Checkout vary. If you're a merchant participating in the company's lucrative AdWords program, you may process up $10 in payments for free every dollar they spend on AdWords. Non-AdWord merchant, or those who exceed the limit, pay 20 cents per transaction plus 2% of the payment being processed.
PayPal's fees start at 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.
According to reports, rumors of Google's announcement had been floating around for at least a week. Notably, PayPal, owned by eBay, announced on Monday a holiday incentive program of its own aimed at consumers. "Millions of PayPal customers will be eligible to receive cash rebate offers up to $20 when paying with PayPal on qualifying merchant Web sites in North America ... . Additionally, consumers will find free shipping from some of the Web's most popular brand names when they pay with PayPal this holiday season," according to a release from PayPal.
Google's free online-payment-processing ploy is presumably an attempt to take a bite out of PayPal's market share by coercing merchants to give the initially unpopular Checkout service another chance. Soon after its launch last June,merchants and shoppers complained it was often taking too long to complete sales transactions, and that sometimes orders were cancelled unjustifiably and without warning.
PayPal isn't the only company seeing Google make some aggressive moves into its territory of late. The company this week has announced a program for selling ad space for print publications as well as audio advertisements for radio.
Posted by Ted Samson on November 8, 2006 11:46 PM
November 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Just when American tech businesses were getting comfortable with the idea of outsourcing in India, they now have another change to contend with. The government of Bangalore, the city sometimes called India's Silicon Valley, has announced that it will be changing its name to Bengaluru.
The change represents a return to the more traditional, Indian pronunciation and follows recent moves by other Indian cities, including the cities formerly known as Bombay and Madras, which changed their names to Mumbai and Chennai, respectively.
Though the announcement of the change took place today, officials expect the formal transition process to take a month or more.
Posted by Neil McAllister on November 1, 2006 02:46 PM
October 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sony's woes continue with PS3 delay
Poor Sony. Last week, it detailed the problems behind the millions of defective, prone-to-combustion laptop batteries it's recalled, which is costing the company $429 million.
Now today, according to reports, it's going to be shipping 20,000 fewer PlayStation 3 video-game units than it had originally announced, due to a delay in part production.
That delay won't affect shipments in the U.S., which is slated to get 400,000, as opposed to the 80,000 units now scheduled to drop in Japan.
Notably, the company is already planning to sell the units at a loss, with the 20GB model priced at $430. That's not an uncommon practice for game-system vendors, though, who make up the loss through software and licensing sales.
Sony is currently running at a 94% profit loss this quarter, due to the battery recalls and troubles in its gaming division.
By the way, if you think discussing video-game consoles is too end-user-y for an enterprise IT blog, well, you may be right.
But then again, have you seen the specs on the high-end system? In addition to having Blu-Ray optical drive and built-in 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, it will be the first commercial device powered by the Cell processor, a 3.2GHz chip that Sony developed with assistance from IBM and Toshiba. Boasting seven SPEs, the chip is said to perform at 218 gigaflops. Maybe there'll be a place for one in your server room?
Posted by Ted Samson on October 30, 2006 02:35 PM
October 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Report: News Corp. eyeing Digg
News aggregation site Digg.com and News Corp. have been in engaged in acquisition negotiations but have yet to reach any agreements, according to Techcrunch.
By acquiring Digg, News Corp. would add another Internet hot-spot to its portfolio, which already includes MySpace. If the acquisition doesn't occur, Digg is poised to persue a secound round of financing, according to the report.
The sticking point, Techcrunch says, is how much Digg is actually worth: The startup is asking for no less than $150 million, which doesn't equal the company's ad revenue, some speculate. (Doesn't hurt to ask, right? YouTube's owners got $1.6 billion from Google for their video-sharing site.)
Digg's value is undoubtedly tied to the number of visitors it gets, and that was one of the looming questions in the negotiations. Digg pegs unique monthly visitors at 20 million and growing. Comscore re-ports that site enjoys only 1.3 million monthly unique visitors. Quantcast, currently in beta, cal-culates the number of U.S. visitors at around 500,000 (if I am reading their chart correctly).
Stay tuned.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 26, 2006 01:00 PM
October 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
We've heard the rumors: Software is on the way out, the industry is dying, yada, yada, yada. Well, hold the rumors. Deloitte just pumped out its 12th annual "2006 Technology Fast 500" list, a daunting compendium purporting to identify the fastest growing tech companies in North America. And -- surprise! -- just as in years past, the list is dominated by software vendors: 179 of 'em. Add the 60 entries listed under the rubric "Internet" (essentially software by another name) and software industry might even seem robust. Sheer bulk aside, however, telecom looks like the place to be, with the greatest percentage revenue growth over all.
Still, you've got to take these kinds of self-serving surveys with a grain of salt … and maybe a pitcher of margaritas to boot. More than half of these companies are privately held, so there's limited visibility into their actual finances. Even if the top line for company X grew by 1000 percent, who's to say that their costs didn't go up even faster. More telling, the list is based on five-year revenue growth percentage. A large percentage of a small number is still a small number. Company no. 10, Antenna Software ("real-time mobility solutions"), grew revenue more than 16,000 percent, from $61,000 to $9,852,000. Sounds impressive, but that would be a rounding error for Google (no. 41). Nonetheless, Antenna will get to issue a press release, as will IT consultancy Vaptech ($5 million in revenues). That's got to be worth something.
There aren't all that many whizzy, collaborative Web 2.0 plays here, probably because companies have to have been around for five years and show revenue progress. Let's look back in a few years. But there are a boatload of on-demand software-as-a-service providers, which take advantage of Web 2.0-ish browser functionality. Even so, the software list is dominated by frumpy old apps, IT consulting services, and vertical offerings catering to health care and the like. Somehow I find that comforting.
Posted by Steve Fox on October 19, 2006 04:00 AM
September 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Wells Fargo leaks personal data
Wells Fargo has joined the unfortunate ranks of Chevron, AT&T, Williams-Sonoma, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, in suffering a recent leak of private data.
In this case, the financial insitution lost personal information about an unspecified number of its employees, according to reports. The company informed workers of the breach on Aug. 28.
The data was on a disk drive and/or a laptop, both of which were swiped from the trunk of a car. Whether they know it or not, the perpatrators got away with names, Social Security numbers, and presciption information.
There's a common thread in all these data-leak cases, one that I've alluded to previously: The data was being handled by third-party companies. Frustratingly, most of these companies won't disclose the name of their data-fumbling partners, which means they don't have to suffer embarrassing publicity and make promises to step up their security measures. Heaven forbid.
Third-party follies aside, maybe organizations aren't taking the problem seriously because courts have already set a precedent that relieves them of negligence if they lose customer data. Last March, U.S. District Judge David Doty in Minnesota ruled that Wells Fargo was not responsible for losing customers' personal data because said data was never misused by miscreants. The judge's general reasoning was, the people suing the company hadn't suffered any actual damages; they were just worried about future damages.
So there you have it. Companies have the luxury of saving money by being lax on security. If they spill your SSN, your address, your phone number, your health records -- info that could be used for identity theft or a targetted phishing scam -- they don't have to fret. That is, unless the data is abused in the aforementioned manner, in which case I expect the victims would then have to demonstrate that the perpatrators were using the data they'd harvested from said company.
It's a fascinating legal precedent, isn't it? Why are there strict government regulations and guidelines in HIPAA that protect patients' medical records, for example, but nothing to better ensure protection of customer data, which could be used just as maliciously?
Granted, I'd rather that companies and organizations take it upon themselves to enact better security measures, such as implementing encryption technology. But for the time being, there's no tangible ROI in that, I guess. It's cheaper to just e-mail out an apology and give victimized customers and employees a year of free credit monitoring.
Posted by Ted Samson on September 6, 2006 10:13 AM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
SpiralFrog's "free" tunes are pricey
There are right ways to use ad revenue to provide free goods and services, and there are wrong ways.
This brilliant revelation struck as I read all the buzz about the forthcoming free music download site SpiralFrog, which some are touting as a challenge to the reigning king of the downloadable music world, iTunes.
If you glance over the headlines, you might indeed believe that Apple faces a real challenge. Here you have a new company with an amusing name, teamed up with a dominant music company in Universal, providing music and video downloads absolutely free. That's 100% less than what iTunes charges per song. (Math majors: Please double-check my work.)
Shockingly, Universal isn't opening up its music treasure trove out of the goodness of its corporate heart; rather than having you fork over some cash for a tune or a video, you trade some of your time (and brain cells) by watching an ad.
If it stopped there, I'd say that SpiralFrog and Universal were onto something big (but that's not a very realistic model). But no; through the magic of DRM, the file you've downloaded will become unplayable after one month -- unless you visit the site again and watch an ad to refresh the license.
It's not clear whether you'll need to watch an ad per month for each file you've downloaded, and the PR person at SpiralFrog didn't respond to my e-mail. But that would be my anticipation, which makes the service even less palatable.
Pretend there's a fellow named Billy, who (like me) falls into the 18 to 34 year-old age range SpiralFrog is targeting. Billy visits SpiralFrog for the first time and loads up on 20 songs. He's a little aggravated by having to sit through 20 minutes of commercials to get his tunes, but hey, he's got free music. He then transfers his newly scored tunes to his non-iPod MP3 player. (Did I mention the files from SpiralFrog won't run on iPod, at least at first? Oh, and you can't burn them to CD, either.)
A month later, Billy's on the plane to Boise to visit Grandma Ethel. He's listening to his Creative MuVo when he suddenly finds that a bunch of his songs won't play. After worrying that his device is malfunctioning, he remembers those tracks came from SpiralFrog and had locked up. So once he gets back home from grandma's, he gets on his PC, goes to SpiralFrog, renews his 20 licenses by viewing a bunch of commercials, then transfers the newly re-licensed versions onto his MuVo to replace the locked-up ones.
Billy then reflects on whether it would have been worthwhile to pay $20 (or less) to get those songs from any number of music-download sites, rather than dealing with that aggravation.
As far as I can tell, the incentive to deal with that just isn't there, especially with so many ways to listen to music for cheap or free, from MySpace band pages to Napster to Yahoo Music.
Now compare SpiralFrog's ad-driven model to something like Google's new Web-based communications package, Google Apps for Your Domain. The Standard Edition gives your organization e-mail, IM, calendar, and a Web page creator, along with a management UI and freedom to swap services in and out for users. It's entirely free; revenue comes from ads.
In this case, I expect the ad-revenue driven model will work, because the ads aren't ridiculously disruptive. You don't need to do anything extra to use them; just go about your business as your peripheral vision takes in an advertising message. (You're not going to use a Firefox plugin to disable those ads, are you?)
Plus Google is providing a service that's more difficult to come by for free. Remember: It's not just the applications; there's the management UI and customizeability.
Ad revenue also works for media sites like, say, InfoWorld.com. Those flashing squares and rectangles you see to above and to the right? They're not there simply for your entertainment. But they're (generally) not disruptive.
I do apologize to the good people at SpiralFrog for my gloomy take on their still-unborn service, though I'm not the only person to have made one. And hey, SpiralFrog won't release the service until December, so it has some time to refine its plan, if necessary.
What do you think? Is Spiral Frog a good model for an ad-revenue driven business?
Posted by Ted Samson on August 30, 2006 04:07 PM
August 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun baits HP with wooden cutout
Note from the writer, Sept. 7: In this article, I incorrectly reported the material from which the cutout is made. It's wood. I regret any confusion I may have caused.
Sun has its fair share of cutups. Now they've been joined by a cutout.
In a stunt that appears to be part PR, part prank, and part pestering, Sun has secured a wooden cutout of HP founders William Hewlett and David Packard for $6,000, boasts Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz in his blog. Since acquiring the life-size portrait, Sun has set up various photo-ops with it, bedecking the duo in pro-Sun and Solaris paraphernalia.
Therein lies the prank and the pestering of the stunt. The PR emerges in Schwartz's touting of Solaris in his post. "With nearly 25% of Solaris downloads requested on to HP's servers, we know their customers really want the partnership, and we're happy to oblige," he writes.
"To warn you in advance, Bill and Dave have both indicated a strong interest in learning more about Sun and the Solaris platform, so stay tuned," he continues.
The wooden dual portrait, by the way, was part of a cross-country art project called "Pioneers Hitchhiking in the Valley of Heart's Delight."
HP was given right of first refusal to purchase the portrait of its esteemed founders, but the company declined. In his own blog, HP Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy and Excellence Eric Kintz returns Schwartz's volley, seemingly unimpressed by, or perhaps even sour on, Sun's "nice stunt." "I never met Bill or Dave, but I bet neither of them would have approved paying thousands for representations of themselves," he writes.
Kintz also made a point of addressing Schwartz's claims about the popularity of Solaris on HP servers by pointing to an HP-written summation of a 2006 IDC report. As far as I can tell, nothing there contradicts Schwartz's assertions of Solaris being downloaded to 25 percent of all HP servers. The report does say that "HP is #1 in high-end Unix server revenue with a 48.3% market share worldwide. IBM is #2 with 20.7% and Sun is #3 with 14.0%."
As for the fate of Hewlett and Packard: Sun says it will donate the piece to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 24, 2006 03:30 PM
August 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Judge squeezes $25M more out of MS
Microsoft and Autodesk now owe DRM startup z4 Technologies $158 million in damages, up from $133 million, a federal judge in Texas ruled last Friday.
The two companies were in court appealing a previous ruling that they had infringed on z4's product activation patents. Not only did they fail to convince U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis of their innocence; the judge admonished them for attempting to mislead the court and ordered them to pay even more damages to z4.
Microsoft now owes Michigan-based z4 an additional $25 million to the $115 millions in damages it owed, plus almost $2 million in legal costs. Autodesk, located based in San Rafael, Calif., owes another z4 another $322,000 on top of the original $18 million.
According to The Seattle Times, Davis slammed the defendants for "[attempting] to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys" and one "intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court."
Posted by Ted Samson on August 23, 2006 12:05 PM
August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Bloggers and pundits are engaging in a game of "CSI: Web 2.0" as they try to pinpoint who did in online-calendar startup Kiko.com.
Kiko.com -- including the Web site, the software, and the domain name -- went up for sale on eBay last week. One prospective buyer, who has no public buying or selling history on the popular auction site, has made a bid thus far for $49,999.00.
Whatever the future holds for Kiko, some people are taking this opportunity to point an accusing finger at Google, saying the release of Google Calendar was the fatal blow for Kiko. Take this article from the Guardian Unlimited, which invokes the phrase "Google creep":
"It only takes Google to experiment in a particular online area to kill off fledgling businesses. That appears to be what happened to Kiko. Google launched a test version of its Google Calendar application in April, and that seems to have rung the death knell for Kiko."
Google is becoming an increasingly common and easy target for these types of accusations. The company certainly is shifting more than a couple of technology landscapes as it dabbles not only in search innovation but also Web-based applications, news aggregation, and other projects not necessarily ending with -ation, such as its shiny new free wireless network in Menlo Park, Calif.
But did Google unfairly catch Kiko off-guard with the release of Calendar and pummel the upstart into submission with its hefty muscles? Not quite, if you agree with Richard White, who was a member of the Kiko team.
White shares his own perspectives as to what happened to Kiko, and opines quite explicitly that the company's demise was more due to self-inflicted wounds.
Among them, White writes, the Kiko team didn't stay sufficiently focused:
"We were on track to release the new version of Kiko in the middle of January, when we *lost focus* and starting working on something totally different altogether. This was obviously a suicidal move in hindsight as it cost us 2 months: Kiko 2.0 launched on March 15th instead of January 15th/ During that time two important things happened:
1. 30Boxes came out of nowhere and launched on Feb 14. Thus becoming the new internet calendar darling.
2. Screenshots of Google calendar were leaked and posted all over the Internet."
Additionally, White writes that the company released Kiko 1.0 too early while it still suffered a poor UI, souring some users' first impression. Moreover, he says the team attempted to cram too many features into Kiko 2.0, which resulted in a delayed launch.
I applaud White for his mature and honest perspective of what happened to Kiko and his restraint in not simply blaming Google. The company is a formidable beast, and thus an easy scapegoat: It has the brains and the dollars to crank out innovative products, combined with the enviable agility to do so relatively quickly.
But that doesn't mean that startups should just call it quits for fear that whatever they do, Google -- or Microsoft, or IBM, or any other tech giant for that matter -- will do it faster and better. We saw plenty of promising ventures keel over and die during the Web 1.0 boom, like WebVan and pets.com, but others, like Amazon.com and Salesforce.com (founded in 1999), not only survived, but thrived.
Now we're in the Web 2.0 era, and as hardware and software, as well as the needs of business and users, evolve, the potential for innovative and successful business endeavors expands exponentially.
Yes, the promising Kikos of the world might not survive, but inevitably, another young company will grow up to become the next seemingly unbeatable Googliath. But then a new onslaught of eager Davids will emerge, wielding slings the likes of which we've never seen.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 22, 2006 11:00 AM
August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
IBM Lands Delta in IT services deal
From pills to planes, it looks like IBM is continuing its recent trend of landing mega IT outsourcing deals.
The company said today that it has signed a seven year deal with Delta Air Lines to "help support (Delta's) ongoing IT needs as it restructures its operations and progresses toward emergence from bankruptcy in the first half of 2007."
Now God only knows what 'IT needs' declaring bankruptcy creates. IBM said it will be providing IT mainframe and mi-range services, allowing Delta to "oursource (its) IT infrastructure management.")
This news comes just a month after IBM and CVS Pharmacy announced a huge, 10 year BPO (business process outsourcing) deal that put CVS's HR department under IBM's control.
The common theme? IT is expensive, and companies both healthy and ailing are increasingly looking for ways to defer those costs, or at least contain them. For Delta, this is all about reducing overhead and, I would guess, headcount. In the case of CVS, it was actually the company's rapid growth -- 55,000 U.S. employees in two years -- that prompted the deal. "This rapid growth has stretched our current systems supporting human resources transactions," V. Michael Ferdinandi, CVS SVP for Human Resources and Corporate Communications, said at the time that deal was announced.
CVS was looking not only for cost efficiencies signing on with IBM, but for IBM's expertise in hot areas like BPO to give it the technology to "improve human resources tools for our stores," he said.
But there are risks in these mega deals for all the parties involved. Seven and ten year outsourcing engagements are great for the balance sheet, but they also have considerable up front costs for IBM before it really begins to make money in the deal. And, as Big Blue learned with its $5 billion deal with JP Morgan a couple years back, and Sprint earlier this year, the longer the deal goes on, the more potential there is for *&$! happening -- buyouts, mergers or general disenchantment that can shake up a rock-solid outsourcing relationship.
Posted by Paul Roberts on August 21, 2006 09:21 AM
August 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Is the general public and press more blasé about companies mishandling the personal data of employees than it is about the government mishandling that of its citizens?
Fueling this perhaps loaded question is my observation that the news about a data leak at Chevron went widely unreported, as far as I can tell.
Now, I wasn't expecting Google news to be brimming with thousands of articles, nor did I envision citizens gathering torches and pitchforks and storming the Chevron headquarters. But the relative silence I've observed left me curious.
Consider, after all, the widespread coverage of the recent data leaks by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Granted, the VA has suffered more than one embarrassing data leak thus far, forcing it into the public spotlight. Arguably, though, that's been a good thing in that it has resulted in action: the VA's information security officer stepped down. The department has pledged to implement encryption technology. And Unisys, the company responsible for VA's latest lost laptop, is offering a $50,000 reward for its return.
Do public multi-national corporations get a reprieve for substandard security that potentially puts its employees at risk of identity theft? How about smaller chain stores like Williams Sonoma, which reportedly suffered a leak of its own?
Notably, with Chevron, Williams Sonoma, and at least in the VA's most recent leak, it was partners that had really dropped the ball. In Chevron's case, the stolen laptop was in the care of an independent public accounting firm auditing the company's employee savings, health and disability plans. For the VA, someone at the aforementioned Unisys erred. And for Williams Sonoma, a Deloitte & Touche employee, who was performing an audit of the furnishings chain, had the laptop stolen from his apartment.
On the one hand, I can understand why there's more public concern over the VA's data leaks. After all, we're supposed to entrust the government to protect us, and we pay for that protection with tax dollars. Plus, holes in government security seem more likely to affect you and me than does a security breach at some company we don't run or work at.
But these kinds of leaks represent a growing trend in the business world. The Ponemon Institute and Vontu have come out with a study pointing out that very fact. As these breaches become more pervasive, the chances of one eventually affecting you or me increases. And that should concern you whether you're the CEO of the company who has to field questions from the press and disgruntled stockholders after your organization is sued by a group of employees whose personal data was swiped; whether you're the head of your company's IT security and you're given walking papers for letting personal data fall into the hands of criminals; or whether you're the VP of sales, or assistant marketing director, or just some poor sucker who got your personal data ripped off.
I think it's inevitable that we'll soon see hefty lawsuit settlements against companies that have negligently exposed their employees SSNs and other personal information. I also think that, eventually, the government is going to intervene and pass some legislation that will pile some hefty fines on companies that don't meet certain standards insofar as guarding that kind of information, a la HIPAA for the medical industry.
In the meantime, though, companies (and governmental agencies) need to get on the ball. I'm talking about stricter policies restricting what kind of data employees can carry around on laptops -- tied to serious consequences for those who don't comply. I'm talking about implementing technology like encryption, which may not be a simple cure-all, but that's a step in the right direction. And I am talking about scrutinizing those SLAs with your partner companies, like Unisys and Deloitte & Touche, and being certain they're taking measures to keep your company out of hot water -- and blog posts like this one.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 17, 2006 11:08 AM
August 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Chevron has a messy spill to clean up, but it's not an oil spill; it's a data leak.
The oil behemoth circulated an e-mail to its U.S. employees last Monday, cautioning them that a laptop "was stolen from an employee of an independent public accounting firm who was auditing our employee savings, health and disability plans," according to today's San Francisco Chronicle.
The laptop was swiped on Monday, Aug. 7, according to the report, and contained data such as Social Security numbers and other private data of potentially thousands of employees. The name of the public accounting firm was not disclosed.
According to the report, the e-mail, sent to "U.S. Payroll Employees" by Peter Robertson, Chevron's vice chairman, offered assurances to workers that "we believe it is unlikely that any Chevron benefit plans will be impacted by this theft with the security measures we have in place for those plans."
Nonetheless, the e-mail continues, "in order to mitigate any identity theft issues related to this event, we are offering a comprehensive set of services paid for by Chevron to affected plan participants."
Reports of data leaks are becoming regrettably common these days. In recent months, for example, government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs have reported thefts of personal data. The VA announced earlier this week plans to invest $3.7 million in encryption technology in an effort to prevent future data leaks.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 16, 2006 09:53 AM
August 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The financial powder keg at CA has finally gone off on the employment roll, as the systems management and security vendor has said it will sever ties with 10 percent of its current workforce, announcing a proposed layoff of 1,700 employees today.
Long in the offing, the run-up to the reduction has proved a tangled mess of stock-option inquisition, copious executive reshufflings, earnings delays and restatements, sales commission snafus, and high-profile acquisitions. Tumultuous times indeed. And that's not to mention any orange jumpsuits.
New CEO John Swainson labeled the layoffs "the first steps in a long-term program to achieve a best-of-breed cost structure." Rhetoric of transition notwithstanding, the layoffs doubled previous rumors, which may beg some explaining. The expected savings, $200 million, is on par with the $225 million the company agreed to pay shareholders to avoid fraudulent accounting prosecution.
The question remains, Can Swainson & Co. contain the chaos and script a forward-looking tech agenda that can put recent past to rest?
Posted by Jason Snyder on August 14, 2006 04:51 PM
August 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
At times, I have upwards of 20 empty drinking receptacles on my desk here at InfoWorld. It's not that I anticipate my empty Glaceau Vitamin Water (i.e. Kool-Aid for adults) bottles will suddenly appreciate in value. I'm a recycling proponent -- albeit a well-hydrated one with a propensity to procrastinate.
So what happens when a similarly environmentally-minded CTO, for example, faces the task of getting rid of a load of PCs and monitors? For the sake of both the environment and security, he or she might want to recycle them. And in order to learn just how and why to do that, might be interested in a talk to be given on Aug. 15 by author Elizabeth Grossman, who will be speaking in San Francisco about her latest book, "High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health."
Grossman argues that "e-waste" warrants some serious attention, citing on her Web site facts about its environmental and health impacts. Tons of lectronics such as monitors, PCs, and semi-conductors, are being improperly dumped or melted down, she says, which can release dangerous materials such as lead, mercury, and copper. Plus, it's pretty wasteful; the systems that are too slow to do the 3D rendering your organization needs may be a perfect fit for the local public school or community center.
One of the answers to the problem of the ever-growing piles of junked computers and LCDs, she says, is recycling programs, and she cites several places you might go to help you with that task. Among them is the eBay-hosted ReThink Program, where you can find an extensive list of electronics recyclers.
When choosing a recycler, she recommends, be sure to ask about how equipment is tracked and where it will be sent. "What you want ensure is that your equipment won't be exported to parts of the world where unsafe, environmentally unsound recycling or dumping takes place — or anywhere else that you're not comfortable with," she writes.
For the sake of security, Grossman advises that you be sure to ask about how the recycler or reuse organization "handles data destruction: Can the recycler or reuse organization wipe the hard drive for you and provide documentation that they have done so?" Of course, you also can do that data-scrub in-house, for better peace of mind.
For more guidance to disposing of your old electronic gear, consider checking out this article from CIO.
If you live in the Bay Area, you can see her live at 7:00 p.m. Pacific at Book Passage, located at 1 Ferry Plaza, #46, in San Francisco. Otherwise, C-SPAN will be recording the talk and running it several times in coming weeks. (Check your local listings, or the C-SPAN Web site, for details.)
Posted by Ted Samson on August 8, 2006 04:56 PM
August 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Report: IT workers seeing fatter paychecks, fewer bonuses
If you're an IT professional, there's a pretty good chance you're getting fewer bonuses than you used to during the dot-com boom. Instead, that cash is showing up in your compensation package, and it's based on the specific IT skills you bring to the table.
According to a report released by Foote Partners, 51% of the 54,000 IT pros surveyed in the U.S. and Canada are seeing larger paychecks instead of sometimes unpredictable chunks of bonus change thrown their way throughout the year.
Perhaps more significantly, companies are doing a better job of compensating their IT pros based on their specific certified and noncertified IT-related skills, according to the report.
What that means is, a system admin with a Unix or Linux specialization who works on critical customer-facing systems will see more money than an MVS administators with the same system admin title, says David Foote, CEO and chief research officer at Foote Partners. "The beauty of this approach is its flexibility and ease in getting a workers total compensation to true market value, and also recognizing his or her special qualities. That's a big plus when you need to get the right people in place on critical projects," Foote explains.
The approach also boosts moral and retention, he adds.
Foote Partners, based in New Canaan, Conn., also has released its Hot Technical Skills and Certification Pay Index, containing pay rates for 242 IT skills, which is available here.
If you missed it, you also should check out InfoWorld's own 2006 Compensation Survey.
So what do you think? If you're an IT pro: Would you rather see a fatter paycheck each week, or do you find yourself more motivated by the prospect of potentially more money with bonuses? And IT managers: Which approach do you think works best to get the most out of your teams?
Posted by Ted Samson on August 2, 2006 10:05 AM
July 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Why did HP acquire Mercury? Because it's absolutely crucial to HP's Adaptive Enterprise initiative, which purports to connect IT assets to business value. Before, HP could only make this connection at the network and systems level with OpenView -- here's the chunk of data center resources you need for this particular job and here's how it's running.
Now, with the Mercury acquisition, that visibility extends into application monitoring and portfolio management, which needs to happen in order to tie together business outcomes and technology spend in any meaningful way.
Thomas Hogan, HP's senior vice president of software, told me that Mercury's software portfolio and project management in particular filled a critical gap in HP's offering. "It gives us access at a strategic level to the CIO. Instead of being viewed as a killer server company and a killer printer company, now we're engaged at the CIO level to talk about running his organization as a business and optimizing business outcomes."
The big question is whether HP is capable of succeeding with software at any layer higher than that of OpenView. Consider the words of HP's CEO, Mark Hurd, who told analysts: "We think we have a chance for software to be truly one of the crown jewels of Hewlett-Packard."
After witnessing several big HP software fiascos -- the failure to capitalize on its early eSpeak Web services innovations, the acquisition and later abandonment of Bluestone and its excellent J2EE app server technology -- I have to wonder how big that chance may be.
I can see Mercury's runtime monitoring software extending more-or-less seamlessly from OpenView. But what does HP know about software testing, Mercury's bread and butter? Will that fall through the cracks?
That question extends to professional services as well. Mercury has a small services footprint for a software company its size, yet as I see it HP's Adaptive Enterprise initiative is essentially a professional services play. Will Mercury be adequately represented as HP consultants pitch CIOs on the vision? Or will Mercury's stuff be an afterthought or even a separate proposition?
It all comes down to how effectively HP can integrate Mercury's portfolio into the vision and the on-the-ground value proposition to customers. If HP can do it, it's a big win -- and gives retroactive meaning to the amorphous Adaptive Enterprise pitch. If it can't, then add Mercury to HP's software deadpool.
Posted by Eric Knorr on July 26, 2006 01:39 PM
June 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The company formerly known as Computer Associates
Taking a page out of the Colonel's finger-lickin' playbook, Computer Associates is on the move shedding its past with a hip name change.
Like with KFC, only CA will identify the company formerly known as Computer Associates, as that name is wiped from ad collateral Web- and print-wide.
"CA" is a bit more problematic, however, with California and Canada vying for those two letters in a Web search, for example.
But that's nothing a major ad spend can't fix, the company hopes.
Posted by Mike Barton on June 19, 2006 12:36 PM
May 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Poor Sun. The quality of its products is widely recognized. Solaris is a great OS. Java is an undisputed success. The new Niagara processor is generating a lot of buzz, and Sun's AMD-based x86 servers are top notch. Despite all this, however, the question that remains on everyone's mind is whether Sun will be able to capitalize on all this great R&D. Just how, exactly, does it plan to reverse its financial misfortunes of the last few years?
We may now have one part of the answer. IDG News Service reports that Sun plans to lay off some 5,000 employees, amounting to as much as 13 percent of its workforce. In addition, it will sell three of its U.S. campus facilities.
Sun's board has already approved the moves, as well as new operational goals, including modest revenue growth. But what do you think? Is tightening its belt what it will take to pull Sun out of its slump?
Posted by Neil McAllister on May 31, 2006 02:50 PM
May 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer, defending company spending plans that have triggered a 12 percent stock price drop since last Thursday, wrote to employees in an e-mail: "Throughout our history, Microsoft has won by making big, bold bets."
"I believe that now is not the time to scale back the scope of our ambition or the scale of our investment," Ballmer wrote. "While our opportunities are greater than ever, we also face new competitors, faster-moving markets and new customer demands."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran excerpts on of the e-mail on its Web site.
Core in his appeal that spending was on target, Ballmer said Google was the reason behind some of the spending, taking aim at Google's revolutionary AdSense. "Further development of [our response] adCenter is key -- our goal is to create the Web's largest advertising network, giving us an engine that will enable us to monetize our services and compete against Google."
Where's the big, bold bet? Google is betting on its talent pool, and backing it with generous time to innovate. Question is, when will Microsoft stop chasing Google and start innovating? (See PC World's Full Disclosure: Microsoft Innovation--An Oxymoron). Let's hope after it catches up...
Posted by Mike Barton on May 2, 2006 02:51 PM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
With McNealy out, what should Schwartz focus on?
The news that Sun's Scott McNealy stepped aside today from the helm should come as no surprise. The only thing I would be surprised at are those who think he actually stepped aside and wasn't pushed by the board.
The financial news coming out of Sun has been bleak since 2002 with estimates that the total loses since the dot-com bubble burst is about $4.5 billion.
Some say Jonathan Schwartz will complete the move to the network computer.
The question is, does the concept of a super-thin client, no hard drives, intelligent cache, running anything but Windows have legs. Can Sun under Schwartz sell it. And I mean literally sell it.
Others, like Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting, has different advice for Schwartz.
Greenbaum says Sun's major failing is it has never been able to capitalize on the software leadership that it generated over the years, with Java being the best example.
There is no Java revenue stream.
Schwartz has a better sense of what the software side of Sun's future is about.
Greenbaum believes in order for Sun to survive it has to follow the lead of IBM up the food chain and offer middleware.
Hardware, as far as Greenbaum is concerned, is a deadend street -- a commodity that is going now where. "Sun has been growing wheat [hardware] while everyone else is selling bread [software and services]" says Greenbaum.
There will be a brief honeymoon as the board gives Schwartz a bit of room to show what he can do.
What next for Sun? I agree with Greenbaum that hardware is a dead end. I'd like to hear from readers what they think. Or let's offer Jonathan Schwartz some guidance. I'll post your comments below.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on April 24, 2006 02:50 PM
March 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
H-1B visa scandal gets a Congressional hearing
The issue of whether or not to increase the number of H-1B visas is being hotly debated in Congress this week.
See the news story on our site now, "IT workers to US Congress: limit H-1B program".
I covered this same topic and talked about H-1B visa abuses back in October.
In both a column,"The H-1B Visa Swindle" and a follow-up blog,"Comparison of programmer wages between U.S. nationals and H-1B visa workers" I quote John Miano, a member of the Programmers Guild board of directors.
It was Miano who testified before the Congressional Committee this week, telling the committee that that the H-1B visa program is being misused by companies to undercut salaries of U.S. programmers.
Miano wasn't just offering his opinion, however. Miano had analyzed government statistics on wages by profession and industry category.
I gave Miano some space in my blog to answer his critics who claimed the study was flawed.
Worth a read I think especially as the issue of increasing the number of H-1B visas is at the top of the news.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on March 30, 2006 02:40 PM
March 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Scuttlebut on Microsoft's reshuffling of its Platforms & Services division has surfaced on Valleywag, which writes of MS execs dropping like flies: "Now Kevin Johnson, the newest of the Microsoft beast's eight heads, has issued a decree to his entire organization."
The post wincludes what it says is an introductory memo followed by an outline of the reorg. Kevin Johnson's main points:
- Windows Vista + Windows Live = the future.
- Windows Live -- oh, and you too, MSN -- will enjoy a growing online advertising industry.
- "Our software + service approach and the expertise we have built in MSN can support innovation agility as we enable the Live era." In other words, "Thanks for training the next generation. Don't let the door hit you..."
- Jim Allchin is still Johnson's co-president. He'll run the "dining with bloggers" department."
Any insiders at MSN care to share what's really going on?
Posted by Mike Barton on March 23, 2006 04:39 PM
November 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cyber Monday: pretty much a big fat lie
Upon waking Monday morning I groggily flipped the radio dial to NPR to start the process of reviving my body from its holiday food coma and getting back into workaday mode.
What NPR story greeted my ears? It was a news piece about Cyber Monday, which is the name that has been given to the Monday after Thanksgiving for being, as the story claimed, the biggest online shopping day of the year.
I listened as experts in e-commerce explained the reasoning. After the traditional brick and mortar retail blitz of Black Friday comes Cyber Monday, when workers return to the office where high speed Internet connections can be counted on to continue the post-Thanksgiving shopping spree.
Another reason behind Cyber Monday, according to the NPR story and many others like it, is that shoppers get all kinds of holiday gift ideas while hoofing it around the mall and, tired of fighting the crowds, rejoice in the quiet of bargain hunting via keyboard and monitor. It all made sense.
However, Truthful Tuesday arrives and turns out the dividends of Cyber Monday may have been exaggerated. According to an article published today by Business Week, Cyber Monday is only the 12th busiest online shopping day of the year, and the term was coined just last week by Shop.org, a retailers' association looking to create a little buzz around online buying.
Well it worked. Hundreds of online, print, and radio stories were penned and spoken touting Cyber Monday as the Web equivalent of a shopping mall horde. Internet traffic watcher comScore Networks is planning to publish data on Wednesday that they say will reveal the actual online shopping traffic numbers from pseudo "Cyber" Monday. We'll see then if Cyber Monday was anything more than a marketing mirage.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 29, 2005 03:04 PM
June 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
AMD and Intel: The long war ahead
AMD's antitrust lawsuit alleging Intel coerced hardware vendors and retailers into using Intel's chips instead of AMD's with discriminatory pricing, market pressure and intimidation is bound to capture the attention of much of the tech industry for some time to come.
Almost 40 companies listed in the complaint received discovery retention notices from AMD, requiring them to keep documents related to this case, Mike Simonoff, an AMD spokesman, told IDG News Service. And so far, AMD has built its case on