Be it Automobile , Aviation or Heavy Metal Industries, everyone felt the heat of recession but regardless IT fared better than most. In spite of worst economic meltdowns in history, acquisitions among big vendors continued to reshape the market, operating-system wars extended to mobile battlefields, microblogging became a powerful source of real-time information, and the take-up of small, Net-connected devices was stronger than ever.

But how good is this wave of mergers and acquisitions for the future? ( By future I mean upcoming innovation and future of Startups which target innovation not business)

Whenever your biggest competitor takes you over, it blunts the competitive spirit that can drive innovations. Thats what concerns me most, the spirit of innovation is somehow compromised because of takeovers.

Not always always a potential Merger or Takeover can be taken as a positive sign of ever increasing competition and globalization. And particularly not right now when it comes to web and social media startups, many of which are still more focused on innovation and building up audiences than on making profits. Rushing them into deals to fulfill long-delayed plans for an exit strategy could derail the evolution of a strong business plan.

From an investment standpoint, founders and venture capitalists have good reasons to cash out now. Market caps of public tech giants are rising — the Nasdaq gaining big time – and so are their cash stockpiles. For Instance Microsoft has a stock pile of about $49 billion in cash; similar is the story of Google with $24 billion. High-profile Multi Billion dollar deals like the ones we had in recent times have a way of spurring on other acquisitions.

TimeWarner buying AOL and eBay buying Skype come to mind. Even snapping up a hot startup for its technology or talent — Google buying Dodgeball or Yahoo buying Flickr – can lead to culture clashes, customer anger and other disappointing results.

I  tried to re-compile the list of some major takeovers which are substantial enough to change the future of computing.   We are talking about some multibillion dollar mergers and acquisitions, where the Big gets even Bigger.

Oracle eclipses the SUN @ $7.4 Billion

This Merger can be coined as “father of all the Tech Mergers” announced last year. If the announced the deal went through, Oracle,  the industry’s largest database software vendor would get an entry into the server and storage markets worldwide.

The acquisition, still pending, was announced in April, and may even be blocked because European regulators are contending that combining Oracle’s technology with Sun’s open source MySQL database would violate competition laws. Lets see if this deal goes through.

Xerox snaps up ACS in $6.4 billion

Another major takeover, Xerox pays about $6.4 billion in cash and stock for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a large IT and outsourcing firm. With this merger Xerox hopes it will give it a bigger foothold in the business services space. While the deal will surely boost Xerox, investors wondered whether it overpriced the deal.

Calling the ACS deal “a game-changer” for Xerox, Burns, CEO of the company, said it would help Xerox “expand our business and benefit from stronger revenue and earnings growth.” The deal will triple the service component of Xerox’s revenue to roughly $10 billion annually from $3.5 billion, according to the company.

Dell – Perot Catch-Up Deal worth $ 3.9 Billion

Buying Perot was a part of Dell’s plan to expand its footprint in the IT services market, which was  a necessity in a time when hardware sales were falling. Dell offered a staggering $3.9 billion for Perot Systems, a 68% premium over Perot’s actual stock value. Dell’s purchase can also be seen as a response to rival HP’s $13.9 billion acquisition the previous year of EDS — another services company founded by Perot.

Cisco-Tandberg worth  $3.4 billion

Cisco, already a major player in collaboration products with WebEx and TelePresence, signed an agreement in October to purchase videoconferencing vendor Tandberg, which makes both video devices and network infrastructure products. The acquisition, if completed, could have both a direct and indirect impact on Cisco’s bottom line, because expanded use of videoconferencing may increase network traffic, letting Cisco sell more switches and routers.

HP Acquires 3Com For $2.7 Billion

HP launched a straightforward assault on Cisco in their own Game of Networks. HP’s increasing influence in data center networking and convergence markets will have a big boost with its purchase of 3Com, a maker of switches, routers and security products. HP says the acquisition will further its data center strategy “built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services.” The acquisition of 3Com also help to expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China thanks to 3Com’s strong presence in China. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

I have collected the figures and numbers from various sources including PCWorld, Gigaom and Wikipedia. Let me know if you have a suggestion or correction to make. Please forgive me for the grammar, I was always bad in Grammar since school

Article Previosuly mirror-posted by me at Global Thoughtz.

Anand

As most of us by now have heard about the tragic earthquake at Haiti, which took more than 1000 lives today. I am writing this blog to help people in Haiti, who might have lost almost every thing in their life. In this posting I am trying to enlist all possible website through which one can contribute to the earthquake relief funds. I am not sure about the authenticity (nor i care about this moment of time) of these websites. But most of them I am enlisting are renowned globally for their efforts.

The European Commission’s  Joint Research Centre has developed a high resolution digital view of man-made green house gas (GHG) emissions for any 10 km x 10 km area in the world. Scientists from the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) have made it possible to visualize the distribution of GHG emissions all over the world at local level through an add-on layer to Google Earth™.

This application brings environmental information closer to the world’s citizens. By simply entering a city name, the amount of greenhouse gases released since 1970 can be visualized. In addition, the main sources of GHG emissions in the year 2005 can be identified: industries (fuel combustion, process and waste emissions in energy and manufacturing industries); transport (road, rail, shipping); residential fuel combustion and waste handling; and agriculture.

As in my last post Jeremy pointed out  “the environmental footprint of their premises, logistics and supply chain, paper and ink consumption, utility consumptions (water, electricity,…), transportation and travels, waste, etc. must also be a point of concern”. Using this application we can definitely get a better view to the complete picture.

How to Use the Application:

• Install Google Earth

• Downloaded EDGAR GHG viewer 2005

Once you have installed Google Earth, install EDGAR GHG viewer and restart the application. Its just a matter of some clicks. I was really excited to see it for the first time. I am attaching a few snapshots that I took today morning. Try it yourself, you will understand how grave the scene is atleast in Europe, China, India  and USA.

Snapshot 1 – US of A.                                                           Snapshot 2 – Europe and Middle East with Africa

Snapshot 3 : Asia.

Representations : The data presented here covers carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorcarbons (HFCs), perfluorcarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In order to compare different greenhouse gas emissions the emissions of individual gases have to be converted into CO2-equivalents. The Green Areas of Map has 0.00 -0.10 G equivalent of CO2 and Black/Blue spots are worst affected areas with or more 250 G equivalent of CO2 .

Personally, I hope this modeled simulation of World Wide GHG emissions will help a lot of people involved in Carbon Foot printing or planning to join the Green movement world wide. Let me know your ideas and reviews about this. The data sets are also available for download (free ) at the link.

To those people that have followed my writing these last two months, I’ve been exposed to virtualisation more than I would like, due to an incompatibility between my Macbook, a Java Virtualbox I’m running on it, and the Windows 2003 server managing our company network. As a result, I’ve been booting a lot into Windows via Boot Camp, got hooked on Windows Live Writer, and have been using Parallels frequently just for that app (I need a Crossover fix for .NET apps badly).

The second consequence is that I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of virtual OSs. With Google OS recently having been announced, which is supposed to integrate flawlessly with Macs and Windows, assumably Android, as well as being designed for Netbooks, I wonder if Intel, with it’s multi-core processors, has not created a situation where nothing else matters, hardware-wise, except to have a powerful enough processor? In other words, have hardware-manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, and to some extent, Apple simply become irrelevant?

Take Sony for instance, which has just announced its first “Netbook.” It’s one selling point?

“Like other netbooks the Vaio W has a 10-inch screen, but its display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels rather than the more common 1,024 by 600 pixels. That means more of a Web site can be fitted onto the screen, and the user will have to scroll less, the company said at a launch event in Tokyo on Tuesday.” (emphasis my own)

Not much to write home about, except if you absolutely need to use a Sony, and bear in mind that that company was at some point a premium manufacturer of technology. The PC market has long been commoditised of course, ever since IBM opened its hardware up to the world, but with the rise of ultra-cheap PCs & laptops, I think they are digging their own grave.

I think that, as I wrote in a comment to a recent post, Netbooks are a failed experiment and, to add to that, unless either drastic changes in the cost-structure can be made to increase profit-margins, or new business models can be found (e.g. a similar hardware-service bundling to what has been happening in the mobile phone space), I think that we won’t be hearing from netbooks after 2010 onwards.

What also seems clear is that software companies, with their much more favourable profit margins, are winning this war, and, pretty soon, they won’t have to think about hardware at all any more. Instead of writing for a “spec,” you just need to write for a virtual space, which can run anywhere or everywhere.

Arguably, hardware has always been enslaved to software (except for one company), but I see the Sony’s & Samsung’s of today becoming the Nokia’s & Motorola’s of the future.

Since I’m not a technologist (more of a technology philosopher), I may be drastically oversimplifying. What do you think?
P.S. going to stop signing my name for a while. I’ll see if that makes a difference. V.

Not as impressed as Vince with the new browser. Buggy (error at startup time after migrating the favorites) unable to access gmail, suspicious googleUpdate.exe process still active after I’ve closed the app etc …

However, the comic is quite a fascinating experience.

Documenting software to transmit knowledge has always been something I’ve loved to do. The reason is : along with tests, documentation is another abandonned child of the developpers and as such I feel a lot of tenderness towards this activity.

Head First series has been an amazing step toward transmitting knowledge. Kathy Sierra has been studying cognitive science so she knows a tad bout the subject.

But here we’re just moving a step further : a real artist is documenting this rather geeky product …

Scott Mc Cloud is a graphic artist and he has been approached by google to write the specs of the Google Browser. The old times of truck loads of documentation delivered together with your software by the big cat  seems like ages ago.

Kathy Sierra taught us why a) conversational writing kicks formal writing whenever it comes to teach and have your audience remembering and b) Graphics have people responding. Google learned their lesson very well thank you and decided to do both.

At GLV puts it in twitter : Google Chrome’s coolness is mostly under the hood. Hard to convince non-programmers why that’s important. The comic is a brilliant solution.

Best thing : the main characters are software engineers. Respect to the alpha geeks indeed.

Check out Scott interview at techRadar.

(Hi it’s Cecil here. As usual, a copy of this post is available on Heavy Mental)

The aim of this new serie is to propose quick (errrm…) and synthetic overview of a key concept of the IT industry, based on various media and quotes. Lately, I have spent some time googling around for some innovation inputs and it took me a while to gather all this material. So this comes as some sort of digest.

Scott Berkun (again and again !) has been the constant inspiration of this digest. He will lead us through this bulletin with this brilliant video of his lecture on the topic @ Carnegie Mellon (50ish minutes – recommend to view after reading the post). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc]

Read more »

Hey there, planet mainstream here, are you in for some blockbuster scenarios?

After 2 peaceful years of gardening new products and shopping (still checking if Yahoo comes in the right size) Microsoft has apparently decided to go extrovert and check out the competition. The new internet explorer, IE8, marketed as the “discrete one’ comes with features like ‘In Private Browsing’ that help you block away some aspects of commercial intrusion such as cookies, history lists, and ads.

Wait a minute, are ads angels or demons? It depends on whose side you are, ads are actually multifaceted like mood rings: their use and value are subject to the judge’s role, critical spirit, need of information.

Web ads are mostly seen as angels: they do no evil, they function more elegantly than on other media, probably that’s why people put up with them and other people have based business and state funding models on them.

Demonizing web ads is not part of the ‘InPrivate Blocking’ goals, free will rules. But with privacy on internet becoming a hot topic for regulation, InPrivateBrowsing is actually a do-no-evil, democratic timebomb.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fMqJWoOjE4]

So, this is my scenario.

(late this summer, honey I’m home)

Microsoft is risking committing twice the same antitrust crime, expecting the ad-allergy to spread like a demon-ex-machina by means of ambient buzz (autumn leaves and dust).

(later this year, in the city)

In the same way we’ve rapidly become eco-aware, we begin paying more attention to our privacy.

(you’re just too good to be true)

As Google’s adwords becomes better and Google’s search engine becomes more personalized the results of these two tend to look alike. At some point, our contextual aesthetics react to the lack of difference in the typology of service. Allergy. (atsum)

(in the meantime, the trial)

Then, the second antitrust trial for Microsoft magnetizes ambient dynamics towards privacy awareness.

(whose side are we?)

People are mostly concerned with the direct impact of this issue on their lives rather than the health of the economic competition. This aspect works for Microsoft.

(in the spring, jingle bells blossom/ after the trial…)

As time goes by, behavioral reflexes are built on this awareness.

By highlighting that do-no-evil doesn’t equal do-good, the trial triggers the attitude of systematically using the ad-blocking features in IE or elsewhere (Firefox, Safari…)

(is the trial just a bad dream?)

Google on the other side is still our clean cut hero, our Brandon Walsh.. Fighting for free airwaves, for openness, for us, has chosen an original model of B2C partnership. Beyond a company it acts as a web NGO.

So what is the best path to protect its core business? The legal, the educational, the crowdsourcing or the self-transformational?

Will Brandon

a) complain to the highschool director ?

b) organize an ad-contest for the beach-club kids to campaign for homeless veterans ?

c) run for highschool president ?

d) or study hard to access UCLA?

…to be continued

Well, I also have some legal questions:

If InPrivateBlocking is banned, is the same feature declared non grata for other browsers as well ? What about other add-on programs-is size(impact) shaping legality?

How is the applicable legal domain chosen? Is it an issue of commercial or civil law and how is EU regulation restrictive in each case?

Piss o’ cake?

Georgia

Uf!

My faith has been restored: we live in a civilized business world where everybody can be a winner, sky is the limit etc.

More specifically, as far as the 700Mhz part of the sky is concerned, the breaking news are that there are no breaking news and no disruptive solutions:

Winners

US government has won

~ 20 billions of declining US  $.

AT&T has won

the C-block and the pride of carriers being carriers.

AT&T’s lawyers have won

significant fees and gem experience from lawsuits concerning the Openness clause.

Google has won

• the right to patch their apps on (carter)mobiles,
• access to the mobile advertising market (~ 3 billions d.US $)
• and saved ~ 5b.d.US $ to invest on their core business and on P&L  communication (partnerships and lobbying)

Consumers have won

• a stable thus fitter-happier-more productive market
• having the actors empowered and doing their best to focus on client satisfaction with the cease of this corporate battle
• a monetization of their mobile clicking
• federal income

(others)

… you’re welcome to brainstorm.

Geometry: Symmetry and a 3D market that moves in balance.

The equilibrium of this auction is a piece of art.

The main financial flows are organized symmetrically, in analogy of size.

This is my oversimplified prism:

• Big still pay the Big (B to B) : AT&T pays FCC
• MicroPlayers AKA “consumers” pay attention that pays Google (MP to G)

The notorious interoperability in telecommunications could actually apply to business models as well , since each one has found its place in this multidimensional world.

As you can see above  the 700 MHz space has been defined in 3D :

Little red axe: MP to G

Big red axe: B to B

The long red tail: their future interactions.

I commit to review my proposition to do away with auctions as sales procedures, taking off my hat to these infamous Google game theorists.

Hey guys, would you care to take a look into tougher games once you’ve finished with business peace?

Georgia

It’s over.

Analog US tellyvisions are being thrown away, liberating long-desired spectrum that calls for reallocation, today.

Chicken or egg, we need air, so let there be plans, people & co, actions and an auction to start with, auction 73 for the 700Mhz spectrum. Rounds last 10minutes to set an equilibrium position among the different degrees on openness of the mobile industry. Tough.

The auction house is the Federal Communications Commission and the most desired item on the catalogue is the “C Block”, a fine 22Mhz segment assorted with the capacity of enabling deployment of national scale projects to its collectors: nationals and locals, operators and WISPs, new business people, some opportunists and an artist (Office of Spectral Ecology)

The majority of big Mobile Network Operators (aka MNOs) have shown up only to be shown the door out during the prequalification phase, in a sort of witty joke or creative telco analysis challenge.

As today was approaching, no more jokes, FCC doubled the panel of qualified bidders to reach 214, re-including the MNOs, who can reconsider themselves as “home”. (AllTel, AT&T Mobility Spectrum, Chevron, Qualcomm, Verizon Wireless)

On the “guests” side I was delighted to find the haute couture of creative business modelists. (Google, Spectrum, LLC/ Bend Cable Communications and other Sillicon Valley based companies)

buzz abouts

If you hate theories and concepts skip next paragraph and just suppose the iPhone being created by Banana Ltd instead of Apple. And then imagine it, because you couldn’t be holding it right now: AT&T or Orange don’t partner with Bananas, they milkshake and invite Banana’s to participate. The fuzz is Bananas laying on the street to claim their right to please consumers (ideally).

Next Paragraph

buzz abouts

Apparently “homes” seek simply to preserve their status: their prescription power over mobile phone manufacturers, over content management, their regulatory influence…

On the other hand, runner-ups are challenged to prove that they can enter the supply chain and change it, having pretty good chances to do so: they have already marked a point, with Google resisting AT&T’s bullying ( !!“put up or shut up” !!) and lobbying the way into:

• Open devices: through the “Wireless Carterphone” condition, which stops bullying against manufacturers.
• Open services: through non discriminatory wholesale network access conditions

So the Googlephone might be on his way! (hurray!) along with long desired network neutrality, openness, disconcentration, innovation and regulatory repositioning. In simple words when mobile networks are neutral and open to all technologic standards and functionalities, ideas can find their way easily, and parental controls have less role to play. Tim Wu explains so well the environment of neutral networks in “Wireless Carterphone” that he even bothers to post a real picture from the 60’s version, along with his excellent insights.

Flip TI

I want to flip it: using my mobile I want to talk for peanuts, to access any site on internet, command my computer, camera and coffee machine and do whatever engineers are amused implementing to amuse me. As a professional I want the evolution mechanism to function again, cleaning up the confused telcos environment. It feels strange to complain about traffic on my way to work and when I am there just smile awkwardly in front of bottlenecks that squize ideas, and set up useless and expensive jobs.

I search no solution, it seems that exists already in network neutrality but until now our problem in the mobile industry was ignored and thus not treated. On predictions I am sure you have some great ideas to share, please do…

What intrigues me and made me torture you with this auction is NOW,

what is happening and HOW it is happening.

Method: Let me first express some sympathy for the “guests” as they have to play in a tough procedure that mostly reflects the MNOs structure. The Auction Method (73) puts utmost pressure on buyers, forces them give up any sense of negotiation, pumps up prices and favors existing capital value over project potential value.

Principles: Price should not be the only criterion, it could be rude (and silly) to ignore deployment projects and profitability potential.

Timing: Since the long-term objective is market stabilization and consumer centric profitability these values could apply early. Sooner or later consumers will finally decide if they like MNOs choosing content for them or they’d rather put up with libertine spam while  producing and distributing their own.

So how could it be sooner? How can we implicate this market feedback on this starting point? How a weighted voting system could apply? Can we group people that compose the market by expertise, consumerism, technology awareness, implication will and make a mature decision on airwaves ?

And funding? Come on, it’s simple, funding could be tailored to winner’s logic and the associated business model:

If it is for MNO’s the supply chain can stay as is: Winner pays now and consumers pay later.

If it is for alternatives, funding gets creative as well: Consumers can be taxed now and being rewarded later with free/gratos/tzamba mobile products, funded by advertising and paraphernalia the other way up.

Fair enough?