Analysts to Google: Buy Salesforce
For some reason unknown, once in a while some analysts may decide to step up and tell a company how to run itself.
Let's skip the obvious and go deeper into the right question: does Google want to succeed in anything other than advertising?
Google Application, although well developed and well integrated into SF.COM, is still an experimental toy for Google. Yes, it has potential, but a company can only focus on limited number of thing at a time.
Google has proven to be extremely efficient in terms of monetizing search related technology. From the proportion of spotlight that Google's products received, it is easy to conclude that essentially the next big thing is still advertising. Youtube and Android, for example, are just new platform for advertising, and we can't really say the same for Google Applications.
To promote Google Application aggressively is to fight a war in a battlefield that Google has not yet claimed dominance. It's time-consuming, resource-draining and profit-thinning. Why would Google do that right now?
Of course, Google has interest in this market, but it's not time yet for Google to become serious.
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Forrester: Social networking means business, big business | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
Forrester: Social networking means business, big business | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
This is a claim that I never have understood. Facebook is fun to play with, but that is as far as it would go. Advertising potential of pure Social Networking sites is also just as good as a marginal one. I have never clicked on those ads; at the same time, I do click on Google Adwords from search result because they are not only interesting, but most of time relevant.
In my opinion, Social Networking sites should look at business side more closely and they will find that the profitable headhunter/recruiter market is within their reach. It might take extra know-how and effort to run this side of business, but relationship can mostly be monetized this way. Users, at the same time, would also be more willing to share their private data if a fatter paycheck is at his/her door, don't you think?
This is a claim that I never have understood. Facebook is fun to play with, but that is as far as it would go. Advertising potential of pure Social Networking sites is also just as good as a marginal one. I have never clicked on those ads; at the same time, I do click on Google Adwords from search result because they are not only interesting, but most of time relevant.
In my opinion, Social Networking sites should look at business side more closely and they will find that the profitable headhunter/recruiter market is within their reach. It might take extra know-how and effort to run this side of business, but relationship can mostly be monetized this way. Users, at the same time, would also be more willing to share their private data if a fatter paycheck is at his/her door, don't you think?
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
US Internet will shrink to 2 strong players-report - Forbes.com
US Internet will shrink to 2 strong players-report - Forbes.com
......which fits exactly with my own prediction. Internet companies require vision, and among all those companies, only Google and Amazon have shown a constant vigilance and preparation for what it is to come. Ok, perhaps we should also add Apple to the mix, for it is now the largest music retailer on the internet, and perhaps the most successful mobile device maker by the introduction of iPhone 3G. Yes, people have always underestimated this company (including myself), but Apple has shown to attack when it is least expected. After all, Apple is going to own both the device (iPhone, iPod) and internet (expansion of iTune store).
......which fits exactly with my own prediction. Internet companies require vision, and among all those companies, only Google and Amazon have shown a constant vigilance and preparation for what it is to come. Ok, perhaps we should also add Apple to the mix, for it is now the largest music retailer on the internet, and perhaps the most successful mobile device maker by the introduction of iPhone 3G. Yes, people have always underestimated this company (including myself), but Apple has shown to attack when it is least expected. After all, Apple is going to own both the device (iPhone, iPod) and internet (expansion of iTune store).
Monday, May 26, 2008
Breaking: FCC Confirms that Big Winner in Spectrum Auction is Verizon. So Why Is Google Smiling?
Breaking: FCC Confirms that Big Winner in Spectrum Auction is Verizon. So Why Is Google Smiling?
Nicely played. As what I have mentioned before: The beauty of capitalism and free market is competition. In long term, consumers always win.
Nicely played. As what I have mentioned before: The beauty of capitalism and free market is competition. In long term, consumers always win.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Salesforce.com + Google Apps (Verdict: Good, but occasionally frustrating) | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
Salesforce.com + Google Apps (Verdict: Good, but occasionally frustrating) | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
We're definitely going to see more this kind of commercial "Meshup" application. Putting Technology aside, though, I'm interested in knowing Google's strategy on monetizing its applications.
The industry overall have a firm confidence in Google's engineering ability. It is not unrealistic to expect that Google, given its reputation, would definitely fix any technology deficiency in time. Google Applications's adoption, however, might be halt by uncertainty surrounding Google's strategy. Will Google seriously consider anything but advertising?
My experience at BEA tells me that big corporate account need extra consideration. Is Google ready for really big enterprise?
We're definitely going to see more this kind of commercial "Meshup" application. Putting Technology aside, though, I'm interested in knowing Google's strategy on monetizing its applications.
The industry overall have a firm confidence in Google's engineering ability. It is not unrealistic to expect that Google, given its reputation, would definitely fix any technology deficiency in time. Google Applications's adoption, however, might be halt by uncertainty surrounding Google's strategy. Will Google seriously consider anything but advertising?
My experience at BEA tells me that big corporate account need extra consideration. Is Google ready for really big enterprise?
More Google Docs available offline: Spreadsheets, presentations | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
More Google Docs available offline: Spreadsheets, presentations | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
Offline Google Applications are definitely a boon to commuting and traveling users. But it is still kind of wierd to use a browser as your office suite interface.
What about, for example, adopting openoffice as user interface and using Google API to keep document contents in sync? Now that there are way too many "open" or "open-sourced" applications out there, creativity lies in integrating those efforts, I think.
Offline Google Applications are definitely a boon to commuting and traveling users. But it is still kind of wierd to use a browser as your office suite interface.
What about, for example, adopting openoffice as user interface and using Google API to keep document contents in sync? Now that there are way too many "open" or "open-sourced" applications out there, creativity lies in integrating those efforts, I think.
Monday, March 10, 2008
InfoQ: Presentation: Operational Manageability lessons learned from eBay
InfoQ: Presentation: Operational Manageability lessons learned from eBay
Design for operation. That is something that today's corporate IT should embed in their minds.
In past 10 years, the so-called application servers are supposed to provide transparent technologies to software programmers so that programmers don't have to worry about availability and scalability issues. Indeed, in small to medium scalability scenarios, Java EE Application Server like BEA WebLogic has achieved certain success. As clustering demand get larger and more complex, however, features offered by today's application servers are not enough anymore. Like any asset, IT assets today are facing the challenge of fluidity. Computing power should be provided when needed and just as much as needed.
Cloud computing offerings provided by Google and Amazon are indeed quite appealing, but corporate mindset is not likely to concede ownership of core business systems to another entity. Outsourcing is one thing; to convince corporate that EC2 or Google App Engine can be a solid substitute for outsourcing is another.
Therefore, I see several technology/business opportunities:
- Partnership between IBM/Accenture/Tata etc. and Google/Amazon
- This is most likely to happen within near future. An endorsement from IT shop like Accenture would ease corporate mind and fear.
- IT Consulting practices focused on helping build in-house cloud computing architecture
- Certain entrepreneurs departing Google or Amazon could definitely make some buck by sharing their in-house experience.
- Advancement of Virtualization software packages to close the gap between Cloud-computing and Virtualization
- I have seen real demo of VMWare ESX Server. It is a very interesting and promising technology. Endorsement of key outsourcing services providers is key to their success though.
- Cloud-enabling application platforms.
- From a Java programmer perspective, I do hope to see a "cloud-enabling" JavaEE application server. But that is near impossible to happen. Java EE is designed with old-style scalability and availability in mind; its current focus is still to achieve easier development and deployment (which makes sense). I hope that current remaining JavaEE players can allocate some effort in cloud-computing.
Google Apps Gets Important Endorsement
Google Apps Gets Important Endorsement
It makes sense. As a technology enthusiast, I always delight in finding new ways on how information technology can be used to improve business efficiency.
Bringing collaborative features of a Wiki to MS Office-addicted crowd
If GoogleDocs were just positioned as an online MS Word replacement, it wouldn't have created enough strategic value for an IT Consulting company like Cap Gemini to endorse it.
While I worked at BEA as Systems Engineer, I had to write a lot of Proposal documents. For those of you who don't know, a Proposal document for an IT project is always result of collective work, because in IT projects, multiple company would form an alliance and bid for the project together. Since MS Word doesn't really have collaborative feature (revision doesn't count as one), the "Zip and attach to email" standard procedure caused a lot of miscommunication. After a while, no one would have knowledge on which "copy" of the document is the most recent and legitimate ones. Frankly, most of my time as project management role has been wasted on figuring out which is which.
For geeks like me, I would just say: let's use a Wiki. Truly, collaborative features of Wiki is why software development powerhouses like Google, Microsoft and SAP rely on it so much. But unfortunately, in business world, not everyone can grab the concept of what Wiki is. People still think about document.
GoogleDocs, in my opinion, fits in this particular area. While not being especially feature rich for a word processor, GoogleDocs maintained useful collaborative features of an online Wiki system, creating an interesting and unique value proposition.
Multiple participants can join and edit the same document at the same time, and a detailed log of revisions done by each participants is maintained. Since there is only one online copy, there is no need anymore of a periodical "merge" of different version of documents. Communication overhead is dramatically reduced, and the project manager is no longer the bottleneck of the bidding process.
Seems nice and simple eh? Not quite. For many corporate cultures/mentalities/myths, collaboration equals less control. At the end, it is our mentality that constraints us. This is something that Cap Gemini should address. How does the highly interactive nature of GoogleDocs merge into the corporate world? Hopefully more and more IT consulting firms can join the boat and work with Google to come up with a "Best Practice".
It makes sense. As a technology enthusiast, I always delight in finding new ways on how information technology can be used to improve business efficiency.
Bringing collaborative features of a Wiki to MS Office-addicted crowd
If GoogleDocs were just positioned as an online MS Word replacement, it wouldn't have created enough strategic value for an IT Consulting company like Cap Gemini to endorse it.
While I worked at BEA as Systems Engineer, I had to write a lot of Proposal documents. For those of you who don't know, a Proposal document for an IT project is always result of collective work, because in IT projects, multiple company would form an alliance and bid for the project together. Since MS Word doesn't really have collaborative feature (revision doesn't count as one), the "Zip and attach to email" standard procedure caused a lot of miscommunication. After a while, no one would have knowledge on which "copy" of the document is the most recent and legitimate ones. Frankly, most of my time as project management role has been wasted on figuring out which is which.
For geeks like me, I would just say: let's use a Wiki. Truly, collaborative features of Wiki is why software development powerhouses like Google, Microsoft and SAP rely on it so much. But unfortunately, in business world, not everyone can grab the concept of what Wiki is. People still think about document.
GoogleDocs, in my opinion, fits in this particular area. While not being especially feature rich for a word processor, GoogleDocs maintained useful collaborative features of an online Wiki system, creating an interesting and unique value proposition.
Multiple participants can join and edit the same document at the same time, and a detailed log of revisions done by each participants is maintained. Since there is only one online copy, there is no need anymore of a periodical "merge" of different version of documents. Communication overhead is dramatically reduced, and the project manager is no longer the bottleneck of the bidding process.
Seems nice and simple eh? Not quite. For many corporate cultures/mentalities/myths, collaboration equals less control. At the end, it is our mentality that constraints us. This is something that Cap Gemini should address. How does the highly interactive nature of GoogleDocs merge into the corporate world? Hopefully more and more IT consulting firms can join the boat and work with Google to come up with a "Best Practice".
Sunday, March 09, 2008
How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)
How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)
This is a very sensitive topic. I do agree with most of author's points, especially regarding the way IT investment goes (I might replace Mac to Linux Ubuntu, just for personal flavor).
With so many free/cheap opensource, commercial and SaaS software and hosted solutions, a startup company can indeed save a lot of money on their IT infrastructure. Google Applications + OpenOffice nowadays can provide everything you need; the collaborative nature of Google Docs can actually bring additional productivity for team members.
Do more with less, that's something we call "progress".
This is a very sensitive topic. I do agree with most of author's points, especially regarding the way IT investment goes (I might replace Mac to Linux Ubuntu, just for personal flavor).
With so many free/cheap opensource, commercial and SaaS software and hosted solutions, a startup company can indeed save a lot of money on their IT infrastructure. Google Applications + OpenOffice nowadays can provide everything you need; the collaborative nature of Google Docs can actually bring additional productivity for team members.
Do more with less, that's something we call "progress".
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Sandberg leaves for Facebook. Let's all recite Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer.
This is one of the times that a satirical blogger like Fake Steve Jobs writes something really deep and funny. Bro, I'm really considering buying your Godsend book by now.
Interestingly, this also shows how startups play this Web 2.0 game. Seeing all these, I can't help but admire people like Bill Gates who built a monopoly by using the force of economics alone. Fair or not, businessman should be rewarded proportionally by the value created, not by media coverage he/she received.
But that's my opinion anyway.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Deja vu: Open Handset Alliance
It happened before, and so it happens again.
Open Handset Alliance
I'm not saying that such an open ecosystem for smartphone existed before. I'm just saying that this alliance sounds very like Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE). Perhaps it will also impact the industry like Java EE did. We shall see.
Being a developer-minded person, I would definitely look into it, even just for the notion "All applications are created equal".
That's where they nailed it. Symbian, UIQ, iPhone or Microsoft all suffer from not-so-decent built-in applications. The real tragedy about that is that developers are not allowed to modify core built-in applications such as address book and calendar. Yes, there are certain APIs here and there, but that's never enough. I hope that such kind of problem can be addressed by this alliance.
Well, congratulations to Google for another job/strategy well done. No matter who wins this war, software developers are going to benefit from it, I'm sure.
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Will fast-paced and relatively-efficient companies take over old corporate types?
If your dear readers have not yet read about it, you might want to do it now.
Apple, Google vs. Big Wireless
With Google and Apple both bidding for a wireless spectrum, strategies of those two companies are getting always clearer. One rule to make big bucks strategically: commoditize others in your value chain. This has never changed in the history of business evolution; what's different each time is approach.
Years ago, while Microsoft was climbing toward peak of its power, I thought that perhaps Microsoft had enough power to change the industry. It indeed had all capital and execution power to outplay all major vendor of IT value chain "one by one", but its tremendous success attracted too much fear. Microsoft wisely chose to stand aside and just happily be a very profitable software vendor; I can almost hear a sigh of relief from those worried industry giant. But now we have Google and Apple, companies ready to disrupt the industry again, and this time they won't settle easily.
Usually, by mature market we mean those market that are commoditized by fierce competition. In a sentence, more features are shipped with lowered price. The industry that Google and Apple are attempting to enter is, however, a mature market that doesn't show any of above mentioned signs. If Darwin was right, then what will happen next is pretty obvious. Either old corporate types would evolve to catch up, or face the fate of extinction.
One month ago, someone who worked in one big IB in Wall Street for 7 years told me: Google is just a company that does only web pages, nothing special about that. Hmm. I guess his opinion does not represent Wall Street, for Google stock price is well over 600+ now. And Apple worth more than IBM. Many would call Google and Apple as arrogant companies, but arrogance paired with capability is called pride; true arrogance is accompanied by ignorance. It would seem that ignorance is more a matter of heart instead of level of education.
Then what's next? I think the industry of air conditioner might be next mark. I have a friend who works at a very big Japanese company that produces air conditioner. If you spread their cost structure carefully, you will find out that 20-30% of revenue for each air conditioner sold goes to personal rebates, rebates that would end up in personal coffer of high executives in corruption speaking. Such situation just reflects a lack of fierce competition. We have wait until then for cheap and high quality air conditioners and refrigerators.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Java or .NET?
這個問題從我在唸書的時候就常常被問到。年輕的時候比較衝動，往往還會因為這種問題和別人在BBS上大打筆仗。進入職場之後，我理所當然的以Java Solution作為主要的職業選擇；當然，實際的工作之後，對於所謂的Java VS .NET的問題，我有了更寬廣的理解空間。
Java 和 .NET並不是天堂和地獄的差別。這主要是世界觀的差別。在Java的生態體系當中，你擁有的是選擇；在微軟的生態體系當中，你擁有的是統一的秩序。從企業IT架構的角度來看，選擇Java 或者 .NET的差異主要在於，你怎麼看待你企業IT所扮演的角色。IT對你的企業，到底是一種消耗品，還是一種競爭優勢？這其實是一個很Tricky，也很少人會老實作答的問題。一般來說，願意承認自己下班回家會看A片的人應該比願意承認自己是消耗品的人來得多；但事實上許多目前的IT不可諱言的是一種消耗。如果你維護的系統每天要改好幾次table schema, column name, source code... 你認為這是不是一種消耗性行為？
我想這是為什麼Google這種以技術優勢作為老本的公司會選擇C, C++, Java等技術來作為他們本身的技術架構。以Google來說，他們的競爭優勢是技術，所以需要的是能夠量身訂做的技術作為基礎；在這個部分，.NET的許多假設和限制會讓它無法被採用。但是.NET搭配上微軟的工具，的確讓小型AP的量產變成可能。在這方面，Java真是望塵莫及。
所以要想清楚到底要的是什麼，然後作相對應的選擇。
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Google Web Toolkit (Oh My God)
Google終於推出Java Web Application Framework了！(地震！)
從網頁上的解釋看來，本質上比較像是一個Java- Map那樣酷炫的Web AP。
挺有趣的Concept！不過目前為止我所看到的新一代Rich Internet Application Framework都有一個共同的問題：Java←→Javascript Type Mapping。不曉得Google Web Toolkit有沒有類似的問題。
或許是所有RPC導向的設計方式都有這樣的限制吧？目前Web Service的發展也是遇到類似的問題。Complex Java Object Type是比較難以正確的對應到javascript物件的；只是就Web Service來說，我們可以透過像是AquaLogic Service Bus內建的XQuery Transformation來做Object→XML的對應，但是在Browser裡頭的javascript→java RPC如果也要這樣做也太Heavy Weight了吧？
不過不管怎樣，對於技術狂熱者來說，最近這一年真的太棒了。為了方便以後追蹤，我把一些我認為有機會成為主流的RIA技術列在下面，順便讓大家參考一下：
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