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10 days ago
Over the next decade, the notion of the operating system is going to change immensely. Developing applications that only run on a local PC will become irrelevant with virtualization and the increasing capabilities in web browsers. More and more applications will get built for the cloud first, consumable on any device. This is also a boon for developers who can now scale incrementally to a customer ready solution with much lower costs, and even gain access to an out-of-the-box revenue stream from day 1 with search origination fees. It’s an exciting future that can really light up the tech industry. I am proud that Microsoft has seized this opportunity to rally around a true cloud computing platform that enables developers to leverage skills to enter this new era through Windows Azure. Ray Ozzie will be talking about this today at the Professional Developers Conference if you are interested. Large companies the size of Microsoft are not easy to turn, but over the last 4 years I ...
21 days ago
Years ago (OK, maybe it was just four years ago but that’s a lifetime in online world) we were contemplating making Spaces into much more of a platform that would allow others to build customized experiences on top, but using our ID, storage, relationships info and core user experience. By using the same infrastructure, a user could be in multiple niches and still find it easy to move between them with single sign on, content reposts, aggregation etc. Not that dissimilar to what Ning has been doing in some ways. It didn’t fit with the direction Windows Live was going in so we abandoned it. Fast forward a few years and it’s great to see some validation to this approach. Ali just sent me a link to below website for Amish people dating. To be clear, according to this website, there are 233,000 Amish adults and children. Let’s say 10% are inclined to date …. that’s just 23,000 users target market. Even if you have 30% penetration, that’s about 6,000 users on your service. ...
21 days ago
Great article in New York Times on “Cisco’s Run of Spending”. The article talks about the $22 Billion of acquisitions Cisco has done since 2002 (and doesn’t even mention the billions more before that). The case is pretty damning for Cisco overall ending with the statement “After 10 years of searching for the promised land of growth, it’s time for something different. Slowing acquisitions would a good start. If the strategy’s benefit isn’t apparent after a decade of purchases, it is hard to see how it will appear magically now.” Some other key points: Cisco purchased $60B of stock but the outstanding shares decreased by only 1.3B (current outstanding shares = 5.79B) due to dilutive acquisitions and options. John Chambers (CEO) claimed growth could increase by 50% a year over the long run. Actual growth has been closer to 7% per year. They have 26 new product areas that could account for $1B in new revenue in near term. I don’t know how anyone can even remember 26 ...
77 days ago
Gotta love this quote: Would Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz have accepted Microsoft's $40 billion-plus takeover offer last year if she had been in charge of the company then? "Sure, do you think I'm stupid?" Bartz said in an interview Thursday on CNBC, the business-news cable channel. Read more here. There was a great quote in a book called "Breaking Windows" where Bill Gates was reported as saying "something happens to a man when his net worth exceeds $100M, all they are interested in is their legacy and not what you or anyone else wants". Quote is not exact, but along those lines. Jerry Yang fits into that category and the pursuit of legacy really let down many Yahoo! shareholders and possibly employees. I dare say Yahoo! is not the only company with this problem. I am sure at Microsoft there are folks who have got to this stage ... but how do you align the interests of shareholders with people who are too wealthy to care what they think? This ...
102 days ago
Akaash Thomas Hussain, born August 12th 2009 at 7.48am, weighing in at 7lb 10oz. Here's a couple of pics with big brother Armaan.
