Archives for 2005

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Pre-AJAX AJAX Applications

Posted on September 6, 2005 ·

OK, so this title does not make a lot of sense … I’ll explain:
There’s a lot of hype around AJAX ( Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which, in laymen’s terms is a set of technologies that allow web applications to have the look’n feel (and speed!) of desktop applications.

Traditional “web behavior” has been one of the main reasons for user reluctance against hosted Enterprise Applications, and innovative companies have come up with AJAX-style solutions for quite a while. Norway-based 24SevenOffice, a provider of hosted, modular All-In-One applications (ERP, CRM, email, calendar ..etc) has had an AJAX-like UI for a year and a half or so. Of course the term AJAX did not exist, so they had to explain at length the benefits of a faster, friendlier, easier-to-use Web Application.

It took a brand like Google, and the gliding-sliding oh-so-beautiful and fast Google Maps for AJAX to become a “household” name and one of the hot IT trends this year. Now longer do we need the long explanation, AJAX is chic du jour, all new web apps have it, and the major hosted Enterprise App’s also go the AJAX way: see NetSuite’s announcement. They claim to be first major business application with broad support of AJAX, but as stated above, they are a little late to the party… Late or not, it’s nice to see mainstream adoption and friendlier Web-apps finally.

For more technical info, as well as a good compilation of reference material, check out Rasmus’ 30 second tutorial. (via Jeff Nolan).

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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Programmer Raids Kitchen, Robs Company

Posted on September 3, 2005 ·

It’s really funny to watch how a story reverberates.  I’ve just read it thanks to Jeff Clavier, who links to the original story, clearly talking about ONE slice of pizza.

A few minutes later thanks to Steve Rubel I can read the AP story (it’s funny it’s under “Breaking News” … I mean it’s just as important as Katrina, Iran’s nuclear plans…etc), anyway, by the time it hit AP, they are talking about TWO slices of pizza.

I’m looking forward to a few more iterations, I’m sure before the day is over, we’ll know this guy was actually a robber who took all his company’s hi-tech equipment and emptied the entire kitchen along the way 🙂

Update: (9/5):  I wonder if the contestants are real people here, or even if they are, did most of them submit fictional stories?   Several userid’s on SimplyFired psted 10-20-40 entries, and the pizza story above is by simplyfiredcontestentries  the “official Simply Fired contest entry ID” with 303 posts.  

 

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Humor, Misc ·
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An Arm & Leg … for Starters.

Posted on September 2, 2005 ·

 No comment …

 Is this the solution?

 

 

 

 (thanks to Stephen Baker)

 

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Humor, Misc ·
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The Emperor’s Naked: Technorati

Posted on September 2, 2005 ·

(Updates at the bottom)

Technorati is dressing up a dying sick body in fancy new clothes.  Who cares, if the body fails it’s basic functions?   

The latest new feature, Blog Finder meets more criticism than welcome:  here, here, here, here, to list just a few, but it’s all so irrelevant. Let’s face it: it really does not matter, whether this latest feature works or not.  There’s an old IT axiom:  Garbage In, Garbage Out.  If you have the wrong data to begin with, it really does not matter how many layers of extra services you put on it, the output is still worthless.

Everybody seems to be talking about performance problems; for example here, here, here, here, here and  here, but IMHO not getting data out of Technorati is by far not the worst; getting the WRONG information is far, far worse.  Techorati has major problems parsing the main pages of blogs built on standard templates of major bog platforms, and the result is the result is entries in their metadata where:

  • the body of a post appears with the title of another one (mostly, but not always, the previous one)
  • the body of a post is associated with tags of another one.

I myself, and other bloggers documented this before: here, here, here  and here again just giving a sample, and here’s a  little gem of a title and article that have nothing to do with each other:

Technorati

 (actually, the above image is a “triple whammy”: the tag, title, body come from 3 different posts)
 
I always wondered that if parsing the main page is so difficult (it is not, actually) why doesn’t Technorati use the permalink page, or even better, the RSS feed instead of the main page where they “get lost” – perhaps THAT is a performance issue?
 
In any case, as seen above, the search problems are the tip of the iceberg, the real problem is building the wrong index.  From a blogger’s point of view, this makes us look like complete fools – posting meaningless articles.

Now, let’s talk about communication:  emailing techorati support is a complete dead end.  Bloggers quickly learned the trick: emailing Dave Sifry (CEO), or perhaps Kevin Marks, or tagging blog entries with their names used to result in a response, and sometimes even corrective action.  That’s no longer the case.  I understand.  The CEO personally emailing back is not exactly scalable communication.  But why doesn’t Technorati have a searchable Knowledge Base, or at least a FAQ of known issues and solutions?  This is really Customer Service 101.

The SiliconBeat, Joi Ito, and many others welcome Dave Sifry’s post discussing the problems: “ Once we got our keyword search infrastructure back on track, our infrastructure team has been working 100% on fixing Cosmos search. Our current plan is to have Cosmos search back up and running by the end of September .“

Sorry, Dave, but your keyword search is far from fixed, it still results in timeout in more than half the cases.. in fact the Technorati homepage is often unaccessible.   On this chart  a response time above 3 seconds is considered critical – wow, I am generally happy getting anything below 30 seconds, if at all.   On the input side, Technorati claims to index posts within minutes, yet several influential bloggers complain they have not been indexed for weeks.   Dave strikes an honest tone and discusses some of the issues, but frankly, I doubt he really knows the status of his own business.

All this makes me wonder if Technorati is an “idea company” – they truly are Innovators of the Blogosphere, just can’t execute.  This makes me wish BL Ochman’s recent “hot tip” about an imminent buyout were true. 

 Update (9/10) This is pathetic:  New Orleans is listed as #6 on the Tehcnorati Top Search list, yet clicking on it results in this:

Technorati new orleans

Update (9/11) Can’t log in to Technorati account, infinite loop asking to log in again and again …


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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Customer Service, SaaS, Software, Startups, Technology ·
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Sad Quiz

Posted on September 1, 2005 ·

What do these headlines refer to?

  • US Military helicopter on rescue mission comes under fire
  • Gunmen target medical convoy
  • Police say shootings, rape, violence inside Convention Center

A: Iraq   B: New Orleans

WTF??? 

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Filed Under: Misc ·
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“Resistance is Futile” – GBorg

Posted on August 31, 2005 ·

Updates at bottom.

This must be Google-day:

First, details of Google Purge via John Batelle:

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index

 

“A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest,” John Battelle wrote in his widely read “Searchblog.” “Thanks to Google Purge, you’ll never have to worry that your search has missed some obscure book, because that book will no longer exist. And the same goes for movies, art, and music.”
“Book burning is just the beginning,” said Google co-founder Larry Page.   As a part of Phase One operations, Google executives will permanently erase the hard drive of any computer that is not already indexed by the Google Desktop Search.

 The company’s new directive may explain its recent acquisition of Celera Genomics, the company that mapped the human genome, and its buildup of a vast army of laser-equipped robots.   Google’s robot army is rumored to include some 4 million cybernetic search-and-destroy units, each capable of capturing and scanning up to 100 humans per day. Said co-founder Sergey Brin: “The scanning will be relatively painless. Hey, it’s Google. It’ll be fun to be scanned by a Googlebot. But in the event people resist, the robots are programmed to liquify the brain.”

OK, so it’s humor .. after all it is from The Onion. 

But when you’re done watching Epic 2015, via Jeff Nolan,  are you still laughing?

 

P.S.  Does this mean Microsoft is now officially Off the Hook?

Update (9/1)  Russel Glass  chimes in:  there is actually some truth to the  Onion’s piece.

Update 2 (9/3) So, before long — the operating system, the artificial heart, and monthly blackmail cheques made payable to ‘The company that can do no evil”.

Update 3 (9/8)   “do no evil” – really?   You be the judge.  (via Chris Selland)

Update 4 (11/17)  Russel Glass shows Epic 2014. Hey, I beat you by a year, we’re in 2015:-)

Update 5 (03/06):  “We have all the ingredients for a great story: dramatic predictions of

Google taking over the world, secret disclosures of a new stealth

product at a Google analyst meeting, outing of the story by bloggers,

and subsequent purging of the public data by Google to keep things

hidden from the public and competitors.”  read on at TechCrunch.

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Filed Under: Humor, Software, Startups ·
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The Scary Thing About Ads – part 2. UPDATED

Posted on August 31, 2005 ·

I don’t want to write a part 3., but this is getting ridiculous, please see updates at the bottom.

Seth Godin explains  what he meant in his previous post that I cited here. 

Well, that’s not the only unfortunate ad placement – how about this, from my yahoo home page:

 

 

No, I am not blaming Yahoo for being insensitive  – this is just technology without human feelings after all.

Update (8/31).  Check out Michael’s post about juxtaposed ads.

Update 2. (8/31) Stephen Baker at Blogspotting:  “Feel-good ads feel weird on hurricane coverage”

Update 3. (9/5)  Another example via Jeff Clavier:

Update 4. (9/7)  I wanted to give these guys the benefit of doubt, and considered the above ad a simple case of carelessness, but, boy, was I wrong!  This company sets a new record of intentionally tasteless, exploitative advertising.  The proof is in the date (8/2, Friday AFTER Katrina) of this job post on craigslist.  I don’t expect the link to last long, they will probably delete the ad soon, so here’s the full quote: 

New Orleans Own – Southern Comfort – Needs Models

Reply to: job-88476604@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-08-02, 12:02PM CDT

Born in New Orleans, Southern Comfort is seeking spirited girls to promote the brand around town! Must be attractive, willing to mingle, 21+, and have reliable transportation to get to promotions.

This job is all about having fun and involves no shot serving. Promotions will take place at local bars, conventions, music venues, and events such as Voodoofest.

“Southern Comfort – Born In New Orleans Where Anything Can Happen”

Job location is New Orleans, LA
Compensation: $20-$25 depending on experience / leadership

Hat tip to Jeff Clavier and I am joining him in linking to the call to boycott of  Southern Comfort’s products until they abandon this tasteless campaign.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Marketing / PR, Misc, Software ·
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What You See Is Not What You Get

Posted on August 30, 2005 ·

 Seth Godin captured what appears to be “The scary thing about blog ads” on Jeff Jarvis’s blog:

 

   
 

 

But this is the full picture from Jeff’s site:

 

 

Screen clipping taken: 8/30/2005, 7:31 PM

 

 

And clicking through reveals the “explicit” act: 

 

“the former Baywatch star and longtime animal advocate’s latest project is “Kentucky Fried Cruelty,” an undercover expos

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing / PR, Misc, Software ·
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Not-So-Open-Source Applications

Posted on August 30, 2005 ·

(Updates at bottom)

“Enterprise software vendors who leverage open source, subscriptions and grid computing to meet customer needs will emerge as next-generation industry leaders. “ – says John Loiacono, EVP, Sun Microsystems.

Jeff Nolan recommends caution: “… open source and subscription licensing, two completely separate trends that often get lumped together, are not silver bullets for emerging companies.” His post is well worth reading, and I agree with most of his logic, which refers to the traditional Open Source “business model”, if there is such a thing (we’ll come back to this later):

  • Open Code
  • Broad Support Community
  • Paid Sales & Marketing staff
  • Paid core Engineering
  • Product Available free
  • Revenue from support / training / consulting… i.e. services

He then rightly concludes that this model is basically a service business, so investors should beware, when we peel the hype layer away, they don’t find the hypergrowth software business there.

Yes … but … this may just have been the “beta version” of an Open Source business model – if we can even say that. In fact we really shouldn’t: Open Source is not a business model, it’s a software production model (and philosophy), says Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL (via Jeff Clavier). Absolutely.

The two examples Jeff uses, SugarCRM and Compiere could not be further away from each other – not only in terms of their product offering, but mostly their business model.

Compiere, for all I know is closer to that “beta model” of “trying-to-make-a-buck” on Open Source, or, if I may say, the idealistic, altruistic (?) Open Source company that makes ALL it’s products ( full ERP & CRM for the SMB sector) available for free, source code included. They even let Consulting/ Implementation Partners rebrand the product under their own name. They are the “nice guys” barely making a buck on support. (Sorry, Jorg, if I am mistaken.)

SugarCRM, on the other hand is not even a purely Open Source company, it’s a hybrid. (Hey, hybrids are popular nowadays ). “ It didn’t take me long to realize that there is a HUGE part missing in the open source version “ says Simon Romanski, director of information systems at Fulfillment America, quoted by ZDNet. The title says a lot: Commercial open source, a misnomer? Well, not a misnomer, but definitely commercial software: SugarCRM sells the Pro and Enterprise versions of their product, and also charges for the On-Demand version. Even the Open Source version can be “upgraded” by paying for extensions, e.g. the $39.99/user Outlook Plugin. Hm, I would not put my Sales Organization, no matter how small, on a CRM system without Contact synchronization. By the time we configure the basic needs of a small Sales Team, chances are pricing is on par with a truly commercial software company, e.g. 24SevenOffice .
So is SugarCRM using Open Source as a marketing gimmick, riding the fashion wave? I don’t think so. Nor do I think there is anything wrong with the business model… perhaps a little heavy on the hype, like the other guy selling software using the “No Software” slogan. SugarCRM is a successful hybrid that’s partly Open Source (development, support community, viral marketing) yet generates it’s revenue from selling software like any other company.

Only to prove Marten right.

Update (9/01): ZDNet’s SaaS blog has a good follow-on article on SugarCRM: “Outwitted by its own ecosystem”

Update 2 (9/01) The “Commercial Open Source” story reverberates; ZDNet’s Dan Farber follows on quoting Marc Fleury, CEO of JBOSS.

Update 3 (9/28): The Next Little Thing Isn’t Free by Sam Ramji

Update 4 (11/16) But is it really free? CIO Magazine

Hybrid Open Source Business Models by Zack Urlocker

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Open Source, SaaS, Software, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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On-Demand Software is Not Just a Lease (Where’s My Upgraded Lexus…)

Posted on August 30, 2005 ·

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Recently several analysts downgraded salesforce.com’s stock, citing high valuation:   Salesforce a A Harder Sell ,  Salesforce.com Shares Seen As Pricy  .  Chris Selland had voiced his doubts regarding the hosted CRM model before (“ won’t cure cancer anytime soon “) , and sees the downgrades as signs that  “the media honeymoon appears to be mostly over”.
I beg to differ … a stock’s valuation is often not indicative of the business’s success, further growth potential, and certainly not of the underlying business model (hosted CRM) in general.  The stock can become an underdog, simply because it had previously ran ahead, was overvalued, while the SalesForce.com (and On-Demand software) continues to grow.

AMR research reported 105% growth in on-demand CRM in 2004. Nevertheless, the debate continues as to how suitable the On-Demand model is, especially for larger Enterprises:  “Is it less expensive to lease or buy a car? If you don’t have a down payment, a lease looks pretty attractive,” says Bob Thompson, founder of CRMguru.com. But if the total overall cost is the main concern, the best strategy is to buy a car and “drive it into the dirt,”  (via The Deal.com)
I think the car analogy is seriously flawed: this is not a simple lease / buy decision.  In the On-Demand model  bug-fixes, even major upgrades are managed centrally in a painless manner, often not even transparent to the Customer.  The car analogy would only be fair if it referred to a lease where any time the car manufacturer had an upgrade (we’re not talking about the new models every 4 years or so, with today’s cars software upgrades, amongst others are almost continuous) my friendly dealer  drove up to my house, leave a new car with identical trim level, color, options (“customization”) at my doorstep and drove the old car away. Now, that’s a lease model not even Lexus came up with … but if anyone knows such a deal, sign me up! 🙂

Of course the on-demand vs. on-premise decision is not simply a matter of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analyses.  Phil Wainewright discusses a few other criteria specific to large enterprises. 

Debate or not, I think both camps agree at least in these points:

  • On-Demand software is now a proven business, here to stay
  • It is no longer “only for small businesses”
  • For small businesses though, it is likely to be the best choice
  • There is no “best choice” for a large enterprise, they all have to perform their own analyses and pick the best option.

After more than a decade in the Enterprise Software business with the “biggies” like SAP, IBM, Deloitte  my attention is now focused on the SMB sector, their Enterprise Software and Infrastructure needs.  It’s a very refreshing change, and I’ve come to learn a whole new world. (Having switched from Service Provider to Customer  in a smaller business was a tremendously helpful eye-opener.)   In the next several posts I will look at  On-Demand, Open-Source and other new trends from an SMB point of view.  

 

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software ·
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