via Judith Hurwirtz

Judith has attended to the last IBM Rational Conference and is sharing with us some noteworthy aspects of the “changing landscape of software development”.

1. Rational is moving from tools company to a software development platform. […]
2. More management, fewer low level developers [were attending the conference] […]
3. Rational has changed dramatically through acquisitions. […]
4. It’s all about Jazz. Jazz, IBM’s collaboration platform was a major focus of the conference.  Jazz is an architecture intended to integrate data and function.  Jazz’s foundation is the REST architecture and therefore it is well positioned for use in Web 2.0 applications. What is most important is that IBM is bringing all of its Rational technology under this model. Over the next few years, we can expect to see this framework under all of the Rational’s products.
5. Rational doesn’t stand alone. […] What I found quite interesting was the emphasis on the intersection between the Rational platform and Tivoli’s management services as well as Websphere’s Service Oriented Architecture offerings. Rational also made a point of focusing on the use of collaboration elements provided by the Lotus division.  Cloud computing was also a major focus of discussion at the event.[…] The one area that IBM seem to have hit a home run is its Cloud Burst appliance which is intended create and manage virtual images. Rational is also beginning to deliver its testing offerings as cloud based services. One of the most interesting elements of its approach is to use tokens as a licensing model. In other words, customers purchase a set number of tokens or virtual licenses that can be used to purchase services that are not tied to a specific project or product.

Cross-posted on the Didier Beck Blog

Fast comparison between LinkedInand Xing.

Xing

• November 1, 2003 - 5 1/2 years old
• 7 million members
• 26’000 groups
• 16 languages
• 600’000 paying members
• 240 employees from 22 nations

LinkedIn

• May 5, 2003 - 6 years old
• 40 million members, thereof 10 million in Europe and 800’000 in France
• 300’000 user groups
• 4 languages
• 345 employees

My LinkedIn profile (member since March 2004, i.e. more than 5 years)

My Xing profile (member since November 2005).

The Innoveo LinkedIn profile and the Innoveo Xing profile.

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Blog.

via Judith Hurwitz

Judith is bringing, as usual, interesting feeds for thoughts, this time in the field of software maintenance fees.

[…] As the world slowly moves to cloud computing for economic reasons there will be a major impact on how companies pay for software. Salesforce.com has indeed proven that companies are willing to trust their sales and customer data to a Software as a Service vendor. These customers are also willing to pay per user or per company yearly fees to rent software. Does this mean that they are no longer paying maintance fees? My answer would be no. It is all about accounting and economics. Clearly, Salesforce.com spends a lot of money adding functionality to its application and someone pays for that. So, what part of that monthly or yearly per user fee is allocated to maintaining the application? Who knows? And I am sure that it is not one of those statistics that Salesforce.com or any other Software as a Service or any Platform as a Service vendor is going to publish. Why? Because these companies don’t think of themselves as traditional software companies. They don’t expect that anyone will ever own a copy of their code.

The bottom line is that software will never be good enough to never need maintenance. Software vendors — whether they sell perpetual licenses or Software as a Service– will continue to charge for maintance. The reality is that the concrete idea of the maintenance fee will evolve over time. Customers will pay it but they probably won’t see it on their bills.  Nevertheless, the impact on traditional software companies will be dramatic over time and a lot of these companies will have to rethink their strategies. Many software companies have become increasingly dependent on maintenance revenue to keep revenue growing.  I think that Marc Benioff has started a conversation that will spark a debate that could have wide ranging implications for the future of not only maintenance but of what we think of as software.

Interesting!

Cross-posted on the Didier Beck Weblog.

via Between the Lines

As everybody already knows, Oracle is buying Sun for about $7.4 billion, including Sun’s debt ($9.50 a share in cash). Some interesting thoughts from Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet.

• [Oracle] added that the acquisition of Java “is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired.”
• Oracle also becomes a full-fledged hardware player.
• Oracle and Sun have been long-time partners. […] “More Oracle databases run on the Solaris Sparc than any other system,” said Ellison, noting Linux was second. “We’ll engineer the Oracle database and Solaris operating system together. With Sun we can make all components of the IT stack integrated and work well.”
• Oracle with Sun appears to be the Apple of the enterprise. Indeed, Oracle President Charles Phillips noted that the company is looking to offer everything from apps to the disk.
• Oracle’s stack of IT stuff now includes:
  • Java;
  • Solaris;
  • Enterprise applications ranging from CRM to ERP to business intelligence;
  • The database (Oracle and MySQL);
  • The middleware;
  • The storage hardware;
  • Cloud computing services;
  • And servers.
• Art of War approach:
  • Oracle gets to annoy IBM—and own Java—over a few pennies a share more than Big Blue was willing to pay.
  • Oracle gets to kill MySQL. There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database. MySQL at best will wither from neglect. In any case, MySQL is MyToast.
  • Sun has a big installed base. All the better to upsell applications into.
• Sun was relatively cheap compared to Oracle’s other acquisitions. The price was above the Hyperion buyout but below PeopleSoft and Siebel.
• Oracle saves Sun management from what could have been a complete debacle following the IBM takeover talks. The Sun board had been split on the IBM deal. Today, it’s all roses.

The official Oracle press release can be found here.

It is clear that this deal will change the IT landscape quite massively. And the consolidation is definitely not finished…

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Blog.

via Judith Hurwitz

Judith has joined the yearly HP industry analyst summit organized by HP. This summit is dealing with everything at HP, excepted the PCs and printers. Based on the discussions there, Judith is giving her view on the possible future of HP. Very interesting analysis!

I think that HP is at a crossroads. Today it is the largest technology company. This is a wonderful opportunity because size gives customers comfort. […] On the other hand, it provides a challenge. When you are this big, you have to act big and bold. You have to set a leadership agenda that the market and the customers take note of. […]

1. Be Top Dog in Selected Markets. HP’s overall strategy remains consistent: it’s objective is to be either number 1 or 2 in each product category it participates in.  While HP has made some strides in achieving this lofty goal, it is still a work in process. […]
2. EDS is larger than HP’s printer business. With EDS as part of the portfolio, the amount of revenue from printers and ink has started to diminish. In fact, HP executives proudly announced that EDS is as large as  HP’s printer revenue. […]
3. Procurve chases Cisco in network management. While HP has been in the networking business for decades, it has been a well kept secret. Because of HP’s tight partnership with Cisco, HP has been wary of appearing to compete. However, it appears that HP is now willing to take on Cisco in the networking switching arena. […]
4. The software business is (still) important. HP has long had a love/hate relationship with software. HP has selected management and automation to focus its software business. […]
5. HP does the cloud. […] Clearly, the cloud strategy is a work in progress. But HP is thinking about the right issues as it makes its way into this important emerging area. HP’s intent is to leverage its software assets to create a common framework for its cloud strategy. HP anticipates that it can leverage EDS’s expertise to gain a cloud framework that it can leverage with customers.
6. HP expands Software as a Service. When HP acquired Mercury it also picked up a growing SaaS business. The company is planning to continue to focus on this arena both in the enterprise market and the SMB market. SaaS offerings will continue to focus both on the testing and the remote monitoring markets. […]

HP is very focused on being a provider of IT services, hardware, and software.  It has no desire to be a business management or a business consulting organization.  While HP  is most  comfortable in the hardware arena,  it is making important strides in this part of the business. […]

The software business, on the other hand, is still at a transition point. While HP has done extremely well with its performance management and testing business, it has had a hard time creating an overall software portfolio. Opsware is clearly being used to provide the foundation for cloud computing but it will take some more time and cycles for this platform emerges as a power. […]

In my view, there will be more aquisitions to come for HP. I suspect that most will be in software and will have to fill the gaps in data management and security. […]

 

Disclosure: we are at Innoveo member of the Development and Solutions Partner Program (DSPP) and a worldwide Financial Services Industry Partner.

Cross-posted on didier beck’s blog

via 451 CAOS Theory

Great post about some impressive figures from the Linux kernel development.

• There have been almost 10,000 patches in each recent quarterly Linux kernel release.
• Releases include work from ~1,000 developers and ~100 companies.
• Since 2005, Linux has had more than 3,600 individual developers and more than 250 companies contributing to the kernel.
• The individual development community has tripled in the last three years.
• The top 10 developers have contributed 15% of changes, and the top 30 developers have contributed 30% of changes to the kernel.
• Linus Torvalds is 27th on the list of contributors with most changes over the last few years. He has 495 to his name.
• More than 11,500 or 14% of kernel changes have come from developers with no commercial entity backing their Linux development.
• Another 13% of changes come from developers with ‘unknown’ commercial affiliation.
• When we get to actual companies, Red Hat leads with 9,351 kernel changes, or 11.2%. Next is Novell with 8.9%, IBM with 8.3% and Intel with 4.1% of kernel changes.
• More than 70% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work.
• From the 2.6.11 kernel to the 2.6.24 release (1,140 days), there were an average of 2.8 accepted patches applied to the Linux kernel tree per hour.
• An average of more than 3,600 lines of code is added to the Linux kernel tree every day.
• Since 2005, the kernel has grown at a steady rate of 10% per year.

Gosh, if this is not showing the incredible health and dynamism of the Linux community!

cross-posted on didier beck's weblog.

Beginning of this week, Nick and I were able to assist to a business meeting with some people in Amsterdam - Holland, based on the last TelePresence system from Cisco. Below a picture taken just before the conference start in Zurich.

This experience, I must say, was absolutely great! You really feel the presence (good product name ;-) of the other participants thanks to the high-quality video (1080p), the fact that the 3 screens are reproducing the real size of the participants, and because of the quality of the sound (CD quality). The oval form of the table with each half-part on each side of the table is also a good idea.

More information: cisco TelePresence 3000 (pdf).

Below another picture from cisco. You see the both parts and a presentation projection just below the table (another good idea!).

Cross-posted on didier beck's weblog.

We are very proud at Innoveo to announce that we are now officially a Business Partner of HP (Hewlett-Packard) since about one month.

We are member of the Developer & Solution Partner Program (DSPP). Our front-end solution for the Insurance Industry and our company are listed in the worldwide partners and solutions catalog!

innoveo solutions is a software company whose products, services and technologies enable its insurance industry clients to create business value. It provides high-level expertise in software, multi-channel e-business platforms, SOA, architecture, open source, infrastructure in combination with insurance industry knowledge.

This membership is concretizing a solid, trustful and already quite long common partnership. And also the fact that quite a lot of us are former HP employees ;-)

All this was possible thanks to the great and constant support of Petra Wildemann, Worldwide Director Financial Services / Insurance at HP.

cross-posted on didier beck's weblog.

Laurent and I had the chance to be in Paris for the 4th edition of leweb3 conference. For me, it is the third time I could attend to this conference, the first time for Laurent.

Why are we attending?

• first, as bloggers
• then, to extend and consolidate our network (this part is just exceptionnal by leweb3!)
• third, to listen to the new trends and important Internet technologies that are coming up
• fourth, to be "stimulated" by all these VC and entrepreneurs. We are "tanked" for about one year!

We couldn't resist to wear our "marketing" innoveo T-shirts ;-) Quite successful, a lot of people were looking at us and "reading" our T-shirts.

Very interesting meetings, exciting people (over 1'800 participants from more than 40 countries). Very inspiring, a real success!

Hello World!

Besides our Corporate website which is representing the "official voice" of innoveo, we would like to start a more informal conversation with you all, who are coming and visiting us.

After quite a long (hi)story, we could found innoveo with the Team and start to act as an independent company since October 1, 2007.

As a start-up company, our challenge in the next couple of months will be to correctly handle the parallel delivery of our running projects and the setup of our product and services portfolio for the market.

We will use this blog especially to publish our findings and ideas with regards to the IT industry and insurance market and would like to share thoughts, to start discussions and to get feedbacks.

It will be also the place where you will be able to hear about what we are doing, and how the company is going on.

And surely also, a place for some very technological discussions ;-)

This blog is opened to all the innoveo people, who have to post under our innoveo blogging guidelines, based on the ones of IBM and SUN. You can expect also some cross-posting (will be always specified), as some of us are already bloggers for a while. The postings on this blog are representing the personal opinions of their authors and don’t necessarily represent innoveo’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Our publications are covered by a Creative Commons license.

The comments are moderated and we are keeping the right to publish or not your comments, based on our policy.

We are very excited to start the conversation as innoveo bloggers!