BKM Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Rackspace Prices IPO

John Hooks — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:11:24 -0000

Brian - as my profs at HBS, Lerner & Hardymon taught me a few years ago - value creation through innovation and unfair advantage are the ultimate determinant of market value. Recently, I've seen very few deals go through, even on the High-tech M&A side, because they lacked a clear vision. Kudos to you and the nGenera SMT for picking ones that will drive growth and enhance shareholder value.

We'll see if the recent pattern of IPOs above $100M will trickle down to smaller offerings, though. I've yet to see it.

Re: How Enterprises are using Twitter

papput — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:21:50 -0000

These are clearly emerging case studies of how enterprises are making use of Social Media, but are certainly harbingers of great things to come. Many of the highlighted use cases are for customer engagement, which means the enterprises are recognizing the growing voice and power of their customer base due to the Web 2.0 technology revolution.

shabby

Massachusetts Treatment Centers

Re: Forstmann’s view on the credit crisis

SteveElmore — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:15:06 -0000

Frightening! This also extends to the Federal Government and how they have allowed the dollar to devalue. It certainly makes our debt cheaper over time. You may recall that OPEC had a fit when we went off the gold standard and then decided to peg oil to gold. The problem is, there's not enough gold to match even what is in circulation in the U.S. (around $4 trillion). Gold would have to double in price, just as oil has. There is a lot going on here.

Re: Social Enterprise Software discussion buzzing last week

Jeff Dachis — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:45:22 -0000

Well said

Re: Social Enterprise Software discussion buzzing last week

bmagierski — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:34:04 -0000

Thanks Oliver - great comment. I agree that IBM page is not impressive in
the least, and the timeframe question for the big players is the real
question. All have a placeholder for sure because they have to, but many
lack commitment - in the ham & eggs analogy, they are the eggs. This
includes Sharepoint despite the civil defense force you mention. The
Sharepoint story seems to their typical play - rather than just have a
placeholder, they deliberately seed something inside their customers into
which will grow whatever needs to grow to dominate that part of the customer
infrastructure over whatever timeframe it takes them to figure it out.
I agree with your comment - we are seeing the natural evolution in market
development in play here - from Education to Custom Solution development to
more packaged Applications / Solutions. We're probably in between the
Education and Custom Solution development stage, with collaborative
processes now being defined in some enterprises / industries, and custom
solutions being developed on these infrastructure toolsets - wikis, blogs,
forums, social nets, Sharepoint : ) - and single sign-on.

Dennis is probably right, these infrastructure players get consolidated into
the infrastructure. Alongside that, new application / social enterprise apps
providers will emerge building the next generation apps leveraging this web
middleware. All in all, a fun time to be in the market.

Re: Social Enterprise Software discussion buzzing last week

oliver marks — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:58:57 -0000

Very cogent and coherent contribution to this debate. Conventional wisdom of course is that the big dogs- Oracle, IBM, MSoft et al, will ultimately provide the underlying infrastructure for collaboration with other players either subsumed or in niche roles augmenting big player platforms.
Assuming for a moment this is how things play out the bigger question then becomes in what timeframe. In my earlier post you cite above, I deliberately linked to an IBM 'collaboration' page that was less than impressive. I know IBM are planning big things but no one challenged my post, unlike the sharepoint civil defense force who are vigilantly scanning the horizon for comments about their baby.

The reality is most enterprises are not ready for fully formed 'solution' suites at this point in time. We are in a fascinating era where collaboration processes and procedures are still evolving - software represents the functionality required from this thinking and at this point the solution is often a combination of different apps under single sign on for specific goals.

There clearly will be consolidation and shake out in this space which is set to be joined by yet more me-to apps as the consumer web 2.0 bubble deflates and attempts are made to rationalize 'social' in the enterprise.

What I'm seeing on the ground today as an enterprise collaboration consultant recommending appropriate sets of tools for a given set of client needs is diversity. This diversity is typical solved with an amalgamation of appropriate solutions, usually under single sign on.

There's no question suites are coming as we rationalize but that day hasn't arrived. Yet.