An aggressive sales-first mantra has made billions for Oracle. This approach may be backfiring, though, as competitors and former partners line up to take Oracle down and customers start to call the company's tactics hostile. Will this hurt the firm's future?
Card transaction handler Pulse is investing in HP's appliance computing technology in an effort to make the battle against bank card fraud less expensive and more consumer-friendly. The company also saved considerably cost by moving away from Oracle, according to columnist Rob Enderle.
An experienced firm that knows your business and knows what it takes to implement software will do a better job with an inferior product than a vendor with a great product but no know-how. Columnist Rob Enderle says it's high time to accept that.
After a disastrous quarter, Research in Motion is in a free fall. But there are reasons to remain hopeful for a turnaround. Apple and IBM were in the same position once, too, and things turned out well in Cupertino and Armonk. For Waterloo, Ont., to avoid becoming the second Waterloo that ended an era, RIM needs to learn four things from the Apple and IBM.
One Microsoft Surface Tablet will run on Intel processors, the other on Nvidia. One will appeal to end users, the other to IT departments. Which is which isn't as obvious as it seems.
Speakers at Microsoft TechEd touted the virtues of the upcoming Windows 8. No surprise there -- except the speakers were using Windows 8 on tablets, with nary a desktop in sight. Will the strength of Windows 8 on tablets finally get IT and end users on the same BYOD page?
Most IT vendors use their annual conferences to tell attendees what customers are doing. This year HP brought DreamWorks, complete with Alex the Lion, on stage at Discover 2012 to discuss how HP's helping it realize the goal of real-time animation. CIO.com columnist Rob Enderle sees this exemplifying the era of the 'super customer' relationship.
Reports of the death of IT departments in the Bring Your Own Device era have been exaggerated. However, if IT doesn't accept its new role one that's focused less on individual user support and more on setting policies then it might be time to write the obituary.
More precisely, Oracle said Sun hardware baaaallllloooooooows. That description comes from on discovery documents released by HP related ligation between the two tech giants. Columnist Rob Enderle says Oracle treated you and him like 'idiots.'
In a BYOD world, this approach is compelling. By hosting the desktop, IT owns a virtualized generic hardware environment yet can supply that environment to a variety of hardware devices-smartphones, tablets, Linux PCs and even smart TVs, which could be used more readily for high-end, off-site conferences in rented facilities or as a cheaper alternative to more expensive conference room solutions.
Gartner is a major power in the IT advisory firm space. There is constant contention between Gartner and the vendors who think, right or wrong, that the company charges them way too much—sometimes upwards of $100 million—for positive reviews. IT buyers often complain that Gartner, like any large company serving lots of people, doesn't get down to their unique needs and often sends them analysts who are inexperienced. Furthermore, there has always been a concern with every vendor-funded firm in the segment that the difference between reviews and marketing collateral is negligible. With Gartner, the issue generally isn't corruption but, rather, timeliness and relevance.
In a world driven by consumerization one company stands alone against the wave of employees who are bringing their iPhones and Android phones to work. That company is RIM , who just announced plans to abandon their consumer efforts and focus on the enterprise. We know this will work because it worked so swimmingly for Microsoft. I think we can officially start preparing to say, "RIP, RIM."
Having worked for large and small companies, I have seen massive layoffs and reorganizations, and watched painfully as entitlements were stripped in order to feather executive bonuses. In the end, there are companies that value employees and those that don't, and, given a choice, my recommendation based on a lifetime of experience is to find a path to work for the former.
HP's recent coming out party unveiled products ranging from an enhanced server line to a new range of thin clients to the first all-in-one workstation. What's missing is an HP corporate story along with what may be the major competitive opportunity. Let me explain.
Just the other night I was told of yet another horrid experience where a company, at the direction of the CEO, had bought a new technology (in this case Salesforce.com) and then spent a massive amount of money creating a tool the sales people couldn't use.