Dortch's Digressions

Autonomy: HP's Last, Best Hope?

And in the buried lede department (to paraphrase the great Harry Shearer), HP buys (and likely overpays for) Autonomy.

A "lede" is the lead or first paragraph of a news story. The term "buried lede" refers to stories with headlines about one thing, but details deep in the story that are likely more interesting, important or both. And much of the reporting about HP, PCs and tablets seems to bury what I think should be the real lede: the purchase of Autonomy. Whether or not HP "overpaid," as some of the overheated coverage I've read indicates.

Why? Three reasons.

1. Autonomy is successfully selling enterprise software into a market in which enterprise spending on technology is growing, even while IT budgets are flat or in decline. (Autonomy's software supports enterprise search and what the company calls "meaning-based computing." These are areas already generating both revenues and promises of whole new classes of business solutions.)

2. Software solutions like Autonomy's, both premise-based and increasingly cloud-based, help to sell more server, storage and management hardware and services, things HP continues to sell.

3. HP needs a cultural makeover at least as much as it needs strategic refocusing, and Autonomy might be the key to both.

HP should never have bought Palm or tried to make WebOS any kind of market presence. It should have played to its historical strengths in business markets, and thrown its weight behind whichever tablet and smartphone platforms came to dominate the market. And I can't help but feel that some earlier iteration of the company would have seen that.

As I posted in this very space back in September 2006, Mark Hurd's tenure as CEO saw the undeniable death of what was once proudly known as "The HP Way." That death was certainly not all his fault, but it happened on his watch, while he held the office where the buck's supposed to stop.

What HP's customers, partners and fans need to hope for now is the arising of a "New HP Way." One that puts enterprise customer success ahead of clever corporate machinations. One that sees customer success as a path towards and not in competition with personal success and aggrandizement. (Nothing wrong with either of those, mind, as long as they're the result of good intentions and actions.)

I and everyone who cares about HP is waiting with bated breath to see if the current management team is seriously, willfully committed to such a path. Autonomy is a successful player in a tough market HP cares about a lot. The Autonomy purchase is likely HP's last, best chance at successfully reinventing itself, strategically and culturally, and recalling any of its former greatness. I'm pulling for it to succeed -- but won't be surprised if more wrenching changes precede or even preclude that success.

 

Interop, The Week After: A Few Thoughts on Trade Shows

I moderated five sessions (on virtualization) at Interop Las Vegas last week. Herewith, some thoughts on that show, and on trade shows in general.

First off, I think Lenny Heymann, Manuela Farrell, Andy Saldana, the Interop show network crew and the rest of the Interop management team deserve a major shout-out, for running the show well, treating speakers well and helping to revive a show that many perceived was moribund, if not on its last legs, not too long ago. And I think that the Interop show (which I also participated in last October in New York after several years away) is playing out an evolution of trade shows I and others have been predicting for a while.

Specifically, my impression is that the hottest, highest-value events at Interop Las Vegas were the educational sessions, including but definitely not restricted to the ones in which I participated. The show floor was decent, but not all that exciting to me or to others with whom I spoke at the show. But every person with whom I spoke who attended a session got value out of it, and seemed excited to have learned and/or validated things they could take home and use and/or do.

There were a few weirdnesses at Interop, at least to me. Most notable among these was the fact that keynote addresses were streamed live on the Web, but could not be viewed on many if not most mobile devices that were not traditional laptops. Given that the keynote venue was almost always full to over-capacity and that many speakers and media attending the conference carried various tablets and other mobile devices, this seems…well, weird. But otherwise, the show seemed to hum right along, with last-minute speaker challenges addressed graciously and efficiently.

If you exhibit at trade shows and conferences, think seriously about upping your company's participation in educational sessions and similar interactions. It may be worth reducing or eliminating entirely the expense and difficulty of mounting a major show floor exhibit, unless you're required to exhibit to sponsor or participate in such sessions. (A hotel suite to which you can invite hand-selected visitors during the day and house a staffer or two at night may make a lot more economic and marketing sense.)

If you go to trade shows and conferences, spend a bit more time examining and planning your time at relevant sessions. And work with your colleagues to share and distribute session attendance intelligently, and to make sure all relevant courseware makes it back home in a usable, shareable form. And it wouldn't hurt to collaborate on a post-event report that summarizes relevant highlights and gathers links to any useful materials available online. (The good folks at Interop make all session presentations available for download with user IDs and passwords provided by show organizers.)

Trade shows and conferences are typically expensive, disruptive events for exhibitors, speakers and attendees alike. But that doesn't mean they don't have value. Especially as they continue to evolve, whatever you can do to maximize that value to you personally and to your organization will help to justify the effort and costs -- and maybe free up more time to consume the free food and drink almost always available somewhere, and to make and deepen those personal connections...

Why I Bought -- and Use, and Love -- My iPad

I've been in the information technology analysis and observation game for more than 30 years. In all that time, I've never bought a first-generation anything. That streak has now been broken by the iPad. Why?

1. With the Documents to Go app, I can read, edit and create Microsoft Office files in their native formats, compatible with everyone with whom I work who uses Office or anything compatible with it.

2. Documents to Go also lets me synchronize copies of files with the Google Docs online file management service (and with several others). Another app, SimpleNote, lets me synchronize copies of files with SimpleNote servers. By saving copies of my files in the cloud, I can always get to them from any device I have that can access the Web, nit just my iPad (or my wife's -- we got her one, too).

3. I spend hours on buses each week and elsewhere between my home and office. Now, I can always get to my e-mail and my most critical work, even when there's no Wi-Fi where I am. (I'm still not a big fan of the AT&T network, but it is improving, it's better than no connectivity, and the iPad does enough offline to make occasional network hiccups tolerable.

4. I have almost all of my critical documents and notes, all of my critical contacts and appointments, and all of my favorite music and entertainment with me or accessible to me wherever I am, along with navigational assistance, local information and other resources, in a package I can fit and take almost anywhere.

5. The iPad is basically the coolest, most elegant piece of technology I've seen since the lever and fulcrum. (Yeah, I know. Geeky. I went to the Bronx High School of Science and M.I.T. I can't help myself. Sue me.)

I know all about its challenges and limitations. By the way, the on-screen keyboard is not the challenge it's sometimes made out to be. It takes some practice, but in landscape mode at a comfortable angle, it's pretty usable. And if you disagree, the Apple Wireless Keyboard may be worth the additional investment, and adds to the coolness factor. And yes, I also know that future versions are coming with more features. But the first-generation iPad does enough of what I want and need, and enough more cool and neat stuff, in ways even better than I'd thought or seen described before seeing and touching one.

It may not be for you, but it might be more for you than you think or have seen, especially if you rely on a computer and the Internet for work or other important aspects of your life. Ignore the political, religious and ideological arguments, and just check one out. Or ask any of the growing number of iPad users you'll soon see at your local coffeehouse, waiting for a shopping spouse at the mall, or on an upcoming flight. And if the user you run into happens to be me, please forgive my nearly irrational exuberance.

Gartner to Absorb AMR – and Analyst Firm Consolidation Continues…

Ironically, Gartner’s announced plans to buy supply chain mavens AMR Research can be seen as basically an elaborate Yankee Group reunion, of sorts – echoes of one I attended just under a month ago, as Yankee Group employee #5. After all, Gartner Senior VP and Director of Research Dale Kutnick was my boss at Yankee. AMR Chief Research Officer Bruce Richardson and CEO Tony Friscia are both Yankee alumni as well.  (Bruce and Dale were both at the reunion I attended, as was Howard Anderson, Yankee Group founder and current member of the faculty at my alma mater, M.I.T. A good, nostalgia-imbued time was had by all, near as I could tell.)

And while I’m sure the acquisition will be good for AMR and Gartner, and at least neutral if not positive for current AMR clients, I believe its effects on the future of IT analyst/research industry will be mixed at best, at least in the short term. As some have already opined in their own blogs, as reported in Computerworld, taking competitors out of this market reduces reputable corporate sources of trusted, actionable information. And given that many users and at least some vendors already look askance at the entire traditional market, fewer such sources is not a promising prospect.

But there may be some good to come out of such consolidation, albeit not necessarily immediately. As we’re finding at Focus and elsewhere, users and at least some vendors are eschewing relationships with analyst firms. They are instead forging more direct relationships with knowledgeable, credible analysts, users and other individuals with relevant opinions and experience.

This is a trend that will continue and accelerate. It will likely result in significant and sustained benefit for users seeking guidance and vendors seeking alternatives to competing with larger, better-known companies for attention from traditional analyst firms.

(Imagine that you were an analyst or business development person at Analyst Firm X, and two calls came in simultaneously – one from, Big Vendor That’s Already a Client and one from Unknown Start-Up Vendor Y. Which call would you take first?)

If you look at Focus, RedMonk and some other non-traditional sources of IT market analysis and opinion, you see levels of interactivity and connection traditional analyst firms simply cannot match. At least not without wrenching changes to their fundamental business models. And these new levels of interactivity and connection are enabled by analysts who have chosen to pursue alternative ways to ply their trade – and new technologies that make new connections possible.

Consolidation can only go so much further – how many more firms can the big boys buy? (Forrester Research was also started by another Yankee Group alumnus, George Colony, who was also at that reunion I attended. I’m just sayin’.) But opportunities abound for analysts and others seeking to communicate and interact directly with users, vendors and other analysts. Focus, for example, offers numerous online communities, as well as complementary research created by users, consultants, analysts and even vendors.

The future of market analysis is not about analyst firms pontificating to users or vendors. It’s about those who know and those who do sharing what they know and do with others who want or have to know or do similar things. It’s about those seeking information and knowledge vetting and commenting upon the information and knowledge of others. And it’s about using modern technologies to make such knowledge and information accessible to those who need and want it most – the users whose purchases make entire markets possible.

And that future is already happening right now. At Focus and elsewhere. Come participate, and help make that future bright, for you and your company and for others in situations like your own.

Apple and MacWorld: Who Needs Big Trade Shows Anymore, Anyway?

So Apple has decided that Steve Jobs will not give the Macworld Expo 2009 keynote address in a few weeks, and that the company will pull out of the 25-year-old show altogether after the 2009 edition. And speculation runs rampant across the Web and print media worlds, about (1) Steve Job's health and (2) that of Macworld Expo itself. I'll ignore issue (1) because it's none of my business, and focus on issue (2).

The large computer industry trade show has been a dying dinosaur for years, but has stubbornly hung on in many cases. However, there are now too many factors mitigating against the success of such events. These range from the abilities of companies such as Apple to turn retail stores and Web sites into far more manageable, controllable, and profitable "mini-expos" to growing requirements to reduce or eliminate costly, low-productivity business travel. (I mean, the MacBook Pro on which I'm composing this very screed already has built-in Internet connectivity, a microphone AND a camera...)

But don't cry for Macworld just yet. There is an awful lot of value to be gotten out of the event, even should Apple disappear from it entirely as a participant, or radically reduce its participation. I'm old enough to remember when networking pioneer all but owned the NetWorld trade show, but that event retained value beyond Novell itself, especially when it was combined with Interop, another pioneering big industry event. So there's semi-relevant precedent for the possibility of an Apple-free (or "Apple-reduced") Macworld continuing on successfully, at least for a while.

All depends on how Macworld Expo 2009 actually plays out, and what Apple does, if anything, before, at, and after said event. (If you want to read similar, more granular, and "closer-to-home" musings on this subject, I highly recommend "Apple at Expo: What went wrong?" by Jason Snell of Macworld.com, a corporate cousin of the company that runs Macworld Expo.) But regardless of how things play out at Macworld, what's happened to Macworld is definitely indicative of a larger truth: with few if any exceptions, the larger and/or more focused on a single vendor the trade show, the more likely that its days are numbered. And those numbers, if used to measure years of remaining longevity, are in the low to very low single digits, at best.

Sprint Nextel to Troublesome Customers: You're Fired!

So Sprint Nextel has "fired" some 1,000 of what it says are its most troublesome (and apparently troubled) customers. The company said in published reports that these customers made as many as 40 to 50 calls to the company's customer service team every month. And yet, there are folks out there in the blogosphere chalking this up to callously typical Big Business behavior, and stating with falsely ironic wistfulness that it must be nice to be able to fire customers at will.

A few things.

1. ANY business has the right, if not the ethical responsibility, to part company with any customer that business cannot satisfy. As long as the business makes the customer contractually and financially whole, which Sprint Nextel has done with its 1,000 former customers, why stay in a relationship that's not working? (Hold on, hold on -- let's stick to business relationships here, people!)

2. Sprint Nextel says it researched its customer base and complaint call logs extensively before doing this. The fact that the company was able to find 1,000 people who averaged 40 to 50 complaint calls monthly out of a claimed subscriber base of 57 million seems to indicate at least some research was in fact conducted. It should have taken a fair amount of digging -- any wireless carrier where a majority of customers were that unhappy would have gone out of business before most of us would have heard about them. (Fill in your preferred former carrier here.)

3. What happens if customer service and satisfaction levels increase measurably for the 56,999,000 or so Sprint Nextel customers still under contract? Will critics of the move lapse into grumbling silence? (Unlikely.) Will Sprint Nextel seek out the next 1,000 most complaint-prone customers and send them warning? (Possibly.) Will other wireless carriers or other types of companies follow Sprint Nextel's lead? (Unlikely, at least "out loud" among wireless carriers; possibly, in other cases.)

4. This is not about Big Bidness trampling the individual, something that constantly troubles me personally, make no mistake. Nor is it, I believe, anything about getting people to suck it up, shut up, and stop complaining about what they perceive as poor service. I do that all the time, but would have to give up blogging, if not working full-time, to get to the level of 40 to 50 calls a month. This is about a company using business analytics, business intelligence (BI), and customer relationship management (CRM) tools and processes to identify a relatively minute set of apparently extremely, chronically unhappy customers, and walking away from them rather than draining significant resources continuing to try to satisfy them. If it were your business, and you could, why wouldn't you, if it offered a chance to make life better for you and the vast majority of your customer base?

That last is not a rhetorical question. If you have an answer you'd care to offer, as Ross Perot said when he ran for President, "Ah'm all ears!"

Apple's iPhone: Yes, But...

Yes, the iPhone's cool and all, but...

1. If you aren't already an AT&T/Cingular Wireless subscriber, is a $500, unproven telephone worth switching networks for, no matter how cool it is?

2. Does it do anything that you know about that you've been able to duplicate otherwise or live without until now, but for some reason can't duplicate or live without once the iPhone is available?

3. If you use corporate e-mail, unless you're the CEO or the CFO or similarly senior/powerful, is the IT department going to jump through sufficient hoops to make your e-mail and calendar accessible from your iPhone before you get frustrated enough to break something...or someone?

4. Can you honestly look at yourself in the mirror and swear that you were in no way disappointed or frustrated any of the previous times you bought the first edition of some cool technology, only to see cooler and/or equally cool but cheaper technology appear almost immediately? (Hey, you early iPod adopters -- lose the earbuds, I'm talkin' to you!)

The iPhone is the Paris Hilton of new, cool, geeky gadgets. It's certainly fascinating to look at, and it's danged good at generating publicity for itself and those behind it. But I'm still waiting for proof of substance that I find meaningful or compelling. I'm not saying such substance isn't possible, or that it won't be there eventually -- just that it ain't there yet. So I, at least, will wait, and see, and wait to see.

What about you? Let me know, via e-mail and/or a comment post. Especially if you turn out to be one of those irrepressible early iPhone adopters, once you finally get yours...so to speak...

Two Takes on Modern Technologies and Real Life

Earlier today, at a blog I write about business process management (BPM), I used the example of the French government banning BlackBerry handheld wireless e-mail devices from its ministries and other buildings, fearing U.S. surveillance of those e-mails. Never mind that the system's been approved by security agencies in multiple countries, and that it employs encryption stronger than that used at some online banking sites.

Sigh. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, though, I stumbled across another, far more apparently positive example of technology colliding with real life.

My colleague and friend Ron Exler, author of the authoritative blog on everything geospatial, "The Geo Factor," tells me that where he lives in Maryland, Bank of America has deployed ATMs that let depositors insert checks with no envelopes or deposit slips. The ATM scans your check, displays what it thinks the amount of the check is, gives the depositor a chance to correct or verify the amount, and prints out a deposit receipt that includes an image of the check.

To me, this is a prime example of what modern technology is supposed to do -- give us options, while enabling automated systems to duplicate, if not improve upon, things we used to rely upon other human beings to do. If you've ever waited in line in a bank to deposit a check at the beginning, middle, or end of a month -- or especially if you've waited in line to do almost anything else -- this is something you should find it easy to appreciate.

Sometimes, electricity or fire provide light and heat. Sometimes, they can burn down a building. All depends on how they're deployed, and the thinking behind that deployment.

Can Print News Publications Be Saved? Should They Be?

Hmm. The venerable and respected InfoWorld's killing off its print edition. Other newspapers and magazines are doing the same, or just dying outright. Meanwhile, though, The Boston Globe has begun marketing its online edition as an add-on to its print edition, increasing online subscriptions by 145 percent, according to the folks at MarketingSherpa. And there are multiple, spirited debates taking place across the Web and the blogosphere, about what is likely to and should or should not happen to print newspapers and magazines. (Some of the most lively discussion has followed some opining from columnist David Lazarus at SFGate, the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, another newspaper reportedly in trouble.)

In any case, maybe someone can explain to me why print publication owners have waited this long to do anything serious about the challenges to their "empires." Instead of or in addition to gutting editorial departments and relying more and more on packaged story sets provided by "others," why haven't they recruited frequent opinion contributors as bloggers or columnists, and sought sponsors for these? Why haven't they started working with journalism and business schools to change how graduates are trained, so they don't enter a not-so-brave new world with a bunch of old-world skills and attitudes about how things work in their world? And why, oh why, are they still bothering with legal wrangling about who has the rights to link to what, when they could just, for example, make their archives completely "open source," and therefore far more attractive and useful to readers, researchers, students, and others?

These are not new ideas, and I am not the first or the only person to consider them. In my darker moments, I fear that the reason they aren't yet being seriously considered by larger numbers of those involved is the same reason why the recorded music and movie industry is still so largely flummoxed by new technologies -- apparently intractable mental inertia, or the inability or unwillingness to face and embrace change. Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes, evolution means waiting for a critical mass of dinosaurs to die or otherwise get out of the way...

Steve Jobs and Digital Rights Management: You Can't Have it Both Ways

OK, NOW I'm really confused...

Steve Jobs of Apple wants the recorded music industry to consider getting rid of its various, insidious, and ineffective attempts at digital rights management (DRM), formerly known as "copy protection." This would open up the online music market considerably, and be something Apple would embrace wholeheartedly, Jobs said.

Wonderful ideas, all. Also only a matter of time, if the entertainment/"content" industry's history with home media recording and playback technologies ranging from the phonograph to television to the VCR is any accurate indication.

However, the very same Steve Jobs won't let non-iPod users become iTunes customers, not even if they were willing to pay a financial premium. That would open up iTunes considerably -- but it just might slow iPod sales, which generate far higher profits for Apple.

Apple's Jobs also won't let Macintosh users run virtual copies of the Mac OS X operating system. Now, there are all kinds of good reasons to be able to run virtual copies of OS X, for enterprises supporting Mac users and for consumers as well, as a quick search for online info on "virtualization" should make clear. This would especially be true if I could run Mac OS X on less expensive PC hardware -- you know, like the Intel Corp. chips now inside all the new Macintosh systems.

But of course, this might hurt Macintosh hardware sales.

It's not impossible to do technologically. There are already OS X images online that will run in virtual environments. They're not sanctioned or supported by Apple, and they almost definitely violate Apple intellectual property rights. But they demonstrate a curiosity, if not an actual desire, for features Apple could provide and support, but is not. (Microsoft is almost as bad, by the way -- you can only virtualize the more expensive versions of Windows Vista, for example. You can read a very informative blog about this by "The PC Doctor," Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, at http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/wp-trackback.php?p=257.)

DRM is like global warming -- it seems that all but the most die-hard contrarians have admitted that
both exist, and are inherently damaging to the larger ecosystem. But where DRM is concerned, at least some IT industry leaders appear to be speaking inconsistently. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have both been reported as not thinking very much of the current state of DRM, as reported by Playfuls.com. However, some of my industry contacts indicate that in the closed negotiations going on among IT and content vendors and standards promulgators, things are very likely to get much worse before they get any better for business users or consumers.