Google is battling Facebook - and where is Microsoft?
Don't you find it peculiar that Microsoft is not playing a role in this week's mass computing hottest news? After getting used to see Google and Microsoft poking and fighting each other, it's suddenly Google's Buzz and Facebook's Titan that take over the headlines.
Is Microsoft waiting to see what's going on and then take an action, or is it that Microsoft is implicitly playing here through it's holdings at Facebook?
And maybe we should look for Microsoft battling Google in a totally different arena?
Apparently, Microsoft has identified the evolution of SaaS as a major threat to its traditional licensing model. As Gartner puts Cloud Computing (which, for software companies such as Microsoft and Google means SaaS and Paas) at the peak of the Hype Cycle curve, whilst Social Software Suits is on the down slope of the very same curve, it makes a perfect sense for Microsoft to focus its development efforts in the SaaS arena.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Deja vu: Oracle is in the headline again
This time it may be the biggest acquisition of all - Sun Microsystems.
Enless blogs, analysis opinions and speculations were written in the last few days about the motivation of Oracle to acquire Sun, and about the dillemas Oracle is to face now.
Although it's been more than a year since my previous post, a sharp look would reveal that the latest and hottest event is a natural continuation of the trend I talked about back then.
Putting $7.4 Billion at turbulent times like this is not, by all means, to be done just for the sake of opportunity. I'd say that this acquisition was carefully planned and examined in Oracle's HQ for at least a year back. Adding the on-and-off rumors and announcements about the merger talks between IBM and Sun, it makes more and more sense to perceive Oracle's activity during the last 2 years as becoming a large competition to IBM, making the enterprise IT market into a bi-polar competitive landscape, almost a duopole.
I tend to speculate, similar to others, that the value that Oracle intend to create from this deal is more in the software domain rather than in the hardware. I believe that Oracle would deepen its partnership with HP, maybe transfer some of the hardware competencies of (former) Sun to its partner, and eventually we'd see a merger between Oracle and HP, which would become a powerful enough competitor to challenge IBM in the area of real end to end enterprise solution.
The end-to-end solution would be different from what we have known so far. Until now, end to end solution referred, most of the time, to the application layer only. If the scenario depicted above is going to take place - the term 'end to end' would represent a situation in which all the hardware, software infrastructure and applications come from the same vendor.
For enterprise customers - there are good and bad implications for this situation, has it became true. The good is that there would be a price-war between IBM and Oracle/HP, which would, in its turn, translate to cost saving. The bad side of it is that it would mean the end for best-of-breed option, as there would be two Gorillas fiercely fighting each other, and all the rest would become too small to notice.
Enless blogs, analysis opinions and speculations were written in the last few days about the motivation of Oracle to acquire Sun, and about the dillemas Oracle is to face now.
Although it's been more than a year since my previous post, a sharp look would reveal that the latest and hottest event is a natural continuation of the trend I talked about back then.
Putting $7.4 Billion at turbulent times like this is not, by all means, to be done just for the sake of opportunity. I'd say that this acquisition was carefully planned and examined in Oracle's HQ for at least a year back. Adding the on-and-off rumors and announcements about the merger talks between IBM and Sun, it makes more and more sense to perceive Oracle's activity during the last 2 years as becoming a large competition to IBM, making the enterprise IT market into a bi-polar competitive landscape, almost a duopole.
I tend to speculate, similar to others, that the value that Oracle intend to create from this deal is more in the software domain rather than in the hardware. I believe that Oracle would deepen its partnership with HP, maybe transfer some of the hardware competencies of (former) Sun to its partner, and eventually we'd see a merger between Oracle and HP, which would become a powerful enough competitor to challenge IBM in the area of real end to end enterprise solution.
The end-to-end solution would be different from what we have known so far. Until now, end to end solution referred, most of the time, to the application layer only. If the scenario depicted above is going to take place - the term 'end to end' would represent a situation in which all the hardware, software infrastructure and applications come from the same vendor.
For enterprise customers - there are good and bad implications for this situation, has it became true. The good is that there would be a price-war between IBM and Oracle/HP, which would, in its turn, translate to cost saving. The bad side of it is that it would mean the end for best-of-breed option, as there would be two Gorillas fiercely fighting each other, and all the rest would become too small to notice.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Oracle acquisitions trip - where does it go?
The acquisition of BEA by Oracle (39th acquisition) that took place this week completes the portfolio of Oracle in the area of enterprise applications and moves it to a new type of competition. Until recently, competition for Oracle was fragmented to infrastructure and applications. Oracle's Fusion Middleware never took off to significant position.
Analysts watching at Oracle as application provider are used to point out SAP as Oracle's reference competitor, but this is about to change - SAP doesn't have a significant middleware in its portfolio. The reference competitor should be now a company that has a COMPLETE offer - from database and middleware infrastructure to customized applications. One such company is IBM.
Are we going to see Oracle shifts its marketing fire from SAP to IBM? Well, let's wait and see.
Analysts watching at Oracle as application provider are used to point out SAP as Oracle's reference competitor, but this is about to change - SAP doesn't have a significant middleware in its portfolio. The reference competitor should be now a company that has a COMPLETE offer - from database and middleware infrastructure to customized applications. One such company is IBM.
Are we going to see Oracle shifts its marketing fire from SAP to IBM? Well, let's wait and see.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
What's this blog is all about?
Every day brings new and exciting stories from the business world. I will put on the blog one issue in each post, and will offer my point of view about it. I invite everybody to share their opinion, to tell the world how they would have dealt with the particular business issue and to offer more hot business issues to discuss.
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