Software strategies and more…

After 11 months as a consultant, I took a job as a global analyst and consultant dealing with leading technology vendors in the business cloud space. In my job, I cover emerging technologies and trends in the business applications space that include financial applications, customer relationship management, business intelligence, collaboration software, and more.

As all companies do, I was issued a laptop computer as part of my job. I put it on my desk fired up a cranky old version of Windows (XP), put the laptop lock in place, and left it there. I use it once a day to sort my emails into folders, and access the few intercompany resources I cannot connect to from the web.

Instead, I use my personal laptop. I prefer it, much like the way I prefer my phone. It fits me, it allows me to get my job done, and its has what I need in terms of software, horsepower and tools needed to help my customers.

Here are the reasons I will not use my perfectly good work device.

1. My official work computer, and its locked software environment, lacks the context I need to my job effectively.
2. The laptops work policies prevent me from supporting and troubleshooting problems or tools I need when on the road.
3. The lack of ability to collaborate with my customers – dropbox, skype, Adobe ROME and more apps that are not supported by my IT dept. so not allowed on the “official” laptop.
4. I hate old software, seriously Windows XP? Office 2003? and other crapware the company ‘approves’?
5. Battery, form factor, etc. give me my 9-cell battery, backlit screen (so I can read outside), access to movies for the many flights, and i7 processor so I spend less time waiting and more time doing…

Sorry IT department, I’ll stick with my own kit. But thanks for the paperweight.

<Addition March 2011 on BYOD and IT Security>

Reflecting on this blog post and a recent meeting I had with Paul Muller VP Strategic Marketing @ HP, I realize that my choice is far from unique.

With the increase trend by companies and professionals with regards to the cosumerization of IT there is a growing acceptance (or invasion) of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Often this device is the personal mobile phone – commonly an Apple iPhone or a Droid phone versus or in addition to the companies standard issue Blackberry or Nokia.

These devices are quickly being joined by tablets and laptops brought in by users (like me) and connected to company networks via ‘gray’ wifi zones. These may not be directly connected to core network, but are connected to web-based services. Increasingly with the adoption of Apple’s iPad companies are using third party stores to validate applications but then deliver data directly for use by employees. This will undoubtedly continue to give IT departments fits until Apple (and others) start offering some type of enterprise store that enterprises can use to bring in-house and begin serving up many of the custom apps they have developed.

Nonetheless, people like me will be an increasing demographic that the IT department will have to deal with. For the IT departments seeking insight into securing their environment with the growing number of BYODs out there, I encourage them to look at a recent presentation given at a session I attended.

You can access the presentation on BYOC trends and how IT departments can address new treats surrounding cyber security here.

Just reading how Google’s employees are being switched to Google OS and those that aren’t are choosing between Apple or Linux. The article goes beyond just the trials and tribulations between Google and Microsoft and adds additional food for thought with regards to whether Steveb and team can right the listing Microsoft Titanic.

To see the writing on the wall, one only has to look as far as the turmoil currently happening within the Windows Consumer division, a restart with Windows Mobile that leaves Windows Mobile 6.x users (including nearly every MS employee) out in the cold with a dead product, long-time partners jumping ship for new tablet and tablet-like O/S platforms, and its own inability to launch a competitive product in a space it was once the pioneer, not to mention a music player and store that never was…. What is left Live and XBOX? Both which have had and are being challenged by other services that are often seen as easier and more in tune with the needs of their users. It my opinion that without a tangible connection to what people want to do with computing (consume information about their business, their activities, their customers and their friends) tools that Microsoft continues to decrease its own relevance in the modern computing space.

Of course an argument is that Microsoft is tied tightly into business technology and is it’s platform of choice because they offer everything from the data centre to the desktop, but if we look at changes that are now starting to reshape the enterprise (and by this I mean all businesses that transact with customers large and small) market we see the client/server world coming to a end in the not-to-distant future.

Start by looking at the combined Software as a Service offerings and the Platform as a Service offerings that are enabling both traditional and up-start business to manage their financials, customers, inventory as well as computing and processing power you soon can conclude the tools that Microsoft offers for managing, deploying and developing are quickly becoming yesterday’s news. In fact, I would further argue given IBM, Oracle and SAP’s focus on developing in-memory databases, web-based, mobile and business intelligence solutions that these will have an near term immediate impact on sales of Microsoft’s SQL database as instances of this product will be replaced by solutions that can run complex transaction and data mining queries in-memory and report in real-time rather than via traditional I/O coding. If you combine this with the cloud becoming a repository for web-platform tools like AppExchange for the business and Apple’s Appstore or Google’s Apps for business for consumers and businesses alike and you see how on-premise is quickly becoming a model of the past.

It seems that the market also continues to question the relevance of Microsoft in the future. During the past decade there have only been two periods when the stock showed life, those being the end of the dot.com boom cycle and when Microsoft was expected to buy into the search wars by acquiring Yahoo! but failed. The stock market seems to question Microsoft’s future plans since the company is no longer rewarded with a premium multiple that innovative leaders such as Apple receive.

Yes, I know Microsoft has launched its Cloud strategy and has promising applications from Office 2010, SharePoint, Azure, and CRM – but many of these are still tied to heavy enterprise investments in Microsoft’s traditional tools and platform solutions. So for hybrid environments (Software+Services) this may forestall rapid migration, but it doesn’t mean that Microsoft is truly “all-in” in my opinion.

My final thoughts are these:

1. Microsoft has lost its way at the worst time in the consumer space, its customer and its partners are looking to Microsoft’s competitors for innovation and sellable solutions. Dell and HP are the first off the boat, so how will Microsoft shore up the army of independent and small developers that may soon follow. This space is critical because it connects the data, information and systems to the jobs people are doing in and away from the office. Innovation begins with the consumer these days not with corporate IT, even SAP gets this.

2. Ballmer has bet on a long term strategy over short term gains. I agree that technology investments are not something you should tie to quarterly results, but looking at the quarters and yearly figures above. Seems it’s time to put up or shut up about this.

3. The ‘elephants’ Windows, Information Worker Group, and AppPlat are massive parts of the companies ~$60B in revenues. These massive businesses have the company committed to a course that makes innovation hard and political. While there are forces at work (Azure, Office On-line, CRM) that may effect a change of course – it will take significant management and ethos re-direction to make this work. I am not confident Microsoft has the hutspa  to make the bold and risky choices needed for this to happen. As such Microsoft may loose the enterprise market just as it is loosing the consumer market.

* Full disclosure, I worked at Microsoft and had an amazing experience while there, opinions in this blog are based on my person view of the company given the challenges they face in the market and the publicly available sites I have referenced in this blog. I do not hold shares in Microsoft.

I am not sure.

After hobbling thru the choppy live webcast yesterday and trying to piece together all the PR fluff, blogger commentary and random 140 character posts on Twitter I am still not sure how VMforce will be a monetize-able joint venture between VMware and SFDC.

On the surface it seems to be a great new sandbox for developers to play in to develop future cloud and on-premise applications for their organization and/or for the market at large. Folks that already utilize SFDC’s appexchange and chatterexchange to develop add-ons for SFDC user communities now have access to an even more robust and dynamics infrastructure – but what is VMware’s cut in this?

My gut says VMware is trying to position themselves as a leader in cloud based infrastructure as a service. Potentially even helping companies not only shed business software, but also the hardware needed to support these and other client/server apps. It a bold gambit that vaults them into competing on higher footing with the likes of Amazon’s AWS and both Cisco’s Smart Grid and HP’s Cloud Assure IaaS plans.

Of course the interesting play here is how both of these companies through VMForce are looking to attract the Java developer communities and enable them to create connection across both application and infrastructure software realms. This should further bolster interest in FinancialForce.com, making it easier to build out its core accounting and financial solutions to include industry and role-based users and business processes. Finally this also may allow for BI as a Service to also take off by utilizing virtual machines to power processor hungry analytics, reporting and planning tools.

Personally, I think this makes them a very interesting M&A target for SAP or a merger with SFDC themselves – both to compete more effectively with Oracle. Time will tell as more information and customer adoption of VMforce.com comes to light.