* Posts by Amy Wohl

5 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2007

Halfway through Meg Whitman's HP turnaround time: Is it working?

Amy Wohl

Enterprise SW Sales Count

Back when HO was doing $500 million in SW sales they asked me why I didn'[t cover them. I suggested that SW was such a tny part of their mix (less tha 1%), that I could not imagine what I'd say. Many years later they're up to $3 Billion -- still a pretty small percentage.

I have no idea what they thought they'd do with Autonomy, any more than I could understand why they bought Palm and then did nothing with it. SW deals are notoriously hard to integrate whicih is why they should be carefully selected and meticuously planned. (Note: IBM is very clever at this; they like to buy IBM Partners whom they already know well and whose software is oftn "pre-integrated.")

But if you're an nterprise vendor with the cash and the management bandwidth required, this is a grea time for acquisitions, especially enterprise cloud software which costs much more to bring to market and to evolve than most startups (exempt Workday) plan on.

We'd all like HP to return o its former glories, but depending on it's old PC business won't be the way. They need to look at Dell which is rapidly swappping PC's for services growth.

Hybrid clouds 2012: the private cloud myth lives

Amy Wohl

Buying a Hybrid Cloud?

No one can buy a hybrid cloud -- what they can buy is enabling hardware and software that allows multiple clouds -- public or private -- to connect for the purpose of sharing compute power, storage, or data. And even in these very early days for this technology, properly done the CIO can have as much control over what he shares and when as he might like.

Yes there are some who believe that private clouds aren't clouds -- usually they rely on their lesser elasticity in this discussion. But public clouds don't have infinite capacity either and private clouds can be as big (or as interconnected) as their owners choose.

The hybrid technology allows architects, developers, and CIO's another way of managing their IT needs. Most companies who are using or planning to use this technology find it a natural development in the emerging important of clouds.

For those who believe that private clouds are a myth, you can find some publicly cited refererences here: http://www.ibm.com/search/csass/search?sn=mh&q=case%20studies%20private%20cloud&lang=en&cc=us&en=utf. My understanding is that IBM has helped to implement thousands of private clouds, including a number of community clouds (a private cloud whose owner chooses to share it with a group of invited users).

Will private clouds be important in the long run? It looks that way, but only time will tell. Perhaps public clouds in some future, near or far, will appear to be sufficiently secure and full of compelling features that CIO's will choose to favor them. I expect that, as always in computing, the ending will be much more heterogeneous than that.

Just because it’s SaaS doesn’t make it good

Amy Wohl

SaaS isn't just about the cost of Software

When you compare the cost of software by the month to software in the box, it's a good idea to compare apples to apples. A SaaS application includes the use of a server to run it on, its implementation and operation management (including patching, updating, etc.), and help services. When you install software yourself, you get to pay for all of that, too. Not just once, but every month, year in and year out. That doesn't mean you'll pick SaaS for everything; it does mean that sometimes SaaS can be a good choice, based on the economics.

It also means you ocan start using it right away, rather than waiting for your in-house team to implement and test your software of choice. Sometimes time to usage counts, too.

Second Life will dwarf the web in ten years

Amy Wohl

Mainstream Applications Need to be Easy and Compelling

I love the idea of Virtual Reality. I've been eyeing it for 20 years -- and much earlier in SciFi and cyberpunk.

But to attract mainstream audiences to a new medium it has to meet mainstream standards. That means it has to be easy to use (SL is unnecessariy difficult -- learning navigation is ridicuilous, considering the meager payoff), priced right (please remember that almost none of those 8.5 Million folks who have tried SL once are actually paying members -- that number isi closer to 50,000, less than 1% -- not much of a business modell which is why LL has resoted to selling real estate to Sony and IBM.

Mainstream Big New Ideas also have to be compelling. We all use the Internet because it offers us something we want -- indeed, we don't know how to live without it any more. FaceBook probably isn't quite that compelling but its incremental cost is very low (free plus some time) and its navigation and ease of use are trivial -- new users are at ease within moments.

I am sure we will have successful 3D experiences eventually. Some will be specialized and relatively lexpensie -- some people wil pay a lot to have what feels like a real sexual experience with Cleopatra of Henry VIII. Others will be the social environments some posters have described as the most successful element of SL but with much easier navigation and many more guideposts to potential new friends and things to do plus more natural ways of communicating. All it takes is time and technology. I doubt that the world I'd like to visit will be SL, but I am certain someone will build something interesting in less than ten years.

Microsoft waves in Minority Report-style computing era

Amy Wohl

Technology Enables Old Ideas

The idea of a gesture-enabled interface has been around for a long time. Office Automation conferences in the early 80's included a number of ideas, ranging from touch screens to walls of screens (or very large screens), controlled by large-scale gestures (and voice).

Wang Laboratories had a clever gesture-controlled interface with fully graphic icons (thumbnails of actual documents, including thickness; ability to "staple" documents together and "undo" them) before Windows 3.0.

All of this however, needed much more powerful computers and standard device interfaces to get to Microsoft's "new" idea. So give Microsoft credit for being first to a commercial market, albeit one limited by an initial high price, and let's hope that imaginative and innovative hardware designers can now figure out how to build smaller (and larger), less expensive and more mobile designs.