Business post wrap-up

Free stuff from McKinsey's

Highly recommended for anyone in business or involved in business studies: the McKinsey Quarterly. Some content is free upon registration. If you are doing an MBA these reports are great reference material.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Apple's Leopard about to pounce

OS wars, again and again

Does it really matter what Apple does? They only have about 2% of the global PC market, if that. However they do possess greater 'mind share'. Far more than 2% of us know about Apple as a brand. We may like 'em or loathe 'em but they do come out with some funky stuff. Here's a positive (perhaps overly positive) report on Leopard from SmartHouse. With Windows Vista somewhere in the wings it's Apple's (and Linux's) time to make up some ground. With Macs now powered by Intel the obvious is happening - Apple can now confidently assert that all apps are available on the one platform - the Apple platform. Whilst that's reassuring for the Mac users - to have access to Windows apps on their otherwise more limited (if impressive) architecture - will it drive PC fans into the arms of Apple dealers?

I suspect it will grab a bigger bite, but it won't shake the earth.

posted by gtveloce at 2:52 AM

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Strategic purchase by AMD

The ATI purchase by AMD is interesting. It's not just a simple play to grow a company by absorbing a related but smaller company. Sure, AMD is a chip maker, but it makes the grandest chips of all - the CPUs - so buying up a graphics specialist is (a) chicken feed and (b) not going to shake the Earth. Or will it?

By buying up such a reputable graphics card maker they have guaranteed that at least some of AMD's product will now be getting inside some of those Intel boxes, not just their own. Intel may now have to consider putting pressure on its customers to drop ATI - but it surely risks anti-competitive action in so doing. And some graphics and games buffs love ATI, so there will be resistance. It's thus another ploy by AMD to get the brand into Intel territory and to drive a wedge into the box makers. Do they stick with ATI and thus side with AMD, risking Intel's wrath, or do they side with Intel and drop ATI, accepting any collateral damage that may bring?

It's a canny move by AMD in any case. Read Infoworld's take here.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Top ten proliferated new technologies by 2020

"In the year 2020 -- the death of locality and other predictions", from Infoworld with extras in bold by yours truly. Infoworld's writer had a talk with Hossein Eslambolchi, former president of AT&T Labs and CTO for the company. This is his/their top 10, except I have added my comment to Infoworld's.

Number 10 -- Next generation speech recognition and Natural Language Understanding [NLU] will redefine human machine interface. Comment: I hope it comes before then, I'm sick of typing. On the other hand I get a sore throat and what happens? Perhaps some more direct mind-machine interface would do the trick?

Number 9 -- Knowledge mining will transform the way we do business. By 2010 individual databases will store 5 terabytes to 10 terabytes of data. By 2020 Eslambolchi says a single database will contain 100 petabytes of data. Comment: can't argue against this one, it's happening as we speak (or write). Tell us something new!

Number 8 -- Open source components at network edge will dominate. Stuff that sits on the edge now, like security and XML messaging will be integrated into the heart of the network and new things will appear at the edge. Comment: hmmm, not very convincing. What's the new stuff? Should we be that concerned about where stuff "sits"? Will we even have an "edge" to consider by 2020?

Number 7 -- Broadband will be common -- death of locality. Comment: well, yeah. Once we cure famine and war we will have the death of locality. In lucky western countries we already have reasonable broadband and it doesn't matter much where you are. I am in Australia. Can you tell? But it matters in Lebanon right now, don't you think?

Number 6 -- e-collaboration and P2P will dominate the workplace. Infoworld says: Maybe. Comment: As we Kazaa and Skype our P2P way through our day now, this is a no brainer. Similarly with e-coolaboration. Like we do it now, so why should it not persist? It will proliferate. It will remain difficult to plough a field e-cooperatively but I'm sure tractors will be electronically, remotely controlled, guided by GPS and absolutely brilliant by 2020. We'll all want one.

Number 5 -- Sensor networks will proliferate. "Yes, if you sneeze into a tissue there will be a sensor on the tissue and you'll find an email in your inbox when you get home asking if you want to reorder". Comment: like we need to waste the world's resources on all those throw-away sensors. Better bet - the box counts the tissues and suggests a reorder, and the new tissues come sans-box.

Number 4 -- Wireless Internet Access will grow exponentially. Sounds obvious but Eslambolchi says gaps will be filled in over the next gen. Comment: still seems obvious. Barring a better way being developed, makes sense. Not earth-shaking. Burying/hanging copper made sense under the old water/power utility model. Thinking of which, what about data via the power lines? Talk about ubiquity...

Number 3 -- Networks will become personal. Wireless IP networks will create a new class of personal devices and services. A network dedicated to you. Infoworld supposes its 'like a personal portal on steroids'. Comment: I think we can all see this one happening. Loads of people have personal LANS, it's just an extension of the obvious.

Number 2 -- Security requirements will continue to increase. Comment: no way! Surely not? Are they wasting bandwidth writing this stuff? I'm beginning to think I am!

And Infoworld says that "the number 1 technology change we will see by the year 2020 is --
Emerging networks and the Internet will be ready for the "sextuple" play. Voice, video, data, wireless, gaming and sensory information". Comment: Go on, tell us more. Did someone have a slow news day? I'm sorry I just added to it! Anyone out there want to prognosticate with vision and insight, rather than stating the blindingly obvious??

Neverthess, as Infoworld says, "go forth and build a business around one of these. You can't lose". Indeed, it's a pretty safe bet you'll have a market. You may have to fight for your marketshare and the return on investment may be poor, but... hmmm. There's no free lunch here, folks. This is leveraging what's already well on its way with many players already claiming rights.Grab a niche or go for a big play, or perhaps build something compelling and new that leverages off these no brainers. Your choice.