Auridian

In the C-Suite: The dawn of deglobalisation

Harvard Business Review recently lamented on how destructive outsourcing in respect of high –tech manufacturing has led to the US losing its competitive edge.

With outsourcing goes the associated skill, knowledge and R&D investment.; usually in an easterly direction.

It seems logical of course to outsource ‘low value’ activity such as the production of chips, routers and PCs. But before you know it the design of such products are also outsourced. And thus the direction in which these markets evolve is then beyond your control.

The R&D associated with these low value technologies goes on to generate the high value-high opportunity technologies such as electronic paper, thin-film solar powered cells and sophisticated mobile handsets.

It would appear that the elastic band of outsourcing is at full stretch with a reversal in trend imminent.

Business-leaders might also apply this thinking to their IT investment. Whilst short term cost savings might be achieved, the associated business wisdom once jettisoned will be difficult to retrieve.

CIO: Virtualisation

Like many technology terms, virtualisation is one that is likely to keep you out of the boardroom.

However if you can present it as a business concept then you are more likely to get the CEO's attention.

So instead of virtualisation been described as way to eg. reduce the TCO of the IT function, it can be played as follows:

• A mechanism that will stop business units from creating competing power structures using the number of servers they have allocated to their unit as a measure of military capability

• A mechanism that will allow staff to work from anywhere, whether that be in any of the offices across the planet, their home, the beach or Starbucks.
• A mechanism to promote collaboration and knowledge flow
• A mechanism for the customer to have a single view of the organisation.  

So now IT paradigms become a source of business wisdom. And you become the business sage.

Tech Sector Review

The unicorn is running late..
IBM may well be remembered for the organisation that made meetings fun. Lotus Sametime service will allow people to meet virtually in avatar format!  Of course there are savings to be made in not travelling to meet people physically, but the real benefit has to be in conducting staff appraisals depicted as a troll or goblin.

Double D attracts serious attention
The infrastructure market is also experiencing consolidation, with data management specialist Data Domain being the centre of attention. Its party piece is the deduplication of data. This will save organisations large sums of money through better data governance and reduced storage costs. Both EMC and NetApp have been hovering. The Data Domain board want to accept NetApp’s offer of $1.9bn cash and stock, but are under pressure to consider EMC’s $1.8bn all cash offer. 

Seven
Microsoft is taking no chances with the launch of Windows 7 by offering very aggressive discounting, seventy five percent off the list price). This should be good news for the PC industry. It will also help Microsoft to quickly purge Vista from the public’s consciousness. Interesting facts about 7: It follows 6 and is the fourth prime number. But perhaps most significantly according to catastrophe theory, is that there are in fact 7 fundamental types of catastrophe. In any case don’t expect Internet Explorer to come bundled with the operating system. Its absence relates to the ongoing settlement with the European Commission in respect of anti-competitive behaviour. Though how you download the browser of your choice without a browser might be an issue.

Oracle impresses  - relatively speaking
The market gave software giant Oracle’s stock a 7% boost for dropping quarterly revenue (-5%) and profit (-7%) year on year. Despite this the associated income was $1.9bn, which is impressive in this market and above market expectations. Like Red Hat, Oracle can be seen as an annuity investment given that an increasingly significant fraction of its revenues come from ongoing updates and licence renewals. The fact that new software sales were down 13% suggests that the tech sector still has some way to go before happy days are here again.

See other news - click here.

Tech Sector Review

Smooth criminals exploit Jackson’s death
Hackers were quick to capitalise on the recent demise of pop star Michael Jackson. Spam emails are exploiting the public’s interest in order to harvest emails for criminal exploitation. Ironically Jackson, back in 1982, lamented on the growing problem of identity theft in his hit single Billie Jean. The interest in his death was so high on the night of his death that it crashed Google and Twitter.

Software tools okay!
The mid-level players in the software tools industry are careering towards the end game with predators hovering over the once mighty Borland. It looked like UK listed Micro Focus was about to be victorious, but a new bidder has entered the fray. Perhaps it is Embarcadero Technologies (that earlier bought a business unit from Borland) that will spice this up, or even Microsoft, Oracle or IBM?

Red Hot!
Open source, but not totally free, Linux distributor Red Hat posted a 7 per cent rise in quarterly profits, which is at odds with the market. This can be attributed to their ex-Delta Airlines CEO, a leader who knows a lot about driving costs out of low margin businesses. It also highlights that open source software is gaining further traction as organisations look to reduce their IT-related spend.

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In the C-Suite: CIO - Coca Cola Innovation Officer?

Time for some good news. Information Week's Bob Evan's has crafted a case study that should inspire all CEOs and CIOs who feel that the current business-IT status quo is just not right.

Click here to read Bob's piece.

Read it all and see the future.