News and analysis to 22nd March 2007
Long Bill Silver
It would appear that Microsoft like pirates. According to Jeff Raikes, president of
Microsoft’s business division during an interview at the Morgan Stanley
Technology Conference recently, software piracy of Microsoft’s products is
preferable to the pirates using competitive offerings. Possibly pirated
software ‘sales’ will fall under what Microsoft might call its open software
division. The business model would seem to be based on making money by ‘converting’
pirates to paying customers. Given the volume of pirated software in the world,
the largest growing part of the Seattle giant’s business is likely to be the
Pirate Upgrade Encouragement division.
Microsoft – No free speech
Microsoft has recently acquired privately held Tellme
Networks, which specialises in voice recognition and search technology. Specifically it allows users to conduct
voice-activated web searches on their mobile phone. Existing Tellme customers
include Domino’s Pizza and American Airlines. Microsoft lags Google and Yahoo
in the web search market, but with Tellme it moves into the lead on mobile web
search. This technology is likely to find its way into future operating system
releases. This will certainly help when
the irritating paper clip appears in the screen. Let’s hope it will be tuned to
the myriad of ways in which people might request that it ‘goes away’.
Dunn deal
A turbulent chapter in HP’s history was drawn to a close
recently with the charges against former chairperson Patricia Dunn being thrown
out of court. The charges related to the ‘less than legal’ tactics used by a
private investigator on behalf of HP in trying to ascertain who was responsible
for leaking corporate information. Possibly now is not the time for HP to
launch its identity management services.
HSBC loves Suse
The controversial alliance between Microsoft and Novell to
push (Suse) Linux is gaining momentum. HSBC is the latest high profile
organisation to sign up. Wal-Mart, AIG Technologies, Deutsche Bank and Credit
Suisse are already bagged. This Microsoft/Linux combo offering appears to be
attractive amongst organisations that have a significant Microsoft investment
but are interested in growing their assets powered by open source software.
This may also work in Microsoft’s favour as it allows the software giant to
have some influence on the extent to which companies explore their open source
options.
YouSue
It was just a matter of time before YouTube got its parent
Google in trouble over copyright infringement. TV producer Viacom is claiming
$1bn in damages. Apparently it has found 150,000 clips of its own programming
on YouTube that collectively had been viewed 1.5 billion times. The Google
subsidiary has put the emphasis on the copyright owners to report infringements
rather than actively self-policing its site. Possibly Viacom is setting the
scene to do a deal with Google, much like other content owners such as the BBC.
The web and TV worlds are colliding. The question is who has the power, the content
providers or the content channel owners?
Teletubbies’ search will lead to tagging
This is not a reference to a dawn raid on four masked
criminals that speak gibberish and go by the sinister names of Tinky Winky,
Dipsy, La La and Po. No. It is a reference to the fact that the BBC is working
with IBM to tag its collection of images and video to make it more accessible
to users. IBM has some clever software that can visually analyse such content.
Having done that the content is then tagged with a classification reference.
Very useful given that the BBC has 1.4 million hours of content to classify.
Uh-ho!
Microsoft goes Live on Lenovo
Microsoft is making further inroads into the Internet. It
has secured a deal to have its Live.com suite of Internet stuff (email, search,
blogging and so on) accessible via a browser toolbar on Chinese PC maker
Lenovo’s desktop and laptop computers. Lenovo’s has a 7.3% global market share
having acquired IBM’s PC business. A significant proportion of web searching is
done via browser toolbars and this will be a blow to Google and Yahoo.
Digital universe expanding
Research firm IDC has some sobering facts about the growth
of digital data. The amount of digital data created last year, if converted
into traditional text books would stack high enough to reach the Sun from the
Earth, twelve times. The volume predicted for 2010 will stretch from the Sun to
Pluto and back. This research was sponsored by EMC, which presumably is setting
up offices right across the Solar System. The amount of data captured last year
was 161 exabytes (1024 x 1024 x 1024 gigabytes), which is also 3,000,000 times
the amount of data in all the books ever written previously. This might suggest
that there is money to be made in storage. A significant amount of this comes
from mobile phone video creation. So perhaps there is an opportunity for
someone to provide specialist storage and retrieval services for say the
happy-slapper community?
Oracle moves into Hyper(ion) space
Oracle has got its purse out again with a $3.3bn cash offer
to buy business intelligence software maker Hyperion Solutions. This will cause
a warp in the space-time fabric of the enterprise applications market. It will
allow Oracle to eventually cut into rival Sap’s business and it is likely to
force a rush by the likes of Sap and Microsoft to make a similar purchase. The
likes of Business Objects, MicroStrategy and Cognos may need to review their
business plans. Much like pursuit cycling, Oracle has broken the pack and now
the rest have no choice but to play catch-up.
LogicaCMGWMUnilog reporting
LogicaCMG is morphing almost beyond recognition. It has just
sold its telecoms business. Unilog and WM-data were recent acquisitions. Most
recently it has bought the Norwegian division of Siemens Business Services. The
former two acquisitions had the impact of doubling LogicaCMG’s headcount. A
late starter to the world of outsourcing, this now accounts for 27% of its
revenues. End of year figures appear to be in line with preliminary numbers. So
things are looking up from the 6% share price dip in January. Given CEO Martin
Read’s bullish sentiments, it may well be appropriate to put in an offer on the
ailing Atos Origin.
