News and Analysis to 15th September 2005
Welcome home Tom
Acquisition crazy Oracle plans to pay $5.8bn for languishing
CRM vendor Siebel. Larry Ellison could have saved himself a few billion if he
had allowed Tom Siebel, a former Oracle executive, to pursue his CRM dream
whilst he was on the payroll. Oracle is in danger of suffering corporate
indigestion as it tries to assimilate PeopleSoft, Retek and JD Edwards along
with Siebel.
eBay successfully bids for Skype
Online auctioneer eBay has announced that it will buy phone
revolutionary Skype, a favourite with the techno cost conscious, for $2.6bn.
The synergies are not obvious, unless eBay plans to incorporate voice
recognition into its trading platform, or it plans to promote context sensitive
bid lots during Skype users’ telephone conversations.
Google to reroute business?
Information megalomaniac Google has just acquired Vinton
Cerf, the inventor of TCP/IP, the underlying communication technology of the
Internet. Google is behaving counter intuitively. Starting off as an
information service provider, it appears to be steadily working its way down
the value chain, via email, and now into the Internet infrastructure. So what
is happening? Maybe Google is planning to launch an alternative Internet, which
would be a serious bid for world dominance. Naming Cerf as Chief Internet
Evangelist suggests that the new world order might come with its own religion.
Sap to go vertical shopping
Up until now Sap’s strategic response to Oracle’s major
shopping spree was to mimic a startled rabbit. This looks set to change as the
German software giant announces plans to go big(gish) game hunting; looking for
deals costing up to $1bn a piece. Oracle appears to want to make everyone an
Oracle customer. But by putting an upper limit on the transaction price, Sap is
looking at a less blunt approach to growth, aiming for a greater share of the
customer’s wallet in certain industry verticals.
Intel in denial
Intel has denied all claims made by rival AMD, which has
filed an antitrust lawsuit against the chip giant. The latter has accused Intel
of using Mafia style tactics to discourage chip buyers from using AMD.
Apparently Dell, HP, IBM, Sony, NEC, Toshiba and Hitachi amongst others have
been intimidated into purchasing from Intel. Whether Intel intimidated these
chip consumers or whether they would have used Intel in any case will be
difficult to prove. My suggestion is that AMD demands to have access to the
video footage showing who is entering the head office foyers of the organisations
concerned. To prove their case, AMD needs to identify repeated instances of
burly blue follicly challenged ‘violin players’ wearing heavy trench coats
marching up to reception and mining a scene reminiscent of the St Valentine Day
massacre.
Paperclip to drive Office sales
You know the paperclip that pops up uninvited whilst using
Office products? Well Microsoft believes that it or an equivalent will
encourage customers to migrate to its forthcoming version of Office (scheduled
for H2 06). Microsoft has struggled to convince people to upgrade their Office
software of late, which is not surprising given that most of us would be happy
with the functionality contained in Office 95. This new version of Office will
try to anticipate what users intend to do next. This is well intentioned, but
picture two ballroom dancers waltzing, where both are trying to lead. That
should give you a sense of the user experiencing awaiting Office upgraders.
