Opinions

What's Behind the Hybrid Cloud Hype?
May 15, 2013

Hybrid cloud technology is garnering much attention of late -- whether for cutting-edge development and the continuous integration and release processes achieved through devops, or for traditional enterprise-proven approaches to infrastructure and applications. There's more to hybrid clouds than hype. The growth outlook for all types of cloud computing is strong.

Joe Tucci's Magic Turnaround Formula
May 13, 2013

I've been focused on and off on turnarounds since I covered IBM's from the inside out in the 1990s, so I don't know how I missed this, but EMC²'s turnaround was clearly a success, and its unique resulting organizational structure is incredibly subtle. The company is actually far more similar in breadth to HP than most folks realize, largely because they mix up EMC and EMC².

From BI to KPIs to Benchmark Success in the Cloud
May 10, 2013

Organizations of all sizes across an assortment of industries are using a growing set of cloud analytics solutions to address their Big Data, business intelligence and data integration challenges. Escalating competitive pressures and customer expectations are forcing organizations to find new ways to tap internal and external data sources to achieve their business goals.

Tech Offers Web of Support for Stroke Survivors
May 09, 2013

May is National Stroke Awareness month. I like to follow the technology advancements for stroke prevention and treatment -- and the companies making them -- because I have been a stroke survivor for nine years. We don't realize it on a daily basis, but things advance as quickly in the medical and health industries as in wireless and communications.

Tap CRM to Give Your Customers a Pleasant Surprise
May 07, 2013

So you have your CRM application in place and humming, collecting information about customers and potential customers and organizing it -- but how are you using it? Most companies pour it back into sales, marketing and support to keep feeding those machines, which is good. It's the way you realize the value from your CRM investment.

How HP Could Become the Next Apple
May 06, 2013

I was given a task the other day, and this happens every once in a while, to imagine a sequence of events that would turn HP from an industry problem to an industry leader in Apple's class. Apple went from being in far worse shape than HP's in now to become more valuable at its peak than even oil companies, so this isn't an impossible goal.

Forgetting Today's Users May Be BlackBerry's Folly
May 02, 2013

BlackBerry, formerly Research In Motion, is under a lot of scrutiny as it pursues its comeback strategy. An interesting question recently came up having to do with that effort: Is BlackBerry so busy focusing on growth and the future that it has forgotten about taking care of customer needs in the present? I'll address this both as a technology industry analyst and a long time BlackBerry fan.

Sky HDTV Could Make Your Cord-Cutting Decision Easy
April 30, 2013

It's hardly a surprise that cable and satellite television service providers are in trouble. Take decades of complacency, add in mostly awful customer service, mix liberally with resistance to change, and you have an industry heading toward self-inflicted extinction.

Social Savvy Beats Cold Read for Warming Up to Customers
April 30, 2013

If you're a dedicated skeptic like I am, you probably know the way a psychic's cold read works. Start by asking a broad question that fits almost anyone -- like, "Have you lost someone you love?" Allow the mark to fill in the blanks, and then ask further leading questions based on information fed to you until the mark thinks you're actually communicating with a dead relative.

CTIA's Eye-Opening Competition
April 25, 2013

As a judge in CTIA's annual wireless competition, I was looking for what's new, earthshaking and transformative, and I was very impressed with many entries. I think you will be as well. Every few years there is an earthquake in the wireless industry -- something new that redefines and transforms everything.

Magellan SmartGPS Does the Cloud Right
April 22, 2013

With smartphones and an increasing number of tablets becoming GPS-capable, it is easy to write off dedicated GPS players. So many seem stuck in the past -- days when devices needed a wired connection for updates and didn't seem to be aware of Web services they might be ideal for, like Yelp. I think it is time to revisit the dedicated GPS player, and I'll use the Magellan SmartGPS as an example of the current best of class.

Can Apple's 'Genius' Sprout Far From the Tree?
April 17, 2013

Messianic tendencies are seldom healthy, but they can be doubly destructive in business, where a misstep, missed trend or messy product launch can turn last year's wunderkind into this year's washout. So it's interesting to consider why Silicon Valley -- along with much of the rest of IT -- is so fixated on "rock star" executives. If you think an industry that prides itself on innovation would be immune to self-indulgent behavioral clichés, you'd be wrong.

The Rebirth of PCs, or Telling IT to Frack Off Again
April 15, 2013

I've been watching the horrid numbers surrounding the PC market with double digit declines and folks increasingly talking about the "death of the PC," but I don't think the PC is dying any more than computing was dying when the PC was created. What we are seeing is a rapid evolution of the platform -- a shift to where the calculations are made back to a centralized resource, but the end result is at least as personal as we have always had.

Using Cloud Analytics to Corral Big Data
April 12, 2013

Strategic Big Data and Actionable Analytics are two of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, according to Gartner. Yet only 12 percent have a big data strategy that governs their daily operations, a recent survey of 339 data management professionals by SAS and SourceMedia found. In my view, this gap is the result of years of unfulfilled promises from a previous generation of business intelligence and data integration vendors.

The Wild and Wonderful Future of Wireless
April 11, 2013

The wireless industry is in the middle of a transformation. That means there are many new opportunities going forward, but there are many new challenges as well. Which ideas, companies and sectors will win is the question. As a wireless and technology industry analyst, I have followed and worked with many companies as they changed the industry -- and change continues.

The Say-Anything Salesperson Is a CRM Killer
April 11, 2013

I was talking to a friend of mine whose company had a rough first quarter. As is often the case, both sales and marketing came under scrutiny; several salespeople were let go, and marketing is now under a microscope. In trying to perform a post-mortem on the problems, we struck upon the issue of salespeople. The sales manager held up a former employee as an example of the kind of people he wanted; this guy was a go-getter.

OpenStack Gives the Open Source Cloud a Lift
April 09, 2013

Since its start in the summer of 2010, the OpenStack open source cloud computing project has been the subject of a lot of hype. Today, the technology, backers and users of OpenStack are giving substance to all of that sizzle, and skepticism is giving way to service provider and enterprise use cases across the globe. OpenStack is relatively immature and still requires a high degree of technical aptitude to deploy, but its community continues to grow.

The Next Big Thing in Smartphones: Multiple Video Camera Support
April 08, 2013

I've been meeting with a number of companies that build video-editing software, and I've been becoming increasingly concerned that we aren't at all ready for a world in which nearly every car and every head has a streaming camera attached to it. Regardless of whether we are prepared or not, I think it likely that the next big smartphone feature will be the ability to stream multiple cameras at once.

5 Things That Kill CRM ROI Dead
April 05, 2013

Back in the old days -- like around 2003 -- the rate of what was termed "CRM failure" was unacceptably high. You often heard it bandied about that 70 percent of implementations were failures. That was an estimate -- companies were not coming forward to confess their CRM disasters, so building a scientific sample was impossible. Still, the number reflected the general dissatisfaction.

It's Time for Aereo to Soar
April 04, 2013

Aereo streams television over the Internet for a fee -- so far only in the New York City region. Its expected rapid rollout has not happened over the past year. Why? One reason is that Aereo was being sued by various broadcasters. However, the decision handed down this week from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals looks good for Aereo.