The Tech Toy That Will Probably Cause My Divorce

I’m late to the smartphone party. That’s okay. It’s only recently that I could justify buying one of these expensive gadgets, both professionally and personally. They also were a wee bit more expensive than I would have preferred. Also, let’s be honest, I’ve been burned by enough version 1.0 products to know not to do that with my phone. But the time was ripe.

My new baby is a Samsung Continuum Galaxy S. Sounds like a starship on Star Trek doesn’t it? I have yet to see a more melodramatic and pompous products name. It is the complete opposite of the simplicity of the iPhone name. That’s not surprising since it’s philosophy is pretty different too.

This is a good time to introduce Tom’s Law of Usability, Stability, and Flexibility. It states that usability and stability are inversely proportional to flexibility for IT and Electronics products. The Geek Corollary to that Law states “Geeks prize flexibility over usability and stability because, heck, we can figure it out, right?” You see this played out dramatically in the operating system market. On the far right is Mac OS X. It’s pretty, it’s easy, and you have one way of doing anything. That’s why you only have one button on your mouse – because that’s all you need and if you want more you are doing something wrong (dammit!). Mac’s are for people who say “I just want you to tell me how to do <fill in the blanks>!” This is true of all of Apple’s products. They excel at simplicity as long as you do things the way you are told.

Linux is on the other end of the spectrum. If you don’t have to drop to the command line a couple of times a day, then go get a Mac! Seriously, Linux users like the fact that their are ten ways to do something, each with varying degrees of difficulty. They like the fact that they have to edit a 57 page XML-based configuration file. Registries are for babies and the mentally incompetent. With Linux, you can remake you computer into your own image down to rewriting the kernel if you please – and who wouldn’t want to do that? Microsoft Windows lives in a space between the Linux and Mac worlds, trying to balance usability with flexibility and taking hard knocks for not achieving either. It’s not fair but neither is life.

This Law applies to my phone. It is based on Android, a Google Linux derivative. Compared to any other phone I have ever had, it has infinitely more settings, configurations, and options. In other words, it’s way cool! It’s not really even a phone. It’s a tiny computer that happens to make calls. I can customize it at least as good as my Windows and Linux computers. I can add software from anywhere (not just the Verizon app store) and even connect it to my home network. Heck, I have used it to get a remote desktop to a server on my LAN. It is just the neatest toy which is why my wife is starting to hate it. It’s only a matter of time before I will hear “Put that damn thing down when I’m trying to talk to you” or something like that.

But, just like a typical Linux computer it has it’s foibles. Ever so often it just locks up. No reason. It just seems to go home for the evening and hangs out a “We’re Closed” sign. There’s no reset button so I have to pull the battery, an action that requires opening up the case. I cringe every time I have to do that. It feels like something I shouldn’t be doing.

But this is truly a device for geeks. There are lots of ways to really screw this puppy up, not the least of which is misbehaving software. That’s its charm. You can customize this phone/tiny laptop to your heart’s content without getting permission from mother Apple.

Now, if only I can stop playing Angry Birds. That’s like game crack.

Shaking the Smartphone OS Cocktail

The difference between a mélange and a mess is balance. A mélange mixes together disparate elements into a cohesive combination by carefully balancing each part in relation to the other parts. A mess, by contrast, has no balance. It’s a jumble of confusing elements that fight against each other. It’s why one bartender can make the perfect cocktail and another a horrible brew with the same ingredients.

The smartphone OS market right now is a mess not a mélange. Rather than a handful of operating systems that compliment each other we have too many that do the same thing and fight with each other. While this will eventually shake out, at the moment it is a confusing mess for the consumer.

I’m about to step up to a smartphone. It’s been a long time coming. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what value these devices had. They had neither the software or power that I crave in a computer nor, in most cases, the sound quality I want in a phone. Both of those situations have changed. The devices and apps have become more powerful and hence, more useful. The sound quality has also increased dramatically. This is a great time to buy these devices too. Prices are dropping and data coverage expanding.

It’s the operating systems that are holding me back. There are too many of them to choose from. Smartphones are not like old school cell phones. In my old mobile phones the operating system really didn’t matter. The carrier and phone did but not the OS. Whether you bought a phone from Nokia, LG, Samsung, or Motorola, the features of the phone and phone company (flip or stick? service in the desert?) decide your experience.

No longer. Now, like a computer, you have to decide on an OS and boy are there a lot of them. Ticking off the major ones in my head I came up with Apple iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows 7 Mobile, and RIM’s BlackBerry 6 OS. That’s five major smartphone operating systems I can come up with using no research. All with incompatible apps, offered on different devices that have different features, on different carriers, and available in different countries. If I was starting from scratch, I would need a matrix of carriers (probably only the major ones like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Nextel), device manufacturers (the ones I’ve mentioned plus HTC and RIM) and five operating systems. All before I got to the features of the phone. At a minimum that’s a 4X6X5. For you math geeks that means as many as 120 combinations. Even if I eliminate some combinations as non-existent, such as Blackberry OS with anything but a RIM device, it’s still a big number before heading out to look at the phones that support my X by Y by Z combination.

Complicating matters is that smartphones are only one slice of the mobile pie. I have to take into account that I might want a pad device someday. That makes the OS choice even more important since I wouldn’t want more than one mobile OS with incompatible apps. It’s bad enough that my laptop and phone will have different applications and operating systems. No need to make it three different operating systems.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were clear distinctions between any of these operating systems and their apps. Perhaps from the point of view of the folks who design them and the analysts who cover the mobile market there is. To consumers, however, it’s all the same. You have gestures, even if they are different. You have apps, even if they are different. You have buttons and some type of virtual keyboard, even if they are different. At best, ones choice is determined by whimsical personal preferences.

The thing is, the OS matters. Just like any other computer, the smartphone OS determines what applications are available for your platform. Which operating systems a software developer writes for depends less on technical details and much more on market share. My choices will be limited by which OS app developers think will provide them the most exposure in the market. Most software companies don’t want to develop for an operating system that won’t have much market share or be around very long.

I’ve been in this industry long enough to know this won’t continue. Sooner or later there will be a shakeout and half of these operating systems will disappear. Some won’t that should but will be marginalized like Windows CE. Others will become nothing more than user interfaces in much the same way Apple’s OS turned into UNIX under the covers but has kept its Apple GUI. Still others will disappear altogether.

The problem is guessing which ones will live and which will die. No one wants to buy a device that will have an obsolete and discontinued operating system. It’s like buying a Palm device anywhere between 2000 and 2005. If you knew then what we know now you wouldn’t have. I have a desk draw full of obsolete devices like my old Palm devices.  They are, for all practical purposes, museum pieces.

I generally don’t like to make predictions (since they are frequently wrong) but here’s what I think will happen:

• Apple iOS – keeps going. Apple simply doesn’t care about the wider market. That and the cognoscenti love their Apple crack.
• Android – generous licensing will insure that it continues to evolve. It lives!
• Windows 7 Mobile – another failed attempt. Sorry Microsoft. I actually like Vista and Windows 7 on the desktop. The mobile OS is too little too late. It dies. Microsoft money insures it dies slowly and painfully. Please Mt. Ballmer, do a deal with Google and move to Android while you still can.
• WebOS – really? I get that HP paid good money for Palm but with all the other choices, why would I want this. The tablet market? And this from a company who’s last homegrown OS was HP/UX. It dies and HP switches to Android merging whatever is good about WebOS into it.
• Blackberry OS – this is a tough one. RIM has an enormous and fanatical installed base but it’s slipping. They had the first viable smartphone-like device which helped get them established. At the time you had to rely on their closed system for email. Now, that’s a liability. I’ll bet that they quietly move to something else but with Blackberry extensions so the old guard can feel happy. My guess is that it will be Android too.

Given where the market is going, the basic mobile phone probably has only a few more generations before they are all smartphones. There will be basic versions for the cheap, the Luddite, and the burner phone market. Those will still be smartphones, just lobotomized ones.

In the meantime, there are too many choices and that will hurt the market. Consumers like simplicity. Until recently, mobile phones were fairly simple devices with a small number of functions. As long as the major bases were covered (make and receive calls, SMS, a couple of toys like tip calculators) you were fine. Now they are computing endpoints with all the same problems as a laptop. Too many operating systems makes it overly complicated. It can’t continue like this.

For the smartphone OS folks who I’ve just insulted remember this: This was the same situation in the personal computer/workstation market in 1990. You had DOS, Apple, dozens of UNIX flavors, CP/M in all of it’s variants, as well as proprietary workstation operating systems. Remember IRIS? Ask your kids (huh? what’s that?) and you will feel old. I loved developing for Apollo’s Domain OS but where is it now? Next to the VAX in the Smithsonian. The market demanded simplicity, leaving Microsoft with the lion’s share. It didn’t matter that DOS was inferior to UNIX or Domain OS. Microsoft still ate their lunch. That UNIX, Apple, and a few others still exist is no solace. They are niche players now, not majors.  Windows and Linux make up the majority of the market by fulfilling different needs. They compliment each other.

Since I have to bet, I’m betting on Android. I’m locked into Verizon with no burning need to change which makes the decision easier. Choosing Android eliminates Apple and RIM devices too, further simplifying things. I almost don’t care what the phone is now. I’ll probably decide on price.

Novell Rides Off Into The Sunset

The curtain comes down for yet another 80’s era pioneer. Novell is finally throwing in the hat (not a Red Hat mind you) and selling itself off to Attachmate for the ungodly sum of US$2.2B. There are a couple of interesting questions about this acquisition but first a moment of silence for an historic old ship that has run up on the shoals of competition. At one point they were as hot as Google. But like Sun and other companies of my youth they didn’t keep up and will soon be no more.

Why sell now? Because Novell is obviously not going anywhere. At one time they had the number two PC server operating system, have the number two server Linux and generally were number two in a many things. You can’t be number two without eventually ending up on someone’s shoe. So, if someone offers you enough money to float a missile cruiser, you take it. That’s being responsible. Or maybe the rent’s too damn high. (Caution: Sound is too damn high in this web site).

Why US$2.2B? Got me. I mean that’s not that much of a premium over Novell’s market cap but it’s a lot of money for a company that is a shade of its former self. Part of why that number is so high is because Microsoft (through CPTN Holdings LLC) dropped US$450M into the pot. They have a lot of cash. For them, this is like buying a pack of gum. Still, I have a hard time seeing this pay off for Attachmate. Unless it’s not about paying off for Attachmate per se. (I love foreshadowing…)

Who? Attachmate? I know what you mean. Who the heck are these guys that they can go out and buy Novell. That’s like Meritline (a purveyor of cheap Chinese electronics) buying Best Buy. Seems backwards. Attachmate has a product portfolio that looks like a hodgepodge of data center management products. The deal makes sense from a product point of view in that Novell has their own hodgepodge of data center tools and technology. So, depending on what stays with Attachmate and what goes to Microsoft, you will have a company with a huge collection of somewhat related technology. Combine them into certain combinations and you have a bunch of companies. The funny thing is that Attachmate is nearly as old as Novell but you don’t think of them like Novell. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Attachmate is owned by a group of private equity groups. That, plus it’s product portfolio mélange, makes it look like a rollup. Rollups keep going by rolling up more companies and selling them off in combinations. It’s like cooking – a little of this, and a little of that, a pinch of something else and Voila! you have a dish you can sell to investors. That might be where the pay off is.

Why should we care? Really we shouldn’t but we do. Whenever a company with a history like Novell’s gets absorbed and turns into little more than a brand it’s sad. We really should if something bad happens next like SUSE Linux goes away, reducing competition in the Linux market. But really, I doubt that will happen and if it does there’s still OpenSuse, right? If you’re a Novell customer of course you care. You don’t know what these guys at Attachmate (or Microsoft) might do and that has to mess with your head. Otherwise, it’s not a game changing acquisition.

So, what does happen next? My guess is that they package up SUSE Linux with some other stuff and spin it off to investors or another company.  If I’m the folks in Redmond I want the identity management IP. That would go along way to creating online services and backend software for trusted Internet environments. Attachmate absorbs the rest and moves on its merry way. Depending what it gets for the other pieces of Novell (like SUSE Linux and ZenWorks) and what it can combine with its own products and sell off, it might make money on this. This is not about product engineering. It’s about financial engineering. And in this type of financial engineering one plus one can equal three.

I wave my hat to Novell as it rides off into the sunset. We’ll miss you amigo.

What! No Virtual Booth Models?

I’m “at” the Comdex Virtual event right now. It’s an unusual experience. This is not the first time I’ve participated in virtual trade shows as both an attendee and a speaker. It’s been awhile though and the experience is a bit different than it was in the past. It’s much more elaborate, more like a real conference. Unfortunately, some things are the same such as jumpy video.

I get virtual trade shows. Let’s face it, for a lot of attendees big trade shows are boondoggles. Expensive boondoggles. You have to pay to travel, pay for hotels and meals, and pay for the show. A lot of IT managers used to justify trade shows as part of employee education. That was true for some people but a lot of folks got too little “education” out of these industry confabs. Instead they got a lot of swag (the stuff they give away at booths). Marketing people even have a term for these folks. We call them trick-or-treaters. Besides junk to fill up their cubicles all that most attendees got were vendor pitches masquerading as seminars. Not a good use of limited budget dollars.

From the vendor point of view, you spend a big chunk of your marketing budget on booths and travel and came back with few qualified leads. Instead of customers with money, you waste your time on trick-or-treaters and folks too low on the totem pole to have any influence on spending. Trade shows in general have two business goals. First, spreading the word i.e. marketing. Branding, education, PR, positioning, and messaging are key activities at trade shows. In this regard, trade shows are generally successful. The press is at these events and people have little else to do but listen to your message. Unless the show is in Las Vegas. Then all bets are off. Get it? Bets? Okay we’ll move on.

The second big goal of trade shows, from a vendor perspective, is lead generation. No matter how you look at it, there are better ways to generate leads. Again, you have to pull some of your marketing and sales team out of the field so they can sift through lots of the trick-or-treater types to get a few decent leads. It’s not very efficient. To get anyone to talk to you at all, you have to sink a boatload of money into flashy booths, presentations, entertainment (magicians, comedians, etc.) and other diversions to cut through the white noise of the expo floor. That’s just to swipe the badge of someone unlikely to buy anything in the first place.

Virtual trade shows are intriguing because they are cheap for everyone. No flashy booths or expensive travel for vendors. For attendees it has the advantage of  allowing you to do other things while “attending” (like your job) and it doesn’t take a big divot out of your budget. I can see it for education and messaging. I still don’t see it for lead generation.

I’m fascinated by how much effort has gone into making Comdex Virtual mimic the experience of a real trade show. There are keynotes, breakout sessions, virtual booths and a lobby with flashing advertisements. There’s even hospitality suites that you’re not allowed into without an invite. You get to feel the same pang of of disappointment you would experience walking past a real hospitality suite that you’re not invited into. Ah, the memories.

Despite advances in show design there are still a bunch of annoying quirks. Video is jumpy and makes every speaker sound like Max Headroom. If Hulu and YouTube could figure this out you’d think Comdex Virtual could. The slides for the keynote don’t change. It’s probably a stupid technical problem but it effects the experience. Some of the virtual booths have tiny PowerPoint presentations running. It’s like business for Smurfs. And just like Smurf signs you can’t read the slides. Folks like Microsoft and EMC figured that out and had video presentations. You can hear just fine no matter how tiny the talking head is.

What Comdex Virtual can’t reproduce is, for me, the most important aspect of a real show – running into people I know. A lot of business gets done when you happen upon colleagues and old friends. They try to do this with the VAR Bar - group chat room - but it doesn’t work. It is overpopulated with vendors and the text scrolls so fast that you can’t really see anything interesting. It is tough to search for someone you know (the virtual equivalent of scanning the room) because the application had the annoying habit of suddenly jumping to the top of the list. Besides, looking around a physical room is much faster than scrolling through more than 200 names and icons.

Comdex Virtual goes a long way to making virtual trade shows more enjoyable and interesting. The structure of the event, made to appear like a live event, provides familiar context. It is certainly easier on the budget. Still, it doesn’t allow for one of the most crucial parts of a trade event – human contact.

At least the food is better than it was at live Comdex. And I don’t have to wait for a cab back to my hotel. That’s something the original event could never deliver on.

Hurd The News About HP? What Does The Oracle Tell Us?

So, first Michael Hurd resigns as HP CEO because of minor accounting snafus related to his totally not sexually harassing a B-movie actress (snicker!). Then, Oracle hires him “allowing” one of the co-Presidents, Charles Phillips, to leave.  Phillips apparently had his own public problems with a woman (snicker!) .  Now, HP is suing Hurd because – now get this – they have a non-disclosure. Not a non-compete. An NDA. So HP is suing Hurd after they effectively forced him to resign over something he didn’t do with a woman because of something he has yet to do.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. The mind reels with questions here. Let’s choose a few major ones.

• Are technology executives of such low moral fiber that they keep getting into trouble with women other than their wives?
• Is Hurd just so good that Oracle is willing to deal with the inevitable lawsuits?
• If so, was HP just that stupid for letting him go?
• Can you really sue someone for something they might do but haven’t yet done?

Let’s tackle these in order. First off, I know a lot of technology executives. While some are ethically and morally challenged, as a class they don’t seem any worse than anyone else. I don’t mean no worse than other business executives. I mean no worse than the guy who delivers my mail or teaches my kids in school. Really, they are about the same as everyone else. Except politicians. Those folks don’t seem to know what ethics are at all. Oh, and Wall Street. Don’t get me started on Wall Street…

Next question - is Hurd just that good that he’s worth the trouble? Well, it’s possible that Oracle didn’t think he would be this much trouble. He didn’t, after all, have a non-compete. That still blows my mind but we’ll come back to that later. More likely, Larry Ellison just didn’t care. You see, Hurd has done some pretty remarkable things at HP. Mr. Ellison clearly thinks so, going so far as to send an email to the New York Times calling the HP board “idiots” for letting him go. That kind of tells me that he thinks Hurd is special.

The next question sort of answers itself. Given the mess HP made of Hurd’s departure it doesn’t look like they were doing the smart things. Really, didn’t they think they could deal with one aging actress who got hit on by an executive (if that even happened)? On the surface, it at least seems like cowardice. I’m willing to accept that there may be more to the story than is generally known. Maybe. Still, guys with Hurd’s track record are not exactly sitting around waiting for “The Call”. It does seem at least a little stupid.

Look at it this way: If they had tossed a tiny fraction of what they are going to spend on 3Par at the B-movie actress, this all could have gone away in an instant.

Finally, can they sue Hurd for not adhering to a non-disclosure when it hasn’t happened yet? A non-compete is different. The minute he took the job at Oracle he would have violated a non-compete. But he didn’t have a non-compete! I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. If you sell a bagel restaurant you sign a non-compete. This guy was CEO of a huge corporation. How did that one get through? But I digress (and rant a bit admittedly).

Hurd can’t violate the non-disclosure until he actually disclosures something and HP finds out about it. What would a court say here? “Mr Hurd is ordered not disclose trade secrets like he has already agreed to and has so far complied with”? Huh? He has to do something to harm them then they can go after him. What it looks like here is that the HP Board wanted but didn’t get a non-compete. I can’t believe they just forgot. Since they didn’t get the non-compete they want to make one out of the non-disclosure. It’s like legal alchemy. Take a base agreement and turn it into a golden one. The contract is what it is. It is not something else just because you want it to be.

Maybe the argument is that he can’t be an Oracle President and not disclose sensitive information. That’s a scary argument mostly because it assumes guilt. This suit assumes the inevitability of wrongdoing. Even if HP feels that Mr. Hurd has such low moral character that it’s likely he will disclosure something (see above) he still has to do the bad thing first. It’s not enough to say “we feel he might.”

This is not a trivial matter. Technology businesses cannot exist without confidentially. Everyone signs confidentiality agreements. Who will now if they can be turned into non-competes and other types of agreements by fiat. If you can be sued because you might do something but haven’t then would you sign an NDA? Will you enter into a confidentially agreement that is a non-compete in disguise? This has far reaching consequences in all aspects of business. Everyone signs non-disclosures when they go to work for a company, enter into partnerships, work with customers and vendors, etc. What if all of those magically turned into non-competes too? If you except the argument that you can’t work for someone else without disclosing trade secrets then you effectively do that and bind everyone to their current company. Like indentured servants only with cubicles.

So, the answer to the last question is “Yes. You can sue someone for something they haven’t yet done.” It doesn't mean you will win though. Hopefully HP won’t prevail. That would be devastating to all business.

And guys, stay away from the booth babes. You shouldn’t have them in the first place. They are insulting to men and women alike but clearly a minefield for the C-level executives. Protect your CEO. Don’t use booth babes.

Whereby I Commit Heresy

It is axiomatic that when you develop a product you listen to your customers. Throughout the development process, even before product conceptualization, you are talking to customers. You get their opinions, wants, desires, and hopefully needs. Most Product Requirements include something about the “Voice of the Customer”.

Although listening to customers is a good thing, if it is adhered to too strictly it can really screw up product development. That’s right, listening to customers can mess up your products. Heresy! See, I delivered on my promise.

Here’s how customers can tank your product.

Customers don’t know always know what they need. They more likely know what they want but not always what they need. When gathering data, customers will talk to you about features and technology but not business. Take servers. We keep making faster servers whose CPUs are mostly underutilized. One of the reasons that server virtualization has taken off is because server manufacturers built in too much capacity. They did that because their customers told them too. What customers needed was better application performance. They just assumed that meant a faster processor or more memory. Talking to customers about problems and behaviors yields a better response. It’s just harder to do.

Which brings us to the next problem – customers answer the question you ask of them. Asked if you want a faster server who won’t say yes. A lot of companies don’t dig in deep to find out what they plan to do with that extra performance. If you asked what is the biggest issue they have with applications and infrastructure you will likely get a different answer. Worse yet, sales and marketing people tend to introduce features into the conversation that customers never even thought about. How many times has someone suggested a feature to a customer, had the customer said they liked it, but then the same customer wouldn't buy it. It happens all the time.

Even if you understand what someone needs, that doesn’t mean they can pay for it. Years ago, when I was a product line manager, I was told repeatedly that my product line needed SGI drivers (it was that long ago). There were lots of customers who wanted it, need it even. When we queried those same customers as to how much they were willing to pay for those drivers, we got a different answer. To have listened to the “voice of the customer” would have committed us to an expensive development, test, and service effort for something that no one would pay for.

The biggest problem is dealing with conflicting needs. Unless you have an incredibly homogenous customerbase you will not find a clear picture of what everyone needs. Instead, you will get a fragmented view based on competing needs. How do you resolve these conflicts? Who do you listen to more? How do you make room for innovation? To put it simply, you can’t be all things to all people so compromises will have to be made. That can be difficult especially if you are just chasing features.

Here is where you see the effects of big customers. Big consumers of your products tend to dictate that their needs come first. Wal-Mart is famous for this in consumer goods as are large banks for IT. The problem is that they are not all of your customers and may not be where your growth is. By catering to a few powerful customers, you risk alienating other customers and making it difficult to break into other markets. You might also spend a lot of resources on features with narrow appeal. Even worse, large institutions tend to be conservative. Given too much credence they can stall innovation in your products leading to slow death for the company.

The overwhelming problem with listening to customers is that it isn’t enough. You have to understand their business and industry. Only then will you have enough context to figure out what they really need and what they are likely to need in the future. A great product anticipates future needs instead of simply meeting current known ones.

So listen to your customers. Just not too much.

Of iPads and Hamptons

Last week I was on vacation with my family in Williamsburg, Virginia. I highly recommend it if you haven't been there. We stayed at a Hampton Inn which is usually considered a budget hotel. It was a fantastic hotel. I often stay at Hampton Inns because they have everything I want and need at a great price. Big rooms, comfy beds, a decent TV with 100 channels, and a free breakfast buffet. They also have attentive and super friendly service. They always seem to be be staffed with nice and helpful people.

Hampton Inn gets my business on a regular basis for one reason – they focus on things that are important to travelers and don't bother with needless frills. A well appointed business center is more important to me than a fancy lobby that I will never sit in. By focusing on what is of real value, they keep costs low and provide a great experience.

That got me thinking about the iPad. I know it sounds weird but I think about products a lot. I love the idea of the iPad. I have doodles in my notebook from five years ago for a tablet device like it. Yet, I've found little enthusiasm for it amongst regular folk (meaning non-geeks). Even hardcore Mac people who seem to be willing to buy every little thing that Steve Jobs comes up with aren't that interested. Why?

The typical answer I get is that they don't know what it is for. Some will point to their iPhone and say “I already have one and it makes phone calls too!” or “What is it? An eBook reader? Internet device? I already have a laptop.”

The problem with the iPad is not that it can only run one application at a time. That's certainly a problem but one that Apple will eventually fix. The big problem is that it isn't solving a big problem. It doesn't focus on what is important to people. The iPhone did. Apple understood that people wanted information wherever they were. The netbook concept was also successful by providing only Internet access (pretty much) and not trying to be a full blown laptop. eBook readers such as the Kindle or Nook are addressing the needs of voracious readers. They want to be able to carry ten books on a plane and still have it fit in their carry-on bag.

The iPad, in contrast, is neither fish nor fowl. It's an Internet device but with few advantages over a laptop or netbook. It's not exactly an eBook reader. Those have special displays to making reading easier over long periods of time. Traditional displays can be tough on the eyes when reading a book (I know. I tried it). As a media player, it is rather large to haul around just to listen to tunes.

All products must pass two tests. One is the “who cares?” test. Will anyone care enough to take a look at it? Does it grab your attention in some way? The second test, a more stringent one, is the “show me the money!” test. Will someone care enough plunk down their hard earned cash to buy one?

Apple's reputation and design aesthetics will almost always pass the first test. Pretty helps. Cool gizmo features like the giant touch screen will also help to get people to at least take a look. The second test can only be passed by providing enough consumers enough value for the right price. As far as the iPad goes, I'm not hearing the love out there.

I like the idea of the iPad. A small, lightweight, device that surfs the Internet, let's me check email, read eBooks, listen to music, and watch video on a screen that is big enough for my old eyes to see. Others don't share my enthusiasm. Perhaps the iPad tries to do too much. It does seem to want to compete with other devices that most people already have. Or perhaps it is simple too much money for something that doesn't replace a laptop or even an eBook reader.

For a great many people, the value is simply not there. Apple, in trying to create a trend, may have missed the most important aspect of product development – give people what they really want at a reasonable price and nothing more. Here, the value/price ratio appears to be way off. I'm hoping I'm completely wrong since the death of the iPad could set the entire tablet computing segment back.

Or maybe Steve Jobs should needs to stay at a Hampton Inn from time to time.

Blessed Be The Makers

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The current recession is a tough one for sure. Not only is it the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression but the supposed recovery is looking to be a jobless one. In past recessions, lots of talented people were let loose on the marketplace with a few bucks of severance or buy out money in their pockets. Many of these creative people ran out and started companies. Others went and joined these new companies, which they would not have done in better times. Some of today's bellwether technology companies grew up in the midst of recession.

This is unlikely to happen this time around. With money so tight, funding a new business is a bigger challenge than it has been in the past. From banks to Venture Capitalists, the money is just not there and the requirements for funding are more stringent than ever before. The upshot of the lack of investment funding is that companies will need to fend for themselves much longer than they did in the past and not everyone has the stomach for that. Going without meaningful income while working like mad is hard to do. When you think you will do it for years, it can be downright disheartening.

There is a bright spot however. Bubbling up from the underground is a grassroots movement of people who like to build homegrown technology. Called Makers (and the related movement, Crafters), this is a DIY movement that celebrates homemade tech. Makers create electronic doo-dads from open source hardware like Arduino boards. They build funky mechanical devices. They blow stuff up and put it back together.

In my youth the computer industry was like this. Back in the day we were called Hackers until the term was co-opted by the bad guys. Many of these same hackers created software and hardware companies that still endure.

Like the Hackers before them, Makers do what they do for the sheer joy of it. They create devices to do interesting and sometimes silly things. Whereas launching a Christmas tree with rockets is kind of silly (and dangerous), other projects have real usefulness. For example, a cheap strobe algae bioreactor is serious stuff for biotech and alternative energy.

Makers know how to build product on a shoestring and have no wish for the pretensions of glitzy high tech companies. Instead, technology is reason enough itself. The simple fun of making something is what drives Makers.

Makers are also forming collectives to share resources and lab space. It is not hard to imagine these collectives turning into companies some day. Take a group of smart techie folks used to working with little money and stick them in one place. Before long you are bound to have a “Hey! I got an idea how we can make a few bucks” moment. There is some spill over into the software world too. Call it a resurgence of the old values. Groups of people with skills who are under or unemployed, writing code for giggles until one day – BAM! - the great idea emerges.

And these folks will have little use for the bankers who spurned them and cause so much economic misery. They will remember that they had to work at Best Buy because a bunch of greedy money people screwed things up. About the only people they will listen to will be the Angel investors because they've built something themselves. The Makers will drive hard bargains when they do take money since this is a labor of love not simply business. They will once again be an engine of growth in the technology market. Watch for it. It's already starting.

Blessed be the Makers for they will raise us out of the depths.

Obfuscation through non-erudite terminology

I've spent a lot of time around both lawyers and engineers. One of the common complaints about either group is a tendency to say things in non-human terms. The assumption is that there an attempt being made to obscure facts through archaic language. Actually, both groups use their own language in an attempt to be more precise, as do scientists, police, and accountants. It is language designed to communicate to each other not to the world at large. The problems occur when they try and explain what they are doing to folks outside their profession using that same special language.

Marketing folks, on the other hand, are supposed to communicate in ways that customers understand. In my own career, I have often been employed as a geek who can speak, translating from technospeak into plain language. That is the heart of technical marketing.

Instead, we consistently find technical marketing people using language that no one understands. It's not that it's too technical. That would make sense if you are selling to techies. No, quite the opposite. A lot of the time, it simply doesn't make much sense. Let's look at the sampling below. In an attempt to not pick on any one company, I won't say who specific quotes came from. The list was a quick sampling from a number of company websites, technology news sites, white paper titles, and press releases.

• Navigating to Customer Satisfaction

• Innovations in Managing IT Service Quality

• ... To Accelerate Innovation Across The Network

• Improve Business Efficiency and Agility & Enables organizational agility. These came from two different web sites

• Sustainability can help you unlock the value of green

• Provides actionable knowledge

• Reduce costs as you solve IT challenges across your information infrastructure.

Most of these don't make much sense do they? “Navigating to Customer Satisfaction” would kind of make sense if this were a shipping company (it's not). I'm hoping they really didn't mean “actionable”. “Actionable is a legal term that means an action that is grounds for a lawsuit. If the knowledge is actionable, then I don't want it provided.

My favorite is “Sustainability can help you unlock the value of green.” What does “green” mean here? Besides the color, it is often misused as an adjective to mean environmental friendly. That phrase is, I'll grant you, kind of an obtuse way of saying “good for the environment” but at least people get that. When did green become a noun? Can I have two greens to go? Maybe they mean a putting green. Building a golf course around my green will unlock it's value quite nice, thank you. Or salad greens, perhaps? In that case, the value comes from destroying (that is eating) them not from sustaining them. That sounds more like something I would need Ex Lax for.

I'm not against using language in a sophisticated manner. This blog has a plethora of SAT words like obtuse, obfuscation, archaic , erudite, and, of course, plethora. What I don't like is mangling language, especially in marketing. Marketing is supposed to make it obvious and clear why you should buy something. Instead, we are treated to tongue and mind twisting phrases that only confuse. I don't want to hear “optimizes performance envelope capabilities”. Say “It's much faster” or even “ higher performing” instead. I know what that means without my decoder ring.

Speaking of the decoder ring, here is a (tongue in cheek) glance at part of it. I hope this helps in the future.

TechnoBusiness Marketing Speak	What it really means?
Innovate, Innovation	To make something that is totally new. Or something that sounds new but isn't.
Enabling	Helping... you to spend money.
Driving	Pushing... you to spend money.
Solution, Solutions	A fix to a problem. Or, a bunch of stuff thrown together into groups. We can sell you bundles this way.
Mobility	Moving around. Like moving your money into our pockets.
Optimize	To make something so that it is as good as it can be. Unfortunately, we seem to have to optimize constantly so it really doesn't make things optimal.
Efficiency (Attain Efficiency)	Using the least resources possible. Notice, that money is not included in this. Your money anyway.
Productivity (Boost Productivity)	Doing more with fewer resources... including your money.
Smarter	Not doing stupid things. It does suggest that you are doing some dumb things right now doesn't it? Feel insulted?
Business Need	Stuff your business needs to keep going. As in “our business needs your money”

Sometimes though, you hear something that is pretty straight up. It doesn't mean you believe it but at least you understand it. So, from the front page of Microsoft's website comes “Windows 7 is pretty dope.” It's not hard to guess that someone likes Windows 7. If only we could always be that obvious.

Ba Da Bing!

Microsoft has recently launched it's new search engine, called Bing, with a massive advertising campaign. Excuse me. It's not a search engine. It's “the worlds first decision engine.” Whatever that means.

Okay, I know what that means. At least what Microsoft wants you to think it is. The thrust of the marketing campaign is that you get better tools for deciding which sites to bother. Of course, that's not the real purpose of Bing. At its heart, Bing is about sticking Google in the eye with a pointed stick. Not unlike the purpose of Google Chrome which is to kick Internet Explorer in the groin. As good as they are, neither delivers the knockout that these companies would like to deliver. And so it goes.

Being the hopeless tech geek that I am, I couldn't help messing around with Bing and found a few interesting surprises. The unique features that Microsoft has created have led me to use Bing pretty much the way I approach Chrome – it is more useful in certain circumstance but won't change my everyday habits.

Google is still my go-to search engine for most everyday uses in the much the same way Firefox is my everyday browser. When I want something quick and dirty, Google is my engine of choice. That's not going to change. It excels at finding the usual stuff quickly. If what I'm looking for will pop up in the first three entries, Google is great. Its clean interface helps, providing users the basics like the site name and summary, so that it is easy to identify a site quickly.

Bing is different. It is really good at organizing result sets. Like Google, you can toggle between different types of searches, such as Images, Video or News, using links at the top of the page. Unlike Google, the information on the page is arranged into logical categories, specific to the search, with the best hits displayed in each category. You can see more of the them if you like but that's usually pointless. If what you want is not in the top five hits, its not anywhere in the results.

For example, in searching for Helen Kane (a singer from the 1930s that was the model for Betty Boop), I get general results, then categories such as Songs and Albums. Even better, on the left side are similar searches. In this case, actors and musicians from the late 1920's and early 1930's are featured. Makes sense.

Together, these two features make it easier for me to drill into just what I want without complicated queries. For more obscure information, Bing makes it easier to find what I need by guessing some structure and organizing the results accordingly.

Another feature that Microsoft is touting is the little popup on the side of each entry that gives a more intelligent summary of the site. It's fine for what it does but is more of an amusement than a useful tool. You don't get enough to avoid clicking through to the site and the simple summary on the page is usually enough to decide if you want to click through in the first place. Cool technology in search of meaning.

There is yet another advantage to Bing, though the same could be said for Yahoo, Ask, and any other search engine – different results. The dirty little secret of all search engines is that the same query often returns different result sets. The search algorithms are based on statistical equations that can return different sets even when run on the same data. You can sometimes get different results from the same data set by rerunning the same queries on the same engine. Since the search is kind of fuzzy, the result set is not absolute. This has long been one of the reasons that professional researchers will often use more than one commercial database provider even when the underlying data is the same. I saw this a lot in the patent search game.

All that is to say that using multiple engines for particularly difficult searches is a good strategy in any event. When the quick Google search fails to get me what I want, I can now turn to Bing. I get some different results and some better organization.

Technology-wise, Microsoft has come up with excellent search software. Unfortunately, that is not enough to move people toward abandoning Google and using Bing as the search engine of first choice. Instead, it will be where you go when Google doesn't cut it. Good technology but bad business. Bad business because Bing needs advertising and lower hits translates to lower revenue. Bing is not a Google killer. More of a Google annoyer.

Let me put it another way. It's not going to go Ba Da Bing on Google.

Is It Right To Enforce a Non-compete

Over the past few days there has been some intriguing commentary on non-compete agreements. This has been spurred on by the recent hire of Dave Donatelli by HP and subsequent lawsuit from his former (long time) employer EMC. Much of the commentary, mine included, though missed the most important point. We failed to consider the question “Is it right?”

I don't know the particulars of Mr. Donatelli's contract but to me the legal technicalities don't matter. Massachusetts law and California law may well differ as to whether the contract is enforceable but that too does not matter. What is not debated nearly as much is whether it is right to try and break a non-compete agreement in the first place. Steve Duplessie of Enterprise Strategy Group went there but looked at it as a business argument. What does the business get and lose from a non-compete.

What interests me is the moral argument. Having signed a number of these agreements in the past, both on behalf of myself and the company, I have confronted the moral ambiguity of the situation enough times to have an opinion. It breaks down to two questions:

1. When you agree to something freely are you bound to it?

2. Can a company effectively keep you from working when there is nothing more for you at the company?

The legal answers are different between jurisdictions. The morality is more defined – that is to the extent that any morality can be absolute.

Question 1: Should you be as good as your word?

It doesn't matter if you don't like the agreement. Don't sign it and deal with the consequences. Unless someone holds a gun to your head and makes you an offer you cannot refuse, your word should be your bond. Maybe that is an old-fashioned concept but it is the fabric of society. The social contract should always outweigh the legal one. If you agree to something, even if it is inconvenient later, you should abide by that agreement. That is what used to be called honor . Even mercenaries have a code of honor. And it matters. If you will break your agreement with my rival, then you are clearly willing to break your agreements with me. How can there be trust in that environment? Especially at the highest levels, there must be trust or business, communities, and society can't function. It doesn't matter what the law says. Law is for wrongdoers. Keep in mind, this type of behavior is one reason why we are in such a mess economically. People did what was legal but had no honor. It worked for awhile but now they are despised.

So, if you agree to a non-compete you are bound to no matter what California or Massachusetts says. Do what is legal and not moral and you lose your honor. Maybe your soul too.

Question 2: Can we indenture people like this?

The counterargument is that non-compete agreements are a form of indentured servitude. As was pointed out by many, you always can't hold people (in some jurisdictions but not all) to a non-compete if you fire them. Morally it's straightforward. The company ditched you so you should be free to go elsewhere to make a living.

What about someone who leaves voluntarily? Here the situation gets messy. For the average Joe worker, even a typical middle manager, the job is too important to survival to turn it down. It is especially hard to do so when every job requires a non-compete. Even narrow non-competes can effectively keep you from working. You are binding the employee to the company by making it impossible for them to use their skills and knowledge, especially domain and industry knowledge, to continue and further their career. In philosophy it is called Morton's Choice. You have to choose between two bad alternatives - Be bound like a slave or go bankrupt. There is no moral argument for supporting this type of agreement under these circumstances.

For an executive though, things are different. Executives are very highly compensated people who hold the most important secrets of the company in their heads. How do you not use those for your new employer to devastating effect? It is not just industry and domain knowledge that the new employer wants, it's specific knowledge of your former company. Besides, for executives in Fortune 500 companies, having a job is not a matter of survival. I doubt if any of them won't eat if they can't work for a year.

Still, no job can become a form of bound servitude. The executive who wants to leave must have a recourse, a way of working in his industry without becoming a weapon of mass destruction. That can happen by limiting what they do for awhile. In the computer industry a year is a lifetime. In the case of Dave Donatelli, storage is only one part of his portfolio at HP. One solution is to limit involvement in that group for a year. Another possibility is to pay an executive to not work for awhile. That happens a lot in buy outs. Top folks are paid lots of money to sit on the sidelines or just be pundits for a period of time. Perhaps write a book about their management philosophy or birds. Whatever. Will a year off for a C-level individual destroy their career? I doubt it. Might actually help their marriage and make their kids like them better.

Answer 1: Yes

Answer 2: No for regular people, Yes for executives with a safety valve

In a sentence – we should be bound to our word. If, however, you have the equivalent of a gun to your head – that is you need the job to survive and the employer knows it – there should be a safety valve to protect you from becoming a slave to the company. For most executives, this doesn't apply. Ambition is not the same as survival. Still, even an executive can't be bound permanently. Hopefully, cool heads will devise a solution here that is both legal and moral.

My guess is that EMC and HP will come to some agreement rather then let it go to court. A protracted legal battle in multiple jurisdictions won't help them sell anything. It's a cost they don't need. There will be an accommodation. Okay, but has trust been ruined forever?

Just When I Was Losing Hope

This has been a week of marketing hell. First, we get an ER episode on Hulu about the dangers of teenage drinking attached to an ad selling flavored vodka (thanks again Absolut). Then, I had to wrangle with Northwest Airlines in what has to be the single most frustrating customer service situation imaginable. They actually told me that they wouldn't assign me seats so that they could accommodate people “who don't plan ahead”. That's a direct quote. They penalize me for planning ahead so that they can accommodate people who don't. Sounds twisted. It's also probably not true. I think they want to sell me a more expensive seat.

But then, just when all hope is lost, I am reminded again what good marketing can be like. My reminder came via Marc Farley's StorageRap. For those who don't know Marc, he has been around the data storage industry for a long time. He knows his stuff technically (I have had the privilege of working with Marc on some projects) and has published several excellent books. But that is only part of the story. Marc works for 3PAR, one of the millions of storage array vendors out there. He creates some truly imaginative Internet marketing pieces under the StorageRap moniker. StorageRap combines animation, YouTube like amateur video, humor, music, blogging, and Twitter feeds to get the 3Par message out. The League of Suspicious Avatars and the Steering Wheel Cam are two neat constructs that Marc uses to accomplish the marketing mission.

Sometimes it's weird, maybe even a bit obscure (like the bit on chunklets). That fine because it is also eye catching and memorable. The latest video, talking about 3PAR's F Class arrays, is a classic. It uses hip hop and animation in a sort of video game way. Imagine Weird Al Yankovic combined with 50 Cent and living inside an Xbox game. Out there? Sure. It is supposed to get my attention and succeeds brilliantly. I even bothered to look up the F Class array because of it. I don't know if it meets all the claims on the web site but if I was buying arrays, I would probably call to find out (Message to 3PAR sales guys – I'm not buying any arrays. Don't waste time calling me).

That's what good marketing is about. Not only does it grab your attention but it holds it long enough that you can get the message. Ultimately, good marketing compels you to at least consider the product in question.

So in an age of horrible, irresponsible, offensive, ugly marketing that only seems to want to make you run screaming from the room, StorageRap is refreshing. Too bad the 3PAR palate is so small. Then again, at an EMC or IBM, would Marc be allowed to be this interesting and creative. I doubt it.

In a crowded field of very similar looking products, 3PAR stands out and gets our attention through superior marketing. I don't know what they pay Marc, but it isn't nearly enough for the value he creates.

Now, I want to know how he creates those cool avatars...

The Sun Sets

A friend of mine asked me what I thought of the talks between Sun and IBM. At first I was trying to ignore it. The timing of it, coming on the heels of the Cisco announcement and a bunch of Sun talk on cloud computing, seemed suspicious.

But as I wrote my email, I realized that I did have a bunch of opinions on this and, what the heck, might was well put them here for everyone to see.

Before going into all of my deep thoughts, it's full disclosure time. I have Sun stock. Big deal, so do a lot of people who do lousy in the market. That was mean but fair. I have always been a proponent of Sun technology, despite feeling that Solaris is mostly irrelevant to all but a few folks who just don't know when to let go (like Sun).

I see several scenarios for the Sun-IBM merger deal.

Scenario 1. It might not happen at all so don't get too excited. A lot of folks think that IBM might overpay for Sun and I can see it getting killed by somewhat frugal shareholders. It's hard to value technology companies since the intellectual property often far outweighs earnings. You can see that being the case with Sun. Besides, they are only in “talks”. More can happen to kill the deal then can happen to help it to close. Who knows what what the result will be when CEO egos bump into each other.

Scenario 2. Also known as the doomsday scenario where Sun turns into a brown dwarf and burns out. Sun needs this more than IBM. They have great technology but they can't seem to sell it. It is really sad to see where they are financially, especially of you are a shareholder like myself. Sun has to do something while there is still something left that has value. Worst case scenario, Sun runs out of money, market share, and ideas. Then, everyone loses. What's truly awful is the nagging suspicion that they have already run out of ideas and the money and market share will follow soon. The doomsday scenario is unlikely but not impossible. Luckily, they have a few bright lights in their constellation and many loyal followers and customers.

The related scenarios are not much better. One that is more likely then the doomsday is the slow death. Sun continues to spiral slowly downward until they cease to be relevant. Over time they sell off or shut down unit after unit. Storage first (the perennial underachiever of the data storage industry), then networking, and finally servers until only the software and services is left. These assets get sold off piecemeal to at fire sale prices.

Scenario 3. IBM does the deal. Sun has technology that is important to IBM, especially Java and Solaris. For instance, much of IBM's own software products rely heavily on Java and, to some extent, MySQL including Eclipse and Domino . A lot of that IBM software runs on Solaris machines. If someone else were to buy up Sun at a fire sale, say Microsoft, it could be devastating to IBM. They need to protect Sun so that they aren't beholden to someone who is less cooperative.

I think that the deal will happen because of this. Sun can't risk either going under or the slow death of a thousand cuts. It's in Sun's best interest to sell off the entire company and let IBM worry about the product overlap. IBM can pick up a few good people and customers, which is a bonus. I don't know how much they will want to value the non-software parts of the business. It might come down to getting hardware and services for essentially nothing while paying a high price for the software business.

Scenario 4. An alternate scenario has Sun breaking up the company, with the hardware and services group trying to make a go of it while IBM buys the software component. Services would include cloud computing and the “data center in a cargo container” business as well as the traditional support business. All of these service offerings have merit and could make it as a standalone business. IBM doesn't need them and gets very little value from them. I doubt that will happen since Sun already knows it can't make it in hardware and the services business would be saddled with all of that also ran hardware.

Maybe sell software, close hardware, and create a services company? That might work but it would be pretty complicated to decouple all of that.

The more I think about it, the more I think the deal makes sense for both of them. IBM has to protect itself, can use some of Sun's products and services, and will keep a good number of mutual customers happy. Sun needs to do a deal so they don't end up in the tech company equivalent of an unmarked grave.

Unless finicky shareholders or squabbling CEO's mess this up, Sun will be consumed by IBM and cease to exist. Too bad, so sad.