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I used to run a post-merger clean-up team for IBM years ago, and have since spent a great deal of time thinking about and dealing with major mergers that clients have undertaken. In a market like this, consolidation and acquisition are inevitable, and knowing how to play in what will likely be the kind of massive change that occurs after a merger can be a critical personal survival skill.
I'm often fascinated by mergers, or I should say I'm fascinated by how often they are attempted and how rarely they succeed While it may appear that smaller mergers are more successful than larger ones, the reality is smaller merger failures are vastly easier to cover up. Very few mergers actually deliver the benefits that were promised by their ad...
I'm writing this from the Microsoft Management Summit at Interop with 5,000 of my closest friends in Las Vegas, and I'm still thinking about the book I brought up recently, titled Inside Steve's Brain. The result is, I think I've had an epiphany (and no, I didn't call a doctor) I realized that for all Apple's impressive success, I was watching Micr...
Microsoft has just brought out the physical representation of its fifth major evolutionary change, and this one may turn out to be the most dramatic. The technology, Live Mesh, may actually both help Microsoft's customer satisfaction issues and help move Apple and Linux onto desktops everyplace Speaking of Apple, it bought P.A. Semi, a processor te...
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been meeting with vendors all over the country that range from those that build PCs to those that build tools and parts, to those that build back-end solutions. One common message has come through. They all are targeting Apple as the company whose performance they most want to beat This has more implications for ...
This cuts close to the heart because I truly believe this Web anonymity thing actually helps criminals more than it protects honest citizens. Microsoft has released a white paper that lays out the problem and asks for feedback on a solution (asking our opinion first at the very least should be applauded) However, Microsoft clearly isn't the most tr...
Last week I was in Shanghai, China -- which is truly an amazing place -- attending Intel's IDF (Intel Developer Forum), where the company is officially launching its new Netbook and iPhone-like MID (mobile Internet device) platforms. This is actually the first time I've seen products that are based on Linux that may exceed Apple's vaunted user experience...
Too many of us -- and I include myself -- are too willing to go to war and not willing enough to find harder, but often more successful, collaborative ways to solve problems. I often look at both the U.S. and Microsoft as similar entities in their respective spaces, and I'm often fascinated by how examples of good and bad judgment can be applied to both...
I was working on two things last week. One was the impact of the recession on the tech market and what would likely happen to tech spending; and the second was the release of Windows Vista SP1, which I've been using for several months on a number of machines. On the recession side, I've been particularly focused on what is likely to be an adverse impact on some, but not all, "green" initiatives and how the recession will increase the number of hostile takeovers...
Over the last two weeks, I attended a huge HP lab event, watched Apple launch the iPhone SDK brilliantly, and saw one of the strongest consumer laptop lines launched by Acer. All three vendors are growing in the 30 percent range in the PC market; Acer just passed Dell for the No. 2 spot in the notebook market; and all three vendors have smartphone efforts in their infancy...
Last week was filled with what could represent the beginning of one of the biggest overall changes to the cell phone market. The short-term change was the announcement of a solid and apparently well-controlled developer platform coupled with the long anticipated Exchange integration announcement. However, bigger than that and longer-term was the announcement of Intel's new Atom platform, which forecasts the death and rebirth of a better iPhone...
I've been talking about heroes for several weeks now, most recently the folks at HP who are overcoming the company's internal bureaucracy to turn what had been a problem unit -- its PC unit -- into the most powerful PC entity in the world But inside HP another group of unsung heroes are those that are transforming their aging IT shop into a cutting...
Last week, HP turned in a financial report that seemed to provide a strong counterpoint to the view that the world was heading into a recession, or at least that tech was going to be sacrificed to that recession However, this took me back to IBM and what stopped its turnaround in the '90s and whether HP could succeed where IBM failed....
Last week continued the excitement with Yahoo as it worked to get Microsoft to increase its offer by trying out alternatives but not really finding any good ones At the huge phone conference in Spain -- where Apple wasn't -- companies from Microsoft to Google announced acquisitions and plans that seem to focus on taking on the iPhone. Finally, we a...
I've had a little time to think about the Yahoo/Microsoft merger, why this makes sense and what could go wrong. This thing actually should be one of the easiest mergers of its type, and there is actually a strange amount of affinity, often taken for granted, between these two firms that most seem to not know about. In addition, I'm amazed at how many people are being outspoken on how bad the Macbook Air is, and I think it is time to re-look at just what a flagship product is supposed to be and reset expectations a little bit. Folks, once you understand what this product is intended to do, it really isn't that bad...
This last week I spent some quality time at HP, and I'm frankly amazed at what the PC team has been able to accomplish in terms of overcoming what I've termed the "Big Company Disease." However, as I watched them struggle to create the best user experience on the planet, one that exceeded what Apple currently provides, I constantly saw Microsoft as...
Typically I pick two or three things that I think were interesting, chat about them briefly and then make my product of the week selection. I'll still do my product of the week thing but, on doing the background work on Dell and Microsoft joining the (Product) Red campaign, I started to get really upset, not once but twice, and thought I would share why this week...
I kind of felt sorry for Steve Jobs last week because he got a raw deal. Folks seemed to be expecting an iPhone-like announcement and instead got nice improvements on existing products and a wonderful new laptop I personally think the impact of the improvements to Apple TV and seemingly Apple-led move to ultra-thin laptops to be, in combination, po...
CES is an incredible show, but I was both sad and happy to see the final keynote Bill Gates gave at CES, both because I like Bill and probably won't see him personally again, and because he is moving to something that he really wants to do, I'm happy for him. I also think this CES signals a major change for Microsoft that is part positive and part negative...
There are two mistakes a vendor can make that it may not be able to recover from. One is to build too many products, which stay in inventory and prevent future sales; and the other is to have too few products and lose out of sales as a result Nintendo did the latter, and that will be a problem for the company in 2008. With CES and Macworld starting...
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