What have you done? Where have you been? That’s what Meosphere wants you to tell it. Here, Founder and CEO Eric Eliason shows us the Meosphere.

Other posts from a year ago:
Keeping track of your life with Meosphere’s CEO
Collaborative design app wows at Mix
Compete’s charts Web traffic trends
Talking about tracking Web site traffic/trends with Compete

Tags: Meosphere, Eric Eliason

Through the seven steps that have been outlined, you will identify ways to not only examine your daily business, but how to change it. The challenge with financial institutions today is that information is produced in silos. With all this information being spread around, it is hard for a manager to know what is going on and when there is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Our proven methodology focuses on the importance of putting information in the hands of the deal maker and how to change the incentive structure. Above everything else, an organization must learn how to implement a comprehensive integrated performance and risk management framework. This framework is vital for the success of one’s organization.

In a period of sharply reduced balance sheet allocations, certain businesses have reached a critical point where information and tools are required if they are to compete effectively. Organizations can better prepare themselves to achieve advantageous returns by formulating a comprehensive risk and performance strategy. A strategy similar to that outlined herein can help management to dramatically reduce the capital your organization consumes while conversely demonstrating superior returns.

Tags: BearingPoint, Brian Hart, risk management

The biggest issue banks are facing is the lack of loyalty from its current clientele. Present-day customers will shop around and find the best price to do their personal banking, loans, credit cards, and even mortgages. Many times this results in the use of various banks that are all competing for your loyalty. In order to conquer the competition, many retail banks are turning to a transparent system which allows them to view all the costs across the entire organization. This in turn determines where costs can be eliminated and how they can better provide a more cost-effective solution to their customers for all their banking needs.

With our deep process knowledge and global depth, BearingPoint brings both management consulting and strong technology experience to the table. We not only work with some of the most distinguished experts in the field, but individuals with a deep domain expertise. Through our Retail Banking Solution, our only priority is assisting you with redefining your current systems to provide the best possible solutions to your clients.

Tags: BearingPoint, Peter Nikonovich, Retail Banking, Enterprise Performance Improvement

As you may recall, Dan and Eddie have been on RedMonkTV before, back during SAP Sapphire ‘07.

Tags: SAP TechEd, Dan McWeeney, Eddie Herrmann, DemoJam, Wiimote

Tags: The Solar Decathlon

After discussing the market for banking software, Zane tells us several methods of bank fraud that one of his company’s applications — Fraud Sweep — help banks detect. In doing so, he gives us a rare glimpse into the several ways that people try to defraud banks. Most interestingly, he comments, losses from straight up fraud with commercial accounts far out-weigh losses from identity theft.

Tags: Cote, Zane Rockenbaugh, Liquid Labs, Fraud Sweep

Tags: Hybridfest, Dr. Rich McKone, Aston Martin, Great Race, E-85

Tags: Spock, search engine, social networking, Jay Bhatti

Tags: robots, Robogames, Simone Davalos, combat robot

Tags: Challenge X, Chevrolet Equinox, hybrid, E85, COBASYS

Tags: Ernst & Young, Entrepreneur, Thomas D. Dickson, Amy Rees Lewis, MediConnect, Utah, AtTask, OpenView

Learn more about HP’s Business Technology
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Tags: Business Technology, HP, Olivier Helleboid, Adaptive Infrastructure, information technology infrastructure

Tags: HP Services

Tags: Compete.com, David Cancel

Tags: David Cancel, Compete, Web traffic

Tags: Dodge Demon, DaimlerChrysler

Tags: LaVerne Council, Johnson & Johnson, John Gallant

On March 13th, Intel judges selected the top PC design semifinalists. The industry-chosen winners are scheduled to be announced at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum in Beijing, China in April. But you can vote and comment on your favorite finalists participating in the PC Design People’s Choice Awards, which are running simultaneously with the Intel Core Processor Challenge. If you’re an eligible vote, even YOU could win a $100 prize!

Related Stories: IntelDesignChallenge

Tags: Intel Developers Forum, Intel, design, People’s Choice, IntelDesignChallenge

Related Stories: GoogleApps

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Tags: Google Apps, GoogleApps

(more…)

Tags: Frank Russell, GeoLearning, SaaS

Transcript:

Host: Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
Guest: Bill McCarthy – Cisco Systems

Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
From the World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida this is PodTech.net.

Bill McCarthy is Operations Director with Cisco Systems managing field service providers. Bill talked with PodTech.net about opportunities and challenges for the new Competitive Local Exchange Careers.

Bill McCarthy – Cisco Systems
When we think of emerging providers, our definition would be CLECs’ new greenfield opportunities like a bondage a couple of years ago. But, we also work with ISPs, we work with the Euroflings (Inaudible), but lot of folks here are trying to figure out the riddle in terms of translating the competitive business and this is something that’s profitable today.

Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
So, tell me a little bit more about Cisco’s role in the current climate, about what’s going on with CLECs?

Bill McCarthy – Cisco Systems
Well, traditionally we’ve been involved with the core and the edge built out over the CLECs infrastructure. We’ve also been very interested historically in capturing CPE, so if they’re adding customer from the insurance perspective and there is a piece of Cisco equipment attached to that. A lot of design work consultation on how to build out the infrastructure. As we go forward, and this is a lot of what we spoke about this morning is, the ability to create new services to deliver over that infrastructure is becoming more and more important, because I think many of the CLECs are struggling with, how do we become more profitable, more effective in reaching our end users with relevant services. So, our efforts have moved from simply providing infrastructure now to move into efforts from service creation, understand the market, understand what’s available, I am trying to build those next solutions with our customer base.

Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
I would think that would involve some pretty significant business partnerships or collaborations. How is Cisco collaborating with MetaSwitch?

Bill McCarthy – Cisco Systems
MetaSwitch has filled a good product yet for us. Our partnership with MetaSwitch initially was geared towards how do we go and approach CLECs with business customers and residential. John and I actually worked on the first couple of projects together, John Lazar who is the CEO of MetaSwitch and they’ve been very successful in the market in the United States, especially with the emerging providers and they’ve also been a wonderful partner for us and they help facilitate building — if somebody is going to make the transition of Voice over IP, they also have to make an investment in IP infrastructure. So, from our perspective that’s very natural on a very healthy match.

Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
Finally, where’s this going? What are the regulatory changes or deregulation changes that’ll change the business climate for Cisco?

Bill McCarthy – Cisco Systems
Yes, that might be the $20,000 question. If somebody said to me where do I think the pendulum is right now, it probably favors a larger providers. They’ve CC changes of last 12-24 months; they’ really probably favored the larger service providers. That seems in my view to go in seasons. The larger providers are innovating well today, some of the larger incumbents, I mean they are some new things, IPT wheels driving — in my opinion, is forcing them to make investments, so they historically haven’t had to make, it’s forcing them to change their back-offices, it’s forcing them to try to go out and compete with Cable which is very difficult. The CLEC market has to respond to that same competitive environment, because users want a lot of the same things. Users want more and more rich content, they want applications, they want them quickly. So, in our opinion, in the CLEC market the game is really going to be about speed. How quickly can you profitably modify your business model so that you can go and hang in there with the ILECs, compete with the Cable companies but also create some things that give you differentiation in the market place, so that you can continue to make money not only with that thrive. Certainly some folks are going to fall by the wayside, there are others that are very — they are very efficient in invading and we are going to see those individuals continue to have success, those individual companies have success.

Catherine Girardeau – PodTech
Bill McCarthy is an Operations Director with Cisco Systems, this is PodTech.net.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Bill McCarthy, MetaSwitch, Cisco

Transcript:

Host: Paul Lancour – PodTech
Guest: Frank Buytendijk – Hyperion
Guest: Martin Vonk - ING Direct
Guest: Rennae Rupert (ph) - University Of Lausanne
Guest: Ulrich Coenen – E-Plus

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Frank Buytendijk of Hyperion has developed his series of articles and podcasts. CIO Dilemmas, examining the role of the CIO and distilling it down to four common Dilemmas that must be addressed in order to formulate working solutions.

In this final Podcast in this series, Frank tackles the comments of several thought Leaders in the area of Business Intelligence in the context of his work. We started with Martin Vonk, COO and CIO of the ING Direct. He began by assessing the IT landscape today.

Martin Vonk – ING Direct
The main dilemma is the way and I perceive them nowadays is a lack of alignment between business and IT, IT and Aux (ph) together, I must say, which presumably from my perception relates to governance issues and the way the organization is basically put together, so it’s strongly related in my opinion to governance. So, I would like to ask him what would be his idea about bridging that gap because still when you see that operations, IT and all these areas of expertise are really treated to these cost centers by senior management and CEOs instead of (Inaudible) for a profit center and so, that is the main challenge I’m facing. So, I would like to ask now, “How will you would basically address this challenge?”

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Frank, go ahead

Frank Buytendijk – Hyperion
That’s indeed a very important question that Martin is putting on the table here and I must say I’m really honored by Martin Vonk’s question because I have to say I know ING Direct just a little bit and Martin is actually too modest to ask this question. ING Direct — their business model itself shows that there’s not really an IT and business device necessary and in their case they’ve made the business and IT alignment actually a comparative advantage. At ING Direct, IT is at the core of the business model itself, it shows how you can defeat the either-or choices of strategy.

Many people know that three key strategies that there are, those would be Operational Excellence versus Product Innovation versus Customer Intimacy, at least that’s what we’ve learned, you have to make a choice for your Core Strategy but ING Direct chose which that you don’t have to choose. What they have done, they have innovated their Operational Excellence model to create Customer Intimacy in their interactions through the Web and through the call centers that they have.

Now, there’s also something else that is quite interesting about ING Direct in the very visionary work that Martin Vonk has done there. ING Direct also defeats the central — decentral discussion and that is typically how the pendulum swings in most companies. We decentralize, come across the negative consequences of that, then we centralize, come across the negative consequences of that, we decentralize and that’s how it goes. What ING Direct has done that I think is brilliant in its simplicity is that they have a very centralized business model but all kinds of innovations that come from a certain country are immediately implemented in a decentral way first, but after it has shown to be a success for instance as a pilot or it comes through specific implementation, those innovations as new best practices are immediately picked up and become the standard for other countries. There’s no such thing as a top-down or bottom-up business model. Innovations come from all over the business.

There’s not one country that is in the lead or there’s also not corporate that is in the lead. I think and that is my opinion that this all comes from understanding that the statement, “IT follows the business” or vice versa for that matter is nonsense. In many cases, IT equals the business and I think in IT, we shouldn’t think in terms of users or internal customers, we should be colleagues with the same objectives and the moment we go back to actually a logical way of thinking, many of the dilemmas in business and IT alignments will not even appear.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Great! We’ll next return to Rennae Rupert (ph), Rennae is Lecturer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. We asked him “What question he would like to direct to Frank?”

Rennae Rupert (ph) – University of Lausanne
Well, I think Frank’s approach does not excludes the emotional aspect of a dilemma. He only and simply presents a dilemma as most people tends to discover them. Obviously, it’s very embarrassing because a dilemma is a problem which two or more monolithic solutions, and monolithic means that it can’t be broken down into something simple that could be discussed individually, it’s monolithic, so it’s that or nothing and usually they’re not acceptable. So, it’s a tough situation, but what I am saying is as soon as you look into the emotional aspect you discover ways out and ways to treat and address this problem.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Frank.

Frank Buytendijk – Hyperion
What Renay Rupert is bringing up is quite interesting, that’s the emotional side of dilemmas, being embarrassed about them and not really knowing what to do with them and how would emotional approach would help in solving a dilemma. In fact, there’s a technique in counseling that has been used a lot for this when two parties are quarreling and one of the way that you can solve the dilemma that two parties in business or in the private sense are dealing with, would be to ask each of the two parties to defend the other party’s position to totally lift the situation of the other side, and the moment you crawl into the skin of the other person, you defend their position, you’re one step closer to the solution of the dilemma as well and that is a very simple, let’s say, a smaller way of solving a dilemma.

I think there’s a misconception that dilemmas and dealing with dilemmas has to be big, that if it is about heroic decisions, that’s or nothing, Rennae (ph) already said. It is about drastic measures or brilliant insights to defeat a certain dilemma, but in most cases it is actually rather simple. What I would like to suggest as well is to look at dilemmas in the — well, let me say, not that monolithic, try to break down the dilemma, the two opposite opinions or the two opposite situations, try to break them down in smaller components and you’ll see that of every small component the advantage that you would gain by implementing that small component would be small, but also the disadvantage would be small, and if you wisely choose components of one side of the dilemma and to the other side of the dilemma and you create a portfolio of small, incremental, straight forward solutions.

Again you’ll see that most probably the negative side effects of choosing between the two bad things of the dilemma won’t even appear, you have synthesized it.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Great and finally we turn to Ulrich Coenen, he is the director of business intelligence at E-Plus which is a large mobile phone company in Germany, we asked him what he would like to talk to Frank about?

Ulrich Coenen – E-Plus
The speed of development, what we face in telecom industry is still a very high speed of change that I have never encountered in any other industry before and to cope with those issues from business intelligence or business performance management side, still it’s an unsolved issue and I know that Frank is very busy at this technical question, I think it’s the most important question, it’s not about how to outsource operations, how to streamline the IT with respect to standardization and things like that. It’s about how can you keep pace with the changes that still happen, especially in fast moving industries like the telecom business.

The idea of a competence center is key for answering this question so that actually what I took away from his thoughts about, how to structure everything around business performance management.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, Frank the speed of business today is Ulrich Coenen’s concern.

Frank Buytendijk – Hyperion
Yes, how can you keep pace with all the change in the telecom market that’s what Ulrich is talking about, which is interesting. In fact, it is — the one of the dilemmas that I did described in one of the papers on the CIO Dilemmas and it can be solved with an infrastructural approach. It’s the infrastructure versus business agility dilemma, and infrastructural approach means that you try to create a generic way to solve many different problems at the same time. It’s a highly-standardized way of working, so the moment you have implemented such an infrastructure, every change only has to be completed once throughout the systems and not in multiple places and it has an effect in the complete organization as you can imagine there’s a huge advantage in creating such a way of working.

Unfortunately, implementing such an infrastructure takes a lot of time and given the speeds of change in the Telco Industry and mainly other industries for that matter, you don’t have that time, you don’t have, let’s say, a year or one-and-a-half year to build a complete generic data warehouse infrastructure. So, how we describe this in one of the CIO dilemma pieces if you need to do both at the same time, you need to have your short-term solutions and you need to be working on this infrastructural approach at the same time.

Now, when I mentioned infrastructural approach, I don’t want to necessarily restrict myself to technology infrastructure. If you listened to what (Inaudible) what I’m trying to say, he did mention a business intelligence competency center and I know that E-Plus is a very successful competency center. In essence you could call this competency center an organizational infrastructure, it is a generic group of people that know how to tackle difficult business intelligence problems and apply those solutions throughout the organization in a standardized way.

So, the results can be leveraged throughout the complete business and the different people in the business intelligence competency center can work for the various kinds of business as there’s also not only a standardized technology set but also a standardized way of working, and in that sense, this is how you would solve the dilemma between the speed of making changes versus taking a long time to think and doing things right.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Well, Frank, thank you very much for taking the time to take some of the ideas we’ve discussed in earlier podcasts and directing them towards some real life situations with some thought leaders in the area of Business Intelligence and thank you for sharing your insights throughout the entire series on CIO Dilemmas.

Frank Buytendijk – Hyperion
Thank you very much, it was a pleasure.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Get in on the conversation by going to Frank’s Blog at blogs.hyperion.com/frankb. And of course, for more information go to Hyperion.com.

Thanks for listening.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Frank Buytendijk, corporate strategy, Hyperion, CIO, business intelligence

This is the second in a series. Part one.

Tags: Motionbox, Chris O’Brien, profitability

Part two of this conversation.

Tags: deep tagging, YouTube, Motionbox, Chris O’Brien

Transcript:
Host: Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Guest: Andy Schroepfer – Tier 1 Research

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Welcome to this edition of Thought Leaders, where we bring you candid conversations with the people whose research and writing are guiding both the buyers and suppliers of IT Solution. I’m Jim Leach. Today we are joined by Andy Schroepfer, President and Founder of Tier 1 Research. Andy is unique in market research field in that he is part Wall Street analyst and part IT Industry analyst. He applies his experience on Wall Street through his research and how IT companies are turning customer solution into shareholder value. Thanks for joining us on Thought Leaders Andy.

Andrew Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
Hey, happy to be here, thanks for having me.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Can you put on your Wall Street Analyst hat first and give our listeners your view on the hosting industry? How big is it? How do you segment it? Where are the growth areas?

Andy Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
Sure. Well, from the Wall Street perspective, there were a ton of people that got burned back in the Internet bubble that looked at Exodus as the be-all-end-all company in the hosting sector and then there was Acomi and all these other companies that had monstrous billion dollar valuations, and obviously those all came down in fact, to zero to something probably above zero.

So, in a couple of years that ensued since then, it was tough for people to really understand why would I go back to that industry, it was part of the bubble. And fortunately now, we’ve had a five year - half a decade separation to where people can come back and revisit these.

So, that’s because of the Web 2.0 movement that gives a lot of prospects. BusinessWeek article from a couple of weeks ago; we have a $12 billion industry in hosting that people still don’t necessarily know how to look at. There is two ways to look at it. One is the old way which is the — there is data centers, and that’s a co-location business. There’s people with dedicated hosting that actually own the gear and it’s actually a single device or multiple single devices for specific a client. Then there is shared infrastructure; shared infrastructure used to just be defined as shared hosting, but now as you look, it includes utility computing and virtualized hosting. That’s the old way to look at it.

The form factor — way to look at it is not how we believe investors would want anyone to look at it. The new way should be, who is the buyer of the services that are being sold in this $12 billion hosting industry; it’s the consumer which buys blog services, media publishing, and sharing tools; it’s the small business that buys different software, the service applications, or host their own version of an appliance as an application. Then there’s large enterprises that have big needs for disaster recovery, big needs for facilities, for lots of their analyst applications.

So, the right way to look at it is by customer type that’s buying; and that’s how we are starting to segment our industry at least, in our revenue view of this $12 billion sector. But now that’s the right way to look at it, as people are starting to understand that and understand how these business models are working. The investors have started to come back, and most of the stocks in this sector that are public, and what we’ve seen are doubling over the last year, or at least they are more formalization in how their capital structures worked. So, I think investors have more of a reason to come back to this sector as well as a healthier sector to come back to.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Very interesting; so let’s dig into those buyer segments a little bit, the consumers, small business and large enterprises. Where are the growth areas in those segments, are they all growing at about the same rate or are some of the areas hotter than others?

Andy Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
The consumer sector interestingly, is actually being driven by free services, which are advertising based. So, it’s actually a different revenue model than people buying actually for the services whether it’s a blog service, whether it’s a shared hosting account, whether it’s an email account.

So that business model is completely different and there’s tremendous growth in online advertising because of the benefits that you can have from better targeting who you are trying to reach with your ad. As you get into the small business, those companies are finally understanding that they can take advantage of the applications that larger enterprises have used because they can buy them in a ‘software as a service’ delivery model, which gives it a per user, per seat, per month, pricing structure, and lets it be approachable by both the user as well as the buyer from the small business.

So that’s the biggest growth area as it relates to hosting. The large enterprise has already decided whether they’re going to do something in-house or whether they are going to do it on an outsourced basis. That usually has a five year cyclical nature and I think we are coming back to the marketplace — we are coming back to the part in that cycle, where the enterprises want to be outsourcing more. And interestingly the dynamic that’s hitting at the same time now is the availability of so many enterprise applications through this ‘software as a service’ model, which is causing enterprises to need less data center space in some cases, or if their delivery model is to be a ‘software as a service’ company, a lot of these companies are taking on more infrastructure.

So there’s as many companies growing huge in a large enterprise as it relates to their hosting needs, as there are companies who have a significantly less need. So a good large enterprise is probably the slowest growth sector but it’s more about who you’re targeting that large enterprise group.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
So the buyers of Web hosting services are starting to segment themselves into these different categories of consumer and small business, large enterprises. Are you also seeing a similar type of segmentation in the Web hosting providers? Are they trying to deliver different types of services and to meet the needs of these different segments?

Andy Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
Yes, that’s a great question. It’s been the changeover from the seller having the power to the buyer having the power; and there’s equally as many companies that get this change, to the companies that don’t. So, the companies that get this change are offering so many services on a needed basis, or on a pre-user basis; that’s how the buyers are interested in buying right now. As you go down across those different segments from large enterprise down to consumer, the consumer is becoming so used to having free services, and they are happy to understand that advertisements are what’s allowing them to get that service for free.

You no longer have people interested in buying a software package at ‘Best Buy’ or ‘Circuit City’ or having them download software from the Web, you’re wanting them to just be able to drive right in and use the service and pay for it; then again, as you go up into the small business and large enterprise to be able to use that and pay for that on a pre-user basis, and above and beyond that the ones who really get this change that’s happened, understand that you are personalizing and verticalizing their offerings; so, not just offering a utility computing platform but tailoring it towards a particular vertical market such as financial services or retail or healthcare.

Whatever the application is that’s going to reside on top of an infrastructure, it’s going to have a better growth story behind it and a better traction and adoption if it’s tailored towards this specific vertical market. Those are the companies who really get what’s going on right now.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Or in a sense that the consumer segment is driving the business segment; and from an IT supplier perspective, a number of the biggest hosting companies, firms like IBM, EDS, big telcos like AT&T and Verizon, they grew up in the business sector. Are firms like those big traditional outsourcers going to have trouble surviving in this new market? Do they have to regroup?

Andy Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
They definitely need to regroup. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they have a problem surviving. I hope a lot of these mega-companies lay off a lot of people that hopefully go and start a lot of new interesting entrepreneurial companies. The entire reason that the consumer is driving the innovations in the enterprise services world is that it’s easier to adopt something that’s free. I mean you can get mass adoption of something that’s free, and you get a lot of people that battle-test different applications that are online.

So is Microsoft ready to offer their entire Office suite in an online format yet? Sure they’re probably ready, but will they? They won’t until they have to. Unfortunately, there’s companies from Google all the way on down to the companies like Zoho that are launching spreadsheets and word processing documents online, and making that something that Microsoft will have to react to; same thing can be said for the outsourcers on your question. If these services are geared towards being tuned with expensive consultants and expensive engagements, it’s not necessary that that’s wrong, there’s the need for that personalization.

They’re using the tools that have been battle-tested in the consumer world. You are able to more quickly and easily adopt, customize, personalize, and verticalize all these applications and the enterprises outside do think that IBM is at a disadvantage as a company, but hopefully the IBMs, EDSs, the CSEs will use to their advantage the divisions that are focused on looking at those technologies to their advantage for their enterprise accounts. So again, I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re in trouble; I would go as far as to say they are disadvantaged relative to companies that do get to work closer to both the cutting edge consumer side as well as the small business side.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Let’s talk a little about the startups that you alluded to, that it might start emerging over time. I know you keep an eye on that part of the marketplace. Have you seen anything interesting with the startups that you think could have a big impact on the broader Web hosting industry?

Andy Schroepfer - Tier 1 Research
Yeah, I think social networking is essentially the heart of what the Web 2.0 movement stands for; it’s the ability for anyone to interact with any content and share it with anyone that they want to, in any format that they want to. Whatever website you might go to, whatever application you might interact with, it should afford you the opportunity to use that in a community fashion whether it’s reading a news article online, whether it’s buying a product online, whether it’s writing a blog entry online; everything that you might do is something that should be something that can exist in a social network.

So, whether it’s the social network software makers themselves that actually pioneer this into all of the enterprise applications is yet to be seen - kind of like business analytics, that’s the sector that still exists today with business objects and a lot of mega companies still – essentially analytics need to be applied to every application. We think social networking is the latest thing out of the startup movement and needs to be applied to almost every website, every application that exists.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
It’s always a pleasure to get a chance to spend some time and talk with you Andy, I really appreciate you being a part of Thought Leaders. Let me asked you one last question.

Andy Schroepfer – Tier 1 Research
Sure.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
There has been a lot of press coverage recently about an impending battle between Microsoft and Google. Are the battle lines really being drawn between these two companies, and if they are, who’s going to win and what will it mean for the IT industry?

Andy Schroepfer – Tier 1 Research
When the company is afforded evaluation like Google has, and is simultaneously able to spend increasingly mega amounts of money and be rewarded for that, that’s a hard monster for anyone to compete with. Fortunately, there are a couple players in the world like Microsoft that have dollars that they can go and compete.

So, Microsoft committed a couple billion extra dollars in this current year to go build the platform to compete. But what’s really happening is, who can build up a complete platform that anyone in the world can plug an application into and be able to like Google, help monetize that in return for access to this monster platform. Microsoft, I think is going to do the same thing; so, I guess, I do believe they are at battle completely and wholly. Do I think Microsoft has the ability to win? They have the chance to win, but this is Google’s game to lose at this point. The longer the market continues to afford Google, evaluation, to the extent that they have it for putting together this monstrosity of the computing platform, it will become almost untouchable.

So, everyone in the world that wants to have an application — and again, this comes back to the hosting sector and say, if I wanted — do I want to go build my own complete resource, or do I want to potentially tap that into a Microsoft platform or a Google platform or a Yahoo platform or an Amazon - eBay could, on down the line. Fortunately, the hosting companies that get this, again are offering utility computing, so you can hopefully tap into an unlimited amount of resource, so you can serve all of the people that want to come visit your site. But specific to Google and Microsoft if I had to pick a winner, I’m still picking Google at this point, but if you had to compete against anybody - if I’m Google, I don’t want to compete against Microsoft, if I’m Microsoft I don’t want to compete against Google; its going to be an interesting battle. Google’s my pick for the winner right now.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS Thought Leaders
Thanks again to Andy Schroepfer, President and Founder, Tier 1 Research, and thanks to you, our listeners for joining us on this edition of Thought Leaders.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Thought Leaders, SAVVIS, Andy Schroepfer, Tier 1 Research