David Berlind summarises the message by Cisco’s CEO at a keynote at Interop: “The ever elusive productivity gains that can drive efficiency and profitability are now hiding in interactions (as opposed to transactions); to unlock them, the ‘cloud’ that once defined a networks boundaries must grow to encompass the applications and services in a way that delivers a centralized view of digitized information anytime, anywhere, and in any mode that the information consumer wants.”
Day: June 10, 2005
Shanda and Sina
Small is the New Big
Seth Godin writes:
Im writing this on a laptop at a skateboard park that added wifi for parents. Because they wanted to. It took them a few minutes and $50. No big meetings, corporate policies or feasibility studies. They just did it.
Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. Little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones.
Today, Craigslist (18 employees) is the fourth most visited site according to some measures. They are partly owned by eBay (more than 4,000 employees) which hopes to stay in the same league, traffic-wise. Theyre certainly not growing nearly as fast.
Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.
Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
Small means that you can answer email from your customers.
Jeff Jarvis adds:
I’ve been trying to figure this out for sometime: On the one hand, things in our world are getting bigger: Walmart… media conglomerates… Dell… merged airlines… megachurches… Home Depot… merged banks… Microsoft…
But on the other hand, things are getting smaller: The empowered individual can create a media company, using blog software; create a manufacturing company, using somebody else’s factory and somebody else’s distribution; create a multinational enterprise, using nothing more than a Skype line.
I wondered whether small was just a trend or a new organizing principle for the business world. I now think it could be the latter. Small won’t replace big, of course, but small will add up to considerable new competition. And that is because small can now succeed. The economies of scale must compete with the economies of small.
Sun’s Tarantella Acquisition
This is a little old, but still worth noting. Jonathan Schwartz writes:
There’s no question enterprises and CIO’s are interested in an alternative to the deployment complexity associated with PC’s. ‘Thin’ is in, but according to our calculus, the existing ‘thin client’ options are just as expensive as a traditional PC (if not more expensive). There’s similarly no question the preponderance of legacy desktop applications are written to Windows, rather than the internet. And preserving access to that legacy is a checklist item for those seeking to lower desktop PC costs while moving to shared services or grid infrastructure.
With Sun’s SunRay, what we view as the first of many “DOIP” devices to emerge, we’ve delivered a step function improvement in security and cost – literally moving the desktop to the grid. But there have been two principle objections raised by customers.
The first related (the past tense is deliberate) to the need for a continuous network connection. Without a high quality network, a SunRay is worthless – at its simplest, it’s a display that uses the network instead of a cable to attach to a CPU (which means the CPU for a SunRay can be 1,000’s of miles away). This network centricity is one of the SunRay’s many advantages – as a completely stateless device, if you steal a SunRay, you’ve got yourself a worthless piece of plastic. Nothing more. There’s no data, even settings, to steal – the value’s in the network. So problems like the FBI or Wells Fargo experienced can be a thing of the past. It also means you can centralize upgrades and configurations – and put it all in the network.
Before networks were truly pervasive or of reasonable quality, this ‘constraint’ – the need for a persistent network connection – was an impediment to adoption. But now we say, “you run a SunRay wherever you run Google.” And the objection’s off the table.
The next issue hasn’t been so easy to overcome. It’s that the majority of the legacy applications customers were looking to present through a secured thin client were written to Windows. And SunRay today leverages an open source Mozilla/StarOffice/Java Desktop System stack, where Windows is largely inaccessible unless you grapple with the complexity and expense of a Citrix license. With the increasing interoperability between the two companies, though, Tarantella’s technology provides a foundation to present Windows applications over a grid (ours, or a customer’s). Without a Citrix license.
So at this point, there are no more objections – SunRay’s are a far more efficient deployment option for desktop applications. Windows, Solaris or Linux.
Atanu’s Abhishek Letters
Atanu Dey has started a series of letters to Abhishek (my son, born April 19, 2005). They are not necessarily specific to Abhishek but to all young children – “Little Buddhas” as Atanu calls them. Here are the first two [1 2].
Welcome to the world and may you have a long and happy stay here. In this letter I will try to tell you a few things that may help you along.
You are just a month old. The universe you are born into is infinitely older than you. I hope someday you would learn what the relation between you and the universe is and appreciate the unique place you occupy within it. You will spend quite a bit of time making a living, but to truly make a life, you will have to comprehend who you are in the larger scheme of things. We will talk about this at length later.
…
I will close this one with some words from The Desiderata: You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.With a deep bow to the Buddha within you.
I will be starting my own letters to Abhishek starting next week as part of Tech Talk.
TECH TALK: Dotcom Nostalgia: The Future
When I look back, there are times when I have mixed feelings about the decision to sell. On the one hand, it gave me the ability to start from scratch with capital. On the other hand, it also took away the platform that I had built to reach out to a large audience in India and outside. That platform could have been a base for new services over time. Building a new platform can be incredibly hard!
A question I also get asked often is whether I was lucky or was I smart. A lot of Internet entrepreneurs would probably ask themselves the same question. In my case, I guess it was an element of luck at the end, but then one had to be smart to be in a situation to capitalise on the luck. I did not start off with a desire to sell. In fact, even when the offer was on the table, it was not an instant Yes. Money had not been a motivator for me once we turned profitable. But in the end, I did realise that I had reached the limits of how I could grow the business myself. I had two choices: either raise capital and bring in new management (which I was also attempting to do) or sell and work with the acquiring company to grow the business. I chose the second option. (I don’t know what would have happened had I chosen the first option!)
For me now, IndiaWorld is a set of memories and experiences. They were five wonderful years even though on an individual basis, each day had its own challenges. But it was a period when I was excited almost every morning when I woke up. One didn’t know what the day would bring, but the mystery itself had its own aura.
For a period in between (2001-2004), I think somehow that excitement dried up. I had lots of ideas, but I lacked the ability to execute on them. It was a difficult period. Now, however, it is back. Broadband and mobility are going to transform the world as we know it now. The opportunities are plenty. This time around, I am working to put an ecosystem of companies together which can together help construct tomorrow’s world.
It may not the same as taking one small idea and trying to build it out incrementally. I am now thinking bigger but I still need to retain the entrepreneurial zeal and roots. This is where the last few sentences of the article capture my thinking:
My focus has really been on how to use technology as a platform and as a tool for change. How can we create solutions for the next billion people in emerging markets? We need disruptive innovations in such markets.
For instance, how do you deliver education differently? You need to leapfrog in the delivery of services. How can we build technology-enabled solutions which can be used in India first? How can you envision tomorrow’s world and go out and create it? Indiaworld was a vindication of that belief.
Hopefully, we can be smart and lucky again!
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