Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been a buzz word for a while now. Leaders in the space would be companies like Google, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Most of the product based companies are shifting thier strategy from desktop products to their online versions. Some are in B2C and others are in B2B world. Definitely B2C based online services would be a great win for both companies and their customers if it's done well enough to delight the customers and implement proper usage based pricing strategy on the service that they offer. But B2B based cloud services may not be very attractive and definitely companies like salesforce or products like google apps would see a challenge to penetrate the market. The real winning point on the B2B service would be acquiring the confidence of the medium large enterprises in areas like security, privacy, compliance, SLAs, etc. Google has proved its trust far beyond than any other companies by exhibiting its core principles. Definitely i would see Google being a potential winner in B2B market comparing to any other ones competing in the same space. Besides, another important aspects of B2B services to enable mobile or tablet based offerings serving it from a cloud. That's where the 640B business lies for mobile space. On the hardware side, the companies would be developing brilliant displays which is interacting with cloud services through an ultra high speed internet channel. There is no wonder in a few days you would be keeping your 'pockettop' in your pocket and doing all sorts of work with the same comfort of a fully fledged laptop from any where you want.

Google's Strategy in Mobile Space

When Apple launched iPhone on June 11, entire US was looking into it and there is no doubt that the sleek interfaces and usability lured millions into it. Now Apple is trying to release it in each and every country and no wonder why mobile companies are fighting each other for the right to sell iPhones. All mobile rivals fighted in Germany when T-Mobile got the contract to sell locked iPhones and court ruled it in favour of to T-Mobile.



Now lets looks at the matter more closely. May be after some time Apple's safari is going to be mostly used browser in mobile space and you know that browsers are turning to be the most used application if all company start embracing the service oriented architecure.

Now if you look at an analogy Apple's iPhone is getting the demand that we see for a windows operating system and what's the strategy to counter it? An open source initiative? Linux is slowly catching the demand and the its market slowness is due to the patent issues raised by Microsoft.

But, that is not the case in Mobile Space and the best strategy to gain the market space is to have a Open source mobile operating system in which Google can influence enough to meet thier business objectives.

That's Android. Let's watch what next?

Why not Linux?

It's been a long time for Linus Torvald's kernel to be in the off-market plate. Still no business tactics could take Linux's influence off from the people and now the demand is growing even with more pance but still lot of hesitations lingering in computer market to choose Linux.



I was looking for a Linux Laptop and found most of them are over priced. How could this is possible to have a notebook with an operating system sold for free can price more than the one with a commercial OS like windows. None of the laptops with Linux systems in the market are no where able to compete with notebooks coming with Windows.

Now days, Microsoft is trying all what they could do to stop Linux from entering into the desktop market. In sever side Linux is having the largest market share. But if you look at the desktop market side, none of the computer manufacturing companies are daring to ship thier desktop or laptop with Linux OS at a competing price that of windows.



Some of the companies should be appreciated for this, for knwoing the demand and the passion. DELL has started selling Linux Laptops with Ubuntu 7.04 version but they are well priced and causing poor customer satisfaction. Even Lenova has started with Linux notebooks which are over priced. And most of the other computer assembling companies are no where in the scene.

But how long this going to exist? Microsoft never revealed the details of the patent violations claimed over linux and Linux developers are wondering what's wrong. It puts linux community under uncertainity and manufactures dont want to take that risk. Also, Microsoft's open source initiatives for MONO which was actually licensed under MPL, was an attempt to put more violations into the application code.
Is there any anwser for this. GPLv3 could not resolve this problem as Microsoft changed deal with Novell. What could be a solution for this?

This problem will persist if customers dont show the enthusiasm to accept linux. But if all people go forward and ready to take that risk, all major product based companies release thier product under linux, all the hardware vendors going to work with Linux, then, the situation going to change. Microsoft will be forced to reveal the patent violations and Linux would able to emerge out from that. Lets watch!!

What is Yahoo looking at

Making a single web solution for all resources and information and redefining the human concepts of an operating system. That’s what Google aiming at. By making all the pages more simple and elegant Google trying to capture the mind of the audience and succeeded in retaining them. Additionally, they are generating revenue through placing ads on these free babies.

Google has come far ahead of Yahoo in terms revenue and page hits. All of their strategies focused mostly on the web interface and Yahoo's strategies are getting futile here.

What could be the strategy for Yahoo>? Staying on the UI rich interfaces won’t make yahoo successful in web. That might be successful in a desktop requirement, but not in a web interface for a long time. People will leave Yahoo products after a while and will switch to Google. This is where Google gaining momentum.



The only way to survive the competition is through the rich desktop based UI interfaces with strong mind luring ideas.The strategy leads one and stay first in competition and there are some points, i think these would make Yahoo more successfull than Google in the market

1. Rich UI and desktop based products
2. Tie-ups with desktop based products & companies
3. Making the web pages more simple and elegant
4. Marketing & Enhancing Yahoo widgets plus Yahoo Messenger with brand new ideas
5. Tie-ups with PC vendors to ship it with Yahoo widgets, etc
6. Building products with revolutionary ideas and retaining the audience

That’s why Yahoo came up with Yahoo mail which was something like MS outlook. But those ideas were not new to the public and couldn’t get enough acceptance.

Now, i am moving more toward yahoo. I love Yahoo Widgets. Its more sleek and this would be a starting point for Yahoo in gaining momentum and if their strategies aligned to this they are going to be successful. Else Google going to gain.

So, i believe,

To succeed in Market one must hit the strategies of the competitors, not their products.

Deal with Microsoft looking good for Novell

When Novell signed up a deal with Microsoft, all OpenSource world really couldnt bear with that. As you know SuSe Linux, one of the flagship product, easily configurable and a well known Linux distribution in corporate as well user community came to an agreement with Microsoft; As per the deal, Microsoft is going to pay a huge junk of money and free from all claimed-patent violations; In return Novell would be making SuSe Linux interoperable with Windows and allowing microsoft to provide the tech support for its operating system.

Well, it is known to all world that Opensource initiative was done in order to bring down the monopoly from the Big players and Linux community could not accept the deal as they thought it would not be good for the future of Linux.

Soon after that deal, Richard Stallman came into picture. He renewed the GNU Public License from version 2 to version 3; adding more clauses which say if a company comes in a deal with any opensource product, that conditions are going to be extended to other products in the open source community as well. So, after that Microsoft would not able to sue any Linux distributions for patent violations as SuSe upgraded thier license to GPLv3 due to possibility of loosing the oppertunity for OS updates and its components from the open source world.

There was a point when all this deal was looking so stupid and putting the CEO of Novell into big trouble. But his vision and decisions turned out to be best. Today, the market is responding too good for SuSe Linux. The deal with microsoft made them soar high!

DoubleClick Acquisition

DoubleClick, top leader in providing digital marketing technology and services; The world's top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick's expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium.

Affiliate Marketing means a system of revenue sharing between one site (the affiliate merchant) which features an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the advertiser). The affiliate will receive a fee based on the amount of traffic generated.

DoubleClick’s industry-leading DART platform manages advertising campaigns in both current and emerging media. DART’s seamless integration of display, search, rich media and video translates into campaign optimization and smarter decision-making.

Google's acquisition going to give them almost 80% of the online advertising and Microsoft is currently fighting against this acquistion. Thier arguement is allowing google to acquire the most significant competitor which could give rise to economic consequences and more privacy implications. It is well know that google is keeping all the search history and IP for user research and advertising. But Google says, DoubleClick is to Google what FedEx or UPS is to Amazon.com and thier are complimentary businesses.

Google is trying to extend the pipline of its business. Right now, they get major share of the online advertising via adwords. But it would be good to have a better altenative for Adwords and DoubleClick business models fits here. Great Vision Google!

Who is going to be world largest PC vendor

Undoubtedly, HP holds the leadership of the PC Market and Del is close behind, in the second position. Looks like the PC mfg domain is hot. The merger of Gateway is going to place Acer overtake Lenova which is the largest vendor in china. The acquisition is going to place Acer just behind Dell.

How could HP top this domain? Thier acquisition with compaq; though it was little awkward in the beginning, bringing down the printer market share, resignation of CEO, etc HP did very well. Another motivating factor for the success of the HP is his customer support. If anything happens to your computer, the replacement is quite smooth, you wont be loosing even a single penny from your pocket. HP will take care of getting the product from customer, it repairs or replacing parts for free and getting the product delivered to right hands. One should really appreciate HP efforts to maintain the customer satisfaction high.

Well, dell has to work hard to gain capture the market. Thier products looks quite simpler and that has a catch to attract more users. But, still they have to work more to improve thier interfaces looking more elegant.

Acer also falls into same category of dell. Both of them could not generate a twist in the corporate world where most of the systems are from IBM; really heavy usage systems for best peformance and but it costs you.

GPLv3 keeps Linux free from patent Issues

Microsoft and the open source, they are always in the battle against each other. The latest results shows that Linux could be growing to much larger extend than it never before due to the mistake of Microsoft. Suse Linux, which one of the best and easily configurable Linux distribution from Novell was the keyfactor in the management game.

Always, the larger portion of erver market share goes to Linux and most of the companies have a trouble in integrating and managing windows, Linux and database servers. So it was important for Microsoft to enter that area and get more access towards the network domain management along with its own products. So they selected Suse Linux, linux distribution from Novell.

Microsoft agreed to pay a huge amount to Novell in return to provide the tight integration of windows and Suse and customer support. According to this agreement, microsoft would not be filing any case against Suse customers for the patent infringement which they do raise against other linux distribution. This was also another motification factor for Suse Linux customers beacuse now they can use Suse systems without any danger from Microsoft.

But FSF found this as biggest threat for Open source which conside Microsoft as a core enemy and decided to renew the GPLv2. Now the current GPLv3 states that if microsoft forms and agreement with a GPLv3 product, then that will be extended to other open source products which support the GPLv3 license.

Novell is into GPLv3 now and Microsoft can not enforce the patent infringement issue against other linux customers who support GPLv3. This is going to be a good news for the growth of Linux. But, still i feel Linux has to go far before it can claim the hardware support for many vendors or saying an operating system equivalent to Windows. Still windows rocks.

Hypervisor: A server without OS

A machine or web server without an operating system? Are we going back to our olden days of computer. Look at the new weblogic server virtual edition from BEA. It runs only on an x86 hypervisor and does not support none of the operating system.



A hypervisor is a thin layer of low level code that sits just above the hardware and creates a virtualized version of that hardware. Normally, we have our operating system windows or linux running on a hardware and virtual machines like java runs on top of the OS executing the bytecode and web applications runs above Java.

BEA has removed the operating system layer and currently it supports only x86 hypervisor and in future, they are in plan to support XEN and MS Virdian.

Linux has the largest share in the server market and microsoft stands far next. Is this going to take Linux market share? Lets' watch.

BEA is not the first company in introducing the idea. IBM uses same concept for thier mainframes. But BEA is the first to introduce in Intel and AMD chipset.

Scope for Web Hosting

Belive it or not, Web hosting would be another high potentiontial upcoming business oppertunity for IT industries in the near future. There is going to be great challenges and oppertunities for web designers and developers. Also, look and feel of the sites are also embracing the web 2.0 technological advancements. Ajax, OpenLaszlo, Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, etc are becoming the choice for web site technologies. Making these high usability interfaces accessible to search engine spider is another challenge for the companies. Most of the companies are slowly moving to web 2.0, many are working on changing thier internal sites into Flex based system and generating a talent pool for building systems with high usability, performance and security.

Google wanted to generate more ad revenue and plots for the advertisements. They thought, blogs would be a good option. Now the blogs are going out of the limitations of google. But, it is a good start for any bolgger like me who works in the pre primary school of ideas and blogging. There would be a day, when each blogger graduates and fly in his own wings and google would be generating revenue for teaching them to fly and also, for helping them to maintain thier wings stretched.

Blogs have great role in pushing the demand for web hosting. Also, most of the SMB wanted to migrate thier static web pages into more dynamic, database driven. They want to integrate thier internal system with thier sites and web sites are taking multi-tier shape by pushing the services in different layers for performance and security.

But most of the wb hosting companies provide services in a virtual machines which lack both performance and security. So it would be wise to know more about the hosting company and doing a risk analysis before going forward. So, is there anybody to start up a web hosting company with me?