Monday, August 10, 2009
Be careful what you post online, career counselors warn
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Are information technology's glory days gone?
If Thomas M. Siebel can accurately see the future, computer science students with the entrepreneurial gene may want to look for a different major.
And investors who think that information technology is a sector that will produce outsized returns should wake up.
In Siebel's view, IT is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the larger economy. He contends that its glory days are past – long past, having ended in 2000.
I believe that Siebel may well be wrong. But his own illustrious career in IT makes his opinions a matter of uncommon interest.
Earning both a master’s degree in computer science and an MBA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he was an executive at Oracle from 1984 to 1990. In 1993, he founded Siebel Systems, which sells software for tracking customers and sales prospects; the company was acquired in 2006 by Oracle, which paid almost $6 billion. In Siebel’s self-deprecating narrative, he was simply standing in the right place at the right time.
Addressing Stanford students in February as a guest of the engineering school, Siebel called attention to 20 sweet years, from 1980 to 2000, when, he said, worldwide IT spending grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17 percent. "All you had to do was show up and not goof it up," he said. "All ships were rising."
Since 2000, however, that rate has averaged only 3 percent, he said. His explanation for the sharp decline is that "the promise of the post-industrial society has been realized."
No new technological advances, he believes, would impel IT customers to replace the computer technology they already had: "I would suggest to you that most of what’s going on today is not very exciting."
In his view, far larger opportunities are to be found in businesses that address needs in food, water, health care and energy. Though Silicon Valley was "where the action was" when he finished graduate school, he says, "if I were graduating today, I would get on a boat and I would get off in Shanghai."
When I called him last month to discuss his provocative arguments, he was disarmingly modest. "I’m just an old has-been, I don’t present myself as an expert in this or any other area," he said.
The huge difference in growth rates, pre- and post-2000, may seem so stark as to leave no room for an alternative view of IT’s prospects.
But the recent drop is not as steep as it seems at first. I asked Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who has written extensively about the computer industry, to take a look at the raw data upon which those numbers were supposedly based: the annual IT spending estimates published by IDC.
Greenstein’s calculations produced a more moderate compounded annual growth rate of 11.6 percent for 1980 to 2000, instead of 17 percent. (Siebel’s personal assistant said last week that the 17 percent in the Stanford talk came from a staff member who calculated from a reading of a chart, not from precise figures.)
When Greenstein looked at the full IDC data set, which goes back to 1961, and used other breakpoints to compare growth in earlier and later periods, he found that the most golden years of IT were in the 1960s, when use of mainframe computers spread widely. From 1961 to 1971, the compounded annual growth rate was 35.7 percent, more than three times the rate in the 1980-2000 period celebrated by Siebel.
Declining growth rates over time are to be expected, Greenstein said. After all, it doesn’t take many sales to show huge percentage gains when the base is small.
Timothy Bresnahan, a Stanford economist, similarly does not accept Siebel’s contention that the decline in growth rates this decade, which encompasses two recessions, signals a permanent end to IT’s record of growing faster than the larger economy. "It is early days to say the game is over," he said.
When the economy recovers, there is no dearth of unfinished projects for IT, he said, like "automating white-collar work and automating buying and selling in markets."
And when one company dominates a certain area of technology, it can be a bottleneck along the road to innovation – an obstacle to the technology of others. Bresnahan says that this has happened with Microsoft in the PC side of corporate information technology, and in earlier times with IBM in computers and AT&T in telecommunications. But he said that entrepreneurial companies of those earlier days – like Siebel Systems – ultimately invented around bottlenecks and "innovation-led growth picked up again."
The biggest decline in IT’s growth came at the end of the 1960s, well before Siebel’s own IT career. A fortune or two could still be made, it turns out. Siebel Systems, which its founder says attained $2 billion in revenue annually in only seven years, was founded after the growth rate of IT spending dropped precipitously.
Entrepreneurial engineers in the United States should take heart. There’s no cause for mass flight to Shanghai.
And investors who think that information technology is a sector that will produce outsized returns should wake up.
In Siebel's view, IT is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the larger economy. He contends that its glory days are past – long past, having ended in 2000.
I believe that Siebel may well be wrong. But his own illustrious career in IT makes his opinions a matter of uncommon interest.
Earning both a master’s degree in computer science and an MBA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he was an executive at Oracle from 1984 to 1990. In 1993, he founded Siebel Systems, which sells software for tracking customers and sales prospects; the company was acquired in 2006 by Oracle, which paid almost $6 billion. In Siebel’s self-deprecating narrative, he was simply standing in the right place at the right time.
Addressing Stanford students in February as a guest of the engineering school, Siebel called attention to 20 sweet years, from 1980 to 2000, when, he said, worldwide IT spending grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17 percent. "All you had to do was show up and not goof it up," he said. "All ships were rising."
Since 2000, however, that rate has averaged only 3 percent, he said. His explanation for the sharp decline is that "the promise of the post-industrial society has been realized."
No new technological advances, he believes, would impel IT customers to replace the computer technology they already had: "I would suggest to you that most of what’s going on today is not very exciting."
In his view, far larger opportunities are to be found in businesses that address needs in food, water, health care and energy. Though Silicon Valley was "where the action was" when he finished graduate school, he says, "if I were graduating today, I would get on a boat and I would get off in Shanghai."
When I called him last month to discuss his provocative arguments, he was disarmingly modest. "I’m just an old has-been, I don’t present myself as an expert in this or any other area," he said.
The huge difference in growth rates, pre- and post-2000, may seem so stark as to leave no room for an alternative view of IT’s prospects.
But the recent drop is not as steep as it seems at first. I asked Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who has written extensively about the computer industry, to take a look at the raw data upon which those numbers were supposedly based: the annual IT spending estimates published by IDC.
Greenstein’s calculations produced a more moderate compounded annual growth rate of 11.6 percent for 1980 to 2000, instead of 17 percent. (Siebel’s personal assistant said last week that the 17 percent in the Stanford talk came from a staff member who calculated from a reading of a chart, not from precise figures.)
When Greenstein looked at the full IDC data set, which goes back to 1961, and used other breakpoints to compare growth in earlier and later periods, he found that the most golden years of IT were in the 1960s, when use of mainframe computers spread widely. From 1961 to 1971, the compounded annual growth rate was 35.7 percent, more than three times the rate in the 1980-2000 period celebrated by Siebel.
Declining growth rates over time are to be expected, Greenstein said. After all, it doesn’t take many sales to show huge percentage gains when the base is small.
Timothy Bresnahan, a Stanford economist, similarly does not accept Siebel’s contention that the decline in growth rates this decade, which encompasses two recessions, signals a permanent end to IT’s record of growing faster than the larger economy. "It is early days to say the game is over," he said.
When the economy recovers, there is no dearth of unfinished projects for IT, he said, like "automating white-collar work and automating buying and selling in markets."
And when one company dominates a certain area of technology, it can be a bottleneck along the road to innovation – an obstacle to the technology of others. Bresnahan says that this has happened with Microsoft in the PC side of corporate information technology, and in earlier times with IBM in computers and AT&T in telecommunications. But he said that entrepreneurial companies of those earlier days – like Siebel Systems – ultimately invented around bottlenecks and "innovation-led growth picked up again."
The biggest decline in IT’s growth came at the end of the 1960s, well before Siebel’s own IT career. A fortune or two could still be made, it turns out. Siebel Systems, which its founder says attained $2 billion in revenue annually in only seven years, was founded after the growth rate of IT spending dropped precipitously.
Entrepreneurial engineers in the United States should take heart. There’s no cause for mass flight to Shanghai.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Oracle waives fees on extended support offerings
Oracle President Charles Phillips pleasantly surprised Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Collaborate 09 attendees this morning during his keynote with the decision to waive Extended Support fees for a number of product lines through 2010 and 2011.
As customers and prospects face one of the worst global economic crises, proactive relief on support and maintenance fees could not come at a better time. Summary details of the program can be found below
Oracle's move to address the support issue may stem from a variety of reasons but the main focus centers around improving the vendor-client relationship for a few reasons:
Responding to the global economic crisis. Oracle has taken the initiative in listening to customers, partners, and industry watchers about customer reactions to the escalating costs of software maintenance. Oracle's Applications Unlimited and Lifetime Support Programs have been successful in retaining acquired customers and have shown customers that acquisitions need not be slash and burn with minimal reinvestment.
Providing more time for customers to adopt Fusion Apps. With the slow down, Oracle may be anticipating slower upgrade rates. While no clear date and product road map has been communicated to customers, removing the price pressure on extended support fees provides customers with some breathing room on upgrade timing.
Mitigating attention on high profit margins and its M&A strategy. After touting record profit margins near 50% and continuing its M&A strategy with the announcement to acquire Sun, customers have become concerned about the impact of less choice in the market. This move may appease regulators and industry watchers and show that Oracle has some self regulating policies.
The bottom line - user groups should now determine the minimum R&D percentage of investment from revenues
Oracle continues to gain economies of scale with each acquisition. The good news - Oracle has the capacity to reinvest $2.6B per year into R&D and the real dollar amount has increased from 1.9B in 2006. While this is a large figure, the bigger and more important issue - what percentage of the maintenance revenues have been reinvested?
Here's where we find a slight drop from 12.6% to about 11.6% in 2008. Consequently, like SAP's users and user groups, OAUG and the other Oracle users and user groups should begin to track the ratio of R&D dollars that tie back to the amount of maintenance revenue. In fact, they may want to take a look at the SUGEN KPI's and see if they are applicable to Oracle's environment.
based on :
http://www.oracle.com/profit/features/support.html?msgid=7642415
As customers and prospects face one of the worst global economic crises, proactive relief on support and maintenance fees could not come at a better time. Summary details of the program can be found below
Oracle's move to address the support issue may stem from a variety of reasons but the main focus centers around improving the vendor-client relationship for a few reasons:
Responding to the global economic crisis. Oracle has taken the initiative in listening to customers, partners, and industry watchers about customer reactions to the escalating costs of software maintenance. Oracle's Applications Unlimited and Lifetime Support Programs have been successful in retaining acquired customers and have shown customers that acquisitions need not be slash and burn with minimal reinvestment.
Providing more time for customers to adopt Fusion Apps. With the slow down, Oracle may be anticipating slower upgrade rates. While no clear date and product road map has been communicated to customers, removing the price pressure on extended support fees provides customers with some breathing room on upgrade timing.
Mitigating attention on high profit margins and its M&A strategy. After touting record profit margins near 50% and continuing its M&A strategy with the announcement to acquire Sun, customers have become concerned about the impact of less choice in the market. This move may appease regulators and industry watchers and show that Oracle has some self regulating policies.
The bottom line - user groups should now determine the minimum R&D percentage of investment from revenues
Oracle continues to gain economies of scale with each acquisition. The good news - Oracle has the capacity to reinvest $2.6B per year into R&D and the real dollar amount has increased from 1.9B in 2006. While this is a large figure, the bigger and more important issue - what percentage of the maintenance revenues have been reinvested?
Here's where we find a slight drop from 12.6% to about 11.6% in 2008. Consequently, like SAP's users and user groups, OAUG and the other Oracle users and user groups should begin to track the ratio of R&D dollars that tie back to the amount of maintenance revenue. In fact, they may want to take a look at the SUGEN KPI's and see if they are applicable to Oracle's environment.
based on :
http://www.oracle.com/profit/features/support.html?msgid=7642415
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Tomcat 6x web server installations
Tomcat : web server built on java. Avaible freely for commercial use.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomcat installations
Install j2se 5.0 jre . Refer http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp
Install Tomcat 6x - http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi
While installaing :
1) Configure the port (xxxx) the server needs to be accessed
2) set the password for admin user id
3) select the options for full installation
4) start the web server with either start command from $CATALINA_HOME/bin folder
5) This can also be done from service on windows /daemon process on Unix
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomcat installations
Install j2se 5.0 jre . Refer http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp
Install Tomcat 6x - http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi
While installaing :
1) Configure the port (xxxx) the server needs to be accessed
2) set the password for admin user id
3) select the options for full installation
4) start the web server with either start command from $CATALINA_HOME/bin folder
5) This can also be done from service on windows /daemon process on Unix
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
