Thinkervine

After a full year of down-turn mode due to the recession, companies are starting to see the light again. There are some emerging trends of business recovery, enterprise strategists and entrepreneurs are re-engaging new projects in hope of transforming opportunities into cash.

Being an Entrepreneur or Intrapreneur almost comes back to the same thing. Come up with a bright idea and convince the audience to get sponsporship. Leading the project development to a productized state. Market the product, build a faithful community of consumers. Manage the product lifecycle, spin-off the business plan and enrich the catalog. Be competitive and be able to have a quick-spin reaction to face competitors.

But what makes a good entrepreneur ? What makes some of them successful and sustainable ? While others have to face failure ?

We are not going to discuss the intrinseque qualities the entrepreneur should behold in order to drive successfully his business. We will rather try to lay down, from a management perspective, what are the good deeds that will lead to a prosperous company.

At the beginning, there was the idea. Then the idea was nurtured, matured, shaped and eventually a product or service came out of it. A market research would then help define the relevance of this idea and how it would be adopted by consumers, which leads to building a solid business model that will eventually convince investors, around a table, to rise funds.

Although this process seems straight-forward, it is rarely the case. First of all, entrepreneurship is scarcely a one-man thing. The entrepreneur needs to define what skills are required in order to  create his inner circle of trustees. The people that will help him through the process, provide him with the appropriate advices and critics, and mentor him. Collaboration is the key word, here. An entrepreneur should not be afraid of involving his friends, family and professionals in order to collect feedback about his product and roadmap thourough the development cycle. This should help him refine the concept until reaching the best-of-the-breed state of release.

An entrepreneur needs to be adaptable. He might come up with a great idea at first but then realize that by the time it comes to the market that it would be outdated or irrelevant. You can take the example of Seesmic, a web 2.0 startup in San Francisco, which started with micro-video blogging and sharing. Recently, its founder, Loic Lemeur, seeing that the market came to a saturation state in addition to changing habits, he decided to give a U-turn to the company and Seesmic relocated around Seesmic Desktop, a tool that allows you to update anf follow Twitter and Facebook status messages. Another example is The Next Big Sound, who realized mid-way that they could come up with better ideas, which they presented to their advisors. This daring move, reinforced the trust from the investors and these guys came out with a genuine concept for signing new musical artists.

For this purpose, the entrepreneur needs to constantly screen his audience, screen the market, aggregate the information and go through a constant decision process. This does not mean he has to turn-ways every dire tides but that eventually it would be about time to come up with the next big idea to reinforce his position on the market. Although processes will help industrialize most of the tasks to handle lean costs, he will still need to be agile enough in order to react to the market.

B2C interaction goes mainly through communication. It is very important for an entrepreneur to endorse his company and his products. Trust in a product and trust in a company go through trust in the person that runs that company. Recently, a study by McKinsey showed a recession in trust in big corporations, due to the lack of transparency and the focus on stakeholder’s interests versus a customer focus organization. The Apple case is good example of how its CEO, Steve Jobs, endorsed every product that was released, demonstrating how this was a break-through product that everyone needed to own. Another example would be the Digg case, where Kevin Rose started a live cast called Diggnation in order to comment the popular stories on Digg. The combination of the platform and the show made a good audience capture in an environment where Digg-like services started to pop-up every week.

The good counter-example of this would really be Facebook. Despite its popularity as a social network, Facebook failed to have a good community management and strong endorsement by its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. This lead to serious crisis management when it came to the privacy terms of service or the recent issues with click fraud. However smart were the moves they have adopted at a later stage, the scars will stick to their skin.

At last, an entrepreneur needs to create an ecosystem around his company. A company should be able to leverage its partnership circle in order to provide by severals means the best customer experience. Reliable partners are key to the success of a young blossom. A partner could either be a managing partner or a business partner (third party service providers).

Managing partnerships is essential in the company’s life. A partner could either be a bliss to the enterprise or a stagnant and dysfunctional strain that needs to be managed on a day to day basis. Due diligence will often help you go through this but before creating a new relationship, you will have to assert the benefits of this relationship. Which value do you get from this new business link ? What are his previous performances and do they serve you right ?

A good knowledge of your partners will not only help you prevent deadlocks but will also allow you leverage at best the capabilities they could bring to you. They will help you assemble this whole set of competencies, services and networks in order to come-up with a valuable service for your customers.

Launching a new project does not only require a bright idea and strong commitment from the entrepreneur, but it is also the right combination of a smart and wise management, risks and taking on the exciting challenges with the appropriate people.

Facebook has reinvented the social networking, beating in popularity all its predecessors (MySpace and Bebo). It has long lived as the poppy cheery Social Media company and then came Twitter. Micro-blogging. Follwers and not friends. Search. Live stream. Easy access URLs.

Facebook didn’t see the threat coming until it was there. Even since, Facebook has made a huge work trying to catch up with Twitter. It changed its (long controversed) new home page to include live stream, it then included Vanity URLs. Recently, Facebook introduced the universal status, allowing people outside Facebook to see your status.

Now the new feature Facebook has come up with is… Followers. Yeah, highly innovative feature, it’s been there since 3 years on Twitter but anyway.

It is now activated by default and allows people to add you not as a friend and access your complete profile, but as a person to follow including your status updates into their new stream, as an opt-in system.

For privacy reasons, you can either choose to keep it on or de-activate it (Settings -> Notifications).

Let us analyze this new feature introduction and how it has been introduced.

Facebook has made no announcement to the introduction to this feature, hence users are not notified that their streams are public by default and that anyone can subscribe to them (understand by this: your boss, unwanted public). This is a major issue especially when several UE agencies have asked all major social networks to have a better control on default privacy options.

Second, I barely see users subscribe to other people’s feeds. The whole Facebook architecture is not meant for that. Profiles are heavy and full loaded with pictures, applications and other things. People are barely solely interested in incognito’s status updates within the whole flow of information they are already getting. Either be friends or wander away. Hence, I seriously doubt there will be a serious adoption of this feature by Facebook users. This is highly unlike Twitter where the Following/Follower system is as the essence of the service, and where you have applications that allow you to manage your stream, which is not Facebook’s case.

Furtherly, how do you decide wether you want to subscribe to someone or not ? Will you be provided with a history of the statuses ? Can you make a profile search based on criterias just as Twitter does ? Will the friend suggestion engine take into account subscriptions as a fan on the base of people you are following and not just those you are friend with ?

On the contact list level, how do you manage your fans ? Can you see them and search through them ? Can you block them ? Are you notified when someone adds you as a fan ? Ideally if Facebook wanted this thing working right, as soon as you have fans, you’d have a spin-off of your profile into a real fan page to which people subscribe. Your statuses would then be broadcasted to the fan page and hence to your fans.

Facebook is most probably driving a bad strategy right now. Instead of pursuing the innovation quest, just as it successfully did during the last years, it is now plunging into the catch-up competition, which means you’re already second to introduce the feature. These guys should step to the next running field and have lead the competition instead of trying to imitate their fellow entrepreneurs.

Guys from Google have been asking people in New York about a definition of a browser and the difference it has from a search engine. As you can see most people, although, they’re using the Internet on a daily basis, just can’t tell. Watch this video:

Yesterday, the dev team has released its activation and jailbreaking tool for the newly released firmware 3.0 from Apple. But as pwnage tool only runs under mac, PC users had to wait until this morning when they released redsn0w which provides the same capabilities for the iPhone 2G, 3G and iPod Touch original and 2G.

So, if you’re looking forward jailbreaking your phone, you can check out the redsn0w release post.

After downloading the tool, READ the mentions on the dev team blog. Then you’ll be able to execute the MO as described hereafter:

- Unarchive the zip file into a directory

- Run iTunes 8.2

- Connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your computer and make sure iTunes recognizes it

- Switch to DFU mode

- Run redsn0w from the command line using: redsn0w <path-to-firmware-30-file>

- Wait until you’re receiving the message that your device has been jailbroken

There you go but be aware that jailbreaking your device voids your warranty.

You may have heard. Microsoft is not shipping IE8 with its new operating system Windows 7, which should be released in October, in Europe. Several solutions are being proposed as how users will install a browser on their machine but all have a common proposal: Users will have the choice on which browser to install.

This is a major threat for Microsoft and might lead to a big marketshare loss. Today, many people use Internet Explorer as it is the “default” installed browser and do not bother to look at something else. In the future, they will have no default and will have to make a choice.

Microsoft will be starting an evangelisation campaign, trying to rally most of the users to its new version of Internet Explorer, IE8. It started with a (laughable) comparison with Firefox and Chrome.

The below table shows their points of comparison. You may notice how the left column is populated, and you really got to check the comments.

According to this chart, IE8 should be the prefered browsing choice. But when it comes to real facts, this depicts how Microsoft tries to jeopardize real facts using marketing speech. This chart would have been of more interest if actually it had presented something more representative of reality. Showing a “no coverage” case for Firefox and Chrome when it comes to Security or Privacy is just meaningless. We all know how Chrome first introduced the “anonymous mode” that has been adopted in IE8 at a later stage. Both browsers support all common security and anti-phishing mechanisms.

Search has always been an enhanced feature within Firefox which had the small search box on the upper left, Chrome uses the address bar as a search engine, providing predictive typing. Where does this compare to anything provided by Microsoft.

Funny enough, Microsoft skipped Opera and Safari. Aren’t they considered as real threats to Microsoft ? Opera has just launched its Opera Unite platform, which introduces an embedded Web Server and several features. They were also the firsts to introduce the speed dial feature that was adopted in Chrome (supported in IE using Google Toolbar).

There’s one particular section I love: Performance. We all know this is a major issue in IE8. Slow for starters (cold and warm starts), slow for rendering pages and aweful Javascript execution speed. Both Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 3.0 have been introducing great enhancements. So what do they have to say for their defense ? “Top speed of a car doesn’t tell you how fast you can drive during rush hours”. Does that mean that the Internet is in a permanent congestion ? They might have missed fact that people have been consuming lot of media on the internet, that many now are living through DSL and Fiber. We’ll let them know. And I’d really know what kind of car they’re riding, old bikes perhaps. On the basis of this statement, you might just need to align on the basement ? Yeah, right. Why bother upgrading to IE8, let’s just get back to IE5

Now talking real, does browsing restricts to Windows users only ? What about Linux and Mac users ? Hence, what does Microsoft say about portability ? Or perhaps they might develop Linux and Mac versions for IE8 ? Which we righteously can claim ?

This is about time to go out and claim it. Microsoft, we would be glad to adopt IE8 provided you hand us copies under Linux and Mac. And I’m sure many others would do as well, so it’s up to you. Care to listen ?

Apple announced the release of the new iPhone, called 3Gs, during the World Wide Developer Conference 09, held on June 8th. Rumors and speculations have been going on, long before, as it usually does before any WWDC. Many of which were quite promising.

While the announcement was going on, a foule of people was there, following each of them, waiting for the breath-taking one. But it never came. Several interesting features have been announced, but most of them were rather tied to the Firmware 3.0 (which will be available as of June 17) rather than the 3Gs.

The innovative stake at Apple during the last year has been pretty low, or at least, not focused on the iPhone. There has been no improvements on the design, one of Apple’s major focus. No improvement on the screen quality. No improvement on useability. Not even a frontal camera for 3G conversations.

Among the improvements, you can find:

• 3MP Camera and video recording
• OpenGL support
• Compass
• Voice control
• 32GB storage

Complete list is here.

Mainly, the focus was purely technical: better speed, better battery life, better camera, more storage, Nike+ support. But again, this is far from creativity, far from revolution. I am not saying the 3Gs won’t be a great phone. And I will be part of the guys upgrading, since I’m still keeping a vintage 2G as I was not particularly seduced by the 3G and was expecting more from the next-gen.

The innovation slowdown is not just iPhone related. You can see it slowing in every major Apple line of products. Macbooks just got greener, Snow Leopard had the same focus: technical improvements, less features introductions than what Leopard did.

Is it a sign that Apple’s creativity is slowly reaching its limits ? Or is it because the main driving force (aka Steve Jobs) is leaving the business inch by inch (mainly due to health reasons) ?

Apple will, for sure, have to react if they don’t want to lose the market they’ve been winning. Palm Pre and Android are there as big threats and if you have to SWOT the smartphone market, you’d notice that Apple would face a great list of Ts (Threats) despite the Ss (Strenghts) and the Os (Opportunities) which they share with their competitors.

You’ve been hearing about Cloud Computing but you could hardly define what it was, what are its usages. This 5mn video will get you through it and enlighten your path.

The Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) has been released today.

As the name says, the RC version of a software is the candidate to be the final version that goes to market, almost apple to apple, but for some minor bug fixes.

If you have been trying out Windows 7 during beta, you may just upgrade, this version is likely to be more stable and should implement late implementation features. If you’re a Windows XP/Vista user and plan to upgrade, you may start with this RC and move to the final version, which should be released on March 2010.

Windows Vista users will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 using the installation process, while XP and Windows 7 beta users should do a fresh install then restore/reinstall their previous applications and files.

The Windows 7 RC will expire on June 2010. As of March 2010, it will shut down the computer every couple of hours. But by the time, the final version should have been released to public and widely distributed. You will then have reinstall the final release and restore your files. Windows will notify you two-weeks before the shut down process starts.

Windows Seven has been released in two versions, 32bits and 64bits. Depending on your architecture, you should download and install the appropriate version. If you’re 64, I recommend you’d use the 64bits version rather than the 32 in order to leverage the full capabilities. 32bits applications will still be able to run in compatibility mode.

You may download Windows 7 on the Microsoft download site. You may then follow installation instructions described here.

The product keys are common to all users and a list is provided by Microsoft. You will be provided with a product key during the download process.

Lately, I have been highly involved in the implementation of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation for NetWeaver at a customer. As you might know (or not), this product was until, this morning, in a Ramp Up process.

This is the first version of the port of the Oulooksoft product on the NetWeaver platform, it has introduced along, several new concepts to the solution, which are basics of a standard SAP solution.

Among the changes, SAP BPC for NW has now the transport concept which allows you to transport your customizing along the environments on your maintenance track. As the product lacked documentation on this aspect, I have decided to release a document providing an overview of the transport concepts, tools and a governance approach for managing changes in SAP BPC.

You may download the white paper from the SAP Developer Network, on the Enterprise Performance Management page.

The Sun acquisition by Oracle has been a long debate on the press and Twitter.

Yesterday, as I was strolling through our internal corporate portal, I saw a headline post about this topic which continued in our internal forum, asking about our thoughts on this move. I thought I’d just share them with everyone.

First, we have yet to spot the real motivation that lead Oracle to overtake on Sun. Might be end-to-end data center solution or can be software based (Java mainly).

If you look at Oracle’s portfolio, it is mainly Java based, wether it is Oracle Database design tools, Middleware or most other applications. So, leveraging Java technology will certainly be a big asset for them.

Sun and Oracle have both a whole different corporate culture and outlook on open-source. So far Oracle has only done limited Open Source incursions. Mainly their Linux support service was a way to draw in more database customers. Oracle has a different approach to open-ness than Sun has. Plus the open source business model relies on services which is not something Oracle is really experienced with as they mostly rely on partners. And since Sun has drastically reduced the open source service over the year, they might not prove better monetizing these solutions.

The Java community is among the most importants in the IT world, Oracle cannot take back some of asserted concepts, like open source, availability/portability and roadmap for Java and its SDK. But they could fork their development into a community version and an enterprise version, providing a business oriented framework which is the main motivation for enterprises. On the other side, you’ll still have community produced content and software (Struts, Spring, Hibernate…).

Looking through MySQL, there are two differentiating parts:

• MySQL as a community and open source database, which might be kept as en entry database software, that fits well with the web world
• MySQL Enterprise (including MySQL Cluster) which will certainly be cut dead as it is a direct competitor to Oracle.

Although, for cost reasons, Oracle will probably reduce the team sizes for these community products to the minimal requirement. Hence you can expect more delayed releases and less improvement over time. The maintenance will probably an issue to discuss.

Oracle will probably kill all the non profitable side apps like Glassfish, Netbeans as they will try to impose their own existing tools that have been acquired through the years (especially through BEA). Not to forget that Oracle is a member of Eclipse, which is the main Netbeans competitor.

Now on the hardware level, the fact that Oracle provides hardware will probably change its relationship with hardware partners. For example, I can see the HP-Oracle Exadata partnership killed as Oracle will manufacture its own high profile database platforms.

Will the software still be agnostic ? Not sure. You might see in the future a delayed support for other platforms (Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Linux).

One of the main opportunities Oracle gets by acquiring Sun is entering the Cloud Computing world, they would be able provide an end to end platform. Sun has already made great achievements and acquisitions in this way. Completing their infrastructure with Cloud oriented applications (web application servers, database) will certainly reinforce Oracle’s position on this market as a global provider.

Now what are the threats to SAP ? It all depends on how strong the SAP-Oracle relationship in the coopetition environment.

SAP is a main driver to Oracle’s database world so has it been for Sun’s hardware and software (OS, Clustering). On the other hand, Sun was maintaining a specific SDK for SAP in order to run NetWeaver 7.0 Java based platforms. Will the version still be maintained by Oracle ?

As for future releases, SAP has taken a step ahead and is now basing the new solutions on its own JDK, named Solid Rock, this reduces the liability to Sun’s releases thus to Oracle. On the other hand, SAP uses its own framework for building Java applications (CAF and Java webdynpros), thus the impact of Oracle owning Java cannot be significant.

Still this rises the liability to its main competitor for future releases. In order to be kept aligned on future evolutions of the technology, SAP will still have to leverage the advancements made by Oracle on Java in order be standards compliant. Unless Oracle suddenly threats Java as a private and proprietary asset, SAP might not affected by this.

Oracle has now become a big threat to IBM then to HP (and possibly Microsoft) rather than SAP. The position against SAP will barely change by this acquisition, but this makes an important competitor to these 3 others.