Technology Archives
Here you’ll find a collection of articles published under the Technology category.
Looking Beyond Web 2.0
By Michael Mace on September 18, 2008
A popular sport in Silicon Valley is arguing about what exactly Web 2.0 is or is not. Is it about collaboration? Social networking? Custom services?
We think the argument misses the point. Web 2.0 is just an effect of a broader trend: the fundamental remaking of the software industry as a result of the Internet.
Can the iPhone be Apple’s next big thing?
By Michael Mace on May 28, 2008
Apple’s excellent April financial report — revenue up 43% and year over year and profits up 36% — masked the disturbing news that Apple’s iPod business has basically stopped growing. iPod units were up only one percent year over year. Most of Apple’s growth came from the Macintosh business.
Although Macs are on a roll at the moment, it’s risky for Apple to rely only on the relatively mature personal computer market for all of its growth. With the iPod now saturating, Apple needs its new iPhone business to provide a second growth engine.
What to Watch for in 2008
By Michael Mace on January 15, 2008
It’s very risky to make predictions in the tech industry. If we knew for certain what the future would be, we’d all be retired and living on our stock investments.
Looking Beyond Web 2.0: The Fate of the Software Industry
By Michael Mace on December 1, 2007
A popular sport in Silicon Valley is arguing about what exactly Web 2.0 is or is not. Is it about collaboration ? Social networking ? Custom services ?
We think the argument misses the point. Web 2.0 is just an effect of a broader trend: the fundamental remaking of the software industry as a result of the Internet. The label “Web 2.0” is being slapped on each new emerging symptom of that transition, as if each one was the whole picture. That’s dangerous thinking for tech companies because it encourages them to invest in yesterday’s news rather than looking ahead to what’ll happen next.
O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit: No Cave of Wonders
By Michael Mace on November 1, 2007
There is so much happening in the Web world that I went into this year’s annual O’Reilly Web 2.0 event hoping it would be like Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders—full of bright shiny new companies that did amazing things, each more enticing than the last.
Innovation: The Real Thing
By Michael Mace on November 1, 2007
Throughout the history of the tech industry, one of its guiding beliefs has been a faith in the power of innovation—that the company building the best mousetrap will win. But as outsourcing and web technologies continue to drive change, we’re starting to see the rise of tech businesses that specialize in business process rather than innovation. Innovativeness itself is a commodity to be managed through economic forces, rather than a craft to be nurtured.
The Sub-PC
By Michael Mace on September 20, 2007
The cancellation of the Palm Foleo marks the latest in a long string of failed attempts to create a market for keyboard-based devices that are smaller, simpler, and cheaper than personal computers. Computer companies have been trying to make sub-PCs work since the 1980s, but the only place they have been a major success is in Japan, where the complexities of typing in Japanese encouraged many people to buy cheap word processors instead of typewriters.
Mobile Commerce: Coming to a phone near you?
By Bruce LaFetra on August 16, 2007
A colleague recently bent my ear regarding mobile commerce and how she can barely wait for some of the new services (like this one) to become available in her area. I love a good gadget as much as the next guy, but having lived through electronic wallets and many of the other “great ideas” on the front-side of the dot com boom, I’m a bit skeptical.
For those that are willing to learn, failures teach us more than successes, so this got me thinking about what the past can teach us about these new service offerings. I’m not talking about ringtones and wallpaper; I’m only talking about stuff you buy with your phone, not for your phone.
Impact of Amazon Flexible Payments Service: Computing as a utility
By Michael Mace on August 16, 2007
The announcement of Amazon FPS made my whole week, on a lot of different levels. I’m excited about the service itself, I’m excited about what it means for the development of web applications, and I’m excited about what it’ll eventually do for the mobile data world.
Okay, I’m just excited.
Separating “How” from “What:” An open letter to the tech industry
By Michael Mace on April 6, 2007
One of the advantages of working as a consultant is that you get to look at the big picture across corporations. You can see trends and common themes that might not be obvious to somebody working in a single company.
One of the themes that’s become very clear lately is our industry’s difficulty telling the difference between “how” and “what” when designing products.
Virtualization in the Real World
By Bruce LaFetra on April 5, 2007
Conventional wisdom, in lumping Second Life with MySpace, FaceBook and other social networking sites, dismisses it as merely a social site. By “dismisses” I don’t mean to say that people think as a phenomena it is unimportant and can be ignored, but merely that they think of its impact solely in terms of social interaction. I am more convinced than ever that Second Life is really a new medium of virtualization, and is far more revolutionary than most people realize.
Telephony meets the Internet: What it means to you
By Michael Mace on April 1, 2007
The Emerging Telephony (eTel) conference brings together the open source and web telephony community. It doesn’t get much attention in the mainstream tech press, but it’s an interesting place for scouting out telephony trends that might affect the tech industry as a whole. We went to this year’s conference. Three themes stood out that deserve your attention:
Top 10 Trends for 2007 High-Tech Markets
By Nilofer Merchant on January 24, 2007
Rubicon has always served its clients by scouting trends and drawing out the implications to those high-tech companies seeking to craft winning strategies. To help you plan for the new year, here’s a look at what we think is going to matter in 2007, why it’s important, and what we think it means in terms of opportunities.
Hardware to Watch in 2007
By Michael Mace on January 8, 2007
We’re optimistic that 2007 will turn out to be a year of significant progress in the creation of new types of computing devices. Here are some of the things to watch for, and why we think they’re significant:
Software Platforms of the Future
By Michael Mace on January 7, 2007
A very important trend to watch in 2007 will be the ongoing efforts to separate the operating system from the platform (the APIs and user interface that an application interacts with).
Key players in this movement include Adobe’s Apollo and Microsoft WPF/E.
Is Vista the End of Windows?
By Michael Mace on January 6, 2007
At the end of 2006, Gartner Group predicted that Vista would be the last major release of Windows, with future updates being delivered on the fly, in modular format. “The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end,” Gartner said. “Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement and the result will be more flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall.”
Will WiMax Change the Wireless Landscape?
By Michael Mace on January 1, 2007
Most companies that deal with the mobile industry are frustrated with the protected business models of the carriers. Unlike the wired Internet, it’s not generally possible for a software company to deploy a program to any cellphone without extensive reprogramming and often getting permission from the carrier. Deploying new hardware can be equally daunting — it’s often difficult to get a carrier to even offer a new phone.
Web 2.0, Meet College Politics 2.0
By Bruce LaFetra on November 13, 2006
Reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page the other day, it struck me how far the societal impact of Web 2.0 has come. It is a great example of how the technological and cultural changes driving Web 2.0 are no longer limited to technology; in this case, the hotly contested election on the proposed Alumni Constitution at Dartmouth College.
Peter Robinson writes in the Wall Street Journal,
Insights on Corporate Blogging
By Michael Mace on November 12, 2006
Robert Scoble, former lead blogger at Microsoft, was interviewed recently by Ziff-Davis. Some key points:
Web 2.0 vs. SaaS
By Michael Mace on November 10, 2006
Web 2.0, meet Software as a Service.
SaaS, meet Web 2.0.
You two need to talk. You’re working on many of the same problems, but you don’t communicate well, and sometimes it seems like each of you barely knows that the other exists.
The “Lamest Feature Ever” on a Corporate Weblog
By Michael Mace on November 9, 2006
All right, it’s probably not the lamest one ever. But it’s the lamest one we’ve seen in quite a while.
Sprint has a weblog that lists podcasts the company has created. That’s fine. But for some reason the site has a prominent tool to let the user change the background highlight color used in the weblog’s graphics. Not the whole background, just the highlight color. And there are only four choices.
Understanding the full impact of the web
By Michael Mace on September 27, 2006
This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses.
I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a reaction to the Internet bubble — because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don’t understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don’t understand its full impact across their entire company.
To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here’s what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.
Yahoo Partners with Motorola: Should You Care?
By Bruce LaFetra on August 1, 2006
Yahoo and Motorola recently announced a multi-year deal where Motorola will pre-load Yahoo Go for Mobile on “tens of millions” of mid-priced and high-end Motorola phones. The deal is similar to the deal Yahoo and Nokia struck in January. Currently, Yahoo Go for Mobile is available in US only from Cingular on a single Nokia phone (S60-based Nokia 8862) available since February. 5-10 models are shipping with the service in Europe and Asia.
Web 2.0 Takes Another Step Forward
By Bruce LaFetra on August 1, 2006
Market analyst powerhouse Gartner recently came out strongly behind Web 2.0, which we and others see as another step toward the Web 2.0 vision. While Gartner expects the majority of Global 1000 companies to adopt some technology-related aspects of Web 2.0 by 2008, companies will be much slower to adopt the social dimensions of Web 2.0.
Flash: The New Computing Platform?
By Michael Mace on June 1, 2006
The newly-merged Adobe/Macromedia is rolling out ambitions plans for Flash, its Web animation tool. Most of the tech community is expecting there to be a battle between Adobe and Microsoft over Web graphics, but we think the competition goes a lot deeper than that, to the heart of the Windows franchise. We think Adobe is trying to make Windows irrelevant, and it might work.
To explain what’s happening, we have to spend a little time discussing what exactly an operating system like Windows is. To a computer scientist, an OS is the software that enables computing hardware to work. It manages the basic operations of the system (thus the name), so applications can perform the tasks desired by a designer or user.
Are the Mammals Eating Your Eggs?
By Bruce LaFetra on April 17, 2006
Clients ask us lots of questions, but with the world buzzing about Web 2.0 and software changing in some pretty significant ways, one question that clients should ask but never do is, “Is my company becoming a dinosaur?” Maybe it’s because people don’t want to know, or perhaps Rai Wasner, a former colleague, had it right years ago when he said that life can be pretty good for the last dinosaur as you seem to have the whole swamp to yourself.
Once you stop innovating, you’re stuck in the status quo, and if—really when—the world changes, you’ll be unable to adapt. Your company’s name will be added to the corporate “Where are they now?” file.
As a public service, Rubicon Consulting has compiled a list of signs that your company may not be as nimble and innovative as it needs to be to defeat challenges from upstart competitors.
Software as a Service: The New Cargo Cult
By Michael Mace on April 17, 2006
The big buzzword at April’s Software 2006 conference was Software as a Service. What does it mean, what impact will it have, and what should companies do about it? Former Oracle exec Ray Lane, now a venture capitalist, listed the key attributes of hot new software companies. They included software that’s viral (anyone can download it and try it out), that generates value for an end user (so they’ll have an incentive to install it), that doesn’t require any data entry or training (so users can work with it instantly), and that generates immediate value (he called it "value first, pay later").
New Drivers for Digital Video Editing: A Personal View
By Bruce LaFetra on April 17, 2006
My experience over the past year with digital video (DV) makes me wonder if the market is changing in important ways that are perhaps not being picked up by the market. Like so many parents, I bought my first camcorder after the birth of my first child. My wife and I took lots of video the first few years, and I spent many, many, many hours turning the first couple of years into a decent—but not great—movie. By the time my son turned six, I had four years of partially edited video and was falling further behind even though we were taking less video and I had better software. Suddenly, a year ago I started taking a lot more video and within days turned it into dozens of five to eight minute videos kids and adults love to watch.
I don’t have a whole lot more time on my hands, so what changed? Hint: the difference is not the fabulous editing software now available for consumers, nor any of the snazzy little DV cameras on the market. It is more fundamental than that.
CTIA: Thin Phones and Fat Interfaces
By Michael Mace on April 17, 2006
The recent CTIA show in Las Vegas was awash in new mobile phones. If you didn’t make it to the show, here’s one highlight and one lowlight:
Blogging: Friend or Foe?
By Bruce LaFetra on March 1, 2006
Blogging is hip. Blogging is cool. More and more companies are using blogs as corporate marketing tools. Some of these efforts are enormously successful, while others make us shudder. Before your company adopts a blogging strategy, here’s what you’ve got to know.
Some companies like Google, GM and Cisco have official company blogs. Others like Sun and Microsoft have hundreds of employee bloggers to which the companies link to from the corporate web site. Still others are encouraging executives and rank and file employees to blog, but don’t seem to be having much success. Here are some thoughts about corporate blogs.
Software as a Service: Over-hyped, But That Doesn’t Mean it Won’t Kill You
By Michael Mace on March 1, 2006
We were involved in a recent roundtable meeting where the topic of Software as a Service (SaaS) came up. Some of the people there felt it’s an important trend, others viewed it as the latest round of Silicon Valley hype.
Our view is that it’s an important change in the way the industry works, but one that will take years to play out. As so often happens in our industry, it will probably be written off by a lot of people before it has its greatest impact.
Is SaaS Right for You?
By Bruce LaFetra on February 1, 2006
Most articles about Software as a Service (SaaS) focus on its many benefits, but only a few talk about its drawbacks. In almost breathless tones, IDC forecasts that SaaS will grow at 21% a year through 2009, reaching $10.7 billion. With last week’s launch of a SaaS offering by SAP and the ongoing launch of Microsoft’s Windows OneCare Live, the 1,000 pound gorillas are taking the field. With SaaS services vendors pitching their services to one and all, there’s little focus on the pragmatic questions of why SaaS is appropriate and when is the right time to make the move. We look at who cannot afford to miss the SaaS boat and who might benefit from a later departure. Our clients are especially interested in understanding SaaS with regards to desktop applications.
Mobile Opportunity Named “Best Blog” for 2005
By Nilofer Merchant on January 1, 2006
Palm 24/7 named our own Mike Mace’s blog, Mobile Opportunity one of two “Best Blogs” for 2005, saying “Brilliant writing and sharp opinions put this in my top two.”
Healthy Outlook for Education Software Spending In 2006
By Bruce LaFetra on December 1, 2005
Is the Education market facing several years of flat growth, or are things looking up? A widely reported forecast from INPUT recently predicted flat IT spending in US Education until a sharp upturn after 2008. Reading deeper, the renewed spending is predicated on the wildly optimistic hope of reigning in healthcare spending beginning in 2008. So, without the rose-colored glasses, the outlook is pretty discouraging with little relief in sight.
SaaS: Deja vú, or something new?
By Nilofer Merchant on October 1, 2005
A few years ago, Application service providers (ASPs) were all the rage. Then the Internet bubble burst and the term fell from favor. Now more companies are offering their applications via Software as a Service (SaaS). Some articles you read do not even attempt to distinguish between the two, and refer to ASP/ SaaS companies.
So what is the difference, and why is distinguishing between them important.
Multi-Core CPUs Raise Licensing Issues
By Bruce LaFetra on September 1, 2005
Users and vendors are both grappling with the impact on pricing models as a result of the introduction of multi-core CPUs. The choice between pricing per user and per server grew more complicated a few years ago when multi-processor servers came into broad use. With two-thirds of new servers expected to ship with multi-core CPUs by the end of 2006, software publishers are anything but unified in their reaction. Is a dual-core CPU one or two CPUs for licensing purposes? Consensus appears to be a long ways off.
Oracle, always looking for a way to improve licensing revenue, counts the number of cores. Microsoft counts only the number of CPUs. IBM, trying to have it both ways, counts by cores for some types of CPUs, but not for others.
Life Caching: Opportunity or Just Another Blog?
By Marsha Keeffer on September 1, 2005
Why would someone want to video, record, or photograph everything that happened to them and/or their friends on a particular day, or any day, for that matter? Perhaps the best answer is simply because they can. Similar to the 70’s slide shows of “Dad packing the car”, but with a digital twist, the abundance of gadgets, Web sites, and software specifically designed and focused to easily record, document, organize and store all of life’s moments, it’s no wonder that everyday activities, no matter how mundane, are being recorded as if they are Oscar winning moments. Trendwatching.com, a leading Web source for the latest trends and insights who also dubbed this trend as “Life Caching”, put it best when they said, “Human beings love to collect and store possessions, memories, experiences, in order to create personal histories, mementoes of their lives, or just to keep track for practical reasons.”