As we've been saying for months, post (hopefully) pandemic Market Conditions are ripe for you to act in driving business value into your company. If you've ever dreamed of being the budget hero, this is it. With the tumult in the supplier marketplace around M&As, shifts of products to the cloud, small company disruptions, the supplier competition has never been as robust. Once you digest the list below and want more, we're happy to talk. There's nothing we like better than chatting about how to get more value from technology suppliers - especially now. Big Software SAP Nearly 100% of SAP deals come due in December. This is driven by ...
Read More
If you are like me, you have been receiving an avalanche of email notifications from every company you’ve ever done business with letting you know how they are responding to the Covid-19 crisis. Did I really need to know how my auto mechanic is responding to the epidemic? Probably not at the top of my list. However, if you can get through the noise, there have been some legitimate offers to help companies support their teams and customers through the crisis. Most of these offers are in the form of free services and software for an extended period of time (30-60-90 days and more). Below, we’ve compiled a list of twenty-three companies and ...
Read More
Leave it to IBM to bring in fresh new blood. After nearly 40 years at IBM. Ginni Rometty steps down and Arvind steps forward; someone with only 30 years in at IBM, so we can expect a radical departure from the past, right? Jokes!! Of course, we are jesting, but maybe (just maybe) this guy is different. Let’s see. IBM’s new CEO (who currently heads up IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive Division), is credited with being the primary architect of IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat. Certainly, he will be measured by how well IBM becomes more like Red Hat, rather than Red Hat becoming at all like IBM. If Arvind is to be successful, IBM will need to become the de ...
Read More
Virginia “Ginni” Rometty has agreed to step down at IBM, and it’s without a doubt the best thing she has done for the company in her 8+ year tenure as its CEO. The news sent the markets reeling and IBM stock soaring; up 5%. The market clearly agrees that this is a long overdue and much needed move. Ginni plans to step down as CEO in early April and retire officially by the end of the year with nearly 40 years of experience at IBM. NET(net) has been somewhat critical (but fair) of Ginni over the years. Shortly after she was named CEO, we documented our Top 10 Reasons Why Ginni Rometty Will Fail as IBM’s New CEO, and fail she did. The ...
Read More
Software audits have become an unfortunate but necessary revenue stream for most suppliers today. And who can really blame them? It usually works! Just as governments have now come to rely on revenue from things like speeding and parking tickets, so to have software companies come to rely on software audits to move the needle on revenue or generate fear, using pressure and leverage to create opportunities for new licensing revenue. The reasons are well known, and really haven’t changed significantly in the last few years: Competition from disruptive suppliers Migration away from perpetual licensing to subscription-based cloud solutions ...
Read More
We are still waiting for the great IBM turnaround led by Ginny Rometty since her installment as CEO in 2012. IBM has pinned its turnaround on Watson AI, Blockchain and now “Hybrid Cloud” with the RedHat acquisition. IBM’s “turnaround” has resulted in 22 out of 25 quarters of declining earnings. To be fair, it’s the last three quarters that have shown growth, not driven by its strategic imperatives but rather has been provided by (drum roll please) – mainframe. Yes, the good old mainframe, with upgrades and increased storage needs driving strong revenue in Q2 and Q3. How the mighty have fallen, or better said, continue to fall as we have been ...
Read More
Back in March 1991, Stewart Alsop, a venture-capitalist and editor of InfoWorld said, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15th, 1996”. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, so we know now, this could not be further from the truth. The mainframe is not only ‘not’ a dinosaur, it may be the single most important technology in the financial services industry, running almost every large Bank and Insurance Company’s back end system in the world. Still today, seemingly only the mainframe can handle the performance requirements & reliability demands of these challenging operating environments and support the sheer volume of ...
Read More
