June 12th, 2009

TechCrunch Research: Big deal or not?

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:22 am

Categories: Consulting, Uncategorized, Vendor relationships

Tags: TechCrunch, Advisor, PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS TechCrunch, TechCrunch Research, Investment, Finance, Michael Krigsman

TechCrunch, the opinionated startup-focused blog network, has launched a low-cost analytic research service. Given the company’s high profile, this research offering cannot be ignored. However, does this new TechCrunch initiative provide value to buyers or threaten established analyst firms?

TechCrunch describes its 1Q 2009 Report report this way:

[It] provides key take aways and statistical support for the major trends of Q1. The report covers trends in start-up foundings, products, financings and exits across a variety of technology sectors: consumer media and entertainment, social networking, cloud computing, mobile communications, search, advertising and ecommerce, consumer electronics and clean tech.

The report costs $149 and partially overlaps the outstanding, web-based MoneyTree Report, which is free and has been around for years. PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association sponsor MoneyTree.

THE PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS

TechCrunch keeps its finger on the pulse of startups, writing with a colorful (some say arrogant) tone and style. This formula has propelled TechCrunch’s popularity and influence among those following technology startups and investment.

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April 28th, 2009

Chuck Norris Syndrome and IT failure

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:57 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, IT issues, Uncategorized

Tags: Information Technology, Twitter, Chuck Norris, Brian D. Foy, Team Management, Internet, Strategy, Management, Michael Krigsman

During a Twitter discussion last night, I mentioned that some organizations want to improve business operations without change or cost. This ridiculous perspective implies that meaningful improvements arise effortlessly of their own accord, as if through magical or divine intervention. Amazingly, such attitudes are common and underlie many project failures.

A blog post from perlmonks.org directly addresses this point. Technical consultant, brian d foy (no caps), says some of his clients seem to want a super-human, such as actor Chuck Norris, to save them:

Chuck Norris is the man who can do anything, and the universe is afraid of him. Not just the people in the universe, the actual universe itself. [His] abilities are collected in Chuck Norris Facts, which include:

• Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
• Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.
• Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Brian groups his clients into three categories; the first only needs a gentle nudge to get their project moving:

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March 11th, 2009

Will downtime rain on the cloud computing parade?

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:22 am

Categories: Availability and reliability, CIO issues, Enterprise 2.0, Google, IT issues, SAP, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Uncategorized

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Google Inc., Google Gmail, Downtime, Outage, Manufacturing, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Sales Force Management, Internet

Gmail recorded downtime yesterday, once again raising availability as an on-demand software issue. I’m interested in your opinion on whether this issue is significant.

Here’s a view of this most recent Gmail outage from Google’s new status dashboard:

And here’s detail describing the problem:

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March 10th, 2009

Google Apps Status Dashboard: enterprise-friendly

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:43 am

Categories: Availability and reliability, Enterprise 2.0, Google, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Salesforce.com

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Dashboard, Status Dashboard, Cloud Computing, Michael Krigsman

Following a major Gmail outage, Google released a new, publicly available status dashboard showing system health for the company’s Apps products.

This release brings Google into the ranks of companies such as Salesforce.com and Amazon, which already have dashboards that accurately report system status to end-users.

The Google Enterprise Blog announced the news:

The Google Apps Status Dashboard represents an additional layer of transparency that we believe will be particularly useful for our business users, and it’s also relevant to users of our consumer products. The Status Dashboard is the best place to check for information on service availability for Google Apps anywhere in the world.

Here’s a screen capture of the dashboard:

And this screen shows the detail if you click one of the information icons in the dashboard:

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February 11th, 2009

IT failures roundup: software bugs everywhere

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:42 am

Categories: End-user impact, News roundup, Project failures

Tags: Software, Information Technology, Flash Memory, Tools & Techniques, Management, Michael Krigsman

Software permeates even the most seemingly low-tech aspects of our lives. As we know, wherever software is deployed, bugs are sure to follow. Here’s a small sampling of recent software glitches from around the world.

Although none of these failures is earth-shattering, they all inconvenienced “victims.” I find the breadth and variety of these glitches absolutely amazing.

Seattle parking meters. Seatlepi.com reports that even parking meters can suffer software failures:

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January 31st, 2009

Google search suffers outage

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:01 am

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0, Google, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Tools

Tags: Google Inc., Google Search, Cloud Computing, Michael Krigsman

For a period of time today, searches on Google incorrectly reported every Internet site as being unavailable due to the presence of malware.

Here’s a screen capture of a Google search for ZDNet:

And here’s what happens when you try to click the ZDNet link:

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January 26th, 2009

Why I love Windows 7, hate Linux, and think the Mac is lame

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 8:03 am

Categories: End-user impact, IT issues, Microsoft, Tools

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows 7, ThingsMacintosh, Support Infrastructure, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, UNIX, Open Source, Software

I’ve been involved with Windows, Linux, and Macs since the early days. After more than 20 years wandering the operating system landscape with hopes and dreams, I’ve finally settled on a platform with no regrets: Windows 7.

Early versions of Windows, which was released in 1985, were virtually useless. It took Microsoft until 1992, with the release of Windows 3.1, to set Windows on its present trajectory toward operating system greatness.

This screen capture shows the first version of Windows:

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January 19th, 2009

Salesforce.com Service Cloud integrates enterprise social media

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:28 am

Categories: CIO issues, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Social Media, Sales Force Management, Sales, Michael Krigsman

Cloud computing vendor, Salesforce.com, has extended its service and support product line with Service Cloud, a set of technologies integrating community-generated knowledge with traditional call center data.

With this announcement, Salesforce establishes an important strategic push for the company, which Chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, called a billion-dollar opportunity. Importantly, Service Cloud also demonstrates that social media can offer measurable ROI in the enterprise, which is a big deal.

Key components include:

• Customer communities for interaction not just posting. Salesforce.com wants to host corporate communities.
• Social networking connections. Salesforce.com said its Service Cloud will connect to Facebook, forums and blogs. The goal: Absorb information into a corporate knowledge base.
• Search ranking. Salesforce.com promises that Service Cloud results will be ranked near the top of Google results.
• Partner information sharing via the cloud.
• Multi-channel–phone, email and chat–support hosted in the cloud.

The most significant innovation is how Service Cloud parses social networking conversations to integrate that dispersed, user-generated data into existing call center knowledge bases and workflows. The other components are infrastructure and glue that enable Salesforce customers to collect, share, and work with community-generated data.

This diagram summarizes the components:

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January 13th, 2009

Miami-Dade school district and Deloitte: 'Endless money pit'

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:53 am

Categories: IT issues, Project failures, SAP

Tags: Project, Deloitte LLP, Miami-Dade School District, Ofelia San Pedro, Renier, Corporate Governance, Aerospace & Defense, Corporate Communications, Financial Accounting, Business Operations

Deloitte seems to hit the IT failures radar with some frequency. Miami-Dade school district’s (MDCPS) SAP implementation is the most recent Deloitte project to come across my desk. Although this implementation is clearly running late, the extent of delays is ambiguous.

Teachdade.com notes:

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December 25th, 2008

A reader's ZDNet holiday poem

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:46 am

Categories: Blog annoucements

Tags: Poem, Blog, Blogger, Blogging, Internet, Michael Krigsman

ZDNet reader, MGP2, posted this original poem, called “Tis the day before Christmas,” in a Talkback. For the entire ZDNet gang, I want to thank him and all our readers. Hope you’re enjoying the holidays!

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