Oracle press release on Oct. 25, 2006:

Today Oracle announced that it would provide the same enterprise class support for Linux as it provides for its database, middleware and applications products. Oracle starts with Red Hat Linux, removes Red Hat trademarks, and then adds Linux bug fixes. […] Oracle is offering its Unbreakable Linux program for substantially less than Red Hat currently charges for its best support

I saw this announcement on two blogs: BusinessWeek Online — Tech Beat and Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type.

It is very interesting to compare first the titles: “Oracle Drops the Bomb on Red Hat” versus “Larry Ellison and the business of social production” and then the comments.

While Steve Hamm is a journalist from title to the last line:

It’s a ruthless and brilliant act of capitalism.

Nicholas Carr plays the analyst card:

It illuminates a much broader and deeper tension in the digital world, a fault line that runs not only through the software industry but through every industry whose products or services exist, or can exist, as software.

Nicholas Carr analyze this from a product industry perspective. Readers of “The Magic Cauldron” of Eric S. Raymond will recognize the mistake: most of the open source related business models are about services not products.

It is not about providing a better mousetrap; it is about learning people how to catch mice.

If RedHat sees it’s core business as providing services then it stand a chance. If not, not!

What do you think? Is RedHat doomed? Is Oracle move an attack to open source philosophy?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Make them read this post on the Creating passionate users blog.
“Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article…” is about presentations, about good presentations. It is not about graphics aids (for this read Presentation Zen) it is about content.

Five advices:

1) Do NOT start at the beginning!
2) Show, Don’t Tell
3) For the love of god, DO NOT start with history!
4) DO NOT start with prereqs
5) MYTH: you must establish credibility up front

I like very much the first advice:

Do NOT start at the beginning! […] Start where the action begins!

The second one is simply wonderful:

If you have to TELL your audience that they should care, you’re screwed. The motivation for why they should care should be an inherent part of the story, scenarios, examples, graphics, etc.

The article has many valuable “IDEAS FOR BEGINNINGS”.

This is a definite must read for every presenter.

Usual staff turnover for white-collar workers is around 3%. In Romania for IT professionals (geeks :-)) is much higher. I just reviewed figures for my team (120 people): 0,18% for the last 12 months. Not bad, isn’t it?

What makes geeks tick? Are geeks different? Do we need special skills to manage geeks?

I always said that a good people manager can manage any team: geeks or not.

Take a look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (quote from Wikipedia):

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as deficiency needs associated with physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. While our deficiency needs must be met, our being needs are continually shaping our behavior. The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the needs that are lower down in the pyramid are mainly or entirely satisfied. Growth forces create upward movement in the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push prepotent needs further down the hierarchy.

Read Linus book “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary“:

There are three things that have meaning for life. They are the motivational factors for everything in your life – for anything that you or any living thing does: The first is survival, the second is social order, and the third is entertainment. Everything in life progresses in that order.

The higher the abstract level of a job the higher is the importance of the upper level motivational factors. Geeks happen to work at a very abstract level: computers and anything around them are highly abstract.

After basic work needs (reasonable salary and job security) are fulfilled, geeks place an inordinate amount of importance to other factors: environment, colleagues, management style, type of work, and many other factors.

If you work a lot on other factors can obtain significant savings in his payroll budget: within the right environment you can pay below the market and still enjoy very low turnover.

Do you think this is achievable?

Sometimes CIO is the Chief Information Officer or Chief Innovation Officer or even Chief Intelligence Officer.

Not according to Nicholas Carr. In a recent post he announces another step on the road from CIO to CEO (Chief Electricity Officer).

Nicholas blogs about an announcement from Sun: a data center in a container. The data-center-in-a-box is a readymade data center in shipping containers at a starting price of a half million bucks a pop. And Nicholas comments:

In many ways, the containerized data center resembles the standardized electricity-generation system that Thomas Edison sold to factories at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Manufacturers bought a lot of those systems to replace their complex, custom-built hydraulic or steam systems for generating mechanical power. Edison’s off-the-shelf powerplant turned out to be a transitional product - though a very lucrative one. Once the distribution network - the electric grid - had matured, factories abandoned their private generating stations altogether, choosing to get their power for a monthly fee from utilities, the ultimate black boxes.

Something similar will happen - is happening - with computing, but how exactly computing assets end up being divided between companies and utilities remains to be seen. In the meantime, commodity data centers, in various physical and virtual forms, should prove increasingly popular to companies looking to radically simplify their computing infrastructure and reduce the single biggest cost of corporate computing today: labor.

Nicholas seems to wander between hardware, software and information. Modern IT is as much about process as is about information (and much less about hardware). Nobody says that a wide area networks really adds value, but one should not place process modeling and simulation (for example) on the same plateau with operation system installation.

Back in 1960’s having a computer up and running was a great achievement on it’s own. Today It is muuuch more than that.

Depending on your definition of IT, IT may or may not matter to an enterprise. Unfortunately Nicholas still uses a 1960’s definition of IT.

What do YOU think?

Today I was invited on “The Money Channel” at their Sunday “IT&C Show”. The topic: open source.

I had an interesting discussion with two smart gentlemen. I told them about how my company uses various open source solutions and how we selected them. During the discussion two interesting aspects of the open source world came to our attention.

Open source vs. world

As a CIO I was asked countless times: “Do you use open source software?” I don’t see the point of this question. I am not using a development model. I use specific solutions, specific pieces of software, chosen based on their merits.

When I analyze a potential solution it is never “open source versus Microsoft Windows Server” or “open source versus Lotus Notes”. I always compare “Linux versus Windows Server” or “sendmail versus Lotus Notes”. One cannot compare a development model with a specific piece of software.

The Che Guevara selling methodology

There are many “Che Guevara” in open source community. They come waiving flags and preaching about changing the world. They are convinced that only open source revolution can avoid the …. (fill in the blanks with your favorite apocalyptic scenario).

I can only tell them that I don’t want to save the world; I only want a decent solution to my IT problem. Corporations want solutions to their problems. The “suits” usually left world rescue to Mattel super heroes.

Don’t came to corporate speaking like a knight on a white horse. Please come armed with NPV, TCO and ROI weapons!

PS: I am a BIG fan of open source solutions! I am only sad when I saw attitudes that create bad perception about very good solutions.

In a recent issue Harvard Business Review has an article about HR departments. Most of the things in article also apply to IT departments.

Many IT mission statements boasts about “excellent” service, of course “beyond expectation”, about support, about “enabling the business” and a lot of related buzzwords.

But in business it’s always about competitive advantage and about customer.

Any CEO wants a competitive advantage for every dollar spent: growth, better customer service, lower costs and so on. Consider Wall Mart: every dollar they spend on IT it’s dedicated to improvements in their supply chain – their competitive advantage. And the CIO wants to provide “excellent service, beyond expectation”… I am not saying that good service is not necessary; I am arguing only that service is not the mission of IT. IT, like any part of the company must help create and maintain competitive advantage.

Next time when you draft you IT strategic plan ask yourself: what are my company’s competitive advantages? And what can I do to increase them? Or even better: what can I do to create a new competitive advantage?

The new technologies allow you to remain connected wherever you are. You can talk on the phone, check your email or access your files.

Welcome to the world of 24 hours shifts!

We are like a child discovering a new toy. Mobile and laptop became status symbols. We like to impress with them. They are “cool”.

Always connected we begin to think everything can be solved “now”. And from “can” to “must”, there is only one step.

Everything must be solved now, everything is urgent. We lost the sight of another dimension: “importance”. Slowly, we begin to solve only what is urgent, forgetting about what is important.

We think that the higher the rank a person has in the company, the higher the mobile phone bill must be. This means solving as many urgent problems as possible.

Wrong!

The higher the rank, the less mobile phone usage. This means solving more important, strategic issues.

If a manager must solve by himself all the urgent problems, what’s the team for? And when he can find the time for strategic issues?