eCENTER: Conference in Moscow

Wow. Three days in Moscow for the first International Life & Pension conference. Great (but exhausting) event! About 160 participants from 19 countries, 94 companies represented. Good contacts :-)

First, a beautiful flight from Zurich to Moscow

Great view from the Hotel Baltschung on the Red Square

ecenter stand at the conference (Nick and myself)

The ecenter presentation

Petra Wildemann from hp introducing our presentation

First part presented my ... me

Second part presented by Nick

Petra, myself and Nick listenning carefully

NEWS: Restos du coeur - already 20 years

There are *still* a lot of needy and homeless in France, our soooo developped country. We are talking about 10% of the population. As Bono is used to say "Too many".

I am not used to talk about typical French-oriented topic but I would like to take my hat off to all these volunteers who are supporting and making this French charitable association work so efficiently and humanely. You, mostly as non-French, don't know it, it is called Les Restos du coeur - Restaurants of the Heart. Its three main goals, as an official non-profit organization, are:

1. distribute free food packages and meals to the needy and homeless


2. support their economical and social re-integration


3. generally speaking, fight against poverty in all its forms

This great association was created in 1985 by Coluche, a famous French humourist and comedian who died in 1986.

Les Restos du Coeur are very professionally and efficiently managed, a lot of retired persons are helping for example, and bringing their huge experience in the association (logistics, IT, admin, etc.). Have a quit look at the figures, it gives you also a first impression about the catastrophic number of people in France who are in need...... For the period 2003/2004 (winter-period):

• 650'000 persons supported


• 66.5 million meals distributed


• 43'000 volunteers


• 467'000 private donors


• 1'900 locations around France

With its very cost-effective structure, the association can invest more than 90% of the donation directly in the different support activities. Great.

As I said at the beginning, respect! If you want to donate (hey it is good for your taxes - just for the French donors), it is here.

NEWS: Hearing airport bathroom in the background?

[via Tom Peters]

Wow, I haven't seen that yet, *but* I am convinced that I will... And for those who know me: no, no, no, I have *never* done that. On the other hand, it depends who is on the other side of the line ;-)

But now, at least for men, social norms have relaxed to a new level. Many times in the past year I've walked into an airport men's room and seen a lone man standing at a bank of urinals, actively engaged in a hands-free conversation with someone hundreds of miles away, presumably with a hidden bluetooth headset in his ear. These people inevitably speak in extra loud voices, as people speaking on cell phones in public often do. So, it's hard not to hear about the latest deal their trying to close, or the new investment idea their discussing.

I guees the call of the greenback makes it difficult to wait two minutes to make the call. After all, cash is king. But, I personally refuse to take part in this latest cultural development. And, I'll hang up on anyone who calls me if I hear the sounds of the airport bathroom in the background.

BLOG: Happy Thanksgiving!

As Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) says:

To my fellow Americans, have a great Thanksgiving Day. Everyone else, please hate us a little bit less at least for today. Most of us mean well. We realize it doesn’t always look that way.

And as I know that some of you, my dear readers, are coming from the US ;-)



I wish you all a happy thanksgiving, do not eat and drink too much ;-)

PRIVATE: Snowy week-end?

It seems that the the coming week-end will be really cold and snowy.



On the other hand, I will fly to Moscow on Sunday morning to attend the first International Life&Pension Insurance Conference. It will be not so cold (!) but more snowy. Let's see. Btw, we received today our visas for Moscow, what a complicated process....

BUSINESS: Stockdale's principles

In Spring 2004, I published some posts about Corporate Entrepreneurship and, within this serie, some inputs and ideas of Jim Collins. In this post, I also talked about some of the Stockdale's principles (eg: confronting the brutal facts), who is cited a lot of time by Jim.

I was very happy to find some of the Stockdale's principles in a post of Marc Goldberg at the end of October (some delay...). And that Marc is also finding these inputs very useful :-)

Stockdale's principles

1. You are your bother keeper (the key to survival, self respect and happiness lies in submerging your individual instingts for self preservation in the greater common denominator of uniersal solidarity)


2. Life is not fair


3. Duty comes before defiance


4. Compulsion and free will can coexist


5. Every man can be more than he is.


6. Freedom and absolute equality are a trade-off


7. People do ont like to be programmed


8. Living in harmonious and heaps is contrary to man's nature (life only makes sense when an element of freedom is included in the mix)


9. The self-discipline of stoicism has everyday applications.


10. Moral responsibility cannot be escaped

Great leaders are...

Moralist who exhort men to be good abd thinker who elucidate what is good. This requires a clear idea of right and wrong and the integrity to stand behind your assessment of the situation.

Teacher able to give those around him a sense of perspective and to set the moral, social, and motivational climate among his followers.

Steward able to know character and heart to boots others and show them the way.

Philosopher able to understand and explain the lack of moral economy in this universe.

And finally, what Marc wants to do with this stuff:

As an VC, investing in people driven tech businesses, and stuggling to identify and support technology leaders, those perspectives are very usefull, and will feed in all my discussions with CEOs and CxOs inside the various projects we are working on.

PICTURES: View of Tethys

[via CICLOPS]

The Cassini-Huygens mission is again delivering some beautiful pictures. This time of Tethys, one of moon of Saturn (mean diameter: 1'060 km).

With this fabulous, full-disk mosaic, Cassini presents the best view yet of the south pole of Tethys.

The giant rift Ithaca Chasma cuts across the disk. Much of the topography seen here, including that of Ithaca Chasma, has a soft, muted appearance. It is clearly very old and has been heavily bombarded by impacts over time.

Many of the fresh-appearing craters (ones with crisp relief) exhibit unusually bright crater floors. The origin of the apparent brightness (or "albedo") contrast is not known. It is possible that impacts punched through to a brighter layer underneath, or perhaps it is brighter because of different grain sizes or textures of the crater floor material in comparison to material along the crater walls and surrounding surface.

The moon’s high southern latitudes, seen here at bottom, were not imaged by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft during their flybys of Tethys 25 years ago.

The mosaic is composed of nine images taken during Cassini’s close flyby of Tethys (1,071 kilometers, 665 miles across) on September 24, 2005, during which the spacecraft passed approximately 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) above the moon’s surface.

DRINKS: Armagnac Sempe from 1960

I decided to open a new category DRINKS because I really have a very bad memory concerning the names, the good years and so on ;-)

For some days, I have already written one "drinks' post" about a great grappa I received.

On last Friday evening, I had a good dinner at the Violettes, where I had the chance to enjoy a 1961 vintage Armagnac from Sempe. 44 years old, respect! One of the best Armagnac I ever tasted, a real happiness :-)

About Sempe

Founded in 1934, one of the oldest Armagnac estates...

Since 2002 our company has been a subsidiary of the Gerland group and enjoys all the advantages of a group entirely dedicated to vineyard production in Gers and the Landes.

We have a great stock of Armagnac, over 13,000 hectolitres of pure alcohol; we produce and age wines from Gascony and the Landes; we have modern distillat

About 1961 vintage

1961: Very dry but with a sweetish, slightly floral nose; fruitcake, carrot cake, dry spices, leather, potpourri. Still some life ahead. Very good+.

Drink moderately and safely. Enjoy your alcohol.

NEWS: Swiss soccer team qualifies for the World Cup

[via SwissInfo]

Well done, Switzerland :-) It was tough but the results are here. Turkey, boooooo.

Football's world governing body, Fifa, says it will open an investigation into alleged violence at the Turkey-Switzerland World Cup playoff match on Wednesday.

Fifa's Swiss president, Sepp Blatter, said sanctions against Turkey could amount to the suspension of the Turkish federation or a ban from the 2010 World Cup.[...]

The two teams tied 4-4 on aggregate, but the Swiss advanced to next year's World Cup in Germany on away goals.

After the final whistle in Istanbul, both teams raced from the field to escape angry fans. Swiss midfielder Benjamin Huggel was seen to kick a member of the Turkish coaching staff as he ran off the pitch before Turkish defender Alpay aimed a kick at Marco Streller.

Television footage then showed a melee breaking out in the tunnel on the way to the locker room involving several players.

Swiss defender Stephane Grichting was injured and hospitalised with a groin injury, according to the Swiss Football Association. The team doctor said that he is not expected to be able to play for a week at least.[...]

Turkey has already been warned and fined twice by Fifa because of its supporters' behaviour during earlier qualification matches for next year's World Cup.[...]

The Swiss said they were subjected to hostile treatment when they arrived in Istanbul on Monday, including being held up for several hours in passport control. Fans taunted the players and reportedly threw eggs and rocks at the team bus as it left the airport.

OPEN SOURCE: Software business model broken?

Again, a *great* post of Jeff Clavier concerning sales and marketing approach by Open Source companies, huge change in enterprise software business model.

Wow, I exactly missed this input in my analysis, really a must read. Thx Jeff.

• The problem is that the traditional enterprise software business model is broken. A rabid search for new customers and revenue growth has caused sales and marketing costs to spiral out of control. In fact, Rick Sherlund at Goldman Sachs estimates that in 2005 software companies will spend 82 percent of new license revenue on marketing and sales efforts. That's up from 66 percent in 2000.


• The Open Source model turns the marketing problem on its head. Customers can look at, evaluate and review software without contacting the company that will sell it to them. [...] The customer says, "I want something like that." He locates the Open Source version of the product, downloads it and is using it before the company is involved. [...] the Open Source solution, the CIO is happy with the software. But after using it for a while, begins to wish for documentation, a live-person to ask questions, a phone number for support, and so on. At that point, the customer calls the company saying, "I've been using your product for a year and now I need your help."


• The Open Source model likely delivers at best a 50% cost advantage in R&D. Most Open Source companies gain little community leverage developing the core of their application. R&D community leverage tends to come from testing, bug fixes, and interface/integration code. On the other hand, the savings in sales & marketing could be closer to 75 percent. Without the need to pay for large up-front sales & marketing costs, the vendor doesn't have to charge a new license fee up front. No more charging the customer to sell to them - the customers have to sell themselves - but they still come to the vendor for maintenance and support. And maintenance and support is how most software vendors make their living these days anyway.


• New license growth in enterprise software companies today is stagnating. By changing the revenue mix from primarily new licenses to primarily maintenance on already proven products, a typical enterprise software vendor's top line would drop by 25 to 30 percent. But the decrease in price and increase in market size will enable growth in those previously unreachable markets, creating a vibrant and growing company that will eventual pass its former revenue numbers.

NEWS: Ray Ozzie's Weblog

[via BetaNews]



Ray Ozzie, former CEO of Groove and now, CTO at Microsoft, has started a new blog, his third one :-)

NEWS: Blog 2.0 - Last update

So, some news and updates concerning the coming conference Les Blogs 2.0 in Paris.

• 257 confirmed participants, 92 seats available


• About 50 (!) very well-known and exciting speakers, have a look at the speakers' list


• Below, the program highlights:


• How is blogging challenging the Corporate World ?


• How is blogging affecting corporations ?


• How is blogging and citizen publishing changing the media landscape ?


• Investing 2.0 : The Good, The Bad and The Ugly


• How blogs influence politics ?


• Blogs and education


• What are the tools used and how we can all best benefit from them ?


• How to socialize in the year 2055


• Tracking/Listening to the Online World


• Eight ideas that will really revolutionize the 21st century (and why blogging isn't one of them)


• And a *lot* of networking events

You can register here.

NEWS: Tom Peters on Peter Drucker

[via Tom Peters]

[...] Jack Welch was not the first CEO of GE, though to read Fortune in the '90s one might have thought so. And Peter Drucker didn't "invent" management. The Chinese probably did thousands of years ago—among other things, Sun Tzu's roughly 2,500-year-old The Art of War is a full-blown "management" text. So, too, Machiavelli's The Prince. And Frederick Taylor's century-old The Principles of Scientific Management.

But Peter Drucker did arguably (1) "invent" modern management as we now think of it; (2) give the study and craft of management-as-profession credibility and visibility, even though biz schools like Harvard had been around for a long time; and (3) provide a (the first?) comprehensive toolkit-framework for addressing and even mastering the problems of emergent enterprise complexity.

And he did something else incredibly important: He popularized the study of-appreciation of modern management. Doubtless Mr Drucker would have been appalled to be described as a "popularizer"—after all, that was one of his abiding and biting criticisms of me. But the truth is that, though his consulting was carried out in the stratospheric confines of CEO-world, his books and articles were very comprehensible and accessible [...]

DRINKS: Great grappa - Ornellaia

Since about 3 years now, I am also drinking some grappa from time to time, which was absolutely not my preferred "digestif" - I like very much Cognac and Bas-Armagnac. We have to talk about these two beverages in the near future ;-)

I received a great grappa, have a look at the color! Although it titrates (correct word?) 42%, you haven't got the touch of the strong alcohol, but just the fruit. Exceptional!



Drink moderately and safely. Enjoy your alcohol!

PICTURES: Canon lens EF 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

I got a Canon EOS 20D since April 2005, completed by an ultrawide-angle lens, the Canon EF 17-40 f/4.0L USM. This lens is absolutely great, but it is an ultrawide-angle, and sometimes you need a more flexible lens, which you can use as a zoom, for example. After some on-line researches (how did we realize that *before* the web??), I decided myself for a Canon EF 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM.

How it looks like

Specs

• f/3.5-5.6 maximum aperture


• Micro UltraSonic Motor (USM)


• Image Stabilizer


• EF mount; standard zoom lens


• Internal focusing; full-time manual focus; aspherical lens


• 28-135mm focal length


• Closest Focusing Distance: 0.5m


• Weight: 500g

The rule of thumb of a correct IS usage

The rule of thumb to get crisp photos without image stabilization is that your shutter speed should not be longer than 1 over your focal length. So if you are taking a picture zoomed in at 135mm, your shutter speed needs to be 1/135 sec or faster, and since no camera I know of has a 1/135 setting, that means going up to 1/160 sec (on cameras with stops in 1/3 increments) or faster. The image stabilizer means that you can go 2 f-stops slower than you normally could using the rule I just explained. So if you're shooting at 135mm and you have the IS switched on, you can shoot at 1/40 sec instead of 1/160 sec. That means four times as much light goes past the shutter, or that you can get the same quality results with 1/4 of the ambient light you would normally need.

Some reviews

• EOS documentation project


• CameraHacker


• Bob Atkins


• William Castleman


• Amazon reviewers

One example (without flash, with IS, very low-light)

[click]

(1600 ISO, 1/8s, f4.0)

TOOLS: Mega Codec Pack v1.42

[via BetaNews]

A new version (v1.42, 27.3 MB) of K-Lite Mega Codec Pack was released. As usual, this audio and video codecs and players package contains all the things you need in this field (incl. a QuickTime and RealTime alternatives which are running greatly). All for free, very good packaged, super easy to install and to update. A *must* have.

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats.

The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:

• It it always very up-to-date with the latest versions of the codecs.


• It is very user-friendly and the installation is fully customizable, meaning that you can install only those components that you really want.


• It's easy to make an unattended installation.


• It has been very well tested, so that the package doesn't contain any conflicting codecs. It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems.


• It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies.


• There are different packages. From small to extra-large.

NEWS: Peter Drucker dies at 95

[via Bloomberg]

Peter Drucker, one of the most significant contributor to the concept of modern management, has died. He was 95. Peter Drucker is impacting us all in the way we are doing business today.

I like particularly one of his book, Management challenges for the 21st century, worth a read!

No single person has influenced the course of business in the 20th century as much as Peter Drucker. He practically invented management as a discipline in the 1950s, elevating it from an ignored, even despised, profession into a necessary institution that "reflects the basic spirit of the modern age." Now, in Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Drucker looks at the profound social and economic changes occurring today and considers how management--not government or free markets--should orient itself to address these new realities.

Drucker sees the period we're living in as one of "PROFOUND TRANSITION--and the changes are more radical perhaps than even those that ushered in the 'Second Industrial Revolution' of the middle of the 19th century, or the structural changes triggered by the Great Depression and the Second World War." In the midst of all this change, he contends, there are five social and political certainties that will shape business strategy in the not-too-distant future: the collapsing birthrate in the developed world; shifts in distribution of disposable income; a redefinition of corporate performance; global competitiveness; and the growing incongruence between economic and political reality. Drucker then looks at requirements for leadership ("One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it"), the characteristics of the "new information revolution" (one should focus on the meaning of information, not the technology that collects it), productivity of the knowledge worker (unlike manual workers, knowledge workers must be seen as capital assets, not costs), and finally the responsibilities that knowledge workers must assume in managing themselves and their careers.

OPEN SOURCE: JBoss welcomes Drools

The Drools project, a well-known open source Java business rules engine, will join JBoss.

The Drools project

Drools is a Rules Engine implementation based on Charles Forgy's Rete algorithm tailored for the Java language. Adapting Rete to an object-oriented interface allows for more natural expression of business rules with regards to business objects. Drools is written in Java, but able to run on Java and .Net.

Drools is designed to allow pluggeable language implementations. Currently rules can be written in Java, Python and Groovy. More importantly, Drools provides for Declarative Programming and is flexible enough to match the semantics of your problem domain with Domain Specific Languages (DSL) via XML using a Schema defined for your problem domain. DSLs consist of XML elements and attributes that represent the problem domain.

The JBoss announcement

The addition of Drools represents another critical step in the evolution of JEMS as the Open Source Platform for SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). With Drools, JBoss is again demonstrating its commitment to bring a cohesive open source middleware platform to the mass market. Incorporation of the Drools rules engine into JEMS will allow organizations to easily customize their products and service offerings using business rules that can be applied across an SOA based on actions, events and historical activities.

Thx Nick ;-)

GADGET: Shure canal phones

I have decided for a while to buy the Shure E2c earphones. Really great, although you are a bit ridiculous when you try to plug correctly these headphones :-)

Great to see that Russell is also a fan of the Shure earphones. He decided himself for the E3c series, have a look at his review. Quite similar results, pros & cons as my own experience.

eCENTER: International Life & Pension Insurance Conference

As already mentionned in one of my post on October 23, we are invited to talk about our case in Moscow at the end of November. The program and speakers are updated. Have a look at insuranceforum.ru for more detail.

I hope we will have some good local support concerning the lamguage/translation :-)

That is a *real* foreign language. As an example:

Дидье Бек, директор E-Center solutions Helvetia Patria Group, Швейцария

NEWS: 200 million downloads for Skype

[via Skype News]

A milestone is reached for Skype. Some interesting figures:

• At peak time, we’re pumping out close to 10 downloads a second. That’s almost a million downloads every single day by now. Not quite a million every day yet, but we’re getting there.


• The download traffic at peak time adds up to 500 Mbit/sec, or 0.5 Gbit/sec. That’s 500 times more than an average 1 Mbit home “broadband” connection.


• We got from 0 to 100M downloads in 595 days, from 100M to 150M in 124 days, from 150M to 200M in 83 days. There’s no signs of the pace slowing down.

BUSINESS: A bias for action

[via Tom Peters]

As usual, feed for thoughts...and really cool to hear/read this kind of input from time to time :-)

"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things."
Herb Kelleher

"A good plan executed right now tops a perfect plan executed next week."
George Patton

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin

"If Microsoft is good at anything, it's avoiding the trap of worrying about criticism. Microsoft fails constantly. They're eviscerated in public for lousy products. Yet they persist, through version after version, until they get something good enough. Then they leverage the power they’ve gained in other markets to enforce their standard."
Seth Godin

"I saw that leaders placed too much emphasis on what some call high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. People would agree on a project or initiative, and then nothing would come of it."
Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

The Leader's Seven Essential Behaviors

1. Know your people and your business


2. Insist on realism


3. Set clear goals and priorities


4. Follow through


5. Reward the doers


6. Expand people’s capabilities


7. Know yourself

Source: Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan/ Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

"The person who is a little less conceptual but is absolutely determined to succeed will usually find the right people and get them together to achieve objectives. I'm not knocking education or looking for dumb people. But if you have to choose between someone with a staggering IQ and an elite education who's gliding along, and someone with a lower IQ but who is absolutely determined to succeed, you'll always do better with the second person."
Source: Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan/ Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

"Thomas Stanley has not only found no correlation between success in school and an ability to accumulate wealth, he’s actually found a negative correlation. "It seems that school-related evaluations are poor predictors of economic success," Stanley concluded. What did predict success was a willingness to take risks. Yet the success-failure standards of most schools penalized risk takers. Most educational systems reward those who play it safe. As a result, those who do well in school find it hard to take risks later on."
Source: Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes, Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins

TRAVELLING: Next holidays

After Calvi (Corsica, France), we really needed to book our next holidays as quick as possible :-) So, after having "tested" St.Barths in the Caribbean this year, we decided ourselves again for the same destination for our Winter Holidays in February 2006. It is the first time that we return to the same destination more than one time. It was *such* a great time :-) We will combine a stay in Anguila and in St.Barths.

Anguilla - CuisinArt

So, we will first stay in the Hotel CuisinArt at Anguilla.

St.Barths - François Plantation

Then, return to the paradise at the Hotel François Plantation at St.Barths. Another interesting resource about St.Barths.

OPEN SOURCE: Some Novell announcements

[via Novell Press Room]

Some news from Novell. Their new strategy doesn't seem to be implement yet...

02 Nov 2005—Novell, Inc. today announced it will concentrate its business on key growth opportunities in the Linux and Open Source and Identity and Resource Management markets, resulting in a restructuring of the business that will reduce annual run rate expenses by more than $110 million.

[...] As a result of the restructuring, product development and consulting resources are now more focused on the company's growth businesses, Linux and Identity. Novell also expects to continue to evaluate non-core consulting activities.

[...] Novell also announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized management and its financial advisor, Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, to explore strategic alternatives for Celerant, Novell's consulting subsidiary. The company has previously stated that it intends to separate Celerant from Novell when market and other conditions are appropriate.

Celerant, as the e-Services division of Novell, integrates, among others, the former Cambridge Technology Partners.

Thx Philippe ;-)

IN MEMORIAM: Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. I haven't heard/read a lot about this on-line. Sometimes, the newspapers are still interesting...

Her role in American history earned her an iconic legacy in American culture and worldwide civil rights movements.

The Neville Brothers wrote a beautiful song called "Sister Rosa" in 1989 (present on their great album Yellow Moon produced by Daniel Lanois). Beautiful lyrics:

December 1, 1955, our freedom movement came alive. And because of Sister Rosa you know, we don’t ride on the back of the bus no more.

Sister Rosa Parks was tired one day
after a hard day on her job.
When all she wanted was a well deserved rest
Not a scene from an angry mob.
A bus driver said, "Lady, you got to get up
cuz a white person wants that seat."
But Miss Rosa said, "No, not no more.
I’m gonna sit here and rest my feet."

Chorus
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.
Thank you Miss Rosa you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.

Now, the police came without fail
And took Sister Rosa off to jail.
And 14 dollars was her fine,
Brother Martin Luther King
knew it was our time.
The people of Montgomery sit down to talk
It was decided all gods’ children should walk
Until segregation was brought to its knees
And we obtain freedom and equality, yeah

[...] So we dedicate this song to thee
for being the symbol of our dignity.
Thank Sister Rosa Parks.

BUSINESS: sugarCRM

[via Jeff]

Jeff pointed out an interesting article from Business Week about Open Source Software, and more specifically, about sugarCRM, a software company which is developping a CRM open-source application.

Eighteen months ago John Roberts, Clint Oram, and Jacob Taylor decided to quit their jobs at Epiphany, a maker of customer-relationship software. The trio wanted to target the same market, but write a new application developed using open-source code. It took them only three months to create the program and just another month to close their first round of funding. Little more than a year later, their company, SugarCRM, has given away more than 325,000 copies of its software, and raised a second round of capital, for a total of $7.75 million.

Giving away software isn't your typical path for a venture-capital-backed startup. But Roberts & Co., are smack in the middle of the next frontier of the open-source movement: business applications. "No one had funded an open-source application company at that point -- it was all infrastructure," says CEO Roberts. "We broke a glass ceiling."

And this input from Jeff (wow):

[...] This is one of the few enterprise software companies I have been interested in tracking. The company had raised their $5.75M Series B and their $2M Series A respectively 10 and 15 months ago, and did not require a new cash infusion based on its reported market success. By implementing a dual license strategy, and leveraging the community to develop portions of the product, and make available through 21 languages less than 18 months after launch (which is more than Salesforce.com after 8 years).

I have downloaded the Sugar open source edition v3.5.0b (windows exe, about 23MB) and installed the software by our hosting provider OVH, as the solution is fully based on a LAMP stack (Linux Apache MySql PHP). OVH is supporting all the requested components, I just had to upgrade from mySql 3.x to 4.x. I was *really* impressed by the install process delivered with the open source version of sugarCRM. Impressive!! A kind of "windows setup", great :-)

We are now testing the functionalities of sugarCRM and we will decide in some times if we will use sugarCRM or not.

I will publish in some days some thoughts about the business model and the approach of sugarCRM. There is something very interesting in it.

NEWS: Sky peer-to-peer

[via Skype Blog]

I find always interesting to know where a company name is coming from. Have a look at the meaning of Skype, great!

One of the names they came up with was “Sky peer-to-peer”, which got soon shortened to “Skyper”. But as happens in the Internet world, some of the domain names associated with “skyper” were already taken, so they thought what the heck, let’s just drop the “r” and make it “Skype”. It sounded good and the domains were available.

Initially the name didn’t make sense to many people. (Probably still doesn’t.) They go “Skype, what is that? A bird? Or a disease?” But after people learn about what Skype can do for them, the name seems to kind of work.

GADGET: TabletPC TC4200 and issue with pen

I got a convertible TabletPC HP TC4200 for some months now (I have to tell you how far this machine is *great*) and I had an issue for some days with the pen. I couldn't use the pen anymore, as it was de-activated, although all the drivers were present. I have solved this issue by installing the original wacom driver (the TC4200 is using a wacom pen). You can find this driver here.

Back to full productivity (in fact, I have a day-off today :-).