eCENTER: CIO Insight article

Swiss Company Proved Value of Services Architecture Before the Name Was Even Coined

Wow, that's us :-)

I am very excited and proud to announce you that Edward Cone (contributing editor at Wired magazine; a senior writer for Inter@ctive Week; an opinion columnist for Greensboro News & Record; a freelancer covering business, technology, and a wide variety of other stuff; and a staff writer at Forbes) - Oh Ed, I haven't known that you have a blog... - interviewed us end of 2005 for CIO Insight.

His article about the ecenter, called Insuring the future, is really great, thanks a lot Ed for your time and your great challenging questions! Have a look ;-) You can find the whole article here.

Before all the hype over service-oriented architecture, before the cumbersome acronym had been coined, and before the now infamous Microsoft memos were sent, one small insurance company in Switzerland had a big head start. Helvetia Patria Group, a St. Gallen, Switzerland-based insurance company put its service-oriented architecture in place four years ago, before anyone even knew what to call it. [...]

Built on an electronic banking platform from Hewlett-Packard Co., with assistance from H-P consultants, the Helvetia Patria eBusiness Center makes more than two dozen products available on line. The company says it has realized a return on investment of 111 percent in the system's first three years, and anticipates a six-year return of 201 percent.

Actually, the ROI study was done by a neutral external specialized company called Thoughware Worldwide. You can find an Executive Summary of this study here. We had really a great time during this study with Tim, Jacob, Fotios and Rose-Marie, thank you all ;-)

Tags: ecenter solutions - SOA - eplatform

TRAVELLING: Anguilla and St.Barths

I am soooo sorry :-)

In about 5 days we will be in Anguilla and the week after, in St.Barths, with my wife and my son. Oh oh, we are waiting for these holidays as crazy. Just too much time since the last one. I am completely behind for the last organization and preparation tasks... Plus a *bunch* of things to do before going, plus by birthday, grrrrr...

It seems that the weather was not so cool there the last days BUT the sun should be present again from Wednesday, good timing :-) As usual, 24°C during the night, and 26°C the day, sea at 25°C. Oh I WANT TO BE THERE!!!

PICTURES: Bentley

In the citycar, we had the chance to see some very nice Bentley's cars. Wow!

Continal Flying Spur

• 12 cylinders, 6-litre engine


• 560PS, 650Nm


• 0-100km/h: 5.2s


• max.speed: 312km/h


• twin turbocharged engine


• weight: 2'475kg

Continal GT

• 560PS


• 0-100km/h in 4.8s


• 12 cylinders, 6 litres (W formation)


• twin turbochargers


• weight: 2'385kg

Bentley Speed 8 (winner Le Mans 2003)

Tags: bentley

BLOG: A day with traffic :-)

Oups... I have just seen that, on last Monday (January 23), I had my biggest traffic peak ever in one day:

• 5'092 pageviews


• 2'681 visitors


• 0.52 GB transferred

And no, it is not coming from an attack and/or spam ;-) Somewhat slowly disturbing...

NEWS: Torvalds says no GPLv3 for Linux

[via BetaNews]

One of the General Public License's biggest supporters will not be converted to version 3 out of objections over its position on digital rights management. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux is the first to take issue with the first revision of the GPL in a decade and a half.[...]

At issue for Torvalds is the provision within GPLv3 that opposes digital rights management and would apparently open up parts of the kernel to copying. He says that GPLv2 currently prevents this, but GPLv3 would not.

"The Linux kernel is under the GPL version 2. Not anything else. Some individual files are licensable under v3, but not the kernel in general," he argued. "I think it's insane to require people to make their private signing keys available."

Tags: gplv3 - linux - torvalds

BLOG: Back to work

Wow, I am back now, it was a very fruitful and intensive Strategic Management session (about extending/creating Business Models) in Wolfsburg - Germany, at the CityCar of Volkswagen. This place is very strange, a lot of beautiful and modern buildings, near the power plant of the car factory.

Tags: citycar - wolfsburg

BLOG: Off to Wolfsburg-Germany

I will be off till Friday for our internal International Executive Program. This time, we will be in Germany, exactly in Wolfsburg, well-know for hosting the Headquarter of Volkswagen and the so-called citycar. We should participate to a "driving safety training", whatever that means ;-)

It will be cold and snowy. The travel is completely crazy:
- car: home-france => basel-switzerland
- train: basel => zurich airport (switzerland)
- plane: zurich airport => hannover (germany)
- train: hannover => wolfsburg (germany)
Pffuuuuu......

On the other side, it seems that we are in a great Hotel.

The main topic will be "Successful business models and best practice".

I am not sure that we will have an Internet access, see you on the other side ;-)

Tags: volkswagen - wolfsburg

BUSINESS: The grass is always greener...

[via Jeff Bussgang]

You surely know the motto "the grass is always greener on the over side", what Jeff calls "the circle of envy". Great and funny post about the different perspectives of an Entrepreneur envying the VC, the VC envying the Private Equity Executive, the Private Executive envying the Hedge Funds Executive....and finally, to close the circle, the Hedge Funds Executive envying the Entrepreneur :-)

Entrepreneurs envying VCs

Entrepreneurs are recently famous for sulkily observing that the VCs have the cushiest of lives. Unlike entrepreneurs who live and die by quarterly and annual milestones, VCs get paid generous management fees whether they seem to actually perform or not. In the mind of many entrepreneurs, VCs don’t work all that hard, parachute into board meetings without having done their homework, make a few trite, unhelpful comments and then leave. In short, entrepreneurs are envious of the VC way of life, which seems to have lots of financial upside and none of the quality of life downside.

VCs envying Private Equity Executives

VCs are recently famous for grousing about how much money their private equity cousins are making. A VC struggles to invest $5-10 million at a time while their private equity cousins pour hundreds of millions of dollars, and recently even billions, into a single deal. Since the fee income portion of compensation is a function of assets under management, the more you manage, the more you make. The other compensation component is the carried interest, and VCs are green with envy when they see buyout guys use cheap leverage to make money while retaining large stakes in their firms. In short, VCs see the outrageous financial lifestyles of the private equity hitters, flying around in their private jets and think: "if only I could be like them, they’ve really got the model figured out".

Private Equity Executives envying Hedge Funds Executive

Private equity executives are recently famous for expressing their envy for hedge funds. Unlike private equity and VC firms, who only get paid on the gains when a portfolio company is liquidated, hedge funds take their carried interest off the table every year. And when a private equity or VC firm gets hot, it has to wait three or four years in between fund cycles to raise new, larger funds. Those lucky hedge fund executives can sweep big money in at a moment’s notice, raising their fee income with a snap. Further, complain private equity folks, the hedge fund executives rarely travel to chase around high-stakes auctions and have none of the responsibility or liability that "owning" companies and controlling boards represents. They just seem to coast along, accumulate more and more capital, and live it up.

Hedge Funds Executives envying ... Entrepreneurs :-)

And hedge fund executives? The top of the heap? Hardly. I often hear them discuss with envy the life of the entrepreneur cycling through exciting new start-ups every 5-6 years and then taking long sabbaticals in-between gigs. Meanwhile, the hedge fund executive is chained to every international market every minute of the day for fear they miss spotting the latest currency or interest rate fluctuation. Entrepreneurs actually create things of value and leave a mark on society, rather than simply financial engineering. And that nonsense about money flowing in so fast being such a great thing? Remember, it can flow out just as fast. And, besides, the hedge fund business as a whole has little barriers to entry and struggle to find true proprietary elements of the busines, resulting in too much money chasing too few good investment opportunities. Those entrepreneurs who can come up with original ideas, build proprietary technology and products, and then sell them out get all the glory, reap all the rewards and then unplug. Now that’s the life.

Tags: entrepreneurship - VC - private equity

BUSINESS: Top Brand Ranking 2005

[via brandchannel.com]

In 2005's results, Google took the lead from Apple in what is shaping up to be a back and forth contest through the years for these two innovative tech companies. Each year one out-does the other, and this time it is Google's turn to shine.

Nokia pulled back up to number one for Europe & Africa after slipping in the past years from first place (2001 and 2002) to third (2003) and then fourth in 2004.

[...] Swedish retailer Ikea has lurked at the number one or two spot for the last four years; in 2005, it settles into the second spot behind its eastern neighbor Nokia. Ikea opened over 20 new stores in 2005, helpfully showing 410 million shoppers how to fill a space and budget with cheap Scandinavian design.

Tags: brand

NEWS: The Million Dollar Homepage

[via Tom Peters]

You have surely heard about this story:

Last September college student Alex Tew launched a new business to fund his college education. It was called "The Million Dollar Homepage." His scheme was to sell advertising space on a 1 million pixel homepage to advertisers for $1 per pixel. Believe it or not, The Million Dollar Homepage is sold out.

Very strange, typical "one-shot-action" to my point of view, with quite a lot of buzz. And definitely nothing to do with marketing! If this is really cool for Alex on the long-run... It seems that the "Dark Side" effects are coming.

How anyone could think this is great marketing is beyond me. It represents the worst of clutter culture, where the customer is so overwhelmed by noise that nobody (except Alex Tew) can possibly get something out of it. [...]

So Alex Tew seemed like the only winner, until some extortionists threatened to hack his site if he didn't pay them. He refused and they shut down his site for 5 days, and now he's being sued by advertisers whose ads weren't viewable during that time. Yes, these litigants are just looking for more "PR value."

Tags: alex tew

BUSINESS: Corporate Finance

I have recently to dig a bit in my "old" MBA Corporate Finance and Valuation classes because some of the fundamental skills were just...gone ;-)

I have also tried to find something "on-line" and I have found really a great website in this field: Damodaran Online.

Professor Aswath Damodaran is working at the New York University - Leonard Stern School of Business.

Mr. Damodaran is publishing an enormous, very useful and solid amount of teaching material, books and excel spreadsheets (MBA, Executive MBA, etc.) on his website for free. Really great!

His website received a "Best of the Web" award from Forbes.com.

Have a look at the sitemap, just to get a first impression of the huge quantity of published information!

Tags: corporate finance

TOOLS: Time difference....

I have more and more problems to find out what is the time difference with other countries and/or towns. Nick gave me a good site where it is very easy to bring your favorite (or most used) time zones:

timeanddate.com

I have to organize a telephone conference with Bangalore in India in the coming days and I have remarked that there is a time difference of .... 4.5 hours between Zurich and Bangalore!! I haven't known that you can have half an hour of time difference :-) Quite crazy.



And no, it is *not* about offshoring, more the contrary :-)

Tags: time difference

NEWS: Cisco to target consumers

[via BetaNews]

Interesting but tough move. Cisco doesn't know this end-consumer market, the brand is not present in the head of these potential clients, and there is already a very tough competition in these markets. What is the expected differentiation?

In a move that will expand the company's market reach, Cisco Systems has plans to start selling a line of consumer products including phones, radios and home theater devices, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. Cisco believes it can define itself by adding Internet connectivity to these devices, thus creating a new market.

Tags: cisco

TOOLS: Firefox v1.5.0.1

[via BetaNews]

New version of Firefox available. Quite a lot of bugs corrected!

• Overlong page title causes hang on subsequent startups


• Selected images (from a selection of the document to print) are black


• Crash in browser when attempting to print a text selection


• fill/stroke shouldn't destroy path


• Can't copy and paste into the beginning of a line (Midas/designMode)


• XML object parsed from string from flash throws permission denied error when accessed


• Flashplayer 8 "Bad NPObject as private data!"


• Incorrect wrapping in RTL textarea with horizontal scrollbar


• Crash with moz-border-radius and small font-size


• Unable to create new XMLHttpRequests and DOMParsers from an XPCNativeWrapped window (e.g. in a Greasemonkey script)


• Security error with remote : can't switch tabs if chrome has focus


• Clicking a partially off-screen link shouldn't scroll the page


• If link target URL has non-ASCII char that is not encoded by UTF-8, the default file name is always escaped at "Save Link As..."


• Crash: array_unshift doesn't handle holes properly [@ js_DeleteProperty - array_unshift]


• Crash involving autocomplete

Tags: firefox

NEWS: Google as deus ex machina?

[via Dragos and economist.com]

Yes, Google will “support” an existing (and well-known) project by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce a laptop for the poor, but so will many companies, and who wouldn't? At one point, Mr Page mocked such inflated expectations by “announcing” Google Fastfood, a button in car dashboards that delivers instantaneous hamburgers.

Mr Page's ambition started early. When he was 12, he read a biography of Nikola Tesla, a prolific inventor who never got credit for much, but is now a hero among geeks. Mr Page decided that he would be different: a great inventor and an acknowledged world-changer to boot. As the son of a computer-science professor, he channelled his energy into technology. By the time he was in college, Mr Page was building working inkjet printers out of Lego bricks—probably just to show that he could.

Playing God

If Google is a religion, what is its God? It would have to be The Algorithm. Faith in the possibility of an omniscient and omnipotent algorithm appears to be what Messrs Page and Brin have in common. It's “in their DNA,” says Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist famous for investing early in both Yahoo! and Google. Whereas Yahoo! was started by two Stanford students who turned a hobby into a business, Google was started by two Stanford students who turned an intellectual obsession into a quest, says Mr Moritz. And what is that quest? Merely upstaging Microsoft would be almost banal. “We're not trying to build a better operating system,” says Mr Schmidt (although that will not kill the rumour). Part of the plan is certainly “organising the world's information”. But some people think they detect an even more grandiose design. Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, “they're trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test”—in other words, an artificial intelligence that can pass as a human in written conversations. Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.

Tags: google

PICTURES: Snow crystals

[via wikipedia]

Sometimes, nature can be beautiful and ... geometric.

Snow flakes highly magnified by a low-temperature scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Tags: picture - snow

OPEN SOURCE: First draft of GPL v3 coming soon

[via BetaNews]

The first draft of the General Public License version 3 will be released on January 16 at a conference organized to help develop the standard. The First International Conference on GPLv3 will take place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Free Software Foundation said Wednesday.

The current version of the GPL is 15 years old, and does not address many of the issues that play a role in modern computing. Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF, first announced that it would be working towards a new version of the GPL in November. [...]

Some issues to be undertaken by the new version of the license include protection from companies who attempt to sue GPL developers over patent issues, GPL software use on DRM-capable devices, and modifications to policies surrounding how GPL software can be used on the Internet.

Tags: opensource - GPL

NEWS: Google's capitalization

[via OnlineInvestor]

Oups, on January 6, 2006, the capitalization of Google ($137 bn) was higher than the one of IBM ($134 bn), Cisco ($115 bn), PepsiCo ($100 bn). Google is now at the rank 15 from the biggest capitalization.... Still far away from MS ($286 bn) and GE ($375 bn), the biggest one. Just crazy, in such a short time.

Tags: google

OPEN SOURCE: Apache Geronimo v1.0 released

The Apache Software Foundation released the version 1.0 of its J2EE certified server project called Geronimo on January 5, 2006. If you don't this very central open source project, have a look at the Wikipedia's description:

The Geronimo project is an open source application server developed by the Apache Software Foundation and distributed under the Apache license.

Geronimo is currently compatible with the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 specification. When compared to other application servers such as JBoss, WebLogic and WebSphere, Geronimo's most distinctive features are its:

• BSD-style license, which allows it to be modified for and embedded within commercial, closed source software (unlike the popular GPL and LGPL licenses)


• Modular GBean-based architecture, which allows users to remove unneeded services and build very lightweight configurations of the server


• Non-Profit ASF leadership, which provides legal protection, ensures stability across the loss of individual contributors and insulates the project from commercial conflicts of interest


• Diverse support community, in which companies compete freely and openly to provide services, with none enjoying any particular trademark advantage

Software consulting giant IBM has provided considerable support to the project through marketing, code contributions, and the funding of several project committers. In October 2005, IBM announced a free edition of its WebSphere application server suite based on Geronimo.

Other commercial supporters include AMD, Chariot Solutions, Simula Labs and Virtuas.

Tags: opensource - geronimo

NEWS: New Google data center

[via Matt Cutts]

Matt Cutts, if you don't yet know him, is an employee of Google since January 2000 (Software Engineering). Matt is posting about a new data center Google is currently testing with some new algorithms. You can test it on http://66.249.93.104. This new data center is called Bigdaddy. This new stuff should be put in production in 1-2 months from now on. If you want to know if your Google position will change or not, have a look ;-)

Q: Do you expect this to become the default source of web results? How long will it take?
A: Yes, I do expect Bigdaddy to become the default source of web results. The length of the transition will depend on lots of different issues. Right now I’m guessing 1-2 months, but if I find out more specifics I’ll let you know.

Q: What’s new and different in Bigdaddy?
A: It has some new infrastructure, not just better algorithms or different data. Most of the changes are under the hood, enough so that an average user might not even notice any difference in this iteration.

Q: What else can you tell me about Bigdaddy?
A: In my opinion, this data center improves in several of the ways that you’d measure a search engine. But for now, the main feedback we’re looking for is just general quality and canonicalization.

Tags: google - bigdaddy

MUSIC: Some U2's figures from 2005

[via U2log.com]

Paul McGuinness - U2's manager - reflections on 2005 published in Billboard. Impressive!

This was such a great year for U2. A No. 1 album in 20 countries, 110 shows all sold out, 3.3 million tickets sold, 100% of the tickets we put on sale. Nine million-plus sold of the current record, 3 million catalog, 2 million DVDs. U2 have never been bigger or better. Next year after Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, we will end the Vertigo tour in Honolulu.

Tags: U2

BUSINESS: About Software Industry

Hey, wow, it is my Marc Goldberg's day :-) Marc actually published three must-read articles about all the economic shifts in the Software industry. Really worth a read for the three (although one of them is in French...). So, a very long post ;-)

First "via Marc"

Marc found out a very interesting article from Rick Sherlund, Goldman Sachs, about the new Software industry economic trends. Very interesting!

The macroeconomic influence on tech is greater than ever as tech has grown to become the single largest component of corporate capital spending - now almost 40% of the total.

IT spending was able to well outpace economic growth as it grew as a proportion of GDP from 1.5% in 1970 to almost 5% in 2000. Since settling in at less than 4% in recent years, tech is likely to resume growing as a percentage of the economy, but not nearly at the rate of decades past.

Not surprisingly then, the correlation of IT with the broader economy has jumped from less than 0.1 in the 1970s to over 0.9 in recent years as the industry has matured.

While tech continues to benefit from "mini-waves" of technology shifts (e.g.,
wireless), there are not the rapid, landscape-changing shifts that drove feverish growth in the 90s. In addition, many of today's technology trends actually serve to reduce aggregate IT spending. [...]

1. Of all tech trends, wireless's impact will be broadest


2. China and India are altering both supply and demand formulae


3. The low-end unit epidemic is distorting revenue realities


4. With drivers escalating, security is at an earlier stage than the consensus view


5. Even at this stage, spending is still consolidating around fewer, larger vendors


6. Internet treasure chest now being unlocked


7. Open source opening Pandora's box on pricing throughout the IT stack


8. The true digital home will be longer in coming than expected


9. SOAs shake up the software industry

Second "via Marc"

By the way, Marc has also published for some days a superbe analysis about the new Software industry economics and valuation. Just for French-speaking readers....

10 years of Internet, certainly 10 years of technology change and new businesses models, but more than that 10 years for a paradigm shift on how corporate assets are identified, valued, and monetized: 10 years during which the importance of intangible assets, their mode of valorization by the markets and their mode of appropriation by the entrepreneurs and owners of these companies became our true obsession....

Third "via Marc"

Last but not least.... The third one is based on a post from Bill Burnham on how the software industry has been shrinking in 2005 (providing low public market returns, but interesting M&A exits for innovative software SME's).

Despite this explosion of new software, the software industry itself is shrinking. In 2005, the aggregate market capitalization of the software sector shank by almost 10% despite the broader NASDAQ market being up 1.4%. Even if one adjusts that number to account for privatizations, M&A and IPOs, the software market still shrank by 9%. This shrinkage is also apparent when looks at the raw number of public software companies. There were 236 public software companies at the start of 2005, but only 213 at the end of the year, a decline of 10%. Put another way, for every new software company that went public in 2005, almost 7 were acquired or went out of business. Not exactly an encouraging picture.

What then is responsible for the software sector’s precipitous market cap decline? Like most complex systems, there is no one single factor driving this trend, but a combination of factors including:

1. Software is moving from “growth” to “value”. value managers simply aren’t willing to pay 35X next year’s EPS for anything, which is leading to major multiple contractions in many of the top names in the industry.


2. Open Source and SaaS. The modern software market was built on the backs of large one-time perpetual license sales. Unfortunately two major trends are conspiring to make it increasingly difficult to grow revenues quickly: Open Source and SaaS. Open Source basically flips the revenue model: it gives away the source code up-front and tries to make money on the back-end by charging for support. SaaS (Software as a Service) allows companies to purchase software “on demand” over the web. As a result, SaaS requires little or no up front investment from a customer and is often purchased on a short term subscription plan. The lack of large up-front payments makes it very difficult to grow SaaS revenues quickly and reduces margins because the company actually provides a real service as opposed to just shipping a disk. Thus, as Open Source and SaaS gain prominence it’s becoming increasingly clear to investors that the good old days of 200% revenue growth/year at 95%+ gross margins are gone for good and stock multiples are responding by heading south.


3. No big platform transition.


4. Networking companies are encroaching on software company turf. If you pry open the hood of your average router, you won’t find a disk drive or a keyboard but you will find a ton of software sitting inside flash memory or embedded in chips. In fact, many network company executives will insist to anyone that listens that their company is more of a software company than it is a hardware company.


5. Being public ain’t so great. Being public in these post Sarbanes-Oxley days is not easy, especially if you were a software company that lavished options on its employees and played it a little loose with revenue recognition from time to time.

I can't agree more... Specially concerning the point 4). For the point 5), I am convinced that there is no new platform, BUT new layers are appearing in the whole IT stack. I will come back to that in the coming days....

Tags: opensource - software industry

PICTURES: Iceberg

[via PlanetEarth]

The iceberg image is a digital composite that I designed to illustrate the concept of "what you see is not necessarily what you get". As an underwater photographer I knew that my "vision" of what a big iceberg looks like was impossible to get in reality so I had to create it. The image exists in nature but due to water visibility is not possible to capture on film. There are 4 separate images involved; the sky, the background, the top iceberg (shot in Antarctica), and the underwater iceberg (shot above water in Alaska and flipped in the final composite). The image is available for licensing through CORBIS at www.corbis.com Ralph Clevenger

Tags: pictures - iceberg - clevenger

OPEN SOURCE: sugarCRM part II

Beginning of November, I have published a first post about sugarCRM. As promised, some other inputs about this open source company.

Positioning of sugarCRM within the Open Source Stack (view from Optaros):



As far as I understood, sugarCRM has about the same (working) business model as mySQL, that means:

• a GPL license BUT they keep their roadmap totally under control, as the technical decisions. it is exactly a so-called "dual-license", that means it exists a commercial and open source version of the product.


• the collaboration with the community is not very extensive, that means, the development is mainly based on internal resources.


• they are spreading their application on internet (website, blog) because of the availibility of an open source version (325'000 copies within 8 months!!!).


• they are using the LAMP (linux apache mySql PHP) stack, which ensures a) a very low cost structure (no license required) b) a complete portability of the solution c) a very attractive technical solutions for the geeks and SW-engineers ;-)


• the core team has a huge business know-how and they are specialized in CRM solutions for years.


• it is the first time that a start-up is entering the so-called open source business-solution-stack. till today, the succesful companies were more present in the so-called infrastructure-solution-stack (linux, apache, mySql, jBoss).


• their business case is based on "derivatives": consulting, plugins (as the outlook ones), hosting (ASP solution), support, customization.


• they found a *lot* of investors who invested a *lot* of money. last round: 19 mio $.

Have a look at what they are saying on their website:

We believe the SugarCRM open source business model is far more efficient than the classic approach to building propriety CRM software. We do not believe in the notion of hiding access to code in order to lock-in customers.

Since the open source project is such an effective marketing mechanism, open source companies can keep their sales and marketing costs low. Revenues are invested back into product development. Our prices are substantially lower than what CRM vendors charge today the majority of your subscription costs goes back into product development, not into marketing and selling the solution. Download and install the freely distributed Sugar Open Source application. If it works for your company, we ask that you participate in the SugarCRM Community through forum discussions or code contributions. If you need the functionality in Sugar Professional or Sugar Enterprise, give us a call. We want you to become a customer once we have proven we have generated value for your company, not one minute sooner.

And, on sugarForge:

The reason there are so few CRM vendors is not because it's costly to build great CRM applications, but because of the costs required to market and sell CRM applications. Take a look at the financials of any of the established CRM players, both hosted and on-premise. What you will see is that less than 15% of a CRM vendor's revenue is applied to product development and easily 50-70% of revenue is allocated to sales and marketing expenditures. This has been the norm for traditional software companies, but is it the right model for today?

There is a perception today that if you host or rent your CRM application you will save money over time. The marketing engines of the leading hosting vendors have done an outstanding job selling folks on this premise. It is completely false.

Renting a proprietary hosted CRM application at $50-100 per user per month over a three year period far exceeds the cost of running an open source based CRM application. With a stock Linux server you can be up and running with SugarCRM in less than 15 minutes - installation is that easy and SugarCRM is far more flexible and extendable than anything you can rent from a hosted CRM provider.

Recently there have been a number of industry analysts quoted saying "the enterprise applications industry is dead". We believe they are right. Modern open source based software companies are built on business models that are much more efficient and cost effective in building software, distributing software and acquiring customers. They spend far less on marketing and sales and far more on engineering and quality. Since the open source project is such an effective marketing mechanism, open source companies can keep their sales and marketing costs low.

Providing application source code is a good thing. Gone are the days of 'custom demos' by trained sales consultants or "Model T" application trials from hosting providers. At SugarCRM, our source code is available to all. Our bug lists are published, our feature roadmap laid out, our quality assurance testing shared with real customers - in real time. Download SugarCRM today. Install it, run it for free, build new components, interact with other Sugar enthusiasts and the Sugar team on the forums.

Tags: sugarCRM - opensource

TRAVELLING: Before Anguilla and St.Barths....

Before lying on the beautiful beaches of Anguilla and St.Barths, you have to....get there!! I have forgotten this part of our holidays, and Loic has just posted a funny picture of an Airbus landing in Saint Martin at the Princess Juliana airport (SXM).


© airliners.net

We were there last year, and I can tell you that this picture is not a fake :-) The landing happened exactly in this way. Generally speaking, the runway is *very* short for these kind of big airplanes, as the Boeing 747/400 and Airbus A340/300. Last year, there was some little wind from behind, and the pilot had to realize a beautiful touch-and-go. Then, we had to go to the Dominican Republic, where we slept, and then re-took the plane, and flew back to Saint Martin. Great...

Another picture of a Boeing 757 landing, also in Saint Martin, taken from the other side of the beach.


© airliners.net

So, after the first "challenge", you are in Saint Martin. It is not finished! Then, we will flight to Anguilla's airport, Wall Blake. No idea how is the airport there. BUT, I know how is the one of St.Barths. Wow, that was (and will be) a beautiful flight with...crazy landings, have a look:


© airliners.net


© airliners.net


© airliners.net

Again, no fake pictures here, the pilot has to "jump" the pass, and then, to stick to the mountain slope, in order to touch right at the beginning of the runway. If it doesn't work, touch-and-go :-) Some planes also finished their flight in....the beautiful sea :-)

Tags: anguilla - stbarths - saint martin

NEWS: Amazon "Best of 2005 list"

[via amazon.com]

Best selling products on Amazon.com in 2005 by total units sold:

1. Books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling


2. Music: X&Y by Coldplay


3. DVD: Star Wars Episode III- Revenge of the Sith (Widescreen Edition)


4. Electronics: 2GB iPod Nano (black)


5. Home & Garden: Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 8-1/2-Quart Saucier with Lid


6. Health & Personal Care: Airborne Effervescent Health Formula Dietary Supplement


7. Computer & Video Games: Madden NFL 2006


8. Tools & Hardware: Jorgensen 50XXX 3/4" Pony Pipe Clamp Fixture


9. Apparel & Accessories: Columbia Bugaboo Jacket


10. Shoes: Tommy Hilfiger Women's Erin Slipper

Products most frequently purchased as gifts by Amazon.com customers in 2005:

1. Books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling


2. Music: X&Y by Coldplay


3. DVD: Lost - The Complete First Season (2004)


4. Electronics: Apple 512 MB iPod Shuffle


5. Home & Garden: Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 8-1/2-Quart Saucier with Lid


6. Health & Personal Care: Pampers Swaddlers diapers


7. Computer & Video Games: Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) Value Pack


8. Tools & Hardware: Black & Decker SS925 Storm Station All-in-One


9. Apparel & Accessories: Prada Women's Small Rectangle Nylon Handbag, Nero


10. Sports & Outdoors: Diamond Gen IV - Rechargeable No Battery Forever LED Shake Flashlight

Tags: amazon - e-commerce

BLOG: Happy New Year 2006

I wish you and your family a happy, successful, and healthy New Year 2006.

I would like to thank you very much for taking some time here on my blog. It was really a pleasure to post (exactly 351 posts in the last 12 months) during the last year ... and it is crazy to see how many *you* are, month after month!

365'000 unique visitors during the last year (48'000 in December), who generated more than 565'000 pageviews (70'000 in December). An increase of more than 300% from January to December 2005. Wow.

The list of the first 30 countries of my visitors:



And my first tagCloud (via PointBlog):

Tags: tagCloud - statistics