Mahabharata in Polyester: The Making of the World’s Richest Brothers and Their Feud

This book would be a great read.

The Economist: A durable yarn - A revealing account of India’s most colourful business family

DHIRUBHAI AMBANI grew up in a two-room home with an earthen floor in the Indian state of Gujarat, close to the Arabian Sea. Later this month his eldest son, Mukesh (pictured above, right), head of Reliance Industries and the world’s fourth richest man, will throw a party to show off his new home in Mumbai, a towering vertical palace with six floors of parking space, three helipads and a hanging garden.

…

Indians complain that social connections trump hard work. But no one worked harder than Dhirubhai at forging connections. “His philosophy was to cultivate everybody from the doorkeeper up,â€

Oracle acquires ATG eCommerce

The Giant Acquisition Machine called Oracle is at it again. This time they spend another handsome $1B to acquire ATG Technology Group, a leading provider of eCommerce Software.

Oracle Buys ATG

Oracle announced today that it has agreed to acquire Art Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARTG), a leading provider of eCommerce software and related on demand commerce optimization applications, through a cash merger for $6.00 per share, or approximately $1.0 billion. ATG’s solutions enable enterprises to provide a cohesive online customer experience with sophisticated merchandising, marketing, content personalization, automated recommendations, and live-help services.

ATG’s eCommerce software platform is the industry’s top-ranked, cross-channel commerce solution and is highly complementary to Oracle’s CRM, ERP, Retail, and Supply Chain applications, as well as its portfolio of middleware and business intelligence technologies. ATG also offers on demand commerce optimization applications that provide companies with an online presence, the ability to improve customer satisfaction through immediate service response and automated recommendations.

Together Oracle and ATG expect to help businesses grow revenue, strengthen customer loyalty, improve brand value, achieve better operating results, and increase business agility across online and traditional commerce environments.

Brian Walker of Forrester weighs in with his comments.

Not only are the solution sets are very complimentary, but it also allows each to address gaps in their solution portfolio. Oracle has had a significant hole in terms of eCommerce capability needed by their ERP, CRM, and supply chain clients. ATG has lacked enterprise order management and CRM capabilities required by their more sophisticated clients. Together these offerings will make a compelling pairing, though productization and packaging of the offering may remain a challenge for the near future.

Some additional thoughts:

·         Commerce is converging and client needs will span channels and capability. The trend of “dropping the e from eCommerce” is something we have been talking about for some time, as eCommerce solutions are leveraged not only on the web but also in the call center, to drive mobile commerce, and increasingly in the store or branch. This is now becoming something our clients at Forrester are looking for in their next generation of commerce solutions. For Oracle this trend was beginning to present a threat as they lacked a capable B2C oriented eCommerce platform. For ATG this represents a response to the moves IBM and GSI have made to develop cross-channel enterprise commerce solutions.

·         Don't worry ATG will get buried in a bone yard. I expect ATG’s products to gain additional wind at their back while also focusing on thier core differentiators of merchandising tools, commerce content capability, and driving relevance at the customer touch-points. Oracles acquisition can also clarify the answers to ATG's questions related to order management and supply chain requirements.

·         There is a significant overlap in customers but integration of the product will remain tricky and possibly slow. Merging the products, sales forces, roadmaps of large organizations is difficult. Many, many books have been written trying to help people get this right. For Oracle there are existing commerce solutions in iStore and Siebel which need to be rationalized with ATG’s products. Oracle has had an IT orientation, selling into the technology teams and seeking to drive value to the CIO. ATG has had a largely business orientation seeking to drive the goals and objectives of the channel leaders and CMO, which has also led them to introduce on-demand hosted offerings. Determining how to combine and sell these products and normalize the cultural approaches may be very challenging.

Why asynchronous communication scales, and what we can do with that power

Some great points on why Asynch Communications scale against Synch communications. Couple of points I can add quickly.

1.       Asynch communications are long term. You can write an article or a blog post today and have someone comment on it year later.

2.       You will add more value to the conversation if your platform supports elongating the async communications. YouTube does this well. Twitter doesn’t. Twitter communications are short lived and since the tweets are not track-able later, the value users put in these communications diminishes with time (and this time is essentially 1-2 weeks). If you look backwards 6 months and see your Twitter stream, how many of these communications actually make sense to you now. But do the same on YouTube with comments around a video, it all makes sense.

Microsoft Tag Growth Accelerates Exponentially With More Than 2 Billion Tags Printed

One of the many ways Microsoft impacts Consumers and Enterprises both using a simple technology and great execution.

Microsoft Tag Growth Accelerates Exponentially With More Than 2 Billion Tags Printed

Microsoft Tag today announced impressive trend data to demonstrate the exponential growth of its industry-leading 2-D barcode technology:
  • 1 billion Tags have been printed in the past four months, bringing the total to 2 billion Tags printed since its January 2009 launch.
  • The number of Tag users increased by three fold since emerging from beta in May; the number of Tags scanned increased by four fold during the same time period.
  • To date, more than 100,000 Tag accounts have been set up to add interactive digital experiences to brand advertising and marketing campaigns.
  • Since August, Tag has been used in more than 100 million magazine issues.
  • In the largest known barcode campaign to date, Allure had 450,000 scans, using Microsoft Tag for its annual Free Stuff Giveaway issue in August.

Verizon Profit Falls as Customer Growth Slows

Wonder where is the revenue from all that Android sales going?

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=4355F79C07C250B2BC5A52DEEC64558A...

Despite a strong lineup of smartphones powered by Google's operating system, Verizon Communications on Friday reported a 25 percent drop in profit and a slowing growth of new customers in the third quarter. The company cited pension settlements resulting from layoffs and voluntary departures as the main reason for the smaller profit. Net income dipped to $881 million, or 31 cents a share, compared with $1.2 billion, or 41 cents a share, reported a year ago. Excluding the pension-related charges and acquisitions, including the sale of four million phone lines to Frontier Communications, Verizon's earnings were 56 cents a share - beating the expectations of Wall Street analysts by 2 cents. Verizon Wireless also struggled to appeal to new customers in the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, adding fewer than its main competitor, AT&T, which is still luring subscribers to its service with the iPhone. Verizon reported a net addition of 584,000 contract customers in the quarter, while AT&T added 745,000. Still, Verizon managed to hold on to its place as the nation's largest wireless carrier, if only by a fraction. Its total subscriber pool increased by nearly 5 percent, to 93.2 million wireless customers. By comparison, AT&T now has 92.8 million consumers. Verizon, based in New York, has suffered from the impact of a steadily declining landline business, the result of more people giving up home phones in favor of cellphones. John F. Killian, Verizon's chief financial officer, said there was "tremendous opportunity" in the number of customers purchasing smartphones and the lucrative data plans that accompanied them. More than 40 percent of the company's device sales are now attributed to smartphones, he said. "We're performing very well in this very competitive marketplace," he said in a call with investors and analysts. Mr. Killian said Verizon's portfolio of smartphones, including several that use Google's Android operating system, were helping to spur sales. "The Droid franchise has gone from nothing a year ago to having a lot of buzz and momentum in the marketplace now," he said. Mr. Killian also said he expected earnings in the final quarter of the year to improve by 5 to 10 percent. He did not discuss reports that the iPhone was coming to Verizon's network. But he said he expected the company to gain a competitive edge against rivals with the introduction of its next-generation wireless network, LTE, which will improve the speed of data-heavy functions like video streaming.

GOOG is Evil

Google saved $3.1 billion in taxes over the last three years. This by taking advantage of legal tax maneuvers to dramatically reduce the amount of taxes they have to pay on money earned outside the U.S. Shows Google is Evil (although in a little smarter way by avoiding taxes legally and not evading) and hypocrite too.
Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”

                …

Google’s transfer pricing contributed to international tax benefits that boosted its earnings by 26 percent last year, company filings show. Based on a rough analysis, if the company paid taxes at the 35 percent rate on all its earnings, its share price might be reduced by about $100, said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. He recommends buying Google stock, which closed yesterday at $607.98.

                …

The company, which tells employees “don’t be evil” in its code of conduct, has cut its effective tax rate abroad more than its peers in the technology sector: Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone; Microsoft, the largest software company; International Business Machines Corp., the biggest computer-services provider; and Oracle Corp., the second-biggest software company. Those companies reported rates that ranged between 4.5 percent and 25.8 percent for 2007 through 2009.

Google is “flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,” said Abraham J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College in New York who has examined Google’s tax disclosures.

“Who is it that paid for the underlying concept on which they built these billions of dollars of revenues?” Briloff said. “It was paid for by the United States citizenry.”

Office 365 has attractive pricing

Microsoft announced the Office 365 (will be online post 12 p.m. PDT) service today, which includes cloud based Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync (erstwhile Communicator) Online services. The best part is the pricing for the services. The pricing will definitely pinch Google Apps which runs at $50 per user per year.

Microsoft Announces Office 365

With Office 365 for small businesses, professionals and small companies with fewer than 25 employees can be up and running with Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and an external website in just 15 minutes, for $6 or 5.25 euros per user, per month.

Office 365 for enterprises introduces an array of choices for midsize and large businesses as well as government organizations, starting for as little as $2 or 1.75 euros per user, per month1 for basic e-mail. Office 365 for enterprises also includes the option to get Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop software on a pay-as-you-go basis, for the first time ever. For $24 or 22.75 euros per user, per month1, organizations can get Office Professional Plus along with e-mail, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, Web portals, extranets, voice conferencing and videoconferencing, web conferencing, 24x7 phone support, on-premises licenses, and more.

Apple had its best quarter till date

Apple had a blowout quarter and an equally impressive earnings call with Steve Jobs. Quite Impressive.

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $12.21 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.53 billion, or $2.77 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.9 percent compared to 41.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 57 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 91 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.05 million iPods during the quarter, representing an 11 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 4.19 million iPads during the quarter.

“We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

“We’re thrilled with the performance and strength of our business, generating almost $5.7 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $23 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.80.”

The best part was Steve’s rant against RIM and Google, part of which you can hear here.

After having a stellar quarter, shares fell about 6 percent in after-hours trading. Reason, drop in margins.

Apple’s profit margins are the envy of the consumer electronics industry. The problem was that the company’s newest products were not as profitable as its computers and iPod music players. Strong sales of lower-margin products — the iPad among them — caused the decline, according to Apple executives.

The company said gross margins fell to 36.9 percent, from 41.8 percent in the quarter a year ago. Apple predicted that its margins would slump a bit more, to 36 percent, in the current quarter. Executives repeatedly played down the importance in a conference call with analysts by saying that they were happy with where they were.

Sony Ericsson - Windows Phone 7 coming next year

Windows Phone 7 has another OEM now. Sony Ericsson will be focusing on Android along with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 next year. They are announcing discontinuing Symbian based phones.

Sony Ericsson: Windows Phone 7 handsets incoming, Symbian gets axed Sony Ericsson WILL Make WP7 Phones

Sony Ericsson’s new CTO, Jan Uddenfeldt, spoke with Swedish outlet NyTeknik declared the company would still be committing its resources to Android but also that Windows Phone 7 was still on its roadmap:

“Android is definitely our focus, but we have not given up on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system, although it had a bit slow to take off. But Windows 7 Phone is on the roadmap. However, we have at present no plans for new products with Symbian.”

It appears Uddenfeldt has the US market in mind, continuing pushing the popular Android operating system to consumers by also banking on the success of Windows Phone 7. Symbian gets the axe, now a common move for manufacturers looking to crack the North American markets.

Sour Grapes & Microsoft

Case of Sour Grapes. And this happens most around Microsoft.

Google 24/7 - Bing and Facebook, connected

Like a lot of people, I hide most of my Facebook information from the general public and search engines.  That includes Bing and I'm not sharing my Facebook to the world so I can improve search results.

It is what Zuckerberg said in the Q&A makes me think this is all just smoke and mirrors.  When asked if Bing would have access to data that a Facebook user doesn't make public, he said

"Bing can see no other information about you than any other Facebook user can see. It's all public information. And Bing sends no information back to Facebook.".

That also means Google (GOOG) could slurp up this same information and include it in their results as well.

Recent remarks by Eric Schmidt make me think they are doing this exact thing.

"The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data," Mr. Schmidt said. "Failing that, there are other ways to get that information."

Facebook, for its part, was open to offering this type of service to other search engines like Yahoo and Google.  During the Q&A, Zuckerberg  was asked if he was open to doing other search deals. He said, "we want to work with everybody".

Brett Taylor, Facebook CTO and former Googler, followed that up with a huge caveat.  They weren't in a huge hurry to do this sort of thing and that as a practical matter, collaboration on this level with other search engines isn't going to happen any time soon. He said that Facebook wanted to get this right with Bing first before considering implementations with other engines.

Facebook is keeping its social graph to itself.  In this deal, Facebook has just helped Microsoft build tools to get the information that is available to the rest of the world, including Google.

Keep ’em coming, it’s good to be on this side.

AOL looking to acquire Yahoo

This keeps getting interesting.

WSJ: AOL, Firms Explore an Offer for Yahoo

AOL Inc. and several private-equity firms are exploring making an offer to buy Yahoo Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, devising a bold plan to marry two big Internet brands facing steep challenges.

Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group LP are among the firms that have expressed interest in either teaming up with AOL to buy Yahoo or trying to take it private on their own, these people said. They added that at least two or three other firms could be interested in participating if a formal buyout proposal is drawn up.

The people familiar with the matter cautioned that these discussions—involving private-equity firms, AOL executives and financial advisers—are preliminary and don't yet involve Yahoo. The conversations may not lead to an approach given the complexities inherent in structuring a proposal, the people said.

Message to Andy Rubin

Google 24/7 points to an interview Andy Rubin gave to PCMagazine. They write:

From the interview at PCMag:

PCMag: On Monday, Microsoft is announcing their first Windows Phone 7 phones. What do you think of that platform as a competitor?

Rubin: I think the screen shots I've seen are interesting, but look, the world doesn't need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons. Why doesn't the whole world run with [Android]? They don't like the people who developed, or "not invented here," but [Android] is a successful, complete, vertically integrated free platform. I encourage everybody to use it, but I'm also not under the impression that everybody will use it, which is a good thing, because competition is good for the consumer and if somebody has an an idea for a feature or a piece of functionality in their platform and Android doesn't do it, great.

It will be interesting to see if the world does indeed need Windows Phone 7, which launches next week.  Reviews have been mixed but there is no doubt that Microsoft (MSFT) is spending unheard of amounts of money to market their new product.  I have a feeling that Rubin misspoke a bit there and he backtracked toward the end.  Still, an interesting perspective.

Check the whole interview here.

Dear Andy, Like world needs Gmail alongside Hotmail, like world needs Facebook alongside Orkut, like world needs Bing alongside Google Search… the World needs Windows Phone besides Android and iPhone. Competition makes the world a better place. You please carry on the innovations, remember it’s always Survival of the fittest. Cheers !!

Microsoft and Whitespace Wi-Fi

Now with FCC formally backing proposals to free up the white spaces which are nothing but currently unused frequencies in between TV channels, Microsoft should be able to leverage its research on “White-Fi” transmitters and be a leader in this space.

Economist on Whitespace Wi-Fi

Microsoft, an active proponent of white-space wireless, is using just two of its experimental “White-Fi” transmitters to blanket the company’s entire 200-hectare campus at Redmond, Washington, in place of the thousands of Wi-Fi routers that would otherwise have been needed. No wonder white-space is being referred to as “Wi-Fi on steroids”.

Enthusiasts talk about white-space devices offering a “third pipe” for access to the internet, to rival cable and telephone broadband. Others see white-space as providing an alternative to mobile telephony. When wireless hotspots cover entire neighborhoods rather than mere coffee shops, who needs a mobile-phone contract? A smart phone running Skype or something similar would be essentially free of usage charges and unfettered by all the restrictions that carriers impose. 

Such thoughts have doubtless crossed many a mind at Google. Not having to put up with carrier-required compromises that hobble functions and features, owners of Android smart phones would be free to use the full power of their devices to surf the web for information, social networking and entertainment—and, in so doing, rake in billions more advertising dollars for Google. That, after all, was why the search company developed its free Android operating system in the first place. It is not impossible to envisage Google—in partnership with, say, Spectrum Bridge, a company in Florida that has installed several demonstration systems which use white-space technology to blanket whole communities—emerging as a mobile operator in its own right one day.

If you want to know what White Space Wi-Fi is, go through the following links.

White Spaces Worth a Toast, But Not With Champagne

The term “white spaces" refers to spectrum allocated to any type of radio applications that aren't fully used in specific areas of the country. On September 23, 2010, the FCC issued a Second Memorandum Opinion and Order (MO&O) allowing spectrum assigned to broadcast television stations -- but not used -- to be available for other types of communications. Most importantly, this spectrum will be free and unlicensed, just as WiFi is.

All types of applications -- wireless Internet access, smart grid monitoring, telecommunications backhaul -- could be available for white spaces, just as they are for WiFi.

Microsoft Research - Networking Over White Spaces (KNOWS)

Technology Review - Wi-Fi via White Spaces

               

Windows Tablets coming afterall

Now you have three reasons to look forward to this holiday season, Windows Phone 7, XBOX Kinect and now Windows 7 Slates.

Microsoft CEO says will see Windows slates by Christmas

A Microsoft slate to counter Apple's popular iPad tablet computer will be seen by the Christmas holiday, Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday.

Ballmer did not say whether the palm-sized slates would actually be on sale in time for Christmas, nor did he say who would make them. Microsoft has been slow to respond to the iPad, and has also made little headway in mobile phones.

"You'll see new slates with Windows on them. You'll see them this Christmas," he told an audience of students, staff and journalists at the London School of Economics.

"Certainly we have done work around the tablet as both a productivity device and a consumption device," he said.

Google approaching quarter million Android activations/day

Timely reality check on Android devices and Google’s increasing prowess in the Mobile space.

Google is approaching a quarter million Android activations/day

In an excellent story on the Android Invasion, Newsweek's Dan Lyons get's some new activation numbers from Android Chief, Andy Rubin. Rubin says that Google has recently passed the 250,000 activations/day mark, though only once, yet the numbers continue to rise overall.

That rate is 1 million every four days, just under 8 million a month and close to 100 million activations/year.  Will Google have sold 100 million more Android handsets by this time next year?  It seems pretty likely.

Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt announced that they were activating 200,000 devices/day just two months ago at the Techonomy conference in Aspen.  That's up from 100,000/day in May at Google I/O and 160,000/day announced at Google's June earnings conference.

Wow.

The numbers have even baffled rival CEOs like Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs.  Jobs said there must be something wrong with the numbers at a recent Apple event, "we think our friends are counting upgrades".  At the same time, he announced Apple was activating 230,000 iOS devices/day.  Google retorted saying, "The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services."