Indian IT Industry

Muppalla · Post by **Muppalla** » 22 Apr 2009 01:07

I would say it is extremely sound/great decision by Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems. This gives a great advantage/leaverage to compete with Microsoft technologies. There was a dip in Oracle database market after the release of SQL Server 2005.

Microsoft's main thurst is database market and it is spending 30% of its expenditure on database. SQL server 2008 was a huge release. The single advantage that Micorsoft has is it really never bothered about other OS except of Windows. All its tools and SQL Server is build on .NET platform. In terms of open standards too MS has gone a long way by implementing the latest XML standards and everything else into its platform and OS. Because of the tighter integration of OS - .NET Platform - Database and all the dev tools, it has greater advantage as SUN-IBM-Oracle never really integrate to that extent as compared to MS platform.

In a way Oracle, SUN and IBM tried to do same but every one are competing themselves. For example IBM-DB2 and Oracle are competing, regarding OS, they have several UNIX OS types and for XML several open standard parsers. By doing that way everyone is not integrating things as fixed to one way but are mostly going the route of least common denominator.

with this buy, Oracle, Java and an XML parser will become tightly integrated. SUN has to bring a Websphere type product and the new company shoud start integrated products that are not interpreted-code but compiled code. SUN-OS should be the OS that Oracle works better than any other OS.

Had SUN, Netscape, Oracle merged in 2000/2001 they would have given a run for money to Microsoft. They also need to bring competive front end tools to that MS. Costs also should comedown.

This is something that should have happened a long time ago where the technology was CORBA Vs. COM/DCOM. It is late but very right thing to happen to see some good competition. Looks like sense prevails when the chips are down.

milindc · Post by **milindc** » 22 Apr 2009 02:06

vina wrote:Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!

Another possibility for Yechh Pee is acquiring Teradata. Even SAS Inc wants to get into parallel/partitioned database space and might acquire Teradata.

Rishirishi · Post by **Rishirishi** » 22 Apr 2009 02:24

sampat wrote:
negi wrote:^ If they cant compete with SAP they would BUY it . .Siebel ,Hyperian,IFLEX all were gobbled up by Oracle Inc. . As it is in any case with likes of Oracle,IBM and now HP venturing into this services business the small fish are gonna have tough time (watch out for the hiring patterns of these cos in India ).

Sap is not going anywhere. They are the leaders in ERP segment. Oracle will never be allowed to buy out SAP. It will be blocked by courts on the grounds of preventing monopoly. SAP is robust but i wouldn't call it flexible but this is true for all big ERP solutions. Between SAP and oracle they have covered almost all verticals so very little room for new guy to breakinto this space. Only SaaS CRM soultions from guys like salesforce.com, zoho and netsolutions have managed to grab market from biggies as they do not cater to SMB sector as well as new guys.
Before SAP I think SAP or Oracle will gobble Salesforce.com.

In reality, SAP does not really have any competitor in large scale end to end ERP implementations. It is so vast that it is going to be near impossible to catch up. But SAP needs urgently to look at dealing with the front end. It is so hard and cumbersome to use that lots of errors are made.
In the SMB sector SAP has Business 1 . It has been a flop, becasue it is far behind the other players for the SMB market.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 22 Apr 2009 05:38

negi wrote:It is simple only; by buying SUN ,Oracle not only gets a foothold into OS and Datacenter space but also ensures that by having a underlying HW and OS under its own belt it will be able to offer a complete end to end solution which can potentially mean existing capabilities/features would be delivered at a higher performance and the new ones would be even more optimised as they would be developed around the Server platform itself.

Lastly above would also serve as an insurance against HP's potential moves to acquire or move into a dedicated DB segment .As long as Oracle maintains the edge in DB segment it has little to worry about.

Larry has invested in a company called The Pillar data systems

vina · Post by **vina** » 22 Apr 2009 08:40

Singha wrote:why not remain smaller, focussed and profitable like netapps, jnpr etc.

Big fish eat smaller fish. Higher you are in the food chain, the safer you are from being eaten!

. Remember in any M&A, it is the management of the guys selling out who are gutted first!. Saving backsides onree Saar!.

this mania for being everything to everyone is just stoked my M&A players hoping to pocket their 2% of the
deal value....usual suspects like goldman & their ilk

Well, us boor Karporate Stratejee types too have to earn our salaries (very expensive these days you know), pay our rents, money for fuel, food, daily essentials and put kids through college onree. What to do ?

sarulan · Post by **sarulan** » 22 Apr 2009 08:59

Oracle may layoff 10,000 people

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24539/1231/

"In our estimation, Oracle will lay off between 10,000 to 15,000 Sun employees and gain annual savings of $1.5 billion in operating expense in year one and more than $2.0 billion in the second year," they say in a research note.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 22 Apr 2009 09:27

Earlier IBM was in the only one stop shop for hardware, application servers(java based) and database. It was hard to beat the combination. The software (app server. database) came cheap if you bouth the hardware (AIX/Linux machines). BEA, SUN and Oracle partnered before to compete with IBM, but I guess it did not work out. IBM usually follows up its hardware/software combo with its overpriced consultants. Now Oracle has all the ingredients to compete with IBM.

--hanumadu

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 22 Apr 2009 17:36

vina wrote:Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!

WHAT?!!

I bet my f**eskin that ain't gonna happen! With those millions and millions of MySQL servers running,
- that is a market and not a liability!
- Nothing even compares to mySQL in the LAMP arena
- A much awaited reunion with InnoDB. MySQL can move in the direction it was originally intended
- MySQL yields pennies compared to Oracle; but massive volume.

Expect a deliberate tuning down of MySQL at the extreme high end
And expect it to be open source. No company in its sane mind will antagonize so many!

Jayram · Post by **Jayram** » 22 Apr 2009 23:53

milindc wrote:
vina wrote:Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!
Another possibility for Yechh Pee is acquiring Teradata. Even SAS Inc wants to get into parallel/partitioned database space and might acquire Teradata.

This may or may not happen dependign on how much of a threat HP can mount on Teradata. Thats right the reason is
HP has a competetive product to Teradata with a LOT of R&D behind it called HP Neoview acquired after HP bought Compaq which had bought Tandem earlier which itself was a spin off from HP

. BTW Mark Hurd ran Teradata before he moved to NCR and then to HP.. Intersting times we live in..
This product is a based on Tandem NonStop SQL and got converted from OLTP to Data Warehousing BI type product.. So basically HP has a prodcut aimed squarely at the Data Warehouse segment but with nothing related to Bread and butter Oracle OLTP type..
Read all about Neoview and its technology at this industry respected Database Blog here. Fascinating stuff for technically minded Db folks...
There is talk there of running a query of 300 joins of over 60 Pages of SQL..

Imagine coding that by hand heh heh

http://www.dbms2.com/2008/10/02/hp-neov ... y-history/ You can also search there for the authors take on the Sun buy...

Pulikeshi · Post by **Pulikeshi** » 23 Apr 2009 00:57

Acharya wrote:
Singha wrote:why does HP or anybody else need to constantly buy and grow bigger?
That is the grand strategy.

Depends on the state and maturity of the market. Early on there is a proliferation of companies, over time as the pot size grows consolidations occurs, to a point when the number one and two get too far ahead of the pack and some disruptive technology forces the repeat of the cycle again...
(of course I am grossly simplifying what really happens!)

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 07:54

yeah but I recall reading articles that say most large mergers have failed.

but success or failure, the M&A guys who "shape the environment" pocket their 2% and
make merry. its like brokers hyping up/talking down stocks to gain % on high trade volume.

and these are supposed to be the "best n brightest square jawed crew cut ivy trained" types.

if sw/hw had such a % of failure, we did be panhandling on the street but "strategic advisors"
are allowed to dole out wrong advice, write books based on what they got wrong and profit from
it! some of them rise up and reach the jedi council to be "CEO coach" it gets even more chummy
and country clubby at that level

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arti ... cleid=1137

After all, many mergers ultimately don't add value to companies, and even end up causing serious damage. "Studies indicate that several companies fail to show positive results when it comes to mergers," says Wharton accounting professor Robert Holthausen, who teaches courses on M&A strategy. Noting that there have been "hundreds of studies" conducted on the long-term results of mergers, Holthausen says that researchers estimate the range for failure is between 50% and 80%.

http://petercohan.blogspot.com/2006/01/ ... -fail.html

Numerous studies suggest that most mergers destroy shareholder wealth. For example, a Chicago Tribune/A.T. Kearney study of 50 mergers between January 1999 and September 1999 found that 69% of the surviving companies lagged their industry average in shareholder returns in the two years after the deal closed. About 70% of surviving companies underperformed their peers five years after the deals closed according to Kidd Stewart (2001).

vina · Post by **vina** » 23 Apr 2009 08:34

yeah but I recall reading articles that say most large mergers have failed.

but success or failure, the M&A guys who "shape the environment" pocket their 2% and
make merry. its like brokers hyping up/talking down stocks to gain % on high trade volume.

and these are supposed to be the "best n brightest square jawed crew cut ivy trained" types.

Yup. Guilty as accused. The failure rate is above 55%.

But that said, Oracle's record in M&A has been very good indeed. It executed the consolidation game at the right time, environment and price. Those are the key for success.

Oracle, kicked out the tech geeks in senior management and brought in hotshots from Banking precisely for that. By this I am talking about Safra Catz and Charles Philips , both of whom are now Presidents there.

Safra seems to be quite a woman. This long line of acquisitions starting from PeopleSoft has been entirely her play and she has executed those brilliantly, esp PeopleSoft which was done against so much hostility and the regulators blocking the move (they won against the regulators in court). She is a former Managing Director at DLJ and I think her timing with Sun has been brilliant. She bought it out at perfect price , when SUN basically had no other option and no else to sell to.

The M&A Strategy has allowed Oracle to fill in the blank spaces and has made it the formidable force it is today in the entire space from apps to infrastructure to databases etc today and the ability to take on IBM in all parts except Services. SAP is now crushed. Oracle has been winning market share and if the industry consolidates around HP, IBM, Oracle/Sun and Mickey Soft led generic dabbas , Dell is going to be shut out of the data center forever and be a desktop/notebook player. If Oracle can crash MickeySoft's party by basically matching the price point of Mickey Soft and Generic dabbas in the departmental level server with Solaris/Linux running on generic hardware with Oracle stack on it, MickeySoft and Dell tide would have crested and it is downhill from there.

Pssst.. Watch out. I think VMWare and EMC are next in line for acquisition. Selling vertically integrated stacks from hardware all the way to apps is the story now. Netzilla better act now or else Safra Catz might get those two in her claws soon.

With Ray Lane getting fired, Oracle is really now a fully "Yum Bee Yea" led company (Ellison, Safra (JD, but still very close), Philip)

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 23 Apr 2009 08:46

Singha wrote:but success or failure, the M&A guys who "shape the environment" pocket their 2% and make merry.

8-8.5% is more like standard and see what the bank earns when a $20 B deal is done. That is the one of the reason they even encourage leveraged buyouts - meaning they will lend you money to conclude the deal. In that case, they earn that 8% "consulting" fee plus hefty interest in an LBO

==Added later==

Oops...you guys may be talking about in-house M&A Vina ji type and I was talking about investment banks.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 23 Apr 2009 08:51

vina wrote:Pssst.. Watch out. I think VMWare and EMC are next in line for acquisition. Selling vertically integrated stacks from hardware all the way to apps is the story now. Netzilla better act now or else Safra Catz might get those two in her claws soon.

I am also thinking NetApp going Singha ji's way.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 10:21

looks guys I am not out to 'attack' Vina or anyones living. M&A is essential function of the
economy, nobody can dispute that. its just that my CIWS need to get warmed up periodically and unleash a burst of lead....not my doing - its on automode.

(I extend moral and diplomatic
support to the STGR system onree) my rant was against some the PE players and the
huge leveraged buyouts they engineered at height of boom.

there are rumours that Netapp is paring its H&R and support functions to prepare for a buyout,
allegedly by netzilla. just rumours.

EMC is way too much market value for netzilla to buy with stock. and netzilla wouldnt want to
expend 90% of cash in one buy. they do have a cozy relationship with.

Vmware would be a good buy, but its like going after EMCs beautiful "wife" - a fascinating prospect to bed but her powerful husband might be pi***ed. so a "platonic partnership/shmoozing" might be the only way fwd to get facetime socially

all the while lusting after her.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 10:27

btw has anyone come across a coach/guru named Ram Charan. said to be a exclusive advisor to CEOs and lives out of a suitcase with a small office somewhere in texas(?). he has written books like "leadership in era of change" and so on. has a air of mystery and low-key unlike more high profile maves like bhagawati and prahlad.

they say he is one of the best?

amol.p · Post by **amol.p** » 23 Apr 2009 11:47

Salary freeze at Wipro, campus hiring depends on business

Wipro Ltd, India's third largest software exporter, has freezed salary increase for the current financial year and gave no commitment on campus hiring, saying the recruitment depended on how business shaped up.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Sal ... 436158.cms

amol.p · Post by **amol.p** » 23 Apr 2009 11:49

HCL unlikely to make campus offers

To save on the cost of training, one of the leading domestic software exporter HCL Technologies said it will hire people 'just in time' of Coming to terms with lay-off
requirement rather than maintaining a bench.

HCL has been following the policy of just in time hiring, which has paid off well for the organisation, HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayyar said.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Fea ... 438397.cms

All previously boasted numbers ...every year adding.......300k engg....now realising that never to have heard like mentality

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 12:02

indeed. the headcount based growth model is RIP.

the backpressure effects of this are already being felt in a savage reduction of hiring from
campuses around the country and deferral of joining dates for those offered last year. salary
cuts, pay freezes etc are too common to comment on.

medium term the flood of pvt engg colleges that come up in last 10 years often offering "in demand" branches only like EE/CSE/MCA might face reduction in student interest as people shift to whatever has better prospects. same for the tier2-3 Mba schools.

there was even high demand for civil and project engineers due to the realty/infra boom.
poor civil engg had been relegated to last choice by ITvity badboy types and often many
colleges didnt even offer branches like civil, chemical, metallurgy, material science and mechanical offered only grudgingly.

problem is - what is the next big thing to generate white collar boom? retail ? telecom services?
manufacturing?

vina · Post by **vina** » 23 Apr 2009 12:29

Singha wrote:btw has anyone come across a coach/guru named Ram Charan. said to be a exclusive advisor to CEOs and lives out of a suitcase with a small office somewhere in texas(?). he has written books like "leadership in era of change" and so on. has a air of mystery and low-key unlike more high profile maves like bhagawati and prahlad.

they say he is one of the best?

Saar. Prahlad and Bhagwati are academics, internationally know (Bhagwati always a perennial candidate for a Nobel in Economics, I think he deserves to get it). Ram Charan is the "ultimate consultant" , a one man McKinsey if you will. He is a smooth neat operator, with direct CEO level access , with focus primarily on " how to implement", very nice talker, great presence, basically a ultimate consultant ka baap. I have met him and spoken with him, the last time in Bangalore a couple of years back at Leela .

Ram Charan peppers his talk (esp in India) about his bania background and how he can knows his business details like the back of his hand like his margins were " rupiye mein ek ana" (do the math it is 6 1/4 %), about how he went to IT BHU and scraped through on meager funds, landed up in Australia after graduation , working for a (mining company) I think and then Haahvud Bijnezz School and I think a Pee Yeechh Dee from somewhere (not sure).

Talks basic bread and butter stuff ,that any normal Yum Bee Yea will know, but brilliantly packaged , superbly delivered and basically a consultant par excellence. Very Smoooooooooooth. The other two guys are just plain academics and will no where come close to our guy in direct CEO level access, influence and ability to schmooze.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 12:38

indeed - Charan sir is his own brand. another upcoming person seems to be geoffrey moore
author of "dealing with darwin". he advises netzilla mgmt for sure per a flyer for a lecture he
delivered in san jose last week, followed by a book signing - on campus. aptly enough he
also wrote a book named "the gorilla game"

there's a bengali guy who lives in australia? wrote some massive tome on CDO type stuff and
is now retired. he allegedly wrote the book on cdo in the sense of opening a new field.

sugriva · Post by **sugriva** » 23 Apr 2009 12:46

Singha wrote:there's a bengali guy who lives in australia? wrote some massive tome on CDO type stuff and is now retired. he allegedly wrote the book on cdo in the sense of opening a new field.

I think you meant Satyajit Das and his book
http://www.amazon.com/Credit-Derivative ... 0470821590
Here's his blog.
http://www.wilmott.com/blogs/satyajitdas/

Nayak · Post by **Nayak** » 23 Apr 2009 12:51

A post of contradiction, so go easy on me vina-guru.

Most of the stuff these guys drone on sounds very 420ish to me. I used to get sent to some of these strategic level stuff talks, I was just interested in mooching off the free drinks/foods and rub my paunch with the bony pyt shoulders. When I actually paid any attention to the verbal diarrorhea, I realized it was just plain common-sense and not some ground-breaking discovery. I mean most of the 'con-sultants' drop fancy jargons, stats and cherry-picked data. As a trench-level, stinger carrying, survivor of multiple hind attacks, hawai-chappal-wearing muj, I look at such talks with a high degree of skepticism.

I don't know if the masala I am hearing is similar to the $hit churned out by tabloids/self-promotion/yellow journalism.

Since I can pick up the buzzing off an approaching low-level hind sent from Vina's base, I will promptly change my shalwar to burkha and disappear for a short time.....

Sridhar K · Post by **Sridhar K** » 23 Apr 2009 13:19

Heard from insiders, The Cobol Sangam after silent layoffs (including many people at senior levels), has fired its next salvo at its foot soldiers - will not pay a component of the variable allowance for the last quarter of 08-09, but still continues to take in freshers.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 13:40

cobol sangam ?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 23 Apr 2009 14:54

What do people think of middleware technologies in the Communications domain? Vendors like Cisco, Avaya, Nortel are coming up with middleware layers that sit between the communications domain and the business applications domain and allow them to talk to each other. Everyone claims they are multi vendor, multi applications etc. In simplest terms it allows you to say, click on any name in any application and contact that person: be it on IM/phone/mobile all at the same time. I can see the uses, but any future for this?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 15:04

unified communications, unified virtual desktop, unified application access....from anywhere. isnt that the holy grail of the all-IP-all-ethernet model?

person == IP addr. once that mapping is able to be kept anywhere, delivering any service be it voice or data anywhere to any IP addressable device is feasible.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 23 Apr 2009 15:20

Ah Singhaji

person == IP addr. once that mapping is able to be kept anywhere, delivering any service be it voice or data anywhere to any IP addressable device is feasible.

You are looking at it only from a data perspective. What they are offering is paging all 3 modes simultaneously: IM/desk phone/mobile. The person can be reachable from any combination or even a single mode of the the 3. IP adress = person doesnt work for that case. The closest is SIP address = person, then the SIP gateway resolves that person to his endpoint.

Anyways, it is interesting, but is this just a fad?

suvod · Post by **suvod** » 23 Apr 2009 16:28

The Cobol Sangam == the comp which also builds steel & nano, saar.

the news is correct. steps taken to reduce costs...performance based terminations (which the company is calling 'involuntary attrition'!!), sending back non-billable personnel (bdm/brm/pmo/etc) from onsite locations.

and surprise surprise, still taking in freshers and putting pressure on PMs to somehow make them billable. methinks the desi comps have become so big as to be almost unmanagable. the HR and other support functions have not kept pace with the growth in headcount and are also staffed by 3rd grade personnel. sometimes it looks like different arms of the company are not talking to each other anymore.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Apr 2009 16:45

I also got confirmation from a spy - his number of reports have declined due to attritions both voluntary and forced.

you are right - they are unmanageable ... nobody knows what will happen or how they can scale
from 100K -> 300K and 10X current revenue to challenge IBM/Accenture.

Srinivas · Post by **Srinivas** » 23 Apr 2009 22:00

Singha wrote:btw has anyone come across a coach/guru named Ram Charan. said to be a exclusive advisor to CEOs and lives out of a suitcase with a small office somewhere in texas(?). he has written books like "leadership in era of change" and so on. has a air of mystery and low-key unlike more high profile maves like bhagawati and prahlad.

they say he is one of the best?

Remembered the Fortune article I read about him couple of years back -

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ ... /index.htm

Very interesting read.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 23 Apr 2009 22:38

Since the IT bubble of the last two decades was built on the financial bubble of the same period, what does that mean for the industry in general looking forward. What have the prophets to say.

Even vina-saar has largely kept away from this topic

where the IT quacks are getting halal'd regularly. So what is the growth model envisioned for the teeming millions ? And will the 'demography bonus' in India remain an un-cashed cheque at the global labour mandi.

Population culling seem to be the only real alternative. Shrink to DINK status to ease the next generation from facing too much competition

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 24 Apr 2009 05:33

IT bubble was not really due to financial bubble. IT will be back once the economy improves and we will be back to the same cycle of boom-bust soon.

tchandr · Post by **tchandr** » 24 Apr 2009 10:16

suvod wrote: and surprise surprise, still taking in freshers and putting pressure on PMs to somehow make them billable.

Phew, been there. We got a pilot project from a reputed company. Since we always wait till last minute it was decided to put a greenhorn on project with no experience. End result, those guys never came back, now heard from my friend in HR the top guy wants to fire some one for this.

vina · Post by **vina** » 24 Apr 2009 11:09

Guys. I think Mickey Soft has crested and now on the wrong side of history . According to a story in NY TImes, Mickey Soft's profits dropped for the 1st time in 23 years (some 34% drop) . The core Window's franchise saw sales drop from $4b to $3.4b this quarter.

This is huge. Net books are now 10% of overall PC sales. This has literally come out of nowhere and taken a big chunk of marketshare. Now the days of Micksey soft getting the lions share of value in a $500 to $1000 typical PC/Notebook, with close to $85 upwards, all in profits are gone and gone forever. Now the Window's desktop franchise, around which the entire Microsoft franchise is built has been penetrated. Linux , and now upcoming Android , Symbian etc migrating to Netbooks and then dissolving the barrier between PCs and Phones (something MickeySoft can NEVER EVER DO with the bloated Windoze, and if they develop a brand new OS, then they are toast anyway, coz they will have no competitive advantage) , makes Mickey Soft's future beyond the next 5 years , when the current systems come up for replacement very cloudy indeed.

And in the server side, if the Oracle /SUN led consolidation is successful in terms of business model, and Cloud / publicly hosted infra from the Google/Amazon etc guys takes off, then Mickey Soft's dabba server business is toast. All in all, the salad days are behind it. It is going to be downhill all the way for those guys from now.

What sustained them through the .com challenge etc was their vice like grip on the desktop and the franchise on it. Now with that key broken, they will not have the cash cow any longer to go and finance ways to suck up all the profits and life blood of potential competitors in other business like they did in the access biz with AOL (the $400 giveaways if you signed up for MSN), the war against Sony PS2 , the entire online assault against Goog etc , loss leaders and massive losses all, which would have sunk any normal company. But with the core getting penetrated, WWMSD ? , (what will Mickey Soft Do)

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 24 Apr 2009 11:18

Takeover of Yahoo is inevitable. It is just a matter of few months (or weeks).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Apr 2009 11:30

vina saar,

[1] windows server2008 has hyper-V virtualization support, it can support anything as virtual
machines

[2] windows server hosts 1000s of business critical apps and can itself become a VM either
on windows server/vmware/xen

so in that sense they will just migrate into the skynet cloud and serve virtual desktops over
the fat pipe.

they could buy citrix and gain good share in the space between cloud and desktop.

android/symbian would fight for meager scraps on thin clients and netbooks.

linux can ofcourse go into cloud via xen and kvm. it can become fat or thin. but nobody "owns"
linux so no dominant player can eat all the meat. citrix owns Xen, red hat owns kvm.

I do agree some of their loss making businesses / outlying things might be reduced.
revenue expections could be 50% of current. i.e. 50% reduction in company size could
happen.

vina · Post by **vina** » 24 Apr 2009 12:20

Andriod & Symbian are the lakh takiya /Nano of the OS world where they will bring the huge volumes of the mobile devices /merge them with desktops. I foresee a world where you will carry a slightly bigger USB stick kind of device, which is your "portable" and has limited battery so that it works fine as a phone and for more heavy duty computing, it plugs into a docking station like device and you get a full screen and keyboard and power source and you are all set.

I think the key to crack the "display" and " user interface" problems between PC/Notebook and phones is to recognize that they are different . They are east and west and the twain can never meet. But what can converge is the hardware and the OS. So there you have it . A "portable shell" which has power connectors a screen and a key board with mouse , into which a full featured phone (with best UI comparable to a stand alone phone) and when plugged into the "shell" becomes a full featured laptop with additional memory /hard disk in case it is needed and it is expensive to build that into a phone with small form factor. With this, other high cost item after the screen in a lap top , ie the LiOn battery can be taken out and shared with the phone. What you will have to give up is 4 or 6 hrs on battery use. i seriously doubt if anyone uses their laptops for more than 1hr in most cases (other than playing DVDs in non stop NY to LA/SF kind of flights) for such uses.

vina · Post by **vina** » 24 Apr 2009 12:28

Singha wrote:vina saar,

[1] windows server2008 has hyper-V virtualization support, it can support anything as virtual
machines

[2] windows server hosts 1000s of business critical apps and can itself become a VM either
on windows server/vmware/xen

so in that sense they will just migrate into the skynet cloud and serve virtual desktops over
the fat pipe.

But then they become "commodity plays" based on "industry standards" and no franchise/entry barriers/exit barriers/monopoly. So long term ECONOMIC profits (ie. profits less cost of capital ) will drop to Zero (Econ 101 onree).

android/symbian would fight for meager scraps on thin clients and netbooks

Refer my previous post. Just like Nano will wipe out Maruti's profits and attack it's hitherto protected franchise in M800 and Alto , ie the A segment, so will these two with Mickey Soft. Just like Maruti's entire business model is underwritten by the dominance in the A segment, so is Mickey Soft with Windoze and office (which are interrelated). Break that, and Mickey Soft goes.

I do agree some of their loss making businesses / outlying things might be reduced.
revenue expections could be 50% of current. i.e. 50% reduction in company size could
happen.

That is unsustainable in the long term and also in the current environment. I expect those busiensses to be told, to shape up or be folded, with folded being the more probable outcome. No way in hell those businesses will meet the overall margin targets of Mickey Soft.

The bigger point is Mickey Soft cannot be the Darth Vader who can come and kill any potentially threatening business even outside it's franchise by putting up with bottomless losses, just to bleed the other guy to death (like they did with NetScape and a host of other guys. For Google, they didnt understand it and woke up too late to be able to do anything about it. after all, every one had given up search business as a dog (Inktomi ..rather "oink to me" , Yahoo, Alta Vista etc), until google polished the rough and held it up as a flawless gem)

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 24 Apr 2009 13:00

vina wrote:Andriod & Symbian are the lakh takiya /Nano of the OS world where they will bring the huge volumes of the mobile devices /merge them with desktops. I foresee a world where you will carry a slightly bigger USB stick kind of device, which is your "portable" and has limited battery so that it works fine as a phone and for more heavy duty computing, it plugs into a docking station like device and you get a full screen and keyboard and power source and you are all set.

Vina saar, I see major issues with the above model. OSs need memory. And people want speed! Maybe the docking station will take over when the device is plugged in but then you are back to the present!

vina wrote: I think the key to crack the "display" and " user interface" problems between PC/Notebook and phones is to recognize that they are different . They are east and west and the twain can never meet. But what can converge is the hardware and the OS. So there you have it . A "portable shell" which has power connectors a screen and a key board with mouse , into which a full featured phone (with best UI comparable to a stand alone phone) and when plugged into the "shell" becomes a full featured laptop with additional memory /hard disk in case it is needed and it is expensive to build that into a phone with small form factor. With this, other high cost item after the screen in a lap top , ie the LiOn battery can be taken out and shared with the phone. What you will have to give up is 4 or 6 hrs on battery use. i seriously doubt if anyone uses their laptops for more than 1hr in most cases (other than playing DVDs in non stop NY to LA/SF kind of flights) for such uses.

Still hard to beat Windows. The moment you want a little bit more,(whatver it may be) you will hit a wall
- Device integration
- Driver support
- Time taken to get things up and running.

Remember, companies are built around MS OS.
Try getting your Creative 5.1 speakers or Logitech Webcam working with a Ubuntu 8.1 laptop. Both companies are giants in their domains. Yet when it comes to Linux support, they will telly you that its a nightmare

Netbooks could be popular now. But I see this as a iPhone like craze flattening off soon.
Like I said , when you want a little bit more, you will run to big daddy! Smaller devices wont scale given the way OSs are built today. Memory , memory and memory. You can do without it.
MS is like the the viswaroopam of Maha Vishnu. Everyone will run to it in life and death! The other gods are lesser mortals!