Interesting session this morning comparing Microsoft, Google and Apple on their philosophy and approach to business.
The thoughts reproduced below are entirely that of the presenters and not my own. I wanted to present an unadulterated version of their version. When colored with my commentary, I indicated it as such.
If you were to hear the presentation live, one gets the perception that the presenters are trying hard to make the impression that Apple is the company "to be" in today's competitive market.
Nevertheless, the presenters make some interesting comparisons on these three organizations:
First of all, Apple is presented as a vertically integrated high margin hardware provider whose emphasis is more on elegant design rather than low cost.
Google is presented as essentially an advertising company to all the world's people which uses the power of engineering to develop geeky applications with mass following.
Microsoft, on the other hand is presented as a software and platform system developer which has its own ecosystem to help thrive the Microsoft brand.
An interesting comparison that was made between Google and Microsoft in their sustainability models. Google was painted as a cowboy who believes in the democratization of information. Google believes in capturing the next 2 billion users and lacks little or no enterprise focus. They are considered as radical innovators who deny anyone the opportunity to control their destiny.
Microsoft was painted as a steady entity that believes in the democratization of technology. On the other hand, Microsoft has a strategy of an orderly enterprise growth which defines and develops programming platforms. Microsoft is persistent who is no longer the innovator but believes in leap-frogging and making better the innovations of others.
More on this later….
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Opening Keynote at Gartner Symposium
The focus of the opening keynote was themed along the key aspects of Cloud, Social, Information and Mobile computing.
These four key areas together form a nexus of forces which makes any and all recent architectures immediately obsolete. The information technology paradigm is easily overshadowed by Information Ecology.
However, all of this comes at a great risk. In fact, most disruptive technologies come with significant risks that needs to be appropriately harnessed into a risk adjusted value management. It belies the oft-held belief that risk management in the face of constant disruption is a waste of time.
The keynote was structured around 3 themes:
Post-Modern Business
Simplicity
Creative Destruction
Peter Sonnengard clearly outlined that companies that use leading risk indicators clearly outperform their competitors. The reality, of course, is that in today's dire economic climate, it is easier said than done. The forecast for overall IT spend is predicted to be just under 4% through 2015. This outlook is made by Gartner after factoring the continued sluggish growth of the economy.
Daryl Plummer went on to talk about post-modern Business. So what really is post-modern business? It is an "anything goes" approach that focuses on deeper relationship with customers, suppliers and partners. It is a business "with no walls" mantra where you rely on delighting customers, garnering the interest of disengaged customers and combating their short attention span.
Hung Lehong talked about simplicity as a paradigm in today's way of doing business. By 2015, four mobile apps will be deployed for every single traditional PC based application. This necessitates a basic "rethink" in developing systems that are context aware and people centric resulting in a rich user experience.
Tina Nunno closed out the keynote by speaking about creative destruction. For those of us not in the know, it is a controlled rationalization of existing IT and Business assets in the hopes of a leaner and meaner organizational system. Therefore, every IT and business executive should evaluate their own appetite for risk. This will facilitate that technology does not create limits but actually facilitates the lowering of barriers.
All good points which made for an effective keynote.
These four key areas together form a nexus of forces which makes any and all recent architectures immediately obsolete. The information technology paradigm is easily overshadowed by Information Ecology.
However, all of this comes at a great risk. In fact, most disruptive technologies come with significant risks that needs to be appropriately harnessed into a risk adjusted value management. It belies the oft-held belief that risk management in the face of constant disruption is a waste of time.
The keynote was structured around 3 themes:
Post-Modern Business
Simplicity
Creative Destruction
Peter Sonnengard clearly outlined that companies that use leading risk indicators clearly outperform their competitors. The reality, of course, is that in today's dire economic climate, it is easier said than done. The forecast for overall IT spend is predicted to be just under 4% through 2015. This outlook is made by Gartner after factoring the continued sluggish growth of the economy.
Daryl Plummer went on to talk about post-modern Business. So what really is post-modern business? It is an "anything goes" approach that focuses on deeper relationship with customers, suppliers and partners. It is a business "with no walls" mantra where you rely on delighting customers, garnering the interest of disengaged customers and combating their short attention span.
Hung Lehong talked about simplicity as a paradigm in today's way of doing business. By 2015, four mobile apps will be deployed for every single traditional PC based application. This necessitates a basic "rethink" in developing systems that are context aware and people centric resulting in a rich user experience.
Tina Nunno closed out the keynote by speaking about creative destruction. For those of us not in the know, it is a controlled rationalization of existing IT and Business assets in the hopes of a leaner and meaner organizational system. Therefore, every IT and business executive should evaluate their own appetite for risk. This will facilitate that technology does not create limits but actually facilitates the lowering of barriers.
All good points which made for an effective keynote.
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About Me
- Sree Sundaram
- Sree Sundaram is currently a Sr. Director of Enterprise Architecture at a major global technology firm. He is currently engaged at two major international biotechnology firms in optimization and migration of infrastructure from their current platform to a newer technological platform that is in line with their current and future business needs. Sree has solid experience in understanding the needs of both middle and top level management and has the ability to communicate at both levels. He is fundamentally aware that the transactional and short-term needs of middle level management are different from the long-term vision of top-level management. He has successfully dealt with such issues by providing an IT framework that meets both the short term and long term needs. In general, Sree helps to prioritize competing initiatives using a combination of his acumen, communication skills, strategic and operation plans.