Google Reveals App Engine Secrets to Its True Audience
June 8, 2009
If you had any doubt that Google’s audience is a programming savvy crowd, just read “10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know about App Engine” here. GOOG takes the long view. The idea is surround and seep. The first step is to get to the developers who can help Google implement its strategy. Who else but programmers would twirl with excitement over tips such as:
- The Java runtime supports any language that compiles to Java bytecode
- Datastore performance doesn’t depend on how many entities you have or
- The order that handlers in app.yaml, web.xml, and appengine-web.xml are specified in matters.
User friendly, right?
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Clouds Part, Truth Peeks Out
June 8, 2009
Ned Batchelder’s “Real World Cloud Computing is worth reading. You can find the article here. The information is a summary of key and interesting observations made by six start ups’ top guns about cloud computing. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of the original post. I would like to quote one passage to motivate you to read the article:
Here are five points about Amazon’s cloud services:
- “Can’t send lots of emails, since you need a spam-white listed server
- Disk I/O in the cloud is a lot slower than in real machines (“punishingly slow”).
- Want a db server with 32Gb RAM? Amazon doesn’t offer it.
- Want dual hardware load balancers? Amazon doesn’t have it.
- PCI (credit card) compliance is a problem: use a 3rd-party cart or PayPal instead of doing it yourself in the cloud.”
Very useful.
Stephen Arnold, June 8, 2009
Yet Another Revolution: Business at the Speed of Thought
June 7, 2009
I am all for speed when driving under the speed limit. I am not too keen on speed for speed’s sake. Call me an old fashioned addled goose. Business decisions made at speed can be interesting. For example, it a share of stock drops a percentage point, should one dump the stock or but more? What about shorting the stock? Make the incorrect decision and you can blow more of your available cash.
Some decisions require context, thought, in-depth research, and even a Twitter post or two over some period of time. Living for the moment may have thrilled Andrew Marvell’s readers, but the carpe diem approach to decision making can produce exciting consequences.
A Web site called Menafn.com published a story that got me thinking about velocity. The article was “SAP to Revolutionize BI with New Solution that Delivers Insight at the Speed of Thought” and you can read it here. SAP is the IBM-esque company that vies with SPSS, Cognos, and dozens of other heavyweights for number crunching services. Over the last decade, number crunchers have made an effort to suck in text, convert the unstructured content to a form that can be counted, and the mash up generates outputs. I have had a little experience with the outputs of BI systems, and I can tell you that setting up the systems, tuning them, coding the queries, and then helping the legions of MBAs figure out what’s in the reports is a good business. SAP has been for me a touchstone for how some software companies will evolve in the hostile financial climate some of my clients report as problematic to corporate navigators.
The Menafn.com Web site reported:
SAP AG. “This new software provides a clear line of sight and enables customers to achieve transparency in every corner of their business. Moving forward, solutions like SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will help businesses develop a new generation of informed executives, who will drive companies globally toward a path of greater transparency, growth and competitiveness.” Availability SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version for SAP NetWeaver BW, is planned to be available during summer 2009. The solution will also be packaged and available through the Best-Run Now initiative from SAP. The package, called “Explore Your Business at the Speed of Thought,” will be available globally and is designed to meet the needs of diverse lines of business and industries.
Like the Nstein news release that caught my attention, SAP is nosing into the future release world of software; that is, this is “to be” stuff, not “as is” stuff. There a touch of revolutionary and truck load of promises. Nary a word about the TREX search system, how one can actually find the data to smunch together in a report, or any information about the role of Endeca, a company into which one unit of SAP injected investment.
I wonder if summertime makes some news release writers feel their inorganic oats. When software takes several years to deploy, I don’t have much confidence in Menafn’s assertion about “summer 2009”. How much transparency does a firm doing classified work or developing cutting edge pharmaceuticals require when making quick decisions? In my opinion, prudent decisions and some compartmentalization might be useful for contract compliance and the managers who are struggling to deal with the information flooding across their desks at this time. Future software doesn’t help too much in the real “now” but I suppose it sounds good to those outside my goose pond.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Google Docs and the Thrilling DOCX
June 7, 2009
Ever have this happen? You get a file and you are in an Internet shop in Wellington, New Zealand. You get an email labeled Word file only to discover that it is in the DOCX format. The PC at the end of the earth only has Word 97. Instead of screaming, you now can use Google Docs to read the file. Joy, and I mean it. Great addition to the Google Docs service. More information is here.
Google Enterprise Revenue
June 7, 2009
Dave Girpuard is a smart man. He is president of the Google’s enterprise unit. I read Larry Dignan’s article “Enterprise Business Profitable; Says Email Migration ‘Proof Points’ Building” here and was puzzled. The re3venue figure in the article was reported as “a few 100 million dollars”. What is included? Google has enterprise deals in education. It has revenue from the Google Search Appliance, enterprise partners who pay to play, it has the Postini business, and several others. Do some estimating, and the GOOG has a booming business that my estimates suggest with revenue way north of $100 million.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Microsoft Partners Flock to Lotus Notes
June 7, 2009
Here’s the headline that brought a smile to my face: “200+ Microsoft Partners Per Month Flocking to Sell IBM Lotus Foundations Appliance”. You can read the scoop on the KLKN TV Web site here. Take a close look. The “story” is a news release. The author of the “story” / news release (!) is IBM. The document reports some “facts” and “ideas” that I find at odds with my experience. Keep in mind that I am an addled goose and lack the sophistication of the IBM PR team, but consider these points:
- “According to Microsoft business partners, sales of Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) software bundle have slowed due to lack of innovation and partner dissatisfaction with their inability to add solutions. In challenging economic times, Microsoft partners are looking for an alternative that provides SMB customers with more collaboration computing power for less money and more reliability.”
- “…Some Microsoft partners have expressed disenchantment with Microsoft’s new strategy of battling Linux encroachment in the SMB market by offering a skeletal version of Windows Server. Named “Microsoft Foundation Windows Server,” it can be positioned as a loss leader to up-sell customers a variety of other Microsoft products. Seeing rising customer demand for lower cost, more secure, and open source alternatives, many Microsoft partners are looking to sell Linux-based solutions.”
- “We chose Lotus Foundations from IBM for its high availability and ease of maintainability,” said Jim Abraham, Managing Partner of Line Fifty Software. “Lotus Foundations also helps companies keep costs down due to its reliability, all-in-one office software suite, ease of use and maintainability. Additionally, since our solution is Windows-based, the ability to run Windows applications alongside Linux applications makes the Foundations environment a complete SMB solution.”
Strong stuff and I didn’t even mention the pat on the head for Linux and the implicit sideswipe of the Microsoft limo. My thoughts about this type of “story” are that [a] someone needs to run the IBM news releases by an individual with some experience in the real world of partner management. Partners invest time and money and risk losing the support of the mothership for getting out of bounds. I think some of the folks quoted in this news story may have an opportunity for a heart to heart chat with an interested party; [b] the Lotus Appliance does not work like bread crumbs thrown to pigeons. “Flock” does not strike the right chord with me. The number 200 sounds odd to me when I consider the companies cited in the “news story”. I wonder if digging around would reveal that these are firms who represent a range of different products and signed up to resell the Lotus Appliance because fees were waived or some inducement offered; and [c] what the heck is a puff piece like this one doing on a TV station’s Web site. Where’s the New York Times’s coverage? Where’s the story in Network World? Not too many Microsoft resellers will be checking out the KLKN Web site for Lotus news I surmise. I wonder if I can find the original release by searching the IBM Web site? Doing that now. Answer: Nope. IBM is as adept at Lotus Appliance PR as it is at search it seems.
Stephen Arnold,
Bing Bang Boing: The Sound of Early Clicks
June 7, 2009
I have been in the warm embrace of a wonderful airline and a Type A client. I relaxed when I read the flurry of articles about Microsoft’s spike in Web search share. Good news, I thought. After reading a number of posts I circled back to a write up in Search Engine Land called “Did Bing Leapfrog Yahoo? Not Exactly” here. There is a good round up of usage data from a number of azure chip outfits “generating” these data. That was useful. What I found lacking in this analysis and many others at which I looked was:
- A statement that new services get a spike in usage and at the GOOG a boost. The use of “new” in marketing has psychological and traffic benefits. The point is what will be the usage in three months?
- The data wander. The prudent approach is to crack that stats book and generate a normalized value. Bing gets a bounce but the outliers are corralled.
- The usage data themselves have margins of error. In some cases five, seven or more percent. This may mean Bing is performing better than the pundits opine or much worse.
My take on these data is simple: Let’s check out the data in 12 or 16 weeks.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Google Is Small, Really Really Small, Really
June 6, 2009
In 2007 I thought I heard a Googler suggest that Google would be a $100 billion dollar company. I mentioned the number to a couple of folks who said, “You are nuts.” I know what I wrote in my notes, but as an addled goose with lousy hearing from various loud sounds over the years, I may have misheard. I dropped the number from my Google descriptions until I read a Washington Post story. The article’s title was “Google Says It’s Actually Quite Small” by Jeff Horwitz, who probably is neither addled nor half deaf. He wrote:
If that number seems low for the runaway success story of the Internet age, Google wants you to believe that it’s just a question of market definition. Google rejects the idea that it’s in the search advertising business, an industry in which it holds more than a 70 percent share of revenue. Instead, the company says that its competition is all advertising, a category broad enough to include newspaper, radio and highway billboards. Google’s argument is not simply that it’s not a big bully. If you believe the company, it’s not even that big.
The “small” argument is part of a longer term effort to blunt any allegations by those who would assert that Google is a monopoly. Even Microsofties have used the verb “google” to describe some of their information retrieval efforts. Is Google small, depends on where one sits I think. IBM is in the #=$100 billion range and considered toothless by some including me. Microsoft is in the $65 billion area and we know what that firm is doing. Google is just a small outfit in my opinion, really tiny, even eesie meensie.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Catching Google with Ads
June 6, 2009
The ad lab test is on. I want to follow how marketing folks address the gap between Google’s Web search market share and Microsoft’s effort to whittle narrow the gap. Joe Wilcox’s “First Bing Ad Bombs, Others Are The Bomb” may turn out to be an important commentary. You can find his write up here. He wrote:
Somewhere, someday, someone may receive an award for this first Bing commercial. It’s got that kind of appeal. Too much advertising is focused on making statements, of ad agencies winning the approval of peers when the focus should be helping clients sell products and build brand awareness.
The campaign is a step out of the gate and already the goal is winning an award. Mr. Wilcox noted:
… this is great advertising and almost makes up for the scary first commercial. Microsoft is effectively using people to market Bing. Bwahahaha, maybe the second and third commercials are scary, too. Scarily good.
I thought the idea was to move the eight percent market share of Microsoft closer to the 60 to 70 percent market share of Google. Maybe I don’t understand the importance of advertising. I do understand the importance of Web search market share. In my opinion, Mr. Wilcox’s review provides some useful links to the ads, points out a Mac reference, and helps me understand that Madison Avenue’s approach to building market share is now carrying the load for Microsoft’s catching Google in Web search. My question: Is Mad Ave strong enough?
Stephen Arnold, June 6, 2009
Optimizing IIS for SEO
June 6, 2009
Short honk: If you are a Microsoft shop, you may want to check out the write up “IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit” by Scott Guthrie. You can find the article here. The toolkit is free and download links are provided. Worth a look. If you are not in the GOOG or other search engines, your site may not be findable.
Stephen Arnold, June 6, 2009
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