Skip to content

Post-Acquisition Strategies in Tech Companies

Just a brief note on an interesting trend I am seeing with some of my technology partners ... Virtela, an international telecom / data services provider out of Denver, CO was recently acquired by NTT, a massive ($130B) international presence. At our business review meeting last week, we were assured that NTT intends to leave Virtela alone, to operate very much as they have in the past. "NTT bought our people, processes, and services as much as a customer base"…

Read More ...

IBM Marketing Message Muddle

Just an observation from the past week; I had a meeting with an IBM Sales Team, reviewing a range of products as they work to understand where IBM might help my business. I appreciate the fact that IBM has a wide selection of offerings, and we were doing an OK job of reviewing various families / groups of products ... until we got to something labeled Smarter Cities. This one piqued my interest - something potentially related to the products…

Read More ...

Is SharePoint WSS dangerous to SharePoint contractors?

Firing Up Internal Opportunity It was true last year, but even more so now; SharePoint is very important for corporate IT, both strategically (medium- and long-term) and tactically (short-term). Sure, it's a terrific way to iterate on collaboration, internal portals, document management, etc. - "enabling innovation" in every buzzword-compliant sense. But there is solid benefit for even short-sighted, plodding, tactical IT - and it's all about staff retention. SharePoint WSS represents a nice opportunity for folks in IT to get…

Read More ...

Field Notes: Lean Times for IT Services

I know it's lean times in IT, and product / services vendors are all beating the bushes. Some interesting patterns have emerged over the last few months ... My Boss Is In Town: This is far and away the #1 meme / structure of incoming cold calls; I get a (very) brief synopsis of services/value add, the caller and pushes for some face time with "their manager". Did some newsletter or web site suggest this novel approach last summer? I…

Read More ...

Aggravating Vendor Behavior – Ever Heard of CRM?

I got a call a few weeks ago that put me in a slightly cranky, slightly bemused mood. This is not a recent phenomenon - it has happened at every company in my career. A few of the big-name vendors (including IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP, and others) have no problem peppering different people in a company with requests for basic information (What systems are your running? Do you have a general ledger system? Do you use computers? Do you…

Read More ...