http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma would you be sanely insane or insanely sane? Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:13:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Tripwire announced today that AirTran uses them for PCI. Here is a link to the article AirTran Airways Selects Tripwire Enterprise for Continuous Data Center Compliance The press release title is just marketing fluff, if you jump into the article it says the bought it for PCI. It is ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/10/02/tripwire-and-incomplete-solution-for-pci/ The word on the street says that Tripwire has been talking to potential suitors again. One set of negotiations were really close to a deal, or atleast offers were made, but the numbers were too far apart and talks stalled. I was talking to an M&A professional recently and they said ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/10/02/rumor-tripwire-for-sale/ Here is SVP of Marketing at Tripwire's response to the Solidcore Blog (http://blog.solidcore.com). Our response: let the technology speak for itself ... the customers will decide. Marketing folks can call even batch processing real time huh?! From: DJS Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:52 PM To: Erin Swanson Subject: Our realtime Nice blog Erin... Just ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/09/24/bring-it-on-tripwire/ We at Solidcore are engaged in a market share battle with Tripwire. Tripwire is about 10 years old, their biggest asset is that they are bigger, have a more widely known brand name than us. Their weakness is that their technology is the same at it was 10 years ago. We ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/09/22/tripwire-versus-solidcore-turning-the-tables/ Maybe once you are a famous writer like Seth Godin you can get away with almost anything. I read this book and was completely lost. Out of respect for Seth, I read it again and made some progress. My interest was sparked because it looks just like the picture that ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/06/21/dip-by-seth-godin/ I recently attended a talk today about AIM, from a CEO who had gone through the process of listing there. It was very educational, here are some of the insights:  Basic Understanding To list on AIM you need to hire a banker in the UK The banker calls fund managers to sell your ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/06/09/aim-market-london/ I was attending a talk by Amnon Landan, who joined Mercury in 1989 and was CEO from 1997-2005. One of the things he talked about was how to decide whether a product idea was worth pursuing or not. He made the picture above. When you build a new product, the first 10 customers ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/04/10/if-they-complain-build-it/ I found myself sitting next to a young chap on my flight back to San Fransisco. He was from Bangalore and was in the US for a couple of weeks of work. It turns out he needed a ride to San Jose and I offered to drop him off on ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/02/26/from-bangalore-married-but-available/ That is the word on the street. Given EMC's foray into buying management tool vendors, would it make sense for them to buy a provisioning system? http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/02/16/rumor-emc-to-buy-bladelogic/ This week tripwire announced their release 6.0 and they have adopted (blatantly copied) the Solidcore message of Visibility, Accountability and Control. Why would they do that? is the market adopting this message? is it really what the customers need? It is also interesting to see how they are positioning their product capabilities: 1. Solidcore: ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/02/13/tripwire-copies-solidcore-messaging/ "Behind The Firewall: The next time the sales rep from your anti-virus provider drops by, shake his hand, thank him and wish him luck in his future endeavors. You won't be needing his services much longer, because the age of viruses and worms is over." -- Dennis Fisher  Link to article. For ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/02/04/anti-viruss-nemesis-in-the-enterprise-change-control/ We have been running a campaign on Google AdWords, and I was recently looking at the numbers: It turned out each click through was costing us $5 - $7 and about 1/10-20 of the click through was resulting in people registering on the site. Which made our cost of acquiring ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/02/04/is-google-guilty-of-price-fixing/ The Symantec, Altiris deal is the first recognition of the fact that traditional anti-virus, anti-phisihing etc is a dying market. And this is not because Microsoft (MSFT) has decided to put some of the features in its newly launched Vista release. Many corporations have realized that traditional anti-***** products stop the ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/30/symantec-altiris-death-of-anti/ This is a great site for enterpreneurs and CEO's who like to read. 800ceoread.com http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/27/800ceoreadcom/ Dennis Drogseth is a vice president with Enterprise Management Associates, a leading analyst, market research and IT consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management. This is an awesome article about startup mistakes (Link Here). http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/23/how-to-fail-in-business-dennis-drogseth/ What Steve Jobs did at Macworld is a classic example of what CEO's should not do. He raised expectations astronomically. (Mike Egan echoed the same sentiment in his article @ computer world). As a CEO there is immense pressure to sell the future. Steve Jobs has to figure out a ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/22/apple-iphone-how-to-get-fired-as-a-ceo/ Peter Armstrong, Corporate Strategist BMC Software, talks about IT horor stories in IT World. Here is Peter's podcast. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/21/it-horror-stories-be-afraid-be-very-afraid/ How to Blag an Interview Every now and then as a technology journalist, you’ll find yourself agreeing to participate in what is referred to a “Press Tour”. Vendors do these once or twice a year, when they have a shiny new product to talk about. This means you sit in a room ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/19/doing-a-product-launch-read-this/ ... based on a true story at a Fortune 1000 company From the wikipedia: … a tax shelter is any organized program in which many individuals, rich or poor, participate to reduce their taxes due. However, a few individuals stretch the limits of legal interpretation of the income tax laws. While these ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/18/itil-the-change-management-tax-shelters/ There is a battle brewing out there: google versus citrix. Sounds absurd, its not. Google wants to become the place where people store thier data, run applications from and do all their computing. That is exactly what citrix does for the enterprise today. A number of engineering people I have talked ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/17/google-to-collide-with-citrix/ Is there a simple ITIL philosophy that can be used as the guiding light for implementing ITIL. The general consensus about six-sigma was that if the top leaders in the organization understood that six-sigma was about "removing variability from a repeatable process", and then they empowered their people to go ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/17/in-search-of-the-itil-philosophy/ Vijay Anand (the force behind Proto) posted this note from a Demo Conference Veteran to help people have the maximum impact during their product presentations ( You can get the original posting from here). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shel Israel Date: Jan 14, 2007 9:43 PM Subject: RE: Proto.in Presentation Tips To: Vijay Anand 1. ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/14/presentation-tips/ It's that time of the year again. Superbowl is a few weeks away. The playoffs are well underway, people are arguing about the Patriots, Chargers, Colts ... winning it all. GoDaddy's co-founder has been talking about how his ads were rejected by the ABC censorship committee. People almost expect something ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/14/janet-jacksons-control-failure/ from moneyball ... " Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was dound afterwards at the bottom. Now as he was sinking -- had he got the gold or the ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/12/has-he-the-change-or-the-change-him/ I was recently driving down a deserted highway in Texas when something on the dashboard of my car began blinking red.  I called the service center and the technician (quoting as much as I can remember) said, “ Pull over, turn off the car, and start it again.  If that ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/12/honey-they-rebooted-our-car/ Companies employed 450,000 workers,  generated $52B in sales in 2005 By Rachel Konrad Updated: 7:08 p.m. PT Jan 3, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO - Foreign-born entrepreneurs were behind one in four U.S. technology startups over the past decade, according to a study to be published Thursday. Read the article at MSNBC. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/01/04/immigrants-behind-25-percent-of-tech-startups/ Rob: did you hear? Tony: hear what? Rob: The NFL decided they wanted the equivalent of the yellow line to help the referee’s determine whether the team got the first down or not. They announced a contest: million dollar prize to the winner. Tony: Its about time they fixed all those mistakes. Rob: ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/19/would-tripwire-work-for-the-nfl/ I was at an ITSMF meeting recently and the speaker did a show of hands: How many people had deployed a CMDB? One hand went up. How many folks had actually seen a live CMDB? Only one hand went up. How many folks had projects to evaluate a CMDB? Entire room put up ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/15/how-widespread-is-cmdb-deployment/ 1. Outsourcing will reduce cost of my product release At some point or another in the life of a startup, the question gets asked: why dont you outsource your development to India (or China)? And ofcourse everyone on the board talks about how this would save money and reduce the burn ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/13/utsourcing-to-india-top-ten-mistakes/ Perspective from some work I did at Cornell (with S. Keshav) in the late 90's .... YouTube has changed the video paradigm completely. But most video's today are short clips, as the clips become longer .... I believe that the evolution of YouTube will cater to a model of "micro-viewership":  ... ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/10/internet-tv-where-youtube-is-headed/ The Demo Conference (http://www.demo.com) is a great place to launch a product in the US. Vijay Anand and others have launched Proto (http://www.proto.in) with a similar concept for India. This is a fanastic thing for the Indian startup eco-system. The first conference is to be held Jan 20-21, 2007. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/09/proto-demo-conference-for-india/ This is fantastic video for enterpreneurs: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294 he has also written some interesting books: http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/bio.html http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/05/seth-godins-talk-at-google/ I arrived in the US as a graduate student in the Computer Science department at Stanford in 1993. And as part of being a PhD student, had to do my share of being a teaching assistant. Everyone at Stanford at that time was talking about companies ... I would rarely ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/05/stanford-to-cornell-to-bangalore/ We (the think-smarter crew) are going to introduce you to a novel technique called the “blank presentation method” which will enable you to identify 70% of what should be built with 10 blank sheets of paper. No kidding. The following parable brings out the basics of how this gets done. A ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/03/how-to-start-a-company-with-a-blank-presentation/ From: Rosen Sharma Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 9:04 PM To: 'jboudreau@mercurynews.com' Subject: RE: India VC 2.0 John, Read your article about India VC. I want to thank you for increasing the awareness of what is happening in India. Please don’t take the following as a criticism, but more as an informed opinion. Everyone who goes ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/12/03/open-letter-to-john-boudreau-san-jose-mercury-news/ I was talking to a guru in the change management space and sharing with him all these companies that came up in the search and asked for his opinion on this concept of the application view and he had a really great insight … Software which starts with the applications, like ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/28/in-search-of-a-change-management-system-part-iv-the-application-view-contd%e2%80%a6/ HP, Mercury (now HP), BMC, CA, EMC, IBM, have been on an acquisition binge over the past few years to put together thier porfolio for ITIL/ITSM. Here are some of the recent acquisitions … are there others that you think are also related to ITIL? Dev. Process Application Dependency Map Service Desk Provisioning System Other HP ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/17/itil-acquisitions/ Yesterday I heard Cal coach Jeff Tedford on the radio talking about preparation for this week’s big game. Tedford said he would not prepare any differently this week than any other week in the season because 1-if he knew a better way to prepare he would use it every week ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/15/cal-versus-usc/ There are so many help desk tools out there, most of which now call themselves service desk — that I find it very confusing to understand all the nuances. I found this forrester report really useful (and it is avaliable for free, from the altiris web site). It compares Altiris, ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/15/from-help-desk-to-service-desk/ I was with the VP of Operations of a Global Fortune 500 company which had just deployed Opsware on thousands of end-points. Opsware is a provisioning system which can be used to push patches, updates etc. Like most other provisioning systems, such as BladeLogic, Radia (HP), it also keeps track ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/15/opsware-water-water-everywhere-not-a-drop-to-drink%e2%80%a6/ One of the most puzzling aspects of the set of companies we found in Part II: IBM Rational, Sunview Software, Seapine, BMC, Pega, Solidcore, Opsware, MetricsStream, is several companies with development tools. Infact if you dig a bit deeper other companies who sold tools in the developer market — ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/14/in-search-of-a-change-management-system-part-iii-the-application-view/ Some FIXED assets Swivel chairs with wheels Laptops Elevators SAP Implementors ITIL Consultants http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/10/asset-management/ If you are a large IT organization, most likely there is a central IT organization and some IT in each business unit. Usually the relationship between the two organizations is somewhat strained. Recently I was on a panel with a CIO from the DC area and he mentioned that one ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/10/building-trust-between-central-and-business-unit-it/ What is she doing in an change management class? Don’t know maybe the movie business doesn’t pay that well anymore Apparently her marriage consellor sent her here Hmm… and why would that be Tom and she need to reconcile their differences http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/09/hey-nicole-kiddman-is-here/ I was with a CIO for a large public utility, where several of the IT systems control real world infrastructure. He made a very interesting point — universally what people in IT are doing to reduce cost is to automate all the manual tasks. While this seems the correct way ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/09/automation-and-cascading-changes/ After hunting for vendor independent material (see Part I) it was time to look at the vendor material. So I typed in “change management” into google and scan through the sponsored links … the following seemed relevant IBM Rational: the link takes us to Clear Case which is a source code ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/09/in-search-of-a-change-management-system-part-ii/ service desk talking with change management “hey, I heard we are being federated,” sd “and what does that mean,” cm “we will need to communicate to each other,” sd “as if we don’t do enough of that,” cm “honey, communicate is different than talk,” sd “how so,” cm “we will need to re-concile our differences,” sd “you ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/08/itil-consultant/ I was at a large retailer with stores in Europe and US. All the stores connected to a central transaction processing system. The setup was similar to the one in the picture below (which is from AJB software — no relation to the retailer) So all the stores connect to ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/08/auto-update-in-production/ There seems to be a lot of people buying or upgrading there change management system. I was discussing with some of them how exactly do they go about this. I decided why not try and go through the process myself and see where we would end up. So as s a ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/07/in-search-of-a-change-management-system-part-i/ Two changes standing in a long line “Man, this will take for ever” “I told my boss, I will be in by end of the week” “may be your boss should declare an emergency” http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/06/waiting-in-line/ I visited one of the larger (top 5 by revenue) wineries in Napa. And heard a very interesting story. Apparently most wines these days are made from grapes from a couple of places if not more. And the law requires that you have to keep track of exactly what volume ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/05/wineries-%e2%80%9cchange-management%e2%80%9d-system/ Baby Server said to Mr. Change, “I don’t know you” “That’s because I am un-authorized”, replied Mr. Change “My parents asked me not to talk to strangers”, said Baby Server “I will take you where you have never gone before”, replied Mr. Change “I will be scolded if my parents find out”, said ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/05/talking-to-strangers/ There was a lot of hype and hope when six-sigma was the “thing”. Now ITIL seems to be the “thing” and there is a similar kind of hype associated with it. There was a study couple of years back (I can’t find the link — will post it when I ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/04/what-can-itil-implementations-learn-from-six-sigma-adoption/ In Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talked about how they brought crime under control in New York City. They began arresting people who were jumping the ticket turnstiles and booking them on the spot. How would this help with anything … people would have thought? But it so happened that several ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/04/how-would-rudy-giuliani-implement-change-management/ What did the small change say to the big change? “I don’t need a ticket. I will slip in behind you.” http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/03/at-the-movies/ He said: I got two tickets for the show. It starts in 45 minutes. She said: Fantastic. Let me go change. He said: Honey, we don’t have time She said: I am not requesting, but informing He sighed: just like at work http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/03/tickets-for-the-show/ Oracle’s “unbreakable” campaign is mostly mis-understood. To get enterprise customers to commit to Linux, Oracle promised them that if any bugs came up they would fix them within the SLA provided. Oracle had a few thousand (speculation) programmers and the way it worked was that Oracle wrote the code, give ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/03/oracle-unbreakable-oracle-vs-redhat/ She said: married women don’t change their name these days He said: yeah … they don’t like to follow process She said: the article said, most people don’t want to go through the paperwork He said: really, filing a change request at work is more complicated than that. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/02/married-women/ He said: what’s for dinner? She said: how about something from the ITIL cookbook? He said: there should be about 50 people She said: i would recommend the Pink Elephant http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/02/what%e2%80%99s-for-dinner/ He said: you got another ticket? She said: no way He said: see they sent a snapshot of the back of your car with your license plate, jumping the red light, from those camera She said: honey, what day was that He said: it says last tuesday She said: hmm… you were towing my car ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/02/you-got-another-ticket/ She said: why are you always talking about change management? He said: because it is so difficult She said: well I bought you something which can solve the problem He said: what is it? She said: surprise http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/02/change-management/ She said: Bob and Joan are struggling to potty train Jack He said: they should send him to the ITIL class She said: why? He said: it is all about release management http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/02/potty-training/ He said: you look beautiful today She smiled: thank you. What’s different? He said: I can’t remember what you wore yesterday She said: What #$! you only scan me once a day…. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/01/you-look-beautiful-today/ This picture is off the whiteboard of a the person responsible for ITIL implementation at one of the largest utilities in the US. I found it to be a simple and succint explanation of how things worked and inter-operated with each other. Click on the picture to see animation about ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/01/change-related-processes-itil/ At one of the hospitals in the Bay Area, when you check in to deliver your baby, they ask you if your husband is an engineer or works in hi-tech. If the answer is “yes”, you get a long and stern lecture from the person at the station checking you ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/01/to-be-fathers-1-cause-of-downtime-at-hospital/ I was with a large company in San Fransisco, talking to the VP of IT operations. They were in the middle of a moving sun machines from corporate to a data center. About an year they noticed that suddenly a set of servers were having problems, they had couple of ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/01/availability-depends-on-the-location-of-the-coffee-machine/ She Said: what comes after birth control? He said: change control She frowned: Wrong. Babies you idiot. He said: are you pregnant? She said: I thought an ITIL guru would know “unfreeze, change, freeze“ http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/11/01/what-comes-after-birth-control/ Why did BMC buy Remedy? “Because they were in pain” http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/31/why-did-bmc-buy-remedy/ I was talking to a senior analyst (non-financial) and they mentioned that it is a possibility that someone may buy Opsware. There are several large companies who are not as strong on the datacenter/provisioning side of the business. Opsware and Bladelogic are the two strong companies in that space. ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/31/musings-should-opsware-be-bought/ She said: Who is in control? He Said: You Are She Said: Thank You (Kids heard laughing in the background) … They think they are in control … http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/31/who-is-in-control/ As an immigrant to the US, it took a while before I got comfortable using the bathrooms in the gas stations on long drives. In most other countries, the bathrooms tend to be unusable. In Britain you have to deposit money to use them and the auto-clean can be interesting ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/30/what-can-itil-learn-from-american-gas-stations/ IT Change Management can learn from what has been learnt about change management more from a people and organizational perspective. Here is an excerpt from “Change Management 101: A Primer” available at http://home.att.net/~nickols/change.htm Section III: The Change Process ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/30/the-change-process-as-%e2%80%9cunfreezing-changing-and-refreezing%e2%80%9d/ I was recently at a talk by Dave McQueeny, CTO IBM Federal, where he talked about some interesting trends in the industry. One of the things he mentioned was that for some time now it has become difficult for chip companies like Intel to increase the processor ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/15/musings-should-intel-buy-nvidia/ Opsware stock is trading roughly 10x revenue, high for its sector? Good time to buy companies. Tripwire had about 35M in revenue in 2005 as reported in the Portland Business Journal (http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2006/06/05/daily51.html). If revenue this year is around 50 that would be a significant increase for Opsware. If they pay ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/08/rumor-opsware-to-buy-tripwire/ Ok. Its not driven by the alphabet soup. The rumor abounds though after EMC purchase of nLayers which got them into the CMDB space. There have been rumors about IBM buying BMC and of BMC being taken over by private equity. But EMC buying them may make some sense. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/10/04/rumor-emc-to-buy-bmc/ Thats the word on the street … Check out http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/09/18/1901468.htm http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/26/nortel-to-buy-force10networks/ That would be a big one. But people say that HP today can’t fight IBM in mainframe territory. Almost every IBM mainframe account uses CA. So the acquisition can give HP access to most IBM accounts. Also CA’s stock is relatively cheap. http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/16/rumor-hp-to-buy-ca/ Market Cap of Exxon Mobil: $404B; Market Cap of GM: $17B They could buy them wothout blinking an eye. Think of the cell phone market, the phones are sold or leased by the carriers, not by the phone manufacturers. Sprint, Verizon, ATT sell us phones, not Qualcomm or Motorolla. Similarly Exxon ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/16/should-exxon-mobil-buy-general-motors-or-ford/ This is a wild one. It has been circulating for some time. I can’t say I understand it, except that maybe Zander does not like Chicago and wants to move back to the Bay Area. It does make sense from a market perspective: both the companies sell to carriers … ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/06/rumor-motorola-to-buy-juniper/ Should they? They both have a common enemy. Google for the longest time has been trying to get consumers to park more of their data with google. All efforts like 2GB storage with gmail or desktop search, or hosted office seem to be steps in that direction. Apple offers a very ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/04/should-apple-and-google-merge/ There has been a rumor going around that Oracle will buy Redhat. When you ask people why — the responses are very random at best. Some say Oracle has a banking mindset now with Charles Phillips is President … so they are looking for companies with good maintenance revenue streams ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/03/rumor-oracle-to-buy-redhat/ IBM’s acquisition of MRO for $740M took some people by surprise. On the surface it was not clear why IBM paid a premium: it shared a large percentage of customers with MRO. Also Tivoli does have enterprise asset management capabilities. As several news articles reported MRO was strong for non-IT ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/03/ibm-buys-mro-non-it-it-asset-convergence/ Every month or so someone talks about going public on AIM (Alternative Investment Market) in UK. The requirements to go public are less strict: there is no SOX requirement, no minimum revenue etc. Almost every investment firm also has a “AIM” specialist you can talk to. The conversation almost always drifts ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/02/is-aim-a-viable-option-to-go-public/ I heard recently “to go public these days you need the unbounded potential of the dot-com days and the solid fundamentals of large company”. That comment crystalized several disconnected snippets of conversations over the past several weeks. During lunch a CEO was said his company is doing 20M annual booking ... http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2006/09/01/is-tech-a-buyers-market/