Category: Amazon

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The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

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written 19:38 CET on chronolog
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Why I don't believe in these crazy technology company valuations

The debate about the potential second technology bubble is all over the media. One of the first milestones that will determine the outcome of this story happened on friday, when Facebook went public. As opposed to other (smaller) web IPOs of the past years (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Yandex), the price on the first day stayed on the same level. This was to be expected, since Facebook received the valuation of 100 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's around half of Google's value, and about the same value as Amazon has. But Facebook makes 10 times less revenue than Google does, and its revenue growth is slowing down. Was Facebook valued too high? It seems so, and some analysts are already saying that most of the stocks were bought by institutional investors to keep the share price above 38$.

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written 9:14 CET on chronolog
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The future (of software) is in platforms

I don't know if you've had the chance to read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You should, it's a very powerful book, even though it's been written a few years ago. Things have changed a bit since then, when Google was on top of it's game, but that doesn't mean the ideas presented in the book aren't more actual than ever. One of the chapters that made the biggest impact on me was the one about platforms and distributed systems. Google managed to conquer the world of Web 1.0 by being decentralized, allowing others to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps and Ads anywhere on the Web. This orientation provided the fuel for Google's further development and growth. Today, this way of thinking is not a competitive advantage anymore, it's becoming a necessity. As you will see, current online market leaders of various industries are not those who provide the service, they're the ones who provide the platform.

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written 17:26 CET on chronolog
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The great technology wars and the transition of software from B2B to B2C

The epic article by Fast Company about the technology wars of 2012 provides great insight into what's happening in Silicon Valley and software in general these days. Four players, or the Fabulous Four, are mentioned to be the real market and innovation leaders: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. Each of these companies found its place where it dominates and invents new business models, and each one is a role model for new generations of technology startups and leaders. And if you didn't notice, all of them sell software to consumers, not other companies (in case of Google and Facebook, you are the real customer, but advertisers pay for it). Software is becoming more and more consumer-oriented, and the clash of these titans will determine the outcome, the software of the future.

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written 12:25 CET on chronolog
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Apple's strategy of becoming a content provider might simply be ingenious

Apple is an interesting corporation. Some love it, some hate it, but the fact is, Apple has become the biggest technology company in the world. An interesting turn of events, from a company that nearly went bankrupt a few decades ago, to a player that we know today. Looks like Steve Jobs really is one of the greatest visionaries of our time, as his comeback in 1996 together with the introduction of the iMac and the iPod managed to turn things around for Apple. Looking at these facts in 2010, the iPod may turn out to be even more important than it seems, creating a digital music revolution and providing the foundation for Apple's strategy of becoming the world's dominant commercial content provider.

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written 16:38 CET on chronolog
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