Open Source
I had breakfast the other day with Mike Olson, CEO of Hadoop ecosystem leader, Cloudera. We met because we run in similar circles in data management land and because Mike had some quibbles with my post, The Open Source Software Paradox. My premise was that open source presents a fundamental
Management
Everyone’s aligned in a Silicon Valley startup, right? Give everyone some options so everyone has skin in the game and then everyone wants what’s best for the share price: one for all and all for one! Not so fast. In this post, inspired by a chat with longtime
Management
Building on on a post by 10gen's Max Schireson which in turn built on a post by me, I thought I'd have some fun by playing with and enhancing Max's taxonomy of technology senior executives. Max's theory is that a surprisingly number
Open Source
As a marketer, I'm a fan of open source software. After all, if you can't dislodge Microsoft from mid-range server operating systems, Microsoft Office from desktop productivity suites, or Oracle from relational databases -- and doing so through traditional means is a virtual impossibility -- then blowing
Management
I've always found business to have a fair amount of accidental, built-in hubris, largely resulting from the strategy formulation process. I remember one time at Business Objects we had a strategy offsite where, in our infinite wisdom and with a fair bit of groupthink, we came up
Every once in a while, I have an "aha" moment where I'm blown away by an unsuspected use or combination of technologies. Prior to yesterday, the last such moment was when I heard my son shouting in French while playing alone in his room on a
Strategy
Let's say you're not feeling well, so you visit the Doctor. You walk into her office and she says, "Hi, it's great to see you again. I'm going to start you on 125 mcg of Synthroid." You say, "What?
BI
I suppose it's not surprising that on the journey to find my ideal next gig that I've seen a lot of next-generation business intelligence (BI) companies. Because I've thus had the chance to immerse myself in the BI startup world, I thought I&
Since I'm on the board of Aster Data I will refrain from editorial on this announcement and simply say congratulations to Teradata on buying a great company and congratulations to Aster Data, its founders Mayank Bawa, Tasso Argyros, and George Candea, its investors, and its employees on what
Silicon Valley
While I was reading this story in the Mercury News about President Obama's dinner yesterday with a number of Silicon Valley tech titans, an odd thought occurred to me: Boy, I'd hate to make the seating chart for that dinner! How do you prioritize Larry Ellison,
Management
While I know that reading the newspaper -- with high unemployment, record budget deficits, and drastic spending cuts -- might make you want to go back to bed in the morning, from my experience there is plenty of positive excitement happening in Silicon Valley right now. Venture capital (VC) is the engine
Strategy
HP today announced that they will acquire data warehouse and analytics platform provider Vertica of Billerica, MA. Cowen and Company estimated the price at 5x revenues, estimating that Vertica did $40M in 2010 revenues, suggesting a valuation of $200M which I find low. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised
