Strategy

Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Strategy

Why tech firms must now be agile in business, too

The future isn’t going to be like the past. In fact it isn’t even going to be like the present, but that’s not new for tech firms. What is new is that there are so many moving parts and large, disparate and sudden uncertainties out there that make forecasting deeply suspect. The range of significant…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Business leaders need to know where Cloud is heading

I read somewhere that business is all about solving problems before someone else solves them for you. Certainly “Hope and Cope” is not a management strategy that has much going for it. Anticipation is everything, especially for business leaders in fast moving sectors like technology where it’s like driving at high speed. To correct a…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Netflix shows us that Cloud is a jungle

Good entrepreneurs and great salespeople share a key characteristic: at heart they are control freaks. In some it may all be fairly benign, carefully moderated and directed to get good things to happen, but control is what drives them. Michael Porter’s Five Forces is a well established device that’s used by market strategists to analyse…
Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Why the Cloud carve-up makes life hard for SMEs

Revealing figures published recently in the FT show Cloud supply is highly concentrated in AWS and Azure, and they now command more than half the worldwide revenues in the sector. The rest of the vendors are fragmented and too dispersed for them to be able to exert any significant influence. They pick up what’s left….
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Cloud vendors are taking us back to the 1960s

Trousers were flared, and flowers and funny smelling smoke were everywhere when Gene Amdahl worked as a computer architect at IBM in the 1960s. Back then, designing and building hardware was a big deal and very expensive. Only a few companies produced such equipment, and each was different from the rest. Software was big, complex,…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation, Strategy

What Tim did after Steve

There were a lot of naysayers about the future of Apple when Steve Jobs died in October 2011. Few were confident about the Company he’d created and its future under Tim Cook, who’d just been promoted up from Chief Operating Officer to CEO. Even fewer had any idea about the rocket ship that the business…
Covid-19, Investors, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Covid climbs into the ring with the rioters

Authorities across Europe have been increasingly nervous about accelerating Covid infections. The German health minister told his public that “…Germans would be vaccinated, cured or dead by Christmas”. Populations are tired of pandemic restrictions, though, and many are taking to the streets, rioting in Holland, France, Belgium, Austria, and elsewhere (Reuters). Not to be outdone,…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Organisation, Strategy

Why business leaders must forget about normal and thrive in the unknown

I’ve been in business a long time, and big events have come and gone: the oil crisis and inflation of 1972; the crash of ’87; a couple of recessions and a few wars and 9/11, you get the picture. Sudden technology changes have done their bit as well. I’m not really sure when it was,…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Strategy

How to fix the business issues created by Public Cloud

Public Cloud – on-line computing resources from the big brands – was seen as the obvious choice for many and technologists love them, but several key problems have emerged for business users: Costs can become prohibitive when usage gets underway Lock-in strips away business flexibility and choice Privacy and security issues concern many Support is…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Organisation, Strategy

How Cloud creates business problems that can be solved

Business challenges begin once the technology is running Dev and test are all about getting new functionality to run to spec. Once it’s running and doing what it should, it must move to Production and get delivered to the intended customers and users. This is where the business challenges begin as the costs issues and…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Organisation, Strategy

How stretched tech teams can raise their game in the Cloud

The pool of talent in ambitious tech firms always seems too thinly spread. We used to think it was like a small duvet: you can have your shoulders warm or your feet, but not both. Almost all ambitious tech businesses have too few tech specialists that have the depth of skills and a real understanding…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Strategy

Is Cloud separating the quick from the dead?

A recent research study by Accenture surveyed some 4,000 executives and concluded that their companies fell into two categories : those that viewed Cloud as “…a launch pad for innovation and new operating models.”, and those that see it as a tool for cost saving and operational efficiency. What caught my eye was that they…