OK I know the Oscars are long finished but I just saw 'The Hurt Locker' at the weekend and I've wanted to tie it into a post for ages.
My two cents worth - I desperately wanted 'The Hurt Locker' to be a worthy winner of six oscars, especially as it won out over 'Avatar'. However, I was disappointed. Whilst it is a good film, it certainly isn't a great one. Best Film and Best Director - I don't think so. But this just reaffirms what I've always believed about luck and timing playing their part in awards ceremonies.
At my last ever Oracle Consulting conference I was led to believe by my Practice Manager that the project team I had lead was up for an Outstanding Performance Award. We had just finished a difficult 4 month project that was a great success. The client was happy and referenceable, the systems integrator couldn't praise us highly enough and was lining us up for more work. And we had achieved all of this with the minimum of fuss. OK, we'd worked a few weekends and late nights but nothing out of the ordinary.
So there I sat at the dinner at the final night of the conference fully expecting my team to be one of those to pick up an award. You guessed it though - we didn't even get a mention. I have to admit I was desperately pee'd off. The project that claimed the prize we'd been promised, by contrast, had been classic car crash IT. Badly managed, poor quality, late, over budget, all hands to the pumps, client threats, the whole lot. Some hours later my Practice Manager came skulking over with some lame explanation that the award was given as recognition for all the 'above and beyond' efforts put in by the other project team.
So my advice to you. If you want to win awards and get recognition go ahead and fcuk up your project and then flog your staff for 18 hours a day to correct your mistakes. Don't, whatever you do, just run a successful project without drama. I left Oracle a few months after that and the irony was that I got a posthumous award for another penultimate project I'd been on. Too little, too late.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Cheap at half the price
Here at the Depatment of Hopes and Dreams we're having a lovely spat with one of our software vendors at present. The issue is that my boss is questioning the need to pay a quarter of a million dollars in annual maintenance fees when he believes we only use about $40,000 worth of the product.
The interesting thing is that the software supplier has recalcuted the maintenance bill twice now using different breakdown structures. Both breakdowns don't help clarify exactly what it is that we're paying for. In fact the only figure that remains the same is the invoice amount - $250,000. Funny that.
The wider question is that once you've implemented something and it is successfully bedded in why bother paying maintenance ever again? The software vendor will say that you're our of support and that you original software licence will be revoked but if you do the cost benefit anaylsis you might find witholding the maintenance over say 5 years might pay for the replacement software further down the line. By that time the software might be half the price anyway. It's certainly worth some consideration.
The interesting thing is that the software supplier has recalcuted the maintenance bill twice now using different breakdown structures. Both breakdowns don't help clarify exactly what it is that we're paying for. In fact the only figure that remains the same is the invoice amount - $250,000. Funny that.
The wider question is that once you've implemented something and it is successfully bedded in why bother paying maintenance ever again? The software vendor will say that you're our of support and that you original software licence will be revoked but if you do the cost benefit anaylsis you might find witholding the maintenance over say 5 years might pay for the replacement software further down the line. By that time the software might be half the price anyway. It's certainly worth some consideration.
How much should you pay for software?
I've always had a problem paying lots of money for software, which is odd when you think about it. I'll happily pay for hardware, or to see a movie or to listen to a CD. In fact, the only software I think I pay without much hesitation is a computer game.
Out of the twenty or so apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone the only paid one is the very successful game Flight Control which cost me the princely sum of $1.19.
So at Oracle I was working with a sales rep who was trying to land a $10m deal with a large australian multinational company for a global license I was surpised, given that this account made up about one third of his territory, that he was chasing a deal that would probably limit what he could sell in future years.
We had a discussion about what software was worth and it was illuminating to me. As he pointed out - to him the software was worth the cost of the CD - a few cents and nothing more.
The funny thing is that a few years earlier I worked for a mainframe software house who when the annual results we're due and the numbers looked bad had a dodgy practice of cutting a few tapes bunging them in a storage cupboard and reporting the software as millions worth of assets. (They were later censured by the Stock Exchange for this practice).
I guess the old marketing saying is true - something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.
Out of the twenty or so apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone the only paid one is the very successful game Flight Control which cost me the princely sum of $1.19.
So at Oracle I was working with a sales rep who was trying to land a $10m deal with a large australian multinational company for a global license I was surpised, given that this account made up about one third of his territory, that he was chasing a deal that would probably limit what he could sell in future years.
We had a discussion about what software was worth and it was illuminating to me. As he pointed out - to him the software was worth the cost of the CD - a few cents and nothing more.
The funny thing is that a few years earlier I worked for a mainframe software house who when the annual results we're due and the numbers looked bad had a dodgy practice of cutting a few tapes bunging them in a storage cupboard and reporting the software as millions worth of assets. (They were later censured by the Stock Exchange for this practice).
I guess the old marketing saying is true - something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.
Big time Brits to whom Apple are indebted
In a previous post I spoke of my amazement at how the UK was the engine of innovation during the industrial revolution. Whilst the UK is no longer the powerhouse it used to be we still probably punch above our weight in certain fields given the we make up 1 in a thousand inhabitants of Planet Earth.
In this post I just wanted to pay tribute to two world renowned Brits who both have connections with Apple and with where I hail from in the UK. One who was born twenty miles away from my hometown and the other studied at Uni some 14 miles away.
They are Ridley Scott (born in South Shields) and Jonathan Ive (who studied at Newcastle Polytechnic). The Jony Ive connection with Apple is obvious as he is their SVP of Design.
The other connection is that Ridley Scott directed the Apple's '1984 Big Brother' Superbowl commercial that is still regarded nearly twenty years after its broadcast as one of the most iconic and important commercials ever made.
The question I'm asking is where are Microsoft's or Google's Brit, and indeed North East, connection?
In this post I just wanted to pay tribute to two world renowned Brits who both have connections with Apple and with where I hail from in the UK. One who was born twenty miles away from my hometown and the other studied at Uni some 14 miles away.
They are Ridley Scott (born in South Shields) and Jonathan Ive (who studied at Newcastle Polytechnic). The Jony Ive connection with Apple is obvious as he is their SVP of Design.
The other connection is that Ridley Scott directed the Apple's '1984 Big Brother' Superbowl commercial that is still regarded nearly twenty years after its broadcast as one of the most iconic and important commercials ever made.
The question I'm asking is where are Microsoft's or Google's Brit, and indeed North East, connection?
Who would play Bill Gates in the movies?
I loved the movie 'Wargames' starring Matthew Broderick and always felt that the erratic and reclusive computer genius, Professor Falken, was loosly based upon Steve Jobs. I had much less time for the film 'Verical Limit' although the ruthless & driven US billionaire character in it reminded me very much of Larry Ellison.
The funny thing is that I've never seen a cinematic incarnation of Bill Gates portrayed on the silver screen. I suppose that this is something to do with a perceived lack of charisma. I don't pity Bill, however, as no matter what your thoughts on Microsoft's innovation, style or business practices he and his company have been hugely influential for the last 20 years.
People who try to ridicule him for the infamous quite about 640K of RAM or the failed Tablet PC just don't seem to get that he is probably the most successful opportunist who has ever lived.
The funny thing is that I've never seen a cinematic incarnation of Bill Gates portrayed on the silver screen. I suppose that this is something to do with a perceived lack of charisma. I don't pity Bill, however, as no matter what your thoughts on Microsoft's innovation, style or business practices he and his company have been hugely influential for the last 20 years.
People who try to ridicule him for the infamous quite about 640K of RAM or the failed Tablet PC just don't seem to get that he is probably the most successful opportunist who has ever lived.
The Beast in the East
The other night I was watching a TV show about Rivers (the BBC one with Gryff Rhys Jones) and apart from admiring the beautiful scenery a recurring point of the show is that rivers and canals were the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution, much in the way that roads were in the 20th Century and copper (for broadband) is in the Information Age. As such innovation flourised along these waterways. Indeed, something that always amazes me is just how much innovation sprang from the small island of my birth - the UK - and this is where the US picked up the during the early 20th Century.
The other day I was having a discussion at lunch with a friend who is an senior australian academic and the I questioned whether any of the emerging economic powers, namely India or China, was poised to pick up the innovation chalice from the US. For the record he has travelled and dealt with major research organisations in both the US and China. His answer was categoric and a little bit worrying.
Within a generation he believes that China will be the only engine of innovation that matters, something far removed from its current role as the world's factory. This makes me wonder what will become of Silicon Valley in twenty or thirty years time and I suppose bring the current spat between the US, Google and China into some perpective.
The other day I was having a discussion at lunch with a friend who is an senior australian academic and the I questioned whether any of the emerging economic powers, namely India or China, was poised to pick up the innovation chalice from the US. For the record he has travelled and dealt with major research organisations in both the US and China. His answer was categoric and a little bit worrying.
Within a generation he believes that China will be the only engine of innovation that matters, something far removed from its current role as the world's factory. This makes me wonder what will become of Silicon Valley in twenty or thirty years time and I suppose bring the current spat between the US, Google and China into some perpective.
Monkey See Monkey Do
I remember seeing a Rodney Dangerfield film in the 1990's which was pretty much forgettable except for one scene. The scene was set in a typical university ampitheatre with a lecturer and say 200 students. Over time as the weeks passed many of the students opted to skip the lectures but record them on a tape recorders, until finally even the lecturer himself failed to show and simply played an audio recording of the lecture to the non existant students.
So what's the connection with IT. I worked with some Oracle PreSales in the 1990's. They were always a pretty busy bunch responding to RFI/RFP's and doing demos. At the time Oracle has a graduate recruitment program and one of the grads I knew was on secondment to PreSales.
Chatting one day I asked what she was doing and she said that she was responding to an Oracle Financials RFP. I was impressed, actually more baffled, that given their lack of experience that they were entrusted with this work that would normally be entrusted to a senior Financials PreSales resource. Digging a bit deeper the answer became obvious. I found out that the grad was pretty much cutting and pasting answers from previous RFP responses into the new one.
How could they do this? Easily, really, becuase the RFP's at the time we being generated by grads sitting in the Big Six consultancies and contained a random subset of the stock RFP Financials questions they had.
The difference is that our grads were working for free (chasing new business). Somehow I don't think that the client would be paying the Big Six consultancy grad rates for their RFP work.
So what's the connection with IT. I worked with some Oracle PreSales in the 1990's. They were always a pretty busy bunch responding to RFI/RFP's and doing demos. At the time Oracle has a graduate recruitment program and one of the grads I knew was on secondment to PreSales.
Chatting one day I asked what she was doing and she said that she was responding to an Oracle Financials RFP. I was impressed, actually more baffled, that given their lack of experience that they were entrusted with this work that would normally be entrusted to a senior Financials PreSales resource. Digging a bit deeper the answer became obvious. I found out that the grad was pretty much cutting and pasting answers from previous RFP responses into the new one.
How could they do this? Easily, really, becuase the RFP's at the time we being generated by grads sitting in the Big Six consultancies and contained a random subset of the stock RFP Financials questions they had.
The difference is that our grads were working for free (chasing new business). Somehow I don't think that the client would be paying the Big Six consultancy grad rates for their RFP work.
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