Archive for the ‘Business’ Category:
IBM Fires Juniper-Loaded Salvo at Cisco
IBM said today it will resell switches and routers made by Juniper under the IBM brand to compliment Big Blue’s server products aimed at data centers.The move is a direct response to Cisco’s creation of its own brand of servers it calls the Unified Computing System, as well as efforts by Hewlett-Packard to bring that company’s ProCurve networking gear closer to its servers. They’re all part of a larger attempt to keep pushing the boundaries of virtualization beyond hardware and into the network itself.
Virtualizing the network, or creating a network fabric, is the next big trend in data centers. Once the servers are virtualized the hardware is separated from the software running on it. However, when the time comes for that software to access the network, it is once again tied down to physical infrastructure — limited by the the cables that attach the server to a switch or the storage network. That means the network becomes a bottleneck in highly virtualized environments. But in many cases, by adding software and some gear to virtualize the network, a data center operator can reduce manual intervention and cut costs while increasing performance. For more on this see my article over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required). Read more…
Some of resources: Internet Marketing Services, Freelance Projects USA
Hacker Exposes Private Twitter Documents
Twitter, which is generally quite private about its business plans, has fallen prey to an attack by a hacker who has apparently exposed confidential corporate information.
The hacker claims to have private documents including confidential contracts with Nokia, Samsung, Dell, AOL and Microsoft; the resumes of people who have applied to work at Twitter; personal information about Twitter employees including credit card numbers; future business plans; and floor plans and security codes for Twitter’s offices.
The breach occurred in May, but on Wednesday, the hacker, who calls himself “Hacker Croll,” leaked a large number of documents unearthed in the attack to TechCrunch and a French blog called Korben. TechCrunch said it received 310 documents.
One internal document the hacker claims to have includes projections that Twitter will have 25 million users this year, 100 million next year and 350 million in 2011, and will eventually become the first Web service to have 1 billion users.
The hacker apparently broke into the Internet accounts of various Twitter employees, including Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, as well as Mr. Williams’s wife, who does not work for Twitter, and two Twitter employees. He claims to have accessed Google Apps, Gmail, PayPal, Amazon, Apple, AT&T and MobileMe accounts.
Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders, wrote on the company blog Wednesday that the hacker broke into an administrative employee’s personal e-mail account and from there gained access to the employee’s Google Apps account, where Twitter shares calendars, spreadsheets and documents with ideas and financial details. Read more…
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How to Hire an A-Team
In How to Be an Effective CEO, we noted three things that a CEO has to do. One of them is to hire and fire a top management team. One of the simplest rules to understand is:
This is simple to understand but hard to execute.
Integrity
Here is a bit of timeless wisdom from Warren Buffet. He advises that, when hiring, look for brains, energy, and integrity. But if the people you find don’t have integrity, the other two qualities will kill you.
10 Tips for Hiring an A-Team
- Don’t be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you.
That is harder to do than to say. You need a lot of innate confidence to do this. Hiring someone for a technical competency that you lack is easy. Hiring someone who will challenge your thinking on every level and may later go on to build a business much more successful than yours is harder. - Hire athletes.
They have energy, know how to endure pain to get results, and like to win. - Focus hard on building a win/win compensation plan:
A win for the company and a win for the employee. This is also hard to do right. Even good compensation plans get gamed, which is why Buffet’s focus on integrity is so critical. Be generous… but also demanding (see #5). - Take the time you need.
Hiring is your most important job. Take the time to interview a lot of candidates; cast a wide net. Spend a lot of face-to-face time with the candidates on your short list. Do real reference checks, ideally face to face. Meet their family and friends socially. As a side benefit, interviewing a ton of smart people is a great way to learn more about your market. - Be demanding.
Find people who want to achieve ambitious goals, spend time setting metrics, and then hold them accountable to them. - Be honest and transparent.
You cannot expect integrity from others unless you show it yourself. And you can’t fake it, not with members of an A-Team: they will be too smart for B.S. - Listen.
Just as listening is the key to selling, it is also the key to recruiting.
Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts
Why ‘Outsourcing’ May Lose Its Power as a Scare Word
IN the 2004 political season, offshore outsourcing — the practice of hiring lower-paid service workers in places like India to carry out tasks previously done by higher-paid American workers — became an important issue.
The debate flared after the annual Economic Report of the President was issued in February 2004, just as the Democratic presidential primaries were heating up and payroll job growth was sluggish. Answering reporters’ questions about a section of the report on trade, N. Gregory Mankiw, then the chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, made a statement that would be utterly unobjectionable if uttered in a classroom at Harvard, where he taught before joining the Bush administration and to which he has returned.
The crux of it was this: ”outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade.”
The phrase was translated into headlines, as well as politically motivated press releases, that accused Mr. Mankiw, and hence President Bush, of supporting the wholesale export of jobs from Bangor to Bangalore. Democrats and Republicans hastened to condemn the remark, which Mr. Mankiw hastened to clarify.
For Mr. Mankiw, the episode, which he recounts in a recent working paper that he wrote with Philip L. Swagel, former chief of staff at the council, stands as a case study of what happens when an academic economist is tossed into the meat grinder of the news cycle — and of the public’s general lack of economic education. ”This is the sort of stuff I talk about in the first week of my introductory economics class,” he said.
Outsourcing has yet to make a significant appearance in this year’s political campaign. The furor surrounding the practice seems to have subsided quickly once the ballots were tallied in November 2004.
Mr. Mankiw and Mr. Swagel found that the number of references to ”outsourcing” in four major newspapers spiked from about 300 in 2003 to 1,000 in 2004, but has since fallen. As the number of jobs has risen steadily — albeit not impressively — politicians now seem preoccupied with other issues, like Iraq and energy. Read more…
Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; Western Outsourcing Lifts Profits at Two Indian Companies
India’s two largest outsourcing companies, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies, announced healthy growth in quarterly profits on Tuesday, indicating that Western corporations continued to vigorously outsource technology and back office operations.
India’s $17.2 billion outsourcing industry is flourishing as companies hire skilled yet inexpensive English-speaking programmers and call center workers to carry out technology projects and provide customer support for their American and European clients.
Tata Consultancy, which provides software services, said that its quarterly profit rose 20.5 percent while its closest rival, Infosys, said its profit rose 36 percent.
In results announced this week, smaller outsourcing companies like iGate Global Solutions and Aztec Software said they had nearly or more than doubled their quarterly profits.
Tata Consultancy, which is based in Mumbai, said Tuesday that its profit rose to 6.94 billion rupees ($155 million) compared with 5.76 billion rupees in the period a year earlier. Revenue rose 23 percent, to 29.83 billion rupees. Infosys said its earnings rose to 6.06 billion rupees from 4.47 billion rupees a year earlier. Revenue grew 31 percent, to 22.94 billion rupees. Read more…
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Global BPO Services Corporation
Stream Global Services, Inc. (SGS), formerly Global BPO Services Corp., is a provider of customer relationship management (CRM) and other business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The Company provides services to companies in the technology, software, consumer electronics and communications industries. CRM solutions encompass a range of telephone, e-mail and Internet based services and technical support programs designed to maximize the long-term value of the relationships between its clients and their customers, or end users. Technical support programs include technical troubleshooting (including game support), hardware and warranty support, hosted services, data management, telecommunications services and professional services. Customer service programs consist of activities, such as customer setup/activations, up-sell or cross-sell programs, revenue generation, customer billing inquiries, win-back programs, and customer retention initiatives. Read more…
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ALL BUSINESS: Cash Is King for Investors
NEW YORK (AP) — That old saying ”cash is king” certainly rings true these days. Investors can’t seem to get enough of it, which ultimately could be bad news for the stock market and the economy.
In the past, investors would cling to cash until the market’s prospects brightened and then money would pour back into stocks. That’s just what the bulls today are hoping will drive a surge on Wall Street in the months ahead.
But the shock of the financial crisis — which have made leverage and risk-taking dirty words — may be changing all that. Even with today’s minuscule returns, cash seems to have become a sought-after asset class among investors who intendto keep it as a part of their portfolios for the long term.
Watching this play out firsthand is Jack Albin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. In sizing up the outlook, he has to balance what the past tells him about cash tending to move back into the market and the cautionary tone that he’s hearing from the bank’s clients .
Historical data he has crunched shows that whenever assets in money market mutual funds — which are low-risk, highly liquid investments — exceeded 25 percent of the market capitalization of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, stocks have rallied over the following two years.
This ratio jumped to an almost-unheard of level of more than 60 percent on March 9, almost triple the median level in the early years of this decade, for two reasons. Money market fund totals have surged 30 percent since the stock market peaked in October 2007, and by early March the S&P 500’s market cap had plunged 57 percent from its high point in 2007.
Today, that ratio has narrowed to about 45 percent, primarily because of a recent rebound in stocks. There is $3.7 trillion sitting in money market mutual funds right now, and the market cap of the S&P 500 is about $8 trillion, up from a March low of $5.9 trillion. Read more…
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Maybe “Paid” Is the Future of Online Business
In 1988, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody commercial deriding clumsy business models. “At First CityWide Change Bank, our business is making change,” said actor Jim Downey, portraying a naive “service representative.” After listing various ways in which his company could break a five, he explained how money is made. “The answer is simple: volume.”
More than 20 years later, I wonder if some digital entrepreneurs think the same. “Simple: we’ll make money on volume of traffic, at some future date,” they promise, even if the math doesn’t add up right now. Despite a knee-deep recession, the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever. But is “free” selling?
Free
Although not the inventor, the chief evangelist of the “free” world is author and Wired editor Chris Anderson. Last year, before the recession hit, Anderson outlined his upcoming book in a cover story titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.” A year and a half later, the final subtitle was changed to a less pretentious “The Future of a Radical Price,” “mostly because ‘why X is the future of business’ is now a cliche,” Anderson tells me.
The gist of his book: “People are making lots of money and charging nothing,” he writes (via the LA Times). In fairness, though, the idea of “Free” is a little misleading, since someone has to part with money so someone else can profit. “For most customers in the marketplace, the product is really free,” Anderson clarifies in an email. “The difference is who the paying customers are: advertisers or ‘premium’ users,” which effectively summarizes Anderson’s thesis.
The only problem? It’s difficult to cite thriving examples of either ad-sponsored or paid upgrades taking place online, at least when compared with the disproportionate amounts of money still being exchanged for offline goods and services. Google is the glaring exception, a web darling Anderson is quick to reference in his book. But even the search giant isn’t perfect — YouTube is a money pit, as part-time critic and full-time intellectual Malcom Gladwell notes in his dissenting review of “Free” for the New Yorker. Read more…
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Networking for the Shy Entrepreneur
You know you have to do it. You have been meaning to do it. And now that the recession is here, you wish had done it sooner. But networking, especially if you are never going to be described as outgoing, can be extremely difficult. Still, by putting off any real effort to network, you have not used the opportunity to create mutually beneficial business relationships.
It’s not too late, experts say. Here are some tips that can help.
IT’S NOT THAT HARD. Writing on CIO.com, Meredith Levinson makes two good points that may relieve some of your anxiety.
While most people instantly think about approaching strangers whenever the term “networking” surfaces, that doesn’t have to be the case. You can begin by “seeking out familiar faces, such as relatives and friends,” she says. “Starting with someone you know makes it easier to get your networking career under way.”
Second, “many introverted professionals think they have to act like an extrovert in networking situations. While you do have to make an effort to be more gregarious than normal, you shouldn’t be artificial.” Read more…
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How to Win a Business Plan Competition
These days, business plan competitions yield prizes worth more than ever. The Wharton Business Plan Competition, for example, awards $20,000 in cash and $10,000 in legal services to its top entrant. Harvard Business School’s traditional track competition awards $25,000 in cash and $25,000 in business services to its winner. M.I.T.’s Clean Energy Prize includes $200,000 in cash. And Rice University offers a whopping $225,000 prize to its first-place winner, including $125,000 in equity investment, $20,000 in cash and more than $80,000 in services.
Still, it’s really not about the money, says Cliff Holekamp, a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Washington University’s Olin Business School, which hosts multiple competitions, including the recently introduced Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition, a do-good variation with a $150,000 prize pool. “The value of participation,” says Mr. Holekamp, “is not found in funding but in a process that brings you mentorship, support, structure and access to the resources and people that will help perfect your business model.”
As impressive as the cash awards sound, Saad Khan, who has served as a competition judge and is an investor with CMEA Capital in Mountain View, Calif., says the amounts are “fairly small in the context of starting a business.” A better reason to compete, he says, is “to get feedback in real time and to get noticed by alumni who have done well, local VCs and other investors in that community.” Read more…
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