HP's Vision

Leo Apotheker took center stage yesterday for the first time since taking over as CEO of the World's largest technology company (by revenue) last November. Chris O'Brien (the business editor of the Mercury News) was not too impressed.

It seems to me that Leo Apotheker is able to put together a cohesive strategy around HP's vast portfolio. The fact that he dismissed the possible acquisition of SAP saying, "We don't need to own a big transactional application platform," says a lot about his focus.

There is a Software Advice blog post that mentions possible acquisitions by HP - with SAP leading the list. It would be interesting to see the results of their survey on when/who people think will be HP's next acquisition.

HP is poised to lead the technology universe into the world of cloud computing. Sun attempted to do that many years ago and failed. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and, now, HP are attempting to grab a piece of this pie. Sun's failure was in the execution of its vision. Often times, Sun tended to place the cart before the horse. That is, the execs would go up on stage and articulate a grandiose vision and then attempt to build the technologies towards that vision. HP, on the other hand, has been building up its portfolio of the various pieces in the puzzle. Yesterday, they finally came out and told us how they all fit together.

The next 6-12 months will tell us who comes out ahead in this battle that is being played out in the open. As a follow up to my earlier blog post (on HP vs Oracle), I think we are half time now and HP is leading by a touchdown.

Oracle Open World

I was at the GlassFish Community Event at Oracle Open World earlier this evening. The theme for Oracle Open World Conference this year is "Hardware and Software. Engineered to Work Together". The entire block of Howard Street was blocked off by a huge tent for the event. A Half Pipe with the "Future of Java" is the first sight that greets you as you make the left turn into Howard Street from 4th Street.

Other than this blue, the area was swathed in a sea of Oracle Red. I have been attending JavaOne conferences at Moscone for the last 15 years. I have not seen the area transformed in this fashion.

As you enter the Moscone Convention Center, the first thing you see is the America's Cup trophy - with two guards stationed to ensure that it stays there! The crowds were quite huge. I was not surprised when Judith Sim (Oracle CMO) announced that there were 41,000 people in attendance. The Opening keynote of the conference was delivered by HP Exec VP Ann Livermore. I am not sure if I was the only uncomfortable person in the room when she was introduced. Here are two companies that are bitterly feuding out in the open. Her introduction might as well have been , "HP paid mucho bucks to sponsor this conference. There was no backing off their keynote slot. So here is Ann Livermore." Ms. Livermore made the mistake of asking the audience how many people used Oracle solutions on HP hardware. About a dozen people raised their hands. Usually, when the audience is asked a question, the lights go brighter and the camera is turned towards the audience. Luckily (for HP) the logistics folks at Moscone realized the disastrous response and quickly dimmed the lights. Ms. Livermore recovered glibly and unconvincingly said, "Good. That is a sizable number". The rest of her talk focused on the HP panoply of solutions.

The lowlight of the evening was Larry Ellison's keynote. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I had gone there to hear an industry visionary provide a state-of-the-industry, an Oracle-State-of-the-Union, where-is-technology-headed, state-of-feud-with-HP. Instead, we got a dull, boring, sales pitch on Oracle's new Exalogic Cloud server. I was curious to check if it was just me who was uninspired. Just about everyone I checked with afterwards gave a resounding, unequivocal thumbs down. In my opinion, here are the mistakes Mr. Ellison did:

• Beating up Salesforce.com and Marc Benioff openly. Also, Mr. Ellison made some simplistic assumptions on Salesforce.com and started bashing this mythical entity.
• Insulting the IQ of his audience by repeating just about everything he said not once, not twice, but at least three times. We got it the first time you said it, Mr. Ellison.
• At one point in his drone, Mr. Ellison said, "They asked me not to add this information." "They" suggested that for a good reason, Larry. By putting it up and reading it out loud (as if by rote), you did not help yourself.

At around 8:00 pm (the keynote was already 15 minutes past the scheduled end time), I could not take it anymore and walked out. I looked back and most of the seats were empty ...

Oh! and as I was explaining what Micello does to a few folks at the conference, the unanimous response was, "I could totally have used that at this conference". Especially this year, where JavaOne, Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are all combined into a single event!

Wow!

[Full Disclosure: I own HPQ stock. The following blog post, however, is not written from a shareholder perspective. These opinions, as the others in my blog, are solely my own]

I mean WOW! In my blogging past, I have heaped praise on two CEO's:

1. Ramalinga Raju and
2. Mark Hurd

Ramalinga Raju is currently in Hyderabad's Chanchalguda jail and Mark Hurd has been unceremoniously dismissed as the CEO of HP. I wonder what drives these (and other) talented individuals to such grave deeds of misconduct (I provide an POV later in this posting)

Sexual misconduct/ethical lapses and Corporate world are certainly not strangers. Recently, IBM's Robert Moffat resigned on an insider-trading charge after "becoming intimate" with tipster Danielle Chiesi. I agree with Chris O'Brien that the circumstances of Hurd's dismissal are mysterious - especially with the comment that Hurd would keep $20,000 in his shoe :) However, I disagree with Chris in wondering if Hurd had to go. Curiously, it was the same Hurd that spoke not too long ago of the ethical challenges that he faces in running a large, global company :) If there is one thing I admired about the leadership at Sun it was the high moral ground maintained by its executives (Sun won the award for the World's Most Ethical Company). They may have been recognized as the worst leaders in American History (for the record, I do not share that opinion), but they did their jobs ethically :)

Given the increased scrutiny in a post Enron world, you wonder what were Hurd, Moffat, et al thinking? We are not talking about minor reckless driving incidents before they became the CEO of large corporations. We are also not talking about improprieties by sports figures. After all, the only one affected in this case is their family (not that it condones the despicable and dastardly behavior!).

There is a certain responsibility that comes with running the world's largest computer company - to the 300,000+ employees and shareholders. Words used by Tiger Woods in his apology come to mind, "I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to". History is replete with examples of moral hypocrisy from absolute power.

Lord Acton's dictum of "absolute power corrupting absolutely" has been proven time and time again ...

Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application

App Stores have hit mass market. The estimate is that by 2014, the revenues will reach $25b! Mobile data services revenue have already exceeded $10b in Q1 of 2009. The opportunity for the Next Killer Mobile Application is real and we can all smell it.

At Micello, we have been working on creating such an application for the last 8+ months. Micello did a private launch at JavaOne two months back to validate the concept. We got good visibility and some excellent feedback. We are gearing up to launch our Public Beta pretty soon (watch this space for announcements on that). In the meantime, I worked with Marina Fisher at Sun Microsystems to put together a Webinar on "Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application" that includes lessons learned, best practices and collective wisdom. The Webinar will also delve into how Micello uses Sun's technologies in the deployment stack. So, sign up here and hope to see you at the Webinar on Wednesday next week.