Greek Complexity

The "new" HP

Printers? Dying.

Services? Lots of pain.

PCs? Let's not even talk about it.

But, says Meg Whitman, "Cloud is a funny word, because when you say it, people think it’s all like Amazon’s cloud. But [HP's] private cloud business is much, much bigger than Amazon’s public cloud."

More from Whitman: http://allthingsd.com/20130612/more-questions-about-hps-business-for-ceo-meg-whitman/

The company's shares are up more than 80% this year, up about 11% over 12 months, down 48% over 5 years and up 13% over 10 years. Is that a confusing picture? I only mention it in passing. Look ahead, not back.

Can the Internet Replace Big Banks?

Excerpt: "We've seen digital technology disintermediate everything from record companies to university curriculum. Yet banking has remained rather immune to all this disruption. Sure, ATMs and online banking may threaten the bank teller's union, but central banking's monopoly over money has hardly budged. Just like we have to get our food from real plants and animals, we have to get our money from real banks. Or at least it appears that way to most of us."

More here: http://mashable.com/2013/03/24/douglas-rushkoff-digital-economy/

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Facebook Shatters the Computer Server Into Tiny Pieces

Excerpt:

When you sit down with the burly Texan, inside Facebook’s Northern California headquarters, he takes the Open Compute philosophy to new extremes, revealing the blueprint for a computer server that doesn’t even look like a computer server. This design lets you add or remove a server’s primary part — the processor — whenever you like. Nowadays, if you want a new processor, you need, well, a new server. But Frankovksy and the Open Compute Project aim to change that, sharing the new design with anyone who wants it.

“By modularizing the design, you can rip and place the bits that need to be upgraded, but you can leave the stuff that’s still good,” Frankovsky says, pointing to memory and flash storage as hardware that you don’t have to replace as often as the processor. “Plus, you can better match your hardware to the software that it’s going to run.”

More here: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/01/facebook-server-pieces/

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The frequent fliers who flew too much

Excerpt: "There are frequent fliers, and then there are people like Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom. Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. It was almost like owning a fleet of private jets."

More here: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506

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Indian ecommerce execs arrested for alleged cheating

http://www.nextbigwhat.com/timtara-founders-arrested-297/

More troubles catching up to the Indian e-commerce industry

How One Man Turned Himself Into a Publicly Owned Company

Excerpt: "Mike Merrill was thinking of pumping up his workout regimen with mixed-martial-arts classes and boxing lessons. The scheme would involve seven and a half hours a week at various gyms—a big commitment. So he put the matter before his 160 shareholders."

More here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/putting-the-i-in-ipo/309255/

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Singapore continues to be attractive to start-ups from elsewhere

Notwithstanding my post the other day about a shortcoming of one specific government support scheme for tech entrepreneurs, Singapore continues to be seen by entrepreneurs as an attractive place to do business , and rightly so.

Taslima Khan quotes me and several others in Business Today, a fortnightly publication in India, about Indian entrepreneurs' Look East Policy, specifically focusing on Singapore as a destination for Indian entrepreneurs to move HQ to, raise money or otherwise expand.

Singapore's advantages over India? Briefly:

• Ease of listing Singapore-domiciled companies on various stock exchanges. India-domiciled companies cannot be listed directly on a foreign stock exchange.
• Singapore's small market, perhaps paradoxically, gives start-ups the cachet of being a regional or global company, as opposed to an Indian (Chinese/Malaysian/American/Indonesian/etc) company, which might be seen as focused purely on the domestic market
• No capital controls
• Predictable policy-making
• Comfort among customers and partners from around the world to work and sign contracts with Singapore-registered companies
• Low taxes
• Established brand in the business world
• Being a regional centre for decison-making for some industries, such as advertising and financial services
• Indian entrepreneurs feel culturally comfortable in Singapore

Having said that, only moving one's legal HQ to Singapore while maintaining substantially all operations within India may not achieve much, as I said in the Business Today piece.

There are of course disadvantages too, two of the most commonly cited in my experience being higher cost of operations and a much smaller base of potential employees to choose from.

New Money Ventures to Silicon Valley

Excerpt: "When SurveyMonkey LLC Chief Executive Dave Goldberg wanted to raise money for his Palo Alto, Calif., company, he didn't lean on the venture capitalists that scour Silicon Valley looking for the next Google Inc. or Facebook Inc. Instead, Mr."

More here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324034804578346500201330208.html

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How Big Data Is Transforming the Hunt for Talent

Excerpt: "Big Data is suddenly hot, winning Harvard Business Review’s recent “sexiest job of the 21st century” sweepstakes."

Very interesting but I wish people wouldn't brandish the Big Data buzzword at anything and everything. This is good old-fashioned analytics at work, but analytics does not equal Big Data (or vice versa).

More here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2013/03/08/how-big-data-is-transforming-the-hunt-for-talent/

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VimpelCom deal with MS and Nokia

The FT reports:

VimpelCom, the global telecoms operator, has signed an agreement with Microsoft and Nokia that will allow its customers to use their mobile accounts to buy applications and content on the Windows Phone platform.

Under the agreement, VimpelCom customers will be able to use their mobile accounts to find, try and buy digital content from the Windows store. The cost of any applications, games or music purchased will be deducted from pre-pay customers’ phone credits, or added to subscribers’ monthly bills.

VimpelCom will create its own virtual “shelf” to help customers find digital content in the Windows store, some of which will be tailored to local services.

I wonder what form this “shelf” will take. If it’s yet another operator attempt at a walled garden, it’s doomed to be dead on arrival. But if the parties involved are smart about it -- a very big IF -- it could turn into quite a useful tool for consumers.