Ventana Research is a well-known analyst outfit so it would seem HP will want to refute this assertion quickly if it was not true.  Granted the whole company was probably getting ready for its annual year end shutdown, but no company will let external commentary drive the narrative for its product line, especially not one as big as HP.

Finally, we see on December 13, 2010 that HP announced the hiring of an SAP executive and a denial that it was killing its Neoview data warehousing solution.   As other observers pointed out, Business Intelligence solutions have continued to attract investment by enterprises even during the trough of the bust in 2008~2009.  It will be unwise for HP to leave the market, even though the company has not made much of headway in selling Neoview.

This is a curious occurrence – an analyst making a pubic claim that HP was killing a product and HP finally got around to denying a week later.  Maybe there is more to come on this intrigue.  What do you think?

Observe that the person being quoted is the venture capitalist who invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Boxee, Delicious and Feedburner.  Granted these companies have had a lot of users, their share of growing pains and even an exit event(Feedburner is now part of Google), I don’t know if we can say they are unqualifiedly successful yet.  Do you?

On the other hand, I do support the principle that software design should be driven by usability which usually includes quick response and delightful user experience. This is generally not in dispute but why do most enterprise software still look awful and a pain to use?  Here is just a blog exploring the whys, Is Simple Viable in Enterprise Land?

I suspect the separation of buying responsibility and user satisfaction encourages shenanigans from the vendors.  The people who sign on the dotted line often have goals not entirely aligned with the end users, a fact many vendors play to the max.  Any comments?

I do not have an iPad or a Kindle though I would imagine it is true that you can live with Wi-Fi only if you use the iPad like a Kindle.  However, if you want to use the iPad more like a computer, which I do with my iPhone, Wi-Fi only is unacceptable.

As the Mashable article said, you hardly find public access points that are open, and when you do, you can’t be sure somebody is not maliciously tapping into your data stream.  Even if you are just looking for a restaurant on Yelp to have lunch after reading a book for a couple hours on your iPad in a park, you need a connection.  Chances are you’d like to have 3G if nobody is giving you free Wi-Fi at the park.

As an iPhone owner who is already paying AT&T a handsome sum every month,  I am glad that AT&T realizes that I am not inclined to pay them again if I ever buy an iPad.  Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb, iPad Owners to Go Wi-Fi Only? AT&T CEO Thinks So (POLL).  However, I also want to lobby as Stan Schroeder did on Mashable, to allow my iPhone to serve as a tethered modem to the iPad.

Apple and AT&T should listen – iPhone users are already unhappy with the quality of the data and phone service.  iPad users should be allowed to connect to the 3G network without having to subscribe to another line.

Updated March 6, 2010:  Turns out somebody asked Steve Jobs about tethering iPad to the iPhone and Jobs said, “No”.

If you want to spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon reading up on the politics of HTML5 vs Flash, you can start with this article on the Mac Observer, The Lowdown: Technology and Politics of HTML5 vs. Flash.

This is the article from Gizmodo that talks about Vimeo now supports HTML5 video.  In fact, you can access YouTube content in HTML5 format as well (remember that YouTube was probably the catalyst that spread Flash to most end user desktops).   If you listen to the people who care about such things, a Mashable poll with the title HTML5 Knocks Out Adobe Flash in Reader Vote indicates that they prefer HTML5 over Flash 2 to 1.

As an observer from the sideline of this battle, I am interested in the outcome and I certainly have heard HTML5 being mentioned more.  What Apple might or might not have considered is that, by actively promoting HTML5 and preventing Flash from being deployed on iPhone and iPad, Apple may help establish HTML5 as the standard not just for video streaming but also for mobile software development in general.

Most application developers would love to build a single mobile application and deploy it to iPhone, Android and Blackberry (I ignore Windows Mobile because Microsoft does not even support HTML5 on desktop IE yet).  HTML5 might succeed but Apple might lose its dominance over mobile applications if developers can build once and deploy everywhere.

There are a few implications that most people who have dabbled in the ITSM space in recent years can reiterate:

1. The old model of IT being a provider of technology for the company puts IT in a no win situation as funding is cut and the outcome usually hurts the career of the CIO.
2. The newer but aging model of service focused model of running allows IT to shoot for some service levels and potentially succeed despite constant cost cutting.  The CIO is still looking at the risk of his or her organization being completely outsourced.
3. The in-vogue model of IT should at least be a partner in driving business success if not be a driver of new growth opportunities.  Some ITSM vendors came out with Service Portfolio Management but few have succeeded in helping their clients reach what Capgemini calls the Business Technology camp.

The report from Capgemini also interestingly defines the CIOs in the Business Technology camp as those who have moved their organizations into using newer technologies such as cloud computing and analytics.

The conclusion I draw is that a CIO who is ambitious and wants a seat at the executive table needs to move the IT organization towards the Business Technology camp.  Being in group #1 or #2 is not necessarily wrong for the company, it is just not a very healthy place for a CIO and IT organization to be.  In other words, get out of merely managing services.  Is that the same as moving beyond ITSM?