A good friend of mine, Zihni Ozdil from the Netherlands / Turkey, Historian Extraordinaire, is now publishing his wisdom online. If history, politics, and culture (“beyond the superficial”) is something you find interesting, I encourage you to check it out. On his site, I found an article entitled ‘the real Evil Empire,’ which, ignoring the provocative title, deals with the interesting topic of the cold war and the ‘demonification’ of Russia and communism at that time.

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with some Canadian Swedes that moved to Florida with their kids and had trouble finding a school. The only way, it seemed, to guarantee that their kid ended up in a good one is to have an A-class school in your district (which you can find via a website that profiles attendees according to race and economic background… wow…) and to have paid your electricity bills. It worked out well for them, but clearly suggests the underlying problem of a long-term selection bias.

Last night, meeting the Canadian Swedes, where I was also in the company of a Russian and a Japanese, I noted that it was strange that while both Russia and Japan, being superpowers in their own right, have infamously challenging education systems, which result in some pretty smart people graduating from either country, the US does not seem to follow that pattern, at least not at the high school level, and certainly not across all demographics. Yet, by all accounts, the US is a superpower, if not the superpower of this and the last century.

My post today is not about comparing countries’ education systems, it’s more about the strategic purpose of education. Many people don’t know this about me, but I don’t vote and I don’t generally care about (regional) politics. To me, our planet should be one country, where anyone can move and work anywhere, and services don’t have to be moved just because you physically moved  XX km/miles to another country. But I do recognise the power of competition and how that can lead to excellence. Versus a ‘group think’-like mediocrity where everyone just tries to be like everyone else and no one exceeds. So, in a way, I endorse a system of divided regions, because I think it leads to competition and thus excellence.

Education plays a strong role on the competitive advantage of nations, as it does in certain companies. Last year, applying to a lot of consultancy companies and working as one myself, I was struck at the importance that the accumulation of knowledge plays in this industry. If I were to start my own consultancy, continuous education of the staff would most certainly be a cornerstone of the business strategy, because knowledge is your product as a consultant.

I know that this thinking plays a strong part in government circles as well: how to make your/our country as strong as possible, not (just) in military terms, but in the sense of knowledge, mostly measured by the no. of graduates and the no. of patents that are published every year (as well the commercialisation thereof, which doesn’t go quite as smoothly).

I know that the no. of graduates coming out of Chinese universities is tremendous, and the no. of patents coming out of US ones is among the highest in the world also. So clearly, the US, superpower extraordinaire, is doing something right. I don’t however entirely understand why the primary/secondary school system is so abysmal then in the US. My only explanation is that, in academic circles, there are no national boundaries, and a Russian researcher can just as well (if not better) produce patents in the US as anywhere else.

There are other dimensions to the US superpower status as well, of course. It’s a military superpower, it is a cultural superpower (in terms of films, music, and literature), it has a large consumer-base. These three dimensions—safety through military strength, an easily adopted culture, a consumer’s paradise—also have the effect that they serve as an attraction point for outside academic or other talent. And while other countries may have strong educational bases, the other aspects are perhaps ignored just a little too much, still making the US a prime export location for knowlegde.

In the strategic literature, there is the concept of the resource-based view, which stipulates that company strategies are nothing more than a collection of resources, some of which are internalised and some that are not. I think that in the context of the US and education, the resources that must be internalised are those that lead to the commercial exploitation of technological advantage, which sounds abstract, but basically means making sure that the best technology/knowledge is produced in-house and generates economic benefits in-house as well.

But there other resources that must most certainly not be held onto in-house. These include standards, which facilitate the assimilation of knowledge. In education, the standards that we use are the bachelor-master-phd system, which can easily be studied in different combinations and locations. And text-books, which as many students know, are often from US-origins.

In many ways, the cultural exports from the US—movies, music, literature—are nothing more than the spreading of a standard, that of a language and a way of thinking, which makes assimilation of outside talent easier. And as long as that outside talent is used for the benefit of the US, in the form of patent exploitation, the US benefits, even if their own primary/secondary education system is quite uneven.

As mentioned, I don’t care about politics, country-differences, or governments. But if my logic is correct, I wonder if a metaphor exists for commercial superpowers, i.e. companies that are market leaders and remain so by attracting the greatest talent and finding ways to turn that into economic benefits.

Organisations are not complete economies like governments are and also have the benefit of being mobile—by law they are considered single persons, which have residence, pay taxes, etc. just like everyone else. So, as long as they obey the law, they can choose where they stay and choose to ignore local conditions, much like, I theorise, some governments do, instead focussing on the bottom-line: attracting excellence and turning that into profit, while keeping ‘unnecessary’ expenses as low as possible. Well, at least that is the stereotype of an organisation, while pressures have certainly lead some to adopt a more socially-responsible attitude.

Clearly, the question of talent, whether attracting or training it, remains a vital one for both countries and organisations. But I don’t think there is necessarily a correlation between talent and local conditions.. at all.. though local conditions do play a part in the quality of life, or lack thereof, which affects the talent’s in question desire for a certain location.

Vincent out.

(Picture courtesy of thehindubusinessline.com)

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As promised, I’ll be focussing more on innovation on Tech IT Easy these coming months, and you can be sure that my search for content will focus on universities and other institutes, rather than the internet.

It’ll be interesting challenge for sure, particularly as I’ll be reading a whole bunch of dry scholarly articles and dissertations, as well as tracking down interesting organisations for interviews, to hopefully produce something of value for you and me.

As I’ve asked before, if you have interesting ideas for content of this nature, or even want an interview, article, or thesis (summary) of your own to be published here, please drop a comment or mail!

Bookmark this site for more info!
Vincent

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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[slideshare id=58242&doc=nextweb2007-saul-1518&w=425]

The slideshow speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And even if you don’t chose to become an entrepreneur yourself at this very moment, in Europe or elsewhere, my take is that you should join an early-stage startup. Let me tell you a quick story about this.

The first time I thought of leaving MS to start a startup (a thought that never occurred again, believe it or not, before I actually walked out to either join another company or take the big plunge), I hadn’t even joined Microsoft. I was at Capital IT, a major VC forum in Paris, as a Microsoftee although I was due to join the company a few days later. There I met, for the first and last time so far, Pascal Mercier, a French fundraiser whose firm Aelios Finance is pretty successful at matching the best entrepreneurs and smart money (to my knowledge both angels & VCs). I was introduced as a recent graduate and the second we met, Pascal Mercier asked: “Why didn’t you choose to join a startup rather?”. The best answer I found was: “but I do work for startups!” Which I thought was true since 1) MS is just a damn successful startup (you would be surprised to see the easy-going startup atmosphere within the company); 2) I was part of the team that took care of emerging ISVs in France. Acknowledging reason #2 only I guess, Pascal nodded and we parted ways. I later realized though that working for startups, and working in a startup, are clearly two different things. When you represent Microsoft, you may call whoever you want and the door will be opened the next day. Your brand power is so strong that at the end of the day, you never know whether you achieved great things because you’re damn so good, or because your company is so powerful in its industry. As an entrepreneur, and I’ve been facing this issue already, you need to fight like a pitbull to get passed through the right person on the phone, and fight again to get an appointment. I should also mention that you’ll need to deliver the best pitch of your life, after waiting for an hour in the lobby without even being served a cup of coffee, to actually get to the point where you may pretend to try and sell your solution. This struggle for survival is real life and that makes entrepreneurs fully accountable for their success or failure.

The same rationale goes for early-stage startups, without a brand name yet: life will be tougher for sure than if you worked for a big name, but the impact you can have on such companies is huge (eg double revenues in 6 months, etc. something unachievable in an 85K-strong corporation like Microsoft – or even at Google, a 20K-strong company & definitely not a startup anymore). Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or join a larger group later in your career (or both), an unknown and yet ambitious startup is where you should start your career to acquire the right survival toolkit. By the way, did I mention the stock option plan?

My two cents…

Addendum 11am: check out comment #3 to discover how to spot startups that will pay you better than large corporations and resign from consulting, banking and Fortune 500 companies to join them!

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Getting back to business (we’ll get back to the gambetto later), it is very common to say that the state of an economy is reflected by the strength of its currency when the Euro currency is weak – and hence that the economy of the EU are in poor shape. However, when the Euro gets stronger, companies and officials claim that corporations are constrained in their efforts to export goods and services and that the situation should be reversed or the EU will soon enter an economic turmoil.

I think this is all too easy and bullshit.

God Dollar used to be the only viable currency in international trade, until the Euro came out of nowhere in January 2000 (2001 for actual pocket coins and bills). The European Union is the world’s largest consumer market, and a gateway to the Middle East and Africa for American companies. Although the Dollar still dominates international transactions of goods (slightly) and financial transactions (easily), the Euro has emerged as a tangible alternative considering the political stability of the region.

Consequently, the Euro vs. US Dollar exchange rate has kept growing insanely from 1 EUR = USD 0.85 in mid 2000 (1 EUR = 1.19 USD on January 1st 2000) to 1 EURO = USD 1.47 USD today. Althoug I acknowledge the trickiness of the situation for export businesses, high tech or not, I see very few corporations have implemented hedging strategies or make proper use of forward contracts – which is a shame. Still, instead of lamenting, I believe economic decision makers of both the US and the EU should roll up their sleeves and act in such a way (hell yeah I’m even givin’ lessons now, love blogging…):

For US High Tech companies: go for internationalization. Acquiring hardware, software, telco devices, consumer electronics and services labeled in USD has never been cheaper. So why wait? I’m pretty sure any potential buyer would understand this reasoning. A weak USD is a fantastic opportunity for American exporters to thrive abroad, and win strategic, long-term projects. It doesn’t matter whether the profitability of these projects is low: what matters is to build reputation on new markets, or to highlight your competitive advantage against local players. Remember, the gambetto? Be ready to sacrifice a few cents today (anyways, the dollar rates so low that it’s no big loss whatsoever) to be in the real race when that moment comes.

For European high tech ventures: shop for intellectual property and talents in the US since the Euro has never been so strong against the US Dollar – which will make acquiring quality companies cheap, and build production capability in China and India (or go and get cheap but excellent developers in Eastern Europe, before the Euro comes there, or Israel) to reduce the cost of goods sold, enhance their competitiveness and therefore be ready for a shift during harsher economic times or win back market share on their competitors’ behalf. EU corporations, especially the big ones, find it hard to tear the P&L from the balance sheet and should learn to make better investments. Remember when the VCs said that few large European high tech corporations had a real, sound external growth strategy? Even though making the quarter may seem tough because of a strong Euro, acquiring today technologies that will generate tomorrow’s revenues boils down to ‘sacrificing’ a small slice of the pie to weaken the competition, and build a better product offer for tomorrow. Gambetto again.

Now waiting for the Chinese Yuan to offer a third way…

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=M56QwDjE6PQ]

Bonus on the house for those who like soul music: Feel like making love, by D’Angelo. Nothing to do wih duos.

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That said, it’s not a bad book at all. In it, you will learn what made McDonalds great and much of what made Ray Kroc great. I wrote a little about him a few days ago – a blue-collar worker, who excelled in sales and at smelling opportunities. He was an operations-freak, planning out every step from the potato to the french frie or from the cow to the burger, and from the food to customers’ mouths. But it all started with location-location-location, planting a restaurant in the right spot, attracting the talent to run it, and promoting the McDonalds way. This book is a perfect example of that.

McDonalds is a complicated business, wrapped up in a simple package. Many people eating at McDonalds think the restaurant is owned by the company and all the staff works for them too. They may even think that McDonalds has farms growing potatoes and herding milkshake-cows, I’m not sure. But it’s not like that. At the time the book was published (the last edition in 1992), the company owned less than 30% of the restaurants around the world, and I’m sure it’s around the 20% mark or less today. The rest is composed of franchises, owned by independent operators, who, like entrepreneurs, have to turn an empty building and a name into a thriving ecosystem.

But the advantage of being a franchisee, especially a McDonalds-one, is that you are not really alone. Sure, you invest a considerable amount of cash into the venture and you bear most of the risk, but when you sign up for a franchise, you get working experience at a running McDonalds-restaurant, training at McDonalds-university, also for your staff, and the purchasing- and marketing-power that makes McDonalds great.

Something about purchasing-power. The last book I read on McDo was in the form of ‘Fast Food Nation‘, a drastically different view of the company. If ‘Grinding it out’ is a picture of heaven, this book presents it as hell. Some of the criticisms in that book were about the way that food was artificially flavoured to make better smelling food (I forgot how that was bad), and on how the power of McDonalds both lead to lower wages in America and the destruction of the farmer. On that last point, I think that’s probably right, then again, whether there is still space for the traditional farmer is another discussion all together. McDonalds has a lot of purchasing power, it has deep and privileged relationship with its suppliers, which result in cheaper and (hopefully) better food. This translates into an easier experience for the franchisee.

From my reading, I think there are following sub-groups in the McDonalds-umbrella, which make up the ecosystem. These are: the corporation, which runs marketing (think Ronald McDonalds), decides on real-estate locations, and maintains some (not all) of the relationships with suppliers. Then there is McDonalds University, which trains operators and staff to maintain a smooth operation and to always keep smiling. There are the suppliers, which are located all over the world. There are the franchisees. And there are the customers. In one package it a near-perfect picture of the American global capitalist system.

Well what do you know, Jeremy is a Microsoft-head, and I’m turning into Mcdonalds-one. One of several keys to franchising, I learned in a course I did with Jeremy, is to make every step so explicit, that you can write a manual about it an other people can follow it. This book is an example of evangelising a business-idea. And it’s great at that. Perhaps more to follow as I read the last pages of the book. All opinions on McDonalds aside, franchising is a great and easy way to get into running your own business, and a great way for your business to grow big.

Vincent is a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement or on his blog. He enjoys a (fish-)burger and a milkshake about once a year. Ps. I’ll be leaving for a holiday in a few hours, so any responses to comments will be delayed by a few days.

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Today is our Independence Day: this blog is now fully accessible through www.techiteasy.org. All existing jeremyfain.wordpress.com/something trackbacks are automatically redirected to www.techiteasy.org/something. Our search engine referencing might suffer for a couple weeks, but since I noticed we have quite a captive audience (people coming back every single day are very, very numerous – like 600 / 900), it’s not going to get too bad.

Step by step, you will see my personal references (Flickr feed, CartoReso maybe, Developer Pages, Del.icio.us, blogroll) vanish to leave the Tech IT Easy community do what it has to do with this very blog.

When I find some time (most probably in July or August), the template will evolve and integrate external widgets.

Back to the Tech IT Easy vision:

A community blog where professionals passionate about technology (software, web, consumer electronics, eCommerce, media, hardware, robotics, telecommunications, computer networking – from both market & technology view points) share their thoughts and analyses with the world. The only rule that applies to all contributors is that there should be no rule whatsoever: no control, no hassle, no constraint. Once you’re in the community, you’re there forever unless you decide to leave it. The idea is not to go after TechCrunch, TechMeme, GigaOM, VentureBeat, Read/Write Web and their likes: rather than information, we deliver original content deeply rooted in the background of the authors. To say the least, we should complement existing tech information blogs rather than compete with them. On top of that, we are all amateurs and none of us blogging full-time, this should position us in quite a different way. Last but not least, we enjoy answering valuable comments and emails: one thing we all share is our willingness to stay close to our readers.

PS: just opened my personal blog in French, named Jeremy Fain in French. Accessible right here. I’ll be testing a new open source platform, after WordPress for Tech IT Easy: DotClear2.

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Today, although I hardly checked my personal emails and mobile voice mail, I received no less than:

• 9 friends left me voice messages
• 1 actually reached me at lunch time
• 2 left me text messages
• 2 friends of my girlfriend tried to reach me but left no message
• my sister sent me a text message and called me to see what was going on
• 3 of my girlfriend’s friends sent me private messages on Facebook (2 had actually guessed I was kidding)
• 1 friend sent me a wall message on Facebook
• at least 15 people tried to reach me via instant messengers (MSN & Skype)
• 7 emails or private Facebook messages from girls I had met maybe once and had hardly spoken to since then or haven’t spoken to in years – that’s my favorite bit. That’s very reassuring: thank you, I just don’t deserve it. I understanding why dating websites cash in so much money: the dating market is hot! Women are like vultures (actually, Paris is piece of cake compared to Tel Aviv or New York).

Now that I think about it, I wish I had planned this all with telco service providers. Getting a commission would have definitely helped me being able to afford these Paris Opera tickets I’m dying to buy for my girlfriend & I for the next time she is in Paris.

When all’s said and done and to get back to the core business of Tech IT Easy rather than personal considerations, Facebook looks to me as an impressive self mass media. By the way, can you think of a way for startups other than human beings to test their market traction in such an easy way?

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5. Today is our Independence Day

 Invited by Jeremy, I recently went to the SME Day organised by Microsoft in Brussels. Being a novice in the field of new technologies, i was impressed by the organisation and the atmosphere and tried to grasp the opportunity to network and take hold of some interesting ideas. Here is a quick overview of these two days spent at an event intimately tied to Microsoft’s “Ecosystem”:

1. Meeting with the entrepreneurs was probably the greatest pleasure. I was mostly impressed byPierre-Antoine Durgeat and Gilles Barbier of TellMeWhere ( wait for it to wait) and had a great talk with Aymeric Mollet of Excentive, both sponsored by Microsoft and looking forward to raise funds. With TellMeWhere, i will be at last able to found my own global network of fans of sushi restaurants and always know where they are thanks to a great map system! This website, a sort of a mix of Wikipedia and Mappy, just blew my out. Excentive was quite impressive for one who studied business and works in an investment bank. It offers an HR solution to corporates to manage complex variable remuneration packages. Apparently, the solution is fully compatible with other HR solutions and is a leader its niche.

 2. I met some Venture Capitalists, a dominant species at the forum, and must admit that their company was rather pleasant. Jeremy introduced me to Said Sebti from Ventech, Nicolas Celier from Alven Capital and Michel de Lempdes of Credit Agricole PE. They all insisted on the lack of interesting investing opportunities, either in the field of software or hardware. Being a banker, i inquired whether there were opportunities for potential IPOs and advisory on trade-sales. Interestingly, there appears to be some possibilities for larger investment banks with IPOs but only when the market capitalisation is above €200m, which allows a >€50m float.

3. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief of (Long Term) Strategy, explained that the challenge for the computer world will be in mastering ‘ManyCore’ processors over the next 5-10 years. From his point of view, the hardware solution exists but the software means to effectively transform processing power into powerful applications remains unsolved. According to him, the founders of a solutions which allows to use multi-core processors will be the stars of tomorrow. It would be great to have the opinion of the TechITEasy community on the question, and especially on what i think to be the key element in this field : patents & Microsft’s interest in developing such a solution or helping its players of its ecosystem to do it.

4. A presentation made by, Roger Franklin a research fellow of Library House on Venture Capital in Europe put forward an interesting idea. Trying the explain the lack of fruitfull innovation in Europe, Dr. Franklin pointed at a lack of capital for ‘seed’ financing in Europe, which prevent structured projects to even reach first round financing stage. In fact, Europe doesn’t lack of capital, at least when the need is assessed at first round of financing. Again, the debate which this statement created was to see whether state intervention could be a solution, making grants available for entrepreneurs to explore their ideas and formalise the project for further financing. The study shows that Israel and the US, the most successful countries in terms of innovation, have implemented a structured public policy to do so. Tax incentives as a solution to this problem have been also mentionned by a panel member. Again, some reactions are welcome on this.

As a conclusion, I hope that Microsoft will continue cultivating its Ecosystem in the future, and that i will be invited next year!

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I found through Cyril Attias‘s blog (in French) a funny website named MyHeritage. MyHeritage has a buzz feature named MyHeritage Face Recognition, that tells you which celebrities looks like you most.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m not especially proud of the results – except for Dudi Balsar, an Israeli lawyer and model that according to what my search engine tells me, often finds himself elected the sexiest man in Israel. Just like I do on a regular basis in France.

Anyways, leaving aside my own results, I found you might find funny to give MyHeritage Face Recognition a try. It’s all here.

Going back to more serious issues, I admire these companies who find ways to attract bloggers and generate a buzz through building nice little apps: Microsoft built PopFly to create mash ups in a sec, IBM built Development Engagement Service (the name really sucks though), Criteo built the Autoroll and made it quickly on the consumer market despite a DNA anchored in enterprises, U.[Lik] built an amazing widget that may easily plug onto your blog and show your virtual library, etc.

Can you think of companies that owe a good deal of their success to initially non-core business gadgets, widgets, plug ins & features?

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I’ve been playing with IBM Development Engagement Service (lousy name though) and indeed, built in 3 simple & natural steps:

1. Name your application and describe it (max. 3 minutes)
2. Create a form definition (max. 45 minutes)
3. Publish the newly created application (max. 2 minutes)

Even dummies are able to publish web forms in less than an hour.

Remember, I was talking a few days ago about PopFly – a killer web app made by Microsoft to empower non developers with a tool to help them devise their own mash ups.

Now it’s IBM’s turn. And I can assure you one can tell the elephant can dance indeed. To give IBM DevEngage a go – which I highly recommend, click here.

It’s late and I’m too tired to write a short analysis about software giants (IBM is second to Microsoft on the software market) putting on efforts to become more agile against the new competition from the web (mainly Web 2.0 consumer apps & enterprise SaaS). But I’m sure you’ll do it in the comment section of this post. Enjoy the discussion!

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An public company listed (Euronext), Dassault Systèmes is a spin off of jet manufacturer Dassault Aviation – born after a bunch of people decided to market outside the company the CAO software they had devised for internal purpose. 60% of Dassault Systèmes is owned by a number of historical, managerial & institutional investors. Thanks to its locked capital structure, Dassault Systèmes engineers don’t get disturbed by M&A rumors such as Business Objects software guys, which helps the management (Charles Edelstenne, a chartered accountant and significant shareholder, as a President & Bernard Charlès as an executive director) execute their very conservative and yet aggressive acquisition strategy (DS is hot on acquiring strategic targets; e.g. SolidWorks in 1997, MatrixOne in 2006, etc.).

DS competitors include AutoDesk, PTC, SofTech, EDS-PLM Solutions, MSC Software, Aras Corp, Arena Solutions, Agile Software Corporation & Unigraphics on a fast, 2-digit growing but yet cyclical market. Indeed, in case of an economic downturn, R&D budgets are likely to be cut first (which I think is dumb, but what can I do about it?). And since PLM is aimed at R&D departments…

Dassault Systèmes is truly international software company: 60% of its revenues are generated in Asia & the Americas. Unlike a majority of software publishers who prefer to keep product development centralized at corporate headquarters (such as Microsoft does), Dassault Systèmes has R&D centers spread all over the world (France, USA, India, Israel, etc.) – which I think is good in the business of technology: it fosters competition, diversity, creativity & innovation.

Dassault Systèmes has one of the best software development teams worldwide: their people are highly knowledgeable in a number of areas such as C++ programming, 3-D modeling & mathematics, industrialization processes, & mechanical engineering. Oddly enough, and although Dassault Systèmes isn’t famous for paying software developers so well (compensated by a highly technical culture within the company & a number of perks such as preferred shares, no work on week ends, etc.), staff turnover is extremely low. Headhunters spend a lot of time trying to recruit these high flyers for their software clients, but it’s no piece of cake: Dassault Systèmes’ technology is cutting-edge in the industry. DS engineers know too well about their technological competitive advantage and are, as far as I know, usually proud of their company.

DS’s product portfolio include 5 brands: CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, SolidWorks & ENOVIA. Each one of these address specific market segments & functional needs. See for yourself: product engineering for CATIA, life cycle management & product data for ENOVIA, manufacturing process simulation for DELMIA, physical phenomena simulation for SIMULIA, etc.. In total, DS’s 5 brands have been packaged into 400 different products!

Dassault Systèmes’ 90,000 clients include Boeing, Embraer, Airbus Industries, Toyota, Smoby, Essilor, Nordica, and, this is pretty new, a number of pharmaceutical companies. One of Dassault Systèmes’ major upcoming challenge, considering the sector diversity of its clients, will be to integrate its clients’ know-how into DS products.

When it comes to distribution & integration, DS rests on a vast ecosystem of local VAD and global partners. The most noticeable of these partners being IBM: Dassault Systèmes & IBM Software Group have been working together for more than 25 years. The latter is responsible for marketing & deploying the solution to Fortune 500 corporate accounts – which enables DS to focus on its core business: crème-de-la-crème product development.

A few figures now: DS is to generate US$ 1.5 bn of revenues this year, representing a US$ 6.5bn market cap. Its business model is one of the most profitable in the entire software industry, with gross margins reaching 48%. DS employs 7000 people, amongst which 3000 are R&D engineers (1,700 of them are located just outside Paris, in Suresnes).

Let’s add to it some corporate bullshit: DS’s vision is that “3D opens the door to the world we imagine“, and its mission is to “enable people to create innovative products & experience the whole life cycle to build a better environment for the future“.

Last but not least, Dassault Systèmes has always led market trends: I take the company’s ability to drive strategic shifts successfully very seriously. Check this out: in the 1970s, DS was in 2D CAD; it turned to 3D CAD in 1985. It turned to process modeling in 1995, and packaged the whole thing into PLM solutions in early 2000. Now the company’s been focusing on integrating more client knowledge into its products. Its roadmap include turning to realistic simulation and 3D collaborative tools at the 2010 horizon.

Dassault Systèmes has always operated in the B-to-B market, leaving a share of the pie to its value-added resellers. At Capital IT in Paris recently, CEO Bernard Charlès announced Dassault Systèmes was to turn in the short term to the consumer market. In Bernard Charlès own words, DS is to come out very soon not with a Second Life-like, but with a “First Life”. The underlying rationale of this strategy being to provide a tri-dimensional environment to everyone. Turning to B-to-C is so exciting! Considering the tradition of the company to deliver top quality products, I hardly see any market adoption risk.

Needless to say, I purchased 50 Dassault Systèmes shares @ a EUR 40.55 price each, after running the company numbers thoroughly. I’m confident on the company’s long term potential, and I’m holding the stock until it reaches EUR 65 – which according to my financial forecast & crash test should occur within a 24 months time line.

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It takes thousands of suppliers to manufacture a plane. And guess what? Suppliers don’t immediately get paid for their work. Airbus, for instance, has built risk sharing partnerships with all its suppliers to reduce its working capital and enhance interest alignment.

But what is a risk sharing partnership? Basically, for each plane sold to an airline company, the supplier gets a percentage of the revenues corresponding to the relative value in complexity and workload it has put into the project. As an example, Messier Bugatti wouldn’t get paid when it ships carbon brakes, but would receive x% of all revenues derived from Airbus using Messier Bugatti’s aeronautical braking systems – x most probably being the result of both a negotiation and a cost breakdown analysis.

When it comes to hacking code, it seems so many complains about offshore development quality that it’s the responsibility of both software module suppliers and their clients (quality’s usually good when the client know what it takes to manage a project) to define new business models to align interests of all parties involved in information system projects. For instance: fee per SQL request, percentage of each transaction, percentage of each sale in B-to-B markets, etc. I don’t abide anymore by the paid-per-man/day dogma: it lacks the handcuffs to help invisible contractors turn into business partners.

In my opinion, risk sharing partnerships represent an elegant solution to the drawbacks of offshore development.

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For those of you interested, Conor’s post about an Irish Silicon Valley trip (as opposed to the French trip ) is right here.

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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All lessons given, I had a wonderful purchasing experience with a language learning software company based in Harrisonburg, VA: Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone, a product of Fairfield Language Technologies, is already a brand in the world of software-backed language learning: its client portfolio include the NASA & CIA, many Fortune 500 companies, etc. Plus it was elected fastest growing software company in Virginia and included by Deloitte in the Virginia Fast 50 index back in 2004. So one might think Rosetta Stone doesn’t care about generating one more sale from a single customer like me. Well, if I actually thought so, but they proved me wrong.

Upon ordering Hebrew language lessons Level 1 about 15 months ago (when I left Tel Aviv to move to New York City), I had incidentally asked whilst completing my purchase whether there would soon be a Hebrew language lessons Level 2 version (I had just spent 5 months in Israel and had found the trial lessons pretty easy to say the least). I got a personalized answer the next day: “we hadn’t actually thought about it yet, but that may be a good idea“. Well, at least they read and answer e-mails (and respect the time of the people who take time to write to them).

Pleased with their reactivity and happy about my purchase (Level 1 helped me consolidate in the short run what I had learnt, although I never had time to complete the full set of lessons), I received maybe 3 months ago (1 year after my suggestion) a marketing e-mail: “we’re pleased to announce the release of Hebrew language lessons Level 2; as an early adopter gift, you’re entitled to a 20% discount should you choose to proceed your purchase within 3 weeks”. Which I did!

Well, I have to admit that spending 6 months in the US, 3 months in Spain and being back to France for 4 months where I was studying information technology hard after spending 5 months in Israel had not helped my Hebrew skills at all, so I shall start with Level 1 right from the beginning rather than tackling Level 2. But I was so glad I had maybe contributed to this product launch that I purchased Level 2, although I’m sure not good enough in Hebrew anymore to follow it properly.

Anyways, 1 year between a customer suggestion and a product release makes it likely that my e-mail took part (if not initiated) of Rosetta Stone team’s decision-making process to start building or not a Hebrew language Level 2 package.

Frankly, I’m glad to see some companies actually listen to their customers out there in the jungle, and I’m ready to bet on such companies (as a stockholder, business partner, customer, employee, contractor, etc.): say Rosetta Stone goes public some day, I would for sure buy as much stock as I can, certain of their success in the long-run.

It’s the customers who make companies exist, not the other way around.

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Many thanks to Chadi for the fish. I apologize to all my visitors, this blog has been related to everything but IT recently. But I’m to strike back with interesting stuff very soon.

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Well, John, we don’t know each other yet, but your e-mail was so nice and sweet that I don’t know how I could say no. On top of this, I’m always glad to make my readers happy, so if you’ve got any topic you’d like me to launch a discussion about here (provided it’s tech-related, …or not), feel free to email me.

So here’s the thing. I’m not going to delve into the technical details since you asked me not to (and I would’ve had to do some extra homework, so good for me), but rather examine concisely the point of each standard, starting with 1G.

• 0G phones, standing for the 1st generation of mobile phones, were satellite phones developed for boats mainly – but anyone could get one in one’s car in the beginning of the 90s for several thousand dollars. Networks such as Iridium, Global Star and Eutelsat were truly worldwide (although for physical reasons, think of a satellite as a fixed point above the equator, some Northern parts of Scandinavia aren’t reachable), and everybody thought at that time that satellite phones would become mainstream products as soon as devices got smaller and cheaper. This vision proved wrong when the GSM concretely came to life in 1990/1991 in Finland.

• 1G: Firstly, there were analog GSM systems, that existed for a few years. And then came the digital systems.

• 2G: the second generation of mobile telecommunications still is the most widespread technology in the world; you’ve basically all heard of the GSM norm (GSM stands for Groupe Spécial Mobile in French, renamed in Global System for Mobility). The GSM operates in the 850Mhz. and 1900Mhz. bands in the US, & 900Mhz. and 1.8Mhz. bands in the rest of the world (eg did you know Bluetooth stands in the 2.4Ghz. area, just like your…microwave!? But that’s another story, not related to this article) and delivers data at the slow rate of 9.6 Kbytes/sec.

• 2.5G: For that last reason (9.6 Kbytes/sec doesn’t allow you to browse the Net or up/download an image), telco operators came up with the GPRS (remember all the hype around the Wap) which could enable much faster communications (115Kbytes.sec). But the market decided it was still not enough compared to what they had at home.

• 2.75G: EDGE (I just called it 2.75G, 2.5′s not the official or unofficial number at all), which is a pretty recent standard, allows for downloading faster. Since mobile devices have become both a TV and a ‘walkman’ or music player, people needed to be able to watch streaming video and download mp3 files faster – that’s precisely what EDGE allows for and that’s for the good news. The bad news is that if EDGE rocks at downloading, it’s protocol is asymmetrical hence making EDGE suck at uploading ie broadcasting videos of yours for instance. Still an interesting achievement thanks to which data packets can effectively reach 180kbytes/sec. EDGE is now widely being used.

• 3G: also called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard). Aimed at enabling long expected videoconferencing, although nobody seems to actually use it (do you know any?). Its other name is 3GSM, which says literally that UMTS is 3 times better than GSM. One issue though: depending on the deployment level of the area you are in and your device, your phone will (have to be) handle(d) from the GSM network to the UMTS network, and conversely – making billing more complex to understand for the consumers. One of the major positive points of UMTS is its global roaming capabilities (roaming is the process that allows you, at a cost, to borrow bandwidth from a telco provider that’s not yours; you usually use roaming when calling from abroad).

• 3.5G or 3G+: HSDPA is theoretically 6 times faster than UMTS (up to 3.6 Mbytes/sec)! Practically speaking, this would mean downloading an mp3 file would take about 30 secs instead of something like 2 minutes. Not bad, uh?

• 4G: still a research lab standard, at least to my knowledge, that should combine the best of cellphone network technologies with WiMax, wireless Internet, voice over IP and IPv6 (a post about the latter soon). Data rates are expected to reach 100 Mbytes/sec.

So John, I hope this helps. I know it’s not detailed at all, but it should be enough at first to make your son’s cellphones shop potential customers understand what lies behind the different technologies. Even though you’re not an industrialist (ie working at a telco operator or a consumer electronic company building cellphones), I strongly recommend you watch what goes on in Asia in general (Japan, Singapore, Mauritius even though it’s in Africa, the Philippines, South Korea) and Finland on top of the US to get updates about what’s actually going onwhere it all happens in the mobile telecommunications industry.

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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While wondering about the reasons for this phenomenon in the Paris metro a couple days ago, I wrote on my metro ticket the 10 most relevant-in-my-opinion variables explaining the success of Silicon Valley. I could hardly read what I had put down, but it should more or less boil down to this list:

1. Creative entrepreneurs with a can-do mentality (from dream to execution)
2. Top-notch Universities (Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) & R&D labs (Bell labs & Xerox Park)
3. Venture capitalists back seed and early-stage projects
4. Geeky mindset: appetite for innovation and technology
5. Attracts top technical talents from all over the world
6. « Nothing is impossible » state of mind
7. Failure isn’t perceived as evil: you learn from your mistakes
8. Skills and drive matter more than age, status, degrees, name, bank account well..we’re in the US so maybe, etc.)
9. Official support from relevant authorities (State, tax administration, regulators, politicians, etc.)
10. Climate! (I truly believe software developers are very climate-sensitive)

On a number of points (3., 4., 5., 6., 7., 8., 9., 10.), France still has a long way to go, although a lot has been going on in the Paris Innovation Valley recently – especially in the software (VideoLan, Neolane, Excentive, Total Immersion, Voluntis, SoftFluent, Seemage, L4 Logistics, etc.) and Internet (Netvibes, Wikio, U-[Lik], DailyMotion, Viadeo, etc.) industries.

On top of this, I also found a short and yet pretty interesting video featuring venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley (namely: Jonathan Medved (Israel Seed Partners, Vringo), Joe Schoendorf (Accel Partners), Mary Alexander (Quova), Daniel Gatti (Big Bangwidth), Kim Odhner (Orient Networks) )(more. Here’s what I took away from it:

• the comparison with Japan (great Universities, top research capabilities, money available; so why aren’t start ups booming there?);
• the difference between the ‘would do’ European mentality and the ‘can do’ American attitude raised by the Dutch woman raised in Atlanta;
• the tax burden dampering Germany’s start up potential;
• the point made about people who keep repeating ‘it’s not possible’. Are you one of these?

While you think about it, watch the video:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=2WRugBmnvYQ]

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I’m looking for one or two companies with strong fundamentals (few or no debts, strong FCF generation, global presence, growing market, good client feedback on main products, consistent product portfolio, capacity to build win-win partnerships within its own industry, attention-raising product pipeline as I am to invest in the long-run ie more or less 4 years, managers who have become managers through internal promotions, growth strategy: I’m keener to invest on companies who grow organically rather than through repeat M&As – so no Oracle for me thanks, reasonable cash compensation to CEO – so no Business Objects for me thanks).

So, I started scanning for a company that has good value for money, looking at ratios over time and all (one ratio considered for one single year has very little meaning, you should look at the forecast curve to get a good grasp of market trends so don’t consider the present table for a decision making purpose – it’s just a tool aimed at supporting a demonstration). I have compiled this little table that shows that in 2007, Web 2.0 stocks are to be twice as expensive as enterprise software! Obviously, if you consider 2008 and 2009 PER or a PEG (price over earnings to growth, quite a relevant metric when considering Internet companies) ratio, the gap becomes sort of less significant – but I wanted to shock in order to make my point.

And my point is that enterprise software companies are not so expensive after all. The recent stockmarket rally came to prove that big caps have lots of cash to spend, & IT spendings in 2007 look very promising indeed. My call is that 2007 will be a historical vintage in the history of B-to-B software.

Furthermore, the market has become quite predictable, margins are pretty high as in the entire software industry, clients have cash to invest, and market demand is identified: basically all big accounts have had finance and HR modules installed. So the focus for software vendors will be on integrating business intelligence better, investing in more flexible CRM systems (supply chain systems as soon as there’s a market downturn). I should also mention 2 more things: 1) the relative affordability of financial software vendors although market finance is in desperate need for competitive advantage-granting solutions; 2) the hot and getting hotter SME market where Sage, SAP, Oracle & Microsoft (with Microsoft Dynamics) and many other ISVs have been at loggerheads.

I haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’m thinking of CEGID (very strong on the growing European SME market) and Baidu (the number one search engine in China – but I still have to figure out which broker allows trading with China). What do you think?

Disclaimer: as this post is about to be published, I’m an unsignificant stockholder at Boursorama, Microsoft Corp., SAP & Dassault Systèmes – all 4 companies are mentioned in this note.

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This very post isn’t about the actual content of the event (a couple speeches by senator Saunier and Eric Boustouller, MS France’s General Manager; a roundtable about “potential synergies between start ups and large caps” moderated by blogger and journalist Thomas Blard, involving corporate business developer Martin Duval from Orange, venture capitalist Eric Harlé from iSource, innovation cluster manager Patrick Cocquet from Cap Digital, developer platform & evangelism division manager Marc Jalabert from Microsoft France, business developer Laurent Kott from INRIA Transfert & CapIntech, and entrepreneur Thomas Serval from Baracoda & the Richelieu Committee; and an amazing forum with 25 start ups presenting their producs), neither is it about the reasons for my optimism about the prospects of the software industry in Europe (I’ll write extensively about it starting in May, 2007), but rather on the nuts and bolds of IDEES – in other words, introducing IDEES.

So, to get to the point, what is IDEES about? IDEES (click here for the official website, in French) aims at helping technology start ups by providing them with 4 different kinds of resources:

• technical resources (crème-de-la-crème consultants from the Microsoft Technology Center help you clean your code and test your scalability);
• marketing resources (more visibility in shows through presenting at the Microsoft booth; corporate account introductions; PR);
• help in internationalization (in 2007, the IDEES experience is to be reproduced under the brand IDEAS in both China and Israel, hence allowing sound, real cross developments for selected start ups; IDEES also supports a private initiative in Silicon Valley named FBIA, standing for French Business & Innovation Accelerator Program, aimed at helping French technology start ups settle in the US, a complex market)
• help in financing (many of the top venture capital shops in France are partners of the program). 25 start ups are to be selected every year to joining IDEES, a program managed by Julien Codorniou.

Through IDEES, Microsoft is not aiming at making equity investments or stealing innovative business plans. Actually, Microsoft has acquired just one business in France recently (that was Motionbridge, a mobile search engine solution – and it happened one year ago exactly) and rips off its acquisition map all start ups involved in one of its programs.

So, has Microsoft, like Bill Gates, decided it would become a philantropic corporation? Not at all. Actually, Microsoft benefits directly from the dynamism of its ecosystem. Here’s an example: a software start up with a cutting edge technology may, throught the credit and human capital Microsoft provides it with, seduce a large account and hence become stronger. Since Microsoft generates 95% of its revenues through its ecosystem (eg OEM) and that start up belongs to its ecosystem, all 3 companies end up with benefits. It’s a win-win-win deal between 1) the start up company which has generated a sale, 2) the client or large account who will benefit from the cutting-edge technology of the start up company, and 3) Microsoft which is very likely to have its technology included in the deal at some point (like OS Vista, or databases SQL Server) – although as far as IDEES’s concerned, partnerships are opened to start ups advocating the use of open source and free software.

Microsoft’s performances are indeed highly correlated to the dynamism of the industry of information technology. Read what the Seattle Times says about Windows Vista’s ecosystem development perspectives: ‘The 157,000-job gain IDC attributes to Vista is in addition to normal employment growth in the industry. Gantz acknowledged that those workers may not work on Vista exclusively. “It’s the share of employment that’s driven by Windows or that touches Windows,” he said. IDC forecasts that for every dollar of revenue Microsoft brings in directly from Vista in 2007, the rest of the industry will see $18 in revenue.‘ Read the entire article here.

Basically, Bill Gates’ vision has always be to build solid platforms and help software developers and entrepreneurs build applications on it. Microsoft started with desktop operating systems when Bill Gates, back in the 1970s when there was a handful computers on the entire planet, started believing there would be a single computer in every room at home and on every desk at the workplace. The vision expanded to mobile devices (PDAs and cellphones now converging on Windows CE & Windows Mobile), video games (XBox) and last but not least robots. The value of these platforms increases everytime a new application runs on it.

The same reasoning goes for other companies, including Microsoft’s competitors: the value of the Sony Playstation is correlated with the game catalog available on it; the value for retailers to sell iPods (low, imposed by Apple Inc. margins) is to benefit from selling high-margin iPod complementary devices like Bose soundbass system or running scratch; eBay’s success is measured by the number and dynamism of sellers and APIs available thanks to the eBay Platform Developers Program; the valuation of Google Inc. is justified by the size of its ecosystem: which website on the Internet doesn’t make use of Google in a way? The same goes for CISCO, Oracle (which is said to be currently launching a program largely inspired by IDEES), and all other successful technology companies. Sony, Apple, Google, CISCO, Oracle, eBay are all, like Microsoft, platform companies. And the value of a platform companiy can only be measured by the size, commitment, and drive of its ecosystem. Hence the need for coming up with initiatives such as IDEES to provide incentives for top independent software vendors using platforms devised by Microsoft to do everyday a better job. If they help Microsoft platforms, Microsoft will help them.

The Microsoft Corporation has once benefited from belonging to the IBM ecosystem. Why wouldn’t Microsoft help the next IT industry giant emerge from its own ecosystem? When all’s said and done, the whole point of IDEES is exactly to enhance the entire French software industry – including through signing partnerships with regional adminitrations such as Lyon and Mulhouse (more to come).

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Well, I’m not getting that much traffic, you’re still on a small and growing blog (or put it that way: a start up). About 300+ single visits (WordPress counter) on average in the last few weeks (from 220 on week ends to 460-500 when I get a post referred on a prominent blog). So why is Tech IT Easy getting a 300-fold traffic compared to the average number of daily visits, does that mean that on average, one blog gets one visit per day??

According to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the answer is yes: “Mr. Schmidt said that by by Google’s calculation, a new blog is being created every second of every day. He said that Google now estimates that the average blog is read by one person.” – source: see here an article published on a New York Times’ blog on politics, many thanks to Kari for pointing the link to me.

One visit per day! It means the number of blogs is so high, and most contents so poor or even inactive that in the end, many are called, few are chosen. Were all the guys predicting the day there would be one blog for each Internet user wrong? I guess so, and I have to say I had myself never expected such a terrible figure.

Anyways, it’s not my our case I guess (until when? ): I’ve just purchased the domaine name techiteasy.org. I’m giving myself one year to start a collaborative weblog, a community of light bloggers with a passion for technology and complementary skills, view points and backgrounds. The only rule is that there won’t be any editorial rule, no official language, no quantitative or even qualitative (the market will choose whether to leave comments and interact or not) constrain whatsoever, and no limit to creativity and boldness. In French, we’d say un peu le bordel, some kind of a mess. But that’s exactly what I want: it’s not about building something huge, so we don”t need a structure.

Actually, I like the Google stat. Many inactive blogs means many people don’t find the time to blog. And I’m planning to ‘recruit’ amongst people I know and/or trust that have no time to blog every single day (but maybe twice a week or so).

It would be pretty nice as well if all tech industries (software, consumer electronics, Internet, telcos, computer networks, information management, media, biotech?, etc.), functions (developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, finance guys, lawyers, etc.) and clusters of innovation on all continents could be represented. I’m also tending to favour friends and fools as I want this experience to be as time-demanding as regular blogging (in my case, between 20 min. and 75 min. / day), and also fun and exciting as I am most probably to blog after work and during week ends.

I’m not ruling out monetization (although not bullish as of today) if techiteasy.org turns out to be a success, and although my success metric is essentially the number of comments (down from 5+ to 5- in the last few months, I’m not improving, and you’re not helping me with criticism; in this respect, please provide me with a feedback if you find room for improvements in a way) as of today, techiteasy.org’s success major metric will definitely be plain vanilla traffic.

In a nutshell: techiteasy.org is just a project to be launched within one year or never to be launched.

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1) First resolution: I will thorougly visit at least one cluster of technological innovation every single year, to keep track of what’s happening, spot opportunities, and get a better understanding of the global product and talent market

By visiting, I mean sightseeing of course, but also make sure I understand the innovation pipeline in the area, know about all hot start ups upon leaving, meet entrepreneurs there, visit a university or a research center, etc.

By cluster of innovation, I mean a buzzing place where entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and R&D brain power is available. Amongst these you may find:

• in the US: Mecca (the Silicon Valley of course), Massachussets Route 128, Austin TX, Seattle – Vancouver
• in the EU: Paris (I’m currently writing this very post from the Plateau de Saclay where a lot of things are happening), Helsinki, Sophia Antipolis, Lyon, Switzerland, Estonia, Southern London, Berlin, etc. There are actually many, many places in Europe. These places just turn out not to be as concentrated and focused on innovation as the US clusters so it won’t be as interesting and easy probably.
• in the Middle East: Israel (I usually go there at least once a year so it should be okay), Dubaï (? I’m not sure anything is happening in software; I know Jordan isn’t bad in telcos and actually went there already: true their network’s good but couldn’t figure out if there were any clusters)
• Asia & Oceania: Singapore, Taiwan, Beijing, Shanghaï, Bangalore, Madras – Chennai, Bombay, Melbourne, Sidney

And the list is far from exhaustive. Of course, outside the few places in Europe that may present an interest, the most pregnant places are all those in the US, Bangalore, and Israel. As far as this very year (2007) is concerned, I feel I need to breathe the air of the Silicon Valley. I’ll save some money and try to make it to the Valley in either November or December 2007. I’ll keep you updated anyways. If you live there or just happen to be there for a while, give me a buzz via e-mail, MSN messenger or Skype.

To wind up, my first resolution is to visit at least one cluster of innovation every single year. Of course, I’m opened to all travelling recommendations so feel free to let me know if there’s a hot place I seem not to know about yet.

2) Second resolution: although I won’t be a core business guy in the business of software (software developers are) but rather a management – business development – sales – marketing sort of profile, I’ll make sure I keep getting better in programming despite a busy schedule (meaning basically hack code at night and in the week ends, and read Bruce Eckel’s books during vacations)

Indeed, I’ll be entering the software industry upon graduation, and in the business of software, those who lead the cattle are the software developers. Open a restaurant, and the person with most clout will be the chef. Take a pharmaceutical company, the most powerful department is likely to be chemistry R&D. Look at any soccer team: those who make most money are the players, not the coach, definitely not the referree. So start a software start up, and the best treated guys on the floor will be the software developers. This is logical: core business guys are always kings, a rule of thumb even more true in brain-intensive businesses like technology.

As a non core business guy (I’ll be probably move between business development, marketing, sales, general management functions), one of my main challenges will be to be to always make sure I at least understand a little bit of what I’m talking about. Many, too many sales or marketing people have no clue of what a software really is. Since I’ll be interacting with former or current software developers a lot, I believe a great deal of my credibility will come from my ability to at least get a grasp of what I’m being told, and ask the right questions.

That’s why I believe I should stick to programming. I’m still doing very simple stuff, in other words a beginner. But one of my resolutions is to keep developing this crucial skill as I’m definitely not on the techie scheme. By the same token, I’ll try to take advantage of the situation to bridge the gap between software developers and business developers, explaining the former why they need the latter (as far as the reciprocal assertion is concerned, I guess it’s pretty clear for all parties).

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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“The Web 2.0 is what the Internet is as you’re reading this very sentence.”

I like the Web 2.0 expression: it’s pretty convenient to use since many people speak that language. Ouriel Ohayon, an editor at TechCrunch France, blogger and VC in Israël (see my blogroll), had another definition, more geeky and in my view by far too complicated: “web 2.0 = UGC (user generated content)+ high speed internet techno+ sharing/collaborating”.

I actually agree with Ouriel on the way he calls the Web 2.0 “The New Web”. What I indeed mean with my rather mainstream definition “the Web 2.0 is what the Internet is right now” is exactly this: there used to be an Internet, before the bubble burst and everybody (venture capitalists, consumers, the media, politicians, etc. but the entrepreneurs that have succeeded most since then) left the industry and started to look down on it. The Internet was a one-to-many tool, without interaction. 5 years later, it is just another story: the Internet is what you actually make of it. It has re-focused on providing quality platforms to Internet citizens who find ways of using these best.

What about you? How would you define the Web 2.0 – especially if you’re unlike me not so happy with this expression?

Links:

• I don’t believe there’s a Web 2.0 bubble, although I acknowledge valuations are a probably too..let’s say, optimistic.
• A little chart I had devised to understand better the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
• For techies only: Master Yoda Tim O’Reilly’s article entitled “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns & Business Models for the Next Generation of Software“. Frankly, the best article I’ve read in a while. Highly recommended.

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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It’s Holiday time!

Although I’m French, I hadn’t been on vacations since April 2005 & I couldn’t stand it anymore (okay, I’m French). In two hours time from now, I’ll be on a plane to Israel. I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to post anything from there. Not that there’s no Internet connection, but I know a girl that would probably be quite angry if I spent my time writing on my computer

This being said, I have many ideas for you in 2007, amongst these starting to blog about software start-ups of interest. Feel free to send (by e-mail or leaving a comment) your recommendations to me.

Well, it’s time for me to leave you with my 4 favorite videos (fun or songs) related to Israel, as a Christmas (/Hanuka) present. Enjoy!

Hilarious:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FscHi1a4Oo8]

A very realistic scenario on a Tel Aviv beach:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ujMx5w_aPI]

Best Israeli song ever. Pay attention to all the accents – Poland, Russia, Latvia, Romania, Czech Republic, USA, Germany, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Yemen,…very few genuine ‘Tsabar’ (native) intonations – Israel is such a melting pot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKTyxB1amI]

Allright, the latter was from the 70s…This is how modern Israeli singers look like – definitely more sexy, Shiri Maymon here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBWwdx9d4_A]

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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One the one hand, people tend to more and more use their blog to sell their stuff (see Ouriel – again, thanks to whom I got this business idea), or even look for something through their personal blog.

On the other hand, e-Commerce sales have been booming recently: consumers have acknowledged that transaction security is no longer an issue, plus more and more interesting concept e-stores or e-companies helping supply meet demand have emerged. 2 concrete examples:

• Zlio, which empowers people willing to open their own online store with the appropriate web service tools (zero-inventory or -shipping hassle);
• aStore, a subsidiary of Amazon providing a platform for people to build up their own Amazon e-boutique and integrate it to their own website.

I believe, and I’m not the only one, that we’re just at eCommerce growth is an underlying trend of the world we live in.

If I were Ouriel, or say I would’ve liked to purchase his iTrip (very unlikely: I don’t like closed environments like the one iPod provides, here’s why), it would’ve been cool to have some sort of plug-in, feature, gadget or widget (call it as you like) ready to be integrated onto your blog for people to pay directly – it goes without saying, if the item’s still available – & why not using services like Paypal or Google Checkout.

57 million bloggers (huge market) worldwide spend their time building trust and common ground with their readers, key caracteristics of good bloggers who look for repeat readers (and even better, commentors) rather than one shot visitors. So, instead of advertising and polluting their readers’ environment (for those willing to monetize their time writing), why wouldn’t anyone put on her/his own weblog some items for selling to their readership? Allright, a blog for sure doesn’t have as much traffic as eBay. But I believe trust compensates for traffic, and many supposedly ‘famous’ bloggers could make a hell lot of money through this canal.

Such an initiative, this online payment feature for bloggers (of which business model would be based on commissions as you had already guessed), would also urge the development of a better sense of customer care and retail flair that too few people can claim to be gifted with in Latin and German cultures. This stance is less true in Anglo-Saxon and Arab countries where retailers of all sizes are better perceived socially, and quality of service is printed in most people’s DNA.

As for all business ideas, there’s a lot of room for improvement. This is where you’re coming in leaving challenging comments…The floor is yours!

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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