Atlantis in bits

Two days ago (Nov 12, 2007), IBM announced the acquisition of Cognos, a well known software company providing business intelligence and performance management solutions. It’s the 23rd acquisition in support of its Information on Demand Strategy announced on 2006.  Although we can treat Cognos as a middleware provider, we may still found that IBM is moving further into the application software arena.

I am working for the Lotus Group, IBM as an intern. We are delivering the products Workplace for Business Control and Reporting (WBCR) and Lotus Connections. When I came to IBM’s China Software Development Labs last year,it really surprised me that IBM even produces software or solutions on this level. WBCR is a risk and control management software and its competitors definitely include SAP, IDS and Oracle. But risk and control management is not the core business of those companies. Lotus Connections was delivered in the first half year of 2007 as an Enterprise 2.0 solutions. With the service provided by its GBS and GES, those kind of large scale solutions can be sold easily and sometimes the software is certainly one part of the service. 

I have to admire IBM’s strategy on software industry. IBM knows which is his competitive advantage. It’s the services he provided and the integration ability he own. Thus, he just focuses on some areas where his services could help to extend and avoid the competition between some large providers, such as SAP and Oracle ( Actually, IBM is the partner of both SAP and Oracle.) But in the same time, IBM works as a propeller for Linux, Eclipse and some other open source software (OSS). I believe with the “disturbing” brought by OSS or even by itself (see below 1), some IBM’s potential competitors (Such as Microsoft) have to slow down their spreading speed. IBM can’t control the whole software market, or even it can’t be ranked as the top 3 software companies ( probably, top 3 should be Microsoft, Oracle and SAP), but he could control the speed of the whole enterprise market and earn money from top levels of software market. We have to confess that the OS market is almost wholly controlled by Microsoft, but we also can’t ignore the impact of various release editions of Linux. It was said several year ago that SAP’s shareholders intended to sold SAP to a big company, and they want the company to be IBM. Probably it was just a rumor, but IBM clarified it with a negative answer clearly. IBM don’t want to be a competitor of some big companies. He prefers a win-win situation. With the innovation on market, service and technology, IBM is able to find the “blue ocean” continually.

1. an alterative for Microsoft Office delivered by Lotus, IBM.

Always found many people published some unreasonable articles on Internet expressing strong disapproval or charge of current China society. Sometimes, or even in most cases, these people include writers and reporters who have much more influence on people. And many users on Internet haven’t had the sense of responsibility that they should be responsible for what they said and what they posted.

Today, People’s Bank of China announced that China will raise the reserve requirement ratio by half a percentage point for commercial banks in an effort to cool the booming economy, and it will take effect from Nov. 26. I read this news on Sina Finance (in Chinese) and was very curious on the discussion on this news. So I clicked the links and entered the discussion board. However, what I see surprised me a lot. Actually, I expected some professional discussions on this finance move, but at that time this board was full of condemns on the society. Those users didn’t understand the real meanings of this move but always believed this move was harmful to them. Some discussions are translated and listed below:

Money becomes more and more valueless, how can we live. (Actually, we know, this move will decrease the liquidity)

Notes are being produced ceaselessly. This move is just shown to our common people, telling us they are working.

I have no idea why these people are wild about publishing such posts. Actually, the revolution and opening has already made our life much better, though the polarization became a little higher (Probably, it is because that common people in China possess a psychology that they have no fear of the poverty but the equality). We should recognize that our government are taking steps. Be easy and generous to everything, I believe it will make us much happier and optimistic.

Last week, I was asked to give a detail developing plan for a new module. I just broken down major items into minor items and gave each minor items an estimation about the effort. Our boss replied and seems not satisfied with my plan.

After discussed with some colleagues, I realized that I made a mistake. I thought everything from a programer’s aspect. Each minor steps is described with technical details which probably our boss doesn’t care about. And from her view, probably the most important things she want to know are the target of each steps, the risk of each steps and the schedule. Only with these she could make a decision if we should put resources onto this module.

Actually, I also emphasized a point in our Toastmaster event. I said we should make clear who we are giving a speech to, what the audience want to know.  These two, speech or planning, are the same thing. They are just the activity of thinking. We should think from others’ position not only our own one, so that we could make us understood by others.