VMWare: coming to a Smartphone near you

On Monday (10 November 2008), VMWare (NYSE: VMW) announced the release of a new product - Mobile Virtualization Platform. According to an article at InformationWeek.com, the product is described as a "a thin layer of software that will be embedded on mobile phones. It decouples the applications and data from the underlying hardware."

What does this mean for you?

Eventually it will mean that the types of applications that you can install on your smartphone will no longer be dependent on the specific device. In more grandiose terms, it standardizes the mobile platform in the same way that Windows standardized the desktop. No longer will mobile apps need to be tweaked and adjusted for a specific device. Instead, they will write for the platform, greatly reducing time-to-market for applications and substantially increasing customer choice.

The mobile virtualization platform could enable phone makers to bring handsets to market faster, and it could simplify migrating personal data off phones.

None of this will happen overnight. VMWare is negotiating with handset manufacturers and plans to have devices on the street in about a year. But we can be confident that the development community will begin to exploit this new technology very quickly.

Link to the InformationWeek.com article: VMware Brings Virtualization To Smartphones

BI for Open Source

There seems to be no shortage of Business Intelligence offerings, even as the industry continues to consolidate. One BI firm, Actuate (NSDQ: ACTU) has put its chips on the open source end of the table. Their next release, v 10, is targeted for shipment in the next two months, and it promises enhanced support for the Eclipse Foundation project called BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools).

The company announced that more than 5 million copies of BIRT were downloaded during the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2008. This tells me that small and mid-sized firms are actively pursuing ways to exploit BI without the enormous upfront costs that Oracle and IBM require.

Of course, downloading the software is not the same as using the software, and firms will still need professional assistance to access and integrate the data. Inexpensive software will not absolve executives from the need to understand what BI can and cannot do, and to guide the initiatives accordingly. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the benefits of BI and the steps you should take to get the most out of this exciting technology.

More information on the BIRT Project: BIRT on Wikipedia
The BIRT Homepage: The BIRT Project

Storage innovations

Data storage could be in for its biggest innovations in years.

SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) recently unveiled a flash drive that starts to address the random write performance issues of earlier versions. This is one of those very subtle, but potentially transformative events in technology innovation. That's because it has the capability to render traditional hard drives obsolete.

Conventional hard drives have undergone massive improvements over the past decade. They are faster, more reliable and more efficient than ever. But the underlying technology is fundamentally the same as it was 20 years ago. Flash drives represented a big shift in storage, especially in terms of portability. No longer did your hard drive need its own carry-on bag. Multiple Gb's of data can be carried in your pocket. The trade-off, though, is speed. While a 5Gb memory stick is easy to tote around, it can take you a fair amount of time to use it... especially when you're adding data.

SanDisk claims to have made a big leap on this, with their ExtremeFFS file management system. If it delivers on its potential, then buying a PC with a 80Gb hard-drive will no longer be necessary. Your new laptop will be far lighter without that big magnet stuck inside. Think about the convenience of transferring files from your camera and expand it exponentially.

Keep your eye on SanDisk. They could be a big winner next year.

Ellison sounds spooked

Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), has decided that Software-as-a-Service is falling short of expectations. He pointed to Salesforce.com as an example of a SaaS firm that hasn't improved its profitability as much as some might have hoped, even after 10 years of solid performance.

To me, this sounds a lot like the naysayers of the early 1980's. There were those who simply couldn't believe that an individual would have any need for their own personal computer. I wonder if Mr. Ellison is worried that his company, built on the now traditional big upfront licensing costs plus scandalously high "maintenance" fees, will follow in DEC's footsteps. Perhaps he believes that he can give a few prospects second thoughts about throwing in with a rival SaaS vendor.

If this belief represents the extent of Oracle's strategic thinking, then their future is not terribly bright. That Mr. Ellison made these remarks during an earnings call makes me even more bearish on thier long-term prospects. Oracle seems to be betting their success on the failure of a business model that is gaining market acceptance with each passing quarter.