Predictions for 2011

Happy New Year dear readers and I hope 2011 is filled with success for you all.  With the New Year come resolutions and predictions and I've read more than a few.  So staying with the theme, I thought I'd venture a few predictions of my own on the information and cloud industries just for fun.

Prediction 1 - Organizational shake up at Thomson Reuters Markets.  Although the A-Team group's Andrew Delaney has been on this since mid-last year, I think this year is where changes finally occur.  An influx of external talent into the Enterprise and Sales & Trading organizations, a major sales re-org kicked off this year and poor performance by some of the Investment & Advisory segments leads me to think some shuffling is due.  Sources also tell me of a general hiring freeze through Q1 of 2011 which also has preceded organizational changes in the past, seems to indicate some shifting of the deck-chairs.

Prediction 2 - Factset finally expands into Investment Banking with more gusto.  Reading through the recent Factset filings indicate they have been steadily investing into their stable of content assets with high value into the IB space.  Enhancements to the ex-TF Worldscope data (now called Factset Fundamentals), new issues, M&A data as well as other PE/VC data sets, seem to indicate they are ready to go after the junior banker/knowledge worker space.  They might not have all the necessary assets for the senior banker but their partnership with Dow Jones supports that sub-segment.

Prediction 3 - InfoGroup enters the financial services space.  Clare Hart, CEO of InfoGroup, is too smart and too experienced not to.  Add to it her recent hire Gemma Postlethwaite from Thomson Reuters to run products and content, tells me they are shifting from serving only the sales and marketing segments.  Ms. Postlethwaite has significant experience in the Investment Banking space and built the latest Thomson Reuters Banking desktop product.  As well, her experience in managing the data alliances for the Investment & Advisory division of Thomson Reuters more recently, gives her insight into the other competitors and their relative content strengths.  Its a good hire and indicates to me Infogroup to make a push into financial services, specifically in Investment Banking before year end.

Prediction 4 - Market data accelerates into the cloud - and not through big name vendors. As I've mentioned before, smaller cloud-based 'data vendors' are starting to appear to support off-trade floor uses of market data.  This is the year one or two make their presence known.  While the name vendors - Thomson Reuters and IDC mainly - invest in a 'market data cloud' themselves, I expect firms of all sizes look to other providers.  Firms are already realizing the 'standardized' data product of the vendors is limiting and in often interferes with their data strategies.  Access to raw, "as prepared" data directly from sources, rather than the packaged data through data vendors, will become increasingly in demand and impact on big-box vendors adversely.  A couple firms will start to break-through and will start to erode large vendor revenues for off-trade floor data needs.

Prediction 5 - Apple acquires Salesforce.com.  With Mr. Jobs health in question, Apple will need a strong voice and leader to support if not replace Mr. Jobs for the overall good of the company.  As Microsoft has shown, putting a good operations guy in the number 1 seat doesn't lead to maintaining a leadership position and innovation.  These company traits start at the top and Mr. Benioff's resume is solid enough to replace Mr. Jobs.  As I said in a prior post, back in June of last year, the tie-up of Apple and SFDC complete both firms and puts them as the sole competitor to Microsoft, outside of search and gaming.  SFDC sees the iPad and Apple technology platforms as the clear winner and placed a firm-wide bet on the Apple products.  However, should Mr, Jobs condition be debilitating, and we hope it is not for nothing else than for him and his family's sake, Apple will need to find a new head as the firm faces increased competition on its core businesses and seeks to expand into the enterprise market.  That search for a new CEO should start and end with Mr. Benioff.

There you have it, 5 fearless predictions for 2011.  Appreciate comments on any or all of them, but we will see in 12 months time if any are actually accurate.  If anyone has any predictions of their own, love to hear them.

Until next time....

The End of No Software?

The other day, I caught a story how Salesforce.com - the pioneers of No Software and Cloud Computing - are building an app for the iPad and Android devices both expected in 2011.

That's right: the leader of the cult of no software is developing - gasp - a software application.

Clearly I am missing something. Yes I understand how important mobile computing is and the rest of it, however, I am at a loss to understand why Salesforce.com would step out of the cloud and onto terra firma in the world of deployed software. I am wracking my brain to understand why they would do this. Their applications and platform work just as well on Safari and Chrome as they do on IE and Firefox so why divert valuable development resources into building a closed box application on the iPad.

Then it struck me - might some merger or the like happen between Apple and Salesforce.com some time in the very near future?

It makes perfect sense (to me anyway). Salesforce.com are completely complementary to Apple in so many ways and together they are devastating. I'll explain:

Apple has:
1) Great devices
2) Great application platform for mobile computing for consumer apps
3) Great ecosystem of firms building consumer apps
4) Great customer loyalty and numbers
5) Market cap of over $240 billion
6) Strong central leadership and a CEO who is a visionary and thought leader

Apple hasn't:
1) Trust of enterprises/large corporations around security or application development
2) Any real revenue from corporate businesses
3) A clear successor for Steve Jobs (sorry - they don't)

Salesforce.com has:
1) Great application platform trusted by large corporations
2) Great customer loyalty and growth
3) Market cap of just under $12 billion
4) Strong central leadership and a CEO who is a visionary and thought leader

Salesforce.com hasn't:
1) Any consumer-based revenue
2) No device business
3) A tough road to go from $1 billion in revenue to $5 billion as planned

So what if you put these two firms together, what do you have:
1) A firm that can deliver end to end applications - browser or device-based
2) A huge ecosystem of partners building apps for either businesses or consumers
3) A firm ready to merge consumer and corporate apps into one channel
4) Technology trusted by businesses and consumers
5) A firm to really compete with Microsoft and Google and win - big
6) A successor for Steve who is 10 years younger than he is

I might be enjoying the glorious Friday weather too much but this makes way more sense than those Google-Salesforce.com or Oracle-Salesforce.com rumours/stories we've all heard. Imagine - the power of the device leader with the cloud computing leader. Wow.

It would be an absolute game changer for the industry and complete the shift to cloud/mobile computing. Businesses would be able to buy in more heavily into the mobile cloud story with the combined entity. Parker Harris and his team would address any security concerns with the OS and take the Apple productivity tools into their cloud with relative ease (that's my guess). The ecosystem could tap into two channels - consumer and business - and start to develop huge revenues through each.

RIM would be done and really have no choice but to sell to Microsoft to give them a viable device business. Microsoft would need to double-down on Azure and hope their .NET developer community can win out over the Apple OS and Java developer community that the Apple-Salesforce.com entity would carry.

If there is something to this hypothesis, it would be a good year or so away (didn't Salesforce.com say they would have an iPad app by mid-2011) and does assume Mr. Jobs is ready to pull back a from running Apple much like Bill Gates has done with Microsoft. I think Mr. Jobs concern is he has a Steve Ballmer type ready not a Steve Jobs type. No offense to Mr. Ballmer but he isnt in the 'visioning thing'.

Marc Benioff is - big time. There are parallels between Mr. Jobs and Mr. Benioff in that Mr. Benioff worked for a time at Apple, has been the slayer of giants and mover of mountains in leading the cloud computing charge. Mr. Jobs we know has done similar in the mobile space. And both have a passion for getting Microsoft.

What if......