Why did BMC buy Remedy?

Why did BMC buy Remedy?

“Because they were in pain”

Add comment October 31st, 2006

Musings: Should Opsware be bought?

I was talking to a senior analyst (non-financial) and they mentioned that it is a possibility that someone may buy Opsware. There are several large companies who are not as strong on the datacenter/provisioning side of the business. Opsware and Bladelogic are the two strong companies in that space. Who ever might buy them, needs a fat checkbook though — so has to be one of the big players like MSFT, HP, CA, EMC?

Add comment October 31st, 2006

Who is in control?

She said: Who is in control?

He Said: You Are

She Said: Thank You

(Kids heard laughing in the background)

… They think they are in control …

Add comment October 31st, 2006

What can ITIL learn from American Gas Stations?

As an immigrant to the US, it took a while before I got comfortable using the bathrooms in the gas stations on long drives. In most other countries, the bathrooms tend to be unusable. In Britain you have to deposit money to use them and the auto-clean can be interesting experiences.

My wife and I always talked about how they managed to keep those things clean. And it occurred to us one day that it was all because of the long unwieldy things the key is attached to. You can’t loose the key or leave it in the lock.

As I sit in a lot of these ITIL conversations around change management, I find myself smiling. Only if we could maintain the same process around our infrastructure, like the gas stations have around their bathrooms, availability would jump another 9 atleast. Keep the infrastructure locked, till there is an approved change (like the guy who bought gas at your station) and then give them the key with a really long handle, so they can’t loose it or forget it or pass it to someone else

There are some great ideas and parallels in the book by Suellen Hoy

Add comment October 30th, 2006

The Change Process as “Unfreezing, Changing and Refreezing”

IT Change Management can learn from what has been learnt about change management more from a people and organizational perspective. Here is an excerpt from “Change Management 101: A Primer” available at http://home.att.net/~nickols/change.htm

Section III: The Change Process

The Change Process as “Unfreezing, Changing and Refreezing”

The process of change has been characterized as having three basic stages: unfreezing, changing, and re-freezing. This view draws heavily on Kurt Lewin’s adoption of the systems concept of homeostasis or dynamic stability.

What is useful about this framework is that it gives rise to thinking about a staged approach to changing things. Looking before you leap is usually sound practice.

What is not useful about this framework is that it does not allow for change efforts that begin with the organization in extremis (i.e., already “unfrozen”), nor does it allow for organizations faced with the prospect of having to “hang loose” for extended periods of time (i.e., staying “unfrozen”).

In other words, the beginning and ending point of the unfreeze-change-refreeze model is stability — which, for some people and some organizations, is a luxury. For others, internal stability spells disaster. A tortoise on the move can overtake even the fastest hare if that hare stands still.It gets more interesting for organizations if the people doing the unfreezing and refreezing are different than those making change. Then this is very powerful insight.

Add comment October 30th, 2006

Musings: Should Intel buy nVidia?

I was recently at a talk by Dave McQueeny, CTO IBM Federal, where he talked about some interesting trends in the industry. One of the things he mentioned was that for some time now it has become difficult for chip companies like Intel to increase the processor speed year after year by 30%.

So it is speculated that Intel stopped marketing giga Hertz as the main reason to upgrade and being smart has shifted the focus to number of core’s in the CPU. AMD has made heat consumption an issue, which again Dave mentioned is an issue because now the power consumed by a processor when its idle versus when it is working is roughly the same and so it never gets to cool down.

Another impact of this shift may be in how ODM’s select chipsets to put on a motherboard. Since they wont be touting giga hertz, they are also shifting to heat consumtion, number of cores etc. Will the graphics capability become an important selling point? You do need sophisticated graphics cards to work with 24″ or 30″ displays.

What do you think?

Add comment October 15th, 2006

Rumor: Opsware to buy Tripwire?

Opsware stock is trading roughly 10x revenue, high for its sector? Good time to buy companies. Tripwire had about 35M in revenue in 2005 as reported in the Portland Business Journal (http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2006/06/05/daily51.html). If revenue this year is around 50 that would be a significant increase for Opsware. If they pay 200-250M for the acqusition the stock should go up 50% because of the revenue jump … making it effectively a 375M acqution … which should be a good outcome for Tripwire … which has raised about 60M.

Add comment October 8th, 2006

Rumor: EMC to buy BMC?

Ok. Its not driven by the alphabet soup. The rumor abounds though after EMC purchase of nLayers which got them into the CMDB space. There have been rumors about IBM buying BMC and of BMC being taken over by private equity. But EMC buying them may make some sense.

Add comment October 4th, 2006