IBM @ SXSWi 2012: Interview with Stowe Boyd (by IBMSocialBiz)
We talked about Cluetrain, the social revolution online, work media tools, the impact on media companies, the changing way we read, and my upcoming ebook: ‘The Business Of Social Business’.
Roughly equal companies in terms of market cap — $220B — but with IBM’s enterprise value about $50B, I am predicting a merger of IBM and Microsoft with IBM leading the merged company, Ballmer retiring, and Microsoft being run — at least for a while — as a branded line of business in the twice as large, new IBM.
The fit of Microsoft’s enterprise solutions — Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, database, programming tools — with IBM’s corporate offerings is great. Also, IBM is the perfect partner to capitalize on the (eventual) migration away from Windows as a PC and server O/S.
As part of the deal, IBM would spin out various parts:
We’ll see, but I think $25-50B could be saved in a merger, with all of that going to the bottom line for investors.
Urban Renewal
These 10 global infrastructure and tech companies are among the early leaders in smart-city programs.
“Like Siemens and ABB, most of the beneficiaries of urbanization will be infrastructure and technology outfits that provide or utilize smartphones, sensors and software and services to track the use of a city’s assets and commit resources when and where they’re needed. Cloud technology, which can cut costs while boosting computing capacity, will play a big role. Even social media will participate, as cities multiply the ways a citizen can spot a problem–anything from a water-main break to a traffic snarl–and then alert others to avoid it or do something about it.
Technology researchers at IDC estimate the size of the smart-city information-technology market is now $34 billion annually and will gain 18%-plus a year to $57 billion by 2014. That’s not a huge amount to global giants, but certainly enough to help drive growth. (The companies don’t break out earnings related to these projects.) The market has broadened to include items like broadband connectivity, green belts, renewable energy, green buildings and other intelligent-city systems. “You are talking about smart water, smart transportation, better public safety,” says Jennifer Bélissent, a consultant at Forrester.”
Kara Swisher reports on a soon-to-be-transacted funding for Twitter based on an $8B valuation, raising $800M, with $400M to be used to cash out employees and earlier investors.
Kara Swisher
This is more than double what Twitter was valued at when it got $200 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins in December at a $3.7 billion valuation.
Once the latest investments are complete, Twitter’s total cash haul since it was founded five years ago will be $760 million.
[…]
The latest funding is an important one for Twitter and will up the pressure for its management, including CEO Dick Costolo, to really get its business growing in terms of revenue and profits.
Twitter is still struggling with coming up with a truly lucrative business model, and its execs have presented a number of them, such as promoted tweets, largely based on advertising.
I wonder if Costolo has looked into the enterprise side of things, and I don’t mean social media. I mean work media: helping businesses coordinate, communicate, cooperate, and collaborate internally, and with partners and customers?
It’s a large and growing market, with competitors like Jive, IBM, Yammer, and Podio, but Twitter has huge advantages, and could move aggressively.
Apple’s announcements yesterday […] can all be viewed as increasing ease of use, but from the perspective of Apple CEO Steve Jobs they perform an even more vital function — killing Microsoft.
[…]
The quicker Microsoft can turn itself into IBM the better for Redmond, because that appears to be their only chance.
Closing down a lot of the comsumer products at Cisco, including Flip, as Leena Rao reports:
Cisco has just issued a release stating that in a strategic plan to “align its operations,” the company will exit parts of its consumer businesses and realign the remaining consumer business to support four of its five key company priorities: core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video. One of the casualties of this realignment: Cisco’s video camera Flip business, which was part of its $590 million acquisition of Pure Digital.
As part of the plan, Cisco will close down its Flip business and “support current FlipShare customers and partners with a transition plan.” Cisco will also refocus its Home Networking business and will integrate Cisco umi into the company’s Business TelePresence product line. As part of the transition, Cisco plans to eliminate 550 jobs.
Flip didn’t really make sense in 2009, when video was available on cell phones and the writing was on the wall. This is Cisco retrenchment from throwing around a lot of ready cash, and trying to refocus on the business sector.
I bet Cisco will be acquired within the year. All of this cleaning up — and passing along the costs in the form of stock valuation falling — will make the company attractive to people like IBM, Oracle, or Microsoft.
At the Enterprise 2.0 conference, and I will not be blogging a lot, but I have hit my first dislocation.
David was wonderful, and recapped the messages of his new book, Everything is Miscellaneous, leaving us on a wonderful philosophical slight-of-hand: when everything is miscellaneous — when all information is both information and a means to makes sense of it — and the means to makes sense of it is put into our hands, then we, the edglings, control everything. It’s our world, our internet, our digital future.
I wanted to be marching down a street in the sunshine, arm-in-arm with my brothers and sisters with flags waving, singing the Marseillais. Truly. No kidding around.
Andrew was more quotidian, opting to give a report card on the progress of the Enterprise 2.0 meme in the 18 months since he coined the term. (I whispered William James’ adage to him, just before he took the podium, “you coin a new term at your own peril.”) He was at the same time both more positive (giving high marks to the spread of the meme and the maturity of the technology) and more negative (on the time frame of real revolution in enterprises) than I am. But still, I found it interesting.
Then… thud. A general manager from IBM’s software group is telling me about IBM’s Enterprise 2.0 push with business mashups and Lotus Connectors. It’s actually something I am interested in, at least a little, but the context of these ads is very, very old school.
Maybe I am too harsh when I say it just sounds mashifying business portals. Still, this is likely the transitional period that we will have to go through. The revolution will come as a series of small transitions, and so I have to put up with IBM slide shows with dozens of trademarked buzzwords, like Info 2.0(r), Lotus (r) Connections (r), annd QEDWiki (r). And an analogy to the Web 1.0 Internet/intranet/extranet model, and telling us that the Web 2.0 shift is not your father’s Internet anymore. Ok.
But it’s still arresting to go from the stratospheric thoughts of Weinberger to the screenshots of IBM’s thinly veiled marketing pitch. I have psychological whiplash.
Social anthropologist, clairvoyant, postfuturist.
My work is social tools and their impact on media, business, and society.
I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections.
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