Author: Manoj Ranaweera

Dennis Howlett just got my attention to Gartner’s 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle Highlights Key Technology Themes. Unfortunately, I cannot read above graph (not clear) and do not have access to the full report. The little I can see, suggests web 2.0 is at the peak and VoIP has reached a plateau. I slightly disagree as both got lot more mileage to cover. Update 1: Click here for better image……. Technorati Tags: Gartner, Dennis Howlett, Web 2.0

On 2 Aug 2006, Infor, a portfolio company of Golden Gate Capital, accelerated its market share by acquiring Extensity, a leading financial performance management company and Systems Union Group, the UK based financial and performance management solutions provider. With the acquisition, Infor now has annual revenues totalling $2.1bn, offices in 100 countries and approximately 70,000 customers. Visit Infor for the full press release. What is the impact of this acquisition has on ebdex? Quite a bit! My planned meeting with a senior executive of Pegasus, which is owned by System Union Group has now been postponed. However, the acquisition also increases…

Dave Stephens, CEO of Coupa commented on Competing with the “Open Source Way" at his Procurement Central. Extracts from his comments (modified to suit): Sourceforge has over 100,000 active opensource projects. Sometimes particular projects, gain good interest over time, like with Salesforce.com. But wait a minute, Salesforce.com isn’t an open source firm. Closed source firms and service providers (Google & Microsoft included) are beginning to open up around the edges and use the movement where it makes sense for them. Then I commented on his blog: We will make our API “Open Source”. It does not make commercial sense to…

Dennis Howlett reported that Niall Kennedy is leaving Microsoft to start-up his own business, after joining Microsoft in April 2006. It is the first time I came across the existence of Niall and I like to address two points (you need to read his blog to understand why he is leaving Microsoft): Whilst companies allow certain freedom to promote innovative ideas it’s employees have, in most cases the level of freedom is controlled by organisation’s own corporate strategy and policies. Wrongly, many organisations take a short-term view specially if it has to deal with drop in share price, revenues and/or…

According to Onestat.com, Mozilla Firefox is the second most widely used browser in the world. It retaines the same ranking in USA, Canada and UK. It has gained 14.07% and 16.98% market share in the USA and Canada respectively. UK market is split as follows with Microsoft IE dorminanting the market: 1. Microsoft IE 93.37 % 2. Mozilla Firefox 4.94 % 3. Apple Safari 0.99 % 4. Netscape 0.23 % 5. Opera 0.39 % The report is dated 2 Nov 2005. Anybody got the latest figures? Technorati Tags : Microsoft IE, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Browsers,…

Whilst researching SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certification Authorities, my team (thanks Roshan) came across WhichSSL set up by Comodo Inc. Comodo claims they are the world’s second largest and fastest growing High Assurance Certification Authority. Of course everyone has heard of Verisign, but not Comodo! And their UK office is based in Manchester. So I started exploring the use of their SSL certificates for ebdex.  Isn’t it great to do business with local companies? You know that if things go wrong, you can easily turn up at their door step! What a refreshing thought! According to WhichSSL, the market share…

It is so frustrating to hear another start-up launching an EIPP solution ahead of ebdex. We seem to be stuck with never ending cycle of misfortunes! I will cover the story later. Technorati Tags : EIPP

Many companies make money by optimising other peoples websites for search (search engine optimisation). However, google seems to favour blogs. For example, I have blogged about following companies: Yuuguu Affno Tiyga ebdex Type any of the above on google search and see where my blog appears. Usually No. 2 or 3. I know this would not last long, as blogs become more common and traditional static and dynamic web strategies fight for top ranks. I wonder whether anyone done any research in this area! Technorati Tags : Yuuguu, ebdex, Google, affno, Tiyga, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO

Think twice if you plan to select your favourite holiday destination as your company name (e.g. Marrakech)! Your competition suddenly include holiday industry, and everyone who blogs after visiting the place as you fight your way to No. 1 position on google.com. Unless of course, that is not important to you! In my opinion, Google should form part of marketing strategy of any company, small and large. I constantly look at google to see our ranking. Earlier days, ebdex had to fight with a games company (something about radio active cows!), now pretty much stable at No.1. Sometimes, I do…

Jason Busch at Spend Matters recently commented on Marrakech.  According to the European Leaders Network, Dublin technology firm, AMT-Sybex has purchased Marrakech, for an undisclosed sum. According to Marrakech’s website, it’s investors include: Doughty Hanson & Co Cross Atlantic Capital Partners Crucible Corporation Gartmore Group AMT · SYBEX Group In Mar 2006, I had the opportunity to meet one of the Venture Capitalists listed above who funded Marrakech! He hinted at that time, they were looking to dispose Marrakech from their portfolio, having invested and re-invested in the company since late ’90s. I believe a total investment of over $20m has…