Eric Lundquist

More sales per second at a lower cost. Now thats an idea that would warm the heart of even the most cold-hearted bean counter. The mathematical concept came up during a conversation with Akamai CEO George Conrades. The topic of the conversation was what Akamai is up to now and how to measure technology success […]

Dell is on a roll. There is no disputing that. Recently, I spent a day in Texas at the companys financial analysts meeting, which was more like an analyst love-in. You would have been hard-pressed to find an analyst not remarking about the companys ability to bounce over the bursting of the dot-com bubble or […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wants lots of enterprise customers. That is not news to anyone. The news is the willingness of the company to make alliances with former competitors to get those customers. Thanks go to a customer base firm in its commitment to a mixed computing environment, the Linux alternative and IBM for getting […]

The ecology lesson for today is about the care and feeding of the technology infrastructure. Vendors that understand the technology ecology and create products and services that promote the intertwined relationship are able to prosper. Customers who understand the technology ecology are able to offer the goods and services their companies need to build a […]

When is a trend for real? When a vendor gets behind the trend—from the president to the parking lot attendant—and when customers ask for the product instead of having it forced on them. I spent last week at a string of vendor meetings in Silicon Valley trying to distinguish the trends that will stick from […]

As I burned leaves during my annual spring cleanup early last week, I had a realization: The next big thing in the use of the Internet for business is right in front of us—if business execs are willing to take a little heat. First, let me back up a bit. When Amazon and other e-tailers […]

You can tell a lot about someone by the magazines they read. If someone reads Sports Illustrated, Sporting News and Baseball Digest, you know that reader is a sports aficionado with an interest in baseball. Likewise, in the technology industry you used to be able to identify a technologist by his product selections. For the […]

The theme of last weeks IBM PartnerWorld conference was “Winning in an on-demand world.” And despite some excessive glitz involving leather-clad tumblers and Segway cycles (excusable because it was in Las Vegas), and the somewhat-odd spectacle of IBM CEO Sam Palmisano still trying to define what on demand is a year and a half after […]

Many and varied were the responses to my last two columns on outsourcing. Many were the readers who wished that I might experience firsthand the agony of seeing my job head across the ocean. Varied were the complaints of those who have seen their skills replicated overseas—complaints about the nature of the companies for which […]

Innovation. In defending Microsofts monopoly, Bill Gates said it was the goal of the companys product strategies. More recently, Hewlett-Packard boss Carly Fiorina championed innovation, rather than trade barriers, as the best counterweight to outsourcing. If innovation, like eating right and exercising more, is so good for us, how come we arent doing enough of […]

Vivek Paul, Vice Chairman of Wipro Technologies, the $1 billion India-based outsourcing company, told me a very interesting story. When his 1995-model car recently needed a repair, he dutifully clipped a coupon from a Silicon Valley newspaper offering 20 percent off the regular service rate. When told that even with the discount the rate would […]

We live in an increasingly impermanent world. Few things are built to last. And yet some things are uncannily permanent. Some things will remain; others will not. First, here are a few things that will go away: Spam. If you want to mark your calendar, 2006 is the year that Bill Gates predicts spam will […]