C4 News Talking *******
Discussion
Minor rant.
Haven't really watched C4 News for a few months - but since when did it become quite so left wing and frankly daft?
I know its the Guardian equivalent of the news channels, but now its not even vaguely hidden. For instance, we had 15 minutes of stuff about Israel that included a CND soap dodger who had intimate knowledge of US weapon movements that was presented as fact rather than "I'm simply guessing here". And so forth.
And then the most stupid article. Microsoft laying off 5,000 workers. Apparently they are under pressure from free software (read Ubuntu).
The business editor then concludes that the business model (of selling software to the punter) may be over???!!?? wtf? What ever thought this guy could be a business editor for a news channel. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid. Whatever next, car companies will stop developing and selling cars because the business model doesn't work???
Its a recession ffs. The reason MS are booting staff is because despite their whopping profits they have a window of opportunity to rationalize their business without unions having a go at them.
Haven't really watched C4 News for a few months - but since when did it become quite so left wing and frankly daft?
I know its the Guardian equivalent of the news channels, but now its not even vaguely hidden. For instance, we had 15 minutes of stuff about Israel that included a CND soap dodger who had intimate knowledge of US weapon movements that was presented as fact rather than "I'm simply guessing here". And so forth.
And then the most stupid article. Microsoft laying off 5,000 workers. Apparently they are under pressure from free software (read Ubuntu).
The business editor then concludes that the business model (of selling software to the punter) may be over???!!?? wtf? What ever thought this guy could be a business editor for a news channel. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid. Whatever next, car companies will stop developing and selling cars because the business model doesn't work???
Its a recession ffs. The reason MS are booting staff is because despite their whopping profits they have a window of opportunity to rationalize their business without unions having a go at them.
tinman0 said:
The business editor then concludes that the business model (of selling software to the punter) may be over???!!?? wtf? What ever thought this guy could be a business editor for a news channel. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid. Whatever next, car companies will stop developing and selling cars because the business model doesn't work???
Oh I don't know, with opensource being about doing the exact same thing for free, no one needs to even try and get hold of a dodgy copy of Microsoft Office anymore.MS don't sell that many copies to individuals anymore, it's all business to the hardware companies for sales pre-installed on new machines. If they start to struggle, what's left for them?
Microsoft missed the internet boat early on and they're still playing catch-up, I'll agree the redundancies are to help trim some of the fat in the recession, but other avenues of software development can't be helping them.
They need another 'Windows' type product that revolutionises how we use PCs etc, like the original did from DOS years ago to keep the big money coming in. Bet they're still not too worried about going under mind, I'd like to be a tenner behind Bill Gates in the accountancy race!
Hedders said:
tinman0 said:
I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid.
I thought they stopped that practice years ago. These days, they sell the software and then develop it!develop, sell, fix
tinman0 said:
I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid.
No, it isn't.Microsoft would love to get out of the "selling software" game and into the "renting software" game.
It's all about software as a service, baybee.
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
...and end up paying even more than you ever did for the same software - except with the added problem that when the internets go down, your software provides (at best) limited service.Great. Sign me up for that utopia.
In many ways, open source has been a disaster for the end user - whilst there have been some big wins, the 'why pay for it, someone will develop it for free' mentality has made developing some applications near impossible.
Tuna said:
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
...and end up paying even more than you ever did for the same software - except with the added problem that when the internets go down, your software provides (at best) limited service.Great. Sign me up for that utopia.
In many ways, open source has been a disaster for the end user - whilst there have been some big wins, the 'why pay for it, someone will develop it for free' mentality has made developing some applications near impossible.
Some of the worlds biggest companies are running business critical applications on SaaS systems. The cost, and risk, is comparatively tiny in relation to running massive in house systems where you are running the entire infastructure to power your own applications.
If you need to power a your TV what would you rather do - plug it into the wall and pay as you go leveraging a massive, proven, and reliable infrastructure or build a power station in your garden?
Then you have the, frankly enormous benefit of partner connectivity of a platform sat outside of your four walls.
It's the future.
brum said:
Ah, yes. Now you have said that your point is abundantly clear 
I can expand if you want. Outsourcing development, provision and maintenance of mission critical systems was seen as the universal panacea five years ago. Outsource your applications and some nice man in India would take away your risks and woes and provide your system requirements for a fraction of the price of the 'old fashioned' expensive installations. Many of the claims being made for SaaS were made for outsourcing entire IT/IS departments.It turned out the issues around outsourcing (communication, time differences, quality control, enforcement etc.) made the benefits far less significant, and in many (painful) cases the issues far outweighed the claimed rewards.
Now SaaS pundits are promising that this new paradigm will be the universal panacea. Cynical old developers think that the practicalities will turn out to reduce the benefit and increase the cost. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme.
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
I spent an awful lot of time in the summer and autumn of 2000 with companies psuhing this who wanted to IPO. brum said:
Tuna said:
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
...and end up paying even more than you ever did for the same software - except with the added problem that when the internets go down, your software provides (at best) limited service.Great. Sign me up for that utopia.
In many ways, open source has been a disaster for the end user - whilst there have been some big wins, the 'why pay for it, someone will develop it for free' mentality has made developing some applications near impossible.
Some of the worlds biggest companies are running business critical applications on SaaS systems. The cost, and risk, is comparatively tiny in relation to running massive in house systems where you are running the entire infastructure to power your own applications.
If you need to power a your TV what would you rather do - plug it into the wall and pay as you go leveraging a massive, proven, and reliable infrastructure or build a power station in your garden?
Then you have the, frankly enormous benefit of partner connectivity of a platform sat outside of your four walls.
It's the future.
If it were SaaS'd, then during those time periods it would be unavailable. Plus it wouldn't just be our connection, if the providors connection went down we'd have the same problem which was illustrated perfectly by Salesforce last year.
For that reason, whilst I am IT Manager, our systems will stay in my control. And when I'm not, I don't give a flying f
k 
dwilkie said:
brum said:
Tuna said:
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
...and end up paying even more than you ever did for the same software - except with the added problem that when the internets go down, your software provides (at best) limited service.Great. Sign me up for that utopia.
In many ways, open source has been a disaster for the end user - whilst there have been some big wins, the 'why pay for it, someone will develop it for free' mentality has made developing some applications near impossible.
Some of the worlds biggest companies are running business critical applications on SaaS systems. The cost, and risk, is comparatively tiny in relation to running massive in house systems where you are running the entire infastructure to power your own applications.
If you need to power a your TV what would you rather do - plug it into the wall and pay as you go leveraging a massive, proven, and reliable infrastructure or build a power station in your garden?
Then you have the, frankly enormous benefit of partner connectivity of a platform sat outside of your four walls.
It's the future.
If it were SaaS'd, then during those time periods it would be unavailable. Plus it wouldn't just be our connection, if the providors connection went down we'd have the same problem which was illustrated perfectly by Salesforce last year.
For that reason, whilst I am IT Manager, our systems will stay in my control. And when I'm not, I don't give a flying f
k To be honest if the line goes down into any business and all of a sudden you have no access to web, e-mail or phone the entire business kind of grinds to a halt until your connected again - we've all been there. WTF am I supposed to do now - I can't even get onto Pistonheads.
The SaaS vendors that are running ERP type applications have so many service providers that their outbound service isn't going to get shut down easily. I'm not particularly familiar with the SF.com outage last year but thought it was due to scheduled maintainence not effectively communicated to their partners. The big multinationals running SaaS applications aren't going to sign up for this without sufficient assurances that it's pretty robust.
But since its cropped up Salesforce is an epically successful business - due in no small part to its delivery model. A single infrastructure leveraged by everyone where all users benefit immediately from any improvements or upgrades rather than having to pay for, and install updates.
The biggest wins for SaaS are where partner connectivity is a key driver. Connecting companies to a single integration point, and managing that data feed and quality, before feeding it back out again is so much more beneficial than individual companies building millions of connections into thousands of disparate systems. Thats where the immediate benefit is.
And I quite like Channel 4 news.
Edited by brum on Thursday 22 January 23:49
CommanderJameson said:
tinman0 said:
I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid.
No, it isn't.Microsoft would love to get out of the "selling software" game and into the "renting software" game.
It's all about software as a service, baybee.
Microsoft earn a huge amount of cash from their business. To say that their business model is somehow "finished" when they pulled $16bn in turnover and $4b in profit in a QUARTER, is stupid.
Let write out the amount of cash that MS turnover a year:
$48,000,000,000
And now lets write out their profits:
$16,000,000,000
This is not a company whose business model has suddenly failed FFS. For some lanky t
t on C4 to say "their business model is over" is talking out their arse and doesn't deserve to have that job.Edited by tinman0 on Thursday 22 January 23:58
brum said:
dwilkie said:
brum said:
Tuna said:
brum said:
On demand delivery of software is without a doubt the future. The days of paying $20-$30m to SAP/Oracle to run your ERP is coming to an end. Pay an annual subscription, pick and choose the functional aspects you need. Leverage a multi million dollar on-demand infrastructure rather than building your own.
...and end up paying even more than you ever did for the same software - except with the added problem that when the internets go down, your software provides (at best) limited service.Great. Sign me up for that utopia.
In many ways, open source has been a disaster for the end user - whilst there have been some big wins, the 'why pay for it, someone will develop it for free' mentality has made developing some applications near impossible.
Some of the worlds biggest companies are running business critical applications on SaaS systems. The cost, and risk, is comparatively tiny in relation to running massive in house systems where you are running the entire infastructure to power your own applications.
If you need to power a your TV what would you rather do - plug it into the wall and pay as you go leveraging a massive, proven, and reliable infrastructure or build a power station in your garden?
Then you have the, frankly enormous benefit of partner connectivity of a platform sat outside of your four walls.
It's the future.
If it were SaaS'd, then during those time periods it would be unavailable. Plus it wouldn't just be our connection, if the providors connection went down we'd have the same problem which was illustrated perfectly by Salesforce last year.
For that reason, whilst I am IT Manager, our systems will stay in my control. And when I'm not, I don't give a flying f
k Edited by brum on Thursday 22 January 23:49
I'm not saying it can't work, I just don't trust it enough (OK, I don't trust BT Enough) at the moment. As for SF, as I recall they went down for routine maintainence, but didn't come back up properly and it caused a lot of outages which, by the nature of what they do, cost lots to their customers. I could be wrong though, it was a while ago
tinman0 said:
Hedders said:
tinman0 said:
I'm not a fan of Microsoft but to suggest that a certain business model of developing and then selling a product may be over is frankly stupid.
I thought they stopped that practice years ago. These days, they sell the software and then develop it!develop, sell, fix
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