After an extended testing period, NBC launched today their 'HD' video download service. Content is available for immediate download, or via a free download subscription that automatically sends shows to your PC (for now Windows only, and not transferable to other machines/devices).
Notable is the first significant market endorsement of P2P technology by a large owner of video content. Long the scourge of content owners, P2P (in this case powered by Pando Networks...where I am an investor), the legal harnessing of this technology has a promise of providing enhanced quality, lower costs, and better network performance than stand alone CDN delivery.
The nascent yet emerging 'digital living room' market is showing signs of experiencing great growth, as evidenced by Hulu's steep rise in viewers here. We are seeing a gaggle of solutions from stream to download, hearing about the primacy of the set-top box and new intelligence built into the PC (mom would love that oxymoron), let alone the great media server debate. The raging debates reminds me of the IBM/ATT quarrel of the late 80's when the hot topic was which is more valuable the network or the node? While ATT and IBM were fighting that one out, Cisco and Microsoft created the great franchises for the next decade. I would not be surprised if some of the young vendors competing here today have similar DNA.
For NBC, I suspect that the scope of available content and the viewing experience will be the key factors in its success. Looking at content, the NBC Video Library includes such stalwart shows as Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Buck Rogers, and Mr. T's the A Team! As for the viewing experience, download the client and start watching. Don't feel guilty, you are doing 'research'.
From NBC's perspective, I am sure watched by other broadcasters, delivering 'HD' using P2P could be a cost/experience equation game changer. If not for you, NBC....
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
An entrepeneur goes to school
I had the opportunity over the weekend to hear a successful software entrepreneur address a group of pre-business school young adults. He shared with them the 4 key elements an internet founding CEO ought to concentrate on when starting a business. His thoughts were so crisp that I wanted to share them with you here:
1. Market- For him, this is 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration. He looks for large problems, areas where people are repeatedly spending money (ongoing purchases that could become a much less stressful and less costly subscription), or likely to spend money/time, where he can innovate and save them time or increase their purchasing power through removing or obsoleting a vendor (drive to permacheap).
2. Technology- He looks for a set of technologies that could be integrated in a novel way. Low R but high D, in the R&D equation.
3. The experience- Delight the customer, but don't think you will do this immediately. By expecting, and planning that your first few iterations will be off market, he inculcates a culture that embraces, rather than denies, rapid change. In his mind, the product/experience is never complete; so don't fight it.
4. Reaching the market- Today, this is an all consuming task for him as it's the company's largest expense component and capital efficiency is one of his mantras. He strives to build a balance between channel sales, business development (partnerships), and a limited direct effort. The later is an area he is least comfortable with as it takes 6 months of investment/training to receive a preliminary indication of success. Contrasting this with channel or affiliate sales and it's scores of 'turns' off from being able to rapidly react to market 'changes' or product management miscues.
Four well thought out rules.
1. Market- For him, this is 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration. He looks for large problems, areas where people are repeatedly spending money (ongoing purchases that could become a much less stressful and less costly subscription), or likely to spend money/time, where he can innovate and save them time or increase their purchasing power through removing or obsoleting a vendor (drive to permacheap).
2. Technology- He looks for a set of technologies that could be integrated in a novel way. Low R but high D, in the R&D equation.
3. The experience- Delight the customer, but don't think you will do this immediately. By expecting, and planning that your first few iterations will be off market, he inculcates a culture that embraces, rather than denies, rapid change. In his mind, the product/experience is never complete; so don't fight it.
4. Reaching the market- Today, this is an all consuming task for him as it's the company's largest expense component and capital efficiency is one of his mantras. He strives to build a balance between channel sales, business development (partnerships), and a limited direct effort. The later is an area he is least comfortable with as it takes 6 months of investment/training to receive a preliminary indication of success. Contrasting this with channel or affiliate sales and it's scores of 'turns' off from being able to rapidly react to market 'changes' or product management miscues.
Four well thought out rules.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Light in the tunnel
The WSJ unsurprisingly noted that, as investors react to an altered state, a shake-out appears to be happening amongst venture backed companies.
After being involved in my fair share of 'heroic' efforts attempting to save/rescue young technology companies, I am an advocate of taking a spoon-full of medicine and refocusing investor, and entrepreneurial efforts away from failing companies. The grand yarns, told around worn conference room tables, about how the last minute purchase order, big sale, or business development agreement launched a company on the path to riches unfortunately obscures the long-odds of this happening.
Interestingly, on the same day this article appeared, Guggenheim Venture Partners announced the sale of one of their portfolio companies, CICLON to Texas Instruments.
Guggenheim concentrates its investment efforts in an arena that is complementary to the trend noted in the WSJ, and seems timely to be exploited. Their investment focus is dedicated towards acquiring equity positions in technology firms/divisions where the initial venture backers no longer have adequate capital to pursue the market opportunity, or in buying positions in spin-outs from corporations seeking to trim their focus. The targets have management teams in place, product developed, and participate in growing markets. Everything but the capital to make it work.
Every ecosystem needs scavengers (here it's a compliment). With many venture portfolios suffering from investment constipation (many deals made, few exits) this just may well be a once in a lifetime equity building opportunity.
After being involved in my fair share of 'heroic' efforts attempting to save/rescue young technology companies, I am an advocate of taking a spoon-full of medicine and refocusing investor, and entrepreneurial efforts away from failing companies. The grand yarns, told around worn conference room tables, about how the last minute purchase order, big sale, or business development agreement launched a company on the path to riches unfortunately obscures the long-odds of this happening.
Interestingly, on the same day this article appeared, Guggenheim Venture Partners announced the sale of one of their portfolio companies, CICLON to Texas Instruments.
Guggenheim concentrates its investment efforts in an arena that is complementary to the trend noted in the WSJ, and seems timely to be exploited. Their investment focus is dedicated towards acquiring equity positions in technology firms/divisions where the initial venture backers no longer have adequate capital to pursue the market opportunity, or in buying positions in spin-outs from corporations seeking to trim their focus. The targets have management teams in place, product developed, and participate in growing markets. Everything but the capital to make it work.
Every ecosystem needs scavengers (here it's a compliment). With many venture portfolios suffering from investment constipation (many deals made, few exits) this just may well be a once in a lifetime equity building opportunity.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
There's something going around here,
What it is ain't exactly clear Outbrain, a company started in NY by Quigo co-founder, Yaron Galai, announced an expansion round of financing led by new investor, Israel based Carmel Ventures.
During the summer, NY based Payoneer, also received expansion funding led by Carmel. Last year, Greylock (Israel) led an expansion round for NY based WebCollage. Also, last year, Eyeblaster secured a $30mm expansion round from a group of Israel based technology investors.
With a dearth of exits that the general venture market has experienced, the venture capital market in Israel has been contracting for a number of years. But that's only part of the story. A few years ago, it was standard practice for young, Israel based companies, to receive initial funding from local VC's, then relocate to NY, Ca, or Boston while raising expansion funding from US investors. Now, however, a generation of US based (the above examples are even more specific to NY) Israeli's have successfully raised expansion funding from Israel based VC's that have shifted, at least some of their focus, to expansion stage investing and are deploying significant capital in the US.
Today, in Israel, non-native VC's account for more than 50% of the early stage funding activity. Great firms such as Greylock, Lightspeed, Benchmark, Canaan, and Sequoia, have paved the way for others.
I am sure that the natural movement up the lifecycle chain by Israeli VC's is both a defensive reaction to the success of non-Israeli investors in garnering significant market share, as well as an opportunistic move to leverage existing relationships.
Turning back to earlier stage transactions, we have seen Union Square and First Round involved in funding young Israel based (and other non-US) companies that are building presence in the NY area.
There was a time, interrupted by the Internet bubble, when the venture market was strictly segmented by stage and geography. The globalization of the internet opportunity, coupled with the democratization of IP knowledge seems to have broken down the limiting geographic walls in investing criteria. Time will tell how well stage agnostic investors will fare.
During the summer, NY based Payoneer, also received expansion funding led by Carmel. Last year, Greylock (Israel) led an expansion round for NY based WebCollage. Also, last year, Eyeblaster secured a $30mm expansion round from a group of Israel based technology investors.
With a dearth of exits that the general venture market has experienced, the venture capital market in Israel has been contracting for a number of years. But that's only part of the story. A few years ago, it was standard practice for young, Israel based companies, to receive initial funding from local VC's, then relocate to NY, Ca, or Boston while raising expansion funding from US investors. Now, however, a generation of US based (the above examples are even more specific to NY) Israeli's have successfully raised expansion funding from Israel based VC's that have shifted, at least some of their focus, to expansion stage investing and are deploying significant capital in the US.
Today, in Israel, non-native VC's account for more than 50% of the early stage funding activity. Great firms such as Greylock, Lightspeed, Benchmark, Canaan, and Sequoia, have paved the way for others.
I am sure that the natural movement up the lifecycle chain by Israeli VC's is both a defensive reaction to the success of non-Israeli investors in garnering significant market share, as well as an opportunistic move to leverage existing relationships.
Turning back to earlier stage transactions, we have seen Union Square and First Round involved in funding young Israel based (and other non-US) companies that are building presence in the NY area.
There was a time, interrupted by the Internet bubble, when the venture market was strictly segmented by stage and geography. The globalization of the internet opportunity, coupled with the democratization of IP knowledge seems to have broken down the limiting geographic walls in investing criteria. Time will tell how well stage agnostic investors will fare.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
SAP and Adobe M&A presentations (sponsored by SIIA with Credit Suisse)
Ken Wasch and his team over at the SIIA, have really put together a quality program aimed at providing exit insights to venture capitalists, and visibility to the software/internet's most prolific M&A players. Their Private Equity forum is worth a look.
Following are notes from the session held yesterday:
Monty Gray- Director M&A SAP
Company overview
11.5B Euros of Revenue
51,000 Employees (reducing headcount to 48,000)
12mm users across 120 countries
1.5mm community partners
15 Industry Value Networks
EMEA 60% of Revenue
Americas 30% of Revenue
Other 10% of Revenue
View the US as the early adopter market that is a precursor for global adoption of innovative products/technologies.
SAP has completed 27 deals in the past 5 years, including their largest acquisition, and the 4th largest in the history of the software industry at $7B+, Business Objects. Though that transaction has exceeded expectations, they are not similarly focused as Oracle, with a drive to consolidate market share.
Historically, viewed the Company as a packaged software business with maintenance (33% of revenue) driving the profit engine. The core SAP Business Suite has spawned vertical Industry Solutions, a horizontal Business Process (middleware) platform, and a Small Business offering. Finally, Business Objects is the core of a Business User Solution Group (addressing White Collar workers).
Look at acquisitions in 4 buckets:
1. Game Changer- Move to position SAP as player in a new segment (e.g. BOJ brought them scale in providing product to white collar workers). Large transactions usually >500B Euros. SAP does these infrequently
2. Market Extension-Expedite time to market or small market extensions for an existing market focus. Transaction size between 20-500mm Euros
3. Direct Tuck-in- Same criteria as market extension, but smaller transaction size. Deal size is under 20mm Euros and will do 3-5/year
4. In-Direct Tuck-in- New technology that enables new use cases or user experience. Deal size is under 20mm Euros and will do 3-5/year
In the Business User Solution (white collar) area looking for market extensions and Tuck-in's
SME- Happy with what they have, may do some tuck-in's
Business Process Platform- Organic Growth
Industry Solutions- Looking for market extensions and tuck-in's
Prefer to pay a bit more for companies doing well, and will shy away from turn-around situations. With that said, they are conservative buyers and unlikely to purchase high growth companies at a significant premium.
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul Weiskopf SVP-Corporate Development Adobe
"Adobe's mission is to create enabling technologies to create and enable growing markets through democratizing technology"
First growth phase for Adobe was around desktop publishing, next around electronic documents (PDF), 3rd was around Interactive media/websites (Flash), now looking at the rapid adoption of rich internet applications as their growth engine. Sees the industry at an inflection point around devices, smart documents, and rich media that fundamentally changes the way people interact with the internet. He thinks our computing experience is changing radically. The largest problem they see needing to be solved is to provide a consistent application and viewing experiences around multiple devices.
Sees Adobe uniquely positioned to add value in the application development tools, run times, and deployment arenas. He did mention, in a response to a question from the audience, that P2P is a technology they are looking at to facilitate the provisioning of live events.
Customer Segmentation
Creatives and Prosumers
Knowledge Workers
Enterprises
Consumers
OEM & Service Providers
Web Application
Creative Solutions- 58% of Revenue
Business Productivity- 30% of Revenue
Other 9%
Mobile 3%
Americas's represent 46% of Revenue and is growing slower than the rest of the world.
Expect to continue doing 2-4 M&A deals/year and may be more aggressive in an environment where they see enhanced value through lower prices. Generally focused on smaller technology companies that have a culture of innovation, cutting edge technology and strong engineering teams.
Have completed more than 50 transactions over the past 10 years. The core M&A activity is around buying smaller technology oriented companies. They will pursue larger, Company transformative deals if they can attain a leadership position in an important target market. Macromedia was the last transformative deal they completed (2005).
Complementing its M&A activity, Adobe employs an active venture investment program. Adobe does not lead these investments, but will participate taking a minority ownership stake and holds board observer positions. The motivation is driven by strategy and measured with financial returns. If there is not an opportunity for a tangible commercial relationship, they typically do not engage.
Have invested cross-stage from seed to expansion, with B round the typical stage. $1mm is the often the minimum target amount invested, with $2mm the mean and $5mm the to date maximum.
Since 2006, have made 17 investments including:
Veoh &56.com- web video discovery
iMeem- content driven social networking
Bunchball- driving and measuring user engagement
ScanR & ColorZip- mobile information capture
DemandBase- marketing automation/lead generation
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve West- Managing Director and Co-Head of Global Software Credit Suisse
Only 4 Technology IPO's in 2008. Prior to the mess we have in our financial system, the main issue is that not many private companies today fit the current institutional interest profile requiring cash flow growth and business model stability...with critical mass.
Dow Jones data from time of funding to exit:
78 months to M&A
99 months to IPO
The public software market is contracting, and the 'middle market' is disappearing with:
275 public software companies in 2004; with 35% below $100mm market cap
182 public software companies in 2009; with 80% below $100mm market cap
Looking at the near term health of the industry:
Public company revenue growth expectations have fallen dramatically as total software growth expectations in June '08 was 17%; now it's 6%. Expectations for firms with >$1B revenue went from 9% to 0. Firms under $100mm went from 29% to 9% (he expects this to come down further).
Consistent with the compression in expected growth, revenue multiples have fallen 55-70% from 2007 averages to a mean of 1.5x expected revenues. EBITDA multiples are down a similar amount to 5-6x (Saas is an outlier at 10x).
Clearly sobering news for venture portfolios heavy with software investments made in a different economic and valuation environment. Also hard to reconcile with an average pre-money venture valuation of $22mm during 2008.
If this trend holds, venture funds that follow FAS 157 (mark to market), and have software investments, will likely show some serious write-downs in their portfolios.
Following are notes from the session held yesterday:
Monty Gray- Director M&A SAP
Company overview
11.5B Euros of Revenue
51,000 Employees (reducing headcount to 48,000)
12mm users across 120 countries
1.5mm community partners
15 Industry Value Networks
EMEA 60% of Revenue
Americas 30% of Revenue
Other 10% of Revenue
View the US as the early adopter market that is a precursor for global adoption of innovative products/technologies.
SAP has completed 27 deals in the past 5 years, including their largest acquisition, and the 4th largest in the history of the software industry at $7B+, Business Objects. Though that transaction has exceeded expectations, they are not similarly focused as Oracle, with a drive to consolidate market share.
Historically, viewed the Company as a packaged software business with maintenance (33% of revenue) driving the profit engine. The core SAP Business Suite has spawned vertical Industry Solutions, a horizontal Business Process (middleware) platform, and a Small Business offering. Finally, Business Objects is the core of a Business User Solution Group (addressing White Collar workers).
Look at acquisitions in 4 buckets:
1. Game Changer- Move to position SAP as player in a new segment (e.g. BOJ brought them scale in providing product to white collar workers). Large transactions usually >500B Euros. SAP does these infrequently
2. Market Extension-Expedite time to market or small market extensions for an existing market focus. Transaction size between 20-500mm Euros
3. Direct Tuck-in- Same criteria as market extension, but smaller transaction size. Deal size is under 20mm Euros and will do 3-5/year
4. In-Direct Tuck-in- New technology that enables new use cases or user experience. Deal size is under 20mm Euros and will do 3-5/year
In the Business User Solution (white collar) area looking for market extensions and Tuck-in's
SME- Happy with what they have, may do some tuck-in's
Business Process Platform- Organic Growth
Industry Solutions- Looking for market extensions and tuck-in's
Prefer to pay a bit more for companies doing well, and will shy away from turn-around situations. With that said, they are conservative buyers and unlikely to purchase high growth companies at a significant premium.
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul Weiskopf SVP-Corporate Development Adobe
"Adobe's mission is to create enabling technologies to create and enable growing markets through democratizing technology"
First growth phase for Adobe was around desktop publishing, next around electronic documents (PDF), 3rd was around Interactive media/websites (Flash), now looking at the rapid adoption of rich internet applications as their growth engine. Sees the industry at an inflection point around devices, smart documents, and rich media that fundamentally changes the way people interact with the internet. He thinks our computing experience is changing radically. The largest problem they see needing to be solved is to provide a consistent application and viewing experiences around multiple devices.
Sees Adobe uniquely positioned to add value in the application development tools, run times, and deployment arenas. He did mention, in a response to a question from the audience, that P2P is a technology they are looking at to facilitate the provisioning of live events.
Customer Segmentation
Creatives and Prosumers
Knowledge Workers
Enterprises
Consumers
OEM & Service Providers
Web Application
Creative Solutions- 58% of Revenue
Business Productivity- 30% of Revenue
Other 9%
Mobile 3%
Americas's represent 46% of Revenue and is growing slower than the rest of the world.
Expect to continue doing 2-4 M&A deals/year and may be more aggressive in an environment where they see enhanced value through lower prices. Generally focused on smaller technology companies that have a culture of innovation, cutting edge technology and strong engineering teams.
Have completed more than 50 transactions over the past 10 years. The core M&A activity is around buying smaller technology oriented companies. They will pursue larger, Company transformative deals if they can attain a leadership position in an important target market. Macromedia was the last transformative deal they completed (2005).
Complementing its M&A activity, Adobe employs an active venture investment program. Adobe does not lead these investments, but will participate taking a minority ownership stake and holds board observer positions. The motivation is driven by strategy and measured with financial returns. If there is not an opportunity for a tangible commercial relationship, they typically do not engage.
Have invested cross-stage from seed to expansion, with B round the typical stage. $1mm is the often the minimum target amount invested, with $2mm the mean and $5mm the to date maximum.
Since 2006, have made 17 investments including:
Veoh &56.com- web video discovery
iMeem- content driven social networking
Bunchball- driving and measuring user engagement
ScanR & ColorZip- mobile information capture
DemandBase- marketing automation/lead generation
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve West- Managing Director and Co-Head of Global Software Credit Suisse
Only 4 Technology IPO's in 2008. Prior to the mess we have in our financial system, the main issue is that not many private companies today fit the current institutional interest profile requiring cash flow growth and business model stability...with critical mass.
Dow Jones data from time of funding to exit:
78 months to M&A
99 months to IPO
The public software market is contracting, and the 'middle market' is disappearing with:
275 public software companies in 2004; with 35% below $100mm market cap
182 public software companies in 2009; with 80% below $100mm market cap
Looking at the near term health of the industry:
Public company revenue growth expectations have fallen dramatically as total software growth expectations in June '08 was 17%; now it's 6%. Expectations for firms with >$1B revenue went from 9% to 0. Firms under $100mm went from 29% to 9% (he expects this to come down further).
Consistent with the compression in expected growth, revenue multiples have fallen 55-70% from 2007 averages to a mean of 1.5x expected revenues. EBITDA multiples are down a similar amount to 5-6x (Saas is an outlier at 10x).
Clearly sobering news for venture portfolios heavy with software investments made in a different economic and valuation environment. Also hard to reconcile with an average pre-money venture valuation of $22mm during 2008.
If this trend holds, venture funds that follow FAS 157 (mark to market), and have software investments, will likely show some serious write-downs in their portfolios.
Do you want to know a secret?
Let's talk.
A-Rod no longer has a secret.
Ken Lay (RIP) took many secrets to the grave
Rating Agencies no longer have secrets...but why they still get paid is beyond me.
Banks and related financial institutions no longer have secrets.
In hindsight, maybe we should have known.
Do you want to know a secret? I will share it with you if you promise to tell.
Click fraud is huge, it's getting larger, it's global, our leading industry participants have conflicts fighting it (I think of it as the equivalent to using steroids on their P&L's) and they won't share how they fight it (may be understandable). Not many mainstream folk are talking about the way click fraud growth is outstripping the internet's growth by nearly 2x. We have uninvited guests to our dinner, and that's a problem.
I am sure that executives at MSFT, Yahoo, Google, et al hate click fraud; though I suspect it's an unreported and unmonitored profit center for each of them. Grab a look at the Click Fraud Index from a company ClickForensics. They estimate click fraud grew to 17+% in Q4 '08. But it gets worse..." The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%"
More than 28%!. Hard to imagine, but this is a lower estimate than MarketingExperiments published.
It's going to get much worse. According to the Index, automated Botnet fraud is taking more share of the fraud pie. Unfortunately, these criminals take the 'permacheap' business model to a new level of refinement as they 'borrow' bandwidth and cpu's from unsuspecting innocents to purport their crimes. It's incredibly profitable, hard to detect, and when detected, hard to prosecute when the bad guys are resident in countries that don't have effective laws to combat this, or choose to ignore them.
Our industry has a little secret that's growing into a quiet big problem. Young industries, like small children, have little problems. Large industries, supporting market caps in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which experience fraud rates this high have BIG problems. At this rate of growth, clickfraud is going to kill PPC, if Congressional type hearings don't get there first.
It must be a big problem, clicking through on the key words 'click fraud' on Google, gave me 53 pages of paid Adwords and 539 displayed results. Many smart people are working on combating the problem. Someone is going to build a boatload of valuable equity when they devise a solution that becomes an industry standard at fighting it. Today, the industry's fragmentation is a sign that no one has a recognized superior solution.
That's a secret we don't want to share.
A-Rod no longer has a secret.
Ken Lay (RIP) took many secrets to the grave
Rating Agencies no longer have secrets...but why they still get paid is beyond me.
Banks and related financial institutions no longer have secrets.
In hindsight, maybe we should have known.
Do you want to know a secret? I will share it with you if you promise to tell.
Click fraud is huge, it's getting larger, it's global, our leading industry participants have conflicts fighting it (I think of it as the equivalent to using steroids on their P&L's) and they won't share how they fight it (may be understandable). Not many mainstream folk are talking about the way click fraud growth is outstripping the internet's growth by nearly 2x. We have uninvited guests to our dinner, and that's a problem.
I am sure that executives at MSFT, Yahoo, Google, et al hate click fraud; though I suspect it's an unreported and unmonitored profit center for each of them. Grab a look at the Click Fraud Index from a company ClickForensics. They estimate click fraud grew to 17+% in Q4 '08. But it gets worse..." The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%"
More than 28%!. Hard to imagine, but this is a lower estimate than MarketingExperiments published.
It's going to get much worse. According to the Index, automated Botnet fraud is taking more share of the fraud pie. Unfortunately, these criminals take the 'permacheap' business model to a new level of refinement as they 'borrow' bandwidth and cpu's from unsuspecting innocents to purport their crimes. It's incredibly profitable, hard to detect, and when detected, hard to prosecute when the bad guys are resident in countries that don't have effective laws to combat this, or choose to ignore them.
Our industry has a little secret that's growing into a quiet big problem. Young industries, like small children, have little problems. Large industries, supporting market caps in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which experience fraud rates this high have BIG problems. At this rate of growth, clickfraud is going to kill PPC, if Congressional type hearings don't get there first.
It must be a big problem, clicking through on the key words 'click fraud' on Google, gave me 53 pages of paid Adwords and 539 displayed results. Many smart people are working on combating the problem. Someone is going to build a boatload of valuable equity when they devise a solution that becomes an industry standard at fighting it. Today, the industry's fragmentation is a sign that no one has a recognized superior solution.
That's a secret we don't want to share.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Random events and realtime operations
Zak recently sent me a great O'Reilly Radar post that highlights how totally random events (in this case the stunning online numbers of folk watching Mr. Obama's inauguration), affect management metrics for online sites.
For sure, sites will be barraged by ongoing Black Swan's that serve as a reminder that an element of pay-as-you-go-provisioning looks like a prudent, and efficient way to deploy capital.
For sure, sites will be barraged by ongoing Black Swan's that serve as a reminder that an element of pay-as-you-go-provisioning looks like a prudent, and efficient way to deploy capital.
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