Midmarket Clan Chat: Midmarket Tech Firms Optimistic

bye

Tea-tainted coffee it is!

Meat you on the message boards. Ha-cha! OK bye.

Yes. I need a warm beverage so I can thaw out.

It's been real.

Meat and greet.

lol

Shall we bring this to an, ahem, endpoint?

Meat shirt.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXtrU7baJ1Q

So... meat people... have we anything more to say?

Ah, Kim, we get in our fun where we can.

Copy desk doesn't like "meatspace."  Notice that I used the word "behemoth" in the audio portion.  Only because the copy desk took it out of one of my blogs a couple of months ago.  Bwahahaha.

Meat pie.

Maybe once was yesterday. All the days are blending together. Either way.

Do you folk have any alternative?

I think the term meatspace is probably old now. But "real world" isn't accurate either.

Twice today, I think...

That's at least twice this week you've said "meatspace" Mary.

Hmph.

Exactly.  Just one among many functions - as opposed to being essentially a phone which also does other cool stuff.

@Nicole: You message me too! We aren't speaking -- with our organic meatspace voices, anyway.

I figured.

@Nicole: I think Kim means that voice will be only a percentage of what the endpoint device does, making the term "phone" inaccurate. Right, Kim?

"Smart endpoint" is a great phrase, Mary.

Nicole, you don't even talk to me.  You message me.  :D

So it's really smart endpoint devices that will rule.

Make calls and all that

Ah, okay. Gotcha, Kim. I think.

How do we talkkkk to people?

@Mary, well yes, but at some point it stops being a "phone" in any meaningful sense and has become something else.

They'll never take my iPhone!

The smartphone is dead.  You read it here first.  :visionary:

What about just smaller tablets, smartphones?

Kim, I'm not understanding.

@Nicole.  No, I'm imagining devices with greater functionality replacing smartphones.

It's the 35th Street torture chamber. I'm ready to give up all my secrets.

And y'all want me to get in there quickly. Hmmm....

An understatement, Mary.

Hmm I don't know Kim. Are you suggesting users will carry around feature phones/dumb phones and tablet devices?

The NYC office appears to be a Dante's Inferno of environmental unpleasantness.

There should have been a question mark in that post, but we are undergoing deafening PA testing here.

Being visionary, how long before smartphones as such are rejected in favor of devices with much greater diversity of function, built on a conveniently portable scale.  The Kindle Fire is much smaller than the iPad.

@Mary.  I had in mind PCs obviously (with declining sales), but I think content - a buzzword not long ago - is so fragmented that focusing on being a content provider is precarious too.

Not sure there.  Certainly, any security vendors deeply invested in AV need to be diversifying.

@Kim, or to put it differently, what sectors of tech are decreasing in value?

Which other companies are you thinking of, Kim?

@Kim, maybe like Symantec, McAfee?

We could see more than one large tech company broken up and/or sold over the next twelve months.  Too many are really good at things which are decreasing in value.

And it seems that the parts sale is rising to top priority.

There is no clear direction there. Some want it to operate as a start-up, some surely want to break it up and sell it off in parts.

Exactly!

I think that might depend on who you ask at the company.

How about Yahoo!  How do they define themselves now?

"strategy," that is. Seems more like hysteria.

That's the sense I get. I find their strategy puzzling.

But HP hasn't taken that time. Or if managers and divisions have, it has been stymied from above.

LOL @Nicole. I do think that companies like HP have to take the time to find their own identities, not to duplicate those of key rivals.

India also provides a lot of IT support for European companies.

Some babies have to stay in the bath without the water and deal with the prospect of getting drafted, or something.

India buys heavily from European vendors and distributors.

Right. There has to be a strategic reason to follow some path, not just say "others reinvented and I can too."

Or as Kim would say, there's only one Elvis.

I know some regions - India for example - are very concerned about tightening IT spending in Europe.

I mean, we can't all be Apples, or Beatles, or Steve Jobs, no matter how hard we try.

But like other big business success stories, IBM's experience can be mimicked with some success but probably not duplicated.

Yes!

Mary is enjoying the war theme.

HP is clearly trying to duplicate the IBM story.

Well there are exceptions and there are rules.

HP doesn't realize that the war is already on and it can't take any easy way out.

Of course, IBM reinvented itself.  It's not impossible.

And I agree, that's what HP is doing. Poor baby.

Not relevant. Just saying...

Where'd this baby metaphor come from to begin with? It's mean. I wonder who started it.

Another good metaphor for what HP is doing is shooting itself in the foot to avoid the draft.

@Kim, I think that's a good metaphor for what HP's doing.

I think what I have in mind is that the market is changing so rapidly that larger enterprises can be caught with huge shares of a vanishing market on their hands.  Look at H-P, pretty much throwing the baby overboard in panic (is that a good metaphor?).

Yes, of course.

There are too many start-ups on the scene that are not providing the right product, though, nor establishing the right business models (or any).

This also from IBM's ebook: "In the US alone, midmarket firms represent $6.1 trillion in revenue, or 40 percent of the national GDP." That was a quote form Deloitte.

I think there are different definitions of the midmarket.  I don't mean to rule out good prospects for small tech start-ups too, if they have the right product.

In other words, if I am company XYZ with a new mobile commerce app, VCs have funded me millions, propelling me into the midmarket sector.

Oh no really? Maybe I'm NOT going tomorrow then!

You're right, Kim. I wonder if that is because really innovative startups now qualify as midmarket firms.

Kim the Snuggie is a blanket with sleeves.

It's by no means as cold here as it was at the Javits Center this morning.

It's in my drawer. It needs to be washed... I can't use it until it's washed. It smells.

The Snuggie is a new tablet?

When you look at the enterprises providing innovative technology in these areas, there are plenty of midmarket companies.

Do you have the Snuggie?

I think there would be a large measure of agreement among us on which fields will develop rapidly over the next year or so.  Mobile, including devices and apps, cloud, business analytics.

I'd say frigid.

RE HP:  Yes, Mary.

O dear. Nicole. Is the office cold?

As I said, I am speculating, but not I think without foundation.

@Kim: I assume you're noting HP as the example of a large company that's not agile?

Just a head's up.

Oh, by the way if I suddenly stop talking, it's not out of laziness, it's because the hypothermia set in and I died.

"Midsize companies are the fast trackers of the global business scene..." (from the ebook)

Did you read any analysis as to why the midmarket is best positioned here?

I am sure there are examples other than Hewlett-Packard, but I do wonder if companies built on that scale, with very entrenched traditions, can jump on rapidly evolving demands for technology with the same agility as the midmarket.

Actually, in an IBM e-book posted on IE earlier this year, midmarket is touted as driving economic growth worldwide.

Mary, yes that ought to be the case.  I looked down the list of vendors whose products are predicted by Bluefoot to be in demand, and I see plenty of mid-sized companies alongside the Googles and MSFTs.

You must go fetch it, Kimbo. Gotta join the Cloud Clan... the coolest new Clan around!

Kim is chat-crazy today. He also live-blogged the Interop keynotes for us earlier this morning. Chat maniac.

Where's my cloud badge?

Kimmbbooo

Kim, the midmarket seems to have much stronger prospects than other enterprise segments.

Yay!

Helloo.

The early birthday present would be you spending $2K for access to the report for me. ;)

Kim is returning to his desk. He's almost ready to engage us in chat.

What is the early B day present?

RU referring to my new cloud badge, Nicole?

Nice you got your cloud button. That was fast. :)

Mary, consider it my early birthday present!

Well we're definitely focusing on the right topics for the rest of the year based on that short list.

I was checking the link supplied by Kim in his blog.

A cursory check says no, Nicole. Or if it does, one must pay >$2K to find out.

Did the Forrester report break out its predictions according to company size?

Ah! so I do. I don't want to be without.

Hey MJ looks like you need to add a Cloud Clan button to your badge collection.

I don't know what to make of such optimism.

Yes!

Optimistic too!

Chatterific.