Author: Rob Enderle

The automotive market is making a major pivot in several directions at once. First, it’s pivoting away from internal combustion engines (ICE) to electric propulsion. Second, it’s trying to make these cars self-driving, and third, in parallel to the second point, flying autonomous vehicles are entering testing that could eventually eclipse land-based transportation as a far less infrastructure intensive alternative. All of this is forcing a level of technology into cars that goes far beyond what we have today, but that also opens the industry to the potential for significant problems resulting from the increasing connectivity of these vehicles and…

Someone I’ve known for years moved from Dell to Cisco to Apple. Nine months after her move to Apple, she’s jumping ship to HP. She left Dell because of the opportunity at Cisco, which was a step up if you wanted more control and less aggravation (Dell is a far more complex company than Cisco, and both companies treat their customers and employees very well). She left Cisco because Apple paid better but Apple, in contrast, is a lock-in company and puts financial performance ahead of everything else. This makes it a very difficult company to work for, partner with,…

IBM Power platform and products are quickly becoming an example of how to compete in a world defined by competing technologies. The X86 platform shared by Intel and AMD owns PCs and servers for the most part, while ARM (largely helped by Qualcomm) owns mobile devices and IoT markets and is in the process of competing for PCs. IBM and Power can’t compete with either product broadly, but if it picks its fights and focuses, a vendor with far smaller market share can advance against its larger, less focused competitors and grow market share while providing unique, focused value. With…

We often compare vendors competitively, but some things, like sustainability, are accretive in nature, complementing each other. I often find this more interesting than comparing and ranking vendors because, again especially for sustainability efforts, I believe we are too wedded to conflict and often miss beneficial efforts that help everyone. Cisco had an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) event this week and one of their practices, focused on creating a 360 Ecosystem, is in sharp contrast to Dell’s Concept Luna in terms of approach. But the two approaches aren’t contradictory and could be layered to create an even more sustainable…

IBM just released its financials. After divesting its legacy services unit, it’s showing an impressive 11% year-over-year growth in an increasingly challenged market due to the Russia/Ukraine war and sustained logistics issues related to that war and the pandemic. These growth numbers potentially showcase that IBM’s pivot is working well and, barring even more problematic global problems like a World War, this growth should continue for the foreseeable future. Let’s talk a bit about this success and why focus is so critical to a complex technology product company like IBM. Why umbrella companies are difficult to manage Umbrella companies like…

HP was once one of the leading innovators in high-end video conferencing and collaboration with its Halo video conferencing effort. It was the first to wed high resolution video conferencing to a service that could link two sites at opposite ends of the world in a seamless experience. Halo successfully addressed two of the biggest problems at the time (video quality and ease-of-use) to create what was a revolutionary offering. However, it failed and was sold to Polycom. Polycom was acquired by Plantronics, which had also been developing market-leading sound solutions for video conferencing rooms. Now, HP has acquired the…

This month Microsoft gave a briefing on the coming features for Windows 11 with some of the most compelling having to do with security and management. However, what really caught my eye was the promise that AI (artificial intelligence) technology was being applied to the product and that, increasingly, Windows 11 would be adapting dynamically to the way you work. This has long been a promise of AI applied to computer interfaces, that instead of us having to learn to work with computers, they, would learn to work with us. This would be huge because each of us is somewhat…

This week Intel announced its mobile discrete GPU strategy, ARC, and, as an ex-Competitive Analyst, I find it fascinating. I have not had a chance to review the part myself, but on paper the specs are impressive with equal to or better parity to AMD and NVIDIA and a potential advantage in upscaling content. This could be a godsend when you, like I do, play older games. But that typically is not enough to move against a market dominated by two vendors any more than it was effective in taking CPU dominance from Intel. So, what is interesting is Intel’s…

Last week I attended the IBM event with Fast Company on its hybrid cloud solutions. IBM is unique in that it often populates events like this with customers who talk about how IBM’s solutions are used rather than the far less interesting performance metrics of new hardware, software, or networking solutions. This use of customers to create content is far more compelling than the usual vendor talking head, and, in terms of credibility, people who use a technology are far more credible than those who sell it. In short, IBM’s use of customers to tell the story has for some…

CableLabs, which is run by my old friend Phil McKinney, is one of the few firms run by an ex-CTO. I find this interesting because CTOs are tied to a strategic vision that was once core to a CEO’s job description. These days, the role has become far more tactical, which has resulted in companies with far shorter lifespans because, if you don’t plan for tomorrow, you probably won’t survive it. Creating a template of the future One of the ways to predict the future is called the Delphi Method, where you pull together a group of people and brainstorm…