By Mark Cavender on 5/19/2010 11:41 PM

Tonight I attended the 12th Annual Top 10 Tech Trends program of the Churchill Club in San Jose. Five Silicon Valley luminaries gave their predictions of what's going to be hot in the next 12 months. Potential winners included product categories such as social networking, health care, new life forms and connected devices plus more general ideas such as the best time to start a company and long-term accountability, The audience was given the opportunity to cast their vote on each, courtesy of a real-time voting device provided by iml Connector (www.imlworldwide.com/beyondvoting). The event can be viewed here (registration required) http://fora.tv/confe ... Read More »

By Michael Eckhardt on 5/15/2010 10:51 PM

There were multiple reasons for HP (HPQ) acquiring struggling smart phone pioneer Palm (PALM) for $1.2 billion a few weeks ago, including mobile computing, the WebOS, and core technology.

One of these reasons was to reinvigorate HP's (HPQ) mobile phone / smart phone offering. It's clear that Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, RIM's (RIMM) Blackberry, and Google's (GOOG) Droid are three of the current winners . . .

• in today's smart phone Tornado market for "business customers throughout the US / Western Europe"
• with "Tornado" being defined by us at Chasm Institute as a market that's growing at 45% or more (annulized, in units)

The good news is that this Tornado is currently raging - an ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 5/12/2010 11:53 PM

Today SAP announced the acquisition of Sybase for $5.8B US.

I remember in the 1980s. I was working for a company called McComack & Dodge. We provided financial applications including general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, and fixed assets. Each of these applications were often sold stand-alone, and companies would buy best-of-breed from either McCormack & Dodge, Management Science America, or Data Design. As the market matured, McCormack & Dodge bought a human resource application, and we began selling "financial"  systems or "human resource" systems.

Then the market moved to  applications based on a relational database management system (RDBMS). Companies bought Oracle's RDBMS along with their financial ... Read More »