Social Network Benefits to the B2B World

I've just read with great interest this article about B2B and social networking. I'm hearing the same things from friends in the marketing area. This is clearly changing the landscape of outbound marketing. And in turn, this is going to turn the flow of money from traditional web advertising towards more targeted social networking advertising. This is a short article but very much to the point.

Sun unveils Virtualization Hypervisor

I'm very bullish on virtualization as the next evolution in the data center environment. Here's a very interesting announcement from my former company Sun Microsystems. VMware and Microsoft are the leaders but it's good to see convergence between software and hardware vendors in that space. As a start-up, we see very clearly the benefits of server virtualization for our development efforts. This is giving us a tremendous leg up to get our product out of the door while keeping our IT costs under control.

Google announces Android

Last week, Google announced an open-source mobile operating system called Android. There is no doubt that this will change the way that mobile applications are developed.
As much as I like the people at RIM, they have no innovation on the application side that can resist what Apple and Google are doing to them right now. Ask people why they have a Blackberry today and the answer will be: push email. Messaging was a great differentiator 3 years ago, but for iPhones and Android-based phones, this is not even a table stake anymore.

Operating systems that can accommodate a rich and vibrant developer community will allow the creation of many small innovative applications that will drive revenue for carriers, handset manufacturers and developers. The more revenue they will generate with the platform, the more new developers will invest in this technology. Microsoft's response will be interesting, since they would be the only other serious contender in this battle.

Control of the user is achieved through control of the device, network and content. Google is becoming quite dominant here.