Dell Does Retail About Face

In a post last September, I urged Dell to get into retail:

The big-box electronics retailers are exactly where you should be. Get into lots of them. Best Buy and Costco and Office Depot. You need retail saturation and volume fast, not boutiques rolled out at a leisurely pace. Support these retailers by focusing on brand advertising that extends your old "Easy as Dell" theme to the consumer who wants to see it, talk to a salesperson about it, take it right home and use it. Advertise simple product choices with simple names that convey ease and reliability. Think "computer as appliance." Back this with execution. Keep your costs down and your product and customer service quality high. Stick to Dell's traditions. Stay with what has made Dell great. Just add the distribution channel that extends your reach to today's home and small business consumer.

Your CEO Kevin Rollins said that Dell was "reevaluating every element of the business model. We want to do things more effectively." He called it Dell 2.0. That is fine, but choose wisely what you change. Preserve your core, it is who you are. Do not give up on being the low-price leader in brand name computers. Become great at retail distribution.

I then got a snarky email from someone at Dell telling me that, ahem, retailing through others was just not Dell's thing. This ignored the availability of Dell laptops in Costco, but lets not quibble details.

Well, Kevin Rollins is gone and Michael Dell is back at the helm. With its market share plummeting and rival HP now the leader in PC shipments, Dell has done an about-face and decided to enter the messy retail fray in a bigger way. It will sell two low-end desktop models through Wal-Mart as the first step in "a global retail strategy that you're going to hear a lot more about."

Just keep it simple, fellas. Simple choices, simple branding, well-configured. Make it a real appliance buy.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Dell

Is The Google Bamboozle Evolving?

As we have previously discussed (Google Bamboozles Microsoft, Bamboozle Update, Bamboozle Update 2), Google continues to give Microsoft fits with its bamboozle attack on Microsoft Office. This attack is intended to divert some Microsoft resources away from improving search to instead defend Office against the Google threat without taking significant Google resources and without generating much revenue. This is amplified in my book, Attacking The Crown Jewels, which also describes how a bamboozle attack may evolve:

Bamboozle attacks can evolve into classic or proxy attacks. Sometimes the bamboozler discovers serious revenue potential in the attack weapon and decides to make a full commitment to the market, a classic attack. In other cases, the bamboozler sees an opportunity to spin off or sell the attack weapon to new owners that they are convinced they can influence to continue the attack for them as a proxy attack.

Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of this metamorphosis. First, at its shareholder's meeting earlier this month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the company now has a tag line: "Search, Ads and Apps." This is the first time the company has formally given applications equal billing with search and advertising. Then on Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Google and Salesforce.com were discussing teaming up in some fashion. One possibility of such a hookup is to tie Google's applications to the Salesforce CRM suite. This could jump-start Google applications as a serious alternative to Microsoft Office and Exchange in the business world.

Salesforce, the poster child for on-demand business applications, would be a perfect ally for Google's "office in the clouds" applications, from instant messaging to email to word processing to calendaring to spreadsheets to ...

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Google, Salesforce

Microsoft Self-FUD

Microsoft's announced this week that it would reduce the feature set of its "Viridian" virtualization software for the Longhorn release of the Windows server operating system. This has provoked good deal of pundit commentary. Yes, it once more demonstrates how you cannot count on any Microsoft development schedule or roadmap; this is Vista redux, with the boilerplate spin from the Softies. But it begs another question: what exactly is behind Microsoft's virtualization strategy?

For a great analysis of this strategy, read Alessandro Perilli's March 1 post. But what exactly is motivating Microsoft? As one reader wrote:

"Exactly what is Microsoft's business strategy here? They seem to really need focus. They certainly are not attacking VMware to prevent VMware from creating an OS or an office like suite. Are they in the space simply to be in the space?"

The answer is, I believe, self-FUD. This is not the usual fear, uncertainty and doubt propaganda ploy that is used to freeze the market. Self-FUD is fear, uncertainty and doubt directed internally within an organization, as in "Omigod I dunno what this means but the sky could fall." For the Softies, it is now a conditioned response to any new technology that seems platform-like and whose impact on the future revenue from their crown jewels -- Windows, Office, SQL Server -- is not well understood. The mantra is simple: when in doubt, seek to control.

We saw this play out in the browser wars with Netscape. Failing to have their own vision for Windows, Office and SQL Server in an Internet world, failing in fact to "get" the Internet in the 1990s, Microsoft crushed Netscape. Now they have Internet Explorer, which produces no revenue, as a development resource-hogging albatross. Windows Media Player is a similar story, leading directly to Microsoft's woes with European regulators. And so forth.

What would it be like for Microsoft if they did not have these defensive products that produce little or no revenue and for which their are viable alternatives? What would it be like if the resources these and other similar efforts consume were directed elsewhere? Perhaps we would get incremental releases of Windows, Office and SQL Server on an annual basis. Perhaps we would be able to upgrade to a new release as painlessly as Macintosh users. Perhaps we would see some real innovation coming from the Softies, some new offering that would knock our socks off, some real technology leadership. Not to mention that Microsoft, once it crushes a competitor, puts the attack weapon on the back-burner, customers be damned.

But no, we get stewardship instead. And development motivated by fear. They are too busy trying to stop the likes of VMware from, er, well, they are not sure what exactly the threat is but if they can control it they can contain it. That is the Microsoft knee-jerk reaction to self-FUD.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Microsoft, VMware

Why So Quiet About IE 8?

Mix '07, Microsoft's annual conference for web developers, is wrapping up this week in Las Vegas. The big news was Silverlight, Microsoft's new platform for rich web development. Development tools and platforms are what the Softies do best, and if you are a web developer Silverlight is important news. It promises to do for rich web development what Visual Studio did for Windows development.

Notably missing from the Mix hoopla was any detail about the next release of Internet Explorer. The Softies had promised that we would not have to wait another five years for an IE release, like we did with IE 7. They had said that they were looking at more like an 18 month release cycle. So many were expecting some pretty definite information about IE 8 at Mix. This was not forthcoming. Instead, there were murmurs about improved security, improved standards compliance and improved developer capabilities. If this sounds familiar, it is. This is the rubber stamp Internet Explorer release description, dusted off from the same kit used for the last few releases.

Why no details? Because the Softies have nothing to copy that will excite anyone. With IE 7, they had tabbed browsing to copy from Firefox and others. The Softies are just not good at inventing user interface improvements, though they are great at copying and improving on those of others. There is nothing new on the browser UI front to copy at the moment, thus there is no "wow" for the Softies to embrace and extend.

We'll have to wait for the other browser vendors to release UI improvements so Microsoft knows what to tell us will delight us about IE 8.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Microsoft

Free Advice For Steve Balmer

The most interesting news out of Microsoft in a long time was its Silverlight announcement at Mix '07 in Las Vegas.

"Whazzat?" you ask. "Silverwhat? Some kind of mix? In Vegas?"

This is the sad state of the Softies. Google burps and the press reports it as a gastronomic breakthrough that will change digestion forever. Steve Jobs hiccups and they go gaga over his visionary diction. Microsoft announces a technology that could become the platform for most future web development of all kinds, and they scratch their heads and yawn.

Rather than diving into this new technology and its implications, I am here to offer some free strategic advice to Steve Balmer and his gang that, if followed, will get gobs of ongoing press and consumer attention. It is time, Steve, to make the Microsoft Entertainment division (yes, it is all about ME) a force to be reckoned with. It is time to add the other pieces of the puzzle to Zune and Xbox.

Acquire TiVo and Netflix. These are both cheap right now for a variety of reasons. Both are great brands. The MS Netflix store would provide video DVDs and audio and video downloads on a subscription basis. Zune becomes just a device brand and the Netflix brand gets slapped on the Zune Store. Subscription is a Netflix forte, the content creators want it and Steve Jobs shuns it. What could be better?

TiVo brings a base of time-shifting customers and great technology and IP. TiVo becomes a service brand and Xbox the device. TiVo boxes become the low-end DVR-only Xbox.

All of this can be done right now. None of it requires legal or technological advances.

And it would be great fun.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Microsoft