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Anatomy of a Search Engine:
SearchDay Looks Inside Google
October
30, 2002 - a new article on SearchDay takes you inside the 10,000 server
web resource that is the Google search-engine. Ever wanted to know
how a search-engine works? Read this article to find out. ...Google,
...Searchenginewatch.com
See
also:- Classic Web
Marketing Resources |
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Is it a maze?
No. It's Seagate's a-maze-ing new logo.
SCOTTS
VALLEY, Calif. - October 30, 2002 - Seagate Technology today unveiled a
new visual identity for its corporate brand. |
| Building on the traditional
strengths of its brand, including the color green, the new identity includes a
logo inspired by rotating storage media, and ideas and information in motion, as
well as a new brandline, "We Turn On Ideas," reflecting the spirit of
the Company and the meaning, relevance, and value that Seagate brings to its
partnerships and its products.
|
 |
"Over the past
few years, Seagate has undergone significant transformation to keep pace with
changing market dynamics," said Steve Luczo, Seagate Chairman and CEO. "We've
improved our manufacturing processes, streamlined our supply chain, built Six
Sigma quality methodologies into our operations and business processes,
strategically aligned engineering and design teams, and implemented new employee
development and training/education programs around the world. Our decisions have
been, and remain, informed by a set of values focused on our long-term goals for
leadership, partnership and success. "This transformation has strengthened
Seagate's brand," Luczo continued. "Just as our company has evolved,
our brand has evolved. The new brand identity will act as a visual signal to all
of our constituents that Seagate has changed." ...Seagate profile
Editor's
comments:- OK hands up all those of you who can remember what Seagate's old logo
used to look like? Chances are it's very few of you because most users don't
have to open their computer to change the disk drives unless there's something
wrong with the old one. And that's a strong argument for having no logo printed
on the old disk drive (particularly if it's just crashed). But there's a
growing trend for consumers to have more intimate contact with disks as external
back up devices, or attachments to their PDAs and digital cameras, and that's
probably what has fueled the need to design a prettier new logo. The "Intel
inside" branding program worked for Intel to isolate its competitors like
AMD. Seagate will have to invest heavily in advertising to become a consumer
identifiable brand. That will mean spending more on advertising than they do on
R&D, something which always comes as a cultural shock to technically rooted
companies.
Way ahead in this race for storage consumer mindshare are
companies like Sony. Way behind are stealth marketers like Fujitsu. Will Seagate
become the best known disk brand to consumers? or will Seagate still be running
round in circles focusing on technology while their rivals clean up in the mall?
There's
a lot more to branding than meets the eye. My partner Janet Downes, at
Downes Strategic Marketing, is
delivering a 3 day course on branding this week at the Chartered Institute of
Marketing in the UK. | |
|
IDC Finds IT Security and
Business Continuity Market Poised to Double in Size by 2006
FRAMINGHAM,
Mass. - October 28, 2002 - IDC says that despite the post-9/11 urgency
for improved enterprise security and business continuity, corporate investment
dollars did not immediately follow. After an initial spike in buying
interest, many buyers postponed their purchases due to cost concerns and
confusion about what products and services were needed. This "rethink"
period is now coming to an end and, according to IDC, corporate spending for IT
security and business continuity solutions is expected to grow from $66 billion
in 2001 to $155 billion in 2006.
"Corporate buyers were
confronted with a difficult situation – their understanding of the security
need was high but their ability to quantify the risk of a security threat was
low," said John F. Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president
at IDC. "This uncertainty about the risk caused many companies to delay
their purchase decisions. The result was a gap between the need for security and
corporate investments in security solutions."
Although spending decisions were delayed, corporate security remains
the number 1 priority of IT professionals. Forty percent of almost 1,000 IT
managers surveyed by IDC in July 2002 rated IT security as their highest
priority. And security was the only area where the percentage of respondents
saying spending increased in the past six months was greater than those saying
it decreased. This security focus will translate into an $80 billion market in
2002 and will cause worldwide spending on IT security/business continuity to
grow twice as fast as IT spending in general. IDC believes spending will more
than double in five years, growing from $66 billion in 2001 to $155 billion in
2006. Although this spending will be almost evenly split on infrastructure,
business continuity and information security, spending on business continuity
products and services will account for a slightly larger part of the market.
"The current market is a confusing mosaic of undifferentiated
products, services and companies offering solutions," added Gantz. "This
confusion remains an inhibitor to corporate spending. The companies that will
come out ahead in this environment are those that work closely with their
clients to develop realistic risk assessments and plans that provide the most
protection within the budget available."
...IDC profile
See
also:- STORAGE Security |
|
One Third of US Sun
Resellers May Disappear
October 21, 2002 - a
leader column in the SPARC Product Directory today reported that the
total number of US resellers selling Sun based solutions has markedly
declined for the first time in Sun's history. The publication, which has
been tracking the number of Sun VARs for over 10 years, goes on to suggest that
as many as 1 in 3 Sun VARs, in the US, will exit the Sun market, or go out of
business during the next 6 months. ...Sun SPARC VARs -
USA, ...SPARC Product
Directory, ...Sun
Microsystems profile |
|
IDC Says PC Market Resumed
Modest Growth in Third Quarter
FRAMINGHAM,
Mass. - October 17, 2002 - IDC reports that the global PC market
returned to positive growth in the third quarter of 2002 after five consecutive
quarters of decline. Third quarter shipments were up 3.8% from a year ago to
32.6 million units. Growth was slightly behind forecasts of 4.0% growth but
essentially met expectations of a seasonal increase amid difficult market
conditions. Sequential growth of 6% was slightly behind average third quarter
sequential gains of 9.2% reflecting the cautious market. Dell regained its
number 1 position in total shipments, out shipping HP by 3.5%.
"Growth
remains limited, but at least the market is moving in the right direction again,"
said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. "We
believe the market is a lot healthier than it was three months ago, as
inventories have come down and expectations for growth are more realistic. While
business investment remains soft, it continues to improve slowly and should gain
momentum as company financials respond to restructuring efforts of the past
year. The consumer segment is also improving gradually despite uncertainty in
the market. At the moment we don't expect a lot from consumers in the fourth
quarter, but there is potential for growth."
"This was the quarter of the behemoths," said Roger Kay,
Director of Client Computing at IDC. "Despite having to digest the results
of its recently executed merger with Compaq, HP managed to register healthy
sequential growth and gained share in the United States. And Dell, the perennial
U. S. leader, showed no signs of slowing its relentless pace as it grew to
nearly 30% of the market."
...IDC profile |
|
ISP Switching and SPAM
Continue to Drive E-mail Address Changes
New
York, NY and London - October 15, 2002 - A new study, to be unveiled next week
at The 85th Annual Direct Marketing Association conference, indicates that
e-mail addresses are changing at the rate of 31 percent annually, driven by ISP
switching, job changes and consumer efforts to avoid SPAM. The e-mail
survey, conducted by independent, third-party research firm NFO WorldGroup,
concluded that, consequently, the majority of consumers lose touch with personal
and professional contacts and with preferred websites. The study was
commissioned by Return Path Inc., the leading provider of e-mail change of
address services, and Global Name Registry, license operator of the .name
top-level domain.
"The rate of e-mail address turnover continues unabated from the
pace we first identified in September 2000," said Matt Blumberg, chief
executive officer of Return Path, "And in addition to the impact on
consumer relationships identified, there is a real and significant subsequent
financial impact on reputable businesses that rely on e-mail to communicate with
their customers."
The survey, conducted in August 2002, updates a similar study by
Return Path and NFO WorldGroup from September 2000, which identified a 32
percent annual rate of e-mail address churn. The results are based on responses
from 1,015 consumers from NFO WorldGroup's online panel of U.S. e-mail users
over the age of 18. The panel is representative of U.S. online households. The
survey revealed that consumers, on average, now own 3.1 e-mail addresses (up
from 2.6 in the 2000 study).
...Return Path |
|
What Will Branding Look
Like in 2005? - New book - "FusionBranding" - Aims to Give Answers
ATLANTA
- October 11, 2002 - Why do more than 90% of new products fail? Why do so many
branding efforts never create a blip on consumer and business radar screens?
The reason: Many companies – especially those selling to other
businesses – are failing to brand today because they are using the one-way
marketing tactics of the 1970s, such as "positioning." That's the
premise of a controversial new book, FusionBranding:
How To Forge Your Brand For The Future, by brand futurist Nick Wreden. The
book argues that companies need to start preparing now for the branding
imperatives of the next decade, which will be substantially different than the
marketing requirements of the past 30 years.
FusionBranding: How To Forge Your Brand For The Future by brand
futurist Nick Wreden represents a fresh look at branding imperatives, especially
for companies involved in selling to other businesses. These imperatives include
customer equity, operational excellence and accountability. Core principles of
FusionBranding, based on the fact that customers – not companies –
define brands, are illustrated with numerous case studies. Chapters also include
a "FutureView," which looks at branding in 2005 and beyond, "Takeaways,"
in-depth questions that can help readers apply FusionBranding principles, and "Resources"
that feature books and Web sites about FusionBranding principles. Finally, key
vendors are listed. 400 pages, indexed. Price - $29.95. ...sample
chapter - Chapter 5: No Other Alternative: Doing Business on Customer Terms |
|
CMP Electronics Mags to
Close
Editor:- October 10, 2002 - according to a recent report in
SourceWire. "CMP Europe
is to close its electronics division. EE Times UK (Electronic Engineering Times
UK), Electronic Engineering Design and Microwave Engineering Europe will all be
closing at the end of November. The only magazine with a chance of being
re-launched is Microwave Engineering Europe. Helen Duncan, current editor, said
she might try to "do a deal" with pan-European publications, although
it is very early days."
Let's do a reality check here.
Market researchers covering
the EDA market were telling me as far back as 1997 that electronic component
specifiers and designers in the US were using the web as their primary source of
technology and product information instead of printed comics. But I guess that
advertising agencies can always find people stupid enough to pay for pictures in
magazines which no one reads or cares about for a long time before they're found
out.
That's how the dotcom crash started in the first place, as ad
agencies misdirected billions of dollars of shareholder money into TV ads and
print ads thereby triggering the IT recession in the US. Now at last someone at
the client side has calculated that it's not worth advertising in trade
electronics magazines after all. How sad... Speaking as an ex electronics
engineer and design manager myself, the only surprise is that these publications
actually lasted so long. |
|
Vendors Overstate eSourcing
Savings, Forrester Calculates
London
- October 9, 2002 - To maintain profit margins, European firms stampede into
online sourcing, but firms fail to achieve hoped-for cost savings due to fudged
price comparisons and weak purchasing compliance, according to a new brief by
Forrester Research. Firms will focus on multicriteria value
creation, not on one-off price cuts.
"In today's tough economic
climate, European execs seek to enhance cost control with eSourcing technologies
like auctions, tenders, and requests for quote," said Forrester Senior
Analyst David Metcalfe. "Vendors of all stripes use claims of 10% average
cost savings to drive demand for online sourcing technologies and wraparound
consulting. But average price reductions defined in contracts don't add up.
Indeed, Forrester believes online sourcing offers firms the prospect of
year-on-year average cost savings of less than 5%, not the 10% vendors claim."
To calculate cost savings from eSourcing, firms must deduct license
fees and consulting charges - additional fees that they didn't face before.
Also, vendors sell their sourcing platforms by the module, but many clients
don't have the contract management functionality needed to enforce changes in
purchasing behavior - and some vendors lack contract management functionality
entirely. For instance, plant managers distributed across the world continue to
buy from regional suppliers, short-circuiting eSourced corporate deals. Firms
took two years to discover that eProcurement requires process change to capture
technology efficiencies; the redesign of the sourcing process adds additional
change costs.
Forrester believes that as executives discover the true drivers of
cost savings, they will shift their eSourcing focus from short-term price
reductions to sustainable value creation on multiple criteria like product
quality and delivery timeliness. To maximize value creation, firms should drive
compliance with accounts payable integration and enhance requirements gathering
with shopfloor integration.
...Forrester Research
profile
See also:-
Market research &
STORAGE analysts, Storage
Services |
|
Remind Your Customers About
the Benefits They're Getting from Time to Time
Editor:- October 8,
2002 - My Renault car is two years old this month and I thought I should book it
in for a service. The service dealer asked me for the chassis number just so
they could be sure they had the right parts. So I looked up the paperwork to get
the information. Along the way I noticed the freephone number for RAC roadside
assistance and recovery which came as a free offer with the car. Now the RAC
never figured as an incentive when I bought the car. I just liked their ads
(Size? It matters!") I found this model comfortable on vacation in France
as a hire car and I preconfigured all the features etc on the Renault web site.
Unfortunately I had to print out these details and take them to a dealer to buy
it. But that was back in 2000, and you have to remember that the UK is at least
3 years behind the US when it comes to doing business selling things on the
web.
Anyway, I couldn't remember how long the free breakdown recovery
service lasted. From memory I assumed it was one year. As I already had the
freephone number in hand I thought I'd ring it and find out. The phone was
answered instantly and I was asked for my car registration number. I gave it and
explained that I hadn't broken down, and just wanted to know when the service
ended. I was surprised and delighted to learn that it runs for another year. So
the original offer must have been 3 years. ...And yes, they will send me a
reminder when it comes to an end.
Now I have to admit that the last
time I was in a car which broke down a lot, was in my wife's special edition
Jaguar. Occasionally the engine control unit would pine for the fiords and
request a control-alt-delete type intervention back in the local Jaguar garage.
That was expensive but the car always came back looking clean and shiny even if
they didn't ever fix the basic problem (which may have been a design fault
anyway.) The Audi which has replaced it, never goes to the garage and therefore
never looks clean.
Back to the Renault... It's 20 years since any of
the mass production cars I have ownded, ever stopped involuntarily by the
roadside. That was a Ford Capri which I drove through what I thought was a
puddle - but turned out to be a big dip in the road which was flooded by
melting ice and snow. It was a moonlit night and as the engine stopped and the
front of the car disappeared from view, I noticed big ice cubes floating past
the driver's window at about neck height.
I knew then, I had made a
serious miscalculation about the depth of the water and shouldn't have tried to
drive through it at high speed. Luckily I was only a few hundred yards away
from home and walked it dripping wet, still clutching the plastic carrier bag
with the ruined Chinese take away in my hand. When, a few hours later, we
towed my car backwards out from the water, I, knowing nothing about engines,
naiively put the key in the iginition and miraculously it started. So I
didn't need a tow home, but sat on the wet seat and drove it via the several
mile unflooded route home. It took a few weeks to dry out inside and in the
meantime I sat on a cushion and kept driving it the 40 miles or so commute to
work. I bought several Fords after that. But my point is, that I have always
been lucky with car reliability.
Anyway... today I was delighted to
find out that my free RAC cover was actually for 3 years, and not just 1 year as
I originally thought. If I had been getting a yearly update, the outcome
wouldn't have been any different, because I didn't need the service, but for
most people it would give peace of mind. So that's a trick the marketers at the
RAC and Renault have missed. Make sure you don't. |
|
2002 SAN and NAS Report by
Peripheral Concepts, Inc.
October 7, 2002 - a new
article published today by Peripheral Concepts, Inc. on STORAGEsearch
provides a management summary of trends in the SAN and NAS market. Taken
from their recently published market report called "2002 SAN and NAS Report
- Infrastructure, Products and Market Opportunity" which costs $2,895,
the article is a must read document for vendors and users who want simple clear
insights into what's happening in the network storage market. ...Peripheral Concepts profile |
|
Worldwide Chip Sales up
2.2% in August from July
SAN JOSE, Calif. –
October 1, 2002– SAN JOSE, Calif. – Global chip sales totaled $11.9
billion in August, a 2.2% sequential increase over the $11.7 billion level reach
in July, the SIA announced today. On a year-to-year basis, chip
sales in August were up 14% from August of 2001, the first double-digit increase
from the industry's cyclical low in 2001.
"The August data confirm that the semiconductor industry is in
the midst of a broadly-based upturn", stated SIA President George Scalise. "After
5.6% sequential growth in the first quarter of 2002 and 5.8% growth in the
second quarter, the double-digit year over year increase in August sales is yet
further evidence of a sustained and durable recovery."
The
wireless market continues to be the strongest end market, as reflected in brisk
growth of chips used in handsets, as new subscribers continue to come on line in
Asia and existing customers upgrade to newer technologies.
The PC market traditionally shows sequential third quarter growth as a
result of back to school purchases and anticipation of the consumer holiday
buying season and both trends were in evidence with sequential increases in
Microprocessor and DRAM revenues. A number of product lines registered increases
in Average Selling Prices (ASP's) in August, as rising demand and the prior
runoff of inventory produced a better overall supply/demand balance. For tables
and more data click on the link above. ...SIA |
|
Why isn't the solid state
disk accelerator market already a 5 to 10 billion dollar market?
October 1, 2002 - in a leader
article on this week's STORAGEsearch news page the question is posed -
why isn't the solid state disk accelerator market much bigger, given the
compelling economic arguments for this technology? The blame is laid
squarely at the primitive state of the SAN software management industry, which
is still using out of date control models which look more like the chemical
industry of the 1970s than the computer industry in the 21st century. Until
storage software management tools become better adapted to users needs, they
will slow down the adoption and limit the uptake of promising new storage
technologies. ..Solid State
Disks |
|
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Other news on this page
Anatomy
of a Search Engine: SearchDay Looks Inside Google
Is it a maze? No.
It's Seagate's a-maze-ing new logo
IDC Finds IT Security and Business
Continuity Market Poised to Double in Size by 2006
One Third of US
Sun Resellers May Disappear
IDC Says PC Market Resumed Modest Growth in
Third Quarter
ISP Switching and SPAM Continue to Drive E-mail Address
Changes
What Will Branding Look Like in 2005? - New book - "FusionBranding"
- Aims to Give Answers
CMP Electronics Mags to Close
Vendors
Overstate eSourcing Savings, Forrester Calculates
Remind Your Customers About the Benefits They're Getting from Time to
Time
2002 SAN and NAS Report by Peripheral Concepts, Inc.
Worldwide
Chip Sales up 2.2% in August from July
Why isn't the solid state disk
accelerator market already a 5 to 10 billion dollar market?
earlier news (archive) |
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Nibble:-
The New Goldrush? - Network Accelerators
Since the summer dozens
of companies have announced a wide range of network accelerators. These are
particulary important to Sun users because
Sun Microsystems
has been parsimonious with its SPARC CPU clock speeds in the past few years,
offering speedups of x 1.2, when really users would rather like x 2.0. So if
you want things to go any faster, you'll have to look at accelerator
coprocessors instead of accelerated native SPARC processors.
In the
security part of the
market, joining the long established PCI crypto accelerator card first announced
two years ago by Compaq, then badged by Sun, then dropped by Sun and now
supported by
SUFFIX Informatik, we now have
some network security boxes which protect storage networks at wireline speeds.
New vendors in this market include
Cylink and
Decru.
NAS is now a $3 Billion
market, and will double in size in the next 2 years according to the
2002 SAN and NAS
Report by Peripheral Concepts, Inc. So dozens of companies have announced
TCP/IP Offload accelerator products to things move along a little faster.
In addition to the pioneer company in this market,
Alacritech, and chip
companies Intel and
LSI Logic, two long
established SPARC OEMs Antares
Microsystems and
Tadpole have
publicly announced they are working on products for the Sun market. And
Aristos Logic was the
first company to reveal details of its storage processor in October 2002. So it
won't be long before its competitors, still in stealth mode will have to put up,
or shut up.
A full list of
iSCSI and FCIP companies
and Storage interface ICs,
processors & accelerator chips can be seen on the mouse site,
STORAGEsearch.com. So, despite the
recession, Sun users are going to see some innovative new 3rd party products
soon which will help them speed up their servers without breaking the bank.
Why
do you need all these accelerator products? Won't software do the job?
The
killer application for network accelerators is the real-time response for data
replication and onsite and offsite backup windows. Without hardware accelerators
your internal networks are more vulnerable to data loss and longer restore
cycles. Meanwhile your ISPs are looking for any reason to charge more money, and
if you need to buy extra bandwidth for your VPNs then the hardware accelerators
could end up being much cheaper.
And I haven't even mentioned
Solid State Disks
because I thought that everyone already knows that they can make your Sun
server run 20 to 30 percent faster. There are lots of application notes about
that with a complete list of vendors also at the click of mouse. | |
