http://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblogA Springboard to ServicesWord is out that the acquisition Kaz by Fujitsu is off, seems that de-integrating Kaz from the Telstra mothership is proving a little difficult. 7/13/2008 10:00:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=167Whilst it is not announced as yet, it is a very open secret that Fujitsu will buy Kaz, the only think that remains is the price and the date of the announcement. Clearly Fujitsu will talk about client integration, and the benefits of scale, however what is clear that in effect it has become cheap enough to be worth buying. Many people have looked at it, of course including Fujitsu, but matching expectations of price has been a tough ask to make.   Given it’s previous lustre and status in the Australian IT services market it is sad how Kaz lost it’s way, perhaps it started before being bought by Telstra, but it was certainly accelerated by Australia’s largest telco. Kaz has no momentum of note, and has lost key people and perhaps more importantly key clients in recent times. The brand with a few small exceptions has lost its strength, (Canberra is one exception), and Fujitsu will really be buying existing engagements.   In the mid market Fujitsu will be able to reach a little higher, and actually have very strong capability in the space, so from that point of view a price around A$100M may be worthwhile. Several other vendors are actively looking towards acquisition, so it will be interesting to see if this sparks interest in vendors such as Data#3, Datacom etc, or if the consolidation is at the larger end of town.   For clients, there is certainly a lot of disruption, HP and EDS are consummating their marriage with limited noise, and now Fujitsu and KAZ will have to ensure that they focus on pipeline management and client execution, this is often difficult through the life of an acquisition but of course, without customer intimacy, the customer looks elsewhere.    7/1/2008 7:36:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=165According to leading economists it appears that a range of economies are approaching recession, or even in recession. This includes Canada, Ireland, Spain, Italy and New Zealand. Even more critically it appears likely that the US and UK are set to follow. This has significant implications, investment may shift from these markets to those with a more positive outlook, investment structure in IT will change. CIO's will be required to have IT investments that return effectively and quickly. Hopefully waste will be removed from the economies, and in places like Ireland and Canada which have experienced long term economic stability and growth, there has been a lot of extra weight added to the economy and inefficiency. This will be removed as the economy get tighter.   As with all recessions and economics for that matter, there needs to be some realistic context. Whilst economies are slowing, or experiencing negative growth, they are not going to disappear overnight. The Canadian economy shrank by 0.3% recently, it is still 99.7% of the economy, but clearly in relative and absolute terms the cream has come off the economy.   We will look at this and the implications for the economy as it evolves.   6/26/2008 9:40:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=164If anyone else has tried to get a visa from Indian consulates around the world, it is a long and very frustrating process to merely submit a visa. However it has been moved to an outsourcing arrangement, and amazingly it works. A one hour experience was moved to a 1 minute one. Given that it is the Indian government undertaking the process, perhaps it is not a surprise that they have made sure it works seamlessly from end to end. Now to fix the traffic in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.6/24/2008 10:50:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=162An interesting article in the New York Times today on the role of ex HP CEO Carly Fiorina in the presidential campaign of John McCain.   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/us/politics/06fiorina.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin   Avoiding the US political race, what was interesting to me was the comments of Fiorina on her legacy at HP. Did she turn them around, or was it Mark Hurd who should have credit for it. Not surprisingly she is pretty clear in her own mind on the matter. To quote her -From the day I was fired, every quarter, even before they had a new C.E.O., has been record after record. That doesn’t happen unless the foundation’s been built –   Whist of course this has merit, and she has a fair point, the market did not want her, the majority of the board and Senior Management Team did not want her. Furthermore,  enough employees were not drinking from the kool aid to be happy without her there. My question is did Firoina really build the foundation at HP for its recovery, or was it done by the many thoushands of employees who got on with the job despite the speculation. HP was never a one person company, it was founded by two people and symbolically has grown from there to have a very unique culture that has allowed it to succeed often in spite of itself.   By the same consistency Mark Hurd cannot take the credit for the ongoing success of HP as well, (publically and from what I have seen, I doubt he would be inclined to anyway).  That goes to the employees who battle on in head office and across the many HP plants and locations. The CEO is of course critical to provide the vision, discipline and following in a firm such as HP, but without the employees on the ground 1 person cannot make HP (or any other firm) great.   6/5/2008 7:47:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=161http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,23766293-462,00.html An article speculating that 1 million jobs will be lost to offshore in the next 20 years in Australia, it is union funded, I am not a union basher, with unemployment at record lows, and a looming skills shortage, surely the fact that the economy structurally changes means that this sort of analyis is so simplistic it does not one any good. A little frustrating but as is always clear, everyone has an agenda.5/26/2008 10:46:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=160Green IT will be one of the key areas of attention from a services line for the merged HP-EDS entity, both have some strengths in the market, whilst it does not solve the HP printer issue (ie the role of a printer being to print ink on paper, both rather negative, though HP is looking to maximise the efficiency), the Data Centre environment and a wholistic all of IT view of the green world will both be areas where HP will be able to enrich capabilities and drive client value moving forward, again, assuming execution.5/26/2008 3:12:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=159Hi, thanks for all the visits in the last week, some records were smashed for my blog, of interest may be the following PR that we released, it highlights how important Apps services are, and that it is the focus of growth, there is growth of course across the markets, but we see the acceleration of Enterprise Application Integration services as being a critical market. http://www.springboardresearch.com/news.html?item=64 5/21/2008 1:37:00 AMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=158Able now to pry myself away from HP-EDS, I have been spending some time looking at the skills shortage issue, in a discussion about this with a major vendor it was clear to me the key irony of the skills issue in IT, and perhaps why we cannot avoid it. Simply, (and I hope I am the first to say this, I did google it), - IT does not have the people to develop the technology to take the people out of technology.  5/15/2008 9:20:00 PMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=157Due to overwhelming demand, please see the link to the Focus Point I wrote on this. We believe that Springboard was the first analyst firm to blog at depth and to get a detailed analysis out to the market for insight and comment. http://www.springboardresearch.com/content/sampleresearch/hp_eds.pdf 5/14/2008 12:56:00 AMhttp://www.springboardresearch.com/sbrblog/comments.asp?id=156