Duncan Riley write on Blog slayer: Microsoft and the future of SixApart about the threats Microsoft poses on standalone blogging platform companies; including potential threats. Although the post relates to SixApart I think it is relevant for any other company that provides similar tools.

Although a direct competition with Microsoft is probably not the most pleasant experience for smaller vendors:), especially when their PR drums announce a full blown charge on a new emerging market. Still, I think that automatically deducting from any new competitive scenario where Microsoft is involved a predictable end of story where the smaller vendor is the loser may not always be right. Even when contemplating on the lessons Microsoft and Netscape wars has brought us.

Today there are different variables that affect the current competitive landscape that didn’t exist before, which in turn can lead to different outcomes.

A big difference in the competitive landscape is that blogging platforms and blogs reading software are tied in a loosely coupled manner unlike the strong link web servers and web browsers has. The competitive edge Microsoft had while controlling the browser (and its underlying operating system) as well as the server side no longer exists. Blog readers can consume content in many different ways. Blogs are read via different web aggregators, personal aggregators, iPods, mobile phones and other mediums that highly depend only on readers preferences.

Innovation in blog reading mediums is at high rates and will grow even higher thanks to the simplicity and accessibility of blog content. The lack of dependency between the client side and the server side makes competition less intensive and less critical even when Microsoft is your competitor. Actually it makes Microsoft a competitor that has to follow the same rules every other competitor works by and this makes competition more fair.

The loosely coupled nature of the RSS in general has been built thanks to many different factors, including way XML is architectured, the concept of web services and open source technologies and state of mind.

Oracle weighs move on Siebel by Kate Gibson - The two companies are in preliminary talks, according to analysts and a source close to the company. as seen on TheDeal.com - Oracle weighs move on Siebel by Kate Gibson.

See Interview with Laurence Haughton Lip-Sticking: Smart Man Online: Laurence Haughton

Interesting Posts:
Novell will own open source (says them) - martinandalex

Early peek to Jim Allchin video interview on Longhorn - radio.weblogs.com

Interesting News:
Business Objects Integrates XI Suite With SAP Platforms - crn.com

Cisco Systems splashes out $68m to boost Linksys division - cbronline.com

Next Inning Technology Research Comments on Juniper Networks - biz.yahoo.com

A Revolution in John Thompson’s Head - The Symantec CEO has a vision of tech innovation for the outfit’s merger with Veritas. Will wary investors see it his way? - businessweek

Wireless leaders hook up to address security - vnunet.com

ChannelAdvisor Raises $18 Million in Additional Financing - tmcnet.com

IBM Develops ThinkPad Tablet PC - eweek.com

NetQoS Acquires RedPoint Network Systems, Launches NetVoyant Polling Technology; Acquisition of NetVoyant Technology Enhances NetQoS’ Product Portfolio - businesswire

Gates wants to scrap H-1B visa restrictions - zdnet

Rapid VoIP Growth Threatens Quality Of Service - The surge in VoIP providers is beginning to strain many ISPs a report from a U.K.-based networking equipment company says. - smallbizpipeline

SAP, Microsoft Team On Front/Back-Office Integration For Small Businesses - smallbizpipeline

Q&A: SAP’s Dennis Moore on what to expect from Mendocino - computerworld

Customer Focus Is Key to Ingram Micro’s Outsourcing Success - thechannelinsider

CIOs, CTO give thumbs-up to software as a service - infoworld

HP exec cites open source, commercial mix - Shane Robison also emphasizes SOA management - infoworld

What’s Going on With Microsoft MBF? - microsoft-watch

Novell Releases Tool for Asset Management - newsfactor

Mozilla Browsers Gaining Market Share - newsfactor

Fred Wilson on A VC blog talks on conflicts of interests that exist in the VC line of business - post.

My moral perspective on each conflict mentioned:

Confidentiality Conflict - Due to the nature of VCs work, where they meet everyday with different people it is reasonable that pieces of information disclosed or domain expertise gained in discussions with entrepreneurs will be used or even spoken without harm intentions. We are all people and having to keep high level of confidentiality is an important part of a VC job description.

The situation that really worries entrepreneurs is when a VC takes this sensitive information and uses that intentionally for its own benefit with the knowledge that it will harm the person that trusted him/her. This, of course is not the common state of mind although in life, you encounter situations where the temptation gets high. This behavior is a matter of personal ethics since the decision to do or not to do lies in the VC’s head only and many times it will be taken without external accountability.

Portfolio Company Conflict - If relationship with portfolio companies are open and candid then all the sides of the conflict should be aware to each other line of business, duties and responsibilities; A VC has to manage a portfolio of companies driving to the best result possible. As long as decisions are based on good rationale and not on personal preferences (As it happens also) I think that the involved parties will understand and accept the decisions, and if not immediately then it will happen within time.

Relationship conflict - I agree that this is a true conflict that can be handled only by openness and sensitivity.

Adteractive Raises $100M+ & Other Fresh Deals - thealarmclock.com

SAP readies new business-monitoring programs - news.com

Cisco Buys Sipura for Telephony Tech - newsfactor.com

SAP’s Kagermann sees competition, cooperation with Microsoft - And he said there are no plans to revive merger talks - computerworld.com

Reconnex Gets $3.5 Million - redherring.com

Exec Survey: Regulation Hurts Our Growth - nationalunderwriter.com

SAP expands in the public sector, unveils wares - computerworld.com

Nortel buys government services firm for $448M - computerworld.com

Google Takes AdWords Beyond Clicks - betanews.com

- Microsoft, SAP strengthen alliance
news.com

Novell Keeping an Open Mind on Linux - newsfactor.com

Cisco’s Strategy: Helping Businesses Go Wireless - Networking vendor is moving aggressively to integrate wireless LAN technology from Airespace into its product portfolio - informationweek

Veritas CEO Talks Convergence - “Information and currency are becoming one and the same,” Garry Bloom tells the audience at the vendor’s Vision conference. - informationweek

Merrill Lynch CIO survey sees IT spending stable in Q2 - The 100 CIOs surveyed also weighed in on new technologies and Windows - computerworld

I.B.M. Plans to Buy a Health Consulting Firm - nytimes.com

WINHEC - Microsoft aims “Metro” at Adobe - infoworld

85% of IT executives consider application quality critical - itfacts.biz

- Microsoft names new CFO -Chris Liddell, former finance chief at International Paper, to move into the CFO’s office for the software giant.
news.com

Venture investing falls 7.9% - Venture capital investing, the financial fuel of the innovation economy, slowed in the first three months of this year, according to the first-quarter MoneyTree survey released yesterday. - boston.com

Netscapees Launch Yet Another Start-Up - thealarmclock.com

IBM looks to level field with EMC - Virtualization is Big Blue’s hope for future - boston.com

Yahoo! chief’s vision: All functions on one device Terry Semel told “Globes” he would consider cooperation with Israel 10 television - globes.co.il

US venture investments down 16% in Q1 2005 - itfacts.biz

Google Tests Cost-Per-Impression Pricing and Targeting for AdWords - searchenginelowdown.com

BlackBerry Popularity Leads To Fierce Competition - Success breeds challengers, as developments from Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung begin to erode RIM’s dominance. - webpronews.com

Gates talks about Longhorn - geeknewscentral.com

Microsoft Plans To Hardwire Security - newsfactor.com

A Step Behind Intel, AMD Enters New Chip War - newsfactor.com

Every now and then I stop and think on how I perceive the concept of strategy in the business environment and how it relates to other terms such as: strategic plans, tactics, objectives, mission, vision and policies. I welcome any kind of feedback and within time I will update this post to accommodate new thinking as well as users’ feedback.

Businesses are measured or compared on certain qualitative and quantitative aspects such as: level of profitability, share of a specific market, number of employees, no. of incoming service calls, employee churn, pipeline of prospects, web site ranking on Google, market value of shares, domain knowledge, and many others. These attributes change within time based on what the business does and on what happens around it.

Business objectives represent an ambition to change business reality into a desirable one, where certain aspects of the business will meet certain criteria. For example, an objective to reach a 30% market share in a target market within 5 years can be measured as the percentage of customers out of the total addressable market.

To change the complex business reality for a business and achieve objectives, the business has to execute a set of actions and to follow different guidelines during a specific time frame. The complexity of business reality is driven by different forces such as regulation, available talent, available capital, customers spending level, available innovation, politics and others. Setting and achieving business objectives bring into the equation of complexity an additional unique set of conflicting forces, and that is competition. Competition is when other businesses share similar objectives to yours and everyone can not have it in the same time. An objective that no other business tries to accomplish except for your business, within time becomes more of a personal ambition and less of a business objective.

The “virtual” group of all actions a business is intending to take in a predefined time frame comprises the pile of corporate plans. In reality there isn’t a one plan for a business that includes a recipe on what to do and usually it takes the form of several inter-dependent plans. In the complex and unpredictable reality planners consider known facts and also make predictions for different scenarios and how it can affect attaining the business objectives in a low risk fashion. Every action a business decides to take has a specific goal to be achieved; the process of breaking down the main objectives into the set of intermediary goals and setting the dependency among them represents the core of planning.

A strategic plan contains, except for the description of goals and resources, a continuous and coherent line of thought that answers the questions of what is the current state? What concrete goals can be achieved in high probability with available resources and finally how these goals will contribute to the accomplishment of the desired objectives. This underlying stream of thoughts can viewed as one aspect of business strategy and that is why a strategic plan is called a strategic plan.

The strategic plan takes into account the most important objectives for the business and dictates what to do with the most important resources available on a specific timeframe. A strategic plan is the root of any other plan in the organization. A business mission represents the path set in a strategic plan for reaching the objectives. The vision is a wider set of longer term objectives; and every strategic plan in its time has to be aligned with the general direction set by the vision’s objectives.

A strategic plan is made of explicit actions and their target goals (Or goals that will be achieved based on dependent lower-level plans) as well policies. Policies can be viewed as a set of rules that dictate the boundaries of actions laid in a plan. A rule unlike an explicit action is triggered upon certain predefined events and when it is triggered it activates other predefined actions for returning the business back to its chartered course. It is mainly a tool for accommodating the unpredictable nature of reality where a plan is executed. Achieving one objective can affect the success ratio of achieving a different parallel objective and policies serve as a synchronization mechanism for orchestrating a successful execution.

In a short example of a business that develops and sells software for banks the top management assumes that an excellence positioning on customer service would be the right strategy for achieving their strategic objectives. Customer service excellence means maintaining a constant high level of service that is satisfactory in relation to their expectations and to what competitors offer. Business policies serve here as a watchdog for assuring the excellence level and when things don’t go as planned different correctional courses of action are triggered.

Of course it is not an automatic mechanism, but still it is a way for a business to react better to unexpected scenarios. It somehow reduces rethinking on core strategies when events occur and leaves more space for thinking on correction. Strategic policies can be viewed also as the corporate values that are wished to be maintained on a certain level for keeping the general direction of the company on its mission.

A strategy is eventually translated into groups of standalone concrete steps – tactical steps, where every group of logically-bound steps share a visible and attainable goals that can be achieved only by successful and ordered execution. Tactics represent the implementation aspect of the strategic line of thought, where concrete actions take place with real consequences.