Want Publicity? Start Your Own Blog, Media Site

April 29, 2009

As the old French adage goes, “One is never so well served as by one-self.”

And for PR pros that could also mean becoming… a publisher!

“Don’t underestimate the potential of self-publising and developing your own powerful blog or media site,” said Dell’s Vice President of Large Enterprise Marketing and Online, Andy Lark. 

Speaking today at PRSA’s event on “PR Secret Strategies For Success” Lark argued that the vacuum created by the collapse of publishing – Fortune Small Business magazine was just taken off the stand -and in particular in the high-tech sector, left Oracle magazine and Dell’s Power Solutions magazine as the 2 most distributed tech magazine in the world, ahead of IDG’s InfoWorld.

“Increasingly the “private label” publications is starting to dominate the media landscape with deeper reach and richer content,” added Lark.

For Lark, there’s no reason why even a small startup can not become a large publisher, with a site that agregates content and finally end up with a bigger circulation very quickly than any of the tradional media sites.

I agree this can be true for companies launching publications focused on their core market. Like Seagate’s blogs on digital storage or RSA’s security blog.

But I find hard to believe that these “private label” blogs will provide a fair and balance view of competitors, flaws, etc…

And there will always be a room for high-quality reporting, in “traditional” media, blog or whatever you want to call it.

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Dell Worries About Bloggers, Not Mossberg

April 29, 2009

I have an advice to the many startups in the Valley, after you watch the video: don’t try this at home!

One of the many funny moments at today’s PRSA event titled “PR in a Down Economy: Secret Strategies For Success” was when Dell’s Vice President of Large Enterprise Marketing and Online, Andy Lark, talked about blogs versus the traditional media, and how bloggers keep him awake at night, and not the Wall Street Journal’s consumer technology journalist, Walt Mossberg.

“When I wake up in the morning at Dell, I’m not worried about what Walt Mossberg is going to write. I’m worried about what Ryan, and guys writing at Engadget and Gizmodo… They are more like to break a story than any journalist out there except Justin Scheck from the Wall Street Journal,” jokes Lark.

Scheck recently wrote an investigative piece on Dell’s plans to sell its first smart phone.

If you’re the size of Dell you might get away snobbing someone as influential as Mossberg. But if you’re not, there are many ways to “pitch” him – at conferences he attends for example – and you don’t necessarily need a PR firm for that!

[Update] In his Thursday column in the Wall Street Journal, Mossberg reviewed 2 Dell consumer products – the Adamo super-thin laptop and the Studio One all-in-one desktop – noting that “with these machines, Dell is making a strong bid to win back consumers’ hearts. It’s off to a decent start.” Sounds nice to me. Wonder if that’s why Lark was not worried about what Mossberg is writing!

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H-P Passes Dell In U.S. PC Sales; But Industry Continues Decline

April 15, 2009
Apple needs to come up with a low cost PC to reverse the slide of its Macintosh sales (mock up by Isamu Sanada)

Apple needs to come up with a low cost PC to weather the downturn (mock up by Isamu Sanada)

H-P is now the world’s undisputed leader of the computer market, period.

Until today, Dell always bragged that it was selling more PCs in the U.S. market than its Palo Alto, Calif.-rival.

But according to studies released today by analyst firms Gartner and IDC, H-P now holds the crown with a 27.6 percent market share, ahead of Dell at 26.3 percent.

Low-cost PC sales growth helped avoid steeper fall

However, today’s analysts findings contradict Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini optimistic comments made yesterday about an end of the PC industry slide, as worldwide PC shipments for the first quarter of 2009 continue to decline: -7.1 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago for IDC and -6.5 percent for Gartner.

Apple also suffered from the continuing downturn and saw a 1.1 percent decline globally of its Macintosh sales. “Apple’s relatively higher ASP (average selling price) created challenges for it in the tough economy,” said Gartner analysts.

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Analyst: Dell Smartphone Doomed From Start

April 13, 2009
Dells aspiration to enter the smartphone business might be short lived

Dell's aspiration to enter the smartphone business might be short lived

Entering the highly competitive mobile handset market with a poorly conceived product and little carriers support surely spells trouble for Dell, told Collin Stewarts analyst Ashok Kumar in a note to clients today.

“Dell plans to enter the smart handset market in a unique manner, by launching its products directly to the retailer… Dell committed itself to the handset business with a poorly planned feature set and cost targets,” wrote Kumar.

Although Dell is a newbie in the mobile phone space, the head of its consumer business – Ron Garriques – is no less than the former chief of Motorola’s handset division.

And talking to Garriques on a visit last year at Dell’s corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas, the ex-Motorola executive is focused on not repeating the mistakes done under his watch at Motorola.

But will consumers buy a product that carriers think is not good enough, asks Kumar. “The early verdict appears to indicate that Dell’s handset is more like a “me too” product with a cost structure that offers little advantage over established players like Apple, Nokia and RIM,” suggests the analyst.

On a related news, Dell is reported to launch its smartphone in China, rather sooner than later. What may be a flop in the U.S., may find a public in China, where Dell enjoys a good reputation.

Of course, time will tell. But if H-P was unsuccessful attracting carriers and customers (even its own employees!) to its Windows Mobile phones, its hard to imagine Dell having better luck to crack the world’s mobile market.

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Dell Blasts Cisco Server Strategy; Drives For More Standardisation

March 26, 2009
Dell's president of the large enterprise division wishes Cisco good luck entering the server market!

Dell's president of the large enterprise division wishes Cisco good luck entering the server market!

Going after the server market, is not going to be a walk in the park for Cisco. And after Brocade, it’s Dell’s turn to take a shot at Cisco’s data center strategy.

In a conversation yesterday with Stephen Schuckenbrock, the president of a Dell unit that serves large businesses – $20 billion in annual revenues – had strong words to describe Cisco’s inroads into the server market.

From a customer perspective, why do we need another proprietary platform in the industry. Customers want open architected solutions. They want the flexibility to choose what optimises costs and output in their own business. Dell provides that.

A lot of our competitors, whichever one you choose, would like to lock you in their proprietary sofware and services stack that goes on top of the platform. That’s not our approach.

And Schuckenbrock to add,

“Cisco is just another one of those proprietary solutions that happens to be a new entrant that will learn a lot about what it means to be in the server industry.

And they are in generation 1, and we are in generation 11. I think we’re prepared for that battle.”

Up to 18 servers consolidated into 1 new Dell server

Schuckenbrock also talked about how Dell’s new servers will be able to help enterprises reduce costs – up to 40 percent – through the use of consolidation and virtualisation.

“With our new enterprise efficiency platform which comes with 20 new products, we’re seeing customers that can consolidate 9 servers to 1. Just consider that one simple example where each of those servers come with software licensing, maintenance agreements, their own amortization and depreciation schedules, take up space and consume power. And when you consider the costs of all of those things, and contrast with the do-all-that in one footprint, the savings will begin to speak for themselves.

Emerson seen consolidation as they’ve added a lot of virtualisation to that same agenda of up to 18 to 1″ consolidation to our new platforms

Here’s a video excerpt of my conversation with Schuckenbrock:

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Intel: Slowest Nehalem Server Chip Outperforms Fastest AMD Opteron; Current Or Future

March 25, 2009
Intel's server chief is very optimistic on Nehalem's performance over AMD's Opteron

Intel's server chief is very optimistic on Nehalem's performance over AMD's Opteron

Today, Intel started to drum up next week’s launch of it’s next-generation server chip dubbed “Nehalem”.

Talking at a Dell press conference today, Kirk Skaugen, Intel’s vice president of the Digital Enterprise Group launched a direct attack on AMD’s Opteron server chip dominance.

“Relative to AMD… I can confidently say that our lowest performance Nehalem will outperform the fastest performing Shanghai. Which is probably an unprecedented statement,” said Skaugen.

Adding that,

“Of course I want the benchmarks to legitimise that from third parties but at least I want you to walk away with the scale of performance that we are talking about here… but I think it’s an unprecedented leap and I think we feel very good that even this 4-core (each core mutithreaded), even with [AMD Opteron] Istanbul out in the end of the year… We feel quite strong that Nehalem is going to be a strong leadership product even against the next-generation coming that is isn’t shipping from the competition.”

Intel made an “exception” for Apple’s Nehalem workstation launch

Skaugen also explained that Apple’s launch of Nehalem workstations three weeks ago was an “exception” and that the “official” launch – with partners, OEMs… – will happen next week, on March 30th.

“We needed to thoroughly test the chip on all the platforms it will be made available on. We did this earlier with Apple, because it only involved one operating system and a small number of hardware configuration,” adds Skaugen.

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Brocade Blasts Cisco’s Data Center Strategy

March 24, 2009

Inexperienced, proprietary and self-serving.

That’s how rivals describe Cisco System’s big push into the data center last week.

I think its gong to be a tough road, says Mike Klayko

"I think it's going to be a tough road," says Mike Klayko

With typical marketing aplomb, Cisco unveiled its Unified Computing System last Monday along with a promise to save customers 30 percent of their operating costs. The cost cuts come, it said, if they turned to Cisco for a broad range of their networking, storage and computing needs.

To make good on this last point, Cisco introduced its first blade servers.

Some rivals answered back almost immediately. “Would you let a plumber build your house?” asked Jim Ganthier, Hewlett-Packard’s vice president of infrastructure software and blades, according to eWeek.

On Monday, Brocade Communications Systems offered a pithy criticism of its own. And it boiled down to this: would you trust your infrastructure to unproven gear?

“I’m not sure the largest accounts in the world will put their most critical applications …on a version one product,” said Brocade CEO Mike Klayko in a video posted to You Tube. “I think it is going to be a tough road just because…they’re not a known expert in that space.”

Klayko argued that H-P, IBM and Dell are on version six and seven of their servers and that saving costs is not a secret known only to Cisco.

“We’re all going toward the same goal of taking cost out of the environment,” he said. “I just think we are better positioned.”

Of course, time will tell who is right.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

IBM To Buy Sun?

March 18, 2009

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for a mere $6.5 billion in cash, less $1.63 billion the Silicon Valley company has already in the bank.

A chump change for Big Blue which has about $12.7 billion in its cash reserve, but a 100 per cent premium for the Santa Clara, Calif.-company stockholders!

What a reverse of fortune for Sun which also approached H-P. I remember co-founder Scott McNealy telling me last year that before anyone think of acquiring his company they will have to have it least $20 billion. Now, it’s about a quarter of that.

An IBM-Sun combination would become undisputedly the world’s largest server maker with 42 per cent market share, against H-P (29.5 per cent) and Dell (11.6 per cent); as well as a formidable force in the data center arena, open source software and storage.

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Dell Unveils MacBook Killer; Adamo 13 Targets Luxury Conscious Customers!

March 17, 2009

Dell Adamo 13 copycats Apple's latest MacBooks with an all-aluminum unibody case and a thin profile

Dell Adamo 13 copycats Apple's latest MacBooks with an all-aluminum unibody case and a thin profile

After teasing us at CES with its luxury PC line, Dell is finally ready to ship the first laptop of its Adamo line.

Adamo, derived from the Latin word meaning “to fall in love,” will serve as the flagship in a line of Dell products created to “disrupt the personal computing space with the combination of new design aesthetics, personalization choices and sought-after technologies.”

Taking a page from Apple, the 13.4-inch glass wide-screen laptop has super thin profiles, weights 4lb (1 more than the MacBook Air) and is built into an “unibody” aluminum case – similar to the current MacBooks.

“The Adamo by Dell brand was inspired by fashion, luxury brands and timeless design,” says Dell.

With the Adamo 13, the solid-state drive comes standard, replacing a hard-disk drive.

Available in black “onyx” and white “pearl” the Adamo laptop can be preordered here and will ship on March 26 at prices starting at $1,999.

Technical specifications

  • Intel Core 2 Duo 1.2Ghz
  • Intel 965 Express, Intel GMX4500 GPU
  • 2GB DDR3 (4GB max)
  • 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display
  • 128GB solid state drive
  • Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi-N, Bluetooth
  • Vista Home Premium 64-bits (SP1)
  • 331x242x16.39mm, 4Lbs
  • 5 hours of battery life

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Analyst: Cisco To Launch Densest Intel Blade Servers; Competes Head-To-Head With Dell, H-P, IBM, Sun

March 15, 2009

At an event Monday, Cisco Systems CEO, John Chambers, will unveil the company’s first ever servers, code-named “California”.

According to an IMEX Research report, Cisco’s blade servers will feature two Nehalem 5570 Xeons based on Intel’s Core i7 processors, with up to 384GB of memory, well above the maximum capacity of 128GB in today’s blades and allowing up to 100 virtual machines on a single server.

“Cisco will be entering the market with by far the densest and powerful blade servers and data center infrastructure than any existing on the market,” indicates the IMEX report.

The “California” blades will integrate VMware’s virtualization software, and embed a Nexus 5000 networking switch, putting computing and networking in a single box, thus removing bottlenecks at a memory and networking level.

The San Jose, Calif.-company’s latest servers will compete head-to-head with blade offerings from Dell, H-P, IBM and Sun.

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