There’s a good reason why Microsoft was dubbed the Death Star by many fearful detractors during the on-premise era: its OS/application stack, with 90%+ desktop share, was an impermeable force that whipped the surrounding computing galaxy into submission.  Given Window’s ubiquity, value added resellers and systems integrators optimized their resources and relationships by supporting Windows […]

Sometime in late 2015, I built my first website.  Or rather, I purchased a subscription on weebly.com, a website builder, and proceeded to upload photos and drag and drop pre-configured modules into a blank screen.  The process was easy, which helped as I was clueless; the layout was unoriginal and austere, which sufficed as the […]

Several weeks ago, the stock of Ellie Mae, a SaaS that automates the grueling task of underwriting residential mortgages, got hammered when the company reported revenue weakness on lower than expected industry refinancing volumes and longer than expected ramp times for larger enterprise customers, prompting management to dramatically cut its full year revenue growth guidance […]

[TRIP – Tripadvisor] This stock had a few crazy trading days last week, opening down 8% before closing up 2.5% on the first full trading day post-earning and then rallying again days later, apparently sparked by rustlings of a take-out [TRIP’s chairman Greg Maffei stoked such hopes a few months ago].  At least opposes this hypothetical […]

It seems not too long ago, business arrangements between application providers were called partnerships….now they carry distended labels like platforms or ecosystems.  Platforms come in various guises.  Some, like eBay or AirBnB, don’t create products for direct consumption, but instead provide the connective tissue for various constituents of the platform to connect, taking a cut […]