Amr Awadallah Blog

I was meaning to put this talk up for grabs for some time now, but kept forgetting. I was invited to give the keynote speech for the Microstrategy World 2008 conference. The talk was very well received, so here is the presentation in pdf format.

This is one of the key slides which shows the main layers/components of the Business Intelligent stack at Yahoo:

I have been mentioning this analogy verbally to folks for some time and found it is getting good traction, so time to write it down in pixels.

The browser was initially not free and had a lot of hoopla around it, hence the rise of Netscape. Soon the browser became free since folks realized that the value is not the browser it self, but rather what you can do with the browser, the rest is history.

There is a similar trend happening with VMs, they are currently costly (at least the high performance ones like ESX from VMware), but soon the VM will be free. The true value will not be the VMM it self (i.e. the hypervisor), but in what it enables. VMware is obviously aware of that, hence why all the value-added applications they are building (like VI), and their acquisition strategy (B-Hive, Determina, Foedus, Thinstall, Propero, Akimbi, Dunes, etc)

Cheers,

— amr

I was sorting through some old papers and I found a hand written sheet labeled “Past Lessons”. It was written by Charlie Oppenheimer, he was the CEO for VivaSmart, and now CEO at Digital Fountain. Here is Charlie’s advice FWIW:

• Be true to your desires … not other’s expectations of you.
• Evaluate a situation based on what it is … not what you want it to be.
• Be with the best possible team
• Are you one of the people making it happen or the only one?
• Don’t hang on too long

Attached to that sheet was also this nice quote from Geoffrey Moore:

The key distinction is between failing and losing. Failing means getting blocked on an intended course, backing out, and restarting. Losing means persisting in your failing ways, refusing to change your current course, and instead putting significant effort into justifying the course. Worse yet, it means getting defensive whenever you are challenged about your vision. In high-tech ventures, you can expect to fail many, many times. That’s part of the deal. You get up, brush yourself off, and get back in the game. But lose just once, and you may never have another chance. That too is part of the deal.

Thanks Charlie,

— amr