John's Music Blog

I had a call yesterday with a guy (I’ll call him Julio, because that isn’t his name) that is responsible for storage decisions at a very big company (I’ll call the company Acme, because that isn’t the company’s name).  I can’t name the company or the guy for reasons that are obvious to anyone who works in a large public company.   But I can share the gist of our conversation.  The part that is interesting to startups is the conversation we had around supplier management, environment complexity, and supplier support.

Julio’s at the end of a purchase decision cycle, and he told me which way he was going.  “We’re going with Sun, at least for now,” he said, “because they provide great service, we’ve worked with them for years, they understand our environment, and quite frankly, I don’t want to add another supplier.”  (more…)

As a fellow baby boomer, Denise Shiffman’s recent blog post really hit home.  She said, “Facebook is the new email.”  She wasn’t the first to make the connection.  In fact, the Scobleizer has a whole running debate here from October, 2007.  But because I know Denise, and implicitly trust her, she gets credit for getting my attention. 

As a boomer, I live on email, but as my blog readers know, I’m on Facebook now, too.  In fact, it’s about the only way that I communicate with Steve Zivanic, who created this viral campaign for very-traditional Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).  I just checked one YouTube posting of his video that reports 320,000+ downloads.  Good job Steve.  Steve’s left HDS and found a fitting home at myndnet.  He tells me they understand the value of viral marketing. (more…)