David Byrne played Davies Symphony Hall Tuesday night in San Francisco. This show focused on his work with Brian Eno, including the first three Talking Heads recordings, and solo work, most notably their excellent new release “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today“. Right off let me say that this was a very inspirational show, delivered with incredible energy, and built from a perfect selection of songs. From the first track, members of the audience began migrating down the ailes up to the front of the stage to dance. By the fifth track, a slow burner from the “Remain in Light” album called “Houses in Motion”, the rest of the audience were on their feet.  And then something happened which is rare - at the end of that song, the entire audience cheered so vigorously, and for so long, that the band was actually taken aback and had to pause the show for about two minutes (which seemed like an eternity!) to let the roar subside. Chills. Cool, still avant garde, and highly recommended - if this comes your way don’t miss it!

 

Okay, the ubiquitous use of the term ‘cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’ is already getting annoying. It seems practically every other marketing offer, industry analyst and sales exec is adopting this nebulous term as if it has specific meaning to them. Very quickly this is squeezing the last drop out of what meaning there was to the term. I am drenched in a deluge of offers and admonitions to get ‘into the cloud’.  It’s enough to make you wish for a cloudless day.  Already the backlash has begun - just search on ‘cloud computing’ to see the griping.

The silver lining?  However the term is used, business models that allow you to subscribe to software are of great benefit to us, the consumer. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Spoon played at the Filmore auditorium this week in San Francisco on a three night stint. We went to the second of three shows and I give them an A for effort though there were slow patches. Best moments happened with they ventured into “Wilco-like” territory, expanding on tracks and adding color to their solid foundation. Additional horns picked things up a bit the few times they joined. Their release from last year was highlighted - will continue to follow this one.

 

Intacct is the SaaS provider we selected at Ingres for our accounting software over 2 years ago.  They provide on line Financials including general accounting, purchasing, inventory and order management capabilities. Their order entry and receivables applications are pre-integrated to Salesforce.com and we utilize this key capability.  Their annual conference was held last week in San Jose at the Hayes Mansion.

Intacct has been expanding their strategic partnerships and have been working on their platform and integration standards to make these offerings seamless and compelling.  Read the rest of this entry »

 

Okay so this might be a bit excessive, but I am a major fan of all things sprung from Split Enz and the Finn brothers in general.  So off we trod last Sunday night to see Tim Finn at the Great American Music Hall, even though we caught his show earlier this year at the Independent.  Tim & Neil Finn are the equivalent of the Beatles but from New Zealand, with Tim playing Paul’s role. The majority of what Tim played was from the Split Enz days, from his stint in Crowded House, and from his most recent solo release.  The only disappointment for me was that only 1 track was covered from his first three solo releases but that was overshadowed by the unique interpretations of the rest of the selections. The show was wonderful and highly recommended.

 

Ben Kepes penned a nice summary of the Office 2.0 conference and one complaint I liked is that the session on going 100% SaaS still focused a bit too much on justifying “why SaaS”.  This has been nagging at me as well lately - all the chatter about whether or not 100% SaaS makes sense, and whether or not there are 7 myths about SaaS, etc.

The Vision Thing

All the time spent debating positions which are already clear does take time away from the “vision thing”.  In fact I suppose we are in a bit of our own “silly season” in this debate about how to provision IT!  So here is the vision in my view: we are now in a position to run a reasonably sized business in many industries without building a data center and without traditional “outsourcing” of IT for that business. Read the rest of this entry »