World Class Product Marketing

Yesterday I was invited as a guest speaker by the marketing club at Chicago Booth. The topic was “World Class Product Marketing”.  A wonderful opportunity for me to go back to my favorite alma mater and give something back. But it wasn’t easy!

The challenge was to present something that such a smart audience (#1 ranked business school) can appreciate over and above what’s already taught extremely well in the marketing classes. When I was in school myself, my classmates and I always valued those guest speakers the most who talked “practice” more than “theory”. So I structured the presentation to provide a framework of success in product marketing and reinforced that with some practical tools and examples.

I was a bit nervous when I saw quite a turnout. We had space for about 20 and close to 50 people showed up. But it went quite well. The audience was polite, asked insightful questions and seemed engaged during the presentation. The post-session feedback so far has been positive. The marketing club Vice President, Bhavin Patel, who did a great job in running this event, told me that this was by far the most attended event they had.

Presenting in front of an audience has always been a high for me. Yesterday was no different but more than that I am thrilled that it may be helpful to someone in some small way. I would do it again in a heartbeat

So long!

Follow up on questions to ask Oracle

Some interesting blogs and web pages have appeared since my post below. Check out the links below and comment.

Why Pay More Website

Erik Christianson’s blog

Walt Noffsinger’s blog

Elisabeth Stahl’s blog

DISCLAIMER: Opinion expressed in this blog entry is based on publicly available information to the author at the time of writing this blog entry. The posting on this site is my own and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Are you at OpenWorld? Ask this!

Do a stranger a favor today.

Since Oracle OpenWorld encourages you to come with questions you want answered, ask a couple of questions for me. Will you? You don’t mind? Do I hear a YES?

OK, great here you go -

Why don’t WebLogic Server licenses for primary servers cover standby servers or remote mirroring servers?[2] They are for back up by definition right? What Gives?

Want to ask another one? Yes? OK that’s the spirit!

Why doesn’t Oracle recognize “soft” partitions created using VMware, and charge only for CPU’s assigned to the partition hosting WebLogic Server?[4] What gives?

A bit complicated? How about a couple of straightforward ones?

Why did the license price of WebLogic Server Enterprise Edition go up by 47% since Oracle acquired BEA?[3]

Why does WebLogic Server Enterprise Edition cost 74% more for 1^st year of license and support than WebSphere Application Server ND?[1]

The real underlying question is “Why pay more…and get less?”

Let me know what you find out! Appreciate the good deed! And enjoy the conference in Frisco.

==

For the skeptic :=), here are the sources -

1. 1.Oracle technology global price list , section II pages 3-5. Effective: 1 Oct 2009
2. 2.Oracle software investment guide , page 20-21. Effective: 28 May 2009
3. 3.Oracle hikes middleware license fees 20 Jun 2008
4. 4.Oracle software investment guide – partitioning page 1 Effective: 30 Sept 2009

DISCLAIMER: Opinion expressed in this blog entry is based on publicly available information to the author at the time of writing this blog entry. The posting on this site is my own and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Smarter Planet for Ukrainian Leaders

Pryvit!

Recently I had the exciting opportunity to talk to 20 or so CEO’s from Ukraine. In the world-class environs of IBM’s Innovation Center in downtown Chicago, these young Ukrainians spent the time listening to IBM’s vision for building a smarter planet. Although every line had to be translated, it was clear that they were really interested in the presentation. The questions that followed ranged from “How much is IBM investing in the initiative?” to “How has the economic downturn affected IBM” and even “When is IBM opening an innovation center in Kiev!”.

After that talk I thought to myself that these were business leaders from Ukraine, but indeed the concept of smarter planet is something even a lay person can appreciate, understand and relate to. Our world has become so instrumented, intelligent and connected that the ideas around smart work, dynamic infrastructure, new intelligence, green and beyond touch everyone in any corner of the world in one way or other.

Dyakooyoo!

Impact 2009 conference in Vegas

I just came back from the Impact 2009 conference in Vegas. Although the conference had many highlights (Billy Crystal (!) on Day 1, Smart Work launch, 300+ customer SOA stories, new IBM appliance for cloud computing, etc etc), the best thing I liked was getting to talk to a number of our customers. There’s really nothing in my day to day job that comes even close to that. I always learn something new from my customers and they are the primary reason that drives us day in and day out at IBM.