Cupertino, CA, USA

http://www.gitpro.org

Global Indian Technology Professionals Association (GITPRO) is hosting a conference on “Emerging Technologies and Opportunities for Professionals and Entrepreneurs” on 18^th Feb 2012 at Palo Alto, CA. With three parallel tracks focused on Technology, Career & Leadership and Startups, this conference is best suitable for everybody from technology to entrepreneurs.

Iconic serial entrepreneur and entrepreneurship coach at Stanford University, Steve Blank would be delivering a keynote. The CEO of Persistent Systems, Anand Deshpande, would be delivering keynotes at the conference.

The Technology track is full of experts on Big Data, Hadoop, Cloud, Mobile and Social Computing. They are coming from Greenplums, Cloudera, HortonWorks, Microsoft, IBM, ThisMoment, AdMaxim, and GloMantra.

The Startup Bootcamp at GITPRO World 2012 would cover everything that an entrepreneur should know from launching a startup to a successful exit. Successful startup entrepreneurs, VCs, sales & marketing executives would be guiding aspiring entrepreneurs.

The GITPRO World 2012 has sessions specially focuses on career and leadership related topics covering various aspects like managing with influence, evolving from individual role to manager and leader, mid career accelerators & Mid-Career Switch and job opportunities in 2012.

This event would provide a unique opportunity for Indian Technology professionals for networking with fellow professionals, technical experts, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, career coaches, and VCs.

GITPRO is a global networking platform for Indian Technology Professionals for their professional and self-development and their contribution back to the profession, society, and people of US and India. GITPRO, started in 2009, has chapters in Silicon Valley, Contra Costa Valley, Seattle, DC, Denver in US and Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune in India.

http://texploration.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/2011-technology-predictions/

Prediction 1: A Year of Tech IPOs:

“But definitely LinkedIn going IPO this year and followed by Facebook. After rejecting Google’s acquisition attempt, Groupon is also positioning to go IPO.”

Analysis: 50% As predicted LinkedIn and Groupon went public but Facebook has timely gone slow. The IPO market was heating up but in the choppy market due to European crisis it has gone cold.

Prediction 2: A Year of Merger and Acquisitions :

“Big companies are sitting on a pile of cash would like to acquire small companies this year before the valuations goes up. There is a micro-bubble in in area. Just this week Huffington post got acquired by AOL at a huge premium. AOL earlier bought TechCrunch too. After digesting Sun, Oracle’s exec team now be free to look around for new acquisitions. However, Salesforce is a very priced up to get acquired by Oracle. There can be a potential in Cloud computing like VMWare / EMC. On enterprise Apps space, SAP may be an interesting acquisition target (may be HP?). There are rumors about Twitter acquisition by Google or Facebook.”

Analysis: Oracle acquired RightNow at $1.5 B and Endea at $1 B (and many at unknown prices) however did not acquire VMW or other big ones. HP bought Autonomy at 8.5B instead of SAP. Skype got bought by Microsoft at $8.5  SuccessFactor got acquired by SAP at 3.5B. National Semiconductor got acquired by Texas Instruments at 6.5B and Varian got acquired by Applied Materials at 4.5B NetLogic got acquired by Broadcom at $3.7

M&A activities picked up but different companies than I thought. Yes. It is difficult to predict precisely but can be predicted broadly.

Prediction 3: Gadgets :

“Smartphones and Tablets: Both would continue their rapid ascent to new heights.”

Happening

“The usage of smartphones would increase in the emerging markets too. “

Yes

“Though iPhone would lead the innovation and elegance in giving rich user experience, Android already crossing iPhone with a potential of having the largest share of smartphone OS.”

Android Share is larger than iOS

“Windows7 would have better momentum too.”

Windows Mango has been launched and well received.

“HP’s acquired Palm technology Pre / WebOS would pave its entry in devices. Its tablet would wait for Apps developers mindshare .”

HP did not get developers mindset hence initially discontinued from the market and now Open sourced WebOS.

“Due to various mobile OS,  cross devices platforms for mobile Apps development would have more momentum.”

Android is gaining in this.

“On Apple side, it would continue to innovate both iPad (not only iPad 2.0 but iPad 3.0 may come out too). “

iPhone 4S has voice interactive personal assistance (SIRI) and iPad 2.0 came out (but not 3.0)

“Tablets would eat market shares of notebooks as well as of eReaders” Yes. Almost killed NetBooks and eReaders are now becoming tablets : example Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Prediction 4:  Personalized Content:

“Tablets would give much-needed momentum to online digital content. With the information overload, the importance of personalized content would become a necessity..”

Analysis: Yahoo and New York times announced Personalized News. myBantu serving Personalized News at samachar.com Ziet got acquired by CNN. Many readers on iPad are coming up. I like Feedly.

Prediction 5. Cloud Computing:

“Cloud computing would start becoming a reality in the enterprises with their own private clouds. May Cloud computing infrastructure startup companies would have a good momentum . After ridiculing Cloud Computing last year, Larry Ellison would share Oracle’s big push in the space.”

Analysis: Oracle OpenWorld main theme this year was on Cloud Computing. Oracle announced many offerings from IAAS to PAAS to SAAS. Cloud Computing startups are doing good.

Prediction 6. Social Apps: “What started as a social networking phenomenon for consumers, would become an active area of interest for enterprises. Enterprise Apps and vertical applications as well as consumer portals would pour huge investment in enabling their apps to social media. Social CRM, Social Analytics, Social commerce, and Context based computing would start becoming buzz words and in next few years this would be one of the major area of investments.”

Analysis: SalesForce acquired Radian6. eBay added Social Commerce to platform X and Magento Opensource. Oracle announced Social platform. Many startups are pouring in this space.

• advisors,
•  investors,
• spouses,
• lawyers,
• designers
• financial advisors
• and network
• etc.

Ticker            Min        Max          Now (12/21/2011)

ZNGA             8.5         11.5          9.5

GRPN            14.84     31.5          22.96

LNKD          55.98 -   122.70      62

FSL                9.43 - 20.97            12.5

JIVE             14.36 – 16.50         15

• advisors,
•  investors, 
• spouses, 
• lawyers, 
• designers
• financial advisors 
• and network
• etc.

Here they are in bullet forms.

1. Low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15% of top outsourcing players’ revenue by 2015.

2. The investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks in 2013, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.

3. At least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client by 2016.

4. Mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1 by 2015.

5. 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service by 2016.

6. More than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud by year-end 2016.

7. 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget by 2015.

8. 20% of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas by 2015.

9. The financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year through 2016, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.

10. The prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge by 2015.

11. More than 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage through 2015.

2H 2010: total Apple App Store Sales in the second half $858 million; annual sales calendar 2010 $1.4 billion

With 225,000 Apps developers the per app developer the payment comes around 6.5K which is a very small amount to make a business out of it. 

However, not all apps developers get paid or depend on paid App. There are four additional monetization models:

1. Ad Revenue: Many games and entertainment apps depend of ad revenue

2. Transaction Revenue: Apps like myBantu depends on transactions to make money

3. Virtual goods: Games and other apps use virtual products to make money

4. Client Apps: Client Apps like enterprise Apps are just access but the money is paid to the enterprise licenses.

Here is the ruling: http://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/337_710_Notice12192011sgl.pdf

It seems that Apple has many such patents which when pressed against Android can create a competitive barrier. 

This year has been interesting from patents point of view. Apple and Microsoft ganged up to by Nortells patent portfolio at billions. Then, the corneded Google bought Motorolla mobility especially for the patents. On other wise, there is a patent war going between Samsung and Apple of Samsung Galaxy.

BTW another observation that only 49% site has either Facebook or Twitter button on the home page. So there is still a market for them to grow.