Money vs. Culture

New York Times

I am a Greg Smith, late of Goldman Sachs, fan.  Bloomberg gave their counter argument today 

"Apparently, when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation -- existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world."

Sure, everyone needs to make money.  But I think there were two important points Smith was trying to get across:


1. To make money you must have happy customers who keep coming back.  This is a cultural choice that companies make.  I wrote a blog a while back when IBM turned 100.  The killer quote was:

"I believe that if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself, except its beliefs." - Thomas Watson, Jr.

His point to the Goldman Board was that the culture needed to be redirected back to the basics that had made them successful for 143 years.

2.  He personally was not comfortable with the culture.  Good for him in choosing to leave.

Massive Open Online Courses

Really interesting article on a new wave of teaching/learning - Massive Open Online Courses.

"160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in an Artificial Intelligence ... An additional 200 registered for the course on campus."

 Three things jump to mind.

1. This works only when students are motivated.  So it might not work for the average high school student.  On the other hand it rewards those with the motivation to learn something new.

2.  This flattens the world.  No longer does someone need to live in a good school district or go to the best college.  Anyone with an Internet connection can take advantage of the best educational opportunities.

3.  Economics - for both the student and the teacher/institution.  For students this is obviously a way to get access to great material without paying $50k per year from Stanford.  For educational institutions there are several business models that can generate more revenue from a course.  And there will be a new wave of competition to get to brand and tap this new market for colleges and others.

I really do love the thought of having more people across the world having more opportunities.  I'm feeling the glass is more than half full today!

AnyCloud - The New Generation for Middleware

In 1994 a couple of companies all started working on a new architecture for developing and deploying applications on the Web.  I was lucky to be at one of the pioneers of the Application Server market, Bluestone.  It was a compelling vision, especially when Sun stepped up and generated a set of standard around Enterprise Java.  Write your code once and then deploy it to any compatible App Server.  Your operations team would be able to configure many servers to distribute the load and handle massive volumes of traffic.

In 2002 I joined the next generation to move things forward with Professional Open Source at JBoss.  This was great because it put power back in developers hands, and lots more people could afford to develop apps, and those apps and JBoss grew up to be core parts of infrastructure around the world, taking on traditional enterprise vendors like IBM, BEA and Oracle.

In 2010, Sacha Labourey started CloudBees with the vision to bring a Cloud and Service-based architecture to move us into a new generation.  Before today CloudBees was simply the Heroku of Java, with the nice added benefit it looked at the whole lifecycle with the tight integration of Jenkins.

Today in 2012, we have released that new generation - AnyCloud.

Certainly the Cloud offers lots of promise.  Lower roadblocks for developers, lower costs thru shared services, and lots of scalability.  By itself, it puts pressure on traditional enterprise software business models and deployment architectures like vSphere virtualization and Java App Servers like JBoss, WebSphere and WebLogic.

AnyCloud takes it to the logical conclusion with two key steps:

1. Middleware is now a Service - not Enterprise Software.


2. Deployment of applications and load should be completely flexible and open.

Unlike first generation Cloud companies like Amazon and Heroku, AnyCloud gives you flexibility to run your apps where you want them with all the great Cloud features you know and love.

Unlike second generation app servers like CloudFoundry and OpenShift, AnyCloud is not about selling a new version of their app server with cloud-like features and a traditional channel sales model, or to simply be the Heroku of Java.  AnyCloud is about giving customers the power of deployment flexibility.

AnyCloud offers a new way of thinking about IT Operations.  No longer are you tied down with Enterprise Software that you can only run in-house.  No longer do you have to pay massive IT Operations bills to maintain and grow your own inflexible data center.  No longer do developers have to wait for resources.

AnyCloud, combined with the rich full lifecycle services of the CloudBees Platform brings companies the new architecture.  It is about saying goodbye to old Enterprise Software and hello to a new world of flexible, far lower cost services.

For students of history, and for those who want to see what the future is about - take a look at this white paper that goes into more detail.  Middleware has entered a new age.

VMWare Exec makes my day

It was a really good day yesterday.  Very productive on lots of fronts, and a ton of good news for CloudBees.  We got in the Jolt Awards - "Cloudbees was included for special distinction because we strongly feel it indicates an important new direction in coding. The product is still in its infancy, but we think its importance to the market warrants inclusion for a special award." And we got named one of the 9 Hot Startups by NetworkWorld.


Then as I was getting ready for bed James Watters of VMWare posted this:

wattersjames James Watters 

@ 

@stevengharris who in their right mind would take that troll blog by@bobbickel seriously? It doesn't even have its facts right around price

Well, a little tweet storm erupted that I will copy here for posterity purposes and ease of reading.  There are two blog posts in question: How Will PaaS be Priced, and Why VMWare Loves and Hates the Cloud.

bobbickel bobbickel 

I'm a troll!! So thrilling! Can't wait for those bridge tolls to come rolling in... Thanks @wattersjames

wattersjames James Watters 

@bobbickel I mean, I get it, start-ups should be scrappy and make noise, its cool, have fun.

bobbickel bobbickel 

@wattersjames - my daughter just asked me if you called me a troll because I am short and ugly. I told it was complicated ;-)

wattersjames James Watters 

@ 

@bobbickel but if your best troll is just making up pricing and not even looking at VSPP, its a pretty thin argument and you loose cred

wattersjames James Watters 

@ 

@bobbickel I didn't call you a troll, I said your blog was a troll. And it was, look up the history of the word.

bobbickel bobbickel 

@ 

@wattersjames - smile a bit. If my pricing is off, correct it in a comment. I tried my troll best to understand your pricing on VMware.com

wattersjames James Watters 

@ 

@bobbickel its not my job to educate you about the market, enjoy your misconceptions, I just questions others using you as a reference.

bobbickel bobbickel 

Here are the two blogs in question -bobbickel.blogspot.com/2011/06/paas-h… andbobbickel.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-vm…

wattersjames James Watters 

@ 

@bobbickel google: VSPP

bobbickel bobbickel 

I pulled the VMware pricing from vmware.com/products/appli… andvmware.com/products/vsphe…

michaelneale Michael Neale 

@ 

@bobbickel trolls do have beards.

This whole thread made me giggle.  


But to get serious:


1. This is my blog.  I do not seek approval from the companies I work with.  They are my thoughts as they pertain to the businesses I am involved in.


2. I am a homer (meaning I cheer for the home team).  So most of my blogs have to do with the businesses I am invested in and work with.  They recount the basic reasons that I am working with them beyond the fundamentals of wanting to hang with smart, hard working, fun, team-oriented people.  If that is a troll, then so be it.


3. I make sure that the information I write is accurate.  In spite of being a troll, I do value my credibility.  Although sometimes folks in big companies like Ted and James do not always agree.  As for the pricing in my blog it is based on single unit costs as explained on the VMWare TCServer Pricing and vSphere Pricing pages.  I do not get how James thinks a glorified volume discount program for Service  Providers makes my blog troll-like.


Making me feel a bit better about this was this tweet:

vaporfog Benjamin Dover 

@bobbickel @stevengharris everyone is a troll according to@wattersjames so don't pay him no mind.

vaporfog Benjamin Dover 

@bobbickel is much more accomplished then you @wattersjames , he was on the board of #hyperic for crying out loud.

I am so happy a guy named Ben Dover came to rescue my credibility!

Bickel Business Review 2011

I like to spend a bit of time looking back at the year each December.  I'm happy to report that all of my various business adventures have moved forward since last year.  My family is also happy that I did not take on any new projects this year!

Overall, it was a year where strategies that were put in place in 2010 started to reap benefits and all of the companies "grew up" a bit.  None of them are fully grown by any means, but there is a sense of maturity in each.

The other big trend was just a total focus on the Cloud as a delivery and a business model.  My view is that tech companies are founded on the technology, and developing for the Cloud changes things drastically.  New versions go up each day.  There is no need to support old releases.  This changes the development, QA, and support processes a great deal.  It has the effect of faster cycle times, a requirement for new automation, and if done right, significantly lower costs.

CloudBees - 2010 was about building the technology team.  2011 has seen that technology team deliver mature and robust cloud services, and Jenkins has basically kicked ass (I am so happy for KK).  

While PaaS is still in early adoption mode, we are seeing strong growth in small apps and have even gotten to the point where we have a couple of six figure customers.  This means our infrastructure has become big enough and our processes mature enough to start to bring real economic savings to customers.  We rolled out pricing change for our Jenkins in the Cloud services and should be rolling out the Java PaaS side pretty soon.  This will mean that the Cloud becomes a "no brainer" for anyone doing Continuous Integration or developing and deploying Java apps.  You simply can not buy raw hardware and load it with open source software for less than we can.  This is going to bring big changes over the next 3-5 years to the enterprise software market.


As a company, we grew beyond the raw technology foundation.  The key to a company's success (as long as you have solid technology and are in a good market) is the people.  We added Jim McLaughlin as VP of Sales, Andre Pino as VP of Marketing and Steve Harris as VP of Products.  I've been lucky to work with Andre and Steve in the past.  What strikes me as I sit in team meetings is the rare combination of experience, maturity and drive this team has.  We are lucky to have the business team that will make sure our transformational Cloud offerings bring real value to customers.  In addition, we solidified our technical advisory board as well as our corporate board and balance sheet with a great Series B fundraising that brought an additional $11M into the company.  It should be a kick ass 2012!

eXo - This is a company on the cusp of making a major move forward based on the new cloud offerings that started coming out this year (Cloud-IDE) and will continue into this coming year as the entire platform becomes cloud enabled.  This means we will enable both ourselves and our customers to shift from the old business model of open source / enterprise software into the new Cloud business model.


We also saw our business double in 2011 thanks to the efforts of our new VP of Sales, Yann Aubry, and his team.  There was also expansion beyond our strong partnership with Red Hat with new relationships with VMWare and an expanding partner ecosystem.  Given the new offerings coming out we are quite excited about 2012.


The thing I like most about eXo is the fact it is a glimpse into the future of how companies will be organized.  Development teams are in France, Ukraine and Vietnam.  Tunisia is home to a sales team, support team and consulting team.  It was so exciting to see Tunisia lead the Arab Spring revolution this year and seeing the excitement of Oualid and the whole team.  France and America both have sales, marketing and product management responsibilities.  Benjamin has been a visionary in terms of using social and collaboration and reporting tools to keep this distributed team in sync and producing simply amazing amounts and quality of technology.  Without getting too mushy, I think this type of cross-cultural team will move the world forward to be a more peaceful and equitable future.  I also must admit I love going to Paris for board meetings ;-)

Metaverse - This company may have matured the most in the past year.  The transition was caused when Doug Kerwin went on his honeymoon and read Tony Hseih's book on Zappo's.  Doug has done basically what Tony did with his company.  He went from worrying about investors and valuation to worrying about his customers and employees.  Instead of trying to come up with the latest "get rich quick with new stuff" the focus shifted to doing the little things right to satisfy customers and employees.  The results have been very rewarding in terms of company morale, customer satisfaction and (surprise, surprise) financial results.


I love visiting Metaverse where tens of thousands of shipments happen each month, generated from literally thousands of websites (they provide the art backend for online stores like Macy's, Sears, Kohls, Office Max, CafePress and others).  As I have said in the past it is a technology company that has automated processes for a seamless and highly efficient system.  As an e-commerce company they have been a leader in what many others are finding out about a Cloud process.  Making changes across thousands of web properties on a daily basis in baked into the DNA of this company.  When I think about old line companies, it will be very difficult to compete with this new breed.

Moorestown Running Company  - We are in the middle of our fifth year, and it looks like this will be a very long term business.  We became profitable last year and we have grown 7% this year and delivered another profitable year.  What I love most is how the store has become a part of the culture of Moorestown.

There was a nice article in the local online paper about the store.  It did a good job of explaining how happy I am to be able to work with Joe, Ralph, Ed, Colleen, Mo, Becca and Dave to deliver a place for the running community in our small town.

The big addition this year were the coaching services Colleen and Ralph expanded.  Ralph also started up a side business by buying an Alter-G machine.  This enables runners to run at a lighter weight for training or recovery from injuries.

RunSignUp.com - At the end of 2010 I decided to invest more into this new business as the first year results were very promising.  We have a seen a 5X growth in registrations, and it looks like it will just keep growing very quickly over the next year.  Jordan has been on a full year now and makes sure our race directors, timers and runners are happy.  Our development team has grown quite a bit, and we have just added a couple more part time college students from Villanova.

We are the up and comer in this market leveraging our new cloud-based architecture to move past the old and unfocused Active.com.  I was not able to spend much time on this business in 2011 as it was an important year at CloudBees in particular.  I have started to focus more on this business for 2012 and am very excited  about the coming year!


And finally, my big achievement for the year was recognized by USAirways...