Marvell Technology introduced a new category of computing at the beginning of 2009 called Plug Computing – computers that plug directly into electrical sockets. The strategy behind Marvell’s effort was to create a community around Plug Computers and to a larger degree they have been pretty successful.

Take a look at the number of partners and community development sites have come up in the last 12 months at the community site here and notable among these are the Pogoplug by Cloud Engines and an open source community being built by a student – Mike Staszel at Openpogo. Major tech bloggers such as Om Malik have nothing but praise for the simplicity and ease of Pogoplug.

The Plugs are using high-performance processors – they run the Marvell Sheeva ARM-core powered processor with very high integration, low-power consumption at 1.2GHz.

The initiative is innovative in its packaging of a computing platform – in the form of a “plug” – and while there may be many processors in the market that could fit in the same form factor (as of a Plug) – the Sheeva from Marvell is a very good combination of features and functions in the given small form factor.

The packaging innovation is being taken a step further – establishing a community led development strategy for the Plug Computers. Earlier this year I attempted to start hacking on ARM-core based systems by getting the TI Beagleboard which I wrote about here – but I found the entire process complicated and after getting the board never did anything with it. On the other hand getting started with the SheevaPlug was so much simpler (except the ordering process)….

Marvell, of course, hopes that this community driven development model on its processor will lead to an “iPhone SDK” style model and promoting richer software for the Plugs and hence in turn selling more processors.

Marvell is on the right track – the CES in Las Vegas in January should show a glimpse of what is in store for Plug Computing.

While my brain is unusually active on ideas, I rarely write them down. Back in May in my post The Dell Dilemma – I wrote about how Dell needs to innovate. At that time I had an idea to propose, I never got around to writing about it. The idea can be best expressed by the seeing what this Litl startup has done. Dell needs to innovate their PC and Notebook lineup to better compete with HP. John Gruber of Daring Fireball makes very good arguments on why PC companies need to out of the box innovation here and here – and gives example of what Litl has done.

For now, Dell is trying to mimic IBM and HP with the acquisition of Perot Systems to compete with them. I think that is, culturally, a much more difficult move for Dell, not to mention it is not their core competency.

Dell should learn from Litl or may be even acquire them and come out with dual function notebook or webbook.  I would, though, enhance the Litl platform in the following ways:

1. A Dual-Mode machine = PC + Media Player

2. Install a Android-based OS (or may be even Ubuntu Karmic!) – increase the PC functionality on the current design of Litl

3. Make it a dual boot OR rather a dual-mode machine by providing a “dock” that has the HDMI connections to the TV

4. When the machine is docked, it would work as a Entertainment Netbook (the SW would switch upon docking)

5. Bundle a nice remote with the package (and of course the Dock)

5. License Boxee software and have it pre-loaded on the Book

6. When Undocked – it works like a PC with support for Google Docs or Open Office

Future editions could bundle the Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook support to make it work like an e-Reader. The bottomline, though, is that Dell’s operational and supply chain expertise could bring down the cost of manufacturing and marketing and introduce a new category in the Computing Market.

Amazon dropped its price on Kindle 2 today.  Reading the article prompted me to think about the market for eReaders and comparing them to MP3 players.

Remember when Apple iPod was launched in 2001? In the beginning it attracted the die hard Apple fans, and MP3 aficionados but within three years it had overtaken all MP3 players and established itself as a clear winner. Apple sold 376,000 iPods in the first year, second year they sold 937,000 – crossing a million in the first two years since introduction.

Contrast that with the Amazon Kindle – estimates range from 189,000 to 600,000 in the first year. A February ‘09 post on paidContent estimates the Kindle sales to 374,000 life-to-date.

The same article talks about why Kindle sales cannot be compared to Apple iPod:

—The iPod was introduced in 2001, which is very different period than 2009 when it comes to consumer electronics, not to mention consumption of digital media. So just because initial sales are comparable, or even greater for the Kindle, doesn’t mean that you can draw any longer-term grand conclusions.

—The number of people who read every day is likely much less than the number of people who listen to music daily (25% of all people do not read books at all
– can the same be said about music?).  As a result, early adopters have likely driven early sales, and sales growth will probably come down to earth once the device has reached the masses.

Consumers who  purchased MP3 players and Apple iPod had access to massive amounts of free content to load on their iPods:

• Digitize their own existing CDs
• If not for their own CDs they could borrow from their friends or family
  
• or even worse download pirated music
  

Note the Apple model was the reverse of the Gillette Razor model – Apple makes it money and tons of money on selling devices i.e. iPods not on selling music.

The challenge with Amazon Kindle and eReaders in general is that consumers are forced to buy content given that the free content is limited or boring. It is extremely challenging to scan books and move them to the Kindle or should I say next to impossible.  Amazon has chosen a model where they are not subsidizing the Kindle and neither are they making content cheap.

Jeff Bezos would be better off either subsidizing the Kindle or content and gaining massive consumer acceptance rather than having somebody or something like iPhone steal the market from Amazon.  Having mass adoption as in tens or hundreds of millions will allow Amazon to offer content and services other than books.

Bharti-Airtel of India continues to innovate on their business models, recently outsourcing mobile value added services to Comviva.  As you read through this article, one paragraph captures my attention:

Airtel’s IT contract with IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) works on a revenue-sharing basis, while the operator’s network outsourcing contracts with Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) and Nokia Siemens Networks introduced a radical financial arrangement whereby Airtel pays for network capacity usage (priced per erlang), and not for the network infrastructure.

Bharti is not paying for the network infrastructure, they are not even leasing it, they are paying based on actual usage.

Intel is going to acquire Wind River – it is all over the news & blogosphere. Some articles make the claim, such as this one in WSJ , that this acquisition will be a threat to Microsoft. The article also claims the acquisition will lead to a new source of revenue – selling software! Even if that is true, it is too far out to have a significant shareholder value – let’s not forget the real cash cow is in selling Processors and all other silicon they make!

I think it finally gives Intel the software expertise and hence control to add value to its processors & chips, and to out-rival the competition.

Here is why:

There is a growing need to have low-level software (a.k.a. firmware), the right Operating System (OS) support and the software tools for the specialized processors (System on Chip – SOC) Intel i s building for the new markets it is entering – one such example is Intel CE 3100 (code-name Canmore) designed for video devices such as Set Top Boxes (STB) and TVs. Intel’s thrust is evident in articles, a sampling of which you can read here, here, here,  and here.

And in this market for specialized processors, Intel is competing head on with the likes of Broadcom, Marvell, and Qualcomm. This market is sensitive to pricing plus needs bundling of the low-level firmware.  The inability to provide the enabling software would lead to the Intel chips being not used in favor of the competition. Without Wind River – Intel has to more or less rely on partners to support expanding range of software that needs to run on the specialized processors such as Adobe FlashLite, Google Android, Windows Mobile and may be in future the the new Palm WebOS being launched with Palm Pre.

Let me state the obvious – the real money is in creating and selling a device that adds value the higher end of the software stack – the Applications & Services a consumer would use.  And let’s not forget in the era of Web 2.0 time to market and service velocity is a must! So if I am a CE company and I want to design a product, I want a Processor that allows me to get to adding value quickly instead of spending time on doing the nitty-gritty embedded stuff.

Having Wind River in its portfolio enables Intel to out-compete and provide the complete solution to build CE devices…

I write this as Dell is about to announce their latest quarterly results on May 28^th. Dell’s struggles in the past few years are well documented in blogs (technical and financial) and their own financial results, even after the comeback of Michael Dell the struggle has continued. Here is a sampling:

1. Dell’s current revenues are steeped in PCs & Notebooks. The financial year ending January 31^st, 2009 had 60% of its revenues in Mobility & PCs – Mobility accounting 31% of the revenues.
2. Even though there are some predictions in the market that the business have quit slashing their IT budgets – it is difficult to envision how Dell is going to come out at the top. Year over year revenues are stagnant at $61.1 billion and the profit is down from $2.94 billion to $2.47 billion.
3. Dell still seems to be dabbling with no clear sense of strategy and direction. Dell has done business selling flat panel TVs and handheld devices.
4. And recently has been attempting to introduce a Smart Phone! Doing a Google Search on “Dell Cell Phone” results in the first entry indicating that they have been mulling a cell phone since 2007! But as you search and read on you find out that carriers have more or less rejected the Dell Cell Phone citing it as too dull. Oh and as I write this and run various Google searches I come across a post which says the Dell’s Cell Phone is Dead!
5. Dell also has recently launched the Adamo series to compete with the Macbook Air from Apple. It has been slow on the Netbook market trend as well. And, of course, like many others, Dell is also rumored to be tinkering with Android based Netbook!
6. Dell is going to face an interesting challenge on the server front thanks to Cloud Offerings by the likes of Amazon and Google in addition to the traditional competition from Sun, HP, and IBM. Not to make things easier even Cisco has entered the Server Market recently!
7. Net-net this lack of direction is well summarized here!

So what is Dell to do, IMHO:

As a recent investor in DELL and watching their stock price meander with no direction, I was prompted to write this post.

Dell needs to make radical changes on what and how they build their products. They need to enter product categories that allow them to create a Blue Ocean or Purple Cow. Simply speaking they need to out-compete their competition – introducing just another Smart Phone or a Netbook is probably not going to be a game changer.

The down-turn in the industry is a good time for Dell to re-invent itself.

Ericsson usually does not figure in the Cloud Computing conversations and blogs  – at least the ones that I have been following (and I checked, they are not part of the supporters in the Cloud Manifesto project).  However I think there may be a case to be made that Ericsson may be in an excellent position to offer Cloud Computing services – may be as managed services which they excel at. How did I arrive at

Being a part of Cisco’s Service Provider group I regularly track  news on Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network (NSN)  and the first bit of information that was lodged in my mind was an article in the Technology section of NYTimes titled “Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Are Managing Just Fine“.  To quote from the article:

Ericsson manages all or parts of the networks of 230 mobile operators with a total 225 million customers.

It is significant revenue for Ericsson earning them $1.7 billion last year from managing the mobile networks.  With this bit of information fresh in my mind, I ended up last night attending a presentation by Brad Anderson on Erlang at the Atlanta AWSome meetup last night.

Brad gave an introduction to Erlang and the history of its development with Ericsson.  His point that Erland is extremely well-suited for building Cloud Computing platforms and from his slide titled “The Three Biggies”, here are the reasons why Erlang is ideal for Cloud Computing:

• Massively Concurrent
• Seamlessly Distributed
• Fault Tolerant

The slides from an earlier presentation by Brad can be found here which make a good case on “Why Erlang?”. They also talk about how Erlang is catching up with major social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.  Erlang, as I learnt, has been around since 1990 and used actively by Ericsson on their Telephone Infrastructure unit and augmented by the Open Telecom Plaform (OTP).  And guess what Erlang is Open Source!

It is difficult to tell how much of Ericsson equipment and how much of the Erlang based technology is being used to manage the mobile networks but it is certainly interesting to note that the combination of a technology expertise (programming platform/langauge) in Erlang and their massive experience in managing networks and operations would be very useful in providing Cloud Computing Services.

The real question is does really think of itself to in a position to provide Cloud Computing services?

This is a fairly old post by Telecompetitor but I was prompted to go back to it upon reading this in the WSJ – DirecTV bucks recession. The WSJ post by Roger Cheng says:

There are longer-term fears that DirecTV’s lack of a physical line into homes will ultimately prove a hindrance as more people watch TV on the Web, a claim the company dismisses. For now, not having a physical infrastructure is considered an advantage.

The cable providers have to deal with losing market share in TV customers, while the telecom companies are losing traditional landline customers. DirecTV doesn’t have a legacy business, and only has to worry about TV, which is benefiting from more consumers staying home.

The cable providers and telcos offering video are threatened to some degree by online video. NetFlix has also reported increased subscriptions because of their streaming service. The MSOs are deploying metered broadband t counter the threat.

DirecTV and Dish Network may be a in a position to distinguish themselves by combining their DBS service with Video On Demand & Online Video over Broadband connections.  The bandwidth challenges being faced today are two-fold:

1. Cable Providers have a challenge with the amount of bandwidth available to them on their cable plants.

2. Metering on the DOCSIS (which uses a different frequency range compared to Broadcast in cable plants) by the MSOs or just plain lack of decent bandwidth

With a hybrid service offering described above DirecTV may be poised to be a bigger threat to the cable providers (and also to Telcos with Wired Video solutions)  and a great consumer platform!

Disclaimer: I do not have DirecTV or Dish service at my home, neither do I own stock as of this posting and I am not working on any project related to DirecTV and Dish Networks.

First things first, the credit for this post in some way should go to GigaOm’s Om Malik (reading his articles and posts from the days of Red Herring) and his tweet for the post on Digg vs. Bit.ly

A bit of context before I outline my idea on what Digg should do -

In the last 18 to 24 months, my role involved working with Service Providers to provide them with TV/Video Solutions (primarily for Telcos with IPTV on DSL Networks) all over the world and a common theme in many of these conversations & projects were the request/requirements for the following features:

• Voting Systems (Mechanism to use the Remote Control to vote in shows e.g. selecting or scoring the couple in “Dancing with the Stars”)
• Sharing (Mechanism to share opinions/thoughts/likes on shows in real-time with Friends & Family)
• Rating (Mechanism to collect consumer watching stats)
• Recommendation (Using meta-data collected and pushing recommendations back to the consumer)

Today’s (i.e. released in the last 12 months or so) TV-connected devices  especially Set Top Boxes (STBs) support Web 2.0 frameworks built into them allowing Video to converge the Web Services & Applications.

It is then natural to gravitate towards using de-facto and popular Web 2.0 services rather than inventing proprietary methods to address the above features. It makes business sense to use Digg or similar services for implementing the value-added services listed above.  Simply speaking use the Digg API and applications on the devices -  a Poll or Score widget can be overlaid on the video.  The remote is then used to “Digg” shows.

This certainly do-able,  I have personally implemented Twitter & Flickr Apps on couple of the platforms. The Twitter app was used to showcase how can consumers share what they are watching with their followers!  A further and more important point of evidence  is to look at the services being introduced by Verizon FiOS  – they recently announced widgets and a developer program. AT&T U-Verse powered by Microsoft Mediaroom is another example of making Digg and other web services available on the TV.

To the point being made by Om in his post – services such as Digg have to innovate by spreading to other platforms, and getting onto the TV platform may make sense!

While my day job is @ Cisco’s SPVTG BU is Business Development and/or Product Strategy, I am certainly a geek @ heart. And hence the nature of these posts and the gadgets that I play around with…

I am going to hack with the BeagleBoard which is based on the TI OMAP 3530 (powered by the ARM Cortex-A8 Core) because of the following:

1. Android has started with OMAP/ARM Cores, you can get all the source and it is based on the Linux 2.6.2x Kernel for OMAP
2. The ARM Core also powers the Apple 3G iPhone – it is supposed to be a Samsung chip, you can find the info here.
3. As noted in #1 above, the first Android Phone – the T-Mobile G1 (by HTC) is also powered using OMAP/ARM core.
4. The Amazon Kindle 2 is also powered by an ARM-11 Core, look here for details.

You see the common theme, it has been a long, long time since I hacked/coded on the ARM core but I am sure this will all come back to me….

(BTW need to look at investing in ARM Holdings, the company that licenses the ARM Cores …)