You can’t hurry love

 

Michael Dell belongs to a generation where many admirers of Phil Collins come from. So probably he will recall Phil’s remake of a classic theme first sung by The Supremes, “You can’t hurry love”.

Indeed he should have taken this into account when launching his new advertising campaign, following the announcement of spending a lot of money in revamping their products.

judge by yourself…

We are not going to judge the little sample we have seen, but we certainly applaud Dell’s effort to look at themselves through the eyes of consumers. In fact, the sort of product they are putting there is more likely to be accepted in the market via the consumer segment. Following this communication approach, it looks clear they are following the steps from the master, Steve Jobs at Apple.

Now, we hope these guys realize it is not just a matter of doing nice ads. It takes more than a 30 seconds clip to win customers hearts. “Love don’t come easy”, the song said. “It’s a game of give and take”, and for the moment, Dell’s perception in the consumer market has been much more of a take than a give.

“You’ll just have to wait”, and in the meantime, make sure your message goes through, and is backed by superior customer experience and even better service and support. and these has not been your best.

So take it easy, and don’t give up. Otherwise, you will not be having “Another day in Paradise”…

timeless classic…

 

Ferrari is red

 

We are entering into the final steps of the Formula 1 world championship. We’ve got Red Bulls, Ferraris, McLaren-Mercedes topping chances to win, and many others.

All of these teams manage quite a lot of money, don’t they? Well paid managers and pilots, lots of PR and press around… Quite a numbers of sponsors who invest little fortunes that could solve our lives for several generations to come. Lots of glamour, lots of technology as well.

There is no clear dominant team, and the difference between one and the other is measured in milliseconds! Huh, quite detailed and precise measurements have to be in place to differentiate a winner from a loser.

When we see each of these teams performing, whether in qualifying sessions or in the actual Grand Prize race, each parameter is measured, verified, checked, and calculated. We do not know the throughputs in their computers, but must be big… and reliable. And this is just putting into practice hours and hours of background engineering work at the same detail level and requirement.

At the end, the difference between two of these teams can be summarized in a single word: Details. As many as you want, as technical as you like. But details, at the end of the day. Just details.

And these details will mean, at the end of the season, that several of the teams that race this year will not be there in the next season, and their place will be taken by new upstarts who will have to face the challenge of the details to survive.

In the race for dominating the PC industry we can see as well great teams around: The Apples, the HPs, the Dells, the Acers, the Sonys… and trailing Fujitsus, clone brands and others…

Any of these do manage quite a lot of money… And have well paid CEOs and managers; lots of PR around, and quite a number of partners who invest little fortunes that could solve our lives for several generations to come. Lots of glamour as well (fishy CEO events perhaps, or sailing oracles, or HP, Acer, Intel and AMD sponsoring high speed cars).. and, yes, we were forgetting: Lots of technology as well.

There is no clear dominant team, and the difference between one and the other is measured in basic points in share performance at Wall Street! Huh, quite detailed and precise measurements have to be in place to differentiate a winner from a loser.

When we see these guys performing, whether in Consumer market or in big Enterprise business, each parameter is measured, verified, checked and calculated, with as well lots of time, energy, money and resources invested in background tasks, hidden to the external observers.

At the end, the difference between two of these teams can be summarized in a single word: Details. Just details, that make or break success.

From what we have read in the news recently, it seems that Ferrari is the likeliest one to get a pilot winning the championship. If you want details, Ferrari’s leading pilot walks slowly all the length of each racing track a few hours before the actual race to see closely every detail in the circuit and leverage that when driving. Ferrari is red. The best apples in America, are red too.

Curiously enough, the second likeliest team to place a winning pilot is Red Bull. Well, the only “red” they have is in the name.

Incidentally, Renault, who already quit its chances to win anything after two years of glory some time ago, is sponsored by a certain HP.

The Greater Evil

 

In an obvious reference to justifying an open alliance with Iosif Stalin, Sir Winston Churchill dared to publicly state that “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons”.

Quite a bold statement, indeed, for it was pretty much inconceivable at that time that the British people would find themselves friends with the arch-enemy, Bolshevik Soviet Union.

If we review Winston Churchill’s memories, we can even find traces of personal friendship (at least to Sir Winston’s perception) at the same level of the one the author declares for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Of course, the situation in Europe and the rest of the world at that time more than justified such strange friendship, beyond a simple political and military alliance, and what Sir Winston really meant was that if Stalin was bad, Hitler and Nazism was even worse. He was choosing to oppose the Greater Evil.

However, we are not so unfamiliar to seeing weird friendships every now and them in areas such as war or politics, aren’t we? And, should we accept the thesis that business is not much different of war and politics, we should be used to seeing strange partnerships at different levels in this environment too. Like the case of the HP merger with Compaq, or the sudden reconcilement of Dell and EMC.

Furthermore, sometimes strange friendships in business go beyond mergers or alliances and reach individuals. The most recent case we have learned about has to do with Mark Hurd’s hiring by Oracle.

One of the most frequent reasons quoted to justify or explain Hurd’s acceptance of a job below the ranking of a CEO was that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Mark are friends, buddies, pals and other synonyms, besides the fact of playing tennis together every now and then.

Leaving aside that tennis matches by these two individuals would probably be similar to watching a Jane Fonda’s remake of one of her honeymoons (Ellison being 66 and Hurd being 53 is no sophomore match despite how gallant their sports style was thirty years ago), their so-called friendship still has a lot to go through to be understood or simply trusted. 

After all, Hurd was still leading the HP armies when Larry Ellison started a de-facto war by stepping into the hardware business after having purchased Sun Microsystems. A Sun in the Twilight was no match to Hurd’s hordes, of course, but backed by the power of the Oracle, it could quickly turn into a serious threat.

In such situation, it could not possibly be a part of the Oracles’ wildest dreams to get Hurd on board…but then mysterious Fate in the form of a non-sophomoric (Jodie Fisher is 50) scandal struck the industry, forced Hurd’s way out of HP, and opened the opportunity for the Oracle, who simply ignored everything after Hurd’s ouster and quickly got him into the ranks.

Hurd did probably not hesitate much, and soon was presented as co-President of the Oracle, reporting to Larry Ellison, in hail and praise. He succeeded Charles Phillips, who, by the way, was not precisely candidate to sainthood himself.

From bitter foes to intimate friends in a matter of days? Difficult to believe, despite whatever business HP and the Oracle might have done in the past, and despite how many “alliances” they formed.

Was not Ellison “making at least a favorable reference to Hurd in front of his own particular House of Commons”? We believe he did. And then, naturally, the next question is sort of obvious: Who is then the Greater Evil? Well, we think that Ellison is so proud of himself that he could eventually believe himself a sort of Hercules fighting against an Hydra or IBMs, SAPs, HPs and a portion of the rest of the Universe.

Going forward, we as well see deeper parallelism with Sir Winston’s case, if we look to the personal level of this weird friendship. As in the Churchill-Stalin case, there is probably a love-hate and fear-attraction mutual feeling between the two. In our opinion, Hurd wants to become CEO again, and should Oracle get to the dominant position Ellison wants it to be, hitting the CEO job by then would be a more than acceptable settlement for him to cool down his testosterone…

On the other hand, Ellison would crave the execution ability that Hurd demonstrated at HP, and keeping Safra Katz as the gatekeeper, just in case, at least while Hurd proved he would not screw up again, and returned part of his cost in results for the Oracle.

Forced equilibrium in any case between these two heavy weights (and heavy egos) that we do not really believe will last for ever and will potentially end up in a burst similar to the breaking of Stalin and the Western Powers at the dawn of the Cold War.

Both of them, Ellison and Hurd, will have to pay a price for it should it happen… Being the 6th richest man in the world would allow Ellison to afford it. In the case of Hurd, lets hope this time he goes for more mature toys, and does not pay the Fisher-Price.

You will tell

It appears the guys from Dell are going to to their own version of HP’s “Personal Again” stuff.

Well, it seems that HP’s results from that campaign paid off, and have not passed unnoticed to them.

For the moment, the level of investment is similar to HP’s, though they might have had more should they had not screwed up with their financials, according to a bunch of dollars’ fines recently awarded to them.

Anyway, we will se how it goes, and how far it reaches. We might say these guys are running similar risks to HP’s when it comes to advertising. Moreover, they even have further limitations, the main one not lacking a basic ingredient for today’s market needs if you really want to become personal as HP does, like an operating system to work on (WebOS).

We will certainly be able to tell it is going to be a Dell…as this former topper in the personal systems market will claim.

Given the company’s recent trajectory, its prospects and the market environment, not mentioning their internal leadership issue, those people that fall under their marketing spell will certainly tell when it comes to support, customer experience, quality issues that even reach court...

For Dell itself they might accept the suggestion of adding a little tag to their motto: “You can tell we are Dell, because it is just like Hell” (even if it only were because of Windows®)…

A real life marriage

 

It seems that there are marriages that can resist any sort of shaking…

When we see the romantic turning in Dell’s and EMC’s love story, it comes to our minds the illustrative Clintons’ affair. Sort of an automatic link, we suppose, probably natural in our feverish minds.

Of course, we mean the most famous affair in the Clintons’ whole story, say, the Lewinski case. We understand the readers could be confused if we are not precise, so many affairs Bill Clinton was credited for.

Hard times for America, those years, when their Supreme Leader was pushed to the limit of potential impeachment, if we recall correctly… Unofficial accounts report him addressing American people right at the lectern, asking them to “prepare for hard and difficult times; times for Americans –not you, Monica, to grind your teeth and hold on tight”.

Surprisingly, at least in front of public audiences, Hillary stood by him all over. Admirable.

Years later, a declining Bill has left Hillary the stage, and he is more and more being known as The Secretary of State’s consort, while Hillary solves the world’s problems and enjoys the limelight.

Dell used to be, too, the Master of the IT industry some years ago, when its fragile business model of bringing cheap PCs, together with some Intelgate thing delivered short term results that outshone the marketplace. They were a kind of Supreme Leader market-share-wise.

Here and there they partnered around with EMC, who supplied the Storage solutions and capabilities Dell lacked. (As a side note, we could imagine that should Dell have had appropriate storage of its own, they would have recorded better the funding they got from Intel between 2001 and 2006).

So the IT industry had this nice couple, Dell + EMC, living a sort of honeymoon…

But then temptation happened to appear. The “younger” and less expert 3Par stepped up. Huh, this was indeed interesting for Dell. It was about novelty, it was about youth, it was about new practices.. it was sexy!

EMC held on. They kept cool head while considering their chances. “Don’t blow it!”, they said, “keep holding on!”.

In front of public audiences, EMC kept its head high, ignoring gossip. Dell kept on promising the earth and the moon to 3Par (couldn’t possibly promise the Sun too, as Larry Ellison was already building his own Solar System), but…

There was a big “but” in this story… Notice we wrote “but” with one “t” only, as there was a big “butt” too, though it was something different that HP would kick out later).

And the “but” was that Dell’s attempts where finally frustrated by the “big butt”, who, before it was turning to a fishy Fisherman, promised a bigger moon and a bigger earth plus assorted stars to dear 3Par.

Defeated, Dell turned back to heal its wounds, and, like Bill Clinton (unofficially) has been reported to tell Hillary after making love (“I’ll be home in 15 minutes, Hil”), they begged pardon from their former partner.

Hillary kept solemn silence in public, and as she had broader and certainly more ambitious goals of her own which Bill still could be some use for, she decided to pardon him and play again the respectable role of a respectable, reasonable and forgiving loyal wife.

EMC’s Tucci, CEO, is probably as well considering the use Dell can be of for the dollar revenue stream, despite Dell’s declining path in the last years… and probably will end up forgiving the sinner.

In a relatively short time from now, the once almighty Dell Inc will be known as just one of the guys that provided PCs for EMC deals… while the latter enjoys the sweet limelight its recent performance at Wall Street is showing.

As an Epilogue to the story… 3Par as well got its fifteen minutes of fame that according to Andy Warhol everybody deserves, and will be soon diluted among tins, crystal jars and pharmacist wares in Apotheker’s workshop. Same as formerly famous Lewinsky, who after fifteen minutes of embarrassing fame and another fifteen to clean up Bill’s DNA free samples, quietly disappeared in the shades of indifference.

What did Michael Dell watch on TV in November 1973?

 

Today we’ve learnt that, after the ongoing Fishergate at HP and all the trailing episodes that keep it up, we have some sort of Intelgate at Dell’s.

Several millionaire fines have been set on Michael Dell and Dell Inc after inappropriate accounting practices from 2001 and 2006. Details published recently.  

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Technorati Tags: Dell,Apotheker,Intel,HP,Oracle,Ellison

One of the funny aspects of the story is that Dell Inc is quoted as having won (!) a judge’s permission to pay $100M to settle accounting fraud claims.

What a victory, we’d say. Who call’s a $100M fine a “win”? The only reasonable explanation we could think of is that Dell Inc feared a much higher cost… derived perhaps from a murkier feeling of guilt?

Another $4M fine to Michael Dell that will allow him to continue as the company CEO. Well, sounds cheap, according to the earnings of other CEOs in the industry. Just recall the recent figures published about HP’s Apotheker, who got about that much just for signing up for his new job, and another $4.6M for moving house to California, or Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, who tops the list of well paid toppers… Oracle’s Ellison being the 6th fortune in the planet…

Adding the fines imposed to Dell Inc, We would compare that to the hypothetical impact had this company not injected the money coming from Intel into the financial statements. Still would probably seem a bargain, we think.

In 1973, Richard Nixon defended his record strongly by declaring to the Washington Post “I’m not a crook” in the arch-famous Watergate affair.

A famous quote indeed, probably still familiar to many Americans, who learnt then that the Top Guy was abusing his resources in a fraudulent manner.

Maybe these days there is another Top Guy that is trying to convince himself that he’s not a crook since he won’t probably convince others. Maybe he should have watched carefully TV in 1973.