Eric Lundquist

As it happened, I was in Round Rock, Texas, last week on the day Dell celebrated its 20th anniversary. While the company went for a subdued cake-and-conversation event rather than, say, a Tyco-style event with its infamous ice sculpture of Michelangelos “David” pouring (ahem) Stolichnaya vodka into crystal glasses, Dells birthday marked a milestone other […]

There seemed to be some symbolic harmony in that I—one of the 100 worst golfers in the world—was going to play in a media-day event last week at one of the countrys 100 best courses. Alas, it was not meant to be, as a steady rainfall kept me and the other media types off the […]

More sales per second at a lower cost. Now thats an idea that would warm the heart of even the most cold-hearted bean counter. The mathematical concept came up during a conversation with Akamai CEO George Conrades. The topic of the conversation was what Akamai is up to now and how to measure technology success […]

Dell is on a roll. There is no disputing that. Recently, I spent a day in Texas at the companys financial analysts meeting, which was more like an analyst love-in. You would have been hard-pressed to find an analyst not remarking about the companys ability to bounce over the bursting of the dot-com bubble or […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wants lots of enterprise customers. That is not news to anyone. The news is the willingness of the company to make alliances with former competitors to get those customers. Thanks go to a customer base firm in its commitment to a mixed computing environment, the Linux alternative and IBM for getting […]

The ecology lesson for today is about the care and feeding of the technology infrastructure. Vendors that understand the technology ecology and create products and services that promote the intertwined relationship are able to prosper. Customers who understand the technology ecology are able to offer the goods and services their companies need to build a […]

When is a trend for real? When a vendor gets behind the trend—from the president to the parking lot attendant—and when customers ask for the product instead of having it forced on them. I spent last week at a string of vendor meetings in Silicon Valley trying to distinguish the trends that will stick from […]

As I burned leaves during my annual spring cleanup early last week, I had a realization: The next big thing in the use of the Internet for business is right in front of us—if business execs are willing to take a little heat. First, let me back up a bit. When Amazon and other e-tailers […]

You can tell a lot about someone by the magazines they read. If someone reads Sports Illustrated, Sporting News and Baseball Digest, you know that reader is a sports aficionado with an interest in baseball. Likewise, in the technology industry you used to be able to identify a technologist by his product selections. For the […]

The theme of last weeks IBM PartnerWorld conference was “Winning in an on-demand world.” And despite some excessive glitz involving leather-clad tumblers and Segway cycles (excusable because it was in Las Vegas), and the somewhat-odd spectacle of IBM CEO Sam Palmisano still trying to define what on demand is a year and a half after […]