"Single source of truth" is a very common corporate term that's not deep or spiritual. It just means not having to look for the same information in several places that aren't synced to each other. Like, "Can we have a single source of truth for the project plan so we're not keeping track if it in five different places?"
Before this, slack bought a program called "hip chat" just to destroy it (it literally just went away). Hip chat was a regular messaging program that integrated with atlassian's stuff: "jira", a ticket management system and "confluence", a custom wiki system. Both of those programs are pretty great and seem like they keep getting better ... My bet is atlassian is the next to be bought by either salesforce or microsoft and then its products will either be made to suck or they'll just go away.
My job also used to use "box"... They upped their rates by like 10x and so the higher ups decided to go with microsoft onedrive. We're on our way to becoming all microsoft.
With regard to the lack of conscience in the 'progressive' Democratic party, a quote by a poor Jewish carpenter recorded by a man named Mark comes to mind: "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul." (Mark 8:36)
This territory, the lack of attention to the transcendent, is not unique to Democrats, but more representative of post-modern western public life in general (though it could be argued that in the US the 'mainstream media', with it's primarily progressive bent controls much of public discourse.)
I would contend that Del Noce was right, and that monopoly and all of it's iterations, whose goals are material: money = power = control, cannot be curtailed until we find our individual and collective soul.
I appreciated the Del Noce article, which I doubt I would have discovered but through this newsletter. I have often wondered amazedly at how poorly my Catholic upbringing seemed to prepare me for modern economic and cultural realities. At the outset of my 20s, I made the choice to forego any engagement with technology save for a trusty cellphone capable only of talk and text, and it was torturous. The course of years would bring technology’s enticements back into my life like they were the tide. With the benefit of those stubborner years, I was afforded a unique perspective as to where lies the American experience. One of the impressive thing about Mr. Stoller’s newsletter is the way his consideration of the subject of monopolies addresses the human element, not merely as an economic toll, but also as an intellectual, cultural, and, let us say, humanistic concern. If my experience has shown me one thing clearly, it is that the epidemics of alienation and loneliness are not divorced from the forces Mr. Stoller details in his writing. Our culture is composed of distraction, confusions leveraged to the hilt and, perhaps most importantly, instant gratification of the egotistical, sexual, emotional, and edible kinds. While I do not mean to walk about with a clapboard reading ‘The End is Nigh,’ these tendrils work their way into life, nearly undetectably, and it is these structures alone that, having eroded what was there before, appear to provide our society’s cohesion. Forego them, and but for a unique charisma or perceptiveness and ample endurance, loneliness follows. I do not wish to be gobbled up by titans, nor would I wish that subsequent generations be gobbled up by titans for a fleeting benefit today, but if what I’m reading is correct, it seems the advantage lies with them.
Providence Capital which was behind Community Brands is also behind Therapy Brands: https://therapybrands.com. They are rolling up Behavioral Ehr companies. Parallel with that is a monopolization of psychotherapy via companies like Quartet Health, Lyra Health. These companies are taking over provision of psychotherapy--the result being impoverished therapists, instruction manual therapy replacing real therapy, etc.
There was likely similar pressure for the Tableau sale to Salesforce. Tableau was at one point the dominant independent player in the data visualization space. Microsoft came along in 2014 with their PowerBI offering, and I imagine, a similarly packaged free with their software suite offer to their enterprise customers. They also quickly get on the map with analysts - a favorite CYA enterprise buying guide - even as they are out of the blue, me too product offerings, just because of their existing godzilla omnipresence in the enterprise and analyst relations budgets.
I scoured the Internet for an article that would cover the monopolistic aspects of the merger, and this is the first article that did so. I want to congratulate Matt for an excellent article that got to the heart of matter. I was entirely unaware of what MSFT did to Slack with Teams. I use Teams because I have to, but it has a very low level of functionality compared to Slack, so I consider it a similar product in name only. However, no doubt MSFT salespeople have pitched it as representative to clueless corporate buyers.
I use Office365, again because I have to, and consider it a productivity sucker. I try to get out of it as soon as possible and question the intelligence and understanding of the technology of anyone who would make Office365 their collaborative product.
An ironic point about Microsoft vs. Slack is that to try to compete feature-wise with Slack, Microsoft merged its easy-to-use Skype for Business product into Microsoft Teams. The result is a software service that looks like it was designed by Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Amid the global pandemic, who profited from that stupid move? Zoom! Compared to the cobbled-together Microsoft Teams, Zoom is exceptionally easy to use yet does almost everything that Teams does. It’s turned into a lifeline for tens of millions of people who want to communicate online in groups large and small (in teams!) and is killing Microsoft Teams in the Web conferencing arena. Zoom’s stock has grown about 500 percent since the start of the year. Serves Microsoft right, don't you think?
Thanks for your analysis. I know from my own professional experience that marketing enterprise software outside existing suites with their bundling, etc. is near impossible.
What‘s your prediction for Zoom as a remaining and currently very successful enterprise tool? Another acquisition goal for one of the big platforms when the price is lower post-Covid?
Also, what‘s your forecast for the Gaia-X ecosystem? On the one side, the objective is to ensure European data sovereignty, on the other side collaboration from US hyperscalers is welcomed.
Another thing is at this 100k ft view we forget that most people make software/apps to fulfil a specific need and to get RICH. The easiest way to get RICH quick is to become a threat and to sell out before they copy you. Those are basically the two choices. And the only way to stay BIG is to buy out and/or copy. And even if you aren't BIG you are sure to be copied if successful. I am not sure there is really a fix for this. Matt would say COMPETITION. But it seems to naturally result in this cycle.
For all book lovers, you should be encouraged to see this new online bookshop which supports local bookshops: https://bookshop.org/pages/about
Takes away all the sour aftertaste of buying books for pittance through Amazon!
P.s. My company used Slack at first, before Teams was released. I preferred Slack, but Teams was a clear shoo-in, being basically free - I immediately resigned myself to using Teams from then on! The Office integration isn't even a benefit to Teams in my opinion but just makes it more clunky. No, I don't want to open a spreadsheet inside my Teams chat, why would I?
Thanks for your passion for this sad merger, but I think you're tragically missing many points by NOT focusing enough on the economic game at stake.
From a pure anti-trust doctrine, Microsoft and Salesforce are playing at their best, by pleasing the actual customer, aka the Corporate Buyer.
Software is, eventually, 'executable knowledge' with no marginal cost thus can NOT be the source of sustainable value for a product.
As you mention, in a world of corporations, the real value is to know how to sell NOT to users, but to BUYERS.
Few giant sellers will actually please even better these customers, as they will play even better at dealing complex set up, discounts, features, engagement, etc.
The more small SaaS, the more the market system would be efficient, the least you would need buyers.
"User centric" SaaS can not win in a "Fortune500 obsessed game", the problem is not Microsoft nor Salesforce, the best players at it, but the game itself.
For the User Centric SaaS to win BIG, they have to dream and disrupt BIG in the proper meaning.
They will have to push a "Bring Your Own" radicalism where you eventually come with your productivity tools that can be pluged in a "Product matrix"...
Like a musician comes with its instruments to play its part in an orchestra.
With technology in general we tend to go through bundling and unbundling macro cycles. The last big unbundling started with companies like Salesforce and the disruption that cloud companies brought to the tech market. Customers were going for best of breed and ended up with hundreds of products from hundreds of companies because they were new cutting edge products and better than the onpremise alternatives. Fast forward to today and we're in the midst of a great bundling cycle, the cloud players are established and now bundling everything into their platforms in order to grow wallet share at customers. This will likely continue until the next big technology disruption that takes us beyond the current cloud delivery methods.
I worked for a small (less than 100 people) market research firm (DisplaySearch) that was acquired (2007 or 2008, I forget) by NPD because we became a competitive threat.....NPD sold DisplaySearch to IHS (before it reverse merged w/ Markit, a UK company), because IHS had already bought DisplayBank and iSuppli (2 of DisplaySearch's competitors)....Once DisplaySearch was acquired, prices were raised 30-50% on standard reports......IHS-Markit has since spun out IHS Technology to InformaTech/Omdia......so, I know a little about that history...also, they treat their analysts like sh*t. Why? Because there are very few competitive firms to go to.
"Single source of truth" is a very common corporate term that's not deep or spiritual. It just means not having to look for the same information in several places that aren't synced to each other. Like, "Can we have a single source of truth for the project plan so we're not keeping track if it in five different places?"
Before this, slack bought a program called "hip chat" just to destroy it (it literally just went away). Hip chat was a regular messaging program that integrated with atlassian's stuff: "jira", a ticket management system and "confluence", a custom wiki system. Both of those programs are pretty great and seem like they keep getting better ... My bet is atlassian is the next to be bought by either salesforce or microsoft and then its products will either be made to suck or they'll just go away.
My job also used to use "box"... They upped their rates by like 10x and so the higher ups decided to go with microsoft onedrive. We're on our way to becoming all microsoft.
With regard to the lack of conscience in the 'progressive' Democratic party, a quote by a poor Jewish carpenter recorded by a man named Mark comes to mind: "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul." (Mark 8:36)
This territory, the lack of attention to the transcendent, is not unique to Democrats, but more representative of post-modern western public life in general (though it could be argued that in the US the 'mainstream media', with it's primarily progressive bent controls much of public discourse.)
I would contend that Del Noce was right, and that monopoly and all of it's iterations, whose goals are material: money = power = control, cannot be curtailed until we find our individual and collective soul.
I appreciated the Del Noce article, which I doubt I would have discovered but through this newsletter. I have often wondered amazedly at how poorly my Catholic upbringing seemed to prepare me for modern economic and cultural realities. At the outset of my 20s, I made the choice to forego any engagement with technology save for a trusty cellphone capable only of talk and text, and it was torturous. The course of years would bring technology’s enticements back into my life like they were the tide. With the benefit of those stubborner years, I was afforded a unique perspective as to where lies the American experience. One of the impressive thing about Mr. Stoller’s newsletter is the way his consideration of the subject of monopolies addresses the human element, not merely as an economic toll, but also as an intellectual, cultural, and, let us say, humanistic concern. If my experience has shown me one thing clearly, it is that the epidemics of alienation and loneliness are not divorced from the forces Mr. Stoller details in his writing. Our culture is composed of distraction, confusions leveraged to the hilt and, perhaps most importantly, instant gratification of the egotistical, sexual, emotional, and edible kinds. While I do not mean to walk about with a clapboard reading ‘The End is Nigh,’ these tendrils work their way into life, nearly undetectably, and it is these structures alone that, having eroded what was there before, appear to provide our society’s cohesion. Forego them, and but for a unique charisma or perceptiveness and ample endurance, loneliness follows. I do not wish to be gobbled up by titans, nor would I wish that subsequent generations be gobbled up by titans for a fleeting benefit today, but if what I’m reading is correct, it seems the advantage lies with them.
Providence Capital which was behind Community Brands is also behind Therapy Brands: https://therapybrands.com. They are rolling up Behavioral Ehr companies. Parallel with that is a monopolization of psychotherapy via companies like Quartet Health, Lyra Health. These companies are taking over provision of psychotherapy--the result being impoverished therapists, instruction manual therapy replacing real therapy, etc.
There was likely similar pressure for the Tableau sale to Salesforce. Tableau was at one point the dominant independent player in the data visualization space. Microsoft came along in 2014 with their PowerBI offering, and I imagine, a similarly packaged free with their software suite offer to their enterprise customers. They also quickly get on the map with analysts - a favorite CYA enterprise buying guide - even as they are out of the blue, me too product offerings, just because of their existing godzilla omnipresence in the enterprise and analyst relations budgets.
I scoured the Internet for an article that would cover the monopolistic aspects of the merger, and this is the first article that did so. I want to congratulate Matt for an excellent article that got to the heart of matter. I was entirely unaware of what MSFT did to Slack with Teams. I use Teams because I have to, but it has a very low level of functionality compared to Slack, so I consider it a similar product in name only. However, no doubt MSFT salespeople have pitched it as representative to clueless corporate buyers.
I use Office365, again because I have to, and consider it a productivity sucker. I try to get out of it as soon as possible and question the intelligence and understanding of the technology of anyone who would make Office365 their collaborative product.
An ironic point about Microsoft vs. Slack is that to try to compete feature-wise with Slack, Microsoft merged its easy-to-use Skype for Business product into Microsoft Teams. The result is a software service that looks like it was designed by Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Amid the global pandemic, who profited from that stupid move? Zoom! Compared to the cobbled-together Microsoft Teams, Zoom is exceptionally easy to use yet does almost everything that Teams does. It’s turned into a lifeline for tens of millions of people who want to communicate online in groups large and small (in teams!) and is killing Microsoft Teams in the Web conferencing arena. Zoom’s stock has grown about 500 percent since the start of the year. Serves Microsoft right, don't you think?
Thanks for your analysis. I know from my own professional experience that marketing enterprise software outside existing suites with their bundling, etc. is near impossible.
What‘s your prediction for Zoom as a remaining and currently very successful enterprise tool? Another acquisition goal for one of the big platforms when the price is lower post-Covid?
Also, what‘s your forecast for the Gaia-X ecosystem? On the one side, the objective is to ensure European data sovereignty, on the other side collaboration from US hyperscalers is welcomed.
Another thing is at this 100k ft view we forget that most people make software/apps to fulfil a specific need and to get RICH. The easiest way to get RICH quick is to become a threat and to sell out before they copy you. Those are basically the two choices. And the only way to stay BIG is to buy out and/or copy. And even if you aren't BIG you are sure to be copied if successful. I am not sure there is really a fix for this. Matt would say COMPETITION. But it seems to naturally result in this cycle.
For all book lovers, you should be encouraged to see this new online bookshop which supports local bookshops: https://bookshop.org/pages/about
Takes away all the sour aftertaste of buying books for pittance through Amazon!
P.s. My company used Slack at first, before Teams was released. I preferred Slack, but Teams was a clear shoo-in, being basically free - I immediately resigned myself to using Teams from then on! The Office integration isn't even a benefit to Teams in my opinion but just makes it more clunky. No, I don't want to open a spreadsheet inside my Teams chat, why would I?
Sir,
Thanks for your passion for this sad merger, but I think you're tragically missing many points by NOT focusing enough on the economic game at stake.
From a pure anti-trust doctrine, Microsoft and Salesforce are playing at their best, by pleasing the actual customer, aka the Corporate Buyer.
Software is, eventually, 'executable knowledge' with no marginal cost thus can NOT be the source of sustainable value for a product.
As you mention, in a world of corporations, the real value is to know how to sell NOT to users, but to BUYERS.
Few giant sellers will actually please even better these customers, as they will play even better at dealing complex set up, discounts, features, engagement, etc.
The more small SaaS, the more the market system would be efficient, the least you would need buyers.
"User centric" SaaS can not win in a "Fortune500 obsessed game", the problem is not Microsoft nor Salesforce, the best players at it, but the game itself.
For the User Centric SaaS to win BIG, they have to dream and disrupt BIG in the proper meaning.
They will have to push a "Bring Your Own" radicalism where you eventually come with your productivity tools that can be pluged in a "Product matrix"...
Like a musician comes with its instruments to play its part in an orchestra.
Best
Julien
With technology in general we tend to go through bundling and unbundling macro cycles. The last big unbundling started with companies like Salesforce and the disruption that cloud companies brought to the tech market. Customers were going for best of breed and ended up with hundreds of products from hundreds of companies because they were new cutting edge products and better than the onpremise alternatives. Fast forward to today and we're in the midst of a great bundling cycle, the cloud players are established and now bundling everything into their platforms in order to grow wallet share at customers. This will likely continue until the next big technology disruption that takes us beyond the current cloud delivery methods.
Sir,
I worked for a small (less than 100 people) market research firm (DisplaySearch) that was acquired (2007 or 2008, I forget) by NPD because we became a competitive threat.....NPD sold DisplaySearch to IHS (before it reverse merged w/ Markit, a UK company), because IHS had already bought DisplayBank and iSuppli (2 of DisplaySearch's competitors)....Once DisplaySearch was acquired, prices were raised 30-50% on standard reports......IHS-Markit has since spun out IHS Technology to InformaTech/Omdia......so, I know a little about that history...also, they treat their analysts like sh*t. Why? Because there are very few competitive firms to go to.