Eric Savitz in his Seeking Alpha blog post sites the following:

Piper Jaffray’s Mark Murphy today launched coverage of NetSuite (N) with a Sell rating and a $14 price target, well below the current level.

Murphy’s thesis is that customers are not that happy with the on-demand business software provider’s offerings. “We believe the market has yet to include the potential financial consequences of what we believe to be lower customer satisfaction levels than the broader On Demand industry,” he writes. “While we think our estimates are achievable, there is potential downside risk to our long-term cash flow forecasts if customer concerns are not addressed.”

Murphy says his due diligence with customers uncovered a “higher-than-average mix of unsatisfied customers.” He says that the product gets strong technical reviews once it is operational, but that “deployment frustrates many customers due to the over-arching nature of the project.” He also says that checks with the Better Business Bureau find a 13x higher complaint rate for NetSuite than for Salesforce.com (CRM).

Last weekend the company agreed to acquire its competitor, OpenAir, which is specializing in Professional Services Automation (PSA). The OpenAir has over 300 well satisfied subscribers, but they have to integrate their business flows with other applications, such as Financials, etc. on their own. The Netsuite, by contrast, offers fully integrated approach and sees this acquisition as an upsell opportunity to OpenAir customers. I wonder how these customers will react to the NetSuite overtures considering level of their customers satisfaction.

The introduction of “cloud” computing seem to be forcing mass modernization of IT infrastructure. The scale of required demand for computing power surely requires fundamental re-evaluation of assets, methods, and practices which have been developed and deployed during last two decades. “Down on the server farm”, the article published by The Economist, explores economical, political, and security factors involved in planning process.

As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature. Often just as much power is needed for cooling as for computing. The largest data centres now rival aluminium smelters in the energy they consume. Microsoft’s $500m new facility near Chicago, for instance, will need three electrical substations with a total capacity of 198 megawatts.

And we thought the herds of cows generating methane should be blamed for global warming! I wonder if anybody studied a positive impact of IT on re-forestation? With Internet news and advertising replacing newsprint consumption, on-line shopping reduces driving, etc there should be enough evidence to start balancing an impact of progress and present rational analysis of what is going on.

It is interesting to see how the industry based on “disruptive innovation” seem to embrace the challenge because it realizes profit opportunities associated with it. This quote is from “Buy our stuff, save the planet” article published in the same issue of the Economist.

It is easy to be cynical about all this. However energy-efficient computers become, the bigger task will be to generate electricity using technologies that do not emit carbon dioxide. Yet this is one case when market forces and environmentalism align. A cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, of course, would make such alignments more commonplace. But even without putting a price on carbon, there are already plenty of examples, as in computing, where adopting more efficient technology would both save money and help the environment.

Greenery does not have to be motivated by altruism; and it is far more likely to be effective when it is not. If it helps to reduce carbon-emissions, self-serving greenery is as good as any other kind. The planet cannot tell the difference.

It is a refreshing change in attitude compared to one displayed by traditional industries and governments - “deny until you blue in the face and it will go away”. Perhaps they can benefit from more competition and less regulation, because we badly need some disruption for much more decaying infrastructure outside of IT.

Why is it so easy to forget that IT technology exist to leverage an organizational change? I just read a blog post “IT to Business: I won’t read your mind” describing “successful” implementation of technology for nor particular reason. Why are stories like that so common?

Nothing improved because no one had tried to improve anything.  The direction had been “throw technology at problems and they go away,” but they don’t.  You cannot solve a problem by introducing technology by itself.  You have to understand the problem first.  The technology was not wrong.  The systems worked great, but they didn’t solve measurable business problems.

One reason I can think of is that IT is miscast to lead Organizational Transformation initiatives. I suppose if you hire an architect to help you with a problem, likelihood is you will end up with a house. Or a court case if you hire a lawyer. Do I need any more analogies to make my point?

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

  - George Bernard Shaw

I would state that many IT initiatives could possibly produce better results without technology being involved at all.