Outsourcing Delivers ROI, But Not Innovation

Too many businesses take a short-sighted view of their outsourcing contracts, concludes Deloitte following a recent study. The consulting firm found that while most business executives it surveyed are satisfied with the cost savings they get from outsourcing, most said outsourcing relationships had not led to important innovations or transformations.

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Deal Roundup, Feb 19, 2008

Who invests in who? Who buys who? Who sells?

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Web roundup: Feb 19, 2008

What’s going on around the internet world??? News and analyses from best and well-regard sources such as TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, etc.

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Guy Kawasaki: Angel capital and the HotorNot approach

Why bother impressing venture capitalists when (a) it takes less money to start a company and (b) there are plenty of angels who will fund early-stage deals?

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PC and mobile phone supply chains to increase shipments by 10% in 2008

In 2007, the PC supply chain shipped 257 million systems worldwide and the mobile phone supply chain manufactured 1.1 billion finished phones that same year. Combined, these two supply chains finished shipments were valued at $318 billion in 2007, equal to more than a third of the global customer spending on information and communications technology hardware. In 2008, IDC expects the PC and the mobile phone supply chains to increase shipments by 10% worldwide.

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TV viewing losing ground

If you have an Internet connection, chances are you are spending much more time surfing the Web than watching TV. “The time spent using the Internet will continue to increase at the expense of television and, to a lesser extent, print media,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment at IDC. “This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising.”

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Silicon Valley start-ups begin hitting the brakes

VCs urge companies to raise cash now, pass up deals that look too pricey Investors worry a tough economy will slash big companies’ spending on products sold by start-ups and may also damp online ad spending.

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Could Google and Microsoft’s online advertising model change the pricing of all Web services

Perhaps this micropayment model is also the future of Web services or software as a service (Saas). Soon, companies like Salesforce.com and Qualys could be offering their on-demand services with the same pay-as-you-go pricing as Google charges for sponsored links. “There’s a growing demand of the businesses and enterprise to be treated as a customer,” says Yisrael Dancziger, CEO and president of Digital Fuel, a company that makes software specifically for measuring SaaS utilization.

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E-Bay: The high cost of a good reputation

For heavy sellers and those who make a substantial proportion of their income from eBay, the reports they get from other buyers and sellers are very important. Their concerns about negative feedback are well-grounded. Buyers and sellers seem to be engaged in a war of attrition where negative feedback is one of the main weapons, and now eBay has announced that sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback on buyers, hoping that this will help to rebalance things.

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Microsoft-Yahoo Deal: Link Update (Feb 18, 2008)

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Update (from Feb 15 till morning Feb 19) from AP, Reuteurs, New York Times, New York Post, Silicon Valley, eWeek, Informationweek, ZDnet, AllthingsD, WebProNews

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