Tioga Venture Blog

AFDEL-Tioga : A la conquête des pays émergents

 Dans le cadre de son partenariat avec l'AFDEL, Tioga Venture interviendra sur le sujet des opportunités de croissance dans les pays émergents. A l'heure où la reprise se fait attendre en France comme dans le reste de l'Europe, les opportunités de développement dans les pays émergents (Chine et Inde, mais pas seulement) sont réelles pour les éditeurs français.

Cette conférence, réservée aux membres de l'AFDEL, se tiendra le mercredi 2 décembre à 16H30 dans les locaux de l'AFDEL au 11-17 rue de l'Amiral Hamelin, 75016 Paris.

Intercim, Sanofi Pasteur and the H1N1 vaccine

Working in the high-tech industry is fun, high-paced, exciting and challenging. However, it sometimes misses that extra 'meaning' thing where you feel you have a real impact on people's life.  It is cool to work on the latest cloud technology, operating system and so on but I don't think that qualifies as really changing people's life. However, you sometimes find situation when stars are aligned and you can do both.

I was involved for a few years in Pertinence (now Intercim) a French software vendors providing advanced analytics to manufacturing companies. We worked with them from the strategic repositioning in 2003 to the merge with Intercim in 2007. During that time, one of the most rewarding part was the involvement with Pertinence's number one customer : Sanofi Pasteur, the number one vaccine manufacturer in the world. Sanofi Pasteur used Pertinence's solution to improve the yield and accelerate the ramp-up on vaccine manufacturing. All the details can be found in the customers' testimonial here. Contributing to improving vaccine production, even very modestly, was one the best usage of technology I have come across in my professional life. With the H1N1 epidemic going through the globe, I was wondering how the vaccine manufacturers were ramping up their production, trying to outrun the virus and get to full scale production as soon as possible. I came across this great video from CNBC addressing that topic.

The video was shot at the Swiftwater (PA)  plant where I have been quite a few times. It is nestled in the woody hills of Pennsylvania close to New Jersey - very nice location close to the Delaware river. Even if Intercim / Pertinence is not mentionned in the piece, It is probably part of the reason why Sanofi Pasteur seems to have been able to ramp-up the H1N1 vaccine production more quickly than others. It still feels good to hear about that - and hope to get the vaccine before I get sick!

Frederic HALLEY

Apple store in Paris : preview

Tomorrow is the grand opening of the first Apple store in France (saturday November 7 at 10am). It took a long time for French people to be able to enjoy the stores that Apple has been rolling out over the world. This is one is located Carroussel du Louvre, an underground mall located below the museum. This prime retail space probably comes at a hefty price but foot traffic will definitely be there.

Today was the press / business day. As I am not a 'professional' blogger, I just took a sneak peak through the window. No surprise : clean and neat aspect in the usual Apple color. As I use a windows phone and not an Iphone, I could take a reasonably good picture of the store to share with you - ironic isn't it if you see the previous post from my Tioga colleagues. Good luck for the opening.

Frederic HALLEY

Windows Cafe : "Iphones are not allowed!"

47, Bd Sébastopol in the heart of Paris is now a place of a new genre: first of its kind, unique in the world, trendy and cozy. Yet, when I took out my iPhone last week to immortalize this ephemeral space, I was - gently - hollered at!

The Windows Café is a 2 floor coffee shop entirely dedicated to Microsoft’s new Operating System, Windows 7. An army of Microsoft people are here to welcome you and make you discover the new OS possibilities through 5 interesting demo zones: Playground (PC customization), Safe Zone (security), Home Sweet Home (connection with other media devices at home), Zen Zone (data storage optimization) and Social Club (blog creation, Messenger use…etc). Also, you can attend numerous free workshops such as “Protect your children” or “I work from home”... etc.

You will learn a lot of tips and hints. My preferred: to clean your windows, wipe them. Its usefulness is debatable, yet typically the sort of feature that is impossible to discover by yourself! Many more are available.

This open place concept is a unique opportunity to discuss with Microsoft professionals and ask them all the questions you have had about the use of your PC, and maybe share new ideas on how to enhance it.

Of course you can simply have a fresh fruit juice or a coffee by the digital fireplace or around a card game on the ground breaking Windows Surface – prices are not especially high and seats are quite comfortable!

After an hour spent on all types of computers made available to the visitors, I could realize the impressive improvements since their previous OS, Vista. I now feel more enthusiastic about this new OS and I have a clear idea on how I will select my next computer.

Before leaving this warm place, I still took pictures with my iPhone. I should have listened! None ended up being of good quality - too dark for the low end camera. Bottom line: I cannot share visuals with you. But if you are around, you should definitely go and visit the Windows Café.

Hurry up, it is open only till the end of the year!

Nadir EL JOUAIDI

Note: The full program is available here

 

Windows 7 upgrade : not for me

If you have a PC and are connected to the web, you know that Thursday October 22nd is the big day : the launch of the latest/last of the Windows family product, Windows 7. Our regular readers already know that he discussion between the EU and Microsoft have ended on the good side for consumers : it will be possible to upgrade from XP or Vista to W7 without going through a full reinstall. Out goes the infamous E version.

Now the bad news : Microsoft will try to get as much as possible from you for this upgrade. If you are a consumer with 3 PC at home (not that average), you'll be somewhat fine : about 150€ for 3 upgrade is somewhat reasonable. However, if you are a professional, be ready to spend 289€ !! (seen on fnac.com for France). This is the price for 1 upgrade of 1 PC, just for the OS. Let me summarize my thinking as a professional:

• My 2 years old laptop is running Vista very happily. I know Vista has a bad press, but as far I am concerned I am very happy with i : no crash in 2 years. And I have for a coffee before I start working in the morning (and my PC boots)
• An average business laptop costs about 1000€
• As a small company, we don't have access to the interesting line of pricing at Microsoft
• All reviews on Windows 7 are very good, but as far I am concerned this is just the OS

Bottom line, I can either pay 300€ just to upgrade or wait next year, buy a new laptop (better and more powerful) and get Windows 7 and Office 2010 at OEM price, most likely around 1000€. That's simple : I'll wait.

To be exhaustive, this thinking is valid only for small companies. If you are managing a whole fleet of PC and have buying power, this is a whole different game.

Dailymotion : breakeven or not?

In an interview to the French news magazine Capital, the new CEO of Dailymotion revealed some breaking news : 
- the company just raised 15M€ - it looks like an inside round
- Dailymotion is now breakeven

The first part is not really surprising and I would argue that the existing investors didn't have much choice. The second information is much more surprising. In 2007, Dailymotion lost 14M€ on a revenue of 4,8M€ - these are the official numbers filed by the company at the 'registre du commerce'.

Let's extrapolate from the interview that the revenue grew 50% both in 08 and 09 that would mean around 10M€ revenue for the full year 2009. That would be an amazing performance knowing that the internet advertising market is flat or low growth in 2008 and 09 and that the ranking of dailymotion has been dropping constantly over the last months (see below the worldwide ranking of dailymotion.com from Alexa).

In the meantime, to be breakeven, management would have had to cost cut by 2 from ~20M€ a year to ~10M€. That is possible but difficult. At the same time, Credit Suisse estimated that Youtube is losing ~500M€ a year, showing it is very difficult to be breakeven in that business

Either we missed something in the above analysis, either Cedric de Tournay is being very positive in the media to give a positive spin.

Frederic HALLEY

Tioga wins ecommerce awards

We are very happy to announce that Tioga Venture in partnership with Squid solutions was awarded the ecommerce award in the technology category yesterday at the ecommerce forum in Paris. Tioga Venture has been working with Squid solutions to deliver high end analytical solution to Ebay for the last couple of years. The solution developed is able to process massive amount of data to analyze consumer pattern and act on them. The case was presented by Julien Mazerolle, Tioga Venture's partner, with Adrien Schmidt, CEO of Squid solutions, on wednesday morning. See presentation description here.

This awards reflects the development of Tioga Venture in the ecommerce area over the last 2 years. Building on techniques and processes initially developed in the telecom industry in the 90s, Tioga Venture has been able to contribute to the success of ecommerce leaders such as Ebay.

Frederic Halley

Mobility update at EBG conference

Last week was the first post summer mobility conference of EBG. As usual, a good roaster of speaker with representatives of key players (Microsoft, Nokia, Orange) and some start-ups (Goojet). Market data provided by Comscore / Mmetrics.

The mood was pretty upbeat which feels good in the current economy. The elephant in the room was Apple - no representative in panel ... - with speakers trying to either capitalize, explain or compete against the Iphone tectonic shift.

Some interesting figures provided by Comscore :
    - 77% of Iphone users have apps on their phone (vs 36% for other smartphone users)
    - 85% of them browse the web (vs 52%)

There is clearly some self fulfilling prophecy as operators have pushed unlimited data plan with iphone first. Only recently have they started promoting these plans for other smartphones. Getting hit by a 100€ data cost over a month for browsing makes you rethink your usage pattern! (I can testify on that one)

Nicolas Petit from Microsoft was very upbeat about the soon to come launch of Windows Phone (aka Windows Mobile 6.5). Based on everything I have read and heard from Microsoft people, it is difficult to get as excited as he is. The 6.5 is not expected to get even close to iphone ease of use. That could be with Windows Mobile 7 in a year or so. More than 3 years behind Apple... On the positive side for Nicolas, France is where WM has the highest market share with 26% of smartphone.

From the Nokia side, Bertrand Dupuis was covering the different strategies and initiatives. Much expectations on the N900 on Maemo. That could overcome the slight disappointment on the N97 that has not been the expected Iphone killer. OVI has been somewhat slow to take up. Let's wait and see how it goes.

Back to Apple and the appstore. The 2bn downloads has just been passed recently. That means the current trend is close to 11 million downloads a day! However the top 20 downloaded applications are all free. The major paying category are mobile games far ahead of anything else. That makes me wonder even more why Nokia was never able to pull it off with Ngage which started earlier with the right games.

To conclude, I fully agree with Guillaume Decugis (Goojet) analysis on the importance of the iphone. Why is the iphone so important and so good? yes, the handset is good, the data plans offered are the right ones but more importantly it is a great distribution channel. It improves all steps of the buying process on mobile (discovery, payment, delivery, recurrent usage). In the mobile space, we were missing a great mobile only distribution channel, reasonably cheap and not fully dependent on the operators. Apple has shown the way. Let's see what Microsoft and Nokia will do.

Frederic Halley

Tioga Venture rejoint l’AFDEL comme partenaire

Tioga s’engage auprès des éditeurs de logiciels français au sein de l’AFDEL

 

Paris, France le 8 Septembre 2009 – Tioga Venture rejoint l’AFDEL (Association Française Des Editeurs de Logiciels) comme membre partenaire gold.

Depuis sa création en 2002, Tioga Venture a travaillé avec de nombreux éditeurs de logiciel, aussi bien en France, en Europe, aux Etats Unis et en Asie. Le partenariat avec l’AFDEL est donc une évolution logique de cette spécialisation du cabinet de conseil dans les domaines du marketing et vente pour les éditeurs de logiciel. Cette collaboration permettra à Tioga Venture de contribuer au développement de l’industrie du logiciel en France. Le positionnement spécifique de Tioga Venture permettra d’apporter son expertise aux 180 membres de l’association. 

« Nous sommes ravis de rejoindre l’AFDEL comme partenaire. L’AFDEL joue un rôle clé dans la visibilité et la représentation des éditeurs de logiciel en France et nous espérons pouvoir contribuer au développement de l’industrie du logiciel grâce à ce partenariat »  déclare Frédéric HALLEY, Managing Partner de Tioga Venture.

«Le partenariat avec Tioga Venture confirme la capacité de l’AFDEL à rassembler un véritable écosystème centré autour de l’édition du logiciel et sur toute la chaîne de valeur, pour le bénéfice de l’industrie » témoigne Loïc Rivière, délégué général de l’AFDEL.

 

A propos de Tioga Venture : Tioga Venture est une société de conseil en management leader dans le secteur des hautes technologies. Tioga Venture répond aux  problématiques en matière de vente, marketing et services sur des aspects d’organisation, de stratégie et de performance. Tioga Venture compte parmi ses clients Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK),  Ebay (NASDAQ:EBAY), Elsag-Datamat et Access Commerce (EPA : CES). Tioga Venture est basée à Paris avec un bureau dans la Silicon Valley. Pour plus d’information sur Tioga Venture, veuillez consulter notre site web (http://www.tiogaventure.com) ou notre blog (http://tiogaventure.typepad.com ).

 

A propos de l’AFDEL (www.afdel.fr )

Créée en octobre 2005, l’Association Française des Editeurs de Logiciels, AFDEL, a pour vocation de rassembler les éditeurs autour d’un esprit de communauté et d’être le porte-parole de l’industrie du logiciel en France. L’AFDEL compte aujourd’hui prés de 180 membres (CA global : 2,5 Mds€) dans toute la France : grands groupes de dimension internationale dont les premiers français, PME et Start up (http://www.afdel.fr/membres-afdel.html) . L’association est le partenaire français de l’ESA (European Software Association).

Contacts :

Frederic Halley

Tioga Venture

+33 1 5535 9920

 

Fabrice Larrue

AFDEL

+33 6 82 07 65 83

Tioga Venture speaking on agility in Ecommerce

Capitalizing on its experience in helping ecommerce companies maximize their revenue, Tioga Venture will be a speaker at the Ecommerce convention in Paris on September 30th. Jointly with Squid Solutions and our customer Ebay, Julien Mazerolle will be discussing how understanding customer behavior has to be integrated into optimized analytical processes. Quality of analysis is necessary but has to be part of an industrialized - and agile - analytical process. More at the convention...

Details on the conference and on the session here.

Frederic HALLEY