Just a note to say that I've started a new blog specifically devoted to the next 12 months as President of Engineers Ireland.
I'll keep this blog for musings, opinion pieces etc, of a more general nature....
Sunday 14 June 2009
Tuesday 9 June 2009
Boxing above your weight
I reproduce below an invited keynote talk which I gave this morning at a seminar organised the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in University College Cork, on the general topic of entrepreneurship and start-ups.
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Exactly twenty years ago, American Airlines and Hewlett-Packard Corporation took an initiative in the global software industry to interconnect distributed software applications. The initiative rapidly gained momentum, with all major software suppliers - with the sole exception of Microsoft - quickly joining. Yet by 1996, a small company from Ireland, IONA Technologies, was a widely recognised world leading supplier of products to interconnect distributed software applications, ahead of such major vendors as IBM, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Digital and Sun. As a result, IONA had major customer contracts with companies such as Motorola, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa and Hong Kong Telecom. How can a relatively small player punch way above its weight ?
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Exactly twenty years ago, American Airlines and Hewlett-Packard Corporation took an initiative in the global software industry to interconnect distributed software applications. The initiative rapidly gained momentum, with all major software suppliers - with the sole exception of Microsoft - quickly joining. Yet by 1996, a small company from Ireland, IONA Technologies, was a widely recognised world leading supplier of products to interconnect distributed software applications, ahead of such major vendors as IBM, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Digital and Sun. As a result, IONA had major customer contracts with companies such as Motorola, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa and Hong Kong Telecom. How can a relatively small player punch way above its weight ?
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