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Notable quotes from execs at Salesforce, IBM, HP and others in the software ecosystem

By January 29, 2012Uncategorized

“This has been a very rocky period for the former Palm team/WebOS team that we built. And this was not a happy set of occurrences over the last six to eight months. So we have lost some people”
Meg Whitman, CEO, Hewlett Packard
“We argue about these [technology] trends. There are real debates at the top of the business. . . . I think that probably a lot of companies had those debates. I don’t think it was anything in the technology that we were seeing that others weren’t seeing. We just decided to act upon it. Others chose not to act upon it. I understand that, because when the PC thing came along, when we almost failed, we saw the trend. But we didn’t exploit it because we were wedded to the past, the business model called the mainframe. . . . The impact of missing the shift — you see it all the time, especially in technology industries because most of the companies are so young.”
Sam Palmisano, former IBM CEO
“We all love the internet and support a free internet, but a lot of the discussion surrounding SOPA painted giants like Google and Facebook like fledgling startups, oppressed by ‘the man’. We have to get past this line of thinking as it sets a dangerous precedent.”
Charlie Warzel, BostInno staff writer
“When it comes to software development, you could say the route to the flame sits within over-complexity. This is the Apple effect in the Post-PC era: look at what the company is offering and it doesn’t provide a Swiss Army knife, it offers potential. A potential unlocked by limited use apps which, in conjunction with other available solutions allow users to configure something like the solution they crave. … If you think about it, a large, bloated software package is a set of restraints applied by a sadistic, rubber-clad captor.”
Jonny Evans, “Apple Holic” and blogger
“The only real way for any business to differentiate itself from competitors is by superior use of social technology, web applications and supply integration – all of which depend on a strategic use of IT. That means that the people in the position to deliver those differentiations are going to be very much in demand.”
Peter Coffee, vice president and head of platform research, Salesforce.com