PlantSuccess Newsletter
Volume III, Issue 13
25 June 2003
Dear
Subscriber:
It has become
virtually impossible for anyone in business, certainly in the US, to be
unaffected by Microsoft every day. Although it is not unusual for a
limited number of companies to have a major impact on the lives of large
numbers of people, it is unique for one company to have such an impact on so
many for so long. The size and impact of Microsoft is measured and described in
many ways – always huge – yet, paradoxically, the company has earned a
reputation for being very responsive to changing requirements of market
conditions.
Just how
big is Microsoft? A common measure of relative size is Fortune’s Global 500: Wal-Mart ranks 1st with
annual revenues of $220 billion, ExxonMobil is 2nd, GM
is 3rd … Microsoft is ranked 175th with $25 billion in revenue plus
an industry leading $8 billion in profit. A measure for investors is market
capitalization: MSFT is at $270 billion (a long way from the $500 billion level
of 1999) and back to being #2 behind GE at $292 billion. By comparison, ExxonMobil’s
market cap is $245 billion and GM’s is $20 billion!
The company
has been incredibly successful and these numbers are huge by any standard,
making a recent e-mail to company employees from CEO Steve Ballmer all
the more remarkable. Titled “The Microsoft Business Plan,”
Ballmer laid out a six-point plan for “operationalizing” the company’s
priorities, to wit:
I’ve seen a
lot of business plans and a lot of communications from executives to employees,
seldom anything like this. Following the rule of CMII, this is clear, concise
and consistent and will get the job done.
Ballmer
takes issue with skeptics who have questioned IT’s strategic advantage.
Advances in software, he wrote, “will be one of the biggest sources of value
creation for customers.”
PlantSuccess
also is about value creation. Innovative managers from leading process
manufacturers discuss effective implementations of engineering IT including
business drivers, impact on work processes and integration requirements.
Sessions are actively moderated; a lively Q&A is assured.
PlantSuccess
also attracts sponsors with the demonstrated ability to provide the products
and resources necessary to meet the demands of managing the physical plant and
its corresponding information through the multiple phases of the plant
lifecycle.
AVEVA, a valued sponsor of PlantSuccess and a long-term provider
of highly valued software, held its annual ISEIT conference at The Woodlands in
Houston last week. The event featured keynoter Mike Miller, CIO of Jacobs
Engineering, and presentations by senior managers from DuPont, Merck,
NETCO, SAIC, Shell, Foster-Wheeler, KBR, Paragon and other users plus
presentations from AVEVA application experts.
AVEVA
announced the release of VNET Navigator, a web-centric solution for the
collaboration of plant models, schematics and component data that should be
very useful in plant management. Learn more about VNET Navigator at www.aveva.com and from AVEVA personnel in the
Solutions Marketplace at PlantSuccess Northeast 2003, 15-16 October at the PHL
Airport Marriott. Visit www.PlantSuccess.com
for more information and join us.
Best regards,
Carl. Howk,
Chairman
*****************
Current
Links
*****************
Gain
an understanding of what Web services are and what they can do.
From Gartner’s Matthew Hotle, A Conceptual Evolution
from Process to Web Services: “Web services" are not the same as "things
done over the Web." To clarify the definition, we track the evolution of
manual processes over time into Web services, without targeting a specific Web
services technology.
An
interesting, comprehensive article on Web services, the summary: “Without a
common vernacular, Web services will remain a hype-laden panacea for business
and technical staffs. By gaining an understanding of what services really are,
and what they’re capable of doing, application development staff can prepare
themselves and their business partners for the realistic benefits that can be
realized through service-oriented development.” READ
MORE.
Building
“Digital Loyalty Networks.”
A very
interesting, lengthy article from Deloitte Research, with the intriguing
title, “Profiting from Continuous Differentiation in the Global Chemicals
Industry.” The article cites frequent PlantSuccess contributors Dow
Chemical and Rohm and Haas as among those manufacturers looking to
compete on a basis other than price or product differentiation.
The Executive
Summary includes: “While the chemicals industry struggles to remain
profitable and meet its cost of capital, our research on nearly 100 major
global chemical companies in North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America
and South America found that those with effective digital loyalty networks were
on average 95 percent more profitable than those that lacked the core elements
of such networks.” READ
MORE
The
PlantSuccess Newsletter generates a substantial number of visits to our
website, we welcome the interest and the access to previous issues of the
Newsletter which are available there. If you'd like to share this newsletter
with a colleague, just forward a copy. Subscribe or cancel by sending a request
to Carl.Howk@PlantSuccess.com
Full links to Volume III, Issue 13 Newsletter articles: