WE ROCK !!!

Morgan Stanley takes IT honours at Financial News awards  

Luke Jeffs

21 Sep 2006

Morgan Stanley has taken the crown for best European IT department for the second year in a row at the fourth annual Financial News Awards for IT Excellence, with Credit Suisse, Reuters, Bloomberg and Markit Group last night’s other big winners.

Morgan Stanley won best European IT department over rivals Credit Suisse, Dresdner Kleinwort and Deutsche Bank, and claimed the best back office solution prize for its European equity asset servicing project.

The US investment bank shared the sell side awards with Credit Suisse which won the best algorithmic trading system prize for the second year, and claimed the award for best regulatory driven initiative for its work on commission sharing.

Its chief information officer Tom Sanzone saw off peers from Deutsche Bank, Dresdner and Morgan Stanley to take the coveted best personal contribution prize.

Reuters, Bloomberg and Markit Group dominated the data and trading categories.

Reuters took three awards. It won best foreign exchange trading venue and best FX data solution. Reuters also shared the award for best equities data solution with Thomson Financial.

Bloomberg took the awards for both data and trading excellence in fixed income.

Markit Group claimed the best derivatives data solution for the second year running and the best new vendor solution for its derivatives system.

Eurex, the German exchange, knocked Euronext.liffe off top spot to claim the prize for best derivatives trading venue and the London Stock Exchange beat rivals Euronext and Deutsche Börse to the best equities trading venue award.

Barclays Global Investors was the inaugural winner of this year’s third new category – best buy side IT department of the year.

In total nine organisations shared 15 awards.

Financial News compiled a short list based on firms nominating themselves and consultation with industry experts. The winners were chosen by a panel of ten judges who are independent analysts and consultants.

 

Silicon Valley Still Leads in IT Salaries

San Jose and Silicon Valley employed 214,900 tech industry workers in 2004 and paid them an annual average wage of $126,700.

Los Angeles followed San Jose/Silicon Valley with 165,700 jobs, paying an average of $75,500. San Francisco-Oakland came in third overall, employing 156,700 at an average pay of $96,900, and San Diego followed in tech employment, paying 99,900 an average of $85,200.

Average annual tech wages were 106 percent higher than private sector wages throughout California. At the cities level, this number jumped to 183 percent in Santa Cruz but dropped to 53 percent in Ventura.

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Silicon Valley Still Leads California in Tech Employment

 

Technology and innovation

FON is a Spanish start-up company with global Wi-Fi in its sights. They have acquired 1 million wireless Cisco-Linksys and Buffalo routers and will subsidize them for $5 each. They are doing this to turn home Wi-Fi networks into hotspots for everyone to enjoy. Big name Internet superstars such as Google and Skype have backed this project.

To participate in the program you have to agree to share your Wi-Fi network for 12 months and if you agree to participate in the program then you are allowed to roam all other FON hotspots free of charge. For those not participating you can still access the FON networks for $3 per day.

[Via ZDNet]
India obviously lacks in such daring moves and likes to live in denial

 

Microsoft holding up

This is a nice picture of how microsoft holds up against many companies

Click here for a bigger picture

agree with all of the criticism of MS, including their propensity for copying rather than innovating. I think their sheer size, and their ability to throw resources at new ventures has limited their ability to focus and do anything particularly well.

MS has an interesting problem in that they have to satisfy corporate and retail customers. Their monopoly with Windows makes virtually every entity on the planet a potential customer. They have to retain that broad customer base for Windows, but segment the customer base for other products.

 

Google Spreadsheets

I was able to take a first look at the new Google Spreadsheets. At this time, Google is sending out invites to the first people who signed up for what must be the 15th or so product launch this year

See movie 1 [WMV], a general Spreadsheets overview showing the different editing features, and movie 2 [WMV], showing the multi-user editing capabilities.

This year, we have already seen Google Writely, Google China, Google Trends, Google Co-op, Google Notebook, Google SketchUp, Google AJAX Search API, Google Related Links, Google Mars, Google Page Creator, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Web Toolkit and Google Pack.

Thats pretty impressive pace although I am a tad disappointed with Googles approach in China.

 

When YAHOO tried to buy GOOGLE

From Barnako.com  / NYPOST

Acquiring Google for $3 billion seems like an impossible bargain today, but back in 2001 Yahoo! boss Terry Semel shied away from doing just that deal.

Semel, the former movie mogul who runs Yahoo!, met with Google's two young founders, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, for dinner and talk turned to a possible deal between the two Internet companies.

The pair said their company, which was just getting off the ground, was worth $1 billion – but added they didn't want to sell.

Semel, who recounted the anecdote to a crowd at a breakfast event yesterday sponsored by the Newhouse School, said he was intrigued by the possibility, even though the founders confessed they didn't have much of a plan about how their company would make money.

Semel checked in with them a week or so later. They told him Google still wasn't for sale – and that the price had jumped to $3 billion.

"And I said, well you still have the same business you had two weeks ago, right? Which adds up to nothing," Semel said. "So obviously we couldn't and didn't buy the company."

Since the encounter, Google's value has soared, with the stock market currently pegging its worth at about $115 billion. Yahoo!'s market cap, meanwhile, is sputtering at $44 billion.

Brin, 32, and Page, 33, also have fared well themselves by hanging on to their company.

Boosted by the IPO of Google, Brin and Page this year are on Forbes' list of the richest people in the world, ranking No. 26 with $12.9 billion and No. 27 with $12.8 billion, respectively.

Semel didn't make the list.

 

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 sites , most of them using AJAX technology has cropped up all over the place. Here are some collections ..

• Ask the eConsultant – impressive list of web 2.0 companies, categorized.
• Techcrunch product review list – organized by company name
• Sacred Cow Dung's Everything Web 2.0 – a sacred list
• The Museum of Modern Betas – I'm told this is a good list of beta products
• Emily Chang's eHub – Another excellent resource and is categorized too.
• Web 2.0 Innovation Map - a Google Map of 2.0 startups.
• Web2List – the name says it all!
• Listable – organized by popularity.
• Web2.0Slides - slide show of over 1,400 of the best Web2.0 sites
• Office 2.0 Database – nicely categorized table.
• I want to: – organized by user-focused tasks, e.g. "Communicate with other people; chat, email".