[Coté Memo] Dell Cloud BOGO, M&A decisions by lunch, behind-the-scenes tech press shenanigans

Meta-data

Hello again, welcome to #20. Today we have 30 subscribers, so we're +/-0. Stable! I'd love to hear what you like, dislike, your feedback, etc.: memo@cote.io.

See past newsletters in the archives, and, as always, see things as they come at Cote.io and @cote.

Sponsors

• Come check out cloud hijinks at 451's HCTS conference Oct 6th and 8th. I'll be speaking there on developer relations and marketing. Use the code MC200 to get $200 off when registering. Only one person has taken advantage of this snazzy code, so: come on, sign up!

• Come hear me yammer on about DevOps: I'll be in Chicago (Sep 23rd) and Toronto (Nov 18th) giving my DevOps and cloud talk with TechTarget

Follow-up

• That CoreOS piece I wrote awhile back (and mentioned here) is now free for non-clients.

Tech & Work World

Dell Cloud BOGO!

When I was at Dell, I worked with the team doing this team so I'm always curious what they're up to. Here's where clicking leads to. I'm also curious to see if this whole "cloud broker" idea works out. Everyone except the market-leaders seem all over it; the "leaders" are more like, "sure, smoke 'em if you got 'em..."

"Should we buy this company? Email me by lunch."

For some reason, I typed up my tips on writing executive strategy memos today. I did this for several years while in various strategy roles at Dell. It was fun lurnin'.

Behind-the-scenes: a 500 word column on the channel and OpenStack

Last week I sent in a short column on OpenStack opportunities for "channel." Side-note: I never really know what "the channel" is, so I just file it away as "people who make money of someone's product," partners, re-sellers, OEM'ers, VARs, etc.

Anyhow, when I write for The Register I turn my snark dials up all the way. That's their, you know, thing. I mentioned Piston in a tragically worded sentence, implying that lots of professional services work was needed for them. The original sentence was:

Of course, others like Piston would solve the problem with better software, but professional services work is still often needed.

Of course, the point of Piston is anti-that second half, which they gleefully notified me of along with a number. At first I was somewhat dismissive, but after lunch and some coffee I realized their point was fair. The new sentences reads much different:

Of course, others like Piston would solve the problem with better software: they say that 95% of their customers didn't need professional services work. But, in the broader OpenStack world professional services work is often needed.

In other news, I tried to get a TextExpander reference into a report on Contentful.com today. We'll see if it gets passed the copy desk. If you don't think I'm constantly playing that game, we should have more beers together.

Fun & IRL

No more Deadwood.