Photography by flickr.com: www.theopenmind.org

Photography by flickr.com: www.theopenmind.org

By Philip Peters

Competition within – competition without. Among the thirty plus stories we posted this week three stand out that seem to be saying to us “watch out, the competition is real.”

Certainly analysts’ likening IBM’s procurement process to that of a slow moving bureaucratic army suggests that the company’s dance from a hardware-manufacturer bulwark to service maven still needs work:

Fortuitous, Intuit adjusted its attitude, made an about turn and purchased Mint.com, its personal finance online competitor. Mint’s growth was outstripping both Intuit’s Quicken and Microsoft’s Money by leaps and bounds by attracting over 1.7 million users within its two-year history.

This innovation lag, cost Intuit US$170 million – the price it paid a month ago for Mint.com. Kudos to Aaron Patzer Mint.com’s CEO. The 29-year-old Mr. Patzer is now vice president and general manager of Intuit’s personal finance group and manages the company’s Mint and Quicken products for desktop, online and mobile.

We also aught to be impressed with the London Stock Exchange’s CIO – David Lester’s frankness about the culture of innovation latency often defining capital market exchanges. Commenting on the LSE’s acquisition of Sri Lankan based MelliniumIT in our post – on the story this week he said:

“Exchanges haven’t had a fantastic track record on building the next-generation IT that fast-moving multi-trading facilities have. We want to be in that league and MillenniumIT has the technology to take us there.”

With IT costs absorbing fifty-percent of the LSE’s operating expenses and the ever – growing competitive pressures from other exchanges, Lester see’s his Sri Lankan/MilliniumIT outsourcing play as not just a strategic must do, but an existential one – when he states that:

“It is a matter of life or death for us as a business. [Rival exchanges] are providing highly competitive services to ours and if we carry on with the same IT construct, we won’t be around in two years’ time – it’s as simple as that.”

These developments certainly projects Sri Lanka – with a core of 50,000 IT/BPO workers in its Colombo capital – as a place to consider for outsourcing projects. Perhaps this story also shows the symbiosis or merits of service globalization – outsourcing for both developed and developing worlds.

AT&T needs to better digest the implications of its poor showing reported in the Consumer Report’s 2009 ranking of cell phone service providers we shared this week:

The company took a defensive posture in what appears to be a refutation on the findings, with Dow Jones’ All Things Digital, by suggesting the results of the survey as anecdotal rather than scientific. Take a look from the source and review readers’ comments:

A refreshing article on “The Power of Spiritual Capitalism” canonizing two the work of I.T.’s business leaders – and active philanthropists – Infosys Technologies co-founder Narayana Murthy and Sycamore Networks co-founder and chairman Desh Deshpande – about their success with the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a non-profit devoted to feeding and educating underprivileged children, reflects the beauty and care of business.

Readers, while not posting comments to my take on the Murdoch/Google story seem to have read it. Sarah Rabil and Greg Bensinger from Bloomberg also had they say on the “Pay for Play” content aggregation discussion with the post below.

Without a doubt this story is in its beginning stages with much more to unfold.

Philip Peters by Philip Peters