Salesforce.com calls for End of Maintenance
Below is the contents of an internal salesforce.com memo CEO Marc Benioff shared with Vinnie Mirchandani (and posted on his blog: deal architect). I’m pasting it here for simplicity’s sake and because of the power of the message itself. “For ten years, we’ve been driven by a simple vision: The End of Software. Now it’s [...]
More interesting copyright issues
According to this article from Wired, Apple is involved in some very interesting copyright violation cases related to their fairplay copy protection scheme and DMCA takedown notices they provided to folks discussing how to circumvent Apple technologies. I would pay attention to what the US Copyright Office decides based on their review – and on [...]
Guth Studying for the Bar
Our good friend Stephen Guth of The Vendor Management Office has been on hiatus recently, studying to take (and probably ace) yet another bar exam. For those of you who have never tried one, I don’t recommend it. Usually 2+ days long, 6-8 hours per day. One half is typically a 200+ multiple-choice question exam [...]
Friday Fun
I found an interesting site that covers the trial and tribulations of customer service representatives – stories from the frontlines. A few even relate to negotiation (and one on contracts), so I thought I would share: The Lesser of Two Evils Reorientation Disorientation They Start So Young Why Our Contracts Are a Gazillion Pages Long [...]
How to… redline
When you’re about to enter a contract negotiation, and assuming you’ve not been successful in using your templates, the first step is to review and redline the agreement. This How-To is intended to teach you the obvious (and not-so-obvious) skills of redlining. Ordinarily, I suggest a quick once-over. This is a perusal designed to see [...]
Wonder what would happen if this was done in the IT space
This type of survey would actually never work in the IT vendor world (versus vendors or versus customers) for two reasons: 1. Almost all customer contracts contain confidentiality provisions which would restrict disclosure; and 2. Almost all vendors would simply shut off access to the service or support (or the license remotely) if the customer [...]
Economic Renegotiations
In an interview with Inc magazine the other day, I was discussing the effects of the current economic situation on contract negotiation potential. More specifically, everyone seems to believe that the current downswing is cause for not only some great deals, but also for the potential to create some re-negotiation possibilities. In other words, the [...]
Telecoms and Taxes
OK, I’ve tried to be cool… I’ve tried to be calm. But I’m really tired of telecom companies and their taxes, tariffs, surcharges, fees, pass-throughs, regulatory issues, etcetera. It’s not that telecoms are inherently bad. I like many of them (ok, most of them). But I’m tired of them passing along all of the various [...]
Intellectual Property Issues in 2009
Prompted by an interesting post by James Governor on the subject of IP ownership of brands, names and even posts made through social networking sites (thanks to Deal Architect for the heads-up), I thought that starting a discussion about these IP Issues in 2009 might be a good idea. Basic premises of IP protection have [...]
Facebook’s Voting on ToS
[Disclaimer: While I'm a Facebook user, I do not know all of the ins and outs of this particular issue, as I've not paid too much attention since they rolled back to the old ToS.] Facebook has announced that they plan to have members vote on the new Terms of Service they’ve been working on. [...]
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