Peter Burrows Quotations

Implementing a common business process across multiple brand groups that were considered independent businesses.

Purists can sniff that the new Hi-Fi speaker system is a glorified boom box, but for Microsoft and others the message is clear: Jobs &Co. are coming on strong.

Time and again, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gets grilled when he introduces digital-music products. When the iPod came out in October, 2001, critics complained the $400 unit was hopelessly overpriced. Many said the same thing when Apple unveiled the iPod Mini in early 2004, arguing that consumers would never fork over $250 for just a few gigabytes of storage. And a year later, some naysayers called the iPod Shuffle plain silly, given its lack of a screen to navigate through songs.

It's still early for this. Data quality and clean up is obvious already. Compliance to customer requirements can be seen already. We look different and more modern. We've seen benefits in terms of operational efficiencies and effectiveness. We're achieving Y2K compliance without spending a lot on remediating legacy code.

With no iPod Mini to dilute its impact, Apple's new Nano is poised to become the company's next best seller -- and rivals' biggest headache, ... Steve Jobs's Tiny but Sure Bet.

Obviously, Jobs has had the last laugh -- as some 22 million units sold altogether will attest. And now comes a product, the 1.5-ounce iPod Nano, that's so smartly conceived and well-engineered, the skeptics are hard pressed to find anything to complain about. Sure, consumers will have to pay $50 more to get the same song capacity as with the now-discontinued iPod Mini line. But get one of these gizmos in your hand, and such complaints will fade.

The global presence of SAP... The best-of-breed strategy starts to fall apart when you're dealing with global companies. SAP was willing to modify their product to allow us to bring it up in many different countries all over the world.