Technology Strategy for the Mergers & Acquisitions Industry

No one who has ever worked in a corporate environment, much less been to business school, has ever avoided dealing with the infamous SWOT Analysis. SWOTs are meant to summarize the strategic positioning of a company and explain where they are and what steps they should take to be more effectual. In actuality, they are a very effective high-level tool for examining any company. I incorporated the SWOT technique into my own surveys of companies and created the T-SWOT or Technical SWOT analysis. The idea here is to easily and effectively explain to my VC clients what are the Technology-based positioning a company has. Each SWOT axis can be converted to technology standards and examines the tech functions of a company in a granular fashion. SWOT in an IT Context: Strengths - technical strengths in platform, infrastructure and management Weaknesses - who a firms software design and platform may weaken them and what they should do Opportunities - in the technology field

New Collaborative Technologies Not-All-That-New The messaging industry is highly fragmented but includes very sizable markets such as Email Security (projected at $6.7Bn by 2013, E-mail Security Market, 2009-2013, The Radicati Group, 2009 ) & Instant Messaging (forecasted at over $12Bn by 2013, Mobile Messaging Futures 2009-2013, Telecoms Market Research, 2008 ). A new, possibly disruptive, class of messaging platform is emerging and many are wondering how it might affect the market size from an investment standpoint. These platforms are known as collaborative messaging which are cross-breed of email, IMing and real time interaction with others, the poster-child being Google Wave.  The advent of collaborative technologies has given new dimensions to real-time productivity and communications for users worldwide. This segment of technology includes platforms like Etherpad, Shareflow, Microsoft SharePoint & Google Wave which allow multiple levels of interaction on a real-ti