Peter Yared's Musings

This post was written with Mathew Spolin and published in VentureBeat. From the smallest startup to the largest multi-national company, the ground-up software rewrite is the unicorn of organizations. At some point, a software system needs to be rewritten from scratch, usually for one or more of three reasons: Architectural flaws inherent from the onset. External market conditions that the software can not meet. Too much deferred maintenance such that the software is unstable and unchangeable. Software is sometimes hard to understand as it is abstract. However, we have the ultimate physical, real-life rewrite on our doorstep here in San Francisco: the rebuild of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Architectural Flaws The eastern span of the Bay Bridge, first opened in 1936, had a significant architectural flaw in that it could not survive a high-magnitude earthquake. The magnitude 7 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 caused a 76- by 50-foot section of the upper deck to ...

This post was also published in the Wall Street Journal's CIO Journal. After almost two decades of selling enterprise infrastructure to IT organizations, I have spent the last two years on the other side of the table as the CIO/CTO of CBS Interactive. This is part three of a three part series on how to sell to CIOs. In part one, I provided tips for getting into an account and in part two I discussed how to navigate the sales process . Now it’s time to close the deal. Timing Deals are going to take as long as they take, and there is really not much a vendor can do to make all the stars align within a big enterprise. A sophisticated vendor understands that large enterprises have a lot of processes in place to close deals and an aversion to new vendors. There is generally no shortcut through legal, finance and other internal approvals. When a vendor asks for deviations so that they can make a number or close the deal in Q4 as they promised the board, it makes them seem weak an...

This post was also published in the Wall Street Journal's CIO Journal. After almost two decades of selling enterprise infrastructure to IT organizations, I have spent the last two years on the other side of the table as the CIO/CTO of CBS Interactive. This is the second of a three part series on how to sell to CIOs. The tips I laid out in part one helped you get into an account. But getting the meeting is just the beginning. Now it’s time to sell your product. Sell the ROI The question enterprise IT has for the salesperson during a sales meeting is, “Will your product save or make us money and does it have low risk?” As Founder and CEO of Upstream Group Doug Weaver writes, “They’re not thinking about helping you out or what kind of day you’re having. ‘What’s in it for me?’ is the order of the day.” A vendor needs to have a very clear and verifiable return on investment (ROI) story with measurable metrics. There are times when companies buy software or services without evalu...

This post was also published in the Wall Street Journal's CIO Journal. After almost two decades of selling business infrastructure to technology companies, I thought I knew it all. But since spending the last two years on the other side of the table as the CIO/CTO of CBS Interactive, I realized how much I didn’t know about selling to enterprise IT. The way to truly understand how and why an enterprise purchases technology is by gaining the ability to understand how IT departments at medium to large-size organizations work, how decision-making actually happens and how vendors can avoid getting in their own way. Based on my experience on both sides, the following guide aims to help salespeople and companies become more efficient for both their clients and themselves. Be clear what it is you do A pitch, whether from a small startup or a multinational corporation, should always concisely state the following: 1. Description: What the offering specifically does, how it’s differen...

This post was written with Cameron Olthius and published on TechCrunch. Google has produced a car that drives itself and an Android operating system that has remarkably good speech recognition. Yes, Google has begun to master machine intelligence. So it should be no surprise that Google has finally started to figure out how to stop bad actors from gaming its crown jewel – the Google search engine. We say finally because it’s something Google has always talked about, but, until recently, has never actually been able to do. With the improved search engine, SEO experts will have to learn a new playbook if they want to stay in the game. SEO Wars In January 2011, there was a groundswell of user complaints kicked off by Vivek Wadwa about Google’s search results being subpar and gamed by black hat SEO experts, people who use questionable techniques to improve search-engine results. By exploiting weaknesses in Google’s search algorithms, these characters made search less helpful for ...