A few posts of interest on unrelated themes.
- The GSMA Association, which represents over 750 GSM mobile operators has announced a major green initiative to establish renewable fuel sources to power over 118,000 mobile base stations in the developing world. This is further proof that the private sector is going to lead the environmental transformation that we need.
- AWS, Amazon's web services in the cloud, has announced a new agreement with Oracle whereby licensed Oracle products can be installed on the AWS infrastructure with support from both Oracle and AWS. I believe that this is the first case where a major software company (excluding Microsoft) has offered a licensed product for use in cloud computing. I would expect that most major software companies will follow suit, allowing larger companies with more complex systems and processes to move their IT to the cloud.
- Carl Icahn had two noteworthy comments in a blog post today.
- The size of the real U.S. government debt according to the Petersen Foundation is $ 53 trillion, a staggering statistic
- Icahn used a new finance term (for me)--EBITDAT. Similar to the popular EBITDA term, EBIDAT is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and theft. Theft for Icahn is the excessive salaries, bonuses and shareholdings of under performing CEOs and CFOs in large companies. Maybe those people who monitor corporate governance should start calculating EBITDAT.
