This is my favorite time of year.  The new year rush and subsequent lull is gone, the taxes are filed (and refund on the way), and baseball is back!  It's been a long and dark offseason for Major League Baseball (see the Mitchell Report), but the 2008 season is finally here.  The MLB season kicks off tomorrow night in D.C. as my Atlanta Braves hope to spoil the Washington National's home opener in their new ballpark aptly named, Nationals Park.

As I did last year, I'm going to attempt to predict the fortunes (or misfortunes) of my 2008 Atlanta Braves.  First, let's start with the offseason transactions.

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Last week I attended Microsoft's Convergence 2008 conference at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.  Convergence is focused on Microsoft's Business Solutions division which includes applications in the Dynamics family -- CRM, GP, AX, NAV and SL -- but also touches on related technologies such as SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) and SQL Server.  It was my first time going to this conference, but being at Tech-Ed last year, I figured it would be similar.

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For a while I've had ongoing conversations within my group of business friends about core businesses.  The conversation goes like this:  companies say they do Y but act like a company that does Z.  It's a discrepancy in perception (or public relations) and actuality (which usually isn't so public).  I was reminded of this topic this morning when I read a message from Hugh MacLeod, who said that Wal-Mart is a tech company.  Very true.

I replied to him with my two favorite examples: Amazon.com is a tech company and Fandango.com is a research company (try it... http://fandangoresearch.com).  I have more... AAA is a research company, NASCAR is a marketing platform not a sport, etc.

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