Windows 7: an analyst case study 5 Nov 2009
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A couple of weeks downstream from the official launch, it’s worth taking a look at the commentary around Windows 7. Where are the insights relevant to enterprise deployment? Who’s providing good coverage?
I’m not looking at consumer-level information. Oddly enough, that actually broadens the review: counter-intuitive it may be, but of course the enterprise analysts have been working forward to the event for some time. But what’s the picture now, since Win 7 has seen the official light of day? Where might you go for ongoing advice, as you plot your strategy?
ITasITis regulars will remember I did a similar review of coverage of the Satyam debacle, earlier in the year. This time, there seems to be a lot less to review from the insight providers. News coverage of course is significant; and at the business end, Wharton Business School’s Knowledge@Wharton emphasises the commercial importance of Win7, for Microsoft, after the generally agreed lack of impact from Vista. The article gathers various opinions and research that suggests a better reception this time. But this isn’t the coverage that will be of most benefit to IT strategists.
So: where will you go for advice? Primarily, it’s the two majors: Gartner and Forrester. There’s a significant difference in approach in their mainstream research; and, also, in the flow of ongoing advice.
In official research, Gartner suggest that enterprises should plan an 18-month project to migrate to Win7. Starting now, presumably, since the research is dated 1 October. As Steve Kleynhans points out (and comment is pretty much unanimous on this) this will be the first major migration since the adoption of either Win2000 or XP in most enterprises.
More recently still, and in research available to a free account, Gartner advise that “Windows 7 is unskippable”. This paper advises that it’s “conservative” to plan to eliminate XP by mid-2012, when problems with third party applications may start to appear. So if you’re on the 18-month project, there’s time in hand – but not too much, given the annual-or-longer IT planning horizon. For other Gartner research, especially if you’re an account holder, drop onto the site and just search for “Windows 7″.
For sure, if an enterprise is intending to roll out Win7 across the organisation then the various stages of preparation, inventory, development, testing and rollout have to be gone through. So Gartner are giving thorough advice if your enterprise is still of a mind to create a corporate desktop image and roll it out everywhere.
But second, and importantly: Gartner are also blogging, though (typically) it may not be obvious. They are using Brian Gammage’s blog to capture thoughts on Win7 as the story unfolds. For ongoing insight from the majors, if you don’t have a Gartner account – or even if you do – this is the place to start. Remember, the blogs are not “published Gartner research” – they may give a different picture from the considered reports.
And a sideline. If you want to search Gartner blogs, there’s now a custom search on the InformationSpan Analyst Blogs index. Try it!
Forrester Research, in a piece published just a few days before the official launch, are much more inclined to get the train moving now and move it a bit at a time. Their advice is that enterprises “should: 1) start or accelerate application compatibility testing [...]; 2) plan for rolling out [...] small batches on new hardware initially; 3) weigh the costs and benefits of upgrading existing machines with at least 2 GB of memory; 4) start developing training sessions and tips and tricks guidance; and 5) prepare for — and embrace — empowered users who want to be early adopters.” Looks like they agree with Gartner about development, integration and testing but take more account of XP being long in the tooth; this advice will get experience moving.
A search on Forrester’s site reveals a steady flow of research and opinion over at least the last year, and if enterprises have been following this they should have a fair idea of what their strategy is (not “will be”) and of what they need to do to get there. Forrester do note, in a report from June, that both Vista and MacOS were picking up traction in the enterprise as XP declined.
What else is out there? Actually, not much unless you’ve got accounts with other providers; in which case you’re probably aware of it already. For serious enterprise advice about Windows 7, the two major providers appear to be the only shows in town. If you want an easy-access outside thought, though, have a look at today’s Guardian which reviews Windows 7 against the latest Ubuntu Linux and throws in a mention of MacOS Snow Leopard for good measure. OK, it’s from the personal perspective, but it’s worth remembering that Macs are variously reported as making a stealthy comeback in the enterprise.
Links:
• Opening Windows: Knowledge@Wharton, 22 Oct 2009
• Prepare for Windows 7 in Three Phases, Gartner document G00170151, 1 Oct 2009 (link is to a Google cache copy, so isn’t guaranteed; this report is not openly available on gartner.com)
• Reasons to Care About Windows 7, and Reasons Not to, Gartner document G00171872, 19 Oct 2009
• Windows 7 Commercial Adoption Outlook, Forrester, 15 Oct 2009; the report is quoted extensively in XP to lose adoption war to Windows 7, Computerworld, 20 Oct 2009
• Corporate Desktop Operating System Trends Q3 2008 To Q2 2009, Forrester, 22 Jun 2009
Other reports:
• Breaking the Windows XP Ice Pack: Can Windows 7 Turn Up the Heat on Replacements?, IDC, October 2009, primarily a market research perspective
• Windows 7 or Ubuntu 9.10: battle of the operating systes, Guardian Technology 5 Nov 2009
• Windows 7 Update Advisor, Tom Austin, Gartner Blog Network, 2 Nov 2009
Three to watch 17 Sep 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Technorati.1 comment so far
Outsell offer a list of “30 to watch” in the information industry, and none of them are insight service firms serving enterprise IT.
Here are by suggestions: just Three to watch.
Altimeter Group: Charlene Li’s firm, just on a year old, has acquired three new partners. One of them is one of the foremost thought leaders in ERP, R “Ray” Wang, also from Forrester. Ray was recently named Analyst of the Year by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations. This will clearly take Altimeter from being a one-person enterprise focused on “Social and emerging technology” towards a wider-based insight firm. Very definitely, watch this space.
Ovum Knowledge Centre: Datamonitor have completed their transition to unite the technology insight services of Ovum, Butler Group and Datamonitor Technology under the Ovum brand. Interestingly, the prime URL now reflects “Ovum Knowledge Centre” rather than just “Ovum”. Butler have been trying to break into the US market without success for some time; it will be worth watching to see whether the reorganisation finally creates a competitive global player.
Corporate Integrity: Mike Rasmussen left Forrester only a couple of years ago and his Global Risk & Compliance insights are in demand. The events of the past twelve months highlighted the disastrous consequences of a failure to understand and manage risk. For a one-man-band, Mike’s profile and reach are exceptional.
Links:
• Altimeter Group
• Press release Altimeter Welcomes New Partners, 27 Aug 2009
• Ray Wang named IIAR Analyst of the Year 2009, Institute of Industry Analyst Relations, 25 Aug 2009
• Ovum Knowledge Centre
• Press release Datamonitor Group to integrate its three technology businesses, Datamonitor, 14 Aug 2009
• Corporate Integrity
• 30 to watch for 2009, Outsell, undated
Our Forrester Blogs index now has podcasts too 9 Sep 2009
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I’ve undertaken a second major restructure of the Forrester Research section of the InformationSpan Analyst Blogs index. The Gartner section content has been updated, though there’s only one new Gartner blog this time. Also (update to this post) I’ve checked and revised my Other Blogs page entries.
Forrester organise their blogs in three main themes: enterprise IT; Marketing & Strategy (that’s strategy-for-marketing, not strategy in general); and Technology Industry (that’s vendors). Plus, there are a handful of more generic blogs including George Colony’s own. The InformationSpan index has now separated these categories; we include some cross-referencing between them.
A more significant development for InformationSpan users is that I’ve researched Forrester’s podcasts and added these to the index.
Most of Forrester’s podcasts are associated with specific blogs. Two of them (why only two?) have specific pages on Forrester’s own website. Most are served out either by iTunes or through a FeedBurner link. There’s at least one that’s available through iTunes but is co-hosted by Network World and doesn’t seem to be referenced on Forrester’s own site.
In other words, this is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Like for like, it’s taken more sorting out than Gartner’s decision to index its blogs only by the most recent posting! While on the subject of Gartner: their own index to their titled blogs (that is, those not featuring a single analyst’s personal views) seems to have disappeared. So the InformationSpan index is now your best way to find these linked in one place!
Fortunately, there aren’t a vast number of Forrester podcasts so the research was feasible. No doubt I’ve missed one or two which aren’t in systematic places, and I’ll add these as they surface.
It would be nice if Forrester rationalised it, but in the meantime please visit InformationSpan and, as always, click on the link top right to the Analyst Blogs Index – or the one on this blog.
Gartner Blogs directory improved 15 Jul 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.Tags: Analyst blogs, blogs, directory, Gartner
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I’ve finally implemented a long-planned improvement to the InformationSpan directory of Gartner analyst blogs. Actually, two improvements.
The first sounds simple but proved remarkably difficult to achieve. There are a small handful of Gartner bloggers who are not listed in Gartner’s own online directory of analysts. They are people like my friend Val Sribar, who are senior members of Gartner’s research management team and not “analysts” in the regular sense of the word. Or they might be new arrivals, who haven’t made it into Gartner’s online list yet.
Up to now, these individuals have had special mention at the foot of the “by name” page, and haven’t appeared in the directory of coverage areas at all. Well, that’s changed. They are now fully integrated into the main lists, with a neat little dagger indicating their status.
The second enhancement sounds complex but was much easier. The index of blogs by coverage area has now been split into three sections: Technical coverage (the part of Gartner that most of us look at); Industry verticals (the sectors for which Gartner has a focussed specific advisory service); and Management focus (which at the moment includes two areas: Gartner for Business Leaders, and the Small/Midsize Enterprise IT service). This split doesn’t exactly match Gartner’s own, but it makes sense to me. The three sections are still on the same page; just page down.
Also there are a small number of new blogs highlighted since the last update. The number of analysts blogging has pretty much reached its plateau, I think. I wonder if the joining rate permonth over the last couple of years would plot into a hype cycle shape?
Why not have a look at our Blog Index.
PS – for the technically minded, the implementation uses some arcane Excel coding to sort out the information into the order wanted. The new code vividly exemplifies Niklaus Wirth’s statement: there is no problem in computing that can’t be solved by adding another layer of indirection. Two layers, sometimes, here!
Waves and MQs: an experienced analyst comments 3 Jul 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Impact of IT, Insight services, Technorati.Tags: analysts, how to, Magic Quadrant, Wave
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Mike Rasmussen has blogged a critique of Forrester’s recent Wave on Global Risk and Compliance, in a piece which deserves an audience outside the GRC community.
Mike is the doyen of GRC analysts and, in his time at Forrester, authored two previous versions of this Wave. He’s quite explicitly not getting at the authors of the new update; it’s the process that’s at issue. And the comments are well worth reading if you use any Wave, Magic Quadrant, or similar tool to help your purchasing decisions. Especially if your management board won’t approve a purchase unless these tools “endorse” the choice.
Mike has two criticisms. One of them isn’t a surprise, but it’s worth a reminder. The picture presented in a point-of-time report is, almost by definition, out of date before it’s published. Vendors don’t stand still while a report’s being researched. Indeed, some vendors opt out of supporting an evaluation because they’re close to a new release and don’t want to be judged on the old one.
InformationSpan has a similar issue: if you download our free report on insight service coverage for BI, you’ll find that its assessment of Forrester’s coverage is significantly out of date. It was written last November, and they’ve put out a lot of new coverage this year.
But secondly, Mike comments that the assessment criteria for the GRC Wave haven’t been updated while the discipline of GRC has moved on substantially. Analysis needs to recognise this.
These are process questions. The first one reflects the length of the evaluation process; things go out of date while being evaluated, and vendors sometimes decline to commit the resources. Mike asks whether this can be streamlined.
But the second question reflects the fact that the process was designed for systems delivered into a relatively mature marketplace, where the underlying concepts being modelled in software (for example) aren’t changing greatly.
GRC in the enterprise isn’t primarily about tools: it’s about management discipline and process. Tools simply support the process; tool capabilities develop rapidly as the discipline itself develops. And there are other areas like this.
For example, there’s an emergent unified approach to change management, configuration control and release management (CCRM) – I attended a workshop about this recently. Or there’s architecture, needing new approaches to integrate the benefits of cloud services securely into the enterprise while the first wave of architecture repositories and other tools are still evolving. No doubt you can identify other examples.
This isn’t about the pace of change. It’s whether a process implicitly predicated on a stable environment can cope with changes which are about much more than new technical ways of doing essentially the same thing.
So what’s the way forward? More than Mike suggests, I think. The key must be to separate the market snapshot from the analysis report. A vendor’s vision or ability to deliver don’t change over the timescale of report writing – nor with the actual issue of a new release, though the market’s reaction to it may be significant. So here’s my suggestion.
First: let the analysts get behind the versions to give a well researched, more stable view of the vendors and their contributions in a particular sector. Detach this from the assessment of current releases: they are data for the assessment, in this understanding, but not the core of it. Gartner’s MarketScope, an alternative to their better known Magic Quadrant, targets this: their aim is to provide “an overall market rating that indicates the strength and potential for the market in general. This is particularly important in emerging markets, when … it is difficult to assess the long-term viability or evolution of offerings. In mature markets, MarketScopes provide insight about the ongoing value of products and services“.
And second: make the process continuous, rather than point-in-time. Then it can respond continually not just to new products but to new assessment criteria as the underlying paradigms change. If new tools were continually tested, and the results added to the database, a Wave or MQ could be dynamically delivered from the most current data. I don’t think anyone does this. Tell me if you know different!
It’s a step beyond what Mike’s asking for: not to streamline the process, but to change it.
So read Mike’s comments, and apply them to your own specialism. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of Waves and MQs as they currently exist. Comment back to me here – does anyone know of an assessment tool which is already dynamic in this way? And always remember, when you’re using any of these analyst tools, that they provide insight - not ready-made decisions!
Links:
• The Forrester GRC ?Ripple? … , Corporate Integrity (Mike Rasmussen), 2 July 2009
• Coverage report: Business Intelligence, InformationSpan, Nov 2008 (free download from this page)
• The Forrester Wave
• Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes: How Gartner Evaluates Vendors Within a Market, Gartner, Jan 2008 (this document appears to be openly available)
Gartner creates Business Continuity blog 8 May 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in Insight services, Tech Watch.Tags: Business Continuity, Gartner, Swine Flu
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Gartner recently added a new Business Continuity blog, categorised as Gartner Special Research. It contains advisories relating to the Swine Flu outbreak, which is a more serious issue in the US than it is yet in Europe. Like their other blogs, it’s on open access.
You won’t find it in their list of titled (topic-focussed) blogs, which followers here will know remains somewhat disorganised. Instead, and illogically, it’s been included in the Blog Network as if it were an individual analyst’s blog.
InformationSpan sorts these things out. There’s one new Gartner analyst on stream as well. Visit informationspan.com and click the link to our index of analyst blogs.
Gartner’s titled blogs: Gartner responds to InformationSpan comment 23 Apr 2009
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Following through on the previous post, and the update to InformationSpan’s blog index, I was pleased to note also that Gartner have updated their own index to their titled blogs. I couldn’t assert that my observations were the only reason, but I certainly passed comments to Gartner after I last reviewed their coverage. I only wish they’re read them all!
They’ve made the most important change: the omission of Jackie Fenn and Mark Raskino’s Mastering the Hype Cycle has been repaired. But there are still active blogs listed under Archived, including their Office of the Ombudsman blog which you’d think would be important. In fact, the only two items now under Active are Mastering the Hype Cycle and a link to the analysts’ personal blogs.
And beware: some of the blogs are still not listed by the titles that they carry on their own front pages. Mastering the Hype Cycle is a case in point; it’s referenced as Hype Cycle Book.
We shall also keep an eye on High Performance Workplace. This blog last posted in February 2007, and is correctly included under Archived, but there’s a recent (March 2009) test message on it which probably should not have escaped. Maybe it’s going to be revived.
It would be really nice if Gartner could get this right. In the meantime, go to InformationSpan for an index which does what it says on the tin! There’s a link in the panel on this blog page.
More Gartner Blogs and some under-the-cover changes 23 Apr 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.Tags: Analyst blogs, blog index, Gartner
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Another ten Gartner analysts have joined the Gartner Blog Network and I’ve updated my blog index to include them. For the first time, a couple of the new names are also new analysts, and these are indicated in the index.
There are a couple of other changes on the Gartner side too. Their Investment Services and Banking vertical coverage has been amalgamated, so the sole blogger in this area, Kristin Moyer, now appears under “Banking & Investment Services”.
And one of the new analysts, Richard Fouts, is working within Gartner’s business management service Gartner for Business Leaders. Gartner describe this as “reinvigorated” rather than “new”: it provides “business strategy and marketing insight for technology and service provider organizations” covering analyst relations, sales, product management & marketing, and market & competitive intelligence. I’m going to need to revamp the approach a little to ensure these additional areas get reflected in the topic index; at the moment, they don’t.
Click through to the blog index, and take it from there.
Oracle acquires Sun: what do the analysts say? 23 Apr 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Managing IT.Tags: AMR Research, Analyst blogs, analysts, Forrester, Gartner
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As the comments begin to settle down around Oracle’s latest blockbuster acquisition, let’s have a look at who reacted how quickly, and the quality of their comments.
There’s plenty of discussion of the basics: that Oracle is to acquire (“rescue”, according to some coverage) Sun Microsystems. The crown jewels are:
- the Solaris version of Unix, which Larry Ellison talked up and which is perhaps the most important platform for Oracle’s proprietary software portfolio. Relevant past acquisitions here include PeopleSoft/J D Edwards (Dec 2004) and Siebel (Sep 2005), both hard-fought battles
- Java, the basis for Oracle’s growing middleware business. BEA Systems was acquired in January last year.
- Sun hardware … it will be interesting to see what Oracle does with this, as an indicator of the company’s future direction
- Star Office and Open Office – there’s not much comment about these. But Ellison may well encourage them, the better to compete with Microsoft
- MySQL open source database, widely used by start-ups and web companies
- Definitively stopping a link-up of IBM and Sun
When I looked at coverage of the Satyam scandal, the questions were: who reacted first? Who has the most incisive coverage for the enterprise user? Who had the best accessible coverage?
But things have moved on, not least with Gartner’s entry to the blog movement. The major analysts had blog postings up pretty much on the day, and so did a range of other commentators. Some postings are very short and don’t do much more than register that the analyst had seen the news. But some have significant analysis, and I’d commend Darryl Plummer from Gartner, James Kobelius and Ray Wang from Forrester, and Bruce Richardson of AMR who all quickly began to explore the implications. Stefan Ried of Forrester waited a couple of days and then, after a call with Oracle, brought together some of his colleagues’ earlier comments so that’s a useful link.
And at this stage there is not much early stage formal research reporting. There are a couple of reports from the big two (Forrester and Gartner). Forrester haven’t disappointed as they did last time: the quality of accessible coverage in the blogs is high. Gartner’s blog coverage is more random; perhaps this is where Forrester’s approach to blogging, with topic-related rather than personal blogs, pays off. Then there were rapid initial research notes from Forrester and Gartner but not a great deal more.
As with Satyam, there’s no consensus about the future direction of this integration. The main disagreements are:
- will Oracle divest the hardware business, or leverage it? Significantly, the Oracle press resource talks about delivering “an integrated system—applications to disk”, not “applications to CPU”.
- will MySQL be used as a route to migrate more customers for Oracle’s database and then killed off? will it be actively supported? or will it be cut loose for the open source community to work with?
So perhaps the main conclusion for insight service users is that the pace and quality of fast-response comment to major events has significantly picked up. And that there were no real surprises about coverage – except that I discovered a new source (GigaOM) which had an incisive article – matching Forrester’s Kobelius for early considered analysis. That’s a source I’ll be watching in future.
Links:
• Oracle and Sun, Oracle press and information website
• Forrester: Oracle’s Sun Acquisition Is A Game Changer, 22 April, client research targetted at vendor strategy professionals (i.e. the IT supply side) but relevant to users too
• Gartner: Oracle/Sun Deal Will Change Competitive Landscape in IT, 22 April, client research, short but publicly available
• Our Full Analysis of the $7.4B Oracle-Sun Deal, GigaOM, 20 April
To see more of the coverage identified for this survey, click for items tagged in del.icio.us.
Have you seen … Forrester’s Inquiry Spotlight reports 7 Apr 2009
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Catching up on a Forrester First Look email, my attention was drawn to their (fairly) new report family: Inquiry Spotlight. These focus on topics which garner a large number of inquiries. Even without reading the reports (or summaries, if you’re not a client) it’s interesting to see what these topics are.
Inquiry Spotlight was launched without fanfare, so far as I can see; the first report appears to have covered Server Virtualization and was published last September. The most recent half dozen are E-Signatures; Organizing Architecture Teams; Master Data Management; and Disaster Recovery.
It’s not entirely clear how many inquiries make a topic hot. For example: Organizing Architecture Teams is one topic among around 120 inquiries about the practice of enterprise architecture, these in turn contributing to some 2,000 inquiries in 2008 from architecture professionals. So there may have been only a small handful on this specific topic. But this particular report is stated to be the first in a series of Inquiry Spotlights on EA Practices; we look forward to the rest!
What do you get from this? Not just Forrester’s usual level of insight, but also a benchmark of key issues in enterprise IT. Are your issues the same?
Go to Forrester’s website and just put “Inquiry Spotlight” into their search bar.
