ITasITis

If you click on the Gartner website at the moment, you’ll see the centre panel higlights their report on “The Modernization of IT”. When you click, though, it’s a disappointment. To judge from the headline (I don’t have client access) it is just encouraging enterprise IT to set up a programme office to manage a transformation programme.

Elsewhere, though, there’s a different story. Gartner Voice is Gartner’s regular podcast series, and you can hear these without an account. OK, so it’s explicitly “not published Gartner research”, but it’s worth taking a feed from it all the same. And there’s a different take in there, which I just caught up with, in the shape of an interview with British academic Prof. Peter Keen. Keen is going to be the keynote speaker at Gartner’s upcoming infrastructure forum, and he gets it.

The interview rehearses some familiar stuff. There’s a lot of new technology out there. “IT is in danger of becoming the corporate laggard” because it’s got stuck in corporate technology. do we have an architecture for mobile, for example? “We cater pretty well for the customer of today - people like ourselves.” Our customers of tomorrow (that’s real customers, not enterprise IT’s internal pseudo-customers) are different; unlike us, they’re using this stuff. Our wouldn’t-we-like-them-to-be next generation employees are using it, and some of our existing employees are too. Let’s have corporate IT get real about this stuff and, in Bob Dylan’s words, “don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall”.

But Keen has gone further than many thinkers in showing how this really applies to enterprise IT. Yes, understand your business’s customers and how to interact with them. But ask him how to get the thinking shifted about this, in the boardroom, and he says two things. Stop the “business” thinking that somehow IT isn’t their responsibility. And: stop letting IT be talked about as a cost; the best thing to do with a cost is to cut it. Get the conversation switched to investment, to be creative with or customers. R&D made that switch a long time ago. Get IT onto the same page.

We’ve often said these things separately. Saying them together is newer than it ought to be!

Links:
• Peter Keen
• The Business Blueprint for the IT Platform Gartner Voice, 5 May 2008
• Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit, 2008 (Orlando, 23-25 Jun)

I had a phone chat with Erica Driver yesterday about her new venture, ThinkBalm. Erica has been one of Forrester’s lead analysts for some time, becoming one of their most knowledgeable researchers in what she calls the Immersive Internet. That’s virtual worlds such as Second Life, serious games, virtual meetings and so on. Erica’s charted the possibilities of these technologies - as a participant, not just from the outside. She’s charted much of this through the Forrester Information and Knowledge Management blog, where her reports are still available and can be reached without a subscription (I believe …).

ThinkBalm, set up by Erica and her husband Sam, aims to help vendors and – if there’s a foothold – enterprises working in these areas. With the pressure on costs, the increasing quality of virtual interactions, and less willingness of employees to travel continually, the opportunities are enormous. At the simplest level: I spoke with Erica using Skype – a free call, and we could see each other. Again: the Open University course that I’m teaching has given me a group of students spread from the north of England to the far Mediterranean, and we rely entirely on online communication. With no real face to face time, we have chat rooms but not live video. Wouldn’t that be nice!

Erica is a recognised leader in knowledge and experience of these technologies. She reckons her first clients will be IT vendors. I would expect the more adventurous enterprises to be equally interested!

Links:
• ThinkBalm
• Tips From A Successful Virtual Conference Erica Driver, Forrester IKM Blog, 28 Apr 2008

One of Forrester’s acknowledged problems has always been how to compete with Gartner in the assessment of technology adoption. Everyone knows the Hype Cycle, though there’s varying understanding of how to use it. Technology adoption lifecycles go back over 50 years; they describe the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation.

Forrester haven’t had anything in this area. But now they do.

I’ve been aware of the development of Forrester’s TechRadar for some time; it was pre-launched last summer. This week’s IT First Look mailing highlights its emergence with three reports: mobile devices and management solutions; infrastructure virtualization; and extended supply chain applications.

Forrester prefer not to have TechRadar seen as their answer to the Hype Cycle, but its intention is to enhance their coverage in the technology watch area. So what are the differences and similarities?

First and foremost, remember that Hype Cycle describes industry and media perception of a technology, not its intrinsic capabilities or its actual value. Media presence holds a mirror to uptake and so helps judgements on pricing, on capability, and on supportability. But, for example, the trough of the Hype Cycle might be the right time to invest if you’re convinced of the value of a technology. Prices will likely be low, and resources relatively cheap. Conversely, if a new technology offers a significant potential advantage then invest in the Trigger stage. But be clear that prices will be on the up, knowledge scarce, and the technology itself possibly short lived. Not many people read the Hype Cycle this way!

Using the Wikipedia definition, Forrester’s Radar is not an adoption lifecycle in the same sense. It has a similar horizontal to the Hype Cycle; but even here there’s a difference. It goes right through the life cycle to final decline. On the vertical, though, it’s completely different and the curve shape therefore is different too. Forrester are charting their judgement of the potential for business value. And they split the chart according to likely maximum value. So, for example, in the supply chain TechRadar they see MRP as in decline; supply chain intelligence as reaching its maximum, high value; and advanced planning and scheduling as at its peak but of less overall value. Supply chain event management, they show, is still on the way up but won’t achieve great value even at its peak. And, as with the Hype Cycle, a time dimension is overlaid.

When I saw the first versions of TechRadar, I commented that it looked overly complex. I’m pleased to say that the final version appears a lot clearer. Users will need to invest time to figure out how to read these charts, and to get familiar with the standard table format for data in the reports. But the methodology’s good, and it will be worth it.

Oh, and (I added this to repair an omission) in typical Forrester fashion, you can download the data in a spreadsheet.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of catching up to do. Gartner’s 2007 Hype Cycle summary “features more than 1,500 technologies and trends in 70 technology, topic and industry areas”! Maybe there should be a TechRadar for adoption cycles.

Links:

• Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar Research Forrester Research, updated 15 Jan 2008
• Forrester TechRadar: The Extended Supply Chain Application Ecosystem, Q2 2008 Forrester Research, 15 Apr 2008
• Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2007 Gartner, 1 Aug 2007
• Understanding Gartner’s Hype Cycles, 2007 Gartner, 5 Jul 2007
• Technology adoption lifecycle Wikipedia

Forrester and Gartner reports will not be visible in full without a membership subscription. TechRadar is a Forrester trademark.

I’ve just come across a paper by Joe Clabby (Clabby Analytics) talking about advocacy and objectivity in the analyst business (what InformationSpan calls Insight Services). It’s worth reading to get you thinking about how you use insight services, and what they’re doing.

Joe’s a researcher (as I am) and he espouses a solid research-based methodology. He expects insight services analysts to base their positions on actual research not just “feel”. He’s comfortable that analysts take a position on a market place: the best of these are hands-on researched, like Forrester’s Wave and similar tools, and I agree with him. After nearly 15 years as a service user, I know that enterprises want help and actionable support in making actual decisions, not just the raw data and an invitation to “make up you own mind”.

However – I think he’s over-optimistic in expecting technology press to be accurate and objective, over against an analyst. A reporter is going to be on one assignment one week, and another the next. They may have an area of specialisation, but a good analyst from one of the larger firms, or a niche specialist, will outdo them. How often have you read a trade press report about something you actually know about, and agreed with everything they say? Not often, I assume! which is by no means to question their professionalism, only to say that with deadlines and limited resources they will mostly get only part of the truth. Sure, I use the news sources; but I treat them with caution. Especially today, which is April 1st, but that’s by the by!

I picked the Forrester Wave as a prime example because, unlike some competitors, Forrester gives access to the raw data so that a client can re-balance the scores to meet their own specific environment. And that is another thing which I expect from a good analyst: the ability to take their in-depth research-based knowledge and apply it to my particular concerns: the company’s business aims and culture, the “how we do IT”, the CIO’s top six issues, and so on. In other words, reading the research report isn’t the end, it’s the beginning of the conversation.

Joe - thanks for starting this debate. Let’s keep it going!

Links:

• IT Analyst Ethics: Advocacy vs. Objectivity Clabby Analytics, Jan 2008
• Waves and Vendor Comparisons from Forrester Research

Links are provided in good faith, but InformationSpan does not take responsibility for the content of linked third party sites. Forrester Wave is a trade mark.<