Gartner+AMR: free webinar Monday 14th Dec [update] 2 Dec 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.2 comments
The hot news this week has been the decision of AMR Research to allow itself to be bought by Gartner, per my preceding blog post.
If you’re an AMR client you will already be aware of this, and be thinking about your action plan. If you’re a Gartner client in the ERP and Supply Chain space, there will be direct consequences for your service too. But even if you are a client of neither, you should be thinking about it if ERP and Supply Chain are in your area of responsibility.
This is urgent! AMR and Gartner say they intend to operate as a single service from January 1st. In the three weeks to the holiday break, you need to decide your strategy and take some important actions.
Join InformationSpan and Lighthouse Analyst Relations for a webinar which is focussed specifically on your needs as enterprise users. We will explore the likely consequences for the two services, and for you as enterprise users. You will take away a list of clear actions for the immediate future and for the coming year, and you will learn how we can help.
Date: Monday 14th December 2009
Time: 3pm UK time (7 am Pacific, 10 am Eastern, 4pm European)
Who should attend: AMR clients; Gartner ERP/Supply Chain clients; SC and ERP IT leads; those responsible for insight service portfolios; IT procurement leads looking after insight services and/or ERP and SC systems
How to register: link to follow; in the meantime, send email to us at InformationSpan
Gartner’s top 10 for 2010 26 Nov 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Impact of IT, Insight services, Managing IT, Tech Watch.add a comment
Bill Chamberlin at HorizonWatching has spotted a PDF of Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010, presented by analyst Andy Kyte in Sofia in October. Mr Kyte was there for a local executive briefing to celebrate the opening of a new Gartner office in Bulgaria. It appears that he also presented the talk to a professional gathering in the evening, from where it’s available online. At least, for now!
What’s most interesting is the wholesale change since last year’s list. There’s no item on the new list which appears identically on last year’s. Some changes are cosmetic; there are three items which transfer with new titles, such as Social Software and Social Networking which morphs into the simpler Social Computing.
Others involve reassembling last year’s list. For example, Virtualization (2009) feeds into three new items: Client Computing, Reshaping the Data Center, and Virtualization for Availability. And Cloud Computing (2010) adds Enterprise Mashups and Web-Oriented Architectures (2009) to last year’s definition of Cloud Computing.
This isn’t a list of emerging technologies, although some of the items on the list might be categorised thus. The criterion is the expectation of enterprise impact within the next three years. I’d certainly expect the list to change from year to year and no future impact assessment can guarantee accuracy. But I wonder, for example, whether Gartner think that Unified Communications (dropped this year) has achieved the impact predicted for it in 2008 and 2009, or whether they no longer expect it to do so? Maybe someone with access to the full report can tell us.
HorizonWatching’s a useful service. Well done, over there!
Links:
• Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010, HorizonWatching, 24 Nov 2009
• Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010, Gartner presentation, Sofia, 27 Oct 2009, from the Bulgarian FMI Society IT Academy
• Gartner Executive Event – here for interest is the invitation to the main event on 27 Oct 2009 with the full agenda
Webinar recording available 25 Nov 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.add a comment
Thanks to Duncan Chapple of Lighthouse for sharing and hosting yesterday afternoon’s webinar. Anyone who couldn’t get to the session can reach the material through the link below. Thanks to attendees as well, for some interesting questions!
Click here for the recording hosted by DimDim (Flash Player is needed). Please be assured that the sound quality isn’t due to your PC: I was recovering from a heavy cold!
For more background information, see the original post Free webinar: “Managing the Insight Services Portfolio, From the Panic Cycle to effective delivery” (16 Nov); or contact me to discuss an engagement
Free webinar: “Managing the Insight Services Portfolio, From the Panic Cycle to effective delivery” 16 Nov 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.add a comment
IT budgets are always under constraint, but today’s CIOs are under intense pressure to deliver more for less. At the same time technology development is offering new options, from social computing to sourcing. IT must assess these effectively and invest for business benefit.
Coherent and well-aligned external advice has never been more important. Insight from analyst services, whether it’s the global majors such as Gartner and Forrester Research, or smaller and more specialised services, influences the whole of IT’s strategy and delivery. Yet, as analyst firms themselves respond to the same pressures, the costs of insight services are rising.
With over 700 varied providers, there’s plenty of opportunity to create a portfolio which delivers the right strategic and operational insight. The portfolio approach can yield significant direct savings while, at the same time, measurably improving effectiveness. And this relatively small investment in managing the service portfolio impacts not just the insight services budget, but through it the whole IT spend.
Yet there is limited experience on offer to help enterprises analyse their service needs. How do you shape and manage the portfolio to provide for coherent strategic advice?
I’m outlining the approach to this in a webinar, in conversation with Duncan Chapple. Duncan leads Lighthouse Analyst Relations market analysis of the research community, and between us we bring to the table around twenty years’ experience of this field/
Join us on Tuesday 24th November 2009, at 3 p.m. (15.00) UK time, to learn about “Managing the Insight Services Portfolio: from the Panic Cycle to effective delivery”, and begin your journey.
Who should attend:
- Directors of Enterprise Strategy and Architecture
- Managers in Procurement or in IT who purchase external insight services
- Executive IT directors looking for coherent strategy advice
- IT directors with responsibility for supplier and vendor management
- Service owners and service improvement project leaders
- Risk management leads
- Anyone dissatisfied with their current use of insight services
What you will learn
Obviously we can’t describe a complete methodology in a short Webinar, but we will introduce the key ideas:
- How to assess your current use of insight services
- How to identify the insight services needs of your IT function (needs analysis)
- How to create a cost-effective portfolio
- How to move from disparate service contracts (“We just buy research”) to strategic delivery
register, email me or duncanchapple@lighthousear.com.
Managing the Insight Services Portfolio: from the Panic Cycle to effective delivery
Tuesday 24th November
UK: 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
US East Coast: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
US West Coast: 7 a.m. to 8 a.m.
Mainland Europe: 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
(A version of this post is also available at http://www.analystequity.com/?p=1295)
Windows 7: an analyst case study 5 Nov 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Impact of IT, Insight services, Managing IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.add a comment
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
Cloud and legalities 30 Sep 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in Consumerization, ITasITis, Managing IT, Tech Watch.add a comment
Just come off a Bright Talk webinar, part of a day on issues around Cloud. Miranda Mowbray of HP Labs, Bristol, gave a comprehensive round-up of legal issues which might arise through organisations’ use of externally-sourced Cloud services (everything from basic infrastructure like EC2 up to full-featured applications such as salesforce.com). Sherlock Holmes, apparently, would recognise the issues from Baskerville Moor.
It reminded me of attending a conference in the early days of the Web, where I heard the first attempt to figure out what the regulatory issues might be for pharmaceutical companies, with our heavy and very country-specific regulatory issues to work through. As so often, we’ve been here before: legislation necessarily lags behind technology, and case law has not yet started to accumulate.
The recording is available on the Web and there’s a published paper too. So I won’t attempt to precis it here. Suffice it to say that the issues range from “Where’s my data held?” (and that includes my account and usage data as well as the data I’m handling in the cloud) to “What happens if …” questions (the service goes down, the provider goes out of business, and much more). In particular, beware: most terms and conditions mean that it’s the user, not the provider, who normally carries the responsibility for continuity of service and for backup.
A great deal was packed into thirtyfive minutes and although Miranda Mowbray is not a lawyer (so the advice, of course, is “If in doubt, consult one!”) she clearly has a good grasp of the issues that may well arise.
Something to reference in the end-user guide on “Signing up for web-based IT” which I’m working on. Watch out too for a posting here in a day or two about analysis of “Distribution characteristics” for business and business applications, a piece of work I did many years ago which is highly relevant to today’s developing cloud environments.
Links:
• Cloud Computing and the Law, BrightTalk webcast, 30 Sep 2009
• Miranda Mowbray’s home page at HP Labs
• The Fog over the Grimpen Mire: Cloud Computing and the Law. Mowbray, M., SCRIPTed Journal of Law, Technology and Society vol 6 issue 1 (April 2009) pp.132-146 (the link is directly to a PDF of the document)
Scale out, not up: the Cloud mindset is different 16 Sep 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in Consumerization, ITasITis, Impact of IT, Managing IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.add a comment
Just come off a call with a group which meets regularly by phone to think about the issues of moving corporate IT services to the cloud.
The debate is moving on. Originally, it was triggered by the emergence of Amazon’s EC2 and S3, and similar services, which enable individuals to have easy by-the-drink access to high powered and flexible compute and storage power.
Then, it was key questions about how to enable enterprises to move services to “the cloud”: what do you move and how, and what are the risks that have to be understood and managed?
Now, there’s an understanding that a hybrid model will have a lot to recommend it. Cloud services offer flexibility, and that’s more important than cost saving. The question is no longer “In-house or cloud” but “How do we integrate cloud with in-house, for flexibility and overflow”. You set up multiple-hosted services so that when in-house runs out of capacity, the request is routed seamlessly to a cloud resource.
Someone on the call characterised this as “Scaling out, not up”. And it requires a different mind-set when applications are created. Something which recalled to my mind the “reverse assumptions” for heterogeneous wide area distributed systems, created by the UK/European ANSA project something like 20 years ago. I said I’d re-publish them. Here they are.
| When building a distributed system, a number of assumptions which are commonly made when engineering systems for single hosts not only become invalid, but have to be reversed. The most important of these are: | |
| • | local >> remote more failure modes are possible for remote interactions than for local ones |
| • | direct >> indirect binding configuration becomes a dynamic process, requiring support for linkage at execution time |
| • | sequential >> concurrent execution true concurrency requires mechanisms to provide sequentiality |
| • | synchronous >> asynchronous interaction communication delays require support for asynchronous interactions and pipelining |
| • | homogeneous >> heterogeneous environment requires common data representation for interactions between remote systems |
| • | single instance >> replicated group replication can provide availability and/or dependability |
| • | fixed location >> migration locations of remote interfaces may not be permanent |
| • | unified name space >> federated name spaces need for naming constructs which mirror administrative boundaries across different remote systems |
| • | shared memory >> disjoint memory shared memory mechanisms cannot operate successfully on a large scale and where remote operations are involved. |
There was, and is, another one as well. When you’re creating an application – any application! – don’t assume it will always stay with the localised architecture you’ve created it in. The gotcha assumption these days is that the app is being created with links to a private cloud not the public one, so it’ll stay that way. Deal with it – interfaces, databases, security, the whole nine yards – as if, one day, parts of it will sit on public infrastructure.
Links:
• ANSA project, 1984-1998, document repository (now free access)
• ANSA: An Engineer’s Introduction to the Architecture, ANSA project, Nov 1989 (see section 2.1 p 3 for the reversed assumptions)
• Distributed architectures: reverse assumptions, still relevant, my previous post (ITasITis, Jan 2008)
Our Forrester Blogs index now has podcasts too 9 Sep 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Managing IT, Technorati.add a comment
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
add a comment
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!
