AMR clients: action needed! 1 Dec 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Insight services, Tech Watch, Technorati.3 comments
Today’s news: AMR Research has agreed to be acquired by Gartner. The news is up in a note on AMR’s and Gartner’s websites, and thanks to Sage Circle and Lighthouse for blogging it fast!
AMR (and Gartner) clients: your action list is further down! Contact InformationSpan for insight in your own specific case.
There will be plenty of comment in the coming days but as someone who’s worked with both providers in the past, and understands the user’s point of view, I offer some immediate reactions.
Most importantly and most clearly, Gartner have decided they needed to acquire expertise in supply chain research where AMR are an acknowledged leader. This doesn’t look like a deal to buy up the competition, as the META Group acquisition was late in 2005.
None the less, the META acquisition may offer guidelines to how Gartner will handle this (interesting, this, since Dale Kutnick of META is now a Gartner SVP). Gartner will, presumably, merge AMR’s mainstream work into its own ERP and Supply Chain Management portfolio where there are around 20 existing analysis such as Andy Kyte, Jim Holincheck and Thomas Otter.
I haven’t carefully analysed AMR’s published staff list, but it’s about 60 strong and divided between the analyst side and custom research/consulting business. So clearly there will be some analyst shakeout, initially with analysts who choose to leave AMR rather than move, and then later with those who don’t accommodate well to Gartner’s way of working. AMR’s distinctive podcast style will presumably disappear into Gartner Voice, and the Supply Chain Top 25 awards may or may not continue …
But the delivery models of Gartner and AMR are somewhat different. Gartner’s focus is on the individual IT manager or executive, and Gartner for IT Leaders doesn’t have a Supply Chain role. Will they use the AMR acquisition as the nucleus of one?
The press release says that the services will operate as a unity from 1st Jan 2010. But that’s a very short timescale and I’d expect some issues to be unresolved for at least another quarter.
So if you are an AMR client, here are some must-do actions. Quick reactions are needed, because AMR expect the deal to close this month – that is, by year end. AMR themselves offer “business as usual”:
If you’re an AMR Research client or prospect, your research, client services, and sales contacts will remain the same. All are being retained by Gartner. There will be no changes to our research agenda or announced roster of webcasts, podcasts, and customer visits.
But there must be a limit to this before things get aligned to Gartner’s business models, sales processes and delivery mechanisms. Think about what happened with META Group’s excellent and almost self-contained Architecture Strategies service.
Therefore:
1 – seek an urgent meeting with your account representative. Ask what the future is for your AMR seats in the new Gartner world, both for the duration of your current AMR subscription and, more importantly, beyond it. How does pricing compare? How long will you continue to have access to AMR’s delivery model? Will Gartner suggest that you move your users to GITL seats? Will you get access to Gartner for the unexpired portion of your AMR subscription?
2 – also, ask what your representative’s own future is. Will they continue as your Gartner representative? If so, where will they be based and what will their reporting line be? If not, who will take over – and how soon can they arrange a meeting to introduce you, before the change happens over your head?
3 – Of course, if you have existing relationships to particular AMR analysts, you want to know if they intend to stay or move on. Ask them!
4 – Start to get to know the Gartner analysts in this space. If you’re not a Gartner client, use the blogs – the InformationSpan Analyst Blogs index, with its topic index and our specialised Gartner Blog search, will help
5 – If you’re a Gartner ERP/SC client, some of the same questions apply. Ask what the impact will be of the AMR acquisition. Will there be new delivery elements, particularly a new focussed GITL service? Will your existing Gartner account manager continue on the job?
6 – if you have contracts with both organisations, ask for a refund once the integration takes effect.
7 – take note of Gartner’s and SageCircle’s webinars on 3rd December; these are directed more towards the vendors’ Analyst Relations teams than enterprise users
and 8 – watch out for supply chain start-up insight services, resulting from the shake-out of the two analyst teams. On past experience (think Giga-Forrester or META-Gartner) there will be some AMR analysts who prefer to go independent than migrate into Gartner’s style, processes and organisation. As Lighthouse comments, there will still be a market for second and third opinions – and, I might add, for global specialists in the AMR mould.
Both firms also have consultancy and custom research teams; if you have a current project, there may be an impact here too. Check!
Links:
• Gartner To Acquire AMR Research, AMR Research news release, 1 Dec 2009
• Gartner Buys AMR Research for $64M in Cash, AMR Research, 1 Dec 2009 (longer article by Bruce Richardson)
• Gartner enters into Agreement to Acquire AMR Research, Inc., Gartner Press Release, 1 Dec 2009 (interestingly, I had to search for this news release. It’s not on the homepage)
• Gartner & AMR, but in the end its still organic growth vs. the Analyst Cycle, Analyst Equity (Lighthouse Analyst Relations), 1 Dec 2009
• Gartner hosting special AR Webinar on AMR Research acquisition, Tekrati, 1 Dec 2009 (swith registration link for 3 Dec)
• Gartner Acquiries AMR Research for $64m, SageCircle 1 Dec 2009, with registration link for 3 Dec webinar
• Gartner Acquisition History, Gartner website
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
One you may have missed … 6 Nov 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Impact of IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.add a comment
… as I nearly did. My post from a year ago on reCAPTCHA is still one of the most visited on this blog, and you can see reCAPTCHA in action on my own main website where I use it to protect my email address from spambots.
Well, in mid September reCAPTCHA was acquired by Google. The story’s in Computerworld or on the Google blog. And as Computerworld comments, it’s a little component of Google’s mission to make all the world’s content accessible. The world is full of scanned archives of not-entirely-readable text (machine readable that is). reCAPTCHA helps to crack that problem. As it scans the world’s archives, Google will put it to work way beyond the academic sector where it originated.
Links:
• Google acquires reCAPTCHA in two-for-one deal, Computerworld, 16 Sep 2009
• reCAPTCHA uses one problem to crack another, ITasITis, 27 Nov 2008
• Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA, Official Google Blog, 16 Sep 2009
• reCaptcha
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
The ambulance down in the valley 8 Oct 2009
Posted by InformationSpan in ITasITis, Impact of IT, Tech Watch, Technorati.add a comment
Basex is a tech research and reporting company whose regular newsfeeds I scan and, from time to time, report from. They track and report on information management and particularly on solutions to “information overload”.
Jonathan Spira’s TechWatch newsletters focus often on an issue which afflicts most of us – too much incoming information. The list is long: not just email but blog updates, tweets, personal network posts, messages through other applications, and more. These days, it’s not just the inbox although we can choose to flow a fair amount of it that way or to keep it out.
Well … There’s an old story about a road along a dangerous cliff, with a regular series of accidents due to people walking or driving off the road. The local people decided something needed to be done, so they clubbed together and supported the provision of an ambulance to be permanently stationed down below in the valley. Till someone else pointed out it would be much better and, probably, cheaper to put a guard rail at the side of the road at the top.
That’s where we’re at with incoming overload; except that every attempt to erect a guard rail is frustrated one way or another. The volume just grows, and things fall off the cliff because they get overlooked. So the ambulance helps handle the results; and Basex recently profiled two ambulances.
One is Gist, which just launched (Google-style) a public beta service of an app which is web based, and which reads your email and all those other feeds, prioritises the content, and delivers you the top stuff. There’s a video on the Gist website which of course talks up the service.
The other, Liaise, is an add-on for Outlook that scans your incoming messages specifically for action items, and creates a to-do list. It’s not entirely automated; from the video, it looks as if the message originator has to select sending via Liaise to capture the key points (that’s not exactly how it appears from the Basex description; but Jonathan may have seen the actual product, and I haven’t). It does appear, once messages are set up in Liaise, to have significant capability for team, task and action management. Sounds brilliant, but I can foresee spammers figuring out how to craft emails that get actions into people’s lists.
And it just seems to me that if the number of similar tools grows (as Basex seem to think it will) then we’ll need a tool to manage the output from the tools …
Links:
• In the Briefing Room: Gist, Basex 17 Sep 2009
• In the Briefing Room: Liaise, Basex 24 Sep 2009
• Gist (you might want to go to the Blog, and page down for the initial launch announcement and video)
• Liaise
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
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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)
