Going to Gartner

This is a personal note about a professional decision. You might not be interested. If you are, read on. I’ll try to be brief. I’ve had a very fulfilling two years as an independent analyst, succeeding beyond my expectations. I established (or continued) a respected brand, gathered several thousand twitter followers, drew 80,000 blog viewsContinue reading “Going to Gartner”

Partial Plans Perplex Press at SAP – Sybase Event, But Promise is Everywhere

SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe and Sybase CEO John Chen keynoted a two-continent event on August 19 to demonstrate their solidarity and provide an early look at strategic plans. Many analysts greeted the initial announcement with positive reviews – mine is here, and Noel Yuhanna of Forrester weighed in here. Progress sinceContinue reading “Partial Plans Perplex Press at SAP – Sybase Event, But Promise is Everywhere”

Living in the Present is SO Yesterday

It’s an occupational hazard of living in the future that analysts can begin to ignore the present – unless we make it a practice to seek it out. Here in the Valley, that can be difficult, when being a week behind the latest version of something the rest of the world hasn’t heard of yetContinue reading “Living in the Present is SO Yesterday”

HP To Add 6000 Jobs in Sales and Service

“…with funding to come from 9000 positions that will be eliminated as a result of HP’s successful data center and automation efforts.” My headline from today’s news. Funny how emphasis and choice of lead matters. HP attempted to drive the message on this story by headlining its press release “HP to Invest $1 Billion toContinue reading “HP To Add 6000 Jobs in Sales and Service”

A Visit With Gideon Gartner

I was privileged to work with Gideon Gartner briefly during the early Giga Information Group days (joining about a year in after its founding in 1995.) I was a newbie in the analyst game at the time, although in my prior few years I had done analyst relations formally and informally at two software firms.Continue reading “A Visit With Gideon Gartner”

SapphireNow Day Two – Pump It Up

Bill McDermott began the day for Orlando attendees of SapphireNow by demonstrating that there is no charisma deficit at SAP these days, and his co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe was right there behind him to make the case that commitment and strategy are not lacking either. They welcomed Sybase, hailed the new ByDesign release about toContinue reading “SapphireNow Day Two – Pump It Up”

SapphireNow Day One – Getting Virtual Events Right, And More

I got some great messages today from people who enjoyed my tweets “from” SapphireNow in Orlando – although I wasn’t there. That’s a tribute – not to me; we’re only talking tweets, for goodness’ sake – to SAP for pulling off a two-continent, video-streaming, full-on collaborative event I was able to participate in meaningfully fromContinue reading “SapphireNow Day One – Getting Virtual Events Right, And More”

Will Tiered Content Strategies Crack the IT Research PayWall?

There are two content models in the IT research world: the PayWall and the freely available. In the former model, the business assumption is that the firm’s revenue stream is largely driven by content subscriptions.  The latter treats content as the best advertising of the firm’s real value: its people and the advice they canContinue reading “Will Tiered Content Strategies Crack the IT Research PayWall?”

The State of The Industry Analyst

How’s that for a ridiculous title? This piece is nowhere near as ambitious as that; it’s a response to some typically provocative comments from Gideon Gartner, a founder and arguably the most iconic figure in our industry. In his blog post Advisory Industry, a future redesign: the Payment Model, Gartner challenges his readers to thinkContinue reading “The State of The Industry Analyst”

Oracle Ups EPM Ante

After a 2 year wait, Oracle is rolling out some fruits of its daunting integration efforts in enterprise performance applications. New suite bundles, an Essbase connector and Hyperion uplift are highlights of its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 11.1.2 release. The numbering scheme, evidently constrained by the overall Oracle level 11 nomenclature, drove the understated “11.1.2”Continue reading “Oracle Ups EPM Ante”