Here are the two most important sessions for you to learn more about SSD in the data center at the upcoming Gartner Conference:

1) Fusion-io: Fusion-io Helps MySpace Slash Server Footprint by 60%, Saving Space, Power, and Maintenance

Speaker is David Flynn, Co-Founder, President, and CTO of Fusion-io. Topics inlcude increased performance, server footprint, and rackspace/power reductions. nb: I’ve seen David speak numerous times — he is compelling so try not to miss this session.

2)  SSD – Super Strategies for Deployment

General Session with Stanley Zaffos.  Zaffos is a vice president and research director in Gartner Research. His major areas of responsibility include storage and storage management software.  A flurry of SSD-related product announcements coupled with rapid SSD price declines and a limited understanding of the operational issues surrounding the use of SSDs in complex server environments has created uncertainty about how best to deploy storage systems that incorporate SSDs in user environments. Understanding the following key issues will increase the probability of their effective use in your environment.  Topics include:

Segundo dados do instituto Gartner, as vendas de iPhone no mercado brasileiro despencaram 28,8% no terceiro trimestre deste ano. O que causou enorme frustração por parte do mercado já que no trimestre anterior as vendas tinham batido recordes com aumento de 141%. Foram de 77 mil unidades no terceiro trimestre, contra 108 mil aparelhos contabilizados no segundo período do ano.

Ficando a Apple com 0,7% do mercado de celulares no Brasil, antes com 1%. Resultado nada animador e sem uma explicação clara do motivo. Aguardamos novas informações sobre este resultado negativo nas vendas do aparelho considerado, mêses atrás, desdêjo de muitos consumidores em telefonia e web móvel.

A couple months ago, Gartner released their annual ECM Magic Quadrant (which I looked at).  Sure enough, being an odd year, Forrester released their ECM Wave.  I see the pros of waiting two years as the larger vendors take that long, or longer, for a significant release.  On the other hand, you have longer to wait for new members to show up.

Well not in Forrester’s world.  Only one new vendor (HP) was added and a few were cut, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 2009 Wave

Thanks to Oracle (again), you can look at the Q4 2009Forrester Wave for ECM Suites in detail. For those with less patience, here is a copy of the wave…

Before we talk about the individual vendors, let’s talk about the low number of vendors.  If you look at the 2007 report, many vendors are gone. A couple were acquired (Interwoven and Vignette) and some aren’t what I would call ECM (SAP and Xerox) vendors anyway.

The question is, where is Autonomy?  They bought Interwoven and weren’t new to the content space.  They aren’t mentioned anywhere.  Nuxeo got a mention as one of the two open-source vendors in the "reduced footprint" category.  The SaaS focused SpringCM (under "reduced footprint") and emerging Laserfiche (under "process-focused" and "SMB") both got a nod as well.

All of those got placed on the Quadrant, as did SAP and Xerox.  I wouldn’t be upset, except I like how Forrester structures the wave more than Gartner’s MQ.  I want to see more vendors in here.

Breaking it Down

Let’s look at some of the vendors…

• Alfresco: Forrester thinks they are losing ground.  They didn’t say as much, but last time they were on the verge of making the Strong Contender  classification.  Now they are just strongly a Contender.  I understand raising the bar as the market evolves, but Alfresco hasn’t been sitting on its laurels.  They lost a lot ground in Strategy according to Forrester. As for the Current Offering, looks like the increased focus on integration in this Wave hurt Alfresco.
• HP: Welcome to the Wave.  Still the only major vendor that I haven’t heard connected to CMIS in any way.  I’ve even heard that Hyland is working on it.  Forrester has noticed and made note.
• Microsoft: Love the realism.  There are gaps, but less this time around than two years ago.  Microsoft  has a vision.  When 2010 comes out, they should push their way into the Leaders.
• Open Text: Getting hit on their Strategy.  Constant acquisition of the competition can do that.  Getting things integrated, as always, remains their biggest hurdle.
• EMC: Not much to say, except they got dinged for their poor WCM.  This is a growing trend.
• IBM/Oracle: Feel the love, especially with IBM.

To be honest, nothing surprising, just reinforcing.  I like how Forrester has the Leaders spread a little and how getting closer to the upper-right corner is rewarded.  You need a strong Strategy and solid Offering to get rated well.  Market Presence is measured by the size of the dot.  It just makes a lot more sense to me.

You know what is missing this year?  The score weighting.  Smart move as I trashed it last year and it gives people something extra when they pay for the full details.

Overall, the scoring had nothing massively off, though I’m not sure why Alfresco took so many hits.  The next couple of years is going to be critical for Alfresco as they start to hit middle-age and strive to be more.

The Mobile application space is hotting up a lot. Now that the voice service prices have touched the minimum pulse of a second, Service providers will have to look at providing Value added services for the non-voice segment. I am pretty bullish on providing services using the SMS service.

Gartner has listed out the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012. Promises to be a very interesting read. They have identified that the applications will include the following:

Estudo divulgado pelo Gartner nesta terça-feira, 17, alerta que 2010 será o ano em que as empresas deverão decidir qual caminho seguir em seus ambientes de TI. Com o mercado se preparando para voltar a crescer, a consultoria observa que é hora de as organizações avaliarem as reais necessidades e só voltarem a investir na modernização de suas infraestruturas quando decidirem o tipo de estratégia de cloud computing irão adotar, para que não sejam necessários novos gastos com reestruturações.

O Gartner aconselha as empresas a adotarem novas políticas de investimento, partindo do princípio de que “sempre se pode gastar menos”. Para isso, a consultoria lista 11 atividades de TI que são grandes candidatas a revisão pelas empresas e as aconselha a considerarem as abordagens listadas abaixo para cada atividade, antes de decidir como proceder. As recomendações são baseadas nos resultados de pesquisas feitas pelo Gartner com centenas de empresas. Veja, a seguir, as recomendações:

1) Modernizar a infraestrutura de TI em conformidade com a estratégia de cloud computing.

A consultoria alerta que as empresas, antes de retomar seus investimentos em infraestrutura de tecnologia, devem decidir qual será sua estratégia para computação em nuvem.

2) Aproveitar melhor o orçamento já existente

O Gartner diz que as empresas devem impor à suas áreas de TI a política de “orçamento zero”, para que as equipes se acostumem sempre a trabalhar com a verba que já têm e gastem apenas o necessário.

3) Contratar um diretor financeiro só para TI

Isso ajudaria as companhias a estabelecer políticas financeiras mais sólidas e a estudar melhor os contratos de TI.

4) O que passar para os executivos sobre TI

A consultoria defende que a estrutura de tecnologia da informação deve ser sempre muito transparente. Todos os contratos e todos os negócios da área devem ser sempre muito bem esclarecidos para todos os executivos da empresa.

5) Avisar quando os aspirantes a CIO devem deixar a área de TI

O Gartner diz que os diretores de tecnologia devem passar por outras áreas da companhia e, por isso, recomenda que orientem os aspirantes a CIO quando estes devem ir atrás de novos objetivos fora da área.

6) Dar prioridade a redução de gastos ou crescimento dos negócios?

Nenhum dos dois. A consultoria acredita que as empresas devem encontrar um jeito de conseguir trabalhar com os dois simultaneamente.

7) Quais as estruturas de TI que funcionam melhor

O Gartner aconselha que as estruturas “Tier 1, 2 e 3″ sejam abandonadas, pois elas atrasam o desenvolvimento dos negócios de TI e a criação de novas operações.

8  Os novos CIOs devem abandonar as estruturas de TI já adotadas na empresa?

Antes de começar a fazer as mudanças estruturais, os CIOs recém-chegados devem se preocupar em fazer a estrutura já existente render mais e os negócios da empresa crescerem.

9) Decidir que tipo de inovações sua equipe de TI deve desenvolver

Os gerentes precisam decidir se suas equipes serão formadas por profissionais especializados em identificar problemas e recomendar soluções ou especializados em desenvolver ferramentas para resolver os problemas conforme a necessidade.

10) Que inovações de TI devem ser priorizadas

Para esse período de transformações econômicas, a consultoria aconselha os diretores de tecnologia a se voltarem para os ciclos de negócios de TI que requeiram menos tempo de manutenção.

11) É possível vender os desafios de implantação de uma rede de longa distância corporativa até 2013?

O Gartner acredita que as companhias devem direcionar suas verbas de pesquisa e desenvolvimento para a criação dessas redes.

My opinion on the below article:

It is important to remember that what most people think are applications are actually widgets.  It is these widgets that have a shelve life of 3-4 days before being discarded.  How many widgets do you have on your computer?  Not many I expect.  However, the more dynamic true applications or web applications actually have a much longer shelve life.  The utility based apps that have an everyday purpose are the ones that will continue to be of value on a continued basis in the coming years.  Here are some examples:

Travel: Tickets, boarding passes, informational services and promotional services

Maps: TomTom, Google,

Banking:  Balance, Transfers, Payments, Find Nearest Bank/ATM

Automotive: Car service updates & monitoring + promotional sales & informational

Mobile Internet Launchers: for general mobile web as openess becomes a reality

Instant Messaging/Social Media

Augmented Reality: Promotional Services

Couponing/Loyalty Redemption

Location Based Services – Social, Information and Promotional Advertising

Music/Events – Information, Ticketing, Promotional Sales

Mobile Search

Health Services

Please see the article below from the Independent website:

Relax News Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Market researcher Gartner has pinpointed the top ten consumer mobile applications consumers will be using and downloading in the year 2012. The most popularly used applications will include those designed to facilitate mobile money transfers, location-based services and mobile search said Gartner in its November 18 report. In the past, consumers purchased mobile phones based on the built-in features that came standard with the handset. With the arrival of smartphone operating systems capable of running third-party applications, consumers were freed from the phone maker’s confines and were able to customize their devices with powerful applications tailored to their own needs. Future mobile trends point to a widening of this segment, with third-party applications breaking into the mainstream mobile market and even breaking through to many lower-priced handsets. “Consumer mobile applications and services are no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. “The increasing consumer interest in smartphones, the participation of internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power.” Mobile phone makers, inspired by the success (and profitability) of Apple’s App Store, have all eagerly jumped into the market, opening their own propriety application stores. Application developers too have embraced the market, resulting in the creation of hundreds of thousands of new application for mobile devices. The wide availability of applications has given consumers free range on mobile customization, but research shows that many apps are being downloaded, used once or twice and then deleted from phones. “We predict that most users will use no more than five mobile applications at a time and most future opportunities will come from niche market ‘killer applications’,” reveals Shen. Gartner predicts applications in the categories of mobile payments, location-based services, those that provide fast search results for users on the go and applications that facilitate mobile internet browsing will be among the top ten mobile applications for 2012. Gartner’s list of top ten consumer mobile applications for 2012:

 

1: Money Transfer

2: Location-Based Services

3: Mobile Search

4: Mobile Browsing

5: Mobile Health Monitoring

6: Mobile Payment

7: Near Field Communication Services

8: Mobile Advertising

9: Mobile Instant Messaging

10: Mobile Music

For more specific information about each mobile application category and to read the full report head to http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413.

URL Link to the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/mobile-application-trends-for-2012-the-top-ten-applications-1822948.html

InformationWeek EUA

Empresas devem garantir que o provedor ofereça, no mínimo, a segurança padrão que eles usam em seus próprios sistemas 
 

Um dos maiores riscos da computação em nuvem é o desconhecido, já que muitos dos fornecedores são empresas relativamente novas ou oferecem serviços em nuvem há pouco tempo. “Cada companhia é diferente, começando por quanto cada uma investe em segurança, com base em tamanho e crescimento e também na sofisticação do grupo de gerenciamento”, diz Cakebread, ex-Salesfroce. Mark Nicolett, vice-presidente de pesquisas da Gartner, relata que o foco dos fornecedores está, em primeiro lugar, nas suas capacidades principais, como backup de dados ou entrega de aplicativo para RH: “A segurança é, geralmente, o último componente adicionado à uma nova tecnologia, e em computação em nuvem não foi exceção”.

Sabemos que a Câmara Municipal de Los Angeles (EUA) exigiu do Google criptografia de e-mail . Mas não se pode esperar que essa codificação esteja disponível em todos os serviços de nuvem. Aplicativos como e-mail, que é usado tanto por consumidores quanto por empresas, certamente não será criptografado. A criptografia gera despesa e os fornecedores não querem estragar a performance do aplicativo ou absorver o custo de consumidores que não queiram uma assinatura premium.

Ash Patel, CIO global da Aon Consulting, uma das três unidades de negócio da Aon Corp., consultora de seguros e prestadora de serviços, optou por uma abordagem mais conservadora ao decidir como assegurar os links de dados e quanto dos dados residiriam no ambiente oferecido pelo serviço de computação em nuvem quando ele contratou a Echopass, uma empresa que oferece serviços de atendimento ao cliente e que vem trabalhando com a Aon há dois anos.

A Aon Consulting optou por uma linha T1 privada da Verizon Communications do seu data center até o serviço da Echopass. “Não nos sentimos confortáveis enviando nossas informações via internet”, contou Patel. Além disso, a Aon tem a camada de criptografia da Verizon nas duas pontas da conexão para que os dados fiquem protegidos por todo o caminho até o data center da Echopass. “Achamos que nossas informações estão seguras conforme saem da rede corporativa e entram na nuvem”, disse Patel.

As empresas devem garantir que o provedor potencial de serviço de computação nas nuvens ofereça, no mínimo, a segurança padrão que eles usam em seus próprios sistemas: detecção de intrusos e software de prevenção, firewall, forte autenticação de usuário e monitoramento de conteúdo.

Uma das coisas que a Sleek checou antes de começar a usar o serviço da 3Tera foi a força do sinal da rede nos arredores do data center do fornecedor. “Ao implementar nosso aplicativo, queríamos ter certeza de que ninguém conseguiria acesso direto aos nossos dados”, disse Threet. Quando os usuários se conectam ao data center da 3Tera, um servidor de proxy processa o pedido e o redireciona aos servidores back-end, restringindo, assim, a visibilidade dentro daquele sistema.

Pela perspectiva da segurança, as empresas precisam imaginar suas redes se estendendo para além do ambiente físico até o data center do fornecedor. Conforme as empresas unem mais serviços de nuvem, o desafio se multiplica. Uma complicação parecida vem do fato de que os serviços de nuvem foram criados em vácuos, com cada fornecedor garantindo sua conexão mas não as outras.

Enquanto as questões de segurança estão no topo das listas de preocupações, também é um forte ponto nas vendas do serviço de computação em nuvem, especialmente para pequenas e médias empresas que não têm como pagar profissionais de TI especializados em segurança da informação. “Não queremos lidar com problemas de segurança, queremos passar essa questão para outra pessoa”, disse Paul Wyatt, chefe de operações da Recurrent Energy, uma empresa nova de sistemas de energia solar, com 45 funcionários e capital de risco de US$ 275 milhões, que tem toda sua infraestrutura de TI alojada nas nuvens.

O pensamento é que já que os fornecedores de nuvem estão no negócio de TI, eles podem dedicar muito mais recursos à segurança. Eles devem ser capazes de monitorar mudanças na segurança e fazer essas mudanças funcionarem com mais eficiência do que muitas empresas. “O nível de segurança disponível nas nuvens pode ser mais alto do que os disponíveis em alguns data centers tradicionais”, disse Nils Puhlmann, VP de gerenciamento de risco da Qualys, um provedor online de software de segurança.

O outro lado desse argumento é que quanto mais dados vão para as nuvens – e quanto mais valioso é o dado – mais atraente eles se tornam como um alvo de ataque. “A computação em nuvem atrai hackers, porque há muito dado corporativo concentrado em um único lugar”, disse Nicolett, VP da Gartner.

É por isso que as empresas, assim que tiverem resolvido os problemas envolvendo segurança de rede ao transferir dados para os servidores em nuvem, precisam experimentar as operações no data center do fornecedor. O SAS-70, um conjunto de processos e controles de segurança de continuidade de negócio do American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, está, rapidamente, se tornando o mais próximo a um padrão entre as operações de computação em nuvem.

A InformationWeek Analytics mostrou, esse ano, que nove entre 12 fornecedores de infraestrutura como serviço tinham certificado SAS-70. O fornecedor de serviço de nuvem Rackspace Managed Hosting, por exemplo, fornece relatórios SAS-70 para todos os clientes para mostrar como seus dados estão seguros e garantidos, disse Adrian Otto, desenvolvedor de nuvem na Rackspace.

As empresas devem se informar também se os fornecedores de nuvem passam por avaliações de segurança feitas por outras empresas ou uma equipe de segurança interna. A maioria é avaliada, embora a pesquisa tenha descoberto que apenas cinco das 12 entrevistadas divulgavam essas avaliações para possíveis clientes.

World over sales of smart-phones will exceed that of regular handsets by 2015, so much so that by 2016, smart-phones will constitute 2/3rds of total mobile phone sales.This has been reported by a Telecom trends international study. The report goes on to say that Smartphones will become the primary mobile device recording robust growth of 28% through 2016. On the other hand, the sales of the regular handsets will start declining.

A few thoughts-

1. Africa and Asia are the two markets which will power the growth in mobile handset population. The present population of handsets world over is 4 billion handsets.

2. Between 2010-2015, Asian markets would reach high volume penetrations. There would also be a strong demand of higher end handsets on a replacement basis.

3. However, I am apprehensive of African numbers.

4. Overall however, the replacement demand will have strong contribution from Latin and North America, Asia, Europe and Oceania.

5. A 66% contribution of replacement devices is thus a strong possibility

6. World over adoption of 3G and 4G mobile broadband will again bolster demand for Internet browsing devices.

7. Even with an internet sidedness of mobile communication and the utility of smart-phones, price would be a hindrance to smart-phones mass acceptance as the primary device.

8. Then, there are other devices and technologies which would emerge to be strong contenders to smart-phone functionality. Net-books could be an example. And you never know what radical innovation lies round the corner.

 Net of all things, 66% of handset sales from smart phones by 2016 will be a tough one. Upgrades and high end devices, probably yes, but smart-phone @ 66% looks a bit stretched.

What are your thoughts: Can smart-phones be 2/3rds of the market by 2016?

I’m always in catch up mode with my reading. I finally got to Ian Glazer’s “Access Certification and Entitlement Management” on a plane to California. If you are in the market for access certification, trying to understand how to construct and approach to managing entitlements or just want to understand the moving parts of access in any reasonably complex organization, then this is a must read. What got me thinking most was the tone of the paper. Essentially it boils down to the good advice to make sure you define boundaries for tasks well and get the people from the business who should own the information to become the owners by the end of the process. Ian also encourages you to use whatever resources you can, even if they make strange bedfellows. It reminded me very much (and I’m going to mix analyst firms here so forgive me) of Earl Perkin’s thoughts about making the auditor your friend and making sure you “care, but not too much”, which he communicated at the Gartner IAM Summit last week (and blogged about previously as well).

All this got me thinking about the actual content of such IT to business communication regarding access certification. And, since I was trapped on a 6+ hour flight with a power outlet but no internet, I came up with this small, tongue in cheek video. I know the terms will feel like nails on a chalkboard to some since they are not exact. But I really tried to exercise that “it’s more important that they get the right ideas and not the exact right terminology” notion as best I could.

And at No.8 is mobile advertising.

A mobile technology poised to break out is mobile advertising. Gartner sees advertising-based app initiatives becoming more popular as smartphones proliferate in the marketplace, and eventually becoming a standard channel in the advertising mix used by brands.

Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 totaled $530.2 million, which Gartner expects to grow to $7.5 billion in 2012.

“Mobile advertising makes the top 10 list because it will be an important way to monetize content on the mobile Internet, offering free applications and services to end users,” Shen said. “The mobile channel will be used as part of larger advertising campaigns in various media, including TV, radio, print and outdoors.”

Guess what made the top 2 in the list?? Cloud Computing and Advanced Analytics.

Both technologies the Datarati’s company is built on

See what else made the list: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1210613

Gartner recently released an web page devoted to Windows 7 and topics around migration to Windows 7.  In a short video, a research VP from Gartner states that because manufacturers are going to move ahead with Windows 7 companies should look at moving ahead with Windows 7 deployment by 2012.  The statement is more quantified by the fact that Microsoft will be support Windows XP SP3 until 2014.  They feel that organizations will feel the push into Windows 7 much earlier.

At this site is many different links and support documentation about the migration to Windows 7 and how much it potentially could cost an organization.  Based on my research and many, many seminars I would say the number one cost for organization will be in the time spent on making sure applications work within the Windows 7 environment.  I will talk more about Application Compatibility in future posts.  But for now enjoy the Gartner website.

http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/reports/windows-7-report.jsp

Das iPhone hat laut Gartner einen Marktanteil bei Smartphones von 17 Prozent (12,4 Prozent im Vorjahr). Damit ist klar, dass mobile Device von Apple ist ein Renner. Und obwohl das Telefon eigentlich intuitiv zu erlernen ist, braucht es für manche User Zusatzliteratur. Früher gab es bei der Volkshochschule Kurse à la: Wie bediene ich mein Handy? Heute gibt es ein interessantes Buch mehr.

Dieses Buch sticht aus der Masse der jüngst veröffentlichten iPhone-Bücher heraus: “Mein iPhone & ich”, geschrieben von meinen lieben Kollegen Michael Krimmer und Simone Ochsenkühn. Das Buch gibt einen Überblick über den praktischen Einsatz des iPhones. Es ist nicht für Hacker oder iApps-Entwickler, sondern für den klassischen User, der die Leistung seines Apple-Produkts voll ausreizen will. Im Technikteil flüssig geschrieben, mit vielen anschaulichen Screenshots finden sich allerhand Tipps und Tricks für Einsteiger, aber auch Profis. Ich bin selbst ein iPhone-Fan der ersten Stunde und auch ich als Power-User fand einige lohnenswerte Kniffe in diesem Buch. Gratulation.

Natürlich lässt sich trefflich darüber streiten, welche Apps aus dem Store denn wirklich lohnenswert sind. Jeder hat hier seine persönlichen Vorlieben. Hier bin ich mit den Autoren nicht immer der selben Meinung, aber für einen Überblick reicht es, um die Faszination iPhone zu erfassen.

Kritik gibt es aber auch: Das Buch dreht sich um das Kult-Telefon von Apple. Doch leider gehen die Autoren auf den Kult eben nicht ein. Es gibt nichts zu lesen über die Einführung des Telefons, die Kampagnen, das geniale Marketing, die Keynote von Apple-Guru Steve Jobs. Dies alles hätte in ein Buch um ein Kultobjekt gehört. So ist das Buch nur eine Bedienungsanleitung für ein Telefon. Eine gute zwar, aber eben nicht mehr.

Leider gibt es auch immer wieder Passagen im Buch, die sich um die menschliche Seite des iPhone-Users gemmühen. Diese fallen im Vergleich zum stringenten Technikteil des Buches ab. Hier wäre der Lektor gefragt, das Niveau anzugleichen.

Dennoch: Die 20 Euro sind für rund 460 gehaltvolle Seiten sinnvoll investiert. Wer mal etwas lesen möchte, dem empfehle ich diese Website.

The AR podcast is a review of the latest news and trends in the analyst ecosystem along with tips and tricks for analyst relations professionals and analyst research consumers. SageCircle strategists Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher co-host this bi-weekly program. You can find all the SageCircle podcasts on our podcast page.

Visit the podcast page to download the MP3 file or listen to the episodes on your computer.  Click here to subscribe to the podcast within iTunes

SCP 13: Table of contents. Numbers in parentheses refer to minutes:seconds when the article starts within the podcast.

[00:00]  Opening

[01:02]  News (ZL Technology/Gartner lawsuit; analyst firm hiring; Twitter Directories; HENRY Corporation expands)

[07:54]  Fact Checking Magic Quadrant Leaders Inflation Accusation

[15:53]  Does it matter how much analysts tweet?

[21:36]  Upcoming AR events

[22:44]  Closing

Our goals for the AR Community Podcast are two-fold. The first goal is to provide an additional venue for SageCircle research that complements our existing deliverables, whether free (e.g., SageCircle blog) or client only (e.g., the Online SageContent Library, the largest and premier repository of AR best practices and downloadable tools available in the industry). The second goal is to develop real-world podcasting skills so when our clients are considering their own podcasts we have the experience (and scar tissue) to help them start podcasting without having to re-invent the wheel.

There is a dangerous beast preying on unsuspecting organisations who want to get into social media.  This beast is the web1.5 agency or campaign.  This is a campaign that purports to be a social media campaign, because it uses the tools of social media, but in reality is an old-fashioned, conventional one-to-many mass message approach.

How do you spot these beasts?

First – if it comes from a traditional ad agency, it will almost certainly be a 1.5 approach.  This is because ad agencies are institutionally incapable of embracing social media.  If they did, they would stop being ad agencies.  Likewise, if it comes from a media agency it will definitely be a 1.5 idea.  Media agencies sell media – and one of the golden rules of social media is “never rent space in a community, platform or digital place”  – if you have to pay to be there, you are doing it wrong.   Most digital agencies still sell 1.5 ideas as do most PR agencies – but not all.

Second – if it calls itself a campaign, it is – by definition – a 1.5 campaign.  Social media doesn’t ‘do’ campaigns.  Social media is an approach, which you either adopt or you don’t.  Campaigns are what traditional marketing is all about.  Incidentally, this is why you can run social media alongside traditional marketing – it is not a case of choosing between a conventional campaign or a social media campaign.  For example – Dell still does advertising, albeit Dell’s sophisticated usage of social media has changed the nature of its advertising – allowing it to become more tactical and less about carrying the brand narrative.  (Check this out – I never tire of showing people this video of Dell’s Andy Lark (@kiwilark) explaining Dell’s approach to marketing)

Third – if it focuses on a particular ‘thing’ (Twitter, facebook, blog etc) it is a 1.5 approach.  All of these ‘things’ are tools – in the same way a hammer or chisel or saw are tools.  Would you hire a carpenter who presented themselves as an expert in hammering?  Never focus on the tools, focus on what you want to build with them.  You can’t ‘do’ social media with just one tool in the same way as you can’t build a garden shed with just a hammer (although a hammer will help you build a garden shed).

What will happen to you if you buy a web1.5 approach.  Hopefully, nothing worse than disappointment.  You won’t get the reach and frequency you get with traditional approaches, nor will you get the engagement available with social media.  But so long as you don’t spend too much money, you can write it all off to experience.

However, there is going to be a lot of disappointment with social media in the next few months, as more and more organisations pile-in and get sold inappropriate solutions.  In fact 2010 is probably going to be the Year of Disappointment for many.  However, this simply equates to the Trough of Disillusionment identified by Gartner on their Hype Cycle – and after the Trough of Disillusionment comes the Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity.  So it’s not all bad.

Since there is so much to say about Gartner IAM Summit 2009, I wanted to break it up a bit. The first thing I wanted to do was get the vendor stuff out of the way. When I get to the topical stuff I’m sure some vendors will be involved, but there is much to say about what happened in exhibition hall.

Possibly the most talked about thing on the floor was the size comparison of the Oracle and Sun booths. Oracle had the biggest possible booth and, predictably, Sun had the very smallest. Sun was literally on the far wall alongside niche players and new entrants. Of course this just makes sense, but everyone was talking about it. I should have taken pictures. To add to this drama, the announcement about the EU’s objections to the merger was made while we were at the show and that just set people off talking about it all again after the booth comparison finally died down. The most sensible thoughts were all centered around the wisdom that it would be years before anything really happened to Sun’s IAM offerings. In fact, Gartner even said as much during the session about the magic quadrant. Yet many people were convinced, all wisdom aside, that this merger was going to be about Oracle raking Sun customers over the coals.

Aside from the Oracle and Sun drama, the show floor was not too exciting. Gartner always has a way of making sure their clients know the show is all about them – this time was no exception. All the booths were in the basement. That said, they only served lunch and drinks by the booths; so there was a captive audience at times. It seemed to me, watching the other attendees, that most folks didn’t really spend a lot of time talking to vendors. From my place in the center of the floor at the Quest booth, I could see pretty much everything. There was only 6 hours of booth time, and I’d say only half of that was really about vendor time (the other half was eating time). The people who came to our booth were either interested in something very specific, or on a mission to talk to everyone a bit and get the lay of the land.

The busiest booth seemed to be Aveksa’s. Sailpoint and Cyber-Ark got some good traffic, too. No surprises there. They are all in the sweet spots of their fields. The only booths I couldn’t see were Oracle and Novell. Of course, those were the biggest booths and they were right at the entrance of the floor. I’m assuming they got some good traffic just because of that.

It seemed to me the best user/vendor interactions were side meetings, which there were tons of, and the use cases that the vendors sponsored. That’s one of the very cool things about Gartner’s shows. The user is in the focus and everything is designed to make sure that it stays that way.

Next post in a few days (or sooner) and it will concentrate on what I took away from the sessions.

Over the past few years, a cadre of “independent” analysts have set up shop and started to speak frankly about the enterprise application vendors, in their blogs and tweets. You know who I’m talking about: Vinnie, of course, and Dennis, and the Enterprise Irregulars, and Brian , and many, many others. These people were really good analysts to begin with–I’ve known them for years–and they have found their more-or-less independent status freeing, so they write the best stuff that is out there.

So if they’ve got a better mousetrap, why is it that the big guys, Forrester and Gartner, just seem to roll on and on, happily enough? Why haven’t they folded, the way the portable CD player did when the iPod came out? In the free market, after all, shouldn’t consumers pick the best quality at the lowest prices?

I got an interesting answer, yesterday, when I attended a talk at Harvard by Marc Flandreau, who is at the Graduate Institute of Development and International Studies, Geneva. Marc is an expert on bad-mouthing, or as we like to say in English, “blackmail.” And he has a fascinating historical explanation of how pay-to-play can emerge in information markets.

Marc’s focus is the wild and woolly bond market in Paris pre-World War I, a market that was deeply affected by the emergence of a free (or at least libel-free) press in France, post 1880. At the time, it was so easy to start and print a newspaper cheaply that a new kind of blackmail emerged. It was, essentially, “Pay us, or we’ll say bad things about you.” The very relaxed libel laws at this time made this a genuine threat, and people (Marc shows) really did make money doing it.

In the financial markets, the threat took the form, “Mr. Russian Government, pay us, or we’ll publish an article saying that you’re losing the then-active Russo-Japanese war.” And, as it turns out, the Russian Government paid up. The records, which were published in the 1930s, show that the government’s expenditure on publicité went up by a factor of two or more during that period, over what would “normally” be expected.

The interesting thing, though, is where the money went. Essentially, a set of what we would now call unscrupulous PR men (possibly, a redundancy, I admit) who took the blackmail money and distributed it among the press.

Now, here is the rub. Most of the money apparently went to the most reputable, most stable, and most expensive financial journals, not to the blackmailers. What these people tried to do with the bribe money was to make blackmail expensive, by “supporting” an alternate, established, reputable forum, which people would look to for authoritative information, and the existence of this forum brought the threat of blackmail from the cheap-sheet vendors down to acceptable levels.

Flandreau demonstrates fairly convincingly that while some money did go to throw-away (sometimes one-issue) newspapers, most of the money went to those journals and was a significant source of income for them.

“So if I may paraphrase,” a Harvard professor said, after hearing this, “The National Enquirer is one of the things that keeps The New York Times alive.” Marc replied in the affirmative.

Marc’s broad conclusion is that a pay-to-play industry will emerge whenever there is a significant threat from “badmouthing.” (He cites Moody’s as a modern-day example of the same phenomenon.) In all these cases (I think movie stars of the 1920s are another example), the best strategy for coping with badmouthing is to support cooperative, but reputable mouthpieces who will then be a permanent counter to whatever bad things are said by the smaller, less reputable people. In his analysis, the accuracy of what these smaller, less reputable people say is irrelevant; it could be true, it could be false. What matters is that you can exert some control over the best people in the industry.

Anybody who has ever taken a PR class already knows this, of course. But what Flandreau contributes are two simple, but odd facts. The premiums are in fact very large, and MOST of the money goes to the larger, more reputable firms.

So what does this mean for Dennis and Vinnie and Brian and Michael Krigsman and Helmuth Gümbel? Well, pretty much it means that their efforts are enriching Gartner and Forrester far more than it enriches them.

Dennis says in a recent tweet, “Pay to play doesn’t cut it.” Sorry Dennis, in this case you’re just wrong. If Marc is right (and I have no reason to think he isn’t), what you’re really doing is supporting the pay-to-play industry.

Според Gartner пазара на лаптопи в Западна Европа се е свил 0,3 процента спрямо същия период на 2008 година. Продадените компютри са 16,7 милиона.

Worldwide mobile phone sales appears to be tanking with a YOY (3Q 2009 versus 3Q 2008) increase in sales of .1%. This contrasts sharply against a 12.2% YOY (3Q 2009 versus 3Q 2008) increase in smart-phone sales. This is according to the 3Q Mobile phones report by Gartner. The 3Q,2009 was charecterised by channel slowed its inventory-reduction efforts leading to increase in sales volumes and stagnation of average selling prices (ASPs). Gartner further predicts an increase in sales in the 4Q holiday season. This however will not lead to any increase in the 2009 figures, which will end up stagnant vis a vis 2008.

However Gartner issued a fresh set of carte blanches for the industry:

1. Android’s coming to mainstream would increase the complexity and competition in the smart-phone space.
2. Hardware commoditisation and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for devices and platforms to stand out.
3. Grey-market sales are no longer limited to China and all manufacturers will have to compete with gray-market players as they expand into emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, Eastern Europe, The Middle East and Latin America.
4. A greater cause of concern is the fact that Grey-market devices are no longer just ultra-low cost models. Feature enhanced phones also feature as a part of the grey market devices.

Nokia appears to still be loosing ground to Samsung who have so far done extremely well with the mid range touch phones: Star and the Corby series. LG also had a decent run with its Cookie series. Going forward the release of Nokia 5230 and 5530 will be an interesting thing to watch out for, as these mid range Nokia devices may prove to be instrumental the market share fight. Research In Motion reached 20 per cent share, its highest yet.

RIM’s sales volumes rested on the Curve 8900 in Europe and the Tour and Storm 2 with Verizon Wireless in the US. RIM also focused on pre-paid sales and more flexible BlackBerry Internet Service offerings, which helped to drive volumes in emerging markets like Latin America.

Apple’s worldwide smartphone share reached 17 per cent as iPhone sales totalled 7 million units in the third quarter of 2009 following the continued rollout of the iPhone 3GS in new countries. Its ASP is holding steady and sales in the fourth quarter should be even stronger as Apple starts selling in China, through one additional carrier in the UK, and in an additional 16 countries.

In the Mobile operating systems space, Android seems to be picking up momentum basis new launches that feature the Android. Sales of Windows-based smartphones saw another decline with the Winmo 6.5 failing to enthuse the markets.

For Q3 2009, Apple’s (s aapl) iPhone accounted for 17.1 percent of worldwide smartphone marketshare, a new high for the company. That’s the good news from Gartner, and there’s more where that came from.

While overall mobile phone sales were flat for the quarter, smartphone sales were up 12.8 percent, some 41 million units. Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, notes that smartphones “represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010.” How convenient for Apple.

3.4, 12.9, and 17.1 percent…that’s Apple’s market share for each third quarter from 2007 through 2009, the growth rate easily besting even RIM’s (s rimm) doubling of its own market share over the same period of time. For the current quarter, Apple also outpaced RIM, the two companies growing by 49.2 and 46.9 percent, respectively. While that surge could be attributed to the launch of the iPhone 3GS, it should be noted that the iPhone 3GS was supply constrained during the quarter. Further, Gartner believes the fourth quarter “should be even stronger as Apple starts selling in China, through one additional carrier in the UK, and in an additional 16 countries.”

While Nokia did manage growth, it picked up only 4.4 percent in units sold, putting the company at 39.3 percent market share, down from 42.3 percent for the same period last year. The big losers for the quarter appears to have been manufacturers saddled with Windows Mobile 6.

According to Gartner, Windows Mobile 6.5 came “too late to have an impact on the third quarter, so sales of Windows-based smartphones saw another decline.” Apparently, HTC must be gaining strength based upon Android. Google’s (s goog) mobile OS “picked up momentum but with only a handful of Android devices available, its share remained modest at 3.5 per cent” of the mobile operating systems.

No doubt phones like Verizon’s (s vz) Droid will help to increase Android’s share of the market, but arguably not at Apple’s expense. The problem with Android is that each carrier is free to create its own mind-numbing implementation, resulting in a lack of consistency for the users of different phones. A case in point is the Droid, which currently lacks multi-touch, even though Android 2.0 supports it. For the most consistent and elegant mobile experience, the only choice remains the iPhone.

More thoughts in the aftermath of the Gartner Symposium in Cannes and the Exeter Likeminds Event.

I had heard the term Value on Investment (VOI) sometime ago, but it never really held much ground in my thinking, Although i’m surprised as it is something that is complimentary to Social Software projects and Knowledge Management Projects.

For those of you who haven’t come across VOI before i’ll try and explain the difference between VOI and ROI (return on investment). Return on Investment is based on return, which is generated by tangible outcomes, such as increases in productivity, increased revenues, cost reductions or entering new markets. VOI however focused on intangible benefits, in particular those related to technology based initiatives and for the purpose of this post consider Social Media/Social Software as key areas to focus on.

Gartner describe VOI using 5 measurable elements or outcomes. Value building initiatives change organisation dynamics by encouraging: (Hint: spot how many can be facilitated by social media and social software)

• business process reinvention and innovation
• cultivation, management and leveraging of knowledge assets
• collaboration and increased capabilities to learn and develop communities
• individual and organisational competencies
• new kinds and levels of leadership

Don’t know about you but i’d tick all for social media and social software.

There is something you need to accept, however when measuring VOI. The more strategic the project the more value you will see in return.

When considering the current economic climate and situation, we should and must consider the VOI aspect as well as the ROI to achieve the level of organisational change that will future proof organisations for when we return to a growth scenario.

It also encourages greater alignment of IT and the Business, As the business needs to take the strategic advantage of the technology. IT alone offer no advantage to the business. To extract the value, the business would have to transform processes and practices, enhance knowledge sharing, establish communities of practice, develop competencies and provide tools for new leadership.

The strategic impact of social software will come over time with the cumulative effect of small projects impacting on the business and initiating change along the way.

My take on this really is that to succeed in the long term and to demonstrate the real value of social media and social software, it will take time, so be patient.  It will develop as each new project delivers results and value along the way.

This exact approach is how i realised the value. I started with twitter, then a blog, then started social bookmarking, then started sharing photos and so on. The cumulative effect of all of these choices have transformed the way i work, collaborate and engage with people.

So focus more on the Value and less on the Return – But ensure you measure both along the way.

SageCircle received an email from a reader asking whether we had seen the newsletter from a boutique analyst firm, which included a comment that Gartner has been increasing the number of Leaders on Magic Quadrants. The clear implication was that this analyst was accusing Gartner of corruption for inflating the number of Leaders in order to extract revenue from vendors in the form of analyst consulting days, research reprints, and so on. Of course, this analyst competes with Gartner for contracts and access to vendor briefings.

SageCircle has not noticed any “Leaders inflation,” but then we have not been doing any systematic, in-depth research which would be required for such an observation. We do note however that Gartner is being sued by ZL Technologies because the MQ that ZL has been listed on since 2005 still has only one (1) Leader and it’s not ZL. So I guess that Gartner gets criticized if it there are too few Leaders or too many.  The joys of being the dominate market player, everybody takes potshots at you.

The boutique analyst firm offered no proof, nor does it describe the research methodology behind the claim, so we cannot evaluate the validity of the claim.  Here are some general observations:

1. The boutique analyst firm analysts could be looking at only a few MQs relevant to their coverage and these may have been around for a number of years. Maturing markets naturally see the vendors migrate up and to the right as the market consolidates through acquisitions or failures, vendors become better at execution, and so on
2. The boutique analyst firm analysts do not notice that Leaders are not the only vendors who purchase reprints, vendors in all boxes – incredibly even vendors in the Niche box – acquire reprint rights and promote the MQs they are on. As a consequence, Gartner would not necessarily get incremental revenues because the Challengers and Visionaries might already be purchasing reprints of the Magic Quadrant
3. We don’t believe there is any “Leaders inflation”

To see if the distribution of vendors around a MQ was skewed in one direction or another, we looked up a random set of MQs just to see what the breakdown was between the various boxes.  Our example set consisted of hardware, software and services MQs mostly from 2009 (click the title to see the MQ):

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Columns: Ldr=Leader, Cha=Challenger, Vis=Visionary, Nic=Niche.

In this unscientific selection of MQs, we detect no particular “Leader Inflation” with Leaders having 23% of the total. However, different types of MQ have different distribution with the hardware Leaders capturing 32% of the total, while software Leaders only get 17%. At the individual research note level, the Help Desk Outsourcing has 52% Leaders, while the Social Software has only 9% Leaders. So clearly there are significant differences between different slices of the data in this small sample.

What about if we were to look at the same MQ, but from different years? Again using a small and unscientific example, we see that indeed the number of Leaders on the Managed File Transfer MQ did increase from 2008 to 2009. However, the number of new vendors added overall was even greater so that Leaders experiences only 21% increase while Visionaries increased 57%.

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To truly determine if there is some sort of skewing of vendor positioning would require an in-depth research project requiring a significant effort and data over a number of years. There would be a need to correct or account for many factors. Steps for an ongoing research project would include:

• Capturing data from all MQs over an extended period of time
• Comparing distributions by
  • Market
  • Initial release of the MQ and updates over time
• Tracking changes in the vendors listed to account for new entrants and market consolidation
• Tracking the discontinuation of MQs and for what reason
• Tracking changes in the lead analysts and contributing analysts
• Tracking evolving criteria to account for changes in position due to changes in the market
• Tracking evolving investment in and execution of analyst relations (AR) by the vendors – better AR execution can improve placement even if nothing else changes

There are unlikely to be any buyers – vendors, enterprise end users, media and so on – for this sort of research. So it is doubtful that any AR services firm or PR agency would actually invest the effort in doing the work to see if the claim about “Leaders inflation” is anything more than hot air. The lack of paying clients is also one of the reasons why nobody tries to audit the accuracy of analyst predictions and recommendations.

Bottom Line: Complaining about Gartner is a perennial topic for blogs and competing analyst firms. Rarely, if ever, do the analysts or bloggers expend the effort needed to provide solid facts and analysis to back up their claims. As a consequence, enterprise end-user clients and vendors should be skeptical about any claims about Gartner, Forrester, IDC and other large firms that are the targets of these attacks.

Question: How much would you pay to have someone audit the analyst research such as the Magic Quadrant?