Tag: Gartner


How Mainstream Industries Form IoT Vanguard

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9th March

Although the consumer implications of the Internet of Things (IoT) have generated plenty of public attention, the real growth in the embryonic IoT market is coming from less visible industrial environments and business applications.

The early IoT advancements may come as a surprise to some, but in these industries, organizations moving quickly to deploy more connected products and services makes sense for a number of reasons.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ perspectives regarding Gartner’s latest survey findings about the early adopters of IoT in E-Commerce Times.



Finding Better IT Management Capabilities in the Cloud – A Guest Commentary in the Wall Street Journal

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27th March

The rapid adoption of cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premise hardware systems and software applications is putting greater pressure on IT organizations to adopt a new set of management tools to better control their internal and third-party resources. Click here to read THINKstrategies’ views about the forces which are driving IT organizations to adopt a new generation of Cloud-based tools to meet their escalating management challenges in the CIO Journal of the Wall Street Journal.



The Next Enterprise Wave is Consumerization of Cloud Storage

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28th July

One of the major trends transforming how hardware and software is acquired and utilized is the ‘consumerization of IT’. This trend has changed how technologies and business applications are designed and delivered, and it is now reshaping how storage solutions are architected and administered in the Cloud, according to a recent Gartner report.

Click here to read my contributed blogpost for Symform, a Cloud Storage Network Service provider, which discusses how this consumerization trend will impact enterprise storage management strategies and solutions.



Yes – The SaaS 'Experiment' Is Over

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13th July

For the past two weeks, I’ve been debating whether to respond to a commentary in InfoWorld by Neil McAllister which asked, “Is the SaaS Experiment Finally Over?”

But, I couldn’t hold back any longer when one of the many online publications where I’m a contributor, eBizQ, posed the question in a more provocative fashion, “Is SaaS Dead?”

I couldn’t bring myself to respond to McAllister’s column when it was first published because his argument was so ludicrous. He alluded to a variety of past SaaS and cloud vendor service outages to raise concerns about the overall viability of these rapidly expanding markets. And he used a series of Gartnerisms to warn against developer migration to the SaaS model.  

Yet, McAllister ignores the pervasive failures of traditional on-premise software which has inspired organizations of all sizes to explore and increasingly adopt SaaS alternatives to better meet their corporate needs.

The … Read More »


Gartner – SaaS Will Achieve 95% Renewal Rates

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3rd May

Once again Gartner is late to the party with its ‘bold’ predictions and customer surveys.

Gartner’s latest findings show that 95% of customers currently using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions are likely to renew these services. THINKstrategies and Cutter Consortium surveys found this out three years ago.

In fact, anyone who really understands the SaaS market, knows that SaaS companies cannot survive unless they keep customer churn to a minimum which means achieving 90%+ renewal rates.

But, Gartner’s survey research still helps to validate the viability of today’s SaaS alteratives in the eyes of the old-guard IT decision-makers who tend to take Gartner’s word as gospel. It clearly shows that the SaaS market isn’t the latest overhyped idea, but a user-driven movement which is fundamentally reshaping the software industry.

This research will open the door wider for greater customer adoption of SaaS solutions and put even more pressure on … Read More »


A SaaS/Cloud Computing Scorecard for 2009

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27th December

Since 2009 is coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to review how I did with my predictions for the year regarding the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing market.

1. On-Demand Services Move From Why To How

According to a Sandhill.com/McKinsey survey of over 850 enterprise customers at the end of 2008, 74% were already favorably disposed to adopting SaaS platforms. As a result, Gartner estimates the SaaS market will have reached approximately $8 billion at the end of 2009, a 21.9% rise from $6.6 billion in 2008. Looks like folks have moved past “why” SaaS to “how” to get the most out of their SaaS deployments.

2. New Hybrid Models

The idea of hybrid SaaS and cloud computing models has been abhorred by industry purists, but the reality is that nearly every business will rely on a combination of on-premise and on-demand resources. In 2009, the concept of “location independence” became bi-directional. … Read More »


It's Official: Gartner Names Cloud Computing Top Strategic Technology for 2010

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20th October

One of my favorite events of the year used to be Gartner’s Symposium in Orlando because of the locale and multi-day immersion in IT prognostications.

While I often disagreed with the POV of Gartner’s analysts, I found it useful to hear what they had to say because of their influence over enterprise IT and business decision-makers.

The past few years, I intentionally stayed away from the event because Gartner had fallen so behind the rapidly changing marketplace when it comes to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing. Instead, I’ve enjoyed referring to Gartner as a ‘lagging indicator’ of market trends.

However, I was very pleased to read the news today that Gartner has put cloud computing at the top of its list of top strategic technologies for 2010.

Although I could discard this announcement as another example of Gartner’s slow recognition of key market trends, I … Read More »


Gartner SaaS Satisfaction Survey Misleading

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17th July

Last week, Gartner attempted to derail the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement by issuing a press release regarding its latest customer survey which found that SaaS users are “underwhelmed by their current experience of it and sense that SaaS is not quite the panacea it often promised to be.”

For some reason, it took Gartner more than six months to interpret the results of its survey of users and prospects of SaaS solutions in 333 enterprises in the U.S. and the U.K. which was conducted in December 2008. Maybe because the data didn’t say what they were hoping and it took more time to twist the results into a story that fit their reality and could generate a few headlines.

Gartner’s press release starts by stating that “SaaS is more mainstream and less controversial than ever before”, an important admission from a research firm which a few … Read More »





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