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June 2009

TSA’s Muddy Response to the Clear Shutdown

Posted by Andrew Jaquith on June 30, 2009

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Andrew Jaquith

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Does Social Technology Matter For The Enterprise?

Posted by Christopher Andrews on June 30, 2009

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At Forrester we get a lot of questions about the use of social technology within the enterprise.  IT organizations are trying to uncover successful ways to apply social technology for their business customers – looking for the new solution will be the “Facebook for the enterprise”. We also know that many technology companies think this will be a crucial development in the market:  a recent survey indicated that 74% of technology marketers and strategists believe web 2.0 tools will be important or very important to their business strategy over the next 1-3 years.

I personally believe that innovation tools have the best potential in the application of social technologies within businesses.  What is innovation if not the ability to source ideas from disparate sources, manage those ideas through a commercial development process, and evaluate their success?

 

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Infrastructure, Software And Services – The Lines Are Blurring

Posted by Holger Kisker on June 30, 2009

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CSC celebrates its 50th anniversary at Innoventure Europe 2009

 

At Innoventure Europe 2009 on June 22 & 23 in Paris CSC outlined their new strategic concept – increased industry focus and innovation.

After 2 years of transformation CSC has finally settled on their new vertical organization and strategy around the 6 industry clusters Public Sector, Financial Services, Manufacturing / Aerospace & Defense, Technology / Consumer, Health Services and Chemical, Energy & Natural Resources. With solid figures for FY09 including a net income of $1,115 million and strong sector growth in e.g. Healthcare (+30%) and Public (+4%) based on the new vertical strategy, CSC seems to be well positioned to navigate the stormy waters of the current economic crises. However, with the new vertical company orientation CSC will face some new fundamental challenges and questions that need to be addressed.

 

·        Technology Agnostic or Pre-packaged?

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Optimizing The Branch Part 3: Three Models For Consolidation

Posted by Chris Silva on June 30, 2009

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I've put together another video blog this time getting into the detail on the various models I see for branch office server and infrastructure consolidation, based on the findings of my recent TechRadar. 


Forrester IT Operations Blog Branch Office Consolidation


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Razorfish finally goes on sale

Posted by Vidya Drego on June 30, 2009

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Harley-Manning_small [Posted by Harley Manning]

One of the toughest parts of being an analyst is figuring
out not WHAT will happen but WHEN it will happen.  Back in May of 2007 I wrote a short report
that described Forrester’s take on Microsoft’s acquisition of Avenue A │ Razorfish. In that report I
predicted that the Web site design part of the business would be spun off,
“possibly just called ‘Razorfish,’” and that acquirers would flock to snap up
that part of the firm.

To be open, I was beginning to think I’d been wrong.  But then yesterday, FT.com broke the news
that Microsoft appointed Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for the design part of
the agency, which dropped the “Avenue A” part of its name and is now called
“Razorfish.”

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Of designers and developers

Posted by Tom Grant on June 30, 2009

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In today's post at The Heretech, I come out of the closet. Yes, I am a bigger history geek than you can possibly imagine. Hello, my name is Tom, and I play wargames.

However, by playing a lot of games designed to simulate historical events, I've learned a couple of things that apply to designing products in the technology industry. Specifically, how do you create a design teeam that can overcome some of the common pitfalls, such as unnecessary complexity? To read more, follow this link.

[P.S. Thanks for pointing out the problem with the link. Typepad is intermittently eating the hyperlinks I enter. From now on, I'll just have to test them before I publish.]

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The Importance Of Having Content

Posted by Nick Thomas on June 30, 2009

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The news that Joost is scaling back its plans for world domination to focus on developing white label services is not a surprise. But it is a marker of sorts, given that back in the day Joost was a poster boy for a new kind of mid-form online video destination that would flourish in the perceived gap between YouTube, with its skateboarding cats and ad-unfriendly farting fratboys, and the old media dinosaurs wedded to distributing their prized content on TV.  Sadly, the game moved on.


So what lessons can be learnt from Joost’s experience? First of all, it took the wrong decision by asking users to download client software. As iPlayer discovered in 2008, users want streaming: it turned out the appeal of YouTube wasn’t just the content, it was the instant click and play experience. Joost changed to a streaming model – eventually -  but too late to engage the audiences who had already discovered iPlayer and Hulu.
 

The media business is still about content, and those who have spent millions of dollars creating and acquiring it are not inclined to let someone else distribute it online. The likes of ABC, NBC/Fox and the BBC (as well as smaller brands) built their own online video platforms to deliver content direct to consumers. At the other end of the spectrum, YouTube started to clean up its act while experimenting with longer-form content. Joost got squeezed out.
 

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The vision thing -- where is it?

Posted by Daniel Krauss on June 30, 2009

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For my latest report -- Innovating Corporate Strategy Services -- I analyzed services providers' (from classical management consulting firms to traditional IT providers, from very small to very large organizations) track record in the innovation of lead themes or paradigms.

Thought leadership efforts play a highly significant role, especially in consulting services (they grant you access to the big guys, they drive new services and engagements, and generate recognition in an IP- dominated environment), however I was surprised about the small number that I found in the end.

All the smart people, all the dedicated research organizations, and obviously all the great client engagements have not really led to more sophisticated forward-looking thinking and "next big things"

Two key conclusions I came up with:

1. Most IT providers lag the vision thing: In a world shifting from IT to BT, providers must become not only tech but business visionaries. They tend to assimilate to trends and paradigms rather than innovate or shape them.

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Green Sigma coalition: a dream team of vendors for sustainability solutions

Posted by Chris Mines on June 29, 2009

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Christopher Mines [Posted by Christopher Mines]

At its green summit event last week, IBM brought together a powerful collection of vendor partners to address customers' sustainability challenges and opportunities. The Green Sigma Coalition is notably different from other vendor partnerships in the green IT space, for three reasons:

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You Asked The Questions; We Give The Answers

Posted by Site Administrator on June 29, 2009

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At this year’s Forrester IT Forum, time constraints and the sheer number of attendees’ questions for our keynote speakers resulted in many questions going unanswered. We’ve reached out to our analysts to answer some of these questions. Here they are:

Question:
Should architects be embedded in business, for IT projects? Why? And for what benefit? Where do you put project management in the business? For IT projects.

Answer from Jeff Scott, Senior Analyst:
There is no “should.” We will see architects located in IT and the business based on the organization’s goals and context. I see EA eventually breaking into three distinct groups over time. Infrastructure architects located in I&O who design the extended infrastructure, application architects located in IT who focus on delivery of business solutions, and business architects located in IT and the business who focus on business strategy. Business architects located in the business generally focus on business change and the benefit is providing a model of the business to executives that connects the disparate lines of business. I don’t see IT project managers moving to the business in any big way. Someone has to oversee all the technology-based issues in a project and usually that is the PM.

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