After Frank Gillett's initial opinion on ChromeOS, I'd like to point you to the ongoing discussion around Google's announcement.The discussion on twitter follows the #ChromeOS hash. Over the last days, you'll find my comments here. No question that ChromeOS is a strategic attack to Microsoft's Windows Desktop with its pre-shipped IE. Who will download IE, if you're not using Windows any more at all. Really funny is for example this fake "Steve Jobs" blog post "Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspective"Read more

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?

 

Read more

I received a comment from a Forrester client about ITIL and BSM, and their respective potential influence on each other. Most notably whether BSM was the only mean to implement ITIL.

My background is in process control automation and software engineering, two disciplines firmly grounded in technology and reality. For me, the word "process" invokes a very specific meaning and definition such as CPRET.

CPRET is a mnemonic for the basic definition of process in process engineering: it stands for Constraints, Product, Resources, input Elements and Transformation which are the basic components of a process. In process engineering, a process is a suite of transformations of elements into a given output (product) given a set of constraints and resources. From this definition, we can see that technology has a strong influence on the process: the transformation part is a clear function of the technology available as input and resources in IT are strongly influenced by the technology used. As we mostly deal with information and data in IT management processes, the type of data available is either helping or impeding the transformation part.

Read more

I have just returned from the Annual International Nortel Networks Users Association (INNUA) Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.  At the event, I was again struck by the loyalty of the Nortel customer base.  There were 1,500 some in attendance.  I saw Nortel customers and partners who hailed from Boston to San Francisco and  as far away as Denmark, India, and Brazil.  Nortel had a group of nearly 250 partners from the Carribean and Latin America in town for training as well.  Attendance was down considerably (nearly cut in half) compared to last year, but those who were in attendance were serious – considering their options and Nortel’s future.  While Nortel compared their history to Pittsburgh’s – a gritty town with staying power that has reinvented itself for the new economy – customers really wanted to know about the future. Nortel preferred to focus on comparisons to the six  time World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers – customers wanted to compare then to the Pittsburgh Penguins wondering whether they could pull off one more win to take the Cup. 

Read more