A few days ago, a long-time client asked us about our views on some industry analyst firms, and it got me thinking again about who people trust when they need real industry analysis and not just the latest (largely unsolicited) market report, so I decided to write this blog about the Top 5 Technology Research Services Firms clients should use in 2022. Now, I think I know what you are thinking….you are probably thinking this is a pointless blog because everyone already knows that the Top 3 technology research services firms are Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, right? Well, what if I told you that after much industry consolidation, we took a ...
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In 2021, Veeva was named as our #1 Technology Supplier to Watch, and with good reason. In our view, Veeva had the ability to outflank Salesforce.com to make a vertical cloud for the global life-sciences industry; something that Salesforce and others failed to do. Marquee customers include AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merk, Nestle, and Sanofi. With this vertical industry focus, Veeva has enjoyed considerable success, and with its premium-priced platform, its success has come at the expense of its customers. Now, with over 50% market share in the life sciences customer relationship management (CRM) market, Veeva ...
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In 2019, we called out Splunk as a disruptive supplier (with a specific focus on security in the financial services industry) in our "Thrive Ultimatum" Series as one of the Top 10 Disruptive Technologies to watch. In 2021, we named Splunk as the #2 technology supplier to watch - largely predicated on its growth in the enterprise space as a tool for searching, monitoring, and otherwise deciphering the growing amount of machine-generated data via its slick web-style interface. Although there has been some turmoil in the executive ranks, and the stock took a serious hit (just recently posting a 52-week low) in Q4 2021 after CEO Doug Merritt ...
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Oracle Corporation has agreed to acquire a large Electronic Health Records (EHR) company, Cerner Corporation, in a transaction worth $28.3 Billion. Oracle already has a significant presence in healthcare but adding Cerner, which essentially runs an ERP-style software system for healthcare delivery networks, gives Oracle a much larger wallet-share inside healthcare related customers. This would also enable greater account control as it adds more industry-specific applications to its already widely entrenched technology platform. If fully executed, this move will likely give Oracle a better market message around industry clouds, especially ...
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The adage goes: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Although technology moves at a rapid pace, the predatory behavior of software vendors does not really change. Certainly, it works for them as the numbers show: Microsoft net income: $44.2B Oracle net income: $14.1B IBM profit: $5.6B Not coincidentally, these are the top 3 suppliers most likely to audit you according to a recent ITAM study of 465 IT Executives conducted by Flexera. This fact comes as no surprise to us, as we wrote about this in 2019 in an article titled: The Top 10 Audit Crazy Suppliers, where our top 3 mirrored the IT Executive survey exactly. In fact, 9 ...
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CRM and Marketing Disruption: Rapid Changing client behavior (initiated by COVID-19) and less physical interaction, required additional means to connect to prospects and grow your business. If you are not doing it your competition will, and companies are loading up on technology to help them achieve this. The problem is, that many companies are loading up and buying the wrong products, at the wrong price, for reasons that are not shared across the enterprise. General Situation: Most Organizations have a CRM (Salesforce, Oracle, SugarCRM, Hubspot etc.) and one of the many Marketing automation tools, but lack the customer knowledge in order to ...
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Prior to establishing Microsoft, Gates and Allen had already formed another company while they were both still students at a high school in Seattle. They designed a computer system that automatically processed traffic counting data called Traf-O-Data. The aim of this was to read the raw data that was produced by roadway traffic counters and transform these into reports for traffic engineers. Apparently, they had a limited amount of success with the company, but it helped them to develop the computer programming skills that was instrumental in founding Microsoft. It also gave them the opportunity to develop their business skills, turning ...
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Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 21 here). Today we review the fourth installment in the series: Set Up Hierarchical Storage Management. Data sets have specific lifecycles. Early on, your workload might often access the data. But overtime, data access, in particular the aging one, drops drastically. Some data remains idle in the ...
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As we've been saying for months, post (hopefully) pandemic Market Conditions are ripe for you to act in driving business value into your company. If you've ever dreamed of being the budget hero, this is it. With the tumult in the supplier marketplace around M&As, shifts of products to the cloud, small company disruptions, the supplier competition has never been as robust. Once you digest the list below and want more, we're happy to talk. There's nothing we like better than chatting about how to get more value from technology suppliers - especially now. Big Software SAP Nearly 100% of SAP deals come due in December. This is driven by ...
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‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...
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