Our Thoughts on IT Matters

Keep Posted on Industry News and Events

   

The Un-Official (sales) Technology Cartel is Alive and Well

The fiscal year end is a critical time of year for both suppliers as well as technology buyers, many of whom are in the middle of 2024 budget planning as I type this. Several tech suppliers are wrapping up their fiscal year soon, and will be putting on the full court press to customers and prospects aiming to get as much revenue possible before the book closes on the year. During times of required action (renewals, new purchases, etc.) or duress (audits, M&As), we feel the pressure to get the deals done, and rarely take a step back to view the tech market as a 'federated'' whole, and how that might be impacting your business decisions. ...

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Be Skeptical of Suppliers Increasing Prices with Inflation Excuses

It’s a now well-known axiom that there is opportunity in chaos. From our vantage point, technology suppliers are joining in the spirit of that theme to accelerate price increases which are then passed along to their customers. Price gouging it would seem is no longer the domain of consumer goods as we suspect it’s also being employed in high tech. If you have been involved recently in a renewal, software audit, M&A activity, or any other supplier intensive negotiation, some of these price increase ‘excuses’ may sound familiar: Inflation Energy costs Interest rates Labor supply Economic downturn War in Ukraine Rising US dollar value ...

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Using IT Savings to Boost Productivity, Lower Costs and Mitigate Recession Risk

As discussed in some of our previous blogs, market indicators continued to show signs that a recessionary environment was on the horizon. Today, it became official wherein the U.S. recorded its second straight quarter GDP retraction. Preceding this news, were some unfortunate earnings reports coming from Fortune 100 companies (Walmart missed expectations on lowered forecasts). Firms are carrying unanticipated levels of inventory and are having to heavily discount to get rid of it, which are all harbingers of low growth, lower revenue and tighter margins. From our blog titled, “CEOs: #1 Action to Protect Your Organization from The Looming ...

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Calling All Budget Heroes: Seven Strategic Supplier Strategies for Year End

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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Like a Bad Hangover, Did You Wake Up in 2022 Budgeting Season and Wonder Where Your Money was Spent?

Like a party no one wanted to go to, the COVID pandemic dragged many IT Executives into (over) spending on technology that was not planned for. In the frenetic pace to ‘keep the lights on’, expenditures were made without the scrutiny they may have normally received pre-COVID. Supporting all the work from anywhere (WFA) initiatives including conferencing, PCs, and remote access software and hardware were all added to the mission critical initiatives already underway, like digital transformation and cloud migrations siphoning money away from those other priorities. As you start planning for your 2022 budgets, you may just now be realizing and ...

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Is 'Overspend' Culture Impeding Your Digital Transformation?

Every IT leader reading this now is overspending 30% to 60% on at least one of their strategic suppliers. Unfortunately, many are overspending on several. How can we know this with such confidence? We’ve been seeing it now since 2002 and it’s the very reason we are thriving today. There are several factors that enable this culture of overspend to get traction inside organizations. Much of it is built on the good intentions of IT buyers simply working to execute their business plans with limited resources. Exacerbating the problem however, are the technology goliaths and their downstream ecosystems, who spend vast sums of money to ensure ...

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Top 4 (of 100) Technology Review Platforms for 2021

Clients often ask how we can stay on top of the market due to its constantly changing nature, and our answer is simple. We are constantly researching and analyzing the market in real-time, availing ourselves of a variety of resources. First among those is our own FMI (Federated Market Intelligence) gathered from thousands of executed deals since 2002. It’s a luxury to have that kind of data to inform Client strategy and optimization. However, we do also frequently vet our own understanding of the market by using a variety of resources, including the major Technology Review Platforms. If you can imagine, there are literally hundreds of ...

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AWS Market Update and 2021 Market Forecast

Cloud is an integral part of almost every company's strategic technology portfolio. As legacy migrations continue and cloud spend increases across every industry, its never been more critical to understand both your specific cloud investments, and the suppliers (AWS) that drive them. Only those that fully understand these market dynamics will enjoy the competitive advantage that comes with informed insight. Conversely, those who fail to comprehend their waste, overspend and the market dynamics behind it, are doomed to escalating spend, blown budgets, and lagging transformation efforts. Below we give you that market insight, updates on AWS as ...

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Your Cisco Technology Investments: It’s Time for Bold Action

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook If you’ve been avoiding risk or waiting for the right time to take bold action in reducing both your reliance and cost structure with Cisco – the wait should be over. The market readiness to reduce or eliminate your Cisco dependence is at an all time high with suppliers who are stable, reliable, innovative and eager to win your business. Below we’ll outline how: The Cisco ecosystem is set up to work against the economics of its own customers Why their ...

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Twenty-Three (and counting) Free Supplier Offers for Business Use During Covid-19

If you are like me, you have been receiving an avalanche of email notifications from every company you’ve ever done business with letting you know how they are responding to the Covid-19 crisis. Did I really need to know how my auto mechanic is responding to the epidemic? Probably not at the top of my list. However, if you can get through the noise, there have been some legitimate offers to help companies support their teams and customers through the crisis. Most of these offers are in the form of free services and software for an extended period of time (30-60-90 days and more). Below, we’ve compiled a list of twenty-three companies and ...

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