The Top 28 Worst Offending Technology Suppliers of 2024 Preface Nearly all clients are seeking greater prosperity in 2024. While client organizations are still focused on cost reductions to meet the challenges of their new economic and market realities, the pent-up demands of the business are increasingly calling for innovation, automation, and organizational performance improvement. Digital Transformation has emerged as the #1 Way to Boost Performance and Savings concurrently. Client organizations that are digitally transforming are harvesting greater value by: Automating tasks (RPA) to streamline efficiencies Unlocking data insights (ML) ...
Read More
Top 5 Examples of Newly Invented Technology Supplier Fees in 2024 Money grab n. Obtaining money from someone without returning anything of real value. Requiring someone to pay a fee out of purely greedy or opportunistic motives. Preface Nearly all clients are seeking greater prosperity in 2024. While client organizations are still focused on cost reductions to meet the challenges of their new economic and market realities, the pent-up demands of the business are increasingly calling for innovation, automation, and organizational performance improvement. Digital Transformation has emerged as the #1 Way to Boost Performance and Savings ...
Read More
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. ...
Read More
Preface Thank you for joining us for this 3-part series on Cloud Costs, where we explore the Top 5 Price Shock Phenomenon’s of Cloud costs, resulting in part from the Top 5 Workloads that are NOT Well Suited for the Cloud, and largely resulting in the Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating previously migrated Workloads from cloud deployments back on-premises: Part 1 (Feb 15): Top 5 Price Shock Phenomenon’s of Cloud Costs Part 2 (Mar 15): Top 5 Workloads that are NOT Well Suited for the Cloud Part 3 (Apr 15): Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating Workloads (This One) Part 3: Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating Workloads In ...
Read More
Preface Thank you for joining us for Part 2 of this 3-Part series on Cloud Costs. Please reference the following 3 blogs to get the complete 2023 Cloud Cost Series: Part 1: Feb 15: Top 5 Price Shock Phenomena of Cloud Part 2: Mar 15: Top 5 Workloads that are NOT Well Suited for the Cloud Part 3: Apr 15: Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating Workloads Part 2: Top 5 Workloads NOT Well Suited for The Cloud Introduction Since the mid-2000s, clients have been migrating workloads to the cloud with increasing frequency, but recently, we have seen clients start to repatriate previously migrated workloads back on-premises, due in no small part ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
The pace of change today is to say the least – breakneck. Leveraging tech to get closer to your customers, drive revenue, and increase margin (i.e., save money) is at the forefront of initiatives for most companies. At the same time, layer in the levels of complexity in understanding every supplier’s value add in that mission, along with each having their own rules for pricing, agreement frameworks, and legal terms, it’s no wonder companies frequently have sub-optimized supplier agreements, investments, and relationships. One area that I have focused on in the last three decades specifically, is Microsoft. I’ve negotiated and reviewed ...
Read More
BREAKING: The Mainframe is not dead. While smaller companies continue to get off the mainframe, it’s still too soon to write an obituary, as mid-sized businesses grew mainframe consumption from 5 to 15% and large enterprises grew from 15 to 20% in 2021. Recent analyst reports suggest that as much as half of the world’s information is still processed on the mainframe. The mainframe was a $2.3 Billion Industry in 2021, is expected to increase another 8% in 2022, and is projected to grow at a 3.2% CAGR from 2021-2029. Major hardware, software, and services companies that stand to benefit from this decade of mainframe market growth include Atos, ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
‘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 ...
Read More
