gartner | I am a Bridge (Hugues Rey Blog)

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2013 – Forbes

April 21, 2013 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2013 – Forbes.

Another day, another top 10 list fromGartner, which this week is playing host to 10,000 IT pro at the Gartner Symposium IT Expo in Orlando.

Yesterday, the research firm laid out “10 critical tech trends for the next five years.”

Today, Gartner took a look at a little closer in, providing a list of the “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013.

You can see the list in the box at right.

Here are a few of their notes on each of the 10 trends, as laid out in the Gartner slides for the presentation:

Mobile device battles: Mobile experiences eclipse the desktop experience. Consumerization drives tablets into the enterprise. Cloud and mobile are mutually reinforcing trends. Bring your own device trend accelerates. In 2013, mobile devices will pass PCs to be most common Web access tools. By 2015, over 80% of handsets in mature markets will be smart phones. 20% of those will be Windows phones. By 2015, tablet shipments will be 50% of laptop shipments, with Windows 8 in third place behind Apple and Android. Microsoft‘s share of overall client platform will fall to 60%, and could drop below 50%. In smartphones, Windows could pass RIM to be #3 player, and could be same size as Apple in units by 2015. Windows 8 will be “relatively niche,” with mostly appealing to enterprise buyers.
Mobile applications & HTML 5: Through 2014, JavaScript performance will push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream application developer environment. There will be long shift to HTML5 from native apps as HTML5 becomes more capable. But native apps won’t disappear, and will always offer best experiences.
Personal Cloud: Cloud will be center of digital lives, for apps, content and preferences. Sync across devices. Services become more important; devices become less important.
Internet of Things: Internet of things is already here. Over 50% of Internet connections are things. In 2011, over 15 billion things on the Web, with 50 billion+ intermittent connections. By 2020, over 30 billion connected things, with over 200 billion with intermittent connections. Key technologies here include embedded sensors, image recognition and NFC. By 2015, in more than 70% of enterprises, a single exec will oversee all Internet connected things. Becomes the Internet of Everything.
Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing: Changes role of IT. IT departments must play more roles in coordinating IT related activities.
Strategic Big Data: Organizations need to focus on non-traditional data types and externa data sources. Hadoop and NoSQL gain momentum. Big data will meet social. Five richest big data sources on the Web include social graph, intent graph, consumption graph, interest graph and mobile graph. Concept of single corporate data warehouse is dead. Multiple systems need to be tied together.
Actionable Analytics: Cloud, packaged analytics and big data accelerates in 2013, 2014. Can now perform analytics and simulation on every action taken in business. Mobile devices will have access to the data, supporting business decision making.
Mainstream In-Memory Computing: Changes expectations, designs and architectures. Can boost performance and response times. Enables real-time self service business intelligence. SAP and others will accelerate delivery of applications in 2012/2013 to leverage in memory capability.
Integrated Ecosystems: More packaging of software and services to address infrastructure or application workload. There will be more shipment of “appliances,” with software delivered as hardware. New trend: virtual appliances, which Gartner sees gaining in popularity over the next five years.
Enterprise App Stores: By 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile app downloads from app stores every year. Also by 2014, most organizations will deliver mobile apps to workers via private application stores.

Categories: Big Data Tags: analytics, app stores, big data, gartner, technology

Gartner May Be Too Scared To Say It, But the PC Is Dead – ReadWrite

April 7, 2013 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner May Be Too Scared To Say It, But the PC Is Dead – ReadWrite.

Gartner has finally come out and said it: The PC market is dying.

Except it hasn’t said that, quite. But it is, and saying so is really important.

The market-research firm predicts a 7.6% decline in PC sales this year, to 315 million units (including desktops and notebooks) from the roughly 341 million PCs sold in 2012. The real knife in the PC’s heart, though, is that Gartner is now finally willing to predict a long-term decline: 302 million PCs in 2014, falling to 272 million in 2017, approaching the sales levels of 2006 and 2007.

“While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement. “As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis.”

Gartner predicted that tablet sales would outpace the PC market sometime between 2014 and and 2017. By then, the firm predicted, manufacturers will sell 468 million tablets, almost double that of the PC market. Phone sales will top 2 billion units.

What Gartner Can’t Say, And Why

Gartner, however, can’t bring itself to say the PC market is shrinking toward irrelevance. Instead, it describes the PC market as “transitional,” in much the same way companies firing large swathes of their workforces insist that employees have been “downsized.” If Gartner was a brokerage firm, its analyst would have placed a “hold” rating on the PC market, with all the wishy-washy implications that word connotes.

“Transitional” is one of those wussy words that says nothing. Here it’s designed primarily to protect the lucrative relationship that Gartner has with its clients. If Gartner declares an industry dead, why should a company like Dell spend thousands of dollars a pop for a report that says so?

“An analyst cannot issue a sell rating because he doesn’t want to lose access,” former securities analyst Tom Larsen told Bloomberg in 2007. Exactly.

To Gartner’s credit, the company began hedging its bets way back into 2010, when the company noted five “disruptive forces” challenging the PC industry, which I’ve condensed to three below:

Stale “mature markets” like the United States;
Thin clients;
A shift in consumer purchasing habits to tablets and other mobile devices that would displace PC sales and incline companies and individuals to keep PCs longer.

Only that last point appears prescient today — and only if you forget that Gartner issued its report in Nov. 2010, seven months after Apple launched the iPad.

Why Gartner’s Hedging Matters

On balance, then, Gartner’s report is nothing more than a reactive sell-side Wall Street analyst which issues a “sell” recommendation after a company has already issued bad news that’s tanked its stock. The PC industry is dying, so let’s move on.

But we actually need a company like Gartner to declare the PC dead — or at least to release data that supports that view, as it’s just done, because companies across all industries use reports from Gartner, IDC, and others to justify their investments.

In order to develop a new PC version of TurboTax, for example, Intuit must demonstrate that there’s a market for it. Gartner’s report indicates that Intuit and other PC developers should consider abandoning the PC in favor of either a Web service or dedicated applications for various mobile platforms, at least if they want to address a market that’s growing instead of shrinking.

We’ve known since 2010 that mobile devices would play an ever increasing role in our lives. But it’s become increasingly clear that the cycle may be accelerating.

Over at his blog Tech-Thoughts, analyst Sameer Singh noted recently that developers are already picking up on this:

[T]he growth of Windows 8 apps has noticeably slowed in Q1 2013. According to the data, the Windows Store is expected to top 50,000 apps by the end of March, but MoM [month-over-month] growth has slowed to just 10-15%.

If the trend continues, the reasons for buying a new PC also decline. Microsoft has begun paying small developers a pittance — $100 per app — to develop for the Windows 8 platform. But that’s barely going to pay for a round of beer and appetizers at the end of the day.

“Microsoft’s promotion is primarily aimed at low-end publishers,” Singh wrote. “Their prime concern at the moment isn’t app quality, but quantity. Unless the app growth on the Windows Store remains strong, Microsoft has very little chance of attracting many major developers to the platform.”

Gartner’s data would indicate that Microsoft faces long odds there. Even if Gartner’s too scared to say it.

Categories: Apple, Android Tags: gartner, PC, tablet, 2017

Gartner : Les nouvelles tendances technologiques et stratégiques | PixelsTrade Blog

December 8, 2012 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner : Les nouvelles tendances technologiques et stratégiques | PixelsTrade Blog.

Gartner, la société Américaine de conseil et de recherche dans le secteur des techniques avancées, a annoncé récemment lors du Symposium ITxpo 2012 ; ses prédictions sur les nouvelles tendances dans le domaine technologique.

Gartner a déclaré qu’en 2013 la commercialisation des mobiles dépassera de loin celle des ordinateurs. Les mobiles vont être les outils fondamentaux pour accéder à Internet. Ceci s’affirmera, également, en 2015 où 80% des téléphones vendus seront des Smartphones dont 20% uniquement tourneront sous Windows Phone. Aussi, en 2015 les tablettes présenteront 50% de part de marché des PCs portables et Windows 8 se placera toujours en 3^ème position derrière Android et iOS.

Les applications mobiles conçues en HTML5, selon les prédictions de Gartner, vont prendre l’avantage. Toutefois, les développeurs sont appelés à multiplier leurs efforts pour créer des applications mobiles optimisées et compatibles avec plusieurs appareils mobiles. Ces applications assureront 310 milliards de téléchargements ce qui permettra de générer 74 milliards de dollars.

Les analystes de Gartner affirment que le Cloud Privé sera de plus en plus utilisé par les particuliers pour le stockage et le traitement de différentes données personnelles. Aussi, il est prévu qu’en 2014, plusieurs sociétés opérant dans le secteur mobile vont mettre les applications qu’elles développent à la disposition de leurs collaborateurs à travers des stores privés. Nous parlons, ainsi, des App Stores d’Entreprises.

L’internet des objets, le Big Data, les éco-systèmes intégrés et bien plus sont les autres tendances IT que connaîtra le nouvel an.

Categories: Android, Mobile Marketing, Reserach Tags: gartner

Gartner Says by 2014, 80 Percent of Current Gamified Applications Will Fail to Meet Business Objectives Primarily Due to Poor Design

November 30, 2012 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner Says by 2014, 80 Percent of Current Gamified Applications Will Fail to Meet Business Objectives Primarily Due to Poor Design.

Analysts Discuss Key Issues During Complimentary Webinar, “Gamification Trends and Strategies to Help Prepare for the Future” on November 28

STAMFORD, Conn., November 27, 2012— As gamification moves from the leading edge to more widespread use by early adopters, now is the time to understand and evaluate this important trend, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gamification is currently being driven by novelty and hype. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.

“The challenge facing project managers and sponsors responsible for gamification initiatives is the lack of game design talent to apply to gamification projects,” said Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner. “Poor game design is one of the key failings of many gamified applications today.”

“The focus is on the obvious game mechanics, such as points, badges and leader boards, rather than the more subtle and more important game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy,” Mr. Burke said. “As a result, in many cases, organizations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience. Some organizations are already beginning to cast off poorly designed gamified applications.”

Gamification is the use of game design and game mechanics to engage a target audience to change behaviors, learn new skills or engage in innovation. The target audience may be customers, employees or the general public, but first and foremost, they are people with needs and desires who will respond to stimuli. It is important to think of the people in these target audiences as “players” in gamified applications.

While game mechanics such as points and badges are the hallmarks of gamification, the real challenge is to design player-centric applications that focus on the motivations and rewards that truly engage players more fully. Game mechanics like points, badges and leader boards are simply the tools that implement the underlying engagement models.

Gamification describes the use of the same design techniques and game mechanics found in all games, but it applies them in non-game contexts including: customer engagement, employee performance, training and education, innovation management, personal development, sustainability and health. Virtually all areas of business could benefit from gamification as it can help to achieve three broad business objectives 1) to change behavior; 2) to develop skills; or 3) to enable innovation. While these objectives are very broad, more opportunities may emerge as the trend matures.

Changing Behaviors - The most common use of gamification is to engage a specific audience and encourage them to change a target set of behaviors. By turning the desired behavior change into a game, people become engaged and encouraged to adopt new habits. For example:

Brands can leverage gamification to engage consumers to better understand their products, and become advocates for the brand to provide product endorsements, and drive customer loyalty.
Companies can use gamification to improve employee performance and to motivate adoption of new business processes.

Developing Skills - Gamification is increasingly being used in both formal education and in corporate training programs to engage students in a more immersive learning experience. While many approaches are being used, they can generally be divided into two categories:

Building a game layer on top of the lesson material, where competition and/or collaboration between students is encouraged with game mechanics such as points for actions, badges for rewards and leader boards for competition.
Turning the lesson into a game, where in addition to the game layer of points and badges, simulation and animation is used to immerse the studentS in the environment and allow them to practice new skills in a safe, virtual environment that provides immediate feedback.

Enabling Innovation - Innovation games are typically structured quite differently than games designed to change behavior or develop skills. Innovation games use emergent game structures that provide the goals, rules, tools and play space for the players to explore, experiment, collaborate and solve problems. Innovation games generally use game mechanics to create a more engaging experience, but the key is to engage lots of players, solving problems through crowdsourcing.

“As gamification moves from being leveraged by a limited number of leading-edge innovators to becoming more broadly adopted by early adopters, it is important that CIOs and IT leaders understand the underlying principle of gamification and how to apply it within the IT organization,” said Mr. Burke.

Additional information is available in the Gartner Special Report “Gamification: Engagement Strategies for Business and IT”. The Special Report can be viewed athttp://www.gartner.com/technology/research/gamification/, and includes links to reports and video commentary that examine the impact of gamification on enterprises.

Categories: Brands Tags: gamification, gartner

Gartner Says Worldwide Sales of Mobile Phones Declined 3 Percent in Third Quarter of 2012; Smartphone Sales Increased 47 Percent

November 15, 2012 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner Says Worldwide Sales of Mobile Phones Declined 3 Percent in Third Quarter of 2012; Smartphone Sales Increased 47 Percent.

Samsung Extended Its Lead in the Smartphone Market Widening the Gap with Apple

Egham, UK, November 14, 2012— Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users reached almost 428 million units in the third quarter of 2012, a 3.1 percent decline from the third quarter of 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales accounted for 39.6 percent of total mobile phone sales, as smartphone sales increased 46.9 percent from the third quarter of 2011.

While the mobile phone market declined year-on-year, Gartner analysts said there were positive signs for the industry during the third quarter.

“After two consecutive quarter of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased sequentially,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. “In China, sales of mobile phones grew driven by sales of smartphones, while demand of feature phones remained weak. In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter.”

Smartphones continued to fuel sales of mobile phones worldwide with sales rising to 169.2 million units in the third quarter of 2012. The smartphone market was dominated by Apple and Samsung. “Both vendors together controlled 46.5 percent of smartphone market leaving a handful of vendors fighting over a distant third spot,” said Mr. Gupta.

Nokia slipped from No. 3 in the second quarter of 2012 to No. 7 in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2012. RIM moved to the No. 3 spot with HTC not far behind, at No. 4. “Both HTC and RIM have seen their sales declining in past few quarters, and the challenges might prevent them from holding on to their current rankings in coming quarters,” added Mr. Gupta.

While seasonality in the fourth quarter of 2012 will help end-of-year mobile phone sales to end users, Gartner analysts said that there will be a lower-than-usual boost from the holiday season. Consumers are either cautious with their spending or finding new gadgets like tablets, as more attractive presents.

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Vendor in 3Q12 (Thousands of Units)

Company	3Q12 Units	3Q12 Market Share (%)	3Q11 Units	3Q11 Market Share (%)
Samsung	97,956.8	22.9	82,612.2	18.7
Nokia	82,300.6	19.2	105,353.5	23.9
Apple	23,550.3	5.5	17,295.3	3.9
ZTE	16,654.2	3.9	14,107.8	3.2
LG Electronics	13,968.8	3.3	21,014.6	4.8
Huawei Device	11,918.9	2.8	10,668.2	2.4
TCL Communication	9,326.7	2.2	9,004.7	2.0
Research in Motion	8,946.8	2.1	12,701.1	2.9
Motorola	8,562.7	2.0	11,182.7	2.5
HTC	8,428.6	2.0	12,099.9	2.7
Others	146,115.1	34.2	145,462.2	32.9
Total	427,729.5	100.0	441,502.2	100.0

Source: Gartner (November 2012)

Nokia’s mobile phone sales declined 21.9 percent in the third quarter of 2012, but overall sales at 82.3 million were better than Gartner’s early estimate, largely driven by increased sales of the Asha full touch range. Nokia had a particularly bad quarter with smartphone sales, and it tumbled to the No. 7 worldwide position with 7.2 million smartphones sold in the third quarter. The arrival of the new Lumia devices on Windows 8 should help to halt the decline in share in the fourth quarter of 2012, although it won’t be until 2013 to see a significant improvement in Nokia’s position.

Apple’s sales to end users totaled 23.6 million units in the third quarter of 2012, up 36.2 percent year-on-year. “We saw inventory built up into the channel as Apple prepared for the coming holiday season, global expansions and the launch into China in the fourth quarter of 2012,” said Mr. Gupta. With iPhone 5 launching in more territories in the fourth quarter of 2012, including China, and the upcoming holiday season Gartner analysts expect Apple will have its traditionally strongest quarter.

In the smartphone market, Android continued to increase its market share, up 19.9 percentage points in the third quarter of 2012. Although RIM lost market share, it climbed to the No. 3 position as Symbian is nearing the end of its lifecycle. There was also channel destocking in preparation of new device launches for RIM, which resulted into 8.9 million sales to end users in the third quarter of 2012. With the launch of iPhone 5, Gartner analysts expect iOS share will grow strongly in the fourth quarter of 2012 because users held on to their replacements in many markets ahead of the iPhone 5 wider roll out. Windows Phone’s share weakened quarter-on-quarter as the Windows Phone 8 launch dampened demand of Windows Phone 7 devices.

Table 2
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	3Q12 Units	3Q12 Market Share (%)	3Q11 Units	3Q11 Market Share (%)
Android	122,480.0	72.4	60,490.4	52.5
iOS	23,550.3	13.9	17,295.3	15.0
Research In Motion	8,946.8	5.3	12,701.1	11.0
Bada	5,054.7	3.0	2,478.5	2.2
Symbian	4,404.9	2.6	19,500.1	16.9
Microsoft	4,058.2	2.4	1,701.9	1.5
Others	683.7	0.4	1,018.1	0.9
Total	169,178.6	100.0	115,185.4	100.0

Source: Gartner (November 2012)

Additional information can be found in the Gartner report “Market Share: Mobile Phones by Region and Country, 3Q12.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2236115.

Categories: Android, BlackBerry, Mobile Apps, Mobile Marketing Tags: gartner, mobile

Gartner Says Big Data Will Drive $28 Billion of IT Spending in 2012

November 15, 2012 huguesrey Leave a comment

Gartner Says Big Data Will Drive $28 Billion of IT Spending in 2012.

Analysts to Examine Key Issues Around Big Data at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012

STAMFORD, Conn., October 17, 2012— Big data will drive $28 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2013, big data is forecast to drive $34 billion of IT spending.

Most of the current spending is used in adapting traditional solutions to the big data demands — machine data, social data, widely varied data, unpredictable velocity, and so on — and only $4.3 billion in software sales will be driven directly by demands for new big data functionality in 2012.

Big data currently has the most significant impact in social network analysis and content analytics with 45 percent of new spending each year. In traditional IT supplier markets, application infrastructure and middleware is most affected (10 percent of new spending each year is influenced by big data in some way) when compared with storage software, database management system, data integration/quality, business intelligence or supply chain management (SCM).

“Despite the hype, big data is not a distinct, stand-alone market, it but represents an industrywide market force which must be addressed in products, practices and solution delivery,” said Mark Beyer, research vice president at Gartner. “In 2011, big data formed a new driver in almost every category of IT spending. However, through 2018, big data requirements will gradually evolve from differentiation to ‘table stakes’ in information management practices and technology. By 2020, big data features and functionality will be non-differentiating and routinely expected from traditional enterprise vendors and part of their product offerings.”

Big data opportunities emerged when several advances in different IT categories aligned in a short period at the end of the last decade, creating a dramatic increase in computing technology capacity. This new capacity, coupled with latent demands for analysis of “dark data,” social networks data and operational technology (or machine data), created an environment highly conducive to rapid innovation.

Starting near the end of 2015, Gartner expects leading organizations to begin to use their big data experience in an almost embedded form in their architectures and practices. Beginning in 2018, big data solutions will be offering increasingly less of a distinct advantage over traditional solutions that have incorporated new features and functions to support greater agility when addressing volume, variety and velocity. However, the skills, practices and tools currently viewed as big data solutions will persist as leading organizations will have incorporated the design principles and acquired the skills necessary to address big data concerns as routine flexibility.

“Because big data’s effects are pervasive, big data will evolve to become a standardized requirement in leading information architectural practices, forcing older practices and technology into early obsolescence,” said Mr. Beyer. “As a result, big data will once again become ‘just data’ by 2020 and architectural approaches, infrastructure and hardware/software that does not adapt to this ‘new normal’ will be retired. Organizations resisting this change will suffer severe economic impacts.”

Additional information is available in the report “Big Data Drives Rapid Changes in Infrastructure and $232 Billion in IT Spending Through 2016″. The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2195915.

Categories: Big Data Tags: big data, gartner, IT

Gartner Says By 2014, 10-15 Percent of Social Media Reviews to Be Fake, Paid for By Companies

September 19, 2012 huguesrey 1 comment

Gartner Says By 2014, 10-15 Percent of Social Media Reviews to Be Fake, Paid for By Companies.

Analysts to Examine Key Issues Social CRM Issues at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

STAMFORD, Conn., September 17, 2012—

Consumers’ increased reliance on social media ratings and reviews will see enterprise spending on paid social media ratings and reviews increase, making up 10 to 15 percent of all reviews by 2014, according to Gartner, Inc. However, analysts predict that increased media attention on fake social media ratings and reviews will result in at least two Fortune 500 brands facing litigation from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the next two years.

“With over half of the Internet’s population on social networks, organizations are scrambling for new ways to build bigger follower bases, generate more hits on videos, garner more positive reviews than their competitors and solicit ‘likes’ on their Facebook pages,” said Jenny Sussin, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Many marketers have turned to paying for positive reviews with cash, coupons and promotions including additional hits on YouTube videos in order to pique site visitors’ interests in the hope of increasing sales, customer loyalty and customer advocacy through social media ‘word of mouth’ campaigns.”

Organizations who opt to pay for phoney reviews can, and have, faced both public condemnation as well as monetary fines. In 2009, the FTC determined that paying for positive reviews without disclosing that the reviewer had been compensated equates to deceptive advertising and would be prosecuted as such.

“Marketing, customer service and IT social media managers looking to use reviews, fans and ‘likes’ to improve their brand’s reputation on social media must beware of the potential negative consequences on corporate reputation and profitability,” said Ed Thompson, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “CMOs will need to weigh the longer-term risks of being caught and the associated fines and damage to reputation and balance them against the short-term potential rewards of increased business and the prevailing common business practice in their market, often regardless of ethics.”

As the FTC begins to crack down on this practice of fake reviews/ratings, some reputation management companies are taking a different approach, not posting new, fake, favorable reviews, but identifying fake and defaming reviews and requesting the reviewers or host site remove them or face legal repercussions. Gartner analysts said they expect a similar market of companies to emerge specializing in reputation defense versus reputation creation.

Gartner believes that although consumer trust in social media is currently low, consumer perception of tightened government regulation and increased media exposure of fake social media ratings and reviews will ultimately increase consumer trust in new and existing social media ratings and reviews.

“Organizations engaging in social media can help to promote trust by openly embracing both positive and negative reviews and leveraging negative reviews as a way to encourage customers with positive product or service experiences to share them on review sites as well,” Ms. Sussin said.“They should also respond to ratings and reviews in an official capacity to demonstrate willingness to engage in productive conversation with anyone.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “The Consequences of Fake Fans, ‘Likes’ and Reviews on Social Networks“. The report is available on Gartner’s web site at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2091515.

Categories: POE, Social Media Tags: gartner, review, some

Roundup of Big Data Forecasts and Market Estimates, 2012 – Forbes

August 17, 2012 huguesrey 1 comment

Roundup of Big Data Forecasts and Market Estimates, 2012 – Forbes.

From the best-known companies in enterprise software to start-ups, everyone is jumping on the big data bandwagon.

The potential of big data to bring insights and intelligence into enterprises is a strong motivator, where managers are constantly looking for the competitive edge to win in their chosen markets. With so much potential to provide enterprises with enhanced analytics, insights and intelligence, it is understandable why this area has such high expectations – and hype – associated with it.

Given the potential big data has to reorder an enterprise and make it more competitive and profitable, it’s understandable why there are so many forecasts and market analyses being done today. The following is a roundup of the latest big data forecasts and market estimates recently published:

As of last month, Gartner had received 12,000 searches over the last twelve months for the term “big data” with the pace increasing.

In Hype Cycle for Big Data, 2012, Gartner states that Column-Store DBMS, Cloud Computing, In-Memory Database Management Systems will be the three most transformational technologies in the next five years. Gartner goes on to predict that Complex Event Processing, Content Analytics, Context-Enriched Services, Hybrid Cloud Computing, Information Capabilities Framework and Telematics round out the technologies the research firm considers transformational. The Hype Cycle for Big Data is shown below:

Predictive modeling is gaining momentum with property and casualty (P&C) companies who are using them to support claims analysis, CRM, risk management, pricing and actuarial workflows, quoting, and underwriting. Web-based quoting systems and pricing optimization strategies are benefiting from investments in predictive modeling as well. The Priority Matrix for Big Data, 2012 is shown below:

Social content is the fastest growing category of new content in the enterprise and will eventually attain 20% market penetration. Gartner defines social content as unstructured data created, edited and published on corporate blogs, communication and collaboration platforms, in addition to external platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and a myriad of others.

Gartner reports that 45% as sales management teams identify sales analytics as a priority to help them understand sales performance, market conditions and opportunities.

Over 80% of Web Analytics solutions are delivered via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Gartner goes on to estimate that over 90% of the total available market for Web Analytics are already using some form of tools and thatGoogle reported 10 million registrations for Google Analytics alone. Google also reports 200,000 active users of their free Analytics application. Gartner also states that the majority of the customers for these systems use two or more Web analytics applications, and less than 50% use the advanced functions including data warehousing, advanced reporting and higher-end customer segmentation features.

In the report Market Trends: Big Data Opportunities in Vertical Industries, the following heat map by industry shows that from a volume of data perspective, Banking and Securities, Communications, Media and Services, Government, and Manufacturing and Natural Resources have the greatest potential opportunity for Big Data.

Last week Gartner hosted Big Data Opportunities in Vertical Industries (August 7^th) and provided an excellent overview of the research behind Market Trends: Big Data Opportunities in Vertical Industries. The following graphic was included in the webinar showing big data investments by industry.

The Wikibon Blog has created an excellent compilation of big data statistics and market forecasts. Their post, A Comprehensive list of Big Data Statistics, can be found here. They’ve also created an infographic titled Taming Big Data. You can find The Big List of Big Data Infographics here.

The Hadoop-MapReduce market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 58% reaching $2.2 billion in 2018. Source:Hadoop-MapReduce Market Forecast 2013-2018

Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity is available for download from the McKinsey Global Institute for free. This is 156 page document authored by McKinsey researchers is excellent. While it was published last year (June, 2011), if you’re following big data, download a copy as much of the research is still relevant. McKinsey includes extensive analysis of how big data can deliver value in a manufacturing value chains for example, which is shown below:

How is big data faring in the enterprise? Is an excellent blog post written by best-selling author and thought leader Dion Hinchcliffe . Be sure to follow Dion on Twitter and by subscribing to his blog, he delivers excellent content that is insightful and interesting.

Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing Shows Enterprises Finding Value in Big Data, Virtualization (forbes.com)
Gartner Puts Numbers To Their Forecast For Cloud Computing (cfoknowledge.wordpress.com)
Gartner Hype Cycle 2012 – Emerging Technologies (setandbma.wordpress.com)
16 August 2012: Forbes (tapthe90.com)
What Do CIOs Need to Know About Big Data? (cochituatemedia.com)
Who Is Paying For Big Data Projects? (informationweek.com)

Categories: Big Data Tags: big data, bigData, cloud computing, Complex Event Processing, Database management system, forbes, gartner, Hype cycle, Telematics

Gartner Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012: Sales Turns to the Cloud for Quick Relief – Forbes

July 29, 2012 huguesrey 4 comments

Gartner Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012: Sales Turns to the Cloud for Quick Relief – Forbes.

Sales VPs for years have been test-driving SaaS-based CRM systems, piloting them with sales teams to see if using them leads to higher sales and greater customer retention. Marketing VPs and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) also continue to pilot SaaS-based web analytics and marketing automation applications.

What’s been missing from these pilots is the ability to bring CRM, marketing automation, sales management and web analytics systems into existing enterprise IT architectures just as fast. This is changing quickly. CRM vendors have been quick to respond to the challenge, offering Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs), integration adapters, connectors and from larger vendors, integrated bus architectures.

What the Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012 Means

CRM’s real value is in unifying an entire enterprise based on its ability to sell, serve and retain customers better than before. Gartner shows this is a high priority for its CRM clients by underscoring which technology and application areas of the hype cycle are responding to his market dynamic, and which aren’t.

This Hype Cycle also reflects the urgency I hear from Sales VPs who want to get in control of the complex compensation, quota, territory management, job appraisal and sales coaching responsibilities they have. While each of these areas is essential, many companies, even those in enterprise software, have ignored these areas, allowing them to stay manually based. Gartner calls this area Sales Performance Management (SPM) and shows it has the highest benefit of all SaaS-based sales management applications in the next two years. Gartner’s analysis captures the time shortage that Sales VPs I know are facing; they have to get to high quota levels while also managing a diverse set of leadership responsibilities as well. The Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012 (G00234919) is shown below:

Gartner estimates 35% of all CRM implementations today use SaaS, growing to over 50% by 2020 according to their projections. In 2011, more than $5 billion was invested in sales applications.

Cloud adoption varies significantly across CRM software categories with Web analytics achieving 95% adoption, Sales Force Automation achieving just over 50%, and Configure Price Quote (CPQ) achieving 40%. Cloud-based Sales Performance Management has the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of any CRM category according to inquiry and client calls.

Sales, Customer Service, Social CRM and Marketing are the four fastest-growing areas of enterprise Sales applications on SaaS. Campaign Management is increasingly quickly, up from 19% using SaaS in 2010 to 29% in 2011.

Gartner sees significant growth in Configure Price Quote (CPQ), projecting a market of $300M in 2012, up from $240M in 2011. Gartner is due out with a MarketScope on CPQ shortly, where the 15 major vendors it tracks in this area will be ranked. 40% of existing implementations are on SaaS, and that proportion is increasing relative to licensed versions. Of the 15 vendors in this market, 12 have announced SaaS-based versions of their applications.

There are 3.8M Sales Force Automation SaaS users globally today.

By 2017, 25% of companies adopting CRM will have extended their customer service contact centers to include social media includingFacebook, Twitter and other emerging online communities. As of 2012, Gartner is seeking only 1% of companies integrate social media into their companies’ departments and work flows to ensure a consistent customer experience.

Price Optimization will experience transformational growth in two to five years. Gartner sees this area as one of the most promising across all CRM Sales as can be seen in the Priority Matrix for CRM Sales 2012 below from the Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012. The research firm has defined this market as including price analysis, price optimization and price execution. Gartner estimates this market was $180M to $190M in 2010. Vendor competing in this market include Accenture, Deloitte, Pros, Vendavo, Vistaar Technologies and Zilliant.

Social CRM (SCRM) for Sales is at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, with 90% of spending for these applications being generated from B2C companies. Gartner expects B2B companies to lead the growth of these applications through 2015, increasing spending from 5% of total SCRM sales in 2011 to 30% by 2015.

SaaS-based CRM sales within enterprises are expected to reach $4.48B in 2012, growing to $6.3B in 2015. The following table from the report Forecast: Software as a Service, Worldwide 2010-2015, 2H11 Update provides a frame of reference for SaaS-based CRM growth overall.

Salesforce leads all CRM vendors in market share growth, advancing 2.8% from 2010 to 2011 according to Gartner’s’ global market share analysis shown below. Salesforce attained 26.9% revenue growth from 2010 to 2011 ($1.3B to $1.6B) and 36.7% growth from 2011 to 2012 ($1.6B to $2.27B). The future momentum of Salesforce is in unifying the enterprise, redefining corporate IT in the context of the customer. Their recent acquisitions show analytics, marketing automation and development platforms are key priorities. The following table is from the report Market Share Snapshot: CRM Software, 2011 (G00233998).

Bottom line: Making CRM strategies successful has to start with a common vision and urgency for results. Both are happening quicker in CRM than ever before, driven by a much clearer understanding of what enterprises need to more effectively attain their goals.