Real-life experiences of Global 100 companies putting Web 2.0 to work – as a core part of their business strategy – are not that common yet. At IDC’s European IT Forum in Berlin last September, Procter & Gamble VP Patrick Arlequeeuw spoke about the company’s experiences in using Web 2.0 technologies and business models to increase the collaboration of P&G researchers with each other (InnovationNet) and outsiders (Connect and Develop), as well as between P&G and its customers (B2B Portal).

Here is a video excerpt:

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In my last post, I wrote about Cisco’s expanding ambitions – to move from a communication products company to a business solutions provider and platform. In this post, I briefly assess Cisco’s potential to get there. [...read more...]

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In Cisco & WebEx: Striking Two Hyperdisruption Chords, we said that Cisco – in the wake of its WebEx acquisition – has a disruption-enabled opportunity to expand its business far beyond networking, moving “up the stack” toward business applications and solutions. Last week, at C-Scape, Cisco’s analyst briefing in San Jose, John Chambers and other Cisco executives articulated just such an expansive vision of the company’s future – one they hope will move the company well beyond its traditional role as networking sector leader, to a leader in providing a wide range of business solutions. [...read more...]

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Earlier this month, IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (STG) hosted its annual briefing for IT industry analysts in Stamford, CT. The briefing covered a lot of ground in 1-1/2 days. But, in my view, the two biggest stories were STG’s plans to: 1) get more proactive with partners around solutions development and delivery, and 2) dramatically increase its SMB market share through new product designs and new delivery models. Here are my key takeaways: [...read more...]

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Many in the market think of Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle as the “kingpins” of the business applications world – after all, these four own the major, traditional application platforms. And they have developed – and are rapidly expanding – large communities of developers around those platforms.

But in my IDC Directions speech in March, I mentioned the growing importance of the major Internet sites like Google, Amazon, Paypal and eBay as a new form of web-based application platform and developer community. [...read more...]

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A few weeks ago, I spoke at our annual State of the IT Industry event – IDC Directions – about the remarkable hyperdisruption we see in process in the IT market. A number of clients, among the over 2,000 that attended between the San Jose and Boston venues, have asked for the video of my talk. Here it is (without the “bat-spinning” demo I showed on-site):

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In IDC Predictions 2007, one call that has sparked a lot of attention and debate is:

Salesforce.com will be acquired in 2007. We believe the growing importance of online delivery of software and business services will make salesforce.com (and particularly its AppExchange hub) a very tempting target to both large players (like IBM, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft) still struggling to scale down and move online, and consumer-heavy players (like Google, Yahoo!, AOL) trying to “scale up” to the business market as a way to further monetize their online presence.

A number of clients (as well as some IDC colleagues!) have pinged me for more detail on why I see a salesforce.com acquisition coming, especially since founder Marc Benioff has consistently asserted that the company is not for sale. Here’s the story… [...read more...]

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[This is the first of several posts that "call-out" key messages from IDC Predictions 2007 - fg]

As we noted in IDC Predictions 2007, this will be a year of intense “hyperdisruption” in the IT industry, with major structural changes taking place along different industry vectors at once – all interacting with each other and, more important, accelerating each other.

Among the many such disruptions, here are nine that we see as critical for IT suppliers and customers to understand, and factor into their strategies right now: [...read more...]

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2007 will be a year of intense “hyperdisruption” in the IT industry, with major structural changes taking place along different industry vectors at once – all interacting with each other and, more important, accelerating each other. In 2007, we’ll see small business become big, more software become services, more services become software, business IT players become more “consumer-ish”, and consumer players become more business-like. These disruptions, and others, will force most market leaders out of their comfort zones and open up new opportunities to those that choose to surf with these disruptions rather than stand against them. [...read more...]

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