Friday, December 23, 2005
Analysts and Software Vendors Unite: Bring me great gifts for the holidays!
Tis the season to be jolly and bring gifts to enterprise architects worldwide. Figured instead of letting lots of folks get it wrong, I would present my holiday wishlist...
Jon Udell, I desire two big favors of you. I really, really, really, really, really would appreciate if you could cover the notion of open source industry analysis in an upcoming column. I know you have mentioned it in your blog but traditional print will help get the importance of this emerging trend in front of all those CIOs us enterprise architects have to deal with who practice Management by Magazine. My second request of you is that I feel I have let you off the hook in terms of you using the world analyst in your own title but disclaiming association. In all reality, I believe that Infoworld is equally guilty of the same questionable guidance practiced by other folks with the title analyst in that they too never seem to compare non-commercial open source product offerings next to commercial proprietary offerings in the test lab. If in the new year, the lab happens to look at either Portals or Enterprise Service Bus, I ask that you throw both Liferay Enterprise Portal and ServiceMix into the product mix. I know you have a ton of integrity and will bring integrity back to the test lab for all readers to see...
James and Stephen oh wise industry analysts from RedMonk I would appreciate your wisdom in helping me as a customer address problems in the industry analysis space. You may have figured out that I read your blogs religiously. My problem is simple. If you are familiar with the process within a large enterprise you are probably aware that an otherwise bad idea that is backed with an industry analyst report is an easier sell than a kick butt well-thought out innovative approach with no supporting documentation. Many of my peers are truly smart individuals but have a difficult job in selling because analysts aren't really providing the documentation that no one really reads for us to do our own jobs. For example, I would love advice on influencing other industry analyst firms to convince the folks at Radicati,Ovum and other large analyst firms that they really should list non-commercial open source projects right alongside commercial proprietary offerings. This would help make our strategy around open source much easier.
Shahin, your company has a lot of really smart people, can they come out and play? You have some really innovative technology. I would love for Azul to start teaching the rest of the planet on how to write extremely scalable multi-threaded Java applications. Lots of proprietary closed-source products simply don't scale in normal environments. Help us folks in the enterprise get scalable enterprise applications from these vendors by creating a 100% publicly available reference architecture outlining practices for running on 384 CPUs. And, while you are working on this, please encourage your CTO Gil Tene and Cliff Click to start blogging...
Brenda, your firm Patricia Seybold Group is really cool. In many ways you are giving RedMonk a run for the money. I recently had the opportunity to read one of your reports and realize that you know SOA deeper than other analyst firms in this space. Hope you don't mind if I direct enterprise architects from other organizations towards your work? I really love when I read a report from an analyst firm and it actually contains references to sources vs the usual practice of only referring to other documents created by the analyst firm itself. This not only shows integrity but real leadership. I wonder if other bloggers in the blogosphere will follow your lead...
Microsoft and Sun Bloggers, I know that you both are passionate about your creations but for a moment could you take the opportunity to listen to the wishes and desires of your customers? I achieved my MSCE and MCSD in 1994 (MCP #9079) yet I equally understand the value proposition that J2EE provides. Both technologies allow me to solve business issues with equal costs, qualities and other attributes. If someone were to ever ask me my own personal off-the-record opinion as to which one I prefer better, it would probably be based more on my recollection of which company sent me the coolest laptop bag. My opinion would definitely be swayed if I got a Ruby on Rails bag before one labelled .NET or Java...
Christopher Koch of CIO Magazine I would love for you tell the real story regarding open source. There are several large Fortune 200 enterprises that not only use open source but actually contribute to it. Note, that I am not asking you to write an article about my own undertakings or that of my peers (you are welcome to do so though) but really believe it is important that other CIOs get to hear the story that is less frequently told. For example, maybe you could tell the story of all of the wonderful things that folks over at Morgan Stanley are doing with open source and how developers while on the clock get paid to write software freely. Maybe you could tell the story about the folks on Wall Street (too many to name) that are working on developing an open source replacement for IBM MQ/Series. While you are at it, maybe you could tell the story of the folks over at Duke Energy and their wonderful contribution of their .NET framework so that the myth that open source doesn't exist in Microsoft land can be put to rest.
To all of the folks who happen to read my blog, I ask you to of one simple favor. There are many people in this planet that are lonely, hungry and simply need a helping hand. I have listed several of my favorite charities for 2005 (in no particular order) and ask that you consider making a small donation to any of them...
| | View blog reactionsJon Udell, I desire two big favors of you. I really, really, really, really, really would appreciate if you could cover the notion of open source industry analysis in an upcoming column. I know you have mentioned it in your blog but traditional print will help get the importance of this emerging trend in front of all those CIOs us enterprise architects have to deal with who practice Management by Magazine. My second request of you is that I feel I have let you off the hook in terms of you using the world analyst in your own title but disclaiming association. In all reality, I believe that Infoworld is equally guilty of the same questionable guidance practiced by other folks with the title analyst in that they too never seem to compare non-commercial open source product offerings next to commercial proprietary offerings in the test lab. If in the new year, the lab happens to look at either Portals or Enterprise Service Bus, I ask that you throw both Liferay Enterprise Portal and ServiceMix into the product mix. I know you have a ton of integrity and will bring integrity back to the test lab for all readers to see...
James and Stephen oh wise industry analysts from RedMonk I would appreciate your wisdom in helping me as a customer address problems in the industry analysis space. You may have figured out that I read your blogs religiously. My problem is simple. If you are familiar with the process within a large enterprise you are probably aware that an otherwise bad idea that is backed with an industry analyst report is an easier sell than a kick butt well-thought out innovative approach with no supporting documentation. Many of my peers are truly smart individuals but have a difficult job in selling because analysts aren't really providing the documentation that no one really reads for us to do our own jobs. For example, I would love advice on influencing other industry analyst firms to convince the folks at Radicati,Ovum and other large analyst firms that they really should list non-commercial open source projects right alongside commercial proprietary offerings. This would help make our strategy around open source much easier.
Shahin, your company has a lot of really smart people, can they come out and play? You have some really innovative technology. I would love for Azul to start teaching the rest of the planet on how to write extremely scalable multi-threaded Java applications. Lots of proprietary closed-source products simply don't scale in normal environments. Help us folks in the enterprise get scalable enterprise applications from these vendors by creating a 100% publicly available reference architecture outlining practices for running on 384 CPUs. And, while you are working on this, please encourage your CTO Gil Tene and Cliff Click to start blogging...
Brenda, your firm Patricia Seybold Group is really cool. In many ways you are giving RedMonk a run for the money. I recently had the opportunity to read one of your reports and realize that you know SOA deeper than other analyst firms in this space. Hope you don't mind if I direct enterprise architects from other organizations towards your work? I really love when I read a report from an analyst firm and it actually contains references to sources vs the usual practice of only referring to other documents created by the analyst firm itself. This not only shows integrity but real leadership. I wonder if other bloggers in the blogosphere will follow your lead...
Microsoft and Sun Bloggers, I know that you both are passionate about your creations but for a moment could you take the opportunity to listen to the wishes and desires of your customers? I achieved my MSCE and MCSD in 1994 (MCP #9079) yet I equally understand the value proposition that J2EE provides. Both technologies allow me to solve business issues with equal costs, qualities and other attributes. If someone were to ever ask me my own personal off-the-record opinion as to which one I prefer better, it would probably be based more on my recollection of which company sent me the coolest laptop bag. My opinion would definitely be swayed if I got a Ruby on Rails bag before one labelled .NET or Java...
Christopher Koch of CIO Magazine I would love for you tell the real story regarding open source. There are several large Fortune 200 enterprises that not only use open source but actually contribute to it. Note, that I am not asking you to write an article about my own undertakings or that of my peers (you are welcome to do so though) but really believe it is important that other CIOs get to hear the story that is less frequently told. For example, maybe you could tell the story of all of the wonderful things that folks over at Morgan Stanley are doing with open source and how developers while on the clock get paid to write software freely. Maybe you could tell the story about the folks on Wall Street (too many to name) that are working on developing an open source replacement for IBM MQ/Series. While you are at it, maybe you could tell the story of the folks over at Duke Energy and their wonderful contribution of their .NET framework so that the myth that open source doesn't exist in Microsoft land can be put to rest.
To all of the folks who happen to read my blog, I ask you to of one simple favor. There are many people in this planet that are lonely, hungry and simply need a helping hand. I have listed several of my favorite charities for 2005 (in no particular order) and ask that you consider making a small donation to any of them...
- American Heart Association
- M.I.S.S. Foundation
- Not in My Name
- Global Fund for Women
- Artists helping Children
