Gartner voorspelt wereldwijde groei ICT-investeringen in 2010

Groei van meer dan vijf procent in West-Europa

Het onderzoeksbureau Gartner gaat er van uit dat de economische heropleving die dit jaar verwacht wordt, ook zal leiden tot een toename van de IT-budgetten. Voor de hele wereld verwacht Gartner een groei met 4,6 procent.

Gartner geeft toe dat deze verhoging relatief beperkt is, maar toch schril afsteekt tegen een daling met 4,6 procent vorig jaar. Gartner voorspelt dat de ICT op alle domeinen zal groeien, zowel in software en diensten als ook in hardware. Voor hardware voorspelt Gartner ziet voor hardware een vooruitgang met 1,6 procent. IT-dienstverlening zal het hardste groeien, met 5,6 procent.

Uiteraard zullen niet alle regio’s in de wereld even sterk groeien. De groei zou het grootste zijn in Latijns-Amerika, Afrika en het Midden-Oosten en Azië. In West-Europa ziet Gartner een groei met 5,2 procent.

De motivatie achter de groei ziet Gartner in het feit dat de economie zelf groeit en dat bedrijven naar nieuwe technologieën zullen zoeken om die groei te verwezenlijken. Gartner gaat er ook van uit dat het voor bedrijven makkelijker zal zijn om aan kredieten te geraken om de investeringen mogelijk te maken.

Gartner: Global software budgets will grow next year

IDG News Service - A new report by Gartner Inc. showing that software spending will increase worldwide next year indicates there may be truth to the general belief that the technology market has hit bottom.

According to results of a Gartner survey of about 1,000 IT professionals worldwide conducted in April and May, 28% of companies in North America expected to increase their software budgets in 2010, while 25% of companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and 30% in the Asia/Pacific region expected the same.

"We're at a turning point," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner and the lead analyst on the survey. She said the survey was conducted during those months because that was about the six-month point after the global economy went into crisis and companies had some time to plan their way through it.

"Everybody has been through six months of 'What am I going to do?'" she said. "We wanted to get a good idea of what their tone was going to be."

Many second-quarter financial results for major sellers of software such as Microsoft Corp. and IBM showed a decline in year-over-year revenue in that segment. However, companies in general reported that though they were not out of the woods financially yet, there would be growth over the next year.

Correia said Gartner's report supports an overall cautiously optimistic tone. While it appears that companies' software budgets have bottomed out and are on the rise, she warned people not to expect anything dramatic. "We're crawling out of the hole," Correia said.

Despite this bit of good news, software spending in general is expected to be on the decline in North America, though other geographies are expecting a slight bump, according to the report.

Software spending in North America is expected to decline 2.06%nt in 2010, with EMEA showing slight positive growth at 0.45 percent, Gartner reported.

The U.S. in particular "is a little more negative than the rest of the world," Correia noted. However, that market "has bottomed out" and companies will start adding money to IT budgets.

Certain economic factors in the U.S. have made it a more challenging environment for IT growth, such as the collapse of its financial and manufacturing markets, Correia said. The financial industry represents about 21% of software spending in the U.S., and the manufacturing industry represents 15% to 18%, she said.

Mature markets in general will show slower growth next year, which is also why growth in the region that includes Europe also will continue to be sluggish, she added.

Software budgets in Latin America and Asia/Pacific should fare better, however, with a rise of 2.54% in the former region and a rise of 4.34% in the latter, according to the report.

Emerging markets like Asia and Central America -- where countries like China, India and Brazil are working on modernizing their IT infrastructure -- will have more growth because of this development, Correia said. Gartner in particular polled IT professionals in China and India for the survey, which could account for why it shows a fair amount of growth in Asia, she added.

Gartner praises Futura Process Intelligence

Once a year trendsetter Gartner assesses several organizations as 'most innovative' in their field of expertise. Futura Process Intelligence is elected as one of the 'Cool Vendors in Business Process Management'. Gartner speaks highly of Futura Process Intelligence for their innovative work on automated business process discovery (ABPD).

Quotes from the Gartner report:
The software suite Reflect "is used for the purpose of 'process intelligence', Futura's term for the combinations of ABPD and the improvement of business processes." "In addition to Reflect, Futura also offers related services, (like the) '14-day challenge'. During a two-week period, Futura will discover, mine and analyze a mutually agreed-on business process and deliver process models, process improvement points and social interaction diagrams." "Tool vendors in other categories are jumping into this field, but they all have their own challenges. These BI tools are often too complicated for many people to use and understand, and lack a process perspective." "Factors that differentiate Futura from many other offerings in the field of BPM include its strong focus on staying ahead of the curve by innovating and the highly intuitive way it provides insight into the historical execution of a process using a novel process animation technique."

Gartner emphasizes that companies that are engaged in business process improvement should be aware that traditional business process modelling is a costly and time-consuming process that is vulnerable to human interpretation, inadequate business knowledge and a lack of objective validation techniques. ABPD and process intelligence can be used to overcome these shortcomings by creating business process models at a fraction of the time and cost involved in traditional methods. Moreover, this method provides the basis for much more accurate process analysis.

About Futura Process Intelligence

In the fall of 2006 Futura Process Intelligence was established. On the basis of scientific research on genetic algorithms, Futura builds commercial software (Reflect), that makes it possible to quickly and accurately define business processes. Reflect is being offered as Software as a Service (SaaS).

Futura Process Intelligence is an ICT-company focused on developing and offering products and services in the domain of Process Intelligence. Since Process intelligence is a relatively new area of expertise, there is still al lot of ambiguity about it.

We see Process Intelligence positioned between the domains of BPM and BI. Because of the focus on processes and data/information about them it's definitely part of the BPM area. It's also part of the BI-arena, because we're using process- and data-mining techniques and software for further analysis to improve the processes and businesses of our customers. We also cover and fill in one quadrant of the Balanced score card (the quadrant "internal processes") with our process monitoring and compliance solutions.

The purpose of Process Intelligence is to unlock the hidden knowledge about processes using historical data and help customers to improve productivity, quality and profitability by making this knowledge explicit and more comprehensible so they can use it effectively.

At the moment we are focusing on our software product Reflect, which is a SaaS application with a business model based on pay-per-use and subscriptions. Reflect is a tool suite for process mining, analysis and charting, making process models and animations, etc. In Reflect we're using genetic algorithms, which have been researched and published at the Technical University of Eindhoven. We have a strong focus on staying ahead in the field, innovating and translating the outcomes of research into solutions that can help solve and improve real life challenges.

Please call or email us for a free demo +31650730710 or dfiservices@live.nl

De (blijvende) aandacht voor SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)

Op de conferentie ‘Gartner BPM Summit 2008’ waren 370 deelnemers aanwezig uit meer dan 25 landen.

Het hoeft niet te verwonderen dat SOA in de belangstelling blijft. Gartner is immers een organisatie die zich richt op onderzoek en advies ten behoeve van de IT industrie. SOA betekent ruwweg het werken met modulaire ‘services’ die ontwikkeld en ter beschikking gesteld worden binnen de IT afdeling als bouwstenen om bedrijfsprocessen te informatiseren. Het grote voordeel van het werken met services is de transparantie en het hergebruik van deze services voor andere huidige en toekomstige toepassingen (en dus processen). BPM als methode om processen te informatiseren is dus nauw verbonden met SOA.

Er dient aangestipt dat BPM in deze context herleid wordt tot een methodiek om processen in kaart te brengen als voorbereiding op informatisering. Dit zorgt voor nogal wat verwarring over de juiste betekenis van BPM.
BPM moet men los zien van informatisering: bedrijfsprocessen kunnen ook verbeterd worden zonder enige vorm van informatisering.

Uit de verschillende presentaties is gebleken dat de SOA filosofie op zich wel goed is, maar pas op lange termijn enige vruchten zal (of kan) afwerpen.

Toenemende mogelijkheden van de BPMS (Business Process Management Suites)

Dit is de naam die Gartner gegeven heeft aan tools die het volledige spectrum van BPM omvatten, met name:

procesmodellering
procesuitvoering en bewaken van de status ervan
management van documenten en inhoud
samenwerking met gebruikers en groepen
verbindingen met andere applicaties en services
procesbewaking en -rapportering
simulatie en optimalisatie
beheer van regels
beheer van het systeem
beheer van de procescomponenten

Dit betekent dus dat de volledige BPM-cyclus (van modelleren, via simuleren tot uitvoeren, bewaken, analyseren en optimaliseren) van een of meerdere processen afgedekt wordt met één enkele geïntegreerde tool. Een BPMS is enkel voorbehouden voor enkele types processen die bovendien aan vele veranderingen (zoals wijzigingen in de regels) onderhevig zijn. Een BPMS wordt ingezet in een filosofie van: ‘gebouwd om te veranderen’ (built to change) en niet met als uitgangspunt ‘gebouwd om te blijven’ (built to last).

Vóór 2005 voldeed geen enkele tool aan deze 10 hierboven vermelde kenmerken. Thans zijn er meer dan 15 tools die er wel aan voldoen. Er is dus grote vooruitgang geboekt op dat vlak.

Aandacht voor de organisatorische dimensie van BPM-trajecten

Naast de vele aandacht voor de link met SOA (de technische dimensie) is er tijdens de conferentie gelukkig ook voldoende aandacht besteed aan de wijze waarop BPM trajecten georganiseerd moeten worden. Het managen van BPM dus.

Vooreerst is er het spanningsveld tussen een procesgeoriënteerde organisatie (met proceseigenaars) en de functionele organisatie. Het is duidelijk geworden dat de functionele organisatie niet zo maar vervangen zal worden door een procesgeoriënteerde organisatie. De beide vormen zullen naast elkaar blijven en op die manier een matrix organisatie vormen. De rol van proceseigenaar bestaat erin om te zorgen voor de initiatie en de coördinatie van verbeteringen op het niveau van het betrokken ‘end-to-end’ proces.

Een ander organisatorisch aandachtspunt is de aansturing van BPM door een specifieke stafdienst, het BPCC (“Business Process Competency Center”) genoemd. Deze dienst levert de nodige expertise om BPM projecten succesvol uit te voeren. Deze expertise situeert zich niet alleen in het domein van processen maar eveneens in de domeinen projectmanagement en veranderingsmanagement.

Verder heeft Gartner aandacht voor de bedrijfscultuur van de organisatie bij de invoering van BPM en maakt een onderscheid tussen een ‘agressieve’ versus een ‘conservatieve’ cultuur.

Tot slot ontwikkelde Gartner een maturiteitsmodel dat de verschillende te nemen stappen weergeeft op weg naar mature BPM organisatie.


Evolutie in de voordelen van BPM

Uit onderzoek is gebleken dat het verbeteren van processen thans de nummer 1 prioriteit is van de CIO (of de IT manager).

Momenteel ligt de nadruk vooral op de efficiëntie (productiviteit, kostenbeheer, …). Dit zal op termijn verschuiven naar effectiviteit (focus op de klant, wendbaarheid, verbeteren van de doorlooptijden, …)

BPM wordt intelligent

Op het BPM-congres van Amelior op 8 mei in Nederland lichtte key-note spreker Prof. Dr. Ir. Wil Van der Aalst de rol toe van process mining in BPM en de resultaten die daardoor kunnen worden geboekt.

Met process mining krijgt BPM volgens Wil Van der Aalst eindelijk de kans echte toegevoegde waarde te leveren. Het idee achter process mining is het onttrekken van kennis over processen uit informatiesystemen.

Vandaag de dag registreren informatiesystemen enorme hoeveelheden gegevens over operationele processen. Elke behandeling in een ziekenhuis leidt tot een lawine van events die aangeven wat er precies met een patiënt is gebeurd. ERP systemen zoals SAP en Oracle en workflow en middleware technologie zoals WebSphere, Staffware en FLOWer, registreren vele activiteiten die plaatsvinden binnen en tussen organisaties.

Aan de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven werken meer dan 50 onderzoekers op het gebied van BPM. Van deze 50 onderzoekers werken er ongeveer 25 aan nieuwe process mining technieken en toepassingen van process mining. Process mining kan gebruikt worden om processen in kaart te brengen en deze verder te analyseren op bijvoorbeeld knelpunten en andere problemen. Hierbij blijkt vaak dat het management een verkeerd beeld heeft van hoe de processen nu echt lopen. Process mining kan ook gebruikt worden voor conformance checking, bijvoorbeeld in de context van SOX compliance.

De resultaten die met process mining bereikt kunnen worden zijn vaak spectaculair van aard. Het is veelal een openbaring om van een problematisch proces bestaande uit tientallen, zo niet honderden activiteiten, een gedetailleerde en accurate ‘landkaart’ te krijgen. Dit maakt pijnlijk duidelijk dat de zogenaamde BI (Business Intelligence)-tools helemaal niet intelligent zijn en dat deze tools zeker geen inzicht geven in wat er nu echt gebeurt binnen processen. Het maakt ook duidelijk dat Business Process Management zich teveel met het modelleren en implementeren van ‘niet bestaande processen’ heeft beziggehouden. Het ontbreekt in BPM-systemen aan een goede diagnosefunctie. Verder is het echt niet altijd noodzakelijk processen te automatiseren om ze te verbeteren. Een analyse op basis van feiten in plaats van politiek gekleurde opinies doet hier wonderen.

Onder leiding van Prof. Wil Van der Aalst wordt er in Eindhoven gewerkt aan een open-source process mining gereedschap: ProM. ProM is met succes ingezet in vele bedrijven die uiteenlopen van ziekenhuizen zoals het AMC in Amsterdam tot (semi-)overheidsorganisaties zoals het UWV, Rijkswaterstaat en de gemeente Alkmaar.

Ook wordt process mining met behulp van ProM steeds vaker ingezet voor de analyse van het gebruik van complexe professionele systemen zoals de röntgenapparatuur van Philips Medical Systems en de wafer-steppers van ASML. Deze systemen hangen aan het internet en geven de producenten een precies beeld van hun daadwerkelijke gebruik en prestaties.

Ook worden ideeën gerealiseerd in ProM steeds vaker overgenomen in commerciële softwareproducten. Een mooi voorbeeld is de nieuwe BPM-suite van Pallas Athena die als eerste BPM-suite process mining integraal ondersteunt. Ook zijn er nieuwe bedrijven als Futura Technology die zich richten op het maken van specifieke process mining applicaties.

Voor meer informatie: www.processmining.org.

Gartner’s Top 10 IT predictions for 2008 and beyond

Open source, Apple, green technology and 3-D printing highlighted
Source: Network World,

Open source, Apple computers, green technology, the rise of users and the proliferation of three-dimensional printing are among the hot trends IT shops should look out for in the next few years, according to Gartner. (Fellow industry watcher Forrester Research also issued predictions this week.)

The analyst firm on Thursday highlighted 10 key predictions of developments that will affect IT and business users in 2008 and beyond. Here’s a detailed look at the list, culled from more than 100 predictions Gartner has made based on its research:
























*Apple will double its market share for computers in the United States and Western Europe by 2011. “Apple’s gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple’s success,” Gartner says. A focus on interoperability between the iPod, iMac and other devices is one of the keys for Apple.











*By 2012, half of all workers will use devices other than their laptops when they travel. “Even though notebooks continue to shrink in size and weight, traveling workers lament the weight and inconvenience of carrying them on their trips,” Gartner states. “Vendors are developing solutions to address these concerns: new classes of Internet-centric pocketable devices at the sub-$400 level; and server and Web-based applications that can be accessed from anywhere.”

*80% of commercial software will contain open source code by 2012, providing “significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.”






*Software-as-a-service will account for at least one-third of business application spending by 2012. “Endorsed and promoted by all leading business applications vendors (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft) and many Web technology leaders (Google, Amazon), the SaaS model of deployment and distribution of software services will enjoy steady growth in mainstream use during the next five years,” Gartner writes.

*IT infrastructure will follow the software-as-a-service wave, with early technology adopters purchasing 40% of their infrastructure as a service by 2011. “Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure

*Environmental concerns will affect many more IT buying decisions. “By 2009, more than one third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods,” Gartner says.






* By 2010, three-quarters of IT shops won’t buy PC hardware unless it meets standards for lower carbon emissions and “full life-cycle energy” usage. Technology providers are only now beginning to analyze their products’ full life-cycle energy usage, but within two years enterprises will be able to use the information to inform purchasing decisions, Gartner predicts.

* By 2011, large global enterprises will require suppliers to prove their “green credentials” via an audited process. Already, “Timberland has launched a “Green Index” environmental rating for its shoes and boots [and] Home Depot is working on evaluation and audit criteria for assessing supplier submissions for its new EcoOptions product line.”

* By 2010, the preferences of users will dictate as many as half of the purchasing decisions made by IT. Because Internet browsers have made computing more approachable, “IT organizations are addressing user concerns through planning for a global class of computing that incorporates user decisions in risk analysis and innovation of business strategy,” Gartner says.






* 3-D printers will spread through homes and businesses. This emerging “technology lets users send a file of a 3-D design to a printer-like device that will carve the design out of a block of resin,” Gartner says. “A manufacturer can make scale models of new product designs without the expense of model makers. Or consumers can have models of the avatars they use online.”
These printers will be available for less than $10,000 this year, a hefty sum, but Gartner predicts that by 2011 the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will be 100 times greater than it was in 2006.

Will Cisco ever catch Riverbed or should they just get out now?

Source: CiscoSubnet

I want to start off with an excerpt from a Gartner paper by Mark Fabbi, it was put out back on March 15, 2007. This paper was written for the Cisco Applications Network Services, an before we go farther the Cisco WAAS is a part of this service. Plus we can look at it as a standalone product.

From a product perspective, Cisco's progress through 2006 has been, at best, mixed and largely disappointing. Cisco is a late entrant to an innovative and dynamic market, and it is "playing catch-up" across all market segments. Despite new product announcements during 2006, Cisco still lags behind the market.

I answer so many questions each week from Cisco customer with regards to the Cisco WAAS, what they are told by their Cisco Sales teams and the Riverbed Steelhead. Being a partner of both products it puts me in a unique position with my customers, it allows to me to what is right for my customer. Many VAR’s do not have this opportunity and are looking just to sell a customer more equipment. I always remember the excerpt above that was put out by Gartner and keep waiting for a change, but I have been disappointed just like customers.

From a VAR stand point I think it is time for Cisco to cut its losses and put the WAAS on the shelf. Right now it is not even in the top two of the product category, Riverbed Technologies and Juniper are one and two. If you are asking why would I say this? Well I have been involved in many bake off’s with customers using every product in this category, when it is an unbiased test Riverbed has never lost. By unbiased I mean that that the VAR just does not drop off equipment to the customer and says go test. You cannot just do that with customers or customers will pick based on culture or who gives them more free stuff than who really is the best.

Case in point, I will give two examples of what has happened to me when I was involved in two evaluations using Cisco, Riverbed (product demo) and Juniper. The first was a state organization that would not allow our engineers to be present when they did the testing; they just wanted the equipment and us out of the way. They said that if we were there we would influence the decision and that they were a state organization, let me say the biggest in the state. Now I have performed many bake offs and with the applications they were using, Riverbed would have no trouble winning.

It came to be that the customer said that Juniper and Cisco both did better than Riverbed, but they would not show us the data. Another bake off was with a very large company in which they were drinking the Cisco Kool-Aid way to much and an engineer sabotaged the evals so that Cisco would win. . If they were so up on putting the wrong product in, you might was well let them and we did. Some people will only put Cisco in and they do not care about anything else. There is an old rule with IT Managers and Directors; you never get fired for putting Cisco in your network even if it does not work. This same company called me one month later wanting help with the WAAS when they could not get it to scale or work like they did in the testing.

So as you can see, even if you are number one with Gartner you still have a huge mountain to climb when going up against Cisco. Now back to another reason why Cisco needs to drop the WAAS, the new mobile client from Riverbed is leaps and bounds above anything anyone else has in the network space. Cisco is years away to catching up with Riverbed on the WAAS and another three to five on to that just to get a mobile client that could compete with Riverbed.

I have copied the cautions from the 2007 Gartner report on WAN Optimizations Controllers; both of these were with reference to the Cisco WAAS:

* Successful implementation often requires multiple days by on-site Cisco engineers, dueto the solution's complexity. There is no single view of configuration, policy or WANoptimization features that are split across Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) andseveral router-based Internetwork Operating System (IOS) software options.

* Cisco has been slow to understand emerging market needs, resulting in WAAS featurereleases usually following other vendors' innovations. For instance, WAAS lacksadvanced features such as acceleration for HTTPS and Messaging ApplicationProgramming Interface (MAPI), and Cisco does not offer a software WOC client. Each ofthese features is available from other vendors.

Now I know things change and Cisco has fixed some issues, but even in this December 2007 Gartner Report they did not even mention the lack of a mobile client from Cisco. Now just to be fair I am going to show what Gartner put in about Riverbed:

* Less-capable QOS and reporting features than some leading vendors.

* Steelhead lacks UDP support.

Now I have to say that it looks to me like Gartner could not find anything else to write about Riverbed since they have great reports and have no issues with QOS (Quality Of Service)for any customer using a Cisco or Juniper network.

Let’s think about this for a second, what would happen if Riverbed took my ideas of which I have told the CTO and published a Windows Mobile Client, Blackberry Client and then got into the home user market?

This is my unbiased opinion being a partner of both vendors and doing many bake off’s. I hate to say this about any Cisco product or any product one of my vendors have but if you want to bring order to chaos within your network, don’t use the WAAS. Going back to my comment above it is about doing what is right for your customer with any product; give them the best product for the money.

Time to get out Cisco, maybe a Cisco Iphone?

IF YOU NEED TO PURCHASE HARDWARE FROM RIVERBED PLEASE CONTACT ME BY PHONE +31650730710 OR BY MAIL DESIGNFORIT@LIVE.NL