
Endings and Beginnings
Almost ten years ago I did a slight career course change and moved from senior roles inside software companies to software market analyst. In that nearly ten years with analyst firm IDC, leading what has grown into a broad team of highly respected software market analysts, I have grown professionally and personally. For the first […]

A Step Towards Protecting Net Neutrality
It was rumored for the past few weeks that this would be the week that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would preview new rules to protect net neutrality (if you want more background on net neutrality and the issues I wrote this post last year). Today on Wired.com, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler explained the proposal […]

Proximity Marketing
Proximity marketing or hyperlocal marketing as it’s sometimes called, is on the upsurge this year. The fact that the smartphone market continues to grow with ~1.3B shipments in 2014 WW, and a CAGR of near 10% through 2018 (based on the IDC Smartphone Tracker) is a part of that of course, but also the technology […]

Some Non-Predictions for 2015
It’s that time of new year when you get deluged with analysts / bloggers predictions and prognostications. I join in most years, and of course there’s the IDC predictions process to contend with as well. This year I swore that I was skipping it. I’ve already done the new IDC “Futurescape” document and webcast with my […]

Is 2015 the Year of the Digital Wallet?
2014 will go down as the year of the major corporate hack. It happened in retail, in banking, in entertainment, in government and probably in many other places that never went public. Personally I have had new debit cards issued three times this past year, all because of a retail hack. Everytime it happens I […]

Transforming Data into Action – Part 3
In part three of the series we will focus on sources of data beyond in-house transaction data and data collected from social listening, and the impact of the Internet and Cloud Computing on both the distribution of data and the business models that are evolving around that data. Data brokers, that is, companies that aggregate […]

Transforming Data Into Action – Part Two
In part one of this series we looked at big data and transforming it into smart data, or data that is contextual, relevant and delivered to the right people / person at the right time. One of the other interesting and growing use cases in the business use of data is something called small data. […]

Social Business and Digital Strategy
Social business, collaboration, community and content, is there real business value tucked away in those words? Digital transformation, digital strategy and digital disruption, are businesses really feeling the pressure to do somethings differently and by changing can they be more competitive, grow faster and be more successful? What’s different today that would help businesses unlock […]

Why is Good Customer Service So Difficult?
This could easily be a rant based on some recent customer service experiences but I’m going to avoid that and instead look at what companies are facing today in trying to meet customer expectations. I read recently that Comcast has finally appointed a VP to try and address their extremely poor customer service (I’d say […]

Transforming Data Into Action – Part One
Everywhere you look in tech today you’ll read / hear about big data and all the many uses businesses could get from it. Businesses do certainly need to become more data driven and in fact the business model for the Information Age is something we’ve referred to as “sense and respond”. Moving from the old […]