It's been quite some time since I've talked about Gartner reporting on virtual worlds, so it's timely that they just issued a report identifying the six key things enterprises need to do in order to get control over their employees virtual worlds avatars. There are two reasons I find this report interesting.

The first reason is the content, which I'll cover momentarily. The second reason is that with Gartner covering virtual worlds it's a salvo that the technology is at a point where it's being taken seriously by the enterprise. However, we'll discuss that at another time. For now let's look at the actual information from Gartner on this topic.

Out of the gate here's Gartner's opening statement:

Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behavior and computing platform requirements, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.

2013 is also the date that GigaOm Pro reports that the virtual worlds market will be at $8 to $10 billion annually, as I wrote about yesterday. So while the market is beginning to heat, these are some of the specific items Gartner is mentioning:

1. Help users learn to control their avatars. For most people, controlling and using an avatar is not viewed as intuitive or easy, but like any skill, after a few sessions a user can master the basics. The platform being used can also be an important factor, but improvements in optimizing virtual environment memory have lessened this issue.

For example, anyone who is new to Second Life can attest to the steep learning curve, especially around avatar control. While we live in a real 3d space, our computer interaction to date has largely been via 2d interfaces and specialized games for 3d. A 3d virtual world in which an avatar is completely unhindered by the type of pre-programmed movements inherent in 3d games is a completely different experience. So yes, this is important.

2. Recognize that users will have a personal affinity with their avatar. Users often take pride in their avatar and dress them up or down. For enterprises, this is where dress codes can come into play, if the avatar is being used for company business. Early efforts with avatar appearance have often been viewed as an inhibitor to adoption but this issue should fade as quicker and easier methods of configuring avatars become available.

Indeed, the ability to personalize an avatar is as important as being able to personalize ones workspace. The avatar is an extension of the real person.

3. Educate users on the risks and responsibilities of reputation management. Organizations can avoid problems with employees mixing their personal and professional avatar interaction and activities by suggesting that employees use one avatar for their work interactions and another avatar for personal activities.

Well, ask most experienced Second Life users about the phenomenon of alts. I think to an extent this is important, but it really depends on what the person is doing in their personal time.

4. Extend the code of conduct to include avatars in 3-D virtual environments. Just as with social networking sites and individual Web pages where employees participate as representatives of their employer, an avatar's behavior and appearance are a reflection of the individual and the company they work for. Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments. However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes.

This makes sense especially when someone is representing a business. There has to be a code of conduct in place.

5. Explore the business case for avatars. Justifying avatar use in a business setting is becoming easier, in part because avatar use is gaining wider acceptance. Training and virtual meetings are the top use cases, and one of the main reasons for the increased use of avatars is cost.

Also remember we are still early in terms of discovering all the possibilities of virtual worlds, especially as more augmented reality solutions come to market. So this is an area that will continue to be dynamic I think.

6. Encourage usage and enterprise pilots. Looking ahead, one of the biggest uses of avatars appears to be for online meetings. Web meetings are emerging as an important new use case for virtual environments, and this may be a good point at which to start learning about the issues and opportunities surrounding users and avatars. Enterprises may find that they have a willing and ready population of users who are familiar with avatars and their usage. Pilot testing is still the best option for starting to understand the issues that enterprises will face with increased avatar adoption.

This last one is fairly standard for new technologies as they are adopted into the enterprise. In any event, it will be interesting to see what Gartner has to say as this market continues to evolve.

For the full article click here


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Included below are a few videos which discuss some of the latest trends with regards to the Gartner Hype Cycle. In case you are unfamiliar with the theory of the hype cycle, I've also included a video which discusses the concept.

The first video is from the SLCC conference that happened in May, and feature Mark Kingdon (M Linden), CEO of Linden Lab, which discusses the current status of Second Life within the hype cycle. Clearly his chart outlines what we have covered in this blog in the past, which is that in mid-2007 Second Life entered the Trough, and has since begun a slow steady climb back to relevance. What will emerge is a more focused solution, and for those who have stuck with Second Life through this period, it should be positive.

The second video is from Gartner, and discusses the 2009 e-Commerce hype cycle. I've included this because it has relevance to the first video, namely, that e-Commerce is being seen as a way of cutting costs. Interestingly though, there are a number of highly hyped companies in this space, but Second Life is not amongst these. Clearly though, there is an e-Commerce aspect to SL, which is still being ferreted out, so it remains to be seen how this space will develop.

On the last video, you only need to watch the first few minutes to gain an understanding of the hype cycle.








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Up until this point in time, if one wanted to work in the Information Technology sector, the usual path was to gain a computer science degree and deeply develop and aptitude in topics such coding or systems architecture or network architecture.

According to a new Gartner report, however, that is going to change. Their take is that the new talents required "will blend business, artistic and technical skills.” Certainly if you look at emerging areas such as video, 3d design, etc., artistic skills are high on the list. Also given the rapid changes the web enables, it doesn't make sense to simply rely on your technical prowess to get you through challenges that are both technical and business related.

For their part, Gartner has selected four key descriptions for the nextgen IT worker:

Web User Experience Roles
User experience roles enable users to effectively consume the applications and information delivered on the Web. Although the role of interface designer has been around since the inception of computing, with consumerization and the densely populated and competitive Web environment, this role is often the critical success factor in a product or service

This sounds like a blend of web designer and HUI expertise. Certainly as we move towards more cloud computing solutions, this does become important.

Behavioral Analysis Roles
These roles are aimed at understanding, responding to and exploiting human behavior on the Web and how it may mirror and differ from behaviors in the physical world. Some key roles that will interpret and leverage human behavior are Web psychologists who are becoming increasingly important to product development and marketing, community designers who are responsible for architecting organization-owned communities, and Web and social network miners and analysts who focus on discovering, understanding and exploiting the social and behavioral dynamics of Web communities.

This one sounds a bit crass, but essentially this is what marketing already does. However, what Gartner seems to be saying is that every business, in any sector, is going to have to blend marketing with your web presence. This is a logical extension of where we are heading, and success will hinge on how effectively your web applications are designed and deployed, which is not just a technical exercise anymore.

Information Specialists
With the volume and diversity of content generated, posted and modified on the Web, there is a rising need for information anthropologists who trace the origin, history, and evolution of Web content. Their objectives range from providing the history of content or information to spotting fraudulent or modified images, audio and texts. Information anthropologists may therefore contribute to legal analysis or to processes where intellectual property or information quality and integrity are at risk.

Gartner is acknowledging that IP protection is no longer just the purview of the legal department. If you place an image on your website, or audio, or embed a YouTube video, do you know if it is properly licensed? If not, you need people in place who do understand these things and can act on them in real time.

Digital Lifestyle Experts
These experts will aid individuals and groups (for example, executive management, technology or marketing teams) to become more digitally aware, connected, effective, and sophisticated. A digital lifestyle expert may also assist or stand in for their clients in their Web endeavors — defining target digital profiles, building out a digital image or personal brand — as well as helping wired users achieve the digital status they aspire to. As such, key roles will include digital persona consultants and personal brand advisers.

Personalization. Don't hide behind your website!

The summary is this:

“The future is solidly connected to the Web and new work streams clearly need to arise to support this,” said Ms. Harris. “Creative, artistic and clever people will develop the early iterations of these new jobs. This will enable businesses and government to take early advantage of new capabilities and develop them into mainstream skills.”

Indeed.

The report can be found by clicking here


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Below is a video of a short interview with Steve Prentice of Gartner, in which he does a nice job discussing the spectrum of different types of virtual worlds and touches on the emergence of virtual worlds in the enterprise.

One of the things I haven't discussed much, but which Steve touches on, is the idea of persistence in the network, something in which virtual worlds such as Second Life excel. But we'll get into that concept in a later post. For now, here's the video.



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I'm not sure what to make of the latest prognostications coming from Gartner and Forrester regarding the IT spend projections in 2009. To be sure, they have been ratcheting down projections for a while, with the latest barrage coming just this week. The projections caused PC Magazine to post a response alluding that 2009 is 2001 redux, or something like that.

But really, for IT that doesn't seem to be the case. After all, 2001 was the dot com bust. 2009 is the Wall Street bust. Anyway, the article in question says the following:

But Andrew Bartels, Forrester principal analyst and vice president, insists the tech sector is not in as bad a shape as it was after the dotcom bust. Bartels was careful to not comment specifically on Gartner's findings, but explained that in 2001 Forrester saw a 6 percent decline in spending, followed by 11 percent in 2002, whereas when Forrester published numbers for 2009 this week, it projected a 3.1 percent decrease in IT goods and services purchased by business and government, rather than its original estimation of a 1.6 percent increase.

Look, the truth is it is bad out there. This is a deep recession, it is global, and it portends a lot of changes in regulation. Long term that last item may indeed benefit IT spending. Additional regulation would mean more record keeping, more reporting, all the stuff the IT does well. The point is, that while things are worse than they predicted, the sky isn't falling. We are in a period of change, which means disruption, which, of course, is where IT products fit nicely.

Don't panic.

Source: Click here

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Does Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Social Networking have anything in common? Are Facebook and Second Life and other community engines going to have an impact on B2B and CRM?

According to Gartner, the answer is a resounding yes, but there are also warning flags ahead. Gartner is stating that the social networking area will become a major part of the customer CRM market to the point of being a disruptive force in that market. Gartner is predicting that by 2010, greater than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will have some type of online community that will be utilized for customer relationship purposes.

All good, right? For some:

Gartner predicts that, by 2010, more than half of companies that have established an online community will fail to manage it as an agent of change, ultimately eroding customer value.

Ouch. That's a horrible stat if it turns out to be true, especially given how prevalent social apps are at present on the consumer area. Enterprises are slow to change, especially the massive ones like the Fortune 100, but a 50% failure rate is an absolute travesty.

In any event, Gartner offers the following four recommendations to help avoid failure:

1. Define the initiative and its purpose

2. Cede some control to encourage participation

3. Understand and reward different kinds of participation

4. Acquire skills to build relationships online

This is a good list, and it's clear that this is a growth area. However, I believe that step #4 should actually be the first step. Each organization, in order to be successful, should have at the executive level, someone who has expertise in social computing. Gartner seems to focus on the resource part of the equation at the tactical level, and assumes that strategy can be set by those who have little domain knowledge.

My prediction is that any company which fails to properly deploy social computing will fail. My reasoning is straight forward. Insular approaches will no longer work, and the community moves much faster than the behemoth. So if the behemoth wants to survive, it had better cede some control to the community. I believe Gartner is essentially saying the same thing:

Social networking has changed the way a critical mass of individuals behaves, including how they act as customers and prospects. Customers, not just digital natives, can no longer be adequately described by demographic information — the usual target for corporate CRM efforts.

Source is here.


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It has been a while since the major analysts have deigned to mention the name "Second Life" in any serious conversation about technology and its usefulness. The reasons for this are probably several, but I suspect can be based on a couple of basic reasons.

First, for a period which began in early 2007, Second Life was becoming the topic of scorn, derision, and overblown scandal. Business had discovered that the marketing nirvana promised them by a handful of developers (who shall remain nameless in this post) was little more than snake oil. The developers promised great things, charged great prices, built great islands for the businesses, and took the money and ran. The businesses who paid them were left with great looking sims which had one problem: they were empty of traffic.

The second reason for the backing away from mentioning Second Life was the media. The stories went from supportive to salacious, and suddenly Second Life found itself in the Trough of Disillusionment. But times change, and 2007 is now a distant memory, at least in Second Life time. As we enter 2009, even the might Gartner has decided that Second Life can be mentioned in polite company without fear of ridicule:

Speaking at the annual Gartner Predicts 2009 briefing in Sydney this morning, Gartner Fellow Steve Prentice said companies must educate themselves on the scope and capabilities of telepresence systems.

"The challenge of the current economic conditions demands that every organization revisit the need for face-to-face meetings," said rentice. "Telepresence is not the answer in every circumstance and there will always be strong cultural and other reasons for face to face encounters, particularly in Asia. But not every meeting needs to be face to face and there is no doubt that telepresence and other approaches to virtual collaboration such as Immersive Workspace, which is built on top of Second Life, or yet to be released solutions will provide a real alternative for many businesses. Companies should put aside previous prejudices and bad memories of older video-conferencing services and seriously investigate these new technologies."

Gartner is considered by many to be the gold standard in tech analysis. While they may not always be correct is their assessments, they are highly influential, especially with enterprise IT. So the fact that they are now openly discussing Second Life as a viable platform for collaboration is an enormous development, and further bolsters what I wrote here on September 22, 2008:

The truth is that the hype cycle was formed around the core ideas of using Second Life as a platform for advertising and marketing of real world brands. The implosion of that model brought about the disillusionment cycle, and the solution providers who stayed with the platform were the ones who already had the core ideas of enterprise collaboration, education, and selling solutions to the consumer base in the form of virtual items such as clothes and accessories.

Even as the trough was continuing, and Second Life was being bashed by the press and in various blogs, the concurrent user rate continued to grow. It is still continuing to grow, and exceeded 70k concurrent users this weekend. Also after the hype bubble burst, the Second Life economy began a slow and steady upward trend that is continuing to this day absent of all the hype

Welcome to the Slope of Enlightenment. Can we say it's official now that Gartner is climbing back on board the SL train?


Source: Gartner Article


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The press is an interesting beast. When a firm like Gartner releases a report, there are usually a flurry of news posts usually with sensationalistic headlines which are aimed at attracting readers. The problem is, if you just read the headlines, you aren't necessarily getting the right picture of the situation, and in the case of Gartner reports (or Forrester, IDC, etc.), analysis is critical to understanding.

Here's a case in point. Gartner just issued a report on the 2008 PC market. Here are some of the headlines:

- Gartner numbers indicate solid Mac sales for Apple

- Gartner says PC sales barely grew in fourth quarter

- Apple’s U.S. market share tumbles to 8% in Q4

- PC shipment growth drops to virtually zero in Q4

- Apple's U.S. Mac Shipments Grow In Q4 While PC Market Shrinks (AAPL)

What's your impression? These are all based off the same report, and yet, some headlines make it seem that Apple did poorly (they didn't), that the PC market is a shambles (there are losers to be sure, but there are also some winners), and so forth. The point being that this is part of the reason I take the time to actually look at the details of a given analyst report, and share some of that on this blog.

Here's the real story on the PC market:



As you can see from this chart, Dell and HP have declines in Q408 as compared to Q407. Acer, Apple, and Toshiba however all experienced nice gains, despite the bad economy. The big story here is the threat Acer poses to the top two players in the market space. The other story is that the emerging "big three" in the PC space are Acer, Apple, and Toshiba. Granted this is a chart for the US, but this is important to note:

The PC industry had a terrible fourth quarter: Worldwide shipments grew just 1.1% year-over-year, the worst Q4 growth rate since 2002, research firm Gartner said today. The U.S. was even worse: Q4 shipments dropped 10.1%.

But not every company fared so poorly.

Apple (AAPL) shipped 1.26 million Macs in the U.S. during Q4, according to Gartner, up 8.3% year-over-year. Meanwhile, Dell (DELL) shipped 4.47 million PCs, down 16.4% year-over-year. And HP (HPQ) dropped 3.4% to 4.29 million shipped.
Acer shipments soared 55.4% to 2.37 million shipped, thanks to super-cheap "netbook" laptops.

Without Gartner's estimate of Apple's worldwide shipments, it's hard for us to gauge how this fits into analysts' models for Apple's fiscal Q1, which it'll report next Wednesday. (We'll get them when available.)

This is why I look beyond the headlines. The report itself is available here.

Happy new year to everyone. 2009 will undoubtably be an interesting year for information technology, but also it will be a challenging one because of the lackluster economy. I'll take a look at some specific areas such as Second Life and OpenSim in upcoming posts, but to start 2009 I thought it would be best to begin by looking at what Gartner has to say about the overall IT space (albeit from a CIO perspective). I'll do the same for Forrester and other analysts, but today it is Gartner.

The report we will look at is called CIO New Year's Resolutions, 2009 and is essentially a set of strategic recommendations for managing through the dangerous landscape facing all of us this coming year. There are ten major recommendations:

1. Start building an alumni network: To maintain legacy skills and complex experienced pools of labour, Gartner recommends CIOs establish alumni networks. This could include a semi-official company IT alumni association with its own web page, use of web social networking tools and re-establishing bounty schemes, where staff are paid for recruits they bring in.

Although they don't specifically call it out by name, LinkedIn is essentially what they are recommending. If you have not become a member of LinkedIn, be forewarned that it is a social networking service aimed at professionals. It's not a networking group for "fun" a la MySpace, but for anyone who is serious about IT related careers (including Second Life based businesses), it is an essential tool.

2. Stop being the exception that enforces the rules: In tense times, leading by example matters more than usual – from body language to dress code, and from vocabulary to attention-span. CIOs should design and adopt two or three key behaviours to match the required direction they want their reports to follow such as turning away their option to upgrade to the glitziest new smartphone. Such signals will cause people to comment and think about their own values and behaviours.

This is an interesting one. I take it that Gartner is recommending that executives begin to "walk the talk" as opposed to sitting in ivory towers. It's difficult to disagree with this sentiment, but how many are truly going to take this advice to heart?

3. Start scouting for key talent: As large numbers of laid-off people flood the market, some salary-level attrition is inevitable and even good people could find themselves without a position for months. “This will create something of a buyers market for some high-calibre IT talent in 2009. However, company recruitment lockdowns will stop CIOs taking advantage if they don’t take specific actions.”

Translation: highly talented cheap labor.

4. Start preparing for the unexpected: “It may seem like a paradox but it is possible to prepare better for the unexpected,” said Mr Mahoney. “It’s important to challenge and develop the thinking styles and frame of reference of your leadership team as well as yourself. We advise CIOs to find people to join the discussion who don’t fit the existing mould and perhaps even deliberately choose people who will irritate the majority.”

This is something that will be difficult to attain because fear of layoffs tend to make people less willing to risk being seen as an irritant. This might be great advice, but I don't see it happening in most organizations.

5. Start using social systems yourself, visibly: Gartner said that CIOs need to start visibly using social networks themselves to kick-start their participation from other staff - lurking in quiet observation is not enough. Gartner advised CIOs to also encourage the leadership team into using social media more openly to communicate internally and externally to rebuild brand confidence, energise the company culture, develop ideas and refine solutions.

Remember my earlier posts about how businesses are using social apps as "Press Releases 2.0?" Basically Gartner is telling you to stop that behavior and start reaching out in an open and honest way. However my prediction is most won't adhere to this advice.

6. Start taking cloud seriously: Cloud computing is a major new stage in the evolution of commercial IT that CIOs must take seriously but at this stage is confusing. In 10 years, much of IT will be served this way, so CIOs need to start leading their organisations safely in this inevitable direction, or risk being sidelined by its progress. They should first set aside a reading day in 2009 to immerse themselves in the issues, terms and sub-trends, then personally subscribe to and test a variety of cloud applications.

This is one of the most important technology trends at the present time, and affects everything from SOA to mobile apps to even considerations of using Second Life/OpenSim or some other 3d space for collaboration. Ignore cloud computing at your peril. Seriously.

7. Stop ignoring people and opting for soft targets:CIOs will be under pressure to be seen taking swift action. There will be temptation to cut quickly in areas where staff is working on longer-term goals that suddenly seem of lower relevance. However, CIOs should not lay off the people they will need long-term and who will be hard to replace just because their work is not an immediate deliverable (e.g. enterprise architects, emerging technologies staff). Instead, they should require their temporary tactical redeployment and displaced market-standard heads elsewhere. Similarly, they shouldn’t cut projects in areas which are in the hype cycle ‘trough of disillusionment’ just because they are unfashionable. CIOs should defend them if they will still yield significant value in a year or two.

This is one in which I am in total agreement. As an example, Second Life went from media darling in 2007 to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ in 2008, and I bet there are a large number of CIO's who are afraid to touch it. However, to refer back to this post, don't discard or discount technology. In terms of cutting costs, developing social networks, and enhancing B2B collaboration capabilities, it has a lot to offer.

8. Start offering your vendors a free lunch: CIOs will require vendors to deliver flexibility and cost savings and will need to reset the style of the relationship. At the same time, suppliers will be keen on staying in close touch, working hard to attract CIOs off-site for ‘face time’, so CIOs must resolve to politely decline vendor courtesy trips in 2009. Both sides must give ground and CIOs must signal a reset to a new style of interchange. They should identify the senior management leader in each of their key vendors, probably not the day-to-day account managers, and invite them to lunch or dinner at a chain-restaurant venue that sets a starkly thrifty tone to discuss the value driven cost optimisation that both be required to deliver in 2009.

Translation: Spago's is out, Denny's is in.

9. Stop fearing the future; start driving it: Internally, CIOs should also reflect conspicuous frugality but not be defined by it. They should resolve to occasionally and visibly splash out a little – where it really matters to staff moral such as training courses or software development tools. Work on real money saving like flying economy instead of business class – but avoid empty-gesture cost cutting such as taking cookies off the plate at management meetings.

Executives flying coach? Perish the thought. Seriously though, I'll believe this when I see it.

Resolution #10: Newer technologies to get experience of in 2009: With so much work to do, Gartner reminded CIOs that they need to protect the time to stay in touch and get ‘hands-on’ with some key technologies in 2009:

e-book readers
Google Chrome
Building mini cloud applications
YouTube as a default search engine for a day
* HD teleconferencing

Some of these are just ridiculous. e-Book readers are going to be more costly because of the DRM attached to the books, and become an extra piece of equipment to haul around. A better recommendation would have been to advise looking at iPhone apps and netbooks. I don't agree with Gartner at all on the e-book recommendation.

As for Google Chrome, yes it is promising, but so is Firefox.

Cloud applications are a no-brainer.

YouTube for search? Huh? Education maybe, but search?

HD teleconferencing is another silly one. Use cheaper 3d space alternatives which provide the real time interaction and visuals. HD teleconferencing is a luxury that doesn't necessarily provide a good ROI in tough times.

Source for the report can be found by clicking here.




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Given the weakening economic climate, businesses will need to adapt, and digital advertising is no exception. Advertising on the web and in virtual worlds is still not a majority of revenue for many ad agencies, but a new Gartner report is indicating that change is happening, and marketeers need to adjust or die.

Essentially there are ten priorities which are recommended focus areas (Gartner really likes top ten lists). We'll review each of these and add a bit of commentary about how each might also be extended forward.

The first:

1. Re-evaluate pricing, packaging and inventory management strategies: Media companies must recognise that solving the challenges of online advertising is not an isolated exercise, but a critical step in preparing for the day when digital advertising is the dominant source of revenue for the business, regardless of which device or channel it is being delivered to.

This is the adapt or die proposition. You either recognize that the web is going to dominate, and it is part of your process, or you are still operating under outdated assumptions. As for applicability in Second Life, there is a there there, but the web comes first.

2. Make data available, internally and externally: Data is the lifeblood of any digital advertising operation; the key to effective pricing, inventory management, targeting and sales.

Read my post from 18th November on Web Oriented Architecture. This is a critical point. Information needs to be on the wire if you are going to succeed.

3. Prioritise strategic relationships with top customers: One of the greatest threats to the media business is the commoditisation of advertising as sales relationships become more transactional and less strategic.

Web 2.0 is all about community, and the immersive web will make that even more true. However, the web is flat and everything is fast becoming a commodity. The only thing that has long term value are your strategic relationships.

4. Sell audience, not just placement

Audience? Okay, these are the important concepts: tribe, flow, peers, viral. If these terms are foreign to you, you're behind the current trends.

5. Invest in yield management tools and dashboards

One of the sub-areas of WOA that I did not discuss in the WOA article concerns the new breed of BI. I'll discuss this topic a bit in the upcoming Enterprise Mashups post, suffice it to say for now that one of the main characteristics of the immersive web is real-time collaboration, and as such, measurement tools must also be real-time.

6. Reach beyond your Web site

Here's the problem. Many businesses believe that doing a blog means that they are doing Web 2.0, and therefore have extended their reach. Maybe, but more often than not, blogs end up being something that resemble Press Releases 2.0 as opposed to extended reach. Don't do Press Releases 2.0, the version 1.0 kind are boring enough.

7. Increase video inventory

This is an area we will be increasing greatly over the coming months. You should be thinking about your strategy with regards to video.

8. Integrate sales teams and track across platforms

Lean, interactive, social, community. It applies to your sales force too.

9. Optimise the use of intermediaries

Share, embed, reuse with attribution. If these don't make sense to you, you're behind.

10. Create a digital advertising road map and governance structure

Just as SOA is creating TOGAF standards for governance models, marketing will need something similar. It's a brave new world out there, and you need to plan and govern.


















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I wrote about the Top 10 Tech Trends from Gartner a while back (click here to view), and have received a number of queries asking me to expand some on the trends which are most applicable to virtual worlds such as Second Life. Mind you these topics are deep, and for the sake of time I can only expand so far in each blog post. Nonetheless we can explore the more relevant trends in more detail than you might find elsewhere on the web.

The first area we will look at is something Garnter calls Web Oriented Architecture, or WOA. This is fundamentally different from Service Oriented Architecture (which is more infrastructure focused), but is built on the same core framework that leads us to the vision of Enterprise 2.0.

Gartner describes WOA as:

The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles.

The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs.

However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

Okay, I know what you're asking:

- What does this look like?

- How does this impact the use of collaborative real time technologies?

- Can I do something with this and leverage the Second Life platform in some fashion?

Let's take a look. First let's answer the first question by viewing SOA and WOA in terms of a technology characteristics chart:



You can see from this chart that WOA is in fact built on top of the architectural and technology components of SOA and Web 2.0. The critical linkage is to be able to create an information on the wire flow from your enterprise apps into and out of your Web 2.0 stack, thus fully enabling a WOA capable enterprise. This leads into the concept of Enterprise 2.0, which includes a number of the other top trends identified by Gartner.

So what about question #2? The answers are several, which essentially rest on this premise:

WOA enables an application infrastructure which is far more agile and flexible than previous architectures. As for specific areas it helps:

- Simple, fast and easy implementation of processes
- Changing requirements can be addressed far more quickly
- Lower maintenance cost
- High performance
- Lower total cost

Finally, question #3, does this have applicability to platforms such as Second Life? The answer is yes, but only if you have an integration strategy with SL via SOA. Where all of this is leading is to real time virtual collaboration environments in which Enterprise mashups can be enabled, and in which data can be visualized in 3d. Of course there is a lot of work to get from where we are today to the vision of being able to work deeply and securely in a 3d immersive environment, but that doesn't mean that it isn't feasible or worth doing. In fact, given the state of the economy and the need to find effective ways to cut costs without affecting your business adversely, a WOA strategy using SL should be on your radar.

Next in this series we will look at Enterprise Mashups. Questions and comments can be sent to me via leaving general questions below, or for specific queries, use the contact page (click here) or send me an IM in Second Life (Allison Selene).

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Gartner's assessment that SOA was in decline. One of the interesting aspects of working with Gartner analysis is that whenever Gartner speaks, people either panic or start claiming victory, depending on the conclusions reached in any given report.

However, two things strike me. First, I sometimes wonder if people read the entire report(s), or if they read the headlines and first paragraph only. This would explain the usual reactions to a report, but given that these reports cost money, I have to believe that they are being read in their entirety. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it seems to me that many people read Gartner reports as though they are gospel, and view the reports as coming from high atop Mt. Gartner where the Lords of Analysis deign to tell us what they have determined to be the fate of a market segment.

The truth of the matter is that Gartner is doing analysis and research, and from there coming up with assessments. Those assessments, while meaningful, cannot predict the future with 100% accuracy, and even then, are really more of a point in time check on progress of various technologies. The other thing is that Gartner reports need to be thoroughly analyzed because oftentimes the headlines only tell part of the story. For example, in their SOA report, something which is very important to enterprise 2.0, the headline for the report is:

Gartner Says the Number of Organizations Planning to Adopt SOA for the First Time Is Falling Dramatically

However in analyzing their analysis, I noted this:

The two major reasons that organizations choose for not pursuing SOA are a lack of skills and expertise, and no viable business case.... Even if a valid business case exists, then the required skills are often unavailable in-house, and the costs and effort to develop in-house skills and acquire outside expertise are often daunting.

Now you can interpret the above comment in different ways I suppose, but it seems to me that what Gartner is saying is that there is a skills shortage in this area. That to me indicates opportunity, as opposed to the conclusion that the SOA market space is falling to pieces. Additionally, we're in a recession, so unless you have a really solid ROI and business case, experiments are out.

According to SearchSOA:

However, a look into the survey itself presents a more positive picture of global SOA implementations. The survey found that in 2008, the number of organizations planning to adopt SOA in the next 12 months fell to 25 percent from 53 percent in 2007, but it also found that 53 percent already have SOA up and running.

"Looking at the Gartner findings, it isn't any kind of train wreck, said Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor Solutions LLC. "Fifty three percent are already doing SOA and 25 percent on top of that are planning to do it in the next 12 months. That's 78 percent. That doesn't strike me as negative.

Given the current global economic climate, Gardner said, it makes sense for late-adopter organizations to continue to defer SOA initiatives.

What does all this tell us? It tells us that Gartner is simply saying that SOA is being viewed through very pragmatic lenses by CIO's, and as such, make sure you have a real business case before pitching an SOA project to the execs.

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Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was supposed to be the next big thing in the enterprise, but if Gartner is to be believed, the news isn't so great if you're in the SOA business.

Just a few short months ago the conventional wisdom held that SOA was an inevitable trend in the enterprise, and the question was not "if" SOA would be implemented, rather it was "when" will it be implemented.

But Gartner's latest findings tell a much different story now:

According to the survey, 53 percent of the respondents were already using SOA in some part of their organizations. Another 25 percent were not using it but had plans to do so in the next 12 months; and 16 percent had no plans to use SOA at all. Approximately 20 percent were building event-driven architectures (EDAs), and 20 percent were planning to do so in the next 12 months.

...

Since the beginning of 2008, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of organizations that are planning to adopt SOA for the first time. In 2008, this was cut by more than one-half, down to 25 percent from 53 percent in 2007, while the number of organizations with no plans to adopt SOA more than doubled from 6 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2008.

This doesn't mean SOA is dead, and indeed there are some interested geographic and demographic trends behind these macro stats:

Gartner found that the significant minority that is not planning to adopt any SOA is a diverse group. The highest concentrations of organizations not pursuing SOA and having no plans to do so are in process manufacturing and agriculture and mining.

...

The survey also found that the adoption of SOA and the plans for adoption vary widely by region. Overall, SOA adoption in Europe is nearly universal, moderate in North America and lagging in Asia. In Europe, current adoption rates are very high, and only a tiny percentage of organizations having no plans for adoption in the future. In North America, the adoption rate is high, but a low number of organizations have committed to adopt SOA in the next 12 months, and a fairly high proportion has no plans to pursue SOA. The picture in Asia is quite different, where adoption is less than half of that in other regions, and where the majority of organizations are not planning to pursue SOA within the next 12 months.

Ultimately this comes down reality. With a recession happening, it's difficult to justify spending money on SOA unless there is an absolutely clear business case to be made, and even then, resources are difficult to find:

The two major reasons that organizations choose for not pursuing SOA are a lack of skills and expertise, and no viable business case.... Even if a valid business case exists, then the required skills are often unavailable in-house, and the costs and effort to develop in-house skills and acquire outside expertise are often daunting.

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Gartner has a new report out which discusses the area of collaboration, which is one of the value add areas that businesses in Second Life have recently rediscovered. I won't get into discussing the merits of collaboration in Second Life in this post, but as we examine the Gartner findings, keep in mind that virtual worlds collaboration is an area which is still open to a lot of growth and innovation.

First key point, the software collaboration market is set to grow by 28% in 2008 over 2007 numbers. Second key point, the market size is $2 billion USD and growing. This trend may in fact be recessionary proof as it is a means of drastically lowering costs to do the same business operations normally accomplished via travel and face-to-face meetings.

Per Gartner:

Technology convergence and consolidation, coupled with an increased emphasis on workplace communities, are the key forces keeping the worldwide web conference and team collaboration software market revenue on pace to reach $2 billion in 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. This represents an increase of 22 per cent growth in worldwide software revenue compared with 2007.

...

In Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the total market for web conferencing and collaboration software market revenue is set to grow 28.6 per cent to reach $500.3 million in 2008, with strongest growth from Eastern Europe, which is on track to increase 55.3 per cent from 2007. Western Europe, which holds 90 per cent market share of the web conference and collaboration market in EMEA, is expected to grow 26.5 per cent while the Middle East and Africa will increase 45 per cent year-on-year

Click for Fullsize

This will also clearly be something that is global and real-time:

cultural differences play a strong role in adoption of collaboration technologies. It is more common in North America and Europe to have meetings and other forms of interpersonal communications supported by collaboration tools. In Latin America and the Middle East and Africa, e-mail is used as the primary mode of communications in lieu of horizontal collaboration technologies. In Asia/Pacific and Japan, face-to-face meetings are preferred, and at times, business travel for meetings is seen as a prerequisite.

And most of the key functions are already in place in some virtual worlds, although data integration and analysis apps in world still pose a weakness:

Although, it is difficult to measure the business value of interactions, a strong and growing demand exists within organisations for real-time and team-based collaboration technologies. Technologies such as instant messaging (IM) are increasingly viewed as birthright technologies, akin to email. Gartner anticipates that IM will become as popular as email by 2010. Videoconferencing will evolve to the desktop to support ad hoc conversations and become better integrated with web conferencing, IM and voice over IP (VoIP).

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eWeek is reporting that, according to Gartner, SaaS (Software as a Service) and Cloud Computing are areas that will continue to grow despite the current economic recession. The caveat here is that Gartner is talking about enterprise applications rather than consumer apps, so the areas they expect to be hot are CRM, Web Conferencing, and Google Apps. Implied in this report is that services inside Second Life can benefit if aimed at enterprise use.

In fact, the growth rate in 2008 for SaaS apps is estimated by Gartner to be 27% over 2007, which is outstanding for any industry. In addition, Gartner doesn't view the September market crash as having much effect to this market space:

Sharon Mertz, Gartner analyst and one of the authors of the report, told me she and her colleagues wrapped up their report in August, before the high-tech downturn and layoffs began en masse.

"That doesn't reflect the market bouncing in September, but I don't know that we would shift it, if at all," Mertz explained.

Mertz and her team have noticed a slowdown in SAAS spending beginning in the third calendar quarter, she said. However, she also said she doesn't expect much change in the SAAS picture from those conclusions.

The biggest area of increase is collaboration, e-learning, online conferencing, all of which are very good areas for Second Life:

SAAS productivity suites may be popular, but because they are mostly "freeware," they're not responsible for the bulk of SAAS sales. That distinction goes to the CCC (content, communications and collaboration) market, which Mertz told me Gartner defines as software for e-mail, e-learning, instant messaging, search, team collaboration, Web conferencing and enterprise content management.

The next big area is CRM, which doesn't have a Second Life impact per se, except for the e-commerce aspects inherent in Second Life:

The second largest section of the overall SAAS enterprise application market is CRM. Mertz said companies like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and NetSuite are carrying this market, with CRM SAAS sales exceeding $1.7 billion in total software revenue. Gartner expects CRM SAAS sales to reach $3.2 billion in total software revenue in 2012.

Finally, keep in mind that this area will be growing, but we are in what is expected to be a long recession (some economists are forecasting a deep two year recession), so the following cautionary advice should be kept in mind:

The prospects for SAAS sales seem rosy for 2008 and beyond if the Gartner report is to be believed, although Mertz said she expects the recession to have an impact on SAAS and all high-tech markets in 2009. How much of an impact remains to be seen.

Counting SAAS and on-premises solutions, Gartner expects the worldwide software market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent through 2012. Asked for a worst-case scenario, Gartner downsized that figure to 9.4 percent, accounting for the current recession

Mertz said despite the hype that SAAS will thrive in a downturn, it's likelier that SAAS will only be used where it makes good business sense. In other words, don't expect a gold rush for SAAS; instead expect, ahem, a cloud here or there.

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