Hurwitz & Associates Blog

Before I start with my predictions, let me explain what I mean by a prediction. I believe that predictions should not be about the end of a technology cycle but the timing for when a issue begins to gain traction that will result in industry shifts.  As I pointed out in my book, Smart or Lucky? How Technology Leaders Turn Change Into Success (Josey Bass, 2011), important industry initiatives and changes usually require decades of trial and error before they result in significant product and important trends.  So, in my predictions, I am pointing out changes that are starting. a know...

Over the past couple of months I have been on the road quite a bit, primarily attending a variety of analyst meetings – in addition to project work and book writing. This has given me little time to keep up with my blog writing. I decided to begin by providing an overview of my composite observations about the direction of the software market as part 1. I will then provide observations from a variety of meetings I have attended this spring. Enterprise software vendors at the crossroads. This is a time of transition for enterprise software. In the good old...

If you think fraud is not your issue, think again; 1 in 13 people will be impacted by fraud. Therefore businesses that hope to maintain the trust of their customers must be able to address fraud in a consistent and predictable way.  If executed well, corporations, government, and non-profits companies need to protect their constituents by being both accountable and prepared. To achieve this aim requires more than simply implementing a set of point solutions, employing individual subject matter expertise, and reviewing an IT governance playbook.  My colleague, Dan Kirsch and I recently attended an IBM meeting where they announced their...

In December, like everyone else, I decided to present my predictions for 2014. I didn’t publish my predictions in an article or blog. Rather, I decided to experiment. Over a number of days I tweeted my predictions. It was an interesting process. I could avoid the problem of getting too busy and not getting around to finishing the blog. How as my experience? I’d say it was mixed. On the positive side, I continued to tweet ideas as they came into my mind, rather than trying to sit down and come up with my top predictions all at once. On...

I have long been a proponent of open computing software. Great software can emerge when you can bring together a community of technologists with passion for accomplishing a common goal. I was asked to participate in an online debate on the topic of the pros and cons of open computing on October 29th, that is part of by IBM's Smarter Computing program  I decided to share some of my thinking about open computing and open source in this post. on "the pros and cons of open computing when it comes to cloud, big data, and software defined environments." This post...

Godfrey Sullivan’s Keynote for this year’s Splunk User Conference had the audience buzzing with excitement as Splunk Version 6 and Splunk Cloud were announced.  Both offerings are intended to allow business users to gain more actionable insight from Splunk’s ability to capture, store and search nearly any type of log-data.  Fraud detection for financial services companies was one of the featured Splunk use cases, along with smart grid technology.  In addition, one of the founders of Splunk’s most recent (and first) acquisition, BugSense spoke during the keynote.  After spending the day talking with current Splunk customers, partners and executives, I had the following...

VMware is at an interesting crossroads of its existence. The company has been around for 15 years and has evolved dramatically from the company that filled a niche in the market for non-mainframe server virtualization. In those early days, VMware was small and unintimidating and pretty much the only game in down. Over the next several years it evolved into a powerhouse in server virtualization – in essence owning the market. The company was sold to EMC in 2004 and three years later, EMC took the company public with 15% of the company’s shares. Today, VMware stands at an important...

One of the biggest benefits from a big data analysis is the ability to find answers to new types of questions and then quickly take action to improve business results. For example, a retailer can leverage social media data to analyze customer reaction to a marketing campaign and make immediate changes rather than waiting several weeks to review results from traditional marketing data sources. Various big data sources such as Twitter feeds, audio files, or emails are analyzed and the resulting patterns that emerge can provide important business value for companies. Increasingly, leaders understand there is enormous value in integrating...