Adopting Business Analytics, like most new technologies, requires the IT organization to have a solid understanding of the challenges which must be addressed and the associated skills and resources likely to be required.

To help enterprise IT organizations, Saugatuck recently published a Strategic Perspectivewhich identifies two categories of challenges in adopting/implementing Business Analytics:

On April 11th, this Saugatuck analyst attended an audio conference focused on IBM’s announcement of flash-memory-based storage offerings. During the call, IBM provided an overview of the new offerings, dubbed the IBM FlashSystem, and an associated support structure with 12 centers around the world.

FlashSystem is a major initiative by IBM to pursue the rapidly growing demand for data storage. Increasing interest in, and anticipated adoption of, Big Data analytics is amplifying storage demand.

Hewlett Packard this week rolled out its first high-profile product in a “shot” meant to improve the company’s position and role in today’s Cloud-centric IT and business environments. In doing so, the company promised a significant disruption. What Saugatuck sees is recognition by HP that it cannot leave its legacy hardware business behind as it blazes a path toward a Cloud-enabled future.

HP’s Moonshot, formally announced Wednesday as “disruptive innovation” by HP, is a high-powered-yet-energy-efficient rack-style server that HP hopes will become must-have hardware for large data centers, especially those powering Cloud services like SaaS, social networks, analytics, and cloud-based infrastructure.

What is Happening?  The components of the new Master Architecture have accelerated rapidly to a level of business relevance since we first described it last year (1052CLS, Boundary-free Enterprise™: Empowered by the New Master Architecture, 11Apr2012). Cloud, Mobile, Social, Analytics, and Integration (CSMA/I) have all become part of strategies for forward-looking IT organizations.

Saugatuck’s current research on the adoption and use of these same strategies indicates two important trends:

Tech news and analyst channels are a-twitter today after the news that Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane is stepping down, along with two other directors.  Meanwhile, Dell’s efforts to take itself private have spawned a series of “he said, they said” exchanges via news outlets regarding company value, strategy, and direction. And Microsoft is, once again, being considered irrelevant by media outlets because of the decline in sales growth for traditional PCs and its perceived lack of significant growth with Win8, Windows Phone, and the Surface hardware line.

It’s gotten to the point where, over coffee this morning, one otherwise-sane CIO asked me if his firm should stop buying anything from any of these Master Brands. He doesn’t want to commit significant money to firms that, as he understands it, “could be out of business in a few years.”