1219MKT May 17, 2013, 4 pages, Bruce Guptill, $195.00 (Single User License)

Conversations with enterprise IT and business leaders suggest that the rapid evolution of Cloud for enterprise business may be more misunderstood by analysts and media than by enterprise executives and decision makers. This Strategic Perspective highlights “golden threads” which recur and weave their way through multiple conversations with providers, partners, buyers and users at SAPPHIRE 2013, helping to show how the nature and expectations of enterprise software buyers and users is changing – more rapidly than most market monitors have been able to note.

1217MKT May 14, 2013, 5 pages, Ron Exler, $195.00 (Single User License)

More and more enterprises of all sizes and types are beginning to pursue Big Data projects for a variety of reasons. While implementations differ based on the enterprise, the technologies and providers used, and other factors, there are several basic considerations that should go into any Big Data project. This Strategic Perspective summarizes three of these considerations, explaining what they are, why they are important, and the basic methods for approaching each. This research reflects recent direct experiences of a large media research company that is in transition mode and used cloud services for an important new initiative.

1216MKT May 10, 2013, 3 pages, Charlie Burns, $195.00 (Single User License)

IBM continues to invest heavily in technologies underlying and enabling the Boundary-free Enterprise™, with the most significant of these being Cloud, Mobility, Social, Analytics, and Integration. IBM’s focus on these technologies and their associated business opportunities was ubiquitous at its Impact 2013 event in Las Vegas, Nevada, in which Saugatuck participated. This Strategic Perspective examines IBM’s Impact messaging and positioning, and the resulting influence on IBM’s market development and sales efforts at least through 2013.

1215STR May 9, 2013, 4 pages, Brian Dooley, $195.00 (Single User License)

Talent Management is undergoing significant change as the pressures that define the BfE continue to resonate throughout the business environment. Talent Management processes are being integrated, automated, and analyzed with the same zeal as other business processes, but with potentially more revolutionary results. Talent Management is about sourcing, training, and career management of individuals and this makes it both more critical and more sensitive than nearly any other area of practice. For this reason, current moves in this sector will have important consequences for the enterprise. This Strategic Perspective looks at Talent Management, how it is changing, and what this means for the Enterprise.

1213MKT May 2, 2013, 4 pages, Brian Dooley, $195.00 (Single User License)

The current mobile ecosystems, principally in Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, have served the needs of rapid BYOD development well, but their utility is beginning to fracture. A monolithic experience is useful for initial growth, but can seriously impede innovation and ability to gain revenue on the part of vendors and other stakeholders. This fact was recently demonstrated by Facebook’s Home app, but fractures are appearing across a wide range of other areas. This Strategic Perspective looks at trends in Mobile ecosystems, and the implications for vendors and users as Mobile devices are integrated into the BfE.

1211MKT April 30, 2013, 5 pages, Bruce Guptill, $195.00 (Single User License)

With physical IT and business boundaries already dissipating, will ubiquitous, cheap smartphones be the force that tips global business into new architectures and new business models, faster than we think and sooner than we’re ready? This Strategic Perspective looks at the global shift toward ultra-cheap smartphones and similar devices, and begins to lay out a scenario that accelerates the growth of the Boundary-free Enterprise™.

1210STR April 30, 2013, 30 pages, Mike West, Bruce Guptill, Bill McNee, Charlie Burns, Alex Bakker, $1295.00 (Single User License)

Recent Cloud-driven changes in services, technologies, and capabilities have shaped a radical and complete re-thinking of the roles, responsibilities, capabilities, and value of enterprise IT and Business organizations – mainly by vividly demonstrating new possibilities, new economies, new ways of doing business, and new businesses entirely.

This high-speed revolution of Cloud-enabled business and IT is both enabled by, and itself enables, a fundamental change in how companies of all types and sizes are structured, organized, and managed, which Saugatuck Technology calls the “Boundary-free Enterprise™” (BfE) – and which is the subject of the company’s latest research report, Saugatuck’s Boundary-free Enterprise™  Model: Concept, Impacts, and Guidance.

Available immediately via Saugatuck’s web site, this Strategic Research Report summarizes and presents key concepts of the BfE foundation, and includes re-examinations of previous foundational Saugatuck research to illustrate the model’s original, core assumptions and expectations. As with any reality-driven model, the BfE model is evolving, and will continue to be examined and expanded in upcoming research published for Saugatuck clients.

Readers of this report will learn the following:

• How is the BfE concept affecting real-world IT acquisition, cost, and usage?
• What are the five critical forces enabling and being accelerated by the BfE?
• How, where, and why is the BfE revolution changing what IT providers are building and bringing to market, along with their core value to buyers and users?
• What should IT buyers be doing to take advantage of this growing “boundary-free” reality, and how must it be managed to avoid chaos?

1209STR April 29, 2013, 7 pages, Mike West, $195.00 (Single User License)

In adapting to client needs for compliance with Solvency II in the UK, Milliman Inc.’s financial modeling solution went from a dedicated, on-premises, PC-based to a Cloud solution on the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, utilizing scalable high performance computing (HPC) across 10,000 or more cores. For Milliman’s client Phoenix Group to install and maintain an HPC grid capable of complying with Solvency II would have been prohibitively expensive - thus Milliman shifting of its MG-ALFA solution to Azure was an ideal use of elastic Cloud resources. For Milliman, however, it would also mean dealing with significant uncertainty in evolving its business to the Cloud. In this Strategic Perspective, we present the second part of our interview with Milliman‘s Pat Renzi on managing that uncertainty. She addresses the important roles that trust, flexibility and cooperation play in managing a challenging business transition, as Milliman’s MG-ALFA moved to the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

1208STR April 25, 2013, 4 pages, Bruce Guptill, $195.00 (Single User License)

SaaS/Cloud software services and providers have matured to the point where, in almost every market, ISVs offer extremely similar functionality, and now need more and better ways of differentiation. And while that functionality may be packaged, priced, or delivered differently, or may provide different ways of performing similar tasks that does not constitute differentiation for the ISV. This Strategic Perspective reviews and updates some of Saugatuck’s insights and guidance regarding ISV differentiation, including research from our work with hundreds of ISVs worldwide over the past 8 years.

1206STR April 18, 2013, 3 pages, Alex Bakker, $195.00 (Single User License)

The Boundary-free Enterprise™ relies on Cloud, Mobile, Social, Analytics, and Integration as the primary forces that will enable a new era of the relationship between business and IT. Though all these forces together are having a profound effect on the IT landscape now, certain combinations of them have specific potential when combined together in certain ways that reinforce the benefits of being Boundary-free, and enable businesses to unlock additional business value. This Strategic Perspective examines one such relationship between Enterprise Social Networks – an enabler of collaboration – and Data Integration.