Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Holistic Industry Analysis

James McGovern ( @mcgoverntheory ) claims that Burton Group is one step ahead of Gartner by focusing on interoperability between products over just vendor characteristics.

I don't wish to comment on his assessment of these two firms. (Although it might be amusing to place these firms into a magic quadrant, it wouldn't mean much.)

However, what I strongly endorse is his statement that focusing on the interoperability between products is at least one step beyond focusing on vendor characteristics, and much more relevant to the concerns of those purchasing, deploying and using the products.

Industry analysts need to provide a joined-up (dare I say "holistic") account of emerging software technology and its relationship to the customer experience. In order to do this, we need to recognize three critical points of asymmetry.

1. The product is not the technology.
2. The solution is not the business.
3. The customer experience is not the customer demand.

No comments:

Post a Comment