Recently in best-of-breed Category

Sometimes ingenuity leads to alternative uses of new products in ways the original designer never imagined. The classic business school example is 3M’s Post-It note which was originally conceived as pressure sensitive adhesive – a novel idea with few practical uses until someone slapped the adhesive on a piece of paper and found utility in a reusable bookmark. 

We’re thrilled to see the buzz gathering around our newest announcement - analysts and media alike seem to agree that we’ve added something new and noteworthy to the market. We think this kind of innovation is especially welcome in a market that has little confidence in those larger competitors.

With myCMDB, we’ve really unleashed the power of the CMDB by adding the community features that should logically be part of any project that requires the input from so many different people within an organization. Heck, using email and voicemail for CMDB communication is like using a rotary dial for a smartphone.

Instead, we’ve brought CMDB communications and process into the 21st century, by adding a combination of Facebook interactivity, Wikipedia information quality management, and Google’s searching model. Basically, these features make it easier to get more users involved in its creation and maintenance, which means the CMDB quickly becomes a more accurate representation of the infrastructure, relationships, and services. This allows organizations to use the CMDB to better control the impact of change and move it into a decision support role.

Stay tuned as the buzz continues to build!

Weeks after the announced acquisition much of the coverage and analysis surrounding the proposed HP and EDS deal still focuses almost exclusively on the effect this transaction will have on the respective companies. What missing is the impact this will have on their customers. As the Economist wrote, "Culture aside, EDS's big selling point is to be the largest services firm that is independent of any hardware or software vendor." That independence is about to be challenged.

Perhaps they are culturally dissimilar but the marriage between the two can be summed up like this: one has huge pockets and desires to be IBM, while the other empty pockets and desires to be ‘a somebody’ again. Fair or unfair, this assessment is precisely why the same Economist article also notes that while EDS "…will continue to advise clients to buy systems from all vendors…those clients are now likely to pay more attention when the boxes come from HP."

And customers ought to pay more attention to those boxes for a very simple reason: big vendors don’t have a track record of playing well with others. Now that HP has acquired all the software vendors it needed to build a BSM strategy, customers should be concerned that with the purchase of EDS, HP will outsource them too. The sales pitch will evolve almost nonchalantly, perhaps even unknowingly, from selling products -- to selling implementation services -- to outsourcing everything.

The promise to eliminate all IT headaches may sound alluring initially -- but the second and third order of effects can be severe: The client has absolutely no control of their IT destiny, and by extension -- given the reliance of business on IT -- no control of their business. Once again, having an independent, transparent, best-of-breed vendor, with a mastery over integration, will be essential for clients to retain an element of control over their businesses.

- Sean