Eric Knipp

My wife and I had a wonderful weekend. We first attended a wedding, and then celebrated her birthday over dinner with friends and family last night. As usual, topics of discussion ranged widely, but a particularly intriguing subject came up – Wal-Mart’s new packaging for its private label goods:

This packaging looks, well, cheap. When I [...]

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Before I joined Gartner I was a developer. I was pretty deep into a handful of technologies and had broad understanding of many others. In my day-to-day work I was always looking for shortcuts and improvements to make me a better and more productive developer. Most of these related to the technology tools I was [...]

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Industry Shakeout 101
According to my strategy professor, Gordon Walker, “the trigger point [for shakeout to begin] is when one or more firms achieve a level of productivity that neither weaker rivals nor potential entrants can match. Thus, the shift in entry and exit rates is ultimately caused by successful and sustainable growth strategies. Only the [...]

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Whoops!
I’ve been so busy with writing deadlines that for the last month I’ve had no time to update this blog. I hate to write things that aren’t “meaningful” to me, and I’m not able to generate meaningful blog posts with the same frequency of some of my peers. So, I ask that you bear with [...]

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I have just been exposed to the work of Joseph Tainter (hat tip Gregor Macdonald). As our society grows more complex, Tainter’s theory regarding the collapse of societies under the weight of complexity seems compelling. As a technology industry analyst, I am faced with complexity every day, and my prime task is to slice through the [...]

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It’s Hard to Say I’m Sorry
I just want you to know, that I do feel guilt for my lack of recent blog posts. I try to commit enough time to my published writing, client conversations, and informal activities (such as this blog), and sometimes I fall down on the job. There’s no excuse.
You Start Me [...]

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Today Salesforce and Google announced Force.com for Google App Engine.
Time Keeps on Slipping
Announcements around App Engine seem to be accelerating as time passes. Last month it was Java, and the Eclipse toolkit for Google App Engine. Since the Java release, open-source Java dynamic language Web projects have been moving fast to tweak their frameworks to [...]

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I am getting settled in at the ranch after returning from a great trip to Denver that saw me visit four Gartner clients on Monday and attend the Glue conference Tuesday and Wednesday. 
As usual, my client meetings got hot and heavy on Cloud computing real quick. What’s interesting to me is that three out of [...]

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Earlier this week, Micro Focus announced its planned acquisition of Borland for $75m.
This is probably pretty meaningless for most folks in Web development, but it carries special meaning for me. I learned how to program on Turbo Pascal 4, way back in the late 80’s when I first worked on some marginally popular forum-hack BBS [...]

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Consumer and Enterprise Mashups have generated significant hype in the technology community. Consumer Mashups, which frequently make mapping and social networking part of the technology, have taken off already, while Enterprise Mashups are on the upswing as “the face of SOA”. I’m also beginning to see traditional non-technology companies take interest in Consumer Mashups.
Best Buy, [...]

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