I’m just setting this blog up, so please keep an eye out for my latest updates. I’ve posted my biography below which includes my areas of research coverage at Gartner.
Unlike other Gartner Blog’s I’d like this one to be more like the ones done by Sports beat writers use – more frequent updates based on thoughts I’d like to share on topics of common interest I may have with you and get your feedback on them. I will, of course, post on research we have available to Gartner clients which goes into greater detail on the topics we might be discussing. But, I’d like this to be a place we can explore ideas of importance to you for which, in many cases, there may not be a black and white answer to a given problem.
And, if you know me, you’ll see that we’ll try to add a bit of humor to the discussions while we throw down the gauntlet of debate.
Since I will be traveling on business the weeks of 3/9 and 3/16, I have elected to what until later in the month to put up my first “real post” and start the dialog going. So, please keep you eyes open for real beginning of this blog.
Bio and areas of coverage:
Michael Blechar is vice president and distinguished analyst in the Applications Architecture Research area of Gartner’s Research and Advisory Services (RAS). He has been in information technology for 39 years, including more than 15 years at Gartner. Mr. Blechar is the topic lead for service-oriented development of applications (SODA) and specializes in the area of business and IT modeling tools and collaboration, model-driven development, metadata repositories and information architecture, analysis and design.
Mr. Blechar has held technical and management positions in systems development, data and database administration, and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) for several Fortune 500 companies, including American Can, Ciba-Geigy and the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to joining Gartner in 1993, Mr. Blechar managed the corporate development center, methodology and data management personnel at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida. Previously, Mr. Blechar served five years as director of product technology and as U.S. product manager for CGI Systems, the vendor of (now IBM’s) Pacbase Integrated-CASE development tool. Mr. Blechar has served on the ANSI IRDS (Repository) standards committee.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Kurt Wilkinson // Mar 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Mike, Kurt Wilkinson here .. long time since we’ve had a chat. Hope the Gartner “gig” is working out .. 14 years later I would say it is! I’m still headhunting and serve our client portfolio companies with recruiting services. Since you know how to read tea leaves, what will be the next big thing withn the software segement to help IT budgets “Re- invigorate” corporate america? We need a silver bullet! Take care, Kurt
2 Michael Blechar // Apr 3, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Hi Kurt! Long to no see. An answer to your question, I think in the short-term it will be the redesign of business processes to cut costs -and then as economics get better the follow-on business improvement projects to generate revenue – which will give IT the funding to re-invigorate IT in order to address the agility needs of the business. As per this blog thread, the role of the enterprise solution/application architect becomes critical from an IT perspective to make that happen. Also, I think master data management projects to help create reusable and assemblable data services (and resolve governance issue surrounding data) will be key to improved business agility as well.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
3 The Team at ProcessGenie // Apr 13, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Mike,
Someone in our community nominated your latest blog article as a “Top BPM News Article” Congrats!
As long as it continues to be voted in the Top 5 we will keep it posted.
Great job!
4 Michael Blechar // Apr 25, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Thanks for the positive feedback! As you may be aware, I have been covering the business process analysis/modeling tool market for Gartner for a number of years. One major change I have seen is a renewed interest in both the areas of how data and metadata relate to BPM efforts. I’m currently working on a research note on the importance of master data management to BPM and service-oriented development. So, keep your eyes open to my blog for more on this subject shortly…
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