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During his 13-plus years at Gartner, he has played a leadership role in several of the company’s efforts in these areas, including the emergence of cloud computing and consumerization of IT. He has served as the lead Gartner analyst covering major vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Sun and AOL. Mr. Smith is often quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and has frequently been a guest on CNBC. In 2002, Adweek’s Technology Marketing magazine named him the most influential industry analyst.

SymTimesWhat new things are happening in your areas of coverage?

David Mitchell Smith: Case studies – as cloud becomes more real, we are documenting uses
First hype cycle for cloud computing just published – shows cloud itself at peak, long line of new technologies coming, based on some proven concepts

ST:What are the Top 3 trends you’re watching in your area of coverage?

DMS: First, excitement over private cloud and how this will impact overall IT strategies. Second, IT moving beyond ‘denial’ stage and using security as excuses and maturing to seriously consider cloud. And third, established vendor strategies emerging.

And if you want to share the experience you had with colleagues, check out Gartner Events on Demand, which brings together the audio track with the session documentation. The special on-site discount price of $595 expires October 26. If you don’t have a chance to stop by for a demo before you leave (booths are located in the Dolphin, Swan and Yacht & Beach), visit www.GartnerEventsOnDemand.com. The discount code was included in the event documentation.

Elop said Microsoft fully embraces “constructive disruption,” and that the corporation recognizes the shift that is happening in its marketplace, as the pace of innovation accelerates in the cloud. Continuing to talk to users and applying the lessons learned from past experience were essential in keeping things in balance, he said.

“Great companies recognize the disruption and power through them,” Elop said, while at the same time acknowledging the challenges Microsoft faces as it keeps pushing forward.

The interview coincided with today’s release of Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest operating system so it was no surprise that it was a topic of conversation at the keynote. Learn more about Windows 7 in Gartner’s Special Report, watch videos on Gartner’s YouTube channel and register for the October 28 webinar.

With 3 billion mobile phones on the planet, mobile devices have become mainstream to business, said to Ken Dulaney, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, in his Thursday presentation at the Yacht & Beach.

The prospects for the major suppliers of mobile enterprise devices, how various operating system platforms will fare in business, and how businesses should construct policies to deal with the use of mobile devices business were the focus of the session.

Mr. Dulaney said that since the introduction of the iPhone, software platform providers have awakened to the reality of a compelling user experience. Creating the right navigation and control models for a small screen are a real challenge. And then there are the questions of how many keys to place on the front of the screen, touch versus keyboard, and portrait versus landscape.

“The science of user interface has become big business and a strong marketing message for the winning platform providers,” said Mr. Dulaney, who has been recognized by Adweek magazine as one of the top 20 technology industry analysts.

Dulaney said two basic design choices are emerging for smartphone designs: task-activity-oriented and application-oriented. Research In Motion (RIM) and Nokia are about the task at hand, providing information about status of important applications, he said. Microsoft is also more task-oriented, whereas Apple is on the opposite end, focusing fully on what applications are available to the user.
Mobile devices have evolved into three ergonomic designs that are not expected to undergo change during the next five years:
• Open face, in which the physical user interface is available without manipulating the device to gain access
• Clamshell, in which the keyboard and main screen fold onto each other.
• Slider, in which the keyboard slides out from underneath the screen.
These form factors exist across the entire continuum of mobile devices, from the very smallest (basic phones) to the very largest (laptop computers).

“Human factors have dictated these designs during the formative years of mobile device evolution and, given that humans aren’t slated for many changes over the coming planning horizon, these designs will remain permanent except for modifications in styling, size and weight,” said Mr. Dulaney.

Portrait and landscape modes are available in all designs and affect how the device is used. With portrait mode, more individual data items can be displayed, although each item shows less data. With landscape mode, fewer data items are shown, but more data from the individual item can be displayed.

Dulaney said he typically fields customers’ questions about mobile devices in four key areas:

• How attractive the device will be to the user base
• How well the device and its supplier support enterprise efforts
• How secure the device is, either through native onboard capabilities or through third-party products
• How strong the tools are for the development of applications to include the development environment and back-end application support

Locations: Tents outside theYacht & Beach and the Dolphin (next to the ITxpo Exhibit hall) and inside at the Swan.

Enterprises and CIOs should look at new financial reporting regulations as an opportunity to gain competitive advantage rather than as costly obstacles, said Michael Smith, Gartner Research vice president, during his this morning’s session “How 21st Century Financial Reporting Requirements Will Impact Enterprises and CIOs,” held in the Swan.

“Regulatory authorities around the world have been collaborating for several years to enhance business and financial reporting through the use of IT,” he said Thursday in an address at Gartner Symposium.

“Mandates for publicly traded companies to disclose financial information in an interactive data format will ramp up significantly during the next few years.”
He said companies need to develop a long-term strategy not only to comply with these regulations, but also to exploit them for competitive advantage. Key issues in new financial reporting requirements include:
• What new reporting requirements are being mandated globally?
• How will these regulations affect “the market” for financial reporting?
• What opportunities does this provide corporations and what role should the CIO play in exploiting them?
“Confusing the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative with SOX would be a mistake,” Mr. Smith said. He said Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) was a reaction to accounting irregularities and focused on stronger penalties for not complying with existing accounting rules. It also imposed additional regulations for internal controls.
Mr. Smith said these new rules were imposed quickly, with little participation of industry groups and resulted in significant internal costs to reporting companies. Similar rules were promulgated by regulatory authorities around the world.
“Needless to say, most corporations are still reeling from the effects of SOX and SOX-like regulations that were imposed in the 2004-2006 time period,” Mr. Smith said.
“The 21st Century Disclosure Initiative is quite different,” he said. “It has taken an evolutionary path with participation from corporations and regulatory authorities around the world. There has been a voluntary program in place since 2004. This program enabled corporations to experiment with ideas and provide feedback over a three-year period.”
The transformation from document-based to interactive data-based disclosure, under the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative, is a disruptive innovation in the marketplace for financial information, according to Mr. Smith.
“The changes for companies are significant, but consider for a moment what this means for auditing, financial publishers of annual reports, and data aggregators,” he said. “Auditors will be able to use interactive data to statistically test for accounting irregularities, hard-copy annual reports may become obsolete, and data aggregators will be disintermediated.”
Through improved transparency, the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative will make it easier for investors to sort through and analyze a company’s information.
“Be prepared for the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative whether you are a proponent or an opponent of transparency,” Mr. Smith recommended. “The worst situation is to be caught off-guard.
He said to develop a phased-in strategy to respond to these new and emerging requirements. Business intelligence and performance management professionals should help senior management understand and assess these market changes and develop a strategy to respond.

Defining the relative importance of different elements of an organization’s strategy is a necessary first step to prioritizing investments, said Gareth Herschel, Gartner research director and lead analyst on the use of analytics to drive improved business performance in the area of customer relationships.

“The temptation for most organizations when presented with a series of valid options is to choose ‘E: All of the Above,’” said Mr. Herschel in this morning’s presentation “The Most Important Analytic Applications for Your Most Important Business Applications.”

“This is why senior management involvement and project sponsorship is so critical, to ensure that the finite amount of organizational resource can be effectively allocated where they will have the most impact, instead of spread thinly across the organization and so diluted into meaninglessness,” he said.

Mr. Herschel outlined a four-step approach: set a strategy, learn from the best, understand the most important attributes when evaluating analytic applications, and guarantee success by avoiding the biggest pitfalls.

He presented three imperatives: establish the correct metrics, properly integrate analytic processes, and prepare for business process change.
“Although few analytical vendors can provide a complete range of analytical capability, and the skill sets required for good analysis may be distributed across the organization, establishing an integrated framework for analysis is essential,” he said.

Mr. Herschel said that lack of skills is the biggest impediment for enterprises seeking to improve their analysis. “A key requirement for enterprises seeking to gain ‘flexibility’ is to ensure that their ability to manage process flexibility equals their ability to determine what variability should exist within the process,” he added.

The whole social media impact. I work for government, and we’re not handling the impact of cloud computing very well.

Beth Niblock
Louisville Metro Government

Cloud is coming!

John Davis
Agfirst Farm Credit Bank

How to better structure enterprise
architecture for the requirementsgathering.
Andrew Lacroix

Information on email in the cloud
and cloud services in general.

Bob Elward
Air Products

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