Thomas Otter

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Archives for June, 2009


Back to the Future.

by Thomas Otter  |  June 16, 2009  |  1 Comment

Jim and I published a first take on the SuccessFactors deal with Siemens. Gartner clients see Siemens to Provide Important SaaS Talent Management Test Case (G00168920), 15-JUN-2009. Last week I suddenly felt like one of those people you meet in IT who keep telling you that computing hasn’t really changed since punchcards or Fortran, and [...]

1 Comment »

Category: HR SAP SaaS history software industry     Tags: , , ,

Spaghetti and UIs. Embracing diversity.

by Thomas Otter  |  June 16, 2009  |  Comments Off

I took a brief detour to the TED website this morning.  I watched Malcolm Gladwell’s talk from February 2004. TED is a dangerous site. People have been known to disappear in it for months. Click here if you don’t see the screen. Watching it is 20 minutes well spent, even if you aren’t a big [...]

Comments Off

Category: UI software industry     Tags: , , , ,

Via a comment via a link. The three sexy skills of data geeks.

by Thomas Otter  |  June 8, 2009  |  1 Comment

Readers of this blog and my Gartner research will know that I am a big fan of analytics. Not the really the tools, but the skills to take numbers and turn them into something useful. I’m not a statistician, but I know several. I’m even friends with a couple (meaning, in this instance, more than [...]

1 Comment »

Category: measurement software industry visualization     Tags: , ,

Well done Ushahidi

by Thomas Otter  |  June 7, 2009  |  Comments Off

Sometimes with web 2.0 technologies I feel as if I’m seeing demos of solutions looking for problems in a technology bubble, but this example really shows how mashups, text messaging and blogs can have a real impact on the quality of life and democracy. In this case, in Africa. via the TED site. Ushahidi — [...]

Comments Off

Category: Africa Social Software politics software industry     Tags: , ,