Premise And Promise

Welcome to a place for honest and candid discussion about what can work, what others have tried, and what is of value. The hope is to provide conversations about insider insights into effective enterprise apps strategies, vendor selection, and software contracts. With that in mind, a few macro trends drive the purpose of this blog:

• The pace of change in disruptive technologies impact business models, business processes, and organizational design.
• The new rules of business have changed. What happens beyond social?
• A movement to bring innovations in Web 2.0 and Cloud safely and securely into the next gen enterprise.
• A changing business environment has forced enterprise apps strategies to be more agile and responsive to the business.
• Software contract negotiations increase in complexity and require more alignment with next gen apps strategy.
• A plethora of partner solutions, purpose built apps, widgets and gadgets have complicated vendor selection.
• Vendor consolidation and a quest for operating margin has led to less leverage in software contract negotiations.

I’m looking forward to our conversations. Don’t be shy!

Blog Taxonomy

Here’s a list and categorization of posts that you may see in this blog.
Daily Themes: Not guaranteed on a weekly basis, but here’s the gist.

• Monday’s Musings – A thought provoking discussion around trends and current events. This replaces the Food For Thought posts.
• Tuesday’s Tips – Targeted advice on a variety of buy-side enterprise apps strategies, vendor selection, and software contract topics.
• Wednesday’s Whispers – A run down of acquisition rumors, personnel changes, and promotions.
• Thursday’s Disruptive Tech Showcase – Reviews on emerging and disruptive technologies from the sell-side world.  Profiles of tech leaders and their views on the future.
• Friday’s Features – Quick product reviews and reaction to product launches and announcements.

Topical Coverage: A list of the type of posts you can expect

• Best Practices – Lessons learned and success factors.
• Business Technology Strategy – Thoughts around management, organizational, or general strategy.
• Customer Case Studies – Real stories about customer experiences with a solution or technology.
• Digital Giants Market Analysis - The run down on high growth stocks, going beyond the usual equity analysis.
• Event Invitation /Speaking Engagement – An invitation to attend a teleconference, physical event, or virtual event where I’m leading a session or speaking.
• Event Report – Observations and commentary from the ground of a major event or conference or travel log.
• Executive Profiles – Insider interviews of leading visionaries in disruptive technology.
• News Analysis – A run down and analysis of hot topics and breaking news in enterprise software. In some cases this will be an Initial News Analysis with a final analysis as a deeper blog post or report as more information becomes available.
• Opinions – A personal point of view based on perspective.
• Personal Log – A log of individual adventures and personal announcements.
• Polls and Surveys – From time to time, you’ll see polls and surveys on topical subjects.
• Product Review – In-depth analysis of a dot release product.
• Quarterly Financial Tracker – An examination into the financial health of vendors.
• Quips – Short bursts of thought more than 140 characters.
• Research Report – In-depth analysis of a topic.
• Research Summary – A first-hand summary of recent research written or co-authored by R “Ray” Wang.
• Software Insider Index^TM– A periodic ranking of covered vendors by revenue by defined category.
• Speaker Notes – Inside thoughts about the key points from selected speeches.
• Trip Report – Observations and commentary from travels for work.
• Trends – Discussion on changes and shifts in enterprise software.