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Private Companies and Public Companies – Sizing up IT Spending

October 15, 2012 / hhenry / 0 Comments

One aspect of the Global 5000 company database is that we include all types, shapes and locations of companies including those that are publicly listed as well as private firms. For those who sell to corporations (as opposed to consumers) there is a great deal of interest in private companies. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that public companies have to disclose so much about their size, shape and all aspects of their organizations – most everyone knows or can find out what they need to. Privates, on the other hand, are less well known and hold the allure that there is great, undiscovered opportunity in there.

To get a sense of the dynamics of the public/private we examined a number of metrics related to companies in the Global 5000 database. It is true that more large companies are publicly traded. Of the 5000 companies, nearly 4,000 are public and just over 1,000 are private. That is the inverse of the market as a whole where most companies in any country or industry are private. Here are a few facts about each group.

The average revenue for a public company in the Global 5000 is $10.3 billion while the private companies averaged $10.6 billion
Public companies reported an average revenue per employee of $214,000 while private companies were just over $282,000
For both 2010 and 2011, revenue for both public and private companies grew by slightly more than 11.5%. Virtually no difference.
In both cases, IT spending per company is over $290 million and approximately 2.7% of revenue.
Total IT spending for Global 5000 public companies is approximately $1.1 trillion while private Global 5000 companies will spend about $300 billion.

The bottom line here is that big is big. It does not make much difference if the company is public or private, the big guys will spend a lot on a wide variety of products and services including IT products and services. The real difference is in the number of these large opportunities there are. Just because we find a few of these nuggets among the privates, does not mean all privates look alike. Most are quite a bit smaller.

Learn more about more the Global 5000 database

W3C Web Platform Docs – a new resource for web developers

October 13, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

W3C announced Web Platform Docs, which promises to be a valuable new resource for web developers of all levels. Imagine a single site that you can depend on for up-to-date, accurate, and browser and device neutral answers and advice for both simple and complex questions. It is brand new and “alpha” but already useful. Below is info from their announcement and a short video. For those of us that prefer textual info see this blog post from Doug Schepers: http://blog.webplatform.org/2012/10/one-small-step/

W3C, in collaboration with Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and others, announced today the alpha release of Web Platform Docs (docs.webplatform.org). This is a new community-driven site that aims to become a comprehensive and authoritative source for web developer documentation. With Web Platform Docs, web professionals will save time and resources by consulting with confidence a single site for current, cross-browser and cross-device coding best practices.

Gilbane Boston Early Discount Deadline Extended

October 11, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Plan to be in Boston for the 9th annual Gilbane Boston Conference and you still have time to SAVE!

Save up to $400 for Three Days, Four Tracks, 45 Sessions & Labs, 6 Workshops with One Objective: to help you understand what technologies can and can’t do, what practices succeed or fail, and how to plan for the rapid changes in market and technology evolution.

Today, you need to be flexible, agile, and ready to incorporate web and multiple mobile platforms with different form factors and capabilities, and you need to combine engaging content and interfaces with small devices and big data – this is not the same challenge you had last year.

To help you keep pace and be able to cut through hype and make informed decisions we bring together a diverse audience of technologists, marketers, strategists, business managers and analysts to learn, share, and debate best practices and strategies. Our conferences have sessions designed for attendees in marketing, technology, business units, as well as analysts and consultants.

Just sign up by October 31st and use discount code GILBANE. Learn more http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

2012 Technology Showcase Hours
Wednesday, November 28: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Thursday, November 29: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

See the conference program:
http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

See the current list of speakers:
http://gilbaneboston.com/speakers.html

See this year’s in-depth pre-conference workshops:
http://gilbaneboston.com/workshops.html

See the current list of Sponsors & Exhibitors:
http://gilbaneboston.com/exhibitors_sponsors.html

Sign-up today to make sure you receive your $200 discount! Just use discount code GILBANE

Or sign-up for your free Keynote and Technology Showcase Pass.

Tablet market evolution and mobile development strategies

October 10, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

It was only about a year ago that the tablet market was only really about general-purpose tablets. There was the dominant iPad, and the fragmented Android market. Ebook readers were a separate animal altogether, although the anticipated release of the first Kindle Fire raised the question of whether it would bridge the general-purpose and ebook market.

In some ways it did, adding enough apps and internet access that it was hard not to sneak in some work email or web research even when your laptop or iPad was purposely left at home for the weekend away with the family. But of course Amazon’s business model was/is different – a subsidized device to increase the sale of content. And Amazon’s use of Android was significantly more customized than other Android tablets.

The folks over at Tech.pinions continue to be a must-read for anyone following/investing in the tablet market. John Kirk in Battle of The Tablet Business Models: Lessons Learned and a Look Ahead, argues that the future of the tablet model will be determined by the business models behind them, and points out some consistencies and lack thereof between the major players, Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. He is surely right that too often commentators and analysts have focused on hardware characteristics and software and not paid enough attention to business models. However, product capabilities can either create new business model possibilities or prevent their success so also help determine the landscape. For example, a non-glare, color display with low power requirements that combines the best of an iPad and a Kindle will certainly have a material effect on the market. In any case John’s post contains a number of nuggets.

Another aspect to consider in tablet market evolution is the difference between enterprise and consumer tablet markets. We’ll look at that in another post.

So You Want to Build a Mobile Content App? or a Better App?

October 8, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Gilbane Conference Workshop: So You Want to Build a Mobile Content App?

Instructor: Jonny Kaldor, Managing Director, Kaldor Group (creators of Pugpig)
November 27th, 2012 at the InterContinental Boston Waterfront

With the continuing and massive adoption of tablet devices, content owners have a dizzying myriad of ways to disseminate content to employees and customers alike in a way that is faster, broader, more engaging and more actionable than ever before. Business models for content owners are being revolutionised, and tablets are now offering a truly viable alternative to print. But it doesn’t stop there – whether you’re pushing content to consumers or disseminating information across your enterprise, you can reap tangible benefits from publishing on tablet devices. This session will dive into the key aspects of conceiving, designing, building and launching your mobile content app, whether you’re targeting your employees, clients or consumers. We’ll cover both the opportunities and the many pitfalls that you will encounter (and nimbly jump over) as you set off of your content app journey…

Key topics:

Where to start?
Translating print or web to mobile – it’s not so easy
Designing an engaging and really useful user experience
Avoiding building a whole new team to manage the mobile channel
Aligning your web and mobile strategy and operations
Webapp vs native vs hybrid – which should I go for?
Adaptive design / responsive design”
Business models that work
Making sense of multiple devices and marketplaces
Using the big players to your advantage (Apple, Google, MS, Amazon)
Keeping your users happy

See the full pre-conference workshop schedule at Gilbane Boston, then [button link=”http://gilbaneboston.com/registration_information.html” variation=”red”]Register[/button].

Frank Gilbane on Gilbane Boston 2012

September 28, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Frank Gilbane describes Gilbane Boston 2012 in a short off the cuff video after being caught walking by the studio. See the Gilbane Conference program.

The Flip Side of IT Spending and Productivity

September 28, 2012 / hhenry / 0 Comments

In our last post we explored the companies in The Global 5000 that showed the biggest gains in revenue per employee AND spent the most on IT. The idea is that this group will continue to spend and strive for continuous improvements — making some great potential targets for those IT suppliers that can show their offerings help save money.

Now, we turn the page and explore the other end of the spectrum. Again, taking companies in the Global 5000 data base we now look at the bottom 2000 companies in terms of revenue per employee change That is — they are not on a positive track. From this group we then took the lowest 1000 firms in terms of IT spending.

We can look at this set of companies in one of two ways – either:

they are ripe opportunities who will need to invest in order to grow their revenue faster or get more productivity out of the existing workforce
OR – they are not going any further with technology spending and their growth is not going to be via increasing spending per employee.

We should run to the first group and run away from the second. Here is the profile of these 1,000 companies where these industries have traditionally been a challenge for the IT suppliers.

The top countries are:

USA
UK
Japan
Canada
France
Spain

And the top industries:

Industrial Manufacturers
Retailers
Consumer Goods Manufacturers
Business Services
Construction

For more information about The Global 5000 database click here

Why Big Data is important to Gilbane Conference attendees

September 23, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

If you think there is too much hype, and gratuitous use of the term, big data, you haven’t seen anything yet. But don’t make the mistake of confusing the hype with how fundamental and how transformational big data is and will certainly be. Just turn your hype filter to high and learn enough about it to make your own judgements about how it will affect your business and whether it is something you need to do something about now, or monitor for future planning.

As I said yesterday in a comment on a post by Sybase CTO Irfan Khan Gartner dead wrong about big data hype cycle (with a response from Gartner):

However Gartner’s Hype Cycle is interpreted I think it is safe to say that most, including many analysts, underestimate how fundamental and how far-reaching big data will be. How rapidly its use will evolve, and in which applications and industries first, is a more difficult and interesting discussion. The twin brakes of a shortage of qualified data scientist skills and the costs and complexities of IT infrastructure changes will surely slow things down and cause disillusionment. On the other hand we have all been surprised by how fast some other fundamental changes have ramped up, and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service) will certainly help accelerate things. There is also a lot more big data development and deployment activity going on than many realize – it is a competitive advantage after all.

There is also a third “brake” which is all the uncertainty around privacy issues. There is already a lot of consumer data that is not being fully used because of fear of customer backlash or new regulation and, one hopes, because of a degree of respect for consumer’s privacy.

Rob Rose expanded on some specific concerns of marketers in a recent post Big Data & Marketing – It’s A Trap!, including the lack of resources for interpreting even the current mostly website analytics data marketers already have. It’s true, and not just for smaller companies. In addition there are at least four requirements for making big data analytics accessible to marketers that are largely beyond the reach of most current organizations.

Partly to the rescue is Big Data as a Service BDaaS (one of the more fun-sounding acronyms). BDaaS is going to be a huge business. All the big technology infrastructure firms are getting involved and all the analytics vendors will all have cloud and big data services. There are also many new companies including some surprises. For example, after developing its own Hadoop-based big data analytics expertise Sears created subsidiary MetaScale to provide BDaaS to other enterprises. Ajay Agarwal from Bain Capital Ventures predicts that the confluence of big data and marketing will lead to several new multi-billion dollar companies and I think he is right.

But while big data is important for the marketers, content managers, and IT who attend our conference because of the potential for enhanced predictive analytics and content marketing. The reach and value of big data applications is far broader than marketing – executives need to understand the potential for new efficiencies, products and businesses. The well-known McKinsey report “Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity” (free) is a good place to start. If you are in the information business I focus on that in my report Big-Data: Big Deal or Just Big Buzz? (not free).

Big data presentations at Gilbane Boston

This year we have six presentations on big data, two devoted to big data and marketing and all chosen with an eye towards the needs of our audience of marketers, content strategists, and IT. You can find out more about these presentations, including their date and time on the conference program.

Keynote

Bill Simmons, CTO, DataXu
Why Marketing Needs Big Data

Main Conference Presentations

Tony Jewitt, VP Big Data Solutions at Avalon Consulting, LLC
“Big Data” 101 for Business

Bryan Bell, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, Expert System
Semantics and the Big Data Opportunity

Brian Courtney, General Manager of Operations Data Management, GE Intelligent Platforms
Leveraging Big Data Analytics

Darren Guarnaccia, Senior VP, Product Marketing, Sitecore
Big Data: What’s the Promise and Reality for Marketers?

Stefan Andreasen, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Kapow Software
Big Data: Black Hole or Strategic Value?

Update: There is now a video of me being interviewed on big data by CMS-Connected.

The Gilbane Advisor