During Gartner’s annual Symposium ITxp 2012, Senior Vice President of Research Peter Sondergaard addressed the media in a round-table interview to clarify and explain more about Gartner’s Nexus, stressing that companies need to embrace it as soon as possible.
Sondergaard explained that the Nexus consists of four key fundamentals, namely Mobile, Social, Information and Cloud. He said companies need to address these fundamentals if they are to keep up with technology, but added that not everybody will do so.
He said that “old” companies like HP are aware of the need to change their IT outlook and adopt the Nexus, but are just moving too slowly with implementation.
“Old vendors are directionally aware of what they need to do, but can’t move fast enough, and some vendors feel the pain in this. HP is seriously challenged because they can’t come up with a coherent infrastructure. The all realise what is happening, but it’s their speed at which they can change that is a problem,” said in a round-table interview.
Asked whether there will be a tipping point at which all companies will improve their IT offerings and adopt Gartner’s strategy of the Nexus, he said there will be some companies left behind. “There will be no over-night shift or tipping point, and will be a gradual change. There will be sub-market changes, and some will fail.”
Referring back to technology company HP, Sondergaard added that they have some great offerings but struggle to bring them together, where as IBM is the most geared towards a big IT shift.
“HP has a number of assets that fit well together, but they have been unable to deliver this. Who will be able to execute things relatively well will be IBM. They have strength in information, but still need to do a better job of the integration. But they need to articulate what they want from mobility and where they stand on it. The software side of IBM is their strength.”
Sondergaard revealed that one of the biggest inhibiters of technology change will be security. “Security will slow things down, and be a limiting factor. The break is going to be the security systems. The challenge for CIOs is the security aspect, and there are a series of forces working here. There are also a lot of complex work going on in the whole infrastructure and how to plan software architecture.”
He also used the opportunity to clarify his statement that 90% of businesses will bypass broad deployment of Windows 8.
“They will skip the first version of Windows 8, but it doesn’t mean that consumer will do so. This is no different than what happens at every major cycle of software, and enterprises made the decision with this one. It’s not a failed OS, but we have seen people realising that they will wait for next version,” he concluded.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
