The Jiminy Crickets of the Enterprise Technology World

by Vinnie Mirchandani on October 6, 2009

3 years ago, Dennis Howlett and I along with a few others formed the Enterprise Irregulars. A tribute to Sherlock Holmes, it showed us how a motley group could use emerging tools of blogging, and RSS and Twitter and new media channels like ZDNet develop a following in technology world. While staying loyal to our individual employers and businesses.

Today, we are joining a few others in announcing the Enterprise Advocates. It has a narrower set of credentials – none of us work for a technology vendor unlike in the EIs. And it has a narrower mission – we want to speak out primarily for the enterprise technology buyer.

We think the time is right. Technology vendors spend 20 to 50% of their revenues in sales and marketing. Give or take that is a trillion dollars a year. The buyer’s voice is often drowned in that roar.

It may be the equivalent of peeing in that wind of vendor self-promotion, but the 5 of us have a track record of doing so. Dennis Howlett, who most readers know, is a certified curmudgeon. Ray Wang, who recently left Forrester, is well known for his Software Buyer’s Bill of Rights. Frank Scavo, who has run a consulting and research firm for years, typifies independence with his quote “Just cuz you’re SaaS doesn’t mean you get a pass!”. Oliver Marks is bringing rational, business results-oriented perspectives to the young world of social media and collaboration.

So you will see webinars, advisory services, blogs and more from us. Our individual firms bring a wide range of experiences and locations and we plan to offer more joint services.

But the key focus is to be Jiminy Crickets to a market whose nose keeps getting longer with that annual trillion dollar spend.

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  • prabirdutt
    Finally a group with established credentials taking up the issue of the colossal waste, verging on almost fraud, perpetrated by the so-called 'Tier 1' ERP vendors. I am looking forward to your analysis and reports. As a first step I would suggest destroying the stupendous myth of the 'Tier 1' designation used in the media and by the ‘other’ big name diverse research/consulting groups - thus implying superior product quality for the insanely higher costs. Have ANY of the customers of these 'Tier 1' products EVER had ANY positive ROI of ANY kind whatsoever in the last 20 years by implementing these products? Just to keep matters transparent my company is also in the ERP software/consulting ('Tier ?') business.
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