Gartner’s Top 10 List is Incorrect and Stupid … NOT :)

James Hamilton wrote a piece for SysCon titled “Gartner’s Top 10 List is Incorrect and Stupid“. 

Actually, I should start with a little background:

InfoWorld posted this article by Lisa Schmeiser. She talks about recession proof jobs. Good read. My only argument would be to the point that companies should try to do everything in-house. Sometimes you need help from the outside to get you started down the right track – if you spend a million to save 2, good ROI right?

One of the jobs had to do with “web 2.0” technologies – for some reason, this really set James off. In his post he wrote:

I can’t imagine a single company today having a spare team of programmers sitting bored in a room with nothing better to do than implement a “social computing” module to their corporate website, or my favorite, “enterprise mashups” for their management team.

Web 2.0 became a mute subject overnight as it relates to software as a business.

Bloggers do not need hundreds of Web 2.0 software companies to help them.

Why would K-Mart need social computing features on its website during the recession of 2009? Why would IBM need social computing elements on its website? Why would Sony need an enterprise mashup? Well, Zillow is a hit. Do we need to change every website on earth to mini Zillows?

I thought I’d repost my comments here:

Sorry James, I think you have this one wrong. First, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of the gartner analysts, and everyone I’ve met has been very bright – most of their opinions are based on actual data and research. It is arrogant to assume that you know better.

Question – if you were a bank, and your customer service organization cost you 100 million dollars a year, what would you spend to cut that cost in half? Many “Web 2.0” portals are used to push customers to self-service. Additionally, according to another research firm forester (who also base their opinions on data and research), those customers who use highly usable self service portals perceive a higher service quality.

So, imagine you are that bank CEO – would you spend 25 million on an IT effort that saved you 50 million this year, and every year going forward? Now add in that your customers’ perception of your bank significantly improves. How attractive is that 25 million spend now?

To use your example – K-Mart’s IT department could create a dashboard to track weather, truck-maintenance schedules, employee vacation time and traffic conditions to more accurately predict truck deliveries –

All “Web 2.0” really does is give us a broader set of tools to create better software, and there is almost always an ROI in that!

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