Posted January 5th, 2010
So you’ve probably seen the news – Gartner is acquiring Burton Group. Looks like we’ll be kept whole in a variety of ways; see this note from Gene Hall. I’ll let you know more as I know.
This does bring the number of analyst firms focused on identity, privacy, and relationships down to a very small number. It will be interesting to watch how the market responds.
What is with Tuesdays in my life? 9/11 – a Tuesday. IBM buys Access360 on a Tuesday. Gartner buys Burton Group on a Tuesday. In keeping with this odd streak of Tuesdays, I think I’ll be at Toledo Lounge tonight – see you there?
Posted October 17th, 2008
Safe to say that these are extremely turbulent times. The mixture of wars, financial crisis and meta-crisis, election cycles, and a looming global recession have combined to form enough angst and fear that it makes emo seem like Elmo. And it is in these times that one could easly just pull the covers over your head and go back to bed. But in doing so, you’d miss some amazing opportunities.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but I think that the “oh crap” moments are far more inspiring and lead to better, more useful innovations.
- Oh crap! There’s more information about everything available in ways I cannot even begin to count. How do I get to the good stuff?
- Oh crap! To compete, I’ve got to get more out of the bright people working for me. How do can I take their creative efforts and merge them into our core business?
- Oh crap! I thought I knew how to start a company but between all of this web 2.0 mumbo-jumbo, VC scare tactics, and the financial crisis, I’m just not sure anymore. What can I do?
It is a real “ah ha” moment that can break you out of the paralysis that an “oh crap” world so easily create. These moments come from seemingly unrelated conversations and random thoughts. These moments come from things like Defrag.
Eric describes Defrag as: Continue reading "Finding the “ah ha” moment in an “oh crap” world"...
Posted July 23rd, 2008
I am headed to this year’s Defrag conference and I pumped to do so. I didn’t get to go last year which I really regretted, and Eric hasn’t let me forget that either.
I will be moderating a panel called: Can identity be a filter for information overload? Eric and I are in search of interesting people and points of view to include on this panel.
On first blush, to me, this sounds like a discussion of the current state of personalization. Eric isn’t sold yet on that angle. I’d be interested to learn if/how personalization is moving from explicit declarations, “I like cake,” to something more implicit, “From examining your read RSS feeds, Computer thinks you like cake.”
Putting on my enterprise identity hat, I start to wonder if my role and relationship to my employer has a hand in this. Again, this ought to be an interpretation of pattern and not an explicit assignment. I am a senior analyst at Burton Group focused on identity and privacy. I share interests with my team. Collectively this blob of information (feeds, groups, sites, etc) is likely to be of interest to us. Further, I am curious how my role and relationship combined with a Google Search Appliance or SharePoint can act as a filter. Continue reading "I’m going to Defrag… help me figure out what to do when I get there"...
Posted July 23rd, 2008
I’m sure you’ve been following the Terry Childs case. Mr. Childs was a sysadmin in San Francisco who decided to change a few passwords and thus locked the city out of their new wide area network. Though it is still not clear why Mr. Childs did this, he had been recently written up for poor job performance.
Among others, Matt Pollicove wrote about this and the need for trust. Matt asserts that trust is a must and I completely agree. That being said, the last two points in his post are mistaken.
First he says:
This means, making sure there’s no orphan or rogue accounts in the systems.
While this is a generally accepted good practice, it would not have necessarily helped San Francisco keep from losing their network. Privileged account management would have been far more useful. Discipline and control around how sysadmins gain access to and use root-like accounts, the bread and butter of privileged account management, would have helped avert some of San Francisco’s problems.
Second Matt says:
GRC tools will be a must in this verification. Continue reading "Chasing the magical GRC animal"...
Posted July 1st, 2008
My first post as a Burton Group analyst is now up over at the Identity and Privacy Strategies blog.
(Helps if I actually link correctly… doh!)
what others say