So the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit is winding down. It's been a hectic few days. You know that end of conference feeling when everyone is de-mob happy and you really feel for the guy on the graveyard shift (I know I've been there!). Well this time it is David Williams flying the flag for IT Process Automation so I'd better be there!!

Read the full "Intelligent Design My Ar*e!" article.

I am writing this at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit in Florida.

This is the second year Gartner has run this event and for an ISV in the IT Process Automation space it is the Gartner event so we are here in force along with some of our competitors as well as one of our OEM partners Unisys Corporation.

Unisys have licensed our Enigmatec Management System (EMS) as Unisys uOrchestrate™ which is a key component of their Infrastructure Management Suite.

Read the full "Drinking your own Champagne" article.

It has been a while since my last post. Well over a year to be exact.

The problem with blogs of course is that if you are not careful a week or two passes between posts then a month or more and before you know it you are in that classic situation where you are too embarrassed to blog!

Read the full "The Problem with Blogs" article.

Back in February I asked the rhetorical question Where has all the snow gone? and floated the idea of a new metric Return on Environment (ROE) which I proposed should be used to determine the overall impact of technology innovation. At the time I argued that ROE should be factored into any overall ROI calculation.

Read the full "What is Progress?" article.

Virtualization is set to play a key role in the next wave of exchange systems. This might seem like a commonplace given the impact virtualization is having elsewhere but there are some subtleties to do with the way electronic trading is implemented that make its application in this area non-trivial. But before we get into this lets look at the history of electronic trading.

Read the full "Virtualized Electronic Trading" article.

Fans of Tom Waits will recognize this as the opening line of What's he building? from his 1999 album Mule Variations. (Lyrics are here if you are interested.)

The same question could be asked of Cisco. There has been a definite uptick in chatter around Cisco's Service-oriented Network Architecture (SONA) ; what has become of their Topspin acquisition; and their ambitious and disruptive concept of a virtual data center centered on network virtualization.

For those of you lucky enough to subscribe to 451 there is a great Spotlight article by one of their network analysts Network virtualization: are servers converging with switches and routers?

Hold that thought - more on this later.

Read the full "What's he building in there?" article.

I'm taking a few days off to meet up with some old buddies for our annual First Friday Chapter Skiing Trip. This is a key event in our social calendar and the only legitimate excuse for not turning up is that you are no longer with us ;-)

Read the full "Where has all the snow gone?" article.

In a recent Grid Computing Planet article Grid, Virtualization Get Closer Paul Shread highlights research by 451 Group analysts Steve Wallage and William Fellows who in their 2007 Preview - Grid Computing argue that Grid and Virtualization are converging with the former being subsumed by the latter.

Read the full "The End of Grid" article.

While I've been on vacation a flurry of articles on virtualization have appeared online reinforcing the widely held view that this is the year that server virtualization goes mainstream and moreover that virtualization management is the key to unlocking its ultimate potential.

Read the full "Virtualization Management is the Key" article.

Earlier today I was in a reflective mood as yet another year draws to a close.

Read the full "2007 - Sneak Preview" article.