I’m wrapping up a trip to Orlando at the Gartner Symposium where I spent time with my good friends, Eric Schmidt (Google) and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft, for the next few months) and 8,000 other CIO types looking for insight into the ground that seems to be literally shifting underneath their IT departments.
Gartner has been speaking for a couple years now about the nexus of forces that is shaping enterprise technology. Those forces being: Mobile, Data, Cloud and Social. It’s a powerful story and one in which Red e App takes center stage.
To walk the show floor at Gartner Symposium is a literal walk among the technology haves and have nots. The “be’s and the wannabe’s – old guard and new. I honestly don’t understand how CIO’s make heads or tales of it.
For instance, is Google the new Microsoft, is Microsoft my new game console? Is Box, the only Box? Is Box the new Evernote? Oh, and Blackberry was there. I think they all chipped in their money to buy hotel rooms and piled in Fairfax Financial’s Tesla and cruised down I95 to show people that they are ALIVE!
Truly, the tech redundancy, overlap, size and mass of these big companies is almost comical, but I certainly understand – driven by market size and investors they must reach far and wide. Be taller, skinnier, faster and prettier.
In 1990, I entered the tech space and saw Microsoft hand Lotus their lunch, to which they stole back, ate and kicked sand in the face of short sighted Lotus. I’m not a prognosticator, nor a #GoogleFanBoy, but the Google Enterprise team had significant presence at Symposium. Their cool stylistic brick façade’s and go getter sales people were at registration, along a bustling hallway, on the exhibitor floor etc. – they were there in force – you are getting the picture.
I took comfort in Red e App and the laser focus we have on the workforce and partner communities we serve, our ability to interact with the old and new giants of Symposium. Our ability to deliver measurable and impactful mobile messaging, content and file sharing and synchronization today – not tomorrow, nor several years from now. Today. This can translate into limitless workflow efficiencies for the largest companies in the world. You ask how we do it? Focus, focus, focus.
I gotta tell you, say what you will about analyst firms and their reach, touch and value – but Gartner does it right. Their information presentation and organization are flat out some of the best execution I have seen in my 23-year career.
Jonathan Erwin
Founder and CEO
