GARTNER Report Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Studying the Gartner Hype Cycle Report, I had devised a strategy for selecting Partner Companies for my company. I present this study as this could be one of the methods for conducting such exercises. This analysis was made in 2016 and is now obsolete for our company.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

SI Solutions LLC is looking to expand its portfolio and business. This is encouraged by the fact that the customers of SI Solutions LLC are seeking more solutions from SI Solutions LLC. Though SI Solutions LLC has embarked on developing solutions themselves, it is impossible for SI Solutions LLC to develop so many solutions in such a short period of time.

So, the strategy in 2017 is to identify companies who have new innovations available with them and partner them to sell and service these solutions. However, the criteria for the selection of these companies for SI Solutions LLC is that these companies should not already have presence in the Middle East Asia. SI Solutions would like to leverage its expertise in the Middle East Asia market and take the partner company solutions to its customers and other customers.

The problem statement for SI Solutions LLC is to identify 5 to 7 such companies and their solutions that SI Solutions LLC would sell and service in Middle East Asia.

 

OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to identify 5 to 7 companies that SI Solutions LLC could sell and service in the Middle East Asia for at least the next 3 to 5 years. On identifying these companies, SI Solutions LLC would look to get into a partnership with these companies either through a licensing model or through a reseller model.

The scope of the study is to go through the new innovations produced by companies worldwide. SI Solutions LLC would ideally like to identify products that are useful for Telecom Sector and Banking Sector. Also, SI Solutions LLC would like to identify products or innovations that can be commercialized within a period of 0 to 2 years. Ideally, SI Solutions LLC would like products and innovations that have already been put into commercial use in USA or Europe. Also, as a stated objective, the products and/or innovation should belong to companies that do not have a presence in the Middle East Asia market.

After the study has identified between 5 to 7 companies with whom SI Solutions LLC would like to form a partnership, SI Solutions LLC would enter into negotiations to ultimately seal the partnership. The commercial negotiations are kept out of the scope of this study.

METHODOLOGY

The methodology is stated as a sequence of steps to be undertaken during the study. These steps are as follows:

1. Gather the Gartner Report for the new Products and Innovations in the market. Gartner releases this report every year. Typically, this report contains survey of between 1800 to 2000 products and innovations. The report states the technology that has been developed, the uses of the technology, the industries to which the technology can be applied, the main players (companies) which are working on developing these technologies, the time that the technology will take to become commercial, etc.
2. From this report, identify the technologies that can be applied to the Telecom and Banking industries. As SI Solutions LLC is focused on the Telecom and Banking industries, this step is extremely vital. Further, SI Solutions LLC would like to identify technologies that are close to or fully fit the solutions that its customers are seeking.
3. From the shortlisted technologies, identify the technologies that can be commercialized in the next 0 to 2 years. SI Solutions LLC would not like going for technologies that have a time horizon beyond 2 years from date. This is because this increases the risk due to uncertainty created by the time frame.
4. For the shortlisted technologies, identify the companies with whom SI Solutions LLC would like to form a partnership. For doing this, the profiles of the companies involved with the technologies would be studied. The main source of study of the company profiles would be through the Internet. The main objective here is to find companies which have adequate expertise in the technology and also have expertise of having implemented it somewhere and most importantly does not have presence in the Middle East Asia.

 

SOURCE DATA

The source data is obtained from http://www.gartner .com through the membership Si Solutions LLC has with Gartner. The source data is contained in the file 291957_gartner_technology_profiles.xlsm. It is an Excel Workbook. There are exactly 1868 technologies discussed in the report. The data contains information in the following columns:

1. Technology Name: The name of the Technology being discussed. Example: Yard Management, Workspace Aggregators, etc.
2. Market Qualifier: The popular domain where the technology fits. This information is not available for all the data points. Example: Networking, Digital Marketing, Digital Banking, etc.
3. Definition: A short definition of the discussed technology.
4. Position: This column states the position of the technology from perspective of its movement in the market according to the Product Maturity Life Cycle. It states whether the technology is in the Pre-Plateau or Post-Through, etc. It also gives an estimate of the stage in terms of percentage. Example: Pre-Plateau 10%, Post-Through 40%, etc.
5. Time to Plateau: This column states the time the technology will take to reach the Plateau in terms of adoption of the technology. This value is given in terms of number of years. The values are Less than 2 years, 2 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, More than 10 years, Obsolete before Plateau.
6. Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The justification for the values given to the “Position” and “Time to Plateau” columns.
7. Business Impact: A brief business impact of the technology.
8. User Advice: An advice to the user considering adoption of the technology for the purpose of investment.
9. Benefit Rating: A categorical rating for the benefits from the technology. The values are High, Low, Moderate, Transformational.
10. Market Penetration: The current stage market penetration. This value is given in terms of percentage. Example: 1% to 5% of target audience, etc.
11. Maturity: A categorical rating for the maturity of the technology. The values are Adolescent, Early Mainstream, Embryonic, Emerging, Legacy, Mature Mainstream, Obsolete.
12. Sample Vendors: A list of vendors working on this technology.

Two examples of the source data are provided below.

Technology Name	ZigBee	Work-at-Home Agent Technology
Market Qualifier		Unified Communications and Collaboration
Definition	ZigBee is a wireless mesh networking technology based on the IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard. Consumer applications include electronics, smart lighting, home automation and machine-to-machine communication. The technology can be used in several topologies, such as point-to-point or mesh. ZigBee’s targeted battery life (lower power) and data rates (lower rates) differentiate it from Wi-Fi.	Work-at-home agent technology enables contact centers to deploy some or all of their agents at home or, otherwise, individually in off-site locations. Solutions typically include a VPN connection via broadband to the agents’ locations, as well as a thin-client agent desktop interface, providing agents with access to CRM and contact center call control features. The voice path is typically provided via either voice over IP (VoIP) over the VPN connection or a plain old telephone service (POTS) line.
Position	5h.post-trough 40%	5e.post-trough 25%
Time to Plateau	2.Two to five years	2.Two to five years
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	While the ZigBee standard has existed for a long time, its evolution has led it to splinter into many incompatible follow-on specifications, such as ZigBee Pro and ZigBee Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics (RF4CE). Several competing technologies, such as Bluetooth low energy (LE) and low-power Wi-Fi, have encroached on some of ZigBee’s core markets, making ZigBee’s staying power questionable. Although ZigBee may achieve lower power consumption through its mesh networking protocol (and thereby shorter distance between nodes), competing technologies either have developed similar technology or are in the process of doing so. Bluetooth 4 (BT4) is a potential competitor in some areas, such as medical equipment and remote control applications; however, BT4 has been more focused on consumer electronics applications. The pricing of a stand-alone radio is expected to be in the $1 to $2 range; however, implementations (for example, building automation) may require an advanced microcontroller, especially when security protocols demand it, potentially adding more cost to the bill of materials. ZigBee’s first significant win was in the smart meter market. This foray into the home may parlay into ZigBee’s inclusion in more home appliances. Thread Group, a new industry group using 802.15.3 as the basis for the Internet of Things (IoT) wireless communications, was formed in 2014 (spearheaded by Google’s Nest division). This has provided a boost in the arm for ZigBee in its battle against Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the smart home arena.	Deployment of work-at-home agents is considered a mainstream practice for many contact centers today — especially those in developed economies such as North America, Western Europe, parts of Asia/Pacific and other locations where broadband service is widely available and reliable. Virtually all-major vendors of premises- or cloud-based contact center platforms support work-at-home agent technology.
Business Impact	It is expected that ZigBee’s primary impact will be in the commercial and industrial segments, particularly in the area of lighting. Other than RF4CE, which has seen some adoption by cable multi-service operators, ZigBee is expected to see limited traction in consumer applications.	Contact centers can leverage work-at-home agent technology to support remote agents as a standard business practice, either to reduce real estate costs when staffing grows beyond a site’s physical capacity; to support flexible work hours to help staff during off hours, seasonally or during spikes in call volume; and to accommodate handicapped workers who have difficulties commuting to work. Allowing agents to work from home either full or part time can also be offered as a benefit to agents, reducing their costs and commute times. This can enable a company to expand the geographic area from which it can recruit agents, making it easier to staff hard-to-find skills. In some cases, agents will be willing to accept lower pay in order to work from home. Work-at-home agent technology can also be used as a means to support disaster recovery situations — whether allowing agents to be geographically dispersed or as a way to quickly turn up agent services at an alternate site, such as a high school gymnasium or hotel conference room.
User Advice	Early adopters and organizations with homegrown applications can consider ZigBee. All other potential users should monitor ZigBee’s market traction versus other key competing technologies, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.	Supporting work-at-home agents via a thick-client interface can be problematic for a variety of reasons, including challenges with pushing out software updates, difficulty ensuring that the use of other applications won’t slow down the performance of the agent’s system, and security concerns associated with customer data residing on the agent’s PC, among others. As a result, most contact centers supporting work-at-home agents strongly prefer to leverage thin-client agent interfaces, such as Web-based or virtualized via Citrix. Contact center planners who are considering work-at-home agent technology must also ensure that the agents’ environments can support a high-quality voice connection. VoIP over broadband connections typically will provide “as good as or better than mobile phone quality.” VoIP quality can sometimes be improved when the voice path is routed to a dedicated VoIP hard phone or appliance. When needing higher-quality connections, companies will often choose to send the voice path over a POTS connection. In this case, agents will typically log on to the contact center system via their agent desktop tool, and the system will then place a call to the agents’ designated phone number, keeping that connection up for the duration of the agents’ shifts and alerting the agents of new incoming our outgoing calls by playing a “zip tone.” In addition to ensuring that agents have reliable broadband service and, if needed, telephony service, companies will often require that the agents ensure that they have a dedicated office space free of typical household distractions and noises; in some cases, they will require the addition of an uninterruptible power supply.
Benefit Rating	Moderate	Moderate
Market Penetration	1% to 5% of target audience	20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity	Adolescent	Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors	Freescale Semiconductor GreenPeak Marvell Technology Group Silicon Labs STMicroelectronics Texas Instruments	8×8 Aspect Avaya Cisco Five9 Genesys inContact Interactive Intelligence LiveOps Mitel

TECHNOLOGIES OF INTEREST FOR SI SOLUTIONS LLC

SI Solutions LLC mainly deals in Telecom and Banking domains. Any technology useful for the Telecom and Banking industry would be of interest for SI Solutions LLC. Also, any allied technologies useful for these domains would be of interest of SI Solutions LLC.

However, as SI Solutions LLC is interested in the market in Middle East Asia, SI Solutions LLC would be interested in the latest, cutting edge technology, which can add value to its customers. The cost of the technology is not a criterion because of the region of operations. However, SI Solutions LLC’s business model hinges on Cost Leadership. So, SI Solutions LLC would like to bring the selected technologies to its customers at the least possible cost of ownership.

SI Solutions LLC would like to adopt technology that can be taken to market in the next 2 years time horizon. Adopting a technology that has got a larger time to market would be risky for SI Solutions LLC.

Also, SI Solutions LLC would not like to be an Early Adopter of the technology. SI Solutions LLC would prefer technology which is the in the Growth Stage or Maturity Stage. SI Solutions LLC would definitely avoid technology that is in the Decline Stage.

 

TECHNOLOGIES SHORTLISTED

To shortlist the technologies for SI Solutions LLC, we first filter the Gartner Report so that we get only the Technologies that are available to market in the next 2 years time period.

The complete Gartner Report has 1868 technologies listed.

An analysis of the technologies on the dimensions of “Time to Plateau” and “Benefit Rating” is as follows.

TIME TO PLATEAU	BENEFIT RATING				TOTAL
	TRANSFORMATIONAL	HIGH	MODERATE	LOW
1. Less than 2 years	9	84	94	9	196
2. 2 to 5 Years	68	410	352	14	844
3. 5 to 10 Years	136	275	256	21	688
4. More than 10 Years	38	37	26	5	106
5. Obsolete before Plateau	4	4	19	7	34

As SI Solution LLC is interested in technologies which can be marketed in the next 2 years, we apply the filter on “Time to Plateau” to be “1. Less than 2 Year”. We are thus left with 196 entries.

Further, we eliminate the entries where the “Benefit” Rating” is “Low”. So, we have 187 entries to examine.

For these 187 entries, we do a further analysis by comparing the “Benefit Rating” against the “Maturity” Level. The result is as follows.

TIME TO PLATEAU: Less Than 2 Years
BENEFIT RATING	MATURITY					TOTAL
	ADOLESCENT	EMERGING	EARLY MAINSTREAM	MATURE MAINSTREAM	LEGACY
TRANSFORMATIONAL	2		5	2		9
HIGH	6	2	48	27	1	84
MODERATE	9	1	46	35	3	94
TOTAL	17	3	99	64	4	187

SI Solutions LLC would like dealing with “Early Mainstream” or “Mature Mainstream” technologies. After this filter, we are left with 163 technologies to choose from.

We do a further analysis for the filtered entries based on the “Market Penetration”. The result is as follows.

TIME TO PLATEAU: Less Than 2 Years
BENEFIT RATING: TRANSFORMATIONAL, HIGH, MODERATE
MATURITY	MARKET PENETRATION (in terms of %age of Target Audience)				TOTAL
	1% – 5%	5% – 20%	20%-50%	>50%
EARLY MAINSTREAM	3	13	78	5	99
MATURE MAINSTREAM		1	21	42	64
TOTAL	3	14	99	47	163

We will consider the technologies that have between 5% to 50% market penetration. This ensures that the technology is reasonably tested and also the market is not already saturated. So, we are left with 113 entries.

We do a further classification based on the “Position” of the technology in the product maturity cycle. The result is as follows.

TIME TO PLATEAU: Less Than 2 Years
BENEFIT RATING: TRANSFORMATIONAL, HIGH, MODERATE
MATURITY: Early Mainstream, Mature Mainstream
POSITION	MARKET PENETRATION		TOTAL
	5% – 20%	20% – 50%
PRE-TROUGH 45%	1		1
PRE-TROUGH 30%	1	1	2
PRE-TROUGH 25%		2	2
PRE-TROUGH 10%		1	1
PRE-TROUGH 5%		1	1
TROUGH		3	3
POST-TROUGH 10%	1	1	2
POST-TROUGH 15%	1	1	2
POST-TROUGH 20%	1		1
POST-TROUGH 25%	1	2	3
POST-TROUGH 30%	1	6	7
POST-TROUGH 35%	1	3	4
POST-TROUGH 40%		4	4
POST-TROUGH 45%		1	1
TROUGH-PLATEAU MIDPOINT		6	6
PRE-PLATEAU 45%		6	6
PRE-PLATEAU 40%	1	9	10
PRE-PLATEAU 35%		6	6
PRE-PLATEAU 30%		7	7
PRE-PLATEAU 25%	1	3	4
PRE-PLATEAU 20%		9	9
PRE-PLATEAU 15%	1	6	7
PRE-PLATEAU 10%	1	8	9
PRE-PLATEAU 5%		4	4
PLATEAU		9	9
POST-PEAK 10%	1		1
POST-PEAK 45%	1		1
TOTAL	14	99	113

We will consider technologies that are in the “Position” of between “Post-Trough 45%” and “Pre-Plateau 25%”. So, we are left with 40 technologies to choose from.

The 40 technologies are listed below. We only table the columns – Technology, Market Qualifier and Definition. From among these, we will select the technologies SI Solutions LCC would be interested in based on their domain of operations. The selected technologies are highlighted in the table below. We will further conduct a detailed analysis of the selected technologies.

Sl.	Technology Name	Market Qualifier	Definition	Shortlisted (Y/N)	Reason
1.	Web-Based Rating Engines		Web-based rating engines offer rule management and a calculation engine for managing rates and prices for property and casualty (P&C) insurance products. Rating engines can be licensed and deployed on a stand-alone basis to serve multiple systems, such as internal policy administration systems and customer-facing websites, and they are also often bundled with policy management modules.	Y	SI Solutions LLC already has solutions for Rating for Telecom Operators. This would be logical expansion into Insurance Domain. The technology from this could be back integrated for Telecom Operators.
2.	Visual Data Discovery		Visual data discovery is a BI platform architectural style that blends data from multiple sources into a proprietary in-memory store that is tightly coupled with an interactive visualization layer. It contrasts with the traditional BI Platform which relies on a more modular architecture dependent on three distinct technologies to integrate, store and present data. This is a new technology profile that is a combination of the in-memory analytics and interactive visualization technologies.	Y	SI Solutions LLC already has solutions for Data Analytics. This would be a natural extension of this arm.
3.	UTM		Unified threat management (UTM) platforms are multifunction network security appliances particularly suited to SMBs. Feature availability continues to grow, copying new features from other network security technologies; but performance degrades as they are enabled. That’s why the primary UTM use cases are employee productivity and Internet security. While none of the functions may be best of breed, UTM products meet the need for low-cost, due-diligence levels of security.	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
4.	Tokenization		Tokenization refers to a process by which a piece of sensitive data, such as a credit card number, is replaced by a surrogate value known as a token. Unless “vault less” tokenization is used, the sensitive data still needs to be stored securely at one centralized location for subsequent reference, and requires strong protections around it. The security of a tokenization approach depends on the security of the sensitive values, and the algorithm and process used to create the surrogate value and map it back to the original value.	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
5.	Static Data Masking		Static data masking (SDM) prevents the abuse of data at rest by giving users fictitious (or a mixture of real and fictitious), yet realistic, data, rather than sensitive data.	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
6.	Social Publishing Applications		Social publishing applications are an extension of campaign management tools, and include capabilities for social media account management, content management, editorializing and content/campaign analysis.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
7.	Social Media Engagement Applications		Social media engagement applications go beyond monitoring brand mentions by adding capability to create and respond to posts from popular social networks. In advanced tools, the social data is captured and analyzed to determine the incoming post’s content, which is submitting the post, the quality of the engagement, and additional capabilities for prioritization and workflow.	N	This is too generic now.
8.	Smartphone Banking		Smartphone mobile banking covers light applications downloaded to the consumer’s mobile devices from an app store. Smartphone apps may offer full-service banking or focus on point solutions, such as payment initiation, bill payment, or transaction and balance tracking. This definition of smartphone mobile banking now excludes downloadable apps that are developed to run on tablet PCs, such as the Apple iPad and Android-based tablets. These are covered in a separate technology profile.	N	This is too generic now.
9.	SIP-Enabled Contact Centers		Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling technology used to establish, support and terminate multimedia communications. In contact center environments, SIP can replace either (1) legacy integrated ISDN trunks for communications outside the contact center, or (2) computer-telephony integration (CTI) for connecting such applications as automatic call distributors (ACDs), interactive voice response (IVR) units and customer databases.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
10.	SIP Communications		Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a communication protocol that is specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It is the industry standard for multiple protocol (voice and video) signaling. SIP enables a new generation of communication services across the Internet as well as over fixed and mobile Internet Protocol (IP) networks.	N	This is too generic now.
11.	Shared OS Virtualization (Non-mainframe)		Shared OS virtualization is used to provide an environment that enables multiple applications to use one instance of an OS. It enables the dynamic allocation of OS resources to each application without affecting the operation of other applications. Shared OS virtualization requires three components to make a suitable environment: isolation, transparency and workload management. This is different from virtualization using a hypervisor.	N	This is too generic now.
12.	SecaaS for Public Social Media		Cloud-deployed security as a service (SecaaS) for public social media (including social networks and blogs) provides fine-grained control of user interactions. SecaaS solutions rely on man-in-the-middle interception of user sessions or data traffic. Features include content capture, records retention, application feature control based on user identity, basic data loss prevention, data encryption, and a centralized control dashboard or console.	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
13.	SaaS Administration Applications	Education	Software as a service (SaaS) for administration applications in higher education is software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers, based on a single set of common code and consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers at any time, on a pay-for-use basis or as a subscription. Student information system functionality is excluded from this technology profile.	N	SI Solutions LLC will not get into Education Domain.
14.	Risk Management Consulting Services		Gartner defines risk management consulting services (RMCS) as a set of expert services designed to help enterprises reduce uncertainty and lessen its impact on business performance. RMCS supports and informs the creation of an enterprise’s overall risk management strategy and provides a mechanism to ensure that important business processes and behaviors remain within the limits of the enterprise’s overall appetite for risk, and adhere to relevant policies, procedures, laws and regulations.	N	SI Solutions LLC is presently looking for products and thus will not consider this.
15.	Procurement Networks		A procurement network is a multi-enterprise solution, primarily for indirect spend. It can include e-catalog content management, e-invoicing, dynamic discounting, supplier discovery and supplier information management (SIM). Some procurement networks leverage traditional B2B integration protocols such as EDI, but increasingly, many rely on browser access, email routing and PDF OCR to transmit data, allowing multichannel integration. Most procurement network operators provide community management services to complement the network.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
16.	Predictive Modeling	Healthcare Payer	Predictive modeling is a data mining technique that uses historical data to generate statistical models that predict future events. Predictive models can be used within payer organizations to better underwrite risk, optimize member engagement, identify opportunities for care management intervention, locate fraud and abuse, and target marketing and sales efforts. Here, we track adoption outside of actuarial use cases, which have long been mature in the payer industry.	Y	SI Solutions LLC already has solutions for Data Analytics. This would be a natural extension of this arm.
17.	Patient Portals		Patient portals enable a secure online patient-provider relationship and access to clinical and educational information, financial and administrative functionality, and personal health maintenance tools. Portals can be stand-alone or tethered (integrated) to electronic health record (EHR) systems or healthcare mega-suite offerings.	N	This is too generic now.
18.	Mobile Social Networks		Mobile social networks enable individuals to connect to their communities using a mobile device through a native application. Members share experiences; interests, presence information and personal content via social network apps or socially enabled mobile apps. Mobile devices enable geo-location, the localization of the social network service (e.g., check-in) or visualization mechanisms (e.g., augmented reality that overlays contextual information).	N	This is too generic now.
19.	Lead Management		Lead management processes take in unqualified contacts and opportunities from a variety of sources, including Web registration pages and campaigns, email marketing, multichannel campaigns, database marketing and third-party leased lists, social CRM and social media, and trade events. The output of lead management processes — qualified, scored, nurtured, augmented and prioritized selling opportunities — are handed off to direct, indirect or e-commerce sales channels for action and closure.	N	This is too generic now.
20.	IT Project and Portfolio Management Applications		On-premises and cloud-hosted IT project and portfolio management (PPM) providers offer deployment options that allow their customers and prospects to deploy a dedicated instance of their IT PPM applications on-site at the customer’s facility or in the cloud in a hosting environment offered by the provider as a service. These products provide portfolio, demand, project, resource and time management capabilities needed by IT departments to manage their IT projects against fixed resources (such as time, people and money).	N	This is too generic now.
21.	IT Infrastructure Utility	IT Outsourcing	Infrastructure utility services (IUS) are the outsourced, industrialized, asset-based IT infrastructure-managed services below the business application functional layer. These services are defined by service outcomes, technical options and interfaces, and they are priced by resource usage, allocation or number of users served.	N	SI Solutions LLC is in this business and would continue to go alone in this space.
22.	Integrated Systems: Infrastructure		“Integrated systems” is an umbrella term that encompasses integrated infrastructure systems (IIS) and integrated stack systems (ISS). An IIS combines hardware integration (server, storage and network) and management tools plus (optionally) the operating system and/or virtualization layer. An ISS is an IIS with the additional integration of a partial or total software stack, which turns the system into a quasi-appliance.	N	SI Solutions LLC is in this business and would continue to go alone in this space.
23.	Ethernet Services	Networking and Communications	Ethernet services deliver WAN connectivity between enterprise locations. These services are available in three types of topologies: point-to-point connection, point-to-multipoint connection and multipoint-to-multipoint services.	N	This is too generic now.
24.	ERP Infrastructure Utility		ERP Infrastructure Utility Services (IUS) are industrialized, shared IT infrastructure services for running ERP applications. IUS for ERP are paid based on either resource consumption or resource allocation.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
25.	Enterprise Internet Reputation Management		Enterprise Internet reputation management solutions detect and respond to threats to the reputation of enterprises and key personnel.	N	This is too generic now.
26.	E-Collage		E-collage, or electronic collage, is the application of computer technology to create an online collection of graphics/pictures to uncover consumer attitudes, emotions and associations. Instead of gluing physical pieces of paper, photos, materials, text and objects to a canvas, e-collage provides participants with a blank computer desktop on which they can drag, drop, insert and manipulate on-screen graphics (usually from an adjacent image library) to create a visual response to a research question.	N	This is too generic now.
27.	Digital Journals		Digital journals are written or multimedia accounts of consumer activities in which research participants connect to a website, program or mobile app that allows them to describe (in their own words or other content) how they interacted or participated in a particular activity, like choosing a product, or relate their experience of a brand or event. Online journals typically capture text, but increasingly take the form of video diaries that can include multimedia components.	N	This is too generic now.
28.	Digital Content Management for Sales		Digital sales content management applications encompass repositories, authoring tools, collaborative environments, and interfaces for publishing, versioning, and presenting collateral to help salespeople develop and close business. The leading solutions also provide external delivery and consumption metric capabilities, which allow sales users to measure prospects’ engagement with the content.	N	This is too generic now.
29.	Data Federation / Virtualization		Data federation and virtualization technology is based on the execution of distributed queries against multiple data sources, federation of query results into virtual views, and consumption of these views by applications, query/reporting tools or other infrastructure components. It can be used to provide a layer of abstraction above the physical implementation of data.	N	This is too generic now.
30.	Continuous Data Protection		Continuous data protection (CDP) is an approach to recovery that continuously, or nearly continuously, captures and transmits changes to applications, files or blocks of data while journaling these changes. This capability provides the option to recover to many more-granular points in time to minimize data loss. Some CDP solutions can be configured to capture data either continuously (true CDP) or at scheduled times (near CDP).	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
31.	Comprehensive CM BPO	CRM CSS	Comprehensive customer management (CM) business process outsourcing (BPO) is the delivery of multiple CM sub processes, such as sales, marketing and customer service and support, by a single provider using an integrated approach. An example might be marketing (customer data analytics, campaign design and management), sales (inbound and outbound telesales or Web sales), and customer care (inbound inquiry and problem resolution) delivered by a single CM BPO provider.	N	This is too generic now.
32.	Claims Management Modules	P&C Insurance	Claims management modules combine claims administration and business process management (BPM) to support every phase of the end-to-end claims process for property and casualty (P&C) insurers, from first notice of loss (FNOL) through settlement and reporting.	N	This is too generic now.
33.	BYOD Strategy	Education	Bring your own device (BYOD) is becoming a dominant practice in higher education (and a pioneering one in K-12) in developed countries, and is growing worldwide. BYOD in this context means BYOD as a deliberate, defined strategy, as opposed to providing standardized devices as was popular in the past. BYOD presents IT organizations in education with multiple challenges, but also provides multiple benefits.	N	This is too generic now.
34.	BPM Platform		The term “business process management (BPM) platform” is an overarching category of products and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings that features a graphical-model-driven authoring environment and an integrated execution engine for accelerating the development of process-centric applications.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
35.	Application Control		Application control solutions, sometimes referred to as “application whitelisting,” are a type of endpoint protection (for example, for desktop and server) typically included within endpoint protection platforms. Basic solutions control whether a given piece of executable code is allowed to execute. More-advanced solutions offer more detailed and granular degrees of control over what an application can do once it is running and interacting with system resources.	N	SI Solutions LLC would not get into the Security Space because of the risk involved in the business.
36.	AMOLED		Active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes (AMOLEDs) consist of pixels of electroluminescent organic compounds “printed” in a matrix onto a base layer. This base layer is currently glass, and will be further developed in the future to use flexible polymers. Unlike LCDs, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays do not require a backlight and consume very little power, making them suitable for battery-powered devices. AMOLEDs use a thin film transistor to control the pixels.	N	This is not a domain SI Solutions LLC would get into.
37.	Advanced Process Control		Advanced process control (APC) refers to a class of applications that uses advanced mathematical and analytical techniques to more effectively control industrial processes in industries such as refining, chemical manufacturing, food processing, pharmaceuticals and power generation. They are typically applied to optimize production yield, reduce energy usage (per unit of production), improve product quality or increase process stability. They complement basic process control and industrial automation systems.	Y	This is a natural extension of SI Solutions LLC’s current capabilities and can be applied to SI Solutions LLC’s customers.
38.	Advanced Analytics for Government		Advanced analytics is the analysis of all kinds of data using sophisticated quantitative methods (for example, statistics, descriptive and predictive data mining, simulation and optimization) to produce insights that traditional approaches to business intelligence (BI) — such as query and reporting — are unlikely to discover.	Y	SI Solutions LLC already has solutions for Data Analytics. This would be a natural extension of this arm.
39.	Accounts Receivable BPO		Business process outsourcing (BPO) of accounts receivable (AR) is the service of an external provider that will be preparing, distributing, recording and analyzing invoices for the company’s customers, suppliers or vendors and collecting debt.	N	This is not a domain SI Solutions LLC would get into.
40.	2D Bar Code Marketing		2D bar codes are a two-dimensional bar code that uses coding schemes such as quick response (QR), Data Matrix and Aztec. Creating marketing materials using 2D bar codes enables people to access information such as websites and product information, download content such as coupons and mobile apps, or connect with the official account on social media.	N	This is not a domain SI Solutions LLC would get into.

So now we have shortlisted 10 technologies. We will take a deeper look at this to make the final selection of Technologies. We will evaluate each of these 10 technologies based on the information provided in the Gartner Report. We will evaluate the technologies based on the following parameters. For each of the parameters, we will assign a score between 1 and 5 with 5 being the best score.

1. Potential: What is the market potential available for the technology?
2. Synergy: What is the synergy of the technology with the Current SI Solutions LLC portfolio?
3. Appropriateness: How appropriate is the technologies for the potential customers of SI Solutions LLC?
4. Applicability: How easily the technology can be applied to the existing and potential customers of SI Solutions LLC?
5. Value to Customer: How much value the technology can garner for the customers?
6. Ease of Implementation: How much effort and investment would be required from SI Solutions LLC and the Customers?
7. Benefit: How much benefit the technology can lend to the customers in their business?
8. Market Available: How much market is still available for the technology?

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Web-Based Rating Engines
Position	Pre-Plateau 40%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Web-based rating engines support real-time transactions that are essential for digital channels, including quick quotes for agents, customer-facing websites and agent-to-insurer transactions. These capabilities are especially critical in mature markets, and adoption by North American and European insurers has outpaced other regions. These rating engines have evolved as vendors have expanded line-of-business support and added functionality such as multiline quoting and “what if” analysis. They play a critical role in product development, and the line between rating engines and product configurators has blurred because vendors have also added more product development functionality. Over the past four years, core solution vendors have had increasing success with proprietary Web-based rating engines bundled with their policy management modules. Bundled rating engines are being selected by a majority of new policy management module customers who hope to speed and simplify deployment. Gartner expects this trend to continue, and sees the market becoming more challenging for vendors that offer stand-alone Web-based rating engines without a complementary policy module. The widespread adoption of Web-based rating engines has pushed its position on the Hype Cycle toward mainstream adoption.	Synergy – 5 Appropriateness – 5	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology has been applied to North America and Europe. So, it can be reasonably easily sold in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	Web-based rating engines are a critical element in supporting plans for growth. By deploying them, P&C insurers can realize the following benefits: ·       Support for real-time quoting for customers and distributors ·       More accurate pricing of risk ·       Faster development and launch of new products ·       Greater efficiency through centralized rating and less need for IT development support Rating engines represent a major steppingstone in the shift to real-time pricing and policy issuance, as well as a means to have improved management and quality in pricing rules.	Applicability – 5	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks.
User Advice	Insurance CIOs should use rating engines to provide a user-friendly means to create, test and manage pricing rules. This empowers stakeholders such as business analysts, product managers and actuaries to improve pricing through rule manipulation and to gain insight into the impact of rule changes on existing policies. Look for rating engines that are Web-based, support real-time capabilities, offer strong rule management and testing capabilities, and come from vendors with a roadmap for new capabilities to match your line of business. Although rating engines are often deployed in conjunction with a policy management module, evaluate whether deploying a rating engine prior to a policy solution will enable your organization to realize significant benefits sooner. Many policy management module vendors now offer rating engines with their modules that can also be deployed stand-alone. Consider this in vendor selection: If a policy management module vendor is a likely candidate for your organization, and if it has a strong rating engine with experience deploying it on a stand-alone basis, then your organization may reduce later integration efforts by deploying it.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 4	This can lead to faster decisions reducing time-to-market; besides providing for accurate rates. SI Solutions LLC has many of these skills.
Benefit Rating	HIGH	Benefit – 4
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Visual Data Discovery
Position	Pre-Plateau 45%	Potential – 3	The technology is fairly mature and it will take time before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Over the last four to five years, the market has dramatically shifted in favor of the visual data discovery architecture. New consumers, mostly business analysts, in the lines of business, mostly drive the shift. The vast majority of new BI deployments leverage visual data discovery architecture over the traditional BI platform architecture. A viral sales model that makes it easy for individuals to try visual data discovery to build analytic views and easily share them more broadly across their organization has accelerated the rapid adoption. As result of this buyer interest, virtually all the traditional BI platform vendors have refocused on visual data discovery as a key component of their go-to-market offerings.	Synergy – 4 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take some convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	Typically, visual data discovery is used for more agile rapid prototyping, making it possible for end users to blend datasets together quickly and provides users with a more unfettered drilling experience. Therefore, visual data discovery provides not only more self-service but also deeper diagnostic analytic capability to most organizations. The rise of self-service data preparation technology should make visual data discovery more relevant for complex and disparate data sources.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, though it will be not the prime revenue earning application.
User Advice	Users clearly want the ease of use and self-service that visual data discovery provides. BI and analytic leaders should provision this capability as a key aspect of their technical architecture. However, BI and analytic leaders should recognize that visual data discovery tools do not offer all the features of the traditional BI platforms particularly with respect to governance and manageability. An effort should be made to provide manual process to more closely manage end-user created analytic content.	Value to Customers – 3 Ease of Implementation – 4	This can create better decisions support systems. SI Solutions LLC has many of these skills.
Benefit Rating	MODERATE	Benefit – 3
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Social Publishing Applications
Position	Trough-Plateau Midpoint	Potential – 2	The technology is yet to mature.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Social publishing applications were among the first social software applications to receive heavy investment by end users during the peak of expectations for social CRM. And, so, social publishing applications were among the first to be acquired by larger CRM and Web players, as prominent social publishing providers like Wildfire, Buddy Media and Vitrue went to Google, Salesforce and Oracle, respectively. The biggest obstacle for the progression of social publishing applications is the time it takes for the market to decide whether it wants a multichannel campaign management application with social publishing capabilities, or whether it wants a stand-alone specialty provider. Gartner believes that the consolidated multichannel campaign management space will win out, and we expect to see increasing proof of this demonstrated by end users moving from specialty providers to companies like Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe.	Synergy – 4 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take some convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	Social publishing applications enable organizations to coordinate around messaging, campaigns and alerts, and, ultimately, allow for content to be pushed to social networks in a unified brand voice. They are almost always used by either the marketing or communications organizations to promote products or services, and to gather customer insight based upon campaign engagement.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, though it will be not the prime revenue earning application.
User Advice	Social publishing applications have become somewhat standardized in their capabilities with a few differentiators, product to product: ·       Access to multiple social networks — While most providers can listen in to multiple social networks, only some have the capability to publish out to sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Sina Weibo through their application. ·       Content management — Some providers rely on the use of external content management systems, and others have their own content management systems in the application. ·       Campaign analysis — Most providers offer some form of campaign analysis, but mature providers can include link tracking, which may show the customer journey from social media through to an e-commerce sale. ·       Industry and geographical specialization and capabilities — These include capabilities such as multilanguage publishing and user interfaces to meet the demands of multinational brands and teams. Understand your operational objectives for a social publishing application so that you can select a solution that is appropriately priced and equipped to manage your marketing and communications teams’ needs.	Value to Customers – 3 Ease of Implementation – 4	This can create better access and analysis of the Social Media. SI Solutions LLC has many of the skills available.
Benefit Rating	MODERATE	Benefit – 3
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	SIP Enabled Contact Center
Position	Pre-Plateau 30%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	SIP network trunks are used to connect both IP PBXs and Internet Protocol (IP) contact centers, with voice being the lead business case replacing legacy ISDN trunks. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) architecture supports centralized trunks, allowing islands of agent locations to cost-effectively share a single pool of SIP trunks. Businesses procure SIP as either part of a contact center refresh deployment or to reduce costs in an existing contact center environment. The second role for SIP is for communications within the contact center and in database integration, replacing the legacy CTI technology. However, the CTI-to-SIP transition is expensive. SIP upgrades are therefore typically part of infrastructure refreshes that also tie in ACDs, IVR systems, outbound dialers, cloud CRM and related databases. SIP can also be deployed when multimedia capabilities are introduced to the agent base, such as with a Microsoft Skype for business-unified communications (UC) or social media integration.	Synergy – 1 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is not aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take some convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	SIP trunks are capturing increased market share in IP-based contact center environments. Businesses report typical savings of more than 30% when replacing legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) infrastructure with SIP trunks. Gartner expects SIP trunks to reach a 30% market share of contact center environments by year-end 2015. Back-end CTI-to-SIP transformations continue to occur as well, though at a slower rate than on the network side because of the implementation costs. SIP upgrades on the back end primarily occur during contact center infrastructure refreshes when newer equipment, which is better suited to SIP technology, is deployed. Gartner expects continued SIP multimedia adoption through 2015 and 2016, as businesses provide their agents with a fuller UC suite that includes voice over IP (VoIP), IM/presence and email. The market momentum of Microsoft’s Skype for Business in enterprises now represents a key enabler of SIP multimedia.	Applicability – 5	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, and it can lead to savings in operation costs.
User Advice	Enterprises should consider SIP trunks as a proven tool for connecting their agents to external communications service provider (CSP) networks. SIP trunks are cheaper than ISDN trunks because of centralized pooling, converged networks and SIP price commoditization. Many CSPs possess over five years of experience with SIP trunk-to-IP contact center integration, thereby minimizing deployment risk. SIP also provides improved multimedia experience as contact centers expand beyond voice. Contact center users should proceed with (or at least examine) CTI-to-SIP back-end conversions during infrastructure upgrades of ACDs, IVRs, CRM, autodialers and related elements. However, these upgrades can result in significant integration and costs. Gartner has witnessed hybrid environments, where the newer components are SIP-enabled while older infrastructure remains CTI-based — especially in the case of databases.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 2	This can create cost-effective Contact Centers. Specialised skills will be required for this implementation. Also, investment in technology needs being made.
Benefit Rating	MODERATE	Benefit – 3
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Procurement Networks
Position	Pre-Plateau 30%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	The procurement network is continuing to move toward mainstream adoption as it has gained broad acceptance as a key technology for procurement transformation to enable organizations to interact with suppliers and partners. The successful network providers are starting to reach a critical mass of trading partners at least in their target regions or industry verticals and now support a broader range of activities. Procurement networks are often bundled into broader procurement suites with enterprise applications for sourcing and e-requisitioning, and almost all procure-to-pay vendors are now favoring procurement networks over portals for supplier interaction. Procurement networks are increasingly featuring multi-enterprise grid functionality to leverage the power of community data and make participation for suppliers more scalable.	Synergy – 1 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is not aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take some convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	Procurement networks provide an established community of trading partners with third-party service providers, such as banks, for trade finance. Buying procurement network services means buyers don’t have to create a community for indirect product and service purchases them. Procurement network vendors provide substantial value by easing the burden of community management for buyers and by creating a scalable solution for sellers as well as supporting an increasing amount of activities such as purchase order transmission, e-invoicing and invoice matching, as well as SIM and e-sourcing in one place.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators, and it can lead to savings in operation costs.
User Advice	The number of procurement network vendors is relatively small because there are high barriers to entry. To build an active community of trading partners, the vendors need to dedicate resources for onboarding and ongoing support for suppliers. Evaluate prospective procurement network vendors’ geographic, industry; spend category orientation and business model before making an investment, because this is a source of differentiation for most vendors. Get input from a cross section of current trading partners on the overall experience and on the costs associated with trading with them on the network before investing in a solution. Trading partner user experiences vary widely across procurement network vendors. Investigate if the network supports multienterprise grid capabilities to fully leverage the many-to-many connectivity and increase scalability for suppliers as well as buyers. If bringing all or most trading partners onboard is in scope, choose a solution that offers multiple types of integration (e.g., B2B protocols, portal, FAX, APIs, etc.), so partners are provided sensible options given their size and technical sophistication. Offering multiple interaction channels is particularly important if implementing in emerging markets, where there are more likely to be information infrastructure challenges.	Value to Customers – 3 Ease of Implementation – 4	This can create cost-effective Procurement Department. SI Solutions LLC has many of these skills. Not much Capital Investment required from Customer.
Benefit Rating	HIGH	Benefit – 4
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Predictive Modeling
Position	Pre-Plateau 45%	Potential – 3	The technology is fairly mature and it will take time before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Data analysis to predict medical costs has been a fundamental competency of healthcare payers since the start of the industry. However, payer adoption outside actuarial functions has generally lagged other industries. Primary barriers to adoption include competing business and technology priorities, uncertain ROI, and aging IT systems unable to incorporate predictive models. Some payers have taken organizational steps to foster the innovation in analytics by forming data science teams and enabling them with more-flexible technology, data access and project management methods to produce predictive models. Among business units, adoption has been uneven. In the area of fraud and abuse, for example, some payers and vendors are applying predictive analytics to social networks and high-risk diagnosis code sets to identify member and provider fraud. Care management, in contrast, has long made use of licensed-claim-based predictive models to identify members for outreach, but their latency (often run in monthly batches) and lack of data variety limit their value. The “consumerization” of the payer market has fueled adoption of predictive analytics in marketing and sales to inform marketing tactics, sales strategies, and product design and placement decisions. The growing complexity of evaluating and contracting with providers will soon drive payers to apply more-sophisticated analytics to provider network management. The final push to the Plateau of Productivity relies on the deployment of these models to business processes. In most payer organizations, a wide gap remains between the environments where models (homegrown or purchased) are executed and the business process applications that would benefit from their predictions. This latency will continue to limit the value that predictive analytics can create.	Synergy – 1 Appropriateness – 2	The domain is not aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take lot of convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	Gartner’s analytics ascendency model places analytics into four categories of increasing business value and difficulty: descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive (see “Big Data Strategy Components: IT Essentials” G00238944). The placement of predictive analytics in this model indicates both its high business value and the operational difficulty of delivering it. Today, predictive modeling is a core competency for a minority of payers in a relatively narrow set of business areas. Over time, however, it will become a requirement to keep pace with the market. The business impact of predictive modeling is rapidly moving beyond underwriting and risk into CRM, care management, fraud and abuse, persuasion analytics, risk score optimization, and provider network management. As the use cases broaden, progress will depend on a cultural shift among business and IT personnel toward understanding data as a strategic asset that can drive value and market advantage.	Applicability – 2	The solution will need expanding to the Healthcare sector. Although, some of the technology can be customized to apply to Telecom and Banking domains.
User Advice	Payer CIOs and IT leaders who have not invested in state-of-the-art predictive modeling should document opportunities and translate them into a prioritized list of projects with associated timelines and costs (see “Drive Payer Analytics to Be Performance-Driven, Internally Coherent and Market-Aware” G00258112). CIOs at payer organizations with more sophistication in predictive analytics should look to improve the predictive capability of existing models (for example, by including additional data sources that more fully profile members), predict more events (for example, developing prospective views of member experience measures), and expand use cases (for example, by developing member-facing predictive models for plan selection or health risk assessment). All payer business and IT leaders, whether building or buying predictive modeling capabilities, must focus on the deployment of predictive modeling within business processes. Business intelligence and analytics platform vendors continue to expand their support for embedding analytics in workflow applications. The expanding footprint of intelligent business process management suite technology within payer organizations is another promising avenue for better deploying of predictive models. In the longer term, emerging architectural options, such as the logical data warehousing and hybrid transaction/analytical processing, will more fundamentally change the way predictive insights are deployed into payer operations.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 2	This can help in better decision support systems. This will require specialized skills.
Benefit Rating	HIGH	Benefit – 4
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	ERP Infrastructure Utility
Position	Pre-Plateau 40%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	The most basic IU style is utility hosting, which has evolved from traditional dedicated hosting and is now fast moving toward virtual private cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The most developed IU offerings are currently built on standard infrastructure blocks (such as virtualized computing, storage and networking), on which application platform elements are designed to run and support a specific application landscape, such as ERP. By far, the most mature offerings are those developed since 2005 to support customized SAP environments (for example, infrastructure utility for SAP [IU4SAP] offerings). The provider tailors the architecture/performance and price of the service to the application requirements — for example, billing on an actual usage basis, such as per server, per GB or per SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS). SAP Basis operations and application patching are included. Aggressive outsourcing service providers are already obtaining 20% to 40% of their data center outsourcing revenue from IUS, while large, conservative players are still in low, single-digit percentages. Ongoing price pressure on infrastructure services will further increase the deployment of industrialized managed services and cause a rise in market consolidation.	Synergy – 2 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is slightly aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will take some convincing to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	IUS for ERP can: ·       Optimize the cost-efficiency and service effectiveness of ERP IT infrastructure. ·       Deliver an open, predefined and automated ERP application platform for innovation. ·       Provide such a platform much faster than the in-house alternative. To benefit, clients must overcome significant cultural, financial and technical issues, such as standardization acceptance, independent software vendor pricing strategies, application portability, virtualization and policy-driven management for heterogeneous environments.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators, and it can lead to savings in operation costs.
User Advice	All client organizations should: ·       Investigate critical areas, including pricing mechanisms and demand management, architectural specifications and limits, impact on application software licenses, transition in and out, contract terms and conditions, security, compliance, auditing and risk management. ·       Use the Gartner Infrastructure Utility Maturity Model as a roadmap for the evolution of infrastructure toward the real-time infrastructure concept. Organizations delivering their ERP IT infrastructure services in-house should regularly monitor how IUS offerings are advancing in the market. Increasingly, these offerings will become the external benchmark for price, efficiency and flexibility. Some of those will take the form of industrialized, low-cost IT services. Organizations considering outsourcing deals, utility or cloud IaaS offerings should: ·       Concentrate on IUS for ERP pricing and on the related tools for service requests, metering, billing and financial and service reporting. Evaluate hidden costs and total cost of ownership (TCO). ·       Ask the provider to carefully describe the processes, automation tools and SLAs underpinning service delivery quality and efficiency. Investigate references carefully. ·       Review the provider service/architecture roadmap to judge the potential for unexpected lock-in. Review the provider cloud-based delivery strategy. ·       Verify the pricing metrics for actual consumption of the service, such as if true cloud elastic pricing available as an option, in case consumption goes down. ·       Verify the impact of software licensing models when moving from dedicated to shared, IU-based hosting solutions.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 3	This can help in lowering operations costs. SI Solution LLC has many of these skills. However, solution implementation will require reasonable capital investment from customer.
Benefit Rating	HIGH	Benefit – 4
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	BPM Platform
Position	Pre-Plateau 25%	Potential – 5	The technology is at the right time to exploit.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	A BPM platform supports the design, implement and execute phases of the business process improvement and reinvention life cycle. A BPM platform minimally includes: ·       A graphical business process and/or rule modeling capability ·       A process registry/repository to handle the modeling metadata ·       A process execution engine, and state management engine or rule engine (or both) Because process changes are immediately executable, BPM platforms that produce direct model-driven applications are more appropriate for business processes owned and maintained by citizen developers, and involve nonroutine work and dynamically changing processes (see “Explore a Solution Delivery Perspective for the IT Power Shift” G00271934). However, changes at runtime are typically limited to the process and decision models, leaving the data model and integrations untouched. The BPM platform market is relatively mature but highly fragmented. While BPM platforms continue to evolve new capabilities to address new usage scenarios, their value proposition is well understood.	Synergy – 5 Appropriateness – 4	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology should be easy to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	BPM platforms can be used in both opportunistic and strategic improvements to your business processes. Basic BPM platforms provide greater visibility into and control over business processes. Citizen developers to quickly automate a simple process can use them. Use a BPM suite (BMPS), with its support for the entire process life cycle, to improve a process for a single function or for structured processes that span functional boundaries (see “Select the Right Type of BPM Platform to Achieve Your Application Development, Business Transformation or Digital Business Goals” G00267296). Use an intelligent BPMS (iBPMS) to provide the greatest level of dynamic behavior to your work orchestration because of its ability to tie analytics to more complete operational intelligence context. An iBPMS can sense and respond to business moments, using analytics and operational intelligence.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, and it can lead to savings in operation costs.
User Advice	BPM platforms are not one size fits all. Understand how your process improvement and business transformation needs can be met by different BPM platforms (see “Select the Right Type of BPM Platform to Achieve Your Application Development, Business Transformation or Digital Business Goals” G00267296). Continuous process improvement (CPI) scenarios require the ability to manage the complete life cycle of a process instance, which may include a variety of process styles. CPI also requires analysis and optimization capabilities that you will not find in a basic BPM platform; basic BPM platforms are primarily focused on simple automation of processes.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 4	This can help in streamlining processes, thus lowering operations costs. SI Solutions LLC possesses many of these skills.
Benefit Rating	TRANSFORMATIONAL	Benefit – 5
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 4
Maturity	Mature Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Application Process Control
Position	Trough-Plateau Midpoint	Potential – 2	The technology is yet to mature.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	While various forms of APC technology — such as model predictive control (MPC) and neural networks — have been used for decades, the advent of the cloud and new analytical techniques such as machine learning are expanding use cases and accessibility of the technology. APC is no longer just confined to large operations in traditional process industries. Gas processing and well fracturing, biotech manufacturing, cement production, and pollution abatement is all current and future application areas for APC. Most of the past advances in the APC realm have been in the areas of easier application deployment and better user interfaces. Improvement in these areas will continue; but, more importantly, the expansion of the cloud and remote collaboration tools will provide access to more deployment/support options, as well as reduce the cost of accessing remote expertise. In addition, yet-to-be-seen advances in analytical approaches and cheaper computing power will likely lead to further step changes in adoption. So, while it is a relatively mature technology, there is still room for expansion of APC usage within the existing user base, as well as into untapped application areas.	Synergy – 5 Appropriateness – 2	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will be difficult to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	The business impact of APC varies by industry, but can be substantial. Paybacks from higher yields, reduced costs and/or improved quality can come in less than 12 months. It can also contribute to more stable processes and, therefore, fewer processes upsets, which can result in adverse environmental compliance incidents, such as spills and emissions. Finally, the hard savings that come from reduced energy consumption also translate into the soft benefit of reducing an organization’s greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint.	Applicability – 3	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, and it can lead to improvement of quality.
User Advice	The deployment of APC typically requires specialized skill sets and knowledge of the process to be improved. Most companies rely on their APC vendors to provide the resources for deployment and, where necessary, will also use the vendors to remotely monitor the application. However, like most areas that require highly skilled technical expertise, the right resources are becoming scarce. Understanding current and future resource requirements is the key to APC project success.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 2	This can help in streamlining processes, thus lowering operations costs. Requires specialized skills.
Benefit Rating	MODERATE	Benefit – 3
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Advanced Analytics for Government
Position	Pre-Plateau 40%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Despite a high level of interest, many government agencies struggle to establish and sustain a formal data analytics program supported by a business intelligence competency center (BICC). Volume and data variety continue to increase exponentially, while commercial off-the-shelf and software as a service BI and analytics tools are mature enough to meet all but the most demanding analytics needs of government. Many government programs such as fraud detection, crime prevention and predictive policing, pension fund management, natural disaster planning and response, and disease outbreak management need to anticipate what is likely to happen (predictive analytics) and what should happen (prescriptive analytics). The demand for business intelligence and data analysts will increase as the end-to-end digitalization of processes and operations eliminates the transactional work that occupies much of the current public-sector workforce. Until this happens, the market penetration of advanced analytics in government will remain under 50%.	Synergy – 5 Appropriateness – 3	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will be moderately easy to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	IT organizations often become the default custodians of BI services as a matter of convenience. This arrangement can feed the perception that BI and analytics “belong” to IT. Government CIOs and program managers must work together to create organizational structures that blend IT and business skills and strike a balance between centralized and decentralized self-service BI delivery for business and data analysts. IT organizations should be responsible for developing the data management policies and maintaining a technical environment that supports the business use of analytics. Procuring big data analytics technologies and services to manage unstructured content from a variety of external sources will increase the capacity of government agencies to process and analyze huge volumes of transactional and administrative data in combination with open data, linked data, operational data and data coming from social networks.	Applicability – 3	The solution will need opening channels for sale in the Government. The solution can also be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks, and it can lead to improvement of quality.
User Advice	Develop business use cases that embed analytical processes and results into the end user’s normal flow of activity, and that present insights or assess risks at the point and time of action ·       Extend your technology portfolio and processes to support the full spectrum of descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analysis ·       Leverage the IT organization’s cross-LOB perspective to select analytic tools capable of delivering self-service and data discovery capabilities that enable better business user access to data ·       Invest in developing analytical and business competencies through training and staff augmentation, or supplement in-house expertise with analytics-as-a-service (AaaS) vendors or companies that operate advanced analytics marketplaces ·       Remain responsive to business needs by staying current with emerging cloud-based analytics services that specialize in specific government data such as CRM, healthcare management or HR	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 2	This can help in improving decision-making. Requires specialized skills for dealing with Government Agencies.
Benefit Rating	HIGH	Benefit – 4
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	Social Media Engagement Applications
Position	Pre-Plateau 40%	Potential – 4	The technology is fairly mature and has yet steam before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	Social media engagement for customer service or marketing purposes has become critical to organizations, as they look to progress in their CRM and customer experience strategies to meet customers in their preferred communication channels. The maturity of the strategy varies from ad hoc response, to brand-related comments, to full queuing of content and preservation of customer interaction histories across multiple departments. Application adoption supports the varying maturity levels of social media engagement strategies and, therefore, 2015 market penetration is somewhere between 20% and 50% depending on industry and region.	Synergy – 5 Appropriateness – 4	The domain is aligned with current SI Solutions LLC’s portfolio. The technology will be easy to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	The shift in global communications due to increased global participation in social networking provides the potential for new ways of conducting business. Although traditional customer engagement channels, such as telephone or email, will not go away, a formally structured, multichannel mix within the customer engagement hub that allows for social media engagement tools and legacy system integration will be needed.	Applicability – 4	The solution can be applied to Telecom Operators and Banks.
User Advice	Social customer strategies have to go beyond just listening or monitoring. Customer, partner or other stakeholder engagement on social media has become imperative as we witness a shift in global communication channels. Once a process for listening and responding is in place, it is necessary to analyze the incoming content, as well as the outgoing responses. This analysis can help with the distribution of social knowledge across the enterprise. Encourage proactive social media engagement, rather than just reactive monitoring and response. Communications, customer service, HR, marketing and sales teams can all benefit from a proactive social media engagement strategy.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 3	This can help in improving decision-making. Requires specialized skills.
Benefit Rating	TRANSFORMATIONAL	Benefit – 5
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Parameter	Description	Score (Out of 5)	Comments
Technology Name	BYOD Strategy
Position	Pre-Plateau 45%	Potential – 3	The technology is fairly mature and it will take time before it attains the peak position.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification	CIOs in higher education or K-12 can no longer stop the wave of diverse consumer devices. The solution is not creating “monocultures” (for example, iPhones and iPads only) — students prefer to use devices they personally select. More institutions are moving toward this heterogeneous approach; others have not yet adopted it, but almost all institutions are discussing it. Educators in K-12 must address equity as an issue, especially when electronic delivery of instruction is required. In higher education, the BYOD discussion is widening to include bring your own everything, which includes devices and services. This relates closely to the Gartner term “consumerization” and puts even greater strain on the IT department. Real-world experience has accumulated, and CIOs are scrambling to keep up as BYOD strategy has slid through the Trough of Disillusionment, and is rapidly moving toward the Plateau of Productivity as pressure from students and faculty builds.	Synergy – 3 Appropriateness – 4	SI Solutions LLC will need venturing into Education domain. The technology will be easy to sell in the Middle East Asia.
Business Impact	With the acceptance of the consumerization of technology, and the near-universal acceptance of the use of personal devices to access and interact with enterprise systems, IT directors are embracing the trend of pushing transaction processing to the users (thereby, making a virtue out of a necessity). It is a reversal of the 40-year trend of IT having to maintain all tools for collecting and processing data, and is a key step toward embracing an exostructure strategy (see “Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Education Ecosystem Requires Going Beyond Mere Infrastructure to Exostructure” G00251105).	Applicability – 2	SI Solutions LLC will need venturing into Education domain.
User Advice	There is a need in education to formally adopt a BYOD strategy, and willingly support it as a benefit for the students and the institution. For IT organizations to take advantage of the BYOD trend, security of the network and applications must be solid. Moreover, systems that customers interface with must be capable of transacting business in all major devices and OSs, or the mobility strategy must be built around a common denominator protocol like HTML5. The situation is similar to that of SMS or texting: Texting is ubiquitous because it is device-, network- and OS-neutral, and works virtually everywhere on most handheld devices. A mobility strategy for BYOD must be the same. It must work with almost any device with a browser to be acceptable. Using a browser-based technology, while often not the same aesthetic as OS-based options, is ubiquitous and allows generalized mobility. The multi-OS problem is accentuated in education because students can be expected to bring a much more varied set of devices compared with a corporate environment. With such approaches as a virtualized (cloud) desktop and the use of the functionality of server-based computing, such as Citrix, even devices of relatively limited functionality can be effectively utilized in a well-designed environment. It may be useful to maintain a relatively small application group to build institution-specific applications offered through the campus’s own app store.	Value to Customers – 4 Ease of Implementation – 5	This can help in reducing costs. Requires no specialized skills.
Benefit Rating	MODERATE	Benefit – 3
Market Penetration	20% – 50% of target audience	Market Available – 3
Maturity	Early Mainstream

Now that we have analysed all the 10 shortlisted technologies, we collate all the scores and pick up the top 3 technologies for consideration.

Technology	Potential	Synergy	Appropriateness	Applicability	Value to Customers	Ease of Implementation	Benefit	Market Available	TOTAL
Web-based Rating Engine	4	5	5	5	4	4	4	3	34
Visual Data Discovery	3	4	3	4	3	4	3	3	27
Social Publishing Applications	2	4	3	4	3	4	3	3	26
SIP-Enabled Contact Centers	4	1	3	5	4	2	3	3	25
Procurement Networks	4	1	3	4	3	4	4	3	26
Predictive Modeling	3	1	2	2	4	2	4	3	21
ERP Infrastructure Utility	4	2	3	4	4	3	4	3	27
BPM Platform	5	5	4	4	4	4	5	4	35
Advanced Process Control	2	5	2	3	4	2	3	3	24
Advanced Analytics for Government	4	5	3	3	4	2	4	3	28
Social Media Engagement Applications	4	5	4	4	4	3	5	3	32
BYOD Strategy	3	3	4	2	4	5	3	3	27

COMPANIES SHORTLISTED

We now list the vendors working on the shortlisted technologies. We analyse these vendors keeping in mind that the vendor should be suitable and also not have presence in the Middle East Asia market.

TECHNOLOGY: BPM Platform
Vendor	Website	Middle East Presence (High / Medium / Low)	Comments
Appian			Information not found.
Bizagi	www.bizagi.com	Low	Market Leader as per Gartner. UK based company. Presence in North & South America and Europe.
IBM	www.ibm.com	High	Not considered
K2	www.k2.com	Medium	Have 1.5 million users in 84 countries. US Based company. Has office in South Africa.
Nintex	www.nintex.com	High	US Based company. Has office in UAE. Widespread operations across the globe. Not considered
Oracle	www.oracle.com	High	Not considered
Pegasystems (Antenna Software)	www.pega.com	Low	Renowned product. Sold by Accenture. Thus, not considered. US based company-having presence in North America, Europe and Australia.
PNMsoft	www.pnmsoft.com	Low	Renowned product. US based company. Has presence in North America and Europe. Has relationship with Israel. Thus, not considered.
Software AG	www.softwareag.com	High	Multi-dimensional company in Digital Space. Not considered
TIBCO Software	www.tibco.com	High	Not considered

We shortlist 2 companies from this list – Bizagi and K2.

TECHNOLOGY: Web-Based Rating Engine
Vendor	Website	Middle East Presence (High / Medium / Low)	Comments
Accenture	www.accenture.com	High	Not considered
CGI	www.cgi.com	High	Not considered
ClarionDoor	www.clariondoor.com	Low	US Based company. Focused on Cloud Technologies. Reasonable number of customers.
CodeObjects	www.codeobjects.com	Low	US Based company. Focused on Insurance domain.
Decision Research Company (DRC)	www.decisionresearch.com	Low	US Based company. Focused on Insurance domain.
NetRate Systems Inc.	www.netrate.com	Low	US Based company. Focused on Cloud technologies, Data Analytics.
Oracle	www.oracle.com	High	Not considered
ValueMomentum	www.valuemomentum.com	Low	US Based company. Focused on Insurance domain and Cloud Technologies. Has office in India.

We shortlist 3 companies from this list – ClarionDoor, NetRate Inc. and ValueMomentum.

TECHNOLOGY: Advanced Analytics for Government
Vendor	Website	Middle East Presence (High / Medium / Low)	Comments
FICO	www.fico.com	Medium	US Based company. Focused on Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning. Renowned product. Wide spread offices. Have office in Turkey.
IBM	www.ibm.com	High	Not considered
LexisNexis	www.lexisnexis.co.in	Low	India Based company. Widespread Sales Operations. Wide number of domains in focus. Not considered
Microsoft	www.microsoft.com	High	Not considered
Oracle	www.oracle.com	High	Not considered
Olik			Information not found.
SAP	www.sap.com	High	Not considered
SAS	www.sas.com	High	Not considered
SPSS	www.ibm.com	High	Not considered
Tableau Software	www.tableau.com	Low	High Rated product. High customer base. No Middle East Asia presence.
Teradata	www.teradata.com	High	Not considered

We shortlist 2 companies from this list – FICO and Tableau Software.

TECHNOLOGY: Social Media Engagement Applications
Vendor	Website	Middle East Presence (High / Medium / Low)	Comments
Conversocial	www.conversocial.com	Low	US Based company with offices in UK and Australia. Founded in 2009. Over 260 customers in 20 countries.
Hootsuite	www.hootsuite.com	Low	Canadian company with offices in Europe and Australia. 10+ Millions users.
Oracle	www.oracle.com	High	Not considered
Salesforce	www.salesforce.com	High	Not considered
Sprinklr	www.sprinklr.com	High	Not considered

We shortlist 2 companies from this list – Conversocial and Hootsuite.

TECHNOLOGY: BYOD Strategy
Vendor	Website	Middle East Presence (High / Medium / Low)	Comments
Blackboard			Information not found.
Modo Labs	www.modolabs.com	Low	US based company. Focused on Mobile Applications.
Sourcebits	www.sourcebits.com	Low	US based company. Has sales office in Bangalore. Focused on Mobile Applications.

We shortlist 2 companies from this list – Modo Labs and Sourcebits.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION

The final recommendation from this analysis is that SI Solutions LLC should consider partnership with one or more of the following companies for the stated technologies. The final recommendation has considered that SI Solutions LLC should form partnerships with at least 2 companies in at least 2 different technologies.

TECHNOLOGY	COMPANY
BPM Platform	Bizagi (www.bizagicom)
	K2 (www.k2.com)
Web-Based Rating Engine	ClarionDoor (www.clariondoor.com)
	NetRate Inc. (www.netrate.com)
	ValueMomentum (www.valuemomentum.com)
Advanced Analytics for Government	FICO (www.fico.com)
	Tableau Software (www.tableau.com)
Social Media Engagement Applications	Conversocial (www.conversocial.com)
	Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com)
BYOD Strategy	Modo Labs (www.modolabs.com)
	Sourcebits (www.sourcebits.com)