"Cool vendors will drive IT Innovation"

so reads the masterfully understated title of a series of Gartner reports on promising new vendors in various tech categories..

Gartner has historically been better at covering vendors and markets as they mature so this is encouraging...no doubt Gartner is looking for research, symposium and other revenue from a new generation of vendors. It is refreshing, however, to see this in the light of all the talk around market consolidation (such talk even in the relatively young offshore market). Gartner's signature Magic Quadrants often help propagate consolidation talk - because they come out only once or twice a year they give a snapshot, static view of any market segment. There was some talk about putting directional arrows on each vendor on the quadrant - moving up, down, sideways. Consolidation talk typically helps larger vendors and discourages innovation.

I have an immigrant's optimistic view on this ...every wave of immigration (at least in the US) has made previous generations more productive...newer vendors do the same to a technology portfolio.