Paul Kedrosky asks a valid question about Forrester's turnaround on Google. Not just turnaround - the executive summary for the new Forrester
document is a simple, powerful "Google will define the future of software". Critical as
I am of Microsoft, SAP, Oracle through out my blog I would not go that
far. But then I was not trained by George Colony.
At Gartner, we would marvel at Forrester's calls. Bold and brash. Forrester was entrepreneurial - Gartner was corporate. But they were also dead wrong quite often. In 1995, Bobby Cameron basically declared SAP dead . Their stock dropped 10% the day he issued that report. He also issued a report in 2000 titled "The Death of IT" way before Nicholas Carr wrote "Does IT matter?"
Forrester talked up "eBusiness" in 1999, tried to talk everybody into accepting the "X Internet" in 2001, scared everyone about offshoring in 2002. George's Google call (s) are part of that pattern. That segment of the industry needs its risk takers too.
One area George does not like to take a risk - he likes all his analysts in Cambridge. One reason I did not get trained by him. My loss.
