Gartner ITAM London Conference Round-up

It was great to attend the Gartner ITAM conference in London last week (thanks to our friends at the big G for inviting us).

Sentiment from the show floor and delegates was positive. I heard the odd grumble about content but overall I think Gartner, as always, did a great job of capturing the industry zeitgeist.

Especially as:

• a) Old timers in the SAM industry need to remember the influx of newbies who are completely fresh to the topic and
• b) the vast majority of organizations are still fumbling with basics

My favourite sessions were from Terry Reddy of ‘The Welfare’ in Ireland and Alexa Bona’s session on Cloud Sourcing and Contracting. Great pragmatic stuff.

Above all, great networking.

But don’t take my word for it – below is a quick showcase of industry suppliers:

Rimini Street were presenting Gartner delegates with a refreshing alternative to spiralling SAP and Oracle maintenance contracts. Rimini Street claim 73% of Oracle User Group members admitted to only upgrading their Oracle estate to stay supported. The Rimini alternative is to upgrade when it suits the business and in the meantime enjoy maintenance renewals at half the normal cost.

Rimini Street

The ‘Livingstone’ team were showing off their new brand (formerly SSS) which is said to reflect the evolution of their business from consulting to managed services. Livingstone has new investors and new senior management team structure in the UK. Co-founder Jason Allaway now has his sights set on US expansion.

Livingstone

The 1E team declared strong interest in their ‘1e Workspace’ offering (VDI at 1/10 the cost). The team also noted a maturing ITAM market with organizations recognizing license management as a standard business function rather than ‘nice to have’.

1E

The License Dashboard team were out to prove that the ‘Solution Provider Tracks’ needn’t be a graveyard slot by pulling in more delegates than the average Gartner analyst session (Highest attended Solution provider session in EMEA apparently). The team reported a positive event with good conversations with delegates.

License Dashboard

007 lookalike Martin Prendergast, CEO at Concorde, said it was good to see ITAM growing in stature with Gartner bringing new thought leadership into the space and helping Gartner clients navigate new trends. He also noted that there continued to be a mismatch in Gartner coverage.

(BMC and HP cited a ‘leaders’ in the space yet not present at the event. See also Gartner Asset Repository Marketscope and Disconnect in Tools coverage from 2012.)

Concorde

Neela Mistry-Bradshaw, Marketing Manager at ITAMS, was taking an ‘assertive’ approach to engaging delegates on the Aspera stand. Aspera were pleased with their interactive session on Compliance Audit Defence.

Aspera

James Benn of Flexera Software reported a ‘full-house’ to see their License Optimization session with Patrik Hillelson from Ericsson.

Flexera

The iQuate team were very pleased with their ‘Gartner Cool Vendor’ status and stated it was good to see the market addressing datacentre issues, a trend reflected in Gartner sessions.

iQuate

Snow Software were pleased to be building their relationship with Gartner and validating their place in the market after many years ‘flying under the radar’.

Snow Software

Finally, the shy and retiring David Bloxham reported good conversations with delegates and strong interest in their session with Iain Brown with Aviva. David also stated, after he’d finished impressing everyone with his David Brent moves, that it was good to see ITAM as a topic getting some appreciation.

Software One