Live from Gartner Symposium ITxpo - Impressions from the expo

I am attending Gartner Symposium and ITxpo this week and blogging as I go. This post is based on my reaction to exploring the show floor this year.

I have to say I was surprised by the lack of "energy" around both Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Intelligence. We are the only large sponsor that really intersects with either category. A handful of BPM vendors (FileNet, Lombardi, Global360, ) were present, mixed in with the business applications folks. Only one other rules vendor (ILOG) was present and although the BI vendors were mostly present (SAS, BusinessObjects, Cognos) none was terribly visible.

Oracle was particularly noticeable in its absence from the Enterprise Applications and BI sections while SAP was also fairly subdued. Sun was also missing.

The content management and search vendors were visible and energetic, reflecting the growing interest in management and exploitation of unstructured documents in business. Similarly there was a tremendous growth in outsourcing vendors from all over the world, reflecting that trend.

Microsoft, IBM, HP, Verizon, BT and a handful of hardware folks were big sponsors too but mostly not focused on the core stuff about which I blog, sadly. IBM had a pretty strong focus on SOA mind you.

I also found the division of the expo into various groups increasingly artificial as more and more vendors blur the line between categories and I think this might be something Gartner needs to think about. All the vendors I saw, however, had great staff and were doing a great job answering questions from the attendees - they take the Expo seriously and it shows.

BTW Fair Isaac is at booth 305

Technorati Tags: BI, BPMS, BRMS, business intelligence, business process management, business rules, Gartner