Where do companies learn which tech to move towards?

Panther

Before there was Office 365, there was on-premise Exchange.
"In-house" was the lay of land.
Much to the chagrin of the email admin, the company went to cloud email.

The new company I'm at now, is also on cloud email.

Where do companies go to look for direction on which tech to move to?
Gartner?
News source? Which ones?
Vendors?
Forums?

I want to try to stay ahead of the game, if I can. By knowing what companies are moving towards.

TechGuru80

Gartner, look at what skills are already in house, check product pricing and total cost of ownership, check training prices and FTE requirements, hire consulting companies to do product evaluations, talk to other professionals to see their experiences...all of these plus more could help in the decision process. Also, some technologies are meant for different size companies, and legal requirements are very important to consider.

LeBroke

To add, never underestimate the comments section of /r/sysadmin and Hackernews.

LordQarlyn

In an ideal world, the senior IT leadership, typically the CIO, will keep current with the latest developments, or at least have staff that does. He or she would evaluate the newest technologies, determine, by using their own judgement, experience, expert reports, assessing the skill sets of current employees, by doing a cost benefit analysis, if the newest technology would bring a reasonable ROI in a reasonable time period. Any technology investment should allow existing processes to be done faster and/or cheaper, and/or increase productivity of current employees involved in core business products, and/or increase or open new revenue streams, or possibly to help comply with a regulatory requirement. Any other reason, no matter how cool and awesome the new technology is, is not a valid reason to invest in the technology.

Realistically, it doesn't work that way all the time. Sometimes the board or non-tech leadership gets caught up in the buzz and "doesn't want to miss out". Or, sometimes the new technology will be of great benefit, but the CIO or other tech leader fails to sell or make a good business case for the investment.

JoJoCal19

At RSA conf lol.

DatabaseHead

Addressing your head line....

From my experience "new" tech comes from previous experiences at their previous position. If company A uses Acme servers and the decision maker goes to company B, high probability he will use the technology he is familiar with.

Of course asset management will go out to vendors and do some price shopping. Laptops, devices, etc......

That's at least the way I have seen it go down.

yoba222

From what I've seen of clients, mainly a combination of whatever the sales people say in emails, phone calls, conferences, and in Gartner. It's very significant if the tech looks and sounds new and shiny. After all, we live in a world where you can add the word blockchain to your business name for instant overnight success.

TechGromit

yoba222 wrote: »

From what I've seen of clients, mainly a combination of whatever the sales people say in emails, phone calls, conferences, and in Gartner.

There's your answer, salesmen. I get endless number of emails from sales people and I don't even has the authority to buy anything.

UnixGuy

from vendors spamming senior leadership with conferences/meetings/presentations/lunches/drinks etc etc

Panther

As we're discussing, some things that come to mind:

Keep an eye/ear open at home:
-iPhone
-iPad
-Subscription models arising, though I dislike it.

Guess what happened at work?
-Blackberry was once king of the world
-Staff was using newer technology at home.
-Eventually iPhone/iPad took over at work.
-Execs were first to get it, and it trickled down.

Company moved to subscription Office suite (Microsoft or Google):
-Seems financially counter-intuitive, at the time
-But hey, it works, company gets lots of features and support, versus the in-house solution/support which can be stagnant

My guess is,
-Heavy vendor marketing and real-world case scenarios
-Vendors try to outbid each other
-Their product takes hold at many companies, and they become the de facto standard

A couple different companies I work for:
Use the same 3rd party:
-Expense reporting web app/website
-Time & Attendance web app/website

I'm like, how do these companies know what to get. I think the vendors just out compete each other.

In some ways, you cannot really know ahead of time, until they take hold?

LordQarlyn

It's a combination of many factors. Vendors do outreach to businesses of course, it's all part of their marketing campaigns. And for things such as time and expense, a few become standards. I've been with three different companies and used three different time, reporting, and expense enterprise applications. One employer had their own in-house solutions.

Changes ultimately have to come from the top. In a perfect world, the CIO or senior technology leadership is constantly evaluating new solutions and new technologies, often made aware of by vendor outreach. They weigh the pros versus the cons, and make a decision. At my work, they decided the cost benefits of moving to Office 365 with its flexibility and free upgrades to the most current version provided at the absurdly low per user volume licensing was more beneficial in the long run, over the standard enterprise license which also had a huge volume discount but required a new purchase for each new version, so they rolled out Office 365. We can argue the pros and cons, but in the end, at my company it was the CIO's decision, based on discussions and consultation with his IT leadership around the world, signed off by the CEO and COO.

Relationships and personal experience matter as well. I'm not referring to blood relationships (though that of course can be a factor) but rather existing business relationships. Let's say I, as IT Manager gets a job at a relatively new company as IT Director, and get tasked to implement enterprise solutions for purchasing, expense reporting, and time recording, probably with a tight deadline. Unless the company leadership already decided upon a vendor, more than likely I will go with solutions my previous employer was using, simply because I know the system, and, I have existing rapport with the vendor's salespeople and tech support staff. I can probably get their solution implemented quicker, get the quirks ironed out quicker, and maybe even eke a discount from them. Going with a vendor that I have little experience with is a much bigger unknown, and in this hypothetical job I would probably be under pressure to get the solution implemented ASAP. Is that the best way to go about it? Of course not, but it probably happens that way quite a bit, which is why some vendors seem to become a de facto standard.