I find the cycles in technology fascinating, and it's an unfolding lesson of historical cycles. Although we believe our industry moves at a rapid pace there are many macro cycles which occur over decades, the patterns do not change much. The first and current example is HP Software (with more focus on IT Operations). Let's rewind to the foundational pieces of HP Software, which came from the acquisition of Mercury Interactive in 2006. HP spent $4.5b to purchase Mercury and built a large well-established business off the platform in both Quality Assurance (QA) and IT Operations. Over time HP failed to invest, in what at one point was the market dominance of QA and a substantial footprint in ITOps, these once large market shares eroded as technologies commoditized and the buying shifted to best-of-breed. HPs solution set became difficult to implement (even for HP engineers), and ongoing management is hard requiring consulting and many resources. Having managed this portfolio at ...
Jonah Kowall is the VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics, driving the company’s product roadmap and vision, entry into new markets and providing technology and business insights. Previously 15 years as a practitioner at several startups and larger enterprises focused on infrastructure and operations, security, and performance engineering. In 2011 Jonah changed careers, moving to Gartner to focus on availability and performance monitoring and IT operations management (ITOM).