Terry,

Thanks, appreciate the comments. These guys are analysts, they are market researchers and report on what they have found. The information they print comes from round table discussions with industry leaders, company reviews and surveys, market reviews through stock market reports and balance sheet analysis, and product reviews.

They are like any other analyst organization and are part of a huge group of companies who feeds to needs of various industry sectors for research information on the state of the ERP/EAM marketplace, the progress of the vendors within it, trends in IT systems and designs and other related fields.

They are not reliability people, this much is true, they are reliability people. I have twice seen Gartner review RCM as a method for advancement and they got it so wrong it was laughable. BUT, they are reflecting concerns in industry, so from that point of view it showed just how far we, asset managers, have to go before we are going to get to where we know we should be.

So thats the point of view that I take, and I would suggest that everybody else who reads them does the same. Acronyms such as PAM and others are merely their effort at branding and at influencing market speak, we know what they mean so take it with a pinch of salt.

I frequently use all sorts of analysts material. Some of it is great, some of it not-so-much. But it is all a part of the picture for me to get an informed view of the entire marketplace, and to understand what my clients are thinking about.

For example, I recently saw the publication of a standard here in the UK regarding Asset management. It is garbage, the people who wrote it did so for purely commercial gain, and it came from an Asset management association that has been hijacked by consultants and promoters for their own commercial ends. regardless, it is influencing the way leaders are thinking here and as such I have to be aware of it and to be concious of the havoc it is creating. Al lpart of having an informed view. I see this sort of work in the same light.

EAM companies paying for analysts coverage

I addressed this earlier and will try to do so again. I am pretty involved with this obviously and have intimate knowledge of two of the companies regularly featured in the magic quadrant.

From my experience there are two sorts of reports that come out. Those that are sponsored, and often do not see the light of day as a public document, and those that are not sponsored.

The magic quadrant is not sponsored and there is no purchasing of positions within the quadrant. To do so would negate the independency of the report and its validity. A company the size of Gartner does not need to bow and scrape to any of the product providers in the market place. (I cant speak for others)

Sponsored reports are exactly that, information and analysis that has been paid for by a company. It does not mean that it will become public, often they dont. But neither does it mean that thay are going to recieve a biased review. They get the warts and all treatment and a company would be foolish to bring them in if they have things that they do not want known. Ultimately they are paying to oget independent focus on their product range with the intention of having it in boardrooms around the world, or of having a referencable document to support their sales positions. (It can and does go bad at times!)

Whether it is stated or not who sponsored the report, there is considerable respect for the neutrality of this particular organization.

again, it was relevent information for this group, I posted it as a part of market analysis and there are many others that I would post also from time to time. The intention was to focus on the analysis rather than get into a big debate over where it came from... but whatever floats your boat!

Cheers,

In any case.. the theme has filled four pages on 24 hours or so.. must be of some interest!

Daryl, This is a good discussion and if it results in us having a better understanding of the value of research material then it is very worthwhile. I must admit that I don't think I have the same background knowledge of this as you but when you say ...

"The information they print comes from round table discussions with industry leaders, company reviews and surveys, market reviews through stock market reports and balance sheet analysis, and product reviews."

... I am still a bit cynical. My reasons are quite clear. Stock market reports, etc. may provide an indication of how a company is performing financially but that is all and I do know that vendors will only get involved in round table discussions when they see some advantage in doing so.

Regarding ...

"For example, I recently saw the publication of a standard here in the UK regarding Asset management. It is garbage, the people who wrote it did so for purely commercial gain, and it came from an Asset management association that has been hijacked by consultants and promoters for their own commercial ends."

Once again my cynicism is surfacing The fact remains that almost everything that is done in business is done for commercial gain either directly or indirectly. Here's an example. I have written several articles for trade magazines. These reports sometimes take me a few days to write and research and I don't get paid for them.

Do people find these to be useful? Probably, because the feed back I get is generally positive. As I say, I don't get paid for this but do I do this for nothing? Well on the face of it, yes. But we consultants all know that their is an "ulterior" motive involved. We do it because it can generate both business and goodwill so effectively we do it for commercial gain.

In my experience most of the really valuable, objective research material is generally only available from academic sources where they are not profit driven.

Guys,

I would like to address some of the content of the report that was posted here if it is of interest.

PAMs themselves are sort of next generation condition monitoring and CMMS integrated tools. (A sub component of many current EAM style systems.) They use neural networks and fuzzy logic, although more of the former than the latter. They are very, very powerful in terms of achieving a level of artificial intelligence and further removing the fallible human from asset management. (Not that this is a good thing, merely a thing)

I was recently somewhat involved in a recent application of nueral network type stuff, intelligent condition and performance monitoring if you like, on a project. Of all things a heart machine. Fantastic results!

However, the interesting subtext of this piece is the reasons why they see PAMs, or any form of asset management as being increasingly important.

And that is competitive pressures to both Europe and the USA. (More the USA than Europe, although Europe is slowly becoming less protectionist)

The opening markets have led to the situation where countries that pay their people in peanuts can swoop in and hoover up many of the labour intensive jobs that previously used to be the domain of working class America.

China is becoming an unstoppable force in manufacturing, India is becoming an unstoppable force in service industries and IT. (And yes, this applies to all of your jobs! Outsourced engineering functions is now a reality sadly)

So we have companies facing the possibility of lowering costs to remain competitive, moving to China, or going out of business. Finally they are reaching for the strategic advantages that are possible from within asset management, as opposed to merely focussing on the narrow view of maintenance. (If at all)

Is it too little too late? NO clue, time will tell. BUT it is an interesting time and will be a battle for many of them to make the quantum leaps in performance that are required to compete with countries who use extremely low-cost labor.

We have had a similar conversation previously, one of the comments was "some maitnenance is better than no maintenance". (Or something like that) This is valid and a good start. However, for many of these companies if they do not try to go for massive quantum leaps in performance, executed in a rapid and integrated fashion, then they will find themselves as a footnote to history very quickly! (This is what happened to the majority of manufacturing industries in my country of Australia about ten years ago)

I think, taking the risky path of trying to predict something, that in the near future the US reliability markets will consist of very few manufacturers. It is not that they can't compete, it is that the famous level playing field does not exist! Those that survive the next few years will be those that have achieved superior levels of performance, rapidly, through "going where no man has boldly gone". And even that may not be enough!

Reliability wil become a discussion between groupings of nuclear, utilities, oil and gas, and other companies that are unable to outsource to cheap labor countries.

Interesting times...

Hi Bryan,

Like who?

Rgds