IT Market Research and IT History

Over the years I have done a large amount of IT industry market research. I have also written a some substantial pieces on the history of the IT industry. Much of the market research work was done at Strategic Research, which was the research arm of Strategic Publishing Group (SPG), the publishing company I co-founded in 1992. When GartnerGroup acquired Strategic Research in 1996, I moved there for a couple of years. My title was Research Director for Demand Research, Asia Pacific.

"Demand research" was the term Gartner used for surveys of computer users, which was what I specialised in. At SPG we built a giant database of every significant IT department in Asia Pacific. We sold the database to computer vendors, but we also surveyed people in the database on their IT directions and strategies. After I left Gartner in 1998, SPG bought this research division back off Gartner, and it was subsequently acquired by Fairfax when that company bought SPG in December 1999. The research lives on as Fairfax Business Research, though I have nothing to do with it any more.

Most of the many reports I researched and wrote during this period are now hopelessly out of date. If you would like to discuss them, please contact me.

Today I write the odd white paper and do a bit of consultation, helping people do market research. I am also writing more and more on the history of IT. You can download some stuff I have written in recent years:

• A Short History of the Software Industry, 2004. A longish (15,000 word) chapter of a book on software development, commissioned by Routledge. Good overview of the key developments in the software industry. Includes much material from "Time Machine" (the next piece), but some good original stuff as well. Extensively referenced, with a good bibliography. Download now (267 KB).
• Time Machine - A Brief History of Computing, 2003. A 10,000 word article on the history of the entire computer industry, written as a major feature for Australian Personal Computer (APC) magazine's 20th anniversary December 2003 edition. Download now (177 KB).
• Bioinformatics and BioIT in Australia, 2003. Survey of Australian biotech organisations, and how they are using IT and bioinformatics. Done through my biotech research company at the time, OmegaBio. It was subsequently republished by BioLateral when OmegaBio and that company merged in August 2003. Download now (70 KB)
• The RoI on eLearning, 2002. White paper written for Click2Learn, 2002. A brief overview of eLearning, and how to do RoI (return on investment) in the area. Download now (222 KB)
• The Electronic Enterprise - ERP/SCM, eBusiness and Beyond, 1999. Written for Hewlett-Packard as part of a roadshow I did for them. Published by Strategic Research. A good overview of the subject - especially on how ERP came to be, and how it has now evolved into eCommerce. Download now (211 KB)
• Mainframe Wars, 1991. A short (90 page) book originally written for CTR Corporation. Good overview of the mainframe scene in the early 1990s and the history of the major players. Some of the stuff on Fujitsu in particular is hard to find anywhere else. Download now (371 KB)