Which Vendors Have Gotten Smart (Computing, That Is)?
Thirteen months ago, I introduced the concept of “Smart Computing,” which I predicted would drive the next big wave of technology innovation and growth in the 2008 to 2016 period (see December 4, 2009, "Smart Computing Drives The New Era of IT Growth"). Smart Computing involves the addition of new awareness technologies like RFID, sensors, and image recognition and new real-time analysis technologies, along with adoption of foundation technologies like service-oriented architectures, unified communications, virtualization, and cloud computing. Since then, I have been tracking the tech market for evidence that this is in fact happening.
One key indicator I am watching is how many vendors have started to incorporate “Smart Computing” terms and language into their marketing, sales, and brand material. This matters, because tech vendors will be the ones that translate the concepts embedded in Smart Computing into actual sales of solutions and products to clients, thereby generating the revenue growth that will cause the tech market to grow twice as fast as the economy as we expect. In fact, that kind of tech market growth has been occurring, at least in the US (December 14, 2010, “US Tech Industry Outlook For 2011 — 2011 Likely To Replay 2010's 8% Overall Domestic Growth Rate”). But we want to see whether that strong growth is due to adoption of Smart Computing solutions, or other factors.
To measure whether tech vendors are absorbing and articulating the key concepts of smart computing, I conducted Google searches this week of the Web sites of 51 large or prominent tech vendors.* Forty-five of these are the vendors whose quarterly revenues we track to see how the tech market is growing, such as IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Oracle, SAP, Motorola, Accenture, Adobe, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and others. But we also included vendors who don’t provide quarterly revenues like Huawei, ZTE, and SAS Institute, or that we have not historically tracked as business-oriented tech vendors, like Apple and GE. Using Google searches of content within each vendor’s website (instead of the search tools provided at the vendor’s sites), I counted the number of citations of words like “smart,” “intelligent,” and “real-time” as crude indicators of whether or not the vendor was talking the talk of Smart Computing. For comparison, I also did a count of the number of citations of "cloud" at each vendor's website. For the 51 vendors, I found a total of 189 thousand references to "smart," 88 thousand to "intelligent," 202 thousand to real-time, and 318 thousand to cloud.
Table 1 shows the results for the 20 vendors with most citations of "smart," "intelligent," or "real-time." Cisco and IBM are the top two in their use of these words, at twice the level of third place Microsoft. CA and Accenture are the next most frequent users of the word “smart,” with SAP and Oracle being the fourth and fifth most frequent users of “intelligent” and Symantec and Oracle having similar rankings in the use of “real-time.” Dell, HP, Motorola, and Siemens used “smart” more frequently than “intelligent” or “real-time, ” while SAP, SAS Institute, and Symantec used “intelligent” and “real-time” more often than “smart.” GE did not rank in the top 20 in its use of any of these words, but “imagination” – which is part of GE’s brand slogan, and is somewhat similar to smart in meaning – had over 8,000 citations at the GE site. If one considers "imagination" to be an equivalent to “smart,” that count would put GE in fourth place on the "smart" list after Microsoft.
Table 1: Number of Google citations of “Smart,” “intelligent,” or “real-time” at tech vendor websites
Rank |
Vendor |
Number of Google citations of “smart” |
Vendor |
Number of Google citations for “intelligent” |
Vendor |
Number of Google citations for “real-time” |
1 |
Cisco |
60,300 |
IBM |
20,400 |
Cisco |
49,100 |
2 |
IBM |
45,600 |
Cisco |
18,900 |
IBM |
42,600 |
3 |
Microsoft |
25,900 |
Microsoft |
9,050 |
Microsoft |
23,700 |
4 |
CA |
8,120 |
SAP |
4,930 |
Symantec |
13,900 |
5 |
Accenture |
6,110 |
Oracle |
4,060 |
Oracle |
13,400 |
6 |
Oracle |
5,630 |
Symantec |
4,020 |
Adobe |
7,980 |
7 |
Motorola |
4,910 |
SAS Institute |
2,830 |
Motorola |
6,340 |
8 |
Dell |
4,310 |
Adobe |
2,540 |
SAS Institute |
5,900 |
9 |
HP |
3,510 |
Motorola |
2,430 |
SAP |
5,520 |
10 |
Adobe |
3,060 |
Dell |
1,920 |
Apple |
5,230 |
11 |
Apple |
2,430 |
Siemens |
1,620 |
salesforce.com |
3,160 |
12 |
Fujitsu |
2,280 |
Fujitsu |
1,570 |
Fujitsu |
2,580 |
13 |
Symantec |
2,140 |
Avaya |
1,480 |
Accenture |
2,560 |
14 |
Siemens |
1,920 |
Apple |
1,350 |
Dell |
2,490 |
15 |
SAS Institute |
1,912 |
Huawei |
1,230 |
HP |
2,250 |
16 |
SAP |
1,690 |
HP |
1,120 |
Infosys |
2,000 |
17 |
Infosys |
1,130 |
Alcatel |
994 |
CA |
1,620 |
18 |
Xerox |
1,050 |
CA |
920 |
Avaya |
1,330 |
19 |
Ericsson |
856 |
EMC |
852 |
Informatica |
1,320 |
20 |
Capgemini |
727 |
Accenture |
805 |
Siemens |
1,230 |
Because of the equivalency in meaning (at least for these purposes) of the words “smart,” “intelligent,” and “real-time, ” I totaled the counts of these words for each of the vendor. Using this total, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft are the top three vendors who have embraced Smart Computing-related concepts, followed by Oracle, Symantec, Motorola, Adobe, SAP, CA, and Accenture rounding out the top 10. Apple, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, and SAS Institute make up the next set of five. Only Fujitsu among the Japanese and Chinese vendors appears in the top 20, and only Infosys among the Indian services vendors (see Table 2).
Table 2: Combined total of Google citations of “Smart,” “intelligent,” and/or “real-time” at tech vendor websites
Rank |
Vendor |
Total number of Google citations of “smart,” “intelligent,” or “real-time” |
1 |
Cisco |
128,300 |
2 |
IBM |
108,600 |
3 |
Microsoft |
58,650 |
4 |
Oracle |
23,090 |
5 |
Symantec |
20,060 |
6 |
Motorola |
13,680 |
7 |
Adobe |
13,580 |
8 |
SAP |
12,140 |
9 |
CA |
10,660 |
10 |
Accenture |
9,475 |
11 |
Apple |
9,010 |
12 |
Dell |
8,720 |
13 |
HP |
6,880 |
14 |
Fujitsu |
6,430 |
15 |
SAS Institute |
5,547 |
16 |
Siemens |
4,770 |
17 |
salesforce.com |
3,647 |
18 |
Infosys |
3,489 |
19 |
Avaya |
3,355 |
20 |
Alcatel |
2,804 |
Most of these are large vendors, with many lines of business and consequently large amounts of content on their websites for these various businesses. To adjust for this factor, I then calculated the number of Google citations of the words “smart,” “intelligent”, and/or “real-time” for every $1 billion in vendor revenues. That ranking shows several smaller vendors – including several SaaS vendors – in the top 10, including NetSuite, RightNow, Informatica, salesforce.com, and TIBCO. Among the larger vendors, Adobe and Symantec are ahead of Cisco, and CA and SAS Institute are ahead of IBM, Microsoft, SAP, or Oracle (see Table 3).
Table 3: Adjusting the combined total of Google citations of “Smart,” “intelligent,” and/or “real-time” at tech vendor websites by vendor revenues
Rank |
Vendor |
Total number of Google citations of “smart”, “intelligent”, or “real-time” per |
1 |
NetSuite |
2,088 |
2 |
Adobe |
1,191 |
3 |
RightNow |
1,145 |
4 |
Symantec |
1,100 |
5 |
Cisco |
1,014 |
6 |
Informatica |
817 |
7 |
CA |
800 |
8 |
SAS Institute |
740 |
9 |
salesforce.com |
739 |
10 |
TIBCO |
434 |
11 |
IBM |
365 |
12 |
Motorola |
340 |
13 |
Ultimate Software |
325 |
14 |
Microsoft |
297 |
15 |
SAP |
250 |
16 |
Oracle |
234 |
17 |
Avaya |
215 |
18 |
Infosys |
204 |
19 |
Accenture |
142 |
20 |
Unisys |
95 |
The problem with simple word counts is that they include uses of these words in context different from smart computing – for example, “our product integrates with many smart phones;” or “we value the many intelligent clients who bought our products.” Sifting through the references to “smart” or “intelligent” or “real-time” at the 51 vendors’ websites, we found only four vendors whose major or core marketing messages embraced these concepts – IBM, with Smarter Planet; Cisco, with Smart+Connected Communities; CA with its sponsorshop of Smart Enterprise magazine for clients; and Capgemini, with its use of intelligent workplace and intelligent enterprise. If one considers GE's use of the tag line "Imagination at Work" to be equivalent to smart or intelligent, GE would be a fifth. Another dozen vendors incorporated smart or intelligent at the product level (for example, Motorola, Siemens, Avaya, Infosys, Xerox, Oracle, and TCS), or used the weaker term “real-time” instead of smart or intelligent in their main marketing messages (e.g., NetSuite, TIBCO, Pegasystems). The rest of the 51 tech vendors that we analyzed have yet to bring the concepts of smart computing into their core marketing messages (Table 4).
Table 4: The Vendors Who Have Gotten “Smart”
Vendor |
Use Smart, Intelligent or Real-time in Main Marketing Messages |
Language used |
IBM |
Yes |
Smarter Planet |
Cisco |
Yes |
Smart-Connected Building, Smart+Connected Communities, Smart Business Architecture |
CA |
Yes |
Smart Enterprise magazine |
Capgemini |
Yes |
Create your intelligent enterprise; "Intelligent Workplace" |
Motorola | Sort of | Motorola Smart Branch, Intelligent Transportation System |
Lenovo |
Sort of |
Whatever you do, Lenovo can help you do it better, smarter, faster |
NetSuite |
Sort of |
Real-time management for global businesses, 'real-time dashboard' |
TIBCO Software |
Sort of |
Enable rapid change and real-time analytics |
Siemens |
Sort of |
Intelligent sensors, intelligent meters, intelligent traffic management |
Avaya |
Sort of |
Avaya Smart Finder, Avaya Intelligent Customer Routing |
Infosys |
Sort of |
Smart Integrator, Smart Merchandizing |
Xerox Company |
Sort of |
Smart eSolutions, Smart documents |
Pegasystems |
Sort of |
Visualize business improvement in real-time |
GE |
Sort of |
Imagination at work |
Oracle |
Sort of |
Oracle Smart Space, Hyperion Smart View |
Tata Consulting Services |
Sort of |
Smart Store, Smart Grid, Smart Metering |
SAS Institute |
Sort of |
Smart Business with SAS; Smart Growth: High Performance and Sustainability Through Analytics |
I plan to repeat this exercise in six and twelve months, to see whether more vendors are getting smart
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*The full list of vendors that we searched are: Accenture, Adobe, Alcatel, Amdocs, Apple, Atos/Origin , Avaya, BMC, CA, Capgemini, CGI, Cisco, Cognizant, CSC, Dell, EMC, Ericsson, Fujitsu, GE, Getronics, HP, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Informatica, Infosys, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola , NEC , NetApp, NetSuite, Nokia, NTT Data, Oracle, Pegasystems, RightNow, salesforce.com, SAP, SAS Institute, Siemens, Symantec, Tata Consulting Services, TIBCO Software, T-Systems, Ultimate Software, Unisys, Wipro, Xerox Company, and ZTE.