Analystpalooza

I just got back from a quick trip to San Francisco for an IDC analyst event. It just so happened that Oracle's OpenWorld conference was taking place at the same time over at Moscone Center - which explains why I had such a difficult time getting a hotel reservation!

Anyway, Servoy's PR expert Brenda Christensen managed to work with Emilie Ingram from IDC to set up a separate meeting at the Palace Hotel (where the IDC event was taking place) with noted analyst Al Hilwa. This is really a hard thing to do - but Mr. Hilwa was in town for the Oracle event and there was a "hole" in his schedule (I think it was for dinner - SORRY, Al!).

It's the first time I've met Mr. Hilwa in person. We've talked on the phone twice when we were briefing him on Servoy 4.0 and more recently on the upcoming Servoy 4.1, and in those conversations things just really "clicked."

He's one of those guys that is just crazy smart. He was an analyst at Gartner in the late 90's and then moved to Senior Product Manager on the SQL Server database team at Microsoft. He has a ton of real world expertise in enterprise computing and the whole application development and product lifecycle management "thing."

He had some really interesting observations, insights and advice for where he sees Servoy in the marketplace and in particular how our go-to-market strategy was particularly interesting. Well, needless to say, that hour absolutely FLEW by! Seriously, it seemed like we had just sat down and it was time for him to bolt off to the next customer meeting (Oracle).

Next, it was off to the IDC event where there were 9 more analysts who specialized in all sorts of industries and market segments. There were also about 90 other people from companies of all sizes who were invited to come and get acquainted with the IDC folks.

What a cool event! It was really cool to talk to some of the other business folks there and understand what business they were in, and talk to (and listen to!) all the other analysts. Talk about a great education... so thanks to Mr. Hilwa, Ms. Ingram and the IDC folks for a great evening.