I’ve been catching up on some podcasts lately — I subscribe to more than 20 via iTunes but only have a chance to listen to a couple of my favourites each day — and finally had a chance to listen to some of the recent RedMonk Radio podcasts from RedMonk, a small analyst firm. I like RedMonk Radio because it’s a conversation between the participants, rather than a formal interview or a standalone speaker, so it’s fun to listen to as well as informative (I especially like James’ imitation of American accents 🙂 ).
In episode 6, James Governor and Michael Coté talk about SOA testing, and the specific problems of testing the heterogeneous SOA environment that most organizations have that includes legacy systems and newer services. There’s a great bit where James states “EAI and SOA are not the same thing, but on the other hand, some of the concepts of EAI, some of the approaches and even some of the technologies are relevant.” Coté asks “What do you think the differences are between the two?” James responds “$40,000 per CPU” (referring to the former market for expensive adapters and connectors that have been replaced by standard web services interfaces), which completely cracked me up. Also some interesting thoughts on testing when some or all of the software/services are outsourced.
In episode 8, Scott Mark interviews James and Coté about life as an industry analyst, which is really about the small-firm analyst experience: I’m sure that things are much different for Gartner analysts, for example. The outside view of analysts is much more glamorous than the reality, but these guys are obviously in it because they have a passion for it, not because they’re making huge buckets of money at it. The funny thing is that the typical day that James described for himself is much like what I do: customer/prospect followups, industry research, reviewing blogs, vendor briefings, writing vendor and technology reviews, and consulting. Maybe I’m an analyst in disguise.
many of the editors and staff associated with ebizq are “analysts in disguise”…
and as for what’s different at a large firm- for one thing… more meetings! 🙂
glad you enjoyed the SOA testing ‘cast – i am proud of that one. i think the tone worked well and the content was good.
and i am half-american. my baseline was actually US – the English is just an overlay… so its midatlantic “rilly”
I’m neither editor nor staff at ebizQ — I’m an unpaid blogger but host my blog here to be part of a larger integration community. My “real” (i.e., paid) business is here.
To my Canadian ear, your American language roots are well disguised, but that does explain your proficiency with the accent!
… but isn’t it ironic how James’ “English overlay” only drops out when he’s making mock statements? 😉
I’m hoping to do more interviews, and would love to chat with someone from a large firm – let me know if you have any referrals. Thanks for the review!
I have to keep listening to the podcasts now to see what other accents that he can do! 😉 The larger firms might not be nearly so much fun.