There are a great many techniques used by vendors to sell their offerings, from traditional direct, single and two-tier indirect and Internet direct techniques. There are also a number of new approaches as the type of products and services change, whether the extension of ITC into consumer channels, or the creation of aggregator channels. The Internet is allowing many new ways of delivering and making money from offerings which were previously restricted to specific company sizes or industry sectors. Shifting to new sales techniques carries the danger of reducing revenues and profits by under-cutting existing methods, so understanding how and when to change is increasingly important.When creating the Rainmaker Index we look at how each vendor sells, who its existing partners are and how it’s adding new approaches is over time. Our scoring is dependent on how appropriate and smart each approach is.

While it is a mistake to over-generalise, we think it’s essential to consider how different generations of users and employees will change the way ITC is sold and deployed. There are differences between Baby Boomers and Generation Y in first having to learn technology when developed and the latter being born into it. We believe this leads to a greater questioning of the differences between offerings by the former and a greater assumption of use by the latter. If the gaming console market is a good indicator of Generation Z computer usage then we should expect the development of more semi-closed Internet communities in future. Clearly new generations exhibit different purchasing behaviour, which suppliers need to include in their approaches in balance with established methods. While those suppliers with consumer customers tend to think harder about these issues, the subject is important for all.
When profiling suppliers for the Rainmaker Index we take care to assess how advanced their handling of new purchasing behaviour of different generations are and how they are planning for new users and employees, assuming that ‘more is better’.

Resource efficiency is the lens we use to filter sustainability initiatives. These span techniques, offerings and services which make the most of the equipment, staff and external support. Regulatory developments and social pressures have led to procurement teams seeking reassurance on sustainability.

We track three specific strands to the resource efficiency stream:

1. Open Source software is an important component of modern computing, although its use has changed dramatically over the last few years; rather than part of pioneer communities proposing alternatives to dominant supplier offerings, it has been subsumed into architectural approaches; central to its use is the judgement of whether or not it is ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of performance and in comparison with the leading products and how its use will reduce overall ITC costs
2. Energy Conservation is becoming a central theme of end-user computing; again there has been a big shift from the Green movement, which assumed that organisations desired to ‘save the planet’; the demand for data centre electricity is growing faster than the Utilities abilities to keep up in many countries and we’re entering a time when governments and Power companies will restrict supply and/or introduce variable pricing; in addition the spiralling cost of electricity is forcing organisations to think about reducing its use by improving utilisation and system efficiency
3. Crowdsourcing and Social CRM are new techniques used by organisations to cut the cost of development and support; again they offer the advantages of low costs and better results in comparison with the techniques they are replacing

When profiling suppliers for the Rainmaker Index we take care to assess how advanced their approaches (both internally and in the offerings they supply) to improving resource efficiency, assuming that ‘more is better’.

Despite two decades of outsourcing, operations still absorb the lion’s share of global IT spending. And across all operational activities, the market remains highly fragmented.

We include software and hardware maintenance along side many managed services offerings as components of this market. For users there is often a frustration in having to pay up front for maintenance contracts, especially as their systems by definition will be better if they don’t need to be called upon.

When profiling suppliers for the Rainmaker Index we take care to assess how advanced their approache to technology operations are and how they are working to reduce down time and costs to their customers, assuming that ‘more is better’.

Data intelligence is a Rainmaker theme because data and information are at the heart of computing. The storage of data is a key aspect of data intelligence, but the theme also embraces the processes that accelerate and extract value in information. Data protection is a significant aspect to the theme, as it remains a mission critical practice even if it may not be seen as revenue generating. We will be paying attention to developments in old-fashioned capacity growth, data transfer, content and analytics. Similarly we explore what customers do to maximise their storage assets and mine the content.

When profiling suppliers for the Rainmaker Index we take care to assess how they advance their storage offerings in the data intelligence area. Our scoring is dependent on how appropriate and smart each approach is.

Virtualisation is an important theme central to the development of modern computing. Not only is it a vital part of Cloud Computing (however defined), but it also has the ability to save customers money through increased utilisation of resources. It is important for improving security, protecting data, making systems management easier and reducing costs. We believe that each vendor’s research, development, investment and support for virtualisation helps to define its revenue opportunities in future markets. We chose virtualisation over Cloud as a theme because it is easier to define and less likely to ebb and flow as a concept through time.Virtualisation has always been central to computing and the ITC industry. An early example is the Turing Test, which proposed that Artificial Intelligence existed if a user posing questions from a keyboard couldn’t tell if the answers were coming from a human or a machine.We look at the use of hypervisors on Servers, the move towards SAN and NAS in Storage Systems. the use of Terminal Services and VDI to create virtual desktops and the infrastructure software from VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, Microsoft and others.When profiling suppliers for the Rainmaker Index we take care to assess how advanced their virtualisation approaches and offerings are, assuming that ‘more is better’.