Bill Clark leaves Gartner for SAP: A Farewell but not Goodbye Part II

By Jim Lundy

At about the same time I wrote the post about Jim Hollincheck leaving Gartner and joining Workday, another Gartner Thought Leader Bill Clark was also doing the same thing, but instead he decided to apply his thought leadership in Mobile at SAP. On Linkedin, Bill is listed as the Global VP for Mobile Strategy and just as with myself and Jim, Bill never got a farewell when he left.  While not great news for Gartner, it is great timing for SAP, since they are looking to make some major moves in Mobile. You will read more about SAP and many other mobile vendors in our soon to be published Aragon Research Globe on Enterprise Mobile Management

Bill was a great analyst to work with and we wish him well at SAP. The bigger news here is that there appears to be the start of another mass exodus at Gartner. It isn’t that people are leaving, it is the thought leaders. On the mobile team, Bill isn’t the first to leave. Mike King beat him to the punch, when he left last year and went to Appcelerator as Director of Strategy.

So, we are giving a shout out to Bill and to Mike, both great guys. It isn’t a goodbye, but a new phase of their careers. It also is a signal to buyers that it pays to understand who the analysts are that you will be dealing with. You can’t replace an analyst who covered their topics for close to ten years overnight.

That brings me to my last point. Mike Anderson and I founded Aragon Research to be the alternative to the big box analyst firms. We focus on client delivery here at Aragon Research and with our clients we do schedule client calls within 24-48 hours of a request (the big guys can’t do that anymore). We cover our markets and we write great research. So, on a Friday in December, we wish our former colleagues Bill Clark and Mike King well, and we wish you a great holiday season.