A new beginning for me in 2008

Happy New Year all. I hope everyone is starting 2008 with optimism about the fresh new year. I know I am. I am leaving Blackfriars and joining Yankee Group in downtown Boston as of today, Monday January 7, as Director for Enterprise Software Research.

I'm excited about this opportunity to return to the commercial analyst business, which I discovered late in my career was probably the best fit for my personal interests that I've ever found. Some of the analysts and executives at Yankee are people I've previously worked with, while others will be new people to discuss and bounce ideas off. But overall, I've been impressed with their work since CEO and former Forrester colleague Emily Green took over the business, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do to contribute to their success.

But at the same time, I feel great sadness about leaving Blackfriars, which Joe and I started more than five years ago and built into a profitable and enjoyable small business. Blackfriars was my first start-up that I helped found (at the age of 50, no less), and one that I will always remember fondly. We've probably had the best clients we could ask for, clients who took chances on engaging our company, challenged us to deliver our best, and made us stretch our skills. Joe will continue to serve those in the future as he continues the company, but I will miss them greatly. And all the while, Blackfriars has given me the time flexibility for me to see my children's school concerts, attend their student teacher conferences, and generally not be away on business trips for many of their younger years. And of course, I've had the opportunity to devote endless hours to writing the more than 1,350 posts I've made to this blog and to engage with my wonderful readers.

Monday will be a big change for me. My commute will go from 10 minutes to about and hour and a quarter each way. Joe will be continuing Blackfriars here, but I'll sorely miss his good humor and marketing wisdom. And sadly, I won't be able to post significant analysis here anymore; my employment contract requires that I devote my writing and efforts to my new clients at Yankee. I'm hoping to emerge with a new blog related to that effort there; if that happens, I'll post a link to it here. Regardless, I do hope to contribute an occasional non-work-related observation here from time to time. I know I would miss it if I didn't.

So thank you to all the Blackfriars readers out there for your time, your attention, and your interest. I'll try to contribute a few more posts as I wind up loose ends here (with MacWorld coming up, I'm not sure I could resist), but they'll rapidly become more of the once-a-week or month variety than the daily posts you've come to expect. But I hope everyone will look for my reports and quotes at Yankee Group and in the press. And if you need research or consulting on Enterprise Software and Mobility (or even if you just want to tell me something cool that's going on), I hope you'll contact me there. I expect my email will be chowe@yankeegroup.com and you can reach me through their main number at (617) 598-7200. And regardless, you can always get my latest contact information from http://www.carhowe.com and write me at carlhowe@mac.com.

Thank you again to all. And Happy New Year.