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- Where do you live?
- Fremont, California
- Tell us about your family.
- I'm married to Pam, and have a son, who's 17. We also have two dogs.
- What are you most proud of professionally?
- Facing the challenge of ever-advancing technology, and being able to keep up with it.
- When you were six years old, what did you want to grow up to be?
- A brain surgeon. Maths and sciences were strong draws to me from my early childhood, so I never went through the train driver, policeman or fireman stages that many of my friends went through. I could easily have ended up in medicine until I made the choice to go with mostly maths and physics in my final years of grammar school (high school in the US). That choice was a direct result of my engagement with computers in my early teens.
- How did you become an IT analyst?
- I did engineering work, everything from circuit design to layout to software. I also ran engineering groups for a number of years, focusing on cost-efficient products and meeting the market needs when they shipped. I then moved into technology and strategic planning. From there, becoming an analyst was a simple step.
- How has IT personally changed your life?
- I started working with computers, getting paid for writing software, in 1971. That set me on a path where I have always worked — and played — with computers.
- If you could not be an analyst, what would be your second career choice?
- Being an analyst is a second career for me, so I have already made that choice once.
- How do you spend your time when you're not working?
- Family, reading, sleeping, flying, eating. The last two are part of the analyst's disease. I have started up a mechanical hobby, and am again learning how to use a lathe and a mill. The goal, of course, it to computerize them so they do the hard work for me.
I have also automated much of my home. The sprinklers, lights, pool pumps are all controlled by a network of sensors and controllers laced through the house, and all accessible from the Internet. It was a hobby/experiment that tells me that so-called smart homes are way, way in the future.
- Favorite vacation spot?
- Hawaii.
- Ideal way to spend a free Sunday afternoon?
- Reading, or fixing stuff up around the house.
- How do you choose the books you read for pleasure?
- Off the best seller rack, mining a particular author or topic at Amazon, a technical book that offers new insights.
- Is there a TV show you never miss?
- No. I have a TiVo. The Chairman of the FCC called it "God's machine". Decoupling TV schedules from their timeslots means I never have to miss anything — and paradoxically, I watch less. My machine is heavily modified, with 200 hours of recording that I will probably never watch, a memory cache, and a network interface.
- Favorite Web sites?
- Slashdot, The Register.
- Is this the best time in your life?
- Of course, you have to make it that way.
- Do you have a philosophy by which you live, something that guides you in tough times?
- To always do what you know is right.
- Where do you want to be, what do you want to be doing, in ten years?
- Tough question. I love the technology industry, I grew up with it. But I wonder about how it will change over the next ten years, and whether it will still be the right place for anyone to be. It may be too late for me to change direction, a challenge that will be more severe for people earlier in their careers.
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Martin covers business and technology issues related to computing hardware. He is particularly interested in the progress of computing capabilities, and how technology may be applied to business advantage.
Topics He Covers Include:
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Computing Processors and Platforms |
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Displays, keyboards, mice, sound and HDTV |
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Wireless technologies |
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Platform security |
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Buses and interfaces |
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Intel, AMD and HP |
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Power technology |
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Cash flow and technology |
Recent Accurate Predictions:
Martin states, "The best predictions come from a quantitative analysis of marketing claims, or a technical review of specifications against the laws of physics." By utilizing these two measurements, he's proven himself a valuable Gartner analyst. Some of his predictions follow.
Over time, quantitative techniques allowed Martin to correctly predict the growth of the Pentium processor; the DRAM shortage around 1995; and to see the collapse of the professional PC market as new seats dried up.
Recently Martin predicted the security issues around WLANS and Bluetooth, which he understood by examining the specs. He and his Gartner colleagues had the research in place a year before the problems opened up to the public eye.
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Correct Predictions:
| The shift of UWB to a personal area network technology — 2002. |
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| The consummation of the HP-Compaq merger — 2001. |
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| The PC price war of 2001 — 2001. |
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| The security issues associated with wireless LANs — 2000. |
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| The security issues associated with Bluetooth — 2000. |
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| 5GHz processors in 2005 — 1999. |
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| Fingerprint copying — 1998. |
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| Magnesium in notebooks — 1998. |
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| Microsoft's corruption of Java — 1997. |
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| Intel's wholesale move to the Pentium processor in 1995 — 1994. |
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| The DRAM shortage of 1994 and beyond — 1993. |
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In 2003, Martin returned to an analytical role where he pursues his current research interests, looking at the long-term future of technology. Many of these concepts were outlined in the Spring 2004 Symposium Keynote. 1Q04: Semiconductor , Hardware and Systems Forecast Scenarios
In 2001, he added responsibility for the semiconductor team and worked with the semiconductor group to move towards quarterly forecasting, dramatically improving the industry's visibility into its future. Prepare for a World That Links People, Places and Objects
Taking on responsibility for the Gartner Dataquest PC and server groups in 1999, Martin worked with the team to move to quarterly forecasting. This shift proved invaluable as the growth of the industry became less predictable.
Martin joined Gartner Dataquest in 1995 to build its technology roadmap program. This program was one of the fastest-growing and most profitable products during its existence, and provided key insights to designers and manufactures of notebook and desktop PCs and the components that go into them.
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Hypervisors and virtualization are coming to the high-volume market, and have profound implications for computing over the next five years. Sensor networks are appearing, and will drive production of billions of smart devices -- all generating information. These technologies will combine to create computing needs and infrastructures one or two orders of magnitude greater than we have today -- as long as the price points and management issues are resolved. Martin is investigating the physics of wireless. We are seeing bold expectations for WiMAX, WiFi, and UWB, but there are physical constraints that mean that wireless data rates cannot advance along the Moore’s Law curve. He is also investigating the end of password security, models relating profitability to cash flow, and IT practices that set apart the leaders from the followers.
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