Event

On 12 February 2013, emergency/mass notification services (EMNS) vendor xMatters purchased the intellectual property of Bamboo, an enterprise-level incident management mobile app from Deloitte Australia, for an undisclosed amount. Members of Deloitte’s risk practice are assisting in the full transition as are application developers from the Bamboo team employed in the build-out.

Analysis

Bamboo has now found a software development home to enhance its business continuity management software. Gartner believes xMatters has the most opportunity to grow Bamboo adoption by supporting the importation of Microsoft Word and Excel files as well as a SharePoint Web service API for those who do not use business continuity management planning (BCMP) tools now. Gartner also believes xMatters should consider evaluating its EMNS pricing strategy to make it more competitive with the rest of the market for increased adoption of Bamboo by prospects that do not already have an EMNS tool.

xMatters adds a mobile app that supports push technology for recovery plan updates, role-based and offline recovery plan access, and GIS-enabled tracking of all capabilities used for real-time incident management. Integration with the xMatters IT alerting system may be a future enhancement.

Before this acquisition, Gartner observed limited Bamboo adoption by our clients, who cited additional costs compared to perceived benefits; Australia-only product support with uncertain future support from Deloitte (which is not known for mobile application development); and limited business continuity management tool integration.

In both current and combined forms, Bamboo powered by xMatters lacks many of the capabilities of the larger BCMP market, particularly related to planning functions, including:

• Business impact analysis
• Risk assessment
• Recovery plan development, maintenance and exercising

But the offering could appeal to xMatters customers that lack a mobile app for real-time incident management.

• BCMP tool customers: If you are looking for EMNS and enhanced real-time incident management capabilities through a mobile device, encourage your BCMP vendor to integrate with xMatters.
• EMNS tool prospects: Consider xMatters because it now has an enhanced mobile app for offline recovery plan access, emergency contact list dialing and GIS for resource tracking — all used for real-time incident management support.
• BCMP vendors that only have mobile Web browser access: If you are looking for an EMNS tie-in, either integrate with xMatters or enhance your mobile app to provide push technology for recovery plan updates, role-based and offline access to plans through the mobile device, and EMNS integration.
• xMatters EMNS competitors : Enhance your mobile app to support push technology for recovery plan updates, role-based and offline recovery plan access and GIS-enabled resource tracking. (EMNS leaders currently support GIS-enabled resource tracking.)
• Existing Bamboo customers: Discuss with your EMNS vendor whether it will continue supporting Bamboo, as it may be a direct competitor to xMatters.

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"Best Practices: EMNS Implementation Advice" — EMNS implemented without a well-considered plan can hurt the constituencies that rely on these services for everything from basic safety to basic survival. By Roberta Witty and John Girard

"Market Analysis in Depth: EMNS Magic Quadrant" — Buyers of EMNS should use this research to guide their vendor selection projects. By Roberta Witty, John Girard and Catherine Goldstein