Of course this is a personal exercise - anyone can come to an different result - here is what I did: I picked the top 8 events, news, acquisitions, conferences, analyst events etc. of the quarter, they had to have a blog post published by yours truly. Threw them in a bucket, draw them and then had them 'play' out the bracket... based on what myPOV was in regards of enterprise relevance and impact for our clients, the CxOs out there. Needless to say - some where easier, some harder.
Here you go for Q1 2016 - all related to NextGen Apps - the research area that covers when enterprises build new software - what are the use cases, the tools, the platforms, the players, the best practises etc.
[Apologies - time to market force me to play the bracket right to left.]
Round #1 Dropouts
- Atos acquired Unify - This was one of the major surprises in Q1 2016, and by now the Atos strategy is clear - differentiate with more products (hardware - see Bull and software - see Unify). A bold move that made the Top 16, but a challenge from an organizational DNA (read more here). Future will tell more. And the IBM and VMware partnership had more impact on CxOs (read here).
- Hortonworks Analyst Summit - Well done summit (read more here), compelling vision of bringing data at rest and in motion together. But Microsoft had more impact with Conversation as a Platform (CaaP) (more here).
- Microsoft acquires Xamarin - A very important acquisition by Microsoft, that makes multi platform native development possible. but compare to Google's announcements at Google Cloud Platform Next (see here) not as relevant, a tough round #1 match up (more here).
- SAP Vora GA - An important step for SAP, making Vora GA, but not as impactful as Oracle acquiring Ravello (more here) - being able to provide heterogeneous load through a nested hypervisor is key to Oracle's overall cloud strategy (more here).
Round #2 Dropouts
- IBM and VMware partner - Great timing for an originally unlikely partnership, that is working well from what we hear (more here). But Microsoft CaaP captured more forward looking plans of CxOs, both events were Top 10 CxO topics in 2016, but Microsoft wins solid (more here).
- Oracle acquires Ravello - A key move by Oracle, that will get even more valuable later in the year (more here), when Oracle will unveil its 2nd generation IaaS strategy. But Google Cloud Platform captures the imagination of CxOs worldwide with its analytical and Machine Learning capability (more here).
Q1 Finals - Microsoft CaaP wins with a buzzer beater
Tough to call with both impactful announcements but Google (see here) and Microsoft. Microsoft Conversation as a Platform wins as Microsoft is the first one out talking virtual assistants and bots in what will become the year when all vendors needs to have an AI story (more here). Very clear and defined positioning by Nadella at the Build developer conference. Very close to call. Congrats to Microsoft to make it to the 2016 Finals.
How would you have scored the Q1 2016 news? Please comment!
Here are all blog posts:
- News Analysis - IBM and VMware announce partnership to accelerate enterprise hybrid cloud adoption >> Looking promising - read here
- Market Move - Atos completes acqusition of Unify - moves more into IP - read here
- Progress Report - Hortonworks wants to become the next generation data platform for the enterprise - a tall ask - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications - read here
- News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
- Event Report - Google Cloud Platform Next - Key offerings for (some of the) enterprise - read here
- Market Move - Oracle acquires Ravello Sysystems - makes good on nested hypervisor roadmap - read here
- News Analysis - SAP Vora now GA - a key milestone for SAP - read here