Results

IBM bankrolls a new $100M interactive practice. Will it work?

IBM bankrolls a new $100M interactive practice. Will it work?

1

Yesterday, IBM announced expansion plans for its Interactive Experience professional services practice. The numbers align a bit too perfectly: 10 new labs, $100M investment, and 1,000 new roles. 

10-100-1000

While the numbers sound great, here's what matters:

  • Access to technology. Brands need to connect with customers along all points of the buying/loyalty loop, same as it ever was. But today, engagement is impossibly inefficient without the help of technology. On the front lines, high tech enables high touch experiences. We could always assume that IBM services had access to the firm's leading-edge research and this announcement includes specifics regarding influence analysis, intelligent customer profiles, and customer identity resolution, in addition to behavioral pricing, life event detection, and psycholinguistics analytics.
  • Global scale. In addition to four Experience Labs in North America, IBM adds 10 locations that provide presence on all continents with the exception of Africa and Antarctica. This allows the firm to match the operating needs of multinational clients, in addition to collecting local insights that can be transferred to broader programs. For example, consider the social media ecosystem in China, which has influenced the roadmaps of Silicon Valley-based platforms (and vice versa).
  • Ability to sign talent. Finding great talent that can pair campaign creativity with quantitative analysis is difficult, and constrained supply drives higher prices. IBM can afford to poach talent from other firms, as evidenced by its hires from Accenture, Wunderman, SapientNitro, DigitasLBi, Capgemini, and Ogilvy. IBM is the professional services equivalent of the New York Yankees.

But I wouldn't consider the game over yet by any means. In fact, some of these strengths come with significant challenges:

  • Legacy branding. International Business Machines has a world renown legacy in enterprise hardware and the current software organization is also well-known. These groups capture the public's attention with innovations like Watson and support of the US Open, which can lead to consulting business. However, internal corporate relationships could lead buyers to lean towards other firms that may not carry a perception of bias towards proprietary technology solutions.
  • You don't have to be the biggest to be the best. Consider the change that technology has driven in the agency landscape; the traditional agencies with roots in the mad men era have been increasingly displaced by smaller shops that are nimble and can react to shifts in current culture. IBM claims to be a "new breed of service provider" but it must be careful that the positioning doesn't become a Napoleonic mistake of creating competition on too many fronts. Moreover, IBM needs to operationalize knowledge from its global network without letting its sheer size get in the way of learning.
  • Fast enough? IBM isn't alone in seeing the marketing opportunity around digital cusotmer experience. Two years ago, Deloitte acquired Ubermind to create Deloitte Digital. Last year, Accenture acquired Fjord and formed Accenture Interactive. Good help is hard to find in this market, which is why SIs are buying digital shops to get in the game quickly. IBM has been hiring talent from the right places, but this one-at-a-time approach may not be a fast enough ramp, leaving money on the table for competitors.

IBM sees the market opportunity in customer experience and appears committed to winning in the market. There are a couple of elements in this announcement that take me back to 2008 as I launched my last company -- "a new service provider that's agency + consultancy" and a multi-million dollar funding commitment -- and the emerging opportunity seems to be wide open. If nothing else, IBM is signalling to potential clients and hires that they're open for business as the "social business" era fades into the next generation of digital transformation.

Marketing Transformation IBM Chief Marketing Officer

10 Things Most Exceptional CIOs Never Do

10 Things Most Exceptional CIOs Never Do

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2014-03-28-ExceptionalCIO.png


The list below is from over two decades of observations in first, second and third person. Before publishing I asked over 50 Fortune 1000 CIOs and CTOs to review and comment; their feedback is included.

At the core of everything below is going against the grain and the herd, and embracing counter intuition. Whether you embrace counter intuition systematically, or selectively, most of the items below are suggesting in their cognitive DNA counter-intuitive thinking.
 

  1. They do not try to define innovation - It's difficult to define innovation, and if you do define innovation it means that you will set up a single process to do or capture it the way you define it. Wrong -- most exceptional technology leaders learn that innovation comes in many flavors, inside-out, outside-in, evolutionary and revolutionary. If you define it you have one process, if you do not, you learn there are many processes needed to do or capture the many types of innovation.

  2. They never have secret projects - The knee-jerk reaction is to have little secret projects, or "black ops" type projects. Exceptional technology leaders will tell you that you need to do innovative projects in the open, allow folks to see, smell and marvel in its artistry. What you want is for everyone to copy the behavior of the few innovating. If you lock them in a secret room, no one knows, and no innovative behavior gets copied.

  3. They are never surprised by failure - Certain percentage of technology projects fail, it is the nature of the beast. Exceptional technology leaders set these expectations for failure with their operating committees, and investment governance stewards early in the process. When failure happens, it is never a surprise; it is usually "well that one falls in our failure bucket we prepared for".

  4. They never start projects themselves - Folks that want/try to build a prototype usually struggle to wow business stakeholders. This is because you have to get the business stakeholders involved before you can build anything. Some leaders I know do not even draw a project in PowerPoint before engaging the customer. Every project is started by the customer, whether on the customer's own conscious accord, or the customer unconsciously prompted (but technology leadership) to do so.

  5. They resist the need for PMO - Certain processes in large organizations do not thrive with the presence of the project police, while others do. Most exceptional leaders I consulted agreed that a PMO in the wrong place at the wrong time can be catastrophic. Some processes need low rigor, some mild, and only some the high rigor that comes with a PMO presence.

  6. They do not break projects into phases - Large phases (one, two and three) are logical "kill points" for projects. Most projects get killed after phase one, and very frequently this is because phase one is a minimally viable product that does the least that can be done, but does it well. Two things happen, the business stakeholders see no reason to fund phase two and/or three (I mean they already saw something that kind of works), and the technology leader never gets to build phase two which would deliver efficiency; and phase three, which would create business value. So large phases leave you always delivering phase one only which unfortunately only kinda works. Have 24 phases, not three.

  7. They never worry about a target state - We can barely predict what our families will do in a year, yet we try to predict what companies of thousands of employees should be like three to five years out with a target state. Worst once there is a targets state, the "target state police" start invalidate changes to the market place and new innovations by activating the "well it does not fit into the target state" card essentially locking the company away from the world for three to five years at a time. Exceptional technology leaders create a governance culture to enable an evolving model, not a target state.

  8. They do not try to build hero products - Very rarely can you build a single product that solves all of your customers ailments in a vacuum. You cannot build standalone solutions; you have to build a product that works with others. The days of platforms with stocks of information are over; exceptional technology leaders build ecosystems with flows of information. Most folks suggested that they build as little as possible, instead they orchestrate like a maestro of other products instead of a builder of a hero product.

  9. They never wait on innovation - Exceptional technology leaders do not wait to see what happens to new innovations, they disdain being a fast follower, they are habitually enterprise early adopters. They buy innovation commercially (and many times invest in the startups) early in the innovation cycle and way left of the theory of diffusion of innovation bell curve. Waiting to see what happens to an innovation means paying more for it, and being late to the party.

  10. They do not read leadership books - There are almost a million books on leadership available for purchase on Amazon.com. All noise, an echo chamber if I may. Exceptional leaders systematically and pragmatically go against the status quo. They thrive in counter intuition. As technology commoditizes, the herd gets larger and larger, go in the opposite direction.


Do you have others to add?

What are some of the traits you see in exceptional technology leaders?

 

New C-Suite Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer

IBM bankrolls a new $100M #CX unit. Will it work?

IBM bankrolls a new $100M #CX unit. Will it work?

1

Yesterday, IBM announced expansion plans for its Interactive Experience professional services practice. The numbers align a bit too perfectly: 10 new labs, $100M investment, and 1,000 new roles.

IBMiX

While the numbers sound great, here’s what matters:

  • Access to technology. Brands need to connect with customers along all points of the buying/loyalty loop, same as it ever was. But today, engagement is impossibly inefficient without the help of technology. On the front lines, high tech enables high touch experiences. We could always assume that IBM services had access to the firm’s leading-edge research and this announcement includes specifics regarding influence analysis, intelligent customer profiles, and customer identity resolution, in addition to behavioral pricing, life event detection, and psycholinguistics analytics.
  • Global scale. In addition to four Experience Labs in North America, IBM adds 10 locations that provide presence on all continents with the exception of Africa and Antarctica. This allows the firm to match the operating needs of multinational clients, in addition to collecting local insights that can be transferred to broader programs. For example, consider the social media ecosystem in China, which has influenced the roadmaps of Silicon Valley-based platforms (and vice versa).
  • Ability to sign talent. Finding great talent that can pair campaign creativity with quantitative analysis is difficult, and constrained supply drives higher prices. IBM can afford to poach talent from other firms, as evidenced by its hires from Accenture, Wunderman, SapientNitro, DigitasLBi, CapGemini, and Ogilvy. IBM is the professional services equivalent of the New York Yankees.

But I wouldn’t consider the game over yet by any means. In fact, some of these strengths come with significant challenges:

  • Legacy branding. International Business Machines has a world renown legacy in enterprise hardware and the current software organization is also well-known. These groups capture the public’s attention with innovations like Watson and support of the US Open, which can lead to consulting business. However, internal corporate relationships could lead buyers to lean towards other firms that may not carry a perception of bias towards proprietary technology solutions.
  • You don’t have to be the biggest to be the best. Consider the change that technology has driven in the agency landscape; the traditional agencies with roots in the mad men era have been increasingly displaced by smaller shops that are nimble and can react to shifts in current culture. IBM claims to be a “new breed of service provider” but it must be careful that the positioning doesn’t become a Napoleonic mistake of creating competition on too many fronts. Moreover, IBM needs to operationalize knowledge from its global network without letting its sheer size get in the way of learning.
  • Fast enough? IBM isn’t alone in seeing the marketing opportunity around digital customer experience. Two years ago, Deloitte acquired Ubermind to create Deloitte Digital. Last year, Accenture acquired Fjord and formed Accenture Interactive. Good help is hard to find in this market, which is why SIs are buying digital shops to get in the game quickly. IBM has been hiring talent from the right places, but this one-at-a-time approach may not be a fast enough ramp, leaving money on the table for competitors.

IBM sees the market opportunity in customer experience and appears committed to winning in the market. There are a couple of elements in this announcement that take me back to 2008 as I launched my last company — “a new service provider that’s agency + consultancy” and a multi-million dollar funding commitment — and the emerging opportunity seems to be wide open. If nothing else, IBM is signalling to potential clients and hires that they’re open for business as the “social business” era fades into the next generation of digital transformation.

The post IBM bankrolls a new $100M #CX unit. Will it work? appeared first on Being: Peter Kim.

 

Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience New C-Suite Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Future of Work Tech Optimization IBM Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass – off into the contingent workforce – early move or reaction?

Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass – off into the contingent workforce – early move or reaction?

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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On March 26th SAP announced the intention to acquire Fieldglass, a leading vendor in the contingent workforce management software category. We take a look at the news release and then take a stab at the background of the acquisition and consider the implications on the marketplace.
 
 
So let’s start with a news analysis of the acquisition, the press release can be found here:
 
WALLDORF, Germany - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced plans to acquire Fieldglass, the leading technology provider for procuring and managing contingent labor and services. The addition of Fieldglass’ cloud-based Vendor Management System (VMS) solution meets the growing demand among employers to manage flexible workforces that can be quickly engaged and on-boarded to support rapidly changing business and customer needs. Combined with the collaborative, network-based procurement capabilities of Ariba and the human resources expertise of SuccessFactors, the acquisition uniquely positions SAP to deliver a platform for businesses to manage their entire workforce — both temporary and permanent staff — from initial recruiting and on-boarding to ongoing development, performance management, retention and retirement. 
Contingent labor and statement-of-work services is a US$3.3 trillion, high-growth market according to industry analyst estimates. Companies are rapidly moving to more variable operating models that enable them to quickly dial up and down infrastructure, talent and expertise to accommodate changes in market dynamics, business needs and special projects. Contingent workforces are expected to grow by nearly 30 percent over the next three years, according to research by Ardent Partners. 

MyPOV – The move to more project oriented work with both internal and external people is one of the major trends that enterprises are facing today. SAP is well positioned to take advantage of this trend with both its SuccessFactors and Ariba products. To a certain point the acquisition also helps SAP to move the conversation on recruiting away from traditional recruiting for employees – to overall recruiting of people – even as they may be ending up as employees or contractors.
 
The combination of Fieldglass’ market-leading VMS solution with SAP promises to transform workforce management by enabling a flexible and comprehensive approach to managing the entire workforce and life cycle, going beyond the traditional focus on the employee record that characterizes many systems today. Together, SAP and Fieldglass will provide companies with the software, collaboration tools and networks needed to engage permanent and temporary staff out of the gate — and on the fly — in new and innovative ways to ensure they have the right people in the right roles at the right times. 
 
MyPOV – The paragraph hits the nail on the head – problemo numero uno of contingent workforces is that traditional HR systems are designed to accommodate employed people only. And that creates both data and process problems managing external project people. Could it be that SAP is addressing one of a design weakness of its traditional on premise R/3 HR system? SuccessFactors never really had to address the problem for most of its architecture life span, since it was never designed to be a core HR system, where the employee record (that better would be a person – we prefer as you probably have noticed people) resides. So how well does the new cloud based HR core system – EmployeeCentral address the challenges around the employee record? We will find out.
 
“The acquisition of Fieldglass creates a compelling advantage for SAP customers as they access, attract and manage talent via the networked economy,” said Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEOs and members of the Executive Board of SAP AG. “This move reaffirms SAP as the undisputed leader of integrated human resources and procurement in the cloud for businesses of all sizes and industries. Combining Fieldglass with SAP is a significant milestone in our strategy to help businesses simplify everything.” 
“With the acquisition of Fieldglass we are taking an incredible step forward to further expand SAP's leadership in a public cloud offering for the enterprise,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, Products & Innovation. “With the power of SAP HANA, SAP Fiori and the Ariba Business Network combined, we can quickly extend the value to our joint customers.”
 
MyPOV – We are used to statements of the SAP co-CEOs – but having three members of the executive board in a press release is a novum – or at least happens very seldom. But it underlines how important the acquisition must be for SAP. The interesting tidbit from the co-CEO statement is the emphasis on the combination of HCM with Procurement. We have said for a long time that SAP has a higher ground in the enterprise software game with Ariba – maybe SAP is playing hand that better now. And we expected the ERP vendors to point out that HCM needs not only good integration with Finance (we hear that from Workday almost daily recently) – but as well into the automation areas of CRM, SCM and purchasing.
In regards to Sikka’s statement it’s key to mention that Fieldglass did not build on HANA and / or Fiori. Au contraire – a quick due diligence check on open technical jobs at Fieldglass is searching for Java / MS SQL and VMwareskills. Any further short search on what Fieldglass has built its offering and which cloud infrastructure it operates on - was futile. So it looks like SAP is faced with significant integration and potentially re-platform work. If you factor in, that the company is now on the verge of moving SuccessFactors to HANA – 2 years after the acquisition – it shows that these efforts can take some time. On the flipside HANA is a much more advanced product today, and then there are many ways of integrating cloud solutions. It will be interesting which path and what phases SAP will choose.
 
Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with approximately 350 employees, Fieldglass’ cloud-based solution is used in more than 100 countries and 16 languages. Fieldglass was also recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. in The Forrester Wave™: VMS, Q1 2014 as the highest-scoring VMS provider in Contingent Workforce Management/Vendor Management System (CWM/VMS) functionality and market presence. In 2013, Fieldglass marked its eighth consecutive year of profitability, adding 2 million new users in markets worldwide. The company's majority investor is Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity investment firm based in Chicago. 
“Joining with SAP will allow us to dramatically accelerate our global growth plans and pace of innovation at the unique intersection of the human capital and procurement sectors,” said Jai Shekhawat, CEO and co-founder, Fieldglass. “SAP’s innovations in cloud, in-memory and mobile technology are transforming workforce management. We look forward to extending our leadership position, increasing our sales and delivery capacity and introducing our winning strategy to new markets.”  […]

My POV – Sounds like Shekhawat knows already that a lot of interesting technology is coming the Fieldglass way – citing HANA and mobile. The question for the sales leaders is going to be how you can expand on the leading Fieldglass position – which was already pretty global. And selling contingent workforces automation is tricky – as the buying center is all over the place. We do not only see Chief People Officers and Chief Procurement Officers, but line of business executives starting to hire contingent workforce members. And with Ariba SAP has already a buyer network that measures in the multiple millions of users– it would be good to see if SAP can make the procurement of contingent workforce services truly self-service – and with some bravado – even transform it into a viral process.
 

Implications, Implications

So let’s look at what this acquisition does to the market place and its participants. Needless to say when a leading vendor like Fieldglass gets acquired – it has deep ramifications on the market dynamics.
 

Implications for SAP customers

This is good news for SAP customers who already use Ariba. With the expected integration of Fieldglass into Ariba the procurement of contingent workforces should be simplified significantly while retaining a common buyer experience, common budgeting, processes and reporting. It also isolates whatever HR system these customers are running from the implications of operating with a contingent workforce. It may well create SaaS by accident scenarios – as mySAP HCM customers may see themselves using SuccessFactors for the contingent workforce. They may be willing to start dabbling into cloud that way. SAP has the assets now to create compelling user experiences with Fiori and a compelling BI technology with BW7.4 on HANA (so this may also be an argument to get a BW install to HANA). And it will also be ‘HANA by accident’ – as it’s close to 100% certain that anything new that SAP will create for contingent workforces will be HANA based.
 

Implications for Fieldglass customers

Very good news if SAP is your backend, what used to be a 3rdparty vendor integration is now becoming a vendor owned integration. That this does not always need to be off to a rosy start was seen with the SuccessFactors to SAP integration (by now addressed better).
For non SAP customers it’s important to secure the support for existing interfaces and partnerships. And these customers need to consider if they want to bring the SAP technology stack in the house (well not really as it will be in the cloud) – most prominently HANA – and with that the SAP datacenter landscape. Both customer groups need to overlay the Fieldglass data center presence with SAP’s quickly, with all implication for legislative and technical aspects. As always with acquisitions – customers should secure all critical items in contracts as soon as possible.
 

Implications for SAP

This puts more work on already busy product teams at SAP. That Fieldglass seems to be operating on Java and MS SQL Server may be good news – as most SaaS vendors segregate client databases physically (due to the known performance challenges of MS SQL Server) – which makes them much more palatable to be moved to HANA quickly and easily (or in other words no tenant striping of the database). As for the business logic – we will have to see SAP’s plans. And let’s hope that the product strategists have been wise and left some spare room in the tank to accommodate the additional work on integration and new product offerings. Sapphire is most likely going to be a good benchmark to assess any roadmap impact both for the product as well as the technology teams.
 

Implications for SAP competitors

For SAP’s most prominent HCM competitors there is less potential urgency on the architecture side – as both Oracle Fusion HCM and Workday have been built with necessary flexibility around the employee record and related processes, all courtesy of having been designed less than 10 years ago, well aware of the contingent workforce architecture and system challenges. But on the market side a leading vendor has gone and Fieldglass supported interfaces into both Workday and Oracle. We will have to see if and how motivated SAP will be to maintain these interfaces. In any case this is a sales opportunity for Oracle and Workday to target Fieldglass customers for their respective contingent workforce offerings.
 
And needless to say it will be interesting what other strong players in the category like Beeline, Peoplefluent and IBM (Emptoris acquisition) will do going forward.
MyPOV


MyPOV

A good acquisition by SAP, it always disrupts the markets when a leading vendor gets acquired. SAP will need to plot out the integration plans quickly, so it can preserve as much as possible of the Fieldglass install base. We see this as the first step of the established ERP vendors to elaborate the value proposition of HCM and other areas of automation beyond Finance (where the messaging is at par with Workday). SAP leveraging the leading position of the Ariba user base and combining contingent workforce procurement with traditional procurement is a smart move that creates value for existing and future customers. 

---------------


And more on overall SAP strategy

 

  • News Analysis – SAP and Accenture partner – more of the old or something new? Read here.
  • Now that SAP is a tech company – it wants to be cloud company – read here.
  • SAP’s startup program keep rolling – read here.
  • Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
  • SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
  • Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
  • SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
  • Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
  • SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
  • Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
  • Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
  • The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
  • A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
  • What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
  • Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
  • Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
  • Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
  • Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here.

And more about SAP technology:

  • Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
  • Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
  • News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
  • SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
  • My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
  • SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
  • Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
  • SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
  • HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.
2012, 2013 & 2014 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

 

New C-Suite Future of Work Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth SAP workday IBM Oracle Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

Rimini Street Expands to Japan

Rimini Street Expands to Japan

J. Bruce Daley

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Rimini-Street-Logo

Third party support provider Rimini Street has launched local operations and expanded its capabilities to deliver software support in Japan. The Company has signed several new clients in Japan since beginning local operations, and had been serving Japanese multinational organizations on a global basis for years. Rimini Street estimates that the enterprise software maintenance market in Japan surpasses ¥120 billion per annum for SAP and Oracle products.

Japan

The Company recently appointed a new executive team for Nihon Rimini Street and is hiring a significant number of local support, development and tax, legal and regulatory research personnel. The Nihon Rimini Street executive leadership team includes:

Mr. Kazuya Ohta. Ohta-san joined Nihon Rimini Street from Sabre Decision Technologies International and reports to Mr. Andrew Powell, Rimini Street's managing director for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

Mr. Hisamichi Nagamori.  A 15-year veteran of the IT industry, and has been appointed vice president of sales for Nihon Rimini Street. Nagamori-san joined Nihon Rimini Street from IBM Japan.

Mr. Tomonori Oku.  Another 15-year veteran of the IT Industry, and has been appointed vice president of service delivery for Nihon Rimini Street. Oku-san joined Nihon Rimini Street from Qunie, a subsidiary of NTT Data.

“Our significant investment to expand operations locally into the Japanese market was accelerated by strong demand from local Japanese organizations ,” said Ohta-san.

Rimini Street enables its clients to run their current software releases without any required upgrades for at least 10 years and provides support for customizations and Japanese tax, legal and regulatory updates.

“Rimini Street is committed to meeting and exceeding the high standards expected by our Japanese clients. ” said Mr. Seth Ravin, Rimini Street CEO. “We  are the first and only independent software maintenance provider to achieve ISO 9001:2008 certification for quality and ISO 27001 certification for information security.”

Internationally  the company can be contacted directly at +1 702-839-9671.

Tech Optimization rimini street Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer

Spinnaker Support Expands To India

Spinnaker Support Expands To India

J. Bruce Daley

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Spinnaker-support
 

In an expansion was driven by the company’s continued growth, Spinnaker Support, a provider of Siebel, SAP and JD Edwards third-party maintenance and services,  has opened a technology center in Mumbai, India. Staff within this office will act as second-line support for the front-line operations staff located in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore.

India

The effort to open the Spinnaker Support Global Technology Center (GTC) began after a significant growth in new customers, increased interest in its tax and regulatory compliance services offering, and a surge of interest in Southeast Asia all combining to trigger the need for an additional facility and resources.

The Spinnaker Support GTC is located in the Powai section of Mumbai. The office will be led by Maurice D'Souza, a seasoned IT executive whose business acumen spans sales and marketing, operations management, business strategy, strategic alliances, and people management. D’Souza brings extensive experience to his role having spent 25 years with SYSTIME (now KPIT), a global IT consulting and product engineering company.

“I am extremely pleased to announce our expansion into India. This direction has been on the corporate roadmap for a couple of years,” said Matt Stava, CEO and Managing Principal of Spinnaker Support. 

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Spinnaker Support provides services  from offices located in Cape Town, Denver, London, Mumbai, and Singapore. Current clients include Fortune 1000 and mid-sized enterprises from the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South Africa operating in industries such as Manufacturing, Healthcare, Government, Retail, Food and Beverage, and Finance.

For more information about careers please call +1-877-476-0576, go to the careers page of the site, or email [email protected]. 

Tech Optimization Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer

Constellation Office Hours: Box IPO, HANA, Cisco InterCloud, Oracle Sales Cloud

Constellation Office Hours: Box IPO, HANA, Cisco InterCloud, Oracle Sales Cloud

Get inside the minds of Constellation analysts during Constellation Office Hours. Office Hours are casual conversations amongst Constellation analysts during which they discuss the latest developments in enterprise technology. At the conclusion of office hours analysts answer questions from the audience. This month, Holger Mueller, Alan Lepofsky, and J. Bruce Daley discussed:

  • Box IPO
  • Cisco Intercloud 
  • Cisco & Chrome partnership for UC
  • HANA
  • Lumira
  • Oracle Sales Cloud

Constellation Office Hours screen shot

1:35 - Constellation News: Peter Kim joins Constellation. 

2:06 - New Research: 

5:28 - Events we're attending

Industry News
6:27 - Alan Lepofsky: Box IPO, Cisco and Google partner for UC

9:15 - Holger Mueller: Box IPO, BW on HANA and Lumira, Google Cloud, Cisco Intercloud, 

13:40 - J. Bruce Daley: Oracle Sales Cloud v8

Big Ideas for Research
15:40 - Alan Lepofsky: It's not about age, it's about digital proficiency. A new framework for planning digital transformation.

17:40 - Holger Mueller: HCM and engagement strategies. Focusing on vertical; not horizontal career paths. PaaS.

20:00 - J. Bruce Daley: Oracle Sales Cloud as part of larger mobility study. Standardization across mobile platforms must occur, but it won't be on HTML5

 

Join us for Office Hours in April: http://constellationr.com/content/constellation-office-hours-april

 

 

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Effectively Manage Your Social & Mobile Workforce

Effectively Manage Your Social & Mobile Workforce

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A major business transformation is brewing in the enterprise today. Enterprise mobility, business velocity, geographically dispersed, multi-device and multi-generational workforce are converging to deliver the promise of responsive organizations. Organizations that miss this paradigm shift will face dire consequences. How can you effectively manage this shift, ensure that it will be sustainable and reap the benefits of being a responsive organization? In this session you’ll learn how to apply practical steps and effective techniques to maximize SharePoint for your multi-device and multi-generational workforce

 

 
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Event Report - AWS Summit in SFO - AWS keeps doing what it has been working since 8 years...

Event Report - AWS Summit in SFO - AWS keeps doing what it has been working since 8 years...

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend the AWS Summit in San Francisco today, a well-attended event. Not surprisingly Amazon Web Services (AWS) can pull a lot of interest in the Bay Area, and most of the crowd was knowledgeable and using AWS products. It also became clear, that AWS Summits are more educational events for Amazon – not necessarily product announcement events – these are  more likely to happen aat is reserved to re:Invent.


So acknowledging that – and given the different nature of other cloud events this week – the event may have been disappointing at first – but then it had considerable punch, too. Here are my top 3 takeaways:
  • Breadth and Depth are the message – Through the keynote I kept picking up how Jassy keep pointing to the experience, track record and success of AWS – here are all the themes we picked up:
    • AWS is turning 8 – definitively the older sibling to some of the toddlers [adding for clarification – Google] and newborns [Cisco] of this week. 
    • AWS is the market leader – The Gartner magic quadrant and customer logo slides transported that message.
    • AWS is secure – Look at all our government security certificates (here is the latest from the US DoD).
    • AWS ships product – WorkSpaces available to all customers.
    • AWS keeps innovating – On track to beat the number of enhancements of 2013 already now. And AWS keeps bringing out new instance types for lower cost and better enabling next generation apps (HS1 and R3 instances).
    • AWS is most comprehensive – The almost 5 minute build up walking through the AWS tech stack served that message. And smart to put people services – with training – on top of it all.
 
    • AWS stays price competitive – AWS reduce prices the 42nd time – not a one-time move. 
      • AWS works well with your private cloud – More options to peer your private could with VPC. 

    • Enterprise is the battle, private cloud is the target – Needless to say that AWS showed good examples on the startup side using their products. Flipboard was certainly a great showcase for rapidly demanding massive scale and AWS enabling that.

      But in my view the coupe was certainly to have Infor CEO Charles Philips on stage. Most of the audience was not familiar with Infor and for many attendees if was even a questionable choice (Infor who?) – but I am sure back on the web decision makers were listening up: When the 3rd largest ERP vendor pulls a NetFlix [to speak AWS crowd language] that is certainly remarkable. Basically Infor is running its next generation applications, CloudSuite on AWS. It’s already using Redshift for analytics. But now critical enterprise resource data and processes will run on AWS. A huge departure from test, development and trial systems we have seen before. The SaaS by accident phenomena is now becoming real for enterprise processes running on AWS. But it makes sense as Philips pointed out – by average enterprise software systems are only utilized around 20%, perfect showcase for the cloud.
     
    • The other key message for the CIOs out there, was that AWS is getting more and more friendly to co-exist with the private and hybrid cloud. With many AWS competitors playing both on the private and public side it is clear that AWS does not want to give up that space all too easily and it was good to see how the private cloud segment gained in length from re:Invent. Of course price reductions are a favorable argument, too – not sure how many CIOs had to revisit their cost assumptions for their private cloud operations and plans. But I don’t think it was a few. When cost can no longer be a justification for private cloud, it will be for sure security concerns that will be raised – but AWS did a good job addressing these better, too. 

    • Price matters – Of course AWS lowered prices, it’s 42nd price reduction. And they are and were pretty substantial. But by now they are expected. Back at re:Invent an excited attendee crowd burst into applause – not so much today in San Francisco. How substantial they are and if AWS can keep its cost leadership position is unclear right now, we will see the analysis of that in the next days. But it was good enough to let existing AWS clients stay where they are and it certainly ensures AWS is a very attractive platform to build and run software on.
     

    MyPOV

    The cloud wars are only to start and AWS as the market leader is playing a smart game. Ignore what the competition has done the same week – hold the course. Do what you have been doing – innovate (AppStream, WorkSpaces and Kinesis were mentioned), deliver to the public (WorkSpaces is available to all customers) and reduce prices. Just stress a little more how established and what a safe choice AWS is – something Jassy and AWS certainly have pulled off today. An 8 year track record certainly helps. And signing up Infor is a huge confidence point for enterprise IT – and the backdoor to get in the enterprise.

    And even as Jassy did not mention any competition – a good move in my view – I am pretty sure that the retailer DNA of Amazon has a keen eye on what the competition does.

    For customers this is all great news. Compute resources have never been so cheap and they can expect for them to get cheaper. The revolution is now happening around long term procurement of these resources. Decision makers should take a hard look at compute procurement, as consumption based models have gotten dramatically more attractive in just… the last 24 hours. It will be hard for the vendors that sell compute resources on premises to react quickly on this. Too much margin is at play, if you are purchasing compute resource now – question that margin not once, but at least twice.

    ---------------

    Because of actual events - check out my take on Google Cloud Platform live here.

    ----------------

    More about AWS:
    • AWS  moves the yardstick - Day 2 reinvent takeaways - read here.
    • AWS powers on, into new markets - Day 1 reinvent takeaways - read here.
    • The Cloud is growing up - three signs in the News - read here.
    • Amazon AWS powers on - read here.
    2012, 2013 & 2014 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

     

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    Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough?

    Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough?

    Holger Mueller
    Vice President and Principal Analyst
    Constellation Research

    Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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    I was invited to attend the BI / HANA 2014 event organized by WisPubs in Orlando this week. I have blogged on my keynote takeaways from yesterday here, today the conference continued with a separate BW 7.4 launch event.

     


    As usual it’s good to remember how we got here…




    A brief history of BW

    Reporting has always been a challenge for enterprise application vendors. And when SAP was busy building R/3 in the early 90ies of last century, speed to build out a functionally complete ERP package was of the essence. Reporting was implemented in a similar way like in R/2 – which meant the company missed the data ware house trend. No one was unhappier about it than SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, who frustrated about a combination of lack of understanding and progress hired an outsider (than a disruptive talent decision for SAP) with Klaus Kreplin. And Kreplin and his team delivered a solid data warehouse, originally called BiW (dropped later for not confusing it with another, but minor other German software company) in very short time. Not surprisingly SAP came to realize that being the largest business application vendor, it was not enough to just deliver a data warehouse, but customers expected extractions and content in the data warehouse. So SAP created the BW content releases. Then followed a long phase of different front end tools, the Business Objects acquisition happened and customers took up BW – to the tune of around 14000 today.




    Enters HANA

    Meanwhile, on the roots of the BW text search engine TREX, the PTime acquisition and the Sybase acquisition HANA was created, and with that some confusion started. Customers were using BW – but hearing from SAP that the traditional separation of OLTP and OLAP was history. Some predicted the end of BW. Of course that did not happen, too many customers, luckily don’t go away overnight, as well as a resilient and large ecosystem of partners.

    And as we all know by now – HANA is the platform on which SAP has embarked in a massive journey of re-inventing itself. Consequently, BW also has to run on HANA and that was achieved with BW 7.3 – which in the aftermath was more of a ‘proof it works’ release. For the first time SAP let its ecosystem try and play with a key revenue product, with the BW 7.3 on HANA trial, with very good success. But after technology adoption, the interesting thing is what happens next, and that is what we can start evaluating with BW 7.4 on HANA.




    Why it’s 2 + 2 = 5!

    Let’s look at greatest drivers for enterprise synergy of the combining the two products:




    • Speed (from HANA) – No question HANA contributes speed to traditional BW implementations. Traditional BW – like all data warehouses – needed some attentive hand holding to remain a responsive system that users could use. Not impossible, but the watch had to be 24x7. Getting speed without having to design a classic star schema design is another advantage.
       
    • Simplification (from HANA) – The simplification of being able to run OLAP and OLTP on the same system, in columnar format has been described much before. But also a key data warehouse process, operated in the ETL layer – has pretty much gone. All data is there – normalized, with no need for transport and massaging.
       
    • Content (from BW) – Remember the BW history, the first versions were technically great – but lacked content. BW has more enterprise content than most enterprises can and want to digest – so HANA instantly gains significant content.
       
    • Governance (from BW) – Another lesson for all data warehouses – skipped for brevity above – is that you can’t surface the insight to just anyone in the enterprise. SAP spend a lot of time in the early 2000s learning that and building appropriately for it – and now it’s practically a gift to HANA.


    So where does the synergy – the 5 come from? Well, it’s the combination of above that enables faster insights, build on a modern application architecture (yes you can use it on an iPad) and that allows enterprise decision makers get to data faster and hopefully with that find the insights to make the right decisions.




    But is 5 enough?

    Getting a 5 from a 2 plus 2 equation – 25% headroom is a good result. Especially with BW 7.4 being the first release beyond 7.3, which as mentioned before was focused mainly on  ‘getting there’. But 5 can only be enough if the insights are packaged in the right way, that a business user can digest them. And SAP has made a good acquisition with KXEN, but the road to packaged analytical applications, consumable by the business end users – remains a long one. To be fair SAP has only started. And 5 can only be enough if sufficient relevant information is available to make the right decision – needless to say that in 2014 it begs the question on how SAP will address the NoSQL / Hadoop challenge. [Added] And the indication on the latter is, that SAP is moving into a co-existence scenario between data in HANA and data in Hadoop in BW 7.4,, allowing the combination via the smart data access functionality. 



     

    MyPOV

    SAP has delivered a promising ‘first’ functional release with BW 7.4 on HANA. It is good progress – but more needs to happen in the next releases to be able to feed (true) analytical insights to business end users – cutting out data scientist engagement on a project level. Of course there is plenty of ‘bread and butter’ BI to have that BW addresses well, but the quest needs to be for the ‘holy’ grail – end user consumable analytical applications, that are good enough to foster insights, without much or any IT and data scientist involvement.

    To be fair – no one has gotten there (yet). It’s probably going to be a score of 8 or 9 that is required. So for now, 5 is a good start.

    2012, 2013 & 2014 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

     

    Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work SAP Oracle SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer
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