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SAP Trenitalia Digital Summit - Event Report

SAP Trenitalia Digital Summit - Event Report

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 Trenitalia / SAP Digital Summit, held last in Rome, Pietrarsa, October 29th 2016. Though not formally labelled as a launch event, it felt like SAP bringing together messaging, executive, an early adopting customer with Trenitalia and products in a single event.

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)



 
 
No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):



 


 
Want to read on? Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

SAP is committed to IoT – As SAP stated in a press release earlier in the week (see here), SAP plans to spend over 2B Euro on the next 5 years to build its position in IoT. The move makes a lot of sense as SAP has a strong install base in manufacturing and other IoT relevant industries – and these customers are high price, high quality manufacturers who have to come up with an IoT strategy for the customers of their things. Time is of essence in IoT as it is the only next generation application use case where there is worldwide consensus that it has to run in the cloud. Even cloud skeptical decision makers in Europe are firmly in the cloud camp, given volume, velocity and uncertainty as key characteristics of any IoT implementation.

Trenitalia is an early adopter – The event was held in Italy as Trenitalia is an early customer of SAP’s IoT Package ‘Vehicle Management’, with the plan to manage all of the railway’s rolling stock with SAP. During the event we were riding a FrecciaRossa 1000 train and looking at the digital exhaust of the ‘train thing’ while riding the train. Trenitalia expects to be done implementing SAP IoT by 2018, with all rolling stock being managed with the solution. New best practices in preventative maintenance are getting tangible for Trenitalia, e.g. scheduling maintenance based on usage, wear and tear vs. the usual hours of operations. Trenitalia technicians will also know before a train rolls into the maintenance facility, what they will have to service on the train. Trenitalia CEO Morgante pointed out that the IoT information will help to make the maintenance technician work more diverse and interesting, a worth to note wrinkle in the usual full of concern discussion on the repercussions of technology on the future of workers.

SAP knows it’s a long journey – Despite early adopters like Trenitalia, SAP realizes that IoT is a long game. On the product side it is good to see that SAP has realized that the usual standard application approach cannot be the solution to make customers successful with IoT, but that a combination of pre-packaged capability together with the HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) is needed. Trenitalia was a showcase for the SAP IoT package Vehicle Management. SAP plans to ship general horizontal, vertical (e.g. Smart Cities) and application specific packages (e.g. Vehicle Management). But SAP is not going to build all applications in house, but sees the need of acquisitions – with the acquisition of PLAT.ONE and Fedem. PLAT.ONE brings SAP good horizontal capabilities that will help building IoT solutions on top of HCP, e.g. lifecycle management for IoT devices, broad device connectivity as well as important IoT edge capabilities. Fedem solves a ‘secondary’ IoT problem, related to having models that tell operators how a thing will behave in the real world, with more or less available physical measuring points. The technology around the digital twin that Fedem has developed becomes crucial when IoT adoption rises, especially on new products / things, where industries have little experience how long they last, what exposure to e.g. elements they can withstand and what durability they will have overall. A long term investment that can develop into a crucial differentiator for SAP in a few years.
Equally SAP realizes that with the current Industrie 4.0 (by purpose with the German spelling) conversation is helping the vendor, but needs more amplification. So SAP plans to open IoT labs, in Berlin, Johannesburg, Munich, Palo Alto, Sao Leopoldo and Shanghai. Probably a necessary move to get the word out and educate customers on the possibilities and best practices around IoT.

 

MyPOV

A very good event, probably the best I have attended in a long time, for sure the best SAP has done (and I have been to a few / attend a lot, maybe too many events). Watching IoT information live, while being a passenger in the train / thing is just. pretty cool. With introductory presentations in Rome, a dual customer and SAP led presentation on the train, interrupted by video messages from CEOs and heads of development / IT, an event in a train museum, a maiden voyage on a train, an agenda lead 50% by the customer, both CEO’s of vendor and launch customer present etc. – all made this a very well executed and impressive event. And SAP’s ambition to invest 2B Euro over the next 5 years in IoT is certainly worth a similar event. SAP is doing many things right in IoT, basing the offerings on its PaaS with HCP, offering packages, acquiring basic, key and differentiating capabilities, and evangelizing the capabilities, these are all the right steps going forward.

On the concern side SAP still needs to clarify its BigData in general and it’s Hadoop strategy specifically, acquiring Altiscale (my take here) is a step in the right direction, so was Vora (here my take at GA). But IoT – and all next generation applications need a Hadoop answer that runs on cheap HDD, as well as a supported IaaS platform answer. And while I understand the SAP strategy in regards of IaaS is evolving (partnerships with IBM (see here), Microsoft (see here) and AWS (for BW/4HANA – see here)) – the support for Hadoop on HDD in regards of official platforms support is - overdue. SAP needs to answer both to become a viable partner for IoT, eliminating all ‘big’ question marks enterprises have today. ‘Small’ question marks always remain, but SAP needs to eliminate the big ones to really play in IoT better sooner than later.

In closing SAP CEO McDermott shared on the question on what the audience can do to propel digital transformation (from yours truly), that DaaS – Data as a Service – is something to look at – both an opportunity for customers and for SAP. Good to hear SAP / McDermott mention that and starting to tackle that 4th ‘aaS’ area.

Back to the event, well done by Trenitalia and SAP, very few things that could have done better, congrats to an almost perfect event. As for SAP IoT, lots of good moves, but some key decisions are still missing, have to be made. The good news is - they are not hard and could come sooner than later.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).


 

And more on SAP:
  • First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - Push on all fronts - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
  • First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
  • First Take -  SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
  • Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
  • News Analysis - Apple & SAP Partner to Revolutionize Work on iPhone & iPad - read here
  • Progress Report - SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP HANA Vora now available... - A key milestone for SAP - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - Make Procurement Cool Again - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors innovates in Performance Management with continuous feedback powered by 1 to 1s  - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
  • News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
  • First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
  • First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
  • First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
  • In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
  • First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
  • Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
  • First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
  • First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
  • SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
  • Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
  • Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
  • First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
  • Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
  • What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
  • Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? 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:
  • Event Prieview - SAP TechEd 2015 - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
  • HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
  • News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
  • 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
 


Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

 
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved
 Tech Optimization Chief Information Officer

What Internet of Things Platforms and Middleware Should You Choose?

What Internet of Things Platforms and Middleware Should You Choose?

Aubrey Coggins
Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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How do you decide which IoT suite, Data Lake Management offering or Enterprise Group Messaging app to deploy? Choosing the right tools will determine the success or failure of your digital programs.

I’m excited to announce our new Constellation ShortList™ offering we’ve created to guide businesses to the right technologies for their transformation initiatives – starting with the Internet of Things (IoT),

IoT is more than just a buzzword; it has practical applications in business and is positioned to be a driving force in the next phase of innovation. With everything from cars, phones, appliances, and even dogs becoming more and more connected, forward-thinking businesses are rethinking their business models to take advantage of IoT. This morning, we released the Internet of Things Platforms and Middleware Constellation ShortList, which identifies IoT companies to watch across four categories – Major IT Vendors, Open Source, Specialist Enterprise and Industrial Automation.

Here are the companies that topped the list:

  • AWS IoT Platform
  • Apache NiFi
  • Asset Mapping
  • Bosch IoT Suite
  • Cisco IOT Cloud Connect
  • Ericsson Device Connection Platform
  • Hortonworks
  • IBM Watson IOT Platform
  • Kaa
  • microServiceBus.com
  • OpenRemote
  • Plat.One IoT & M2M (by SAP)
  • Telit
  • Xively

Constellation advises early adopters using disruptive technologies on how to achieve business model transformation. Products and services named to this Constellation ShortList meet the threshold criteria for each category as determined by Constellation Research through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research.

Additional lists released today include:

Over the next five weeks, we will release nearly 40 Constellation ShortLists authored by our analysts across a range of technologies. If you don’t see a list that applies to your technology needs, check back each Wednesday through early November, or inquire directly by contacting [email protected].

For more information, visit https://www.constellationr.com/shortlist. 

 

 

 

Applying Design Thinking to Sales

Applying Design Thinking to Sales

Cindy Zhou
CMO
Level Access

Cindy Zhou is a practicing CMO.  Prviously, she was Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness. With over 18 years of practitioner experience in corporate marketing, product marketing, product management, and sales operations, Zhou has spearheaded marketing transformation at multiple technology companies. She advised Constellation’s clients on strategies to light-up demand generation, prove revenue contribution, and maximize sales productivity. Prior to joining Constellation, Zhou was Global Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations at BackOffice Associates, a global provider of data quality and information governance solutions to the Fortune 1000 and SAP SolEx partner. Before…...

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I just published my first solo report as an analyst, Sales by Design, Not by Challenge. The report puts forth the concept of how to apply design thinking to the sales process.  Any good sales person will say that sales is an art, it requires understanding the customer’s business objectives, organizational nuances, and being clear that the ultimate goal is to come to a mutually agreed upon outcome. Sales by Design, as explained in the report, helps sales teams understand what the customer’s organizational persona in order to anticipate the customer's needs and manage the sales process accordingly. Sales teams are then able to focus on co-innovation and co-creation of solutions with the customer.
 
When talking about sales strategies, it’s hard to not come across the Corporate Executive Board’s (CEB) book, The Challenger Sale, which advocates the hiring and development of sales representatives that fit a defined "challenger" persona as per CEB's surveys, are the most effective. The book first published over five years ago based on survey data post the financial crisis of 2008.  The selling environment then versus now has changed significantly with the rise of the digital age.  The abundance of information and resources available to buyers and customers in today's social and digitally-driven environment has changed the rules of engagement.  We at Constellation have received a healthy number of client inquiries regarding the Challenger methodology.  I want to be clear that Sales by Design isn’t about dispelling The Challenger Sale; Sales by Design and Challenger are by no means mutually exclusive. Organizations can utilize Sales by Design alongside or as an alternative to Challenger. 
 
In addition to client feedback, I personally tried to implement The Challenger Sale at a prior company. After a recommendation from a former colleague, I read it, found it interesting and bought copies for my global marketing team. As the head of marketing at a mid-size company, the messages around sales and marketing collaboration resonated with me and we went about rethinking our corporate deck and sales collateral.  At the same time, we brought the book to sales and other executive leadership to look at for broader adoption and it quickly became evident that without top-down support from the CEO with dedicated budget and resources for consistent training, recruiting, content development etc, we could not get it off the ground. This doesn’t mean that Challenger doesn’t work for all organizations, but there needs to be acknowledgement of the commitment in time and resources required to make it work.
 
Executives can quickly spot the sales reps trying too hard to be “Challengers”.  They are often overly aggressive, pushing their solutions regardless of fit and are “unafraid to push and discuss money” often at the wrong time.  Hearing these concerns from both clients and other sales teams, it became clear that customers have started to tune out these Challenger-type sales reps. Maybe these are “Challengers” gone wrong, but the more buyers are aware of the style, the less effective it becomes. 
 
As a prior marketing and sales operations executive, I had the privilege to work with some of the best sales people and see them in action. Their success stemmed from their ability to adapt their selling style to the customer’s organizational style. The key to successful selling isn't about the seller's personas and how not to be a “relationship” builder but someone who “pushes customers", but establishes genuine rapport and has a willingness to partner. Sellers leverage both information and technology to their advantage to make meaningful connections and to stay on top of the customer’s personal and organizational developments.  Sales by Design will teach sales teams how to partner with customers to apply design thinking in the sales process to co-create and co-innovate solutions - a win win for both.
 
I invite you to join in the dialog and share with me your thoughts. If you are not a Constellation client, you can download the Table of Contents and an excerpt of the report, Sales by Design, Not by Challenge, here.
 
 
Media Name: Design Thinking.jpg
Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Strata + Hadoop World Highlights Long-Term Bets on Cloud

Strata + Hadoop World Highlights Long-Term Bets on Cloud

Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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Strata + Hadoop World announcements by Cloudera, IBM, Google and SAP anticipate cloud growth. Here’s why cloud will be so crucial even if data remains on premises.

“Today, 92% of all IT is happening on premises,” said Mike Olson, Cloudera’s chief strategy officer, in his September 28 keynote kickoff at Strata + Hadoop World in New York. “But we see dramatic growth — nearly 35% compound annual growth — over the next 10 years in public cloud workloads.”

Even in the big data arena, where so much volume (in the form of data warehouses) remains on premises, practitioners and vendors alike are looking to the cloud. Why? Because so much of what will drive innovation, differentiation and value is going to happen in the cloud. That vision was underscored at Strata + Hadoop World, where Cloudera set the tone and IBM, Google, SAP and others added to list of announcements that centered on cloud deployment options.

cloudera-cloud-partners

Cloudera eases software deployment and promises portability across the leading public clouds,
but customers also want managed services options.

Cloudera highlighted recent cloud-friendly enhancements including the ability to run the Impala database for Hadoop against cloud-native object stores such as Amazon S3 (with Azure Data Lake likely to follow). It’s also previewing a connector for Microsoft Azure users so they can use PowerBI with Impala. The company has simplified use of its Cloudera Director cloud-management tool by adding templates for deploying on AWS, Azure and Google. This underscores the company’s commitment to portability across the top three public clouds. In July the company also introduced consumption-based subscription terms, with the ability to meter hourly usage of its Hadoop software for temporary, project-based workloads.

IBM announced IBM DataWorks, a cloud-based platform with options for data ingestion, persistence and analysis. Data sources can be on-premises or in the cloud, structured or unstructured, and batch oriented or streaming. Options to persist the data include relational database services, NoSQL database services and IBM’s BigInsights Hadoop distro as a service. IBM Watson services and Apache Spark-based machine learning services support data processing and data discovery. DataWorks offers user interfaces for data engineers (DataWorks Connect), data scientists (with Jupyter notebooks and RStudio as part of Data Science Experience), business analysts (Watson Analytics) and app developers  (BlueMix services). It’s largely a packaging of existing cloud services, but what makes it a platform is shared data and metadata access and governance and shared spaces for data modeling and analysis.

Google announcements are always about cloud, of course, but at Strata + Hadoop the company reached out to the enterprise crowd with Big Query for Enterprise. Aimed at mainstream corporate use, Big Query for Enterprise add support for standard SQL (SQL 2011, specifically), including the ability to update, delete and insert rows and columns in BigQuery datasets using SQL. The offering also adds new ODBC drivers, for connecting to popular BI tools, and new access and identity management capabilities. Finally, pricing options include monthly flat-rate pricing, aimed at lowering the cost of long-term use, versus short-term pricing aimed at ephemeral projects.

SAP confirmed its rumored acquisition of Altiscale last week, and it said the business will continue to offer its high-performance Hadoop and Spark services as a separate business unit. Altiscale execs said they expect to expand their business now that they have SAP’s backing and can take advantage of the company’s data center capacity in Europe and elsewhere. As I explained in this take on the deal (before it was confirmed), Altiscale will enable SAP to offer Hadoop and Spark capacity alongside Hana and Hana Vora on the Hana Cloud Platform. Thus, SAP won’t have to turn to other vendors when customers require cloud-based big data infrastructure as part of their next-generation data-driven applications.

MyPOV On Steps Toward the Cloud

All of these moves are positive, but they’re merely next steps toward supporting the sort of hybrid-cloud deployment scenarios that companies will want and need in the years ahead. It’s great that Cloudera has made it easier to deploy its software on the three leading public clouds, but many companies struggle with the complexities of deploying and running Hadoop. They want fully managed services, so they can click to deploy without having to deal with administering the cluster. That’s particularly true when dealing with temporary projects that require infrastructure that companies want to spin up and shut down just as quickly.

IBM gave DataWorks a hyped up “AI” spin, throwing in mentions of “cognitive” and Watson to cover all the bases. What it seemed to boil down to was the use of machine learning in data processing and data discovery. What I wanted to hear more about was automated model assessment and deployment options. That’s the last mile of turning data into decisions embedded within applications, whether those apps are deployed in the cloud or on premises.

Google is clearly trying to broaden BigQuery’s appeal with those “for Enterprise” enhancements. But with so much data still on premises, the public cloud players should do more than offer secure, dedicated connections to support hybrid deployment scenarios. Microsoft and Oracle both make it a priority to integrate with existing, on-premises IT investments such as data warehouses. Amazon and Google could do more to highlight click-ready integrations with the most popular on-premises data platforms. I know Google has third-party options; but Amazon and Google should both be more vocal and visible about supporting common hybrid scenarios without making about moving everything to the cloud.

SAP really had to have its own options for supporting Hadoop and Spark workloads in the cloud, so the Altiscale buy was a smart, turnkey investment. At the same time SAP still has to play nice and keep its options open with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM. SAP is not a hyper-scale cloud player, so it has done well to partner with all of the above. Given the size and stature of SAP’s customers, these cloud partners would all do well to support hybrid scenarios. That will help build trust and remove cultural barriers that might stand in the way of moving on-premises SAP deployments to the cloud.

As Olson observed, only a fraction of IT activity is currently in the cloud, but that’s where the action and the real value is going to being generated. While the back-office, transactional data is crucial, it’s generally predictable and well understood. The cloud is where companies are increasingly intersecting with partners and customers and uncovering interesting insights. Whether it’s through mobile apps, social networks, partner portals or third-party data enrichment, Constellation Research believes that 60% of the data that companies consider to be mission critical will reside outside their four walls by 2020. Making use of that data will be the key to driving breakthrough business models based on data monetization and data-driven services.

Related Reading:
Oracle Vs. Salesforce on AI: What to Expect When
Teradata Amps Up Cloud And Consulting Offerings
SAP Reportedly Buying Altiscale to Power Big Data Services


Data to Decisions Future of Work Matrix Commerce Tech Optimization Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer

Event Report - Cloud Foundry Summit Europe - Europe & Cloud - A long path

Event Report - Cloud Foundry Summit Europe - Europe & Cloud - A long path

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 CloudFroundry’s CFSummit conference held in Frankfurt September 27th and 28th 2016. The conference was well attended with over 700+ participants, coming from customers, prospects and the ecosystem. 

 
So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)

 


No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 

 
Want to read on? Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

Cloud Foundry is growing – Not surprisingly, Cloud Foundry is doing well in Europe. Last year’s Cloud Foundry Summit in Berlin saw about 400 attendees, the 2nd edition this year in Frankfurt saw over 700. Interest in Cloud Foundry is the same as in North America, enterprises are looking for a PaaS platform that allows them to build Next Generation Applications, with the option to deploy on premises and in the cloud, to multiple clouds, and develop software in a modern way that is in tune with the 21st century challenges and best practices. Being in Europe / Germany – there is a European touch to the ecosystem – with e.g. local vendors like SAP and Atos having more prominent roles than e.g. at Cloud Foundry Summit in Santa Clara earlier this year.

Focus on Government – Contrary to the North American edition of the conference, the European edition had an emphasis on showcasing on what is happening in government, with Tuesday having a UK government technologist, and Wednesday having a Dutch government technologist on stage. Certainly no coincidence – could it be that European governments are endorsing and embracing PaaS projects more than e.g. in the US? An interesting wrinkle – that needs more discussion going forward.

IoT rules all use cases – No surprise, as seen on other European events, the IoT use case is strong and prominent. All the way to the fact that IoT reference customers at North American events – usually come from … Europe. And while the average European IT leader is concerned moving customer and employee data into the public cloud – there is no concern, not even discussion when it comes to IoT. The technical requirements are simply too large to even consider running on premises and the pressure on the high quality, high price European manufacturers is simply too high for not choosing a faster to implement cloud strategy.

Community Outreach – On the flipside the more traditional use cases take more time, PaaS, agile development, CI / CD etc. are all newer trends for the Europeans than their North American colleagues. So Pivotal, Cloud Foundry and partners need to invest into community evangelism efforts, and the creation of the Ambassador program is certainly a good step. We will have to check in a few quarters on progress and if it has really moved things in the direction of higher awareness, less concerns and ultimately better adoption.

MyPOV

A good event for Cloud Foundry and partners. European Enterpises have a keen interest to understand what PaaS in general and more specifically – Cloud Foundry can do for them. But basic skepticism towards new best practices, tools and trends coming from North America run high traditionally in Europe – and with good reason: Not everything that comes over the Atlantic, hyped as the derniere cri real lasts and has an impact on enterprise automation. Cloud Foundry now needs to convert that good interesting, first showcase and trial objects into live customer projects, that can be showcased at the 3rd edition of CFSummit Europe in 2017. We will be watching.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).



More on Pivotal / Cloud Foundry
  • Event Report - Pivotal SpringOne Platform - Spring in its 2nd spring - read here
  • Event Report - Cloud Foundry Cloud Foundry Summit - It's good to be king of PaaS - read here
  • News Analysis - Pivotal makes Cloud Foundry more about multi-cloud - read here
  • News Analysis - Pivotal pivots to OpenSource and Hortonworks - Or: OpenSource keeps winning - read here
  • New Analysis: Pivotal Now Makes It Easier Than Ever to Take Software from Idea to Production - read here

More on Next Generation Applications::
 
  • Event Report - Google I/O 2016 - Android N soon, Google assistant sooner and VR / AR later - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
  • Event Report - OpenStack Summit 2016 - Austin - OpenStack matures, grows up - read here
  • First Take - Workato’s Workbot cuts business users some slack with Slack integration - read here
  • Progress Report - Cloudera is all in with Hadoop - now off to verticals - read here
  • First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - The next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
  • Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves into DaaS - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP commits to Cloud Foundry and OpenStack - Key Steps - but what is the direction? Read here
  • Event Report - MongoDB is a showcase for the power of Open Source in the enterprise - read here
  • Musings - A manifesto: What are 'true' analytics? Read here
  • Future of Work - One Spreadsheet at the time - Informatica Springbok - read here
  • Musings - The Era of the no-design Database - Read here
  • Mendix - the other path to build software - read here
  • Musings - Time to ditch your datawarehouse .... - Read here

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved
 Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience 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 Chief Executive Officer

Quo vadis Twitter? Who could, should buy Twitter - and what is Twitter really?

Quo vadis Twitter? Who could, should buy Twitter - and what is Twitter really?

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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So the rumors are out, Twitter is up for sale – and I see it with a wary eye, my most used social network may change owners… time to muse about it.
 

But let’s start what Twitter really is, sharing 5 things Twitter does really well, but you may not have thought of it (my goal is that at least three were new angles for you):

An amazing feed engine – Twitter veterans know the early growth problems of Twitter, but since a few re-architectures Twitter has been stable and scaling well to its 300M+ users. It is unique, as it scales to 300M+ feeds (yes Facebook scales to 1B+ feeds, but they are not of the same virality, velocity and volume like twitter posts). The Twitter engine is what many people try to build their next generation apps for – e.g. to monitor things in the IoT world.

A barrier breaker – Information gets filtered, refactored, edited etc. all the time, a traditional way of preparing and consuming information. With Twitter anyone can find an outlet and post tweets to the world, of different quality, but when e.g. an executive at vendor starts to tweet, it often is an insight on where the executives and / or the vendors thinking is at the moment. If it is worth a tweet, it means something for a busy executive. But often not mentioned, it works as a very effective internal communications tool, were an executive can meet internal and external audiences in a quick, light weight fashion.

The priority inbox – As a heavy Twitter user, I check Twitter often, maybe too often. But it also leads me to check DMs more often than… emails. So the DM has become the priority Inbox. My colleagues even know during covering an event – the best way to reach me is a DM. But it also works as a bypass – some executives have asked and received the best unfiltered feedback about a product, customer, event on DM. And last but not least it works for customer service, too. I have not talked to e.g. a United agent for 2 years, kudos to the Twitter team there that has done all from rebooking, changing flights, changing seats, giving connection information and adding my PRE number (that’s how it all started). So another channel – with some priority.

A note taker – As bad as Twitter is to find people on Twitter where usually Google wins out as most efficient, it works great for atomic note taking. And the search on it is very very powerful. Before going to an event, I look up tweets from last year’s event with a hashtag search. No more efficient way I can think off and have seen. And as an influencer -why should my thoughts, observations and notes not be public right away? Yes, it amounts in lots of tweets, but has proven to be – very valuable.

A survival tool – A lot of my friends and family have gotten Twitter accounts, because they live in … California. And between wild fires and waiting for the ‘big one’ – Twitter is the best safety / survival tool out there. A thin tweet – at sometimes even a text / SMS is visible not only to your followers but the rest of the world. Wishing no one to lay in a ditch or under a collapsed structure – but posting to Facebook is hard and less visible. Instagram and Snapchat are too heavy data wise. On Google+ no one will notice etc.

Who could buy Twitter?

Well anyone who can afford the lofty premium Twitter wants of course for their existing data and Twitters potential to have us users create more data.

But let’s start who should NOT buy Twitter
  • Enterprise software vendors (this includes rumored Salesforce) – Not a good move, these vendors need to stay on top of digital data to power marketing, sales and service – but social media usage and related data exhaust are fickle – owning one major data source will not allow these vendors to do what they need to: Cross social network sensing, execution and operation of related business functions.
     
  • Big Pipe Companies (this are the AT&T, Comcasts, Verizons etc.) – Not a good move either, unless a very bold transformation strategy, so far not unveiled in the direction of DaaS and advertising. Unlikely to be the case – so discard). And these vendors are still licking their wounds from them by now almost entirely abandoned data center diversification strategy.
     
  • Big Media (networks, Disney etc.) – Not a good idea either, though the engagement of Twitter users around live events is very powerful and all these players are losing viewership due to loss of engagement. But 10% of the Twitter price will let these players try all engagement strategies in the universe… so I expect them to spend their $s there. 
 

So who could buy Twitter?

 
  • Obviously DaaS players, we were just reminded e.g. by Oracle last week that they have 3.5B consumer graphs, adding the Twitter data (which maybe there already) is valuable, and likewise something to monetize. Salesforce and IBM e.g. have access to Twitter, too – the value of the functions. But given Twitter’s price, DaaS vendors would need to monetize the Twitter data – and likely sell them to their competitors. The value of Twitter is to be able to push any related services closer to real-time. Malls still rule the spontaneous purchase – because the consumer was there – but Twitter is an opportunity to move this online.
     
  • Certainly Advertisers, as they can get a real input in regards of what moves a tweeter. But Twitter itself has not figured out to do this – and anyone in the space needs to be careful not to turn off / drive off usage by too much in the face advertisement. So any acquirer in this space better have a way how to solve what Twitter has not been able to solve.
     
  • Social Media catch up players can be interested in Twitter. 300M is not Facebook but a Top5 social media network out there. Compared to e.g. Snapchat Twitter is more global and more cross generational and more business. Any player who wants to grow here, wants to get into social could be an acquirer. Google comes to mind immediately.
     
  • A combination player (e.g. Google, Microsoft) that could leverage synergies across multiple fields of existing operations, or form a new offering with Twitter and existing assets. E.g. if it was Google it could not only fuel DaaS for enterprises, add to advertisement, but complement Google+ with Twitter and vice versa – bring more social tools to Twitter from the social toolbox. 
 

MyPOV

It is fascinating to see Twitter grow to its current usage level and still struggle with monetization, turning to a profit. There are many assets inside of Twitter that can be of value for an acquirer – but they are all not easy to unlock, leverage. To me Google makes the most sense – but not sure if the vendor has the appetite to such a large investment. And Google is working hard to get more into the enterprise – se the announcements from the recent Google Horizons event. Unless I missed some major hitter – everybody else will have some challenges with Twitter – not making tis an easy target. So likely Twitter will have to march on -till the investment case gets clearer, another player gets desperate and most likely – Twitter becomes more affordable with a drop in market cap.
 
So what's your take? 

 
More Musings
  • Musings - The Bots are coming to your conversation - what are the implications? - read here
  • Musings - We are entering the age of the Über Super Computer - read here
  • Musings - Retail is the breeding ground for NextGen Apps - read here
  • Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! Read here
  • The Dilemma with Cloud Infrastructure updates - read here
  • Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
  • What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
  • Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
  • How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here. 
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved
 Marketing Transformation Chief Executive Officer

Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Event Report - The Intersection of Sales, Marketing, and Data Clouds

Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Event Report - The Intersection of Sales, Marketing, and Data Clouds

Cindy Zhou
CMO
Level Access

Cindy Zhou is a practicing CMO.  Prviously, she was Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness. With over 18 years of practitioner experience in corporate marketing, product marketing, product management, and sales operations, Zhou has spearheaded marketing transformation at multiple technology companies. She advised Constellation’s clients on strategies to light-up demand generation, prove revenue contribution, and maximize sales productivity. Prior to joining Constellation, Zhou was Global Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations at BackOffice Associates, a global provider of data quality and information governance solutions to the Fortune 1000 and SAP SolEx partner. Before…...

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My Constellation Research colleagues and I had the pleasure of attending OpenWorld, Oracle’s annual customer and developer conference last week.  We all cover different aspects of Oracle’s solutions and this event summary is focused on Oracle Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud and the intersection with Data Cloud. 
 
Impressive Customer Keynote Speakers Showcase Move to Cloud - CEO Mark Hurd’s keynote included videos and live customer interviews with the likes of HSBC and Orange to showcase how these traditional, heavily regulated companies are embracing Oracle Cloud solutions. HSBC Global Services CFO Joanna Fielding described the bank’s goal is to gradually replace legacy infrastructure and back office systems that were largely internally built.  HSBC Global Services started with Oracle Fusion for ERP and expect that the same platform will be utilized across HSBC.  CEO Mark Hurd expanded the base of keynote customer highlights to include more SMBs and disruptive brands like Lyft.
 
Oracle Adaptive Intelligence Announcement (note not Artificial Intelligence)  - The announcement of Adaptive Intelligence apps initial use cases are centered on Marketing by providing context to personalize buyer experiences and automate offers and next steps. Larry Ellison referenced in his keynote, over 5 billion consumer profiles in Oracle’s identity graph (note these are profiles, not individuals, averaging 3-5 devices and multiple email addresses per person). This is a natural value proposition for Marketers to leverage the data from ID Graph for advanced segmentation, targeting, and personalization.  In private briefings with the adaptive intelligence team, the roadmap will later extend to sales, procurement, and financial services use cases among others. 
 
Accelerated Buying Experience - Oracle’s own internal sales process transformation - During one of the analyst sessions, EVP Doug Kehring described Oracle’s Accelerated Buying Experience.  At its core, Oracle is simplifying the way they do business to transform from a company where “no one ever got fired for saying no” with lengthy, onerous contracting processes, to leveraging their own Configure Price Quote (CPQ) technology to automate and streamline the sales process for customers .  The result is a significantly shorter, 1-2 page order summary with click-to-sign, thereby taking the friction out of the selling process.  Shortening the amount of time from quote-to-close enables Oracle’s sales teams better compete with the likes of Amazon and Salesforce. Great move to improve the overall customer experience and I applaud Oracle in this effort.
 
Sales Cloud Momentum - I had the opportunity to speak with several Oracle Sales Cloud customers both through coordinated meetings and casually during the event.  Several remarked on the changes they see with Oracle’s renewed focus on customer satisfaction and help them move off of CRM On-Demand to Sales Cloud.  Several customers including a substantial European conglomerate, are all in the process of migrating over to Sales Cloud from CRM On-Demand and happy with the results thus far. Another customer, a multinational industrial machinery company, has experienced a 300% ROI and shortened deal cycles from using Oracle’s Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solution. Their success with CPQ then led the customer to add Marketing Cloud (Eloqua), and Oracle Sales Cloud to replace a home-grown SFA product. 
 
Oracle Data Cloud in the Center of It All - The combination of the BlueKai, Datalogix, AddThis, and Crosswise acquisitions form the Oracle Data Cloud, which plays a substantial role in both the Adaptive Intelligence and Marketing Cloud areas.  Oracle Data Cloud includes a network of over 1,500 data-suppliers, media and advertising partners, and the customer’s own data stored in the Marketing Cloud, give marketers access to robust profiling capabilities to run personalized, targeted cross-channel campaigns. 
 
Marketing Cloud + Data Management Platform (DMP) = Robust Audience Targeting - Oracle Marketing Cloud is a standalone Business Unit within Oracle comprising of the acquisitions of Eloqua for B2B Marketing, Responsys for B2C Campaign Management, and Maxymiser for A/B Testing and Optimization.  Layer on the integration of the Data Management Platform (Powered by Oracle Data Cloud’s BlueKai) then provides Marketers access to billions of audience profiles and the ID Graph to connect it all together - the known and anonymous, user or household, mobile device identifiers, and emails. The use cases of tying customer anonymous web searches to a personalized website experience and targeted advertising showcase how the triangulation of data works.
 
Eloqua Enhancements  - I was a former Eloqua customer pre-Oracle acquisition, and it was and still remains, one of the strongest B2B Marketing Automation platforms. It has been six years since I’ve personally used Eloqua and Oracle has continued to build upon that strong foundation and the new features I saw in the product demos were impressive.  In particular, the visual click-through report for email engagement will save Marketer’s time looking at email results and new features focused on helping sales teams prospect better such as the Responsive Profiler and Google Chrome tool were standouts.
 
In Summary: The overall impression I left OpenWorld with is an Oracle that's embracing change. The admission that they were late to the Cloud play, but have since made heavy investments and taken giant leaps forward. New thinking on how they revamp their own internal selling process with the Accelerated Buying Experience, and focus on acquisition integration, a common customer concern during inquiry calls, particularly with the Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
 
CEO Mark Hurd stated that the most common feedback he hears from customers is, “I didn’t know you had that.”  There were several moments during OpenWorld when I had a similar reaction. Recommendation to Constellation Digital Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Clients: Take a look at what Oracle has to offer with Data, Sales, and Marketing Cloud and you might just say the same, “I didn’t know Oracle had that”. 
 
Scroll down for a Storify of my tweets from OpenWorld.
 
Please see my esteemed colleagues blogs from OpenWorld as well:
- Holger Mueller’s analysis of the OpenWorld Keynotes 
- Dr. Natalie’s View on Oracle IoT
 

 

 

 

Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Google Rebrands Apps for Work to G Suite: Is That Enough?

Google Rebrands Apps for Work to G Suite: Is That Enough?

Alan Lepofsky
Alan Lepofsky
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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Today at Google Horizon the company announced they are rebranding Google Apps for Work to G Suite, "Google's intelligent apps designed for business."

G Suite, contains the same applications that Google Apps for Work did; Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites but now Google+ is included as a fully supported product. G Suite starts at $5/user/month and doubles to $10/user/month for unlimited storage and admin controls for areas like discovery and compliance.

The announcement of G Suite comes around the 10 Year anniversary of the launch of the original Google Apps for Your Domain offering and Google is now claiming 2M paying business and enterprise customers use Google Apps for Work.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Google Apps for Work provided a clearer definition of what the offering did, where as G Suite is a more generic term akin to Microsoft's Office 365, which they have always struggled to explain. I can see the marketing benefit's of reducing the perceived boundaries between personal computing and business tools, but is that in the vendor's best interest or their customers? Also G Suite does not instantly convey that this set of products will leverage Google's considerable experience in Artifcial Intellignce. That said, at the end of the day it's just a name, and once people get past that the products and the benefits they provide are really what matter. 

So what's new about G Suite?

Google says they are focusing G Suite on 3 areas: employees, teams and organizations.

For employees, they want to make creating content easier. To do this they have enhanced the former feature called Research into a new tool called Explore. Explore searches for information, images and other content on the web (via Google search) and makes it easy to insert into Google Docs. Microsoft Office offers similar functionality, and takes it a step further with tools announced this week that help you automatically format the content. Still, users of Google Docs should find the new Explore function helpful when creating content.

Other tweaks Google has made to G Suite to help people get work done include:

- Find A Time, a smart meeting scheduler that help people book meetings.
- Quick Access, which makes it easy to add attachments from Drive by placing your newest and most frequent files just a click away

 

For teams, Google has introduced Team Drives, which can make files available to everyone at the domain level, instead of individual owners which then have to grant access to other colleagues. Hangouts have also been enhanced, making it easier to dial into meeting and record meetings and save the recording to Drive.

At the organizational level, G Suite will allow administrations to configure Springboard, Google’s new cross application search feature, to search not just G Suite applications, but also 3rd party content as well.

Summary

While G Suite provides a few nice new features, it seems more like a point release than a product worthy of a complete name change. For a company with such an image of innovation (Google Glass, self driving cars, AI winning Go, etc) I’m disappointed that they have not seized more of a leadership role in redefining the way employees work.

- Google has access to so much content and context via email, calendar, maps, photos, videos and docs, and such advanced AI algorithms and search features, that I’d like to see them pushing the boundaries of the way people work together in more innovative ways. For example, on our phones Google Now is an incredibly powerful personal assistant, often surfacing information proactively, I’d like to see a similar level of automation within G Suite. I’d like to see Google using their AI capabilities to automate many of the common and repetitive tasks that employees do everyday.
- G Suite does not offer anything new in the way of project/task management. Products like Google Keep do not offer the functionality that Microsoft OneNote, Wunderlist and Planner provide.
- What is G Suites's enterprise strategy for messaging? While Google Hangouts is being enhanced, should customers expect to see Enterprise versions of Google's new consumer tools such as Allo, Duo and Spaces?

Conclusion

Current customers will be happy with the new G Suite features, but at this time Constellation Research does not see enough product differentiation to cause Microsoft Office customers to switch.
 

Future of Work

SAP's Acquisition of Altiscale: It's About Next Gen Apps Not BigData

SAP's Acquisition of Altiscale: It's About Next Gen Apps Not BigData

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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Long rumored (see my colleague’s Doug Henschen pre-acquisition take here) and now it’s official, SAP has acquired Altiscale, a Big Data as a Service vendor.

 
 

So let’s dissect the press release in our customary style – it can be found here:

Today, September 27, SAP officially announces its completed acquisition of Altiscale, which provides a high-performance, scalable Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) solution that uniquely includes full operational services.
[…] Altiscale will operate as a focused and integrated BDaaS offering from SAP to help accelerate and operationalize Big Data deployment in the enterprise.

MyPOV – Good point on what Altiscale does and how it helps, key SAP will keep operating Altiscale. Important for existing customers, but also going forward.
Several key factors drove SAP’s decision to acquire Altiscale.
The two companies have complementary approaches to implementing enterprise Big Data solutions. SAP has taken the approach to build its distributed based on deep understanding of requirements coming from enterprise applications, analytics, data platform, data warehousing and cloud platform. Altiscale has focused on cloud and data infrastructure with its Altiscale Data Cloud offering, which starts with a highly optimized cloud infrastructure, continues with a Spark and Hadoop data platform.
Altiscale is a natural fit for SAP, as we share our overall focus of helping enterprises derive business value from data – and successfully leverage Big Data. Since Altiscale is a leader in Big Data-as-a-Service based on Hadoop and Spark, it enables SAP to drive end-to-end value in Big Data across the technology, data platform, PaaS, analytics, and application stack.
Altiscale offers high job performance, reliability, and economic performance for Hadoop and Spark in the cloud. It has an established and very satisfied customer base that includes a variety of industries, including financial services, telecommunications, media, ad tech, and marketing analytics.
SAP’s initial foray into Big Data processing began with its investment in SAP HANA Vora, a distributed computing framework that extends Spark’s execution engine to address some key inefficiencies in processing Big Data for business use. Through this experience, SAP saw the unique challenges faced by businesses in the provisioning, scaling, and operation of Hadoop in a production environment. Altiscale directly addresses these challenges, providing the customer with full-service Hadoop and Spark in the cloud to boost performance, eliminate roadblocks, and accelerate customer go-live. The combination of Altiscale and SAP HANA Vora will enable SAP to provide a holistic and accelerated Big Data solution, allowing businesses to quickly achieve positive business impact from Big Data.
Altiscale is a great fit beyond SAP’s Big Data strategy. It is also integrates well with a number of SAP strategic initiatives, such as SAP HANA Cloud Platform, IoT, analytics, LoB cloud apps, and business networks. Altiscale’s Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) capabilities enable SAP to offer a much more comprehensive and robust enterprise solution that meets the unique needs of customers on their digital transformation journey.

MyPOV – All points describe well how Altiscale is a fit for SAP: SAP has been slow warming up to Hadoop – as stated SAP HANA Vora was the first foray – but lots of questions had to be addressed till SAP would from in memory SAP HANA and SAP HANA Vora to ‘spinning rust’ on HDDs managed by Hadoop. This is truly complimentary to SAP – has Altiscale offers yhat SAP does not have and would have had to build from scratch: The dynamic provisioning of large scale BigData implementation for its customers.
There are many use cases for Altiscale in the following areas and industries:
IoT: Uses include manufacturing, utilities, transportation, smart cities, and more.
Financial services: Applications include fraud detection, cybersecurity, and achieving a 360-degree customer view.
Media: Examples include advertising optimization and recommendation engines.
Ad tech and marketing analytics: Uses include multi-channel analytics and advertising attribution.
Pharmaceutical: Drug research, market segmentation, and supply chain optimization are all examples.
Telecommunications: Altiscale can be used to optimize billing and facilitate churn analysis.
 MyPOV – Exactly, it is at the end not about Hadoop and BDaaS (which both are key for SAP extending functional capability and use cases as well as addressing the Hadoop know how / expert shortage questions) – but ultimately all technology is about enabling customer benefits through powering hands on use cases. It’s a good list. Sticklers will note the absence of security, which Altiscale featured high, replaced now with what matters to SAP customers at the moment – IoT). Fair enough 
 
SAP and Altiscale are currently working to synchronize both companies’ technology, products and market perspectives. We will be systematically evolving the Altiscale Data Cloud for integration into the SAP portfolio. […]
MyPOV – No surprise – looking forward to learning more specifics on the roadmap.
As we go forward, SAP remains committed to honoring all customer contracts and ensuring high customer satisfaction. SAP and Altiscale will work closely with customers in the coming months to determine how SAP’s future Big Data and other data analytics offerings can best meet each customer’s unique needs.
MyPOV – Good to see SAP honoring Altiscale contract – especially in BDaaS, because – it is BigData.

Overall MyPOV

A good move by SAP – that needed to have native Hadoop, HDD based BigData capabilities to operate use cases where in memory was either commercially or not even technically feasible. With Altiscale SAP now only addresses this part – but also the know-how challenge that is surrounding BigData. At Constellation we see more than 66% of BigData projects that are live and delivering value seeing interruption because of know how-issues, vendor changes, new software, new consultants etc. So SAP gains both product capabilities and services capabilities, the combination is crucial.

On the concern side, SAP took long to get here and needs to move fast. Clarity on where data resides, which IaaS platforms will be supported etc. needs to come soon, as enterprises make decisions on the providers and platforms for their next generation applications. SAP is always in the picture for ERP content, how much SAP can be in the picture for more of the next generation applications business will be determined by speed and clarity on moving to full Hadoop support.

But for now a truly synergistic acquisition for SAP, which also gets a Hadoop pioneer and its team with Raymie Stata, let’s see how far and fast it can get SAP to power a more complete set of next generation applications – that always need… Hadoop.

 
 
 
And more on SAP
  • First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - Push on all fronts - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
  • First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
  • First Take -  SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
  • Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
  • News Analysis - Apple & SAP Partner to Revolutionize Work on iPhone & iPad - read here
  • Progress Report - SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP HANA Vora now available... - A key milestone for SAP - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - Make Procurement Cool Again - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors innovates in Performance Management with continuous feedback powered by 1 to 1s  - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
  • News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
  • First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
  • Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
  • First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
  • First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
  • In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
  • First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
  • Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
  • First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
  • First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
  • SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
  • Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
  • Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
  • Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
  • First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
  • Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
  • What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
  • Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? 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:
  • Event Prieview - SAP TechEd 2015 - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
  • HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
  • News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
  • 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
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved
 Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Hadoop Chief Information Officer

First Take - Microsoft Ignite - AI, Adobe and FPGA [From the Fences]

First Take - Microsoft Ignite - AI, Adobe and FPGA [From the Fences]

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 could not make it to Microsoft’s IT management focused in Atlanta, but that did not hinder us to watch the event from the fences. The conference is well attended, Microsoft says over 22k attendees, a very good turnout considering this was only the 2nd edition of the Ignite conference. 

 
 
 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 
 

Want to read on? Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

All about AI, democratize AI – In the afternoon keynote Satya Nadella coined a new marketing slogan we will hear more often from Microsoft – Democratize AI. Not surprisingly for Microsoft this means bringing Machine Learning to all its products – we saw Office, Dynamics, Hololens, Security, IoT, of course Cortana and more. Nadella was proud for Microsoft to win 2 world championships in Machine Learning – congrats – we need to see who participated. Voice and Conversation as a Platform that Nadella was very much about at the developer Build conference in spring (see my Event Report here), was less prominent, as was the push for voice is the new UI. But overall messaging was consistent – all the way to the Nadella very early days with MobileFirst and CloudFirst.

Adobe chooses Microsoft – We have written often about Microsoft needing to acquire additional load to fuel the growth of Azure, once Office365 conversions run out of steam. Beyond Office Microsoft does not have too much organic load in house, so it is key for Microsoft to attract ISVs, as ISVs provide a lot of load – and best – transform the load to their IaaS. Adobe is moving out of multiple clouds, but mainly out of AWS, where Adobe was certainly a Top 10 customer. We would not be surprised if commercial terms for Adobe were very attractive. Both vendors have more synergies, like Adobe integrating its marketing products with Dynamics (explicitly mentioned), and longer term Adobe using Microsoft Machine Learning capabilities (more implicit). My colleague R “Ray” Wang has also covered the decision in a News Analysis blog post – check it out here.
 

Azure is (almost) 100% FPGAed – Out of the R&D project Catapult that a brave researcher got passed former Microsoft leader Ballmer, Microsoft not only found a way to accelerate Bing, but all of Azure. Effectively Microsoft now has equipped almost each server in and every new server that comes to Azure with a FPGA, that allows to scale the server better. Especially for Machine Learning, as Microsoft impressively demonstrated that all of Wikipedia could be translated into Spanish in less than 0.1 seconds using all of Azure. So the FPGAs must be doing some very smart balancing across even hundreds of thousands of servers. An interesting approach, that has the flexibility of the programmable FPGA, but is very hard to code. It will be interesting to see how often Microsoft will re-program the FPGAs, for different purposes – or even open them up for Azure customers. But early days and kudos to Microsoft to come up with a unique architecture. 
 

MyPOV

A good start for Ignite, that not only showed innovation across all products, but also the depth and breadth Microsoft has from its R&D team and how it can differentiate offerings. It is clear Microsoft is on a good course, creating new products, innovating, adding new capabilities (e.g. Docker to Azure, normally a bigger announcement, but did not make the Top 3) – and attracting load – Adobe is certainly a big fish to catch. Strategy and messaging has remained consistent compared to the other two major events.

On the concern side Microsoft needs to stretch the rubber between where it needs to be vis a vis the competition (there most notably AWS and Google) and at the same time where its customers are. There is a lot for customers to digest, understand and bring back to their executive teams for the adoption conversation. Making the case to a CIO’s peers was something that Microsoft has room to improve on, and at the same time needs to make sure their customer base does not get overwhelmed. Sometimes less is more. But a good problem to have.

Overall a good start at MS Ignite and interesting and differentiating offerings shown and announced. No surprises – even on the FPGAs (more a question if Microsoft really pushed this out to all Azure Server, but it says it has). Interesting and exciting times stay tuned.


More Apps / SaaS vendor and IaaS vendor partnerships (in chronological order):
  • Infor runs on Amazon AWS (read here)
  • SAP on IBM Cloud (read here) 
  • Lumesse on Salesforce Cloud (read here) and
  • NetSuite on Microsoft Azure (read here)
  • JDA chooses Google Cloud Platform (read here)
  • SAP chooses Microsoft Azure (read here)
  • Salesforce chooses AWS (read here) 
  • Workday chooses IBM for DEV and TST (read here)

And more on Microsoft:
 
  • News Analysis - GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT - read here
  • Market Move - Microsoft acquired Linked - Tons of synergies, start with Cortana, maybe too many - read here
  • News Analysis - Microsoft opens Windows Holographic to partners for a new era of mixed reality - read here
  • News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
  • Musings - Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work? Read here
  • Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications - read here
  • First Take - Microsoft Build 2016 - Day 1 Keynote Takeaways - read here
  • Event Preview - Microsoft Build 2016 - Top 3 Things to watch for developers, managers and execs...  read here
  • News Analysis - Microsoft - New Hybrid Offerings Deliver Bottomless Capacity for Today's Data Explosion - read here
  • News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
  • News Analysis - Microsoft announcements at Convergence Barcelona - Office365. Dynamics CRM and Power Apps 
  • News Analysis - Microsoft expands Azure Data Lake to unleash big data productivity - Good move - time to catch up - read here
  • News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers - read here
  • News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
  • Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
  • First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
  • Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
  • First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
  • Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
  • Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
  • Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
  • Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
  • Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
  • How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
  • How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
  • How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.


Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

 


Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved
 New C-Suite Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Microsoft Leadership ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer
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