IBM Boosts Support to OpenStack's RefStack

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…...

A first serious attempt to make OpenStack interoperability real.

During OpenStack Summit in Austin, probably close to a hundred press releases have been published, tough to find the most important one, but this one from IBM stood out for me. Interoperabiity has always been a promise of the OpenStack community and vendors, but it is tough to prove it (and build for it).

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

Austin, Texas - 26 Apr 2016: In a move to drive greater cloud interoperability, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has contributed significant new features to the RefStack Project, which was created as part of the OpenStack community’s effort to drive interoperability across clouds. The ability to move data and apps from one cloud to another is a major obstacle in the evolution of cloud and business.

MyPOV – Defines well what this is about, making interoperability real.

RefStack, officially launched last year and to which IBM is the lead contributor, is a critical pillar of IBM’s commitment to ensuring an open cloud – helping to progress the company’s long-term vision of mitigating vendor lock-in and enabling developers to use the best combination of cloud services and APIs for their needs.

MyPOV – Good to see the history, and a major OpenStack player like IBM getting serious about interoperability.

RefStack’s new functionality includes improved usability, stability and other upgrades, ensuring better cohesion and integration of cloud workloads running on OpenStack.

RefStack testing ensures core operability across the OpenStack ecosystem, and passing RefStack is a prerequisite for all OpenStack certified cloud platforms. By working on cloud platforms which are OpenStack certified, developers will know their workloads are portable across IBM Cloud and the OpenStack community.

MyPOV – More explanation, good to see the importance of RefStack.

“The OpenStack ecosystem is very rich and rapidly evolving, and provides an extremely strong foundation for real interoperability. However, achieving this will require deep, sustained collaboration across the open community,” said Angel Diaz, Vice President of Cloud Architecture and Technology at IBM. “We are ready and willing to work with every single OpenStack cloud provider on this, and are challenging the OpenStack community to collaborate with us. We are determined to provide customers with the flexibility they want – regardless of their provider – so that they have a global platform for business and innovation.”

MyPOV – Good quote from Diaz – the sad part is that IBM needs to ‘challenge’ the OpenStack community. As vendor ‘diversity’ was a key argument made in the OpenStack keynotes here in Austin this week, would be good to see that the support for interoperability would be a ‘normal’ step and not a challenge.

At the OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas, IBM also announced a formal challenge to community members, asking them to pledge participation in the first-ever October 2016 Interop Challenge. This project will directly work towards building a core language between OpenStack cloud providers by building and deploying test cases for real-world activities performed by everyday users of OpenStack across environments. In October 2016, it will culminate in a public demonstration of interoperability across on-premises, public and hybrid OpenStack cloud deployments.

MyPOV – Good to see a real challenge, will be good to learn more about the details and if there are any other OpenStack members taking up the challenge.

As the primary resource for cloud providers to test OpenStack compatibility, RefStack also maintains a central repository and API for test data, allowing community members visibility into interoperability across OpenStack platforms.

The specific upgrades to the upcoming RefStack release include:
- User functionality and usability enhancements to allow easier, more streamlined visibility into test data for OpenStack release compatibility.
- Tempest plug-in enablement to allow users to expand existing test suites to include external test cases.
- Stability enhancements to expand the availability of the RefStack service and support a growing number of RefStack users.
- Additionally, RefStack will soon enable vendor registration, allowing community members to easily correlate test results in RefStack’s central repository with specific OpenStack vendors – ensuring results are more transparent.

MyPOV – Good to see what is coming soon on the RefStack side

Overall MyPOV

Good to see an OpenStack member stepping up to an attempt to make the OpenStack interoperability and portability more tangible. Practically all vendors in the field mention this as an advantage, but a heterogeneous ecosystem like OpenStack needs to work harder at making this not only marketing slide ware but real tangible and proven benefits. That is hard work and cost for the vendors involved, with the ultimate risk that loads become portable to the point at being lost from from vendor A to vendor B. So a good topic to talk about, a less attractice one to make really work in practice. To be fair – stickiness is a feature all enterprise software players strive for…

A look at the contributors (courtesy of stackalytics.com) shows IBM (274 person days), Mirantis (107) and Indendents (70) shows who is working on making RefStack real. It’s not clear what the other vendors will need to do – but I am sure a few vendors will now read up on the RefSteak project. That alone is a benefit for OpenStack.

The ultimate drive for the challenge would be customer endorsement – all the way to making RefStack test cases part of the RFP and operating SLAs – going beyond the self-policing of the community. We will be watching – stay tuned.

Check out my first take on OpenStack Summit here.

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Next-Generation Customer Experience IBM 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

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Professional On-line Networks - Professional or Social? Or both?

van Essche & Associates

Paul van Essche is the founder/owner of the independent management and tech consulting firm van Essche & Associates. He is a Swiss and South African citizen with qualifications in electronic and industrial engineering as well as project and business management. He has 29 years experience gained in over 20 countries on five continents in multiple industries, serving a range of blue-chip firms and international organizations. One of his specialities is Change Management: he has successfully effected radical change in some of the most resistant business environments. Paul has been independent since 1999, is an accomplished public speaker and negotiator, and is bilingual (English-French).  ...

Overly-social posts on professional networks like LinkedIn solicit a "Put that on Facebook!" reaction from many. But is the line between those networks and purely social media really clear?

Early in the morning of September 14th 2015, a young man in rural Connecticut woke up and headed downstairs for breakfast. Somehow, he tripped and fell down the entire flight of twenty stairs, hitting his head so hard that it split the inch-thick-maple bottom step in two. His severe traumatic brain injury was of the kind seen mostly in high-speed car crashes or helmet-less skiing accidents, and triggered an epic of extreme surgeries (including a hemi-craniotomy), near-death (twice), excruciating rehabilitation and prolonged trauma undergone not only by himself but by his newly-wed wife and their entire families.

The day after the accident, my good friend John Licata, the young man's father-in law, posted a short piece on both FaceBook and LinkedIn to ask for prayers and understanding. Despite the outpouring of support on LinkedIn (close to 40,000 "likes" and nearly as many comments), the negative reaction was vehement enough for John to remove the post. Why would some people react so badly? Are they right to defend the "professional purity" of LinkedIn? Where is a reasonable place to draw the line?

More than a Network, a Virtual Workspace

The success of LinkedIn in particular has made it an extension of our workplace, and a vital tool in our daily interaction with colleagues and business associates, particularly so for those with outward-facing jobs like sales and marketing. In fact, the workplace extension theory holds true for anyone who realizes that well-managed professional networks are just good business and good career curation. No huge leap then to suggest that the behaviors we apply to our physical workplaces are also applicable to professional cyberspaces like LinkedIn.

Following a traumatic personal event, informing colleagues and business associates is a professionally responsible thing to do to. It allows them to cover for you, to give you the time and space you need to be with loved-ones, and to provide the moral support that will likely get you back to work sooner. Why then would it not be responsible to share such news with one's extended professional network? A traumatic event that disrupts one’s personal and professional life cannot be compared to a purely social video post of mom's chihuahua doing a backflip! I believe that in many cases LinkedIn reaches into a distinctly grey - and yes, somewhat FaceBook-like area - that we should not only tolerate but cultivate.

"Friends with Boundaries"

Why cultivate? Firstly because cultivation means control, whereas outright rejection means all bets are off and we lose the ability to moderate our environment. But most importantly we should embrace this space because our highly valued business connections are also our friends at some level - perhaps "friends with boundaries" - but friends nonetheless. How often do you hear someone saying that doing business is only worthwhile if it's conducted with people they like and trust? Isn't that at least part of the definition of a friend?

Know, Like, Trust

This grey area on LinkedIn is arguably the best part of the service precisely because it is where the truly valuable interactions take place - right in the "Know, Like, Trust" cocoon, which is neither coldly professional nor trivially social - the Goldilocks Space, if you will. It's a space to be nurtured, protected from the narcissism and voyeurism of more social platforms, and used to all of our great and mutual benefit. Besides the obviously practical advantages, appropriate personal insights give our professional relationships humanity, which in the final analysis, makes it all worthwhile.

Dare to be Professionally Social

Our professional lives and businesses have a strong and important social component, which translates well to the online environment. Networks like Linkedin are a highly social, even if professional. I would suggest that if people like John use our trusted space to share personal events, that have clear impact on their professional lives, we should welcome them. So even if your news is personal, if you'd share it - appropriately - in the office, with colleagues or with clients, share it within your professional on-line networks too! It's part of your professional workspace.

Footnote: Thankfully and miraculously, John's son-in-law is now recovering well, and recently returned to work, thanks in no small part to networks, personal and professional, online and off.

Future of Work Chief Executive Officer

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Demandware Making The Cloud Rain & Mobile Continues to Dominate Retail

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

Earlier this month I was in sunny Florida at the Demandware XChange conference. A gathering of some of the biggest retail brand names – the likes of Cole Haan, Carter’s, vineyard vines, Party City to name a few, also spent time with me in Florida. With over 1400 attendees representing 600 customers, the event attracted a wide swath of brands and retailers.

The biggest message from the event was the dominance mobile has commanded over the retail world. This is something that has long been resonating in the space. When it comes to connecting with the consumer, the mobile phone is firmly entrenched as the de facto touch point. No surprise since many would rather lose their wallet rather than their iPhone. Therefore it is imperative for retailers to focus on the phone to be central to their consumer facing focus. The main takeaways from the event:

Mobile is the thread that ties in commerce: Mobile phones are always with us – they are the one constant within the commerce ecosystem. This is specific to mobile phones, as tablets are not regarded as “mobile” but more along the same lines as computers. Retailers need to focus on a mobile first strategy. Retailers need to keep in mind that mobile is not simply about reaching conversions via that form factor – rather that mobile plays a role with regards to influencing conversions regardless of where they take place. Conversations between the brand and consumers via mobile can drive conversions – regardless if they are happening on that phone or via a physical store and even through a non-mobile web site.
Don’t ignore important signals your customers are throwing off: There was a time when abandoned shopping carts were viewed with disdain. While retailers still want to see the highest percentages of shopping carts converted, there is some interesting information to be gathered from what products your consumers place in their shopping carts and why they don’t convert. Savvy retailers are looking at these actions by consumers and learning from them. There is also an opportunity to learn from you consumer’s social actions. Tying in buying functions with social sites such as Pinterest, allows retailers to take advantage of how their consumers’ are behaving and interacting. The lesson – find places where your consumer is sharing insights, ideas and potential demands and figure out how to take advantage of this data.
Don’t forget the store labor! A major theme we have seen with retail is the growing importance of labor within the commerce ecosystem. Brands such as Party City are leaning on in store technologies to empower their store associates. Not only for more frictionless interactions between store associate and consumer, but also how to better handle inventory. The labor also needs to lean on the mobile access to information and data. Retailers such as Party City lean on seasonal pop up stores to drive sales around such events such as Halloween. The need for a mobile and flexible in store solution is even more imperative to keep up with these changing retail delivery points.

Demandware and their customers are focused on some key topics facing retailers – all focused on the importance of mobile. The question remains how much can the fulfillment side of the retail supply chain weave into this mobile strategy? As consumers continue to influence the retail supply chain, retailers will also need to adopt a more flexible and responsive fulfillment strategy to integrate with their mobile strategy.

Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Marketing Transformation Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Data to Decisions B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience business Marketing eCommerce Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service AI Analytics Automation Machine Learning Generative AI Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Growth Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Technology Officer

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How GM Uses Social Media to Listen and Engage Customers

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

Having worked for GM years ago and lived in Detroit, the motor capital, it was really interesting to see how GM is using social media to listen and engage customers – in marketing as well as customer service. This new case study shows the depth and strength of how GM is taking advantage of what social media can provide to the business. What’s interesting – and if you follow me, you know I am an ROI gal – is that GM was able to trace their social interactions to actual car sales. And that’s really where the rubber meets the road. Social media has huge implications to business – many of them not obvious to many – but over the years I’ve spent a lot of time understanding how social media provides business value.

For more information on this report, you can find it here.

For other reports on ROI of online communities, ROI of customer care, ROI of agile customer service, Nine Pillars of Successful Digital Customer Experience and Self-service, How General Motors Listens to Customers on Social Media, you can find more info to help your business understand why it’s important to take social and digital media very serious.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Oracle Chief Customer Officer

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OpenStack Summit 2016 - Good start - and a Telco focus

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

We have the opportunity to attend OpenStack Summit 2016, happening in Austin from April 24th till 27th 2016, held at the Austin convention center. Good to see OpenStack coming back to the roots and showing good interest with 7500 attendees.

So let's take a look at the takeaways in this video:

No time to watch - checkout my takeaways in the two slides below on Slideshare:

OpenStack Summit 2016 - First Take Day #1 Keynote from Holger Mueller

Time to read on - here is my view:

MyPOV

Good to see OpenStack come back to its roots in Austin. I was positive surprised by the attendance of 7500, good to see - as well as substantial investment by Openstack partners in marketing and entertainment. Though industry heavyweights like IBM and HP were not part of the keynote, the keynote was still done well. At times I felt presenters were out of synch with the audience, that said - not sure what the audience composure was, but I assume the same mix like at other cloud vendor events.

Kudos to OpenStack for starting the certification process, always something that helps enterprises gain confidence on service capability and service success around new, innovative technologies. And it is clear that NFV / SDN for Telcos runs on Openstack, with both AT&T and Verizon being part of the keynote. Equally ISVs are taking up OpenStack, with SAP keynoting and Workday being mentioned more than once. The question is - what confidence does this give to the average commercial enterprise. I asked a panel in the press Q&A on the largest commercial uptakes and the answers were the usual suspects of Walmart, eBay and Paypal... which is good that they keep investing, not so good as there is no new name in the fold.

Stay tuned fore more updates from OpenStack Summit, follow me on Twitter @holgermu and #OpenstackSummit.

Sill not enough - check out the collection of my tweets below .. and more interesting blog posts.

More Musings

Musings - We are entering the age of the Über Super Computer - read here
Musings - The Bots are coming to your conversation - what are the implications? - read here
Musings - Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work? Read here
Musings - Implications for CxOs from the DoJ vs Apple tussle - 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
Musings - The era of the No Design Database - read here
Musings - What is the future of Recruiting? Read here
Musings - Future of Work - is Voice part of it? Post Cortana debut reflections - read here
Musings - Can a HANA cloud be elastic? Tough - read here

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

Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity New C-Suite 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 Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

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Digital Transformation Must Move Beyond The Hiring Of A Chief Digital Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

Digital Transformation Kicks Into High Gear As A Boardroom Priority Yet Most Leaders Unprepared

Whether it’s the fact that 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or just fell of the list, or maybe it’s the paranoia that a small startup anywhere in the world can disrupt the established business models of existing giants, digital transformation has emerged as a top 10 priority in the global board room. With the board applying pressure to management teams to “go digital” and “disrupt or be disrupted”, most innovative organizations have taken the first step by appointing a Chief Digital Officer. However, in conversations with over 100 organizations engaged in digital transformation, the appointment of a Chief Digital Officer alone will not resolve the overall needs to make the shift.

Success Requires More Than Just A Chief Digital Officer

While the Chief Digital officer plays a major role in identifying, orchestrating, and evangelizing digital transformation, successful organizations have mobilized their leadership and driven the executive buy-in required for success. These market leading organizations have progressively applied the seven ABC’s of digital transformation adoption and :

Appointed a senior level executive to the post of Chief Digital Officer
Brought design thinking approaches to the business
Crafted innovation programs and launched innovation labs
Developed programs to bring innovation concepts to business model execution
Embraced a culture of digital artisans and change agents
Fostered partner ecosystems for co-innovation and co-creation
Given middle managers latitude to fail fast and learn even more quickly

Lesson Learned From Over 100 Organizations Show The Power Of A Change Agent Culture

Digital transformation by nature must disrupt existing business models. The inertia of doing nothing is powerful. The will to change even harder. The FCC’s CIO, Dr. David Bray often talks about the need for change agents. He’s wildly correct. At a recent client innovation summit in Dubai, market leaders shared similar lessons learned in digital transformation and innovation programs. For most of these market leading companies, success required their teams to over come items 4 and 5 on the adoption scale. Taking concepts to business model execution required executive leaders to pull the trigger and take risks instead of just accepting the status quo. Embracing a culture of digital artisans and change agents tested an organizations appetite for celebrating failure and building from mistakes.

The challenge for successful organizations is disrupting their existing business. The challenge for organizations being disrupted is finding the leadership to drive the cultural challenge. Board members need to understand that results do not come overnight. More importantly, digital transformation ultimately requires the organization’s DNA to change and they need air cover from their boards to make it happen.

Your POV.

How are you preparing for digital transformation? Would you like to hear what other organizations have embarked on? Would you like us to present to your boardroom? Learn how non-digital organizations can apply a road map to disrupt digital businesses in the best-selling Harvard Business Review Press book Disrupting Digital.

Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Please let us know if you need help with your Digital Business transformation efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

Developing your digital business strategy
Connecting with other pioneers
Sharing best practices
Vendor selection
Implementation partner selection
Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
Demystifying software licensing

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 -2016 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience

The post Monday’s Musings: Why Digital Transformation Must Move Beyond The Hiring Of A Chief Digital Officer appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Data to Decisions New C-Suite SoftwareInsider AI ML Machine Learning Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience business Marketing SaaS PaaS Growth Cloud Digital Transformation eCommerce Enterprise Software CRM ERP Leadership Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration LLMs Agentic AI HR HCM IaaS Supply Chain Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain finance M&A Enterprise Service Metaverse developer Quantum Computing Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS Robotics Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer

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SAS Goes Cloud, But Will Customers Follow?

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,…...

SAS Viya delivers cloud-ready architecture for multiple public and private deployment scenarios. But will it appeal to next-gen customers looking for new analytics options?

To attend a SAS Global Forum user conference is to be reminded of just how big a footprint the analytics giant has. This week’s event in Las Vegas attracted more than 5,000 thousand attendees, and to meet and talk to many of them was to understand that they’re not, for the most part, early adopters looking to pioneer new approaches. It’s an older and more well-established crowd than you see at your average tech event.

Their embrace of analytics notwithstanding, SAS customers tend to be cautious adopters, so I have to wonder how quickly they’ll take to the two big announcements made at #SASGF. The biggest announcement was SAS Viya, which is SAS’s next-generation architecture for running its software in private and public clouds. It’s a big advance over SAS’ previous cloud approach, which amounted to hosting and managed services. SAS Viya introduces microservices, REST APIs and even the option to use open languages including Python, Lua and Java.

Viya is set to become generally available in Q3 to be deployed using industry-standard technologies for Bare OS and cloud deployment. Cloud deployment and orchestration of SAS Viya will be achieved using Cloud Foundry, which will provide multi-cloud support for OpenStack, VMWare, Amazon Web services, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud infrastructure providers. Within the next month a SAS Viya preview will be available.

video

The second announcement this week was Customer Intelligence 360, an all-new, software-as-a-service-based marketing analytics suite aimed at digital channels. Customer Intelligence 360 is available immediately with modules on AWS for Web and Mobile channels; email and social modules will follow later this year, says SAS.

Customer Intelligence 360 is not a cloud-based alternative to the vendor’s incumbent on-premises offering, SAS Customer Intelligence. Rather, Customer Intelligence 360 complements that product, focusing on digital marketing channels and execution. It links to on-premises Customer Intelligence deployments to gain the proverbial 360-degree view of customer behavior.

Will Customers Follow?

I’m not alone in sizing up SAS customers as mostly cautious adopters. A SAS data warehousing partner confided to me that many customers say “don’t mess with my code” when he suggests that they embrace in-database processing options introduced as early as 2007 and in-memory options introduced in 2012.

Of course, not every SAS customer is technologically conservative. I sat in on a nice presentation by Neil Chandler and Andy Wolfe of U.K.-based e-retailer Shop Direct, which stores its data in a Hadoop data lake. Apache Cassandra/DataStax is used to serve that data to a SAS stack running on Amazon Web Services. What’s more, the analytics are integrated with the retailer’s transactional environment so it can deliver contextually relevant, personalized content and offers to customers in real time as they shop online.

SAS Viya would have saved Shop Direct a lot of trouble, commented Andy Wolfe. But it wasn’t available when the company decided to run SAS on AWS two years ago. No doubt SAS customers who are fast followers will embrace Viya as a way to accelerate private- and public-cloud initiatives involving analytics. The architecture will insulate most of their users from having to deal with or think about third-party cloud tools.

SAS put a big emphasis on compatibility with existing SAS software when it designed Viya and when it talked about it at SAS Global Forum. The on-stage demos featured scenarios in which data and models were moved from on-premises SAS deployments up into Viya and results were returned back to the on-premises world.

So will the many cautious adopters be tempted to experiment with cloud compute scalability and new options coming with Viya such as the new machine learning suite (one of the bright spots in the announcement)? That partner I talked to said many SAS customers don’t change their ways until new CIOs or CMOs show up and demand at least experimentation with cloud deployment, big data platforms like Hadoop and open source analytics. In short, I’m guessing Customer Intelligence 360, the much more straight-forward SaaS offering, might see more robust adoption than SAS Viya over the next year or two.

MyPOV on SAS Viya, Customer Intelligence 360

SAS Viya is a positive, if overdue, step that SAS needed to take. What’s not clear is the degree to which SAS will break from its traditional licensing and maintenance model. Analytics work tends to be spikey, so true cloud elasticity, where you can use and pay for the software only when you need it, is hugely attractive. A pay-as-you-go, analytics-as-a-service offering will be introduced along with SAS Viya, but from what I saw it will be a very limited offering – at least initially.

In my book, the as-a-service machine learning and analytics options being amassed by the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft (as well as those offered by partners on the same platforms) are the most significant threat to SAS in the long term. IBM, meanwhile, is porting its commercial analytics software to run on Apache Spark, offering cloud-delivery options and counting on an open source halo effect.

SAS Viya was clearly developed with existing SAS customers in mind, giving them an avenue to cloud scalability and performance. But I suspect that companies that are embracing new approaches will take a long, hard look at as-a-service options (including open source in the cloud) before making a significant, ongoing commitment to run SAS software in the cloud.

As for CI360, it’s another product that’s most attractive to existing SAS customers – namely those using SAS Customer Intelligence. In fact, the cloud app's promised ability to “unite data from all channels” presumes that you have SAS CI on-premises (or hosted) capturing information on customer behavior on traditional (non-digital) marketing channels. So I suspect the vast majority of uptake will be from existing SAS customers rather than from new customers using Customer Intelligence 360 in stand-alone fashion.

SAS, like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Teradata and other blue chip incumbents, has the luxury of a great big customer base, and in SAS’s case they’re mostly very happy and loyal. The trick will be reinventing the business enough to attract new customers without breaking the model of its existing business

Data to Decisions Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer

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Box and Cognizant Partner To Develop Industry Applications

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…...

Today enterprise content management vendor Box and and business IT consulting firm Cognizant announced a partnership to develop industry specific applications. This is similar to the announcement Box and IBM made in June of 2015.

MyPOV: It's good to see Box continuing to expand the ecosystem of partners that are leveraging the Box platform to build applications. This continues to validate their evolution from just enterprise file synchronization, storage and sharing to being a platform that can be used for the enterprise content management, workflow and security aspects of industry specific applications.

Here is short video of my thoughts on today's announcement:

Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity box Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer

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SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

We had the opportunity to attend the SAP SuccessFactors analyst summit this week, held in San Francisco, we were housed in the historic Argonaut Hotel and sessions took place at the California Museum of Sciences, a very good setup.

Take a look at the video I recorded shortly after:

If you want to read and have 2-3 mins – take a look at the 2 page Powerpoint:

SAP SuccessFactors Analyst Summit 2016 from Holger Mueller

More time to read? Read on:

Always tough to pick the Top 3 takeaways from 1.5 days of briefings and presentations – but here you go:

Broad Momentum – You can peg progress by a vendor to revenue, technical growth and reputation. While SAP does not break out revenues for SuccessFactors, they cloud revenues are up. 40M HCM cloud users pay their monthly subscriptions. We know that transactions are up 12x%+ YoY as shared by Kovalevsky– so here is the technical growth. And lastly the SuccessFactors team seems to have become the SAP ‘cloud’ team for enterprise – with being chartered to shepherd the launch of the cloud edition of S/4HANA. All this would not be happening if things were not well in SuccessFactorLand.

New User Interface – User interfaces across the different products varied quote a bit, with EmployeeCentral getting a lot of the love and latest and greatest techniques (it was needed, the longtime reader remembers the ‘Outlook’ and endless scrolling days) – not so much for the other SuccessFactors products. The start is compelling (see below) now we hope that a common UI will go all across the products, not be stalled at the high level entry screens.

Focus on Horizontal capabilities – With that SuccessFactors refers to investments that benefit all products, a good approach, especially when there is need for investment. We mentioned UI already, but this is also the consistent use of visualization (e.g. finally the InfoHRM (my guess) data is shown together with the rest of SuccessFactors, on one common UI. The UI is also Fiori or ‘Fiori like’ that helps cross product users of SAP. Equally the investments into reporting (now fully running SAP HANA). Same for the Extensions, that can be built across the product. Same for the new Intelligent Services, with more and events being exposed.

Analyst Tidbits

Performance Management – The new approach to performance management has been delivered, in a mobile first approach, as pertaining the 1 to 1 meeting management. Delivering 3 flavors of how Performance Management can be done is a good next step, so we did not see (or missed) how the substantial amount of data from 1 to 1 meetings is collected for performance reviews. And then – what to do in countries where prevailing management culture does not work with weekly 1 to 1s?

Payroll is making progress with now support for 30 countries, all run from all HR Core data coming from EmployeeCentral (this is the venerable R/3 payroll, hosted for cloud purposes, maybe ugly, but it works).

Analytics are delivered as announced at SConnect 2015 – for suggested Learning content and Flight Risk. SAP needs to deliver more and faster on ‘true’ Analytics (more here) in order to catch up with the leading vendors.

Cloud Infrastructure - With now 8 data center locations, and Brazil coming this year. SAP was probably the first HCM vendor allowing international customers to keep data in the Russian Federation, based on the October 1st 2015 deadline to have the primary store for customer, employee and financial data in the Russian Federation. The solution isn’t elegant, but works. And SuccessFactors is working on a better solution (like other vendors). More importantly SuccessFactors can also offer EU based data centers exclusively serviced by EU citizens, another differentiator / early industry achievement.

Services Innovation – SAP SuccessFactors shared some good and unique ideas on the services and success side, e.g. customers helping each other in a structured forum and many more. The role of a customer experience executive is a good setup that is crucial in SaaS success. Getting partners to build more extensions is going to be the ultimate test for a new way of dealing with partners, who now can / should build product intellectual property.

Hands on Mobile Experience – Always good for vendors to let the analysts play with their software. A more personal and unique experience. Kudos to SuccessFactors for doing this – but also with one more first: Real BYOD – as the software ran on the analysts smartphones (iOS and Android).

MyPOV

SAP SuccessFactors shows good progress. The departure of Dmitri Krakovsky seems to have been well transitioned, with product reins in the hands of Dave Ragones and Thomas Otter. The addition of former industry analyst and PeopleSoft veteran Yvette Cameron is also a good addition to an otherwise stable leadership team. On the Extensions and Intelligent Services SuccessFactors is showing good ideas and even industry leadership.

On the concern side, SuccessFactors operated on considerable technical debt incurred over the years, mostly before the acquisition. At some point SAP needs to address that, and that will be a substantial investment. It looks to me as if there are some resource constraints (they are always there, but focusing e.g. on ‘horizontal’ is an indication), that are not of immediate concern, but if SAP SuccessFactors wants to be appealing beyond the SAP install base, it needs to start investing in differentiating ideas now. Smart heads for ideas are certainly there, not sure if enough hands to code them are there today and the coming years, when the proceeds of seeds planted in 2016 can be harvested in the form of market share gains.

But for now good progress for SAP SuccessFactors, which is doing all the right things to build its lead as the most mature SAP cloud offering. Existing customer are in good hands and can see that SAP SuccessFactors delivers what it announced at SConnect 2015 – always a good thing to do for vendors. Now SAP SuccessFactors needs to build out differentiation and get customers to adopt new capabilities, e.g. the new Performance Management. We will be watching and analyzing.

Still not enough? Wait, there is more... see more posts on SAP and SuccessFactors below followed by a Storify of my tweets from the event, if you want to follow my digital exhaust tweet for tweet.

Disrupting the Status Quo With Rookies Leading the Way

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!   ...

“It’s not what you know; it’s how fast you can learn.” Great insight from Liz Wiseman, author of “Rookie Smarts” and President of The Wiseman Group.

This statement captures the theme from last week’s episode of DisrupTV, where our hosts Vala Afshar and R ”Ray” Wang caught up with two influential business leaders who are both shaking up the status quo - Liz Wiseman and Sharon Wienbar, CEO of Hackbright Academy.

The world is changing. When it comes to business, it’s not always about rank or title when looking for new ideas. We’re in a world with new technologies and vast amounts of data hitting the market every day, changing the way we think, do business, and grow as individuals. Liz illustrated the importance of continually learning and looking for resources typically overlooked - the young and aspiring interns and rookies.

This is great advice, and I am grateful to have worked with mentors and managers from the start of my career who asked my opinion and pushed me to grow by challenging his/her and even my way of thinking. Reverse mentoring helps leaders continue to grow, while motivating their staff. A great piece of advice I will keep with me as I continue moving up the ladder.

During the show, Sharon Wienbar explained how women are amping their learning and earning potential through taking a different path, one less traveled. They are changing their careers and switching industries to go into coding - a still male-dominated role - at Hackbright Academy. In an intense 12-week program, women from all walks of life learn the skills to work and succeed (eliminating that dreaded imposter syndrome) as an engineer.

This is a powerful message for all women who may have started in different careers; they aren’t stuck and have the resources and mentors to tackle a job that will dominate in the not-so-distant future. Think about it - we spend way too much time looking at our phones, computers, TVs and other devices. Coding is a language everyone should learn - even with a basic understanding. It’s what connects us to the rest of the world.

This is similar to one of our previous guests Whitney Johnson, the author of “Disrupt Yourself.” She talked about not letting your career go stagnant and looking for the fastest growth curves to continually learn and grow. Sometimes that curve means leaving your cushy job to take on a role in a completely different industry or something new altogether. Whitney actually left her prestigious job on Wall Street to get where she is today. To be successful, you have to constantly learn and challenge yourself. Yes, I’m going to quote Ace of Base: “No one's gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong.”

“It’s not what you know; it’s how fast you can learn.”

Whether you’re part of a company looking to adopt the next big technology, someone looking to switch careers, working your way up the ladder, or just making your way through life, this is a must-watch episode. Personally for me, these women are inspirational and great role models, especially for women looking to climb the ranks in male-dominated industries. Pave the path you want by taking the leap and learning from everyone around you. If you are interested in meeting like-minded executives and mentors, check out the Constellation Executive Network.

DisrupTV Episode 0011: Featuring Sharon Wienbar & Liz Wiseman

Check out DisrupTV every week on blab at 11 AM PT. See you on Fridays!

Innovation & Product-led Growth Data to Decisions Future of Work New C-Suite Tech Optimization DisrupTV Leadership

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IBM Boosts Support to OpenStack's RefStack

Overall MyPOV

Professional On-line Networks - Professional or Social? Or both?

More than a Network, a Virtual Workspace

"Friends with Boundaries"

Know, Like, Trust

Dare to be Professionally Social

Demandware Making The Cloud Rain & Mobile Continues to Dominate Retail

How GM Uses Social Media to Listen and Engage Customers

OpenStack Summit 2016 - Good start - and a Telco focus

MyPOV

Digital Transformation Must Move Beyond The Hiring Of A Chief Digital Officer

Digital Transformation Kicks Into High Gear As A Boardroom Priority Yet Most Leaders Unprepared

Success Requires More Than Just A Chief Digital Officer

Lesson Learned From Over 100 Organizations Show The Power Of A Change Agent Culture

Your POV.

Reprints

Disclosure

SAS Goes Cloud, But Will Customers Follow?

Box and Cognizant Partner To Develop Industry Applications

SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP

Analyst Tidbits

MyPOV

Disrupting the Status Quo With Rookies Leading the Way