Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work?

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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Last week we had the opportunity to take a look at the latest release of Microsoft's last version of the Hololens, the same device the vendor is now releasing to developers to build applications for the platform.
 

My Constellation Research Colleague Alan Lepofsky and me recorded a video earlier, take a look:

 

 

No time to read, here are my key takeaways and views in two slides:

 

Musngs - Will the Microsoft Hololens change the Future of Work? from Holger Mueller

MyPOV

It's the first time Microsoft has completely built and designed a enterprise platform, contrary before where it partnered, provided know how etc. And probably such a radical 'wearable' - I like to call it 'headable' requires close ownership. And all the tools are there to build Hololens apps, as Microsoft was able to show developers present at the Build conference. 

 

On the concern side it looks like Microsoft isn't fully sure what can be done with it. At points our interactions were like that of an adventure racer who made it to stage two and now needs to figure out what to do in stage two. Fair enough, as it was far from clear if Microsoft could pull this off 15 months ago. The device was fidgy, needed a portable 'life support unit' and was tough to use. 12 months made a big difference, it can now be used as a platform. 

 

On the positive side Microsoft has garnered large interest from enterprises. Now it comes back to get the business case right and get developers going on building the applications for the platform. There is more game development in these applications than traditional enterprise software development so it will be interesting to watch in the coming quarters where the protypical Hololens developer will come from. 

 

But for now definitively a platform that is relevant for the enterprise space, High end productivity situations, education, engineering come to mind first. We will be watching. 

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

#Env16 Microsoft: Empowering People Sight Loss to Experience City Life

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…...

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What is Microsoft up to now? Empowering people with sight loss the opportunity to experience city life.

Everyone has a right to independence, but not everyone has the capacity. Cities Unlocked aims to set people with sight loss free to experience city life like never before. The pilot program is a unique collaboration between Microsoft, the U.K. charity Guide Dogs, and urban innovator Future Cities Catapult as well as other partners from business and academia. Even local travel is difficult and daunting with vision loss, which could be part of why of the two million people in the U.K. who have registered their visual impairment, 180,000 rarely if ever go outside, according to Guide Dogs. In the U.S., about 65 percent of people with vision loss are unemployed.

The partners worked together to create a prototype headset and mobile app that works with Bluetooth beacons placed along a given route to provide audio turn-by-turn directions, nearby points of interest (“Chiropractor, about 10 meters”), transportation updates (“No. 9 bus is approaching”) and even polite warnings (“Be aware: This is a main road”).

Source: Microsoft

@drnatalie petouhoff

Covering IOT, Customer Experience and Digital Transformation

Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) releases card fraud statistics every six months for the preceding 12m period. For a decade now, Lockstep has been monitoring these figures, plotting the trend data and analysing what the industry is doing - and not doing - about Card Not Present fraud. Here is our summary for the financial year 2015 stats.

Card Not Present (CNP) fraud has grown over 25 percent year-on-year from FY2014, and now represents 84 percent of all fraud on Australian cards.

APCA evidently has an uneasy relationship with any of the industry's technological responses to CNP fraud, like the controversial 3D Secure, and tokenization. Neither get a mention in the latest payment fraud media release (PDF). Instead APCA puts the stress on shopper behaviour, describing the continuing worsening in fraud as "a timely reminder to Australians to remain vigilant when shopping online". Sadly, this ignores that fact that card data used for organised criminal CNP fraud comes from mass breaches of databases, not from websites. There is nothing that shoppers can do when using their cards online to stop them being stolen, because they're much more likely to get stolen from backend systems over which the shoppers have no control.

You can be as careful as you like online - you can even avoid Internet shopping entirely - and still have your card data stolen from a regular store and used in CNP attacks online.

APCA says in its media release: "Financial institutions and law enforcement have been working together to target skimming at ATMs and in taxis and this, together with the industry’s progressive roll-out of chip-reading at ATMs, is starting to reflect in the fraud data".  That's true. Fraud by skimming and carding was halved by the smartcard rollout, and has remained low and steady in absolute terms for three years. But APCA errs when it goes on with "Cardholders can help these efforts by always protecting their PINs and treating their cards like cash".  Safeguarding your physical card and PIN does nothing to prevent the mass breaches of card data held in backend databases.

A proper fix to replay attack is easily within reach, which would re-use the same cryptography that solves skimming and carding, and would restore a seamless payment experience for card holders. Apple for one has grasped the nettle, and is using its Secure Element-based Apple Pay method (established now for card present NFC payments) for Card Not Present transactions, in the app.

See also my 2012 paper Calling for a Uniform Approach to Card Fraud Offline and On" (PDF).

Abstract

The credit card payments system is a paragon of standardisation. No other industry has such a strong history of driving and adopting uniform technologies, infrastructure and business processes. No matter where you keep a bank account, you can use a globally branded credit card to go shopping in almost every corner of the world. The universal Four Party settlement model, and a long-standing card standard that works the same with ATMs and merchant terminals everywhere underpin seamless convenience. So with this determination to facilitate trustworthy and supremely convenient spending in every corner of the earth, it's astonishing that the industry is still yet to standardise Internet payments. We settled on the EMV standard for in-store transactions, but online we use a wide range of confusing and largely ineffective security measures. As a result, Card Not Present (CNP) fraud is growing unchecked.

This article argues that all card payments should be properly secured using standardised hardware. In particular, CNP transactions should use the very same EMV chip and cryptography as do card present payments.

With all the innovation in payments leveraging cryptographic Secure Elements in mobile phones, perhaps at last we will see CNP payments modernise for web and mobile shopping.

Microsoft Build 2016 - 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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A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications

We had the opportunity to attend Microsoft's developer conference Build in San Francisco, held (where else) at Moscone. Attended by other 5000 participants, it was a different Microsoft Build, with crystal clear focus on developers, tools to increase their productivity and most importantly - build for the new platform CEO Nadella unveiled, Conversations as a Platform.

My colleague Alan Lepofsky earlier recorded this video on our key Day #2 keynote and overall event takeaways - so have a look (if you haven't seen it - Day #1 can be found here):

 

 

Our video went already way too long, I did not get to the IoT announcements that Microsoft shared - the Azure IoT Hub Device Management (in preview) and Azure IoT Gateway SDK (also in preview). In combination with the Azure IoT starter kits both offerings make it easier for enterprises to build their IoT applications, so a good move.
 

Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - All about building next generation applications from Holger Mueller
 

MyPOV

A clear focus on what Microsoft thinks is the emerging, next platform, Conversations as a Platform. Microsoft shared the vision and importantly, had the tools available already to build the applications for the new platform. A welcome difference to vendors putting out a vision only at first, and then a road map to when things will be delivered. 

 

Hololens has made great progress in the last 12 months (see my First take from Build 2015 here), and for the first time Microsoft has created a new platform in the market, for a new type of applications. And it's no surprise - it is a PC - an it is a headable (if you didn't get it combination of header and wearable, I made this up). 

 

In the past Microsoft has often been behind the market innovators on platform changes, so its a welcome difference to see Microsoft laying out an innovative vision for a software application platform (Conversations as a Platform), and creating a new hardware platform with Hololens. Now it needs to execute on both, we will be watching. 

 

 

Microsoft Build 2016 - Day 1 Keynote Takeaways

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 have the opportunity to attend Microsoft's developer conference Build in San Francisco. The attend is well attended with over 5000 participants.

 

 

 

My colleague, Alan Lepofsky, and my own takeaways from Day #1, take a look:

 

 

No time to watch - we have summarized our findings in one slide:

 

First Take - Build 2016 Day #1 Keynote Takeaways from Holger Mueller

 

Want to learn more - check out the Storify collection of my tweets below.

 

MyPOV

A good start for Microsoft at Build. Microsoft has been often behind the latest trends and then had to catch up - this time with Conversation as a Platform the vendor maybe ahead of the curve. Good to see and good to see that all of the Day #1 keynote was - apart from the general availability of Hololens - all centered on Conversation as a Platform. 

 

There is no surprise why Microsoft has a focus on this, CEO Nadella at one point called the new offering 'Computation as a Platform' - which is clear all along, as a lot of compute is required to power the artificial intelligence, machine learning and bots behind Conversation as a Platform. And Microsoft needs to find more load for Azure - once the current wave of Office conversions runs out. 

 

For customers overall it is good news that Microsoft has aligned on a vision for product that is more specific and measurable than the 30k+ feet 'mobile first / cloud first' moniker. Making workers more productive is something that matters to enterprises, and with a lot of innovation happening in email (!) right now we maybe up to the next generation of applications, or as Nadella puts it - up to a new platform.

 

For developers the good news is that Microsoft has shipped SDKs and frameworks that make the daunting task of building these applications easy. And Microsoft has to make it easy for the developer community, as it is proficient in the general aspects of the Microsoft stack, but not on the more advanced BigData, MachineLearning, Language processing etc. skills that are needed to built these next generation conversational platforms. 

 

A good start for Build - looking forward to Day #2, stay tuned. 

More about Microsoft:

• 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.

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

Too much on IoT, not enough on connected business value

Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems. Coverage Areas Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD, Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use Previous experience: Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...

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Five or six years ago, the hype wasn’t IoT, it was Cloud, but the messages about its impact as an industry game change were similar. Again, as with IoT, few people could really claim to understand the true nature of the changes that the Cloud would bring. The usual trait when we encounter something we don’t really understand is to position it aligned to something we do understand, so Cloud came to be seen as a cost reduction alternative to the data center. Few realized the significance of browser driven Services in transforming business capabilities. In 2016 it seems IoT is at the same stage;

IoT, as previously happened with the impact of Cloud, Mobility, and Social Tools, is a technology function not a Business benefit; It’s business value does not lie in IT technology improvement, but in Business led innovation to make use of ‘real time’ connected business opportunities.

There is too much talking about IoT Technology, and not enough focus on deployed business value and competitive impacts being led by Business management.

That’s a bold remark; when asked why the Farmers moved so quickly to adopt connected sensing technology on agricultural equipment, now called Precision Farming, an Agri-Business executive had a possible answer. ‘I guess they didn’t have an IT department’, out of context this is an unfair statement as it really was meant to indicate that Farmers were not tied to extensive in-house IT investments that needed to be considered. Farmers were able to see the link to transforming their profitability and moved quickly and easily to adopt ‘Services’.

Take the time to read an excellent business article on using sensing technology to control costs of inputs to maximize operational outputs, that should make any business manager think again about connected real-time operational business benefits. Okay its in Farming Equipment Canada in respect of Precision Farming, but the terminology is readily referenced to any business being financial and operational.

Quoting directly from the article; “Precision Farming means … optimizing returns on inputs. What does that mean? I see the path for optimizing your returns most effectively by applying the correct inputs, in the correct place and in the correct amount. Precision farming is your way to accurately plant, populate, apply inputs and then provide data, of what was completed on your farm.

The quote makes clear that it isn’t about the technology of IoT sensing applied to Farm Equipment working the land, but that there is a business impact in real-time operational management on direct profitability. Though the article might be about the business of farming, the point is directly applicable to many business sectors. Today the impact has moved beyond individual farms moving to become an Agri-Business sector transformation. See the previous blog A Strategy for Market Leaders based on IoT Platform collaboration for more background information on how John Deere has adapted to ensure ongoing leadership in this transformation.

Whilst it may be a truism that by not having huge IT investments Farmers where able to move quickly to adopt new practices there are several factors under lying the rapid adoption of Precision Farming.  Four major reasons are;

1. The ‘Consumer’ technology revolution around Smart Phones and ‘App Shops’ has removed many former barriers to using Technology, and speeded adoption rates.
2. Charging by use removes the need to justify Capital investment by defining clear cost based returns, encouraging just ‘try it’ adoption to establish new ideas and develop new best practices.
3. Social Tools with focused communities ensure that new practices that work are rapidly communicated, with the additional befit of peer-to-peer support from early adopter fellow users.
4. Market leading suppliers, such as John Deere and Monsanto, involvement in Social Tools allowed them to spot the trend and rapidly move to support Precision Farming making their products more competitively valuable.

Putting these factors together illustrates the real point behind the ‘I guess they didn’t have an IT department’ statement. The rapid adoption of Precision Farming was made possible by using Apps and Services on a pay by use basis, rather than substantial investment in traditional IT Applications with the need to amortize the investment before making further changes.

The opening paragraph pointed out the lack of appreciation of Cloud Technology for its business transformation impact, six years latter the Business impact is becoming increasingly clear. The pay on demand use of Apps and Services, (running on Clouds), that can be deployed with minimal difficulty has revolutionized many Business capabilities.

IoT is a generic term covering too many possible functions to be a meaningful term, as even the word idIoT contains IoT!  Cloud had, and still has, the same challenge when considered as a Technology, but focusing on Business use quickly defines the value of Cloud.

Today Cloud Technology is taken as underlying the whole Internet; as more and more devices are connected the Internet of Things becomes a similar fact of life. The Business value lies in the manner that these two radical shifts in capability are intertwined!

Cloud based Business Services support ‘back end’ processing by pushing their data towards Devices. IoT adds new business value by collecting and sending new data streams from the ‘front end’ devices. The ability to ‘Read’ events as they are happening by sending new data streams to Cloud based Services creates a new generation of optimized ‘Reactions’.

Much of this will occur in near ‘real-time’ that makes outcomes genuinely able to positively influence the events as they develop. Using IoT supplied data makes existing Cloud based Services interactive, or ‘smart’, in their capabilities.  The linkage between the elements can be expressed simply in the following manner.

IoT Data Read  +  Optimized React      =     Smart Service

          Real Time                                                Cloud 

We have stopped discussing the ‘technology’ of the Internet, and the Web, in abstraction from the business valuable capabilities this provides. The first generation of Cloud based technology is now accepted for its infrastructure replacement value, with attention being focused on using capabilities to support Business valuable competitive Services.

IoT should be part of the same Business discussion as Cloud based Apps and Services as the critical input capability supporting fully interactive high value Smart Services.

Lufthansa Takes You on a Virtual Journey

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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One of the key marketing challenges that we face in the customer journey is moving from awareness to trial. That is, we want potential customers to “try out” our products or services.

This can be particularly challenging when your product or service has a substantial price tag attached.

Think of travel.

There are a whole series of steps that we go through when we are on a travel journey:

• Ideas and inspiration: We seek out amazing stories, pictures and reviews of places, people and experiences so that we can plan our own adventures
• Planning and projection: We start to actively curate our activities, destinations and journeys, connecting the dots and figuring out our itineraries and (gasp, horror) budget. In this stage we are not just planning our activities – but actively imagining what it will be like to BE there
• Lock and load: When we’ve checked, double and triple checked, confirmed our budget and dates, now we wade neck deep into the process of locking dates to a loaded credit card. Yes, it’s commitment time and the pressure is on (so many websites, so many things that can go wrong)
• See ya, see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya: Wave goodbye to your friends and family and take the leap into the unknown
• Wish you were here: Well, we say this to be kind, but if the planning and projection phase was well done, you’ll be taking hundreds of selfies all around the world and using them to induce raging envy across your social graph
• Reflection and longing: Planes aren’t the only things that land with a BUMP. So too does our travel ego. Coming back to “reality” can be a confronting experience. To cope, we return to our #RunningWithTheBulls selfies to remind ourselves just what the travel rush was all about and how we really are #travelheroes.

In amongst each of these steps, there are hardly any that an airline can directly impact. They can inspire us with their media activities, advertising and profile. And they may even help us to plan – albeit in a small way. A good airline will make locking and loading a breeze and but it’s really when you are in the plane that they can make a huge impact.

But experiencing airline travel is expensive, right? And price alone is a barrier.

This virtual travel experience from Lufthansa by 3Spin is a very interesting innovation that I expect will see plenty of others follow.

Lufthansa have touched on many aspects of the travel journey – turning a largely imaginative process into something that is more tangible. More experiential. In fact, it’s not just the destination that is inspirational, it’s the experience of the virtual reality itself. And with a clever mix of digital, analog and old fashioned customer service, they’ve created something far more than just a 360 degree virtual experience. They have created an EVENT – a point in time and space that will create memories. Stories. And hopefully for Lufthansa, bookings.

It makes me think there may be something to this VR lark after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRcbFrp9Y4

Event Preview - Microsoft Build 2016 - Top 3 Things to watch for developers, managers and execs...

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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Microsoft's Developer Conference Build is starting tomorrow in San Francisco, and will run through the rest of the week. Well worth a little event preview...

 

 

 

So take a look on what I think are the Top 3 things to watch for the key communities attending: Developers, Managers and Executives:

 

 

No time to watch - well here are all key areas to watch in one slide:

 

Check out my Contellation Research colleague Alan Lepofsky's preview of Build (here), too!

More about Microsoft:

• 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.

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

SAP Bets On Cloud For Analytics, BPC Optimized for S/4 HANA

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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SAP Financials 2016 event highlights a comprehensive cloud platform and real-time analysis. Here’s why SAP Cloud for Analytics and BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance are getting attention.

Two next-generation products stood out at the March 15-16 SAP Financials2016 and GRC2016 event in Las Vegas: SAP Cloud For Analytics and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Optimized for S/4 HANA Finance. There are, in fact, several paths forward in SAP’s vast financial planning and analysis (FP&A) portfolio, but these are the options seeing the most aggressive development and, not surprisingly, the most interest. Here’s why.

Introduced last fall and based on what was originally called SAP Cloud For Planning, SAP Cloud For Analytics is a comprehensive product spanning planning, business intelligence (BI), and, coming later this year, predictive analytics. Long-range plans also call for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) functionality, but that part won’t show up in 2016.

SAP has offered many analytics products over the years, including Lumira, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence (Webby) and you can even throw BPC onto the list. But where those products have been for specific types of analysis and deployed mostly on-premises, the goal with Cloud for Analytics is to cover all the bases in a cohesive and consistent product that runs on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

A key selling point is broad data connectivity and real-time, in-memory analysis. Connection points include on-premises instances of SAP HANA, SAP BW and bi-directionally to BPC. You can also connect to the (private) HANA Enterprise Cloud, Salesforce and Google Enterprise Apps. Soon to be added will be connections to SAP ECC, BusinessObjects Universes, SAP SaaS apps (Ariba, Concur, Hybris, SuccessFactors, etc.) and live connections with write-back capabilities to on-prem instances of SAP BW.

Though it addresses planning, BI and, soon, predictive analytics, Cloud For Analytics is not a monolithic, all-or-nothing proposition. You can subscribe to just planning or just BI and so on. And there are different subscription levels for different types of users, whether they’re basic report or plan consumers or advanced developers or analysts.

Another, emerging constituent for Cloud for Analytics is business unit leaders, CXOs and even board members, all of whom are supported through an optional Digital Boardroom application. The idea is to help executives see where the business stands and where it’s headed, and with access to all that business data and data visualization and planning capabilities in the cloud, it’s an accessible option.

At SAP Financials 2016 (and also at the recent SXSW event in Austin, TX), SAP offered a Digital Boardroom virtual demo that showed how executives can traverse a Value-Driver view and plug in new planning assumptions for what-if scenario analysis. Plug in a new cost figures for key raw materials, for example, and you can see the impact on costs and margins. Or you could plug in an increase in sales staffing in a fast-growing market to gauge the impact on sales and profitability.

The Digital Boardroom app will become even more powerful as Cloud for Analytics gains predictive capabilities later this year, so executives can do simulations and get predictive recommendations on best actions. You can do this executive-level planning and analysis one a single screen with a mouse and keyboard, but the Digital Boardroom option also supports a slick, three-screen conference room setup using giant touch-screen displays (hardware not included).

MyPOV: It’s early days for Cloud for Analytics, and the roadmap reveals that there’s plenty of functionality that has yet to be added. On the planning front, it’s up against fast-growing, cloud-based performance management rivals such as Anaplan, Host Analytics and Adaptive Insights. These products are also more mature, offering prebuilt apps in areas such as workforce planning as well as financial consolidation, something not yet on the roadmap for Cloud for Analytics.

On the BI front there are myriad competitors, from cloud-native BI systems like BIRST, Domo and GoodData to newish cloud offerings from Qlik and Tableau to emerging as-a-service offerings from Amazon Web Services, IBM and Oracle. The predictive analytics capabilities SAP will bring to Cloud for Analytics from its KXEN acquisition could be a real differentiator, but its’ unclear to me how deep this functionality will go and how soon it will be generally available.

For now I’d say that the breath of SAP Cloud For Analytics is very promising, but the depth in each area of analysis has yet to be realized. It will clearly be most attractive to SAP customers who want real-time access to and analysis of on-premises data in the cloud.

BPC Optimized for S/4HANA Finance

BPC has been a cornerstone FP&A option for SAP customers nearly a decade. A key differentiator versus the rival Oracle Hyperion portfolio is that BPC combines both planning and consolidation in a single product. BPC has evolved to include several permutations, including BPC NetWeaver Standard, BPC for Microsoft and BPC Embedded (as in, an embedded component of SAP Hana).

BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance is seeing growing interest because it gives the many companies that have implemented BPC a path to HANA in-memory performance without having to reimplement on HANA. BPC gets direct, real-time access to ERP data from an S/4HANA Finance instance that sits next to a conventional deployments of the SAP Business Suite.

For now, the real-time advantage for BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance is limited to the planning side of the product, but that alone is attractive to many because you get on-the-fly slicing and dicing against up-to-the-minute data. Future plans call for sophisticated, real-time analyses of sales and profitability, investments, liquidity, product costs, tariffs and more.

The appeal of this product will become even more powerful in the third quarter when it gains support for real-time consolidation. This will enable business units and corporate to predict and close end-of-period results that much more quickly, a crucial advantage.

MyPOV: For net-new customers who are implementing from scratch, BPC Embedded is the likely path forward because there’s no legacy to worry about and you develop from the start to gain the real-time analysis advantages of SAP HANA. But for the many existing customers who have content they want to leverage, BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana is a more practical path to real-time planning and consolidation. It’s also a path the S/4Hana Finance Universal Journal, which promises single-table access to all cost and account information, including customer and vendor data. With universal access to real-time data combined with (coming) what-if simulation and recommendations, we’re talking state-of-the-art capabilities that can change the way you see and do business.