Progress Report - Cloudera's is all in with Hadoop - off to verticals

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend the yearly Cloudera analyst meeting at the beautiful historic Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco. The vendor had a remarkable audience of almost 40 analysts attending, documenting the importance of Cloudera for the BigData market.

As usual, here are my top 3 takeaways of the event:

 

BigData has traction – As we also see in our interactions with enterprises, BigData is a key driver for new investment into next generation applications. CEOs intuitively approve BigData proofs of concepts, trials and projects, as the value proposition for insight applications it tangible: When you merge all the information from sources an enterprise paid many multiples more for than for a BigData project, there is a high likeliness that better insights will result from a merge of all of these data sources in BigData clusters. Cloudera sees a similar growth opportunity, enjoying a 150% growth rate. But with growth come the challenges, and Cloudera needs to grow in its go to market and partner ecosystem dimensions. Not easy to solve, but the management team had the right answers how to tackle these two growth areas in the years to come. To exemplify the scale of the problem, Cloudera on average ramps up two partners and hires two employees on a working day. But these are good problems to have for any software vendor, as it shows solid execution on the product side. When asking about Q&A, the vendor shared that the largest investment on the R&D side currently goes into the quality area certainly a good step and direction,. We see quality concerns and potentially resulting delivery issue as the biggest concerns from CIOs / CTOs around the country – once they have bought into the basic value proposition of BigData.

 

Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly talks Intel investment and partnership

More verticals – During the part of CEO Tom Reilly, he shared that after Cloudera created a CDH and a number of security improvements, it was now time to look at more vertical applications. And the focus industries for the near future are – no surprise – Financial Services and Telco, two of the industries known for larger IT budgets and spend. Cloudera will of course not send away any business of other customers, e.g. keep working with retailers, the government etc. – but there will be more attention and focus to these two industries. Reilly did not make specific announcements – but it is certainly good to see that Cloudera plans to create vertical value propositions for prospects and customers.

 

The gentleman who started it all... Doug Cutting

Partners matter – We heard for many times that we are still in the early times of BigData. The main challenge for Cloudera is to ramp up partners, that leverage the Cloudera products. Cloudera’s sales strategy relies on partners to create value for enterprises, as Cloudera tries to close enterprise wide deals with the CIO / CTO. The next step then is to bring partners in, that leverage the existing Cloudera platform for their products. If partners cannot show / create value for a customer, the TCO of the overall Cloudera solution won’t be favorable, so Cloudera’s success stands and falls with the value proposition partner can bring to the table.

Brave 7 Cloudera Execs in Analyst Q&A

MyPOV

An insightful analyst summit by Cloudera, that I had to leave early unfortunately, so baring the one to ones that happened next day, it is clear that Cloudera has made a lot of progress and probably maneuvered itself into a leading position in the BigData space. The vendor has added significant functionality and has an ambitious product agenda for the next 18 months. The strategic question for the vendor is – will a leading position on the database side be enough to let Cloudera earn the fruits of its work, or does the vendor have to move in the PaaS and maybe analytical SaaS applications space. Right now that is a partnering opportunity, but we know that historically PaaS and SaaS vendors command multiples of the database vendors in share of wallet. The good news is, that the Cloudera executives are aware of the risk and know they need to keep an eye on the PaaS and analytical SaaS applications space. Or in other works: Enterprises use Cloudera to build next generation applications – the vendor needs to be close to the use cases and make sure it keeps a large enough piece of the overall enterprise spending. 

 

More posts on the BigData / OpenSource space:

 

• News Analysis - Pivotal pivots to Open Source and Hortonworks - or: Open Source always wins - read here
• Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves into DaaS - read here
• News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenStack - Key Steps - but what is the direction? Read here
• Event Report - MongoDB is a showcase for the power of Open Source in the enterprise - read here
• Musings - A manifesto: What are 'true' analytics? Read here
• Musings - The Era of the no-design Database - Read here
• Musings - Time to ditch your datawarehouse .... - Read here

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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

The Google Advisory Council

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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In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that under European law, people have the right to have certain information about them delisted from search engine results. The ECJ ruling was called the "Right to be Forgotten", despite it having little to do with forgetting (c'est la vie). Shortened as RTBF, it is also referred to more clinically as the "Right to be Delisted" (or simply as "Google Spain" because that was one of the parties in the court action). Within just a few months, the RTBF has triggered conferences, public debates, and a TEDx talk.

Google itself did two things very quickly in response to the RTBF ruling.  First, it mobilised a major team to process delisting requests. This is no mean feat -- over 200,000 requests have been received to date; see Google's transparency report. However it's not surprising they got going so quickly as they already have well-practiced processes for take-down notices for copyright and unlawful material.

Secondly, the company convened an Advisory Council of independent experts to formulate strategies for balancing the competing rights and interests bound up in RTBF. The Advisory Council delivered its report in January; it's available online here.

I declare I'm a strong supporter of RTBF. I've written about it here and here, and participated in an IEEE online seminar. I was impressed by the intellectual and eclectic make-up of the Council, which includes a past European Justice Minister, law professors, and a philosopher. And I do appreciate that the issues are highly complex. So I had high expectations of the Council's report.

Yet I found it quite barren.

Recap - the basics of RTBF

EU Justice Commissioner Martine Reicherts in a speech last August gave a clear explanation of the scope of the ECJ ruling, and acknowledged its nuances. Her speech should be required reading. Reicherts summed up the situation thus:

• What did the Court actually say on the right to be forgotten? It said that individuals have the right to ask companies operating search engines to remove links with personal information about them - under certain conditions - when information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant, outdated or excessive for the purposes of data processing. The Court explicitly ruled that the right to be forgotten is not absolute, but that it will always need to be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as the freedom of expression and the freedom of the media - which, by the way, are not absolute rights either.

High tension

Everyone concerned acknowledges there are tensions in the RTBF ruling. The Google Advisory Council Report mentions these tensions (in Section 3) but sadly spends no time critically exploring them. In truth, all privacy involves conflicting requirements, and to that extent, many features of RTBF have been seen before. At p5, the Report mentions that "the [RTBF] Ruling invokes a data subject's right to object to, and require cessation of, the processing of data about himself or herself" (emphasis added); the reader may conclude, as I have, that the computing of search results by a search engine is just another form of data processing.

One of the most important RTBF talking points is whether it's fair that Google is made to adjudicate delisting requests. I have some sympathies for Google here, and yet this is not an entirely novel situation in privacy. A standard feature of international principles-based privacy regimes is the right of individuals to have erroneous personal data corrected (this is, for example, OECD Privacy Principle No. 7 - Individual Participation, and Australian Privacy Principle No. 13 - Correction of Personal Information). And at the top of p5, the Council Report cites the right to have errors rectified. So it is standard practice that a data custodian must have means for processing access and correction requests. Privacy regimes expect there to be dispute resolution mechanisms too, operated by the company concerned. None of this is new. What seems to be new to some stakeholders is the idea that the results of a search engine is just another type of data processing.

A little rushed

The Council explains in the Introduction to the Report that it had to work "on an accelerated timeline, given the urgency with which Google had to begin complying with the Ruling once handed down". I am afraid that the Report shows signs of being a little rushed.

• There are several spelling errors.
• The contributions from non English speakers could have done with some editing.
• Less trivially, many of the footnotes need editing; it's not always clear how a person's footnoted quote supports the text.
• More importantly, the Advisory Council surely operated with Terms of Reference, yet there is no clear explanation of what those were. At the end of the introduction, we're told the group was "convened to advise on criteria that Google should use in striking a balance, such as what role the data subject plays in public life, or whether the information is outdated or no longer relevant. We also considered the best process and inputs to Google's decision making, including input from the original publishers of information at issue, as potentially important aspects of the balancing exercise." I'm surprised there is not a more complete and definitive description of the mission.
• It's not actually clear what sort of search we're all talking about. It's not until p7 of the Report that the qualified phrase "name-based search" is first used. Are there other types of search for which the RTBF does not apply?
• Above all, it's not clear that the Council has reached a proper conclusion. The Report makes a number of suggestions in passing, and there is a collection of "ideas" at the back for improving the adjudication process, but there is no cogent set of recommendations. That may be because the Council didn't actually reach consensus.

And that's one of the most surprising things about the whole exercise. Of the eight independent Council members, five of them wrote "dissenting opinions". The work of an expert advisory committee is not normally framed as a court-like determination, from which members might dissent. And even if it was, to have the majority of members "dissent" casts doubt on the completeness or even the constitution of the process. Is there anything definite to be dissented from?

Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder and chair, was especially strident in his individual views at the back of the Report. He referred to "publishers whose works are being suppressed" (p27 of the Report), and railed against the report itself, calling its recommendation "deeply flawed due to the law itself being deeply flawed". Can he mean the entire Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and European Convention on Human Rights? Perhaps Wales is the sort of person that denies there are any nuances in privacy, because "suppressed" is an exaggeration if we accept that RTBF doesn't cause anything to be forgotten. In my view, it poisons the entire effort when unqualified insults are allowed to be hurled at the law. If Wales thinks so little of the foundation of both the ECJ ruling and the Advisory Council, he might have declined to take part.

A little hollow

Strangely, the Council's Report is altogether silent on the nature of search. It's such a huge part of their business that I have to think the strength of Google's objection to RTBF is energised by some threat it perceives to its famously secret algorithms.

The Google business was founded on its superior Page Rank search method, and the company has spent fantastic funds on R&D, allowing it to keep a competitive edge for a very long time. And the R&D continues. Curiously, just as everyone is debating RTBF, Google researchers published a paper about a new "knowledge based" approach to evaluating web pages. Surely if page ranking was less arbitrary and more transparent, a lot of the heat would come out of RTBF.

Of all the interests to balance in RTBF, Google's business objectives are actually a legitimate part of the mix. Google provides marvelous free services in exchange for data about its users which it converts into revenue, predominantly through advertising. It's a value exchange, and it need not be bad for privacy. A key component of privacy is transparency: people have a right to know what personal information about them is collected, and why. The RTBF analysis seems a little hollow without frank discussion of what everyone gets out of running a search engine.

Further reading

• The European Court of Justice Right to be Forgotten ruling.
• Academic commentary compiled by Julia Powles and Rebekah Larsen from Cambridge University.
• "Knowledge-Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources" by Xin Luna Dong et al, Google.
• My analysis of search and free speech, "Free search, a misnomer"
• My analysis of search as a Big Data process, "The rite to be forgotten".

Microsoft Convergence Conference Day 1

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 I found most interesting at the Convergence conference is the emphasis on people. And the acknowledgement that technology is there to empower people. There’s been, as many of you know, this rub between the “business” and “IT” and their differing agendas. A couple of examples of customer’s at the Microsoft Convergence Conference showed today clearly that there are companies that have overcome the rub between these two differing parts of a business.

When we were in the analyst and press meeting I asked, “Do you see the rub between IT and the business still in the clients you work with?” They answered very honestly. They told us in clients that “get it” that IT and the business do partner. And often the CIO is the Chief Digital Officer or is truly tapped into the business. And what I loved  the results that you see when that happens.

An example of that was how AccuWeather used the business intelligence to know where trains could avoided tornadoes & Eddie Vedder avoided a lightning strike based on AccuWeather intelligence. This example showed how it’s possible to really make the leap of the digital disruption. Another example was Wash Laundry with 900 employees & 70,000 locations. They are improving their ability to collaborate. Both used Microsoft products.

They also said that they still see some companies not “getting it.” And these companies I worry about. The digital disruption isn’t that you have a Facebook page or a mobile app. It’s that you have truly changed the way you see your business, how you have constructed your business model and found budget to transform the customer and employee experience to be the best they can be. This take organizational change and strong leadership.

Which camp does your company fall into?

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research Covering Marketing, Sales and Service to Create great Customer Experiences

The Scapegoat Mentality

This is a combination between a bad Jerry Maguire scene and the conclusions of many months of conversations around many topics (yes, I woke up at 3:30 AM from a bad dream about “scapegoat” execution and had to write it and share it; I may get fired but my boss is quite understanding since he is more into results and outcomes than into looking good doing things…)

As a stream of consciousness post I may get some parts wrong (and feel free to correct or change what I say in the comments; that’s why they are there); as an observational post it is going to be a summary of the past 6-12 months of my conversations, observations, research, and work.

Here it goes.

First, we are entering what has been called many names (investment years, executions years, GSD – getting “stuff” done moments, etc.) but all points to the same: we are done talking about things and having big ideas and “thought leadership” moments and we need to make things happen. As an analyst it is a scare stage: I make my chops as a thought leader pointing to the future and what may be and now it is about to become reality.  For the next 2-5 years (and maybe longer) and as long as we don’t screw up the economy somehow we are going to have banner years of investment and implementations (and this is not just in the enterprise software world where I live – everything in the world is coming around to be at the same level).  This is what paradigm shifts and transformation looks like at the beginning.

Second, the moment of big ideas is behind us and we are to the second part of the plan: get them done.  I had the pleasure to participate in an innovation summit last week and one of the speakers was from Amazon; as he was talking he reminded me of the guiding principle that Jeff Bezos always talks about: stubborn vision, flexible execution.  We are past vision – better be formed and in place.  If you don’t know what your business is going to look like in 36 months right now (and can recite it with your eyes closed and backwards in 10 languages) you are too late.  You will miss the boat and be a laggard instead of a mainstream or advanced adopter. Nothing anyone can do to fix that now – you either have it (because you invested the past 18-24 months preparing) or you don’t and will implement a half-baked vision and “shoot from the hip” as you go along (not always a good idea, unless you are an itinerant execution and have succeeded at that before – but even then, weaker model than knowing where you are going).

Third, you have 18-36 months to invest and you won’t see the results until then.  You may see small incremental results before then – but not the big picture all put together.  We keep repeating obsolete (I wanted to say stupid, but don’t want to insult lots of people) phrases (culture eats execution for breakfast, relentless pursuit, passionate driving, continuous improvement and some others) spun out by pundits looking for notoriety (or should I call them ninjas and rockstars? doesn’t matter – they are still nothing more than catchphrases and sound bites) but the bottom line is that transformation is hard and will take 2-3 years to see results (note: this is better than last time we did this and took 4-5 years; cycles have greatly improved – but still takes time).

Fourth, We love to follow leaders (the real ones, not the ones that speak in platitudes and sound bites and have no idea what they are doing – but look good doing it) but I see few of them.  For all the talk for transformation of marketplaces, workplaces, and schools – they are mostly an inch deep.  There are some serious changes that happened in our societies in the past few years (online communities changed the nature of the world, everyone is more empowered with more and better access to information and knowledge, traditional models have collapsed under their own complex weight, and more like that) but very few people who totally understand and have figured out a way to carve a path forward and have people follow them.

Fifth, this is inevitable.  We are at a crossroads in history and we need to make something happen.  There is time if you want to come from behind but no more if you want to lead the early charges.  You need to have a strategy mapped out, a timeframe built up, and your key players identified already — or continue working in execution and come in as a late mainstream or laggard (and miss the opportunities and rewards of being early to market).

You are reading this and nodding along, I hope, and then you say, “fine – I believe you… but what do you want me to do?

Don’t get into the scapegoat mentality.

It is tempting to put someone without understanding of how the world changed (but that talks big words and good sounding catchphrases) in charge.  A large number of organizations have done that over the past 2-3 years.  The people leading the strategies have proven they could do it in the past, or have proven they could do something in the past, and have been placed in charge.  Because they did it in the past does not mean they can do it again.  Hopefully the qualifying discriminatory stages identified people who get and set a vision (the most critical part is knowing the metrics of success and the urge to iterate instead of arriving at an end-stage) and know how to move towards that.

In spite of my hopes I am finding more and more organizations with the wrong models for implementing transformation.

I look at organizations today and I see three things that make me believe we are more into looking for scapegoats than executing:

1. Vision is not stubborn or is not there, but sounds like it because “we are going to transform” became the mantra (but there is no effective strategy in place to do so)
2. The organization is the same hierarchical model as before (and usually top heavy) instead of flat and flexible
3. The end result is measured by revenue or dollars instead of effective change accomplished

When you get to the point where you think you had to be in 2-3 years one of three things will happen:

First, you will have succeeded to reach the vision you had and learned along the way many things about how to succeed, lead, and more importantly about how to change as you go with flexible execution.  Likely things won’t look like you wanted them 100%, but you will be close and the strategy will be embraced and adopted by everyone.  And you will know it is time to iterate and move to generation 2.0 or even 3.0 of what you are working on.

Second, you will have half succeeded but realized along the way what you missed and why and will improve the vision and strategy as you go along and come up with the second or third generation of the vision – but still be around to implement it and make it work – reaping (eventually) the rewards of achieving the goal – albeit a tad later (which is fine, as long as you iterate effectively instead of “pivoting”)

Third, you will need an scapegoat.  Someone needs to be responsible for the monumental failure stage you reached and whether you remain alive as an entity or collapse and your bones are picked by the organizations in one of the two previous end results, you will need scapegoat; someone has to take the blame for the results (in spite of the many platitudes we speak lately as mantras – fail fast, learn, etc. – we are still a society that needs to points to someone or something as a failure point; its innate).

This is where this post comes in: when you find yourself at that point where you need to point to your failure point and are looking for a scapegoat (which most likely is already identified from the beginning) take the moment to do things right then: don’t just blame, but go through the previous 1,400+ words and see what you missed along the way.

It wasn’t their fault you failed as an organization, there is no a single scapegoat capable of doing that which the organization as a whole couldn’t have done.  The main failure point (and I can tell you this way before you get there) was the stubborn adherence to a business model and organizational structure instead of embracing change and flexile models.  You have a scapegoat to blame for the lack of execution – but the indicators were there way before she or he took that spot: the organization was not ready to execute and no amount of cattle prodding or pushing will change that in a short time and without modifying things and iterating as you go along.

Scapegoats are overrated.  There is no satisfaction in knowing someone is responsible for the failure (in your mind).  You still failed.  Failing fast with a responsible party does not change the outcome – you still failed. Failure is failure.

Instead of looking for an scapegoat preemptively why don’t you focus on empowering each individual in the organization to do things as they see fit, stick to your stubborn vision, and use the empowerment you effected across the organization to succeed at your own pace.

Whereas I hope few people will have implemented an “scapegoat” mentality – I know it is not true.  My hope is to change a few of those with these and subsequent writings.

Welcome to “digital transformation” (but seriously, make the conversation go beyond digital).

Ready?

Parents: Be careful what you divulge (in front of Barbie)

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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A few weeks ago, Samsung was universally condemned for collecting ambient conversations through their new voice recognition Smart TV. Yet the new Hello Barbie is much worse.

Integrating natural language processing technology from ToyTalk, Mattel's high tech update to the iconic doll is said to converse with children, will get to learn voices, and will adapt the conversation in an intelligent way.

The companies say that of all the wishes they have had for Barbie, children have longed to talk to her. So now they can, the question is, at what cost?

Mario Aguilar writing in Gizmodo considers that "voice recognition technology in Hello Barbie is pretty innocuous" because he takes Mattel's word for it that they won't use conversations they collect from kids for marketing. And he accepts ToyTalk's "statement" (which it seems has not been made public) that "Mattel will only use the conversations recorded through Hello Barbie to operate and improve our products, to develop better speech recognition for children, and to improve the natural language processing of children's speech."

Come on! That's the usual boilerplate that companies use to reserve their right to do anything they like with personal information. The companies' soothing statements need to be critically challenged. Aguilar admits "data is an advertising goldmine". So, what will Mattel and ToyTalk do to restrain their re-use of personal information about children? What do they do with the extracted transcripts of what the children say? Where is the personal information being sent, and how is it stored? When will Mattel update its Privacy Policy to cover Hello Barbie? Is the ToyTalk statement mentioned by Aguilar publicly available?

It's bad enough that Samsung seems to expect Smart TV buyers will study a lengthy technical privacy statement, but do we really think it's reasonable for parents to make informed consent decisions around the usage of personal information collected from a doll?

Talk about childhood's loss of innocence.

Resources

The State of Privacy in 2015

The Social Selling Index: What’s Your Score?

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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If you are in sales, which in some capacity we all are, you really must begin the road down social selling. As I have worked on research on this topic, I’ve gotten comments that range everything from “What’s social selling?” to “Social Selling is the best thing that has every happened to sales!” So if you don’t know what social selling is – here’s a paper that will help you understand some of what you need to know: How Sales Leaders and Sales Reps Can Create a Social Selling Organization. When I was at the LinkedIn’s Social Selling Conference, I was given my Social Selling Index (SSI). What is that? The Social Selling Index is made up of 4 pillars:

The Social Selling Index is measured on a scale of 0-100. Each area has a total possible score of 25. What are the drivers of the Social Selling Index? And why should salespeople care about improving their SSI? Here’s some stats that may surprise you below. LinkedIn Research looked at the people who filled out their profile and it showed that SSI leaders have 45% more opportunities per quarter and are 51% more likely to hit quotas than SSI laggards.* (*Source: LinkedIn Global Survey of 5,000 Sales Professionals, October 2013)

Those with a high SSI score were promoted 17 months faster than those with low SSI. Those with a higher SSI could reach VP level 41 months faster than those with a low SSI.

If you are not sure if social selling is for you, you might want to shift that thinking. Otherwise you might be left behind. Wondering who has already adopted Social Selling Index? Here’s some stats:

Create a Strong Personal Brand

Improving your SSI means that you have to understand each section of the SSI. The first part is about creating a personal brand. I was fortunate that when I began my career I did a lot of writing and established myself as someone who often wrote about the leading edge of what was going on in tech and software. That helped. What also helped was that I had bosses who realized the importance of a strong personal brand. At the time I was a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The partner I worked for explained to me that the reason businesses buy from PWC was, and it was in this order: 1. Who I was (my personal brand, the work I’d be doing and the expertise I’d bring to the table 2. The actual work we would do 3. the fact that we were from the firm PWC. At the time PWC was a 150 year old brand. To me, having a well established brand recognize the importance of personal branding was pretty unusual and astounding. But I went with it and it has served me well. Flash forward 15-20 years and now personal branding is — well let’s just say — “in fashion!”

How do you create a personal brand. Part of that can be done on LinkedIn. Research shows that 81% of people are more likely to engage with someone with a strong, professional brand. When I was at the LinkedIn Social Selling Conference, they gave each attendee their social selling index. Mine is below. What you can see is that I score very high (21) in creating a professional brand. However, I score lower in the next two sections of the social selling index. That makes sense because I am an analyst, not a sales person. I score better on building strong relationships, because that is something that is important as an analyst. So if you have not tried social selling, I highly recommend it. It’s truly where the future of selling is going. And note that it may require that you and / or your team get training. It’s important to understand some of the best practices so you can maximize your social selling success!

And here’s a link to a paper on some best practices on social selling that I put together: How Sales Leaders and Sales Reps Can Create a Social Selling Organization.

@Drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to Create Better Customer Experiences.

Apple Watch – it’s about time, not really.

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…...

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This past week has been a buzz about watches. Remember those devices? Would sit on your wrist and tell you what time of the day it was, much better than carrying a sundial or an hourglass around. Unfortunately for watches, the emergence of the ubiquitous mobile phone has diminished the primary value of the watch – telling time. With most of us staring at our smart phones between 60 – 90 minutes a day, we can see what time it is with a simple glance to the top of our mobile phone screens. By some studies as many as 50% of mobile phone users have no longer a need to wear a watch. So why is Apple, and by some accounts from Mobile World Congress, so many other technology players coming out with watches? Click here for a good piece on MWC from a fellow Constellation Research member.

Here is why it makes sense – it isn’t about the “watch.” These technology players are all trying to get into this space because they want to make sure they get a piece of the real estate that is being battled over – the wrist. The reality is watch sales (non smart watches) has not gone away and is actually on an upswing.

No one is buying watches? Not so fast…

The fact that mechanical types are growing rapidly would reinforce the notion that watches are not about telling time but about fashion, they are closer to Cartier than to Blackberry. The truth is the best watches for time keeping are the digital quartz watches you can purchase at CVS for $10. An automatic watch from Jaeger-LeCoultre probably doesn’t keep time as precisely as a digital Casio – but if you spend the thousands of dollars on a Jaeger-LeCoultre or an A. Lange & Söhne you aren’t doing it because you look at your wrist for the time. We should not think about Apple and the likes trying to compete in the same space as the Omegas, Baume & Merciers and Patek Philippes are in. Wearables are the next wave of connectivity for consumers and corporations. While we are not about to give up our smart phones, the real estate on our wrists has yet to be fully exploited. Of course we have items such as Fitbits that are already finding their way to our arms. Entertainment giants such as Disney are already leveraging the technology with their Magicband. But what is in play for Apple, Samsung, Motorola etc is getting their platform on us. What is done with that platform depends on where application providers’ imaginations can take us. Some use cases that make this more than a watch:

• Wellness – think of a Fitbit or a Garmin Vivofit with beefed up computation power. Devices will be able to be even smarter with our health. It will not be just about how many steps we took but how has it impacted our glucose levels or our heart rate.
• Mobile payment – the wallet is really under increased pressure. Payment can be done by the swipe of our wrist. Since we are wearing the device could we integrate some biometrics to validate that we are the actual user…sure beats remembering all those passwords.
• Manufacturing efficiencies – Many companies are working with the likes of Google glass to bring a wearable the manufacturing floor. Having a device on the wrist that can be voice controlled opens up the door for an array of manufacturing applications. Adding some valuable functional possibilities in the supply chain.
• Better pick n pack for warehouse and retailers – Warehouse operations are always seeking to find new labor efficiencies with how they find inventory, pick it and prepare it for shipment. This is also true in retail, especially when more retailers are starting to use their physical stores as distribution centers.

Of course we are still in the early stages of these types of wearables and their use cases. Adoption will be tied to the price, not sure if the $10,000 Apple Watch will be the driver for adoption (if I had that kind of disposable

I would take one of these with the $10k

income for a wrist device, it would be a real automatic watch!). The $349 price point for the Apple Sport Watch should be low enough to get some traction  with consumers.

For the business uses the price point will have to come down further. Much like tablets, when the iPad came out the $500 price tag was too high for much industrial adoption, it was only when Android tablets at lower price points did the tablet become more ubiquitous.

Apple once again has created a disruptive device. Question remains will it, like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, have the same level of adoption for both consumers and business usage? But let us not compare what Apple and others are putting out as a “watch.” It is the correct first letter but it is closer to an Apple Wearable. Just like the iPhone is really more than a phone. It became a canvass for application providers to express their creative services.

Software AG isn’t picking sides

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…...

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It must be the season for analyst days, for the second week in a row I attended an event specifically for industry analysts, the media and financial analysts. These events are a great way to get a quick update, spend some quality time with executives and see old friends. Plus this one was a few blocks away in Boston! Software AG rolled out their executives to provide a recap on where they came from in 2014 and more importantly where they see the future for the German software giant.

Software AG stressed their transition to helping their customers’ transition to a digital business. Where does digital disruption come from? From Dr John Bates presentation, Software AG pointed out three areas they are seeing disruption come from:

• Connected customer: This is nothing new, but we are all aware that the consumers’ voice is growing in importance. Digital aspects such as social media, mobile, big data to name a few, force companies to seek a 360-degree view of their customers.
• IoT – the Internet of Things: In a way IoT is making machines and devices as connected as the customer. Having this level of connectivity brings great opportunity as well as potential additional IT strain to companies.
• Proactive risk compliance: This is particularly true in such industries as finance, but also in other verticals such as life sciences and even food and beverage.

In order to address these disruptors and empower their customers they are focusing on providing a digital business platform. An agnostic middleware that will allow developers to create applications that can be created “as needed.” All interesting ideas and make sense. The main question moving forward is how will Software AG balance their desire to remain neutral and agnostic, while trying to create the suite and ecosystem that can propel the software vendor in to a leadership position. Their belief is that the software industry has changed and that the old style that package application vendors went about developing solutions cannot meet the needs of today’s businesses.

There is some merit to this point of view. The fact software has “eaten” the world is the reality of the business environment we live in. Companies will look to have the flexibility and tools available to quickly spin up necessary applications. Solutions that are crucial for these companies to respond to their business needs. For example companies such as Turkcell can ensure they have the proper solutions in place to respond to their demands. 

Leaning on SAG to address customer needs. Being capable of flexibly creating solutions that address demand creation and shaping are vital to drive their retail practice. Turkcell is dealing with the connected customer, where demands and needs are constantly evolving. The ability for Turkcell to have the flexibility to create solutions to address these ever changing needs is crucial. Taking advantage of this flexibility has offered Turkcell the ability to offer their customers the right promotion at a precise time, yielding $15m of additional revenue.

Software AG is heading in the right direction and is providing relevant case studies when it comes to creating a true digital business platform. The question is can they continue to be Switzerland (with regards to their neutrality) of the solution providers or will they eventually have to commit themselves to an ecosystem?

Event Report: Inside the #SXSW2015 Phenom - Meerkat

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…...

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Tweeting Live Video Takes Center Stage At #SXSW2015

Live video service Meerkat's launch may well rise above the fray at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) convention. After slews of invites the two weeks before, the service has taken off. Early users have found three major use cases as SXSW has proven to be the testing ground for live video in the twitter sphere:

• 1. Fixed feeds. Frank's pizza shop in Toronto went on full live stream of the kitchen. Given it was on for hours, almost everyone went first to that feed. In fact, early adopters realized that this could be a great way to tap into CCTV feeds and anywhere battery life would not be an issue for broadcast. Digital and social strategists should consider how to plan for live feeds at events and conferences. Meerkat could improve the service by creating a broadcast schedule or ability to follow a large number of feeds. Curation is key here.

• 2. Person on the street. Folks like David Armano quickly saw Meerkat as a great way to share thoughts and conduct live broadcasts (see Figure 1). The key challenge was to stay on longer than 5 minutes so folks could catch up to the stream and watch. However, this application has a lot of appeal for live coverage at action packed events. Digital and social strategists could employ a number of broadcasters on the street to cover an event, story, or issue. What would be nice would be able to pick different streams for a Hollywood squares like face off.

• 3. Scheduled broadcast. The scheduled broadcast model may prove to be the more reliable approach. Amanda Coolong was early to schedule her SXSW AI Future panel at 11:00 on Saturday March 14th. This approach has the biggest appeal as potential viewers would know when to watch. Kudos to Alan Gleeson got kudos as well for putting his Wales v Ireland game. This strategy may yield the most regular viewers and a programming guide and search would take the service to the next level.

Preorder Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press In Q2 2015. Learn more.

The Bottom Line: Meerkat Breathes New Life To Twitter Keep in in mind many live stream services have failed to date with Vine being the most recent example of what could have worked but didn't. Six seconds was just not enough. Success requires the viral nature of community and social graph. As David Armano noted in his Meerkat stream of consciousness this morning, Twitter engagement has shifted to more broadcast than engagement. Meerkat changes the content stream to improve engagement as live video can. Unfortunately, the recent battle by Twitter to cut off Meerkat will only add fuel to the fire as SXSW attendees rally to rebuild community and support. Meerkat will need to find a home for community and social graph but options such as LinkedIn and other networks may prove to be its savior should Twitter make the big fight about Periscope.

Your POV.

Ready for digital disruption by deploying an army of meerkatters? Are you meerkatting your event? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Resources

Progress Report – Ceridian executes on product, next challenge – implementation capacity, then sales …

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 were invited to the Ceridian Analyst Summit in San Francisco earlier this week, and the vendor organized a great event. The event itself was extended from one to one and half days, with the first half day kicked off onsite at a customer location (a major retailer, name under NDA), that gave an insightful update on how and why they use Ceridian.

As usual with analyst briefing events – here are my top 3 takeaways:

A new UI – Ceridian has created a new version of the user interface for Dayforce, which addresses shortfalls of the previous user interface. In the last 20 month’s Ceridian has moved off a very Microsoft centric user interface, to a HTML5 based user interface that was and looked like a first version to now a good looking, dense enough for their heavy users and still visually appealing modern user interface. Sliders, guiding points, one consistent menu are some of the new design elements. And as usual, once you have a great new user interface in place, vendors need to make sure it becomes consistent across all products, which is Ceridian’s next milestone in the near future.

Ceridian Recruiting

Ceridian doing the ‘hard stuff’ – Ceridian keeps focusing on the hard compliance and software architecture issues that not many vendors tackle, in the areas of payroll, workforce management and overall compliance. Legislative and statutory changes overwhelm enterprises across the world, and it is good to see that Ceridian is a vendor that focusses in helping enterprises to address these challenges. As such the vendor invests and walks the extra mile – now it has to show value from that work, which is quickly apparent to the practitioner, but Ceridian now needs to find a ways to demonstrate the value on a CxO level, too. The ROI case studies shown on the first day of the analyst summit are impressive and form a compelling base for such a sales pitch and positioning. Ceridian also keeps showing the value on one integrated HCM system, which runs on a single schema, set of APIs etc. And it is a good point to emphasize for Ceridian, as long as Workforce Management is in the picture. Luckily that is 80% of the vendors customers, but it will be interesting to see how well Ceridian can create and maintain marketing momentum beyond the workforce management requiring industries. Or in other words, how well can Ceridian compete when the scope is only HR Core, Talent Management and Payroll.
 

Ceridian Performance Management

Ceridian adding some ‘soft stuff’ – The Ceridian team surprised the attending analysts with the unveiling of the acquisition of RelatedMatters. Founded by two former Ultimate execs, RelatedMatters has focused on how well people do relate (and with that work with /) to each other, a key psychographic element that is under represented in today’s HCM software. As Ceridian CEO David Ossip stated, RelatedMatters is an acquihire – not only does Ceridian get some interesting software and methodology on the psycho-analytic side, but also two HCM industry veterans. As for the RelatedMatters functionality, Ceridian had the guts to have the analyst use the tool, and most of them complied. The analyst crews can now see how well we relate to each other on a personality side – will be interesting to see how real we think it is. And that’s where all attempts of the HCM software vendors using personality and psychographic information stand right now, it intrinsically makes sense, but the methodology has to show its value for business uses day in and day out. Too early to tell for Ceridian / RelatedMatters – but kudos to Ceridian for the move, we will see how well it works in every day use.

The TeamRelate product

Analyst Tidbits

• Global remains a focus – Ceridian keeps investing into becoming more global HCM system provider. It has made a major push on the compliance side, which for a vendor with Workforce Management capabilities is a little more complex. With the adoption of the EU Work Directive in the product, Ceridian now has the common set of legislative requirements available in Dayforce to run compliant workforce management across the EU. Moreover the vendor now supports 12 languages in the product, making Ceridian a viable vendor option for global HCM system rollouts. 
   
• New Payroll for the UK – Ceridian is in a strong market position in the UK, being the #2 payroll provider, albeit its payroll is an older, legacy product. Last week at Ceridian UK’s user conference, the vendor already shared that it will build a new UK payroll, definitively a good but gutsy move. But if Ceridian succeeds, adding modern payroll techniques (and best practices) like continuous payroll execution, ad hoc payroll results for payees, instant overtime calculation etc,. it has a shot at the #1 market position in the UK.

• Talent Management build out continues – It was good to see that Ceridian keeps building out Talent Management as announced a year ago at the Boston analyst meeting. The vendor is on track with Recruiting being available today, Onboarding and Performance Management coming this year. At this point we can certainly say that Ceridian is on track to have a complete Talent Management suite in 2016, as the vendor announced in spring 2014.
   
• Loyal to the roots – On many occasions during the one and half days Ossip repeated that Ceridian – despite all the work on Core HR, Workforce Management and Talent Management – is committed to its Payroll and compliance business. That is a message that is good to hear for the existing customers, and certainly can be read as ‘protecting the core’ strategy. But Ceridian has the DNA and capability to make sure that other functions have a compliance value add, too – a differentiation that Ceridian needs to keep highlighting in the market place and should keep educating audiences about. 

• Improved Finance situation – Thanks to the sale of Comdata, Ceridian’s financial position has much improved, namely the debt the vendor carries from its past. CFO Lois Martin presented a favorable outlook in regards of debt due dates, which should give Ceridian the opportunity to invest into product and go to market activities in the next year. [Note I am not a financial analyst, check colleagues who are more in tune with that matter].

MyPOV

A much improved analyst summit by Ceridian from an agenda and venue perspective, again with tons of information and a well received focus on product. Marketing, Sales, Services and Support are all important functions and give ample room to hamper a successful product, but in the SaaS age it is the product capability, attractiveness and roadmap that sets up the success trajectory for a vendor. It was good to see Ceridian giving product so much ample room. Likewise it remains clear that Ossip is the intellectual driver behind Dayforce on a strategic level, very few CEOs of a 5000 FTE enterprise know their products on that detail level.

The good news for Ceridian, its customers and prospects is that the vendor shows solid execution on the product roadmap, and deserves respect for being the first major HCM vendor to lay out a multi year roadmap for product in general and e.g. the Talent Management completion in specific. Given the product progress, that of course Ceridian needs to maintain, the focus shifts to partners, mainly to address implementation capacity and know-how. Good to see Ceridian has the plans in place to address this, but it needs to execute to have more Dayforce implementations run by partners, to reach better economies of scale. The same is key on the go to market side, where Ceridian needs to create traction in Europe – beyond the UK. And an APAC strategy does not seem to be on the drawing boards yet (or I missed it). But having to focus on go to market issues and service delivery capacity is a good sign and a good problem to have, these will be the key areas to watch on how Ceridian makes progress throughout 2015.

Also on Ceridian

• Event Report - CeridianINSIGHTS 2014 - Ceridian innovates and adds key functionality - read here
• First Take - Ceridian INSIGHTS Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• Progress Report - Ceridian makes a lot of progress - but the road(map) is long - read here
• Ceridian transforming itself and with that the game – read here

And unrelated to Ceridian - but how important payroll can be for HCM innovation:

• Could the paycheck reinvent HCM - yes it can - read here
• And suddenly... payroll matters again - read here