| Constellation Research

Infor runs CloudSuite on AWS - Inflection Point or hot air balloon?

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…...

Last week was all dominated by public cloud announcements, starting with Cisco’s Intercloud, then Google Cloud platform live event, then AWS Summit and lastly the Microsoft cloudformobile event. In the midst of this – one market move got less attention than it should have: Infor announced during the AWS Summit keynote that it will run its CloudSuite applications on AWS.

So let’s take a first look at the press release and then at what strategy Infor maybe up to, finalizing around the implication for market and customers and a verdict in regards of this forming an inflection point or more a hot air balloon.

Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, today announced Infor CloudSuite^TM, the first group of industry-specific application suites available on Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud. Infor CloudSuite provides beautiful software with deep industry functionality and a flexible, subscription-based delivery model that significantly reduces upfront IT expenditure.

MyPOV – This makes Infor the first enterprise application vendor of size to rely for overall core processes on a public cloud, here AWS. While development and test systems have been available for a long time (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Workday etc.) only very narrow application scopes have been brought to the public cloud (e.g. Infor with its analytical offering on based on AWS Redshift) for production purposes, or their scope has not been too broadly advertised (e.g. Saleforce.com’s Heroku runs on AWS) or it has been only used in very selected scenarios (running SAP, Oracle or Microsoft enterprise apps in production on AWS).

Each industry suite within Infor CloudSuite is built by unifying multiple applications that historically were deployed independently to holistically support core business functions by industry. This core, along with fast and simple provisioning and a SaaS pricing model will enable Infor CloudSuite to change the way enterprise software is delivered to and consumed by customers.

MyPOV – Deep vertical automation is one of the leitmotivs of Infor's products and the company is investing heavily in this area. What Infor is doing is pretty much best practice for anyone out there facing the challenge of building and delivering next generation applications on a public cloud infrastructure. The remarkable part is that Infor is the first - and so far the only - enterprise application vendor to deploy complete transactional application in production on a public cloud (here AWS).

"SaaS today refers primarily to HCM, CRM or another edge application, never to mission-critical business operations," said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. "Infor CloudSuite redefines cloud for the enterprise, delivering the first full suite of business applications purpose-built by industry running in a public cloud through Amazon Web Services."

"Customers want help figuring out how to move more of their operations into the AWS Cloud. They want to shift their resources to focus on what they do best, rather than on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing IT and complex software," said Andy Jassy, SVP, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "We are excited that Infor is addressing these needs using the AWS platform. Infor CloudSuite on AWS delivers a simplified and enhanced user experience, across a multitude of industries, and provides all the agility, elasticity, and cost benefits of the AWS Cloud to enterprise customers around the world."

MyPOV – No surprise – both Philips and Jassy are excited about this. And the excitement is deserved as Infor becomes the first mover across the large enterprise software vendors to deploy productions systems on a public IaaS like AWS, and AWS gets a lot of enterprise load into their cloud. Enterprise load has been something that AWS wants (and needs to) aggressively ramp up inside of enterprises to not let traditional enterprise vendors (that now have cloud offerings) like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, HP etc. gather this lucrative business.

Infor will leverage the AWS cloud infrastructure to allow customers to take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when they need them, on demand and with auto-scaling built into the Infor applications. Infor is in the process of consolidating existing subscribers and transitioning current internal infrastructure to the AWS platform. AWS provides services in 10 Regions, with 25 Availability Zones and 51 Amazon CloudFront Edge locations globally.

MyPOV – This is a key paragraph that documents, that Infor has tried to build out its own datacenter infrastructure – but has obviously realized that moving to a public IaaS provider like AWS is better for Infor. And it makes sense – instead of putting CAPEX into data centers, Infor gains critical capital to pore into R&D or acquisitions. From a technology stack perspective that is relatively easy to do for Infor, as it is standardizing around JBoss, PostgreSQL and Linux. All platforms that AWS offers. The argument of ‘no one can run our tech stack better than us’ is no argument for a generic and open source based technology stack that Infor has opted to build its next generation applications on. Experience and scale matter much more here.

"AWS has the best and most advanced cloud infrastructure in the world, providing a delivery model, cost structure, and focus on operational excellence that perfectly complements and enhances our products," said Phillips. "Moreover, the tie between Infor and AWS is strengthened through a common focus on customer experience, rapid-pace of innovation, and standards-based architecture."

MyPOV – Well I am sure other public cloud IaaS may have given Infor a similar overlap – but as Philips mentioned in his presentation at AWS Summit – none of them was as easy and fast to do business with like AWS. And the JBoss, PostgreSQL and Linux stack eliminated many of the other public cloud IaaS providers. And PostgreSQL was also new to AWS, which announced PostgreSQL support at their re:invent conference only last November as beta (and with that it is available to all customers).

The other emphasis needs to be on standards based which is key for Infor’s technology direction – but also for AWS. As long as standards are popular – they are key winners for AWS and enterprise software vendors like Infor.

Infor plans to roll out industry suites, delivered on AWS, throughout 2014, beginning this spring with Infor CloudSuite Automotive, Infor CloudSuite Aerospace & Defense, and Infor CloudSuite Hospitality. Early this summer Infor expects to deliver Infor CloudSuite Corporate, with a core of best-in-class financials and Infor's complete human capital management suite. [..]

MyPOV – Interesting that Infor is delivering Aerospace and Defense offerings so early, an industry ruled by very high security requirements. It could well be thought that using AWS’ cloud offerings was the faster – and potentially even only way for Infor to get a Defense vertical offering out in the first half of 2014.. The true landmark will be CloudSuite Corporate (Financials and HCM automation) – which will appeal to all of Infor’s customers and is slotted to be available mid-2014..

Massive CAPEX Savings

There can be no question that Infor is gaining significant CAPEX savings from the move. Instead of having to build out a global data center and network infrastructure, it can now piggy back on AWS. To a large extent Infor’s move is like Netflix’s move, which opted years ago to use AWS for its streaming (and more) services. Infor’s COO Pam Murphy even looked relieved to a certain point to not have to deal with the compliance and certification anymore (see here interview with John Furrier and team here).

The Security concerns

Needless to say when you move core enterprise data in the public cloud, there will be security concerns. Infor has done a good job addressing these heads on with almost a quarter of the information of the CloudSuite website centering on security. Infor even went so far to put the email address of their Information Security Officer, Jim Hoover on the website. Kudos for accessibility.

But to a certain point Infor hedges here – as it offers it applications as well on premises, so it’s really the customer who decides at the end of the day. And letting the customer decide is never a bad strategy at the end of the day.

Holistic approach is key

The Infor management team around Philips has plenty of sales execution experience – so no surprise that Infor is equally changing sales compensation plans to motivate its salesforce to move to CloudSuite. A key more to create revenue traction.

Moreover, Infor has involved its substantial 3000+ member partner network that is key to help move install base customer over to the new offering.

And lastly Infor offers a standardized upgrade program with UpgradeX to its customers. For a fixed price Infor will value engineer the move to the cloud, transfer data, train and support customers moving to Infor 10x.

Market Implications

Smaller ISVs with cloud offerings need to take a hard look at the cost of their datacenters and their build out, especially with a global customer base and / or global ambition. Even larger enterprise software vendors like SAP and Oracle will probably need to take a fresh look at their cost calculations.

On the IaaS side AWS has the largest enterprise software vendor on the hook, as Oracle for sure and SAP most likely will go down the path of running their own cloud infrastructure. But as the MDM offering from SAP has already shown, AWS is certainly an attractive option for certain SAP offerings, too. AWS competitors have missed out on one of the largest enterprise software loads out there

Customer Implications

For Infor customers – These customers should take a good look at the CloudSuite offering, as long as functional coverage of CloudSuite vs their existing offering is attractive. Then it comes to security considerations, upgrade costs and overall risk appetite to decide for CloudSuite on premises – or on top of AWS.

For non Infor customers – This is an area to watch. Wait for the offering to mature but then certainly have a look at it. Use the intelligence around the pricing and licensing to ask for similar numbers from your existing enterprise application vendor. If they can be more or less matched, good news, if they cannot be matched – time to look at vendors that can match them, including Infor.

Implications for Infor

Infor has been planning this move for a while, so we can expect that Philips and team know what they are doing. The holistic approach is a key validation point for this. Now it comes back for Infor to execute by delivering what it announced and to create the customer momentum to make this a successful move on the revenue side.

MyPOV

A very good move by Infor, ridding itself of high CAPEX and worries around a global datacenter and network rollout. Infor's commitment to an open source stack is another key piece of its strategy to disrupt its main competitors (SAP, Oracle), reducing and challenging their steady technology license streams.

And a key win for AWS on the enterprise side. If both Infor and AWS deliver, not only SaaS by accident, but SaaS on AWS by accident (customers buying CloudSuite and with that run on AWS) will happen – nothing better can occur for AWS. So definitively an inflection point – not a hot air balloon – as long as Infor can create the commercial success and execute on its ambitious product roadmap.

More about Infor

Inforum 2013 – Takeaways from the Keynote – Day 2 – read here.
Infor’s bet on microverticals – the good, the bad the ugly – read here.

More about AWS:

Event Report – AWS Summit in San Fr.ancisco – AWS keeps doing what has been working since 8 years – read here
AWS moves the yardstick - Day 2 reinvent takeaways - read here.
AWS powers on, into new markets - Day 1 reinvent takeaways - read here.
The Cloud is growing up - three signs in the News - read here.
Amazon AWS powers on - read here.

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

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Candy Crush or Bust: ENSW Apps Must Redesign or Get Crushed

Zachary Jeans

Principal Strategist and Founder
Genius Cloud Solutions

Zachary Jeans is Principal Strategist and Founder of Genius Cloud Solutions. He enjoys discovering new market strategies and digital disruption. Zachary has been the number one Salesforce influencer on Twitter according to research done by Run Consultants in 2014 & 2015. He has also earned the distinction of being in the Top 50 retweeted people in the world by CIOs. He is a Constellation Research Orbits member, a select group focused on digital disruption in technology, business models, and society. Beyond the focus of technology, Zachary was co-leader of LeadWithGiants for 5 years, an organization dedicated to raising up 10,000 uplifting leaders across eduction, business, tech, and government. He then founded ImpactMatters Chat, a leadership-oriented community…...

The next generation of Enterprise Software Applications (#EnSW) will be as easy to download & use as Candy Crush, by King.com, Ltd. They will make use of backend data systems, (PaaS), providers like Salesforce, IBM, AWS, and Rackspace. They’ll integrate with almost any app out there, including consumer apps that seemingly have no business value, but lifestyle value. They’ll work well because they’ve been designed well. And they’ll be beautiful.

The next generation of #EnSW will burn their old school competitors on cost because these solutions will be built by 2 people, not 200. Imagine a business paying 2% the cost of their existing CRM, ERP, or HCM solution. ‘In-app’ upgrades will be available for project durations, and advanced feature use will be unlocked for a small premium. For cash starved Non-Profits or start-ups, freemium versions will be available, with full features, monetized thru ‘in-app’ advertising. Envision these #EnSW disruptors offering to buy out their clients contract cancellation fees like T-Mobile recently did in the consumer cell phone market. It’ll be a wonderful world where a business doesn’t have to pay thousands of dollars to an implementation company or have a developers come in regularly to code new functionality. These divergent #EnSW apps will grab the untold hundred’s of millions of businesses that have yet to implement a business solution. They will own the emerging global markets in Africa, Eastern Europe, South and Central America.

The next generation of #EnSW will never have you enter data into a ‘field’ again, because it will be smart enough to know what to grab and where to put it. User security will be gamified ‘in-app’, rewarding good use, and creating negative sentiment in degrees for the bad use. User adoption will be viral; not the anemic grind that typically occurs when introducing a #EnSW solution in the workplace. The backend administration will be as fluid and fun as the front-end experience. The next gen #EnSW apps will be stupid easy, fun, insightful, witty, and helpful ~anything that isn’t, will get crushed.

New C-Suite Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer

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45% of Global Enterprises Are Running Production-Level Cloud Apps Today

Microsoft’s latest study shows enterprises’ pace of cloud computing adoption continues to accelerate. Nearly half of the respondents (45%) report they have cloud-based applications running in production environments. 58% report that they selectively target new applications and projects for cloud computing.

Microsoft commissioned 451 Research to complete one of the most comprehensive global surveys to date of hosting and cloud computing, titled Hosting and Cloud Go Mainstream releasing the results earlier this month. The 74 page slide deck of results provides a wealth of insights into the current and future state of hosting and cloud computing. 451 Research constructed the methodology to include interviews with 2,000 companies and organizations of all sizes from 11 countries, with more than a third of respondents coming from the United States. Microsoft and 451 Research provided the slides showing the result of screener questions, which provides a useful context for analyzing the survey results.

Here are the key take-aways from the study:

45% of enterprises globally are running production-level cloud computing applications today. North America and Asia have the greatest percentage of enterprises reporting broad implementation of production cloud-based applications (17% each). North America has the greatest percentage of enterprises in the discovery and evaluation phase of cloud computing adoption at 29%.

58% of global enterprises are selectively target new applications for cloud computing, with 18% heavily relying on cloud computing for new projects. The following graphic shows the distribution of organizations’’ approaches to using cloud computing for new applications or IT projects.

SaaS (71%) and Hosted Infrastructure Services (69%) are the two most common IT services currently purchased today, with 14% growth forecasted in each by 2016. The fastest growing category is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), with 37% purchasing these services today projected to grow another 26% in two years.

SaaS is most prevalent in enterprises with over 500 employees, and Hosted Infrastructure Services, in government and education. Please see the graphic below for the distribution of responses by IT service and organization type.

Spending on hosted private clouds will increase from 28% of spending today to 32% in 2016, with traditional dedicated infrastructure services dropping from 48% to 42%.

The majority of SaaS users are employees (45%) followed by businesses (which could be interpreted as suppliers and the broader supply chain) (22%), consumers (18%) and business partners (including distribution channels (14%).

Telephone conversations with customer support specialists is the most valuable form of communication (just over 60%) across all support channels. It is also the most preferred channel for SaaS support.

Business applications (17%), databases (14%) and e-mail 12%) are the top three application spending categories today in hosted and cloud applications. The following graphic breaks out spending by hosting and cloud configuration.

Having a well-defined architecture for security (7.7 out of 8.0), understanding who the end-users are (7.6) and train users to be cautious with access & security (7.5) in addition to having a well-defined architecture for performance (7.5) are the three top best practices for cloud computing projects.

44% of enterprises globally have “shadow IT”, meaning business units are spending their own budget on cloud computing projects outside of the IT approval processes. The following graphic provides the breakdown by type of organization included in the survey.

87% of respondents globally would recommend cloud computing to a peer or colleague and 13% would not. When asked why or why not, respondents most often mentioned a good experience and better service/it works (approximately 17%), followed by improving costs/cost effective/cheaper (approximately 16%). Security issues and concerns (25%) and uncertainty/it’s too new (approximately 16%) are the reasons for not recommending cloud computing.

New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Microsoft SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

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Event Report: The Storify From #AdobeSummit

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…...

Market Leaders And Fast Followers Celebrate A Decade Of Digital Marketing Vision

In 2004, Omniture founder Josh James, an avid skier, held the first Summit atop the Snowbird Ski Resort for 270 early adopters and converted. Fast forward eleven years to 2014, an estimated 7000 customers, partners, influencers, and prospects gathered at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah March 25th to March 28th, 2014 in search of reinvention in digital marketing (see Figure 1). Since that time, Adobe Summit has emerged as a must attend event for those looking at the entire digital experience from creative to commerce. Despite the size, this year’s event remained equally intimate. At almost every venue, restaurant, or session, attendees remarked on how easy it was to meet people and discover, connect, and engage on the future of digital marketing.

Enclosed is the Storify of Tweets from #AdobeSummit:

Figure 1. Storify from #AdobeSummit

View the story "2014 #AdobeSummit at the Salt Palace, Salt Lake City, UT #DigitalBiz" on Storify

Your POV.

Ready for digital disruption? Are you an Adobe shop? Will you add additional modules of Adobe? How did you like Adobe Summit? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

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

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

Resources

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Disclosure

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

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

Copyright © 2001 -2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
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Marketing Transformation Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Future of Work New C-Suite Matrix Commerce Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Event Report adobe SoftwareInsider SAP Marketing B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience AI ML Generative AI Analytics Automation Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Growth eCommerce Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Robotics HR HCM business Metaverse developer SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Quantum Computing Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS M&A Enterprise Service Security Zero Trust Executive Events Chief Marketing Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Experience Officer

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Early Reports Say the Oracle Sales Cloud May Finally Have Come of Age

Constellation Research

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

At this year’s Collaborate, Oracle plans to make a formal announcement of Release 8 of the Oracle Sales Cloud, but behind the scenes new customers can use the release now and existing Release 7 customers are being ported over in the next few weeks. This presents the market with something of a paradox since the Oracle Sales Cloud is both a new product and a mature product at the same time. While it has unusually deep functionality for a new product in features such as integration and territory management, it is also subject to the same rules of software development as any new product and customers of past releases encountered some major hiccups during adoption.

Yet the overwhelming consensus among customers, partners, and other interested parties we talked with was that with Release 8 the Oracle Sales Cloud has finally come of age. The proof, of course, is in the pudding, but if the platform has stabilized, the time has come to examine the mature aspects of the product. These include:

Integration – Among the early adopters we spoke with, the most important factor in choosing the Oracle Sales Cloud was integration with either their existing Oracle E-Business Suite or JD Edwards back office systems. Customers also cited Microsoft Outlook integration as being a key factor in their decision to use the product. Oracle also integration with Siebel and other Oracle CX products as well.

Analytics - The customers we talked with were universally able to improve forecast accuracy and build executive management support for their projects based on the prebuilt reports in the system. Oracle also has brought into Release 8 some features it developed for its own internal use. Based on our interviews, early adopters found analytics be one of the strongest parts of the product and one that surpassed their expectations.

Usability –Oracle beefed up the user interface and gave the product a more consumer-like look and feel. User adoption is an area the company is investing heavily in to improve not only in the way the product looks but also the way it works. Even without the new interface, some early users of the product reported a measurable increase in sales rep adoption.

Mobility – Although mobile demo versions of the product can be downloaded today from Google Play and the Apple Apps stores, most customers we spoke with were only just beginning to use this feature although oddly it was often cited as the most promising aspect of the product to roll out in the future.

Complex Territory Management - Most of the customers we spoke with were midmarket organizations with relatively straightforward territory and account plans and did not make use this features. One large multinational customer with direct and indirect channels did cite the territory management features as an important reason they selected the Oracle Sales Cloud.

Social Collaboration - Given the nature of the business most of the customers we spoke with – specialty chemicals, industrial manufacturers, system integration, transaction processing – the social collaboration features has not been leveraged although one customer reported using the social media features to communicate with their system integrator.

If the platform proves stable in production over in the next few weeks, and given its advanced features and the fact we are entering the time of year when Oracle is most aggressive in offering discounts, organizations considering new CRM systems would be well served to take a careful look at Oracle Sales Cloud Release 8.

Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Oracle SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing Transformation IBM Chief Marketing Officer

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10 Things Most Exceptional CIOs Never Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you have others to add?

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

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

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

IBMiX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

On March 26^th SAP announced the intention to acquire Fieldglass, a leading vendor in the contingent workforce management software category. We take a look at the news release and then take a stab at the background of the acquisition and consider the implications on the marketplace.

So let’s start with a news analysis of the acquisition, the press release can be found here:

WALLDORF, Germany - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced plans to acquire Fieldglass, the leading technology provider for procuring and managing contingent labor and services. The addition of Fieldglass’ cloud-based Vendor Management System (VMS) solution meets the growing demand among employers to manage flexible workforces that can be quickly engaged and on-boarded to support rapidly changing business and customer needs. Combined with the collaborative, network-based procurement capabilities of Ariba and the human resources expertise of SuccessFactors, the acquisition uniquely positions SAP to deliver a platform for businesses to manage their entire workforce — both temporary and permanent staff — from initial recruiting and on-boarding to ongoing development, performance management, retention and retirement.

Contingent labor and statement-of-work services is a US$3.3 trillion, high-growth market according to industry analyst estimates. Companies are rapidly moving to more variable operating models that enable them to quickly dial up and down infrastructure, talent and expertise to accommodate changes in market dynamics, business needs and special projects. Contingent workforces are expected to grow by nearly 30 percent over the next three years, according to research by Ardent Partners.

MyPOV – The move to more project oriented work with both internal and external people is one of the major trends that enterprises are facing today. SAP is well positioned to take advantage of this trend with both its SuccessFactors and Ariba products. To a certain point the acquisition also helps SAP to move the conversation on recruiting away from traditional recruiting for employees – to overall recruiting of people – even as they may be ending up as employees or contractors.

The combination of Fieldglass’ market-leading VMS solution with SAP promises to transform workforce management by enabling a flexible and comprehensive approach to managing the entire workforce and life cycle, going beyond the traditional focus on the employee record that characterizes many systems today. Together, SAP and Fieldglass will provide companies with the software, collaboration tools and networks needed to engage permanent and temporary staff out of the gate — and on the fly — in new and innovative ways to ensure they have the right people in the right roles at the right times.

MyPOV – The paragraph hits the nail on the head – problemo numero uno of contingent workforces is that traditional HR systems are designed to accommodate employed people only. And that creates both data and process problems managing external project people. Could it be that SAP is addressing one of a design weakness of its traditional on premise R/3 HR system? SuccessFactors never really had to address the problem for most of its architecture life span, since it was never designed to be a core HR system, where the employee record (that better would be a person – we prefer as you probably have noticed people) resides. So how well does the new cloud based HR core system – EmployeeCentral address the challenges around the employee record? We will find out.

“The acquisition of Fieldglass creates a compelling advantage for SAP customers as they access, attract and manage talent via the networked economy,” said Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEOs and members of the Executive Board of SAP AG. “This move reaffirms SAP as the undisputed leader of integrated human resources and procurement in the cloud for businesses of all sizes and industries. Combining Fieldglass with SAP is a significant milestone in our strategy to help businesses simplify everything.”

“With the acquisition of Fieldglass we are taking an incredible step forward to further expand SAP's leadership in a public cloud offering for the enterprise,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, Products & Innovation. “With the power of SAP HANA, SAP Fiori and the Ariba Business Network combined, we can quickly extend the value to our joint customers.”

MyPOV – We are used to statements of the SAP co-CEOs – but having three members of the executive board in a press release is a novum – or at least happens very seldom. But it underlines how important the acquisition must be for SAP. The interesting tidbit from the co-CEO statement is the emphasis on the combination of HCM with Procurement. We have said for a long time that SAP has a higher ground in the enterprise software game with Ariba – maybe SAP is playing hand that better now. And we expected the ERP vendors to point out that HCM needs not only good integration with Finance (we hear that from Workday almost daily recently) – but as well into the automation areas of CRM, SCM and purchasing.

In regards to Sikka’s statement it’s key to mention that Fieldglass did not build on HANA and / or Fiori. Au contraire – a quick due diligence check on open technical jobs at Fieldglass is searching for Java / MS SQL and VMwareskills. Any further short search on what Fieldglass has built its offering and which cloud infrastructure it operates on - was futile. So it looks like SAP is faced with significant integration and potentially re-platform work. If you factor in, that the company is now on the verge of moving SuccessFactors to HANA – 2 years after the acquisition – it shows that these efforts can take some time. On the flipside HANA is a much more advanced product today, and then there are many ways of integrating cloud solutions. It will be interesting which path and what phases SAP will choose.

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with approximately 350 employees, Fieldglass’ cloud-based solution is used in more than 100 countries and 16 languages. Fieldglass was also recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. in The Forrester Wave™: VMS, Q1 2014 as the highest-scoring VMS provider in Contingent Workforce Management/Vendor Management System (CWM/VMS) functionality and market presence. In 2013, Fieldglass marked its eighth consecutive year of profitability, adding 2 million new users in markets worldwide. The company's majority investor is Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity investment firm based in Chicago.

“Joining with SAP will allow us to dramatically accelerate our global growth plans and pace of innovation at the unique intersection of the human capital and procurement sectors,” said Jai Shekhawat, CEO and co-founder, Fieldglass. “SAP’s innovations in cloud, in-memory and mobile technology are transforming workforce management. We look forward to extending our leadership position, increasing our sales and delivery capacity and introducing our winning strategy to new markets.” […]

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

Implications, Implications

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

Implications for SAP customers

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

Implications for Fieldglass customers

Very good news if SAP is your backend, what used to be a 3^rdparty vendor integration is now becoming a vendor owned integration. That this does not always need to be off to a rosy start was seen with the SuccessFactors to SAP integration (by now addressed better).

For non SAP customers it’s important to secure the support for existing interfaces and partnerships. And these customers need to consider if they want to bring the SAP technology stack in the house (well not really as it will be in the cloud) – most prominently HANA – and with that the SAP datacenter landscape. Both customer groups need to overlay the Fieldglass data center presence with SAP’s quickly, with all implication for legislative and technical aspects. As always with acquisitions – customers should secure all critical items in contracts as soon as possible.

Implications for SAP

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

Implications for SAP competitors

For SAP’s most prominent HCM competitors there is less potential urgency on the architecture side – as both Oracle Fusion HCM and Workday have been built with necessary flexibility around the employee record and related processes, all courtesy of having been designed less than 10 years ago, well aware of the contingent workforce architecture and system challenges. But on the market side a leading vendor has gone and Fieldglass supported interfaces into both Workday and Oracle. We will have to see if and how motivated SAP will be to maintain these interfaces. In any case this is a sales opportunity for Oracle and Workday to target Fieldglass customers for their respective contingent workforce offerings.

And needless to say it will be interesting what other strong players in the category like Beeline, Peoplefluent and IBM (Emptoris acquisition) will do going forward.

MyPOV

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

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

And more on overall SAP strategy

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

And more about SAP technology:

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

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Rimini Street Expands to Japan

Constellation Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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MyPOV

And more on overall SAP strategy

And more about SAP technology:

Rimini Street Expands to Japan