Outstanding Applications of Big Data - Insights from a Career in Analytics

Data Data to Decisions Visionaries panel at Constellation's Connected Enterprise. Three data executives share their takeaways from their lengthy careers in big data/analytics.
The Visionaries series shares the experiences of industry thought leaders.

Moderator:
J. Bruce Daley, Constellation Research
Panelists:
Dr. Dave Schrader, Teradata
Chris Selland, HP Vertica
Kenneth Wincko, Dunn & Bradstreet

Data to Decisions examines the enablement of data-driven decisions across the entire organization.
Don't get swept up in the big data hype.  Gather key insights from your data, transform insights into actionable information, and then make the right decisions.
 

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How to Fix the Healthcare Industry - The Prevention Economy and the Human API

Today's healthcare industry focuses primarily on the "cure and care" with significantly less attention paid to prevention. Richie Etwaru explains how cloud and mobile technology can shift the healthcare paradigm to focus on prevention, thus resulting in better, cheaper, perfectly-tailored healthcare for all.

Recorded at Constellation's Connected Enterprise Innovation Summit October 31, 2013.

Cegedem is looking for advocates for this prevention-based healthcare industry. For more information visit: thehumanapi.com

Request more information about Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2014

Salesforce1 is Not a Platform: The Inclusion Theory

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. ...

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If Salesforce1 is not a platform then what is it? The Inclusion Theory may provide the key. Inclusion is one of the seminal theories in geology. An inclusion happens when any older material is enclosed inside a newer rock or mineral. The Inclusion Theory in computing holds that Salesforce1 along with products from Amazon Web Services and aMind Solutions (among other companies) enable developers to create a new class of applications by including different mass market devices and enterprise systems together within their structure.

Download "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" snapshot

The significance of this approach is that it treats devices, not as dumb terminals at the top of a software stack, but as hand held computers that also happen to make phone calls. This opens the door for an entirely class of applications to be developed in the cloud that would be impossible to develop in either traditional client server or mainframe environments.

Figure 1: Geological Principal of Inclusion

Source: Idaho Museum of Natural History

Conceptually the theory holds that inclusions take place when APIs and other device-specific code are enclosed inside a newer layer of software, such as Salesforce1. This “inclusion” layer manages tasks such as access, security, and identity. Using the inclusion layer, enterprise systems can be consistently, reliably and cost effectively accessed from devices designed for the mass market. As an unexpected benefit, the inclusion layer also opens the door to a new way of integrating systems together above database or server level. The inclusion layer is also subject to the network effect and becomes more valuable as more devices and enterprise systems are included.

Figure 2: The Inclusion Theory

Source: Constellation Research

In addition to Salesforce1, Constellation research has identified at least two other products that are examples of the inclusion layer approach at work and provide clues how Salesforce1 is likely to develop.  They include:

• Amazon Web Services AppStream
• aMind Mobile and Web Framework

Constellation Research has published a report the "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" by Constellation Principal Analyst and Vice President, J. Bruce Daley. A complimentary report snapshot is available. 

Download "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" snapshot

Salesforce Chatter: The Collaborative Foundation of Salesforce1

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Today Constellation Research published my latest report, Salesforce Chatter and the Salesforce1 Platform from Dreamforce 2013 and Beyond

Executive Summary: Over the last three years, Salesforce.com has evolved its overall marketing message from â??Social Enterpriseâ? to â??Become a Customer Companyâ? and then to â??The Internet of Customersâ?. Constellation supports the increased emphasis on customers and the reduced focus specifically on â??socialâ?. This change in messaging mirrors the shift Salesforce.com is making with its collaboration platform Chatter. The company is improving it from being a stand-alone enterprise social network to being a core element of its line-of-business applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing and Customer Service. This report takes a look at Salesforce Chatter and highlights five strengths and five weaknesses in the service.

This report provides useful decision criteria for organizations investigating Salesforce Chatter, competitive intelligence for collaboration vendors who compete against Salesforce.com, and areas of opportunity for business partners looking for ideas of what do build around the Salesforce.com platform.

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SAP Gets Serious about Open Source, Courts Developers

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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(and it's about time!)

With SAP being a global company it has regional editions of the Sapphire and TechEd events. For anyone following the company it's always a key question if the follow up events to the traditionally leading North American event, are pure repeats - or if there are more or less fine tuned changes. 

For this year's edition of the TechEd developer conference it was more or less same same between Las Vegas and Amsterdam - but the event in Bangalore was an event by itself. There is a lot to digest from this TechEd - that just started today - December 11th - and will go until December 13th.
 

The big picture

So let's start with what I thought was the most interesting and important part to see if it had changed from TechED in Las Vegas and Amsterdam - and the good news is - it has not changed, the picture is still very much the same:

Wedged between HANA the database, running on the HANA cloud platform are a number of different applications - to which Fiori is the front end. And while this is easy to draw and compelling to explain - it has massive repercussions for SAP customers, SAP partners and SAP itself. More to come in a separate post, hopefully soon. 

Takeaways from the press release

Simplified Development Experience 
To address the fast and agile nature of today’s market, SAP has launched a regional test drive of a new open development environment for SAP HANA. SAP River intends to provide a real-time development environment for rapidly building complete native applications powered by SAP HANA and enable increased developer productivity through a simpler development process, easily maintainable source code and a clear separation of intent and yet an optimized native execution on SAP HANA. 

MyPOV

This was certainly the big news - SAP (once again) creates its own development environment and language with SAP River. For those watching SAP long enough, developer productivity was the key reason ABAP was created in the first place and kept in place (ironically it was Shai Aggassi at an event in Bangalore saying that ABAP would be around for a long time, because its so productive) till today. 
We will have to see much more of River if that really merits the case - my general view (for now) is - the world (and developers) do not need another development language and environment.

OpenUI5, Open Source Variant of the SAPUI5, for the Developer Community 
SAP is contributing key portions of its SAPUI5 framework as open source code on the GitHub site under an Apache Version 2.0 license. As part of the effort, SAP has developed different themes, framework features and control libraries to help provide a consistent end-to-end experience and foster reuse and efficiency, for example, via responsive layouts. - See more at: http://www.news-sap.com/sap-increases-focus-on-developer-experience-and-makes-key-open-source-contributions/#sthash.zdnNPNQ4.2Y7JqRMY.dpuf

MyPOV

This was widely popular by the audience and in social media. And in general it's positive when large tech vendors contribute to open source and put muscle and investment behind it. But usually they take a lot from open source and then contribute to the project with some fraction of investment. OpenStack is a prominent example for that. But in SAP's case with SAPUI5 - now OpenUI5 - SAP is the only contributor - and the question is, who will collaborate and invest into it and into which areas. If there was someone, SAP should have had them  on stage and in this press release. 
Another potential red flag are the details on what SAP will keep and not contribute - something that wasn't communicated as I wrote this (yet).

New Service Broker for Cloud Foundry to Connect to SAP HANA
 SAP announced the code contribution and availability of a Cloud Foundry service broker for SAP HANA. Developed in close association with Pivotal and now available as open source on GitHub, the service broker will allow any Cloud Foundry application to connect to and leverage the in-memory capabilities of SAP HANA. - 

MyPOV

Long awaited and now it's there - and good move for HANA - the database. With the new River SAP is competing with Cloud Foundry as a platform for developers to build next generation applications on. I am sure SAP and Pivotal will separate that by the type of applications you can build with each platform - but the partnership with Pivotal becomes now more of a database partnership than anything else. 

New Node.js Connector for SAP HANA 
 In November 2013 SAP contributed SAP HANA database client via GitHub site that enables developers to efficiently connect Node.js applications to SAP HANA. - See more at: http://www.news-sap.com/sap-increases-focus-on-developer-experience-and-makes-key-open-source-contributions/#sthash.zdnNPNQ4.2Y7JqRMY.dpuf

My POV

This goes along the same lines as the previous paragraph on CloudFoundry - only here SAP does really good to open source in the sense that a tech giant contributes (and maintains presumably) an open source framework's usage (in this case the popular node.js framework) as part of a much larger open source project. Of course with the interest of more node.js projects uptaking HANA as the database - but that is a very legitimate motivation for SAP. Well done.

New Beta Version for SAP PowerBuilder 
A new closed beta version of the SAP PowerBuilder application development tool is intended to support new operating systems, databases and open standards and is planned for limited availability on December 15, 2013. SAP is committed to innovation without disruption and with the new beta release, beta customers can use their current investment in applications, knowledge and skills while they take advantage of new SAP innovations. 

MyPOV

With the Sybase acquisition SAP also acquired one aging, but prominent application development platform, the leader of RAD race of the 90ies, PowerBuilder. It's good to see that SAP keeps investing into the product - as there are still a lot of clients out there running applications on PowerBuilder. If I understood Reh correctly, PowerBuilder will be able to generate SAP River RDL code and thus become a code and (hopefully for SAP) a developer hands contributor. If that will work out - we will see - but it's good to see, that SAP leverages all developer assets and  mind share it has to its disposal to get River off to a running start.

Easy Access to SAP Technology 
A unified developer license covering all major platforms and technologies significantly simplifies the developer experience and makes it easy to get access to key SAP technologies. 

MyPOV

Always good to simplify licensing for developers - the details will have to be hashed out. But given that it looks like Schmerder created and updated it - I am pretty confident it's the best that SAP was able to do at this point. Others will dissect and find the issues.


Other key takeaways

As we talk about rivers and the event was in India - not surprisingly there an Indian River inspiring a new codename - the Ganges. And SAP Ganges is the latest attempt of SAP modelling the commerce happening between its customers. Remember SAP tried in the dot com boom era with SAP markets - and wasn't that successful - but with the Ariba and hybris assets in house, it's well worth it to give it another try. It looked like Mondkar annunced it's development roadmap for Ariba till Sapphire in June 2014 - let's see what we hear and see between now and then. SAP Mentor Dick Hirsch has written a great first take here. 

And then Fiori is making progress, progress it needs to make as it was recently (TechEd in Las Vegas) declared as the one and only SAP UI going forward. For that it needs to gain capabilities way beyond it's self service user interface origins - and the demos of the sales forecast and manufacturing planning are encouraging - but there is a lot more that needs to happen for a professional user's user interface, powerful enough to be the user interface from 9 to 5 plus overtime.

MyPOV

It's good to see SAP courting developers, but so is everyone else. If I put my developer hat on and compare the TechED messages with the ones I heard at Google I/O, Microsoft Build, VMWorld, Oracle's JavaOne, AWS re:invent and Salesforce's Dreamforce in the last 6 months - then SAP and River have their work cut out. All these vendors court the enterprise developers and have larger developer ecosystems than what SAP has ever had control over. Valiant to scramble Powerbuilder folks and kudos for supporting it - but that will not give SAP critical mass. 

If SAP e.g. had announced support for the super popular docker both to build on and to deploy on HANA - I am pretty sure it would have garnered (even) more attention and ultimately - more apps running on HAN,A. 

But then SAP is the largest business application vendor and certainly can try to attract developer masses into its proprietary architecture - that's the control ultimately all enterprise giants want to have. But Salesforce.com struggles and ultimately little success with Apex show that the proprietary path SAP seems to be taking with River is a very challenging path to success. But never say never. I have lots of respect for Klein and team.   

Andres Botero Joins Steelwedge Software

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. ...

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Andres Botero, who worked at Siebel Systems as Group Manager of Worldwide Operations, has joined Steelwedge Software as Chief Marketing Officer. Founded in 2000, Steelwedge improves sales and operations planning by adding automated collaboration and analytics to the process. In his new role Botero will be responsible for will be responsible for strategy, positioning, product marketing and marketing operations.

Steelwedge products build consensus among sales, marketing, finance, and the supply chain about future product demand so that companies can better understand why it fluctuates, balance capacity with sales, connect sales and operations with financial planning, and measure performance. The company claims to have more cloud sales and operations planning deployments than all of its competitors combined. Some Steelwedge customers include Applied Materials, Canon, Hospira, Emerson, NVIDIA, Sara Lee, Sony and Syngenta.

Before joining Steelwedge, Botero was Global Lead for Supply Chain Management Marketing at SAP.

Are Contact Centers Becoming Obsolete?

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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The Omni Channel Contact Center refers to the delivery of a fully connected customer experience across all communication channels, which include the telephone, email, Web, IVR, chat, social media, texting and mobile applications. While this is the goal for customer service, most customer support organizations still struggle to support an integrated multi-channel customer experience that does not fully connect the customer across all communication channels. Customers’ preference for non-voice channels is evident by the recent Dimension Data’s 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report @Dimension Data 2009-2013. This report found that the phone was the channel of last resort when all else fails. However, the number of telephone customer support agents continues to grow because brands do not offer satisfactory support over self-service channels, which makes customers place a call by default.

The high growth channels of choice for consumers are smartphone applications, social media, such as Twitter or Facebook or interactive Web dialog. Frequently, brands provide support for these channels in their marketing departments and support is isolated or only partially integrated into the contact center operations. This may result in inconsistent service delivery, as customer applications and content management systems are not shared fully among support groups.  When a customer cannot easily engage with a brand over preferred newer channels, they resort to the most expensive channel, live telephone support.

Moving customers to an integrated omni-channel experience requires updating legacy technology and integrating customer facing applications to support the newer channels. Cloud solutions often enable change to occur more quickly and allow brands to retain existing infrastructure, while adding new support capabilities. Creating intuitive web self-service and social media experience encourages more customers to use these channels exclusively. To transition customer to fully engage with a brand using web self-service CSRs need to encourage customers to go to the web site and walk them through the transaction. While this may be more time consuming initially, it will reduce talk time and shift customer’s behavior. Contact centers that consider the telephone as their primary channel are out of sync with what their customers want from a brand. Innovative brands already know this and the majority of other brands need to quickly catch up.

Resources

"Online Communities Offer Amazing Customer Care" by Elizabeth Herrell

All research by Elizabeth Herrell

Purposeful Collaboration - How To Make "Social" Work

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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The following is the 18min talk I gave at Constellation Connected Enterprise on how to move social from being a stand-alone service for sharing, to integrating social features into the business tools that your company relies on the run your business.

Editor's note: this continues Constellation's continued release of the 2013 Connected Enterprise recordings. We will continue to publish one recording each day. 

Resources:  Enterprise Collaboration Software: From Simple Sharing to Purposeful Collaboration - Research report authored by Alan Lepofksy