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…...

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Adobe Delivers Generative AI With Adobe Firefly

At Adobe Summit on March 21, 2023, Adobe announced and delivered its generative AI offering known as Adobe Firefly. Adobe Firefly (In beta), is a collection of generative AI models built for creative applications.  The offering joins the platform’s AI services. The first Firefly model will focus on image generation and text effects, trained on the hundreds of millions of Adobe stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content where copyright has expired. Adobe plans to integrate Firefly into their Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Adobe Express product lines.

While Firefly is intended to be made up of multiple models, the first model is trained on Adobe Stock images openly licensed content and public domain content, where copyright has expired, and is designed to generate images safe for commercial use. Future models will target additional use cases and content types, potentially leveraging other technology and training data.

Adobe feels, this approach to training differentiates Firefly models from other stable diffusion models where rights, copyrights, and ethical boundaries of an artist’s individual style have come into question. Adobe has also announced new Sensei GenAI services that will continue to expand across Adobe Experience Cloud, deploying multiple LLMs including the Microsoft Azure OpenAI and FLAN-T5 models.

A CRTV Interview With Adobe's Ely Greenfield on Adobe Firefly

Adobe's Takes A Comprehensive Approach To Empowering Creators

What sets Adobe Firefly apart from other offerings is the integration into content workflows such as image creation and text effects.  The goal - deliver generative AI capabilities wherever content is created and modified.  Moreover, the focus on safe for commercial use ensures that Firefly won't generate content based on other individual's or brand's IP.  This eliminates potential legal issues down the road.

In addition, Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI)'s provenance technology creates transparency for digital content via Content Credentials. Creators can use Content Credentials to attach important information to a piece of content using meta data to include their name, date, and what tools were used to create it. That information travels with the content wherever it goes so that by the time people see it, they can experience content and context together.  They can also add tags to ensure "Do Not Train" as well.

On the monetization front, Adobe intends to take a compensation-forward approach with Adobe Stock contributors. Creators who contribute content for training will benefit from the revenue Firefly generates once Firefly is out of beta. Creators may be able to license and monetize their own style and design in the future.

Advancements In Generative AI Have Rapidly Improved

While generative AI has been around for some time, ChatGPT  has captured the hearts and minds of the general population in highlighting tangible possibilities of what AI can accomplish both in the consumer and enterprise world.  In fact, Generative AI has the ability to create chat responses, designs, and other new content including deep fakes and synthetic data.  Neural network techniques such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), variational auto encoders (VAEs), and transformers work together to create original content based on prompts.

On the languages side, GPTs or what’s known as a generative pre-trained transformer, generate conversational text using deep learning.   The pre-training capability allows the AI to take the model from one machine learning task to train another model.  These models are then pre-trained on large corpus of text.  Transformers, a type of neural network, maps the relationships among all the data sources such as text and sentence patterns.

For images, diffusion models allow images to be created from text prompts. Using random noise applied to a set of training images, the diffusion models allow one to remove noise and create a desired image.  Common approaches include DALL-E also from OpenAI, Dreambooth by Google, , Imagen, Lensa, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion.

The more organizations interact with these AI systems, the quicker the AI systems will improve their rate of learning.

The Bottom Line: Expect Exponential Improvements In AI Driven Creativity And Productivity

Generative AI will improve content velocity and improve the ability to power content supply chains with improved collaboration in the delivery of precise, high quality content.  Creators can easily expand their capabilities from one medium to another while making variations to their work.  Moreover, the establishment of creator marketplaces for monetization will augment creativity not automate it.

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform…...

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Being a supervisor—a manager, a team leader, whatever title that comes with the territory—isn’t the same as it was just a few short years ago. This is especially true in contact, service, and communications centers.

Supervisors Have It Rough

After years of enterprises planning for digital transformation and technology innovations that could turn the contact center into a more connected, omnichannel, omnipresent engagement hub, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that pathway to change. Carefully laid-out five-year plans were tossed out the window. Suddenly the teeming floors of contact centers were empty, with workers sent home armed with new laptops and headsets. Everyone, from C-suite leaders to customers calling in, had to trust in technology (and each other), assuming the way we all worked “before” would translate into how work needed to happen in the most insane times.

But something interesting happened in this acceleration of digital transformation: We forgot about the art of being a supervisor. While tools and systems were put into place to allow agents to be highly productive and effective, and executive dashboards and analytics systems were implemented to give senior leadership visibility across the board, tools and technologies for supervisors made a strange shift from tools built to support to tools built to surveil.

We forgot that supervisors don’t just appear—they become—and, more importantly, they grow on the job. They become great supervisors because they understand the role, responsibilities, and requirements of being an agent while simultaneously increasing their own understanding of the business and the impact they make in their leadership role. They are constantly learning and adjusting on the job, coaching individuals and facilitating change across teams while still retaining that skill and empathy that made them terrific agents in the first place. What supervisors had not been expected to be, until now, were technologists and digital transformation experts.

While agents were pushed to transition their workspaces and styles in the shift to working from home, supervisors had to shift right along with them, relearning the act of being a successful agent-from-anywhere while also relearning how to inspire, motivate, and lead under new and often challenging circumstances. Supervisors added technical support and change management to their already-filled leadership cards as entire business models pivoted to a new normal. And then, once everyone was settled into a groove of working from home and engagement-everywhere, the world shifted again with the emergence of new hybrid work models that would once again ask supervisors to stay multiple steps ahead of the pack.

In the name of digital transformation, new tools were introduced, bringing the power of data, analytics, and workflows to the fingertips of every agent, lead, supervisor, and C-suite leader. Agents could now engage with customers in a far more effective, efficient, and productive way as years of separated and segmented screens and tools began to consolidate into a single, easy-to-consume and even customized layer.

Similarly, tools for the C-suite were introduced to give top-level visibility across business strategy key performance indicators (KPIs), showcasing how workforce and workflow automations could impact growth. Toolkits powered by artificial intelligence (AI) invited leaders to ask new questions and interrogate results in new ways, flexibly giving new insights and context that could accelerate decision velocity.

Supervisors got more tools, more windows, and more screens.

Trained to Toggle, Not Transform

Today’s tools are unintentionally reactive, alerting supervisors to issues or the emergence of negative outcomes. While agents are empowered to proactively engage with customers to solidify relationships and deliver optimized experiences, supervisors are left to play whack-a-mole, juggling everything from agent performance data to workforce management, scheduling, and real-time conversation analytics—and all of this is before tackling coaching and flexing the very skills that promoted these leaders from agent to manager or supervisor.

Today’s modern, cloud-native, data-rich communications platforms offer an opportunity to break this cycle for supervisors and reinvigorate the art of supervising the front line of customer experience delivery. Thanks to the composability that cloud architectures provide, supervisors can be met with more flexible and contextual workspace canvases that are personalized to their priorities. In the same way that cloud solutions have delivered exceptional customizations to take the chore out of work for the contact center agent, this same user-centricity is required for leaders.

So how do we start to address the gap that exists between the demands of the modern contact center supervisor and the tools and resources available to these growth leaders? What should a supervisor’s experience look or feel like?

The Top 5 Requirements of a Supervisor’s Workspace Experience

Intuitive: Supervisors shouldn’t have to moonlight as dashboard architects. They also shouldn’t need a Ph.D. in user experience (UX) design to create digital workspaces that centralize the insights, information, and visibility they need to drive performance and move their teams forward.

Extensible: The capacity to extend visibility or enhance capabilities should be at the control of the individual entrusted with the leadership of a team or a function. With libraries of tools, widgets, or templates, supervisors should have the opportunity to enrich and extend as quickly as they centralize and control.

Composable: Composability isn’t just about the capacity to move modules or widgets around a page: It is as much about the microservices architecture underpinning the system that allows for data and intelligence to freely flow to exactly where a user wants and needs it. For the contact center supervisor, that translates into the freedom to view data based on current priorities—priorities that can shift month to month. It also translates into an almost infinite extensibility of where data and intelligence can come from, be it from within the organization or from third-party sources that can all work in concert to accelerate decision velocity.

Intelligent: AI and machine learning (ML) models have been regularly applied to bubble up recommendations and next-best actions, but in supervisor modules they are all too often deployed to react to negative sentiments or scenarios. It is time for AI to take on a far more critical task: proactive experiences, for the agent and the customer. Much like assisted or guided interactions for agents, supervisors should have access to smart coaching and performance recommendations that drive faster decisions and accelerate prioritization. Workspaces should be contextually aware, able to flex and automatically adjust based on priorities and patterns.

Personal: Every team member, manager, and supervisor is unique, meaning their tools and workspaces should be personalized to how they work and how they lead. Thanks to data and libraries being decoupled from presentation layers and experiences, what is right for one manager doesn’t have to be right for the next, allowing for independent controls and modular interfaces that pull data and intelligence directly from a wide array of sources, including third-party sources.

Too Much at Stake

This may seem like a tall order—fully composable, contextual, and intensely personalized workspaces purpose-built for the modern supervisor. But when you consider just how much rides on the success of our supervisors and leaders, raising the expectation bar for the tools and systems we put in place for our leaders shouldn’t feel unreasonable. It should be an expectation. After all, there is an art to being (and staying) a successful supervisor. The real question should be, are we willing to risk losing something that directly impacts and shapes customer outcomes?

Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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The Chinese technology giant, Huawei, has had quite an odyssey the last few years, finding itself in geopolitical struggles that have significantly challenged several of its businesses, most notably its smartphones and carrier equipment divisions. However, as I've watched the company's journey over the last decade, it's clear that it has also been making long-term bets in adjacent businesses and industries. 

I remember seeing Huawei demonstrating remarkably sophisticated and well-thought out blueprints, often with matching solutions, for smart cities, connected factories, autonomous transportation, and other large scale digital transformation back in 2016, when it estimated that $15 trillion in unrealized economic gains were lying in wait for those with the vision to act on on the opportunities. Collectively, Huawei considers the pervasive digitlization of everything as its global industry vision (GIV), which it calls Intelligent World.

It is increasingly in these domains that the company seeks to move "up the stack" from low-level 5G infrastructure and communications devices, into the much higher potential and more value-add transformation of businesses, institutions, cities, and industries with its growing array of technology solutions.

In my talks with many Huawei executives in Barcelona last week, it's clear the company is quite serious about achieving these goals over time, and to do so while also achieving goals in sustainability using green ICT. In order to seize them as fully as possible, the company is also making massive investments into these areas. Thus Huawei now ranks among the very highest spenders on research and development in the world, spending $22.4 billion over the last year and a whopping $132.5 billion over the last decade, as it seeks to enter major new markets and industries. The relative success of these investments is a fascinating question and so Huawei brought a very special customer to us (see below) to demonstrate major traction while also citing that nearly 200 Fortune 500 companies have previously chosen Huawei to help them with their digital transformation.

A Snapshot of Huawei at Mobile World Congress 2023

In was with this backdrop that I was invited to see Huawei's latest progress in these endeavors in Barcelona earlier this month. What followed was a fascinating story told in three vignettes, during mini-events that Huawei held adjacent to the massive Mobile World Congress 2023 (MWC) confab at the huge trade fair and exhibition center, Fira de Barcelona.

Huawei also had the largest exhibit area of the MWC show, taking over half of an entire hall at the fairgrounds, and using the space to tell the stories of the many digital innovations and blueprints that it had, including an entire section devoted to Industrial Digital Transformation, which focused on the digital re-imagining of sectors including energy, manufacturing, education, and healthcare.

Huawei Day 0 Summit: Green ICT Development

However, before MWC even began, Huawei hosted its 12th annual Huawei Day 0 Summit. which it holds the day befoe the larger mobile event begins. The theme for this year's Day 0 event was Green ICT Development, basically a tightly orchestrated set of talks from various telecom leaders on sustainability as well as some environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. (For American readers, ICT stands for Information and Communications Technology, and similar in focus to information technology, or IT.) The mobile industry has a tremendous energy and environmental footprint, and this day was dedicated to seeing what the progress was.

Li Peng, VP and President of the Huawei Carrier Group kicked off the Day 0 Summit, noting that the company was focusing on "creating indicators to measure and improve energy efficiencies" in the mobile industry. Then Massamba Thioye, Project Executive of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Global Innovation Hub mades an address. 

He noted that getting green ICT solutions to market means making knowledge about them far more discoverable and available. Interestingly, he also said they are creating a “deep search engine” to connect  climate change disruption tech to ICT buyers. Then, he painted a clear version for what the UNFCCC was attempting to achieve in the mobile area (and everywhere else): "A world that is generative rather than extractive. A world where a flourishing life is available to all people. Radical collaboration is required for a digital green transition." Finally, Thioye wrapped up with a key point: â€œWe have to decarbonize the value chain of the ICT sector.”

Next, Steven Moore, the head of climate action for GSMA, the mobile carrier industry's main association, then presented an update on what the industry’s Climate Action Task Force has been doing to achieve green ICT and sustainable development. He points out that the source of energy is just one part of the green ICT development equation. "Efficiency a critical factor as well. The core goal is 0.24 kWh per GB of data to 0.17 KWh." This will be achieved by replacing high consumption legacy hardware with more efficient hardware as quickly as is feasible. He also cites Verizon has doing a particularly notable job of using green energy. In addition to nearly a quarter of their energy consumption coming from renewable sources today, they have added over 2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity recently. It's an encouraging story that is early proof that decarbonation of the mobile industry is actually happening.

The takeaway was cautiously optimistic, but every speaker stressed that dramatic increases action are urgently needed. The needle is moving, but not fast enough, "radical collaboration is now needed between organizations and nations. But steadily improving data from across the industry makes the progress measureable and specific needs for action clearer.

Digital Transformation of the Mining Industry

Another notable session that Huawei arranged adjacent to MWC, was about the digital transformation of mining in Botswana. This is the story of Debswana, the world’s leading producer of diamonds, so a particularly notable proof point of Huawei penetrating into the mining industry. The project first started operation in December 2021. The mining firm now uses connected 5G networks, devices, and monitoring/analytics from Huawei, which has been key to the digitization of their business. Huwai says the Jwaneng mine is the world's first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine. 

“We have a specific vision, where we want to move from middle income country to a high income country", said  Thulagano M. Segokgo, Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology of Botswana, "This digitisation agenda is very, very critical to to us be achieving that we need to grow our economy."

“We have collision avoidance systems. We have fatigue management systems. They allow us to plan a very safe mine", noted Debswana's Head of Information Management, Molemisi Nelson Sechaba. He said they wish to get to zero injuries using the connected technologies that they now have in place from Huawei.

After the panel from Debswana and Huawei presented their story of connected 5G smart mining, I asked Debswana's Sechaba why they chose Huawei for digital transformation of their business, over more well-known companies within the mining industry.. He was immediately forthright, and said  they chose them because of 1) how well Huawei listens to them, 2) the quality of their products , 3) follow-through, 4) approachability, and 5) ability to work through issues.

Photo: I ask the Debswana ICT Executive About Selecting Huawei for the Digital Transformation of Mining at MWC 2023. Credit: Arnold Aranez

Since Huawei is not well-known for its deep experience with the #mining industry, the company's Jun Xu, president of Huawei Cloud, explain. As part of its major foray into digital transformation, company wanted to get its connected technologies (5G, Big Data, and AI) used in Industry 4.0 applications.

Finally, there was the important debate of what to do as people are steadily replaced with machines. The company and the country of Botswana have both clearly given this careful thought, noting they are seeking to make impact minimal. They must build ICT skills in local works, since high tech creates "major new employment opportunities."

It's no accident that Huawei chose to profile this particular case study, given it's prominance on the African continent and in the mining industry, both. Huawei seeks to grow in new markets and new industries, and the success of this effort is a key proof point to show they can enter new spaces with apparent ease and create happy customers. In my analysis, this is going to be key for Huawei to rapidly gain credibility as it evolves to expand its business into major new markets.

Roundtable on 5G Business Success

Yet it is 5G and what comes next after it -- namely 5.5G and 6G -- that remains one of Huawei's core businesses, which is increasingly powering a technology world that is going ever more wireless. To that end, the company facilitated a private media roundtable with analysis and influencers. The participants were Paul Scanlan, President Advisor of Huawei's Carrier Business Group, and Arun Sundarajajan of the Stern Business School at New York University.

The subject was the major shifts in the 5G industry that were triggered by the pandemic and increasing usage of bandwidth by the big hyperscalers. Scanlan, who is very well known in 5G circles, observed that 5.5G is an attempt to better "aggregate all the spectrum" to accomdate the growth of uplink, specifically adapting to "the big shift from central Big Tech media to user content [the explosion of Teams/Zoom calls] and security cams, and richer support for an ecosystems of devices." But it was pandemic specifically that "ushered in vast amounts of indoor uplink demand that the early 5G networks just weren’t built for." That's about to be addressed in 5.5G and will lead to more succcess for the costly rollouts that have taken place around the world.

Sundarajajan then noted that the maturing of 5G services has created opportunities to attract many new customers who about to get connected, “we can now reach 100s of millions of people who may not have been an attractive enough market to create that kind of content for in the first place.”

There was the obligatory discussion about ChatGPT and the network effects that drive, which was part of whole challenge of scale convo at MWC: “The layer people that are missing is that you're not just taking all public data, and dumping it into a large language model", said Sundarajajan, "there’s also a layer on top. Reinforcement training is now creating proprietary new data at scale."

Scanlan finished with key points about how 5G must now be used more strategically to transform businesses today, and not just focus on the" the savings of millions of dollars by not cabling everything with proprietary closed networks." He made the point that "it's also the added value of changing your business. And that's where the real difficulty happens. [The customers] have the technology, but [they] don't yet have the mindset. So for me, this is really a story about mindset. It's about training, it's about paradigms, it's about business models, it's about upskilling it's about seeing things differently, so we don't pave the cow path". 

Huawei's Future Journey and Evolution

It was clear from everything on display at their vast pavision in Hall 1 at MWC to the carefully choreographed events on sustainability, digital transformation, and making 5G foundational to industry transformation that the Huawei is thinking very big and seeking to become a strategic partner to enterprises around the world as they remake their industries for today's modern digital capabilities. While they will continue to focus on 5G, they will also be delivering more and more transformational industry solutions in everything from smart cities and intelligent enterprises to transportation, mining, education, and healthcare.

I spoke privately at a reception after these events to Paul Scanlan and asked him if he thought they have pivoted towards this new vision in light of their challenges, and he said definitely not. This has been the plan all along. If I review the 20 year planning models that I know that Huawei uses and the evidence I saw back in 2016, I would have to concur that it's very likely this is part of Huawei overall plan for evolution and growth. Telecom, smart devices, and low level carrier services were never going to fulfill their ultimate ambitions. Furthermore, their enormous R&D investments over the last decade began well before recent bumps in the road, and is yet another proof point. It will be fascinating to watch Huawei work within its geopolitcal constraints as it continues to enter these new markets and industries. One overarching point is clear to me, however: The company is absolutely committed to achieving its ambitious long term goals for becoming a global transformative technology leader.

Related Reading

My full Twitter coverage (photos/videos) of Mobile World Congress 2023 and adjacent Huawei events

A Portrait of Huawei: What Digital Leaders Should Know

Digital Transformation Target Platforms ShortList

An Oracle Netsuite Roadmap for the CIO and CFO

AWS re:Invent 2022: Perspectives for the CIO

CGTN's Mike Walter and Dion Hinchcliffe on Huawei Revenue

Hannah Mason

Marketing Director Constellation Research

Hannah Mason is a marketing director at Constellation Research. She oversees brand positioning, creative direction, and content development across digital platforms, events, and campaigns. Her work spans branding and design—including graphics, sales collateral, and event presentations—along with website content management, newsletters, and Constellation Insights. Mason also manages surveys and produces Constellation’s video collateral, including ConstellationTV. Her role ensures that the Constellation brand is communicated with clarity, creativity, and consistency across all channels.     Contact Hannah at [email protected]. ...

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Elle DeRosa

Director of Marketing, Communications & Operations Constellation Research

Elle is the Director of Marketing at Constellation Research and producer of the weekly enterprise tech show, DisrupTV. She leads marketing and communications efforts across all avenues while also managing an array of programs including the SuperNova Awards, Business Transformation 150, AX100, AI150, S50 and ShortLists. She has previous experience in public relations and has a strong passion for the marketing world.    Contact Elle at [email protected] ...

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Today, we launched the final set of updates to our Constellation ShortList™ portfolio, including 25 new and updated lists.

Each technology vendor on this list has been chosen based on their products and services offering. Our analysts consider technology investment, use cases, strategic vision, customer value, executive leadership and price when anointing a vendor to the ShortList™.

Check out the 25 new and updated lists:

• Blockchain Technology Platforms
• Cloud-Based Planning and Performance Management Platforms
• Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
• Customer Loyalty and Retention
• Digital Adoption Platforms
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) for DX
• Digital Canvas Workboards
• Enterprise Cloud Finance
• Enterprise Low-Code Tools and Platforms
• Field Service Management
• Global IaaS for Next-Gen Applications
• Healthcare ERP
• Hybrid-Cloud and Multicloud Analytical Data Platforms
• Learning Marketplaces
• Master Data Management
• Microsoft End-to-End Service Providers
• P2C Management
• PaaS Suites
• Product-Centric Cloud ERP
• Quantum Computing Platforms
• Quantum Computing Software Platforms
• Sales Engagement Platforms
• Sales Force Automation
• Talent Management Suites
• Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

This program is part of our open research library. You can download and view each list and the criteria for free. If you missed last week’s updates, be sure to check them out here. To engage us in a rapid vendor selection process, please contact [email protected]

We will update the rest of the portfolio in Q3 2023. Some lists may get updated twice a year depending on market changes and based on each analyst’s discretion for each area. If you see a list that wasn’t updated this quarter, it will be updated later this year.

For more information, visit https://www.constellationr.com/shortlist

Elle DeRosa

Director of Marketing, Communications & Operations Constellation Research

Elle is the Director of Marketing at Constellation Research and producer of the weekly enterprise tech show, DisrupTV. She leads marketing and communications efforts across all avenues while also managing an array of programs including the SuperNova Awards, Business Transformation 150, AX100, AI150, S50 and ShortLists. She has previous experience in public relations and has a strong passion for the marketing world.    Contact Elle at [email protected] ...

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Hannah Mason

Marketing Director Constellation Research

Hannah Mason is a marketing director at Constellation Research. She oversees brand positioning, creative direction, and content development across digital platforms, events, and campaigns. Her work spans branding and design—including graphics, sales collateral, and event presentations—along with website content management, newsletters, and Constellation Insights. Mason also manages surveys and produces Constellation’s video collateral, including ConstellationTV. Her role ensures that the Constellation brand is communicated with clarity, creativity, and consistency across all channels.     Contact Hannah at [email protected]. ...

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We are excited to reveal the latest updates to the Constellation ShortList™ portfolio.

The Constellation ShortList™ portfolio highlights the key players for investment consideration across all technology coverage areas, including HR tech, healthcare, AI, marketing, customer and employee experience, emerging technology, automation and analytics, machine learning, and more. Constellation analysts update each ShortList every six months to a year, depending on the category. Constellation offers ShortLists as a tool for enterprise leaders to stay up to speed on the leading technologies as they make purchasing decisions for their enterprise and customers.

Today we released 24 new and updated lists:

• Automated Cloud Data Warehouse Services
• Citizen Developer Low Code Tools and Platforms
• Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
• Data Integration for Cloud-Based Analytical Data Platforms - NEW
• DevOps
• Digital Customer Service and Support
• Digital Transformation Target Platforms
• Employee Digital Workspaces
• Enterprise Application Platforms
• Healthcare Medical Device Security
• Hybrid-Cloud and Multicloud NoSQL Databases
• Innovation Services and Engineering
• Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS)
• Location Technology Platforms
• Next-Gen Databases: RDBMS for On-Premises
• Next-Generation Computing Platforms
• MLOps
• PaaS Tool Suites
• Price Optimization Solutions
• Quantum Full Stack Players
• Sales Performance Management
• Services-Centric Cloud ERP
• Social Engagement Platforms
• Work Coordination Platforms

Each offering meets the threshold criteria as determined by our analysts through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. These reports are part of Constellation’s open research library and are free to download.

For more information, visit https://www.constellationr.com/shortlist.

Our ShortLists^TM are simply the starting points in the vendor selection process. If you would like to take advantage of our expertise with software vendor selection, contract negotiations, and partner selection, please reach out to [email protected].

If there is a coverage area we are missing and should include next quarter, please let us know with a short note to ([email protected]).

We will be releasing the second half of Constellation ShortLists next Wednesday, February 22^nd, so be sure to check back then!
 

Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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The steady growth and evolution of Oracle NetSuite over the years into a rich, multifaceted cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform today has a long and storied history that goes back nearly 25 years. Always a modern, cloud-based solution, the NetSuite platform has evolved extensively across many dimensions over the decades to help organizations manage a wide range of business operations. This now includes financials, inventory, customer relationship management, and e-commerce operations, all within a single platform. 

At issue is that this is far from an exhaustive list of functionality. NetSuite is now a vast solution suite that can seem almost formidably comprehensive today, as the company has grown to serve more than 33,000 customers in over 217 countries with a platform that can seamlessly run almost all key parts of their business today.

In fact, one of the leading challenges in adopting and getting the most value from NetSuite is having a clear and effective understanding of all the capabilities that it has and when to start deploying them. While consolidation for its own sake has some value, the benefits of a deeply integrated platform with a truly unified data model are well-known. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), the two leading C-Suite roles in making a NetSuite implementation successful within an organization, can feel like a tall order, especially when it ultimately falls on them to decide where NetSuite will be used, what systems it might be wise to supplant with it, and planning of the resulting adoption and migration paths. This will usually take place over years given the amount of end-to-end business functionality that NetSuite is able to provide in a cohesive, well-organized way.

However, figuring out an organization's NetSuite journey needn't be daunting. I've been directly involved in as well as a researcher of the deployment of large enterprise software suites for several decades. Understanding where to start and how best to roll out complex new layers such as analytics and AI and adjacent business functionality can require not just good planning and a system-wide view of the options, but some carefully thought-out professional aids. This is where business-focused system models of NetSuite can help to streamline the planning and strategy process.

Appreciating The Options Within a NetSuite Journey

So when leaders begin asking difficult questions about how best to deploy new enterprise-wide, mission-critical business systems like NetSuite, I've found that there is no one-size fits all approach. Instead, what CIOs, CFOs, and other C-Suite leaders tasked with making a NetSuite deployment successful over the long term actually need is a strategic master view. One that helps them really understand and appreciate a) where they should likely start and b) the universe of available options to them (in a manageable way), depending on what their business goals are now and in the future.

What's often the most approachable method for this is a heuristic model that presents a roadmap with various clear but different paths with overarching results that can be achieved clearly labeled in each direction. To that end, I've designed such a C-level roadmap for NetSuite that can help C-level leaders get a mental handle on the total operating space that NetSuite occupies today from a functionality standpoint and then understand where they can begin, then where they can grow and expand as they decide to adopt new capabilities, as they decide they need them from NetSuite.

NetSuite Roadmap for the CIO, CFO, and C-Suite   

To that end, the C-level roadmap (seen in the master visual above) that I've developed has five major regions. Each has a recommended range of order that helps understand when they can best be applied. These five regions comprise the strategic waterfront through and across which NetSuite can provide capabilities to the business in a way that will tend to unfold naturally as well as build on or complement each other. These regions are:

Build the Core - Step 1

Most organizations start with implementing financials with NetSuite, along with some basic reporting and analytics. There is a choice to add customer relationship management (CRM) as well, or even start there if there is a good opportunity within the business, but the first step is often the simplest. This gets the basics of NetSuite's extensible and highly customizable SuiteCloud Platform in place, which is the foundation of the entire NetSuite platform, firmly within the organization and ready for its future evolution and growth in the cloud. The SuiteCloud Platform provides a real-time view of information in a unified data model with full controls within an open platform that can integrate with internal systems or bring in 3rd party applications that enrich the core experience.

Run the Business - Steps 2-3

As organizations seek to have a handle on their business within one reporting system with a master set of controls, additional business functions like inventory, billing, project management, and revenue management can be deployed to the instrument and automate more of the value stream across key operating functions. Specialized vertical functionality can be activated and deployed as well for such industries as high tech, advertising, media, professional services, manufacturing, and wholesale (not exhaustive) All of these vertical modules focus on running the business better than before using leading good practices. Because all of these are hosted in a single integrated platform within NetSuite, this is realized in a more holistic fashion that also gives an instantaneous and accurate view of what is happening within the business, with the ability to automate it and orchestrate it as needed.

Strategic Capabilities - Steps 2-3

After the business is running smoothly using NetSuite, it is often desired to go a level up and begin to deploy capabilities that provide more strategic control and guidance for the organization. This can include NetSuite's financial planning and budgeting, asset management, human capital management, and international operations. The goal is to go beyond just operating the business from a day-to-day perspective but begin to gain and level of truly strategic influence over the direction and evolution of the organization, and become ready for global growth.

Increase Intelligence - Steps 2-4

These days businesses must wield the entirety of their business data with agility to gain insight and make critical decisions, all within shrinking competitive windows. NetSuite brings a wealth of capabilities that can be deployed as they are needed, and that can work seamlessly across the different regions above to bring together views of the business that provide key windows into both challenges and opportunities. From workbooks to SuiteAnalytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), and a growing cohort of prescriptive tools, when the C-Suite requires much better visibility and transparency into their organization, NetSuite delivers an array of analytics and business intelligence tools that can be brought to bear across the entire suite of capabilities, with little to no siloing or otherwise inaccessible data. These intelligent capabilities provide a command chair and virtual dashboard across NetSuite for leaders and staff to cope better with operating turbulence or to seize the moment, as required.

Maximize Potential - Steps 2-5

Towards the end of the journey, or a bit nearer to the beginning if desired, organizations can expand their capabilities into vital new business dimensions such as e-commerce and fulfillment, or functions like expenses or accounting that may not be the stars of the business, but make an organization run smoothly and properly. 

Determining the Journey with NetSuite

It's useful to understand that the two major categories of business goals for NetSuite after initial implementation generally boil down to a) running the business better or b) knowing/growing the business. Most executives have a fairly good sense of what they'd like to achieve for their part of the business overall but may not have a firm grasp of all the ways that NetSuite can help them. Creating two primary categories makes it easier to balance the overall strategy of each stage in the journey. The heuristic roadmap presented above can help with that, making it clear that there are numerous good options in different dimensions to move into the future and expand with NetSuite, with clear overall business objectives for each. The next step is typically to use the heuristic roadmap to develop a more concrete and specific roadmap of what the organization will actually do.

At the end of the day, the CIO and CFO have momentous responsibilities in just getting NetSuite deployed in its core form. Jointly planning, and then sequencing, and staging the rest of the journey in a clear and effective way for stakeholders, and then using communication to help the broader organization understand the journey can truly pave the road ahead. Planned well, especially in an agile way over time, NetSuite can help organizations digitally transform a vast array of their vital operations today in a way that wasn't really possible just a few years ago. By developing, relying upon, and maintaining a living roadmap that describes the NetSuite journey, C-Suite leaders can best guide their organizations into the future.

CXOs wishing additional detail on NetSuite's enterprise capabilities can take this detailed product tour that provides an executive-level walkthrough.

Additional Reading

An Update on IBM Cloud for the CIO

How a Transformation Platform Reimagines Success

Digital Transformation Blueprint for the Office of the CFO

Real-Time Data: A Key Cloud Trend for Enterprises

The Cloud Reaches an Inflection Point for the CIO in 2022

Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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The phenomenon of hybrid work is now well upon us in 2023, as the world shifts into broad new patterns for how workforces are divided between office and remote. Roughly speaking, workers went from a high of about 46% remote during the pandemic, down to about a quarter of workers today and still falling a bit according to my research. This was from a small cohort of approximately 5% of workers who were remote before it became a major global phenomenon. Now workers -- especially in knowledge intensive businesses -- have become distributed between two primary locations: In-office or at a remote location, the latter typically their residence or a co-working space.

Now one of the leading questions about digital employee experience has become how to best enable this hybrid work environment. Business leaders, executives, digital workplace/employee experience teams, human resources, and other stakeholders are now realizing that this is a fundamentally new posture for our workplaces. Indeed, for many workers, all they really have now is a virtual workspace, not a specific physical place. What then are the vital adjustments to the design of the employee experience that must be made? What is the best route to achieve them, given that a growing percentage of work is done entirely in the digital realm in any case. Also, as we'll see, there are real challenges in having such a physically divided workforce.

The Steady Shift to Hybrid Work

The shift to mass remote work in early 2020 required a set of fundamental shifts towards a more digital overall employee experience, but one that few organizations were properly prepared for. This included everything from enabling basic access to devices and networks for everyone in the organization, then on to comms/collaboration, applications, data, along with (hopefully) matching new digital skills, all in a workable, secure package. This shift was a prompt imperative as the pandemic sent workers home en masse, and happened quickly and successfully in most organizations.

However, the subsequent shift to hybrid work is characterized by less urgency than the move to remote work was. And it's qualitatively different than remote work. As a result there are some significant challenges with hybrid work for which there are still few clear answers. This more gradual move is rather unlike what was largely the instant need for a remote work foundation (though the more advanced aspects of remote work are certainly still works in progress.) So the hybrid model will likely not get nearly as much attention or priority. Yet the challenges with hybrid work are in fact vital ones that go directly to what matters most to organizations: Attracting and retaining talent, fostering a strong and positively differentiating organizational culture, and not losing the distinct productivity dividend that emerged in many sectors during remote work, boosted by both automation and less time commuting.

Designing for Hybrid Work

With the ever growing jumble of apps and digital tools put in front of workers, the research increasingly shows that today's sophisticated workspaces now require organizations to put genuine investment and effort into coherently designing their digital employee experiences and digital workplaces, especially in the core journey, in order to have an effective and efficiently operating organization. As a result, a designed digital workplace is a key practice that I've been increasingly advocating in my research, advisory, and consulting work in developing next-generation workplaces, with gratifying results for those that have done this well.

My research currently shows that organizations are seeking to put a growing amount of effort into designing their core worker experience upfront in order to:

• Reduce onboarding time, effort, and cost
• Make new workers more effective on the job earlier
• Reduce complexity and friction in the most common/important processes
• Make existing and new work processes more effective
• Create more personalized and purposeful workspaces

However, achieving these goals requires that we have platforms and tools that are actually designed for the unique aspects of hybrid work. But up until recently that has not been the case, as the majority of the applications that organizations have used were instead designed for an earlier, mostly in-office era. Using these older solutions in a hybrid work environment as-is can become problematic, because of the unique aspects inherent to hybrid workplaces. This aspects are those characterized by having two separate cohorts of workers that are either in the office much of the time or workers that are remote much of the time, but have many tangible and intangible barriers between them. Fortunately, few digital work vendors have stood still and we are now seeing many of them seriously attempting to address the needs of hybrid workplaces.

Reducing the Challenges of Hybrid Work

Without explicit design for the significant and unique issues of hybrid work, the result is a digital work experience that inevitably perpetuates -- or actually creates -- a number of key issues that are essential to address for an effective, inclusive, and equitable hybrid workplace. These issues and challenges include:

• Cultural divide between in-office and remote workers
• Communications/collaboration gaps
• Productivity hits to hybrid teams
• Differences in equity and inclusion
• Disparities in visibility, transparency, and access

To that end, I've surveyed what the top providers of digital workplace tools have done to address the requirement of hybrid work. Since it is still early days in the hybrid work journey, many of these are experiments or educated guesses on what will address the issues. So it's safe to say that many providers are making a good effort to improve the state of the art in hybrid work, but the true effectiveness of these features aren't well understood yet. I will share what I learn as the results of these vendor experiments come in.

How Digital Workplace Vendors Are Supporting Hybrid Work

Below is a summary of the main improvements and additions that the most common used providers have made. I've emphasized communication, collaboration, and productivity tools since they are used a large percentage of the day and directly cross the intersection of the two main cohorts of hybrid work. The list below is sorted in rough order of the scale of efforts and general marketshare, to reflect the likely impact to the number of hybrid workers in the population.

Microsoft has been one of the leaders when it comes to providing specialized capabilities or updated features for hybrid work. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the notable additions to Microsoft365, Office365, and the company's other tools/platforms for hybrid work:

• RSVP for Outlook. Finding a good way to meet together a leading challenge for hybrid workers. Outlook now enables workers to indicate whether they will attend a meeting in-person or remotely. This helps workers plan better the days they will be in the office or remote, by seeing how others will attend meetings that are important to the worker.
• Hybrid-Enabled Working Hours. Outlook will now allow users to include work schedule specifics directly in a worker's calendar, so colleagues can find out when and where they'll be working. Key to bringing parity and inclusion to remote workers, who tend to have more flexible work hours and locations.
• Teams Rooms with Front Row. With this hybrid work feature, the video gallery appears at the bottom of the screen so in-room participants can see remote colleagues in a way that feels more face-to-face, so that they seem like they are in the same room.
• AI-Enhanced Video Presence. Microsoft is in the process of enabling a variety of smart video streams that focus on people and make them visually more present, especially for remote workers. The new category of AI-enabled cameras makes this possible, best embodied right now in a growing number of features for Microsoft Teams. There are three key technologies that deliver this new category of intelligent video presence:  a) Active speaker tracking, which uses smart technology in in-room cameras to tap into audio, facial movements and gestures to detect who in the room is speaking, then dynamically zooming in for a closer view. b) Multiple video streams that enable in-room meeting participants to be positioned visually in their own video pane. c) People recognition, which will automatically identify and then display the profile name of users within the current video pane, if they have previously opted in.
• Video Presence in Powerpoint. Last year Microsoft introduced cameo, a new PowerPoint features that integrates the Teams camera feed into a presentation to allow the presenter to customize how, when, and where they'd like to appear in the presentation deck with their slides. This increases the presence of remote workers when the presentation is played back.
• Voice coaching in Teams. To help workers off all kinds collaborate better across the hybrid divide, there is a new AI-powered speaker coach in Microsoft Teams that privately shares tips and guidance on pace, any tendencies to interrupt others and remind workers to check in with your audience as they talk.
• A new end-to-end hotdesking experience. To help remote workers and more occasional in-office workers visit in-person, Microsoft now offers a more dynamic hotdesking experience right within Microsoft Teams displays that enables workers to locate and reserve flexible, on-demand workspaces in the office. Workers can book a physical working space within the device or before-hand using either Outlook or Teams. They can then access their personal Teams calendar, chats, meetings and more right on the device. Teams displays are designed be used as a stand-alone device or as a second screen while hot desking. After an employee signs out, all personally identifying information will be removed from the device.
• LinkedIn support for hybrid work information. LinkedIn has added new fields in job postings so organizations can now indicate if the open job is remote, hybrid or in-office only. This helps job seekers seek out and discover jobs that align with how they prefer to work. LinkedIn also has way for organizations to share how they are approaching work presence on their company page including vaccination requirements, and their current status on remote or hybrid work.

Sources: Great expectations: A road map for making hybrid work work, Microsoft and LinkedIn share latest data and innovation for hybrid work

For its part, Google Workspace has add a variety of features for hybrid work as well. These include:

• Virtual meeting onramps. Google has added a quick button to met directly in Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Workers are able to quickly start a meeting and bring the meeting session to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation.  They can present this content to all the meeting attendees. This enables everyone in a meeting to collaborate in real-time while having a conversation, right from the same tab. This helps make it easier for remote workers to achieve better parity with in-office workers, who can more easily call physical meetings on the fly.
• Setting current work location. Like Microsoft has provided in Outlook, workers can now set their location for the work day right in Google Calendar. The feature is designed to allow meeting organizers as well as on-site teams to plan for the right mix of in-person and remote attendance. This feature also provides greater visibility and can help set expectations across hybrid teams.
• Companion mode for Meet. In-room meeting attendees now have a way to be more engaged with their personal devices while using in-room audio and video to improve the in-room experience. Google has started rolling out features for people in conference rooms to be able to add their own personal video tile from Companion mode using their laptop camera. This it easier for other attendees to see their expressions and gestures and connect better across the hybrid work divide.
• Connect hybrid teams with Spaces. Formerly known as Rooms in Google Chat), Spaces are a central virtual location for teams to collaborate in Google Workspace. Spaces brings in many of the Workspace tools like Meet, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Tasks so that a living workspace can be created that's friendly for every time of worker, and persists after a collaboration session or planning meeting takes place.

Sources: Boosting communication and collaboration for teams of all sizes in Google Workspace, Make the most of hybrid work with Google Workspace, Bridging the hybrid work gaps with Google Workspace

From my ShortList of Employee Digital Workspaces of the same name, which are collaboration hubs designed for workers to get much of their work done in a team settling, here are the recent hybrid work features from some of the digital workplace providers on the list:

• Dropbox Spaces. While eschewing the term hybrid work, and preferring to talk instead about distributed work, the company's Spaces product was introduced just before the pandemic started (I was in attendance at the announcement.) As company, Dropbox now has a well-known policy of Virtual First, and uses its own products to enable hybrid work. As it turned out, Spaces was prescient in the need to create more context between in-office and remote workers. Spaces is designed to centralize and provide more context around content related to structured work like projects, no matter where workers are located. Spaces enables hybrid work by centralizing information and collaboration, and removes friction from the process of work (by storing comments instead of popping up endless notifications, for example), regardless of physical location. The latest version of Spaces is optimized for remote working, and has features that lets workers manage top priority tasks, even across multiple projects. Always one of my favorite features, Spaces includes integration with key 3rd party systems and tools like Hubspot. Sources: How to manage distributed work with Dropbox Spaces, The new Dropbox Spaces makes remote work easier and more organized
• Happeo. A social intranet designed around Google Workspace that has steadily climb the rankings over the years, Happeo offers a wide range of collaboration features that are appealing for both remote and in-office workers. Perhaps most important is creating a hybrid culture, as Happeo is designed to help remote workers feel like they are a part of the organization by keeping them informed about happenings from around the company. Happeo has an unusually deep analytics tool to help companies understand hybrid work engagement patterns and address shortfalls. It also specifically has high security standards for remote work, which has been a notable issue for remote workers. Happeo has a highly customizable mobile app which lets hybrid workers build the views they need to stay connected to the company. Source: Happeo's Remote Work Software
• HCL Connections. Long an industry stalwart, Connections remains one of the pre-eminent social workspaces in the industry. The recent v7 release of Connections added dynamic community creation wizard that helps hybrid teams more quickly create the groups they need to span in-office and remote workers. New Microsoft365 integration further helps break down silos between distributed teams. Source: HCL Connections v7 Is Here
• Igloo Software. The company has a networked enterprises feature that allows the creation of nuanced hybrid teams based on the audience type. Using a hub and spoke architecture, enterprise administrators can bring in different groups, divisions, geographies, and affiliates while deferring some local control to site administrators. Developed before the pandemic, the feature is particular powerful today, as companies build distributed organizations with far flung boundaries and borders. Source: Networked Enterprises
• Lumapps. A digital workspace solution that has won top intranet awards, Lumapps is not as well known as some of the solutions here but has been delivering a distinguished offering for some years now, and I run into it more often in clients that I used to. The platform offers features that help remote/distributed workers (in addition to in-office ones), including a digital headquarters to allow workers to access files and information and stay connected with each other. Features to foster belonging, including virtual onboarding, training, and employee generated content, are offered as well. These features are used by well known highly distributed/remote companies like Thoughtworks. Source: A Platform for Remote and Hybrid Work
• Salesforce. The well-known SaaS giant created their Success from Anywhere program, through which it has learned what large global organizations must do to empower hybrid and remote teams and rolled what they learned from the program into their products.

What Actually Works to Enable Hybrid Work

As you review these various new features and capabilities for hybrid work above, and you come to the conclusion that many are point features that are not highly strategic, you would not necessarily be wrong. The reality is that we are still learning what organizations really need when it comes to hybrid work. 2023 is a year of mass experimentation for how organizations will try to better enable hybrid work, not just with technology, but with process and education as well. In particular education about the capabilities above will be central to shifting behavior so that hybrid teams work more optimally. We now live in a time where how-to videos, just-in-time training, and digital adoption platforms can help workers rapidly pick up the new mix of skills and techniques that these hybrid work features enable.

To that end, I've embarked on a major research study to learn what organizations are actually doing this year with hybrid work, including what is working and not working. If you're responsible for some aspect of realizing hybrid work at your organization and would like to participate (and get early access to the data), please send me a note.

Also, if you are a digital workplace tool provider and would like your hybrid work features added to the list above, also drop me a line.

My Additional Research on the Future of Work

Every Worker is a Digital Artisan of Their Career Now

How to Think About and Prepare for Hybrid Work

Why Community Belongs at the Center of Today’s Remote Work Strategies

Reimagining the Post-Pandemic Employee Experience

It’s Time to Think About the Post-2020 Employee Experience

Research Report: Building a Next-Generation Employee Experience: 2021 and Beyond

The Crisis-Accelerated Digital Revolution of Work

Revisiting How to Cultivate Connected Organizations in an Age of Coronavirus

How Work Will Evolve in a Digital Post-Pandemic Society

A Checklist for a Modern Core Digital Workplace and/or Intranet

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

The Challenging State of Employee Experience and Digital Workplace Today

The Most Vital Hybrid Work Management Skill: Network Leadership

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…...

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The $450 Billion Ad Tech Market Is About To Be Shaken Up By AI

When Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it was the 21st search engine to enter the market. In 2022 Google generated over $200 billion in revenue off of search advertising and other digital advertising.  MIcrosoft launched the Bing search engine in 2009, built from the assets of Live Search which was released in 2006.  By all accounts, Microsoft Bing was the laggard among Google and Yahoo in the space.  Round 1 of the search engine wars was won by Google which has dominate for almost two decades.

Microsoft - Open AI Alliance Challenges Google Ad Dominance

The recent announcements on Tuesday, February 7th by Microsoft that the new Bing engine would use technology with a more powerful large language model than the one that underpins ChatGPT.  Microsoft's model would add massive data sets of online data for user queries and prompts.

Google countered with Bard AI, an experimental conversational AI service that would do the same and be released soon. Feburary 7th, 2023 will be recognized as the day conversational AI disrupted traditional search advertising.

Round 2 in the battle will be remembered when large language models, NLP, and conversational AI changed the game.  Will Microsoft come in first for technology in this decade, century? What will Apple do with its large data sets?

ChatGPT vs Google Bard AI (What We Know For Now)

So what started all this was the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022.  Chat GPT is an AI language model that communicates with users in a conversational manner.  The AI and large language model (LLM) summarizes text, translate languages, answers questions using a technology called Natural Language Processing or NLP

Google Bard AI is like Chat GPT, but it’s build on Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Application (LaMDA). Google Bard AI can access the entire Internet, ChatGPT can’t yet, but the new Microsoft Bing Search is expected to.  Today, ChatGPT is limited to the data it’s trained on. So it’s good with stuff before 2021.  When available, Google Bard AI will be fresh and current by pulling vast data troves from the web.

From preliminary insights from engineers at Google and Microsoft, Google’s tech will use less computer power so it could handle more users and consume less energy than ChatGPT.  However, Chat GPT is available now and being trained, Google Bard Is coming soon.

The Bottom Line: AI Is An Exponential Game Changer

How we access information on a search bar has fundamentally changed. Expect AI to suggest ideas, explain complex concepts, write code, prepare speeches, and translate languages.  At Davos this year, every third presentation began with "ChatGPT wrote this speech".  With 100 million users in less than 10 days, this is just the power of LLM's, AI, NLP and text.

On the computer vision side, other cool tech like stable diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E2 will do to images and computer vision what conversational AI is doing to text.  AI is an exponential game changer in the enterprise and how humans interface technology is about to be changed right in front of one's eyes.  (This blog post was created by a human)