News Analysis: IBM and AWS Crank Up Their Partnership Up A Notch With AWS Marketplace

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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This year's Amazon Web Services reInvent brought over 55,000 attendees to one of the premier tech industry events.  The obvious and noticeable change in this year's event was an overemphasis on partnerships and alliances.  The AWS leadership team made it clear that partners were more than welcomed.  IBM's presence as the Global Partner of the year did not go unnoticed by the attendees and of course the other public cloud vendors who have not yet had the courage to host in-person events at scale.

reInventing Partnerships With Public Cloud Vendors

IBM’s transformative journey with AWS as a partner began earlier in 2022 when IBM Software became available as-a-Service on IBM Cloud.  The partnership gave customers the ability to access IBM software that runs cloud-native on AWS. The partnership has three key components:

1. Honoring customer cloud commitment spending. Resell partners can apply clients committed spend with AWS against IBM products from the AWS Markeplace.
2. Driving co-sell programs. Partners can sell offerings from IBM, Red Hat, and AWS solutions in the marketplace.  Since May, products such as IBM API Connect, IBM Db2, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Security, Verify, and IBM Watson Orchestrate have been available on the AWS Marketplace.  At this year’s reinvent, IBM added Envizi ESG, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, IBM Content Services and IBM App Connect Enterprise running as-a-service on AWS.
3. Leveraging the AWS’ ecosystem. In addition, ISVs can now purchase IBM software offerings from the AWS Marketplace with similar benefits as an IBM partner.

Meet Customers Where They Are At

IBMs revitalized strategy takes a customer-centric approach – “The client is at the center of everything IBM does,” noted IBM’s worldwide channel chief Kate Woolley in many keynotes and interviews.  This better together strategy enables clients to make the most out of the joint IBM – AWS relationship.  Further, as more IBM offerings are added to the AWS Marketplace customers can purchase and consume their offerings with more flexibility.  Both customers and partners can expect more offerings in the AI portfolio and the Embeddable AI portfolio to be added to the AWS Marketplace.

Modernize Compute Power With Cloud And Mainframe

IBM’s revamped public cloud strategy is a full 180 turn from former CEO and Chairman of IBM’s head on, belligerent approach to public cloud vendors such as Amazon.  This coincides with a strategic push to focus on high value workloads versus commoditized Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) workloads.  The hybrid cloud and Multicloud models now form the heart of IBM’s strategy and the AWS partnerships is proof of this strategic shift that greatly benefits IBM, AWS, and customers.  

Starting with mainframe DevOps, IBM and AWS announced the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack availability in the AWS Marketplace.  Developers will receive key tooling for public cloud platforms and support the modernization of applications. Astute clients may even take advantage of IBM Z’s confidential computing capabilities to encrypt data in and out for additional security.  Constellation believes this expanded pool of developers and tools, will enrich the overall ecosystem and enable customers to match the right work loads with the right compute power, with the right security model, at the right performance/value ratio.

Gain and Streamline Enterprise Class Security

Whether it be in AWS or hybrid cloud environments, IBM’s Security offering includes consulting, systems integration, technology, and managed security services on AWS. IBM has received a Level 1 MSSP Competency Partnership endorsement along with Premier Consulting Partner, Advanced Technology Competency Partner and ISV Accelerate Partner.
 

The Bottom Line: IBM's AWS Relationship Provides A Win-Win For Both Customers and Partners

Customers are already benefiting from the IBM relationship. In one case, FinnAir migrated 70 apps on 400 servers to AWS in partnership with IBM.  Many customers are moving on-premises applications such as SAP into AWS.  Moreover, customers and partners now have an access to IBM offerings on AWS via the AWS Marketplace. 

Having the IBM software and services portfolio accessible to the AWS ecosystem gives stakeholders access to IBM automation. IBM Data and AI, IBM Sustainability Software, IBM Security Software, IBM Security Services, and IBM Storage.  This shift in strategy provides both a customer and partner centric approach that will help accelerate cloud migration and acceleration.

Your POV

Are you both an IBM and AWS customer? Do you see this as a win-win? Will you be more likley to choose AWS because of the IBM relationship?

Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org. Please let us know if you need help with your strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

• Developing your metaverse and digital business strategy
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales.

News Analysis: FTC's Lina Khan Blocks $69 Billion Microsoft - Activision Acquisition

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Microsoft Faces Its Biggest Challenge Despite Its "Social" Standing

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella’s and Vice Chair and President Brad Smith face their toughest challenge.  There was always the belief that so long Microsoft acted like a “good citizen” on social issues they would be immune to anti-trust.  That myth has been burst.  The FTC has filed a lawsuit and a judge must decide if the case is strong enough to block the $69 billion deal.  To be blunt, the FTC fears Microsoft will not provide titles for other platforms.  Other headwinds include 16 countries that will have to approve the mega deal.  China will probably block the deal to protect TenCent's position.  Tencent also owns 5% of Activision.

"This is a battle for the future delivery of gaming and gaming platforms," Ray Wang at @constellationr explains as the FTC puts the brakes on Microsoft’s $75bn deal to buy Activision Blizzard. #CallofDuty #MSFT pic.twitter.com/2gvYQHIG1X

— Dan Murphy (@dan_murphy) December 9, 2022

Digital Giants Operate On A Different Dimension And Playbook

Should the deal be completed, Microsoft will become the third largest gaming player by revenue as they reach 3 billion users behind Tencent (#1) and Sony (#2).  Activision brings 31 million monthly active users (MAUs).  Xbox gaming brings 20 million users to the mix.  At the surface, Microsoft's argument about industry competition makes sense for the $200 billion gaming market. However, digital giants are collapsing industries into value chains.  A software company, gaming company, telecom company, and entertainment have collapsed value chains along four common elements:

• Content - titles, movies, software
• Network - monthly active users and subscribers
• Distributions channels - stores, cloud (Azure), internet, consoles
• Tech platforms - gaming platforms, consoles, marketplaces

Moreover, a concentration of competitors who have integrated content, network, distribution channels, and technology platform could stifle competition. This argument should be the heart of the FTC's argument around digital giant dominance and future digital giant dominance. 

Perceived Past History Haunts Microsoft's Argument

Activision has blockbuster titles such as Overwatch, Call of Duty, Diablo, Warcraft, and Candy Crush Saga.  The FTC's argument primarily rests on how Microsoft allegedly failed to keep its word on more open distribution of its titles post acquisition when it acquired Zenimax. The FTC claimed that Bethesda titles Starfeld and Redfall were not available on other platforms. 

Microsoft disputes the terms of the agreement by stating that "“Future decisions on whether to distribute ZeniMax games for other consoles will be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account player demand and sentiment. Factors that will inform Microsoft’s decision-making on future games include consumer demand and preference and the willingness of third parties to work with Microsoft to launch games for their devices.” 

Despite the apparent confusion and displeasure by the FTC, labor unions such as the Communication Workers of America (CWA) are in favor of the deal.   While Microsoft's gaming head Phil Spencer has offered Activision's blockbuster title Call of Duty, (a $1 billion dollar franchise) for 10 years to both Sony and Nintendo, this may not have been enough for the FTC to back off.

The Bottom Line - Microsoft - Activision Will Become A Landmark Case In Antitrust

Tech companies who thought they could be immune by taking positions on social issues have now realized they are not immune to government interference. At the heart of this case will be how to define the current markets versus the future markets in anti-competitive activity and anti-trust. Dominance in content, network, distribution channels, and tech platforms will eventually become the standard, once this has been identified by the FTC.  For now, this is really about the FTC and Lina Khan needing a win as time is ticking for the current administration to make their point.

In the larger picture, a key factor should be how the innovation lifecycle plays a role in innovation.  Startups and mid-size companies need exits to fund new innovation.  Large digital giants often can not innovate fast enough, attract enough talent, and reach new markets without mergers and acquisitions. Over regulation on M&A will stifle market innovation. Yet, not understanding the dynamics of how digital giants operate in dominating markets will harm consumers in the long run. These factors make this deal a landmark case for the future and may also pave the way for the Metaverse ambitions of Microsoft.

40 Years Young: Adobe Celebrates a Milestone

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 everything from…...

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The very first time I ever heard the word “PostScript” was in high school. I was the editor of my high school’s yearbook, and the publishing company told me that they used the newest technology available like PostScript files that could be sent directly to a printer. Soon we wouldn’t even need carbon paper! A couple years later Adobe would come up again when I was asked if I had ever seen these new Adobe fonts and did I like Utopia or Minion.

It would be a couple more years until I officially joined the ranks of full-time marketer and I had to make that choice many of us had to make back in the day: Adobe or Quark? After dabbling in Quark, my creative "training" (super loose quotations around the word training there) landed and remained in the Adobe Creative Suite. There are still a couple Creative Directors out there that wish I had never taught myself Photoshop or InDesign…and just today I’ve spent a good part of my day creating data charts and report graphics in Illustrator.

Making Milestones Personal (aka It’s All About Me)

I will mark 30 years in Marketing in 2023 and I have to admit that Adobe has been a near-constant partner in my professional journey. And now, all these years later, I cover the broad portfolio that is today’s modern Adobe as part of my role as an Analyst tracking the ins and outs of CX. The team at Adobe may admit that this connection is probably really unfair to them. It is why I can be a bit more tough or critical of them, coming at them as an overly excitable raging (recovering) practitioner instead of a more measured or mild-mannered analyst. But maybe this is also why I find myself thinking about Adobe’s milestone as a marker of “our” work and not just a marker of their work.

When I think about Adobe, I think about an interview where co-Founder John Warnock retold how he and Charles “Chuck” Geshcke decided to leave their jobs and start this adventure. Quoting the transcript from the Wharton interview Warnock said, “I went into Chuck’s office one day and said, “Chuck, we [can stay at] a very cushy, wonderful job here. Or we could try to get something done.” As a marketer, this drive to just go…leave the comfortable…explore that space between cushy and something…is a familiar motivator. It is core to the work of marketing. And the work of marketing is core to Adobe.

But it is, perhaps, a line from a white paper that only the truly nerdy among us have likely ever read. Called “The Camelot Project”, John Warnock outlines a brief for a new technology and foundational idea behind a project that set out to “solve a fundamental problem that confronts today’s companies.” That problem would be the ability to standardize and communicate visual materials across different applications and systems. In this paper Warnock wrote out a vision for documents that could be viewable and printable on any modern device. He wrote, “If this problem can be solved, then the fundamental way people work will change.”

That standard was the Portable Document Format (PDF), and the project was renamed Adobe Acrobat.

Celebrating the Hard Work of Marketing

Once again, we are confronted with this desire that sits at the very epicenter of Adobe’s history…the desire to solve problems and improve how people work. It is still alive and well in today’s Adobe, unapologetically championed by a new cadre of leaders starting with Shantanu Narayan.

From how we imagine and express to how we reach and engage, Adobe has been there stirring the pot and solving problems. There are only a few organizations out there as in tune with the work of marketing…dare I say the messy, hard, sometimes-heartbreaking, always-changing, insanely wonderful work of marketing.

As Adobe turns 40, we can all step back and appreciate how far the company has come, and by extension how far the work of marketing, communications and creativity has come. Adobe isn’t perfect…far from it. Like every other company out there, Adobe has a SWOT deck with plenty of things to include in that W box. But for today, let’s set aside that criticism and cynicism to appreciate the journey started by Warnock and Geshcke who named their little adventure after a creek that ran behind Warnock’s home.

Adobe, Happy 40th. 40 years from now as younger analysts mark your 80th trip around the corporate sun, may they continue to celebrate your dedication to us…to the marketers that decided to leave something cushy behind so we could just get something done.

WalkMe in 2022: An Update on the Digital Adoption Journey

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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I'm here in Kensington, London this morning to get an update from WalkMe, the well-known digital adoption platform. Arguably the poster child for the fast-emerging cottage industry, I've seen solutions in the category spread across organizations as they grapple with getting today's cornucopia of tech more effectively used by their workers. However, among the digital adoption platforms available today, WalkMe continues to define the category, which was first tracked here by Constellation Research.

The success of providing just-in-time training and analytics insights for the digital employee experience has been evident given the number of Constellation SuperNova awards such solutions have won in recent years. Guiding workers through filing expense reports or managing complex projects to ensure they make the most of the expensive and sophisticated IT tools at their disposal has become so vital that I recently cited it as table stakes for the essential core of the digital workplace today.

WalkMe, for its part, has never been content to rest on its laurels, so I'm excited to see what they present this morning in terms of the new art-of-the-possible for digital adoption platforms.

WalkMe Analyst Day, Q4 2022

9:00am: Ofir Bloch kicks things off, talking about how the category started. Mentioning how just about every research firm covers the space now, though it's still not nearly as broadly known as it should be.

9:04am: Now Claire McGovern, Senior Manager of Analyst Relations, is up and introducing the schedule and the day. 

9:10am: Maor Ezer, SVP in the WalkMe Office of the CEO talking talking about living through a rare time in human history. COVID-19, supply chain, Ukraine War, the economy and other current events as a defining time to live through. All of these event are driving change and "really affects us. In the world of enterprise, what we're seeing is we saw a massive spike in experience through the sole great resignation and everything. Everybody started thinking about the employees about the experience they're having, getting the job done, and suddenly almost in a day, we're now seeing the industry talk about ROI, efficiency, and optimization." Shows a graph of the S&P 500 to show the major event shaping the world today.

9:17am: Maor (correctly) says the ability to better connect the user experience the user, whether it be the customer or the employee, to the the business workflow is what ultimately drives ROI. And that is the primary goal of the company. "And if you're able to put them together, you're going to see a lot more ROI." Notes that the typical organization rolled out 187 new apps last year, often with duplicative value, but don't get nearly the value from them that they should, due to various adoption challenges.

9:22am: Now talking about the digital adoption journey, especially across business applications, the business keeps on saying they're thinking about an application, but they are thinking about an application, but it's not an application. It's a user journey, and the user journey goes over multiple applications. Cross application digital adoption is where the value is, notes Maor. It's all about the frustrated employee, who has to engage with so many pieces of software.

9:31am: Talking about their partner ecosystem. "We've seen Accenture build their first digital adoption practice. Same with Deloitte. SAP made a huge deal with us, we're sold with Concur by them." Have seen comparable growth in process intelligence. Talking about positioning, one person notes that "random acts of digital are a thing of the past", meaning WalkMe helps organization make digital deployment and adoption more deliberate and planned.

9:38am: The buyer of the DAP solution today is still fragmented notes Maor and sits across sales, product, IT, HR, customer care, e-commerce, finance, and operations. The CIO, CDO, and CHRO are often taking the ownership, though the best fit currently for DAP acquisition overall is the CIO. "They tear it out of the business, and make it a center of excellence." 

9:43am: The three legs on the DAP table are a) data on usage and user journeys, b) actions that increase adoption and engagement and c) improved experiences. Talking about the DAP flywheel. Specifically talking about outcome-based solutions, "what are you trying to achieve? Build, solve, measure" in an agile cycle.

9:50am: Talking about the DAP process, which is to define success upfront and then adaptively zero on it. Examples of digital success include: Shortening trouble ticket times, encouraging customer self-service, improving CRM data quality, streamlining the quote to cash process, shorten employee onboarding, and increasingly digital sales.

9:55am: "So the experience piece is the cherry on top. That's what the employee engages with. When you think about experience, this is where they meet. This is key to the digital adoption solution. We want something that is the Google of the enterprise that I come to, to start my journey. We want to make sure the future of work and the work experience is accessible to all and really easily on mobile, on desktop, and on the Web.".

10:08am: Showing voice assistants to aid digital adoption. Saying they're going to be able to deliver the experience not just in their application, but through any application in the IT portfolio to the employee using voice. "We will take it on Slack, on Teams. to use in on Cortana, etc. You want to use any technology to be able to be the funnel that connects the automation in the UI."

Summary: WalkMe remains focused on their mission and overall trajectory. However, they have a desire to continue to increase ease-of-automation and bring better and more streamlined access to the experience layer, especially across applications. They are putting their R&D into these goals.'

WalkMe Product Demo by Lloyd Soldatt

10:27am: Lloyd shows the WalkMe DAP Flywheel and explains how they think about customer challenges. "Of course, it's about relevance and precision. We cannot serve the customer without knowing what level of digital experiences they have in the organization. We have three pillars of the digital adoption technology (data, action, experience.) We collect the data, they give us the understanding where the customer is and in every case, it's a unique situation. It's never the same. So it's not the same solution for everyone. It's very unique. Then we develop and deploy the experience. We then measure the outcome, and we re-evaluate if necessary, so it's ever evolving. It's ever adjusting. It's always fitting the situation. " Will now show WalkMe in action shortly.

10:31am: Now talking about the AI in WalkMe called Zest. "It learns what I do throughout the day. So next time if I want to repeat a similar action it actually prompts me with my habits and my behavior from before. So it cuts down on the time that I spent trying to fulfill my tasks but it also makes me extremely successful."

10:40am: Now Lloyd gives an excellent demonstration of how digital adoption actually works to both guide and the user and educate them right in the moment as they carry out their work. Video of the demonstration here.

Customer-Centric Strategy, Value, and Innovation by KJ Kusch, Field CTO

10:50am: KJ is an experienced CTO with experience from ServiceNow. I've spoken with her before and she has a pragmatic, can-do attitude towards IT. Explains how Walkme provides value to customers: They start by defining initiatives, which help them understand what the potential digital adoption projects can be. That's important for them to define a DAP business case for customers. Then they stage the steps of the initiative out: "Because I'm not going to do everything at once. I've got to spread it out over three years. And then we engage with the business, to make sure whoever I'm working with understands the business impact and KPIs."

11:00am: Exploring how WalkMe idenfies value in the use cases. Most valuable are the tasks that are carried out over and over again. These form the foundation of a digital adoption initiative. "So the whole crux of all these conversations we have really comes down to making sure we get the right words on paper to have a mutual plan. And that mutual plan isn't just with us and the customer is with services and partners. We document what we know so that we have a clear understanding of what we've been talking about before we even do anything." Then they make sure there is a way to capture and demonstrate incremental value. Interesting. WalkMe has industry benchmarks now, to tell customers what they can expect and how they compare to competitors.

11:10am: Now KJ shows some impressive client business value assessments for DAP, that show the value accused over the years of actually deploying a digital adoption plan. Shows an example of a client with 61 use cases where they deployed over 200 pieces of digital adoption content to help aid their workers. Then they ensure they measure all of the resulting time saved and efficiencies into an actual dollar amount to show ROI.

Let's Hit Pause on the Salesforce Panic

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 everything from…...

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The timeline of Salesforce announcements has felt ominous, surprising and doom-worthy to be sure:

• November 30: Bret Taylor, Salesforce Co-CEO, announces he is stepping down effective January 2023
• December 1: Mark Nelson, CEO of Salesforce's Tableau, departed the company
• December 1: Steven Tamm, CTO of Salesforce, departed the company
• December 5: Stewart Butterfield, founder and CEO of Slack, announced his departure
• December 5: Tamar Yehoshua, CPO at Slack, announces her departure
• December 5: Jonathan Prince, SVP Marketing, Brand and Communications at Slack, announces his departure

In the wake of the Taylor announcement I mused that someone really needed to go give Marc Benioff a hug as I imagined him standing alone, once again, in Salesforce park with nobody to play with. And to some degree, I still feel that. Benioff has seen a LOT of departure in the past couple of weeks, and not just from Salesforce as Keith Grossman, President of Time Magazine, who notoriously dragged the pub into the web3-powered metaverse announced his departure days before the Taylor bombshell. 

It is hard to turn in any direction and NOT see a report about these departures..along with others reported earlier in the fall like Gavin Patterson's intended departure in January 2023. Some journalists and even some of my analyst peers have taken to social to announce the fatal blow these departures will have on the tech giant. Some comments, it should be mentioned, are down right giddy with anticipation for the pain. Some of these headlines are click bait. Some of the comments are to be cantankerous or persnickity. Some prove that Business Insider LOVES a leaked org chart. Some raise really interesting questions from why to now what.

It is exceedingly easy, especially in the immediate aftermath of big announcements, to imagine a world where NO organization could EVER be the same after someone departs. Slack will never again be Butterfield's Slack. Taylor's shoes are too big...too mission critical...to be filled. 

Here's the thing...and I say this with ALL due respect to both Butterfield and Taylor...everyone is replaceable. Slack will never again be Butterfield's Slack...and that's OK. The question here isn't CAN they be replaced but how well does Salesforce understand Salesforce to correctly map the succession opportunity before them. The opportunity here is to replace those leaders departing with new thinkers that understand that the job isn't to FILL shoes but to cobble a whole new pair that are distinctly theirs. 

The Fallacy of Shoe Filling

As I sit here writing I've been struggling to think of a successful executive who was able to step into a highly visible role by pretending to BE the person they replaced. Tim Cook didn't pretend to be Steve Jobs. Instead, he respectfully and carefully picked up Job's insanely large shoes-to-fill, placed them in a spot of reverence, and then started cobbling his own shoes. When Tim Cook chooses to retire, he too will leave massive shoes to be filled. But they won't be Steve Jobs' kicks.

Let's take the example of Butterfield's departure. In an analyst fireside chat held today (12/6) Butterfield shared that this decision process dates back months. We now know that Lidiane Jones, the current GM of Experience Cloud, Commerce and Marketing Cloud with Salesforce, has been tapped for the role of Slack CEO. This is an executive that has seen Commerce and Marketing Clouds through a significant platform and integration transformation. She's no slouch. She understands the vision, the product, the customer and Salesforce well.

In an age when every corner of tech's opinion-verse touts the criticality of digital ecosystems that can combine customer experience (CX) with employee experience (EX), who better than a CX leader coming to advance the vision for a Digital HQ that includes Slack's capacity to address EX in the service of CX? 

Butterfield's shoes are Slacktastically big...but this isn't a question if Jones can fill Butterfield's shoes. Those are his and his alone. The question SHOULD be what shoes will she make? Will they be distinctly molded to more fully embrace this combined CX + EX vision for Slack? Will they carry the water for a DigitalHQ message or will they evolve that message into its next iteration? Time will tell how well this succession model unfolds. And if I am being honest...I'm far more interested in who is eyeing HER shoes in the CX solutions than concerned for how well she will do in her role with Slack!

Stop Asking About the Plan...Ask About the Strategy

But this does bring us to the issue of succession planning. Succession planning is vastly different than "filling an open position" which is a process. Succession planning is a strategy that culminates in the process of filling the vacancy that is initiated when a leader leaves. Having been part of succession strategy sessions, I've noticed that much like developing customer experience strategies, going on gut, mirroring past actions or guessing-as-strategy typically ends in failure. Guessing is not a strategy 

So where can succession planning avoid guessing? Often times the strategy starts by clearly articulating the top business challenges that the organization could face over the near term and long term, with a focus on those long term "5-years from now" issues and throwing in some of those wild curve ball challenges like a global pandemic just for kicks. Skills, both hard and soft, are also outlined and cataloged, typically based on the positive skills and attributes of the departing leader. In scenarios where cultural change is required, noting any missing skills or skills and attributes to avoid is a wise exercise. 

As the strategy is outlined, there also comes a time to document the teams, leaders and positions that will be critical to ensure near term business continuity and long term success. This is typically where individual names start to bubble up to the surface...individuals who invariably end up placed somewhere in the theoretical line of succession. They may have many of the attributes desired in the next leader. They may be at the helm of mission critical departments. They may be influential partners in the business eco-system. They may be a fan favorite with the outgoing boss. 

Regardless of why they bubble...names start to bubble. And this, sadly, is where some of the guessing begins. We guess that this person will be successful because the former-CEO liked them, they worked well with the board, they hit their goals, the team loves them...all amazingly positive bullet points for a CV...but the guess is still there. 

Networks for Change

While doing research for a report published earlier this year titled "People-Powered Revenue Intelligence" (link gated) I had the opportunity to interview the team at Introhive, the customer intelligence solution, about their work with network analysis among teams and internal organization stakeholders. While talking about change-centric programs like diversity or leadership advancements, the team noted that the data to understand WHY leaders are successful is right under our noses: the data in emails, chats and business communications that can unlock the secrets to what and who is part of a successful network. The question can then shift from "why don't we have more women in leadership roles" to "what network, connections and work actions does this successful woman leader in our organization do that others can replicate and that the organization can support, facilitate and encourage?"

By flipping the script from guessing to knowing about success, traits or attributes, people-powered network intelligence can start to architect the network infrastructure that can be built around individuals with the intent to realize and replicate change. So, through the lens of succession planning, knowing what network a successful outgoing CEO had becomes critical data to inform what network the incoming CEO will need to enact their vision and plans. 

What does this mean for Salesforce? Perhaps nothing at the moment. But as we have seen in the Butterfield to Jones baton handoff, when succession strategy is executed, it can set up the incoming leader for success even in the face of the crowd shouting about imminent demise. Yes, curveballs can appear out of nowhere and for Jones, Slack and Salesforce that curveball was named Bret. Time will tell if succession talks had tackled the scenario of 'what if Taylor departs' or if those Taylor-related conversations were only specific to 'what if Benioff departs' discussions. 

For right now, the reality is that as much as Taylor et al. will be missed...Salesforce will soldier on with new leaders stepping into the footprints of big shoes. The real question to be answered will be if these new leaders will spend their days trying to fill old shoes or if they are ready to cobble their own way forward.

Selling Everywhere

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 everything from…...

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“Always be closing.”

The minute Alec Baldwin’s character Blake said it, we all knew it would be the mantra that would stick. We also knew it shouldn’t.

That infamous line from the film Glengarry Glen Ross has been quoted sometimes as sales motivation…sometimes as irony. But it assumes one thing: The act of selling—and more importantly closing—only happens in the Sales department by Salespeople.

This has been a convenient construct, especially for those of us architecting and scaling sales technologies. If selling only happens in sales, tools like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be “owned” by Sales and other functions like Marketing or Service must bear the burden of feeding the machine in order to accelerate and bloat the closing apparatus. Further, if selling and by extension sales tech only exists in and for sales to always be closing, the data that comes from across the enterprise and from the customer should only be pointed in one direction.

This monolithic and unidirectional concept of sales enablement has been manageable (albeit not entirely effective or efficient) in an age where the pace of business was dictated by the schedule of the enterprise, carefully following the cadence of product and sales. This paradigm relied on digital transformation being a slow moving and reliably intractable process, leaving sales technologies to remain largely untouched for fear of disrupting the flow of revenue.

The customer and the world had other plans.

The COVID pandemic ushered in a new age where digital transformation was an act of necessity accelerated by the uncertainty of what might come next. Once the dust of chaos settled, most customers looked around exceedingly pleased at the ease of use, simplicity and abundance of digital engagements that added tangible value. Most importantly, these engagements brought back something that had gone missing: relationships. With each interaction, customers and organizations were using digital touch points to reconnect and build relationships beyond simple transactions. In a time when physical isolation and distance threatened to sever bonds, digital transformation brought people back together in ways pre-pandemic strategies couldn’t imagine.

Are we ready to empower selling everywhere?

was a core question being asked when I sat down with Nitin Badjatia, Head of SAP’s Product Marketing and Solutions Management for Sales Cloud and Service Cloud and Sanjeet Mall, SAP’s SVP and Head of Digital Workplace Platform. As we look into this new moment of digital-first, data-rich customer-driven experiences, how should proceed? How do we rearchitect Sales and selling? What are the requirements for truly modern CX platforms to meet this selling-everywhere, engaging-anywhere model?

Three key themes emerged from my conversation with Badjatia and Mall:

First and foremost, modern selling systems demand composability…and not just as a buzzword or as a nod to modularity. Rather, this is a call for the strength of a microservices architecture that empowers and enables continuous integration and accelerated business application development and deployment. This is about rethinking foundation in order to rebuild business. It is rejecting a monolithic interpretation of the services and applications that exist across the enterprise.

Second, it is a call for awareness, or more specifically for sales platforms to empower everywhere sellers with situational awareness of opportunities. This goes far beyond a desire for sales executives to have data available to them to close a deal. In fact, it is a requirement to have the capacity to quickly and consistently pull data in from across the enterprise so that anyone engaging with the customer has the awareness of that customer’s entire experience with a brand. With this intelligence, individual customers are seen contextually through the lens of whomever is engaging. This is intelligence and knowledge beyond the moment in front of you. It is knowing the account and the individual and binding that to a deep knowledge of your own business.

Next, it is time to rethink the projects and paths to integration, with fine-grained focus on how systems integrate across the entire business. For too long digital businesses have assumed that digital transformation, especially in the realm of CX, was the act of integrating and aligning the channels through which engagement and experience could be delivered. While this has been a critical stage in the evolution of the digital enterprise, it is not the evolutionary end point. For integration to yield value, the people, platforms and processes of the business must integrate to intentionally service, engage and connect with the customer.

This is perhaps the discussion point that stuck with me the most from my chat with Badjatia and Mall: That integration must mirror how the work of a business needs to get done. Technology and systems only truly work if the promise of value is delivered to a customer. The beauty of systems that are built on top of composable architectures is that there is more than one way to quite literally stack the stack.

For Badjatia and Mall this new enterprise-wide sales approach has required some serious introspection at SAP…and a need to rebuild from the inside. Yet in a world where selling has evolved, CRM seems to be stagnant. But to be sure, CRM is not dead. For SAP, this has been an opportunity for CRM to evolve and look beyond the monolith.

This has led to a Sales Cloud revamp that is totally cloud native and foundationally rooted in modern microservices with flexible and scalable workflows. It requires that SAP and its entire CX portfolio doesn’t disqualify connections to other systems, especially those that may be legacy in nature or sit far beyond SAP’s own portfolio of business and operational systems. But it also requires that tools like SAP Sales Cloud take advantage of the business operations systems that SAP is best known for across ERP and data.

This new SAP vibe is about intentionally designing to be open: open to other systems, processes and data. If there is a singular post-pandemic lesson all businesses have learned it could be that while transformation is not a destination, the inability to quickly pivot and scale is. The problem is that destination is never an end point where a business can thrive. In fact, that destination is more about the stagnation of innovation than the capacity to transform.

But Badjatia said it best as we discussed this new modern selling model: Slow remembers. If left to fester, this slow monolith will encourage our most loyal customers to rethink and retreat. As we look towards a new year, it is time to ask serious questions of our selling systems and strategies. Are we ready for sales systems to be enterprise-wide selling enablers? Do we have the right foundation and architecture to empower that? Are we intentionally establishing systems of intelligence to meet customers at the intersection of intent and value?

Answering yes will deliver value at the velocity the business demands and the cadence the customer expects. Answering no will lead organizations to cling to the outdated “always be closing” strategy that only really worked in the movies…and even in the movies, it never really delivered much value.

FIDO and the Consumerization of Cryptography

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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The following blog is based on my FIDO Authenticate Conference speech, 2022 https://authenticatecon.com/session/leading-at-the-edge-fido-and-the-normalization-of-cryptography/

Since its inception in 2013, the FIDO Alliance has played a largely unsung role in consumerizing cryptography.  FIDO has helped to embed a standard cryptographic stack that extends from the cloud all the way out the edge, where consumers enjoy supremely powerful yet blissfully easy-to-use security.

I assess FIDO to be the most important identity industry consortium of all time. FIDO’s mission, of course started out in solving the world's password problem. And along the way, it has normalised a minimum set of edge device capabilities — a de facto standard for the mission-critical cryptography that we all depend, without knowing it, on in the digital world.

Under the covers, every FIDO capable device has a common suite of features. It will have a tamper-resistant secure element or microcontroller which stores private keys, biometric templates, and other secrets. Critical software operations are executed privately within the confines of that secure element, including key pair generation, digital signing of transactions on behalf of the device user, and verification of the user’s biometrics against stored templates. The secure element will also hold compact firmware that runs all these cryptographic operations and will ideally be independently quality certified.

Pardon me for going into this detail; it’s exactly the sort of detail that no smart phone user ever needs to know.  But this is what makes mobile payments and mobile wallets so safe

The FIDO bag of tricks is the cousin of portable cryptographic technologies going back over 30 years ago, including SIMs (arguably the world’s first verifiable credentials), Chip-and-PIN payment cards, e-passports, health insurance smartcards in Europe, and ID smartcards such as the U.S. Federal Government PIV card.  

In 2013, FIDO’s founders were in the right place at the right time to leverage increasingly powerful mobile technology into password-less authentication. Famously, it is said that a single smartphone today contains more computing power than the whole of NASA at the time of the Apollo moon landings.  What's even more remarkable for security is that the smartphone has more cryptography than the National Security Agency had at its disposal in 1999.  

Just as important as the technology is the consumer behaviour. These personal devices have become habituated; they are on our person pretty much all the time, they are core to our social presence, and so much of our retail business.  We have come to feel viscerally how important they are, so their safekeeping has become second nature.

So not only can digital developers pretty safely assume that a common cryptography stack is available for their apps and service, they can also assume that almost all users are operating that stack safely!

Of course, the technology is not perfect, but think about the common tacit assumption in smartphone banking apps, mobile wallets and airline boarding passes. These are capabilities of enormous consequence; it must be assumed that the capabilities are almost always in the right hands. 

There are trusted processes for apps and credentials to be provisioned to the right users.  And now we have coordinated with human factors engineering to the extent that we can rely on apps and credentials stay safe and sound, where they belong.

The FIDO Alliance, with its normalized basket of security and privacy primitives, sits adjacent to some of the most important security developments today: verifiable credentials and data wallets.