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Week Two - More Constellation ShortList Portfolio Updates

Week Two - More Constellation ShortList Portfolio Updates

Aubrey Coggins
Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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As promised last week, we rolled out an additional 21 new and updated lists from the Constellation ShortList™ portfolio across our different coverage areas.

Below is the full list released today:

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Best Of Breed Platforms - NEW
B2B Marketing Automation
Campaign to Commerce 
Cloud-Based BI & Analytics
Cloud-Based Performance Management
Data Cataloging
Employee Digital Workspaces
ERM/GRC 
European-Centric Talent Management Vendors
Field Service Management
Global HCM Suites
Global IaaS for NextGen Apps
Partner & Alliance Relationship Management (PARM)
Payroll Vendors for North American SMBS
Quantum Computing Platforms
Robotic Process Automation
Self-Service Data Preparation
Smart Services Digital Monetization Platforms
Social / Digital Media Listening / Monitoring / Engagement Platforms
Talent Management Suites
Work Coordination Platforms

Technology buyers use these reports to identify the services and products they need to achieve digital transformation. Products and services named to each Constellation ShortList meet the threshold criteria as determined by our analysts through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. Constellation ShortList reports are part of Constellation’s open research library and are free to download. Updates are shared every six months.

 

Be sure to check back for the final set up updates next Wednesday! 
 

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IBM Think 2019: Takeaways on the Promise of Cloud-Portable Artificial Intelligence

IBM Think 2019: Takeaways on the Promise of Cloud-Portable Artificial Intelligence

Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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IBM promises ‘AI Anywhere,’ but will customers trade one form of lock-in for another?

IBM Think, the company’s big annual event, visited San Francisco for the first time February 12-15, bringing some 30,000 customers, partners, press and analysts to the Moscone Center. What’s next for IBM and will it reignite growth?

Most of what I heard at Think 2019 seemed geared to existing IBM customers who are all-in on its stack. That’s good news for many long-time IBM customers, but I have to wonder whether more heterogeneous firms or entirely new customers will be attracted to what seemed like an all-IBM offering designed for multi-cloud deployment? Here’s my take on the big “AI Anywhere” announcement.

IBM Promises ‘AI Anywhere’

IBM’s Watson Anywhere promise, which was announced by CEO Ginni Rometty during her keynote and detailed in separate analyst and customer presentations, sounded compelling in principle. The idea is to facilitate a hybrid, multi-cloud world, and most organizations Constellation Research talks to accept that the combination of on-premises and cloud-based deployments will be a reality for some time to come. IBM’s envisioned “anywhere” deployment choices include on-premises and the IBM Cloud, of course, but also Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and RedHat Openshift and OpenStack (see IBM Watson Anywhere slide, below).

 

Source: IBM

The “Watson Anywhere” offerings described at Think showed IBM’s complete stack, including the AI options and the underlying information architecture (IA). IBM will use the Kubernetes and containerization capabilities of (the confusingly named) IBM Cloud Private (ICP) to deploy all or parts of the portfolio on the on-premises, private cloud and public-cloud options listed above. IBM’s multi-cloud offering on AWS will be the first of IBM's third-party cloud deployment options to be introduced this year. IBM executives often use the line “there’s no AI without IA,” and the slide below seems to suggest that IBM's AI is inextricably tied to its IA, meaning IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP/D), but that's not the case. You can take more of an a la carte approach, as I discuss below, but execs did a better job of detailing the IBM stack than they did of explaining the modularity and flexibility of the portfolio to work with the components and services that customers might use on other public clouds.

Source: IBM

As for the IBM stack, ICP/D bundles together microservices-enabled capabilities to collect, organize, and analyze data, as shown in the slide below. The “collect” services embedded in ICP/D include the Db2 family (Db2 itself, Db2 Warehouse, Db2 Event Store) and Hadoop, Spark and IBM BigSQL. The “organize” services include capabilities from the InfoSphere brand, including DataStage integration, cleansing, data masking and governance capabilities. The “analyze” aspects of ICP/D include foundations from SPSS, Cognos and Watson Studio. There are also open source technologies in the mix -- like Hadoop, Spark, Elastisearch, Flink and more -- but as you can see below, there are a lot of IBM technologies under the hood in ICP/D.

IBM Cloud Private For Data

Source: IBM

MyPOV on IBM’s Multi-cloud Offering

IBM executives argued that Watson Anywhere will help companies break down the “walled gardens,” meaning various forms of vendor lock-in, on the major public clouds. But I doubt many customes will want to go to the opposite extreme of locking into all IBM technologies wherever they choose to deploy workloads. I see those interested in multi-cloud as more likely to be interested in mixing and matching capabilities, including some native to those third-party clouds, because they 1. Have significant amounts of data on those clouds, 2. Run significant numbers of applications on those clouds and/or 3. Want to use best-of-breed capabilities available on those clouds.

In my recent case study report on Royal Dutch Shell, Daniel Jeavons, the company’s general manager of data science, explained that the energy giant is using both AWS and Azure, tapping what it thinks of as interchangeable, but low-cost and quickly scalable information architecture available on each cloud. For example, Shell uses Redshift Spectrum, S3, Databricks, MySQL, Spark and Hadoop services on AWS and what Jeavons described as more-or-less equivalent services on Azure, including Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Blob Storage, Databricks and MySQL, Spark and HDInsight.

Shell sees what it describes as its “data science platform” as the part that it wants to be portable across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. That platform is a mix of non-cloud-specific software including Alteryx, MATLAB, Python, R, and R Studio. So in Shell’s case, the IA is seen as interchangeable while the AI and data-science capabilities – and the models developed thereon – are the prized part that the company wants available in hybrid- and multi-cloud fashion, applicable wherever data lives.

IBM execs did acknowlede, when asked, that there’s nothing preventing customers from deploying individual components of its modular AI stack. To me, some of the more attractive components of the overall stack are Watson Studio, which includes a nice collection of open source frameworks, and Watson OpenScale, which addresses the monitoring and optimization aspects of the model-development-and-deployment lifecycle often neglected in data science offerings. OpenScale also addresses model interpretability and bias detection, which are emerging as important challenges. If you just want to use Watson Studio and OpenScale, you could use ICP (without the “for Data,” IA part) to deploy just those components on the range of IBM’s hybrid and multi-cloud deployment options. As show below, for example, Watson Studio and OpenScale clould run on AWS or Azure with those clouds being the runtime environment.

Source: IBM

The advantage of a more a la carte approach would be, for example, bringing a consistent data science and model-management environment to a range of deployments, drawing on data where it lives (assuming it’s already on that cloud) rather than moving it or replicating it onto a separate platform (ICP/D running on IaaS). But instead of talking up flexibility and choice, IBM spoke to IBM customers about running the IBM stack on rival clouds using a bare minimum of capabilities from those clouds.

I suppose it’s a breakthrough that IBM is even acknowledging the customer desire to run workloads on rival clouds – something Microsoft and Oracle don’t discuss. But if you’re going to talk up multi-cloud support, in my book you might as well talk up the ability to work with data where it lives and bring what the customer loves most (and not everything) to a third-party cloud. I wouldn't expect IBM execs to talk up the components and services customers might want to use on other clouds, but it would have helped the deploy-anywhere story to hear more about the modularity of the portfolio and the availability of REST APIs and more to play nicely on third-party clouds.

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DisrupTV: Why People are Your Biggest Asset and Building Diversity Across Your Community

DisrupTV: Why People are Your Biggest Asset and Building Diversity Across Your Community

Aubrey Coggins
Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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When it comes to diversity in leadership and your workforce, the customers impacted by disruptive products, and your affiliated communities related to company’s success or personal network growth, it’s important to remember that people are the backbone. DisrupTV dug deep on the people behind the tech through some insightful interviews.

It’s time to Increase Diversity and Women in STEM

Julia Taylor Kennedy, EVP at Center for Talent Innovation, shared some of her findings from the “Wonder Women in STEM” study and discussed what we need to do to elevate women and diversify in these areas. In colleges, the numbers are good: 50% of college grands in STEM are women; 40% at graduate level. When looking in the workforce, however, only 30% are women.

How do we fix this gap? Is it equal pay? Engagement? Communities? Diversity in leadership? Some companies, like Salesforce, are doing a great job with building diversity for women and other minority groups. To make change and bring diversity in STEM and across other fields, it starts at the top by having executives in the C-Suite representing these groups and keeping diversity top of mind. It also comes down to purpose, pay, and having connection through communities and even to the customers they serve.

Building Trust Across Your Organization and Customers

Steve Murphy, Chief Executive Officer at Epicor, shared some of the top trends in manufacturing and the impact of cloud and other technologies facing customers today. By offering advice, knowledge and choices, customers will build the trust needed to do long-term business with you and also give them the confidence to move into new technologies needed to compete in today’s environment.

He also shared some fantastic advice as a veteran CEO and executive. As a leader and especially working directly with customers, product knowledge is essential. Set time in your week to study–really know what you are talking about when it comes to customers’ requirements and pain points. Get into the weeds, understand the ins and outs of the product, and provide value and support to customers.

How are We Impacted by Technology – Customers and Employees?

In our final segment, DisrupTV caught up with Holger Mueller, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, to learn more about his latest research and get a quick grammar lesson on how to properly pronounce “Davos.” Be sure to check out the jam-packed interview on enterprise acceleration, next-gen apps, HR tech, and AI. Learn about the trends and what this means for your people – employees, partners, customers and community.

This is just a small glimpse at the great advice shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or the podcast.

Tune in every week for DisrupTV, hosted by Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang, on Fridays 11 AM PT/2 PM ET. Build good karma by empowering people across your community.

 

 

DisrupTV Episode 136, Featuring Julia Taylor Kennedy, Steve Murphy, Holger Mueller from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

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Event Report: #Think2019 Showcases IBM's Shift Back From Software To Services

Event Report: #Think2019 Showcases IBM's Shift Back From Software To Services

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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IBM Gains Mojo On Cloud Vision and Shows Strength in Digital Ecosystems

Dreaming of warmer pastures in Las Vegas and golf with colleagues, customers, partners, prospects, and employees slogged through the February rain of San Francisco in Moscone Center for the second iteration of IBM Think. Think 2019 had many highlights beyond the lukewarm "second chapter" of the cloud keynote by CEO, Ginni Rometty (see Figure 1):

  • Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale broadens distribution on public clouds and breaks AI vendor lock-in on apps but not at the platform level.
  • New digital ecosystems at Hyundai Card, Cigna, Media Ocean, Sentara show strength of IBM Blockchain
  • Science Slam showcases why faster concept to commercialization at IBM Research will power innovation
  • Project Debater demonstrates how far IBM’s NLP and AI capabilities can react and craft complex arguments
  • IBM Cloud Integration Platform speeds up app deployment and supports hybrid cloud deployments
  • IBM Services for Multicloud helps breaks cloud vendor lock-in but not at the platform level.
  • IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Service deploys IBM LinuxONE mainframes to provide FIPS 140-2 level 4 encryption key management technology
  • IBM Cloud Private and HCL Cloud Native Labs will help migrate ISV solutions to IBM Cloud
  • IBM Managed Security Services Provider Program wins praise from partners building security practices
  • Clients cheer for tech refresh of POWER9 for IBM i and 7.3 TR 4. AS/400 gets more modernization

Figure 1. IBM Gains Mojo On Cloud Vision and Shows Strength in Digital Ecosystems

Figure 2. Ray Wang sits down with Stu Miniman & Dave Vellante at IBM Think 2019 in San Francisco, CA.

The Bottom Line: Customers Seek An IBM Ready To Battle Amazon and Deliver On Innovation

To counter Amazon’s dominance, IBM along with Google now massively back an open sourced and multi-cloud approach to go after the 80% of remaining workloads. Blockchain, security, AI, mainframe, global services, and data driven digital networks power the use cases that attract clients to IBM. The RedHat deal will bring developer communities closer to IBM.

“A vendor that ran large enterprises on WebSphere and DB2 has become a shadow of themselves. Bringing Watson to other IaaS is the consequence of IBM Cloud retiring. Blockchain remains the last product asset that comes from IBM that gets presence,” noted Holger Mueller, Vice President and Principal Analyst, “The rest is RedHat. IBM Is less a product company and more a services company today. This evolution from hardware over services to software it has taken a step back… back at services”. The bright light comes from the digital network ecosystems created at the industry level to create data driven digital networks.

Overall, IBM’s Think event has improved from a D- to a C- as the events team regains their ability to host an enterprise event, despite poor event planning and messaging. The loss of key event staff due to a requirement to work from an office hub decimated tribal knowledge and expertise

Your POV.

Will the discussions in Davos make a difference? Can leaders come together? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

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

  • Developing your digital business strategy
  • 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 .

Resources And Related Research

Disclosures

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website. * Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Constellation Research recommends that readers consult a stock professional for their investment guidance. Investors should understand the potential conflicts of interest analysts might face. Constellation does not underwrite or own the securities of the companies the analysts cover. Analysts themselves sometimes own stocks in the companies they cover—either directly or indirectly, such as through employee stock-purchase pools in which they and their colleagues participate.

As a general matter, investors should not rely solely on an analyst's recommendation when deciding whether to buy, hold, or sell a stock. Instead, they should also do their own research—such as reading the prospectus for new companies or for public companies, the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC—to confirm whether a particular investment is appropriate for them in light of their individual financial circumstances.

Copyright © 2001 – 2019 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Executive Network

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New Release: Q1 2019 Constellation ShortList Portfolio Updates

New Release: Q1 2019 Constellation ShortList Portfolio Updates

Aubrey Coggins
Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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We’re excited to announce the latest updates to the Constellation ShortList™ portfolio. Today, we released 22 new and updated lists from across our coverage areas. More to come over the next three weeks! 

Below is the full list released today:

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Cloud Platforms - NEW
Augmented Meeting Services
Cloud-Based Machine Learning & Deep Learning Platforms - NEW
Customer Loyalty
Digital Adoption Platforms
Digital Canvas Workboards
Enterprise Cloud Finance Apps
Enterprise Low-Code Tools and Platforms
Healthcare Clinical Communication - NEW
Learning Marketplaces
Location Data Services
Marketing Analytics
Medical Device Security - NEW
Next-Generation Computing Platforms - NEW
North American Talent Acquisition Vendors - NEW
PaaS Tool Suites for Next Gen Apps
Sales Force Automation
Sales Productivity
Self-Service Advanced Analytics & Machine Learning
Smart, Augmented Business Intelligence and Analytics
Virtual Care Platforms - NEW
Workforce Management Suites

Technology buyers use these reports to identify the services and products they need to achieve digital transformation. Products and services named to each Constellation ShortList meet the threshold criteria as determined by our analysts through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. Constellation ShortList reports are part of Constellation’s open research library and are free to download. Updates are shared every six months.

Be sure to check back for updates over the next two Wednesdays! 
 

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MicroStrategy Embeds Analytics Into Any Web Interface

MicroStrategy Embeds Analytics Into Any Web Interface

Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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MicroStrategy HyperIntelligence surfaces customizable analytics from any browser-based application. CRM and ERP systems and custom apps and portals are just the beginning.

No matter how “easy” or “intuitive” self-service analytics might be, the route to consumption typically sends users off to a separate, analytic interface, be it a report or a dashboard with lots of options for exploration and deeper analysis. But when users have only seconds to make decisions, they don’t have time (and won’t bother) to leave their business application to consult available analytics.

Delivering insights quickly and within everyday applications is the idea behind HyperIntelligence, a new capability of MicroStrategy 2019, that latest release of that vendor’s venerable analytics platform. Available since December, HyperIntelligence got its splashy unveiling at MicroStrategy World 2019 (#Analytics19), held Feb. 4-6 in Phoenix, AZ, where it was one of three highlighted themes, along with Federated Analytics and Transformational Mobility. Here’s a closer look at all three, along with my take on MicroStrategy 2019.

MicroStrategy’s HyperIntelligence technology surfaces and lets you drill down on customizable, analytic “HyperCards” whenever you hover a selected hyperlink.

HyperIntelligence Surfaces Insight In Context

HyperIntelligence is a new embedded analytics approach that automatically hyperlinks customer names, product names, employee names or any other selected word type (think analytical dimension), that shows up on any web-based interface. When a user hovers over a link using their cursor, a customizable “HyperCard” appears. Cards can deliver enough insight to drive decisions on their own, but users can also click and drill down on the data to explore and analyze.

Hyperlinks and cards can be color-coded by type, so employees and related cards might show up in red while customer names and related cards could show up in blue and products in green. Each user has control over which cards they use and when they use them, so their interfaces won’t light up like Christmas trees as HyperCards and linking options proliferate across an organization.

The possibilities for embedding analytics – whether descriptive, diagnostic or predictive -- are limitless, ranging from Salesforce, SAP, Workday, Office 365 or any other web-based interface to home-grown portals and applications. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor even made a Microsoft Power BI dashboard “smarter” during a keynote demo, adding a link and surfacing a card with data from MicroStrategy that wasn’t available on the dashboard.

MicroStrategy CEO, Michael Saylor, at MicroStrategy World 2019

Cutting-edge flourishes include “HyperVision” augmented-reality overlays that let you surface cards within live images. When a mobile device camera is trained on, for example, a retail shelf, HyperCards can be superimposed with insights on product inventory levels, expected shipments or profitability by product. HyperVoice adds an audible card option that can be personalized and triggered based on user identity, proximity and location.

Federated Analytics Feed an Open Ecosystem

Federation is MicroStrategy’s platform-powered approach to feeding authoritative, well-governed data to an open ecosystem of analytical tools. The list includes not just the vendor’s own Dossiers and MicroStrategy Desktop, but also Microsoft Power BI, Tableau and Qlik. The platform can also deliver analytics embedded into third-party apps through new REST APIs added in MicroStrategy 2019. The latest release also beefs up R- and Python-based data science work through integration of the open source CRAN and PyPI packages. The resulting predictions can be fed back into HyperCards, Dossiers, reports, custom applications and third-party systems.

MicroStrategy makes data accessible through its semantic modeling layer, which has been rechristened as the Enterprise Semantic Graph in MicroStrategy 2019. The Enterprise Semantic Graph is at the heart of new natural language query capabilities and emerging machine-learning and pattern-recognition-based recommendations. For now these smart/augmented analytic capabilities include recommending visualization approaches, data sets, or existing assets based on data selections and user- and role-based behavior patterns. MicroStrategy is also working on spotting correlations, patterns, exceptions and influencers within data sets, and it expects to deliver this functionality by year-end 2019.

Transformational Mobility

MicroStrategy helped pioneer mobile business intelligence starting a decade ago as smart phones and tablets emerged, and it has continued to refine these capabilities. The list of upgrades and tweaks in MicroStrategy 2019 is long. Mobile Dossiers on iOS and Android devices have gained new table-of-contents and filtering features along with new bookmarking, commenting and notification capabilities. The latter make it easier to return to favored analyses, share comments with collaborators and flag updates of interest. New Library features for mobile devices make it easier to search for and find certified, recommended and recently updated Dossiers, apps and other assets.

MicroStrategy’s latest SDKs for iOS and Android devices let you weave analytic content into custom mobile apps using XCode or JavaScript. Improved geospatial services bring better interaction with maps to phones and tablets. A responsive design editor helps developers optimize web and desktop views for mobile consumption.

My Take on MicroStratety 2019

HyperIntelligence was the biggest and newest news in MicroStrategy 2019 and it’s another example of this vendor coming up with something unique in the market. The vendor also announced that it has achieved parity in supporting cloud deployment on Microsoft Azure as well as Amazon Web Services, and important option giving customers flexibility.

I saw the Federated Analytics and Transformational Mobile announcements as refinements of existing MicroStrategy capabilities while the Enterprise Semantic Graph strikes me as something that has yet to reach its full potential as an enabler of smart, augmented analytics. I’m anticipating a richer story on this front at MicroStrategy World 2020.

Customizable HyperCards can be configured to offer details on customers, left, products, right, or suppliers, organizations, employees and so on.

As for the HyperIntelligence announcement, I think it’s promising and ready for broad adoption. Adoption will depend on the cost, which was not disclosed, and certain technical and security considerations. For now HyperIntelligence works with Google Chrome browsers with the aid of a plugin. Chrome accounts for more than half of all Web browsing, so that’s a good start, and MicroStrategy is working on supporting Safari and other browsers. At some firms, the plugins will get scrutiny from chief security officers. I talked to one bank customer who said plugins are frowned upon by security team, but he was excited enough by the promise of HyperIntelligence to explore approval.

MicroStrategy previewed HyperIntelligence more than a year ago, and there were a number of beta customers on hand in Phoenix. During a keynote panel, Jason Pelky, CIO at the Gilbane Building Company, a global construction-management firm, said his firm has develop HyperCards to give salespeople quick insight into prospects when they’re preparing for calls. Their first instinct is to do Google searches, he said, but HyperCards quickly reveal when prospects are actually past customers, surfacing relevant history and project insights.

French energy services giant Engie is using HyperIntelligence to deliver supplier and supply chain insights both inside and outside of its MicroStrategy-powered Procurement Information Center (PIC). The PIC system has more than 500 regular users of its eight core dashboards, according to Arnaud Droissart, Engie’s IS Procurement Manager, who presented on the topic. Droissart said the firm is using HyperIntelligence to surfaces stats, key metrics and other insights on suppliers, product categories and contacts to business users working within the company’s SAP Ariba system and various web-based ERP interfaces.

What’s particularly exciting about HyperIntelligence is that it promises to bring new levels of intelligence to existing interfaces, reports, dashboards, applications and systems without having to replace anything. It’s purely additive rather than being a rip-and-replace proposition. In short, it’s a highly customizable and broadly deployable technology that could redefine expectations for available embedded analytics.

Related Reading:
Salesforce Dreamforce 2018 Spotlights Identity, Integration, AI and Getting More For Less
Microsoft Steps Up Data Platform and AI Ambitions
Qlik Hits Reset Button, Rolls Out New Cloud, AI & Developer Capabilities
MicroStrategy Makes Case for Agile Analytics on its Enterprise Platform

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The Healthcare CIO's Role in Strategy

The Healthcare CIO's Role in Strategy

David Chou
David Chou
CIO
Harris Health Systems

Title: About David Chou David Chou is vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, covering the intersection of the healthcare systems’ stringent processes and regulations and the transformational power of technology. With nearly 20 years of experience as a senior IT executive across various health systems, David brings a CIO’s practicality to his advisory practice on emerging technologies and disruptive innovation. He offers guidance to healthcare institutions and practitioners navigating digital mega trends and how to strategically apply them to hospital operations to maximize their technology investments. David’s expertise is helping a health system transition toward becoming a digital enterprise in the healthcare setting. He has worked on building a digital…...

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In order to be successful in healthcare, it is essential to restore strategy and technology as a priority and empower the CIO.

The role of a CIO (Chief Information Officer) is a rather new position, being used only in the most recent decades. Despite its newness, the role of a CIO is a core role for healthcare operations. Employing a CIO places someone in the C-suite who remains focused on the long-term strategy and future of the technology advancement.

Though the CIO role is gaining attention, it is not currently being used to its fullest potential when organizations are looking at their strategies. This suggests that companies with CIOs must take time to re-examine the use of the position and the way it adds value to the company. Along with re-examining the way the position is used, companies should also take a close look at the way technology strategy is viewed within the organization. Healthcare organizations are experiencing rapid change and the need for great adaptability. This should be reflected in the way companies view their technology investments.

When companies use CIOs and strategy appropriately, it can be highly effective. While companies using them correctly are in the minority, CIOs offer insights that can be applied to help the company improve.

The Problem

The primary problem identified by CIOs is in the gap between where the position reports to and how it is being utilized in the company. Essentially, most CIOs are not a priority in the company because the majority still do not report to the CEO. As a result, CIOs are stretched quite thin because they are getting pulled in many different areas without alignment to the CEO. This prevents them from being able to focus on a particular aspect of the business and manage it effectively. It also prevents CIOs from being able to develop and drive an effective long-term strategy for the company, since their attention is so divided.

Many CIOs feel they are not being included in the important strategic discussions. When they are involved in these discussions, they are not the kind of conversations that CIOs can use to drive long-term strategy. Instead, they focus on short-term goals or financial planning without addressing major strategic issues that should be addressed before short-term solutions can be implemented. While this may be because CIOs are not utilized appropriately in businesses, it may also be that CIOs must be more vocal about their abilities to add value through strategy to the company.

Utilizing the Full Potential of CIOs

There are a number of ways that companies can utilize CIOs to their fullest potential. Three major methods are:

1. Make digital and technology strategy a priority in executive discussions. By making digital a priority in the business, CIOs will have a front seat at the table. This allows CIOs to voice their opinions and concerns and help guide the organization and decisions in the right direction to facilitate successful long-term strategies for the business. A CIO can get executives thinking in the right direction by getting them to think about what would happen if a new competitor entered the industry and how can the organization uses the technology portfolio as a competitive advantage.

2. Make strategic planning an inclusive process with the CIO. The majority of processes in place in most companies focus on short- and medium-term strategies and goals. However, long-term strategy is overlooked or not dealt with appropriately. To manage this, there are things CIOs can do:

  • Remember that every company is a digital company. When developing a strategy, take it apart and look at how the components work independently. Then ensure that the components can then be put back together to form the full strategy with the integration of technology.
  • Assist with ideas and solutions to narrow the scope of the strategy to address a few key issues or questions so it doesn't become overwhelming for the organization to handle.
  • Be inclusive and active in the strategy by building solutions to assist a wider range of stakeholders.
  • Use engagement and communication to make strategy part of the culture of the business rather than an exercise that addresses IT issues.
  • Assist with project management by setting milestones that can be achieved and measured to hold the organization accountable for its progress.  The CIO is well equipped and experienced with managing large-scale implementation.  This is a valuable asset to the organization.

3. Be clear about the CIO's responsibilities and priorities. This will ensure that the CIO knows exactly what is expected and can achieve it successfully. Within these responsibilities, a CIO will find multiple roles that must be played. These roles are:

  • Challenger, which presents ideas that might not otherwise be considered
  • Change agent, which pushes the organization to be dynamic and to support change
  • Advantage guardian, which helps differentiate the organization from its competitors with the use of technology
  • Facilitator, which provides guidance in implementing a strategy
  • Outsource provider, which ensures that the work gets done and problems are solved

The CIO is a position that is not currently being used to its fullest potential. However, if companies recognize the value CIOs can add and allow them to do the work needed, companies can excel and exceed organizational goals and objectives.

 

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What Should the Major Tech Companies Do If They Want to Get into Healthcare?

What Should the Major Tech Companies Do If They Want to Get into Healthcare?

David Chou
David Chou
CIO
Harris Health Systems

Title: About David Chou David Chou is vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, covering the intersection of the healthcare systems’ stringent processes and regulations and the transformational power of technology. With nearly 20 years of experience as a senior IT executive across various health systems, David brings a CIO’s practicality to his advisory practice on emerging technologies and disruptive innovation. He offers guidance to healthcare institutions and practitioners navigating digital mega trends and how to strategically apply them to hospital operations to maximize their technology investments. David’s expertise is helping a health system transition toward becoming a digital enterprise in the healthcare setting. He has worked on building a digital…...

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Buying another technology company, like an EMR company, is not the ideal method for a technology organization to tap into the healthcare market. There was a lot of buzz recently when Jim Cramer made a comment on his show Mad Money recommending Apple buy the electronic medical record vendor, Epic Systems. While that is one approach to gain the market share, it will not transform the industry.

Instead, Apple or another major technology company must buy a hospital or a small health system to transform operations and take advantage of the latest technology solutions. Buying another healthcare technology company, like Epic Systems, will not have the same impact if the operating model and processes do not change. Here are the benefits of having a technology company operate a hospital.

  1. Every hospital is a digital technology company now. One of the highest operating department expenditures in a hospital operation is IT.  A technology company mentality in a hospital will maximize the use of every toolset to drive organizational efficiency. This approach will change the culture by viewing the technology portfolio as a competitive advantage. Technology vendors have all made investments toward agile while hospital systems have invested heavily on the LEAN process. Incorporating agile will complement an organization's LEAN transformation journey to drive the efficiency goal.
  2. Opportunity to fast track technology debt. The lack of cutting-edge technology is a problem in every hospital. Historically, technology is viewed as an expense. This mentality prevents the organization from keeping up with the technology trends that result in technology debt. A typical scenario in an organization to save on cost is extending the technology solution beyond the warranty support period. This practice makes it difficult to maintain the latest solution. Having a technology company as the hospital operator will ensure that the organization is technically prepared for the future.
  3. Use technology to eliminate waste. Every hospital organization is going through an exercise to decrease their expenses and look for opportunities to improve efficiencies. This is a prime target for using technology as a lever to create automation and promote the usage of robotics to create greater efficiencies. The goal is to allow the workforce to practice at the top of their skillset while shifting the manual work efforts to an automated process.
  4. Design thinking for the patients. Hospitals need to do a better job of accommodating the patient's demand as a consumer. The patients expect the same experience as the retail consumer with a personalized experience. This is the prime opportunity for a technology company to incorporate personalized design thinking principles to improve patient engagement. 
  5. Address the technical talent gap. Healthcare industries have a talent gap specifically around digital solutions. The future IT workforce must be proficient in cloud, data analytics, mobile first, and social technology. The benefit of having a hospital operated by a technology company will eliminate the talent gap that exists today.

I have highlighted the five benefits of a technology company acquiring a hospital. We need a takeover like this in the market to improve the technology companies' understanding and appreciation for the hospital's operations. Without a massive change in the business operation, we will continue to see healthcare struggle and play catch up. I am a firm believer that for a major transformation to occur, there has to be a willingness to change the entire operating model. In this case, the influence of a major technology company will be a game changer.

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DisrupTV Turns Three! Digital Leadership, Future of Cities and The Latest Tech Commentary

DisrupTV Turns Three! Digital Leadership, Future of Cities and The Latest Tech Commentary

Aubrey Coggins
Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

Aubrey (Levinstone) Coggins manages Constellation's marketing and communications programs and is the producer of DisrupTV, a weekly Web series on innovation and the enterprise.  She previously served as a senior manager of corporate communications at Egnyte and held account roles at Access Communications and The Hoffman Agency. Born and raised in Texas, she received a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from The University of Texas at Austin – Hook ‘em!   ...

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DisrupTV turned three this month! To celebrate, we brought back a few of our heavy-hitting alumni to share their latest innovative projects, learn from their experiences, and talk about the biggest tech trends impacting us as we move further into 2019.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” Great commentary from Perry Hewitt, Marketer, Digital Strategist and Board Member.

During Hewitt’s interview, she explained that you can’t just throw something over the wall and check the box anymore. We are in the messy middle, and everyone from marketing, product development and across the entire organization needs to collaborate in new ways. This is especially important when it comes to building new programs or fully transforming an organization.

To help with this culture shift and make real impact, it’s critical to bring diversity and different perspectives to the table. Having “echo” chambers or continuing to build programs based on outdated processes will not make the type of impact needed in today’s business environment. Similarly, to continue to grow as a leader, be sure to evaluate the power of your personal network and look for diversity through age, gender, experience, ethnicity, and location, for example.

Joining the Public and Private Sector to Make Change

Beyond individual organizations, cities are also facing major disruption due to the mass increases in population and changing needs of people in these areas. The days of going it alone are over, and partnerships are needed between the public and private sectors to better serve the people living in the city centers, explained former CTO of New York City and now Executive Vice President, Global Cities at Mastercard Miguel Gamin?o Jr.

His interview covered some of the pressing issues facing cities – including major stress on the infrastructure and the difficulties keeping up with the demand. He explained what leaders and organizations need to do to have a better understanding and make real changes in the public sector. It’s not just companies experience digital disruption and transformation.

While technology advancements help in many ways, it’s important to realize that not everyone has access to the technology. We must ensure tech serves people in an inclusive way. Let it follow but not lead the discussion, he explained.

What Tech Trends are Dominating the News and Leadership Discussions?

The show closed out with a very entertaining and blunt discussion with Jon Reed, Co-Founder at Diginomica. He covered Davos, retail and immersive experiences, the skills gap, Facebook, privacy, and more. The segment is worth the time to watch as he dove into some of the biggest themes impacting businesses, communities and maybe even you personally.

This is just a small glimpse at the great advice shared during the show. Please check out the full discussions in the video replay here or the podcast.

Tune in every week for DisrupTV, hosted by Vala Afshar and R “Ray” Wang, on Fridays 11 AM PT/2 PM ET. Bring diversity to your planning team as well as who the end results may impact.


 

DisrupTV Episode 135, Featuring Perry Hewitt, Miguel Gamino, Jon Reed from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

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Inclusion

Inclusion

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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Infosys held the first Asia-Pacifc leg of their regular Confluence partner & customer event recently in Melbourne, over the weekend of the Australian Open.  Confluence APAC was a terrific conference, showcasing Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, real time analytics, learning platforms, and blockchain-as-a-service. There was a great many highly relevant customer stories, novel and truly gripping keynote speeches about Antarctica and the Thai soccer team cave rescue, and tennis. As a major sponsor of the Open, Infosys was able to access behind-the-scenes tours and tickets for all delegates to the women’s and men’s singles finals. It was really superb. 

Yet what struck me the most about Confluence was its formal recognition of Australia’s first peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.  

It’s normal these days for public events in Australia to open with a formal acknowledgement of the original custodians of the local land, calling out the first nation and language group of where the meeting is taking place.  What’s much rarer is the full Welcome to Country.  This ceremony can take 20-30 minutes and must be led by Aboriginal Elders. At Confluence on January 26, we were treated to dancers, the music of the unique didgeridoo, and a beautiful speech by Wurundjeri Elder Uncle Ian Hunter. He told us at length about his local culture, the classic Aboriginal sense of humour, and he touched frankly and calmly on the sensitive issue of Australia Day, a contentious national holiday which fell that very day.  

Now, while a Welcome to Country is rare, what followed was absolutely unique in my thirty years experience in the Australian tech sector. Australia-New Zealand Regional Head Andrew Groth gave his opening address and took time – indeed he took up most of his speech – to celebrate our first peoples.  He called out their care of the land over tens of thousands of years, their innovation and their technology, which they deployed at continental scale.  Groth made special mention of the Brewarrina fish traps which are thought to be the oldest surviving artificial structures anywhere on the planet.

Bravo Infosys! May more of us in technology come to embrace indigenous science and innovation, wherever we’re from, as a mark of respect, and because we all have so much more to learn. 

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