Event Report: ServiceNow Transforms From #ITSM To Experience Orchestration

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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It's The Experience, Stupid!

Over 18,000 customers, partners, prospects, and influencers gathered at the Sands Convention Center and Expo in Las Vegas for the annual ServiceNow Knowledge Event (see Figure 1). The vendor best known for its success in IT Service Management has been on a growth tear. In March 2017, CEO Frank Slootman handed over the reigns to John Donahoe of eBay and Bain fame. His goal is to bring a consumer experience and brand to the enterprise story as ServiceNow expands its reach within the organization to new roles from employee experience (EEX) to customer service management (CSM).

Figure 1. The Massive Investment In Four Pillars of Customer Success

While the Day 1 keynote with CEO John Donahoe felt like a long in the tooth Bain & Company purpose exercise in finding your mission, organization, and goals, the Day 2 keynote with Chief Product Officer C.J. Desai, showcased to customers, prospects, and partners the ServiceNow product pipeline and release schedule (see Figure 2). The demos artfully and deftly walked through cross-role, inter-departmental, business flows and how ServiceNow can pull from existing transactional and engagement systems to easily craft new experiences in a low code, no code democratized developer fashion.

In the traditional "hangover" Day 3 keynote, Senior VP of DevOps Pat Casey did an excellent job highlighting how organizations can use ServiceNow as a catalyst to bring artificial intelligence into existing systems, ease the pain of integration, and rapidly deliver experiences. As ServiceNow acquires more components of AI such as the recent Parlo acquisition for natural language understanding (NLU) and conversations as a service (CaaS), customers can bring an AI platform to existing systems with ServiceNow.

Highlights from the three days of keynote include (see Figure 3):

• Day 1 Keynote CEO John Donahoe focused on purpose. In his trademark approach to taking over as CEO, he brought back founder Fred Luddy's as chairman of the board.
• Day 2 Keynotes showcased new products and possibilities with new apps and offerings
• Day 3 Keynotes demonstrated the NowPlatform capabilities giving customers more choice
• Partnership announced with Microsoft Teams product
• Agent Workspace delivers a command center for next best action (limited release for London Q3 2018 and GA in Madrid Q1 2019)
• Virtual Agent goes from chat to resolution with prebuilt convos (London Q3 2018)
• Enterprise DevOps enables faster creation of apps in any org (London Q3 2018 and Madrid Q1 2019)
• NowPlatform powered for mobile apps (Madrid Q1 2019)
• Commitments made to two release schedules a year with London, Madrid, New York, Orlando, and Paris coming next

Figure 2. The ServiceNow Roadmap and Release Schedule

Figure 3. Event Report Summary For ServiceNow Knowledge 2018

The Bottom Line: Customers Use ServiceNow To Deliver On Last-Mile Experiences In The Cloud

Constellation's market leading and fast following clients often use ServiceNow to design, abstract, build, and orchestrate new experiences throughout the enterprise. After standardizing their cloud vendors for customer, employee, supply chain, finance, and commerce, they often have to bring these systems together. While customers may have started with ServiceNow for ITSM, their need for last mile experiences has moved beyond just the IT department. In fact, they often lock down their cloud systems from customizations, configurations, and extensions in their native cloud applications, but tell their teams to build new experiences in ServiceNow. Why do they choose ServiceNow? The capabilities of the NowPlatform alllow departments, entities, or roles to craft those new experiences and not have to worry about missing:

• ITSM
• Security
• Process Flow
• Integration
• UX including easy mobile (new)
• AI (new)

As organizations move from transactional systems to eventually AI and Cognitive systems, ServiceNow enables organizations a mechanism to keep their legacy systems and embark on a journey of digital transformation. This is the heart of Infinite Ambient Orchestration. ServiceNow has reached a unique point in the marketplace where they must understand how their platform plays a key role in enabling enterprises to succeed in their efforts. Constellation believes that ServiceNow will not only continue to grow organically with new offerings, but also apply its expanding free cash flow to acquire many other technologies and vendors over the next five years. This will create tension in the market as ServiceNow must determine if they are a platform ecosystem or a direct competitor to many of the systems they connect with. The partnership models must change over time and require partners who can help customers see the broader vision beyond their large ITSM practices. And all this comes back to ensuring that the leadership team truly understands their purpose at the enterprise level. This is more than a well heeled consultant study that sounds like motherhood, Chevy's, and apple pie or bringing back the founder for credibility. The good news - ServiceNow has much more substance in product than other vendors with older tech and smaller ambitions. Customers who make the plunge to expand from IT to business will expedite their ability to complete their digital transformation aspirations.

Figure 4. ServiceNow Helps Customers Move from Transactions To Engagement

Your POV.

Are you ready to craft new experiences in ServiceNow? Do you use ServiceNow for ITSM today? Are your business leaders ready to explore ServiceNow? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

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

Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

Call for Applications - 2018 SuperNova Awards

Deadline for applications August 1, 2018

The SuperNova Awards honor leaders that demonstrate excellence in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies. 

In its eighth year, the Constellation SuperNova Awards will recognize early adopters who demonstrate true leadership in digital business through their application of new and emerging technologies. We’re searching for leaders and teams who used disruptive technologies to transform their organizations. 

We’re searching for the boldest, most transformative technology projects out there. If you or someone you know transformed their organization with disruptive technology apply for a SuperNova Award. Fill out the application here: 

Apply

Apply for a SuperNova Award in two easy steps:

1. Download a copy of the application
2. Submit your application online

Timeline

• August 1, 2018 deadline
• August 28, 2018 finalists announced and invited to Connected Enterprise.
• September 3, 2018 voting opens to the public
• September 13, 2018 polls close
• October 26, 2018 Winners announced, SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner at Connected Enterprise

Rewards

• SuperNova Award finalists are awarded one ticket to Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2018
• Winners receive one ticket to Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2019

Judges

Technology thought leaders, analysts, and journalists selected for their futurist mindset and ability to separate substance from hype. The SuperNova Award Judges carefully evaluate each SuperNova Award application against a rigorous set of criteria. Judges will identify individuals who demonstrate true leadership in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies. Want to catch a judge's eye? Judges look for projects whose elements can be replicated in other enterprises.

Categories

• Blockchain - The application of distributed ledger technologies across the enterprise. Constellation will accept research and development case studies for this category. 
• AI and Augmented Humanity - A culmination of technologies that attempts to attain human learning and intelligence capabilities of humans. This category addresses the business outcomes and preparations being made for a future in which software can improve itself.
• Data to Decisions - Employing data to make informed business decisions. (big data, predictive analytics)
• Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness - Data-driven digital marketing and revenue generation (configure price quote, mobile marketing, account based marketing, sales by design)
• Digital Safety, Governance, and Privacy - Enabling customers dictate how personal information is used, strategies for effective compliance, privacy best practices
• Future of Work: Employee Experience - Strategies to deliver the best possible employee experience as a means to maximize wellness and productivity
• Future of Work: Human Capital Management - Technologies that enable organizations to utilize the workforce as a competitive asset. (talent management, benefits, HR core)
• Internet of Things - A network of smart objects enables smart services. (sensors, smart ‘things’, device to purchase, fog computing)• Matrix Commerce - Technologies supporting the future of commerce from payments through supply chain management (digital retail, supply chain, payments, 'ubiquitous-channel' retail)
• Next Generation Customer Experience - How organizations keep brand promises as business shifts to systems of engagement and mass personalization. (crm, customer experience)

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AR Executive Events Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

Monday's Musings: Seven Common Failures Plague Board Room Strategy In Digital Transformation

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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Boardroom Failures Reflect Years Of Focus On EBIDTA and Return On Capital

Faced with massive pressure to embark on their digital journey, boards and CEOs have sought case studies and examples of success to avail without realizing that each journey remains unique. While there are many proof of concepts in play, much of the innovation in play requires a transformational mindset. When boards ask, "Has this has been done before and where", they miss the point. Why? The task at hand requires a shift from operational efficiency or regulatory compliance to a revenue growth and strategic transformation mind set.  Over a decade of digital transformation experience has shown that seven factors create mass board failures in digital transformation (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. Seven Common Boardroom Issues With Digital Transformation

1. Illogical deviation from brand mission causes confusion. While the brand mission can be expanded to a higher order, failure often arises when the brand attempts to solve a problem that the existing customer base finds too deviant. For example, Avis Rental Car has a stated mission to move from rental car company to fleet management. This is a shift from a transactional consumer relationship to an experiential B2B and outcomes based relationship based on their data driven skill of fleet management. Customers find this a reasonable extension. However, If an apparel brand jumped into a new space such as fast food without explaining a larger shift in their mission, that deviation would be too much.
2. Inability to attract top talent due to lack of leadership. Top talent attracts top talent. A players attract A players. B players attract C players. Tech companies in the midst of transformation know how to sell their company's higher mission to recruit top talent seeking a higher purpose. For years, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff sold a vision of no software that appealed to the tech community looking to transform the software business model. Today, his appeal on "tech for good" attracts the best and brightest. The founders of Ultimate Software started out with a People First mission that has stood the test of time. Meanwhile another large tech company has had years of a CEO who has failed to not only attract top talent, but also has failed to retain top talent by creating an environment of instability and insecurity across the ranks as that CEO enriches themselves despite a string of quarterly losses. Change in workforce policies disguised as a reduction in force and the promotion of unqualified individuals under the guise of diversity and inclusion have stripped the ranks of any sense of meritocracy and led to a brain drain that will require a new CEO to arrive prior to that CEO's retirement this year.
3. Laggard market perception cascades failure and customer disillusionment. Declining brands and organizations in laggard industries stripped of brand equity enter an era of negative market perception. Instead of redefining the mission and purpose with new business models, orgs often take a short cut of branding without substance. Seen as devoid of innovation with a commoditized non-differentiated offering, every stakeholder from employee, customer, partner, supplier, and investor lowers expectations of success. The result – leaders who focus on short term gain, declining employee morale, lack of interest by investors, and lower quality from suppliers. Partners lose interest in creating co-innovation and co-creation ecosystems with laggards. Customers no longer find an affinity for a brand that has sold its soul and will not pay for premium pricing when they no longer see value.
4. Short term profit mentality leads to lackluster leadership team. Modern leaders must be able to not only articulate the vision and mission, but also live the values of the organization. Leaders use stories and authentic purpose to attract the right talent. However, the battering of hostile take overs and transformation by fake growth based private equity (PE) firms focused on greater amounts of EBITDA have led to a generation of "Yes Person" CEOs without an understanding of growth. A focus on standard operating practices that focus on efficiency and not growth creates anorexic innovation environments. The definitiveness of cost cut impacts to growing share price result in leadership teams devoid of leaders who know how to create a culture of sustained innovation and long-term growth. This driving out of innovation and growth hurts organizations in the long-run.
5. Dearth of innovation leads to non-differentiated offering and fear of success. Nothing wreaks of failure more than the copycat offering that arrives a cycle late in the marketplace. Organizations who are just doing the bare minimum and rationalizing their product portfolios often have had the EBIDTA militants and legal teams dictate product direction. One can argue that playing it safe and riding on the remaining vestiges of brand cache can help a short term CEO and board hit their targets. Yet this leaves an organization without any differentiation and creates a long term hit. The US auto industry in the 1980s provides a great case study on how not to ruin a market entered by low cost challengers. If the goal is to be the most profitable copycat in the industry, that game has already ended in commoditized markets where the battle for return on equity leaves few players battling a digital death match with no winners. To be clear, there are exceptions. Korean electronics firms for a period of time managed to take innovations from the Japanese and build bigger and profitable challenges. But over time, they also realized they had to commit to innovation in order to not only grow but survive market annihilation.
6. Illusory superiority results in failure to partner while on top of the market. Delusions of grandeur and ego often beset successful market leaders. Thinking that their organization knows best and that others have little to offer create a divide the pie mentality that stifles grow the pie growth and transformation efforts. The result – arrogant partner policies, poor treatment of the ecosystem, and disregard for new adjacent opportunities. As egos take over rationality, a belief that the organization can create whatever a partner has to offer results in a cognitive bias and failure to understand limitations and capabilities. Blackberry's dominance in the 2000's came to a standstill as their failure to tap into the partner ecosystem reflected their overall market and leadership hubris as the management team could not believe they could be displaced by Apple's toy which didn't even have a physical keyboard. Today, one may question whether Apple still has the innovation chops to survive despite crushing it on EBIDTA and return on capital.
7. Short term thinking leads to poor deployment of capital for innovation. Decades of cost cutting, mergers and acquisitions, and activist shareholder fights have decimated the growth and innovation culture at many organizations. In a graph often cited from Clay Christensen, the average investment of profits in 1981 was 50% allocated to research and development and 50% to shareholder dividends. Today that investment number is allocated to 50% stock buy backs, 49% dividends, and 1% research and development (see Figure 2). This strangulation of capital funding for innovation has decimated legacy enterprises.

Jump Start Growth By Re-prioritizing Focus Areas

Over the next few months, Constellation will provide a model for helping boards and CXO’s understand where they sit in the continuum of growth and innovation.  Five focus areas will emerge that boards and CXO’s should consider in their digital transformation efforts to ensure success.  Stay tuned for more.

Your POV.

Ready to roll out your plans for digital transformation.  Do you understand the business model implications?  Are you ready to disrupt the board and jump start growth?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

 

 

New C-Suite Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Experience Officer

Event Report - WorkForce Software Vision 2018 - More Global and Crew Management

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend WorkForce Software 's Vision 2018 user conference held at the Grand Sheraton at Wild Horse Pass, South of Phoenix. The conference was well attended by customers, prospects and partners, substantial growth over 2017 in New Orleans.  

 

Prefer to watch – here is my event video … (if the video doesn't' show up – check here - pardon the bad sound quality at times, will have to record when time allows)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn't show up, check here):

 

 

Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Tech Optimization AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR Chief People Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

Event Report: Workfront LEAP 2018

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We all struggle to get work done. Too many tools, too much chaos, not enough time. That's where Work Coordination Platforms (WCP) come in. These tools help people bring organization and structure to projects and processes. It's a highly competitive market with several exciting things taking place including IPOs, funding rounds and acquisitions. This week I had the pleasure of both attending and speaking at Workfront LEAP 2018, Workfront's annual user conference where they introduced new features, new customer stories and a new product. 

The two main product announcements were:

• Workfront Home: A new starting page that makes it easier for people to see the items that need their attention and manage their time with highly functional calendar integration. Workfront customers will find this a very welcome addition, as it will make it easier to focus on where you need to spend your time without clicking through multiple projects. Interestingly, this comes just a few weeks after another WCP vendor introduced a similar feature, Trello Home.
• Resource Capacity Planner: One of the key elements of project management is the assignment and tracking of resources... meaning how many people are available and how much time do they have to work on things. This new Workfront feature uses AI-enabled planning to help find the right people at the right time to assign work.

The new product announcement was the launch of Workfront Fusion , a tool that enables people to connect business applications to Workfront to automate the data transfer between applications with no coding. It uses a drag and drop process to define events and actions that outline what should happen and when. This is along the same lines as commercial tools like IFTTT and Zapier, and enterprise tools like Workato, Nintex, Microsoft Flow and Zoho Flow.

Here is a short video where I share my thoughts on the items mentioned above:

 

More Thoughts

As mentioned in the video above, Workfront's mission is to become the "Operational System of Record" for work.

I view this as another way of saying they want to become the place that aggregates together the plethora of tools people use to get their jobs done. That's a popular theme these days, as several software vendors are realizing that the lack of context caused by using so many tools is a huge barrier to getting work done. Workfront has taken several smart steps in accomplishing this goal, starting in 2015 with the acquisition of ProofHQ to provide native asset management and publishing capabilities (called Workfront DAM ) to this week's announcement of Workfront Fusion. They also currently provide integrations with Outlook, Jira, Slack, Box, Adobe and others, and announced upcoming integrations with Microsoft Teams

and Salesforce

 

MyPOV

While I'm impressed with the Workfront products, I'm equally impressed with their executive team and their customers. CEO Alex Shootman has an impressive career in enterprise software including Eloqua, Vignette, BMC and IBM. Chief Product & Technology Officer Steven ZoBell is one of the more forward thinking and creative people I've worked with as a industry analyst and advisor, and they've recently brought on a very experienced CMO, Heidi Melin. The overall feeling I get from Workfront, both via my direct work with them as well as watching them at their events is one of humility and passion, not arrogance and entitlement. I was particularly impressed with Alex's opening keynote this week, as he discussed the hot topic of Digital Transformation, but emphasized that the changes taking place today are not the end goal, but rather just the beginning of the next era in business. 

When listening to what's new at these conferences is important, the more valuable experience is speaking with customers. Workfront has a very strong portfolio of customer references, including Disney, Prudential, Marriott, Thomson Reuters, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Black + Decker, Fender, Trek, Alaska Airlines, and Columbia and many more.

The Work Coordination Platform market is just getting started. Everyone has email, file-sharing, some type of messaging, web-conferencing and a few other tools, but not every employee currently uses a tool to structure and organize work. We're at an inflection point where people are overloaded and we can't simply keep producing more content, asking people to do more work, add more tools, and have more conversations. As the awareness of the benefits of these tools increases, their adoption will rise. Workfront is well positioned both in strategy and features, earning them a spot on the Constellation Research Shortlist for WCP.

What I'd like to see next from Workfront is more innovation on the automation across the entire lifecycle of tasks and processes, adding machine learning/artificial intelligence to proactively prioritize tasks, find expertise and create teams, create or curate content and other items that reduce the need for employees to be involved in task management all, freeing them up to spend more time doing the actual work.

 

 

 

Future of Work

Progress Report - SAP SuccesFactors - More SAP (technology)

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend SAP's SuccessFactors Analyst Summit 2018, held from April 30^th to May 2^nd 2018 in San Francisco at the St. Regis. Attendance with over 15 analysts was good, still a good atmosphere to get a pulse on where the vendor is now, especially as it was the first analyst event under the new leadership of Tomb, and the product leadership of Wilson and Harvey.

 

 

 

 

SAP SuccessFactors Analyst Summit 2018

Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

Qlik Hits Reset Button, Rolls Out New Cloud, AI & Developer Capabilities

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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Qlik introduces management team, licensing changes and new hybrid/multi-cloud, augmented intelligence  and development features. Here’s my take from Qonnections 2018.

“Under new management.” When you see these words in front of a local business, you take note, and it makes you wonder what has really changed?

Keynoting at the April 24-26 Qlik Qonnections event in Orlando, Qlik’s new CEO, Mike Capone, after just four months on the job, cut right to the chase and spelled out some important business changes made early in his tenure.

Explaining a reorganization that took place in January, Capone said the goal was to refocus Qlik sales and support efforts on large Enterprise customers while “getting out of the way” of channel partners catering to midsize and smaller commercial customers. The reorg brought a fresh round of layoffs (on top of the layoffs carried out in 2016 when private equity firm Thoma Bravo took Qlik private). Downsizing seldom looks good (except to Wall Street), but in a message to partners, Capone noted that Qlik is reinvesting savings from the reorg to boost partner support programs, including qualified lead generation.

Qlik's new CEO, Mike Capone, was previously COO at Medidata and VP, SVP/GM and CIO,
successively, at ADP.

In a message to customers, Capone promised accelerated development of advanced authoring and visualization capabilities in Qlik Sense, the vendor’s newer, webbier and more self-service oriented product. And despite an “inviolable” promise to maintain support for Qlik View, the company’s original product, Capone also announced new migration tools, a shared Hub interface for all Qlik apps and, most importantly, new licensing terms designed to make it easier to move from Qlik View to Qlik Sense. The licensing change will eliminate the need for a second license. Instead customers will pay a fractional increase in maintenance (somewhere less than 50% of current fees) to add support for Qlik Sense. The Hub and licensing announcements each got big applause from Qonnection’s 3,500-plus attendees.

Cloud, AI and Developer Announcements               

On product and product strategy, executives laid out Qlik’s evolved vision and capabilities on three fronts: cloud, smart capabilities (a.k.a., augmented intelligence) and developer support. Here’s the rundown:

Qlik will promote hybrid- and multi-cloud deployment in part by adding support for
containerization and Linux beginning in June.

Next steps to the cloud. Qlik's cloud vision is to support hybrid- and multi-cloud deployment of Qlik applications and services with a microservices-based architecture that will eventually span and unite all deployment approaches. Qlik will take the next step to deliver on this promise in June by enabling Qlik subscription customers to move Qlik Sense applications into containerized, cloud-based instances than can run on Linux in public or private clouds. The Kubernetes, Docker and Linux support are new to Qlik, and it will enable customers to self-manage instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or their own private clouds.

Containerization and Linux support will also benefit managed-cloud services, which are available from Qlik on the Qlik Cloud or from many partners on private or public clouds of the customer’s choice. Qlik’s two-year-old, software-as-a-service-based Qlik Sense Cloud was scarcely mentioned at Qonnections, but it remains an option for workgroup and departmental multi-tenant instances.

To better support the new range of deployment options, Qlik is introducing a Hub interface that give users one view -- with one log-in, one user ID and one user entitlement – of all their Qlik applications, irrespective of where they’re running. What’s more, Qlik’s management console will enable administrators to set governance policies across all public cloud, private cloud and on-premises instances. Qlik demonstrated a role-playing scenario in which non-regulated (but still access- and security-sensitive) applications and data from a German subsidiary were exposed through a U.S.-based cloud instance. In contrast, privacy-sensitive data subject to compliance requirements in Germany was retained on premises in the demo, but it was made accessible with strict access controls.

“Smart” capabilities explained. Qlik announced an “augmented intelligence” initiative last year, stressing that it would support rather than replace human analysis. The company has been developing a Cognitive Engine that will power a number of features to Quick Sense. An Insight Advisor feature added in April recommends the most appropriate visualization options when you select a particular field for analysis. If you don’t actively choose one of these recommendations, the engine will automatically choose what’s seen as the best-fit option.

Coming in June, Qlik Sense will gain a hands-off approach whereby you can simply point the Insight Advisor at a data set (rather than a particular field) and it will automatically surface all statistically significant insights. After choosing one of these starting points, users can then select the particular field of interest, as noted above, and get additional recommendations to take the analysis even deeper.

Insight Advisor is designed to speed time to analysis for untrained users, but in the spirit of augmenting human intelligence you can interact with the tool and go against its recommendations. In this case, Insight Advisor will flash textual warnings explaining why a particular approach is not recommended. During a keynote demo, a Qlik exec selected a tree map view even though the Insight Advisor recommended a different visualization. Messages appeared noting that there were negative values in the selected data set and that tree maps can’t show negative values. Professionals who don’t want or need this sort of assistance can simply turn the Insight Advisor feature off.

In next steps expected sometime later this year, Qlik plans to enable its Cognitive Engine to start learning from the selections that users choose from among its recommendations. In addition, Qlik plans to team the Cognitive Engine with its associative QIX engine, which keeps entire data sets visible for analysis even as you focus in on selected dimensions of data. If you select customers who are buying X product, for example, QIX also shows you which customers are not buying that product. It’s an advantage over drill-down, SQL analysis where you filter out information as you explore, and Qlik says the combination will recommend powerful, serendipitous insights that other technologies would fail to see.

Targeting developers and embedded analytics. Perhaps the most surprising and, to me, forward-looking initiative at Qlik has been its effort to promote analytic customization, extension and development both within and outside of the confines of Qlik applications. As one Qlik executive put it, “analytics shouldn’t just be a destination [as in a report or a dashboard], it should be part of the journey.” The idea is to support embedding of analytics into other applications, including transactional applications, so you can turn insights into actions. An app could even be autonomous, quickly taking action based on insights without even requiring a human interface or interpretation.

Qlik Core, set for beta release this summer, exposes Qlik analytics capabilites as API-
accessible microservices for cloud-oriented development.

To open up new possibilities, Qlik introduced Qlik Core, set for beta release this summer. Able to run on containers and Linux in the cloud, Qlik Core exposes the QIX engine through a microservices architecture and APIs. I talked to the CTO at Measur.io, a development partner and customer, who has been using and helping to guide the development of Qlik Core for more than a year. He said Qlik Core is powering the analytics behind the company’s Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor applications and giving it all the cloud scalability and deployment flexibility the company needs.

Pricing for Qlik Core has yet to be set, but the licensing approach will combine free development with consumption-based charges for production workloads. Qlik has also open sourced libraries of capabilities, such as data loading with Halyard.JS, Qlik backend services with Enigma.JS, and charting with Picasso.JS, to facilitate cost-effective development and deployment. Qlik’s Qlik Branch developer community is promoting all of the above, and it’s said to growing quickly, with more than 27,000 registered members.

MyPOV on Qlik’s Progress

Overall I was impressed by Qlik’s new management team. Capone went straight to the customer hot buttons, including licensing and accelerated development. He’s also putting an emphasis on driving success through better customer outcomes, whether that’s through direct sales or channel sales. Customers that have better outcomes will naturally buy more software, so the company says it will do more to help customers succeed. Shelfware, meanwhile, is viewed as a failure and an outcome that should be avoided (and perhaps even dis-incented in sales incentive programs).

My consistent lament about Qlik, shared in my analyses from Qlik Qonnections 2016 and 2017, has been its slow pace to innovation. The criticism still applies on the cloud, AI and big data fronts, where Qlik is still delivering on capabilities initially announced 12 to 24 months ago. On cloud, for instance, the multi-cloud deployment option set for June release will initially be limited to consumption. Apps will have to be authored on-premises and then deployed for read-only access in the cloud. Cloud authoring, write-back capabilities and pull-through access to on-premises data sources are all on the roadmap. Similarly, the (late-to-the-game) Big Data Index that Qlik announced last year and demonstrated at Qonnections 2018 won’t see beta release until June or July. I don’t expect general availability before Q3, at the earliest.

I do like Qlik’s platform and QIX associative analysis strengths. I also like the push to enable developers to customize and extend Qlik apps and to create original apps that transcend conventional thinking about analytics. Where there’s confidence in an analysis, human interaction shouldn’t be required. That’s particularly true in emerging streaming and low-latency scenarios where there’s no time for human analysis.

My hope is that Qlik’s new management team continues to be responsive and that it will accelerate innovation. If I had to set the priorities I’d accelerate the practical stuff that customers care about today, such as hybrid-, multi-cloud and developer capabilities, while letting demand for AI capabilities build over the longer term.

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Event Report - NetSuite SuiteWorld 2018 - NetSuite goes Global and Oracle

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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How To Close The Talent Gap With Machine Learning

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• 80% of the positions open in the U.S. alone were due to attrition. On an average, it costs $5,000 to fill an open position and takes on average of 2 months to find a new employee. Reducing attrition removes a major impediment to any company's productivity.
• The average employee's tenure at a cloud-based enterprise software company is 19 months; in the Silicon Valley this trends to 14 months due to intense competition for talent according to C-level executives.
• Eightfold.ai can quantify hiring bias and has found it occurs 35% of the time within in-person interviews and 10% during online or virtual interview sessions.
• Adroll Group launched nurture campaigns leveraging the insights gained using Eightfold.ai for a data scientist open position and attained a 48% open rate, nearly double what they observed from other channels.
• A leading cloud services provider has seen response rates to recruiting campaigns soar from 20% to 50% using AI-based candidate targeting in the company's community.

The essence of every company's revenue growth plan is based on how well they attract, nurture, hire, grow and challenge the best employees they can find. Often relying on manual techniques and systems decades old, companies are struggling to find the right employees to help them grow. Anyone who has hired and managed people can appreciate the upside potential of talent management today.

How AI and Machine Learning Are Revolutionizing Talent Management

Strip away the hype swirling around AI in talent management and what's left is the urgent, unmet needs companies have for greater contextual intelligence and knowledge about every phase of talent management. Many CEOs are also making greater diversity and inclusion their highest priority. Using advanced AI and machine learning techniques, a company founded by former Google and Facebook AI Scientists is showing potential in meeting these challenges. Founders Ashutosh Garg and Varun Kacholia have over 6000+ research citations and 80+ search and personalization patents. Together they founded Eightfold.ai as Varun says "to help companies find and match the right person to the right role at the right time and, for the first time, personalize the recommendations at scale." Varun added that "historically, companies have not been able to recognize people's core capabilities and have unnecessarily exacerbated the talent crisis," said Varun Kacholia, CTO, and Co-Founder of Eightfold.ai.

What makes Eightfold.ai noteworthy is that it's the first AI-based Talent Intelligence Platform that combines analysis of publicly available data, internal data repositories, Human Capital Resource Management (HRM) systems, ATS tools and spreadsheets then creates ontologies based on organization-specific success criteria. Each ontology, or area of talent management interest, is customizable for further queries using the app's easily understood and navigated user interface.

Based on conversations with customers, its clear integration is one of the company's core strengths. Eightfold.ai relies on an API-based integration strategy to connect with legacy back-end systems. The company averages between 2 to 3 system integrations per customer and supports 20 unique system integrations today with more planned. The following diagram explains how the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform is constructed and how it works.

For all the sophisticated analysis, algorithms, system integration connections, and mathematics powering the Eightfold.ai platform, the company's founders have done an amazing job creating a simple, easily understood user interface. The elegant simplicity of the Eightfold.ai interface reflects the same precision of the AI and machine learning code powering this platform.

I had a chance to speak with Adroll Group and DigitalOcean regarding their experiences using Eightfold.ai. Both said being able to connect the dots between their candidate communities, diversity and inclusion goals, and end-to-end talent management objectives were important goals that the streamlined user experience was helping enable. The following is a drill-down of a candidate profile, showing the depth of external and internal data integration that provides contextual intelligence throughout the Eightfold.ai platform.

Talent Management's Inflection Point Has Arrived 

Every interaction with a candidate, current associate, and high-potential employee is a learning event for the system.

AI and machine learning make it possible to shift focus away from being transactional and more on building relationships. AdRoll Group and DigitalOcean both mentioned how Eightfold.ai's advanced analytics and machine learning helps them create and fine-tune nurturing campaigns to keep candidates in high-demand fields aware of opportunities in their companies. AdRoll Group used this technique of concentrating on insights to build relationships with potential Data Scientists and ultimately made a hire assisted by the Eightold.ai platform. DigitalOcean is also active using nurturing campaigns to recruit for their most in-demand positions. “As DigitalOcean continues to experience rapid growth, it’s critical we move fast to secure top talent, while taking time to nurture the phenomenal candidates already in our community,” said Olivia Melman, Manager, Recruiting Operations at DigitalOcean. “Eightfold.ai’s platform helps us improve operational efficiencies so we can quickly engage with high quality candidates and match past applicants to new openings.”

In companies of all sizes, talent management reaches its full potential when accountability and collaboration are aligned to a common set of goals. Business strategies and new business models are created and the specific amount of hires by month and quarter are set. Accountability for results is shared between business and talent management organizations, as is the case at AdRoll Group and DigitalOcean, both of which are making solid contributions to the growth of their businesses. When accountability and collaboration are not aligned, there are unpredictable, less than optimal results.

AI makes it possible to scale personalized responses to specific candidates in a company's candidate community while defining the ideal candidate for each open position. The company's founders call this aspect of their platform personalization at scale. "Our platform takes a holistic approach to talent management by meaningfully connecting the dots between the individual and the business. At Eightfold.ai, we are going far beyond keyword and Boolean searches to help companies and employees alike make more fulfilling decisions about 'what's next, " commented Ashutosh Garg, CEO, and Co-Founder of Eightfold.ai.

Every hiring manager knows what excellence looks like in the positions they're hiring for. Recruiters gather hundreds of resumes and use their best judgment to find close matches to hiring manager needs. Using AI and machine learning, talent management teams save hundreds of hours screening resumes manually and calibrate job requirements to the available candidates in a company's candidate community. This graphic below shows how the Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) helps companies calibrate job descriptions. During my test drive, I found that it's as straightforward as pointing to the profile of ideal candidate and asking TIP to find similar candidates.

Achieving Greater Equality With A Data-Driven Approach To Diversity

Eightfold.ai can quantify hiring bias and has found it occurs 35% of the time within in-person interviews and 10% during online or virtual interview sessions. They've also analyzed hiring data and found that women are 11% less like to make it through application reviews, 19% less likely through recruiter screens, 12% through assessments and a shocking 30% from onsite interviews. Conscious and unconscious biases of recruiters and hiring managers often play a more dominant role than a woman's qualifications in many hiring situations. For the organizations who are enthusiastically endorsing diversity programs yet struggling to make progress, AI and machine learning are helping to accelerate them to the goals they want to accomplish.

AI and machine learning can't make an impact in this area quickly enough. Imagine the lost brainpower from not having a way to evaluate candidates based on their innate skills and potential to excel in the role and the need for far greater inclusion across the communities companies operate in. AdRoll Group's CEO is addressing this directly and has made attaining greater diversity and inclusion a top company objective for the year. Daniel Doody, Global Head of Talent at AdRoll Group says "We're very deliberate in our efforts to uncover and nurture more diverse talent while also identifying individuals who have engaged with our talent brand to include them" he said. Daniel Doody continued, "Eightfold.ai has helped us gain greater precision in our nurturing campaigns designed to bring more diverse talent to Adroll Group globally."

Kelly O. Kay, Managing Partner, Global Managing Partner, Software & Internet Practice at Heidrick & Struggles agrees. "Eightfold.ai levels the playing field for diversity hiring by using pattern matching based on human behavior, which is fascinating," Mr. Kay said. He added, "I'm 100% supportive of using AI and machine learning to provide everyone equal footing in pursuing and attaining their career goals." He added that the Eightfold.ai's greatest strength is how brilliantly it takes on the challenge of removing unconscious bias from hiring decisions, further ensuring greater diversity in hiring, retention and growth decisions.

Eightfold.ai has a unique approach to presenting potential candidates to recruiters and hiring managers. They can remove any gender-specific identification of a candidate and have them evaluated purely on expertise, experiences, merit, and skills. And the platform also can create gender-neutral job descriptions in seconds too. With these advances in AI and machine learning, long-held biases of tech companies who only want to hire from Cal-Berkeley, Stanford or MIT are being challenged when they see the quality of candidates from just as prestigious Indian, Asian, and European universities as well. Daniel Doody of Adroll Group says the insights gained from the Eightfold.ai platform "are helping to make managers and recruiters more aware of their own hiring biases while at the same time assisting in nurturing potential candidates via less obvious channels."

How To Close The Talent Gap

Based on conversations with customers, it's apparent that Eightfold.ai's Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) provides enterprises the ability to accelerate time to hire, reduce the cost to hire and increase the quality of hire. Eightfold.ai customers are also seeing how TIP enables their companies to reduce employee attrition, saving on hiring and training costs and minimizing the impact of lost productivity. Today more CEOs and CFOs than ever are making diversity and talent initiatives their highest priority. Based on conversations with Eightfold.ai customers it's clear their TIP provides the needed insights for C-level executives to reach their goals.

Another aspect of the TIP that customers are just beginning to explore is how to identify employees who are the most likely to leave, and take proactive steps to align their jobs with their aspirations, extending the most valuable employees' tenure at their companies. At the same time, customers already see good results from using TIP to identify top talent that fits open positions who are likely to join them and put campaigns in place to recruit and hire them before they begin an active job search. Every Eightfold.ai customer spoken with attested to the platform's ability to help them in their strategic imperatives around talent.

An Industrial IoT Upstart Rises: Uptake Technologies

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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Located in an upscale and ultramodern facility in downtown Chicago, right in the same Goose Island building that also houses the headquarters of Groupon and a number of other up-and-coming digital startups, is a company that even many in the Internet of Things industry still haven't heard much about. The brainchild of Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky in 2014, Uptake Technologies is a fast growing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) player that has kept largely off the radar while focuses on building early proof points with a strong initial customer base. 

Uptake's primary offering uses the technologies and methods of data science and artificial intelligence, along with existing arrays of sensors that customers already have embedded in their industrial devices, to help enterprises that rely on heavy machines (think trains, planes, mining, and manufacturing lines) get the very most out of them, while managing potential risk and downside ("machines don't have to break" is one of their key tag lines.)

Earlier this month, Uptake held their first ever analyst summit and I was invited to participate.  Well attended by analysts, including the influential (and my fellow Enterprise Irregulars ) Vinnie Mirchandani and Brian Sommer, the session was a end-to-end overview of the startup's history, aspirations, goals, and progress so far. While keeping a fairly low industry profile up until now, the company has already achieved the coveted unicorn status, with a $2.3 billion valuation as of its last funding round, a series D raise for $117 million last fall. The company has taken care to build good relationships with relevant players as well. Uptake's list of strategic partners over the last few years reads like a who's who in industry, including Caterpillar, Progress Rail, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Falling somewhere between asset management and asset optimization, Uptake's approach is a ground-up rethinking of using real-time streams of connected device data -- they touted several times in our sessions that they've already captured over 1.2 billion hours of operational machine data which their algorithms can use as an experience base -- by applying the very latest in data science tools and methods to help organiztions monitor, manage, and maintain their fleets of highly valuable equipment. Uptake's performance-based approach makes the most sense with higher value assets whose failure or unavailability would adversely impact an organization significantly. So far they've largely avoided low cost assets, but indicated that they will likely expand their asset coverage their as they refine their capabilities and understand the needs of customers at that level. Not to mention that higher value industrial assets represent a more profitable business model for the company, at least for now.

Our day kicked off with a session from co-founder Brad Keywell, who discussed the overall vision of the company that he incorporated just four short years ago and now boasts 750 employees with over 50 major industrial customers. For Uptake, “it’s about the efficacy of outcome. If we build the right data, we will become the leading source of outcomes," said Brad. Given the nature of digital ecosystems to confer outsized advantage to those with control over best-in-class data sets, this is strategic approach that will prepare them well to go up against other leaders in the space. These competitors will also be wielding their own growing historical datasets and algorithms to build out and wield competitive advantage. In my analysis, this means that the company that offers the lowest total cost of positive outcome with the highest accuracy will tend to win over time, but the cost of entry is having enough relevant industry data. Uptake has made heavy subject matter and data capture investments in key industries, including a relatively high staff count compared to other digital startups, to delver performance management for assets in the industry segments they believe will propel their growth.

Next up was an overview of Uptake's strategy from Ganesh Bell, who recently arrived at the firm in February from his influential role as Chief Digital Officer of GE Power and is also an industry colleague of mine. In his session, he made the long-term objective of the company very clear, to become the category creator and leader for something he calls "Industrial AI", which is the dynamic application of data science, machine learning, and sensor-based data to improve outcomes in industrial organizations. While Uptake is starting with largely predictive solutions at the moment, over time, as their cognitive capabilities increase and their historical data sets deepen, the company will be able to offer ever more strategic capabilities that reach into the realms of forecasting, prescriptive analytics, and otherwise automating planning and operations of asset-heavy enterprises.

The word "transformation" was mentioned by Uptake's leadership when it came to describing that they did for customers. For now the transformation is more of the tactial variety such as shifting industrial customers from time-based maintenance (such as every 3,000 miles) to condition-based maintenance (the sensors show that the device now requires routine service.) These in reality are significant shifts for relatively large companies to make, and it's good to see Uptake looking at immediate impact as well as a long-term AI-based roadmap, though it's also clear Brad, Ganesh, and others will need to be clearer on what that roadmap is in the coming year or two if they seek to have a full seat at strategic partner tables of their industrial customers.

Figure 1: Uptake realizes nearly the entire reference architecture for an advanced IIoT analytics and ops platform

I also asked Uptake's leadership several times about customer concerns about the data insights there were learning from their customers' equipment, and if there were worries expressed about data ownership and control of those insights, which they will arguably sell to other subsequent customers. While this has been a hot topic in other related industries, I was informed it had not been an major issue so far in discussions with customers, nor a headwind on sales. My view is that this will become much more important for Uptake to manage successfully in the near future as companies increasingly understand the great value they give away by not retaining full control of their industrial data.

The rest of the day included overviews from Chief Product Officer, Greg Goff, Chief Information Security Officer Nicholas J. Percoco, and VP of Data Science, Adam McElhinney, among others. All of them stressed the challenges of creating an advanced industrial analystics capability in remote industrial locations, taking pains to explore the deep thinking they had done to deliver on with the performance, security, and product architecture requirements to create reliable services that accurately predict industrial events. Edge computing, especially distributed analytics on the edge, was also cited numerous times as a core capability of the Uptake platform, and it was clear that the team has done extensive homework to create an early maturity Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) analytics offering.

My conclusions overall on Uptake based on what I learned at the analyst day:

• A strong founding and leadership team intent on creating customer impact more than building a high profile
• Clear tactical vision for shifting legacy industrial asset management to an event-driven, real-time model
• Good execution on the tech with early case studies with ROI sufficient to drive good revenue growth
• Amount of staff in evidence to support just 50 customers in key industries is a potential growth bottleneck 
• Strategic vision needs more development to tell a compelling longer-term story on customer journey
• Ops data history and algorithms a differentiator, but unclear yet if unique enough to keep low cost competitors away
• Can deliver as a network orchestrator, one of the most valuable digital strategies, as their strategic vision matures

Related Reading

Defining the Business benefit and the knowledge for your IoT/IIoT project

IoT Solution Building; Managing and Using Operational Data to change the game

IoT: Where are the Integrators? Who are the Integrators?

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