News Analysis - Unit4 releases People Platform Extension Kit - A new way to fit ERP to business needs

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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It's not often ERP vendors change the game on customization and extension, this press release from Unit4 deserves attention as it does exactly that.

 

Let's dissect the press release in our customary style – it can be found here:

 

 

Unit4, a world leader in enterprise software for service organizations, announces today the release of new cloud services designed for customers and partners to easily extend its enterprise solutions with custom industry specific apps.

MyPOV – Ok – good summary of the press release.
 

 

 

The People Platform Extension Kit is designed to meet the specific challenges of service-based business models. As organizations modernize their business models to engage people in new ways, Unit4 is providing customers and partners with the freedom to develop differentiating front-end applications, that benefit from the critical data held in their back-office systems.

MyPOV – The innovation here is not the extension kit, ERP vendors have done this since decades in various forms, but the focus / choice of capabilities for service heavy industries.
 

 

 

The People Platform is the foundation for creating intelligent enterprise applications, providing services enabling Unit4 applications to become self-driving by offering access to machine learning capabilities, based on data collection and mining. The Extension Kit gives partners and customers access to the full breadth of Unit4 technology. They can construct custom tailored extensions or complete applications, benefiting from the powerful capabilities of the People Platform and intelligence in Unit4 Business World, becoming first-class citizens of the Unit4 application eco-system. Due to the loosely coupled, micro-service based architecture, partners and customers can develop using their preferred tooling and offer their solutions through any industry-standard marketplace.

 MyPOV – Investment in platforms always pays off, once they work and SaaS offerings run on them – this is another proof point, with the extension kit being based and running on the Unit4 People Platform. Making the extension seamless to the users is a key feature, as user experience should not be aware of what is vendor vs extension capability. For the business user the result of an extension has to be seamless UX integration. 

 

 

 

"We're in an age of business process uncertainty where for the first time technology can do more than what traditional business best practice demands," said Holger Mueller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. "We're seeing enterprise acceleration at unprecedented rates with organizations moving faster than ever before. They can be a disruptor or be disrupted and it's their people that can make the difference. By empowering them to purpose build services and small apps in the areas that matter, connected to their enterprise applications, they can break away from the monolithic nature of ERP. Through low-code technology like this, people in business become smarter and empowered to work more effectively, producing better value in their work."

MyPOV – Solid quote... ok. Might be a little biased here. The key aspect is the low code and small apps ability. It expands the number of people available to build extension, a key aspect as often SaaS / ERP software does not work well for areas of the business that will never receive Its attention or justify the cost of a consultant or even developer to make things run smoothly. The other key aspect and innovation is that this makes ERP less monolithic, meaning there is only one way to do things. Being able to create lots of small applications with the extension kit – they may have similar / duplicate capability – but work for different users, is a major break through in ERP architecture.

 

 

 

 

"The everything as a service economy is driving business model changes around the world," said Stephan Sieber, CEO of Unit4. "As customer demand for simple online subscription services and rapid value grows, organizations are modernizing business models to create greater efficiencies and to engage customers, employees, and business partners in new ways. Core enterprise systems are vital, but do not deliver competitive differentiation on their own. Our customers have unique strategic processes, and by opening our solution platform for simple application development irrespective of programming language or industry marketplace, they can build very specific apps that deliver rapid value and seamless user experience. Essentially this is the next generation of customization technology enabling organizations to have exactly what they want and need to be successful."

MyPOV – Good quote from Sieber, focusing on what matters – smooth running software, now enabled by technically savvy – but non-developer – resources in the enterprise. 

 

 

 

 

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work New C-Suite PaaS Chief Information Officer

Discussion with Logitech: The Rise of Video Meetings: Smart, Affordable Collaboration

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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Improvements in both technology and culture are contributing to a rise in the use of video during webconferences. I sat down (over video of course) with Scott Wharton, GM of Logitech's Video Collaboration division to talk about the state of the market.

 

 

AI Investment Rising Significantly Among Early Adopters

Sixty percent plan to increase investment by more than 50% compared to last year

Early adopters are ramping up investment in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in 2018 reveals an AI study conducted by Constellation Research. Sixty percent of C-level executives surveyed say their organizations plan to increase investment in AI by over 50% compared to last year (Figure 1). AI budgets, however, remain relatively modest with 92% of respondents expecting to spend less than $5 million on AI in 2018.

Figure 1. AI Budgets Rising in 2018

Modest AI budgets signal cautious adoption and deployment of foundational AI technologies for now. However, because AI often delivers successes exponentially, Constellation expects AI budgets to continue to rise by more than 50 percent annually for the next four to five years as AI R&D yields bigger successes at an increasing pace.

Firms investing in AI to improve the customer experience and drive growth

AI adoption highest among IT; Customer Service; and sales and marketing departments

The Constellation Research 2018 AI Study reveals firms are investing in AI to help improve the customer experience and drive growth. C-level executives surveyed by Constellation reported the highest levels of investment and adoption in the following departments: information technology; customer service/commerce; sales and marketing; and employee productivity.

Fifty-two percent of respondents report AI projects in production or in pilots in the IT department, 50 percent report production or pilot AI projects in customer service/commerce, 46 percent report AI projects in production or pilots in sales and marketing, and 36 percent report AI projects in production or in pilots in employee productivity (excludes manufacturing employee productivity) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. AI Spending By Department

Driving this trend, explains Cindy Zhou, a Constellation Research principal analyst, is the ease with which firms can acquire AI capabilities for these departments. Packaged apps with AI capabilities are widely available for sales, marketing, employee productivity and commerce. As stated earlier, packaged apps with AI capabilities are often features of existing software or a platform that can simply be "turned on."

"As far as sales, marketing, and customer service organizations are concerned, AI is already here," says Zhou. "Salesforce and Microsoft for example, sell applications with AI capabilities rolled into the core product, or they are sold as add-ons. Salesforce Lightning platform customers automatically get basic Salesforce Einstein capabilities with their contract. If customers need more robust AI capabilities, they can upgrade," she explains, speaking about Salesforce Einstein, the company's AI layer within the platform, which powers a variety of built in and, in some cases, optional skills and application capabilities.

Highlights from the Study

• Widespread adoption with caveats: Seventy percent of respondents to the Constellation 2018 AI Survey indicate their organization currently employs some form of AI technology. This number, however, tells only part of the story. AI budgets remain relatively modest (see below), and, even among early adopters, no organizations in the study have deployed true AI.
• AI investment modest but growing fast: Ninety-two percent of respondents say they will spend less than $5 million on AI in 2018. However, respondents indicate significant year-over-year increases in AI budgets, with 60 percent of respondents registering a 50 percent increase in AI budgets compared to last year.
• Firms employ three primary modes of AI development: developing homegrown applications by building out data science teams and using open source frameworks; developing homegrown applications using cloud-based ML and deep learning (deep learning services; and adopting packaged applications with AI capabilities.
• Companies are investing in AI to help improve the customer experience and drive growth. When Constellation asked respondents to indicate the department(s) where AI is planned or implemented, IT, customer service/commerce, sales and marketing, and employee productivity ranked among the departments receiving the most planned or in-production AI spending. Driving this trend is the ease with which firms can acquire AI capabilities for these departments. Packaged apps with narrow AI capabilities are widely available for sales, marketing, employee productivity and commerce.
• Potential AI-proficient talent shortage. Rising demand for workforce talent with AI proficiency poses a potential challenge for organizations that want to implement AI solutions. Eighty percent of executives say their organizations need to hire additional human capital to implement AI solutions. Seventy-two percent of organizations say they obtain new talent for AI projects via recruiting. Taken together, these two trends have the potential to culminate in a talent war as more AI projects come online.
• Executives are feeling the pressure. Eighty-eight percent of executives say they expect their roles to change as their organizations adopt AI. Fifty-four percent of executives say they will need to understand how to restructure the business to accommodate new business models, 50 percent report a need to acquire data expertise and 48 percent report needing to learn how to motivate an AI-augmented team.
• Resistance to AI: Fifty-two percent of respondents report resistance to AI within the organization. Top sources of resistance among those who reported resistance to AI include lines of business at 67 percent, IT at 32 percent and HR at 25%.
• Data privacy strategies are not yet ubiquitous among firms using or developing AI. Among firms using AI, 23 percent say their organization does not have a data privacy strategy to protect personal information ingested by AI. Thirty-one percent of organizations       currently using AI do not have an opt-in policy to handle personal information ingested by AI.

About the Study

The Constellation Research 2018 Artificial Intelligence Study leverages findings from the 2018 Constellation Research Artificial Intelligence Survey which assesses the state of AI among the first movers, early adopters, and fast followers that comprise Constellation's subscriber base.

The Survey asked C-level executives about the state of AI investment and deployment in their organizations, budgets for AI investment, technologies driving AI development, how AI might impact executives and the workforce, sources of internal resistance to AI, and privacy.

For the purposes of both the Survey and the Study, Constellation defines artificial intelligence as the culmination of technologies including deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing, and big data/predictive analytics to produce software that is self-improving, automatic, and emulates human intelligence.

Seventy-four percent of responses came from the C-suite, with CEOs making up 26 percent of the sample; CIOs, 20 percent; CTOs, 10 percent; CDOs, 6 percent; CMOs, 2 percent; and other C-level executives, 10 percent. There were no CFOs in the survey sample.

The sample consists of respondents from twelve different sectors, mostly in the United States. Sectors include automotive; consumer electronics; consulting/systems integration; finance/insurance/real estate; government; healthcare/medical/pharmaceutical; media/interactive/PR agency; news/entertainment; retail; technology-hardware, software, services; and telecommunications or travel/hospitality.

Total revenue of respondents' firms in 2016 range from less than $10 million to more than $1 billion. Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported revenue of less than $10 million; 14 percent reported revenue between $10 million and $50 million; 29 percent reported revenue between $50 million and $500 million; and 29 percent reported revenue of over $1 billion.

Download a complimentary copy of the Constellation Research 2018 AI Study.

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Microsoft Acquires GitHub

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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On June 4th, 2018 Microsoft announced their intention to acquire GitHub. My research focuses on team collaboration, not application development, so my interest in this deal is around areas of working together, community, etc. Here are a few thoughts:

• If/when/how Microsoft could create a use-case focused version of Microsoft Teams for developers
• What solutions could be created by adding GitHub data into the Microsoft Graph? Could this help developers promote their projects, connect with new contracts, etc? Could it help employers find developers? Could this help create better developer communities?
• How will this enable Microsoft to compete against Atlassian's combination of BitBucket and Stride?

For more information related to the technical aspects of application development tools and platform, follow my colleague Holger Mueller.

Similarly, Ray Wang has some great thoughts about this from a business standpoint, especially around enticing a new generation of developers to think about Microsoft.

Here is a collection of tweets showcasing some of the thoughts from my Constellation Reseach colleagues and me. 

Microsoft Acquires GitHub

Host Analytics Simplifies Collaboration Between Finance and Business Users

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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Host Analytics introduces MyPlan, MyPlan Mobile to enable budget owners on the business side to collaborate on forecasts, plans and agile course corrections.

 

Budget-owners on the business side don’t want to use software designed for financial professionals any more than finance types want business people interacting with data or software features they shouldn’t see or touch.

 

These prevailing instincts are the reason Host Analytics (Host) recently added a business-user-oriented MyPlan interface for its cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) system. At its May 21-23 Host Perform user conference, the company followed up by announcing MyPlan Mobile, a device-native app (initially on iOS) designed to keep executives who are on the go connected to budgeting and planning processes.

 

Held this year in Dallas and attended by some 700 customers, Host Perform also highlighted recent upgrades and coming attractions to the vendor’s software-as-a-service-based EPM platform. But MyPlan and MyPlan Mobile were the clear centers of keynote and expo-floor attention.

 

Design for Business Users

EPM vendors are all fond of saying that budgeting and planning should be a team sport. And in a perfect world, finance wouldn’t rely on emailed spreadsheets and other disconnected, manual methods to gather data and collaborate with budget owners around forecasts and plans. EPM systems give finance a centralized, collaborative platform for budgeting and planning, but these systems have not typically seen broad adoption outside of finance. In Host’s assessment that’s because EMP systems are designed, first and foremost, for finance professionals and are not familiar or intuitive for business users.

 

Rather than dumbing down its usual interface, Host developed MyPlan through clean-sheet design sessions with budget-owning business users. What these users want, Host discovered, is a simpler interface in which they can see where they stand, meaning actual performance to date, see where they’ll land, meaning at the end of current budget period, and see what they can plan, meaning how they can adjust their spending and allocations to meet budget expectations.

 

The result was the MyPlan interface (shown below), which was made generally available in March. The interface gives the budget owner – it this case, a marketing executive – a clear sense of where they stand in terms of people, equipment, travel and program expenses. Green and red colors highlight where forecasts and budget figures are on track and where there’s variance.

 

 

Host's MyPlan (top) and MyPlan Mobile interfaces (above) are designed to show business users where they stand on actual performance and where they're forecasted to land by the end of the current financial period. By selecting a wrench icon, users can test changes, reforecast and then update their plans in order to meet budget expectations.

 

The MyPlan Mobile App, which will be released in the second half of 2018, will enable employees who are on the go to see the latest results and then respond, by adding or deleting a planned employee, adding or deleting an asset, or approving or rejecting an expenditure and submitting the update to finance. In a role-playing scenario during the opening keynote at Host Perform, a corporate lawyer used MyPlan Mobile to reviewed the latest expenditures for the Legal department, make changes to his plan, reforecast and then submit updates to his budget.

 

MyPOV on MyPlan and MyPlan Mobile. Like other EPM vendors Host offers integrations to Microsoft Excel, but the company says the business users it talked to when designing MyPlan pointedly did not want a spreadsheet-like grid for collaborative budgeting and forecasting. As I see it it’s a clean design that keeps things simple, but the strength of the MyPlan interface is that it’s a connected and collaborative view of each stakeholder’s budget and plan. Users can click on the wrench symbol to reallocate resources, optimize and otherwise update their plans in order to meet budget expectations. I particularly like the fact that MyPlan eliminates toggling between applications by exposing everything the user needs within a single interface.

 

Pricing details were not disclosed by Host, but customers will pay for a contributor subscription plus an upcharge for the MyPlan interface that will also include the coming MyPlan Mobile app.

 

Coming Attractions

 

Among the recent, soon-to-be released and on-the-horizon upgrades showcased at Host Perform, here are a few highlights:

 

• Dashboard upgrades added with Host’s May 25 Spring release introduced server-side custom calculations that can be reused across dashboards, speeding development and ensuring consistency.
• Drill-through capabilities expected this summer will enable users to see more details behind the numbers, whether they’re about assets, employees, transactions.
• One-click rolling forecasts now on the roadmap will make it easier to do quarterly and monthly forecasts. You’ll be able to create copies of forecasts and try new scenarios around selected parameters with a single click.
• MyPlan V2 upgrades on the longer-term roadmap will introduce “smart” recommendations for first-pass budgeting and ongoing adjustments to spending based on patterns in historical data.

MyPOV on Host’s path forward:  This is just a sampling of the upgrades Host has in the works. The company also detailed long lists of planned upgrades to its planning, consolidation, modeling and reporting capabilities. Taken together with the MyPlan initiative, there’s clearly healthy investment in supporting both deeper functionality and broader deployments. If there’s one criticism it’s that the move into machine-learning-based predictive and prescriptive capabilities is just getting underway, but it’s early days for these sort of capabilities across the EPM space.

 

The big trend in EPM is that companies are going cloud and want to take the power of planning into many operational areas. Host was already seeing some of the largest cloud-based EPM deployments, but with MyPlan and MyPlan Mobile, the company is raising the bar. One big customer in the property management space that already had 6,000 Host subscribers added 500 MyPlan users soon after it was released. It’s an early sign that Host is poised to win even bigger and broader deployments.

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News: Microsoft Acquires Semantic Machines

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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News: Microsoft Acquires Semantic Machines

Why is this important?

It’s becoming more common to interact with our devices and applications using natural speech patterns. This could be done by speaking out loud (voice) or typing (chat). However, most of today’s interactions are simple command and response. We ask our phone what the weather is like, dictate a text message, or ask an Amazon Echo to play a song or set a reminder. While these interactions are useful, for similar interactions with business applications to be truly valuable, we need to be able to have multi-step conversations. Imagine asking your CRM system a question and having it first reply with a high-level answer, but then ask you for more details in order to provide you a more detailed response. Imagine your calendaring and scheduling system not just looking for free-time to book a meeting, but also asking if it could forward the attendees the required documents before the meeting begins. These types of actions with “chatbots” or “digital assistants” are going to play a key role in the Future of Work.

This is not Microsoft's first foray into conversational chatbots. In addition to Cortana, Microsoft has many other chatbots / digital assistants, including the very popular Xiaoice (on Weibo) and Zo on Kix.

The acquisition of Semantic Machines is not only for the technology, but also the people that work there. The staff they've acquired include people that worked on products like Apple Siri, Google Assistant, and Dragon Natural Speaking. This helps Microsoft compete against Google (who recently showcased Google Assistant having a bi-directional conversation), Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Samsung and others working on artificial intelligence and conversational user experiences.

What Does This Mean For Microsoft Customers?

Microsoft has several areas where they could leverage conversational UI, from Windows and Cortana, to Xbox, Office 365, Surface Hubs and more.

 

Future of Work

News Analysis - Informatica Announces Spring 2018 Release General Availability

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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This morning Informatica hit the wires with a press release about its major release, Spring 2018, fittingly timed with Informatica World, being held in Las Vegas from May 21st till 23rd in Las Vegas at the Sands Convention Center. 

 

 

The Future of Integration Source: Holger Mueller, Constellation Research

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics Analytics Automation Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Quantum Computing Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service developer Metaverse VR Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

News Analysis: Adobe Completes Campaign To Commerce With $1.68B Magento Acquisition

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

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

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Commerce Finally Comes To Adobe

On May 21st, 2018, Adobe announced a $1.68 billion acquisition to acquire Magento for commerce capabilities and the developer ecosystem. When the transaction closes, the Campbell, Ca based company will be part of the Adobe Digital Experience team with Magento's CEO Mark Lavelle reporting to Adobe's executive vice president and general manager Brad Rencher.

Traditional bifurcation in the ecommerce landscape has led to vendor proficiency in B2B or B2C commerce. Few organizations have succeeded in delivering on both B2B and B2C. Meanwhile, the death of the CRM and CX market has led to demand for end to end campaign to commerce solutions. SAP's acquisition of Hybris and Salesforce's acquisition of Demandware and Cloud Craze have left Adobe behind competitors who have had a commerce offering. While Adobe has successfully worked with partners to create a friendly environment for commerce integration, customers and design partners have repeatedly asked when Adobe would acquire or build these capabilities. Sources confirm that Adobe has actively sought a commerce partner and acquisition over the past five years as the market for campaign to commerce has heated up. Magento plays a key role in shoring up the commerce offering and B2B chops missing in Adobe increasing dominance in the B2C world.

Constellation believes that the acquisition (should it close) gives Adobe customers:

• End to end creative to commerce support. Adobe customers can reduce the clutter of best of breed solutions and offer a one stop shop for customers. Commerce brings together a defined end point for all the marketing and customer experiences. Magento even brings a light supply chain offering that includes order management, fulfillment, logistics, and shipping.
• B2B credibility in commerce. As organizations from B2C and B2B to P2P commerce, customers seek the ability to find one vendor with both offerings. B2B capabilities in Magento Commerce 2.2 have started to gain traction and Adobe's channel can bring that to customers across the globe.
• Open source ecosystems and platforms. Despite leveraging and contributing to open source initiatives,Adobe's platforms and culture lack an open source DNA. Magento's heritage of customer communities and developer ecosystems will bring fresh air to Adobe customers used to a very planned and prescribed approach. Access to a broader ecosystem of developers and customers that can expand Adobe's reach.
• Mid-market and lower price points. Magento's CMS is simpler to use but supports less use cases than the flagship Adobe AEM product. Channel development and new price points can potentially serve smb customers who have been priced out of Adobe's offerings.
• Industry expertise. Magento built a strong capability in industry verticals such as automotive, fashion, food and beverage, and health and beauty. This expertise can be applied to other areas of Adobe's industry strategy.

Constellation believes that the acquisition (should it close) gives Magento customers:

• Access to a full scale CMS. While the full blown AEM may be overkill for many Magento customers, customers seeking to expand or go up market will have options within the Adobe family. Those customers who seek to move off Acquia now have options.
• Rich analytics. The flagship analytics cloud offering will most likely replace usage of Google and provide a full end-to-end approach in an area Magento under invested in.
• Long term stability. Adobe had improved its ability to acquire vendors from a product offering, customer service and support, employee retention, and customers success point of view. Adobe's profit margins, management stability, and long term revenue provide a long term investment road map for Magento's offerings and should give peace of mind to larger enterprise customers.

The Bottom Line: Adobe's Vision Is Creative To Commerce Reimagined For An AI Driven Digital World

The combination of machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and cognitive computing changes the ways that customers and prospects interact with their environments. AI-driven smart services will sense one’s surroundings, know one’s preferences from past behavior, and subtly guide people and machines through their daily lives in ways that will truly feel seamless. This quest to deliver AI-driven smart services across all industries and business processes will usher in the most significant shift in computing and business this decade and beyond. Commerce will be the biggest use case for this type of AI driven mass personalization as organizations accelerate their digital transformation efforts and Adobe is in a great position to deliver this to customers.

Both Adobe's and Magento's customers stand to gain a lot from a one stop shop on this digital journey. As commerce velocity has slowed given the complexity of integration and technologies, customers and partners are asking for a consolidation in the market to de-risk the complexity and improve platform resiliency. Adobe's made extensive commerce and marketing specific Sensei investments that will be available to customers in the Fall of 2018. Adobe promises integration of Sensei into Magento starting 2H 2018

Customers can expect these efforts to bring AI to the end to end process in early 2019. The quest to deliver on creative to commerce for B2B and B2C will require additional acquisitions in subscription billing, CPQ, personalization, and contract management in order to step up the competition with SAP Hybris and Salesforce.com. Customers stand to benefit with this level of investment and consolidation in the market. Adobe will have a lot to learn from Magento on how to improve their ecosystem and open up their platforms. If this occurs, the overall ecosystem will have the innovation required to support innovative vendors at the edge and allow for a complete reimagination of commerce.

Your POV.

Are you excited about commerce offerings from Adobe? Will you still use Shopify, Episerver, ElasticPath, Demandware, Sitecore or Hybris? Let us know what you think? 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 .

Resources And Related Research

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing Metaverse developer SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Quantum Computing Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Social Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Experience Officer

Report: How Digital Canvases Enable Hyper-Collaboration

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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There are several challenges related to information and application overload which impede the speed of work. One of the ways to reduce these challenges is by limiting the scope of the content and conversations that are displayed, to just the items that are contextually relevant to the desired task and topic. In my new report: How Digital Canvases Enable Hyper-Collaboration, we examine how this new user-interface can speed up the way people work.

 

Kaplan Test Prep Graduates to a Cloud-Based Data Lake

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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Kaplan uses SnapLogic and Amazon Redshift to cut costs, optimize its product portfolio and boost profits.

Kaplan Test Prep is well known for helping students prepare for college-entrance exams, such as the SAT and ACT; post-grad admissions tests, such as the GRE and GMAT; and licensure exams for medical, legal, nursing, financial and other professional careers. Unfortunately, the company wasn’t making the grade when it came to using all available information for data-driven decision-making.

Founded in 1938, Kaplan has decades of historical data, scores of legacy systems and diverse applications. From 2013 to 2015 it made a methodical move to a virtual private network and cloud-based application stack on Amazon Web Services (AWS), an effort that helped Kaplan modernize infrastructure and consolidate from 12 data centers down to four. But from an analytical perspective, Kaplan continued to rely on siloed tools and reporting capabilities. It lacked a centralized store where it could consolidate and analyze data from many data sources.

“We had one, small [Microsoft SQL Server] data warehouse that was ingesting data from just two systems; that’s it,” says Tapan Parekh, director of analytics and data architecture. “It wasn’t a complete view of data, and nobody was happy.”

When he joined Kaplan in November 2015, Parekh immediately began developing an architecture for an analytical data platform. Given that the majority of data sources were now running on AWS, Parekh was considering Amazon Redshift, the vendor’s columnar database service. His biggest challenge was figuring out how to get data into Redshift.

“We have many different applications using different underlying databases and technologies,” says Parekh. “We had different velocities and volumes of data coming in. Ingesting from a relational database is straightforward, but we also have data coming in from streams, which is nonrelational, JSON data, and we have one or two applications that are XML-based. So, a traditional [batch] approach wouldn’t work.”

Anticipated data-velocity requirements ranged from once-per-month loads from accounting systems to daily, interday and microbatch loads from relational and NoSQL sources, to real-time requirements from Amazon Kinesis-based streaming applications.

Kaplan looked at integration options including Informatica,  Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services and hand-coding with Python, but it quickly narrowed its choice to SnapLogic, based on factors including ease of use, cost competitiveness and security features, according to Parekh. But the selection wasn’t finalized until SnapLogic and Redshift passed a proof-of-concept test in which data was loaded from Salesforce and Zuora SaaS services as well as from a homegrown system of record running in Kaplan’s VPC on Amazon. Once the data was loaded into Redshift, the next step was to build a data mart making all these sources of data available for analysis.

“We were able to do it all within three months using all of the data within these systems, not just dummy data,” says Parekh.

In the first year of the production deployment that followed, the focus was on getting data into the Redshift-based platform. The Kaplan team doing this work varied between three and four people. In one project after another, they managed to build SnapLogic pipelines for data ingestion from more than 30 applications into Redshift. Most of these applications are still active, so Kaplan continues to load copies of incremental data changes at latencies ranging from monthly and daily to hourly, near-real-time and streaming speed. Sources range from systems of record, learning management systems and financial systems to Salesforce CRM, Workday, Zuora and Google Analytics. Underlying database management systems include Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB and DynamoDB.

In some cases, Kaplan is consolidating data using Redshift, doing one-time migrations from legacy applications that have since been retired or that will soon be retired. In these cases, Kaplan moves all available data onto Redshift, retaining historical information that might fuel seasonality, time-series and other long-term trend analyses.

Kaplan is using Redshift’s Spectrum capability to provide access to variably structured information. Examples include JSON data from Kinesis-based streaming applications and Mixpanel data on mobile app clickstreams. This data is stored in the Amazon S3 object store. Redshift Spectrum SQL commands query data in S3 through external tables, effectively joining this data with the structured data on the core platform. Kaplan is exploring the use of Amazon Athena as the unstructured data querying opportunities expand.

As detailed in my latest case study, “Kaplan Graduates to a Cloud-Based Data Lake on Amazon Web Services,” Kaplan has already seen a greater than 10 X return on its investment, and the benefits keep coming. Not only has the company retired aging software and systems to the tune of more than a $1 million in one-time savings, the new platform is powering activity-based cost analyses that are streamlining operations and boosting profits. What’s more, data-archiving workflows powered by SnapLogic are expected to cut CRM system storage costs by $150,000 annually. To find out more about this case study, follow this link and download the free excerpt.

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