This list celebrates changemakers creating meaningful impact through leadership, innovation, fresh perspectives, transformative mindsets, and lessons that resonate far beyond the workplace.
Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998.
Twitter: @chriskanaracus
, Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
...
Amazon ties up with big apartment operators for easier home delivery: Just in time for the busy holiday shopping season, Amazon has inked deals with a number of large apartment building operators that will see in the installation of delivery lockers called Hubs. Companies who have signed up so far collectively manage more than 850,000 apartment units in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal.
The program has a few key goals: More security and flexibility for customers, cost savings gained through dropping off large batches of packages at once, and to help ease the burden on apartment management companies who must grapple with a ever-higher pile of delivery boxes in building lobbies.
POV: Customers get a code they can enter in the locker to retrieve their packages. It's a similar idea to delivery boxes Amazon has already installed at gas stations and other high-traffic locations, but should have much greater appeal to both customers and apartment managers. Meanwhile, the shopping season will certainly give Amazon a test bed to prove out the Hubs at scale.
Apple, GE team up for mobile industrial apps: General Electric will partner with Apple on the creation of mobile applications for machinery and factories, Bloomberg reports:
The Boston-based company on Oct. 26 will publish a toolkit it has built with Apple that helps developers build software for iPhones and iPads that uses its Predix data-collection and analysis tool, Kevin Ichhpurani, the head of sales at GE’s digital division, said in an interview. Apple is making Predix its preferred tool for connected factories.
“More of the customers in the industrial world want to drive mobile experiences to their end users,†Ichhpurani said. “Employees within those enterprises want those same experiences that they have in a consumer world.â€
The focus of the apps will be on monitoring and diagnostics of machinery, as Apple's announcement explains:
For example, a Predix app can notify a worker on their iPhone of a potential issue with equipment such as a wind turbine and allow them to collaborate with remote teams when performing inspections and repairs, collecting relevant data instantly.
GE and Apple also plan to use the iPhone maker’s recently released augmented-reality tools to help train engineers and identify mechanical problems.
POV: This is one partnership that goes beyond a splashy announcement. For example, GE will standardize its mobile devices on iPhone and iPad, while Apple "will promote Predix as the industrial IoT analytics platform of choice to its customers and developers." The SDK for iOS devices will be launched next week during GE's Mind + Machines conference. Overall, the deal cements Apple as a major player in enterprise and digital transformation efforts.
Adobe rolls out next-generation Creative Cloud: During this week's MAX conference, Adobe is unveiling a series of enhancements to its Creative Cloud portfolio, including four new applications. It has also injected more AI capabilities into Creative Cloud from its Sensi AI platform. Here are the key details from its announcement.
Adobe XD CC is a cross-platform toolkit for rapidly prototyping mobile apps and websites.
Adobe Dimension CC provides designers with 3D image creation capabilities.
Character Animator, is a 2D animation tool. Sensei offers improved lip-syncing.
Adobe has also redesigned Lightroom, its cloud-based photo storage, editing and sharing service.
POV: As expected, Adobe is also unveiling updates to its core creative apps, such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, but these improvements appear to be more iterative than transformative. What will be of particular interest to enterprises are new integrations between Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud, making it easier for companies to use both in tandem as they bring branding development operations in-house. Constellation analysts Cindy Zhou and Alan Lepofsky are in attendance at Creative Cloud this week. You can follow their ongoing coverage on Twitter at @cindy_zhou and @alanlepo.
Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998.
Twitter: @chriskanaracus
, Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
...
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…...
Docker adding native support for Kubernetes: For the past couple of years, Docker has pushed Swarm as the default orchestration tool for its popular application container platform. But the Kubernetes container orchestration layer, originally created by Google and now a project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, has far exceeded Swarm in popularity.
Docker has ceded to this reality, announcing during its DockerCon EU conference this week that the next version of Docker Enterprise Edition will ship with support for both orchestrators. It was possible to use Kubernetes before, but the native support will make the experience seamless.
POV: Docker's announcement reportedly garnered ample applause from the DockerCon EU crowd, underscoring that while Docker has been a leading force in containers over the past several years, developers want to use the container-wrangling framework of their choice.
This comes as no surprise, as Kubernetes "is probably the fastest come back from behind win we have seen in infrastructure ever," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "The good news for enterprises is things get easier when making decisions, and lock-in on the container orchestration level has not happened yet. It's getting easier to place down your chips on the architecture for next-gen apps."
Splunk buys SignalSense in machine learning acqui-hire: In its second such move this month, machine data monitoring and analysis vendor Splunk has made an acquisition focused as much on talent as technology. It has purchased a startup called SignalSense, which focused on advanced data collection and breach detection tools:
Seattle-based SignalSense will join Splunk’s Products organization in its growing Seattle office. Splunk will leverage expertise from the SignalSense team to further advance its machine learning capabilities and its market-leading machine data platform.
“Before joining SignalSense, I spent three amazing years at Splunk, and I’m thrilled to return as the company continues to rapidly innovate. Splunk is the perfect platform for our team to make a big impact on Splunk’s substantial customer base,†said Brad Lovering, chief engineering officer, SignalSense.
POV: Earlier this month, Splunk paid an undisclosed sum for Rocana, another analytics startup, and also brought in some of its staff.
These are good moves by Splunk, which has the data but as of yet, not enough machine learning intelligence about that data, says Constellation's Mueller. That ultimately will determine who wins the crown in the market for connected economies and IoT, he adds.
Intralinks gets flipped to private equity firm: Synchronoss Technologies is selling off its Intralinks secure filesharing software division to Siris Capital Partners for about $1 billion. The deal comes about a year after Synchronoss bought Intralinks for $821 million. While investors reacted poorly to the initial acquisition, the pact with Siris sent Synchronoss shares up significantly on Tuesday.
There was reportedly a bidding war for Intralinks, with Siris offering $835 billion in June, and better offers coming in after that, according to Reuters.
POV: The deal in and of itself isn't earth-shattering, but continues the trend over the past few years of private equity firms snapping up enterprise software vendors. Notable examples include BI vendor Qlik, bought by Thoma Bravo for $3 billion; and Dell's sell-off of its software group as part of the merger with EMC.
PE firms have warmed up to enterprise software companies due to their focus on top-line growth, but have also applied more discipline in order to drive out costs. For customers, the trend can mean good things indeed—Koch Industries invested more than $2 billion in Infor, money that is expected to ramp up the ERP vendor's already robust push into micro-verticals and innovation across the stack.
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,…...
Tableau unveils high-scale Hyper engine, previews self-service data-prep and ‘smart’ capabilities. Here’s the cloud agenda for next year's event.
Tableau Software is the Apple of the analytics market, with a huge fan base and enthusiastic customers who are willing to stand in long lines for a glimpse at what’s next. Last week’s Tableau Conference in Las Vegas proved that once again with record attendance of more than 14,000.
The Tableau fan boys and fan girls were not disappointed, as the company detailed plenty of new capabilities. The highly anticipated Hyper engine, for example, is now in beta release 10.5 and is sure to be generally available by early next year. Hyper solves Tableau performance problems when dealing with high-scale data extracts. The columnar, in-memory technology speeds the creation of data extracts, makes it possible to deal with larger-scale extracts and better supports scalability for enterprise-scale deployments.
Also in 10.5 are a slew of upgrades including nested projects, for more granular administrative control, mapping and Web authoring improvements, and a “Viz in Tooltip†feature that provides deeper, sparkline visualizations when you hover over a data point. A new Extensions API will enable developers to bring third-party application functionality into Tableau. For example, natural-language interpretations from Automated Insights can be embedded into Tableau Dashboards to help explain the data visualizations. Or users looking for data sources to explore could be exposed to suggestions from Alation, the third-party data catalog.
For now Tableau's new Hyper engine meets scale and performance demands tied to
handling structured data extracts. In future it will address NoSQL and graph workloads.
A bit farther over the horizon, Tableau offered a preview of its Project Maestro self-service data-prep option. Tableau executives said there would still be a place for the deeper self-service data-prep functionality offered by partners, but it looks like Maestro will deliver intuitive, visual tools that will enable many business users to combine, clean and transform data. (Thus, data-prep partners like Alteryx and Trifacta are moving to provide more advanced capabilities, such as prediction and machine learning).
Maestro is expected to be in beta release by year end. General availability typically follows beta release within a quarter, but Tableau execs weren’t ready to discuss packaging or pricing of what will be an optional module that’s integrated with, but separate from, Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.
Even farther over the horizon, Tableau outlined plans for more “smart†capabilities powered by machine learning and natural language query. Tableau already recommends data sources based on historical behavior by user, group, role and access privileges, but more discovery and analysis recommendations are in the works. Having recently acquired ClearGraph, Tableau is also working on natural language query capabilities that will enable users to have more of a dialogue with the software. Using a technique called query pragmatics, ClearGraph’s technology can retain the context of a previous query to drill down to deeper insight. The queries can be typed in or, with third-party voice-to-text capabilities, spoken into mobile devices.
Tableau' plans to extend machine-learning powered recommendations from data sources
into the areas of suggested visualizations and suggested data-prep steps.
What Tableau didn’t talk about so much were next steps for cloud deployment. Yes, the 10.5 release introduced Linux support for Tableau Server, which is clearly a boon for cloud deployment, where Linux is usually the default operating system. The release also made strides in Tableau’s long-running goal to bring functional parity between Tableau Desktop and the Tableau Web client. Finally, Tableau has also made strides in supporting deployments on Microsoft Azure. But we didn’t hear much at all about what’s coming in the next generation of Tableau Online, which is the vendor’s software-as-a-service offering of Tableau Server. Big enterprise customers more typically deploy Tableau Server themselves on AWS, Azure or the Google Cloud Platform, but here, too, there wasn’t much said about making such cloud deployments easier.
My Take on Tableau Conference 2017
The Tableau Conference grew yet again this year, surpassing the scale of most conferences I attend – and certainly any analytics vendor conference. That’s a testament to the level of customer enthusiasm, which was once again palpable. The love of the product grows from the grassroots level, with Tableau Desktop (as well as the mobile and web clients), but the company was careful to put huge, enterprise-scale deployments at the forefront of this year’s event. In the opening keynote, for example, Sherri Benzelock, VP of Business Analytics at Honeywell, explained how the company achieved a “balance between data access, trust and governance†in a “viral†deployment that reached 20,000 employees within two years.
Another take on creating a well-governed but democratized self-service experience was shared by Steven Hittle and Jason Mack of JP Morgan Chase. Hittle, VP of BI Innovation and a member of the IT team, said Tableau has enabled people to “build in hours what took weeks or months in other tools.†That flexibility has led to broad adoption since 2011, with more than 20,000 users across JP Morgan Chase. It was Hittle’s job to convince risk officers that they could trust people with direct access to data. Governance is largely achieved at the data layer, with robust permissions and access controls. Another safeguard is monitoring all data extracts to enforce the rule that no personally identifiable information is brought into Tableau Server.
Tableau is deployed on premises at JP Morgan Chase, with 15 Tableau Server instances around the world, but Hittle’s advice to fellow enterprise-scale customers speaks to what should be next on the company’s cloud agenda. For starters, managing Tableau Servers is not dead easy, and as deployments scale up, cost-management becomes a concern. It helps that Tableau has introduced subscription-based pricing over the last year, which JP Morgan Chase and many other customers have adopted, but the banking giant has done a lot of work to mine performance and usage statistics and to come up with a shared allocation module – by users as well as by CPU, disk, and network utilization – to guide judicious purchasing of Tableau Server capacity. Hittle said that JP Morgan Chase has also had to work on automating server migrations and version control.
The buzz from big cloud providers, meanwhile, is all about serverless computing, automation and “autonomous†capabilities, as discussed at the recent Oracle Open World event. Tableau obviously has to learn how to make the most of automation through its own Tableau Online cloud service, but that SaaS offering is not suitable for every customer. At the Google Next event this spring, for example, an executive from a major university told me that he couldn’t use Tableau Online because it’s not HIPAA compliant. The university uses Google Big Query and other managed services wherever possible, but it has to run Tableau Server on virtual machines on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, which he described as “the most expensive and complicated thing that we do.â€
I came away from the Tableau Conference impressed by the company’s growth, its many new features and by current and planned smart capabilities powered by machine learning and natural language processing. But the bar continues to rise on cloud expectations. At Tableau Conference 2018 I hope to hear about the maturation of Tableau Online for enterprise needs. And for those who choose to deploy Tableau Server, whether on public cloud infrastructure or on premises, I hope to hear more about automation options and streamlined deployment and management capabilities geared to a hybrid, multi-cloud world.
Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998.
Twitter: @chriskanaracus
, Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
...
Cindy Zhou is a practicing CMO.
Prviously, she was Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness. With over 18 years of practitioner experience in corporate marketing, product marketing, product management, and sales operations, Zhou has spearheaded marketing transformation at multiple technology companies. She advised Constellation’s clients on strategies to light-up demand generation, prove revenue contribution, and maximize sales productivity.
Prior to joining Constellation, Zhou was Global Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations at BackOffice Associates, a global provider of data quality and information governance solutions to the Fortune 1000 and SAP SolEx partner. Before…...
SCOTUS on privacy case: The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to review a landmark 2016 decision that barred the federal government from obtaining personal emails stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had sided with Microsoft in July 2016, but the Department of Justice appealed to the higher court. Microsoft had argued its case on ground that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was created decades before the cloud era, was never meant to have authority within the borders of foreign countries, general counsel Brad Smith said in a blog post:
But as we have said from the beginning of this litigation, there’s a broader dimension to this issue as well. The continued reliance on a law passed in 1986 will neither keep people safe nor protect people’s rights. If U.S. law enforcement can obtain the emails of foreigners stored outside the United States, what’s to stop the government of another country from getting your emails even though they are located in the United States?
We believe that people’s privacy rights should be protected by the laws of their own countries and we believe that information stored in the cloud should have the same protections as paper stored in your desk. Therefore, Congress needs to modernize the law and address these fundamental issues.
POV: There is already bipartisan legislation drafted that would create modernized versions of the ECPA that take into account today's realities while also being mindful of law enforcement needs. Microsoft will continue pressing its case that the DoJ's interpretation of the ECPA is erroneous, Smith wrote.
Redmond will no doubt continue enjoying broad support from other tech vendors, privacy advocates and trade associations in its effort as well. However, the DoJ has its own argument to make, namely that data such as the emails in Ireland is the property of companies, not users, and therefore a warrant served on U.S. corporations for information held abroad is a domestic order and thereby applicable under the ECPA.
The mere fact the DoJ's petition will be heard by the Supreme Court underscores how important the case is. It's not clear when it will be heard, but some reports suggest it could be within a few months. The bottom line? A major decision on how U.S. law treats personal electronic data is coming down soon.
IBM unveils blockchain service for cross-border payments: Big Blue has made a sizable bet indeed on blockchain, with a particular focus on financial services applications. In its latest such move, IBM is partnering with Stellar.org and KlickEx Group on a blockchain service for cross-border payments. Here are the key details from its announcement:
Today, making international payments can be costly, laborious and error-prone. Transactions in different currencies can require multiple intermediaries and take days or weeks to complete.
Using a blockchain distributed ledger, all appropriate parties have access and insight into the clearing and settlement of financial transactions. It is designed to augment financial flows worldwide, for all payment types and values, and allows financial institutions to choose the settlement network of their choice for the exchange of central bank-issued digital assets.
For example, in the future, the new IBM network could make it possible for a farmer in Samoa to enter into a trade contract with a buyer in Indonesia. The blockchain would be used to record the terms of the contract, manage trade documentation, allow the farmer to put up collateral, obtain letters of credit, and finalize transaction terms with immediate payment, conducting global trade with transparency and relative ease.
The service is already processing transactions in 12 "currency corridors" in the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. It is powered by IBM's Hyperledger Fabric-based blockchain platform. Stellar.org provides an open-source blockchain network for trading digital assets, and has a custom-built cryptocurrency called lumens that is being used to settle transactions done through IBM's service. KlickEx is a Pacific region financial services company.
POV: Major financial institutions such as TD Bank and Australia National Bank are also associated with the project, which will be expanded to other regions next year. Overall, it's an example of major tech and financial players joining forces with scrappy blockchain upstarts to tackle a vexing problem. IBM and its partners will discuss the effort in more detail during the Sibos 2017 conference this week in Toronto.
Facebook launches food ordering service: More than anything, Facebook wants to keep users inside its environment. It is launching a new food-ordering service that aggregates third-party options from inside the social network. Here's how Facebook explains it in a blog post:
People already go to Facebook to figure out what to eat by reading about nearby restaurants, and seeing what their friends say about them. So, we’re making it even easier.
Facebook combines options from a number of food ordering services like EatStreet, Delivery.com, DoorDash, ChowNow and Olo, as well as restaurants like Jack in the Box, Five Guys, Papa John’s, and Panera, so you don’t have to search through multiple places to find what you’re looking for. From local spots to national chains, Facebook connects you with old favorites and new discoveries in just a few taps. You can even check out what your friends have to say about a restaurant before you order your food.
The service has been in testing since last year but it now available throughout the US on iOS, Android and desktops.
POV: "I think this is a fantastic development for customer experience," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Cindy Zhou. "Facebook’s advantage is the ability to connect one’s friends, to perhaps order together, and it becomes more of a 'social' outing." Moreover, the ability to integrate reviews is powerful Zhou adds. "I think the risk is for these third-party delivery platforms," she says. "Facebook could take them out by working directly with the brands."
Tech earnings season begins: IBM and SAP are two tech bellwethers set to announce third-quarter earnings this week, followed by Amazon, Microsoft and Google/Alphabet next week. All told, the enterprise market should get a clear snapshot of customer buying patterns and trends.
POV: Eyes will be on whether SAP can continue delivering rapid growth in its cloud applications, as well as updated numbers for S/4HANA adoption and a sense of what momentum SAP's Leonardo product-and-services digital transformation strategy has gained.
IBM is not expected to break its long streak of revenue declines, but it will be interesting to see how Big Blue's newly launched z14 mainframes are tracking in initial sales. The big selling point for the z14 is full encryption with no appreciable performance hit.
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…...
On Oct 11th and 12th Box held their annual BoxWorks conference in San Francisco. There were several announcements for users, developers and administrations, but the most significant for my research area of Personal Productivity, Team Collaboration and the Future of Work was the introduction of Box Skills, a set of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities which can enhance the content stored in Box by automatically adding additional metadata such as tags, sentiment, transcriptions and more.
If you don't have time to read this entire post, here is a quick summary of Constellation's analysis:
Key Announcements and MyPOV
Evolution of their messaging around “Cloud Context Managementâ€
Box is much more than just Files/Folders: KeySafe, Zones, Platform, Relay, Drive, Notes, Capture, Governance, Insights, …
76K customers, 65% of F500, 100k developers
Box Relay - Workflow product (co-developed with IBM) will be available (price has yet to be announced) for all customers on Nov 13. Box Relay allows anyone to fill out a series of guided questions which then creates the conditions and actions to organize business processes.
Box Files - the core file storage and sharing experience of Box
Enhanced commenting: Threaded comments and the ability to mark a thread as completed
Annotations: Leave comments in specific locations on documents
Versioning: Visually see the key differences between two versions
Presence: You can see who else is currently viewing a document
Tasks: You can assign a task to a person with a date. This is just the start of a larger roadmap for task management
Shortcuts: Create links to files or folders in the left side navigation bar
Integrations with Workplace by FB, Slack, Microsoft Teams. Future: IBM Watson Workspace, Google Hangouts Chat, Cisco Spark
MyPOV: Box has done a good job over the last year or two improving the file/folder experience. However, I would like to see more innovation here, such as enabling content to be organized in ways that break away from the hierarchical "file manager†experience. I would also like to see more intelligence around popular content, recommended content, recent files, etc. I’m pleased to see Box working on tasks, but more work is required in this area to truly make it usable for managing and tracking assignments and status of deliverables.
Box Notes - Box’s own word processor/note taking application
Inbox to see documents
Visual differences between versions
Presence
Templates
MyPOV: The addition of a desktop version of Box Notes (the web application wrapped in Electron) was very welcome and should help drive usage of the product. While the content creation features of Box Notes currently lag behind competitive offerings such as DropBox Paper and Salesforce Quip, it does have the advantage of sharing the same security and compliance standards that the core Box Files experience has. Hopefully we’ll see continued feature enhancements to Box Notes in 2018.
Box Skills (Beta planned for 2018) – bringing artificial intelligence to content stored in Box.
Video: everything from audio + facial recognition and indexing
MyPOV: This is the most important announcement of the conference. More details on this significant feature further down in this post.
Box Graph (Beta planned for 2018) – Box has begun working on an underlying architecture that will map the relationships between content and people.
Potential applications: A newsfeed to show top content, anomaly detection
MyPOV: This is a very critical part of the future of Box functionality. Other vendors such as Microsoft, Facebook and Slack leverage their graph to help people avoid information overload, discover content and colleagues, detect patterns and more. Making the API for Box Graph available to developers will be a powerful addition to the Box Platform for creating customer applications.
For Developers
100K+ application developers are now making 12 billion 3rd party API calls/month
New Analytics Dashboard to show API usage
New Box Element: "Open With"
New Training Center / certification
Solutions Gallery to showcase applications
Augmenting Content
The most significant news from BoxWorks (with respect to people and applications interacting with content) is the introduction of Box Skills. These enhancements leverage capabilities from IBM Watson, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure to add functionality to files stored in Box. The first set of skills Box is developing are for image, audio and video files. The architecture of Box Skills has been designed to be platform agnostic, thus enabling developers to use best of breed AI capabilities from multiple vendors instead of being limited to a single choice. At this time Box has not announced how Skills will be charged for, but someone will have to pay for the API calls being made to the commercial AI platforms. For example, each time an image is tagged, Google will require payment. Box has stated they will make this as frictionless as possible for customers, with more details coming in 2018. Skills are an optional feature, and must explicitly be turned on, so customers don’t need to worry about this unless they decide they want to use them. Custom skills can also be developed to meet specific business needs.
Images
The example below shows tags which have been automatically added (via Google Vision API) to the file’s metadata which describe the image. Also, any text on an image is scanned and transcribed. I hope similar functionality will be available for presentations, enabling people to easily find files based on the content in specific slides.
Audio
The example below shows how using IBM Watson, audio files stored in Box can be scanned for keywords and sentiment. The audio can be transcribed, and people can jump to any of the indexed times in the recording.
Video
The example below expands upon the audio use case, showing how video can also be indexed. In addition to pulling out keywords, facial recognition can identify specific people and provide navigation through a video based on faces. I have been using similar functionality in Microsoft Stream and it can make a dramatic difference in the way you view content, enabling you to focus on the areas you want while easily skipping over those you don’t.
Conclusion
At last years conference (BoxWorks 2016) Box emerged with a very strong message of evolving from file storage and sharing, to being a platform for building applications. This years event successfully continued that story by introducing future functionality in the form of Box Skills (AI) and Box Graph (analytics). I was very impressed with the customer references and business partner announcements, both of which show that the ecosystem around Box is quite healthy and growing. I would like to see Box innovate more around the way content is created, organized and shared, as the competition in these areas is quite strong. Overall BoxWorks 2017 was an excellent event, and the customers and partners I spoke with are looking forward to getting their hands on the new functionality.
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…...
We had the opportunity to attend the North American edition of the Workday user conference, held in Chicago from October 9th till12th 2017 at McCormick place. The event was very well attended (almost 9k attendees) across customers, prospects, partners and influencers.
Before reading - check out this video my colleague Chris Kanaracus and me recorded on the way to O'Hare:
Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
People Experience – Workday is unveiling a new, open portal that will allow its customers not only to expose Workday information, but also 3rd party / partner information via REST APIs. A good move, that may give the HR system another shot at becoming truly the all-encompassing employee directory (something the overall industry has by large failed at).
Duffield and Bhusri on the Power of 1
Platform functionality push – Workday is extending its platform capabilities. No surprise – there is Workday Voice – the vendor’s approach to voice recognition. Unfortunately, not show, but vendor independence is the architecture design point a good true north. Workday Bot powers the chat or voice conversations. And Prism analytics, powered by Platfora software and know how assets has gone live for some and in beta for some other capabilities. Finally, Workday Benchmarking has gone GA a few weeks before Rising.
Workday People Experience [Portal]
Progress in Learning and overall in Talent Management – Learning was the latest addition to the Workday Talent Management capabilities – and it is seeing good customer adoption with about 200 customers having purchased, implementing or being live on it. And Workday is bringing all of Talent Management together with a concept of development journeys – an interesting approach to make Talent Management really work from a talent augmentation and career perspective.
Workday Cloud Platform
Workday Cloud Platform – Already mentioned at the recent Workday partner event, Workday also shared its PaaS plans at Rising. It is early days, with 30 services available and a little more than a handful of customers in beta. That will change in 2018 with more early adopters building use cases with Workday Cloud Platform. An interesting takeaway from the executive Q&A was that ISV uptake is expected in a year from now.
MyPOV
A good Rising for Workday customer. record attendance with 8500 participants always give a ‘natural’ adrenaline rush to all who made it to McCormick. And Workday is broadly pushing functionality in its core products, but also adding key platform capabilities with PaaS, DaaS and the Prism analytics. Workday Voice and Workday Bot are changing the user experience in the right direction. Unfortunately, it did no keynote time – after being featured prominently a year ago.
On the concern side, Workday has a lot on its hands. On top of the all the above mentioned innovation, it also is running its first AWS based data center in Montreal, and moving to a more modern container based architecture (Kubernetes). That is a lot to do, but it is key for Workday to provide all of this innovation to remain in a good place when it comes to the newer technologies and platforms. The good news is, that Workday moves to a more commonly understood (and accepted) operating model for SaaS vendors, that should help the vendor reduce its capital expenditures in data centers and that are hopefully invested into new SaaS capabilities. And Workday has a good track record to deliver what it puts on the roadmap.
Overall Workday is moving in the right direction, I’d like to see it move a little faster, but customers will be in good shape as long as Workday delivers on the platform, architecture and functionality capabilities it has announced and shared at Rising. CxOs making decision should practice the usual caution as with all new products – minimum required capabilities, commercial implications, and roadmap are a few prominent considerations to mention. Stay tuned.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). There is a total of four Storifys - below is the executive keynote. You can find the Friday keynote here, and takeaways from the Q&A with Bhusri and executive round tables here (very interesting).
More on Workday
Summer 2017 News Analysis - Workday announces its PaaS - read here
News Analysis - Workday, IBM Form Strategic Partnership on the IBM Cloud - The IaaS vendor race for SaaS load is on - read here
News Analysis - Workday Delivers Payroll for France Customers - read here
Progress Report - Workday Tech Summit - Good Progress, More Insights, Less Concerns - read here
News Analysis - Workday and ADP partner to Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience for Global Payroll - read here
Event Report - Workday Rising - Learning is there and good housekeeping - read here
News Analysis - Workday completes Talent Management with Learning - Finally - or too late? Read here.
Event Preview - What I would like Workday to address this Rising read here
News Analysis – Workday to Expand Suite of Applications for Healthcare Industry - with a SCM twist - read here
News Analysis - Workday supports UK Payroll - now speaks (British English) Payroll - read here
Workday 24 - 'True' Analytics, a Vertical and more - now needs customer proof points - read here
First Take - Top 3 Takeaways from of Workday Rising Day 1 Keynote - The dawn of the analytics era - time to deliver Insight Apps - read here
Progress Report - Workday supports more cloud standard - but work remains - read here
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998.
Twitter: @chriskanaracus
, Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
...
Workday Rising 2017 recap: Myself and colleage Holger Mueller were guests of Workday this week for its annual Rising conference and had the opportunity to speak with a host of customers and company executives, including co-CEO Aneel Bhusri. Here are some of the key findings that arose during those conversations.
Workday has a solid base in HCM and financials, but when it comes to expanding further into ERP, manufacturing won't be a priority. But supply chain is a possibility from the order management standpoint, Bhusri said. It's also open to partners taking the reins. "If someone popped up and wanted to build a killer supply chain management app on our platform ... I would be thrilled," he said.
While Workday is rolling out a PaaS strategy after years of speculation, it is in no hurry to become the next Force.com. Initially, the focus will be on customers and systems integrators building extensions to the core applications. “We’re not looking for an ISV to build an app on the Workday platform for probably a year," Bhusri said.
Workday is moving some of its workloads to Amazon Web Services while maintaining its own datacenter footprint. Many customers want to remain in Workday's cloud, and the company doesn't expect the majority to be on the public cloud until between five and seven years, Bhusri said. AWS is "the right architectural decision" for Workday, particularly due to the rapid flow of cutting-edge features AWS delivers in areas such as machine learning. While Workday will call out to those services from its own cloud, over time customers may come to agree that it makes more sense to be native on AWS.
When it comes to future mergers and acquisitions, Workday will focus on "cool technologies to enhance the platform," Bhusri said. While applications are also a possibility, Workday won't look to buy broad suites, he added.
Workday announced the limited availabilty of Prism, the analytics service based on the acquisition of Platfora last year. General availability is set for the second half of next year. The timeframe reflects the need to work with a small set of early customers to prove out Prism's scalability, as well as to wait for important features still under development, chiefly a data-discovery toolset.
Platfora, which was based on Hadoop and Spark, amounted to more of an acquihire than a technology purchase, and thus a fair amount of engineering work was on order, Workday CTO Joe Korngiebel said in an interview. (For one thing, Platfora was on-premises and single-tenant.) In any case, Workday talked to 25 companies before settling on Platfora, which suggests the talent it acquired was indeed top-notch.
Google launches tool for the app-dev supply chain: Open source software is de rigeur for next-generation application development, but the proliferation of options enterprises can use comes with its own set of problems. To that end, Google is partnering with Red Hat, IBM and other companies on an open-source project called Grafeas. Here's how Google describes Grafeas's intentions in a blog post:
Grafeas (“scribe†in Greek) provides organizations with a central source of truth for tracking and enforcing policies across an ever growing set of software development teams and pipelines. Build, auditing and compliance tools can use the Grafeas API to store, query and retrieve comprehensive metadata on software components of all kinds.
As part of Grafeas, Google is also introducing Kritis, a Kubernetes policy engine that helps customers enforce more secure software supply chain policies. Kritis (“judge†in Greek) enables organizations to do real-time enforcement of container properties at deploy time for Kubernetes clusters based on attestations of container image properties (e.g., build provenance and test status) stored in Grafeas.
Without uniform metadata schemas or a central source of truth, CIOs struggle to govern their software supply chains, let alone answer foundational questions like: “Is software component X deployed right now?†“Did all components deployed to production pass required compliance tests?†and “Does vulnerability Y affect any production code?â€
POV: Other companies involved with Grafeas include Black Duck, Twistlock, Aqua Security and CoreOS. Overall, Grafeas is targeting a crucial weakness in modern software development, wherein the vast array of open-source components give enterprises flexibility while simultaneously creating a pool of risk and uncertainty over their provenance and security. Google is aligning Grafeas with Kubernetes, the open-source container orchestration project that emerged from its internal operations and has steadily gained in popularity. It's a smart idea to open-source Grafeas now and get the broader Kubernetes community involved.
Walmart rolls out rapid returns for online purchases: The customer service and returns counter at Walmart stores can be a dreary place, marked by long lines, cranky shoppers and overwhelmed workers. Walmart is looking to transform the returns experience through a new program powered by its mobile application. Here are the details from its announcement:
Using Mobile Express Returns, customers can complete the returns process in just two simple steps:
1. Initiate the Return: Using the Walmart App, select the Walmart transaction and item(s)* to return and follow the prompts to start the return process.
2. Finish the Return at the Store: At the store, fast-track through the line via the Mobile Express Lane** at the Customer Service Desk. Scan the QR code displayed on the card reader with the Walmart app, and then hand the item to the associate.
Refunds will be credited to customers’ payment account as soon as the next day, and they will no longer have to send off their product and wait days for an online return to be credited. Given 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, it’s never been faster or easier to make an online return.
POV: It's a classic, timely and effective reverse supply chain play by Walmart. Moreover, it is a solid strike against rival Amazon, which is building out a store-level returns strategy through moves such as the acquisition of Whole Foods and partnerships with the likes of Kohl's. Walmart has 4,700 stores in the U.S. and for many Americans is a weekly—at minimum—shopping destination. Friction-free returns for online goods is a no-brainer, and Walmart is planning to add rapid returns for products bought in stores as well.
The bottom line is that the omnichannel retail war remains at a fever pitch, and in many cases, such as this one, both companies and consumers can end up betting from competition-driven innovation.
Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998.
Twitter: @chriskanaracus
, Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights
Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.
...
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…...
Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research
Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems.
Coverage Areas
Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD,
Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use
Previous experience:
Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...
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,…...
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft team up on deep learning: Co-opetition is a driving force in the development of artificial intelligence technologies, evidenced by a new partnership between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. The companies are collaborating on a new library for deep learning called Gluon. Here are the details from a Microsoft blog post:
Gluon is a concise, dynamic, high-level deep learning library, or interface, for building neural networks. It can be used with either Apache MXNet or Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit. Gluon offers an easy-to-use interface for developers, highly-scalable training, and efficient model evaluation–all without sacrificing flexibility for more experienced researchers. For companies, data scientists and developers Gluon offers simplicity without compromise through high-level APIs and pre-build/modular building blocks, and more accessible deep learning.
It's available on GitHub now, for use in conjunction with MXNet, with Cognitive Toolkit support coming later. AWS has also released a blog post with its take on Gluon, which is available here.
POV: The new partnership between Microsoft and AWS is reminiscent of the recent ONNX format announcement, in that it’s aimed at making it easier for developers to work with deep learning libraries, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.
AWS embraced MXNet, a deep learning framework designed for cloud infrastructure, in May, and Gluon has already been a supported interface in MXNet.
At its recent Ignite event, Microsoft executives stressed that the company has an open strategy where deep learning and analytical frameworks are concerned, Henschen notes. "Efforts like ONNX and Gluon are aimed at making machine learning and deep learning work easier for a broader base of developers, but in both cases Microsoft’s favored library and those of its respective partners—Caffe2 in the case of the Facebook/ONNX partnership and MXNet in the case of the Amazon/Gluon partnership—is the first beneficiary."
Box adds AI to its content management mix: Content management unicorn Box used its Boxworks event this week to introduce Box Skills, a number of AI-powered capabilities designed to make the platform much more than a place to store and share files.
There are three initial skills. The first is Image Intelligence, which applies object detection along with handwriting and text recognition. The metadata created helps index images for search.
Audio Intelligence transcribes audio files, making them searchable by words or topics. Video Intelligence also provides transcriptions, plus topic detection and facial recognition.
Box has also created Skills Kit, which can be used by ISVs, SIs and enterprise IT shops to develop custom Box Skills, particularly for industry-specific business processes. The kit allows third parties to bring in whatever machine learning frameworks they'd like to use in conjunction with Box.
At BoxWorks, the company gave a few examples of custom skills, such as one giving quality assurance teams the means to search a call center recording database by topics and sentiment.
Finally, Box has unveiled Box Graph, a machine learning model that gains insight about a customer's organization according to how its workers use and share content. Initially, Box Graph will surface content an employee is or has been working on; recommend content from others it deems relevant; and show what content is the most popular within a company.
Both Box Skills and the Skills kit will enter beta early next year.
POV: "Bringing AI to the content in Box is important, because it elevates the content from just being stored in Box, to being used right within Box," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
It's notable that Box has architected the Skills kit to enable a variety of machine learning models, he adds. However, it's not yet clear what the licensing and pricing will be for associated API calls, Lepofsky notes.
Check out Lepofsky's more in-depth take on Box's news in the video below.
Examining Dell's billion-dollar IoT bet: Dell Technologies has announced it will spend $1 billion on product development, partnership activities and other areas over the next three years as part of a new division centered on IoT. It is the company's biggest push yet into IoT. Here are some key details from Dell's announcement:
The company’s new IoT Division will be led by VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell, and is chartered with orchestrating the development of IoT products and services across the Dell Technologies family. The IoT Solutions Division will combine internally developed technologies with offerings from the vast Dell Technologies ecosystem to deliver complete solutions for the customer.
In essence, the division will bring together software and hardware assets Dell already has, such as VMWare Pulse IoT Control Center and Edge Gateways, while bringing in OT (operation technology)-centric products from partners.
Dell is also working on a number of new products, such as Project Nautilus, a software platform that ingests and analyzes IoT gateway data in real time, and Project IRIS, for security at the edge of IoT networks.
POV: Dell's desire to be a one-stop shop for IoT, albeit with the help of partners, reflects the current market landscape. Hitachi recently launched Vantara, an IoT-focused unit that it says provides both IT and OT know-how.
It's also important to look at the bigger picture underlying Dell and others' IoT moves.
"There is a new accord developing across the market around the manner in which IoT and AI—and directly associated technologies such as machine learning—are deployed to deliver business value," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland. "Increasingly, the term systems of Eegagement is used to describe the manner in which data is gathered around the enterprises activities in respect of the real world of events and actions, whereas the term systems of record is used to describe the role of Enterprise IT in recording transactions to create historical data for analysis."
The point is that just as enterprise IT aligns to the business objective of centralizing and reducing variation in process, systems of engagement align to the new digital business model of engaging with the events at the ‘edge’ of the enterprise, where it interacts with its markets, customers, suppliers, even its own dynamic operations, he adds.
"As deployment experience builds it has become very clear that a significant amount of edge activity must be processed at the edge, within the context and timeframe that drives its business value," Mulholland says. "Cisco identified this as fog computing several years back, but Dell has benefited from its significant market in industrial processors connected to sensors on automated production lines to really grasp the requirement and with this investment move to take a leading position."
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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…...
