| Constellation Research

Digital Transformation Digest: Unpacking the Equifax Breach, AT&T's New IoT Push, Open Source Advocates Decry Proposed EU Copyright Reform

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

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. ...

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

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

Andy Mulholland

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…...

Taking measure of the massive Equifax data breach: The post-mortem on Equifax's massive data breach is just beginning, and the incidentâ€”which exposed the personal information of as many as 143 million peopleâ€”won't be soon forgotten. Equifax is also getting harsh grades for how it's handling the announcement of the breach, which it says it knew of in July.

The credit reporting agency is offering consumers a free year of identity theft protection services, but those affected still face significant risks to their credit. Overall, the matter is a boondoggle of massive proportions.

But the response should include much, much more than apologies and promises by Equifax to do better. In fact, the breach demands for a broad reasessment of how personal information should be viewed, handled and protected, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Steve Wilson.

"It's simply incredible that such important data could be exposed," Wilson says. "The economics of security would suggest that no company anywhere on the planet can be safe." Say the records are worth $5 each, which is actually a conservative figure for Social Security numbers and dates of birth, which are gold to identity thieves, he adds. That means the Equifax trove was worth up to $750 million. "We have to ask, what kind of security can safeguard an asset worth nearly a billion dollars?" Wilson says.

Knowledge-based authentication measures are dead, he adds. Rather, the world is headed toward an 'attributes economy,' where data provenance is what matters most: "How do you know it is real and current, and hasn't been stolen?"

There may also be a need for new jurisprudence over data. "It's not good enough that data brokers are left to their own devices like this," Wilson says. "In fact,we might call it market failure, given that these sorts of breaches are repeated, and clearly businesses don't seem to have adequate free market pressure to do better."

AT&T rolls out new IoT asset-tracking platform: Strategic partnerships are becoming de rigeur in the industry, and AT&T is no exception to the rule. This week the telco announced AT&T Asset Management â€” Operations Center, which is geared toward monitoring and managing large numbers of IoT devices.

While the service uses AT&T's Flow, a web-based development environment for IoT applications, it is relying on Microsoft Azure for infrastructure and a number of Microsoft services, including Cosmos DB and Power BI. Here are the key details from AT&T's announcement:

AT&T Asset Management â€“ Operations Center enables a single IoT application, which supports multiple devices, communication protocols, networks and cloud environments. It comes with a built-in dashboard that lets customers tailor data visualization or use APIs to integrate it into existing enterprise systems. The solution supports a plug and play environment for configuring devices, sensors on device, grouping of assets by location and type, rules for alerts and reporting.

The platform will enter beta later this year. AT&T's announcement notes that it is the "first in a series of multi-market, multi-cloud reference solutions," which suggests that it and others will end up on the likes of Amazon and Google Cloud Platform at some point.

POV: AT&T made its announcement one day in advance of the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona. Much more IoT-related news should come out of the event. It's important to look at the current IoT market at a high level, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.

"We are entering into a new phase around where and how IoT fits into digital business and this autumn we can expect to see most, if not all, major technology vendors making both announcements of significant products and on their business positioning," he says.

Meanwhile, "Microsoft Azure's strategy of being the engine room to connect and process IoT devices and together with added-value services seems to be working as this announcement proves," Mulholland adds.

Advocacy group says proposed European copyright reform could hurt OSS: Last year, the European Union introduced a set of copyright reform proposals. Open source software advocates say that Article 13 in the proposals would prove particuarly problematic for OSS.

Article 13 calls for content-scanning measures to be implemented by "information society providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users," in order to prevent the misuse of copyright-protected material.

Open source software communities fit that description, but an imposition of "permanent compliance assessment" measures would be burdensome to the point of inhibiting innovation significantly, OpenForum Europe argues in a white paper:

This is usually a specialised acti vity, typically reserved only to software vendors for software included in their products, intended to assess the appropriate use of code, and respect for the applicable license terms and conditions. Such compliance is painstaking and expensive, and it includes extensive human assessment. Already a specialist consulting industry has grown up around such compliance assessment (such as BlackDuck, Nexb, and Triplecheck); moreover, it is not feasible fully to automate this activity or to apply it to any piece of content uploaded to a developer platform, ranging from source code to text, audio, video.

In practical terms this would be impossible, especially because automated detection mechanisms do not exist for software as they do for audio-visual material. Licence compliance problems exist even for big companies, let alone the small ones. The impossibility of applying such recognition measures to software, and the associated legal uncertainty, could undermine the distribution ecosystem.

POV: The European Parliament is still in session, and EuroForum Europe, along with other advocacy groups, is hoping to get their attention trained on Article 13 before the session ends. OSS advocates aren't the only constituency arguing against Article 13, with more general Internet privacy and freedom voices also in the fray. But OpenForum and its peers may have more luck than other groups, given the progressive stance most EU governments have taken toward OSS for years.

Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer

Read more about Digital Transformation Digest: Unpacking the Equifax Breach, AT&T's New IoT Push, Open Source Advocates Decry Proposed EU Copyright Reform

Microsoft, Facebook Team Up On Deep Learning Interoperability

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

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,…...

Facebook and Microsoft have created the Open Neural Network Exchange format, which provides a means for creating deep learning models that can be moved to different frameworks. Here's how Facebook describes the value proposition, in a blog post:

When developing learning models, engineers and researchers have many AI frameworks to choose from. At the outset of a project, developers have to choose features and commit to a framework. Many times, the features chosen when experimenting during research and development are different than the features desired for shipping to production. Many organizations are left without a good way to bridge the gap between these operating modes and have resorted to a range of creative workarounds to cope, such as requiring researchers work in the production system or translating models by hand.

We developed ONNX together with Microsoft to bridge this gap and to empower AI developers to choose the framework that fits the current stage of their project and easily switch between frameworks as the project evolves.

The Caffe2, PyTorch and Cognitive Toolkit frameworks will begin supporting ONNX this month. Overall, ONNX should help AI researchers innovate faster.

POV: Engineers and researchers do have many AI frameworks to choose from, but the frameworks that will prevail will be those that enjoy broad adoption, active use and, as a result, innovative contributions from their communities, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.

"Engineers and researchers will flock to frameworks that are powerful yet easy to use, and ONNX is clearly an effort to make machine learning work easier by getting laborious, non-value-add grunt work out of the way," he adds. "Googleâ€™s TensorFlow framework has been getting a lot of attention and has attracted a large community, but this ONNX move could well boost interest in using Cognitive Toolkit, Caffe2, PyTorch and other frameworks that may join the exchange."

Data to Decisions Chief Information Officer

Read more about Microsoft, Facebook Team Up On Deep Learning Interoperability

Blending security and privacy

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

The relationship between privacy regulators and technologists can seem increasingly fraught. A string of adverse (and sometimes counter intuitive) privacy findings against digital businesses – including the “Right to be Forgotten”, and bans on biometric-powered photo tag suggestions – have left some wondering if privacy and IT are fundamentally at odds. Technologists may be confused by these regulatory developments, and as a result, uncertain about their professional role in privacy management.

Several efforts are underway to improve technologists’ contribution to privacy. Most prominent is the “Privacy by Design” movement (PbD), while a newer discipline of ‘privacy engineering’ is also striving to emerge. A wide gap still separates the worlds of data privacy regulation and systems design. Privacy is still not often framed in a way that engineers can relate to. Instead, PbD’s pat generalisations overlook essential differences between security and privacy, and at the same time, fail to pick up on the substantive common ground, like the ‘Need to Know’ and the principle of Least Privilege.

There appears to be a systematic shortfall in the understanding that technologists and engineers collectively have of information privacy. IT professionals routinely receive privacy training now, yet time and time again, technologists seem to misinterpret basic privacy principles, for example by exploiting personal information found in the ‘public domain’ as if data privacy principles do not apply there, or by creating personal information through Big Data processes, evidently with little or no restraint.

Engaging technologists in privacy is exacerbated by the many mixed messages which circulate about privacy, its relative importance, and purported social trends towards promiscuity or what journalist Jeff Jarvis calls ‘publicness’. For decades, mass media headlines regularly announce the death of privacy. When US legal scholars Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis developed some of the world’s first privacy jurisprudence in the 1880s, the social fabric was under threat from the new technologies of photography and the telegraph. In time, computers became the big concern. The cover of Newsweek magazine on 27 July 1970 featured a cartoon couple cowered by mainframe computers and communications technology, under the urgent upper case headline, ‘IS PRIVACY DEAD?’.Of course it’s a rhetorical question. And after a hundred years, the answer is still no.

In my new paper published as a chapter of the book “Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Relations as a Challenge for Democracy”, I review how engineers tend collectively to regard privacy and explore how to make privacy more accessible to technologists. As a result, difficult privacy territory like social networking and Big Data may become clearer to non-lawyers, and the transatlantic compliance challenges might yield to data protection designs that are more fundamentally compatible across the digital ethos of Silicon Valley and the privacy activism of Europe.

Privacy is contentious today. There are legitimate debates about whether the information age has brought real changes to privacy norms or not. Regardless, with so much personal information leaking through breaches, accidents, or digital business practices, it’s often said that ‘the genie is out of the bottle’, meaning privacy has become hopeless. Yet in Europe and many jurisdictions, privacy rights attach to Personal Information no matter where it comes from. The threshold for data being counted as Personal Information (or equivalently in the US, ‘Personally Identifiable Information’) is low: any data about a person whose identity is readily apparent constitutes Personal Information in most places, regardless of where or how it originated, and without any reference to who might be said to ‘own’ the data. This is not obvious to engineers without legal training, who have formed a more casual understanding of what ‘private’ means. So it may strike them as paradoxical that the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ don’t even figure in laws like Australia’s Privacy Act.

Probably the most distracting message for engineers is the well-intended suggestion ‘Privacy is not a Technology Issue’. In 2000, IBM chair Lou Gerstner was one of the first high-profile technologists to isolate privacy as a policy issue. The same trope (that such-and-such ‘is not a technology issue’) is widespread in online discourse. It usually means that multiple disciplines must be brought to bear on certain complex outcomes, such as safety, security or privacy. Unfortunately, engineers can take it to mean that privacy is covered by other departments, such as legal, and has nothing to do with technology at all.

In fact all of our traditional privacy principles are impacted by system design decisions and practices, and are therefore apt for engagement by information technologists. For instance, IT professionals are liable to think of ‘collection’ as a direct activity that solicits Personal Information, whereas under technology neutral privacy principles, indirect collection of identifiable audit logs or database backups should also count.

The most damaging thing that technologists hear about privacy could be the cynical idea that ‘Technology outpaces the Law’. While we should not underestimate how cyberspace will affect society and its many laws borne in earlier ages, in practical day-to-day terms it is the law that challenges technology, not the other way round. The claim that the law cannot keep up with technology is often a rhetorical device used to embolden developers and entrepreneurs. New technologies can make it easier to break old laws, but the legal principles in most cases still stand. If privacy is the fundamental ‘right to be let alone’, then there is nothing intrinsic to technology that supersedes that right. It turns out that technology neutral privacy laws framed over 30 years ago are powerful against very modern trespasses, like wi-fi snooping by Google and over-zealous use of biometrics by Facebook. So technology in general might only outpace policing.

We tend to sugar-coat privacy. Advocates try to reassure harried managers that ‘privacy is good for business’ but the same sort of naïve slogan only undermined the quality movement in the 1990s. In truth, what’s good for business is peculiar to each business. It is plainly the case that some businesses thrive without paying much attention to privacy, or even by mocking it.

Let’s not shrink from the reality that privacy creates tensions with other objectives of complex information systems. Engineering is all about resolving competing requirements. If we’re serious about ‘Privacy by Design’ and ‘Privacy Engineering’, we need to acknowledge the inherent tensions, and equip designers with the tools and the understanding to optimise privacy alongside all the other complexities of modern information systems.

A better appreciation of the nature Personal Information and of technology-neutral data privacy rules should help to demystify European privacy rulings on matters such as facial recognition and the Right to be Forgotten. The treatment of privacy can then be lifted from a defensive compliance exercise, to a properly balanced discussion of what organisations are seeking to get out of the data they have at their disposal.

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity New C-Suite Data to Decisions Security Zero Trust 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 Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer

Read more about Blending security and privacy

Atlassian Takes A Big Stride In Team 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…...

Today Atlassian unveiled Stride (not to be confused with the now defunct SocialCast Strides), their new team collaboration platform that is the culmination of several years worth of research, customer feedback (on their current portfolio), acquisitions and in-house development.

Atlassian's current portfolio may be best known in technical and development teams with products such as Jira, BitBucket and Jira Service Desk. However, Atlassian also has a robust offerings in team communication and collaboration with Confluence, HipChat and recently their recently Trello. Over the last few years Atlassian has acquired several communication and collaboration companies including Hall, Blue Jimp, DocTape, WikiDocs and HipChat... but Stride is not a duct-taped together version of those products, instead it's a new product developed by the combined engineering force from those companies.

Stride is positioned in a very competitive market, and at first glance the standard reaction is going to be "Oh, another messaging client". So how does Stride plan to differentiate from tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Spark, Ring Central Glip, Google Hangouts, Unify Circuit, IBM Watson Workspace and others?

1) All the forms of communication you need are included, there is no need for integrations. You get messaging, video, voice, files, tasks and more all natively built in. I agree this is a strong differentiator, and it mirrors the findings I wrote in my report Why Your Organization Should Buy a Collaboration Platform Instead of a Best-of-Breed Solution

2) Fully execute work within a room. Stride is not just about chat, or even about pulling in status updates from other products (ex: Salesforce, ZenDesk, Workday, etc). Instead, Stride allows any post to be turned into a Task or a Decision, enabling teams to not just talk about a project, but actually document the work and the final outcome right inside a Stride Room.

3) Large existing customer base to upsell into. Constellation views Atlassian's position similar to that of Salesforce a decade ago, where their existing product was mainly used by one department (Sales for Salesforce, Engineering for Atlassian) and via an expanded portfolio they plan to reach more people inside existing accounts.

MyPOV

Atlassian Stride is a very strong product for a 1.0 release. Rather than just messaging, it has many features natively built in, eliminating the need for several integrations. When a feature is missing, Atlassian has a robust ecosystem or partners that provide add-ons via their Marketplace. Their freemium model will be attractive to customers looking to get started quickly. For existing HipChat Cloud (not Data Centre) customers the migration to Stride is seamless. Install the client, log-on and all your HipChat content is there. I'd suggest HipChat customers do this sooner rather than later, as I expect Atlassian to depreciate HipChat and focus on Stride. As integration with Atlassian's portfolio (Jira, Trello, Confluence) deepens, Stride will certainly create a challenge for products like Slack which also has a strong developer following.

I was impressed that Stride already has a "While You Were Away" feature, which allows people to quickly catchup on things they've missed. This is similar to Slack's Highlights feature or IBM Watson Workspace's Moments.

I look forward to seeing how Atlassian furthers integration with Trello and Confluence, ideally creating a seemless experience for people to plan and exectute on work.

Future of Work

Read more about Atlassian Takes A Big Stride In Team Collaboration

Digital Transformation Digest: Amazon's Plan for A Second Headquarters, MIT and IBM Team Up for AI, and Atlassian Launches Its Slack Competitor

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

The mega-numbers behind Amazon's second HQ: Amazon is planning to build a second, but equal in scope and stature, headquarters operation and is looking for a U.S. metro area to house it. The scale of the planned project is indeed massive, as the company's press release notes:

Amazon expects to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs. In addition to Amazonâ€™s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.

The new headquarters will be a "full equal" to Amazon's current one in Seattle, according to a statement from CEO Jeff Bezos.

POV: Amazon's RFP specifies interest in metropolitan areas with more than a million people; a "stable and friendly business environment"; locations with the potential to draw strong technical talent; and "communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options."

Marketwatch determined that 53 cities in the U.S. meet that criteriaâ€”or 52 when you eliminate Seattleâ€”along with six Canadian ones. Wherever Amazon's second HQ ends up, it will make a major economic impact on that city, both directly and indirectly, as it would provide instant critical mass for the broader tech business community.

Amazon's verbiage about friendly business environments and creative thinking suggest the obvious: It's looking for tax breaks and help obtaining land and building supporting infrastructure for the headquarters. On paper, front-runners to land the deal are East Coast cities such as Boston, New York and Atlanta, along with the likes of Denver in the middle-to-west of the nation.

IBM-MIT team up on AI lab: Big Blue will invest $240 million over 10 years in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, in a bid not only to achieve AI research breakthroughs, but also to get up close and personal with the next generation of AI talent. Here are the key details from the joint announcement:

The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI's impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society.

The new lab will be one of the largest long-term university-industry AI collaborations to date, mobilizing the talent of more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research at IBM's Research Lab in Cambridgeâ€”co-located with the IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters in Kendall Square, in Cambridge, Massachusettsâ€”and on the neighboring MIT campus.

The lab will be co-chaired by IBM Research VP of AI and IBM Q, Dario Gil, and Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT's School of Engineering.

MIT and IBM researchers will submit research proposals in the following areas: AI algorithms, next-gen hardware and devices, including quantum computers; industry AI solutions; and how "AI can deliver economic and societal benefits to a broader range of people, nations and enterprises."

The lab's mission will also include encouraging MIT faculty and students "to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI inventions and technologies" developed there.

POV: One can imagine IBM being well-poised to acquire those commercialized inventions, as well as the sharp minds behind them. IBM is in a dogfight with Microsoft, Google and others for top-level AI talent; the lab helps it get in on the ground floor with top prospects and build crucial relationships.

MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) has been a hot bed of AI research for some time, and partnerships like the new lab will help IBM keep its fingers on the pulse, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.

Atlassian tees up its Slack competitor, Stride: The modern workplace is plagued by a surfeit of communication tools that can end up overwhelming workers, rather than helping them get stuff done. That's the contention of Atlassian, which has launched Stride, a team communication tool that on a competitive basis is aimed directly at Slack. Here are the key details from its announcement:

Current workplace communication solutions force users to choose between collaboration and creation, requiring them to monitor an endless conveyor belt of conversation without providing the space for deep, focused work. The burden is on the user to prioritize the firehose of communication, manually sift through and remember where critical information is hiding, and extract team decisions and actions from the barrage of text. Compounding the problem is the absence of non-verbal communication inherent in chat-based tools.

Atlassian built Stride to help solve these issues so teams can move work forward. Our brand new communication solution has best-in-class team messaging, audio and video conferencing, and collaboration tools. Stride is the only communication product teams needs to get work done.

Stride also features something called "Focus Mode," which turns off notifications and displays a special status and user presence indicator, giving them "the mental space to go into deep work." Stride keeps collecting what it deems important information while Focus Mode is turned on, and serves it up to the user once they shut it off.

Atlassian is offering a free version of Stride that has unlimited users but limits storage to 5GB, add-on apps or bots to 10, and up to 25,000 saved messages. A paid version adds functionality and removes storage and other limits for $3 per user per month.

POV: Atlassian certainly is giving a lot away for free with Stride, and is dramatically undercutting Slack on pricing for the paid version. It may have no choice given how much buzz and visibility Slack has, not to mention the fact Atlassian is still in the process of shedding its image as a collaboration company aimed mostly at software development teams, rather than all types of workers.

Microsoft Teams, which comes included with Office 365 subscriptions, is perhaps Stride's most important competitor, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "It's the old 20-year monopoly battle," he says. "If you're already paying for Office, why not use teams?"

Atlassian may not be trying to win large number of new customers, however; rather, the intent may be to get existing customers of its other products to buy into Stride, he adds. That may be easier than you think: Atlassian famously has no direct sales force, instead relying on word of mouth and image to sell its products, Lepofsky notes.

However, Atlassian may need to invest in market education around Stride, given it overlaps with HipChat, Atlassian's popular team chat app. Atlassian will migrate HipChat cloud users to Stride at no charge, but will continue supporting on-premises HipChat customers. However, Stride is clearly the strategic product going forward.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Matrix Commerce Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

Read more about Digital Transformation Digest: Amazon's Plan for A Second Headquarters, MIT and IBM Team Up for AI, and Atlassian Launches Its Slack Competitor

Introducing the Business Transformation 150 of Executives Leading Innovative Business Model Transformations

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

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

I’m happy to announce the launch of the Business Transformation 150, an elite list recognizing the top global executives leading innovative business transformation efforts in their organizations. Congratulations to the leaders named in our new program!

The Business Transformation 150 (BT-150) identifies the world’s most influential executives across a variety of industries from entertainment, finance, government, healthcare, higher education, retail and sports. They demonstrate an understanding of how the business environment is transforming in response to disruptive forces and are actively preparing their companies to excel during and after the transformation.

The industry is witnessing a shift toward leaders who are much more digitally capable when it comes to transforming the modern organization. The BT-150 highlights the exemplars of an emerging new sensibility in leadership. Common traits of the winners include a passion for productive disruption, a willingness to share lessons learned, a desire to achieve the art of the possible, and have a strong will to apply exponential technologies to improve economic, social and environmental conditions.

Nominations from peers, industry influencers, technology vendors, and analysts powered the exhaustive, six-month selection process for the BT-150. Those selected will be recognized at Connected Enterprise 2017 October 25- 27 at the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carlton.

Congrats again to the listed leaders:

Robert Alexander, CIO at Capital One
Stuart Appley, Managing Director at CBRE
Lisa Baldwin, CIO at Tiffany & Co.
Daniel Barchi, CIO at New York Presbyterian Hospital
Christophe, Beck, President at Nalco Water (an Ecolab Company)
Ganesh Bell, VP & CDO at GE Power
Tyler Best, CIO at Hertz
Steve Betts, CIO at Health Care Service Corporation
Bill Blausey, CIO at Eaton Corporation
Kristen Blum, CIO at Frito Lay (PepsiCo)
Alexander Bockelmann, CIO/CDO at UNIQA
Bertrand Bodson, Chief Digital Officer at Novartis
Michael Brady, Global CTO at AIG
David Bray, Chief Ventures Officer at NGA
Chad Brisendine, VP & CIO at St. Luke's University Health Network
Adam Brotman, EVP of Global Retail Operations at Starbucks
Julie Bushman, CIO at 3M
Blake Cahill, SVP, Global Head of Digital Marketing & Media at Royal Philips
Matt Carey, EVP & CIO at Home Depot
Mats Carrgard, SVP, Business Performance at Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa
Bob Carrigan, Chairman & CEO at Dun & Bradstreet
Suja Chandrasekaran, CIO at Kimberly-Clark
Anil Cheriyan, CIO at Suntrust Banks
Andrea Chin, Executive Director PMO at Estee Lauder Companies
Neetan Chopra, SVP Innovation at Emirates Airlines
David Chou, CIO and CDO at Children's Mercy Kansas City
Chris Clark, CIO at Levi Strauss
Ted Colbert, CIO at Boeing
Baron Concors, Global Chief Digital Officer at Pizza Hut
Herve Coureil, EVP Information Systems at Schneider Electric
Heather Cox, Chief Technology and CDO at USAA
Peter Crombecq, CIO at the City of Antwerp
Paul Daugherty, CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Accenture
Christopher Desautel, CIO & VP at Berkshire Hathaway
Peter Doolan, EVP, Digital Transformation & Innovation at Salesforce.com
Nick Drake, Executive Vice President, Marketing & Experience at T-Mobile
Lara Druyan, Managing Director, Head of Innovation, West Coast at RBC
Elie Elbaz, VP, Digital and Connected Cars at Renault
Richie Etwaru, Chief Digital Officer at IMS Quintiles
Karen Evans, National Director at US CyberChallenge
Sabine Everaet, CIO EMEA & Western Europe BU at Coca-Cola
Kim Felix, Vice President, Transportation Technology at UPS
Jay Ferro, Global EVP, Chief Information and Technology Office at ExamWorks
Victor Fetter, Chief Digital Officer at Vertiv
Ken Finnerty, VP, Information Services, Customer Technology at UPS
Miguel Gamiño, CTO of New York City
Gilberto García, Digital Commercial Model Director at CEMEX
Lisa Gelobter, Chief Digital Services Office, US Digital Service, White House
Gerri Martin-Flickinger, EVP and CTO at Starbucks
Tammy Gilbert, CIO at Fidelity Investments
Mike Giresi, CIO at Royal Caribbean Cruises
Stephen Gold, CIO & EVP at CVS Health
Neil Gomes, Chief Digital Officer & SVP for Technology Innovation and Consumer Experience at Thomas Jefferson University and Health System
Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, CIO & CDO at Boston Private
Margarita Gosheva, CIO at Siemens
Piergiorgio Grossi, CIO at Ducati
Mayur Gupta, VP Growth and Marketing at Spotify
Dan Gustafson, SVP Information Technology/CIO at Newell Rubbermaid
Ben Haines, SVP and CIO at OATH
Sami Hassanyeh, CDO at AARP
Christopher Heck, Chief Information Officer at Duke Energy
Perry Hewitt, VP Marketing at ITHAKA
Chris Hjelm, EVP & CIO at Kroger
Chris Hummel, CMO at United Rentals
Clay Johnson, CIO & EVP at Walmart
Milind Kamkolkar, CDO at Sanofi
Michael Keithley, CIO at United Talent Agency
Jay Kerley, CIO & Group VP at Applied Materials
Justin Kershaw, Corporate VP & CIO at Cargill
Peter Kim, VP Digital Consumer Engagement at Lego
Sunny Kim, VP Innovation at Samsung
Marcy Klevorn, Group VP & CIO at Ford Motor Company
Terry Kline, SVP & CIO at Navistar
Phil Komarny, Chief Digital Officer at The University of Texas System
Barbara Koster, CIO at Prudential Financial
Carla Kriwet, Chief Business Leader, Connected Care & Health Informatics at Royal Philips
Rich Kylberg, VP Corporate Marketing and Communications at Arrow Electronics
Kenny Lauer, VP Marketing and Digital at Golden State Warriors
Mary Beth Laughton, SVP of Digital at Sephora
Martin Lippert, EVP Global Head of Technology & Operations at MetLife
Robert Long, Chief Innovation Officer at Coca-Cola
James MacLennan, SVP & CIO at IDEX
Dennis Maloney, Chief Digital Officer at Dominos Pizza
Shawn Mandel, Chief Digital Officer at TELUS
Martin Marcinczyk, VP of Personalization at Comcast
Faisal Masud, CTO at Staples
Michael Mathews, CIO at Oral Roberts University
Meg McCarthy, EVP Operations and Technology at Aetna
Sean McCormack, Head of Digital Growth & CTO at Harley-Davidson
Kathy McElligott, CTO/CIO at McKesson
Stuart McGuigan, CIO at Johnson & Johnson
Greg McKelvey, EVP & Chief Digital Officer at FOSSIL
Mike McNamara, CIO & CDO at Target
Vinay Mehta, CIO at Affinion Group
Diana Melick, CIO at AGCO
Greg Meyers, CIO at Motorola
Gavin Michael, Head of Global Tech at Citi
Jared Miller, CTO at Atlanta Falcons
Laurie Miller, CIO at Covestro Deutschland AG
Sarah Miller, CIO at Neiman Marcus
Tom Miller, CIO at Anthem
Jamie Moldafksy, CMO at Wells Fargo
Jim Mollica, CDO at Under Armour
Dennis Moore, Head of Technology at Bridgewater Associates
Joanne Moretti, SVP & CMO at Jabil and GM at Radius Innovation & Development
Darla, Morse, CIO at Arby's Restaurant Group
Paul Moulton, CIO at Costco
Patrick Naef, CIO at Emirates Airlines
Earl Newsome, CIO at Praxair
Tim O'Keefe, CEO at Symmons Industries
Stefan Olander, VP Global Digital Innovation at Nike
Teresa Ostapower, CDO at AT&T
Graeme Payne, CIO at Equifax
Steve Philpott, CIO at Western Digital
Marc Probst, CIO at Intermountain Healthcare
Scott Pulsipher, President at WGU
G. Nagesh Rao, CTO & Office of Investment & Innovation at US Small Business Administration
Neville Ray, CTO at T-Mobile
Jonathan Reichentel, CIO at the City of Palo Alto
Therace Risch, CIO at JCPenney
Ian Rogers, CDO at LVMH
Bruce Ross, CIO at Royal Bank of Canada
Vijay Sankaran, CIO at TD Ameritrade
Thomas Saueressig, CIO at SAP
Dieter Schmidbaur, CIO at Airbus
Christoph Schmutz, CIO at Austrian Railways
Kurt Schnieders, CIO at Dick's Sporting Goods
Chad Sheridan, CIO at USDA
Janet Sherlock, CIO at Ralph Lauren
Wayne Shurtz, CIO at Sysco
Sue Siegel, CEO at GE Ventures
Preston Simons, CIO at Aurora Healthcare
Barry Simpson, Global CIO at Coca-Cola
Gavin Slater, CEO at Australian Digital Transformation Office
Kim Smith, CDO at Capgemini
Dave Smoley, CIO at AstraZeneca
Adam Stanley, Global CIO & Chief Digital Officer at Cushman & Wakefield
David Stevens CIO at Maricopa County
Kim Stevenson, SVP and GM at Lenovo
Jeroen Tas, Chief innovation Officer at Royal Philips
Brian Tilzer, CDO at CVS Health
Matthew Toner, Managing Director at CBRE Institute
Steve Turner, CIO at Walgreens
Jim Umberger, VP of Digital Marketing & CRM at Allergan
Ron van Kemenade, CIO at ING Bank
Rhonda Vetere, CTO at Estee Lauder
Craig Walker, CIO at Shell Downstream
Ken Washington, VP, Research and Advanced Engineering & Chief Technical Officer at Ford Motor Company
Kathleen Wayton, CIO at Southwest
Steve Zerby, CIO/CTO at Owens Corning

For more details about the listed executives, visit: https://www.constellationr.com/business-transformation-150

New C-Suite Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Experience Officer Chief Growth Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Sustainability Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer

Read more about Introducing the Business Transformation 150 of Executives Leading Innovative Business Model Transformations

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle to Hit Gas Pedal On Java, Flat UI Design's Potential Pitfall, and More

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

Oracle's Java chief calls for faster innovation: A top Oracle employee in charge of Java says it is time to hit the gas pedal on the language's development by moving to a much more frequent release cadence. The changes are necessary to ensure Java remains competitive over the long term, chief platform architect Mark Reinhold said in a blog post.

For more than 20 years, Java SE and its counterpart JDK (Java Development Kit) "have evolved in large, irÂregÂuÂlar, and someÂwhat unÂpreÂdictable steps," he wrote. "Each feaÂture reÂlease has been driÂven by one or a few sigÂnifÂiÂcant feaÂtures, and so the schedÂule of each reÂlease has been adÂjusted as neededâ€Šâ€”â€ŠsomeÂtimes more than once!â€Šâ€”â€Šin order to acÂcomÂmoÂdate the deÂvelÂopÂment of those feaÂtures."

While this allowed the delivery of major, well-tested features, it held up the release of smaller ones, Reinhold added. Back when Java was one of a few platforms that evolved at a similar pace, this was acceptable, but the current landscape is much different, with many more nimble competitors, he argued:

Java 9 will ship this month. Java 8 was released more than three years ago. Reinhold proposes that going forward, there should be a new Java feature release every six months, quarterly update releases and a "long-term support release" every three years.

POV: Reinhold's proposal has been met largely with support from Java developers. It comes shortly after Oracle announced its intention to move Java Enterprise Edition to an as-yet unnamed open source foundation, a move that would significantly democratize the language's oversight.

The new release cadence for Java SE, which remains a widely used programming language, is thoughtful in that it keeps in mind the needs of early-adopter developers as well as more conservative enterprises, thanks to the inclusion of the long-term support release. It's always a good idea to balance innovation with stability and on its face, Reinhold has outlined a plan that delivers both.

Research pokes holes in flat design's efficacy: Flat design has been a preferred UI method for quite some time, first introduced broadly by Microsoft's Metro in the early 2000s and dramatically popularized with its introduction in iOS 7.

It turns outâ€”according to one study, at leastâ€”that flat design may have a clean, minimalist appeal, but it has a negative impact on a user's interaction with web pages and application screens.

That's because flat design downplays the use of signifiersâ€”elements that clearly indicate they are clickable or otherwise an interactive element of the page. UX consultancy Neilsen Norman Group decided to determine just how much. In a recent study, they wired up 71 users with eye-tracking equipment and presented them with the following:

We took 9 web pages from live websites and modified them to create two nearly identical versions of each page, with the same layout, content and visual style. The two versions differed only in the use of strong, weak, or absent signifiers for interactive elements (buttons, links, tabs, sliders).

In some cases, that meant taking an already flat page and adding shadows, gradients, and text treatments to add depth and increase the strength of the clickability signifiers. In other cases, we took a page that already had strong, traditional signifiers, and we created an ultraflat version. We were careful that the modifications we provided were reasonable and realistic.

NNG determined that users spent 22 percent more time on the web pages with weak signifiers, a finding it equated to slower task performance.

POV: It should be noted that NNG doesn't conclude that flat design is a bad idea in all cases. Rather, it will more likely raise usability problems if a web page is crowded with many discrete elements. The full study is well worth a read and is particularly timely as enterprises refresh legacy application UIs and build next-generation applications.

Accenture snaps up another boutique consultancy: The run on specialized tech consulting firms continues with Accenture's move to buy IBB Consulting, which provides services to communications, media and technology companies.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. After its completion, Accenture will gain about 160 consultants in North America and Australia. The move will help Accenture deliver strategy services "around key industry issues such as networks, digital video and IPTV, digital transformation, next generation mobility, internet of things (IoT), M&A, cloud, advanced advertising, data analytics and insights, marketing optimization, and international growth," according to a statement.

POV: Accenture has made a string of niche acquisitions over the past year in order to better position itself as an enterprise partner for digital transformation. As with other deals, IBB is not about adding rank-and-file IT talent, but rather to bring in seasoned advisors who can help enterprises conceive a broad-ranging digital transformation strategy. IBB has worked with some of the biggest companies in its space, including Comcast and Verizon, so it certainly fits that bill.

Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer

Read more about Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle to Hit Gas Pedal On Java, Flat UI Design's Potential Pitfall, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Huawei's Global Cloud Ambitions, WhatsApp Cooking Up Business Edition, and More

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

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…...

Huawei says competing clouds should work like airlines: Chinese telecom Huawei believes there will ultimately be room for five major cloud infrastructure services in the world, and it intends to be part of that select group. Here's how rotating CEO Guo Ping described the vision during a keynote at the Huawei Connect 2017 event in Shanghai:

The cloud is a cornerstone of the intelligent world," he said. "Society is experiencing a tangible Matthew effect in digital technology development. Because of this, as well as economies of scale in investment, clouds around the world will begin to converge â€“ becoming more and more centralized.

The company will build a global cloud network based on its own public clouds, as well as clouds that it has built together with partners. Guo likened Huawei's strategy to the three major airline alliances â€“ SkyTeam, Star Alliance, and Oneworld â€“ which take passengers wherever they need to go in the world. Huawei Cloud, he said, will open up the world to its users.

He went on to explain Huawei's business model for the cloud, emphasizing that Huawei will monetize technology and services, not data. He said, "Huawei's Cloud DNA is made of a unique combination of technology, security, services, and shared success."

POV: It's important to put Ping's remarks in the proper context, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "He's right that probably not more than three to five global clouds will remain, but they will interoperate anyway," Mueller says. Take for example the broad uptake of the container orchestration system Kubernetes, an open-source project that originated at Google.

"The truth is that the partner concept has so fair failed for cloud," Mueller adds. "It was tried by the telcos, it was tried by VMWare, and did not work. It doesn't that it may not work in the long run in some way or shape, but at the moment it's clear that the large IaaS vendors compete, and don't share, and the vendors who don't yet have a public offering and who could partner want to sell their own gear first."

Take the situation of a Huawei customer who could offload compute load to another partner, Mueller says: "That would be good for the partner but not good for Huawei." Finally, the airline analogy doesn't quite apply to a global cloud ecosystem as Huawei envisions. "The airline world was and is heavily regulated and has seen only regionally strong carriers," he says. "That's not the case with cloud."

HPE eyes AWS business with Cloud Technology Partners buy: After shuttering its own public cloud ambitions, HPE is looking to build a business through consulting services for leading public clouds, in particular Amazon Web Services, while making money selling kit and software for private clouds. Its goal was underscored this week with the acquisition of Cloud Technology Partners, a 200-person consultancy based in Boston.

CTP is one of only a relative few AWS Premier Consulting Partners in North America, and says it has completed hundreds of AWS projects for enterprises to date. Within that, CTP has found a niche consulting for financial services firms who want to move to AWS. It says it has built and migrated production applications for "dozens of the world's largest financial services firms."

While CTP is best known for its work with AWS, it presents itself as cloud neutral, offering services for Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and OpenStack environments.

POV: CTP will be moved under HPE's Nextpoint services division and it will benefit from greater scalability and resources. Although

While CTP is small in terms of headcount, it has ample experience working with Fortune 500 companies on complex cloud transformation projects. That kind of expertise can't be grown quickly, which is why HPE opened up its pocketbook for CTP.

The question ahead lies in how HPE communicates its intentions for CTP to its partners, many of which are also in the cloud transformation and services game and as such, may find themselves in competition with HPE for that business. Meanwhile, existing CTP customers and prospects will have to wait and see how well CTP's culture and track record is preserved as part of a much larger services organization.

WhatsApp unveils business version of messaging app: The hugely popular WhatsApp messaging service is rolling out a paid version aimed at businesses.

Purchased by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, since then WhatsApp has served as a hugely popular counterpartâ€”particularly outside of the U.S.â€”to Facebook Messenger, but until now hasn't had a clear monetization plan under Facebook's ownership. The social network giant has rolled out business-friendly features for Messenger and now is taking similar steps with WhatsApp. Here's how WhatsApp describes the plan, from an official blog post:

We know businesses have many different needs. For example, they want an official presence â€“ a verified profile so people can identify a business from another person â€“ and an easier way to respond to messages. We're building and testing new tools via a free WhatsApp Business app for small companies and an enterprise solution for bigger companies operating at a large scale with a global base of customers, like airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks. These businesses will be able to use our solutions to provide customers with useful notifications like flight times, delivery confirmations, and other updates.

The business versions are now in testing; WhatsApp says its goal is to maintain a high level of responsiveness and service.

POV: WhatsApp recently started a closed pilot program for verifying business accounts. The company says messages between customers and businesses will be encrypted end-to-end, although if a business uses a service provider to manage their messages, the latter may be able to read the messages.

News of WhatsApp's plans actually leaked as far back as March, but they seem much further along at this stage. Overall, the emergence of Messenger and WhatsApp as communications channels between businesses and customers is something for every sales, marketing and support organization to have on their radar.

What obviously isn't new is the notion of using electronic messages to reach customers, given the longstanding prominence of email and SMS. But WhatsApp and Messenger can provide a more robust experience, and it's an opportunity that enterprises should be careful not to squander through a lack of discipline. There's no need for spam to rear its ugly head in the multimedia messaging world.

Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer

Read more about Digital Transformation Digest: Huawei's Global Cloud Ambitions, WhatsApp Cooking Up Business Edition, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle Fleshes Out Its IoT Play, Salesforce and IBM Add Integrations, and Key Takeways from Workday's Q2

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights Constellation

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Oracle's big IoT play: Among large software vendors, Oracle hasn't made quite as much noise about IoT as some others. That has just changed with a pair of announcements it made this week that serve to flesh out its IoT strategy in some detail.

The big news concerns new AI and machine learning capabilities in Oracle's IoT Cloud service. These power so-called digital twinsâ€”digital representations of an IoT device or processâ€”as well as what Oracle calls "digital threads," which focus on supply chain:

Supply Chain practitioners have spent millions of dollars in implementing SCM and ERP systems, but most often, data is manually fed into these systems. Digital Thread is a connected business process framework that leverages IoT and creates a "system of systems" by connecting traditionally siloed elements in real-time throughout the digital supply chain.

Oracle also unveiled three new industry IoT applications covering field service, connected factories and fleet management scenarios. These join previously released IoT apps for asset monitoring, connected workforce and other areas.

In addition, Oracle announced it has worked with Mitsubishi Electric on an IoT platform for smart manufacturing. Dubbed FA-IT Open Platform, it employs edge computing to collect and analyze data from production sites, and is built with a number of Oracle technologies including its database, Java, BI, IoT and SOA cloud services.

POV: The Mitsubishi announcement may be more of a customer win story, but it's a significant one and should provide market validation for Oracle's IoT stack. Overall, the company is a bit overdue in fleshing out its IoT story, but clearly things have been in the works behind the scenes, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller.

"It's good to see the digital twin concept taking hold with all ERP vendors that have IoT offerings," he adds. "The digital thread is a new concept and makes sense. We will see where it goes from here. While Oracle's plans for IoT weren't that clear and tangible, they have become clearer now."

Expect IoT to be a big focus at Oracle's upcoming OpenWorld conference in early October.

Salesforce and IBM's practical partnership: Back in March, Salesforce and IBM announced a global strategic partnership and this week unveiled some fruits of that labor, which surprisingly, don't have the words Watson or Einstein printed anywhere on them.

Rather, the companies announced three joint offerings: An tie-up between Salesforce and IBM's cloud integration platform, for creating data flows in and out of Salesforce and both cloud and on-premises sources; Salesforce Garage, new customer engagement centers backed by IBM's Bluewolf consulting group, which was one of the largest Salesforce systems integrators before Big Blue bought it in 2016; and three Salesforce Lightning components that bring IBM's Weather Insights analytics services to Salesforce users.

POV: All three announcements are "devoid of AI sizzle and focus instead on practical solutions that will make it easier for joint IBM and Salesforce customers to do more in the cloud and drive data-driven insights," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.

The cloud integration has obvious appeal, Henschen adds. "Many IBM customers began their cloud journeys by embracing Salesforce for front-office functionality," he says. "IBM's emphasis has been on bringing the rest of the enterprise into the cloud." With the new integration, it will be easier to bring back-office data and systems together with Salesforce's sales, service, marketing and communities applications.

IBM signaled its intent to work more closely with Salesforce when it bought Bluewolf, and the new garages will help Bluewolf more effectively deliver its design-thinking methodologies and project delivery experience. Finally, the weather analytics components "would seem to offer easy and practical ways to put weather insights to day-to-day use in contexts as obvious as insurance claims and as routine as scheduling sales and service calls," Henschen says.

Key takeaways from Workday's Q2: Workday released its second-quarter numbers this week and they were strong, with revenue rising 42 percent to $434.5 million while losses narrowed to 40 cents a share compared to 55 cents per share in the same quarter last year. Often some of the most telling news from a company's quarterly earnings comes not in the press release, but on the conference call with analysts. Here are a few highlights.

More than 30 percent of the Fortune 500 and 17 of the Fortune 50 are now Workday core HR customers, CEO Aneel Bhusri said on the call.
Siemens is replacing its current HR system with Workday HCM, Bhusri said. A massive customer win to say the least.
Workday is continuously refining its implementation methodology and is now seeing Fortune 500 companies going into production in about a year.
In July, Workday announced its PaaS strategy. This was of note, since Workday's platform historically has been tightly closed off. Since then, Workday has held two hackathons and the interest level in those from customers and partners has validated the move toward PaaS, Bhusri said.
Initially, Workday will focus its PaaS on customers extending its applications, but in the longer term "we definitely see an independent software vendor opportunity," Bhusri said. "I think we will be very careful with that. We know we are not looking to get into a whole host of different areas, but as an example, if we came across a group that wanted to build supply chain and manufacturing systems or another industry-specific system that we have a long-term view on ... we know we would welcome that."

POV: The Workday Rising conference is coming up in October and that's where customers can expect to hear many more specifics about Workday's PaaS, perhaps including pricing and availability. Constellation will be in attendance; expect our full report after the event.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization

Read more about Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle Fleshes Out Its IoT Play, Salesforce and IBM Add Integrations, and Key Takeways from Workday's Q2

Oracle Differentiates its MySQL Cloud Service

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

MySQL is available as a service on every major public cloud. Here’s how Oracle MySQL Cloud Service is different.

You’ll find MySQL available as a service on every major public cloud (and plenty of minor ones). So what’s different about the Oracle MySQL Cloud Service, introduced on Oracle Cloud last fall by the owner and current developer of MySQL software?

There are three key differences between the Oracle MySQL Cloud Service and other MySQL cloud services, as I’ll explain, but first a bit of background. MySQL is the most popular open-source database management system in the world, so it should be no surprise that it’s also broadly available as a cloud service. MYSQL is one of six database engines available through Amazon Web Services’ Amazon RDS database service. MySQL has been available through Google Cloud SQL since way back in 2011. Microsoft more recently saw the open source light and introduced Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL in May.

Oracle MySQL Cloud Service differentiators fall into three categories.

So just how has Oracle differentiated its own cloud service? My latest report, Enterprise-Class MySQL Meets Oracle Cloud, explores key differences in three areas. For starters, Oracle MySQL Cloud Service is the only service that’s based on MySQL Enterprise Edition. This is the commercial version of the database that adds enterprise-grade features for monitoring, backup, security and support that are not available in MySQL Community Edition. On the security front, for example, Enterprise Audit tracks database access and usage, Enterprise Encryption protects data during transfer and at rest, and Enterprise Firewall guards against real-time attacks including SQL injection.

On support, Oracle MySQL Cloud Service is backed by the same team that developers and supports MySQL itself. Oracle is in a unique position to resolve technical problems tied to the database software, prioritize bug fixes and issue forward-compatible hot fixes in advance of a next MySQL release. What’s more, Oracle MySQL Cloud Service includes premier-level, consultative support with 15-minute initial response for Severity 1 cases in which the service is stopped or severely compromised.

The second key difference with the Oracle MySQL Cloud Service (and with Oracle Cloud) is that it’s built with hybrid deployment scenarios in mind. Oracle has hundreds of thousands of customers that still have on-premises data centers, so it has developed unified administrative tooling that supports public-cloud, private-cloud and on-premises deployments and the shifting of workloads among these environments. Oracle Enterprise Manager, for example, supports “single-pane-of-glass” management across data centers, private clouds and Oracle Cloud with self-service provisioning and policy-based resource management.

Hybrid portability is also available to companies that are interested in running MySQL Community Edition deployments on premises. There’s 100 percent file compatibility between Enterprise Edition and Community Edition, so users of the Oracle MySQL Cloud Service can simply avoid implementing Enterprise-Edition features for applications that might be migrated and run on-premises using Community Edition software.

The third differentiation for the Oracle MySQL Cloud Service is that it offers many points of integration relevant to Oracle Cloud customers. The Oracle Cloud Console, for example, provides a consistent, consolidated administrative interface to all services, including Oracle MySQL Cloud Service. DevOps teams will appreciate that Oracle MySQL Cloud Service is integrated with Oracle PaaS services including Oracle Java Cloud Service and the Oracle Application Container Cloud Service. Together, these services support development of applications in Java SE, Node.js, PHP and Python that can then be deployed in Oracle Cloud or in hybrid scenarios. Finally, Oracle-centric data-management professionals will appreciate integration with Oracle PaaS capabilities including the Oracle GoldenGate Cloud Service and Oracle Data Integrator Cloud Service. Oracle Database customers can use the GoldenGate Cloud Service to offload basic reporting workloads to the less expensive Oracle MySQL Cloud Service. Similarly, simple ETL workloads can be offloaded to the combination of Oracle’s Data Integrator Service and Oracle MySQL Cloud Service.

These are just the highlights from Enterprise-Class MySQL Meets Oracle Cloud. The full, 21-page report dives into the details and includes a competitive analysis and pricing comparisons along with my in-depth take on best-fit use cases. Click here to download a free excerpt of the full report.

Media Name: Oracle MySQL Cloud Service Differentiators.jpg

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

Read more about Oracle Differentiates its MySQL Cloud Service

Subscribe to

Digital Transformation Digest: Unpacking the Equifax Breach, AT&T's New IoT Push, Open Source Advocates Decry Proposed EU Copyright Reform

Microsoft, Facebook Team Up On Deep Learning Interoperability

Blending security and privacy

Atlassian Takes A Big Stride In Team Collaboration

Digital Transformation Digest: Amazon's Plan for A Second Headquarters, MIT and IBM Team Up for AI, and Atlassian Launches Its Slack Competitor

Introducing the Business Transformation 150 of Executives Leading Innovative Business Model Transformations

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle to Hit Gas Pedal On Java, Flat UI Design's Potential Pitfall, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Huawei's Global Cloud Ambitions, WhatsApp Cooking Up Business Edition, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle Fleshes Out Its IoT Play, Salesforce and IBM Add Integrations, and Key Takeways from Workday's Q2

Oracle Differentiates its MySQL Cloud Service

Research

Analyst Services

Videos

Communities

Events

Insights Live

Results