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Digital Transformation Digest: Microsoft Continues Open-Source Push with .NET Core 2.0, UPS Adds VR to Driver Training, Facebook Goes After Real Estate Ads, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Microsoft Continues Open-Source Push with .NET Core 2.0, UPS Adds VR to Driver Training, Facebook Goes After Real Estate Ads, and More

Chris Kanaracus
Chris Kanaracus
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. ...

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Cindy Zhou
CMO
Level Access

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…...

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Constellation Insights

Microsoft wants to push .NET everywhere with Core 2.0: Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has made a consistent push toward embracing open source software and cross-platform support. That continues in a big way with the release of .NET Core 2.0, the latest edition of its open-source software development framework.

As a companion, Microsoft has also unveiled .NET Standard 2.0. This is a specification that defines which APIs (application programming interfaces) a .NET implementation is required to have. It's hugely important to developer productivity, since over the years .NET's codebase has been forked off a few times for various purposes, such as to better target mobile devices. Before .NET Standard, developers would have to familiarize themselves with multiple class libraries.

Meanwhile, .NET Core 2.0 "treats Linux as a single operating system," Microsoft said in a blog post. "There is now a single Linux build (per chip architecture) that works on all Linux distros that we’ve tested. Our support so far is specific to glibc-based distros and more specifically Debian- and Red Hat-based Linux distros. There are other Linux distros that we would like to support, like those that use musl C Standard library, such as Alpine. Alpine will be supported in a later release."

Microsoft has also added improved support for Docker containers, a move that makes sense given how much general industry momentum Docker has.

POV: .NET dates back nearly 20 years, when it was tightly coupled to the Windows ecosystem, and its evolution away from that mindset—whether forced by simple pragmatism or not—has been something to see. One thing Microsoft has always excelled at is developer evangelism, and like every major platform vendor, it wants to retain and grow developer mindshare as the next wave of enterprise applications—leveraging containers, microservices and cross-platform capabilities—are being built.

That's the goal of .NET Core 2.0, but Microsoft will also have to pay heed to the needs of IT shops still invested heavily in server-side apps built with the closed-source .NET Framework. 

AWS rolls out new data management and security services: While Amazon Web Services rolls out a slew of new features each quarter, it used the occasion of this week's AWS Summit in New York to make several particularly significant ones.

Amazon Macie is a security service "that uses machine learning to help customers prevent data loss by automatically discovering, classifying, and protecting sensitive data in AWS," the company said. It can spot sensitive data such as PII (personally identifiable information) and sound off alerts to customers if it detects something may be awry.

Macie is based on technology AWS acquired earlier this year through the purchase of startup Harvest.ai. It will join AWS security features such as Amazon Inspector, and gives AWS an answer to the likes of Microsoft Azure's Threat Detection service.

Named initial Macie customers include Netflix, Edmunds.com and Autodesk. AWS plans integrations with third-party monitoring services such as Splunk

Meanwhile, AWS also announced the general availability of Glue, a serverless ETL (extract, transform and load) service. Serverless computing means that customers only pay when the service is actually running; there is no need to set up and maintain infrastructure. Initial customers include News Corp. and 21st Century Fox.

Glue was first announced at last year's re:Invent conference. It has native support for a number of AWS data stores, including Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS MySQL, Amazon RDS PostreSQL, Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3, along with MySQL and PostgreSQL databases running in a virtual private cloud on EC2.

While AWS has other ETL-related tools, such as Elastic MapReduce and Data Pipeline, Glue is focused on rapid preparation of AWS-stored data based on a Spark environment; it's not appropriate for every use case, as AWS explains in a FAQ.

POV: The race between AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Oracle for cloud workloads is running at an ever-faster clip, with features just as important as lower prices. To that end, Microsoft this week announced the acquisition of startup Cycle Computing, which will add more support for HPC (high-performance computing) jobs on Azure. 

UPS using VR headsets for driver safety training: The days when driverless delivery trucks will be a common sight are some ways off, and in the meantime major carrier UPS is using virtual reality headsets to help train human drivers at its Integrad facilities. Here's how the company describes its plans:

IT experts at UPS created the VR training modules that users see and hear inside VR headsets like the HTC Vive. Students using the modules must verbally identify potential road hazards such as pedestrians, parked cars and oncoming traffic. The 360-degree view inside the headset is realistic down to the finest details.

“Virtual Reality offers a big technological leap in the realm of driver safety training,” said Juan Perez, UPS chief information and engineering officer. “VR creates a hyper-realistic streetscape that will dazzle even the youngest of our drivers whose previous exposure to the technology was through video games.”

UPS will replace touchscreen devices currently being used with the VR headsets. The new VR training is only for drivers of UPS's ubiquitous brown package delivery vehicles, but may be expanded to tractor trailer training later. Real-world driving is still a part of Integrad training centers, which include replica city streets and sidewalks.

POV: This is one enterprise-centric VR case study to watch very closely. UPS has long been a heavy investor in driver safety and training, spending nearly $200 million on it last year alone, as the Boston Globe notes. Its efforts have led to a 32 percent drop in accidents since 2008. It will be interesting to see how well it weaves VR into existing training programs, and how much impact the technology will have on its safety results. 

Facebook eyes real estate ads for growth: The social network's Dynamic Ads offering is now targeting real estate, which has become a white-hot market in the U.S. over recent months. The move comes following Dynamic Ads' initial forays into travel, retail and mobile application installations, as AdWeek notes.

POV: This is a natural next step for Facebook, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Cindy Zhou. "Most realtors post about and discuss their listings, or ask for referrals on their Facebook page," she says. "Providing an opportunity for buyers to find listings driven by their preferences on both Facebook and Instagram has tremendous potential."

Facebook's treasure trove of data also provides broader signals regarding buyer intent, Zhou adds. "People could be posting about a relocation to a particular city, or asking for ideas for vacation property areas," she says. "These are earlier signals in comparison to a person actively searching for properties on Zillow."

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Digital Officer

Summer 2017 News Analysis - SAP Leonardo event July 2017

Summer 2017 News Analysis - SAP Leonardo event July 2017

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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What’s the news: SAP had its "SAP Leonardo Live" event in Frankfurt July 11th and 12th. Originally planned as an IoT event (that’s the original Leonardo brand) it was supposed to be a sequence to the (very good) launch event in Rome in fall last year (event report here). Frankfurt was more than IoT, as since SAP SAPPHIRE NOW (see here), Leonardo is SAP’s brand to collect all new offerings on top of the SAP Cloud Platform (with the latter not being part of Leonardo) and to implement next generation application projects together with customers, using the Design Thinking umbrella. Frankfurt was a good event to roll out more capabilities of the more mature members of the Leonardo family (BI, IoT) and to get the Leonardo message unveiled to a European / German audience. SAP took special attention to cater to the local audience, even using former CEO Henning Kagermann as a speaker, panelist, something that hasn’t happened since a long time.
 
 
Why it matters: SAP reconfirms its commitment to Leonardo. Leonardo itself is remarkable as SAP basically (but implicitly) admits that the 21st century best practices that enterprise will have to run on – are not established. In contrast – enterprises have to experiment and find their unique path to these best practices. The proven process for this is to pick a strategic area, use design thinking and the modern, 21st century technologies – around Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence / BigData and Cloud – as well as dominating the things with IoT. But these are individual projects, not the best practices that that SAP (and all SaaS vendors) want to have validated and sold to 1000s of customers. So, with the Leonardo projects, SAP has the opportunity to have their hands on the pulse of innovation of business processes. In some areas, e.g. IoT SAP’s offerings are more progressed, as SAP has started earlier and is delivering templates, code collections and samples to help jumpstart customer IoT projects. In other areas these assets still have to be created.
 
MyPOV –  Good to see SAP getting serious on Leonardo, adding credibility with the first follow up event after the launch at SapphireNow in Orlando. SAP is also putting more pieces in place from the traditional enterprise vendor playbook – e.g. the sign-up of partners, the opening of centers around the world etc. Would be even better if SAP admitted the best practice void, something chairman Plattner (also implicitly) did at the Q&A in Orlando. But maybe most enterprises are not ready for message of this nature from SAP – yet. But the realization is sinking in fast with CxOs. That SAP wants credibility with Leonardo is obvious, e.g. using Kagermann who has a long term trusted reputation for customers in Europe underlines that need.
 
The SAP Leonardo Portfolio
CxO Advice: CxOs know that the 20th century best practices will not keep their enterprise in the survival race of the early 21st century. Design Thinking work shops are nothing new, and have proven themselves in the past. What is new is that an enterprise software vendor of the caliber of SAP is ready to partner with enterprises to establish these new best practices. This ensures integration with the rest of SAP automation and the potential bonus of becoming part of the roadmap. In the traditional approach it was clear that the work would always remain a custom effort – with the associated integration burden and maintenance costs following from a custom effort. CxOs need to be aware of the flipside – that a Leonardo project that makes it to the SAP roadmap, will be available to all SAP customers at some point, not always a desirable outcome, especially for strategically differentiating projects. Enterprises don’t always want that capability being available to the competition. But for CxOs firmly rooted in the SAP ecosystem, Leonardo projects are not in question: It’s better to have a seat at the dinner where the conversation is about the future of enterprise software, and what SAP can deliver for that – than not being invited to the dinner at all. Better to participate and influence than to watch from the sidelines, with no strategic alternatives. The opportunity of Leonardo should be evaluated by non SAP centric CxOs for that reason as well. And Leonardo should be used by these CxOs to get their vendors coaxed into a similar offering. Exciting times for enterprise software ahead for enterprises, partners and vendors. 

 
 
 Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity New C-Suite ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Cloud CCaaS UCaaS Enterprise Service Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

Digital Transformation Digest: Google Adds Enterprise Muscle to Cloud Speech API, AWS Lands Hulu, Target Invests In Same-Day Delivery Tech, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Google Adds Enterprise Muscle to Cloud Speech API, AWS Lands Hulu, Target Invests In Same-Day Delivery Tech, and More

Chris Kanaracus
Chris Kanaracus
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. ...

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Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Constellation Insights

Google Cloud Search API gets enterprisey additions: Last year, Google launched its Cloud Speech API, which business could use to add voice commands to various applications, such as call center systems. Now the company has released a series of enterprise-friendly enhancements to the API upon requests from customers. Here are the key details from an official blog post:

Our number one most requested feature has been providing timestamp information for each word in the transcript. Word-level timestamps let users jump to the moment in the audio where the text was spoken, or display the relevant text while the audio is playing.

To help our users with long-form audio needs, we’re increasing the length of supported files from 80 minutes to up to 3 hours. Additionally, files longer than 3 hours could be supported on a case-by-case basis by applying for a quota extension through Cloud Support.

Cloud Speech API already supports 89 language varieties. Today, coinciding with the broader announcement this morning, we’re adding 30 additional language varieties, from Bengali to Latvian to Swahili, covering more than one billion additional speakers.

POV: The new time-stamping feature provides an obviously major convenience, but it's the additional language support that should prove most appealing to enterprises. With nearly 120 languages supported, Cloud Speech API will allow voice commands to have a "nearly global reach," as Google puts it.

AWS grabs Hulu for new OTT TV service: Add Hulu to the long list of streaming content services that have chosen Amazon Web Services as their platform. Hulu launched its over-the-top (OTT) live television service in May, and at this week's AWS Summit in New York, the companies revealed their business relationship.

Hulu says by using AWS, it can focus on delivering more personalized user experiences rather than spend resources managing infrastructure. The company's OTT network joins many other streaming companies on AWS, including Amazon's own video service, Netflix, AOL, Hearst Corporation, News International, News UK and Time Inc.

POV: Hulu also noted that it chose AWS because its infrastructure can support high spikes in traffic without a degradation in service. While that's an issue for VOD (video on demand) services such as Netflix, live television has even higher demands for low-latency and other factors. Hulu's OTT network competes with several others today, and more are likely to spring up in coming months and years as consumers look to "cut the cord" on more expensive cable TV services. As this shift occurs, AWS will find itself not only serving up more and more content, but playing an important role in the evolution of content delivery over the Internet.

It's not so surprising that Hulu would sign up with AWS, given it already powers the likes of Netflix in proven fashion, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "The remarkable part is more on the enterprise sales side of AWS—they're creating repeatable sales in the same vertical, addressing both value proposition and competitive concerns to repeat a similar sale."

Target buys Grand Junction for same-day delivery tech: Retail giant Target is buying a startup called Grand Junction in order to support its push into same-day delivery. Based in San Francisco, Grand Junction's software platform is used by retailers, distributors and logistics companies to fulfill local deliveries, according to a statement.

The company is already working on a same-day delivery pilot project at Target's store in Tribeca, New York:

“Grand Junction’s technology and algorithms will help Target deliver to guests faster and more efficiently,” said Arthur Valdez, executive vice president, chief supply chain and logistics officer, Target. “This acquisition is part of Target’s ongoing efforts to strengthen Target’s supply chain to provide greater speed, reliability and convenience for guests.”

POV: Same-day delivery is a top priority for brick-and-mortar retailers as they compete with Amazon, which offers both same-day and in some markets, two-hour delivery services. Grand Junction will help Target go beyond merely dropping off goods, however; the chain plans to also offer product assembly and installation, according to a company blog post.

Target hired Valdez last year away from Amazon, where he spent 16 years in top supply chain and logistics roles, as it embarked on a plan to shake up its store formats and product mix.

The Grand Junction deal clearly has Valdez's fingerprints all over it, and a big reason Target is making the investment has to be speed-to-market. Grand Junction already has 700 carriers signed up to its program, with 10,000 drivers. It claims to cover 96 percent of North America's population. The main onus on Target will be managing quality control with a same-day service staffed by third-party vendors.

Legacy watch: Mozilla prepares to mothball thousands of older Firefox add-ons: The upcoming version 57 of Mozilla's enduringly popular Firefox web browser will be of note as much for what it adds, as what it leaves behind.

That's because it will no longer support add-ons built with the older Add-Ons SDK (software development kit). Only ones created using WebExtensions will be compatible with Firefox 57. This is a fairly significant deal, given how much Firefox's staying power has been the ability to add so many useful extensions. As Bleeping Computer notes, only about 3,600 of the more than 18,000 add-ons available now through Mozilla's portal are compatible with WebExtensions.

POV: Mozilla first announced WebExtensions—and signaled the end of Add-Ons SDK—two years ago, so it's not as if developers haven't had time to port over their code. It may be that many more do before 57 is released, or will do so shortly thereafter. There are some advantages to WebExtensions, namely that add-on code written for other browsers may work with few or no changes in Firefox, but developers apparently haven't found them compelling enough.

There's no question that Mozilla could see some user backlash from the change; in the meantime, if your browser of choice is Firefox, the time is now to look for alternatives to those useful add-ons.

Future of Work Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization

Great Examples of Systems Savvy People

Great Examples of Systems Savvy People

Terri Griffith
Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The Plugged-In Manager:…...

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1

This is a request for help. My colleagues and I are working on an article that is the academic side plugged-in management -- what we call systems savvy. We are hoping to find current examples of people who do fabulous jobs integrating across the human, technical, and organizational dimensions of their work. In my book, The Plugged-In Manager: Get In Tune With Your People, Technology, And Organization to Thrive, I was able to share many examples of how being able to integrate across all your resources gives people and organizations a huge advantage. In the more recent work, my colleagues John Sawyer, and M. Scott Poole, and I are diving deep into the individual capacity of systems savvy and how you can test and train for it. But what we really need are some fabulous current examples.

Starter Examples

Sherry Smith, a software engineer and inventor of Bluetooth tracking devices/tags that work by creating a network of people and devices to locate things the tags are attached to. (An example product is the Tile Tracker.)

David Baker, and his colleagues, who saw that people would be willing and able to play a computer game folding proteins. The crowdsourced results have been credited with significant scientific discoveries.

Patrick Ross III, Deputy Director of Membership, Team Rubicon. He and his team adopted Cornerstone, a cloud software system, to redesign how logistical tasks are handled and enable the organization to quickly unite military veterans with first responders in emergency response teams. They were able to go from four hours to two minutes in volunteer recruiting, and the implementation of the change itself seems to have flowed smoothly.

Brad Katsuyama, chronicled in the book, Flash Boys. Brad, then lead of an electronic trading group for Royal Bank of Canada, and Rob Park, a financial trading platform coder, joined to create a team to dig into the human and technical details of high-frequency trading practices that some say rigged the stock market. Brad used his ability to understand systems, and people’s varying expertise across human, technical, and organizational systems, to eventually found a new stock exchange (IEX) promising a level playing field across traders.

Our Request

These people are inventors, change agents, or both. Who do you know of that we should add to this list of systems savvy/plugged-in managers? Many thanks for replying in the comments here or on The Plugged-In Manager Facebook page.

Future of Work Chief People Officer

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle's New Database Release Schedule, Kohl's Weathering Amazon's Storm, and DARPA's Bid for 'Explainable' AI

Digital Transformation Digest: Oracle's New Database Release Schedule, Kohl's Weathering Amazon's Storm, and DARPA's Bid for 'Explainable' AI

Chris Kanaracus
Chris Kanaracus
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. ...

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Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Constellation Insights

Oracle shakes up database release naming convention: The Oracle database has long been and remains the market-share leader. Now the company is making a major change to its database release numbering structure, one that could have mixed results from a marketing and customer-satisfaction perspective.

In short, Oracle will move to an annual release cadence with releases named by the year, as Mike Dietrich, master product manager for database upgrades and migrations, explains in a blog post:

In my own words we basically rename the patch sets and name them what they were since years: Full releases. This means, Oracle Database 12.2.0.2 will be Oracle 18. And Oracle 12.2.0.3 will be Oracle 19. And so on.

Therefore there won’t be any Oracle 12.2.0.2 anymore – and obviously no Oracle 13.1 followed by Oracle 13.2.

Along with the annual release, Oracle will issue quarterly release updates. Historically, Oracle database customers have largely waited until the second rendition of a major release before upgrading, with the thinking being it will be more stable than the first. That approach hasn't been necessary for quite a while, but it's been hard to get that across to customers, Dietrich says:

Patch sets are full releases. Patch sets were full releases for years. In Oracle 12.1.0.2 (a so called “patch set” containing only as little as 13000 fixes on top of 12.1.0.1) we introduced complete huge and important new features such as Oracle In-Memory. Patch sets became full releases since at least Oracle 11.2.0.2.

This will hopefully end discussions. Nobody has to justify to go live on the first release. There is no first release. And there weren’t first release for many years. It were full releases.

So yes, I’m happy with this change. And it makes a lot of sense.

POV: A H/T goes to the Register for flagging Dietrich's post. Oracle's previous numbering convention was favored by developers, but this won't be the first shift toward a more marketing-minded approach, nor the first shift that takes place before the dreaded Release 13, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen: "Software release 13.xs are about as popular as 13th floors in office buildings."

But it's not clear that a revamped numbering convention will be enough to spark faster uptake of new database releases, Henschen adds. "Whatever the release designation of the database might be, organizations will continue to consider the lifecycle of holistic deployments, not just the latest features introduced with each new database release."

Kohl's continues evolving toward multichannel: It appears that large retailer Kohl's is having some luck weathering the competitive storm clouds generated by Amazon, reporting quarterly results on Thursday that contained positive news regarding online sales as well as improving synergies with its brick-and-mortar stores.

At Kohl's, online demand sales rose 19 percent and 31 percent of those orders were picked up in stores. (Kohl's also ended the quarter with 1,154 stores, up from 1,150 one year ago.) In addition, Kohl's smartphone app is looking pretty sticky, with 66 percent of its online traffic and 42 percent of online revenue coming through that channel. Overall, Kohl's revenue dipped very slightly to $4.14 billion, but net income shot up 49 percent to $208 million.

Kohl's goal is to continue driving foot traffic toward its stores by leveraging online ordering and in-store fulfillment, which it says leads to significant upselling opportunities. CEO Kevin Mansell said it is continuing to open new stores this year, but they are "very different" than past designs. There also shouldn't be any news regarding store closures this year.

POV: Traditional department stores like Kohl's have been some of the hardest-hit by Amazon's ability to discount, offer a massive selection and deliver a pleasurable overall customer experience. While Kohl's has plenty of work ahead of it, the company at this moment seems like a good example of a legacy business making the right, if sometimes painful steps, toward transformation and ultimately survival. 

DARPA funding research into AI that explains itself: The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is bankrolling research with the end goal of creating artificial intelligence systems that can explain to humans how they arrived at a given result.

The Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox, has been awarded a DARPA contract to create a system called COGLE (COmmon Ground Learning and Explanation), as the company describes in a release:

The key idea behind COGLE is to establish common ground between concepts and abstractions used by humans and the capabilities learned by a machine. These learned representations would then be exposed to the human via COGLE’s rich sense-making interface, enabling people to understand and predict the behavior of an autonomous system.

It's all about gaining crucial context for an AI system's conclusions, as well as to develop trust in the system. COGLE will first be developed in conjunction with an unmanned aircraft system but its design will be applicable to other types of autonomous systems later. Carnegie Mellon University, West Point, the University of Michigan, the University of Edinburgh and the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Learning are also involved in the research.

POV: It's not just DARPA that's interested in AI that is explainable, as financial organizations also insist on recommendations and automated decisions that are explainable for reasons of legal and regulatory requirements, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.

"When it comes to decisions on lending, risk, pricing and claims, financial organizations have to avoid black-box approaches because they have to be able to explain to regulators why certain decisions were made," he adds. "Regulators want to ensure there isn't bias or bad math behind the scenes. The challenge of ensuring human transparency in decision systems will become more challenging as organizations seek to rely on machine learning or cognitive systems that constantly adapt to the results, as expressed in data, of each new decision."

Data to Decisions Matrix Commerce Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Digital Officer

Future of Work Shortlists - Personal Productivity and Group Collaboration

Future of Work Shortlists - Personal Productivity and Group Collaboration

Alan Lepofsky
Alan Lepofsky
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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This week Constellation released the latest versions of our Constellation ShortLists. These lists help organizations decide on which vendors they should be evaluating across various markets. They are not rankings, but rather guides to help the decision making process. The current lists for my coverage in the area of the Future of Work are:

These five lists represent only a small part of my overall coverage areas.  The video and graphic below provide a more complete picture:

 

Future of Work

Constellation's Tech Trends AstroChart for The New C-Suite, Q3 2017

Constellation's Tech Trends AstroChart for The New C-Suite, Q3 2017

Dion Hinchcliffe
Dion Hinchcliffe
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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Inaugurating the New AstroChart™ of Tech Trends for The New C-Suite

Designed for strategic planning and roadmap development by executives, leadership, and key digital decision makers, Constellation’s AstroChart™ of Tech Trends for The New C-Suite is designed to be a highly usable visual guide to the top-level technology trends. The position of a given technology on the Astrochart maps its strategic urgency and impact to today's digital enterprise. The vertical axis rates adoption from mainstream and early adopters, all the way to the bleeding edge of experimentation. The horizontal axis estimates the technology's overall impact on an organization’s business model, from incremental to transformational to exponential. As a reminder, a key objective of a Constellation AstroChart is to move beyond the hype and constraints of the traditional two-dimensional rating grid.

Culled from numerous data points including industry discussions, bespoke research, client advisory sessions, and surveys of CXOs over the last year, Constellation has compiled this AstroChart of how current technology trends in the digital enterprise -- specifically at boardroom and C-Suite level -- are evolving and maturing. As is typical for an AstroChart, these trends will be updated approximately every 180 days and will reflect what’s placed into our Futurist Framework and PESTEL model as well as industry inquiries and our own primary research.

The New C-Suite: Digitally Savvy Business Leaders

As a notion and emerging coverage area for Constellation, The New C-Suite espouses a leadership-centered focus on the business and technology issues impacting the enterprise today at the most strategic levels. This coverage is tailored especially for CIOs, CDOs, CMOs, CEO, CHROs and other C-level roles grappling with existential digital issues and opportunities. Consequently, the topics included on this AstroChart either have a) broad applicability to the majority of organizations globally in the near-term and/or are b) still cutting-edge but our analysis shows will become a significant priority soon enough.

In terms of inclusion, the Tech Trends AstroChart for the New C-Suite covers strategic technologies that are profoundly affecting today's digital revolution by making possible major advances in the primary operating environments for organizations today. In each case, these technologies are either making new markets or upending existing ones, though in some cases they will also enable incremental improvements of competitive significance. Today's CXOs are encouraged to be familiar with and fluent with issues involved in employing these technologies to tranform their businesses, as these advances will drive both top-level opportunity and disruption today for most organizations in the majority of industries and geographies.

Designed as a guide and roadmap for CXOs, the Tech Trends AstroChart for The New C-Suite will have some occasional crossover with other Constellation guides, such as the overall Tech Trends AstroChart, though the individual topics themselves may have different positions, depending on the maturity and impact the trends have at a strategic and leadership level. We believe this guide will cut through the noise by emphasizing what matters most to today's senior leaders with top-level digital responsibilities.

Figure 1. Constellation’s AstroChart of Tech Trends for The New C-Suite

Constellation Astrochart of Emerging Enterprise Tech Trends for The New C-Suite

The Tech Trends C-Suite Astrochart

The technologies arrayed across the nine categories in The New C-Suite Tech Trends AstroChart provides key inputs and rankings for strategic planning for both IT departments and digital business groups, as well as to organizations that are improving their strategic digital posture or seeking to maintain a fast follower position.  The nine categories in this AstroChart include:

  1. Bleeding edge – Exponential. These technologies are still on the emerging edge for the enterprise. This segment is currently dominated by the industry conversation around artificial intelligence and machine learning in virtually all aspects of the enterprise. Other key technologies such as industry clouds, which provide capabilities for specific industries or Industry 4.0 frameworks, as well as outcome-based value-as-a-service (VaaS) offerings based on a pay-per-result SaaS model.
  2. Bleeding edge – Transformational.  Strategic accelerators for digital transformation are beginning to emerge in the form of ready-to-go target platforms that have proven change pathways associated with them. At the same time, technologies for employee engagement and real-time performance management are changing the nature of the digital workplace, while immersive digital experiences in the form of virtual and augmented reality (AR and VR) are poised to remake both the customer and workplace experience. Blockchain is revolutionizing digital recordkeeping while simultaneously creating new products, services, and markets in the process, just as artificial intelligence looms as a potent new way to actually manage and lead the next-generation enteprise.
  3. Bleeding edge – Incremental.  While office robotics is still around the corner, it appears likely to have significant ramifications in many industries in terms of the future of the workforce. At the same time, logistics is being transformed from supply chain to end-point delivery by new forms of automation and intelligence. Digital twins will soon be instrumenting our organizations like never before, providing the ability to both model and monitor organizations strategically. Digital boardrooms as next-generation dashboards that provide insights and prescriptive analytics to senior leaders and are becoming compelling enough for day-to-day use and major decision making.
  4. Early adopter – Exponential. The Internet of Things (IoT) is connecting companies to customers in sustained new ways that create both major challenges and opportunities. Open APIs are quickly becoming a C-level topic as organizations must rapidly position themselves in 2017 as ecosystem-savvy and ready players. Systems of intelligence and innovation are poised to offer blueprints for both functions in the cloud for a growing number of organizations.
  5. Early adopter – Transformational.  Marketing is becoming ever more cross-channel with requisite and voracious demands for data to drive the customer journey as well as to manage the customer experience as a whole. Digital learning and skill building is becoming essential to uptalent and crosstalent the workforce in the digital age. Public cloud is getting increasingly enteprise-ready as organizations broadly shift most new IT investment towards it. The fragmention of marketing into thousands of point solutions will soon drive both a mass die-off as well as a drive towards far better integration to support better customer experience, the top value differentiator when it comes to digital experience.
  6. Early adopter – Incremental.  As today's enterprise has to be increasingly digital-ready in all aspects, microservices has emerged as C-level discussion to build the next generation of revenue generating functions in the modern organization in key industries like health care. Prescriptive analytics is coming into its own to create actionable recommendations that rapidly propel organizations down high value, strategic decision trees, heading off the competition in the process. Master data managment is improving to create a more holistic and actionable view of what organizations know and can do, while adaptive cybersecurity remains the top new tool to combat the challenges of keeping enterprise systems in all forms safe and secure. Risk management technologies round on one of the top digital technologies that organizations must employe to keep digital performing positively on a sustainable basis.
  7. Mainstream – Exponential.  The majority of potential in digital technologies remains outside of the mainstream high growth path (in fact, virtually no traditional enteprises have ever achieved expontential growth or potential), and this segment is currently not occupied though Open APIs and Internet of Things are both poised to move into this position soon.
  8. Mainstream – Transformational.  Mobility is still in the process of remaking digital experience, and still has a good way to go in the majority of organizations. Public cloud has now become a mainstream force for IT, but still has years of major evolution and new potential ahead of it. Digital talent platforms and business intelligence/analytics round out now mainstream technologies that are still steadily changing organizations today.
  9. Mainstream – Incremental.  A bit longer in the tooth in terms of being considered emerging tech, yet still relevant for strategic purposes for the majority of organizations, mainstream technologies such as big data, cloud ERP, customer relationship management, and digital workplace round out tech that still key for C-level leaders to watch closely.

Plan Your Digital Strategy With The Constellation’s AstroChart for Tech Trends for The New C-Suite

Digital leaders can stay abreast of strategic technology and business trends by adoption rates and business model impact using Constellation’s AstroCharts. Use the AstroChart to develop your overall boardroom strategy and to benchmark your organization’s adoption. Constellation notes the following:

Organizations should take an assessment of their strategyic digital priorities and use the AstroChart to determine portfolio management.

  • Market leaders tend to bet 50% of their portfolio on disruptive projects
  • Market leaders tend to bet 30% of their portfolio on bleeding edge projects
  • Fast followers tend to bet 80% of their portfolio on early adopter projects
  • Exponential – bleeding edge bets require a very informed or founder driven board, innovation fund, or startup partners(s)

Become The New C-Suite

Would you like to take advantage of the Constellation’s AstroCharts for The New C-Suite? How have you built out your strategic investment map? Have you prioritized and fully resources your digital efforts? Learn how organizations can apply this business trends roadmap and Constellation's unique frameworks to disrupt digital businesses.

Note: This chart, as well as the Business Trends for The New C-Suite are part of a forthcoming research report that details how these trends must form the foundation of the next generation of your organization. You can also explore my overall take on the enterprise technologies to watch in 2017 on ZDnet.

Please add your comments, suggestions, notes on additions/omissions, and other commentary below. You can also reach me via email: dion (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or @dhinchcliffe on Twitter.

Finally, please let us know if you need help with your digital business and transformation efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

  • Developing your digital business strategy
  • Connecting with other digital leaders
  • Accessing the latest digital best practices
  • Understanding the vendor space
  • Identifying options for implementation partners
  • Validating roadmaps and playbooks
  • Providing advisory and education to CXOs and boards

Additional Reading

Constellation's AstroChart For Business Trends, Q4 2016

CEN Member Chat: Trends for 2017 - Using the AstroCharts for Strategic Planning

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization 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

Digital Transformation Digest: Microsoft's New Blockchain Play, IBM and Bank Team Up Against Paper Overload, and More

Digital Transformation Digest: Microsoft's New Blockchain Play, IBM and Bank Team Up Against Paper Overload, and More

Chris Kanaracus
Chris Kanaracus
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. ...

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Andy Mulholland
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…...

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Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Steve Wilson
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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/cINSIGHTS

Microsoft's plan for enterprise-ready blockchains: In the works at Microsoft is the Coco Framework, what Redmond calls "a first-of-its kind innovation that will advance enterprise adoption of blockchain technology. (Note: Constellation believes despite the term blockchain's enduring popular usage, better ways to describe the core concept are distributed ledger technologies and synchronous ledger technologies.) Here's how Azure CTO Mark Russinovich describes the Coco Framework and its value proposition:

As enterprises look to apply blockchain technology to meet their business needs, they’ve come to realize that many existing blockchain protocols fail to meet key enterprise requirements such as performance, confidentiality, governance, and required processing power. This is because existing systems were designed to function—and to achieve consensus—in public scenarios amongst anonymous, untrusted actors with maximum transparency. Because of this, transactions are posted “in the clear” for all to see, every node in the network executes every transaction, and computationally intensive consensus algorithms must be employed. These safeguards, while necessary to ensure the integrity of public blockchain networks, require tradeoffs in terms of key enterprise requirements such as scalability and confidentiality.

Today I am proud to introduce the Coco Framework, an open-source system that enables high-scale, confidential blockchain networks that meet all key enterprise requirements—providing a means to accelerate production enterprise adoption of blockchain technology.

Coco achieves this by designing specifically for confidential consortiums, where nodes and actors are explicitly declared and controlled. Based on these requirements, Coco presents an alternative approach to ledger construction, giving enterprises the scalability, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality they need without sacrificing the inherent security and immutability they expect.

The framework is not an attempt to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it relies on existing blockchain protocols, trusted execution environments (TEEs) and cryptopgraphy. In addition, Microsoft has begun integrating Coco with leading ledger technologies, including Ethereum, Quorom, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Corda, Russinovich wrote. It is also working with Intel with respect to TEEs. Microsoft started Coco with teams from Azure and its research arm, but intends to open-source the code in early 2018, hoping to scale up its development more quickly.

POV: A technical whitepaper goes into greater depth on Coco, for those in search of such information. However, the paper also gives the strong impression that Coco is more of a statement of intent or pre-announcement, rather than anything truly finalized, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.

"Microsoft clearly feels that it must have a position and be represented in the current enthusiasm to develop blockchain, or blockchain-like, distributed ledger dolutions," Mullholland says. In addition, Azure is an ecosystem under the control of Microsoft, and as such it is possible to avoid some of the challenges of any-to-any interactions occurring between ecosystems, clouds, or products where an unknown must create a trusted relationship with another unknown. The whitepaper suggests that Azure will act as a ‘universal’ bridge between unknowns to assist in solving this problem."

While Coco may be taken as a statement of intent from Microsoft based on the strong market position of Azure, it nonethless has to be taken as a serious move that merits carefully watching as it develops, Mulholland adds.

Meanwhile, it is great to see some attention paid to blockchain user keys in TEEs, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Steve Wilson. "This is one of the missing pieces," he says. "The original anarchic blockchain lacked key management. It was everyone for themselves. The market recognized a need for 'hardware wallets' but it's still a Wild West. With Intel's involvement, I see a long overdue opportunity to standardize or at least normalize proper user key safety—in secure elements, mobile phones, smartcards or whatever form factor makes sense."

HSBC, IBM using cognitive computing to cut paperwork: IBM and large trade financing bank HSBC are working on a project meant to nearly eliminate the need for manual review huge amounts of trade finance documents. Here are the key details from their joint announcement:

HSBC’s Global Trade and Receivables Finance (GTRF) team facilitates over USD500 billion of documentary trade for customers every year, and in doing so must manually review and process up to 100 million pages of documents, ranging from invoices to packing lists and insurance certificates.

The new solution uses IBM’s advanced analytics technology, including intelligent segmentation and text analytics, to identify, digitise and extract key data within these documents before feeding it into the bank’s transaction processing systems; boosting accuracy whilst freeing up staff for more value-adding activities.

“The average trade transaction requires 65 data fields to be extracted from 15 different documents, with 40 pages to be reviewed,” said Natalie Blyth, HSBC’s Global Head of GTRF. “By digitising this process we will make transactions quicker and safer for both buyers and suppliers, leading our industry forwards, and we will reduce compliance risks through an enhanced ability to manage huge volumes of data.”

Right now, HSBC's implementation supports English-based import and export bills, with French, Spanish and Chinese support to come.

A Financial Times article notes that HSBC is also implementing blockchain in its processes. In June, it and six other banks announced participation in a trade finance platform based on the Hyperledger distributed ledger project at the Linux Foundation.

POV: HSBC's deployment is a good example of mature technology being put to effective use against the lingering challenges of paper documents in the financial sector.

Advanced optical character recognition and intelligent character recogition technologies have employed machine learning since the 1990s to learn to recognize even handwritten characters, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.

These capabilities have evolved thanks to much higher computing power, allowing even variable, non-standard documents to be processed without human intervention, Henschen says. While contracts and invoices may vary in format from among trading partners, they usually contain the same data elements and cognitive capture systems can therefore be trained to recognize and extract the right data elements, he adds. IBM's capabilities for this are rooted in its 2010 acquisition of Datacap, but it has "clearly advanced the state of the art."

Legacy watch: Aussie hospital opening allegedly delayed by stumbling EHR project: Two construction companies building a new AUS$2.3 billion hospital in Adelaide has filed a AUS$185 million lawsuit, saying that delays in completing a new EHR (electronic health records) system made it impossible to finish the job by the original deadline of April 2016, as the Adelaide Advertiser reports:

The case has been brought by two building firms that combined in a joint venture to construct the new RAH — CPB Contractors and Hansen Yuncken — against the private consortium overseeing the project, Health Minister Jack Snelling and the state of SA.

The Government plans to run the new RAH without old-fashioned patient records and instead use the computerised Enterprise Patient Administration System, which has been dogged by cost blowouts and time delays. The builders claim they were delayed because EPAS was not ready on time for installation.

“For technical completion to have been achieved under the construction contract, the state ICT was required to have been successfully installed, tested and commissioned,” the claim states.

“The state’s failure ... means that it was impossible for the builder to achieve technical completion and, as such, commercial acceptance under the construction contract.”

A mix of paper and digital records will be used when the hospital opens on September 5.

POV: The EHR industry is dominated by just a handful of players, with Epic, Cerner and MEDITECH garnering around two-thirds of the market on their own. EHR implementations can be fiendishly complicated and wildly expensive even before taking into account unexpected cost overruns. The Adelaide system is budgeted at AUS$422 million, but the U.S. Department of Defense's ongoing EHR project has had a projected $11 billion price tag.

It is also difficult to find cases of hospital staff falling in love with their EHR systems, and indeed, doctors surveyed by the Australian Medical Association about the Adelaide system called it the "worst medical software I have ever used."

It's based on a product from Allscripts, which was awarded the bid in 2010. User acceptance—as well as proper training—is key to any successful software project, and from the sound of it, health system officials have work to do.

 

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Matrix Commerce Tech Optimization

New Constellation ShortList for Marketing Analytics

New Constellation ShortList for Marketing Analytics

Cindy Zhou
CMO
Level Access

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…...

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Our cycle for refreshing the Constellation ShortLists completed in July and in addition to my B2B and B2C Marketing Automation reports, I’m pleased to release a new ShortList specific to Marketing Analytics. Today’s CMOs face an increasingly challenging landscape of marketing channels and technology to manage while needing to prove their efforts are impacting sales. Although there is no shortage of analytics solutions in the market, I evaluated close to 30 standalone analytics solutions that are powerful enough for organizations with a marketing data science team, yet simple for the non-technical marketer to operate. I looked for solutions that:
 
  1. Provided role-based dashboard views to help marketers in different functional areas gain insight into campaign performance quickly.
  2. Contained attribution models that could provide first-touch/last-touch and weighted multi-touch attribution.
  3. Easy integration with existing marketing and sales technology stack (marketing automation, ad platforms, social networks, and CRM). Several of the solutions evaluated include embedded Artificial Intelligence capabilities to help surface intelligent insights for marketers to make better campaign, spend, and segmentation decisions.
My goal is to find solutions to help CMO’s prove revenue contribution and enable marketers to be more productive and make better/faster decisions.
 
The following five standalone solutions (in alphabetical order) made the Constellation Marketing Analytics ShortList. I recommend these solutions to early adopters pursuing digital transformation. 
 
For more information and the full evaluation criteria, please visit Constellation ShortList Marketing Analytics
Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation New C-Suite Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Future of Work Marketing B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience AI ML Generative AI Analytics Automation Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Growth eCommerce Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Machine Learning business SaaS PaaS CRM ERP Leadership LLMs Agentic AI IaaS Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration IoT Blockchain finance Healthcare Chief Marketing Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

Data-to-Decisions Trends Meet the Constellation ShortList

Data-to-Decisions Trends Meet the Constellation ShortList

Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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What’s up in data cataloging, data lake management, hybrid- and cloud-ready databases, and business intelligence and analytics? Here’s my biannual take via Constellation ShortLists.

As the Data-to-Decisions (D2D) analyst at Constellation Research, I cover a broad domain, from data platforms, orchestration and integration up into the business domain, where business intelligence (BI), advanced analytics, embedded services and real-time decisioning help to put insight into action. Twice each year (Q1 and Q3) I make note of the things that impress me through Constellation ShortLists, which are freely available to the public. We’ve just published the latest updates to our ShortLists, so I thought I’d connect the dots among the nine lists that I publish with this post on D2D trends.

'Big' Isn't the Point

The big data bubble has burst. Don’t get me wrong: the data landscape has changed for good (and for the better), and most organizations are now making use of next-generation data platforms like Hadoop and NoSQL databases. But just having access to unprecedented volumes and varieties of data doesn’t matter much if you can’t figure out what’s inside these new platforms and whether that data might drive new insights and better outcomes.

Data cataloging tools explore and make accessible data and metadata across high-scale data lakes and other sources. The best options use machine learning to automatically discover data and detect usage patterns. Collaboration capabilities enable technical and business users to rate and review data assets, annotate what’s known about them and enable authorized users to reject or modify tags and classifications.

My Data Cataloging ShortList still lists just two best-or-breed vendors (click on the link to discover their names). It’s not that it’s a stagnant market. In fact, new cataloging products are coming out of the woodwork, including new products from industry giants. The ShortList is not a checklist, however, so before adding recommendations to the next ShortList in Q1 2018, I’ll be talking to customers, looking for evidence of many successful deployments and signs of significant demand.

On another big data topic, the concept of data lakes is morphing quickly, with cloud-based Hadoop services and cloud object stores rapidly gaining popularity as lower-complexity and lower-cost options for building data lakes. Reality is also setting in that most organizations will have more than one data lake. These trends have introduced new management and governance challenges. Nonetheless, my Data Lake Management ShortList remains unchanged since Q1. Here, too, new options aren’t emerging, but I’m still looking for compelling evidence of adoption and success before adding new names to the list.

Cloud, Yes, Lock-in, No

We’re seeing strong gravitation toward cloud computing, and the appeal is understandable. Agility, limitless scalability, and low and steadily declining costs are among the attractions. Getting locked into one cloud vendor? Not an attraction!

My new Hybrid- and Cloud-Friendly database ShortLists (one for relational databases and one for NoSQL stores) cite products that are available both as software (for on-premises deployments) and as services on multiple popular public clouds. Sure, you can run software on any cloud on infrastructure as a service, but doing so takes away much if not most of the agility, cost and administrative advantages of just tapping into services.

Cloud services offer agility, cost and ease-of-deployment-and-admin advantages, but it’s best if such services are available on multiple clouds. Better still if those services are run by the cloud providers or the software developer (and not a third party). That way you minimize finger pointing when something goes wrong. Most providers of popular database products are making services available across multiple public clouds. For now it’s about having options, but some vendors are hoping to support seamless service portability across clouds using container technology.

Self Service Expands, Meets Cloud

Demand for self service, which really means liberation from IT dependency, is gathering steam. Democratization has been the dominant theme in business intelligence for nearly a decade. My new Self-Service Data Preparation ShortList recommends three vendors, while my previously published Self-Service Advanced Analytics ShortList adds a fifth recommended vendor.

Over the last three years I’ve seen rapidly growing demand for supporting BI and analytics in the cloud. Cloud-based BI services have been around for more than a decade, but interest has spiked as data is increasingly stored, managed and generated in the cloud. I added one maturing vendor offering to my Cloud-Based BI and Analytics Platforms ShortList while dropping another vendor that has shifted its strategy to providing insight services (rather than a general-purpose, cloud-based BI and analytics platform). The changes are explained in the ShortList report.

Two other selections that remain unchanged from Q1 appear in my latest Cloud Performance Management ShortList and Integration Platform-as-a-Service ShortList. These are two more cases where I’m actively considering new competitors. In addition to taking briefings with vendors who think they deserve to be on a ShortList, I talk to plenty of customers and want to see evidence of successful deployments and growing customer demand.

If you have any questions about these ShortLists, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. I’m happy to hear more about your needs and to discuss recommendations that might best suit your specific challenges, use cases and environment.

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