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Salesforce Overhauls Its ISV Partner Program and Everybody Wins

Salesforce Overhauls Its ISV Partner Program and Everybody Wins

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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Constellation Insights

Salesforce's steady growth over the years can be tied in part to its success in establishing a partner ecosystem of ISVs and systems integrators building extensions and full-blown applications on its development platform. 

Periodically Salesforce has tweaked its partner program model, and the latest iteration has now arrived, with some significant changes. Salesforce is changing the program's name from ISV Partner Program to AppExchange Partner Program, but it's more than just a branding shift.

For one, it wants to quickly attract more startups and ISVs to the AppExchange through more attractive pricing, while giving existing ones a reason to stick around longer. Going forward, all new AppExchange partners will be charged 15 percent of their product's net revenue, a 40 percent reduction from the previous, long-standing 25 percent PNR. Existing partners can get the lower pricing when they renew their contracts.

Salesforce is also offering a pricing structure based on a partner's Trailblazer score, which is calculated by metrics such as customer reviews, how current the product is on Salesforce technology, and the number of certifications and lessons completed through the company's Trailhead learning platform.

Additional new aspects of the program include an AppExchange onboarding wizard for partners, additional tools for payments beyond credit cards, and a dashboard that provides access to Trailblazer scores and other information.

Salesforce is also readying DX, a new developer experience that will deliver an improved IDE (integrated development environment) and tools aimed at making individual coders more productive, such as the ability to spin up personal scratch environments where code can be tested and then merged into team-level sandboxes. DX is now in pilot and expected to be generally available later this year.

Some 3,000 applications now sit on the AppExchange. Along with the revamped partner program, Salesforce is hoping to inject more interest in its platform through a new $100 million venture fund aimed at startups who want to build on it. The funding follows a similar move last year when Salesforce launched the Lightning Fund. 

Analysis: Welcome Changes for All Salesforce Stakeholders

The new partner program has clearly been designed with a good degree of thought, as it provides benefits for all three types of Salesforce stakeholders: Salesforce itself, partners and customers. 

Salesforce may take a lower cut of AppExchange partner revenue going forward, but such a dramatic reduction should help drive enough new business to make up the gap and more. Partners in turn get the same benefits of being part of the Salesforce ecosystem while keeping more of the pie. 

Finally, the introduction of incentives tied to Trailblazer scores will get more partners using Salesforce's latest technologies while driving higher quality standards. That scenario that can only help customers, particularly ones who are interested in surrounding their core Salesforce applications for sales and marketing with AppExchange offerings, but have been hesitant to make the investment. 

Not that Salesforce hasn't already found success with the AppExchange. Nearly 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies now have at least one AppExchange app installed, and 65 percent of all customers have multiple apps installed, according to a statement. 

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Market Move - Saba completes acquisition of Halogen

Market Move - Saba completes acquisition of Halogen

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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Things were quiet around Saba for a while, as the vendor struggled with re-stating earnings… then the vendor surprised with the acquisition of Canada head quartered Halogen.

 
 

So let’s dissect the press release in our customary style – it can be found here:
Redwood Shores, CA – May 1, 2017 – Saba Software Inc., today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Halogen Software, Inc. (TSX:HGN). Saba, Vector Capital and its affiliates, and Michael Slaunwhite, Halogen’s co-founder, executive chairman and largest shareholder, have acquired Halogen for CAD$12.50 in cash per share.
MyPOV – Good summary and interesting mix of buyers – apart from Saba and Vector there is a buy back from Halogen co-founder Slaunwhite in the mix. It certainly creates a sense of ownership by Slaunwhite, who is not exiting, but staying on with Saba.
The new, combined organization is now one of the largest independent talent management companies in the world, with 1,000 employees serving more than 4,000 customers in 195 countries around the globe.
MyPOV – That’s a nice title to have, though size is not everything. Redundant product offerings need to be consolidated, customers educated, transferred etc. before Saba can really leverage the scale the size brings. It will also be interesting to see how many cross-sell opportunities the combined entity has.
“No matter what size the company, all organizations are ultimately trying to solve the same challenge, which is how to better their business performance by engaging, developing, and investing in their employees,” said Pervez Qureshi, CEO of Saba. “The combination of Saba and Halogen brings them something very powerful – the expertise of the best and brightest minds in talent management, a deep commitment to helping our customers solve new challenges in new ways, and a true passion to deliver value and innovation, better and faster. This is a unique combination, and something no one else in the market can provide.”
MyPOV – A good (and long) quote by Qureshi. Unfortunately, it does not clarify what the uniqueness on the product side is. But good to see talent, commitment, passion to help customers become better and faster.
The dynamics of the workplace are changing, and organizations that are evolving their approach to employee development and engagement are realizing more productivity and performance. Together, Saba and Halogen plan to deliver a new vision for talent management – one that combines people-centric learning, engagement, and performance in new ways, enabling organizations to meet their employees on new terms, and transform the employee experience.
MyPOV – Words matter and sequences matter. The absence of the ‘Talent Management’ buzzword vs the ranking of learning, engagement and performance may give an insight to the self-realization of the vendor. And while Learning is important, and currently going through a best practice revolution (think of video, self-published, self-paced, micro learning, flip training etc.) it is not the first thing that comes mind in enterprise. Getting the right talent to the right place at the right time is the name of the game – learning is important – but only ¼ or less of the whole automation puzzle.
[…] As pioneers in their respective areas, and with over 40 years of combined experience in talent management, Saba and Halogen share common vision, values and culture, as well as a commitment to the growth and success of their customers.
MyPOV – Always good to have cultural fit and compatibility in a merged company.
“Halogen customers selected the best performance solution in the marketplace today, and Saba acquired Halogen for the same reasons their customers use the software; the people, the products, the culture, and the innovation,” said John Hiraoka, Chief Strategy Officer at Saba. “This is something that we not only intend to continue, but to accelerate in the market. As a combined organization, we intend to rapidly deliver best-in-market innovations to both Saba and Halogen customers, with the same commitment to their growth and success they’ve come to expect.”
MyPOV – Unusual to have another vendor CxO quoted, what is missing are quotes from customers and partners, showing excitement about the new Saba. But there is only so much room in a press release.

 

Overall MyPOV

It is good see life and growth for all market participants, competition makes products better and more affordable and with that enterprises more successful. Since the acquisition of SuccessFactors and Taleo, it had gotten quiet in the very large Talent Management vendor segment. As enterprises want to leverage suites, a concentration process will play in the hands of less integration risk. But Talent Management suite vendors are in the middle – between the complete HCM suite vendor and the startups looking at single (or a few) pieces of HCM automation. Their challenge is to innovate fast enough but integrate on a Talent Management level into a suite that stays ahead of both startups as well as suite vendors. No easy task for all vendors in this category.

Saba was already a player here, now it has gotten innovation (Performance Management) and customers (SMB) from Halogen to help it scale more. But scale only helps when the tough decisions are made in regards of product overlap and the efficiencies are reaped in the go to market.

On the concern side, the new Saba has not made roadmap announcements yet. To be fair Saba has some time with this, but time is of the essence in all merger situations. The machine learning approach is a good direction, e.g. Saba was one of the first HCM vendors to apply machine learning in Compensation Management – three and more years ago. But Machine Learning (or the marketing term du jour – AI) is missing from the press release.

On the philosophical side, it is interesting that with Skillsoft / SumTotal, Cornerstone and now Saba / Halogen it is the original Learning vendors that are now the leading Talent Management suite vendors when it comes to size. Turns out that Learning can be both a blessing and curse…. We look forward to seeing the planned roadmaps of the new Saba and to analyze the direction. Stay tuned.


 
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Oracle Launches Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX

Oracle Launches Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX

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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Oracle demos Adaptive Intelligent Offers app for commerce, marketing. Next up are more CX capabilities as well as ERP, HR and supply chain apps.

The biggest reveal at the April 25-27 Oracle Modern Customer Experience (CX) Event in Las Vegas was the debut of Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX. Adaptive Intelligent Offers (AI Offers) is the first app in a planned portfolio of artificial intelligence applications that will eventually span CX, ERP, human capital management and supply chain management.

The introduction was no surprise. Oracle said a CX app would come first when it announced Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps last September. Since then the company has been refining the behind-the-scenes automated machine learning capabilities. Executives revealed in January that work with beta customers was about to begin.

Adaptive Intelligent Offers delivers a subset of the AI capabilities Oracle has planned for its
customer experience cloud. Sales and service features are expected later this year.

AI Offers delivers a subset of the total capabilities envisioned in the Oracle Adaptive Intelligent App for CX (see image above). AI Offers is also in limited release. For now Oracle is working with early adopter customers. Executives from Team Sportia, a Swedish retail chain, were among two early customers appearing at the Modern CX event. Another customer, an international bank, was identified under non-disclosure terms. Broader availability is expected "soon," according to Oracle, but there’s no official general release date.

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps complement Oracle cloud applications. AI Offers, for example, is an optional (extra-cost) add-on to the Oracle Customer Experience Cloud. At launch, AI Offers is integrated with the Commerce and Marketing clouds in the CX suite, but ties will extend to the Sales and Service clouds later this year.

AI Offers taps into first-party data from a company’s Commerce Cloud instance, enriches it with third-party data from the Oracle Data Cloud, and then applies Oracle’s decision science and machine learning capabilities. The resulting contextual insights into individual customer behaviors and purchase propensities drive best-fit offers as they browse a Commerce Cloud-powered website. The same AI Offers contextual analysis also triggers real-time personalized content recommendations in the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Pricing for AI Offers is based cost-per-thousand offers or content recommendations – the same model used to pay for Oracle Data Cloud enrichment.

AI Offers is an advance over older, rules-based technologies (including Oracle’s own ATG personalization engine) in that it is both adaptive and real time. AI Offers applies and reapplies a recommendation engine and predictive algorithms with each new click and navigation step. The design point is 100-millisecond to 150-millisecond response time -- on par with state-of-the-art e-commerce and advertising systems. Even in marketing scenarios, fresh email promotions are triggered at open time, reflecting up-to-the-second analyses of the latest transactions and online behaviors.

Oracle executives insists that AI App data-collection and data-usage practices adhere to global privacy laws and principles. Personally identifiable information remains in each company’s instance of the Commerce Cloud and is not copied, stored or shared. Third-party from Oracle Data Cloud is temporarily joined to the first-party data and the combination is then run against a combination of collaborative filtering, online learning and predictive algorithms at run time to trigger optimized offers and content recommendations.

AI Apps will learn over time, and Oracle plans to connect these insights across clouds and domains. For example, AI Offers tracks outcomes in the Commerce Cloud, such as purchases by category, brand and product, along with aggregated demographics, such as age, gender, marital status and education level, and psychographics, such as interest in sports, fitness, hobbies, and so on, drawn from Oracle Data Cloud. Oracle plans to bring these aggregated, outcome-based insights into the Marketing Cloud where they will inform targeting and, thus, smarter content recommendations and promotions. Similarly, once Oracle brings Adaptive Intelligent App capabilities into the sales and service areas of CX – a move expected later this year – the company expects to be able to inform next-best sales steps by connecting insights into recent service activities to drive predictive account health insights and predictive recommendation capabilities.

Next steps for Oracle include building up the base of customer success stories, adding connectors for popular third-party commerce systems, and adding domain-specific features for sales and service.

MyPOV on Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps

Adaptive Intelligent Offers is just the first release in a rollout of AI apps that will surely extend into next year and beyond. Constellation expect to see more CX capabilities over the summer and apps in other clouds announced by Oracle Open World in early October.

I like the fact that Oracle has incorporated controls and provisions for business rules in AI Offers so humans can tweak and otherwise override “smart” offers and recommendations, as required by business requirements. Marketing agreements, for example, might dictate that competing brands cannot be shown in the same promotion while overstocks or profitability requirements might need to sway cross-sell and up-sell objectives.

Oracle’s closest competitor on the AI front – specifically in the CX arena -- is Salesforce Einstein. Salesforce has already released 20 Einstein “features” and had another 25 planned for release this year. The features are focused and are not akin to Oracle’s more expansive AI apps. For example, Marketing Cloud Einstein includes a Predictive Content & Product Recommendation feature while the Commerce Cloud has separate Product Recommendation and Predictive Email features. (The complete list of Einstein features is detailed in my Inside Salesforce Einstein Artificial Intelligence report).

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps include multiple capabilities that roughly compare with Einstein features. The Oracle AI App for CX, for example, will eventually include at least 16 capabilities, as shown in the slide above. In the Marketing and Digital category, for example, there’s Intelligent Message and Personalized Open-Time Content. In the Commerce category there’s Personalized Product Recommendations. It’s easy to spot similar capabilities in each CX portfolio, but keep in mind that Oracle also plans to apply AI to the ERP, HCM and SCM arenas.

Who will win the great AI war? We have yet to hear in-depth customer testimonials from either Adaptive Intelligent App or Einstein customers who have really put the offerings to the test. Also keep in mind that you can’t subscribe to either Adaptive Intelligent Apps or Einstein independently; they’re both optional add-on services to underlying application clouds. We’ve all heard examples of the tail wagging the dog, but it remains to be seen whether smarter AI capabilities will lead customers to choose or switch to different core application clouds.

You can read more about Oracle's strategy and broader plans in Inside Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps.

RELATED READING:
Oracle Preps AI Apps, Next Steps for Data Cloud
Inside Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps
Inside Salesforce Artificial Intelligence

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Trump Forms American Technology Council to 'Transform' Government IT

Trump Forms American Technology Council to 'Transform' Government IT

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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Constellation Insights

U.S. President Donald Trump may be moving technology further up his list of priorities, signing an executive order creating the American Technology Council, which will include members of his administration along with input from leaders at top tech companies. 

The ATC will be charged with transforming government IT, particularly for outward-facing citizen services, the order states:

Americans deserve better digital services from their Government. To effectuate this policy, the Federal Government must transform and modernize its information technology and how it uses and delivers digital services.

Trump will chair the committee, which also includes Vice President Mike Pence and many cabinet members. Its purview will not extend to any national security systems. However, the Director of National Intelligence "is encouraged to provide access to classified information on cybersecurity threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigation procedures to the ATC in order to facilitate the ATC's activities," according to the order.

The ATC will be headed up by Chris Liddell, a Trump aide who once served as CFO of Microsoft. About 20 tech company officials will meet with the group in June, Reuters reported. While none were named, expect IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and other top names to be in the mix.

In some respects, the executive order seems to be putting the proverbial cart before the horse. For one thing, Trump has yet to appoint a new U.S. chief technology officer (although he did name a deputy CTO, Michael Kratsios, an aide to Trump ally Peter Thiel). It's also unclear how much overlap the ATC will have with the Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Still, there's no question Trump's administration needs an entity like the ATC, given the enormity of U.S. IT spending and the related ability for the government to not only deliver better citizen services, but also influence the direction of emerging technologies.

Overall, U.S. government agencies spent $82 billion on IT during fiscal 2017, according to the IT Dashboard website. That doesn't include money in the IT modernization fund (which may not end up included in the new budget), or spending on classified IT projects.

Three-quarters or so of government IT spending is on maintaining and operating existing systems, rather than new innovation. Compounding the problem, government IT projects routinely end up well over budget and schedule and lawmakers have railed against the perception of rampant waste for decades, to little avail.

The ATC might also benefit by setting somewhat less lofty goals, as it will be next to impossible to truly "transform and modernize" the government's IT landscape during Trump's term.

A case in point: The Internal Revenue Service's Individual Master File application, which handles tax information and refunds, is written in assembler language and is nearly 60 years old. Or how about this one: The country's nuclear weapons system runs on a system that uses floppy disks and a 1970s-era IBM mainframe. (An upgrade is scheduled for completion this year.)

Former president Barack Obama's administration made some strides in improving citizen IT services, particularly in areas such as information transparency through the IT Dashboard, Data.gov and other avenues. But the colossal initial failure of Healthcare.gov showed that the U.S. government all too often cannot deliver major IT projects succesfully—not even the website underpinning the signature policy achievement of Obama's two terms in office. The ATC has its work cut out for it.

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Tech Optimization Chief Information Officer

Equifax EFXForum 2017 - More International & More DaaS

Equifax EFXForum 2017 - More International & More DaaS

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend Equifax Insight’s EFX Forum user conference in Scottsdale, held April 25th till 27th, at the beautiful Marriott Camelback resort in Scottsdale. The conference was well attended with about 200 attendees, good partner representation and influencer selection. 

 
 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 
 
Want to read on? Here you go: 
 
Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

 
Opening by Equifax Insights with Trusler

International looms – Always good to software vendors taking the show on ‘the road’ or around the world. The beauty of software and intellectual property (IP) is that once something is built and / or understood you can take it to other markets. In the case of Equifax Insights, it is not so easy, as local data and assets have to be understood, acquired or licensed. And Equifax Insights has done its homework here with Canada and Australia, with immediate plans this year, with the UK to follow. The first step will be similar services to what Equifax Insights is known for in the US, “The Works Number”.

 
Hamdi shares three takeaways from BigData Research


Workforce Insights on Compensation – Last year Equifax Insights promised to live up to its name, and provide more insights. One year later the vendor has lived up to the promise and delivers help for making better compensation decisions, a popular offering these days. Though Equifax Insights does not address this from the paycheck angle, but from its credit bureau data. A classic BigData and Data as a Service (DaaS) use case that gives an important additional data (and insight) angle when making compensation decisions. 

 
Full House at EFX Forum 2017


Touch ID for Talent Acquisition – One common nuisance for applicants is to have to provide common information (e.g. address) repeatedly for each application. One common concern for employers is that the provided information is not accurate. With hiring frequency and volumes up as the economy moves into more of a gig economy, the Equifax Insights InstaTouchID service is a win / win between applicant and hiring enterprises. It’s also the option for Equifax to become a provider of individual record services, but that’s for a later time.

 
Panel Action with Jessica Wadd, Madeline Laurano, Holger Mueller and John Sumser (ltr)
 

MyPOV

Equifax Insights keeps showing good progress on its products, extending functionality and capability on a regular basis. DaaS capabilities are interesting for enterprises, who look for easy and effective solutions to improve their data quality, compliance and overall efficiency. The internationalization efforts are encouraging, and should help set the Equifax Insights business on a more steady, global growth path, reducing exposure to the USA as so far only market.

On the concern side, Equifax Insights needs to move phase and come to a strategy that moves it beyond being a ‘tactical’ provider of compliance and data quality. Compliance is a substantial challenge for enterprises with many complexities, CFOs and CHROs don’t want to add complexity by using many, maybe too many compliance and data services providers. They rather would prefer to use a single provider, but in absence of any provider stepping up for a complete Compliance as a Service (CaaS) solution, need to piecemeal the provider decisions. The player who first manages to consolidate Compliance through acquisition, partnership or organic growth, will reap the benefits of CaaS. Equifax Insights needs to work hard to stay in the game here, but has attractive starting positions.

But for now, all is good progress for Equifax Insights customers, partners and the vendor. Stay tuned for more from Equifax Insights, DaaS and CaaS on this blog soon.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).
 
 
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NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 - The Suite gets complete and an Oracle boost

NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 - The Suite gets complete and an Oracle boost

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend NetSuite’s SuiteWorld event held at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas and happening from April 24th till 27th 2017. SuiteWorld was well attended with a new record of over 7000+, good partner representation and influencer selection. It was also the first SuiteWorld in after the Oracle acquisition and in the post Zach Nelson era of NetSuite.

 
 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 
 
Want to read on? 
 
Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

Oracle pushes the gas pedal. As usual with acquisitions in the high-tech industry, a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt gets associated with them. In this case, there were irrational (no need to dig into them) and rational questions (product overlap, go to market etc.). Overall Oracle did a good job to address these concerns, as McGeever from NetSuite put it – the ‘elephant’ in the room. Oracle (co) CEO Mark Hurd was at hand to address the concerns with his usual rational, number driven style. He shared that Oracle paid approximately US$ 9.3B for NetSuite. This makes it the 2nd most expensive Oracle acquisition, shy of Peoplesoft (US$ 10.3B) (see a list of them here). Oracle will bring scale to NetSuite, selling the product in more geographies than before, as Hurd put it ‘as fast as Ewan [Goldberg] can build [Internationalization], we will sell.’ And Oracle brings more development location, as NetSuite will hire more developers. And lastly Oracle data centers will help NetSuite getting a more global technical footprint. Oracle and Hurd have done a pretty good job to address these concerns, as I could not find a prospect, customer or partner that was really concerned about the new ownership of NetSuite, with a ‘wait and see’ being the most cautionary answer. US customers were not fazed, international customers expect more coverage and support and partners were excited as they expect more revenue to be made going forward. So, a good place for NetSuite and Oracle and the NetSuite customers and ecosystems. 
 
NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 Holger Mueller Constellation Research
Hurd addresses SuiteWorld

The (Net)Suite is complete with SuitePeople. For a long time, I have been chronicling the ‘slalom’ like NetSuite HCM strategy (see links below). At the end of the day (for now) it seems that the suite / platform argument is winning and with the launch of SuitePeople, NetSuite (finally) makes the suite complete. Except for a few industries, people are the largest expense for enterprises, so not managing the resources, processes and cost was a major gap in the otherwise complete NetSuite portfolio. The announced scope of SuitePeople with HR Core, Payroll and ‘beachheads’ into Talent and Workforce Management is a good start for the product. NetSuite always had a payroll offering, which was running under the Finance umbrella till now. And NetSuite quietly has already started a pilot program with about 60 customers, many of them at hand and on stage at SuiteWorld to share their (mostly positive) experience so far. And with NetSuite having acquired TribeHR some time ago (read here), and much of that team building SuitePeople, much of the Core HR capability has social elements, including newer concepts like an employee ‘score’. NetSuite’s decision to sell SuitePeople only as part of an overall NetSuite deal is the typical approach all suite vendors take to new products… the product is new, the synergies with the suite need to be leveraged and built and the stand-alone market (not sure if this ever would happen with NetSuite) is much more demanding. So, NetSuite customers looking for HR automation should definitively look at SuitePeople, most likely their account manager will make sure they don’t miss the new capability, too. The question NetSuite customers should ask are the typical ones, in regards of functional maturity, requirements coverage and roadmap compatibility with future demands. 

 
NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 Holger Mueller Constellation Research
McGeever unveils SuitePeople

SuiteSuccess has a vertical angle now. Every ERP vendor has an implementation methodology, NetSuite’s us called SuiteSuccess and NetSuite recently added a vertical angle to the program. All implementation methodologies stand and fall with the quality of the preconfigured functionality, measured in speed and cost of implementation of the product. The numbers shared at SuiteWorld are pretty positive, so looking at using and adopting SuiteSuccess should be something customers facing an implementation should ask for – maybe even demand from their implementation team and possible implementation partners.

 
NetSuite SuiteWorld 2017 Holger Mueller Constellation Research
McGeever on SuiteSuccess Benefits

MyPOV

A very good SuiteWorld for NetSuite, in the new Oracle era and new digs in Las Vegas (all previous 4 events were in San Jose). Good to see a vendor outgrow a location (from San Jose to Las Vegas), also good to see that Oracle is firmly behind the NetSuite acquisition. Rumors of the end of the NetSuite products were never realistic, and put to bed for good.

More on the positive side, NetSuite has shown that it is pushing overall product progress forward, across the board, but most importantly closes the last horizontal functionality hole with SuitePeople. This is hopefully the last chapter of NetSuite’s winding HCM history (express run through: no HCM, but Payroll, partnership with Oracle, partnership with tons of smaller vendors, acquisition of TribeHR, partnership with NetSuite – now SuitePeople – all in 4 years). Customers seem to be unfazed and focus on the value that NetSuite creates.

On the concern side, acquisitions are never easy. It is one thing to plead support and investment into NetSuite – another thing to execute it. There is a reason there is a chasm between large enterprise and SMB offerings – not only in product, but also go to market. Customer need to listen attentively how this will develop for them in the next quarters, as Oracle has to become a little more ‘un-Oracle’ to succeed in SMB. On the flipside, this is an opportunity for Oracle to sell applications to more customers globally than they could with its existing SaaS application portfolio. But instilling the ‘cloud DNA’ into country organizations that are new to Cloud / SaaS will be a challenging.

But for now, all is well for NetSuite, that will be seen in many more geographies around the world, time for decision makers on ERP in SMBs to pay attention, even if NetSuite was not sold yet in their geographies.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
     
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    FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Proposal to Overturn Net Neutrality, Annotated

    FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Proposal to Overturn Net Neutrality, Annotated

    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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    Constellation Insights

    Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has unveiled how he intends to roll back so-called "net neutrality" regulations passed in 2015. While Pai has the benefit of a Republican-majority FCC board, he could still be in for a fight as advocates and the public push back. 

    Net neutrality forbids ISPs from blocking or slowing down Internet traffic that points to legal content, and from favoring traffic based on payments or other considerations. Critics like Pai say the rules, which placed ISPs into the "common carrier" category under Title II of the Communications Act, go too fair and are anticompetitive. 

    Consumer advocacy groups and Internet companies such as Netflix and Facebook have been the most prominent net neutrality advocates, with ISPs seeking further control taking the other position. But in today's environment, with trends such as the IoT (Internet of Things), the app economy and general move toward cloud computing, makes the way Internet traffic is regulated in the U.S. a core concern for enterprises.

    Hence, the details of Pai's proposals are worth a close look. Here are some of the key highlights from a speech he gave this week in Washington outlining his plan, accompanied by my annotations and context. 

    Pai: "Whether I am in Red America, Purple America, or Blue America, whether I am above the Arctic Circle or in the bayous of Louisiana, people tell me that they want fast, affordable, and reliable Internet access. They say that they want the benefits that come from competition. And they tell me that they want to access the content and use the applications, services, and devices of their choice." 

    • The FCC received an unprecedented 3.7 million comments from the public regarding net neutrality before the rules were passed. The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government, performed an analysis using 800,000 of those comments and found that only 1 percent were in opposition to net neutrality. However, other polls have shown that only a scarce majority of Americans understand well enough what net neutrality is. 

    Pai: "[Under] the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ... America’s Internet economy produced the world’s most successful online companies: Google, Facebook, and Netflix, just to name a few. ... And under this framework, consumers benefited from unparalleled innovation. But two years ago, the federal government’s approach suddenly changed. The FCC, on a partyline vote, decided to impose a set of heavy-handed regulations upon the Internet. It decided to slap an old regulatory framework called “Title II”—originally designed in the 1930s for the Ma Bell telephone monopoly—upon thousands of Internet service providers, big and small. It decided to put the federal government at the center of the Internet. Why? Unfortunately, the answer has nothing to do with the law or the facts. Nothing about the Internet was broken in 2015. Nothing about the law had changed. And there wasn’t a rash of Internet service providers blocking customers from accessing the content, applications, or services of their choice.

    • Net neutrality proponent Free Press this week published a list of incidents it says violated the spirit of net neutrality, both before the rules were passed in 2015 and afterward. 

    Pai: So what happened after the Commission adopted Title II? Sure enough, infrastructure investment declined. Among our nation’s 12 largest Internet service providers, domestic broadband capital expenditures decreased by 5.6% percent, or $3.6 billion, between 2014 and 2016, the first two years of the Title II era. This decline is extremely unusual. It is the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the Internet era. And the impact hasn’t been limited to big ISPs. Smaller, competitive providers have also been hit. ... Our nation’s smallest providers simply do not have the means or the margins to withstand the Title II regulatory onslaught. And remember—these are the kinds of small companies who are critical to meeting consumers’ hope for a more competitive broadband marketplace and closing the digital divide.

    • Opinions vary on Title II/net neutrality's impact on ISP infrastructure investment. The Internet Association, a lobbying group which represents companies such as Google and Facebook, noted that major ISPs Comcast, Verizon and AT&T have made aggressive investments in fiber during the past couple of years. Free Press, meanwhile, put out a flyer listing capital expenditures from about two dozen publicly traded ISPs. About three-fourths had expanded their investments from 2015 to 2016. Comcast's capital expenditures grew 26.6 percent during that period, while Cincinatti Bell's rose 50.3 percent.

    Pai: When businesses cut back on capital expenditures, the areas that provide the most marginal returns on investment are the first to go. And in the case of broadband, that means low-income rural and urban neighborhoods. As a result, Title II has kept countless consumers from getting better Internet access or getting access, period. It is widening the digital divide in our country and accentuating the practice of digital redlining—of fencing off lower-income neighborhoods on the map and saying, “It’s not worth the time and money to deploy there.”

    • ISPs have accepted billions in subsidies over the years in the name of supporting rural broadband, but modern fiber networks remain largely nonexistent in less populated areas. Moreover, ISPs are loathe to continue servicing their aging and increasingly obsolete copper networks, which support DSL, the main option for broadband in the U.S. countryside, and have taken steps to phase out the service without an acceptable broadband option being in place.

    Pai: Now, some have called on the FCC to reverse Title II immediately, through what is known as a Declaratory Ruling. But I don’t believe that is the right path forward. This decision should be made through an open and transparent process in which every American can share his or her views. So what are the basic elements of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking? First, we are proposing to return the classification of broadband service from a Title II telecommunications service to a Title I information service—that is, light-touch regulation drawn from the Clinton Administration.

    • The next major step in the debate comes May 18, when the FCC votes on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding Pai's proposal. If it passes—which is practically guaranteed—then a public comment period will open. Net neutrality has simmered in the U.S. for going on 20 years and has always been politically charged. It will be no different, and perhaps more controversial than ever before, as the year unfolds. 

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    Infosys Launches Nia, Its Next-Gen AI Platform

    Infosys Launches Nia, Its Next-Gen AI Platform

    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

    Since becoming CEO of Infosys roughly three years ago, Vishal Sikka has taken the massive Indian systems integrator down new paths, chief among them a focus on creating intellectual property rather than relying on technologies from partners. One of Infosys's key creations under Sikka's leadership Mana, an AI (artificial intelligence) platform, and the company has now launched a new version called Nia. 

    The platform combines Mana's big data, machine learning and cognitive capabilities of Mana with AssistEdge, Infosys's robotic process automation tool. Nia also gets a boost from the recent acquisition of Skytree, a machine learning startup. Infosys laid out the value proposition of Nia in a statement:

    Infosys's first-generation AI platform was about IT, simplification, efficiency and cost. Capabilities included socialization of organizational knowledge, deep analytics, service automation, automated incident root cause analysis and others. ... Infosys Nia tackles breakthrough business problems such as forecasting revenues, forecasting what products need to be built, understanding customer behavior, deeply understanding the content of contracts and legal documents, understanding compliance, and fraud.

     
    Much of the conversation around AI of late has centered on the automation of jobs and what effect that could have on the workforce. In a video message, Sikka alluded to this but offered a measured perspective: "AI can do much more than automate the work that we used to do; It can amplify the work that we will do.” 
     
     

    Skytree emerged as a commercial company out of Georgia Tech in 2012, and raised $20 million in capital through 2013. However, it hadn't logged any other funding rounds since then, suggesting the Infosys deal may have been a fire sale, notes Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen. "Skytree was up against formidable competition, given the rise of open source machine learning options," he adds. 

    Infosys may have sought out Skytree for its talent. In a press interview earlier this month, Sikka noted that Infosys had picked up eight PhDs through the deal.

    Infosys didn’t issue a press release on the deal, but in a press interview, Sikka stressed the talent picked up in the deal – eight PhDs in machine learning – rather than the IP. 

    Mana gained about 50 customers since its launch one year ago and Infosys is betting on software-driven services like it for growth. 

    The name change to Nia—which Sikka described in the video as a "beautiful word" that is both the last three letters of California and a Swahili word for "purpose—will hopefully stick, Henschen says. 

    "If Infosys hopes to build up a brand associated with AI, it has to settle on a name," he says. "The move to consolidate the many piece parts into a unified platform is a welcome step."

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    SAS Takes Next Steps to Cloud Analytics

    SAS Takes Next Steps to Cloud Analytics

    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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    SAS Viya is now available as the cloud-friendly platform for SAS Visual apps and, soon, SAS 9. Next up should be more cloud-based services options.

    SAS, like many well-established tech vendors, has to keep one eye on the future and one eye on the past. At the April 2-5 SAS Global Forum in Orlando, FL, the company did its best to reassure the 5,500-plus attendees that it can take them into the future without obsoleting past investments in SAS technologies and training.

    To the tens of thousands of companies running SAS 9 (there are some 77,000 site licenses for the software), the message was “SAS 9 is here to stay.” And to the thousands of customers running SAS’s newer Visual products (there are more than 6,000 site licenses for SAS Visual Analytics and north of 1,800 for SAS Visual Statistics), the message was “everything in the portfolio can now run on SAS Viya.”

    SAS Viya is the lynchpin of the company’s future. Introduced at SAS Global Forum 2016, Viya is the company’s virtualization and container-ready, Hadoop-compatible, next-generation back-end architecture. It supports in-memory, distributed processing at scale as well as lifecycle management for data and models. Microservices and REST APIs support services-oriented embedding of analytic services. Viya also extends language support beyond SAS to Python, Lua and, coming, R, Java and Scala.

    At SAS Global Forum the company announced that the entire Visual suite -- Visual Analytics, Visual Statistics, Visual Data Mining & Machine Learning, Visual Investigator, Visual Forecasting, Optimization and Econometrics – can now run on Viya. Heretofore these products ran on the SAS LASR Server, which will continue to be available and supported. But if you want the combination of scalability, virtualization and multi-cloud, container-based portability and flexibility, you’ll want Viya.

    As for SAS 9, connectivity to Viya will be introduced in the third quarter, opening up big-data and machine-learning capabilities. These jobs will be sent to Viya while more routine workloads and procedures will continue to run on SAS 9.

    “If you’re processing all your jobs in less than one or two minutes, you’re fine and you don’t need to move [to Viya],” said SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight during a keynote discussion. If you need big-data or modern machine learning capabilities, “…think of Viya as an extension of SAS 9.”

    The plan is to add the more routine analytical capabilities to Viya over time, but some analyses and workloads, including mainframe (zOS) and AIX workloads, will remain tied to SAS 9 (currently on release 9.4).

    The SAS Visual portfolio can now run on the Viya architecture. I'm hoping to see software-
    as-a-service options that would appeal to new customers.

    Other important announcements at SAS Global Forum included:

    • SAS Visual Investigator 10.2: This analytic application was released in 2016, but 10.2 update offers improved search and discovery, scorecarding, alerting, entity analytics, workflow and administrative capabilities. SAS is also developing and delivering pre-built content for more than 14 investigative use cases, including child welfare, anti-money-laundering, power and energy monitoring, insider threat detection, and prescription drug abuse.
    • Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL): This SAS content helps banks deal with what’s formally known as ASU 2016-13, a new U.S. GAAP standard for credit loss accounting. CECL replaces today’s “incurred loss” approach and will become effective for SEC filers in 2020. The rules establish a lifetime loss for every loan, require point-in-time loss estimates and increased public disclosure requirements.
    • SAS-Cisco IoT Partnership: The companies have been working together for 18 months to create the Cisco SAS Edge-to-Enterprise IoT Analytics Platform. The platform includes SAS Event Stream Processing, now certified to run on CISCO UCS servers, and was launched with proof-of-concept content for the energy and mining industries.
    • SAS Results-as-a-Service: A combination of strategy and consulting services wherein SAS professionals deliver analytical solutions within weeks or months. Once a solution is approved, SAS can deploy it in the cloud or on-premises, with supporting managed services or, if desired, training and hand offs to customer teams. The service is aimed at companies that don’t have available staff or infrastructure to tackle new analytic challenges.

    MyTake on SAS Global Forum Announcements

    As I commented after last year’s Global Forum, Viya is SAS’s modern architecture as well as its answer to multiple open-source and cloud threats. The biggest threat by far is Apache Spark, which is gaining adoption quickly and is now widely available as a service on multiple public clouds. Spark software is also distributed and supported for on-premises deployment by multiple vendors, including IBM and the big-three Hadoop vendors, Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR.

    Many SAS customers are, indeed, very conservative and more concerned about continued SAS 9 support than big-data analysis or cloud-deployment options. But with an eye to the future, SAS Viya is crucial. It can’t get here soon enough, in my book, because Apache Spark, as a scalable, in-memory platform and as an elastic, pay-for-what-you-use cloud service, has been steadily gathering steam.

    In an one-on-one conversation, SAS Executive VP and CTO Oliver Schabenberger asserted that open-source alternatives lack the data-governance and model-management capabilities that many SAS customers, particularly regulated companies, insist upon. That may be, but dark warnings about governance failed to keep many BI practitioners from embracing self-service data-discovery and data-visualization products -- even before those products gained governance capabilities.

    On the topic of open source machine learning and algorithms, Schabenberger said “SAS won’t take a back seat to anybody on analytics.” But there’s no denying that the cost advantages and ecosystem strengths of the open-source model are driving huge adoption. That’s precisely why SAS opened up Viya to Python. SAS has had a lot to say, in recent years, about making free SAS software available to colleges and universities. But to a fault, customers in the sessions I attended at the Forum said their new hires tend to use open-source languages such as Python.

    If SAS governance and lifecycle-management capabilities and its analytic depth and breadth are truly superior, they’ll stand up to open-source competition. It’s clearly a topic of debate within SAS. Some executives pointed out that it’s long been possible to invoke open-source algorithms from within SAS, though they’d like to see more explicit support for Spark and other emerging options. And now that Viya is here, several execs hinted that SAS will be much more aggressive about offering SAS analytics and software as ready-to-run cloud services. These would be welcome, future-minded steps that might attract a next-generation of SAS customers, but they’re not on the official roadmap for now. I’m hoping to see more openness and more cloud services options at next year’s SAS Global Forum.

    Media Name: SAS Visual application suite.jpg
    Media Name: SAS Viya.jpg
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    SAP IoT Partnerships Focus on Next-Generation Factories

    SAP IoT Partnerships Focus on Next-Generation Factories

    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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    Constellation Insights

    SAP has long had a substantial presence in manufacturing for its ERP software, but in recent years has brought newer technologies to bear on manufacturing operations. It made two more significant moves in that direction this week at the Hannover Messe industrial trade show in Germany, announcing partnerships with Mitsubishi Electric and robotics manufacturer Kuka.

    "SAP is playing to its established strengths by adding the integration of capabilities and data between operational technology and automation to enterprise information technology systems, plus adding the Intelligence of HANA and the GUI interfaces of Fiori to create new levels of integrated functionality," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland. 

    Under the first deal, Mitsubishi will use data generated from its factory automation capabilities with SAP's IoT (Internet of Things) technology to create new services for remote device management, production monitoring and predictive maintenance.

    Mitsubishi sells products across the full spectrum of factory automation, such as programmable controllers, human-machine interfaces, power distribution products and industrial robots. It's already done some work to connect with SAP software at a deeper level, such as a connector it introduced last year that pushes shop floor data directly into SAP ERP. 

    Meanwhile, KUKA plans to integrate its robots with SAP Cloud Platform, again for scenarios such as predictive maintenance and factory floor monitoring. It will also develop robot applications based on SAP's IoT platform, but details on what functions those will focus on weren't disclosed. Finally, KUKA will incorporate some elements of SAP technology into its homegrown Industrie 4.0 platform, Connyun. 

    Overall, the goal is to connect "the top floor with the shop floor," as one SAP executive said in a statement. 

    Hannover Messe was the proper place for SAP to introduce the new partnerships, given what a prominent event it is for the world's major industrial companies. 

    The deals represent not only SAP's desire to expand further into manufacturing, but also its ongoing transition to a cloud business model. While on-premises software license sales actually rose 13 percent year over year in the first quarter, for SAP and other large software vendors, the rush is on to migrate customers to the cloud, both for operational efficiencies and over the long term, more money. Manufacturing systems generate massive amounts of data and by partnering with the likes of Mitsubishi, SAP hopes to push more workloads to its cloud services.

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