The Future of Education – From the Students’ Perspective (Part 1: Online Classes)

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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Author: Michelle Zhang

Michelle, a high school junior and one of my research assistants for the last three years, is helping me think about the future of education. Very interesting to see the perspective of students heading to college in the next year or two. These are not the issues I would have guessed -- and that's the point. Great to see how she and her colleagues are crafting their best learning environments. Great to see their counselors giving them the freedom to do so. Michelle's bio is below - TG.

Regardless of people’s opinions of online classes, they are an essential tool for students and teachers alike. For all the technological “purists,” who believe that the physical classroom will fade into obscurity in the presence of online classes, I think you’ll be waiting a while.  I don’t see the classroom going away any time soon. However, if a student with low self-confidence is taking a class that isn’t a good fit, then an online class is the long-awaited alternative to that problem. Both classroom and online classes are here to stay. Period. 

Life of College Prep for Today’s Students

The subject of college preparation brings about images of taking a huge number of Advanced Placement (AP) Courses, private counselors, and prepping for standardized tests insanely early. However, there is one thing that is seriously underestimated and often times overlooked in the college preparation process: online classes. As a high school junior, I, unlike other students at my school, do not take an insane amount of AP classes, and I am taking one class online, Pre-calculus. There has been hot debate about the existence of these online classes and how it will shape the future of education, especially at my school amongst the people I interviewed.

Photograph taken by Bahn Mi of the Schoolwatch Programme and released freely under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Benefits and Burdens of Mixing Online and Face-to-Face Classes

In my US History class, there is a new student, let’s call him Austin. In order to be able to take US History at my school, students must take World History, but he hadn’t had that class at his old school. Austin opted to take a World History class online for credits over the summer, and he was able to get it done with an “A” in two and a half months. He, like me, recognizes the flexibility that an online class brings, and says it’s great if you are missing a required class. Austin told me it is also good if one is not particularly good at that subject. He says:

History was never my forte, and if I took an actual World History class in school, I would not do as well. There is a popular belief that a student’s success in a class is completely dependent on their work ethic. That is not the case. Their success also depends on their confidence in a subject, how the teacher structures his or her curriculum, and how the teacher interacts with his or her students. If all the cards are against you, then an online class could be a good alternative.

Austin brings up a good point. As a student, there are not many variables that are in my control. I am able to choose what classes I take, but whether I will be receptive to the teacher or teaching style is not known. I decided to take Pre-calculus online as it gives me more confidence since I control the pace. For example, I can repeat a section as many times as needed. I also feel comfortable when asking a stupid question to the assigned teacher via email. Though the response is not instantaneous, I feel some anonymity thus I am more open.  

I talked to my counselor, and she let me take the class and I just completed it with a solid “A.” However, as good as online classes are, they should not completely replace the classroom as the medium in which we learn. Austin agrees with me saying,

“If a person is taking six classes, and two are online, then that is ok. Human interaction between student and teacher is necessary for future success.”

The other student I interviewed, let’s call her Elaine, has a different view on online classes. She herself has never had a problem with missing a required class. She also has never struggled in any subject. Furthermore, she did not know that students were allowed to take online classes. She says: 

An online class is a hassle because in addition to going to school every day and going home and doing homework and studying for exams, you also have to make progress in an online class. Even if out of six classes, one or two of them is online, it would still be a hassle.

Elaine’s argument is also a valid one, however, she is taking five AP classes, a gargantuan amount compared to Austin’s and my measly two AP classes. For Elaine, time is more valuable than flexibility because she simply has less of it every day. An online class and a class in school are on two different spheres, and Elaine does not want to deal with another class in a, to her, totally different sphere. That said, she does recognize that online classes are a valuable tool for learning saying,

“Online classes are a great way to make things flexible, but for people who do not have much time, it is just another thing they have to deal with”.

Flexibility, Focus, Hassle

People who value flexibility more argue that online classes open up a different avenue. People who value time more disagree saying that it takes more time to make things flexible rather than proceeding as is. To the latter, it conjures up pictures of someone who constantly has to adjust their schedule. To them, the adjustment itself wastes precious time. To others, making things flexible just means prioritizing what is important. Whether students take an online class or not is completely up them. It all depends on what they think is important, flexibility or time.

Michelle Zhang is a junior at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, CA. She began doing research at Santa Clara University with Prof. Griffith in her freshman year. Michelle is very passionate about community service. She is the President of Teach Seniors Technology (http://www.connectseniors.org/), a student-run non-profit organization, and teaches weekly classes. She likes to travel with her family, play guitar, and watch TV.

Lighting A Fire: Cisco Spark Is Building A Collaboration Ecosystem

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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One of the main topics I’ve been discussing ever since I became an analyst is the struggles people face at work caused by the use of too many tools. We use email, calendar, contacts, tasks, files, chat, audio, video, social networks, and several more applications as we connect and communicate with our colleagues. This complex cornucopia of applications results in content and people that are rarely connected, leading to a lack of context which makes it difficult to work effectively.

Three years ago Cisco started out on a project to combat some of these challenges, and that work came to life a year ago in the Cisco Spark platform. This week in San Francisco, Cisco held an event for the launch of the latest version of Cisco Spark and introduced a new conference room solution called Cisco Spark Boards. If you'd like a visual recap of the event, I've documented the major announcements in this Twitter Moment: Cisco Spark Event

The first version of Cisco Spark was primarily a group messaging application that people can access on the web or mobile devices like phones and tablets, but Cisco has been rapidly expanding functionality. Cisco Spark now includes voice calls and video calls, and with the latest enhancements not only have they improved the user interface, they have also added white boarding capability, which enables people to easily collaborate on ideas.

It’s important to note they have designed the white boarding capability of the Cisco Spark app to be very secure. When people draw, the system is not actually storing pictures of the content, but instead sending instructions representing the actions, similar to the way multiplayer video games work. So when someone draws a circle or arrow, th instructions for that action are encrypted and sent from their device to the server, then everyone else receives and decrypted those commands, resulting in the them seeing the picture.

In addition to the latest Cisco Spark enhancements, the big news of the day was the expansion of the Cisco Spark ecosystem into the physical world, with Cisco Spark Boards. These are 55 or 70 inch 4k resolution monitors that are mounted in offices or meeting rooms. They have 4k fixed lens cameras and a 12 microphone array which delivery very high resolution video and audio which they claim makes everyone in the room, no matter how close or far from the screen sound like they are sitting right next to you. The Cisco Spark Board can be used for presentations, white boarding, or video conferencing. The boards work in conjunction with the Cisco Spark app to make things easy, for example proximity detection finds all the people near the board who are using the app and can automaticly identify them.

MyPOV

There are several vendors that are doing parts of what Cisco Spark does; there are other group messaging apps, web conferencing apps, file sharing apps, whiteboards, etc. But it’s the way that Cisco is bringing this all together in a simple, secure and affordable ecosystem that makes this pretty unique.

A few of the areas that point to success for Cisco are:
1. Customers are very interested, and adoption is happening quickly. Cisco has millions of people already using WebEx and Jabber, so the potential pipeline for Cisco Spark is already there compared to vendors that have to start working with customers from scratch.
2. They are taking partner ecosystem for building integrations and bots very seriously. Last year Cisco announced $150M developer fund, followed later in the year with  Cisco Spark Depot, the catalog of applications and bots that can be added into Cisco Spark spaces. I would like to see more integration with core business applications such as CRM, office document suites, file sharing services, marketing tools, HR systems, etc. Without breaking any non-disclosure agreements, I can tell you many of these things are already in the works.
3. Vision. I often say shipping software is more important than slideware, meaning vendors need to deliver products not just tell me what their plans are. However, vision is still important and I have to say I really like what I’m hearing from Rowan Trollope (leader of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group), Jonathan Rosenberg (CTO) and several other Cisco Spark leaders. I can’t share many details with you now, but their vision and roadmap has Cisco Spark going far beyond what is currently available. For example, think about areas like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, wearable computing and more. Cisco Spark is the essentially the cornerstone of almost everything happening at Cisco, including their call centre business, WebEx, the work they are doing in IOT and more. Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins has made it clear that Cisco Spark is a linchpin for the company. Hearing this from the top of the company down, and seeing what they are building gives me confidence they will deliver on their vision.

As with any product, of course there are things missing. I’d like to see more progress in areas like project management, integration with mission critical business applications, as well as automation and workflow via AI. Cisco’s recent acquisition of Worklife (one of the top vendors list in Constellation ShortList™ Meeting Management Tools) points to them being committed to filling some of these gaps.

Guidance

When I work with Constellation’s customers and the major collaboration software vendors, I always focus on what’s needed to really change the way people work. The biggest challenge to the adoption of any new tool is not cost, security, or user interface… it’s status quo. People are used to working the way they do, and unless they can be shown significant benefits to changing, they won’t budge. I really like what I’m seeing in the Cisco Spark platform, and I think their focus on simplicity, integration and security is creating a solution that every customer should have on their shortlist to evaluate.  

Have a few minutes to spare? Take Constellation's 2017 Digital Transformation Survey. Constellation will send you a summary of the results. 

Digital Workflows a Key Part of a Digital Transformation

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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New research report, Nintex: Creating Workflows that Enable Digital Transformation, provides a vendor profile and buyer's guide of Nintex

As companies take on digital transformation, they need to consider the people (their skills and backgrounds), the processes (have they made them digital or they still doing things on spreadsheets?) and the technology (to enable the company to be more digitally oriented.)

A digital workflow and content automation platform that improves the way people work can help make this transition easy. This type of software needs to enable point and click workflow automation to handle everything from basic business functions to company-wide processes with a few clicks. 

In addition to WCA, the digital business platform also needs to have analytics. Why? Because the business will want to monitor the workflows and determine which ones are working well and which processes still need improving. (Most of the time companies don’t look to see if a process they have implemented is effective or efficient). In a new research report, I delve into the capabilities and examine the impact of a digital workflow/content automation platform, Nintex. 

Let’s say you wanted to see how well your expense claims process was working. In the figure below, Nintex Hawkeye is used for expense claim processing;  to look at claims submitted and service level agreement infringements data to sharing among the management to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the expense claim process.

         Dashboard for Expense Claims Submitted

Not only can a company automate a workflow digitally, but they can also monitor, capture and share the process performance for expense claims. The company can see number of claims submitted (677), the amount of expense claims submitted ($1.41M), the average expense claim amount submitted ($2.08K) and what the SLAs infringements were (1996). They can also see how the average expense claim is rising in cost each year (bar chart) and the departments who are submitting the expense reports (the circle graphic.) In this one simple example, a company can take what used to be a manual or somewhat manual process, make it completely digital as well as provide analytics around how well the process is working.

Nintex’s user interface eliminates the need for complicated coding and training for lines of business, system integrators, and IT departments as they pursue digital transformation. In addition, the workflow analytics allow companies to more effectively optimize workflows across organizations, be more productive and intelligent, correct ineffective or inefficient workflows, and thus increase revenue as well as decrease costs.

In evaluating the value of digital transformation software, it is important to look at departments that drive revenue and affect customers. High return on investment (ROI) use cases are processes that involve content (documents, forms, records, etc.) for which requests for further automation and process improvement may take a long time for IT to accommodate.

To successfully compete in this increasingly digital world, enterprises need to transform their slow, error-prone operations from manual, analog processes to automated digital workflows and document generation. As companies consider their journey to a digital workplace, they will need to consider how they are going to transform all their processes that were once done on paper or in spreadsheets, to a fully digital process. A digital business platform is a great place to start. For more on this report, please click here.

Have a few minutes to spare? Take Constellation's 2017 Digital Transformation Survey. Constellation will send you a summary of the results. 

Preventing Digital Disruption with Workflows

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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New research report, Nintex: Creating Workflows that Enable Digital Transformation, provides a vendor profile and buyer's guide of Nintex

Disruption surrounds the marketplace. As companies face disruption in their industry, the race to stay ahead of or beat the competition is quickening. Software is one of the ways companies competitively automate, manage and analyze business processes, data and content and scale operations. And to successfully compete in this increasingly digital world, enterprises need to transform slow, error-prone operations from manual, analog processes to automated digital workflows and document generation.

However, as various departments in companies buy software applications, often the lines of business are choosing the best of breed solutions and platforms which don’t necessarily easily integrate with each other or the main IT systems. This results in companies having many separate software systems. With people distributed over large geographies, it can be difficult to coordinate work across the business and thus defend against competitors.

While obtaining the right software for each department and use case is important, this often leaves the organization without a way to easily connect the work flows across departments and lines of business to get the return on investment. What is the key to winning the digital transformation race? A digital business process flow platform.

Businesses that drive process efficiency and effectiveness across desperate software solutions and across every aspect of their business will be uniquely qualified to position themselves to exceed and excel. To do this, companies need a platform to digitally integrate, sync and create sophisticated business processes independent of the variety of different software solutions throughout the various departments in a company.

The issue is however, not just to connect SaaS applications, but to also provide process automation to make sure the processes from each of those applications work together well. Without a digital workflow and content automation (WCA) platform and corresponding analytics, it can be very difficult to make sure the investments the organization has made in separate software solutions are actually returning the investment. Nintex does just that.

Competitive Positioning

Nintex’s key differentiator is they offer a digital transformation platform comprised of Nintex Workflow Cloud and Nintex Hawkeye. The host of Nintex’s digital SaaS connectors allows clients to rapidly build and deploy a digital workflow and content automation (WCA) and cloud transformation platform without having to write code. The business result is the ability to acquire customers faster, increase the pace of innovation, as well as control and management expenses. The platform allows organizations to automate their business processes quickly and easily. And the drag and drop interface encourages quicker adoption of the Nintex solution. Importantly, any workflow automated with Nintex Workflow can be deployed to native mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows) in a rapid and simple manner.

The Nintex platform automates processes on and between enterprise content management systems and collaboration platforms, connecting on-premises, cloud workflows and mobile users. Two hundred of the Fortune 500 companies use Nintex, including more than 7,000 public and private organizations in 90 countries, running millions of workflows daily.

For companies that are not ready to move everything to the cloud, Nintex also allows companies to create workflows that stretch across both cloud-based and on-premises systems and services, to distribute work to multiple sites for multiple purposes and move data and workflows to the cloud when they are ready.

Nintex’s overall power is as a Digital Business Platform (DBP). Nintex combines powerful Workflow and Content Automation (WCA) capabilities in one platform. (Editor’s Note: WCA is an emerging technology category that consolidates the legacy technology markets of Business Process Management (BPM) and Customer Communications Management (CCM).) Nintex offers advanced WCA for its easy-to-use workflow and document generation capabilities and workflow analytics (workflow process intelligence).

Target Markets and Industry Vertical Solutions

Target markets include Communications and Media, Education, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Legal, Manufacturing, Professionals Services, Retail Services and Technology industries. Nintex solutions are designed for a range of lines of business within organizations, including Sales and Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, IT and Administration, Customer Service, Field Service and Safety.

High-payback document processes that are faster to implement with a system like Nintex include those in Table 1, customer-facing processes as well as back-office processes (see Table 2b and 2b.) What’s important to note is that the implementation timeframe and costs are fractions of a traditional enterprise-level IT system and instead of using a single, formal, top-down development effort, they are evolved with rapid iterations. This takes a page out of the lean-process, design-thinking community, where rapid iterations and pivoting is key to success and gives large organizations not used to the start-up mentality the edge to be more competitive, quicker.

Customer References

In speaking to Nintex customers our research found that many of the gains came from having an easy process to execute on their digital transformation. This might include moving to the cloud, reducing the number and complexity of workflows like creating and approving a press release, signing and approving contracts, reducing resources and reassigning them to more important jobs as well as reducing the number of software applications used by the company.

The savings in time for enhanced workflows advanced the company’s position in the marketplace, get to market faster and beat the competition. In addition, IT departments were able to be more focused on the needs of the business versus being taxed with the maintenance of many separate software applications. This took their time and focus away from the direct needs of the business. By implementing Nintex, the relationship between the lines of business and IT were greatly improved. With the ever changing dynamics in IT, the IT department needs to be highly agile and flexible in the solutions they provide for the business. Nintex provides IT with what they need to deliver the business what they need. This makes IT more relevant than ever, which is especially key when many lines of business are buying their own software. IT can play a key role in the success of the business.

Are you looking to digitally transform your business? Have you determined which processes are slowing the digital transformation of your business? And do you have a solution to take those manual, error-prone processes and digitally enable them? This report will help you in choosing a vendor that can help you with just that.

Have a few minutes to spare? Take Constellation's 2017 Digital Transformation Survey. Constellation will send you a summary of the results. 

Oracle Preps AI Apps, Next Steps for Data Cloud

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 will launch the first of its machine-learning powered Adaptive Intelligent Apps this spring, but what’s next for Oracle Data Cloud? Here’s a look at promised and possible use cases.

The first of five promised Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Application (AI Apps) will be generally available this spring. As for next steps for the petabyte-scale treasure trove known as the Oracle Data Cloud, we’ll have to wait and see.

The AI App plans emerged at the January 17 Oracle Cloud Analyst Summit in New York. The event also saw Oracle’s President, Thomas Kurian, repeat a year-old promise that the Oracle Data Cloud will see use in Oracle applications outside of the marketing domain. Oracle AI Apps are, in fact, part of the story of what’s next for Oracle Data Cloud, as I’ll explain, but first let’s review each offering.

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications

The first of five planned Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications is expected to
launch this spring.

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications are the vendor’s entry into the hot, fast-growing category of “smart” applications variously associated with artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and (usually most accurately) machine learning. AI Apps will be optional (extra-cost) applications complementing Oracle’s customer experience, human capital management, supply chain management and ERP software as a service (SaaS) clouds.

Announced last September at Oracle Open World, AI Apps will be adaptive in that they will continually capture and learn from new data as it is generated. They’ll be intelligent in that they will make recommendations or take actions based on transactional and behavioral histories as well as real-time interactions and conditions, including time, weather and location. Here are the five apps and associated SaaS clouds:

• CX Cloud: Adaptive Intelligent Offers and Adaptive Intelligent Actions
• HCM Cloud: Adaptive Intelligent Candidate Experience
• SCM Cloud: Adaptive Intelligent Planning &Bidding
• ERP Cloud: Adaptive Intelligent Discounts

The new news at the Oracle Cloud Analyst Summit was that the first AI App, Adaptive Intelligent Offers, will launch this spring. Clive Swan, senior VP, applications development, said that two to three additional AI Apps will be available later this year.

Swan also briefly described the machine learning service that will power the AI Apps, explaining that it will automate personalization for each customer through auto feature selection, auto feature engineering and auto hyperparameter tuning. “This lets us scale operationally without data science intervention on a per-customer basis,” he said.

MyPOV on Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps

As I detail in my in-depth report, Inside Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps, it takes Web-scale data, massive compute capacity, advanced data science capabilities and lots of time to develop machine-learning driven applications that can deliver smart recommendations or, even-better, automated actions. Oracle has the data it needs, starting with aggregated and customer-specific histories from its respective SaaS clouds. But this is also where the Oracle Data Cloud comes in, with its petabytes of data, billions of consumer profiles, 400 million professional profiles and 100 million business profiles. The data is already modeled and ready for use in supporting sales, marketing and service decisions. Oracle also has vast and growing cloud compute capacity, with 19 data centers around the globe and counting.

Data science and time seem to be the only holdups on AI Apps. Oracle’s official announcement at Oracle Open World noted that it would take 12 to 18 months to deliver AI Apps. The spring release now expected would be six to eight months after the announcement. As Swan explained it, time was needed to develop and test the automated machine learning capabilities.

Among the vendors exploring AI, Oracle’s app-centric strategy mostly closely matches that of Salesforce. The latter says it spent more than two years developing the automated machine learning behind the Salesforce Einstein apps announced last fall. Salesforce also spent more than $4 billion on AI-related acquisitions last year. This has contributing to the company’s head start. As I detail in this blog, Salesforce has 11 Einstein apps that are generally available, six more due in February and an 15 additional apps expected before the end of the year.

Oracle contrasts its strategy with that of Salesforce noting that it’s apps will include supervisory controls that will enable business users to boost, constrain or even override machine-generated results to fine-tune results and meet specific business objectives. Oracle also says its apps won’t be limited to the sales, service and marketing domains, although it, too, is starting with customer-experience related applications.

Oracle says it will eventually have many more than five AI Apps, but for now, Salesforce has the advantage in terms of availability and diversity of AI apps.

Oracle Data Cloud

Oracle ID Graph is a feature of Oracle Data Cloud that enables tracking of unique
consumer behaviors and, thus, targeted marketing across channels.

It’s no coincidence that the next step for Oracle AI Apps – into the HCM, SCM and ERP domains – are also the next frontier for Oracle Data Cloud. Built on the acquisitions of Blue Kai, DataLogix, Add This and Crosswise, Oracle Data Cloud has heretofore been all about powering data-driven campaigns and marketing data enrichment. With the Oracle ID Graph capability, Data Cloud also helps marketers better recognize, understand and target consumers and business professionals across devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) and across channels (web sites, email, mobile apps, social networks).

It was at last year’s Cloud Analyst Summit that Kurian first vowed that Oracle Data Cloud enrichment opportunities would extend beyond marketing and into HCM, SCM, ERP and other areas. At last week’s event Kurian was asked about progress, and he reiterated that more is to come.

“We didn’t just get into the data business; we wanted to solve a high-value problem,” Kurian said, talking at length about the value of Oracle ID Graph. “Oracle Data Cloud lets us drive differentiated business process outcomes… [and] they’re not just marketing centric.” He cited procurement, replenishment and HR as potential use cases for ID Graph.

MyPOV on Expanding the Footprint of Oracle Data Cloud

Whether it’s Oracle AI Apps or the Oracle Data Cloud, applications outside of the marketing and sales domains are going to take longer for Oracle to develop. Oracle added business-to-business data to Oracle Data Cloud late last summer, and the associated business and professional profiles would presumably help drive SCM, ERP and, possibly, HCM use cases. Oracle also expects to exploit aggregated data from its various SaaS applications, but that may require new data agreements before the company can tap yet more data to bring context and insight to smart applications.

For now, Oracle Data Cloud is an incredibly powerful and unique resource for marketers, but its potential as an engine for AI Apps and conventional apps outside of the CRM realm has yet to be realized. I have no doubt that Oracle will get there, but it’s an objective that remains on the horizon.

Have a few minutes to spare? Take Constellation's 2017 Digital Transformation Survey. Constellation will send you a copy of the results. 

Zoom Video Conferencing Raises $100M

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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On Jan 17, web-conferencing vendor Zoom raised $100M  (series D) from Sequoia capital. I spoke to Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan about this new funding, about the integration of AI into conferencing and more.

Have a few minutes to spare? Take Constellation's 2017 Digital Transformation Survey. Constellation will send you a summary of the results. 

2017; Industrial Technology vendors v the IT Technology vendors in the competition for the Enterprise IoT Market

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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Footnote; Constellation Research is not making a recommendation for any of the listed vendors whose inclusion is purely illustrative of the point being made in the blog;- 2017; Industrial Technology vendors v the IT Technology vendors in the competition for the Enterprise IoT Market

http://m.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2457089/it-decision-makers-undecided-on-who-should-lead-internet-of-things-initiatives-research

Planview Acquired by Thoma Bravo

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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The social task management market is hot! Last week Atlassian purchased Trello for $425M, and today private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired Planview, maker of Trello competitor ProjectPlace. (their product portfolio also includes Innotas, Troux and Planview Enterprise)

I discussed today's news and future plans with Planview's Chief Product Officer, Patrick Tickle.

I first wrote about this market in 2012 in the Constellation Research report: Getting Work Done With Social Task Management. More recently we've published two Constellation ShortLists™  Social Task Management: Enterprise Suites With Project Features and Social Task Management: Stand-alone vendors that highlight the key vendors in this space. These recent acquisitions validate the importance of social task management as one of the critical tools employees should be using to organize, prioritize, and collaborate on their work.

Today's acquisition gives Planview a huge boost to drive their next major stage of growth.  Constellation Research will be monitoring their progress in both new product innovation and customer success.

Wordfence Launches Cyber Attack Activity Report

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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• DDOS – distributed denial of service attacks engage networks of computers to bombard your server with requests
• Brute force attacks – where the attacker attempts to guess your login details usually using an automated system that can send hundreds if not thousands of requests very quickly
• Malware / spyware – where a piece of malicious code is inserted into your system which allows another person (or a program) to take over your computer
• Ransomware – where a small program activates on your computer, encrypting all your data requiring the payment of ransom before you are sent a key to unlock your own machine.

Despite the relative openness and transparency on the web, few people or firms openly talk about cyber attack. This means it is difficult to gauge just how widespread these cyber attacks actually are and whether we should be personally or professionally concerned about this phenomenon.
Now, each month, creator of the WordPress firewall plugin, WordFence, have begun producing a regular report on cyber attacks. This report collates attack information based on the plugin’s install base (WordPress powered websites and blogs all around the world). And while this is just a subset of websites and platforms that live on the internet, it provides a great insight into cyber attacks, including:

• The IP address from which the attack originated
• Country of origination
• Number of attacks launched
• Types of attacks.

This first report reveals that 13 out of the top 25 IP addresses originate in the Ukraine. France comes in second with 7. As the report explains:

Most of these originate from Iliad Enterprises. Iliad is a large organization with many subsidiaries and over 4000 employees. They tried to buy T-Mobile in the USA 2 years ago. The netblock for these IPs is registered to Iliad, but the attacks may originate from one of many subsidiaries of Iliad, like the ISP ‘Free’ in France.

• 63 million complex attacks – attempts to exploit weaknesses in your website code, plugins or database
• 67 million brute force attacks – attempts to guess your passwords and user IDs.

• Regularly patching your site – updating it with the latest changes
• Regularly updating your plugins – turn off the plugins and functionality that you don’t use, and update the ones you do.

• Complex user passwords – require that your users all have complex passwords that consist of upper and lower case characters, numbers and symbols and have a substantial length (more than 8 characters)
• Put in place a mechanism that blocks users after a small number of unsuccessful login attempts
• Add a web firewall to monitor and protect your code from unauthorised updates.

Why should you care?

Virginia Tech Fights Zika With High-Performance Prediction

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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Here’s how Persistent Systems aided the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech in using analytics to predict and help prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

What’s the best weapon to fight the spread of infectious disease? For the epidemiologists at The Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (BI-VT), it’s data.

BI-VT helps U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and Center for Disease Control to predict, prepare for, and prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola and Zika. With help from Persistent Systems (Persistent), BI-VT has dramatically increased the speed, scalability and accuracy of its analytical modeling and simulation environment.

The Biocomplexity Institute’s EpiCaster app, which was co-developed by Persistent
Systems, is an intuitive, public website for tracking flu and other diseases.

The collaboration between BI-VT and Persistent is the topic of my latest case study research, Persistent Systems Helps Virginia Tech Accelerate Predictive Simulation. This 14-page case study should be of interest to any analytics professional interested in using high-performance computing, speeding time to analysis, tapping new data types, or opening up analysis capabilities to non-technical users. With help from Persistent, BI-VT achieved all of the above.

With leadership from Professor Madhav Marathe, Director of the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL) at the Biocomplexity Institute, BI-VT has pioneered graph simulation techniques that have vastly improved the prediction and prevention of disease outbreaks. But you don’t have to be an epidemiologist to appreciate the obstacles BI-VT had to overcome. For example, the simulations initially required complex, manual coding for each one of scores of high-performance computing jobs. What’s more, iterative analyses took a day or more to run, and the analytical tools were usable only by the few experts. Sound familiar?

The first step to addressing these challenges was creating a middleware layer that abstracted and automated the coding and iterative complexities of BI-VT’s data-analysis environment. The software engineers at Persistent helped turn a slow, manual workflow into a streamlined, reliable and resilient production system. Persistent also developed graphical user interface applications (such as the EpiCaster app seen above) that have made the system accessible to non-technical analyst and even the general public.

Over more than a decade of tracking diseases ranging from H1N1 and SARS to, more recently, Ebola and Zika, BI-VT has been able to simulate and recommend data-supported interventions and containment steps, many of which have been implemented by government agencies. Examples include administering antiviral drugs to emergency personnel, inoculating the young and aged, spraying pesticides to curb mosquito populations, and encouraging the public to stay indoors.

To find out more about BI-VT, winner of the Constellation Research 2016 SuperNova Award in the Data-to-Decisions category, click on the "download excerpt" button on this page. The excerpt includes the table of contents, executive summary and introductory section of the case study.

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