3 Must-Reads for Enterprise Leaders Starting with @RealDonaldTrump Era

Director of Customer Programs, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Carole oversees the Constellation Executive Network, an executive community for innovative senior leaders who value strategic guidance from trusted advisors who understand the power of disruptive technologies. Carole brings over 15 years of marketing, strategic account management, and operations experience, specializing in high technology and professional services. She holds a BA from Santa Clara University and a MBA from Thunderbird, School of Global Management.     ...

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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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If you're an enterprise business leader, not a day goes by where you don't see content everywhere. The real issue rests on which content is mission-critical to helping you run your business better? Take a look at these 3 quick posts of premium Constellation Insights content recommended by our managing editor, Chris Kanaracus, that reveal what is valuable to know, given today's political, economic, and societal environment now that we've initiated the unexpected installation of our latest POTUS, Donald Trump. 

Chris K's Top 3 Must-Reads for November 2016

1. News Analysis: America in a @RealDonaldTrump Era – Everything International Clients Need to Know PESTEL Part 1
2. What's Next? Household IoT Devices Used as Path to Hack Smartphones
3. Oracle Closes Its $9.3 Billion NetSuite Acquisition: Now What?

Why Is This Important? 

1. News Analysis: America in a @RealDonaldTrump Era – Everything International Clients Need to Know PESTEL Part 1

Analyst: R "Ray" Wang, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: Ray's post is a sterling example of the type of in-depth, yet rapid turnaround analysis Constellation can deliver on topics of the utmost importance that fall outside core advisory proficiencies on topics such as digital transformation. 

Constellation can not only advise you on technology strategies but also give a 360 degree view of the bigger picture. Also, while the post was targeted at international clients, there's plenty of insights in it for U.S. companies as well.

2. What's Next? Household IoT Devices Used as Path to Hack Smartphones

Analyst: Andy Mullholland, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: It's almost absurd—researchers managed to use Belkin WeMo smart home devices, everything from coffee pots to light bulbs, to tap into users' smartphones and control many aspects of them. How'd they do it? Through Belkin's WeMo app. 

Our VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland, who leads Constellation's research into IoT, says it's time for a call to action. As he puts it, "Let's not fool ourselves by pretending each of these stories is evidence of an individual product failure when the reality is that the rules have changed, exposing a huge number of devices to wholly unexpected conditions."

If your company has an IoT strategy in the works—and who doesn't—you can work with Andy on both highly technical aspects of it, as well as to develop a sound governance framework. 

3. Oracle Closes Its $9.3 Billion NetSuite Acquisition: Now What?

Analysts: Holger Mueller, R "Ray" Wang, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: Relatively few large enterprises are planning to rip and replace their core ERP systems. It's just too expensive and time-consuming. But many are considering two-tier ERP strategies as a path to innovation, using modern systems typically aimed at small and midmarket customers in new divisions and subsidiaries, then tying them back to the core.

That's one reason Oracle spent so much money to buy NetSuite. It also wants to go after the SMB business it hasn't really had in ERP. Growth companies are investing in ERP for their primary solution and Oracle wants to get in on the ground floor. 

There are many good choices for midmarket ERP, however, from the likes of Microsoft, Infor and to an extent, Workday. That's going to make future selections more complicated affairs. Our analysts can help you make those selection from both a technology and contract negotiation standpoint.

New IBM Bluemix Services Help Organizations Accelerate Data Migration to the Cloud

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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IBM has been more quietly and less loudly build out its BlueMix PaaS platform, the press release from earlier in the week is a good reminder on the progress that IBM has made.

 

 

So time to dissect the press release in our customary style (it can be found here):

ARMONK, N.Y. - 18 Nov 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced several cloud data services and features on Bluemix designed to help organizations accelerate the migration of their data to the cloud and more easily generate business insights.

MyPOV – Data is the true sticky factor in all IT. True on premises and true for cloud. Moving it from on premises to cloud (and later between clouds) is a key success factor for all IaaS and PaaS players.

Organizations look to the cloud as a powerful engine to collect and interpret vast amounts of data. However, many are struggling to move their already existing datasets to the cloud, as well as retain control of where they reside and how they are accessed. Without the right tools in place, the problem will only get worse as the amount of data continues to grow. According to […], the amount of high-value data worth analyzing will double by 2020, and much of this data will be in the form of complex, unstructured information.

MyPOV – The unpredictability of the data grown couple with the inability to size the deployments is what is attractive for enterprise to move to IaaS.

 

Now available on Bluemix, IBM Decision Optimization, Bluemix Lift and dashDB for Transactions can help organizations overcome this challenge and make more informed business decisions by enabling them to more easily aggregate, ingest and analyze expanding workloads.
“Cloud is the platform that enables cognitive intelligence,” said John Murphy, Vice President, IBM Watson Data Platform. “We’re continuing to grow our catalog of cloud data services on Bluemix so that we can help developers and data scientists better manage and more quickly interpret data for business innovation.

MyPOV – Ok – the cat is out of the bag – we know what this press release is about – three new capabilities coming to Bluemix, and a good quote from Murphy.
 

The services include: IBM Decision Optimization on Cloud (including the CPLEX engines) is now in beta on Bluemix. It can ingest large amounts of data including predictions, master and transactional data, business goals, and business rules to prioritize and rank business decisions such as plans and schedules. Applicable across all industries, including manufacturing, utilities, finance and retail, this powerful tool offers the ability to trade-off conflicting business goals while balancing resource limitations to make more informed decisions. This offering includes the CPLEX Optimizer Engines and can run as a standalone, embedded in applications using a Rest API, or be used in Jupyter Notebooks within IBM's Data Science Experience.

MyPOV – Data Scientists and developers experienced with CPLEX will rejoice. The proven C library (yes it has C#, Java and Python options, too) is a prime example how assets from the traditional on premises world can create value in the cloud. Python will get particular interest a the language of choince for many data scientists.
 

For example, consider a major clothing retailer in need of restocking its winter coat supply. Local warehouses might be very low in stock, and shipping and transferring supplies from international locations could incur costly fees. Using Decision Optimization, a retail planner could automatically get recommendations and choose the most cost-effective replenishment plan, considering all possible suppliers, warehouses, shipping lanes, and costs, without having to do a potentially time-consuming manual "what-if" analysis or manual comparison of options.

MyPOV – Always good to see a showcase in a press release. The mostly linear programming usage of CPLEX makes it easier to move to cloud, as only the platform changes not the algorithm.. and enterprises like it when not too many things get changed at the same time… they have a business to run.
 

IBM Bluemix Lift is a data migration tool to quickly, securely and reliably migrate databases from existing on-premises data centers to IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson Data Platform. Bluemix Lift encrypts data being transferred, helping to securely move it at a rate of up to ten times faster than traditional offerings. The technology is also designed to minimize downtime, so that applications using the source database can run uninterrupted during migration. In addition, Lift has been designed to be highly reliable, enabling data transfers to keep flowing even during a connectivity loss.

MyPOV – To run analytics in the cloud – you need to get the data there… good to see a Bluemix service that scales, is secure etc. Key services to get adoption of Bluemix.
 

IBM dashDB for Transactions is a fully managed SQL database service on IBM Bluemix, optimized for transactional and web workloads to help developers fuel cloud-based applications. It offers high availability on selected plans, as well as pay-per-use units. It is part of IBM’s dashDB portfolio, offering a workload-optimized database environment designed to meet both the data warehousing and transactional needs of applications.
To get started with these services, visit the Bluemix Developers Catalog for IBM Bluemix Lift,Decision Optimization, and dashDB for Transactions.

MyPOV – A lot of the relevant load for enterprises remains in SQL databases… and transferring from on premises production to in the cloud analysis is slow and expensive. So vendors need to convince enterprises that they can run production SQL loads in the cloud, and therefore dashDB for Transaction is important for IBM.
 

Bluemix, IBM's Cloud platform, has grown rapidly to become one of the largest open, public cloud deployments in the world. Based in open standards, it features over 150 advanced technologies and services, including 35 cloud data services and a roster of others spanning categories of cognitive computing, blockchain, Internet of Things, DevOps and security.

MyPOV – Good summary of the Bluemix progress. Customer count / active deployments would be good to see here, too.
 

Overall MyPOV

The race for cloud load is in full swing and PaaS is a key offering for vendors to get enterprises on their respective cloud infrastructures. Coupled with the need of building their own applications to take advantage of the new best practices in the 21st century, PaaS is likely to make a difference which cloud / IaaS to choose. But at the end of the day it is all about the data, that comes from production systems. Making it easier to transfer the data, analyze the data and monitor it once in the cloud is key – and IBM has made three key steps with the offerings of this press release – IBM Decision Optimization, IBM Bluemix Lift and IBM dashDB for Transactions.

On the concern side, IBM has now show traction with enterprises to use these new services. Being able to leverage existing, proven and trusted algorithms with CPLEX (all the way to pre ILOG days) is an asset – as it takes concerns and costs out of the move to cloud. And to be fair – every new offering needs its first customers.

For now, good move by IBM to make Bluemix and IBM Cloud more attractive to enterprises.


More on IBM:
 

 

 

• Event Report - IBM World of Watson - IBM's bets its future on Watson - read here
• Progress Report - IBM Alliances Insights - Deep Plans, now it is execution time - read here - read here
• News Analysis - Workday, IBM Form Strategic Partnership on the IBM Cloud - The IaaS vendor race for SaaS load is on - read here
• News Analysis - IBM Boosts Support to OpenStack's RefStack... first serious attempt to make OpenStack interoperability real - read here
• Event Report - IBM Interconnect - IBM innovates and partners into the hybrid cloud era - read here
• News Analysis - IBM and VMware announce partnership to accelerate enterprise hybrid cloud adoption >> Looking promising - read here
• Event Preview - IBM Interconnect 2016 - read here
• Site Visit - IBM Design Studio Austin - read here
• MarketMoves - IBM strikes 3x in Fall - Cleversafe, The Weather Company and Gravitant - read here
• News Analysis - IBM launches Industry's First Consulting Practice Dedicated to Cognitive Business - a good move it's early times - read more
• News Analysis - IBM plans to acquire Cleversafe to propel Object Storage into the Hybrid Cloud >> a good move. Read here
  Market Move - IBM acquires StrongLoop - nodejs comes to BlueMix - read here
• News Analysis - IBM and ARM Collaborate to Accelerate Delivery of Internet of Things - The IBM NextGenApps Stack emerges - read here
• Progress Report - IBM Cloud makes good progress - but needs to attract more load - read here
• Market Move - IBM gets into private cloud (services) with Blue Box acqusition - read here
• Event Report - IBM InterConnect - IBM makes bets for the hybrid cloud - read here
• First Take - IBM InterConnect Day #1 Keynote - BlueMix, SoftLayer and Watson - read here
• News Analysis - IBM had a very good year in the cloud - 2015 will be key - read here
• Event Report - IBM Insight 2014 - Is it all coming together for IBM in 2015? Or not? 
• First Take - Top 3 Takeaways from IBM Insight Day 1 Keynote - read here
• IBM and SAP partner for cloud - good move - read here
• Event Report - IBM Enterprise - A lot of value for existing customers, but can IBM attract net new customers? Read here
• Progress Report - The Mainframe is alive and kicking - but there is more in IBM STG - read here
• News Analysis - IBM and Intel partner to make the cloud more secure - read here
• Progress Report - IBM BigData an Analytics have a lot of potential - time to show it - read here
• Event Report - What a difference a year makes - and off to a good start - read here
• First Take - 3 Key Takeaways from IBM's Impact Conference - Day 1 Keynote - read here
• Another week and another Billion - this week it's a BlueMix Paas - read here
• First take - IBM makes Connection - introduces the TalentSuite at IBM Connect - read here
• IBM kicks of cloud data center race in 2014 - read here
• First Take - IBM Software Group's Analyst Insights - read here
• Are we witnessing one of the largest cloud moves - so far? Read here
• Why IBM acquired Softlayer - read here

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Google enters enterprise software space with Google Jobs API

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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Hidden in an overall update on its vast Machine Learning portfolio of last week (see the blog here) was an unusual use case for a vendor like Google - a Jobs API. Clearly a foray into the enterprise application space, HCM in general and Recruiting in detail.

 

 

There is one fundamental problem at the heart of every job search and every recruiting drive - the search for jobs and the search for candidates. Google tries to address the first part - with an improvement in the search for jobs. It has received good validation and is being tested by veritable recruiting vendors CareerBuilder, Dice and Jibe. 

 

Not surprising for search giant Google to pick this challenge. Also not surprising it all starts with ontologies, Google uses two of them: A three tiered occupation ontology (based on the O*Net Standard Occupational Classification) and a skill ontology of over 50k hard and soft skills (how important they are see e.g.  here - Workday acquired Identified). The magic then lies into mapping these two to each other, which Google does in a third step. 

 

A visualization of the occupation ontology - from Google web site - here

It's the third step where Machine Learning really unfolds its power. Google states that its vector for job titles is 100k dimensions big, based on an analysis of 17M job posts. Beyond human grasp and likely also beyond any single project based modelling by a single or team of data scientists. 

 

MyPOV

 

Good to see Google using expertise and moving it towards enterprise applications. One more offering that helps Google move the conversation towards the enterprise, something the vendor desparately wants to foster, grow and ultimately monetize. Good to see uptake and pilots by CareerBuilder, Dice and Jibe. Ultimately also another avenue to get more load into Google Cloud, something the vendor is equally interested in. Finally it is likely the API can be applied also for the reverse search - finding the right candidate - but that's something we will have to wait for Google to provide. In that case some privacy questions will loom...

 

On the concern side it is one more component that may break a Talent Acquisition system. But probably Google can scale more and better than the data science teams at relatively smaller vendors, ultimately given the overall system more stability. 

 

Finally it's an inflection point. Google has probably a lead when it comes to overall machine learning from both an algorithm and platform (with TensorFlow and GPU architectures) - but it has not forayed into enterprise software. Congrats on the first step and we will be watching. 

 

 

 

 

More about Google:

• Event Report - Google I/O 2016 - Android N soon, Google assistant sooner and VR / AR later - read here
• First Take - Google Google I/O 2016 - Day #1 Keynote - Enterprise Takeaways - read here
• Event Preview - Google's Google I/O 2016 - read here
• Event Report – Google Google Cloud Platform Next – Key Offerings for (some of) the enterprise - read here
• First Take - Google Cloud Platform - Takeaways Day #1 Keynote - read here
• News Analysis - Google launches Cloud Dataproc - read here
• Musings - Google re-organizes - will it be about Alpha or Alphabet Soup? Read here
• Event Report - Google I/O - Google wants developers to first & foremost build more Android apps - read here
• First Take - Google I/O Day #1 Keynote - it is all about Android - read here
• News Analysis - Google does it again (lower prices for Google Cloud Platform), enterprises take notice - read here
• News Analyse - Google I/O Takeaways Value Propositions for the enterprise - read here 
• Google gets serious about the cloud and it is different - read here
• A tale of two clouds - Google and HP - read here
• Why Google acquired Talaria - efficiency matters - read here

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my Youtube channel here. 

 

 

 

 

 

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

What is your Twitter Persona?

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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A blog I have meant to write since a long time, being a heavy user of Twitter... related to how reputation and follower dynamic on Twitter are working out - from my vantage point... so let's muse about this...

 

 

 

One of the unique things of Twitter (e.g. compared to Facebook or LinkedIn) is that it shows a users Follower / Following numbers prominently and more importantly it gates progress in regards of following other users on follow back. If memory does not fool me, Twitter installed these limits to avoid abuse and spam. E.g. there is / was a gate a 2000 people followed, where you could only follow more people once your own follower count would pass 2000 followers. So Twitter strives for balanced users - ultimately.

 

With this as a background, when looking at a Twitter use, there are four 'personas' - you can pick them out by the relationship of followed vs. following:

 

• The Twitter NewBie - characterized by a substantial lead of users followed vs. users following. I think every Twitter user starts like this... at the end of the day you need to follow other users to get going. The first users followed is an interesting insight for anyone who wants to do some social analysis of anyone on Twitter.
   
• The likely Spammer - characterized by a 10x+ relationship of following vs. followed. These are the dark side of Twitter, often not human accounts.. but they play a role - as you will later see.
   
• The Hoarder - characterized by a 5x+ relationship of followers vs. following. These are the Twitter users who have 'made it' in the classical sense of reputation management - with other users following them, but them not following back. At some point - e.g. for news organizations and the big celebrities - it is impossible to follow back... that creates an imbalance in the Twitter equilibrium.
   
• The Social User - characterized by an almost even count of followers vs following. The difference being human error, and often the spammers that aren't followed back.
    

MyPOV

Twitter is practically a null sum game for all users from a follower / following perspective ... Imbalanced follower / following accounts trigger their inverse in single or across multiple accounts, as users try to get over the gated hurdles that Twitter has setup... so the Hoarder creates the opportunity for the Spammer... So in my view Twitter would do better in case it would motivate more balanced follower / following ratios. Some of the problems are Twitter self inflicted, as it does not do a good job to help, assist and teach users from managing the Home feed efficiently. 

 

For me I stayed in the Social User category... my following count is less than 10% under my follower count and I routinely go over my followers and follow back based on a few criteria... check my tweets. 

 

What is your Twitter persona?

 

 

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

The Polarization Epidemic

Chris Meyer

Chris Meyer is a thought leader focusing on the information economy, globalization and business innovation. His latest book is "Standing on the Sun".
Got Nerve

Chris's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as an entrepreneur, executive, consultant, author, and the leader of a think tank.

 Based on the ideas in his 2002 book Future Wealth, Chris developed a plan for a business based on a network of thought leaders. He joined The Monitor Group in 2006 to develop this idea as Monitor Networks, where he was Chief Executive from 2004 to 2009. In 2006, he co-founded Monitor Talent, to take these ideas forward operationally. Prior to joining Monitor Group, he was the Director of the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, from 1995 until its closing in December 2002. The Center fostered the conversation of leading issues among the business community, developed public conferences,…...

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Terrific NYT infographic -- the colored counties are those whose presidential votes were "landslides" i.e. the winner 20% or more above the loser. The maps look like Hot Zone or any of the virus outbreak movies -- polarization engulfs the entire population over time. More data on the site about the characteristics of the red and blue counties’ populations.

If you're interested in the causes of this trend (ok, *seriously* interested) this 1971 paper by game theorist Thomas Schellingoutlines the many mechanisms that make it almost inevitable. The paper is tough going, but the first couple of pages make clear that even without gerrymandering or malign intent, normal human behavior will lead in this direction unless there's some countervailing force. 

What might that be?  If France, which puts enormous resources into teaching children what it means to be French, is supporting Le Pen, it’s hard to imagine what it will take to make the US one country. Your thoughts? --CAM

Adobe Acrobat Joins the Market of Mobile Scanning Tools

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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We’ve been talking about living in a digital world for decades, but most of us are still surrounded by paper, business cards, stick notes, todo lists, whiteboards, photos, magazines and other physical forms of content. To help reduce that clutter by transforming content into secure, searchable and signable PDF documents, Adobe has updated their Acrobat Reader mobile application to now include scanning functionality.

MyPOV:

Adding scanning capabilities to Acrobat Reader makes a lot of sense. PDF is already one of the most used file formats, and Acrobat Reader in installed on hundreds of millions of mobile devices, so it’s a natural fit to empower people to easily create PDF via their phone/tablet's camera. There are some very useful features such as reordering pages, rotating and annotating with notes, highlighters, pens and text, and adding your signature... all of which is free. In the future more advanced functionality will be available such as OCR for searching, but this will most likely require an upgrade to full Adobe Document Cloud capabilities. This strategy means Adobe Acrobat Reader’s new scanning features could help increase interest in the full Document Cloud service.

Adobe faces a great deal of competition in the portable scanning market, from products like Box Capture, Dropbox Scan, Evernote Scanable, Microsoft OfficeLens, Google Drive Scan and the new Google PhotoScan. This blog post is not intended to provide a full competitive review of each product, but I can say while the core capabilities in each are similar and useful in many common use-cases, they do vary in areas such as parallax correction (for documents, whiteboards, large screens, etc), OCR and search, digital signatures, annotations and markup, business card scanning, export options, document assembly and organization, sharing, and more. Customers should choose the tool that fits best into their existing environment and workflows, making mobile scanning as seamless to their employees as possible.