How to Save Time and Buy the Right Enterprise Technology

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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                                              Photo: Shutterstock via TechRepublic

Shopping: It’s a Love or Hate Relationship.

Most people seem to have a love or hate relationship with the act of shopping.  It could be as simple and mundane as basic grocery shopping that happens to be a weekly necessity for those of us who believe in Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs where food and safety are part of the foundation. On the other hand, it could be as complex and time-consuming as buying enterprise technology.

Grocery Shopping & Delivery Have Been Disrupted.

Let’s take a look at the business of grocery shopping and delivery first; everyone needs food. Choices now include Google Express and Instacart for those who’ll pay for the convenience and time savings. Even Amazon has gotten into the fray as you can see from this Recode article, “Amazon is putting veteran leaders in charge of its’s big grocery delivery plans.”  If two heavyweight technology companies like Google and Amazon are investing in this, they clearly see an opportunity to fulfill unmet needs in this winner-takes-all market as R “Ray” Wang, Constellation Research’s chairman often states.

The Art of Enterprise Technology Shopping.

Now, let’s consider the art of enterprise technology shopping. Once you narrow down your options to the most likely type of technology that’s going to help you solve your business challenge, you still need to vet, procure, and then implement that technology and hope that you made the right judgement call. Careers can often be made or dismantled by this choice.

Your technology assessment could take anywhere from a few weeks to 18 months or more, depending upon your business criteria, the number of stakeholders involved, your organization’s business culture, and the complexity of the business issue that you’re trying to address. That’s precisely why we set up the Constellation ShortList™ program to help save time for buyers of large-scale technology, by making these insights freely available as a starting guide to the enterprise technology buying journey.

Technology Buyer’s Rights: How to Shorten Your Enterprise Technology Buying Cycle.

We’re releasing 40 Constellation ShortLists in our Research Library before the end of 2016. Take at these blog posts here, here, here, and here for more details on what’s been released already. That’s just for starters. Here's the full list of Constellation ShortList categories, if you're curious.

Why struggle to build a list of top contenders when you can trim that effort and start your buying process with a Constellation ShortList. You can then take consult with experts like our Constellation analysts to find out which technologies are going to be the most suitable for your business. As strategic advisors, our analysts cover a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, healthcare/medical, automotive, retail, government, manufacturing, finance/insurance, media/advertising, hospitality, and technology.

Enterprise technology shopping can be a challenge. Making the right decisions are crucial to organizational growth, and it’s not worth the aggravation to take an uneducated guess. If you take a look at R “Ray” Wang’s “Enterprise cloud buyers bill of rights,” you’ll get a sense of why he, and in fact, our entire analyst team, take your needs as a buyer seriously. 

Don’t Take our Word for It. Find Out Why It Matters.

It’s been thrilling to see the enthusiasm in the market, and we’re honored with early recognition from Ludovic Leforestier, one of the co-founders of the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) who is also the Director of Thought Leadership and Analyst Relations at BearingPoint. For those of you who don’t know about IIAR, it’s an independent organization that weighs in on perceptions of analyst firms on behalf of analyst relations professionals. Find out what Leforestier had to say about how Constellation’s disrupting the analyst industry with his post, "Constellation and the curse of the quadrant”. 

Constellation ShortLists Accelerate the Enterprise Technology Buying Journey.

Effective technology shopping requires forethought, planning, and expert guidance, so that you identify the pitfalls to avoid and the best practices to leverage. To streamline your efforts and maximize your business outcomes, that’s where direct advice from Constellation’s seasoned analysts can save you time and aggravation, in identifying the right technology for your business.

To get advice on matters like this when it counts and at the right time and get connected in an exclusive community for innovative leaders, a solid first step is to join the Constellation Executive Network. By joining you’ll get access to disruptive technology research, expert advice, analyst dialogues on trending topics, business insights, events, and more. 

SaaS Land Grab Ignites as SAP Makes Human Capital Management Solutions Available on Microsoft Azure

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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In a follow up move to its announced partnership from May this year, Microsoft and SAP extended their partnership to the HR area, something that could have been expected, but was not necessarily a given when considering the complex multi-vendor landscape both on the SaaS and the IaaS landscape.
 

 

But let’s dissect the press release in our customary style, it can be found here:

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 18, 2016 – Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced an expanded partnership with SAP to provide public cloud services for the SAP® SuccessFactors® HCM Suite. SAP will make its cloud-based human capital management solutions available on Microsoft Azure over the next five years. This is SAP’s first move to supplement its own infrastructure and operate SAP SuccessFactors solutions in a third-party public cloud, recognizing the experience both companies have in supporting global enterprise clients. With the addition of Azure, SAP has a trusted, global cloud and a powerful data platform to help it drive companies’ human resources transformation, and the potential to dramatically improve business outcomes.

MyPOV – Good summary, correctly referring to an ‘expanded’ partnership. The timeframe of five years seems to be pretty long, but both vendors have been found to be conservative, when it comes to timelines. The concern is that 5 years is the ‘half time’ of a good architecture, so whatever SAP will use as the base for the cutoff to support Azure – it will take some time and the platform may have some years of age already. But that number also reflect a medium term commitment of both vendors to each other. But you never know how long this will take - getting demo environments in Q1 of 2017 is a good start. Good also to see the focus on global, where Azure is doing well and that is crucial from a data residency perspective for many customers.  

 

“Microsoft and SAP share a commitment to empowering digital transformation across every aspect of business,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business at Microsoft. “The combination of SAP’s market-leading, innovative human capital management solutions with Microsoft’s intelligent cloud will equip companies around the world to help maximize the potential and skills of their most valuable asset, their people.”

MyPOV – Good statement of new on board head of worldwide commercial business, Judson Althoff.

SAP will have significant additional capacity to run operational workloads of SAP SuccessFactors solutions on Azure, beginning with demo environments, to support its continuing client user growth. Azure provides enterprise-grade security, an open developer platform and advanced data services that organizations of all kinds can use to innovate and grow. With nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers, the Microsoft Cloud is offered in more worldwide datacenter regions than any other major cloud provider.

MyPOV – Good to learn something about the start – and its conservative – with demo environments. Demo environments are a typical first use case for similar exercises, as they are not critical from a production grade perspective. But certainly critical for the success of a vendor, and with rising demo needs and demand (e.g. from SAP SuccessFactors Partner for Profit program) – it is key for SAP to find a cheap, elastic demo platform. At the same time the create, demo and throw away nature of demo environments give Microsoft and SAP plenty of chances to learn to setup these environments, something important for the next step that usually is development and test (see e.g. where Workday is with IBM here) and then off to the ultimate goal – production. Again rightfully the press release quotes Microsoft’s coverage of large enterprises, when they are comfortable to run Office on a IaaS, they will most likely be comfortable to run HR systems on the same IaaS, too. 

“SAP SuccessFactors is the fastest growing core HR solution, and offers an unmatched depth and breadth across the entire HCM suite, of any vendor in the industry,” said Mike Ettling, president of SAP SuccessFactors. “We’ve seen exponential growth in the past two years, with 42 million users now benefiting from our market-leading solutions. In selecting Azure, we will be able to expand our reach even further, with the reliability that is required of these mission-critical applications, and continue to innovate and enhance services to meet client needs across additional environments.”

MyPOV – Good quote of Ettling, touting growth of SuccessFactors. And one of the first areas where vendors feel growth pain is… demo systems and the pieces are adding up here. Demo systems and sand boxes are vital tools for vendors to ramp up their pipeline, something that SAP SuccessFactors is working hard to do at the moment, especially when it is done via the partner channel (also the case). 

This deal builds on the longstanding partnership between Microsoft and SAP, including integrations between Office 365 and SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite, as well as SAP Fieldglass® Vendor Management System, SAP Ariba® and Concur® solutions. The Microsoft and SAP partnership also includes broad support for the SAP HANA® platform on Azure to enable companies to deliver mission-critical applications and data analytics from the cloud. Microsoft recently announced the general availability of Azure large instances, hardware configurations specifically designed for the largest and most demanding SAP workloads. SAP now enables its customers to build and deploy custom mobile hybrid SAP Fiori® apps on SAP HANA Cloud Platform that can be managed, deployed and protected with Microsoft Intune.

MyPOV – A ‘well we have been doing this since a longtime’ paragraph – that is often found in press releases, when vendors want to show continuity, experience working together and generally make the partnership look like a big deal. Wasn’t necessary in my view, as he first pick of an IaaS by SAP SuccessFactors would be enough of headlines, but so be it. The HANA statement is key, as SuccessFactors is under the ‘Hasso Mandate’ of moving to HANA, and if Azure had not been able to run HANA, some observers would have questioned it… but that’s not the case with Azure’s recent commitment to large memory instances… and that is essential to capture long term SAP load to move to Azure. Once the SAP customers move, they most likely will be on HANA based systems on premises, or move to HANA based systems in the cloud, Microsoft wants to make it a move to Azure. And of course Microsoft has a lot more to offer to SAP and other ISVs, beyond 'just' using Azure. 

Overall MyPOV

We live in the ‘age of the load landgrab’ – which is the fight of IaaS providers like Microsoft Azure here, to capture on premises load (here from SAP). That gets overlaid by SaaS load that is looking for a new home due to a generational or platform update (here SuccessFactors moving to HANA and maybe some more things) and fueled by even large enterprise vendors like SAP, to not put up the CAPEX needed for large datacenter / IaaS rollouts. On the flipside IaaS providers (here Microsoft Azure) are more than willing to put in the CAPEX as they are bound for growth no matter what at the moment and any uniform load from on premises software or SaaS software is highly welcome, in comparison to one customer at a time projects. And SAP signaled already at Sapphire this year that its own IaaS ambitions have been scaled down (see my blog here), as the partnership with Azure was already announced in May, this is the conjugation of this very partnership towards SAP SuccessFactors load.

For customers this is generally good news. Instead of waiting for their enterprise software vendor to figure out IaaS (or not), they can move to the cloud with the help of an IaaS provider who runs cloud infrastructure for a living. An alignment with other load of the enterprise will be of course welcome, as too much fragmentation across too many IaaS provider can quickly become a headache from a performance, compliance and commercial perspective. The good news for here is that most enterprises will be in Azure due to Office gravitas one way or the other. On the concern side customers need to pay more attention now to their SaaS vendors not picking up dependencies on specific cloud infrastructures – as it will limit future portability. For SaaS vendors eager to expand their functionality e.g. in the areas of Machine Learning and AI, this maybe a tradeoff they may be happy to take in the short term, but for customers it is something they may not want to live with middle or long term. So customers need to pay attention to the IaaS capability uptake of your SaaS vendors, in this case e.g. SuccessFactors using capabilities that only Azure offers.

 

It also marks an inflection point that a 'born in the cloud' load like SuccessFactors is looking for its next 'home' - no longer in its own cloud infrastructure, but looking for a stand alone IaaS partner, in this case Azure. Those options were not around for the early SaaS pioneers, who all sit on aging, often proprietary or now 'frenemy' platforms, moving to a partner's IaaS should free up CAPEX resources and ultimately provide a better return of R&D to SaaS vendors making the move, which should translate either in (higher) profitability and / or more functionality in the product. Both are positive developments for a SaaS vendor's customers.

But for now good to see the continuity of the Microsoft / SAP partnership, at the moment it’s a win / win / win for customers who get more live software demos and likely more sand boxes (always ask for them), Microsoft gets a shot at more SAP SuccessFactors load, starting with demo systems and SAP SuccessFactors gets a lot of demo environments and a proven IaaS partner (that SAP overall had chosen already before).

Stay tuned for more on this and more enterprise vendor / SaaS player with IaaS player partnerships, below are a few of the most recent and prominent ones.

Bridging Digital and Analog with Digital Experience Integrated Platforms

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

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

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As digital transformation efforts take center stage, the requirements for the convergence of digital and analog disciplines drastically increase. Ad tech, artificial intelligence (AI), content and data management, Internet of Things (IoT), and mass personalization at scale – all of these new and changing technologies require companies to adopt digital experience integrated solutions to effectively implement disruptive programs to shake up their industries.

Today, Constellation published a Constellation ShortList™ for Digital Experience Integrated Platforms. While no complete solution exists today, it aims to catalogue these offerings as they emerge and become business-model platforms for organizations. Here are the companies that made the Constellation ShortList:

• Acquia
• Adobe
• Demandware (by Salesforce)
• Episerver
• IBM
• Oracle
• Sitecore

Constellation advises early adopters using disruptive technologies on how to achieve business model transformation. Products and services named to this Constellation ShortList meet the threshold criteria for each category as determined by Constellation Research through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research.

Additional lists released today include:

• Enterprise File Sharing: Niche
• Enterprise Group Messaging: Standalone
• Enterprise Group Messaging: Unified Communication
• Social Task Management: Enterprise Suites with Project Features
• Social Task Management: Niche
• Sales Force Automation
• Customer Experience (CX) Services: SMB
• Field Service Management
• Enterprise Cloud Finance Apps

Test out the Constellation ShortList, and when you’re ready, contact us to connect with authoring analyst who can then personalize the vendor selection process for you.

Constellation ShortList™ for Field Service Management

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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Constellation has announced the Constellation ShortList vendors in Field Service Management which provides the best capabilities to help employees serve customers. Field customer service occurs when resources or services are deployed onsite at a client. Field service management software enables companies to be flexible and nimble when providing service. These offerings are great at detecting problems before having to send someone to repair or fix a customer’s issue. In the event they must send someone, they can communicate in real-time with customers, provide on-site information about products and repair issues while offering relevant and timely service.

These offerings help companies improve their operational efficiencies by optimizing work-order routing and technician scheduling, which results in quicker resolution of issues. Analytics used in field services often optimize when services are deployed and how assets are tied to deployment of resources. They have advanced scheduling systems that let the customer know when the technician or field-service employee will arrive within a reasonable window of time. Helping provide an excellent customer experience is the most important aspect of field service management solutions.

The Constellation ShortList presents vendors in different categories of the market relevant to early adopters. In addition, products included in this document meet the threshold criteria for this category as determined by Constellation Research.  This Constellation ShortList of vendors for a market category is compiled through conversations with early adopter clients, independent analysis, and briefings with vendors and partners.

Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:

• Good diagnostics prior to rolling out the truck
• Resource management
• Case management
• Communication with the customer on the status of the technician’s arrival
• Scheduling
• Resource allocation
• Inventory optimization
• Mobile enablement.

Constellation evaluates over 25 solutions categorized in this market. This Constellation ShortList is determined by client inquiries, partner conversations, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. These are the best-of-breed vendors that provide applications and services without bundling into another platform:

• IFS
• Oracle Field Service Cloud (formerly TOA Technologies)
•  ServiceMax
• ClickSoftware
• PTC
• SAP
• Vertical Solutions.

For more information on the short lists, please see the Constellation Research site.

@Drnatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Covering Customer-Facing Applications

Constellation ShortList™ Customer Service and Contact Center Software

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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Constellation Research is launching a new program, and I’m happy to share that the vendors that have been listed on the Constellation ShortList™ for Customer Service and Contact Center Software. The program offers buyers of technology a list of offerings to consider in their pursuit of digital transformation to provide the best capabilities to drive leading customer service.

The Constellation ShortList presents vendors in different categories of the market relevant to early adopters. In addition, products included in this document meet the threshold criteria for this category as determined by Constellation Research. This Constellation ShortList of vendors for a market category is compiled through conversations with early adopter clients, independent analysis, and briefings with vendors and partners.

Customer service and contact center software helps solve customer challenges faster by offering the right tools and support, regardless of channel or device (e.g., phone, tablet, email, chat, text, website, Facebook, other social networks). These offerings can effectively manage inbound communication for increased first-contact resolution, in addition to providing co-browse capabilities to allow visual communication for quicker query resolution. Additionally, they can support the reduction of cart abandonment and increase customer satisfaction with in-cart assistance. 

This type of software provides personalized care through the use of analytics, offering insight into customers’ behaviors for relevant, contextualized service that can predict future needs. Companies can identify new opportunities by integrating these customer insights into their companies’ innovation processes. The software also creates seamless, online experiences with a knowledge base that learns from every interaction, enabling them to match content to consumer intent, which results in higher conversion rates. The top solutions also provide smart customer self-service, allowing customers to help themselves by fostering peer-to-peer support communities and eliminating the need to reach out to the contact center.

Constellation considers the following key criteria for these solutions: Self-service capabilities, case management, natural language processing for knowledge management and search, omni-channel and device customer journeys, mobile customer service and self service, queuing and routing, workforce optimization, predictive and prescriptive rules and advice, next-best action, natural scripting, customer feedback collection capabilities, IVR, visual IVR, inventory optimization, mobile enablement, social and digital engagement simplified user design (UX/UI), reporting and customer analytics, integration to IoT (Internet of Things) platforms and devices, data dashboard and data visualization.

Each Constellation ShortList evaluation will be updated every 90 days as needed. Constellation clients may work with the analyst and research team to conduct a more thorough discussion of this ShortList. Constellation can also provide guidance in vendor selection and contract negotiation.

ShortList is determined by client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. The Shortlist includes:

• Aspect 
• Avaya
• Cisco
• Genesys
• inContact
• Interactive Intelligence
• Oracle
• Salesforce
• Verint. 

For more information about the ShortList, please visit the Constellation Research site.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Covering Customer Facing Applications.

Zenefits Z2 Event Report

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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I attended Zenefits’ Z2 event, which was also its first user conference. Held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, on October 18th the event was a small, efficient affair, with about 700 attendees present. 

 

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

(Apologies for bad audio and even loss of video - the Palace Wifi did not perform well here.)

 

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

 

Event Report - Oracle OpenWorld - Top 3 Positive and Top 3 Concerns from Holger Mueller

 

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

Zenefits has left the troubles of the past – behind. The recent troubled past of Zenefits seems to have made its transition to the history books, clients and prospects present at the event were not concerned about the colorful, recent past of the vendor. That’s a major step forward and allows Zenefits to move on, and the vendor did exactly that with the release of Z2, the 2nd release of the Zenefits system.

New capabilities in Z2 – Zenefits has given its system a new UI, that feels modern and simple to use, something crucial for its customer base of very small businesses of under 50, sweetspot is around 100 employees (but of course scales up and Zenefits has many larger customers, too). These businesses have no HR professional and the ‘HR person’ is a multitasker, who needs an easy to use software, that can be used easily and that has tons of inbuilt automation to avoid them having to spend too much time on HR matters. The 21st century workforce is mobile and Zenefits supports iOS and Android for all key processes, kudos to support both platforms, even much larger vendors based in Silicon Valley have stepped into the ‘iOS for all trap’, that doesn’t’ work for HR in the era of BYOD. The focus on core HR processes and onboarding is no surprise. And a marketplace with over 17 partners makes it easy to use Zenefits as the leading system to integrate into a wide range of productivity, expenses, performance management, payroll accounting, engagement and more vendors. Close to its core competency, Zenefits has improved the benefits enrollment and selection experience.

Zenefits Payroll is here – starting with California – To no surprise, Zenefits unveiled its new Payroll offering, at the moment only working for California. But 9 other states are planned in the coming quarters. It’s a V1 product in terms of scope and capabilities (e.g. garnishments need to be handled manually when it comes to payments) – but it’s a good start for Zenefits. Customers are very positive on Zenefits Payroll capabilities, another indicator how much integration concerns bog down even part time HR professionals.

MyPOV

A good event and a very good first user conference for Zenefits, that has left the troubles of the past behind and has morphed from its benefits origins all the way to become a small HR suite of products for very SMB. It still offers product capabilities for free, the ‘price list’ fits on one slide, but it also is adding products that have a seat cost / employer cost, e.g. Payroll. That’s a good development in my view, as it takes away the competitive / disruptive relationship to the rest of the industry, which Zenefits leadership has rightfully identified as necessary partners, to have a broader scope of HCM automation for is customers (thanks to the marketplace). But Zenefits doesn’t’ shy away from services either, the new HR Advisor capability, where the SMB HR practitioner can talk to a Zenefits expert, is a valuable offering.

On the concern side, Zenefits has lost some time to restart its offering. In the meantime, the competition has not stood still, and has equally simplified its products (e.g. Paychex) or extended its footprint (e.g. partner Gusto). And payroll is crucial to get right for enterprises small and large. A bad payroll run derails equally all work at an enterprise of any size. So expanding payroll footprint should be a priority for Zenefits.

But overall a good launch event and a good first user conference for Zenefits the vendor to watch and consider when you are a very small business. Stay tuned.


Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).


 

Constellation's AstroChart For Business Trends, Q4 2016

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Oracle OpenWorld - The HCM Perspective

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 Oracle’s OpenWorld mega event a few weeks ago, a busy fall schedule has not allowed us to sum up the key findings, though we posted them on YouTube (see here) and Slideshare (see here) right away. Let’s look at the HCM side of the Oracle offering. As usual the HCM sessions were held at the Palace Hotel, off from Moscone, and for the first time, the number of users attending outnumbered the number of prospects.

 

Tough to pick the top 3 takeaways – but here you go:

Oracle HCM is … growing fast – Chris Leone walked through the first 6 years of Oracle HCM, and what was humble beginnings back in 2010 (20 Global HR customers, 30 Talent customers), has developed over the last 6 years into what is now one of the large, if not the largest part of the worldwide HCM market share for SaaS based HCM (with 6000+ HCM Cloud customers, 1300+ Global HR customers (800 live), and 2000+ Talent Acquisition customers. Over 100+ go lives pro quarter and 15M+ HCM employees are other indicators that the substantial investment (about 2500 employees in products – excluding Peoplesoft) is paying off for Oracle. With an equally substantial sales and marketing investment – the next 12 months will have to show if Oracle can move out of the Top 3 in the HCM market, and become a clear leader in customer adoption. For now, you can still slice and dice the Top 3 (including SAP and Workday) as they please. 

 

 

Oracle HCM Market Momentum

New Talent Acquisition in the works – For the longest time Oracle HCM product leadership has shied away from touching the old Taleo functionality. Along the lines ‘the world doesn’t need another / a new recruiting’ product, Oracle provided integration and worked around the regular beat from Workday on the ‘single’ platform, the power of one etc. And one can make the point that in the SaaS world integration is the vendor’s challenge, not the customers, but the concern on integration risk, cost and overall speed of innovation will always be brought up. So the really big news from OpenWorld is, that Oracle is building new Talent Acquisition capabilities, with a focus on functionality for customers using the suite first. This is big news as it takes out the ‘Jockey Club’ that Taleo was for Oracle HCM. Anyone who does not know, visit Las Vegas and watch from the Bellagio hotel toward the Cosmopolitan – you get it. Obviously Oracle has not shared much more details, I’d expect to learn more at next year’s HCM World. But truly an important step to bring together all of HCM automation for Oracle customers and prospects. 

 

Oracle HCM Footprint

 

Adaptive Intelligence – for HCM - We are in the fall of AI where no conference cannot have a stab at Artificial Intelligence, Oracle has been no exception announcing its suite of Adaptive Intelligence applications, one of them being in HCM. Not surprisingly the functional content of the HCM adaptive intelligence application will be on …. Talent Acquisition. And that all makes sense, when you rebuild your Talent Acquisition capabilities (see above) – you want to give customers a reason to move, and build on the latest and greatest capabilities…. So for a 2017 product that need to have an AI / ML play. But its early days for all of Adaptive Intelligence, for now Oracle is ‘just’ rounding up what it had in its portfolio from the Datalogix et al acquisitions (see the take of my colleague Doug Henschen here) and coming out of the gate with that. The HCM Adaptive Intelligence application is coming later, in 2017.

 

MyPOV

A very quiet OpenWorld from the HCM team, the strategy reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ – in the sense of not making big announcements, but building big things. Very un-Oracleish and maybe a first step of Oracle becoming a more gentle, friendly, easy to do business with Oracle. That will be a substantial change in DNA, but given the investment Oracle is doing in R&D in general and in HCM in specific, a little change. Starting in HCM, given the tender nature of relations in the industry is certainly a good first step. But overall kudos to Oracle to start addressing the multi-year ‘elephant (named Taleo) in the room’, adding an AI wrinkle with ‘Adaptive Intelligence’ – so it will be interesting to learn more in 2017. Stay tuned.

 

The Storify of the Hurd keynote can be found here - Ellison's is here, the Day 2 keynote can be found here. Don't miss the HCM Keynote Storify below, or here. 

 

Recent blog posts on Oracle:

• First Take - Early Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Keynotes - read here
• Event Preview - Oracle OpenWorld 2016 - What to expect, what to watch for ... will IaaS start Clicking? - read here
• Market Move - Oracle acquires NetSuite - Oddly consolidation means more options for customers - read here
• News Analysis - Oracle Unveils Suite of Breakthrough Services.. or short: Oracle Cloud Machine - read here
• Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption - read here
• Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
• News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
• First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here

Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:

• Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Innovation around the Core - read here
• Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
• First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
• Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
• Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
• Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.

Also worth a look for the full picture

• Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
• Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
• News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
• Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
• Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
• Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
• Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here. 
• From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
• Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)

And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:

• Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
• Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
• Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
• 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
• Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
• How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
• Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
• Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
• Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here. 

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.

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

VMware embraces AWS as its public cloud IaaS

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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Today – consistent to announcements hinted at earlier at VMworld, VMware has embarked in its new public cloud strategy, embracing IaaS vendors and partnering with them, while helping customer to migrate, monitor and operate loads across their on premises and IaaS based datacenters.
 

 

The press release on the AWS side can be found here, let’s dissect the news in our customary form:

 

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 13, 2016-- VMware (NYSE:VMW) and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud™ on AWS will enable customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, and more. For more information on VMware Cloud on AWS, visit VMware Cloud on AWS.

MyPOV -Describes well what the partnership is about – keep VM formats, images, tools, practices and seamlessly gain an outlet to the public cloud, in this case AWS. Similar to the IBM partnership announced earlier this year (see our analysis here) both VMware and AWS will work together to provide this seamless services. Effectively VMware on AWS creates what VMware promised a long time with vCloudAir - only the hardware comes from AWS this time.

 

Most enterprises rely on VMware to run applications in their vSphere-based private clouds, and often these same customers are also running applications on AWS. Increasingly, these customers have asked both companies to make it easier to run their existing on-premises environments alongside AWS using the VMware software and tools they’ve come to rely on.

MyPOV – Always good to listen to customers and be customer driven. It’s nice for customers to have the opportunity to use their VMware loads and now be able to combine them with AWS offerings. But these offerings are mostly AWS cloud bound, so its likely for joint customers to pick up dependencies on AWS, and with that remain on the public cloud side.

 

VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly architected solution that will integrate the world’s leading private cloud and the world’s leading public cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation™, a unified SDDC platform that integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN™ and NSX™ virtualization technologies, and will provide access to the full range of AWS services, together with the functionality, elasticity, and security customers have come to expect from the AWS Cloud. This new service represents a significant investment in engineering, operations, support, and sales resources from both companies. It will run on next-generation, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure. Customers will have the ability to purchase services through their existing VMware commercial agreement and use their existing VMware software investments to secure additional loyalty discounts for their VMware Cloud on AWS hybrid environment.

MyPOV – So effectively VMware is re-platforming its SDDC architecture on top of AWS machines, referred to as next generation, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure. Not any converged hardware that VMware used to sell and is still selling. One wonders why AWS would not run the VMware converged servers, designed for nothing else than running VMware loads? The answer to that will be interesting and risks to leave some challenging thoughts with VMware converged infrastructure customers. Buying through the VMware commercial agreement should make things easier.

 

“VMware Cloud on AWS offers our customers the best of both worlds,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “This new service will make it easier for customers to preserve their investment in existing applications and processes while taking advantage of the global footprint, advanced capabilities, and scale of the AWS public cloud.”

MyPOV – Good quote from Gelsinger, but by conceding to AWS for infrastructure, he implicitly states (at least here) that the VMware (and EMC and maybe future Dell offerings) for infrastructure will not play (for now) on the public cloud side.
 

“Our customers continue to ask us to make it easier for them to run their existing data center investments alongside AWS,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “Most enterprises are already virtualized using VMware, and now with VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time, it will be easy for customers to operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment using their existing VMware tools on AWS, and without having to purchase custom hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operating model.”

MyPOV -Good quote from Jassy, describing what happens from the AWS side. Could not be much better, VMware is bringing load to AWS, while keeping it familiar for them to operate it. And the chance of tying that load together with AWS products, with the possible consequence of becoming ‘sticky’ to AWS infrastructure. There is almost nothing not to like her, if you are AWS. 

Availability

Available in mid-2017, VMware Cloud on AWS will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service. Pricing will be made available closer to the general availability date.

MyPOV – Good to know when this will be available, and it’s a little far out for cloud speed with 9-10 months. But important to know early – as this may stop customers from extending their on premises data center investments and moving to a hybrid model, using AWS infrastructure.

 

Overall MyPOV

Always good to see when vendors listen to customers, and customers win. In this case it is the VMware centric enterprise, that does not want to invest into on premises resources, or as AWS evangelist Jeff Barr points out in his blog here, wants to combine existing loads with next generation capabilities that AWS offers. The potential dependency on AWS for these solutions is something all enterprises need to make ‘wide eyes open’ decisions on.

AWS wins a lot here. First of all, a former adversary – VMware – is now a key partner. Loads that were stuck and holding out in VMware centric landscapes, possible waiting for vCloudAir to materialize – and out of reach – are now available for AWS. And all of that with no re-imaging, re-testing, re-anything – it cannot get much better for any public cloud IaaS. And longer term the option to upsell more AWS services, so ponying up the CAPEX for these machines, investing resources to build the common solution is a small price to pay. AWS is in this business anyway, the more uniform load it can address, the better.

VMware certainly wins in the short term, too – it keeps customers on VMware, monetizes the moving and administration of the hybrid load and extends all that on VMware paper, effectively OEMing AWS. Effectively AWS is providing the infrastructure to an offering that VMware wanted to offer with vCloudAIr but never managed to have take off. VMware fans may say it was the lack of other tools and products to complement moving the VMware load there, but to me this is the end of the 3+ year riddle why VMware cloud not move loads to public cloud: The inability or non readiness to invest the large amounts of CAPEX to invest into the public cloud infrastructure to run VMware. Effectively it will have taken 4 years – holding both vendors to the above dates – and a complete change in strategy. It begs the question – had VMware done this deal with AWS 3 or even 4 years ago – would VMware (and its customers) bebetter of today? The answer is really related how fast enterprises will move to the public cloud, if hybrid is only a transition, and how long that transition will last. No matter how you spin this, VMware is loosing load on premises for a variety of reasons already (that’s a whole blog post by itself), at the same time it will not be able to command the same pricing levels when running e.g. on AWS than when running VMware on premises. It’s different times and with that I see a longer term loosing hand for VMware. But short term we know this works, as the success of the IBM and VMware partnership has shown. The difference of AWS and VMware is – it will be sold and operated by VMware. The pipelines of VMware sales people may be better filled well for this to work, future quarters will tell. We know that man VMware customers have been holding out hoping for a solution from VMware with vCloudAir – them forgetting and forgiving quickly will be key for the success of the partnership.

The other takeaway is that AWS is quickly becoming the IT department of very large software vendors. We saw that with SAP BW/4HANA (see our take here) and now we see it with VMware on AWS. It is puzzling as the margins of these vendors are greater than the margins of AWS, but at the same time lack of success, fortune, know-how, etc. on their own public cloud offerings has driven giants like SAP and VMware in the arms of AWS. The cloud of the ‘book retailer’ as some observers will remember. Good for AWS, who is willing to keep investing, when other enterprise software giants have stumbled, slowed down, shied away etc. you name it.

Finally VMware is now part of Dell Technology. One can only assume that VMware has telegraphed in all this with HQ in Texas. Maybe the hope is that customers will stay on VMware and move loads back to a super attractive (but still to be announced) Dell Technology SDDC offering. We can only speculate. But effectively VMware has given an effective outlet to its customer from any – not only Dell’s and its own converged offerings – to the public cloud. With VMware founder Diane Greene at Google, anyone would be surprised if a similar partnership with Google Cloud Platform is not in the making. Azure next. Exciting times for sure.


What’s your take on VMware on AWS?

Dreamforce 2016: Einstein to Power the Next Wave of Salesforce Sales and Marketing Advancements

Cindy Zhou

CMO
Level Access

Cindy Zhou is a practicing CMO.  Prviously, she was Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness. With over 18 years of practitioner experience in corporate marketing, product marketing, product management, and sales operations, Zhou has spearheaded marketing transformation at multiple technology companies. She advised Constellation’s clients on strategies to light-up demand generation, prove revenue contribution, and maximize sales productivity. Prior to joining Constellation, Zhou was Global Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations at BackOffice Associates, a global provider of data quality and information governance solutions to the Fortune 1000 and SAP SolEx partner. Before…...

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