BoxWorks Event Report - Box is on the run with a platform

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 BoxWorks in San Francesco, held from September 7th till 9th 2016. It was record attendance for Box, with over 7k registrants, the largest BoxWorks ever. 
 

So take a look at my musings, I was joined by fellow colleague Alan Lepofsky at the conference - and here in the video): (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)
 

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

 

 

Event Report - Box Box\works 2016 - Box is on the run from Holger Mueller

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

Box is a viable business – Not too many years ago there was a concern that the File Synch & Share market would get commoditized, and players like e.g. Box being squeezed out by the entrance of larger players like e.g. Microsoft or Google. Today we can say that this concern has not materialized, and Box is on the path to become a 100M / quarter enterprise vendor, having turned around the potential threats into partners / frenemies / co-opetitors: Both Microsoft (with Peggy Johnson) and Google (with Diane Greene) were on stage with partnership announcement. Quite a remarkable turnaround.

Product Innovation in the core – One of the reasons why Box is doing well is that the vendor is (more than I have seen in the past) actively working on improving the core product. A new user interface is available (finally) and addresses a number of usability concerns many have been vocal before. The new UI feels less clunky and is more in synch with 2016 UI best practices (e.g. dynamic re-sizing). The collaboration on Box Notes will be improved. The most prominent announcement though was the new Relay product – that in conjunction with IBM – will bring light workflow capabilities to the Box product, something Box has been missing (and / or avoiding?) for a long time vis a vis long entrenched workflow / document vendors like EMC’s Documentum, Opentext and others.
  

Product Innovation with Box Platform – The newly unveiled Box Platform, that enables developers to build content centric applications is off to a strong start, with over 80k developers, 2k apps and most interestingly 50% of APIs calls of Box overall. The last statistic shows that there was demand for building content centric applications in the market and the Box install base. From a load / platform perspective Box would be only half the vendor it is today, something few may notice today, but has severe (positive) effects in the medium run. With the additional platform load Box not only gets more customers and users, but also gets better economies of scale to operate its platform and last but not least gets more of an interesting partner for large cloud vendors (no surprise AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM were there – on stage and as sponsors).

But developer adoption does not come by itself, so it is good to see that the Box Platform team is focused on developer experience – which first and foremost starts with developer productivity. Building content centric apps is not trivial from a user experience, so providing controls with the Box UI toolkit is key for developer productivity, as well as an important decision criterion to use Box as a platform. Box has also done work for new media (360-degree video e.g. from drones featured prominently) – and expanded its native viewer capabilities, that are key to keep a seamless user experience. And when applications have been built, they need to be operated and maintained, the new Box Developer Console is a good version one product to address this… And documents often have legal ramification, so apart from Box Zones (available since earlier this year), making available compliance APIs is another key step the Box Platform team has taken to make it easier for developers to address the pesky and tedious compliance questions.

MyPOV

A good event for Box, that not only has reached critical mass but also is progressing well at creating the ‘2nd leg’ with the Box platform. It is early days, but good progress and promising new capabilities are in the pipeline. Things will look (even) better for Box once those will be delivered over the next quarters.

On the concern side there was little progress and announcement on the machine learning side. As an overall trend the intelligence permeates the LCD, which means the intelligence and the actor is not the human anymore – but the software behind it. In many cases today already, software is the better ‘driver’ for content than humans, it is cheaper, never sleeps, does not make mistakes, and if programmed correctly is bias free. We got a glance in a presentation of the ‘future of content management’, it is good to see Box is seeing all the trends, next will be to get them on the product roadmap. It also has some existing partners who are strong in the space (all mentioned above). Sharing documents into the overall business data maelstrom on Hadoop is another area where Box needs to spend some thought (and potential product development) cycles. Lastly Box Zones is a key step forward, but like with all other SaaS vendors, the multi-spliced-multi-location problem is still unsolved. Letting customers select their favorite location is not a medium term viable solution.

For Box customers these are all welcome developments, the new UI certainly having the most immediate, direct impact. Watching the developments around Relay will be a key area for customers to follow – and to consider which workflow around documents may be moved to Box. Equally customers and prospects who are looking at building their own content centric apps have plenty to use and more to come for them. There is little concern at the moment that developers cannot build very powerful content centric next generation applications on the Box Platform, a key value proposition today. Coupled with Box Zones this makes Box also a good partner for global use cases.

Finally it was refreshing to hear a vendor speak so openly about technical debt and how to actively address this phenomena which is part of all software development, but seldom addressed so openly and directly. Good to see, and kudos to the Box team to have the courage to openly talk about the challenge.

Overall encouraging progress and signals from BoxWorks. Stay tuned.

P.S. Checkout Alan Lepofsky's event report here he has the content, collaboration and social angle.

More on Box
 

• Event Preview - What Alan Lepofsky and I want Box to address this BoxWorks [2015] - read here

And more platform Event / Progress Reports (based on recency):
 

• Event Report - Pivotal SpringOne Platform - Spring in its 2nd spring - read here


• Event report - AWS Enterprise Summit 2016 Frankfurt - The German Road to Cloud adoption is ... long - read here
  Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
  Event Report- Alteryx Inspire 2016 - Enabling change agents in data management - read here
  Event Report - Cloud Foundry Cloud Foundry Summit - It's good to be king of PaaS - read here
  Event Report - Google I/O 2016 - Android N soon, Google assistant sooner and VR / AR later - read here
  Event Report - Infosys Confluence - The Future Watch is Software + People - read here
  Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications - read here
  Event Report – Google Google Cloud Platform Next – Key Offerings for (some of) the enterprise - read here
  Progress Report - Cloudera grows product, verticals and globally - now needs to execute - read here
  Progress Report - Hortonworks wants to become the next generation for the enterprise – a tall ask - read here
  Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption - read here
  Progress Report - Workday Tech Summit - Good Progress, More Insights, Less Concerns - read here
  Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
  Event Report - SAPtd Las Vegas 2015 - Analyics, HCP, and Fiori BUILD - read here
  Event Report - Salesforce Dreamforce - Value for customers - but some concerns on direction - read here

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). (The Day #1 Storify is here - the Analyst Day is 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

Event Report: BoxWork 2016

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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This week I attended BoxWorks 2016, Box's annual conference in San Francisco.

If you don't have (15m) time to watch the video below where I review the major news, then just read this one thing:
Box is no longer just a cloud file-storage service, it's a platform for building content-centric applications.

My coverage of the event is mainly focused on the collaboration/productivity tools. If you'd like more details on the application developer/infrastructure/platform side of things, please click here to view my colleague Holger Mueller's event report.

Here are the key product announcements:

In the video below, I discuss the news in detail, including my advice on areas I think Box should improve in.

Constellation Announces 2016 SuperNova Award Finalists

Constellation is pleased to announce the finalists for the sixth annual SuperNova Awards. The Constellation SuperNova Awards recognize leaders and teams for their innovative application of disruptive technology in business.

“The finalists of the 2016 SuperNova Awards demonstrate a deep understanding of the elements required for digital transformation,” said R “Ray” Wang, chairman and founder at Constellation Research. “Among this year's finalists are individuals employing technology to speed organ transplant matches, predict the spread of disease, improve construction site safety, and drive engagement at the ATP. I know the SuperNova Award finalists will inspire other technology leaders to implement new technologies and transform their organizations.”

2016 SuperNova Award Finalists

Data to Decisions

• Alda Mizaku, Mercy
• Ming Zhou, Lenovo   
• Gabriel Gross, Meteo Protect  
• Reid Levesque, Royal Bank of Canada   
• Madhav Marathe, Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech   
• Blake Sanders, American Cancer Society
• Murray Swartzberg , ATP World Tour
• Mok Choe, Toronto Dominion Bank
• Jamie Sutphin, UNOS 

Digital Marketing Transformation

• Blake Cahill, Royal Phillips 
• Kerianne Mellott, eHarmony  
• Kristie Allen, Albertson’s Companies     
• Lindsay Campman, Seven Feathers Casino Resort    

Future of Work - HCM

• Patrick Ross III, Team Rubicon 
• Eric Record, Steel Dynamics 
• Marina Perez, NEC Corporation of America 
• Mark Coy, Summa Technologies 
• Cathy Pryor, Hibbett Sports

Future of Work – Social Business

• Sara Moore, SEA Media, LLC   
• Dave Murphy , Pepper Construction
• Sanay Bhirud, National Instruments    
• Mike Hincks, Vivint Solar  
• Sam Trachtenberg, AdRoll    
• Barry Harvey, University of West Florida Innovation Institute    
• Mohan Nair, Cambia Health Solutions    

Internet of Things

• Scott Strickland; Jim Flatt, Denon + Marantz Electronics 
• Dina Milazzo, GE Digital 
• Wouter Kerkhof, Springg, A Dutch Sprouts Company   
• Michael Skaff, Masons of California   
• Jonathan Foucheaux, Solomon Group

Matrix Commerce

• Ken Finnerty, UPS 
• John Lee, MGM Resorts International   
• Ryan Johnson, Lovesac   
• The Home Depot
• Fred Tiso, Citrix   
• Ed McMahon, Epec Engineered Technologies    

Next Generation Customer Experience

• Murray Swartzberg, ATP World Tour 
• Scott Strickland; Jim Flatt, Denon + Marantz Electronics 
• Kriti Kapoor, HP Inc. 
• Kristin Carlos, Qantas Airways Ltd. 
• Olay, P&G
• Jacqui Darcy, NextGen Healthcare 
• Amihai Zeltzer, Stanley Healthcare
• Roshan Koonja, Constance Hotels and Resorts

Safety and Privacy  

• John N. Stewart, Cisco   

Technology Optimization and Innovation

• Ed McMahon, Epec Engineered Technologies
• Roddy McKaig , Shaw Industries Group, Inc.
• Kyle Rehner , Kroll International, LLC.
• Daniel Probert, Camfed   
• Mike Hincks , Vivint Solar

The SuperNova Award judges recognized entrants who demonstrated the foresight, creativity and measured audacity to successfully implement emerging technologies for their organizations. Public voting will take place online from September 12-21. The winners will be announced at the SuperNova Awards Gala on October 27 in Half Moon Bay, California, during Constellation’s Connected Enterprise.

Were you named a finalist? Find more information about the Awards here. 

Why IoT Devices need to be Digital Assets plus connecting by LoRa and NFC

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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Every business has, and uses, Assets to be able to create the value by which it competes. The difference between ‘has’ and ‘uses’ reflects how efficiently those Assets can be made to work, which in turn reflects on the extent to which those Assets can be managed. IoT simply connects Assets to provide the data and dynamic management to enable business optimization of operations.  But what are these ‘Assets’ that can create new competitive capabilities?

Here are three meaningful descriptions as to what is Asset in respect of Business value; Definition ‘1) An Asset is an economic resource, or something of value’; Definition 2) ‘Some thing possessed by a Business entity from which future economic benefits may be obtained’. Definition 3) Military; ‘A person from whom intelligence is obtained’.

IoT combines all three; Definition; A Device from which is intelligence is obtained, transforming the capabilities of the Device as a Business resource to deliver economic benefits.

Today Enterprises seek more and better data to guide their actions than in turbulent markets then at any time in the past. IoT brings rich new sources and types of data that can be combined through ‘IoT Event Engines’ to create a new generation of valuable ‘insights’.  Many Business Managers now ‘understand’ that IoT data delivered through ‘real time’ event processing enables enterprises to exploit events, and operational situations, as they occur. True though this is, it is only part of the fundamental shift IoT brings in capability to manage Business Operations at the level of Asset optimization.

To define IoT Technology as using sensors data to improve ‘real time’ event reaction alone is similar to defining Client-Server Technology merely by the capability for PCs to share common data. The Business Transformation introduced by Client-Server technology resulted in the Enterprise optimized business processes of ERP. IoT brings a similar level of Business Transformation by allowing key fixed processes to be changed dynamically to deploy individual business Assets in optimized response orchestrations, (Agility).

Mention Digital Business models and the term ‘agility’ is usually brought into the discussion to define the requirement for dynamic responsiveness to opportunities. The missing element in such a discussion is how this achieved by the mass connectivity of IoT to extend Business control of critical Assets. Creating Agility requires new Business skills in the use of IoT to extend current online Digital Business model into the ability to compete in the connected Digital Economy.

The twenty plus year history of Business Process Re-Engineering, and ERP, (with its focus on improving costs by reducing variation and fixing responses), now needs to integrate with the dynamics of IoT connected Digital Business. Competitive ‘Read and Respond’ to market place events and opportunities requires a continuous focus on dynamically optimizing deployment of critical Business Assets. But what is meant by ‘Digital’ Assets?

A Digital Asset is anything that is capable of defining itself, its history and current situation through accessible data. IoT connectivity makes this data available to allow direct operational intervention and decision-making at a granular level. A complex asset such as a General Electric Railroad Locomotive has some 15,000 individual data reporting points that allow customization of the engine to its operating circumstances. The Edge Building in Amsterdam uses 28000 individual data points to dynamically adapt the building to weather, power, occupants, etc. Equally a simple Bus stop with data points to monitor Bus movements can assist passengers to plan their journeys. And of course, the best known example of all, Uber tying Taxis to People around their locations and circumstances.  In each of these cases the granularity of individual Assets at different levels is combined through IoT Technology into a dynamically competitive Business optimized response.

The IoT revolution is driven by cost reduction in chips with changes in connectivity capabilities. The diversity of types of Digital Assets is matched by increased diversity in networking and data protocols. Though the name IoT suggests everything is connected like IT via the Internet that is not necessarily true as the manner in which IoT and Digital Assets are deployed does not correspond to the use of IT. There are four basic techniques; Wired or Wireless into IP Networks; Telecom Mobility Networks; LoRa, Low Power Long Range Networks and NFC, Near Field Connectivity.

IP and Telecom Mobility Networks are already familiar to IT departments existing IT and Mobility networking activities, but LoRa and NFC are unfamiliar yet introduce extremely necessary capabilities to manage IoT Digital Assets. IoT devices are different in what, and how, they are deployed to the connected services provided by IP and Telecom Mobility networks. Two previous blogs have explored this issue; the first posed the question IoT and Network Connectivity Management, or AoT and Data Flow Management on the Network? And the second explored the integrated operation of The challenge of the ‘Final Mile’, Asset Digitisation and Data Flow Management - Making sure that your Graph Databases and Event Engines have all the data

This blog is a quick introduction to the two ‘new’ networks; LoRa is relatively new and designed specifically for low data rate IoT connectivity whilst Near Field Connectivity for IoT, (as opposed to RFID) has attracted less attention than its practical advantages would suggest it should be receiving.

LoRa was designed specifically for IoT sensor data transmissions where data volumes are low, connectivity to transmit infrequent, and cost is a significant issue. Existing technologies ranging from Bluetooth, through more specialized network types, such as Zigbee, were all developed for local ‘on site’ deployment. Other features needed to be optimized rather than low cost large geographical coverage that IoT Sensing systems in sectors such as Utilities, or Transportation systems, require. The adoption of Cellular Technologies from 4G to 5G offer improved coverage, and relative high data transmission rates, but are both costly and high in power demands.

Started some years ago, before IoT deployment requirements were fully understood, LTE, Long Term Evolution, was seen as the answer to the Telecom Industry requirement for a less expensive localized service with good transmission rates and coverage, but unfortunately LTE also comes with relatively high power demands that make extended battery operation all, but impossible.

Low Power, Long Range, LoRa, provides up to 50 Kbits transmission rates, but with low power demands that allow sensors to run off batteries for several years. The long-range capability reduces cost in transmission towers, and has resulted in full countrywide coverage already being made operational in the Netherlands and South Korea. Further details on LoRa architecture can be found here.

Near Field Connectivity, NFC, is a mature, well developed, technology normally associated with RFID tags, however IoT sensors using the RFID / NFC are already deployed in mainstream systems to connect machine sensors.  (As an example SAP ERP Manufacturing). Radio Frequency Identification, RFID, offers many variations from Passive to Active Devices and Readers, but all have the fundamental advantage that each Device/Tag/Sensor chip has a unique ID Serial number.

NFC / RFID architecture enables the ‘Reader’ on detecting a Chip to request its unique Serial number identification in a security challenge to establish connectivity authorization. The unique ID can be used to align with additional information, either on the Chip itself, or by locating a separate data file across the network. NFC / RFID technology does have the benefits of maturity and standards, but unfortunately there is no single standard. Further details on RFID including NFC architecture can be found here and a slide deck on applying NFC to IoT is here.

Using NFC/RFID to identify and connect to Digital Assets brings a whole new range of capabilities to IoT Systems as a number of recent articles have pointed out. In the article ‘Connecting the unconnected in IoT’ there is a useful table showing where the traditional so-called ‘Final Mile’ connectivity shifts to a final 10 meters, (or 30 feet), connectivity benefiting from using NFC/RFID technology.

The automatic assumption that IoT means all Devices will be permanently connected is true where the Device’s value lies in semi continuous dynamic event notifications and/or large data transfers. However many Digital Assets need to impart significant data only at certain times and conditions. Connections, initiated by an engineer using a secure challenge, when physically ‘present’ in the final 10 meters zone over come many security issues.

Additionally it allows data to be carried by a Digital Asset, such as a Truck, that may be serviced in different workshops by different companies. The workshop engineers of a certified and authorized Dealer can gain access to the individual Truck operating history for their service work with a minimum of ‘technology’ and centralized services infrastructure.

‘Presence Connectivity’ opens up a realm of new possibilities for creating and managing IoT devices as Digital Assets, though the concept will be new to many working on IoT solutions. This is an extremely flexible technology with too many options to cover in a blog so what follows is a starting point to learn more.

Tego is one of the most widely known and successful companies in the NFC/RFID market providing a very wide range of solutions. This makes the Tego web site a good source of information for those seeking to know more about the Technology as well as the breadth of capabilities that NFC/RFID technology brings to Digital Asset Management. Other significant players who provide interesting information on RFID use of IOT are; Siemens, Omni-ID, and Smartrac.

Tego provide a thought-provoking summary of the value of NFC/RFID for Digital Asset data; “such as when and how they were made, configuration, authenticity, chain of custody, maintenance history, sensor data on current condition, and usage history. This information can be available at the point of use to authorized users using a simple smartphone reader/writer, and/or uploaded to a centralized analytic and management system. Today this is implemented as a smart tag on the product or component. The metadata about the product then becomes part of the product itself, readily accessible at the point of use. Chips can be designed into products because they are small, inexpensive, long-lived, and operate flawlessly even when exposed to harsh environments”.

An interesting Case Study that brings perspective to how the diversity of IoT Digital Assets and connectivity are combined in a solution, (including LoRa and NFC/RFID connectivity), is the Mercedes Self Driving Bus trials in Amsterdam. In July 2016 on its 20km, or 12 miles, trip across a busy town environment. The Mercedes CityPilot technology links standalone autonomous self driving operation with onboard Digital Asset Management as well as interacting and communicating with IoT devices in its external environment.

There have been several brief outline stories on the July 2016 event when a Mercedes prototype Bus drove a complex route in busy urban conditions using its own onboard capabilities as well as networked interaction with Traffic Lights, Bus Stops and its own transport control center as part of coordinated Smart City transportation.

The Mercedes Bus uses a mixture of IoT technologies; a 3G Telecom link continually reports position and numbers of passengers onboard as the basis for Digital Smart Services Apps used by passengers and city transport operations; LoRa is used to provide a low cost simple, dynamic event reporting service for preventative maintenance monitoring of unplanned events that affect operational readiness such heater failure; NFC provides localized interaction with traffic light, and Intelligent Bus Stops where the physical local presence triggers the connection and interaction. Finally the Bus collects huge amounts of data on every aspect of the trial operations that is accessed by authorized Engineers using NFC/RFID interrogation of the onboard Digital Asset chips when the Bus is off the road in the workshop.

Taking this example to the next level of a fleet of such buses operating in the high traffic urban and city environment of a Smart City. There is a need to combine all transportation elements in a complex integrated operating environment that ultimately will go beyond just the buses. Individual Trains, Buses, Taxis and Cars will need to interact dynamically and continuously as they traverse the crowded, busy city infrastructure.

For these interactions to successfully operate requires immense orchestration. Every transport unit needs to be capable of defining what it is, what it is capable of, together with its role as an IoT Digital Asset. The sheer number of Devices/ Assets in operation at once calls for an architectural approach to deciding when, how, and in what format IoT connectivity is made.

The Services of Digital Business will need to achieve ‘Agility’ through more than the simple availability of more Data! Better data at the right time/place is required, and in the world of IoT that means more than one to one permanent, or semi permanent connectivity, instead the use of different connectivity options adds a further dimension.

SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - 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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We had the opportunity to attend SAP SuccessFactors SConnect event in Las Vegas this week, held from August 29th till 31st 2016 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The conference had (in my records) the best attendance since I am attending in 2013, with over 3000 attendees coming from customers, prospects and partners.
 

 

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

 

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

 

 

Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect 2016 - Push on all Fronts from Holger Mueller

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

New User Interface - The new user interface is certainly the most impressive advancement across all that SuccessFactors delivery plans. In the past there was often a lack of consistency across the SuccessFactors products, that the vendor is now addressing. The new UI, starting with the high frequency screens looks attractive and feedback from users was positive to very positive. Now we will watch what real world feedback is going to be and what the next set of improvements SuccessFactors will put in places.

The Centers have come and more are coming – Last year SuccessFactors introduced the center concept. A single place to look for functions or content, one year later we can state that the Center concept has been well accepted and more centers are on the way. The Release and Report Center are the ones that stood out in my view, as getting customers faster on a release and finding reporting information is always valuable. But there are many more and SuccessFactors is certainly up to something here.

Intelligent Services – Another capability that SuccessFactors debuted last year, Intelligent Service – is seeing good uptake by customers, some executives even shared better uptake than they expected. Personally I am not surprised, as automating more repetitive tasks is something not only HR professionals but especially business users have been asking for a long time. The debate if Intelligent Services is ‘just workflow’ keeps going on, but at the end it does not matter what it can be labelled as from a taxonomy standpoint, what matters is that functionality provides day to day value for SuccessFactors users. And that was a question last year – by now from adoption and customer conversations there is no question anymore.

Performance Management keeps getting continuous – When SAP unveiled its plans to come up with a different approach to Performance Management, there was general surprise. After all, SuccessFactors is the ‘800-pound gorilla’ in Performance Management and gorillas are not know for disrupting themselves. So kudos for that to SuccessFactors, on the flipside the direction of a more continuous form of Performance Management is not in the league with e.g. Columbus finding America. But HR professionals don’t want risky discovery, but a solution to the inaptitude of current Performance Management, and the new SuccessFactors offering is working well in these regards. Also good to see that SuccessFactors did not rest and is building more capabilities into Performance Management.

 

 

Analyst Tidbits

• Payroll – Amongst the numerous announcement was also a payroll related one, that Accenture, EPI-USE and NGA HR would take a SAP customers payroll, ‘lift & shift’ it to their environments and have it run / managed from there. An interesting solution for customers who want to use the SAP cloud offerings, but not go through the risk and cost to re-implement a payroll. Pretty sure this will help SAP / SuccessFactors in one or the other competitive situation.
   
• Bias & Diversity – Back at Sapphire Thomas Otter and me recorded a video on how software can help eliminate bias and increase diversity (see here) – and now SAP is getting ready to release first product capabilities, starting with a resume parser that flags words that may be offensive or limiting candidate response due to bias or targeting only a slice of the candidate population. In combination with the new Investigate (see below) capability there will be also the functionality to analyze the workforce in regards of bias and diversity.
   
• Marketplace - It’s the biennial of the marketplaces, and SuccessFactors does not stand back, launching the "SAP Training Marketplace" for its Learning product. A good start and an area where customers have requested more capabilities. Also a good place to show SAP wide benefits – as SuccessFactors leverage ‘sister division’ hybris capabilities. We will be curios on the uptake.
   
• Analytics – I have been critical of SAP’s analytics efforts overall and HCM in specific (see my definition of ‘true’ analytics here) – so it is good to see that things at SuccessFactors are changing for the better. Next to the new Report Center and the upcoming ‘Investigate’ capability, SuccessFactors has now a number of veritable predictive analytics projects ‘under the belt – which is a much better situation than a few quarters ago. We will have to see how yesterday’s SAP BW/HANA announcement may affect the reporting / analytics strategy for whole divisions like SuccessFactors (see our analysis here).

 

 

MyPOV

A good event for SuccessFactors that is growing on all fronts – customers, users, partners, prospects and most importantly product capability. Both SAP CEO Bill McDermott (with a first live appearance at the event) and Mike Ettling mentioned that the largest R&D contribution of SAP is in the HCM area. And with a focus on horizontal capabilities (e.g. User Interface and Reporting), the benefits are visible and delivered quickly. Also good to see that SuccessFactors has followed up on what they said they would deliver at the analyst summit earlier this year (Progress Report here). Moreover, it was good that this was not another ‘EmployeeCentral’ themed SuccessConnect – which for a long time has been the center of attention for good reasons, but almost to the point where traditional SuccessFactors clients on the older SuccessFactors products felt left out. A focus on overall HCM best practices has been good for the conference.

On the concern side SAP must – like all vendors with a history in the enterprise software market – address the question of technical debt. Some of the acquired older SuccessFactors products are turning double digit if not teenage years old, always a point to rethink and possible rebuild products. At the same time SAP as a company overall is on the quest of rebuilding the suite with S/4HANA and that has repercussions on all product lines – that at least need to be answered (see the BW/HANA announcement happening in parallel). But that is not only a problem for SAP / SuccessFactors – nonetheless an area to watch.

Overall a good event, good to see activity and progress on all fronts. We also learnt that SAP has an ambitious partner agenda – that should drive EmployeeCentral customers to 2000 by end of the year – from a current base of 1200 and change. We will be watching, but for now congrats to SuccessFactors to a good event, showing value to customers across the SAP HCM capabilities.

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

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

Where I am Speaking This Fall! Come Say Hello!

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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ROI of Social Customer Service: How to Calculate It and Create a Strong Business Case

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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The phrase “customer service is the new marketing” has gained popularity with brands realizing that poor customer service takes current, and even potential customers, out of the marketing funnel. Why? If a customer doesn’t get the help she needs, she often will not remain loyal – or worse, she will take to social media and tarnish the brand. Think about it. If a consumer’s flight gets delayed or she receives terrible food brought to the table, she might post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Yelp within minutes of the incident. From one mistake, a company’s reputation can be smeared all over the internet. The report goes into a lot of detail so it’s clear how to calculate the ROI of social customer service:

Many brands have experienced incidents where not taking care of an issue turned into a social media nightmare. These include brands like Domino’s Pizza[i], the Red Cross[ii], McDonald’s[iii], and Cisco and extends to people’s personal brands such as comedian Gilbert Gottfried[iv] and hockey player Tyler Sequin.[v]

Customer care extends far beyond the traditional call center. Every touch point or interaction with the company (or even content about the company) can affect the customer’s satisfaction and loyalty to the brand. While it’s not always a positive experience, brands need to hear opinions expressed online to enable them to create the necessary corrections, drive strategy, and improve operations for making great customer experiences.

To gain buy-in for this type of interaction in a social customer service program, executives need to show senior leaders a viable business case. Once everyone is on board, it’s time to create some baseline metrics and goals and then determine what the ROI needs to be based on the program qualifications being set in place. The components of a business case include:

• Goals and objectives for the social customer care initiative
• A strategy to meet the social customer care goals and objectives
• Metrics/Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the goals and objectives
• The business results (cost savings or revenue generation) or the return on investment (ROI) for the social customer care initiative.

How to Calculate Social Customer Care ROI

Constellation often hears comments such as “the ROI of social media can’t be calculated because there are too many unknowns” or “don’t worry about the ROI – social media is very tactical – just start doing it – get a Twitter handle, a Facebook page, a Pinterest account.” Some people may quote metrics and/or KPIs, but few know how to convert them into ROI.

An ROI calculation offers a way to put the business strategy and metrics into a formula to show, in numbers, how the strategy is, for instance, increasing revenue or decreasing costs. ROI calculations can also provide perspective on the potential strengths or weaknesses of the strategy. Examples in this report will show how correctly calculating ROI will help in the evaluation and improvement of your strategies. The formula to calculate ROI is:

Return on Investment = (Gains from Investment) – (Costs of Investment) x 100

Costs of Investment

Calculating the ROI of social media involves three variables:

• Traditional customer care business metrics
• Social media metrics
• Changes to traditional business processes and metrics when social media is applied to a business initiative.

Here’s an Example: Social Customer Care Increases Revenue and Customer Lifetime Value

An international airline that services over 280 destinations worldwide uses a social media tool for monitoring all its social channels, engaging back with its online communities, doing in-depth reporting, and tracking KPI metrics and agent performance. Most importantly, the platform the airline uses supports its global consumer base, enabling the airline to monitor the 30,000 social mentions received in more than nine languages each month.

A company’s revenue is based on the number of customers and the average purchase value in a period of time. When companies use a social media platform, they can increase their revenue from existing customers. By engaging and listening, they can retain them as customers and increase the amount and frequency of purchases over a longer period of time. When the company is truly listening and integrating the feedback, like the airline above, it will be able to meet the needs of the customer and increase not only the amount that the customer spends, but also the number of years the customer spends with that company.

Calculating Costs

To calculate costs, we look at the cost of the technology and implementation (see Figure 1). Then we also look at the cost of the employees or customer service professionals providing the social customer care. The payroll costs include the expenses of a manager part-time as well as the cost of 10 part-time customer service agents with 40 percent of their time spent on social customer care and 50 full-time customer care social media professionals. The total of the costs for both technology ($30,000) and payroll ($2,720,400) is $2,750,400.

Figure 1. Airline Example of Customer Social Media Cost Calculation

Calculating Gains

The benefit calculation is created by determining the extra revenue generated from more loyal customers who spend more with the airline. The annual number of customers or passengers per year is 22,000,000 with an average spend per customer of $250. With the increased responsiveness and better social customer service, we estimate that 10 percent of the customers will spend 10 percent more per year. The ROI is calculated by taking the $55,000,000 minus $2,750,400 x 100 divided by $2,750,400. This total increase in revenue is approximately $55,000,000 (see Figure 2), and the ROI is 1899 percent. This means that the airline made $18.99 for every dollar that it invested in social customer care.

Figure 2. Airline Example of Customer Social Media Gain Calculation

In the report, we go over many different examples of how companies have calculated ROI. Though there are nearly dozens of ways that social adds to the value of not only Customer Service, Marketing, Product Innovation, Supply Chain, ERP as well as Internal Operations – like acquiring recruiting and retaining top talent. If you want more help on these types of calculations, we are here to help!

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-Facing Applications and how Social, IOT, Machine Learning and AI Transform Customer Experience

[i] “Managing Bad News in Social Media: A Case Study on Domino’s Pizza Crisis”, Jaram Park, Meeyoung Cha, Hoh Kim, Jaeseung Jeong, Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, from Proceedings of the Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2012, https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/download/4672/4994‪.

[ii] “Red Cross Does PR Disaster Recovery on Rogue Tweet”, Todd Wasserman, Mashable, February 16, 2011,http://mashable.com/2011/02/16/red-cross-tweet/#q0MtRnonuSqN

[iii] “#McDStories: When a Hashtag Becomes a Bashtag”, Kashmir Hill, Forbes, January 24, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/24/mcdstories-when-a-hashtag-becomes-a-bashtag/#2b511f55193f

[iv] “Gilbert Gottfried Fired as Aflac Duck after Japanese Tsunami Tweets”, Huffington Post, March 14, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/14/gilbert-gottfried-fired-aflac_n_835692.html.

[v] “Tyler Seguin’s Account Tweets ‘Only Steers and Queers in Texas’; New Stars Center Says He Was Hacked”, SportsDay, July 2013, http://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-stars/starsheadlines/2013/07/07/tyler-seguin-s-account-tweets-only-steers-and-queers-in-texas-new-stars-center-say-he-was-hacked.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Powers Machine Learning Apps, Revs Vertica Database

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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HPE streamlines use of machine learning services with Haven OnDemand Combinations. Vertica release improves performance, adds Hadoop and Spark support.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced August 30 at its HPE Big Data Conference in Boston that it’s making its library of machine learning services easier for developers to build into smart, “cognitive” applications through Haven OnDemand Combinations. In a second announcement at the event, HPE unveiled Vertica 8.0, the next release of the company’s high-scale analytical database.

Haven OnDemand is in the white-hot category of machine learning services. (The category is sometimes pegged as cognitive or artificial intelligence technology, but Constellation Research views machine learning as a more accurate description of current capabilities.) It’s a domain that has seen dozens of acquisitions in recent years, led by leading tech companies including Amazon, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Salesforce.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Powers Cognitive Apps from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

Derived largely from the Autonomy IDOL portfolio, Haven OnDemand now includes more than 70 APIs in categories including text analysis, image analysis, audio and video analysis, prediction and search. By comparison IBM has roughly 30 APIs and Watson Cognitive Services while Microsoft has more than 20 Cognitive Services APIs.

How will HPE differentiate Haven OnDemand as the big public cloud companies deepen their portfolios? Haven OnDemand Combinations is an early effort to do just that by enabling developers to bring together multiple APIs in composite services that can be saved and reused for fast development.

HPE has introduced a few pre-built Combinations of its own, including call archiving and language-agnostic sentiment analysis. But these Combinations aren’t products so much as starting points meant to be adapted by customers. The essence of Combinations is giving developers the ability to tie together multiple APIs, using a drag-and-drop design interface. From thereon, developers can quickly invoke the Combinations through a single API with minimal coding.

Haven OnDemand runs on Microsoft Azure, but it’s REST-based APIs can be invoked in any services-enabled environment, including Amazon Web Services or hybrid and private clouds. Haven OnDemand services originated on HP Helion, but the services were relaunched on Azure after the Helion public cloud was shuttered in 2015.

The availability of machine learning services on Amazon, Azure, Google and IBM clouds is clearly a threat to Haven OnDemand. But in an onstage interview at this week’s conference, Microsoft executive Mike Schutz said the first priority for Azure is providing quickly deployable and scalable infrastructure services and compute capacity. Schutz described Haven OnDemand as a “higher-level solution.”

HPE executives say Haven OnDemand has a head start on delivering machine learning services and stressed that they’re already in production use among “hundreds of thousands of users.” The Haven OnDemand community has some 18,000 developers and the APIs are getting “millions of calls” per month, they said. HPE also noted that Haven OnDemand covers essentials for developing secure applications such as role-based permissions for access to data.

Haven OnDemand Combinations gives developers the ability to chain together APIs and
associated data pipelines and invoke them through a single API call.

MyPOV: There’s no doubt that competition from the big public clouds will present perception and performance challenges to Haven OnDemand over the long haul. For starters there’s the one-stop-shop appeal of using development services and machine learning services from one and the same cloud. Even in the case of Azure, Haven OnDemand is a stand-alone site (HavenOnDemand.com) rather than a library of APIs that’s exposed within the Azure Cloud.

On performance, it will be challenged when high-scale used in an app is in one cloud, say Amazon Web Services, while Haven OnDemand Services run on Azure. HPE execs said the Haven OnDemand APIs typically work with indexes and result sets of data that are a shadow of the size of the original data, minimizing performance and storage penalties, but data movement at high scale can’t help but tax performance.

In short, HPE’s competitive advantage will hinge on just how aggressively and successfully HPE and its biggest rivals pursue machine learning services and support for building smart applications.

Vertica 8.0 Bolsters Hadoop, In-Database Analytics and Cloud Support

HPE’s Vertica analytic database is a popular choice for high-scale data mart deployments, data warehouse optimization scenarios and in embedded, OEM use by software and services companies, such as current customers Domo, GoodData and Looker.

The Vertica 8.0 release announced at HPE’s Big Data Conference is due out by the end of October, and it promises better performance as well as extended support for Hadoop, in-database analytics and cloud deployment. Vertica 8.0 is said to deliver faster data loading, simplified data loading from Amazon S3, and comprehensive visual monitoring of Apache Kafka data streams.

HPE is bolstering Vertica compatibility with Hadoop with support for the Parquet file format. Parquet is widely used on Cloudera deployments. Last year Vertica gained support for ORC, a file format often used in Hortonworks, so HPE is rounding out its ability to work with leading Hadoop distributions.

On the in-database front, Vertica 8.0 gains R-based machine learning algorithms that will enable data scientists to model against vast data sets relying on the power of Vertica’s massively parallel processing (and thus avoiding moving data to analytic servers or relying on sampling techniques). The upgrade also adds a two-way connector for Apache Spark so data scientists can rely on machine learning algorithms in Spark or port high-scale queries that might choke the memory space from Spark to Vertica.

Vertica was already certified to run on Amazon Web Services, but the 8.0 release adds support for deployment on Microsoft Azure. On either cloud it’s a bring-your-own-license (BYOL) approach, but you can spin up the Vertica Community Edition from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

MyPOV on Vertica

As with Hadoop, as-a-service offerings seems to be the hottest database deployment choice of late, but HPE insists that its customers prefer to manage their own deployments BYOL style. The company took a stab at database as a service with Vertica OnDemand on Helion, but unlike competitors like Teradata and Oracle, it has since eschewed providing managed services.

Certification on Azure is a good step and I won’t be surprised to see deeper ties with Microsoft and perhaps more cloud deployment options alongside Haven OnDemand services. HPE and Microsoft have many joint customers and partners, and it’s exactly those constituents it appealed to in a keynote slide with the simple headline, “Our platform, your vision.” It’s about putting Haven OnDemand and Vertica inside customer and partner apps, and that story only gets stronger when there are plenty of flexible deployment options.

Genesys Acquires Interactive Intelligence- Good Move for Both Companies

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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Genesys (www.genesys.com), a customer experience, omnichannel and contact center solution and Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. (www.inin.com), a customer engagement and global leader of cloud and on-premise solutions for  communications and collaboration, are entering into a definitive agreement. In this agreement  Genesys will acquire Interactive Intelligence in a transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion.

How Will This Affect You and Your Customers?

The transaction will accelerate Genesys’ mission of powering customer experiences at scale, anytime, anywhere – over any channel and device, in the cloud and on-premise. Both Genesys and Interactive Intelligence have developed best-in-class capabilities with highly complementary product portfolios that serve adjacent market segments. So together, the combined company will provide a broad customer experience solutions globally for organizations of all sizes across a range of industries.

If you are wondering about their commitment to accelerate innovation and R&D,  Genesys has explained they are committed to accelerate innovation in the customer experience market, with more than $1.3 billion in revenue and annual R&D spend approaching $200 million.
Notes From The Executives

Paul Segre, Chief Executive Officer, Genesys offered, “This is a milestone transaction that combines industry-leading expertise and capabilities to enable lasting customer relationships, accelerate innovation and drive growth. Our combined product portfolio will provide the broadest set of transformative customer experience solutions optimized for customers of all sizes and sophistication levels, available both in the cloud and on-premise. We will significantly invest across the entire Interactive Intelligence product portfolio to support the continued momentum of PureCloud®, Cloud Communications-as-a-Service℠ (CaaS) and Customer Interaction Center™ (CIC), in addition to the rich portfolio of products offered by Genesys today. We are excited to work with the Interactive Intelligence team to deliver even greater innovation and value to our global customers and partners.”
Dr. Don Brown, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Interactive Intelligence explained their position by saying, “We have been working for the past 22 years to build an outstanding company with innovative, disruptive technology solutions that transform businesses. I am confident that our agreement with Genesys, which follows a careful evaluation of strategic alternatives, provides Interactive Intelligence shareholders with immediate and significant value, and will deliver meaningful benefits to our customers, partners and employees. The combination of Genesys and Interactive Intelligence provides a complete portfolio to address all market segments by combining Interactive Intelligence’s PureCloud, Cloud Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS), and Customer Interaction Center (CIC) with Genesys’ offerings. I am excited for the combined company to continue to grow and meet the needs of organizations around the world.”

What Does This Mean to You

Customer experience here to stay. It is the one competitive differentiator that a brand can’t ignore. Customers either have a great experience, over many touch points over the time they spend with a brand or they don’t. If they don’t, often don’t return. The question is what solution(s) will your brand use to affect their experience of doing business with your brand? Many choices for sure.

@drnatalie petouhoff,
VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer Experience