Quo vadis Twitter? Who could, should buy Twitter - and what is Twitter really?

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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So the rumors are out, Twitter is up for sale – and I see it with a wary eye, my most used social network may change owners… time to muse about it.

 

But let’s start what Twitter really is, sharing 5 things Twitter does really well, but you may not have thought of it (my goal is that at least three were new angles for you):

An amazing feed engine – Twitter veterans know the early growth problems of Twitter, but since a few re-architectures Twitter has been stable and scaling well to its 300M+ users. It is unique, as it scales to 300M+ feeds (yes Facebook scales to 1B+ feeds, but they are not of the same virality, velocity and volume like twitter posts). The Twitter engine is what many people try to build their next generation apps for – e.g. to monitor things in the IoT world.

A barrier breaker – Information gets filtered, refactored, edited etc. all the time, a traditional way of preparing and consuming information. With Twitter anyone can find an outlet and post tweets to the world, of different quality, but when e.g. an executive at vendor starts to tweet, it often is an insight on where the executives and / or the vendors thinking is at the moment. If it is worth a tweet, it means something for a busy executive. But often not mentioned, it works as a very effective internal communications tool, were an executive can meet internal and external audiences in a quick, light weight fashion.

The priority inbox – As a heavy Twitter user, I check Twitter often, maybe too often. But it also leads me to check DMs more often than… emails. So the DM has become the priority Inbox. My colleagues even know during covering an event – the best way to reach me is a DM. But it also works as a bypass – some executives have asked and received the best unfiltered feedback about a product, customer, event on DM. And last but not least it works for customer service, too. I have not talked to e.g. a United agent for 2 years, kudos to the Twitter team there that has done all from rebooking, changing flights, changing seats, giving connection information and adding my PRE number (that’s how it all started). So another channel – with some priority.

A note taker – As bad as Twitter is to find people on Twitter where usually Google wins out as most efficient, it works great for atomic note taking. And the search on it is very very powerful. Before going to an event, I look up tweets from last year’s event with a hashtag search. No more efficient way I can think off and have seen. And as an influencer -why should my thoughts, observations and notes not be public right away? Yes, it amounts in lots of tweets, but has proven to be – very valuable.

A survival tool – A lot of my friends and family have gotten Twitter accounts, because they live in … California. And between wild fires and waiting for the ‘big one’ – Twitter is the best safety / survival tool out there. A thin tweet – at sometimes even a text / SMS is visible not only to your followers but the rest of the world. Wishing no one to lay in a ditch or under a collapsed structure – but posting to Facebook is hard and less visible. Instagram and Snapchat are too heavy data wise. On Google+ no one will notice etc.

Who could buy Twitter?

Well anyone who can afford the lofty premium Twitter wants of course for their existing data and Twitters potential to have us users create more data.

But let’s start who should NOT buy Twitter

• Enterprise software vendors (this includes rumored Salesforce) – Not a good move, these vendors need to stay on top of digital data to power marketing, sales and service – but social media usage and related data exhaust are fickle – owning one major data source will not allow these vendors to do what they need to: Cross social network sensing, execution and operation of related business functions.
   
• Big Pipe Companies (this are the AT&T, Comcasts, Verizons etc.) – Not a good move either, unless a very bold transformation strategy, so far not unveiled in the direction of DaaS and advertising. Unlikely to be the case – so discard). And these vendors are still licking their wounds from them by now almost entirely abandoned data center diversification strategy.
   
• Big Media (networks, Disney etc.) – Not a good idea either, though the engagement of Twitter users around live events is very powerful and all these players are losing viewership due to loss of engagement. But 10% of the Twitter price will let these players try all engagement strategies in the universe… so I expect them to spend their $s there. 

 

So who could buy Twitter?

 

• Obviously DaaS players, we were just reminded e.g. by Oracle last week that they have 3.5B consumer graphs, adding the Twitter data (which maybe there already) is valuable, and likewise something to monetize. Salesforce and IBM e.g. have access to Twitter, too – the value of the functions. But given Twitter’s price, DaaS vendors would need to monetize the Twitter data – and likely sell them to their competitors. The value of Twitter is to be able to push any related services closer to real-time. Malls still rule the spontaneous purchase – because the consumer was there – but Twitter is an opportunity to move this online.
   
• Certainly Advertisers, as they can get a real input in regards of what moves a tweeter. But Twitter itself has not figured out to do this – and anyone in the space needs to be careful not to turn off / drive off usage by too much in the face advertisement. So any acquirer in this space better have a way how to solve what Twitter has not been able to solve.
   
• Social Media catch up players can be interested in Twitter. 300M is not Facebook but a Top5 social media network out there. Compared to e.g. Snapchat Twitter is more global and more cross generational and more business. Any player who wants to grow here, wants to get into social could be an acquirer. Google comes to mind immediately.
   
• A combination player (e.g. Google, Microsoft) that could leverage synergies across multiple fields of existing operations, or form a new offering with Twitter and existing assets. E.g. if it was Google it could not only fuel DaaS for enterprises, add to advertisement, but complement Google+ with Twitter and vice versa – bring more social tools to Twitter from the social toolbox. 

 

MyPOV

It is fascinating to see Twitter grow to its current usage level and still struggle with monetization, turning to a profit. There are many assets inside of Twitter that can be of value for an acquirer – but they are all not easy to unlock, leverage. To me Google makes the most sense – but not sure if the vendor has the appetite to such a large investment. And Google is working hard to get more into the enterprise – se the announcements from the recent Google Horizons event. Unless I missed some major hitter – everybody else will have some challenges with Twitter – not making tis an easy target. So likely Twitter will have to march on -till the investment case gets clearer, another player gets desperate and most likely – Twitter becomes more affordable with a drop in market cap.

 

So what's your take? 

 

More Musings

• Musings - The Bots are coming to your conversation - what are the implications? - read here
• Musings - We are entering the age of the Über Super Computer - read here
• Musings - Retail is the breeding ground for NextGen Apps - read here
• Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! Read here
• The Dilemma with Cloud Infrastructure updates - read here
• Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
• What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
• Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
• How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here

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

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

Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Event Report - The Intersection of Sales, Marketing, and Data Clouds

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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Google Rebrands Apps for Work to G Suite: Is That Enough?

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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Today at Google Horizon the company announced they are rebranding Google Apps for Work to G Suite, "Google's intelligent apps designed for business."

G Suite, contains the same applications that Google Apps for Work did; Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites but now Google+ is included as a fully supported product. G Suite starts at $5/user/month and doubles to $10/user/month for unlimited storage and admin controls for areas like discovery and compliance.

The announcement of G Suite comes around the 10 Year anniversary of the launch of the original Google Apps for Your Domain offering and Google is now claiming 2M paying business and enterprise customers use Google Apps for Work.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Google Apps for Work provided a clearer definition of what the offering did, where as G Suite is a more generic term akin to Microsoft's Office 365, which they have always struggled to explain. I can see the marketing benefit's of reducing the perceived boundaries between personal computing and business tools, but is that in the vendor's best interest or their customers? Also G Suite does not instantly convey that this set of products will leverage Google's considerable experience in Artifcial Intellignce. That said, at the end of the day it's just a name, and once people get past that the products and the benefits they provide are really what matter. 

So what's new about G Suite?

Google says they are focusing G Suite on 3 areas: employees, teams and organizations.

For employees, they want to make creating content easier. To do this they have enhanced the former feature called Research into a new tool called Explore. Explore searches for information, images and other content on the web (via Google search) and makes it easy to insert into Google Docs. Microsoft Office offers similar functionality, and takes it a step further with tools announced this week that help you automatically format the content. Still, users of Google Docs should find the new Explore function helpful when creating content.

Other tweaks Google has made to G Suite to help people get work done include:

- Find A Time, a smart meeting scheduler that help people book meetings.
- Quick Access, which makes it easy to add attachments from Drive by placing your newest and most frequent files just a click away

For teams, Google has introduced Team Drives, which can make files available to everyone at the domain level, instead of individual owners which then have to grant access to other colleagues. Hangouts have also been enhanced, making it easier to dial into meeting and record meetings and save the recording to Drive.

At the organizational level, G Suite will allow administrations to configure Springboard, Google’s new cross application search feature, to search not just G Suite applications, but also 3rd party content as well.

Summary

While G Suite provides a few nice new features, it seems more like a point release than a product worthy of a complete name change. For a company with such an image of innovation (Google Glass, self driving cars, AI winning Go, etc) I’m disappointed that they have not seized more of a leadership role in redefining the way employees work.

- Google has access to so much content and context via email, calendar, maps, photos, videos and docs, and such advanced AI algorithms and search features, that I’d like to see them pushing the boundaries of the way people work together in more innovative ways. For example, on our phones Google Now is an incredibly powerful personal assistant, often surfacing information proactively, I’d like to see a similar level of automation within G Suite. I’d like to see Google using their AI capabilities to automate many of the common and repetitive tasks that employees do everyday.
- G Suite does not offer anything new in the way of project/task management. Products like Google Keep do not offer the functionality that Microsoft OneNote, Wunderlist and Planner provide.
- What is G Suites's enterprise strategy for messaging? While Google Hangouts is being enhanced, should customers expect to see Enterprise versions of Google's new consumer tools such as Allo, Duo and Spaces?

Conclusion

Current customers will be happy with the new G Suite features, but at this time Constellation Research does not see enough product differentiation to cause Microsoft Office customers to switch.
 

SAP's Acquisition of Altiscale: It's About Next Gen Apps Not BigData

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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Long rumored (see my colleague’s Doug Henschen pre-acquisition take here) and now it’s official, SAP has acquired Altiscale, a Big Data as a Service vendor.

 

 

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

Today, September 27, SAP officially announces its completed acquisition of Altiscale, which provides a high-performance, scalable Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) solution that uniquely includes full operational services.
[…] Altiscale will operate as a focused and integrated BDaaS offering from SAP to help accelerate and operationalize Big Data deployment in the enterprise.

MyPOV – Good point on what Altiscale does and how it helps, key SAP will keep operating Altiscale. Important for existing customers, but also going forward.

Several key factors drove SAP’s decision to acquire Altiscale.
The two companies have complementary approaches to implementing enterprise Big Data solutions. SAP has taken the approach to build its distributed based on deep understanding of requirements coming from enterprise applications, analytics, data platform, data warehousing and cloud platform. Altiscale has focused on cloud and data infrastructure with its Altiscale Data Cloud offering, which starts with a highly optimized cloud infrastructure, continues with a Spark and Hadoop data platform.
Altiscale is a natural fit for SAP, as we share our overall focus of helping enterprises derive business value from data – and successfully leverage Big Data. Since Altiscale is a leader in Big Data-as-a-Service based on Hadoop and Spark, it enables SAP to drive end-to-end value in Big Data across the technology, data platform, PaaS, analytics, and application stack.
Altiscale offers high job performance, reliability, and economic performance for Hadoop and Spark in the cloud. It has an established and very satisfied customer base that includes a variety of industries, including financial services, telecommunications, media, ad tech, and marketing analytics.
SAP’s initial foray into Big Data processing began with its investment in SAP HANA Vora, a distributed computing framework that extends Spark’s execution engine to address some key inefficiencies in processing Big Data for business use. Through this experience, SAP saw the unique challenges faced by businesses in the provisioning, scaling, and operation of Hadoop in a production environment. Altiscale directly addresses these challenges, providing the customer with full-service Hadoop and Spark in the cloud to boost performance, eliminate roadblocks, and accelerate customer go-live. The combination of Altiscale and SAP HANA Vora will enable SAP to provide a holistic and accelerated Big Data solution, allowing businesses to quickly achieve positive business impact from Big Data.
Altiscale is a great fit beyond SAP’s Big Data strategy. It is also integrates well with a number of SAP strategic initiatives, such as SAP HANA Cloud Platform, IoT, analytics, LoB cloud apps, and business networks. Altiscale’s Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) capabilities enable SAP to offer a much more comprehensive and robust enterprise solution that meets the unique needs of customers on their digital transformation journey.

MyPOV – All points describe well how Altiscale is a fit for SAP: SAP has been slow warming up to Hadoop – as stated SAP HANA Vora was the first foray – but lots of questions had to be addressed till SAP would from in memory SAP HANA and SAP HANA Vora to ‘spinning rust’ on HDDs managed by Hadoop. This is truly complimentary to SAP – has Altiscale offers yhat SAP does not have and would have had to build from scratch: The dynamic provisioning of large scale BigData implementation for its customers.

There are many use cases for Altiscale in the following areas and industries:
IoT: Uses include manufacturing, utilities, transportation, smart cities, and more.
Financial services: Applications include fraud detection, cybersecurity, and achieving a 360-degree customer view.
Media: Examples include advertising optimization and recommendation engines.
Ad tech and marketing analytics: Uses include multi-channel analytics and advertising attribution.
Pharmaceutical: Drug research, market segmentation, and supply chain optimization are all examples.
Telecommunications: Altiscale can be used to optimize billing and facilitate churn analysis.

 MyPOV – Exactly, it is at the end not about Hadoop and BDaaS (which both are key for SAP extending functional capability and use cases as well as addressing the Hadoop know how / expert shortage questions) – but ultimately all technology is about enabling customer benefits through powering hands on use cases. It’s a good list. Sticklers will note the absence of security, which Altiscale featured high, replaced now with what matters to SAP customers at the moment – IoT). Fair enough 

 

SAP and Altiscale are currently working to synchronize both companies’ technology, products and market perspectives. We will be systematically evolving the Altiscale Data Cloud for integration into the SAP portfolio. […]

MyPOV – No surprise – looking forward to learning more specifics on the roadmap.

As we go forward, SAP remains committed to honoring all customer contracts and ensuring high customer satisfaction. SAP and Altiscale will work closely with customers in the coming months to determine how SAP’s future Big Data and other data analytics offerings can best meet each customer’s unique needs.

MyPOV – Good to see SAP honoring Altiscale contract – especially in BDaaS, because – it is BigData.

Overall MyPOV

A good move by SAP – that needed to have native Hadoop, HDD based BigData capabilities to operate use cases where in memory was either commercially or not even technically feasible. With Altiscale SAP now only addresses this part – but also the know-how challenge that is surrounding BigData. At Constellation we see more than 66% of BigData projects that are live and delivering value seeing interruption because of know how-issues, vendor changes, new software, new consultants etc. So SAP gains both product capabilities and services capabilities, the combination is crucial.

On the concern side, SAP took long to get here and needs to move fast. Clarity on where data resides, which IaaS platforms will be supported etc. needs to come soon, as enterprises make decisions on the providers and platforms for their next generation applications. SAP is always in the picture for ERP content, how much SAP can be in the picture for more of the next generation applications business will be determined by speed and clarity on moving to full Hadoop support.

But for now a truly synergistic acquisition for SAP, which also gets a Hadoop pioneer and its team with Raymie Stata, let’s see how far and fast it can get SAP to power a more complete set of next generation applications – that always need… Hadoop.

 

 

 

And more on SAP

• First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
• Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - Push on all fronts - read here
• Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
• Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
• First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
• First Take -  SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
• Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
• News Analysis - Apple & SAP Partner to Revolutionize Work on iPhone & iPad - read here
• Progress Report - SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP - read here
• News Analysis - SAP HANA Vora now available... - A key milestone for SAP - read here
• Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - Make Procurement Cool Again - read here
• News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors innovates in Performance Management with continuous feedback powered by 1 to 1s  - read here
• Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
• News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
• News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
• Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
• First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
• First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
• In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
• First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
• Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
• First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
• First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
• SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
• Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
• Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
• Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
• Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
• News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
• Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
• SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
• Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
• SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
• Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
• SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
• Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
• SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
• Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
• Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
• The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
• Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
• Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
• Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
• Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here

 

And more about SAP technology:

• Event Prieview - SAP TechEd 2015 - read here
• News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
• HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
• News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
• News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
• Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
• Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
• News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
• SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
• My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
• SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
• Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
• SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
• HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here

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

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

First Take - Microsoft Ignite - AI, Adobe and FPGA [From the Fences]

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 could not make it to Microsoft’s IT management focused in Atlanta, but that did not hinder us to watch the event from the fences. The conference is well attended, Microsoft says over 22k attendees, a very good turnout considering this was only the 2nd edition of the Ignite conference. 

 

 

 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

 

 

First Take - Microsoft Ignite - AI, Adobe and FPGA from Holger Mueller

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

All about AI, democratize AI – In the afternoon keynote Satya Nadella coined a new marketing slogan we will hear more often from Microsoft – Democratize AI. Not surprisingly for Microsoft this means bringing Machine Learning to all its products – we saw Office, Dynamics, Hololens, Security, IoT, of course Cortana and more. Nadella was proud for Microsoft to win 2 world championships in Machine Learning – congrats – we need to see who participated. Voice and Conversation as a Platform that Nadella was very much about at the developer Build conference in spring (see my Event Report here), was less prominent, as was the push for voice is the new UI. But overall messaging was consistent – all the way to the Nadella very early days with MobileFirst and CloudFirst.

Adobe chooses Microsoft – We have written often about Microsoft needing to acquire additional load to fuel the growth of Azure, once Office365 conversions run out of steam. Beyond Office Microsoft does not have too much organic load in house, so it is key for Microsoft to attract ISVs, as ISVs provide a lot of load – and best – transform the load to their IaaS. Adobe is moving out of multiple clouds, but mainly out of AWS, where Adobe was certainly a Top 10 customer. We would not be surprised if commercial terms for Adobe were very attractive. Both vendors have more synergies, like Adobe integrating its marketing products with Dynamics (explicitly mentioned), and longer term Adobe using Microsoft Machine Learning capabilities (more implicit). My colleague R “Ray” Wang has also covered the decision in a News Analysis blog post – check it out here.
 

Azure is (almost) 100% FPGAed – Out of the R&D project Catapult that a brave researcher got passed former Microsoft leader Ballmer, Microsoft not only found a way to accelerate Bing, but all of Azure. Effectively Microsoft now has equipped almost each server in and every new server that comes to Azure with a FPGA, that allows to scale the server better. Especially for Machine Learning, as Microsoft impressively demonstrated that all of Wikipedia could be translated into Spanish in less than 0.1 seconds using all of Azure. So the FPGAs must be doing some very smart balancing across even hundreds of thousands of servers. An interesting approach, that has the flexibility of the programmable FPGA, but is very hard to code. It will be interesting to see how often Microsoft will re-program the FPGAs, for different purposes – or even open them up for Azure customers. But early days and kudos to Microsoft to come up with a unique architecture. 

 

MyPOV

A good start for Ignite, that not only showed innovation across all products, but also the depth and breadth Microsoft has from its R&D team and how it can differentiate offerings. It is clear Microsoft is on a good course, creating new products, innovating, adding new capabilities (e.g. Docker to Azure, normally a bigger announcement, but did not make the Top 3) – and attracting load – Adobe is certainly a big fish to catch. Strategy and messaging has remained consistent compared to the other two major events.

On the concern side Microsoft needs to stretch the rubber between where it needs to be vis a vis the competition (there most notably AWS and Google) and at the same time where its customers are. There is a lot for customers to digest, understand and bring back to their executive teams for the adoption conversation. Making the case to a CIO’s peers was something that Microsoft has room to improve on, and at the same time needs to make sure their customer base does not get overwhelmed. Sometimes less is more. But a good problem to have.

Overall a good start at MS Ignite and interesting and differentiating offerings shown and announced. No surprises – even on the FPGAs (more a question if Microsoft really pushed this out to all Azure Server, but it says it has). Interesting and exciting times stay tuned.


More Apps / SaaS vendor and IaaS vendor partnerships (in chronological order):

• Infor runs on Amazon AWS (read here)
• SAP on IBM Cloud (read here) 
• Lumesse on Salesforce Cloud (read here) and
• NetSuite on Microsoft Azure (read here)
• JDA chooses Google Cloud Platform (read here)
• SAP chooses Microsoft Azure (read here)
• Salesforce chooses AWS (read here) 
• Workday chooses IBM for DEV and TST (read here)

And more on Microsoft:
 

• News Analysis - GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT - read here
• Market Move - Microsoft acquired Linked - Tons of synergies, start with Cortana, maybe too many - read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft opens Windows Holographic to partners for a new era of mixed reality - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
• Musings - Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work? Read here
• Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications - read here
• First Take - Microsoft Build 2016 - Day 1 Keynote Takeaways - read here
• Event Preview - Microsoft Build 2016 - Top 3 Things to watch for developers, managers and execs...  read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft - New Hybrid Offerings Deliver Bottomless Capacity for Today's Data Explosion - read here
• News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft announcements at Convergence Barcelona - Office365. Dynamics CRM and Power Apps 
• News Analysis - Microsoft expands Azure Data Lake to unleash big data productivity - Good move - time to catch up - read here
• News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers - read here
• News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
• First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
• First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
• Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
• Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
• Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
• Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
• Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
• How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
• How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
• How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - 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

The Business Phone System Reinvented: The Next-Generation Cloud Communications and Collaboration Tool

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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My latest research report is a case study of Dialpad, an enterprise cloud phone system. This report examines the ROI of Dialpad and Dialpad's effect on collaboration. Learn more about the report here: Next-Generation Cloud Communications and Collaboration Tools. 

The only way to build a truly innovative and collaborative culture is to give everyone a voice. In working with Dialpad, I just completed some ROI research to understand how quickly, easy and affordable it is today to plug every employee into your business with a very innovative phone system. They way it works is that Dialpad turns all of your devices into your business phone, letting you make high-definition calls over Wi-Fi or your carrier network from anywhere. And businesses can let their  remote workers and global offices feel like a part of HQ with peer-to-peer HD video. This is especially great for field service, where video often can solve the problem like no other solution because you can SEE the issue. In these new systems, modern business communications integrate seamlessly with the productivity apps that employees use every day, making it easier than ever for them to collaborate with docs, emails, and calendar invites.

With this system, a brand can move a phone call from their WiFi to their carrier or from a desktop to a mobile device very easily, so in essence it is very easy to switch calls from device to device (phone, tablet, desktop…) It is also easy to transfer calls between colleagues or departments simply by looking up a name in the directory.

In the ROI research we interviewed two companies, Vivant Solar and a large communication services provider to see how they transformed their on-premises telephony systems to a purely cloud-based communications solution using Dialpad. The change, depending on the situation, resulted in six- to seven- figure cost savings. Both companies previously had legacy, on-premises PBX (Private Branch Exchange) technology, which is a private telephone network used within a company.

Dialpad provides a secure, enterprise communications cloud solution that incorporates traditional PBX features into a modern cloud-based, business communications VoIP system. The solution integrates with Google Apps for Work and with Office 365, with a user interface built to satisfy the needs of a modern workplace but without the typical costs of traditional enterprise, on-premise telephony systems.

The platform offers messaging, voice, video, conference calling in the cloud, attributed call transfer, auto-attendant, IVR, business SMS, MMS, and group messaging, call recording, live-call device switching, international outbound calling, local telephone numbers, multi-device functionality, toll-free numbers, visual voicemail, contact profiles, a company directory and fax support as well as core social profile applications, such as LinkedIn and Twitter for context about the caller. In case you are wondering, has anyone else discovered this service, Dialpad’s customers include 60 percent of the Fortune 500, high-growth enterprises, and forward thinking organizations and start-ups. The service is built on the WebRTC framework and runs on a redundant global network of nine data centers on four continents.

CUSTOMER ROI CASE STUDY: VIVINT SOLAR 

In the evaluation of various technology infrastructure systems, Mike Hincks, Director, IT Infrastructure at Vivint Solar, found that traditional IT voice systems come with hundreds of thousands of dollars of yearly infrastructure and hosting costs, all designed around employees using desk phones. The catalyst for change was to use a system not tied to a desk phone. One of the many interesting features was that Dialpad had no upfront capital expenditures or maintenance costs, which made it easier to get the technology approved by senior leaders at Vivint Solar.

In addition, Hincks looked at the money the sister company was spending on long-distance contracts. With Dialpad, there were no long-distance carrier costs. Hincks also looked at the cost of the team he would need to hire in order to maintain an on premise, hosted solution. The sister company had had a five-person team to manage voice applications. In addition, Hincks would have needed to schedule the IT team’s time to provision a new phone for each employee, with at least one hour of training per employee and some additional time from the IT team for troubleshooting. Dialpad required less than one full-time equivalent employee.

Another one of the biggest conveniences was that Dialpad integrated with Google for Work without any authentication process. “I found the Millennial workforce wants technology to work right away. They don’t want to set up an application, have to go through training or troubleshoot it. They want to click on an app and see it work immediately,” said Hincks.

The positive feedback about Dialed from Vivint Solar’s more than 4,000 mobile workers includes:

• Improving the ease of signing up and using the communications technology
• Increasing agility to work anytime and anywhere on any device with technology that doesn’t get in the way of productivity
• Increasing productivity by being able to use a simple user interface
• Boosting the ability to make bigger sales at a faster rate.

The ROI: Costs were reduced by several hundred thousand dollars, year over year. Savings came from:

• No upfront capital expenditure and maintenance costs
• No long-distance carrier costs
• No need to hire a team to manage the cloud based communications
• No need to train employees or engage the training department
• High user adoption rate because of the simple user interface
• Improved ability to attract talent by reducing recruiting costs and increasing retention of top talent

A GLOBAL COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES COMPANY

In the second company, the Director of Digital Workplace Technologies set up a proof of concept (POC) with Dialpad. He found that the best way to meet the needs of workers in the modern enterprise was using cloud technology. He wanted to re-conceptualize how communications services could be presented to users and to eliminate deterrents to productivity, especially for the geographically distributed workforce that used telephony systems. The Director of Digital Workplace Technologies said, “It was important to look at an IT project as an organizational change management project. We learned this lesson when we moved our users to Google Apps for Work. Technology changes that affect how productive workers are should be seen as organizational change projects. If you can’t find something you are looking for, it makes you less productive and frustrated. So we always overlay organization change management with our IT rollouts.”

DON’T FORGET ORGANIZATION CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The company needed to have a new communications system that could be completely up and running in minutes, compared to months or even years required for deploying global on-premises systems. Applications built in the cloud reduce costs because they are more flexible, extensible, and easier to work with while making collaboration intuitive. And this company found organizational change management was a key element for a successful implementation of this new communications system.

The ROI

Using Dialpad, the company was able to retire several of its old telephony systems and realize millions of dollars in cost savings by reducing:

• Maintenance agreements
• Infrastructure
• Service and support for the infrastructure
• Phone lines from service providers.

Today, the company has deployed about 6,000 VoIP lines on Dialpad, which cover about 40 percent of its global employee base. It is looking to expand coverage every quarter. The company’s savings were several million dollars, year over year. Savings came from:

• No upfront capital expenditure
• No maintenance costs
• Reduced reliance on IT helpdesk
• No long-distance carrier costs.

GIVING EMPLOYEES MORE CHOICE, RESULTING IN HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY

After implementing Dialpad at just one large site, the global company reduced the site’s cost per minute of call time by double digits. In addition, the new system offered features that the old telephony systems could not. For instance, the PBX system had been tied to a particular device – the desk office phone. However, most people are now mobile, working from various devices and remote locations. Clearly, workers could not take their desk phones outside of their offices. When workers were away from their desks, they had to use cell phones or other alternatives – from multiple phone numbers – that created additional costs for the company.

Dialpad, however, allows employees use to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony. When the company moved to Dialpad, employees could use their computers to place calls, essentially replacing desk phones. They could also use the Dialpad application on their Android or iOS mobile devices. To the person receiving the call, it all comes from the same phone number, whether the VoIP call is made from a computer or from a mobile device.

Employees could also become more productive. With the ability to communicate from any place, using any device, while still being accessible from a single phone number, people could connect with each other more easily. As collaboration was made easier, the ability for teams to work more effectively with remote employees was also improved. In essence, the company had a new potential to increase the agility and adaptability of its workforce. Employees could be more productive, collaborative and feel more connected to each other using Dialpad.

MODERNIZING THE WORKPLACE 

The new technology enabled the company to modernize its workplace. The company realized that it needed to give employees – as well as new hires and interns – technology tools that are modern, intuitive and easy to use, unlike traditional enterprise tools. The company found employees could easily pick up how to use Dialpad because they were familiar with Google Apps for Work. While moving to Dialpad, the company was also able to shift a portion of its traditional help desk activity to a self-service and community-supported model. In the community, users can ask influencers an guides questions.

WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER IN CHOOSING NEW TECHNOLOGY

Hardware costs and desk phones traditionally have driven the voice communications industry. While struggling for decades to bring down hardware costs, providers attempted to shift to a software model that yielded some feature and cost improvements. However, these changes have not significantly reduced costs, improved scalability, boosted agility or simplified use. In contrast, a revolutionary, exponential change occurs in the telephony industry from using a 100 percent cloud based system designed with the user in mind that is extremely easy to deploy and use while slashing operating costs, eliminating call charges, and offering rapid, unlimited and affordable scalability.

GIVING EMPLOYEES THE RIGHT TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY RESULTS IN BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

At the end of the day, it’s really the employees that create the customer experience. And employees can’t do that unless they are given the right technology. It’s up to companies to evaluate the technology they are using and to provide them the latest technology that allows them to be their best.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Creating Great Customer Experiences By Empowering Employees

Adobe Microsoft Partner For Marketing Cloud, Azure and AI

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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From IT Transactions with BI to IoT Interactions with AI An argument for a ‘Mid Office’ architecture

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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Online Web Based Business showed first retail, and then, many other sectors, that Internet ‘location’ was rapidly becoming more important than the physical location in attracting business. As Internet based business expands and transforms with IoT then understanding the concept of ‘interactions’, rather than the format of IT based ‘Transactions’, becomes necessary. The Enterprise orchestrates IoT event ‘Interactions’ from the market into an the fastest optimum response using its internal IoT assets is the new competitive winner.

Each stage of development of Internet based capabilities has increased the focus on winning business through smarter competitive Internet connected interactions. The recognition of the differences between activities and technologies of the so-called ‘Front Office’ versus the ‘Back Office’ become even more apparent with the introduction of IoT.

A brief reminder; The distinction between Front and Back Office is an important one, broadly defining the difference between the external revenue creating activities and the internal operating efficiency/costs of operating the company. Prior to the year 2000 competitive status focused almost totally on reducing the cost, and improving, the efficiency of internal operating processes usually with ERP. Front Office as a term meant little more than defining the role of the operating departments of Sales and Marketing. The technology used by the Front Office such as the original CRM, or Customer Data, applications were operated from the internal Back Office IT applications and Systems.

The Architecture of IT Enterprise Applications integrated through EAI Middleware created the business model, and the technology (IT) skills, that dominate most Enterprises. The mantra of ‘do more of less’ reducing both products, and operating processes to gain volume pricing economies for goods undergoing conventional physical distribution was the business transformation competitive game changer of the late 80s into the 90s.

Since 2000 there has been a growing use of Internet based technologies to engage with, and win, both customers and orders, by increasingly flexibility in supply to match the buyer’s criteria. The path to 2016 is one of increasing ‘agility and optimization’ of responses to Internet connected ‘opportunities’ to win business. The concept of ‘the long tail’ with its increasing number of low volume products is well on the way to becoming the norm of mainstream business.

Add to this the Cloud revolution of supplying technologies as ‘Services’ and the foundation for the revolution into the Digital Services economy is established. But Services, both in selling and supplying call for a close alignment between supply and demand, coupled to huge flexibility, or customization, of the product.

IoT is not merely the current IT Transactional Back Office model with more Internet connections, it’s the true enabler of the ‘Agile Enterprise’ Business model. As an example; Lean Manufacturing should define an IoT Architected Enterprise business model based on supplier/customer Internet Connectivity to ‘read and react’ through Interactions to Orchestrate an Agile optimization of ‘real time’ opportunities.

The obvious IT approach of adding increased IoT sensing to optimize the sub set of internal Enterprise processes that apply to the act of manufacturing is not IoT Transformation. Whilst there is no doubting the benefits of the increased efficiency brought it is incremental improvement to the current Business model using IT Applications. This is not the Transformation of the Business model that the CEO of General Electric, and others, has been discussing and presenting at Business conferences round the World.

So what’s the problem? After years of developing best practice architecture and deployment IT staff find it difficult not to try to apply their experience and expectations to IoT. (In contrast business managers who are less concerned by the technology seem to find it easier to grasp the Business value). To understand IoT and its differentiation from IoT is made easier by grasping two simple basic ways differences; the first, (and the title of this blog), is the difference between IT Transactions and IoT Interactions; and the second is the dimension of Time, or Timeliness, connected to when and how data is used.

To define IT Transactions is to recognize that the majority of IT Enterprise Applications are deployed to register that a transaction has taken place by the creation of a data record. This data record is a known, defined outcome used to design an application process and required inputs simply to ensure that the Data record will conform exactly. Time stamped, State’ is required to ensure that multiple users have the latest and correct copy of the Data record to use and update.

Data Analysis comes as at a later Time, looking for correlations between the various data records and their formats that where not established in the original records. In the relatively stable World of the 90s continued honing of operating efficiency with the business intelligence gained from Analytics ensured a continuous competitive edge was maintained.

Contrast this with the ability of IoT to create ‘insights’, or outcomes that could not be reliably predicted. IoT makes use input sources that have previously been inaccessible from a huge range of low cost sensors that together provide a continuous picture of events and activities as they occur. And, perhaps most important of all, the data can be used in time frame to optimize reactions as the events and activities are happening.

IoT creates value from orchestrating the ‘read’ of spontaneous ‘Interactions’ into ‘Insights’ that a business can make a ‘response’ to in a ‘Timely’ manner to gain a competitive advantage.  The resulting ‘Agility’ in optimizing enterprise responses and resources, including suppliers, into a lean flexible competitive business creates the transformation of business models.

The ‘Front Office’, which was largely untouched by the IT revolution of the 90s is where this transformation is centered. The ‘Back Office’ will continue to require the internal transactions operation and recording for commercial and compliance purposes. The BIG question is how the Front and Back Office will integrate, and even more importantly how does this create an ‘Agile’ Enterprise.

The ‘Agile’ Enterprise has the potential to change not only how business processes are improved but also how modern workers can make better informed decisions by providing better ‘realtime context’ across the Front and Back office systems. Companies such as Abra uses Artificial Intelligence approach to an age-old challenge — how to increase the visibility of process changes – by helping visualize enterprise business process using data from transactions systems in the front office with data generated from IoT assets in the back office.

There is a potential answer to use as a ‘draft’ model and it comes from the   Financial Sector. Digital markets, and rapid deal optimization using ‘’real time’ market data feeds closely resemble the expectations of Digital Business with IoT. The Financial Industry has found it necessary to introduce the concept of the Mid Office to integrate and operate the Front and Back Offices successfully.

In Financial Trading companies the Mid Office is responsible for risk management, setting the rules, and overseeing trades being successfully transacted in a compliant manner. The Front Office of any Digital IoT Business model will require a similar support role and will need to consider the concept of the Mid Office in their Enterprise.

The Mid Office is also likely to be the home of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, as the ‘intelligent hub’ modeling the Enterprise and continually updated with data and information. In the case of a Lean Manufacturing Enterprise then internal IoT data monitors resources and assets, whilst external IoT monitors the market, supplies, and suppliers. Here AI, unlike BI, will read and react to events, trends and activities in time frames that allow intervention to optimize opportunities.

Studying the Financial Industry and the development of the role of the Mid Office as the Intelligent Operational center of that integrates the internal and external operations provides much to interest Business Managers who are considering the strategic development of their Enterprises business model.

Reltio a provider of modern data management Platform as a Service (PaaS) enables what they call the ‘the next wave in enterprise applications’. The Reltio Cloud PaaS contains built-in Master Data Management (MDM) for data reliability, traditionally only viewed as a Back Office function. They then combine transactions and interaction data at big data scale and have used added Commercial Graph technology to intelligently uncover relationships between entities providing a foundation for front-office facing business applications.

Relto provide an interesting example of bringing the Front and Back Office together in what they call data-driven applications. The bringing together of IoT, and business usersin concert with IT’s data management of a single reliable pool of data is a hugely important next step for many Enterprises. Get it right and it makes immediate business value out of many current individual activities. Getting it right also lays the foundation for analytics and AI with machine learning to be applied ushering in the new era of capabilities that make up an Agile Enterprise.

DX is the New CX- Why Customer Experience Isn’t Up to Snuff

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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Having been a long-term customer experience advocate and studied the field, I as many others, have noticed that while companies are saying that customer experience is a key differentiator, that it’s at the top of their priority list of business initiatives, that they are spending more on it but when customers are asked, they don’t think it’s better. So how could that be?

I know many customer experience professionals who spend a lot of time mapping out their various customer journey’s for different personas or customer profiles, they have purchased and implemented some of the top omni-channel software, are conducting social media / digital media monitoring so they know what their customers are saying… So it’s not that customer experience professionals aren’t doing what they need to do. But if they are doing all that, why do customer still report, in large part, that their experience of most brands is not up to snuff?

What I discovered is that there are two groups of people that think about customer / digital experience, but in very different ways. One group of people tends to be the typical customer experience professional who has done all of the things I mentioned above and done them well. And then there’s another group of people, often in IT, that worry about digital performance management (DPM.) They look at the technology stack that is underneath the omni-channel customer experience technology and optimize it. They worry about things like page load speed, do shopping carts get hung up, etc…

And I found that often the two groups either don’t know they exist or they tend not to work together. And if that is so, the digital customer experience can suffer. Some brands have optimized both the customer experience, omni-channel technology as well as the technology stack underneath omni-channel technology. When that is done, the customer experience is truly optimized from both the DPM and DX perspective and the CX perspective.

If you’d like to learn more about this, please join me on Wednesday, Sept 28th at Sept 28, 2016 @ 10am PT/1pm ET for a Live Webinar and we will look at this topic in-depth! The topic? What the smartest brands know about CX and what they still may not be doing about it! And here’s a link to the research I just completed on The Business Imperative of Optimizing Digital Customer Experience. And here’s all the professionals who spend their days work making the customer experience the best it can be with customer experience professionals collaborating with IT professionals. If content is king, DPM is the ACE!

@DrNatalie Petouhoff

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-Facing Applications that Create Amazing Customer Experiences

#OOW16 – #IOT Is Really Asking Your Business What Outcomes Are You Looking For?

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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Many companies approach the internet of things by starting with a device, make it connectable and then are in search of a business use case. This is a typical process that happens when there is a new area of technology area. If a company uses that as a strategy, it can be the long road to #IoT innovation. What businesses need to ask themselves are, “What business outcomes are they looking for and what innovations could be possible to shift their business model?”

We heard from the @OracleIOT group several business scenarios:

• Break / Fix it – which drives a predictive prescriptive business process
• Static Analytics – which drives the use of real-time, big-data analytics
• Ownership – which drives as-a-service business models and
• Central Service– which drives self-service as well as self-guided service.

What they are finding is that there are various phases a business often goes through when deploying IOT. It can start with the devices or assets (trucks, phones, factories, etc…) which are then connected to a platform which are connected to a network. For a business to actually make use of IOT, the first phase, Phase 1 can be about Connecting Assets for situations like remote monitoring and asset tracking. Phase 2 is can be using Predictive Analytics which means designing predictive algorithms to transform decisions into proactive instead of reactive decisions and improving products and processes. Phase 3 can be about Service Excellence. This is where the customer or employee experience is affected. It is where IOT is being used to transform business processes by blending IOT into enterprise applications like ERP, SCM, Customer Support, CRM, HCM…

Some of Oracle’s IOT applications are in the areas of:

• Asset monitoring for the utilization, availability and data from connected sensors
• Production monitoring and prognostics of the equipment on the manufacturing factory floor
• Fleet Management for business who have fleets of trucks, buses, delivery and maintenance vehicles
• Connected worker for the tracking of employees, for instance in the mining, engineering construction industries.

Here are some examples of clients applying IOT to their businesses:

VINCI is building the next generation sensor-driven building automation to reduce the number of “truck rolls” which has a huge ROI. They are doing this with the integration or Oracle Service Cloud and SAP. Lochbridge is creating connected fleets where IOT and big data is being used for predictive maintenance in monitoring fleet / cargo to reduce the response time. GEMU is using real-time filtering and processing of valve events and proactive parts replacement with the integration of CRM, IOT and a service ticketing system. And SoftBank is using IOT to deliver mobility-as-a-service where they are monitoring vehicle location for billing and geo-fencing.

As the world of IOT expands and more and more companies start to see the value in connecting enterprise applications, with devices, and networks, we will see the transformation of workers, employees and customer experiences. When those experiences are transformed, the real value and ROI of the connected enterprise will come to life.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst

Constellation Research, Covering Customer Facing Applications and IOT