Event Report - 3 Indian HCM Market Takeaways from NASSCOM HR Summit 2016

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I was in India this week on customer advisory and attending the Nasscom HR Summit in Chennai, I had the honor to keynote the event on Day 1 and moderate a panel on the synergy story between man and machine. All that gave me a good insight in the state of the Indian HR market, worth for a blog post. 

 

 

As usual – instead of making it a lengthy blog – let me share my top three takeaways:

High Technology Interest – I found a welcome difference in attitude towards technology by the Indian HR executive, compared to their peers in Europe and North America. Those parts of the world often witness the delegation of all technology understanding to the ‘colleague who cares for HR Technology’, which is an attitude I try to coach HR executives to get rid off. The Indian HR executive is a welcome change and more interested, knowledgeable and open to learn and use technology. Bots were the most common topic of conversation, now we will have to see how adoption in real world implementations will be.

Learning a top concern – Gone are the rapid hiring days in the bustling India of the 90ies and dot com Boom times, now it is all about employee augmentation and Indian HR executives are looking for Learning to address this. With a very high smart phone and solid network penetration it is good to see enterprises are looking for mobile first solutions and show a high degree of readiness to use predictive analytics and machine learning to experiment both with content creation and content provisioning. Should Indian enterprises keep the pressure on vendors at this level, we may well see the Indian Learning market surpassing the traditionally leading 1st world market in regards of capabilities and outcomes.

BPO / Outsourcing of high interest – Equally eye opening for me was to see that (again – no longer the traditional attitude towards hiring and getting big like a decade ago) Indian enterprises are more looking at BPO / Outsourcing. Not only in the traditional RPO side where enterprises in India need outsourcing providers to help with the peak demands – but in very ‘bread and butter’ (wait make that ‘naan and butter’) situations. The drivers are the same as in the 1st world – more rigid labor laws, more investment in employees, a more conservative way to grow businesses, the concerns on bad press in case of layoffs etc. are all reasons we hear in other parts of the world.

MyPOV

It was an honor to participate at my first NASSCOM event as a speaker / moderator, but even more to get insight in the dynamic Indian HCM market. The event itself was well organized, well attended and well received by attendees. Being a new comer I asked veterans on how this year’s edition compared with previous editions of the conference was overall positive. A CHRO of a large enterprise went even so far to call it the best event he has attended in a while. Can’t add more.

And being in India was also a great opportunity to catch up with local vendors Neeyamo, PeopleStrong and some N.N. – always good to catch up IRL and feel the pulse at some vendors. Finally I had a chance to take a 4 hour tour of Chennai, I think I was here last in 1996 (came for the tennis tournament) – what a difference 20 year make in India. Sad to see that Marina Beach (still) has not recovered fully from the Tsunami, good to see the impressive Parthasarthy and Kapaleeswar temples as well as San Thomas Basilica again (they had not changed much). I feel like I am getting my India legs again, 3rd trip of the year, 72 hours, no chance to escape the Kabali launch!

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

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

Workday Deal For Platfora Leaves Questions

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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Workday says Platfora buy will bolster its petabyte-scale analysis capabilities. It’s good news for Workday customers, but Platfora customers should be prepared for change.

Human resources and financial applications vendor Workday announced July 21 that it plans to acquire big data analytics vendor Platfora. In an echo of an earlier initiative, the company says the deal will enable customers to “analyze petabyte-scale data in seconds,” but existing Platfora customers should be prepared for new priorities.

Workday’s first effort to support big data analysis emerged in late 2012, when it announced plans for the Hadoop-based “Workday Big Data Analytics Platform.” When the platform was delivered in September 2013, Workday acknowledged that customers were as interested in small-scale, Workday-internal data analysis as they were in speculative big data opportunities. And by 2015, Workday’s focus had shifted to focused, data-driven “Insights” apps built on the Big Data Analytics Platform, starting with a Talent Insights app. The emphasis was on delivering prescriptive recommendations in the context of applications, not just data visualizations.

The acquisition of Platfora, a five-year-old big data analytics vendor, seems in some ways like a reboot for the Workday Big Data Analytics Platform. Platfora works with Hadoop and Apache Spark, providing data-management and governance capabilities as well as its original OLAP-like Platfora Lenses and high-scale data-visualization capabilities.

This screen shot from Platfora’s site captures the company’s focus on customer behavior analysis,
with examples including path and funnel analysis, attribution and segmentation.

Workday says it will retain Platfora’s technology, its staff and even its San Mateo, CA, office. In a statement, Workday said the deal will “enhance our analytics capabilities—especially areas like managerial reporting and operational analytics where insights are gathered by collecting and connecting multiple data sources (Workday and non-Workday data).”

What Workday didn’t say is that Platfora is currently focused heavily on customer-behavior analysis, with examples including online path and funnel analysis, attribution, customer segmentation and customer journey analysis. Workday, by contrast, is focused on internal HR and financial analysis. Nonetheless, Workday said Platfora’s tech and expertise will help it support all its customers, including retail customers and insurers doing profitability analysis and consumer goods companies pursuing supply chain analysis and planning.

MyPOV On the Platfora Acquisition

Workday did not disclose the terms of acquisition, which suggest it was a comparatively small deal. Platfora was an early mover on big data analysis, but in many ways it was ahead of its time. Last year there were signs of trouble at the company as it swept in a new CEO just as many new competitors, including Arcadia Data, AtScale and Kyvos, started to emerge.

Adding Platfora’s analytical and big data technology and expertise can only be a good thing for Workday, assuming it came at an attractive price. That said, the types of analyses Workday focuses on aren’t exactly in line with the types of “solutions” Platfora specialized in delivering. Shifting focus may take time, but leading software-as-a-service vendors including Workday and Salesforce seem intent on making analytics a part of their platforms. That’s partly a bow to customers, who like seamlessly embedded analytics that are accessible to business users. It’s also a self-interested move to capture more revenue from customers and to avoid forcing them to turn to third-party vendors for analytical capabilities.

As for existing Platfora customers – a list that includes Citi, Disney, Sears, Tivo and Volkswagen Group – I would be wary. Workday’s statement only addressed advancing analysis on the company’s own, cloud-based platform. It did not say anything about continuing to develop and offer Platfora’s software, which is currently deployed on-premises with multiple Hadoop distributions and on the Amazon, Google and Azure public clouds. That’s a crucial bit of reassurance that existing Platfora customers would expect to hear. A separate Platfora blog on the deal was equally vague, saying only that the company will reach out to customers privately to describe what the future holds.

Workday execs were not available for comment. The company said plans will be detailed at the Workday Rising 2016 event in Chicago in late September, but I’m hoping to learn (and will share) more as early as next week.

SuperNova Awards Accepting Applications for Disruptive Tech Leadership

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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The era of digital disruption is upon us. If you follow my work, you'll notice I am a broken record about this statistic: since the year 2000, 52 percent of the Fortune 500 has dropped off the list. Replaced, beaten, and bankrupted by the advancing forces of digital disruption. Digital technology has created a new business environment. Consumers, too, have changed in the digital era. Business giants that clung to the business models that produced success in the 20th century found themselves out of touch, outmaneuvered, and off the Fortune 500 list.

This new business environment calls for leaders who can guide their organizations through the digital thicket. Leaders adept at selecting and championing technologies that enable digital transformation. Leaders who can craft and implement business models that harness the transformative power of disruptive technology.

Every year the Constellation SuperNova Awards recognizes these leaders succeeding in the digital era. In its sixth year, the Constellation SuperNova Awards will recognize nine individuals who demonstrate true leadership in digital business through their application of new and emerging technologies. We're searching for leaders and teams who used disruptive technologies to transform their organizations. I encourage all leaders and teams that have adopted disruptive technologies as a means of adapting to disruption to apply.

The application process is simple:

1. Download the application.
2. Create an account.
3. Submit your application here before August 8.

This year we're evaluating projects in the following nine categories:

• Internet of Things - A network of smart objects that enables smart services (sensors, smart 'things', cognitive, and artificial intelligence).
• Data to Decisions - Using data to make informed business decisions (big data and predictive analytics).
• Digital Marketing Transformation - Personalized, data-driven digital marketing.
• Future of Work: Social Business - Efficient, technology-enabled teamwork (enterprise social networks, collaboration, and digital assistants).
• Future of Work: Human Capital Management - Technologies that transform the workforce into a competitive advantage (talent management, benefits, and HR core).
• Matrix Commerce - Commerce responds to changing realities from the supply chain to the storefront (digital retail, supply chain, payments, and 'ubiquitous-channel' retail).
• Next Generation Customer Experience - Customers in the digital age demand seamless service throughout all lifecycle stages and across all channels (crm and customer experience).
• Safety and Privacy - Next-generation solutions for sensitive data (blockchain, digital identity, and authentication).
• Technology Optimization and Innovation - Innovative methods to balance innovation and IT budgets (innovation in the cloud, ENSW cost savings, cloud ERP, and efficient app production).

The Awards are judged by prominent technology journalists and thought leaders as well as Constellation's analysts.

Benefits of competing include media exposure and the opportunity to participate on a panel at Constellation's Connected Enterprise innovation summit. In addition, winners will be named at a Gala dinner on the second night of Connected Enterprise. Past speakers at the SuperNova Award Gala include Amy Cuddy, Marty Cooper, and Tom Kelley.

The application deadline is August 8, 2016. Visit the SuperNova Award website for more information about the Awards, judges, and criteria.

Global HR Matters and How to Get There - Why global is challenging, but critically important

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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This is the first in a series of posts on problems and challenges that I keep hearing from HR professionals as I make the rounds in the course of my work as an analyst and strategic advisor. Let’s kick off this series with Global HR. I'll highlight trends that make Global HR so important, then examine challenges and solutions to the overall domain. 

There can be little doubt that we live in a more and more global economy. The internet has brought mankind more together than any other technology invention before. News travels around the globe faster than ever, culture is a cross border phenomena and brands have become global not over night, but over the course of a short decade.

But while information travels efficiently globally, enterprise that find themselves in the midst of the globalization trend need to ‘plant the flag’ in the countries they want to do business. Sales operations, fulfillment, customer service etc. all require customer facing activities and with that need physical presence in the countries where an enterprise wants to do business.

And with that any enterprise quickly enters the challenging area of ‘Global HR’, a term that is more than inadequate, since it doesn’t really exist…

What exists on the people side are HR professionals that understand more than one country from both a HR best practices and legislation perspective. But there is no single person in the world that knows all HR regulations and best practices, at best there are professionals who can straddle regions to a good enough detail such as Western Europe, Latin America to name a few.

On the software side, Global HR software on the contrary though, does exist, but as one can imagine it is a challenge to create and even more to maintain this kind of software. For an HR software vendor to be in the ‘Global HR’ system business, the vendor needs to understand the local content, the legislation and best practices that govern each of the countries the vendors wants to support. And despite there are a number of vendors offering ‘Global HR’ systems, none of them is truly 100% global, meaning that they support all languages, all local legislation and best practices in a single system that are happening on this world. The task itself is too big a task and the vendors look for the larger, more popular countries, where their customers and prospects want to take them. And the job doesn’t get easier for the vendor than for an enterprise, as the vendor needs to hire local experts who not only know the local country from a regulation and best practice perspective, but they need to keep monitoring their further evolution, as nothing ever stands still. But not only does a ‘Global HR’ vendor need to have the local experts, the vendor hasn’t done its job by just collecting the requirements, but needs to continuously build these requirements in the code of its products, test them, document, release and support them. Nothing trivial, but key for enterprise to understand when they look for a global HR product.

Moreover, vendors in the space need to understand the jargon and ‘lingo’ spoken in each of the supported countries. Few things turn off and confuse users more than consuming labels and messages in systems, so vendors cannot afford to look at translation of systems based on dictionary accurateness but need to pass the test of daily usage and stay on top of the lingual and cultural nuances each country’s HR practices demand.

Unfortunately the task doesn’t get easier, as the need for social, tax system and welfare reform is imminent all around the world, indeed a global phenomenon. While most of the first world economies struggle with an aging workforce and need to change legislation to support a fast growing number of retirement workers, the 2nd and 3rd world countries are both driven by a spirit of making their tax systems more competitive and simpler. In a number of 3rd world countries the task is even to introduce (and enforce) the very first tax, benefits and welfare systems. So on a worldwide level we notice an acceleration and increase of lawmaker activity that has profound effects on the legislative, statutory and regulatory frameworks under which enterprises need to operate when working on a global scale.

The good news for enterprises is though, as the task gets harder, scale gets more important, and the reason why enterprises look for Global HR vendors is, that these vendors have more scale than enterprises. And scale in this context comes from the number of people employed and paid. It is obvious that enterprise system vendors offering Global HR products will have a higher number of employees (at their customers) than even the largest enterprises can have employed across the world.

The second most prominent driver resulting in more interest in Global HR systems is the benefit enterprises have, when they achieve a global view on their in-house talent, regardless of employment location. The first world is quickly running out of people, while the 2nd and 3rd world produce more professionals that often are eager to help out in the 1st world on a project or even permanent basis. So before an enterprise cannot staff a function at all or needs to recruit from the outside, it may well look on a global level what capabilities, skills and talent it may have in other countries. With the rise of more project based activities and transformations in today’s enterprises, there is even higher demand for a global view on employees.

And lastly enterprises face cost pressure and talent shortage in the 1st world and before moving a function to another location worldwide, management needs to understand the cost of employment, the availability of talent and more from potential target markets. Nothing frustrates executives charged with global functions more than not having fast and efficient visibility into their global responsibility areas, and HR is one of the key areas. With employee related expenditures usually being the larges spending category in an enterprise it deserves attention.

The consequence of the above 3 major and most prominent trends is that enterprises are looking more and more for global HR solutions, even if they have been running a local vendor’s system, as HR leaders realize they can scale better through a vendor’s system that scales across countries, on a global scale.

And on the flipside it is becoming quickly conventional wisdom that disparate HR systems, across multiple countries are quickly becoming a burden to overall enterprise agility, as enterprises don’t have insight into what in most cases is their largest expense, people.

So no matter if motivated by the above three trends or scared by the above scenario of fragmented systems, we see an increased need and demand for Global HR solutions.

Stay tuned for Global HR Matters - How to get there - Part 2, that will focus on User Empowerment. 

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

Blockchain has no meaning - and that's its magic trick

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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What do land titles, marriage certificates, diamonds, ballots, aircraft parts and medical records have in common? They are all said to be managable in radical new ways "on the blockchain". But what does it mean to be "on the blockchain"?

To put a physical asset "on" the blockchain is a metaphorical way of saying that a thing is going to be somehow represented by a symbolic value or "token". We do this all the time of course. Almost every piece of data in every computer system stands for something else. To get a thing represented on the blockchain requires a mapping or translation. Actually it requires two.

Firstly, the asset in question needs to be represented by a blockchain token. For example, Everledger uses a public blockchain to record diamond movements. Each gemstone over a certain weight or value these days has a micrososcopic barcode etched into it; it is that barcode number which is inserted as metadata into an Everledger blockchain transaction, to represent transfer of ownership. Secondly, physical asset owners need to be registered with their respective account keys. This mapping can be pseudonymous, but buyers and sellers of diamonds for instance need to be confident that all counterparties really do control the keys they claim to.

What's unique about the native blockchain is that it works without any of these mappings.  With Bitcoin, nothing matters off the chain. Bitcoins themselves don't exist off-chain. In fact they don't exist "on" the chain either; the blockchain itself only records subtractions and additions of purely abstract balances.  

Furthermore, possession of the private key is the only thing that matters with Bitcoin. Control a wallet's private key and you control the wallet balance. The protocol doesn't care who is in control; it will simply ensure that a quantity of Bitcoin will be transferred from one balance to another, regardless of who "owns" the keys.  It's an agreed property of the system that Bitcoin is like cash; if you lose your Bitcoin private key and the balance that goes with it, then there's nothing you can do about it. There is no regulator or reserve bank to look after you and your deposits. You're on your own. 

So unlike any other serious cryptographic security system I can think of, the Bitcoin blockchain has no key management.  Bitcoin wallet private key pairs need not be mapped onto any person, nor imbued with any extrinsic significance.  They are not associated with (bound to) any real world attributes. Bitcoins have no symbolic meaning.  They are what they are.  And in fact that is blockchain's magic trick!

But make a blockchain token stand for anything in the real world and you break the spell. Symbols are defined by authorities, and, when physical goods are in play, keys and attributes can only be dependably assigned to individuals by third parties who vouch for who holds what. If you have administrators, like the folks that etch barcodes into diamonds and initially register specific stones to particular owners, you just don't need the additional overhead of the blockchain.  The blockchain exists purely to realise Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto's express assumption that nobody in this system of electronic cash was to be trusted. Nakamoto dispelled all third parties and agents who normally are needed to map real world things into digital codes; he/she wrote in the foundational Bitcoin whitepaper (PDF) that the "main benefits [of blockchain] are lost if a third party is still required".  

Key management -- the administrative processes that make sure the right keys are in the right hands, and that they stay that way -- is simply not required by the permissionless blockchain. 

Bitcoin is often said to be anonymous, but its really special property is that it has no meaning. It's truly amazing that such a thing can have value and be relied upon, which is a testament to its ingenious architecture. Blockchain was deliberately designed for an uregulated crypto-currency. It's brilliant yet very specific to its intended trust-less environment. To re-introduce trusted processes simply undoes the security architecture.

In short, blockchain's only unique proposition is for purely digital assets. It was expressly designed to enable people to exchange electronic cash without having to know anything about each other, and without relying on (trusting) any third party. That's why blockchain involves such extravagent computing resources - they stand in place of regular administration and oversight. 

In applications where parties do need to know something about each other - like their permissions, credentials, identity, professional registration, financial bona fides, eligibility, rights to a physical asset, or even their simple uniqueness as in the case of voting - the proceses needed to establish those things trump the blockchain consensus algorithm. Wherever there is an off-chain process to tell us a user is authorized or permissioned, the on-chain consensus becomes academic. There is an easier way to work out the state of the ledger than crowd-sourcing the consensus process, pretending that there isn't an administrator in the background! 

So apart from cryptocurrency, I just don't see how any use case for the straight blockchain stacks up. 

SuperNova Award Deadline August 8, 2016

The deadline for the 2016 SuperNova Awards is August 8, 2016. In its sixth year, the Constellation SuperNova Awards will recognize nine individuals who demonstrate true leadership in digital business through their application of new and emerging technologies.

We’re searching for leaders and teams who used disruptive technolgies to transform their organizations. Special recognition will be given to projects that seek to redefine how the enterprise uses technology on a large scale.

3 Steps to Apply for a SuperNova Award:

1. Download the SuperNova Award application. Click here. Once completed, copy the text directly from this application into the webform in step #3. 

2. Create a Constellation Research account

3. Submit your application by August 8, 2016. Submit applications here.  

More resources 

Application tips

About the 2016 SuperNova Awards

Last year's winners

Who are the IoT Global Pack Leaders? And how does their background and existing expertise bring to their IoT market offerings?

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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IoT as a term defines a ubiquitous state of Internet connectivity, resulting in new forms of data driving interactions that create new competitive Business value. As is usually the case with innovative, transformation technologies, Startups have initially led the way in creating new products, markets and business cases across a wide spectrum of deployments. Now increasing market maturity as allowed a range of global corporations enter the IoT market and make their presence.

The eighteen companies listed below are World recognized market leaders in different business sectors; now they are direct competitors for a part of the overall global IoT market place. Each is using their present markets, experience, and customer base to define their IoT ‘go to market’ strategy. The resulting differences in their offerings are benefiting buyers by increasing the breadth of IoT solutions available.

IoT sensing, together with the business solution requirements for data analysis and ‘real time’ smart services are a broad technology capability that can be applied in many different scenarios. However current business cases for deployment currently usually focus on one of the following three core improvements and in turn that tends to emphasis one particular technology product approach. As an example People working outside the office ‘on the road’ would usually be reliant on ‘mobility’ as a core IoT solution feature.

Three Core Business Justifications for IoT Deployment

People who benefit from being provided with remote ‘real time’ sensing information. As the costs of sensors and network connections have continued to drop even simple schemes to stop merchandisers from making wasted journeys to vending machine contents pay off. More sophisticated deployments allow preventative maintenance to make a substantial difference to Service Engineering operations. Hotels can even ensure that Guests will enjoy fully operational facilities whilst the hotel operator can optimize costs for providing hot water, making a double gain of customer satisfaction and operational cost reduction!

Machines can have their individual performance improved, or can work in coordination with other machines more efficiently. Railway locomotives, even Farm Tractors and their attachments, now use sensors for customized operational optimization. Dynamic, responsive management of complex operations is starting to transform some industry sectors from Products into ‘Services’. At the other end of the scale simple building sensors control reflex reactions to the heat of the sun, or ensure empty parking spaces are made visible to Smart Phone Apps.

IT Systems benefit from the addition of ‘real-time’ data to their existing historical data both for direct inputs to Enterprise Applications, and to offer previously unknown data with new insights to existing Analytics. The comparison between the planned and recorded activity with the dynamics of actual events is transforming ERP capabilities in areas such Logistics, Manufacturing, or Retail. CRM and Big Data Applications often discover radically change perceptions through the previously unforeseen ‘insights’.

Value Proposition with the associated Business Case justification are by their nature highly focused, but as more and more IoT deployments take place in an enterprise then a variation of Metcalf’s law in respect of the multiplication in the value of each individual sensors data correlated with the overall picture becomes apparent. At this point it also becomes clear that the separation around People, Machine and IT Systems is now a barrier, and that a new generation of Enterprise wide function and capabilities is becoming established that requires the integration and free flow of all Enterprise IoT data.

The dangers of initial separate Buying decisions resulting in medium term Enterprise incompatibility is very real as an example using the procurement of a Building Management System and the implications makes clear.

Diagram; The inner ring of the three major initial business drivers is matched to the outer square of four boxes that contain the four capability backgrounds from which Global Corporations now contesting for a share of the IoT market are drawn. The heading ‘Services and Technology’ is less obvious than the other three and is used to describe corporations such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Salesforce all of whom are competing from the provisioning of new Technology Services.

The diagram makes clear the likely, familiar relationships that will drive many enterprise buyers to towards established relationships; IT Systems buyers and Enterprise Application suppliers; Machine buyers and Industrial Systems Suppliers, both being obvious pairings. Mobility deployments have also created a certain degree of a relationship between People buyers and Telecoms suppliers, whilst ‘Services and Technology’ has the advantage of driving innovative initiatives offering a broader value to any of the buying propositions.

Exploiting existing relationships for synergistic advantages usually advantageous as long as a clear vision is maintained to ensure enterprise wide ubiquitous capabilities can be developed from the initial highly focused deployments.

It is possible to identify eighteen well known major Global Corporations that have made a significant commitment to IoT and entered the market with strategically designed products as a part of an identified business solution. There are well known names with IoT products that have not been included either because they are not a Global player even though their contribution is significant, or their strategy commitment is not clear.

There are some outstanding suppliers at a national level, such as KPN, the Dutch Telecom, who has rolled out LoRa IoT services with coverage across the whole of the Netherlands in a clear strategic commitment to the IoT market. And of course there are smaller innovative suppliers whose products may be critical success factors in Enterprise solutions. It is difficult to compile a listing to cover the diversity of this element of the IoT market. Therefore the following listings are limited to eighteen of the best known Global Corporations categorized by existing major sectors and experience, and presented alphabetically in each category.

Seven Players from the Services and Technology Markets;

Amazon Web Services

Cloud Services are a natural partner for IoT Services, and Amazon Web Services Internet of Things platform brings together a range of AWS services from computational and storage through to more specialized dataflow streaming and insight analysis capabilities 

Google

Has moved strongly into consumer IoT based Smart Services acquiring Home Automation leader  Nest and its installed customer based from which to expand into all aspects of the consumer IoT market. Enterprise Business strategy is less clearly differentiated around expanding Cloud Services to support IoT and the planned expansion of an IoT orientated fiber optic network across cities and business zones.

Intel

All IoT devices need processor chips, but Intel see the importance of the processor to embed IoT requirements from network types to security management. Intel has introduced specialized products such as the Quark for small-form factor appliances demanding low power computation, through to extensions to Atom range including rich graphic rendering aimed at interaction through pictures and graphics.

Microsoft

Listed under Services for its non IT enterprise application focused introduction of Azure based Services including an IoT Suite with a sophisticated and integrated set of functions; IoT Hub connection, event notification service and device management; streaming analytics service combined with machine learning; and linked Business Intelligence. Microsoft aims to add to its existing preconfigured IoT templates to broaden technology and business solutions.

PTC

Though previously identified as a supplier of modeling software and product lifecycle management (PLM) tools PTC has moved to become an IoT player through strategic acquisitions. A comprehensive solution approach combines ThingWorx, an IoT application development platform; Axeda, a cloud service for managing connected devices and processing machine-to-machine data; and Coldlight, a machine learning/artificial intelligence platform for analyzing data.

Salesforce.com

With a clear focus maintained on improving all aspects of the customer / sales engagement Salesforce.com sees IoT as being able to bring new insights to learn how customers react and behave with connected products. Salesforce.com has added IoT Cloud, a real-time processing engine named Thunder and extended Lighning to ensure that IoT is fully integrated into all aspects of Salesforce Services.

Qualcomm

In its normal role as a Semiconductor company Qualcomm has introduced a series of IoT-optimized chips named SnapDragon, that offering a variety of connectivity services and platforms. Qualcomm has acted boldly in the Software market place by taking a leading role in the Open Source AllJoyn project aimed at creating open source protocols for IoT devices.

Four Companies from Telecoms and Networks sector;

AT&T

The functionality of the AT&T broadband network and M2X, cloud-based data storage service has been extended with Data Flow, a specialist development portal for building IoT applications. AT&T is aiming to provide ubiquitous capability for mobile devices and states an aim to have 10 million vehicles/objects connected through its Broadband network by 2017.

Cisco

With its huge installed base and range of networking products Cisco predicts that it will be connecting up to 50 million IoT devices by 2020. Extended network IoT services range from specialized Gateways and Management to the concept of Fog Computing. This specialized IoT decentralized architecture moves data collection, storage and analysis to the network reducing network traffic and improving response times.

Samsung

As a major supplier of consumer devices Samsung states it will aim to make its range of phones, appliances, televisions, as well as industrial products all Internet connected by 2020. Samsung is also developing a range of ARM chips for its devices, together with a library of APIs to encourage the overall growth of the IoT market.

Huawei

To build on and extend their traditional market into IoT presents Huawei has launched LiteOS a micro operating system for IoT as well as joining various industry groups on standards and Open Source. Huawei believes it is well placed to be the IoT market leader in Asia as well as a powerful player in the US market.

Four Industrial Automation Leaders

Bosch

A prime European leader with commercial and consumer operations plus a specialization on Automotive boosted in its home market by the German car industry. Enterprise software. Less well known as a supplier of certain types of Enterprise software with IoT Cloud based data management, Bosch is also a key supporter of the European driven Internet 4.0 initiative.

GE

The prime force behind starting the US based ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ movement aimed at optimizing connected machines for manufacturing based on a huge amount of experience in Industrial Automation. GE has a very strong vision of a software driven future with IoT data integrated through Predix, GE’s advance ‘smart’ cloud-based data and analytics service that has a number of substantial industry sector transformations as case studies.

Hitachi Data Systems

HDS, the technology arm of Japanese industrial conglomerate Hitachi, and is partnering with Intel for IoT machine and industrial equipment capabilities whilst developing its own cloud-based platforms to collect and analyze IoT data. HDS believes it brings a unique combination of industrial hands-on equipment and back-end technical services to the IoT market place.

Siemens

Best known for medical equipment though a broad German conglomerate involved in a wide range of markets and products all of which could be interconnected for new value by using IoT. Siemens is using fellow German corporate SAP for its Data and Business Analysis tools, though it is developing new software for IoT under the name of the “Web of Systems.”

Three Companies wishing to add IoT to Enterprise Applications

Dell

The emerging IoT market is seen as an opportunity to move into ‘Integration and Services’ business as well as add IoT to its traditional enterprise hardware products. New products add endpoint connectivity for IoT devices plus back-end storage and analytics platforms for the management of IoT data. A strategic partnership with Intel resulted in a joint IoT Executive demonstration facility near San Francisco.

IBM

IoT means more Data to drive smarter services and reaction to IBM with its investments in Watson “Cognitive Reckoning”. Watson is intended to provide a cohesive integrated environment covering all aspects of IoT from cloud-based development and operating environments/services for Apps and Services including specific packages for various industry sectors.

Oracle

With the introduction of IoT Cloud and Services prepackaging for workflows services Oracle aims to make its databases and enterprise applications part of an integrated platform. The addition of IoT data input for SQL, NoSQL and Hadoop databases links Oracle Sales cloud, Service Cloud and CRM into the IoT environment.