Democratize the Data Lake: Make Big Data Accessible

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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Is your Hadoop-based data lake more like a swamp? Here’s a look at two camps of vendors in the Hadoop ecosystem that are bringing order and accessibility to big data.

The good news is that 10-year-old Hadoop is maturing quickly. The bad news is that many companies are still struggling to get beyond pilot projects and support many applications on this new data-management platform. That's why I wrote my latest report, "Democratize Big Data: How to Bring Order and Accessibility to Data Lakes."

First, let’s consider the industry leaders that are doing great things with data lakes, drawing on examples from the recent Hadoop Summit:

In financial services CapitalOne has been making waves this year, appearing at multiple events to talk about its Hadoop and Spark-based fraud-detection and its big data analytics, streaming and security work.

In retail Macy’s embraced Hadoop more than five years ago to power insights for Macys.com. Today it’s doing more sophisticated cross-channel analysis, driving personalized promotions encouraging online customers to shop in stores and in-store customers to obtain out-of-stock and online-only items at Macys.com.

In manufacturing Ford relies on Hadoop for connected car capabilities. Ford does filtering and decision-making at the sensor and car level while uploading crucial data points for centralized insight and analysis. For example, FordPass app users can remotely check their car’s fuel level, location and diagnostic error codes, but detailed data used by service technicians remains in the car’s black box.

In insurance Progressive has been a pioneer of usage-based pricing with Progressive SnapShot. The company has more than 15 billion miles’ worth of driving data in a Hadoop-based data lake, but it can drill down and offer discounts to individual policy holders based on factors such as their total miles driven, nighttime driving, and speed and breaking habits.

These examples are inspiring, but behind every breakthrough there’s been a lot of hard work. And many fast followers are still struggling. Here’s a recent sampling of criticisms I’ve heard from Hadoop users:

• The VP of platforms and architecture at a digital marketing at advertising company said, “better data governance is the number-one priority on our Hadoop wish list.”
• The director of analytics at a logistics firm said “Hadoop was messy on the data-lineage end. We spent months working out the details for data ingestion.”
• A BI solutions architect at an aerospace firm said “We have three people working with Hadoop, but we have more than 150 business users who need access to the data. I’d like to see better ease of use for business users.”

These and other comments led me to publish my latest research: Democratize Big Data: How to Bring Order and Accessibility to Data Lakes.” The report explores three areas where commercial vendors are filling gaps in the Hadoop stack: data management and governance, data cataloging and metadata management, and data discovery and self-service data prep.

These three gaps are being filled by  two camps of vendors that are complementing what’s available in Hadoop. Incumbent data integration vendors focusing on the data lake include IBM, Informatica, Oracle, Pentaho/Hitachi, SnapLogic, Syncsort and Talend. Next-generation vendors that have emerged in the big data era include Alation, Collibra, Datameer, Podium Data, Paxata, Trifacta, Tamr, Waterline and Zaloni.

Both camps are bringing automation and repeatability to data lake management and governance. They’re also making the contents of the data lake more accessible and many are abstracting users from the complexities of manual coding in Pig, Hive, Spark and other open source components.

As the report explains, a data lake is not a replacement for a conventional enterprise data warehouse, but many data-processing and data-analysis workloads are shifting to this new platform. The choice among incumbents and next-generation vendors depends on the specifics of your deployment. The report offers vendor-, category- and capability-specific descriptions and selection criteria as well as big-picture advice on setting your analytic direction. Here’s a peek inside the table of contents:

• Executive Summary
• Broader Access Drives Insights and Actions
• Hadoop Emerges as a Corporate Standard
• Data Lake Success Demands a Mature Approach
• Seek Ease of Use, Repeatability and Automation
• Look to Next-Generation Vendors to Fill Data Lake Gaps
• Consider Incumbents for Broader Needs
• Recommendation: Target the Center of Analytical Gravity
• Recommendation: Consider Consultants and System Integrators
• Takeaways: Prevent Data Swamps and Make Big Data Accessible

Click here to download an excerpt of the report.

Related Reading:

Hadoop Summit 2016 Spotlights Enterprise Innovation, IoT Use Cases
Hadoop Hits 10 Years: Growing Up Fast
Cloudera Takes to the Cloud, Highlights Industry Use Cases

The Privacy Shield is real - the CxO repercussions

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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Earlier this week the EU Commission approved the Privacy Shield regulation, that is to replace the now invalid Safe Harbor agreement. With the notice being sent to the EU member states, the agreement is in place.
Important enough for privacy to take a look at this - don't miss my earlier posts on the invalidation (here) and the suggested Privacy Shield (here):
 

DisrupTV: Disrupting Business Models with Strategic Customer Success Management

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

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

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Buying has changed, but selling hasn't. This is a big problem.

According to Michael Fauscette, chief research officer at G2 Crowd, 62% of B2B software buyers and end users will only contact a vendor’s sales team after they already made their purchasing decision. Yikes! How can competitive companies (potentially your business) even compete?

Increasing Power of the Customer

Customers are conditioned to look at reviews for making personal decisions. For Amazon’s Prime Day, for example, we look through the positive and negative reviews before buying a Roomba, Roku TV or other special deal. Or if we want to try a new restaurant, we jump over to Yelp to validate our decision. Fauscette explained that buyers want to get information from people that are like them. Relevance, timeliness and context are key to feeling confident about decisions.

Similarly for B2B and other technology purchases, G2 Crowd focuses on providing the right type of data and context for buyers and end users as they determine and/or validate their purchasing choices. They want to establish a real connection with other people from similar companies who are looking to solve the same types of problems. The increased value of crowdsourcing and brand advocacy requires companies to reevaluate their selling strategies based on the new mindsets of buyers.

Elevating Focus on Customer Success Management

As business models continue to shift, companies need to think differently about the way they sell. It’s no longer “sell and move on.”

Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, discussed the growing need for effective customer success management (CSM) with the changing buying/selling relationship. Customers have a lot more power and information available to them than in the past - knowledge is power, right? Subscription-based companies are continually accountable for providing value to their customers, or they risk having customers sign with other companies when their subscriptions end.

The importance of CSM has evolved within companies, and now the CEO and board members are taking note of how to better implement and re-energize these programs. In addition to the key players on the CSM initiative, to scale and offer effective CSM, technology investments are key.

Changing Technology Evolving the Customer Experience

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, explained that companies are thinking more about how to use data to better serve and delight their customers, and are implementing technologies and trends, such as Internet of Things (IoT), to carry out these goals. With your product, you could leverage sensors to determine where, what, how, and when a customer uses it. This data creates the “algorithm of you (the customer)” and helps companies better understand their audiences to transform and build their services around what customers actually want.

At the end of the day, all companies should strive to make engagement and purchasing as frictionless as possible for customers. Long-term strategies should focus on this flow to keep the value and experience high. Dr. Natalie also highlighted the importance of saying “thank you.” For customers and employees, that message of gratitude can go a long way and make the difference in this fast-moving digital economy.

Check out the DisrupTV video below for the full interviews. Be sure to catch DisrupTV live every Friday at 11 a.m. PT on Blab.
 

DisrupTV Episode 0023: Featuring Michael Fauscette, Nick Mehta & Dr. Natalie Petouhoff from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

Implementing Customer Experience, Cloud, IOT or Any Technology Project? Why Will it Fail.

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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Obviously no one plans on implementing a project that will fail. However, statistics show that over the past 20 years a very large percentage of technology projects do fail to result in the business outcomes that they were expected to meet. The real issue is that leading change (implementing new technology, whether it be CX, transitioning to the cloud, IoT, etc…) is different than the role of leading in general. But this point is often overlooked or some leaders don’t realize how big a difference there is in leading change compared to their every day leadership job.

The reasons projects often fail and the need for orchestrating customer experience projects using organizational change management range from:

1. Projects ran over budget, were late, or never completed.
2. Projects were attempted more than once because initial efforts failed.
3. Only a small part of the organization adopted the new processes or systems.
4. When the project went live, critical business systems halted, causing loss of revenue, increased costs, dissatisfied customers and frustrated employees.
5. Parts of the business (or possibly the entire organization) eventually reverted to the old way of doing things.
6. The return on investment (ROI) and/or stated benefits were never realized.
7. The project cost the business more money than it saved or generated.

Our research shows that there are seven steps for leaders of change leaders can use to be more successful.

Practice #1 – Understand the Business Case for Change

Practice #2 – Start with the Executive Team: Move It from Involved to Engaged

Practice #3 – Engage All Leaders and Prepare Them for the Journey

Practice #4 – Build a Broad Understanding of the Change Process

Practice #5 – Evaluate and Tailor the Change Effort

Practice #6 – Develop Adaptive Leadership Skills in Change Leaders

Practice #7 – Create Change Leadership Plans

Don’t become one of the statistics of failed projects. There are best practices that work.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-Facing Applications to Create Awesome Customer Experiences

GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT

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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Microsoft is having its third large customer event of the year in Toronto right now, the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) and as to be expected there are a number of announcements to be made. Given its ramifications, I picked the announcement of both GE and Microsoft to bring the GE PaaS Predix to the Microsoft IaaS, Azure. 

 

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

TORONTO — July 11, 2016 — GE (NYSE: GE) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) today announced a partnership that will make GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the Microsoft Azure cloud for industrial businesses. The move marks the first step in a broad strategic collaboration between the two companies, which will allow customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets and take advantage of Microsoft’s enterprise cloud applications.

MyPOV – Good summary, also makes right away clear that GE and Microsoft are partnering for something bigger and brining Predix to Azure was only one part of the partnership... more on that in the analysis below.

[…] As businesses look to connect their industrial machines from the edge to the cloud, bringing Predix to Azure gives customers greater choice and flexibility to securely harness the power of data from machines and systems of intelligence. Companies worldwide will be able to bridge the divide between the operational and information technologies that make up the Industrial Internet of Things.

MyPOV – Good to see a description of the opportunity, and stating the main benefit for customers, more choice and flexibility – always a win for customers. Microsoft also got mention on what the company is banking a lot (and CEO Nadella talks about) – systems of intelligence. And GE got in the IoT moniker of the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’.

“Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done,” said Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. “GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of industry-leading partners like Microsoft that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale.”

MyPOV – Good quote by Immelt, maybe a tad too much on the information discovery side, less on that aspect that IoT platforms need to (and do) steer the things, too. But it maybe the extent of the partnership with Microsoft at the moment.

As the shift to a more industrialized information age continues, the opportunity to deliver new digital solutions, insights and increased efficiencies is accelerating the need for higher level services. GE’s Predix platform is already helping industrial customers rapidly build, securely deploy and effectively operate industrial applications. Bringing Predix to Azure means those same customers will now have access to additional capabilities such as natural language technology, artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and enterprise application integration.

MyPOV – And here we read what Predix really is – a purpose built PaaS for IoT. And good to see the attraction to Azure comes from natural language technology, AI, visualization, and enterprise application integration. The latter comes to a certain point as a surprise, but interesting it found it in the press release.

Azure will support the growth of the entire industrial IoT ecosystem by offering Predix customers access to the largest cloud footprint available today, along with data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities, and advanced developer and data services. In addition, GE and Microsoft plan to integrate Predix with Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite along with Microsoft business applications, such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI, in order to connect industrial data with business processes and analytics.

MyPOV – Good to see more specifics and glad to see that data sovereignty found a mention, a huge concern on the right side of the Atlantic, and an area to which Microsoft has paid a lot of attention. Also good to see the Azure IoT Suite mentioned, anything else would have been an area of concern, but this means that lower level connectivity to things will come via / through Azure. No surprise on Cortana Intelligence Suite, that was already pre viewed earlier in the press release. And certainly no surprise on Office 365, Dynamics 365 (with new 365 addition!) as well as Power BI. This is ‘music’ to the partners at WPC.

“Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business — from the factory floor to smart buildings.”

MyPOV – Good quote for Nadella, surprisingly candid – that the partnership is helping Microsoft to reach new customers. Seldom CEOs are so clear, good to see.

A developer preview will be released toward the end of 2016, and Predix on Azure will be commercially available by the second quarter of 2017. More information about Microsoft and GE’s partnership will be shared at Predix Transform, July 25–27 in Las Vegas, and Minds + Machines, Nov. 15–16 in San Francisco.

MyPOV – Good to see tangible time lines and milestones in a press release. De facto this means that substantial deployments of the partnership will be out into 2017.

Overall MyPOV

This is the second ‘mega’ partnership Microsoft announces – after the Azure partnership with SAP, the focus with GE though is on next generation applications, building IoT solutions with GE’s Predix. Both partnerships are important for Microsoft as they bring ‘load’ to Azure, and load is what power the economics of scale that make IaaS providers competitive. Microsoft needs these partnerships to fuel Azure growth post the era of the current number one growth engine for Azure – Office conversions.

For GE it is likely a good move, after partnering with AWS for IaaS earlier, Predix becomes effectively ‘multi cloud’, something enterprise want from a multitude of benefits: Commercial acumen, data sovereignty challenges, performance, are just the first that come to mind. From an overall uptake of Predix, the move comes early, as adding another IaaS means more testing, Q&A and documentation efforts. And using some of the Microsoft specific advantages, e.g. in AI, Speech and Machine Learning, means that GE will have to find a way to fork / abstract code for Predix. Something GE would ultimately have to do, but the point comes early in the life of Predix and the ‘tax’ for the additional deployment would have to ‘paid’ from now on. On the flipside this would have to happen sooner than later anyway and GE has the deep pockets on its quest to become a double digit billion software company, so not too much of a concern.

Unconfirmed on the technical details – so we are speculating here – the big winner behind the scenes is Pivotal / CloudFoundry, in which both GE and Microsoft are investors. As CloudFoundry provides cloud portability / multi cloud support this is going to be key benefit and showcase for the PaaS vendor’s deployment capabilities.

The winner of all of this are enterprises that are looking to fuel their next generation application platform needs with the help of GE and Microsoft. A purpose built PaaS platform like Predix cannot be passed over easily by CxOs, now that Predix gains another deployment IaaS, things look even more compelling for the platform. Especially global enterprise know that the rollout of the top 3 IaaS players with AWS, Microsoft and Google does not cover the world well enough form both a performance (that matters more to IoT) and data sovereignty (that matters less to IoT, as legislatures are just getting up to speed on the Safe Harbor replacement Privacy Shield these days). And most large enterprises are already Microsoft customers, so when they show interest into IoT, time to negotiate and throw in some Azure credits for this (which we expect Microsoft to possible even to proactively). The only concern at the moment is the relatively far out timeline with end of 2016 – making 2017 the realistic product deployment, but enterprises can start with Predix now – deploy e.g. on AWS and then later to Azure, true multi-cloud in the plans.

So for now congrats to both vendors on a key partnership, with a not mentioned (CloudFoundry) 3rd party laughing on the sidelines of this press release.
 

More on Microsoft:

• 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.

More on GE:
 

• Event Report - GE Minds & Machines - Good start - a platform for the Industrial Internet - read here

More on Pivotal / Cloud Foundry

• Event Report - Cloud Foundry Cloud Foundry Summit - It's good to be king of PaaS - read here
• News Analysis - Pivotal makes Cloud Foundry more about multi-cloud - read here
• News Analysis - Pivotal pivots to OpenSource and Hortonworks - Or: OpenSource keeps winning - read here
• New Analysis: Pivotal Now Makes It Easier Than Ever to Take Software from Idea to Production - read here

More on Next Generation Applications:

 

• Event Report - Google I/O 2016 - Android N soon, Google assistant sooner and VR / AR later - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
• Event Report - OpenStack Summit 2016 - Austin - OpenStack matures, grows up - read here
• First Take - Workato’s Workbot cuts business users some slack with Slack integration - read here
• Progress Report - Cloudera is all in with Hadoop - now off to verticals - read here
• First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - The next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
• Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves into DaaS - read here
• News Analysis - SAP commits to Cloud Foundry and OpenStack - Key Steps - but what is the direction? Read here
• Event Report - MongoDB is a showcase for the power of Open Source in the enterprise - read here
• Musings - A manifesto: What are 'true' analytics? Read here
• Future of Work - One Spreadsheet at the time - Informatica Springbok - read here
• Musings - The Era of the no-design Database - Read here
• Mendix - the other path to build software - read here
• Musings - Time to ditch your datawarehouse .... - Read here

 

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

Unit4 Acquires Prevero - Analysis

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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Earlier today Unit4 surprised with a ‘summer’ acquisition – wisely timed after end of the European soccer championships – which can always be a major distraction on the ‘old’ continent – of prevero, a German maker of BI and CPM products. (The marketing and aesthetically inclined notice the color match). 

 

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

 

Utrecht, Netherlands & Munich, Germany, July 11, 2016 – Unit4, a fast growing leader in enterprise applications for service organizations, has acquired prevero, a leading provider of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. prevero helps more than 4,000 international clients optimize their financial and operational functions, using business data to uncover deep insight and take quick action.

MyPOV – Good summary that describes what has happened. Prevero has been working in Germany since the 90ies and has accumulated a veritable ‘who is who’ of clients in the German speaking parts of Europe.
 

prevero enables business leaders to align strategy, finance and operations by making smart decisions in every part of their business. Strong CPM and BI offerings complement Unit4’s self-driving business solutions for services organizations, enabling customers to model service delivery around insightful strategic and operational data. Key capabilities of the prevero suite include:
• Predictive analytics and business insights
• Modelling and simulations
• Ubiquitous access to information via in-memory technology
• Corporate-wide collaboration and planning
• Pre-built content for CxO offices and specific verticals

MyPOV - A good collection on what attracted Unit4. Planning and analysis are getting ever more complex these days and by expanding its functional footprint into CPM, Unit4 becomes more strategic and important to its customers and prospects.
 

Unit4 and prevero share a focus on delivering powerful industry-specific solutions. Together the companies will focus on extending the functionality and delivering pre-built content for Unit4’s key verticals including education and professional services.

MyPOV – Always good to see the focus on industries. Prevero had to focus on industries as it had taken substantial market share in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, those assets are now valuable for Unit4. The question is of course, how these best practices translate into other European and potentially North American markets. And while prevero has gone beyond Germany with presences in the UK, France, Italy to name a few – it is still early stages for the customer acquisition efforts of the vendor.
 

prevero is a market leader in the field of CPM and BI, recognized as a visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for strategic CPM suites for the past three years. The solution will be available both standalone and integrated into Unit4’s People Platform technology foundation, delivering customers leading performance management technology with native integration to Unit4’s people-centric enterprise solutions.

MyPOV – Good accolades in the highly fragmented CPM market, the almost has local country champions on Europe. Well described on what makes CPM / BI vendors such attractive target for ‘tuck in’ acquisitions for ERP vendors: Their products are meant to operate stand alone, have integration capabilities and are therefore easily to integrate with other offerings.
 

“As services organizations face increasing pressure to drive organizational transformation across all functions, CPM and BI are critical to successful strategy execution,” said Stephan Sieber, CEO of Unit4. “This is particularly true for services organizations that need to find new service models and revenue streams. Through intelligent enterprise solutions they can become more strategic and ensure efficiency and excellence in execution. The combination of Unit4 and prevero delivers the best performance management and the best services resource planning, designed with the latest technology to simplify user experience and maximize productivity.”

MyPOV – Good quote from Sieber, describing the opportunity and vision on the road ahead.
 

“The combination of the two companies will deliver a market leading offering for strategic finance and other business functions, with the infrastructure and scale required for international expansion,” said Alexander Springer, prevero’s co-founder and CEO. “More than ever, services organizations are looking to optimize the performance of their often over-complex financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. They are also looking to drive that same kind of insight down to all facets of the organization. As part of Unit4, we will massively improve our ability to bring these capabilities to organizations globally.” […]

MyPOV – And Springer shares the ‘business plan’ – bring prevero’s capabilities to the global Unit4 customer base.

 

Overall MyPOV

CPM, BI and other horizontal players are always an interesting acquisition target for suite level ERP players, who lack the capabilities, but may need a jolt of fresh technology or simply more functionality. They are attractive as they immediately create a more strategic conversation topic with customers, something that never hurts an enterprise software vendor – as long as the conversation can lead to respectable sales and the acquired product is viable. On both of the latter points there can be little doubt on the prevero product side, given a proven track record with demanding German customers. What further helps these acquisitions is that CPM / BI vendors assume an integration scenario for their products to thrive, which helps to add them to an ERP vendor install base, we expect the same to happen with prevero and Unit4. And lastly a vendor like prevero can help create insights across multiple Unit4 products and version, something that customers always appreciated, so plenty of synergy and why the acquisition of prevero by Unit4 is a good move.

On the concern side, an acquisition is an acquisition – so key people need to be retained, the architectures and roadmaps harmonized, the sales capabilities expanded and executed. Nothing that we expect the Unit4 management team to be challenged with too much, but still areas end users will want to watch to monitor post acquisition progress.

But for now congrats to Unit4 to the acquisition of prevero, Unit4 customers get access to more and interesting BI and CPM capabilities, some interesting architecture (in memory) – both something that never hurts, and Unit4 gains a larger footprint and a more strategic exposure to the CxOs of its customers. We will be watching.


 

More on Unit4:

 

• News Analysis - Unit4 announces Business World On – A modern ERP offering - read here
• News Analysis - Unit4 announces integration with Slack - read here
• News Analysis - Unit4 picks Microsoft Azure for ‘Self-Driving’ ERP vision - Cloud, Machine Learning, Office and PaaS are the attractors - read here
• Progress Report - Unit4 lays out a big vision - now it needs to execute - read here
• News Analysis - Unit4 acquires Three Rivers Systems - 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

Digital Transformation Best Practices: Five Critical Success Factors

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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Ever wondered what apps you plug into an ERP?

Sholto Macpherson

SME Tech Commentator
Digital First

Sholto Macpherson is a business technology journalist and expert on cloud software and services for SMEs. Since June 2011 he has published http://DigitalFirst.com, which explores how SMEs can use the latest cloud technologies and the impact of digital disruption on the accounting industry.Sholto has 14 years’ experience contributing to magazines and websites, radio and TV segments, webinars and conferences on enterprise and SMB technology and the cloud-led productivity revolution. His stories have appeared in national and regional Australian newspapers and industry websites such as CRN.com.au and iTnews.com.au.Sholto won a national IT Journalism award for Best Columnist in 2012 for his Cloud Channel column in CRN Australia magazine on the transition from server software to cloud software…...

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Does an ERP even need third-party apps? These business management systems cover everything from CRM to warehouse and project management – they are supposed to be the one app the company needs.

It turns out the answer is a resounding yes. While Xero and QuickBooks Online connect to several hundred apps that do everything from send invoices to tracking timesheets, ERPs attract apps that solve big-company problems.

Strolling around the expo floor at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld I met a gaggle of software companies with fascinating ideas for helping SMEs.  

 
Kyriba

Price: From US$24,000 a year (three year contract)
Website: Kyriba

I had never heard of treasury management before – it’s above my paygrade, as the saying goes. Yet within five minutes of talking to Kyriba, I could see a lot of appeal to manufacturers and retailers in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere.

The use case is for companies with several offices overseas who want to know how much money they have and where.

If your head office is in New Zealand, manufacturing is in China, retail in France and distribution in the US, how do you know if you have enough money to pay your suppliers in each currency and country?

Kyriba shows you your balances, how much you’re paying in interest and services to various banks, and hedges against currency movement. “Companies are worried about two things – overborrowing and underleverage,” says Karthik Manimozhi, VP of worldwide indirect sales. “To sell in the Middle East you need eight banking relationships (with each country) and you need to know how much cash you have in those accounts. You would have to log into each of these portals to see how much they have and review it in Excel.”

Kyriba competes against treasury management modules in big ERPs such as SAP, Oracle and Infor. It uses automated bank feeds, updated several times a day, to monitor movement of receivables and payables.

It can also do automated payment workflows that update to the finance module in NetSuite.

Kyriba has a short overview of what it does (1.50 min.).

Huddle

Price: From US$500/month (for a min. 25 users)
Website: Huddle

Collaboration has to be one of the most abused terms in technology but I have to say this app looks good, demos well and (Hallelujah!) understands mobile. Possibly the most important aspect is looks – if the software is ugly everyone who was not born a geek is going to ignore it.  

A collaboration platform with SharePoint in its sights, Huddle is better file sharing and project management in the cloud, with a modern interface and a well-developed mobile app.

Huddle has a relatively low profile given the size of its wins; its largest users include the UK and US governments and the six largest accounting firms in the US. Security is a primary concern and Huddle logs all actions and document changes.  

The app can save documents directly from emails in Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Outlook (desktop) and Google Apps, and integrates with Microsoft Active Directory and identity management tool Okta.

Employees at professional services companies typically resort to unsafe methods of sharing files because they hate using Microsoft SharePoint, the dominant enterprise collaboration platform, says CEO Morten Brøgger.

Reasons for not using SharePoint include it takes too long for IT to set up (30%), the rest of the team doesn’t use it (30%), clients don’t use it (20%) and it doesn’t look professional (20%), a survey commissioned by Huddle found.

The program starts at US$20 a user per month with a 25 user minimum. This gives you 100GB file storage and 25 team workspaces.

Here’s a neat overview showing how it works (2 min.).

iCharts

Price: From $US65/user a month
Website: iCharts

Another overused term is Big Data. Now that we have it, people are trying to work out what to do with it. iCharts is a really clever approach to turning Big Data into Something Useful.

NetSuite’s 2015 app of the year, iCharts is a business intelligence dashboard that displays graphs natively inside Netsuite. A user can pull up a NetSuite dashboard showing various metrics in the accounting module and iCharts will invisibly add graphs from data sets stored outside of NetSuite.

The chart builder uses a drag and drop editor and it updates in real-time within NetSuite. The most common use case is companies with separate business systems wanting to perform analysis in one place without exporting and importing large data sets.

iCharts uses Google BigQuery, a cloud-based big data analytics web service designed to process very large, read-only data sets. BigQuery handles databases with billions of rows using a SQL-like syntax.

The possibilities of BigQuery deserves an article on its own. There are many applications for dumping a huge amount of data – or connecting a streaming river of data – and then using a visualisation tool to pull out real-time trends.   

iCharts is brand new. It released a NetSuite version in 2014; the standalone BigQuery interface is coming soon. Companies will be able to buy an enterprise version that covers NetSuite and BigQuery together, says Rico Andrade, iCharts’ vice president of marketing.  

iCharts has a good testimonial video (3.5 min.) and an overview of how it works (3 min.).

FloDocs

Price: US$3600/year
Website: FloDocs

Workflows are a big area of interest for me right now. Technology on its own is not so useful; it’s the magic about how to make it work for you that really matters.  

FloDocs, like iCharts, received a special mention during one of the keynotes at SuiteWorld. It automatically documents all the changes and customisations a company makes to NetSuite, and can set up and enforce policies for making changes.

The classic scenario is when a business user adds a custom field to a NetSuite module. The company needs to know who added the field, whether it’s still required, can it be deleted and what processes does it affect.

The process editor uses swimlane diagrams for high-level design and text-based steps for the details. A NetSuite company could set up a process for credit checks that automatically routes a customer request to a category based on their payment history, number of invoices outstanding, and so on.

FloDocs, a Canadian startup, has a basic intro video about monitoring changes and another about setting up processes. (Note to FloDocs – get some better marketing videos.)  

Disclosure: NetSuite paid for Sholto Macpherson’s travel and accommodation to attend SuiteWorld.

For more articles on the cutting edge of accounting technology subscribe to DigitalFirst.com

DisrupTV: Digital Transformation Meets the Marketing Disrupters

Aubrey Coggins

Constellation Research

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

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The digital transformation of an organization, company, or industry, requires leadership at the top and within the company’s “four walls.” Over the past few weeks, this theme has appeared through our conversations with key executives and news headlines discussed on our weekly show, DisrupTV.

Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social and author of “The Social Business Imperative,” explained that social and digital transformation is a boardroom and core business-model issue. C-Level executives need to be leading these initiatives, starting with personally using the platforms where customers engage every day - e.g., Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter. While not every CEO will be a branded presence, they should understand how people are actually using social media. Unfortunately, if you aren’t using these channels, you are going to be completely out of touch, she warns.

After the leaders actually lead by example, digital transformation must trickle down to the employees. Constellation Research’s VP and Principal Analysts Alan Lepofsky discussed how skillsets are evolving with the emergence of digitally proficient teams. Facebook, Snapchat - we weren’t using these types of programs in a business sense a few years ago. The bar has been raised, and those “social media skills” aren’t a standout any longer; they’re the baseline for being a competitive employee and company. The future of work requires immersive experiences and an objective.

The digital world is truly making marketing (or all company) programs more meaningful, explained Naveen Rajdev, CMO at Wipro. When reaching out to customers, it’s more than just content marketing. Here’s a great example: We take thousands of photos but may only print and frame a couple of them. This is their approach with their printed magazine. Take what most important and “beautiful” and share those trends with customers to create content that will educate, encourage and inspire them. Sometimes taking digital principles and applying them back to printed collateral can create something that will really move the needle.

Digital transformation is really a shift in thinking and doing - not just the act of using digital programs themselves. Sunder Sarangan, CMO at Persistent Systems, explained that companies need to shift from the “what” to “how.” CMOs need to stand out and run programs that think about the experience, rather than the outcome of a program. You can’t track metrics if you aren’t implementing smart, relevant programs. It’s not “what is” the program, but how are we going to use it to effectively engage with stakeholders?

The verdict is in. Executives need to be front-and-center with leading digital programs within their companies. Small businesses to Fortune 500 companies alike have complained about getting little-to-no ROI when it comes to their digital and social media programs. Why? You can’t just delegate an entire social media program to an intern or newbie. Your investment could be equaling your return.

For the full interviews, check out the videos below. Be sure to also Tune into DisrupTV every Friday on Blab for more insights. 
 

DisrupTV Episode 0020: Featuring Clara Shih, Naveen Rajdev & Alan Lepofsky 6.17.16 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

DisrupTV Episode 0022: Featuring Sunder Sarangan and Jon Swartz 7.1.16 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.