From the Field: Lithium Technologies and Microsoft Dynamics Partner To Create A Total Community Digital Strategy

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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Is social CRM dead? Depends on what you consider social CRM to be. With the partnering of Lithium Technologies and Microsoft Dynamics, we will see yet a new and more extensive version of intelligent customer engagements. The partnership includes Microsoft Dynamics and Lithium’s community data, social customer intelligence and analytics.

The expectation of the value of an online community is often associated with cost savings – just as call deflections can reduce the costs of customer service. While many cost savings are possible, there also are six major areas that my research has found through which an online community can contribute to a company’s revenue, profits and margins. The six areas are: increased revenue through new products and services; enhanced communications, marketing and public relations; improved employee engagement; better business cost efficiencies; expanded business value in customer service; and heightened senior leadership and board member business guidance. With this paper, leaders can create a basic blueprint to embark on a discussion about whether to create an online community, the value the community can provide, and how best to lead this key strategic initiative in their organization.

Back to the conference, @jasonlsilva gave a wonderful talk on perception, change and our ability to redefine the meaning of a billionaire to one that helps a billion people. That I think is quite different than most of the start-up wanna-be billionaire’s who are in tech to become the next billionaire. You can see more of the videos from Jason’s show BrainGames on youtube called Shots of Awe. He talked about how the smart phone is the most powerful tool to get people out of poverty. And that it’s important to step back and understand where we are in time with respect to technology. 100 years ago we were electrifying the world – today we are cognifying the world via technology. In cognitive psychology, after a signal reaches the brain, the instant when we are aware of a change in our environment, but it is before the brain is able to identify and codify what the change is. The key is to not only not be afraid of change, but to embrace it with a positive mindset. The book Mindset was recommended by Lithium’s CEO Rob Tarkoff @rtarkoff by Carol Dweck. And lucky me – got a selfie with @jasonlsilva – 

Speaking of great customer service, I got this note from Claudia Kardzair & Nena Gadingan who are Guest Care Managers at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis:

The days of loyalty driven by customer care are here. Some analysts think companies will be competing on customer experience in the future. I believe they always have been. It may not have been as measured as it is now, it may not have been as obvious as now — but customers have been making mental note of their experiences. If it is bad, they will take themselves out of your marketing funnel, regardless of the number of emails, tweets or other communications a brand sends. It is the era of customer experience being the number one metric all CEOs and CFOs need to pay attention to.

And at the conference we got to hear about the wonderful total community results from customers like @USAA and Renee Horne and Mark Nichols from Skype.

 

The keynote on the future of CRM and intelligent customer engagement by Jujhar Singh, General Manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, provided a deeper understanding of what the partnership means to customers.  He shared key insights into how businesses can maximize customer data to create more personalized brand experiences. The combination of online communities and the power of CRM is an amazing capability. Rob Tarkoff, president and CEO of Lithium Technologies, explained that with the partnership Lithium will be able to expand what they now offer, the power of Total Community across Microsoft’s intelligence and data infrastructures.

By working closely with Microsoft, they together bring a much broader solution to their our customers. The strategic alliance will allow the integration of Lithium social interactions and community data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics customers now have a community platform that offers businesses greater insights from the wealth of customer signals embedded in communities.

What does the future of CRM hold? Perhaps it will finally go from it’s former capabilities – a customer contact management system to actually become the more aspirational customer RELATIONSHIP engagement system that enrolls a brand’s customers and never looses sight of what is important to THEM and is always there when their customers need them with the things that are important to them. When companies do this they become truly customer-centric.

@drnatalie petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering customer-facing applications

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

NGA HR unshackled with new HR service offerings

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend NGA HR’s analyst summit held in Chicago, on June 8th 2016. The summit was well attended with over a dozen analysts there, check out my Storify below for more details. Also good to see that NGA HR (in contrast to 2015) flew out UK based executives, starting with CEO Al-Saleh. 

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here: 

 

 

 

No time to watch – here is the one slide condensation: 

 

Progress Report - NGA HR off to new HR services, unshackled from Holger Mueller

Want to read on? Here you go: 

 

Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

Unshackled – Northgate Information Solutions, the back then holding company For NorthgateArinso (now NGA HR) was a KKR company. Despite valiant answers from executives before the recent debt for equity transaction in November 2015 (see Reuters here), it is now clear that debt load hindered investments at the vendor. The transaction reduced leverage from 8 to 4.5 – a much more manageable load. Nonetheless the vendor keeps up its 4 fold HR services offering with HR Consulting, Application Management, Payroll and BPO offerings. And while the number of customers and serviced employees is up, the NGA HR employee count is down, which at constant revenues is an indication for improved efficiencies.

New HR services Offerings – The question of course was now what NGA HR would do with the new freedom, for me especially on the product side. And while the vendor maintained that the R&D investment is constant, not too much was shown in these regards. Good to see that the venerable ResourceLink product has received a new user interface. NGA HR is also jumping on the PaaS bandwagon at large partner SAP, with launching two Hana Cloud Platform (HCP) based applications. Both NGA HR Request Central and NGA Case Management Central are good early offerings here. What was surprising was that the vendor plans 50 more of these, we look forward to learn more on the scope of these. And good to see continued investment in Payroll Exchange (PEX), the ‘core’ of NGA HR’s global payroll offering. Beside Product, NGA HR is investing into Marketing and Sales, a good decision see why below.

Process Standardization progress – NGA has worked on process standardization for a long time, so it is good to see that the effort is now in Version 4.0, all the way down to Level 5 (physical mapping to system functions, though I will get more details later hopefully). Every service provider prides themselves of these processes, but few have them to this level, and putting them into place is hard, applying them to existing customers even harder. It is good to see NGA HR is working at all these three levels, and has over time created a substantial differentiation over the competitors in the field. It will be interesting to learn what will come in version 5 of the Service Maps machine learning, bots etc. are knocking on the door of advanced best practices for HR services.
 

MyPOV

Good to see the signs going upwards again at NGA HR, which were a little more a concern 12 months ago. Kudos to executives to candidly address the challenges in regards of sales performance (in 2015, 2016 looks much improved), restructuring (once again) HR consulting, and operating at a lower overall headcount. The focus is now on sales execution as NGA HR is one of the few HR BPO vendors that have been able to preserve their offshore execution capacity, now it’s time to get more utilization towards these centers, with large, long term BPO deals (like this one with ThyssenKrupp). NGA HR cannot create those from thin air, but overall signs and forces are pointing to a HR BPO revival, the questions is when that will be. As shared and recorded by us many times, HR executives often get ‘cold feet’ – even after having selected a vendor for a global payroll BPO and then tend to delegate rollout decision back to the different regions. The sooner the industry and NGA as a key vendor can tackle this phenomena, the better for enterprises and players in the market. Global processes in Finance and Procurement are already best practice and reality in most enterprises today, so the question here is – when will the hammer drop for HR?

On the concern side the vendor should use its new financial freedom to rethink where it wants to build its next generation BPaaS product. The Payroll Exchange product could become a HR Core system, including employee usage. NGA HR could also look at redundant payroll offerings it has in the UK, and certainly there are innovation opportunities both for the UK centered ResourceLink and ANZ focused Preceda product. To be fair we did not get briefed in detail here, so we will be happy to revise our view on the topic when we learn more.

Overall good progress at NGA HR, the vendor now has to execute on the sales side, never easy, but something that has been done and can be done. Stay tuned.

More on NGA HR:

• Progress Report - Progress Report - NGA sees Global Payroll BPO as the future - as other businesses are under pressure - read here
• Progress Report - NGA moves on - but in many directions - read here
• NGA executes - but what is the ultimate positioning? Read here

[Disclosure: I had the honor and pleasure to run Products for NGA from Summer 2010 till Spring 2012]

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below.

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

Future of Work Chief People Officer

#DisrupTV: Beyond MOOCS, the Transformation of Personalized Higher Ed

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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When it comes to technology advancements and disruption, what better place to start than in college? The face of the student is changing, and with technology impacting nearly every job and every individual, it’s time to rethink the traditional learning curriculum. We had the pleasure of having Phil Komarny, chief digital officer, and Marni Baker Stein, chief innovation officer, from one of the world’s largest educations systems, The University of Texas System, join DisrupTV to discuss the trends and initiatives to promote big changes in education.   

The Institute for Transformational Learning was formed in 2012 with the goal to answer the questions around influence, accessibility and affordability. As an alumna of UT, I’m proud to see my school leading the charge in the next generation of education, bringing more opportunities for students of all ages in a “lifelong ecosystem of learning,” as Phil and Marni nicely explained.

Their team is focused on a student-centric approach to tear down the typical semester, four-year degree, mid-term tests, goals and achievements normally found in colleges and universities. They are piloting programs to offer personalized experiences based on data collected from each student, which will enable him/her to move at his/her own pace while in school. The data analysis also helps the schools better understand what’s working and what’s not in order to alter programs and provide the best success rates for students at any stage of the education track. To quote UT’s fight song “The eyes of Texas are upon you” (but in a non-creepy way). The pilot programs and successes to date are highlighting a major, positive change for education.

For the full interview, check out the video below.

Be sure to also follow our guests on Twitter: Phil Komarny (@PhilKomarny) and Marni Baker Stein (@marnibstein).

 

DisrupTV Episode 0018: Featuring Phil Komarny, Marni Baker Stein & Kevin Nix from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Data to Decisions New C-Suite Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Walmart's Reinvention Keeps It Fighting the Good Fight

Director of Customer Programs, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Carole oversees the Constellation Executive Network, an executive community for innovative senior leaders who value strategic guidance from trusted advisors who understand the power of disruptive technologies. Carole brings over 15 years of marketing, strategic account management, and operations experience, specializing in high technology and professional services. She holds a BA from Santa Clara University and a MBA from Thunderbird, School of Global Management.     ...

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Walmart's story of reinvention has been unfolding over the past couple years, and recent financial results show that it's still a company to watch. In April, I mentioned that Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon, had been revamping this established retailer in How To Become a Reinventor Like Walmart's CEO. He's been doubling down on Walmart's digital efforts among other key initiatives, and it looks like that choice is paying off, although he clearly has some ground to cover before Walmart shows that it's taking a serious run against Amazon, one of America's most popular digital darlings.

CEO McMillon's hard-fought reinvention shows progress, according to the latest first quarter results where Walmart is up 16% this year. Learn what McMillon shared yesterday in his video interview with CNN Money, Walmart Investors Are Smiling Once Again, where he talked about what his team's doing to focus on learning, listening to the customer, and being inventive. 

Chris Kanaracus, our Managing Editor of Constellation Insights, captures a couple of our leading analysts' perspectives on how Walmart can compete against the likes of Amazon with last-mile fulfillment in this post, Walmart Partners with Uber, Lyft for Grocery Delivery in Strike Against Amazon as stated in The Wall Street Journal. 

Time will tell on how Walmart fares in playing catch-up on last-mile fulfillment, considering that Amazon's already had a head start has been willing and able to take a hit on shipping costs, in order to stay ahead of its competition. Meanwhile, Amazon has been strategically taking aim at traditional brick and mortar clothing retailers to earn their market share by wooing clothing shoppers with online purchases. On that point, MarketWatch just came out with an article citing the obvious for many, Customers Hate Fitting Rooms and Clothing Retailers Are Paying the Price. 

Related articles

Wal-Mart Profit, Revenue Beat Expectations; US. Sales Up More Than Expected. Yahoo Finance 
Big Box Throwdown: Target Vs. Walmart. Forbes

To find out more about leadership advisory on driving digital transformations of all shapes and sizes, consider joining the Constellation Executive Network.

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Alteryx Inspire 2016 - Enabling change agents in data management

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We have the opportunity to attend Alteryx Inspire 2016 in San Diego, held from June 6th till 10th 2016. The conference is well attended with over 1200 participants, coming from customers, prospects and the ecosystem, a significant growth over the same event a year ago in Boston. 

 

So take a look at my musings on the event here:
 

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation:

 

 

Event Report - Alteryx Inspire 2016 from Holger Mueller

Want to read on? 

 

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

Growth shows strong market position – Alteryx has successfully expanded its portfolio from data preparation to enrichment, analysis and sharing of results. Growth on both the customer, partner and overall eco system side show that Alteryx has mastered the ‘land and expand’ model well. Now the vendor will have to go beyond the US / North America – where this model is less adopted and understood at this point. But the strong value proposition for data analysts should help Alteryx in this processes.

Rich Roadmap is investment in the future – Alteryx is innovating on all aspects of its product value proposition, not just the newer functions post data prep. That is key for propelling future growth and attending users value the speed of product expansion. Particular good to see is that Alteryx is working on usability, as in some cases the product’s look and feel comes over more pedestrian than where it should be. . Equally good to see that Alteryx can also do this with usage logs from users, despite the tooling being deployed on premises. Amongst many planned enhancement, an uptake of Machine Learning stands out, as it will help to automate more repetitive tasks for data analysts. More automation can quickly become table stakes and is key for success of any ‘land & expand’ model in the industry.

From asking IT for forgiveness to IT enablement – For a long time using products like Alteryx was outside the ‘approved’ tooling that IT provided to their business. That did not deter business analysts – often with cover of their superiors – to uptake tools and products like Alteryx – asking IT for forgiveness later. That practice is still in place for many technologies, but it was good to learn from attendees as well as Alteryx, that the tide has turned… now IT is the ‘enabler’ of the business, and Alteryx has become part of the official tooling for enterprises. A good move for all involved, business analysts are empowered, IT is an enabler and not a blocker, and Alteryx … grows.
 

MyPOV

Good to see the success for Alteryx, empowering its customers to connect, move, prep, blend etc. data in an easier way and fashion, than most vendors who try to achieve the same. Users are fired up and like to use the tool, as some tweets (see below in Storify) in CEO Stoecker’s keynote showed. Also good to see the vendor is not resting on the laurels, but investing in product roadmap and new capabilities. The move to cloud seems to be well underway with partnerships with AWS and Microsoft. Usability and machine learning enhancements will be key for Alteryx going forward so that the vendor can keep operating on the ‘land & expand’ approach – keeping sales costs down, and investing into product instead.

On the concern side Alteryx must master these technology shifts, needs to start thinking of moving the tooling to the cloud and not missing the trend to enable the business end user (with no / limited data know how) as the next user category which will change how enterprises work with data.

But for now there are only very few alternatives to Alteryx when looking for a data prep, data automation solution in the enterprise, good to see IT departments taking, note too. Stay tuned.


Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below.

And read more on Alteryx and other vendors in Integration / BigData:

• Event Report - Alteryx Inspire 2015 - Positive Growth on Product, Go to Market and Customers - read here
• Event Report - Informatica World 2016 - The Cloud is the new platform - read here
• 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.

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

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work User Conference ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

Apply for a Constellation SuperNova Award - Recognizing Leaders in #DisruptiveTech

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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Every year the Constellation SuperNova Awards recognize individuals for their leadership in digital business. Nominate yourself or someone you know before August 8, 2016. Learn more and apply here: https://www.constellationr.com/events/supernova/2016

About the SuperNova Awards (#SNA2016)

The SuperNova Awards honor leaders that demonstrate excellence in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies.

In its sixth year, the Constellation SuperNova Awards will recognize individuals who demonstrate leadership in nine categories:

•  Internet of Things - A network of smart objects enables smart services. (sensors, smart ‘things’, device to purchase, artificial intelligence)

•  Data to Decisions - Using data to make informed business decisions. (big data, predictive analytics) 

•  Digital Marketing Transformation - Personalized, data-driven digital marketing. 

•  Future of Work: Social Business - The technologies enabling teams to work together efficiently. (enterprise social networks, collaboration, digital assistants)

•  Future of Work: Human Capital Management - Enabling your organization to utilize your workforce as an asset.  (talent management, benefits, HR core)

•  Matrix Commerce - Commerce responds to changing realities from the supply chain to the storefront. (digital retail, supply chain, payments, 'ubiquitous-channel' retail)

•  Next Generation Customer Experience - Customers in the digital age demand seamless service throughout all lifecycle stages and across all channels.  (crm, customer experience)

•  Safety and Privacy - Strategies to secure sensitive data (blockchain, digital identity, authentication)

•  Technology Optimization & Innovation - Innovative methods to balance innovation and IT budgets. (innovation in the cloud, ENSW cost savings, cloud ERP, efficient app production)

The SuperNova Awards are seeking leaders and teams who have innovatively applied disruptive technolgies to their business models as a means of adapting to the rapidly-changing digital business environment. If you have what it takes to compete in the SuperNova Awards submit your application today: https://www.constellationr.com/events/supernova/2016

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AR Executive Events Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Experience Officer

Order starting to emerge in the Blockchain chaos

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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I’ve been a critic of Blockchain. Frankly I’ve never seen such a massed rush of blood to the head for a new technology. Breathless books are being churned out about “trust infrastructure” and an “Internet of Value”. They say Blockchain will keep politicians and business people honest, and enable “billions of excluded people to enter the global economy”.

Most pundits overlook the simple fact that Blockchain only does one thing: it lets you move Bitcoin (a digital bearer token) from one account to another without an umpire. And it doesn’t even do that very well, for the Proof of Work algorithm is stupendously inefficient. Blockchain can't magically make merchants keep up their side of a bargain. Surprise! You can still get ripped off paying with Bitcoin. Blockchain simply doesn’t do what the futurists think it does. In their hot flushes, they tend to be caught in a limbo between the real possibilities of distributed consensus today and a future that no one is seeing clearly.

But Blockchain does solve what was thought to be an impossible problem, and in the right hands, that insight can convert to real innovation. I’m happy to see some safe pairs of hands now emerging in the Blockchain storm.

One example is an investment being made by Ping Identity in Swirlds and its new “hashgraph” distributed consensus platform. Hashgraph has been designed from the ground up to deliver many of Blockchain’s vital properties (consensus on the order of events, and redundancy) in a far more efficient and robust manner.

And what is Ping doing with this platform? Well they’re not rushing out with vague promises to manufacture "trust" but instead they’re making babysteps on real problems in identity management. For starters, they’re applying the new hashgraph platform to Distributed Session Management (DSM). This is the challenge of verifiably shutting down all of a user’s multiple log-on sessions around the web when they take a break, suffer a hack, or lose their job. It's one of the great headaches of enterprise identity administration and is exploited in a great many cyberattacks.

Ping’s identity architects have carefully set out the problem they’re trying to solve, why it’s hard, and how existing approaches don’t deliver the desired security properties for session management. They then evaluated a number of consensus approaches - not just Blockchain but also Paxos and Raft – and discussed their limitations. The Ping team then landed on hashgraph, which appears to meet the needs, and also looks like it can deliver a range of advanced features.

In my view, Ping Identity’s work is the very model of mature security design. It’s an example of the care and attention to detail that other innovators should follow.

Swirld’s founder Dr Leemon Baird will be presenting hashgraph in more detail to the Cloud Identity Summit in New Orleans tomorrow (June 7th).

Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Distillation Aftershots Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth AI Blockchain Security Zero Trust Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Privacy Officer

News Analysis: Acquisition Brings Salesforce Customers To The Commerce Party

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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Salesforce Announces Intent To Acquire Demandware For $2.8B

On June 1st, 2016, Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Burlington, Massachusetts based Demandware for $75.o0 per share or around $2.8 billion in cash.  Constellation predicts a $10.01B market for matrix commerce solutions as new digital platforms and network economies emerge.  Constellation’s quick merger analysis considers the impact on customer, market coverage, product road map, partnership programs, and the competition:

• Customer impact should be mostly positive.  Most Demandware customers sought the product as an alternative to the legacy on-premises based solutions.    Demandware uses a revenue sharing pricing model.   Based on Constellation’s vendor selection and contract negotiations experience, most customers pay anywhere between .5% to 3.5% of monthly sales.  Customers can use Demandware to power custom websites or work with Demandware LINK partners to build the .
  
  Point of View (POV): The acquisition expands the natural definition of CRM and expands the relevance of Salesforce to its customers.  Demandware customers gain an end to end commerce play with Salesforce.  Conversely, Demandware provides Salesforce customers with a rich and compelling story to deliver on campaign to commerce.  From an impact to the customer perspective, Salesforce has shown a positive track record for customers with mergers and acquisitions.  Constellation sees minimal impact to the retention of top talent, additional investment in product road maps and integration, and transition assistance for partners and channels with many of the larger acquisitions.

• Market coverage should increase.  Demandware leads the commerce cloud market and brings over 300 brands in their B2C cloud commerce platform.  Marquee customers include Adidas, Brooks Brothers, Burton, Callaway, carters’s, Columbia, Crabtree & Evelyn, crocs, ecco, Ethan Allen, Fila,  Godiva, GoPro, Hurley, kate spade, Lancome, Land’s End, M&S, NewBalance, Nine West, Panasonic, Pandora, Quicksilver, Reitmans, Rockport, Roots, S.Oliver Samsonite, Scotch & Soda, Skullcandy, Space.NK, Speedo, Stonewall Kitchen, Tory Burch, Traeger, Trina Turk, True Religion, UGG, Urban Decay, Vibram, Vineyard Vines
  
  (POV): Salesforce.com and Demandware have many joint customers.  As customers bring their front office transactional systems together, the value will come from the insights in customer network.  Commerce is the outcome of good customer experience.  Keep in mind, while there may seem little customer upside in the transaction, commerce will drives the future of long term growth for Salesforce.com and increase over total addressable market (TAM) as the acquisition adds to the network and platform business.  Moreover, salesforce.com global reach should pair up well with Demandware in providing global coverage for customers.

• Expect a smarter product road map. Demandware brought a battle tested B2C commerce platform to the masses.  As the basis of the Commerce Cloud, core capabilities include a content management, merchandising, marketing, order management, interaction history/transaction management, store ops, and analytics platform. The retail data model brings orders, customers, product, inventory, and promotion together.  Both Demandware and Salesforce have built on top of Oracle databases running on their own infrastructure with extra capacity running on Amazon Web Services.
  
  Point of View (POV): Demandware started out in 2004 when the co-founder of Intershop, Stephan Schambach, left to form a cloud based ecommerce solutions for retailers.  One of they key assets Salesforce gains is the predictive analytics and machine learning investments.  When paired with the MetaMind technology, customers can expect some advances in artificial intelligence for the overall force.com platform.   With the recent Salesforce partnership on AWS, Constellation expects a mild expansion to more AWS over time for international expansion and newly acquired company platform integration such as Demandware.  Depending on the future analytics strategy, customers can expect 12 to 18 months before a replatform discussion on AWS takes hold.

• Channel and partnership programs . Demandware brings a robust partner program for technology, services solutions, services affiliate, and end-to-end partners.  With over 220 LINK marketplace partners, customers gained from the overall ecosystem and appreciated the overall Demandware community as a key resource for insight
  
  (POV): Salesforce makes another acquisition into a space that partners have carved out into the ecosystem.  From Apttus to ServiceMax to Veeva, partners continue to raise concerns about cannibalization.  While Cloud Craze, one of the first B2B commerce solutions running natively on the Force.com platform, is not directly impacted as they are B2B not B2C, growing concerns continue as Salesforce.com expands TAM through M&A.  Moreover, customers saw value in the community as a resource for best practices sharing and will expect this community to move forward with the acquisition.

• Competitive landscape.  Large enterprise competitors IBM, Oracle, and SAP already have proven B2C commerce solutions to the table. Salesforce’s lack of a commerce option pointed to an obvious gap in customer need.  Adobe and Microsoft remain among the large players without this key commerce capability.  While down market in most deals, Magento Enterprise, Elastic Path, Episerver, Sitecore, and Shopify could be acquired as a result of the Demandware acquisition by Salesforce.com.
  
  (POV): Salesforce outbid many competitors to win over Demandware.  The acquisition gives Salesforce.com ammo to fend off IBM Smarter Commerce and Hybris deals, despite Hybris mostly being on-premises based. The future of CRM includes commerce because at the end of the day, conversion rate optimization matters.  Going forward, Salesforce could include the B2B commerce space adding partners such as Avangate, Cloud Craze, and Digital River as part of the overall industry vertical strategy.  Meanwhile, expect Adobe and Microsoft to step up their efforts around B2C and B2B commerce.

*Key customers of Demandware include 2XU, adidas, American Golf, Anya Hindmarch, Avenue, Bare Escentuals, Brooks Brothers, Brooks, Browns, Burton, Callaway, carters’s, Clarins, Cole Haan, Columbia, Converse, Cortefiel, Crabtree & Evelyn, crocs, Deckers Brands, ecco, EMU Australia, Ethan Allen, Fila, Gaiam, Godiva, GoPro, Gore, HotTopic, House of Fraser, Hurley, Jack Wolfskin, Jewlery Television, JoAnn, Karstad, kate spade, Kiehl’s, L’Oreal, Labelux, Lacoste, Lancome, Land’s End, Liebeskind, Life is Good, London Drugs, Lush Fresh, M. Gemi, Marc O’Polo, M&S, Michael Hill, Micheal’s, mothercare, Mountain Hard Wear, NewBalance, Nine West, OVS, Pacsun, Panasonic, Pandora, PartyCity, Pentland, Perry Ellis, Picard, Pier1 Imports, Poppin, Puma, Quicksilver, Reitmans, Rituals, Rockport, Roots, S.Olive,r Samsonite, Scotch & Soda, Skis.com, Skullcandy, Sleepys, Solstice, Sorel, Space.NK, Speedo, Stoenwall Kitchen, Tory Burch, Traeger, Trina Turk, True Religion, UGG, Urban Decay, Vibram, Vineyard Vines, and others.

Recommendation to Customers And Prospects

Constellation makes the following suggestion to Demandware customers

• Lock down existing contracts and renewals before close.  For those with advantageous revenue share rates, lock down larger volume discounts before the merger.  Factor in the post merger costs of adding to the overall cost per user and consider extending longer term discounts.  As a best practice, identify performance SLA’s to carry over into the Salesforce.com transition.
• Identify feature functionality requests.  Make clear in contract renewals key functional requirements.   Have demandware provide guidance on feature delivery dates.
• Consider integration options.  Determine how the Demandware retail data model will integrate back to the Salesforce customer model.  Identify core order capture and order management process and workflow integration points.
• Explore the functionality of a combined salesforce.com and Demandware.  Map out the campaign to commerce journey. Identify gaps in channel, customer journeys, analytical insights, and customer profiles.  Determine a build, buy, or acquire strategy.

The Bottom Line: The Future Of CRM Is Campaign To Commerce

Digital technologies have transformed CRM. Since the early days of CRM, the core components have revolved first around sales, then service, and then marketing. The next wave focused on systems of engagement. Social CRM, mobile enablement, and the consumerization of technology led this era.  In the shift to “systems of experience,” digital transformation takes CRM to the next level. Here, the focus is not on selling products and services, but on delivering brand authenticity and outcomes, or experiences, from campaign to commerce engagements.  The ultimate result is either a conversion rate or click through.  Commerce is the outcome of good CRM and CX not vice versa.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website. * Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2016 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

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The post News Analysis: Acquisition Brings Salesforce Customers To The Commerce Party appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

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News Analysis - Microsoft opens Windows Holographic to partners for a new era of mixed reality

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, when day broke in Asia, Microsoft used the Comdex event happening in Taiwan to make a major announcement around its holographic product plans, making Windows Holographic available to partners.

 

 

 

 

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

Microsoft Corp. invited its Windows 10 hardware partners to create virtual reality (VR) devices, augmented reality devices and everything in between with Windows Holographic, the platform that powers Microsoft HoloLens. In opening up Windows Holographic to partners, Microsoft shared its vision for mixed reality — a world where devices interact with each other to change the way people work, communicate, learn and play.

MyPOV – Microsoft move back to its DNA, going back to the OEM model that has served the vendor and partners well in the past for the PC. Back at Microsoft’s Build conference earlier this year, we pointed out who Hololens was the first new category platform that Microsoft has completely built from scratch. Microsoft now abandons this exclusive (Apple style) strategy now, which is probably a good move, as it goes back to the Microsoft DNA, working with hardware manufacturers to produce devices, while maintaining the standards and control of the software platform.

“With Windows 10, we’ve been on an incredible journey with our partners, and today we usher in the next frontier of computing — mixed reality,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president, Windows and Devices.

MyPOV – Good quote by Myerson, good pitch on Microsoft’s vision for the future of enriched experiences, that Microsoft calls ‘mixed reality’, differing the offering from augmented and virtual offerings with other vendors in the market.
 

Windows: The only holographic platform
With over 80 million virtual reality devices expected in the market, per year, by 2020, the business opportunity for virtual reality is vast. Yet, today’s devices are built with related but differing technologies — ranging from virtual to augmented reality. These devices and experiences do not work together today, because of different user interfaces, interaction models, input methods, peripherals and applications. Most virtual reality experiences can’t mix real people, objects and environments into the virtual world, making creation and collaboration difficult.

MyPOV – Good description of both the market opportunity and the challenge, the confusion and different standards, of course pitching the Microsoft direction of ‘mixed reality’. My hope would be so to see more device diversity as a consequence of this move for the Microsoft ‘mixed reality’ ecosystem – it’s the diversity that has propelled Android to the clear leader as mobile OS. Doing this around a common standard is a very important move to make sure that the still to be created software can reach enough customers.
 

Windows Holographic unites these worlds and enables innovation across a range of devices. Windows Holographic offers a holographic shell and user interface, perception APIs, and Xbox Live services, enabling a familiar experience across apps and content. All Universal Windows apps can run on the Windows Holographic platform. Today there are nearly a thousand Universal Windows Apps that run on Windows Holographic.

MyPOV – Good description of what Holographic is, effectively a platform for Microsoft’s mixed reality vision. Surprising in our era, that strongly emphasizes platforms, that the word platform is missing here. And good to see the link to the Universal Windows Apps, a key value proposition from Microsoft to developers, as these apps run across different Windows devices and form factors.

In a mixed reality world, devices can offer experiences that extend beyond the virtual world. Imagine wearing a VR device and seeing your physical hands as you manipulate an object, working on the scanned 3-D image of a real object, or bringing a real-life holographic representation of another person into your virtual world so you can collaborate. In this world, devices can spatially map your environment wherever you are; manipulating digital content is as easy and natural as it is in the real world. Interested partners can learn more at http://www.winhec.com.

MyPOV – Unusual to see use cases for products in press releases – obviously Microsoft was compelled to describe the advantages of the mixed reality proposition.
 

In addition to opening up Windows Holographic to its partner ecosystem for the future, Microsoft is working with Intel Corporation, AMD Inc., Qualcomm Inc., HTC Corp., Acer Inc., ASUS, Dell Inc., Falcon Northwest, HP, Lenovo Group Ltd., MSI and many others to build a hardware ecosystem supporting great virtual reality experiences on Windows 10.

MyPOV – This is an impressive list of partners and it is good to see Microsoft tapping into the partner ecosystem.
 

Overall MyPOV

There are two schools of thought when bringing new platforms to market – there is the Apple model – that controls all aspects of the platform, including manufacturing… the alternative is Google’s Android (or Microsoft Windows) model, defining the spec for the platform but leaving it to the market and competition of many manufacturers to provide the devices. There are pros and cons for both approaches, what is hard is when vendors who follow e.g. the Google / Android model switch to the Apple model. I saw that being the case with Microsoft and Hololens, but with this announcement Microsoft has headed back to familiar waters. And maybe it was all creating enough of a proof point for Hololens to create attention, attract demand and test and validate the platform.

And maybe Microsoft planned it that way, maybe it had to react to Google, which equally went into a partner spec model for its AR / VR offerings – see my event report of Google I/O here. And for Microsoft Build below.

Overall this is a key first step for Microsoft to make its mixed reality platform reality in the markets. First you need to sign the partners up, then they need to make money etc. – The good news for enterprises is that the partner model creates choice and competition. Chances that an attractive Hololens offering comes along in a second tier market have gone up. Purchasing managers are sleeping better knowing there will be more of competition for devices. Developers can already see uptake of the Windows Universal Apps, an important promise that Microsoft came through from the last Build conferences. Now the main challenge remains – as with all of augmented / virtual and mixed reality – time to create the new apps that these platforms need. With this announcement Microsoft has done a key step towards success for the Holographic platform… stay tuned for more.


More on Microsoft:
 

• 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.

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

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What is an IoT Platform, and why does it need an AoT Engine?

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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As IT departments start to consider how to provide suitable quality support for their enterprises' IOT initiatives the adoption of a ‘Platform’ to reduce deployment times and costs is a logical move, but what exactly is an IoT Platform? Even more important than the technology definition is capabilities that a new generation of IoT business requirements will demand.

IT practitioners have had much of their thinking and understanding of 'Platforms' shaped over the last few years by their experiences with provisioning Applications, Apps, and some Services onto Clouds Platforms. It has taken more than five years for clarity to emerge on Cloud Platforms, partly due to technology maturing, but largely due to the new, and largely unforeseen in the early days, Business capabilities that became possible by using Cloud technology capabilities.

The shift from IT department initiatives to lower operational costs of traditional IT Enterprise Applications to creating business competitive value by Apps and Services caused many Enterprise investments in ‘Cloud Platforms’ to become ‘troublesome’. Planned moves for simplification with flexibility in provisioning delivery around Platform as a Service, PaaS, started to have to integrate with ‘Everything as a Service’, or XaaS at which point both Vendor and Architecture lock-in became issues.

Unfortunately deploying an IoT Platform looks likely to run through the same pattern as initial views on the use of IoT are most likely to be internally dominated around straight forward use of sensors for monitoring buildings, machines or expense assets. The longer term will see IoT as ‘anything and everything’ connected and interactively responsive in near ‘Real-Time’ heralding the new competitive Digital Business era.

The danger therefore is to take initial technology, (and first generation business), requirements to define an IoT Platform requirement. The IT department needs to some through research to understand IoT, (Internet of Things), and AoT, (Analytics of Things), in order to see beyond these initial requirements.  Thankfully there are now enough early adopter excellent business case studies published to be able to get a relatively clear picture.

Business Management sites are usually the prime source for case studies on how IoT and AoT are transforming Business, rather than Technology sites that by their very purpose are there to provide technical descriptions of the functionality of the current products.

In a way the very term IoT focuses the Platform requirement at the wrong end of the Business value chain. Yes, its true that without the ubiquitous connectivity of IoT devices of all types there would be no new capabilities. As ever the business value comes from the data flows from the IoT Devices, hence the increasing use of the term AoT, Analysis of Things. But its not more ‘Big Data’ to be analyzed in batches, instead the Business value is in as near to ‘Real-Time’ as possible ‘Reading’ of the Data Flows in order to create optimal individually ‘reactions’.

The ‘Digital Economy’, ‘Internet Economy’, or Services Economy’ are all terms for the same transformation; Changing the basis of market competition by using ‘real-time’ intelligence allied to a new generation of ‘Smart’ Services. Think of the impact of Social CRM around interacting and reacting with People, and then add the reaction to events fed by machines, events, and locations to understand how IoT/AoT will shape the future.

Those initial starting internally oriented requirements around connecting a finite number of defined sensors to on screen displays will soon be replaced by demands to deploy sophisticated externally oriented competitive Smart Services to compete in the market places.

This should read as a familiar pattern to those who have worked through the various stages of the adoption of Cloud technology, and the refocus of its capabilities into new Business value creating Enterprise advantage. The simple tool for internal cost reduction moved to becoming a key element in competitive business survival.

There are many pages of independent advice on choosing, operating, even contracting, for Cloud Platforms, but there is very little independent advice to be found on the topic of IoT Platforms. So what are the general characteristics that make an IoT/AoT Platform, or deployment environment, different?

Is there an equivalent to a Cloud Platform? A definition of a Platform as being able to facilitate the deployment of business software by hiding the complexity of the common underlying hardware and software layers. Key to this definition is that a Platform is generally ‘infrastructural’ by nature, provides constant connectivity between various elements, and has a stable set of common core functions. Indeed the whole concept of a Platform is tied to the stability, even predictability, of the environment.

In direct contrast with the stability of Cloud Platforms, and their environment, IoT creates its new business values from the ability to optimizing individual responses from dynamic, unpredictable, events. The often quoted ‘IoT/AoT Insightful Outcomes’ provides value simply because there is no previous foreseeable, or planned, relationships.

An IoT Platform has to simultaneously provide the simple, abstraction, of core technology elements for Developers of Smart Services; and the operational management of Data Flows occurring from unique dynamic event based activities.

An example may help to illustrate the point; Based on a group of IoT sensors triggering to report various event conditions from an Air Conditioner installed in an Office Building. The sensors are connected to an IoT Platform that collates the individual sensor event Data Flows into the recognition that the Air Conditioner has failed. The IoT Platform is supporting multiple IoT/AoT Smart Services, each providing a different and individual set of ‘Read and Response’ functions for some operational aspect of the Office Building.

Only one of those Services activates and manages the activities of an Air Conditioning Engineer and needs to recieve this particular Data Flow, with continuous ‘real time’ analysis optimizing the ‘smart’ operational reactions. However, in parallel there may well be several such event triggers and Data Flows invoking different Smart Services taking place at the same time.

An IoT ‘Platform’ has to support a complex, dynamic, multi functional capability covering both conventional Platform connectivity and common abstracted functions, AND, in addition to provide AoT ‘read and react’ with intelligent switching of Data Flows to individual Services as well.

This is most definitely not a description of the capabilities normally associated with a Platform, in fact the critical dynamic functionality closely resembles the definition normally applied to an ‘Engine’. In traditional computer programming the term Engine refers to a program that performs a core, or essential function for other program stating an ‘Engine’ to be an application program that coordinates the overall operation of other programs.

Architecturally an Engine is the central, or focal, program in an operating system, or subsystem. Once again the definition suits the role of an IoT/AoT Platform that in the decentralized ecosystem of IoT is performing the role of coordinating disparate activities into recognizable functional outcomes.

The simple Platform model derived from Clouds with their structured predictable use simply doesn’t fit with the requirements for the dynamic real time ‘Platform’ role needed to support Business valuable Smart Services driven by IoT/AoT ‘read and react’ optimizations.

The requirement IoT Platform definition comprises of three elements combining Platform, and Engine, into a sophisticated Enterprise and Business operational environment;

1. Common IoT connectivity with associated levels of device management
2. Abstraction of common functions to simplify delivery of Smart Services
3. AoT Data Flow real time analysis with intelligent switching Smart Services

Additionally, IoT is, by definition, based on ever growing massive numbers of a huge variety of devices coming into use. An increasing majority of which will not be chosen, defined, or controlled, by the Enterprise that wants to make use of their data. Vendor lock in element of IoT/AoT architecture is a further risk to be considered.

Initial specifications for an IoT Platform will be to support initial IoT deployments and will often favor a particular vendor product that has been optimized for the installed IoT sensors, and data analytics. As Vendor lock has usually proved to be a major issue in successful long-term investment, and, with the recent experience of Cloud Platforms to offer further guidance, appreciation of the real functionality of this important Enterprise Business investment is essential.

The danger of early IoT requirements with direct-coupled simple Services masking the reality of the fast developing Business use of IoT/AoT with real-time Smart Services is all too obvious. The wise IT department will remember the opening part of this blog around how the role of Clouds changed and expanded redefining the requirements and uses of ‘Cloud Platform’.

As the era of IoT mass connectivity and real time AoT data drives market competitiveness based on Smart Services it will become imperative for an Enterprise to be able to have an IoT Platform, but it has to be close coupled to an AoT Engine.

Footnotes;

1)This blog refers to a fully functional integration Enterprise Platform capable of supporting interactions between multiple Smart Services by connecting IoT Sensors with AoT Dataflow analysis in an intelligent manner. This is NOT the same as an App Shop style Platforms currently in use and featured in the blog; Introducing market disruption strategies for market leaders based IoT platform collaboration

2) This blog is intended primarily to be read as part of the ongoing series of Blogs on the development of IoT, and now AoT, as Business Solutions supported by Technology integration and deployments. As such it uses terms and concepts explored in previous blogs; See for the full Blog series https://www.constellationr.com/users/andy-mulholland - profile2_main_account_group_research_agenda

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