Microsoft Build 2016 - Event Report

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications

We had the opportunity to attend Microsoft's developer conference Build in San Francisco, held (where else) at Moscone. Attended by other 5000 participants, it was a different Microsoft Build, with crystal clear focus on developers, tools to increase their productivity and most importantly - build for the new platform CEO Nadella unveiled, Conversations as a Platform.

My colleague Alan Lepofsky earlier recorded this video on our key Day #2 keynote and overall event takeaways - so have a look (if you haven't seen it - Day #1 can be found here):

 

 

Our video went already way too long, I did not get to the IoT announcements that Microsoft shared - the Azure IoT Hub Device Management (in preview) and Azure IoT Gateway SDK (also in preview). In combination with the Azure IoT starter kits both offerings make it easier for enterprises to build their IoT applications, so a good move.
 

Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - All about building next generation applications from Holger Mueller
 

MyPOV

A clear focus on what Microsoft thinks is the emerging, next platform, Conversations as a Platform. Microsoft shared the vision and importantly, had the tools available already to build the applications for the new platform. A welcome difference to vendors putting out a vision only at first, and then a road map to when things will be delivered. 

 

Hololens has made great progress in the last 12 months (see my First take from Build 2015 here), and for the first time Microsoft has created a new platform in the market, for a new type of applications. And it's no surprise - it is a PC - an it is a headable (if you didn't get it combination of header and wearable, I made this up). 

 

In the past Microsoft has often been behind the market innovators on platform changes, so its a welcome difference to see Microsoft laying out an innovative vision for a software application platform (Conversations as a Platform), and creating a new hardware platform with Hololens. Now it needs to execute on both, we will be watching. 

 

 

Microsoft Build 2016 - Day 1 Keynote Takeaways

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 Microsoft's developer conference Build in San Francisco. The attend is well attended with over 5000 participants.

 

 

 

My colleague, Alan Lepofsky, and my own takeaways from Day #1, take a look:

 

 

No time to watch - we have summarized our findings in one slide:

 

First Take - Build 2016 Day #1 Keynote Takeaways from Holger Mueller

 

Want to learn more - check out the Storify collection of my tweets below.

 

MyPOV

A good start for Microsoft at Build. Microsoft has been often behind the latest trends and then had to catch up - this time with Conversation as a Platform the vendor maybe ahead of the curve. Good to see and good to see that all of the Day #1 keynote was - apart from the general availability of Hololens - all centered on Conversation as a Platform. 

 

There is no surprise why Microsoft has a focus on this, CEO Nadella at one point called the new offering 'Computation as a Platform' - which is clear all along, as a lot of compute is required to power the artificial intelligence, machine learning and bots behind Conversation as a Platform. And Microsoft needs to find more load for Azure - once the current wave of Office conversions runs out. 

 

For customers overall it is good news that Microsoft has aligned on a vision for product that is more specific and measurable than the 30k+ feet 'mobile first / cloud first' moniker. Making workers more productive is something that matters to enterprises, and with a lot of innovation happening in email (!) right now we maybe up to the next generation of applications, or as Nadella puts it - up to a new platform.

 

For developers the good news is that Microsoft has shipped SDKs and frameworks that make the daunting task of building these applications easy. And Microsoft has to make it easy for the developer community, as it is proficient in the general aspects of the Microsoft stack, but not on the more advanced BigData, MachineLearning, Language processing etc. skills that are needed to built these next generation conversational platforms. 

 

A good start for Build - looking forward to Day #2, stay tuned. 

More about Microsoft:

• 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

Too much on IoT, not enough on connected business value

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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Five or six years ago, the hype wasn’t IoT, it was Cloud, but the messages about its impact as an industry game change were similar. Again, as with IoT, few people could really claim to understand the true nature of the changes that the Cloud would bring. The usual trait when we encounter something we don’t really understand is to position it aligned to something we do understand, so Cloud came to be seen as a cost reduction alternative to the data center. Few realized the significance of browser driven Services in transforming business capabilities. In 2016 it seems IoT is at the same stage;

IoT, as previously happened with the impact of Cloud, Mobility, and Social Tools, is a technology function not a Business benefit; It’s business value does not lie in IT technology improvement, but in Business led innovation to make use of ‘real time’ connected business opportunities.

There is too much talking about IoT Technology, and not enough focus on deployed business value and competitive impacts being led by Business management.

That’s a bold remark; when asked why the Farmers moved so quickly to adopt connected sensing technology on agricultural equipment, now called Precision Farming, an Agri-Business executive had a possible answer. ‘I guess they didn’t have an IT department’, out of context this is an unfair statement as it really was meant to indicate that Farmers were not tied to extensive in-house IT investments that needed to be considered. Farmers were able to see the link to transforming their profitability and moved quickly and easily to adopt ‘Services’.

Take the time to read an excellent business article on using sensing technology to control costs of inputs to maximize operational outputs, that should make any business manager think again about connected real-time operational business benefits. Okay its in Farming Equipment Canada in respect of Precision Farming, but the terminology is readily referenced to any business being financial and operational.

Quoting directly from the article; “Precision Farming means … optimizing returns on inputs. What does that mean? I see the path for optimizing your returns most effectively by applying the correct inputs, in the correct place and in the correct amount. Precision farming is your way to accurately plant, populate, apply inputs and then provide data, of what was completed on your farm.

The quote makes clear that it isn’t about the technology of IoT sensing applied to Farm Equipment working the land, but that there is a business impact in real-time operational management on direct profitability. Though the article might be about the business of farming, the point is directly applicable to many business sectors. Today the impact has moved beyond individual farms moving to become an Agri-Business sector transformation. See the previous blog A Strategy for Market Leaders based on IoT Platform collaboration for more background information on how John Deere has adapted to ensure ongoing leadership in this transformation.

Whilst it may be a truism that by not having huge IT investments Farmers where able to move quickly to adopt new practices there are several factors under lying the rapid adoption of Precision Farming.  Four major reasons are;

1. The ‘Consumer’ technology revolution around Smart Phones and ‘App Shops’ has removed many former barriers to using Technology, and speeded adoption rates.
2. Charging by use removes the need to justify Capital investment by defining clear cost based returns, encouraging just ‘try it’ adoption to establish new ideas and develop new best practices.
3. Social Tools with focused communities ensure that new practices that work are rapidly communicated, with the additional befit of peer-to-peer support from early adopter fellow users.
4. Market leading suppliers, such as John Deere and Monsanto, involvement in Social Tools allowed them to spot the trend and rapidly move to support Precision Farming making their products more competitively valuable.

Putting these factors together illustrates the real point behind the ‘I guess they didn’t have an IT department’ statement. The rapid adoption of Precision Farming was made possible by using Apps and Services on a pay by use basis, rather than substantial investment in traditional IT Applications with the need to amortize the investment before making further changes.

The opening paragraph pointed out the lack of appreciation of Cloud Technology for its business transformation impact, six years latter the Business impact is becoming increasingly clear. The pay on demand use of Apps and Services, (running on Clouds), that can be deployed with minimal difficulty has revolutionized many Business capabilities.

IoT is a generic term covering too many possible functions to be a meaningful term, as even the word idIoT contains IoT!  Cloud had, and still has, the same challenge when considered as a Technology, but focusing on Business use quickly defines the value of Cloud.

Today Cloud Technology is taken as underlying the whole Internet; as more and more devices are connected the Internet of Things becomes a similar fact of life. The Business value lies in the manner that these two radical shifts in capability are intertwined!

Cloud based Business Services support ‘back end’ processing by pushing their data towards Devices. IoT adds new business value by collecting and sending new data streams from the ‘front end’ devices. The ability to ‘Read’ events as they are happening by sending new data streams to Cloud based Services creates a new generation of optimized ‘Reactions’.

Much of this will occur in near ‘real-time’ that makes outcomes genuinely able to positively influence the events as they develop. Using IoT supplied data makes existing Cloud based Services interactive, or ‘smart’, in their capabilities.  The linkage between the elements can be expressed simply in the following manner.

IoT Data Read  +  Optimized React      =     Smart Service

          Real Time                                                Cloud 

We have stopped discussing the ‘technology’ of the Internet, and the Web, in abstraction from the business valuable capabilities this provides. The first generation of Cloud based technology is now accepted for its infrastructure replacement value, with attention being focused on using capabilities to support Business valuable competitive Services.

IoT should be part of the same Business discussion as Cloud based Apps and Services as the critical input capability supporting fully interactive high value Smart Services.

Lufthansa Takes You on a Virtual Journey

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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One of the key marketing challenges that we face in the customer journey is moving from awareness to trial. That is, we want potential customers to “try out” our products or services.

This can be particularly challenging when your product or service has a substantial price tag attached.

Think of travel.

There are a whole series of steps that we go through when we are on a travel journey:

• Ideas and inspiration: We seek out amazing stories, pictures and reviews of places, people and experiences so that we can plan our own adventures
• Planning and projection: We start to actively curate our activities, destinations and journeys, connecting the dots and figuring out our itineraries and (gasp, horror) budget. In this stage we are not just planning our activities – but actively imagining what it will be like to BE there
• Lock and load: When we’ve checked, double and triple checked, confirmed our budget and dates, now we wade neck deep into the process of locking dates to a loaded credit card. Yes, it’s commitment time and the pressure is on (so many websites, so many things that can go wrong)
• See ya, see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya: Wave goodbye to your friends and family and take the leap into the unknown
• Wish you were here: Well, we say this to be kind, but if the planning and projection phase was well done, you’ll be taking hundreds of selfies all around the world and using them to induce raging envy across your social graph
• Reflection and longing: Planes aren’t the only things that land with a BUMP. So too does our travel ego. Coming back to “reality” can be a confronting experience. To cope, we return to our #RunningWithTheBulls selfies to remind ourselves just what the travel rush was all about and how we really are #travelheroes.

In amongst each of these steps, there are hardly any that an airline can directly impact. They can inspire us with their media activities, advertising and profile. And they may even help us to plan – albeit in a small way. A good airline will make locking and loading a breeze and but it’s really when you are in the plane that they can make a huge impact.

But experiencing airline travel is expensive, right? And price alone is a barrier.

This virtual travel experience from Lufthansa by 3Spin is a very interesting innovation that I expect will see plenty of others follow.

Lufthansa have touched on many aspects of the travel journey – turning a largely imaginative process into something that is more tangible. More experiential. In fact, it’s not just the destination that is inspirational, it’s the experience of the virtual reality itself. And with a clever mix of digital, analog and old fashioned customer service, they’ve created something far more than just a 360 degree virtual experience. They have created an EVENT – a point in time and space that will create memories. Stories. And hopefully for Lufthansa, bookings.

It makes me think there may be something to this VR lark after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRcbFrp9Y4

Event Preview - Microsoft Build 2016 - Top 3 Things to watch for developers, managers and execs...

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's Developer Conference Build is starting tomorrow in San Francisco, and will run through the rest of the week. Well worth a little event preview...

 

 

 

So take a look on what I think are the Top 3 things to watch for the key communities attending: Developers, Managers and Executives:

 

 

No time to watch - well here are all key areas to watch in one slide:

 

Check out my Contellation Research colleague Alan Lepofsky's preview of Build (here), too!

More about Microsoft:

• 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

SAP Bets On Cloud For Analytics, BPC Optimized for S/4 HANA

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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SAP Financials 2016 event highlights a comprehensive cloud platform and real-time analysis. Here’s why SAP Cloud for Analytics and BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance are getting attention.

Two next-generation products stood out at the March 15-16 SAP Financials2016 and GRC2016 event in Las Vegas: SAP Cloud For Analytics and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Optimized for S/4 HANA Finance. There are, in fact, several paths forward in SAP’s vast financial planning and analysis (FP&A) portfolio, but these are the options seeing the most aggressive development and, not surprisingly, the most interest. Here’s why.

Introduced last fall and based on what was originally called SAP Cloud For Planning, SAP Cloud For Analytics is a comprehensive product spanning planning, business intelligence (BI), and, coming later this year, predictive analytics. Long-range plans also call for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) functionality, but that part won’t show up in 2016.

SAP has offered many analytics products over the years, including Lumira, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence (Webby) and you can even throw BPC onto the list. But where those products have been for specific types of analysis and deployed mostly on-premises, the goal with Cloud for Analytics is to cover all the bases in a cohesive and consistent product that runs on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

A key selling point is broad data connectivity and real-time, in-memory analysis. Connection points include on-premises instances of SAP HANA, SAP BW and bi-directionally to BPC. You can also connect to the (private) HANA Enterprise Cloud, Salesforce and Google Enterprise Apps. Soon to be added will be connections to SAP ECC, BusinessObjects Universes, SAP SaaS apps (Ariba, Concur, Hybris, SuccessFactors, etc.) and live connections with write-back capabilities to on-prem instances of SAP BW.

Though it addresses planning, BI and, soon, predictive analytics, Cloud For Analytics is not a monolithic, all-or-nothing proposition. You can subscribe to just planning or just BI and so on. And there are different subscription levels for different types of users, whether they’re basic report or plan consumers or advanced developers or analysts.

Another, emerging constituent for Cloud for Analytics is business unit leaders, CXOs and even board members, all of whom are supported through an optional Digital Boardroom application. The idea is to help executives see where the business stands and where it’s headed, and with access to all that business data and data visualization and planning capabilities in the cloud, it’s an accessible option.

At SAP Financials 2016 (and also at the recent SXSW event in Austin, TX), SAP offered a Digital Boardroom virtual demo that showed how executives can traverse a Value-Driver view and plug in new planning assumptions for what-if scenario analysis. Plug in a new cost figures for key raw materials, for example, and you can see the impact on costs and margins. Or you could plug in an increase in sales staffing in a fast-growing market to gauge the impact on sales and profitability.

The Digital Boardroom app will become even more powerful as Cloud for Analytics gains predictive capabilities later this year, so executives can do simulations and get predictive recommendations on best actions. You can do this executive-level planning and analysis one a single screen with a mouse and keyboard, but the Digital Boardroom option also supports a slick, three-screen conference room setup using giant touch-screen displays (hardware not included).

MyPOV: It’s early days for Cloud for Analytics, and the roadmap reveals that there’s plenty of functionality that has yet to be added. On the planning front, it’s up against fast-growing, cloud-based performance management rivals such as Anaplan, Host Analytics and Adaptive Insights. These products are also more mature, offering prebuilt apps in areas such as workforce planning as well as financial consolidation, something not yet on the roadmap for Cloud for Analytics.

On the BI front there are myriad competitors, from cloud-native BI systems like BIRST, Domo and GoodData to newish cloud offerings from Qlik and Tableau to emerging as-a-service offerings from Amazon Web Services, IBM and Oracle. The predictive analytics capabilities SAP will bring to Cloud for Analytics from its KXEN acquisition could be a real differentiator, but its’ unclear to me how deep this functionality will go and how soon it will be generally available.

For now I’d say that the breath of SAP Cloud For Analytics is very promising, but the depth in each area of analysis has yet to be realized. It will clearly be most attractive to SAP customers who want real-time access to and analysis of on-premises data in the cloud.

BPC Optimized for S/4HANA Finance

BPC has been a cornerstone FP&A option for SAP customers nearly a decade. A key differentiator versus the rival Oracle Hyperion portfolio is that BPC combines both planning and consolidation in a single product. BPC has evolved to include several permutations, including BPC NetWeaver Standard, BPC for Microsoft and BPC Embedded (as in, an embedded component of SAP Hana).

BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance is seeing growing interest because it gives the many companies that have implemented BPC a path to HANA in-memory performance without having to reimplement on HANA. BPC gets direct, real-time access to ERP data from an S/4HANA Finance instance that sits next to a conventional deployments of the SAP Business Suite.

For now, the real-time advantage for BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana Finance is limited to the planning side of the product, but that alone is attractive to many because you get on-the-fly slicing and dicing against up-to-the-minute data. Future plans call for sophisticated, real-time analyses of sales and profitability, investments, liquidity, product costs, tariffs and more.

The appeal of this product will become even more powerful in the third quarter when it gains support for real-time consolidation. This will enable business units and corporate to predict and close end-of-period results that much more quickly, a crucial advantage.

MyPOV: For net-new customers who are implementing from scratch, BPC Embedded is the likely path forward because there’s no legacy to worry about and you develop from the start to gain the real-time analysis advantages of SAP HANA. But for the many existing customers who have content they want to leverage, BPC Optimized for S/4 Hana is a more practical path to real-time planning and consolidation. It’s also a path the S/4Hana Finance Universal Journal, which promises single-table access to all cost and account information, including customer and vendor data. With universal access to real-time data combined with (coming) what-if simulation and recommendations, we’re talking state-of-the-art capabilities that can change the way you see and do business.

News Analysis - Oracle Unveils Suite of Breakthrough Services.. or short: Oracle Cloud Machine

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 Oracle unveiled the Oracle Cloud Machine, its offering to run on premises what is running in the Oracle Cloud. It’s a key milestone for Oracle and for the overall industry, showing that hybrid cloud is real, and enterprises plan, want and likely will move loads between public cloud and on premises.

 

 

So let’s do our customary news analysis of the press release, that can be found here:

Oracle today launched a new family of offerings designed to enable organizations to easily move to the cloud and remove some of the biggest obstacles to cloud adoption. These first-of-a-kind services provide CIOs with new choices in where they deploy their enterprise software and a natural path to easily move business critical applications from on-premises to the cloud.

MyPOV – Interesting that Oracle approaches it as a strategy / platform to move to the public cloud. Moving load back from public cloud to on premises is what is the more immediate value proposition that comes to (my) mind. 

While organizations are eager to move their enterprise workloads to the public cloud, many have been constrained by business, legislative and regulatory requirements that have prevented them from being able to adopt the technology. Today, Oracle is making it easier for organizations in every industry to make this transition and finally reap the performance, cost and innovation benefits of Oracle Public Cloud Services and run them wherever they want—in the Oracle Cloud or in their own datacenter.

MyPOV – Oracle touches a key point with restrictions that keep enterprises from moving to public cloud. Giving customer choice is always good and that’s what Oracle customers are now getting.
 

"We are committed to helping our customers move to the cloud to help speed their innovation, fuel their business growth, and drive business transformation,” said Thomas Kurian, president, Oracle. “Today’s news is unprecedented. We announced a number of new cloud services and we are now the first public cloud vendor to offer organizations the ultimate in choice on where and how they want to run their Oracle Cloud.”

MyPOV – Good quote from Kurian, certainly Oracle is the first provider to run Oracle Cloud loads on Oracle Cloud Machine on premises. Who else would? Back in January Microsoft made the Azure Stack available that offers the same qualities. Going forward I am sure Microsoft and Oracle will spar with each other over who can move more load(s) and better.
 

Unveiled today, Oracle Cloud at Customer enables organizations to get all of the benefits of Oracle’s cloud services—agility, simplicity, performance, elastic scaling, and subscription pricing—in their datacenter. This is the first offering from a major public cloud vendor that delivers a stack that is 100 percent compatible with the Oracle Cloud but available on-premises. Since the software is seamless with the Oracle Cloud, customers can use it for a number of use cases, including disaster recovery, elastic bursting, dev/test, lift-and-shift workload migration, and a single API and scripting toolkit for DevOps. Additionally, as a fully managed Oracle offering, customers get the same experience and the latest innovations and benefits using it in their datacenter as in the Oracle Cloud.

MyPOV – Good description of the main argument Oracle has been using since many years now: Same platform and software for both sides of the firewall and the benefit of load fluctuation between public cloud and on premises.
 

By extending the Oracle Cloud into their data center, customers can:
Have full control over their data and meet all data sovereignty and data residency requirements that mandate customer data remain within a company’s data center or contained within a geographic location while still taking advantage of the benefits of the cloud

MyPOV – Control over data / privacy / compliance are key arguments for enterprises to keep loads on premises. Given the limbo enterprises are in with the invalidation of the safe harbor agreement, a very valuable offering for many of them.
 

Enable workload portability between on-premises and cloud using identical environments, toolsets, and APIs 

MyPOV – The main Oracle quality, Oracle showed the move of a database between on premises and the cloud back at Oracle OpenWorld last year. The question is how much dynamic load the enterprises will let float.
   

Easily move Oracle and non-Oracle workloads between on-premises and the cloud based on their changing business requirements

MyPOV – The interesting information bit here is ‘non Oracle workloads’ which is the strategy Oracle unveiled earlier in January this year (read here) and OpenWorld last year: With the help of a nested hypervisor infrastructure Oracle wants to attract, run and operate also non Oracle loads. Technically, an enterprise should be able to take e.g. an AWS Cloud load and take in on premises on Oracle Cloud Machine.
   

Comply with security and privacy regulations such as PCI-DSS for the global credit and debit card industry, HIPAA for the US healthcare industry, FedRAMP for the US federal government, Germany’s Federal Data Protection Act, the United Kingdom's Data Protection Act, and other industry- and country-specific regulations

MyPOV – Good to see Oracle has done the homework on all the data privacy and residency mandates that enterprises face – and we know enterprises struggle to stay on top of them. They sure are open for solutions that give them flexibility in regards to where the legislative bodies of their respective countries will march.
 

Today, Oracle is announcing the availability of the following Oracle Cloud at Customer services:
Infrastructure: Provides elastic compute, elastic block storage, virtual networking, file storage, messaging, and identity management to enable portability of Oracle and non-Oracle workloads into the cloud. Additional IaaS services that complete the portfolio, including Containers and Elastic Load Balancer will be available soon.

MyPOV – Good enough to see a sizable enough functionality to really run some load on premises. The Load Balancer will be key, container support will be important to move next generation applications to on premises, as they take advantage of modern software construction and operation technologies like microservices.
 

Data Management: Enables customers to use the number one database to manage data infrastructure in the cloud with the Oracle Database Cloud. The initial set of Database Cloud Service offerings will be followed by Oracle Database Exadata Cloud for extreme performance and a broad set of Big Data Cloud services, including Big Data Discovery, Big Data Preparation, Hadoop, and Big Data SQL.

MyPOV – The list of future offerings is long, reminding us that this is a version 1. But the most common Oracle load, its database is supported and with that there is massive market potential for Oracle Cloud Machine.
 

Application Development: Develop and deploy Java applications in the cloud using Oracle Java Cloud, soon to be followed by other services for polyglot development in Java SE, Node.Js, Ruby, and PHP.

MyPOV – This is likely the most interesting part of Oracle Cloud Machine from a PaaS perspective. It’s practically impossible to develop on premises and use the latest development tools and technologies. This is a first option to take the location of development back inhouse, which a number of organizations will welcome.
 

Enterprise Integration: Simplify integration of on-premises applications to cloud applications and cloud application to cloud application integration using the Oracle Integration Cloud Service. Additional capabilities for SOA, API Management, and IoT will be added soon.

MyPOV – While AppDev was interesting, this is the most impactful capability, as Oracle moves the boundary of integration between the firewall on premises and public cloud based systems to inside the firewall. And with that is open to control and inspection completely in the realm of the enterprise. Something most enterprise IT shops have done for many decades and in many countries are more comfortable to keep doing, then having the interface happening before / after data passes the firewall.
 

Management: Unifies the experience of managing workloads seamlessly on-premises and in the Oracle Cloud.

MyPOV – Ok – no brainer, needed to be there, more details on how to move load would be interesting. When could load ‘burst’ to the cloud, one of the ‘holy grails’ of cloud computing, could data be split based on statutory requirements etc. many more questions.
 

The Oracle Cloud has shown strong adoption, supporting 70+ million users and more than 34 billion transactions each day. It runs in 19 data centers around the world.

MyPOV – Impressive stats, a fortune for how many servers run Oracle on premises, how many users do they serve and how many transactions do they run. I am sure some smart people in Redwood Shores have assessed this…

 

MyPOV

Not a surprising move by Oracle, as it has been talking on symmetrical setup, products and capabilities between its cloud and on premise products since many years. That Oracle makes the move only now (and recently Microsoft, too) shows that Oracle thinks it cloud architecture is so mature, that it can ship it out to customers. At the same time it is clear that customers cannot replicate the full extend (and complexity) of Oracle’s Cloud platform across multiple servers and system landscapes – so offering the same on premises is the logical consequence. No surprise Oracle will have to offer the management of the Oracle Cloud Machines, something CxOs should definitively consider using as a service.

For enterprises it comes back to : Is the ability to run loads that may move to the (Oracle) cloud sometime in the future worth buying Oracle Cloud Machine and services today – versus using existing setups in machines and people. Every enterprise will have a different answer to the equation. 

 

But with many enterprise boards looking at the Capex vs Opex ration, CIOs and CTOs know they need to have more Opex options, so we expect some reasonable interest from the enterprise side. If Oracle now can show TCO superiority (something the vendor usually isn’t shy on) to other, also cloud based solutions, Oracle Cloud machine maybe the on premise route for Oracle to ‘steal’ load from other IaaS providers (thanks to the nested hypervisor). 

But speculation, certainly exciting times ahead, we will be watching, stay tuned.

 

Recent blog posts on Oracle:

• Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption - read here
• Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
• News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
• First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here

Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:

• Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
• First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
• Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
• Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
• Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.

Also worth a look for the full picture

• Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
• Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
• News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
• Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
• Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
• Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
• Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here. 
• From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
• Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)

And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:

• Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
• Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
• Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
• 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
• Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
• How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
• Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
• Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
• Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here. 

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

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

Event Report – Google Cloud Platform Next – Key Offerings for (some of) the enterprise

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 the inaugural Google Cloud Platform conference in San Francisco March 23rd and 24th 2016. Google Cloud Platform Next. For an inaugural event the conference was well attended and situated at beautifully transformed Pier 48 on the San Francisco Waterfront.

 

 

 

So take a look at my key takeaways, with with a focus on the Day #2 keynote (don’t miss my Day #1 takeaways here, if you haven’t seen them, watch them first):
 

No time to watch – read on:

The keynote was lead by Greg DeMichillie who promised that it would be ‘not marketing and all technology’ and it lived certainly up to that, in detail the audience learned:


Google Datacenters - Joe Kava led us through the principles of Google Data Center setup and design, the session was the first time Google shared to a public and wide audience what these principles are. And they are

• Availability – Google design for very high availability, and it needs it for its very own services, achieves it with building own hardware, networking etc.
   
• Security – Google is committed to security, e.g. was the first major cloud provider to enable HTTPS / TLS by default (as one example).
   
• Performance – Google’s proprietary designs are aided by e.g. by high efficiency cooling and innovative hardware designs, e.g. the new OCP announcements around 48V rack specification.
   
• Culture – Google runs its datacenters with its own employees only. From design to built – it’s all done by Google itself, from ‘chip to chiller’. Kava shared a chart that showed that humans make more machines than machines, so the Google built monitoring systems are crucial.
   
• Sustainability - Google is the only cloud provider running exclusively on renewable energy, it helps that Google is the largest private investor in renewables. Own R&D in cooling technology is another strength.
   
• Innovation – Google is using its advances on Machine Learning to harden its data center operations further, all along the software supported operations. 

As mentioned yesterday already, Google will open data centers in Tokyo and Oregon this year. 10 more locations by 2017. And data center locations matter, as we learnt e.g. from Google Partner Avere Systems, there is a difference in performance when you e.g.  render CGI in Iowa or Oregon when based in Southern California. Moreover locations matter for data residency and privacy, and Google is likely going to need more EU and APAC based instances (no 2017 locations were announced).

Security matters – Next was Niels Provos walking us through the security framework of Google and then GCP. Too much for a blog post – but compare the below two pictures. Google of course re-uses its own Google App security stack, and then extends it for the needs of the GCP customers. No surprise here, good to see the synergies. 

 

 

Google Security Stack

Google Cloud Platform Security Sack

 

 

Configuration matters – Next up was Eric Brewer, updating us that Google has been using containers since over 10 years over Borg, then Omega and now Kubernetes. He walked us through recently announced Kubernetes 1.2 and then tackled the challenge of configuration, a key DevOps problem. Making the config available via a mounted volume and gives many advantages, and that’s what Google is introducing with Helm, the package manager of Kubernetes, now on GitHub.
 

Analyst Tidbits

 

• Customer Panel – We had the chance to talk to Google customers Coca-Cola, Snapchat and Spotify. All have very different use cases, Snapchat has been native to Google from the very start, Spotify just choose GCP – mainly for its Analytics / MachineLearning abilities and Coca-Cola built a webscale soccer worldcup picture sharing application. When asked what they would like GCP to improve the mentioned IAM (Spotify), better server farm management (Snapchat) and more partner and SI support (Coca-Cola). Good to see happy customers. 

• Partner Panel – Next was a panel of a very different set of partners with Avere (Hybrid storage, burst to cloud), PWC (building new applications on GCP), BitNami (providing the app stack to ISVs) and xxx (a classis ISV, building a content management system). Good to see GCP being able to serve such a diverse set of partners, and good to see happy partners. 

• Google pushes MachineLearning further – Google machine learning platform Tensorflow became more interesting given the announcements made on assisted learning. Going beyond the data scientist, machine learning specialist is a key step for advancing the overall industry. And Google know that Machine Learning creates substantial need for storage and compute – something every cloud provider wants. The portability of the Tensorflow models makes the product interesting compared to the competition where more lockin is typically in play. 

 

 

MyPOV

A good event for Google that has shown some very compelling arguments to use GCP. 

There can be no doubt at this point that Google understands and operates at cloud scale. Allowing GCP customers to use the same infrastructure and architecture is very attractive for enterprises, as long as their needs fit into the Google use cases. In the executive Q&A Diane Greene was very adamant that it wants all of the enterprise load, and chairman Eric Schmidt made it clear that Google has now understood it needs to come more ‘to you’ (i.e. the enterprises). But there are loads in the enterprise (thing e.g. ERP, CRM etc. systems) that Google has no answer for – except for a re-write of the load into new applications. But that is not palatable for many enterprises, so Google is banking on a multi-cloud future. And we can agree that the future if multi cloud, the question for enterprises is – how much automation / load gets put into which cloud. Naturally they gravitate towards simplicity and to the ‘one butt to kick’ decision making, that has worked well in the past for them – and there is no reason why the same principles will not work in the future. 

Google now needs to think hard how wide it wants to make its product offering to capture enterprise load – e.g. Google can and could go after basic cloud load like storage and DR. Not a peep in the keynotes at GCP. For now enterprises should look at GCP for their next gen Application needs that are aligned with Google’s core competencies – that by itself is a great synergy in what enterprises need to build and what Google can offer. If this will be enough for Google to catch up to current players ahead of Google in the cloud race (AWS and Azure) remains to be seen.

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

Musings - Implications for CxOs from the DoJ vs Apple tussle

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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A lot has been written over the US Department of Justice and Apple sparring over unlocking the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers.



 

What can CxOs in charge of enterprises / enterprise functions learn from it - take a look:



 

 

No time to watch - here are the key takeaways

 

• Privacy Matters - Privacy is important for consumers as well as enterprises, guarding it is quickly becoming at Top 3 objective for CxOs.
   
• Legal Frameworks Lag Behind - The legal frameworks have no been able to keep up with technology progress, that a device can / could be locked beyond the governments access has not happened before.
   
• The Courts Decide - If you venture into the legal gray zone, be ready to defend your position in court.
   
• Governments (so far) always win - Through all technologies, starting from the telegraph, the phone, the internet, etc. governments have always won the oversight battle.
   
• Innovation implications - Apple has been so adamant to defend privacy, that it is even ready to close capabilities that it needs and just used around Error #53. When vendors are not able to correct own mistakes quickly, they need to develop capabilities more carefully, test longer - and that actually will result in slower innovation cycles. 

 

MyPOV

The gap between legal frameworks and technology capability is likely to widen going forward (see Safe Harbor Debate, see FCC regulation of the internet etc.), for CxO it means to be aware of the gap and make conscious decisions. On the societal side the legislative power will have to step up, ultimately driven by voters view if (in their country) there should be unbreakable devices - for the first time. Regulatory certainty around operating businesses will become even more important going forward.

 

[Update March 22nd] It looks like the DOJ has found a 3rd party to help unlock the contested iPhone. Now Apple is worried about what the 'break in' technology would be that endangers the privacy ambition. Lesson learnt: Governments find their way, one way or the other, bu we knew that before. 


 

More Musings

• Musings - Retail is the breeding ground for NextGen Apps - read here
• Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! Read here
• The Dilemma with Cloud Infrrastrcture updates - read here
• Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
• What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
• Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
• How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here

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

 

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