Cyber Security is Now an Important Part of Your Brand

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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In workshops, presentations and executive briefings, I continue to push one clear message. Experience is the Currency of Your Brand. This new consumerverse that we have found ourselves in goes beyond the simple notion of being “customer centric” – to the heart of what it means to be invited into the lives of our customers. For no matter whether we are engaging prospects in a buyer’s journey and nurturing their engagement through to a purchase, or we are working with a community of passionate brand advocates (and yes, they do exist), it’s important to remember that the brand – our brand – never really sits at the centre of our customer’s lives. They sit at the centre of ours.

Increasingly, the experience of engaging with a brand occurs online. When you map out a customer or buyer’s journey, it soon becomes clear that the majority of brand touchpoints are digital. It could be a banner or Facebook ad that kicks off the process for a buyer. It could be an Instagram photo or associated hashtag. It is estimated that around 60% (or more) of the purchase decision is made before customers engage a brand – so that is a significant percentage of non-owned brand experience that is taking place.

Moving your customer from unknown to known

One of the simplest ways of moving your potential customer from unknown to known, is for them to share some information with you. It could be their name, an email address or a Twitter handle. They may leave a comment via Facebook or Instagram. Or they may even call your call centre. But as soon as they do, it means you have an opportunity to engage them more directly. It’s a great opportunity for personalisation or targeted content/engagement.

BUT there are also risks.

Cyber security is about brand trust

When storing customer’s details, you have a duty to do so securely. Not just because of privacy policies or even local laws. Your duty is to protect the TRUST that has been bestowed upon you. And we will hear more about this through 2016. As I write, books are being printed on the subject of “trust” by thought leaders, analysts and marketers around the world. It’s a hot topic because it has a direct impact on our ability to deliver our brand promise. This flows on to brand reputation and even market capitalisation.

Trust is also a hot topic because we are now seeing far more sophisticated digital attacks that are difficult to detect and fix. Take, for example, the strain of malware that impacted the Melbourne Health computer networks in early January 2016. Malware is a type of malicious software that is used to gain access to computer networks to gather information, show unwanted information/advertising and to generally disrupt computer operation. In more extreme examples, we are seeing a type of malware called ransomware encrypting whole networks and hard drives and demanding a ransom to unlock the system.

As IT News reported:

The malware downed the hospital’s pathology systems and forced staff into manual workarounds.

It made its way into the health department through an unnamed zero-day exploit in Windows XP computers, past the agency’s full enterprise antivirus suite.

The Melbourne Health attack has been programmed to “self mutate” which means that it is constantly changing its own internal software structure, writing and re-writing itself as a way of escaping detection. Three weeks after the infestation, it seems that the Melbourne Health IT Team is starting to come to grips with the challenge.

But ask yourself – could your business cope with three weeks of business disruption? How would your new “autonomous vehicle” product team deal with the kind of challenge that Fiat Chrysler encountered last year? Would your new “internet of things” startup cope with a security breach due to something like the Heartbleed bug?

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from the Ashley Madison hack is about the importance of trust and fidelity. To paraphrase Ashley Madison’s tag line – “Customer attention is short. Have good security”.

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Marketing B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience AI ML Generative AI Analytics Automation Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Growth eCommerce Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

Meet the 2016 SuperNova Award Judges #SNA2016

The Constellation SuperNova Awards are the first and only awards to celebrate the leaders and teams who have overcome the odds to successfully apply emerging and disruptive technologies for their organizations.

Constellation is excited to introduce the SuperNova Award judges, a notable group of technology thought leaders, analysts, and journalists who were selected for their futurist mindset and ability to separate substance from hype. The SuperNova Award Judges will carefully evaluate each SuperNova Award application, and will identify individuals who demonstrate true leadership in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies.  Want to catch a judge's eye? Judges look for projects whose elements can be replicated in other enterprises.

Learn more about the SuperNova Awards

Note: this is an evolving list. We will continue to add thought leaders to the SuperNova Award Judging pool. Interested in judging the SuperNova Awards? Drop me a line courtney@constellationr[dot]com. 

Internet of Things

A network of smart objects enables smart services.

Paul Greenberg (@pgreenbe)
Board of Advisors (Constellation Research, Inc.) & President
The 56 Group, LLC
In addition to being the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, an enterprise applications consulting services firm, focused on CRM strategic services including go-to-market strategies for vendors and integrators, CRM strategic planning and vendor selection. The 56 Group also provides writing, speaking and educational services.  Paul has years of experience with both CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). He has built SAP and People Soft practices and, has extremely deep ties into the CRM and enterprise applications communities.

Andy Mulholland 
Vice President and Principal Analyst
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.

Linda Tucci (@ltucci)
Executive Editor
Tech Target, SearchCIO
Executive Editor Linda Tucci oversees news and e-zine projects for SearchCIO.com. She has covered CIO strategy since joining TechTarget in 2005, focusing most recently on big data, mobile computing and social media. She also writes frequently about the CIO role and CIO careers for SearchCIO.com's weekly CIO Matters column. Prior to joining TechTarget she was a business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her freelance work has appeared in The Boston Globeand The New York Times.

Chris Meyer (@chrismeyer16)
Thought leader, Author
Constellation Orbits
Chris's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as an author, executive, consultant, entrepreneur, speaker, Trustee, teacher and the leader of a think tank. Chris has been tracking the evolution of the information economy since the 1980s. He has provided perspective and counsel to many of the large and small companies driving change in how business is done. When he ran Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation Consulting Magazine ranked him #11 among the Most Influential Consultants. He has published four books: the first, BLUR, was a Business Week Top Ten Best Seller, and his most recent, Standing on the Sun, was listed among the Best Books of 2012 by the Financial Times.

DATA TO DECISIONS

Using data to make informed business decisions.

Melanie Duzyj - Agency Lead
Senior Account Executive 
LEWIS PR
Melanie is a senior account executive for the global PR communications agency LEWIS PR, where she leads media and analyst strategies for integrated campaigns. She specializes in B2B technology and works with organizations focused on business intelligence, healthcare IT, HR technology and telecommunications. Prior to her role at LEWIS PR she worked in New York City on the PR teams for healthcare, management consulting and commercial real estate finance organizations. Her client base has included startup, pre-IPO and Fortune 500 companies.

Doug Henschen (@dhenschen)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research
Doug Henschen is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering big data and analytics. Henschen is a keen observer of how organizations utilize emerging analytics technologies to build new business models. Prior to joining Constellation, Henschen was executive editor at InformationWeek. 

Sholto Macpherson (@sholtomac)
SME Tech Commentator, Box Free IT
Contributor, Constellation Orbits
Sholto Macpherson is an analyst in online accounting software for SMEs and a business technology journalist for more than 15 years. Since June 2011 he has published DigitalFirst.com, a blog covering the latest cloud technologies for SMEs and disruption in the accounting profession. 

Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky)
Board of Advisors (Constellation Research, Inc.) & Founder
ThinkJar
Esteban Kolsky is the Founder and Principal at ThinkJar, a research and consulting firm specializing in Customer Experience, CRM, and Feedback Management.  Esteban works with vendors to create go-to market strategies and with organizations leveraging his results-driven, dynamic Customer Experience Management methodology to earn and retain loyal customers.  He continues his research passion in the Social Networking space where he is helping craft the Social CRM (SCRM) market.

DIGITAL MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

Data-driven digital marketing effectively delivers brand messages.

Barbara Bates - Agency Lead
Founder & CEO 
Eastwick
Barbara is a respected industry strategist and connector, proven entrepreneur, former media professional and broadcast journalist with deep Valley roots.  She has been at the helm of one of tech’s top PR firms for 25 years. 

Gavin Heaton (@servantofchaos)
Independent Analyst
Constellation Orbits
Gavin is a marketing technologist, strategist and advisor. He is the founder of the Disruptor’s Handbook – a strategy and innovation firm that helps organisations design and create a collaborative future for a digital world. Gavin has worked at the intersection of marketing and technology for over 20 years for companies and clients including SAP, IBM, McDonald’s and PwC, has co-authored five books and is a regular speaker on marketing, technology, startups and innovation. 

Dom Nicastro (@dnicastro)
Reporter
CMSWire
Dom Nicastro is a Boston-based staff reporter at CMSWire. The former editor-in-chief of a daily newspaper, he reports on a wide range of topics, including social business, digital asset management, customer experience management and web CMS.

Judith Aquino (@JudithAquino)
Senior Writer
1to1
Judith Aquino is a senior writer at 1to1 Media, where she writes about customer experience topics for 1to1Media.com, Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog, and Customer Strategist Journal. Prior to 1to1, she was an associate editor at AdExchanger. Her work has appeared at the New York Daily News, TheStreet.com and Business Insider. She has an M.A. in journalism from New York University.

Kelly Liyakasa
Associate Editor
AdExchanger
Kelly Liyakasa is an associate editor at AdExchanger, where she covers the interplay of commerce, media and digital marketing. Prior, she was an editor at Information Today, where she wrote about sales apps and enterprise strategy at CRM magazine. 

FUTURE OF WORK - Social Business

These technologies help teams to overcome the challenges posed by the changing work paradigm, enabling them to work together efficiently.

Alan Lepofsky (@alanlepo)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc. focusing on the technologies organizations employ to 'get work done'. This includes collaboration technology, digital workplace analytics, project management, and communication tools. Prior to joining Constellation, Alan spent 3 years as Director of Marketing at Socialtext and before that, 14 years in a variety of roles at IBM/Lotus.

FUTURE OF WORK - Human Capital Management

Empowering employees and enabling companies to utilize their workforce as a competitive asset.

Holger Mueller (@holgermu)
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.
Holger Mueller is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on next-gen apps and human capital management technology. Previously Holger was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There he lead the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a service (BPaaS) capabilities. 

Dr. Janice Presser (@drjanice)
CEO and Co-founder
The Gabriel Institute
Janice Presser is a behavioral scientist and the architect of Teamability® – a new technology that measures how people will perform in teams. She has been engaged in the research and development of talent science for over 25 years and is a recognized thought leader in qualitative assessment and human infrastructure management methods. Dr. Presser has served on SHRM's Human Capital Assessment/Metrics Special Expertise Panel, the Taskforce on Workforce Planning, and the Taskforce on Metrics and Measurements. She is Contributing Editor for Selection in ELLA®, Employment Labor Law Audit. She blogs for Constellation Orbits. 

MATRIX COMMERCE

Commerce responds to changing realities from the supply chain to the storefront.

R "Ray" Wang (@rwang0)
CEO & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.

R "Ray" Wang is Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, Inc. Wang is the bestselling author of Disrupting Digital Business. In addition, he is the author of the popular enterprise software blog "A Software Insider’s Point of View". With viewership in the millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models impact the enterprise. Prior to founding Constellation, he was a founding partner and research analyst for enterprise strategy at Altimeter Group and one of the top analysts at Forrester Research for enterprise strategy.

Guy Courtin (@gcourtin)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research
Guy Courtin is Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce. Specifically, Courtin's research examines the manner in which the Internet of Things will influence the future of commerce. Courtin has over fifteen years of experience in the supply chain technology space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. In a former life Courtin studied supply chains as an analyst at Forrester Research. 

NEXT GENERATION CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Customers in the digital age require seamless service throughout all lifecycle stages and across all channels.

Susan Thomas - Agency Lead (@10FoldComms)
President
10Fold

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff (@drnatalie)
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research
Natalie Petouhoff is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research focusing on customer experience. Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic marketing and customer experience solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses.  Previously Petouhoff held positions as a Forrester Analyst, Chief Strategist for Weber Shandwick PR/Marketing Agency, Management Consultant at PWC, Hitachi and management at GE, GM and Hughes Electronics.

Divina Paredes (@divinap)
Editor 
CIO New Zealand & www.cio.co.nz
Divina Paredes is the editor of CIO New Zealand and www.cio.co.nz, the premium leadership and management resource for information and communications technology (ICT) executives and members of the CXO suite. She also organises and moderates CIO community events such as the CIO roundtable discussions and CIO leaders’ luncheons. Divina has been covering the information and communications technology sector for 15 years. She has postgraduate degrees from the University of Sydney (international studies) and New York University (journalism).

Mila D'Antonio (@miladantonio)
Editor-in-Chief 
1to1 Magazine
Mila D’Antonio is currently Editor-in-Chief of 1to1 Media where she leads the editorial direction of 1to1Media.com and 1to1 Media's Weekly Digest. She also oversees the production of 1to1 Media's two annual awards programs: The 1to1 Media Customer Champions and the Gartner & 1to1 Media Customer Experience Excellence Awards. She has worked in journalism for 20 years with 15 of them focused on customer experience and CRM.

Marshall Lager (@lager)
Managing Principal
Third Idea Consulting, LLC
Marshall Lager is the founder and managing principal of Third Idea Consulting, a firm founded to provide advice on the confluence of customer relationship management (CRM), social media, and brand management. Marshall is a former Senior Editor at CRM Media, where he wrote news, blogs, and feature articles on the above topics for CRM magazine and its website, destinationCRM.com.

Brent Leary (@BrentLeary)
Co-Founder and Partner
CRM Essentials
Brent Leary is a crm industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving business relationships. In 2009 he co-authored Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. Recognized by InsideCRM as one of the 25 most influential industry leaders, Leary also is a past recipient of CRM Magazine's Most Influential Leader Award.  He blogs at BrentLeary.com.

SAFETY AND PRIVACY

The best strategies to secure sensitive data also save money and serve customers. ​

Kewal Varia - Agency Lead (@kewalv)
Managing Director
Spark Communications
Kewal Varia is managing director of Sparks Communications, a technology-focused PR firm located in the UK. Clients work with Kewal Varia because they like the mix of technical understanding,creativity and strategy that he brings to their campaigns. In a previous life, Kewal dabbled in freelance journalism.

Alex Crawshaw - Agency Lead (@alex_crawshaw)
Senior Account Director
Spark Communications
Alex has more than 15 years experience in B2B technology PR, working with a variety of blue-chip and start-up clients. Client experience includes working with the likes of BT, HCL Technologies, JDA Software, iPass and the UK & Ireland SAP User Group.

Steve Wilson (@steve_lockstep)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.
Steve Wilson is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, focusing on digital identity and privacy. Wilson has over twenty-five years experience in ICT innovation, and research and development. Wilson is credited with numerous breakthroughs in difficult areas of identity infrastructure and governance, including national and industry level authentication frameworks, PKI systems, smartcards, digital credentials, fraud control, and privacy engineering. 

TECHNOLOGY OPTIMIZATION & INNOVATION

Innovative methods to balance innovation and budget requirements.

Aaron Pearson - Agency Lead (@apearson)
Creation North America
Aaron leads Creation, a division of Weber Shandwick. Aaron specializes in helping B2B companies creatively tell stories of technology innovation and disruption. He is also an adjunct instructor in the Master of Business Communication program at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.

Jon Reed (@jonerp)
Co-founder
Diginomica
Jon Reed has been involved in enterprise communities since 1995, including time spent building ERP recruiting and training firms. These days, Reed is a (cough) blogger/analyst and also counsels vendors and startups on go-to-market strategy. He is an SAP Mentor, Enterprise Irregular, and video content producer.

Ron MIller (@ron_miller)
Freelance Journalist
Enterprise Reporter, TechCrunch
Ron MIller is an award-winning freelance technology writer. His work currently appears in TechCrunch, CiteWorld, EContent Magazine, and SocMedia News. Recognition includes several Apex Awards for Publications Excellence in Feature Writing and the Churchill Award for Editorial Excellence at FierceContentManagement.

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 Supernova Awards AR Executive Events 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

IBM Connect 2016 - A Little Swagger Back In Their Step

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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The week before IBM Connect 2016 I wrote about the things I hoped to hear IBM address at their annual collaboration-focused conference. At that time I summarized my thinking with "I look forward to this new rebooted IBM Connect. I believe it will pay homage to the past while forcing an awakening for the future.” Having returned from the event I can now definitively tell you, it did just that.

In this post I will look back at each of the points I brought up and how IBM did in each. For those looking for some quick take-aways, here’s are some high-level thoughts:

• IBM Connect 2016 was the best IBM collaboration event in several years. It was filled with positive news (as a conference should be) but I am worried that once the shine and polish of the event wears off, things will go back to normal. We’ve all witnessed IBM over commit and under-deliver before. I won't say I have no faith in IBM to deliver, instead I'll say I challenge them to prove they can. I think IBM learned a lot about the design processes, marketing, and product delivery over the last year with Verse. Insert the cliche of your choice, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” , “One bitten, twice shy”, etc. Hopefully, this time around things will be different. They have to be, because there isn't a third chance.
• The most important news of the entire conference came at the end, when Inhi Cho Suh was announced as the new GM of IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS). Note the word collaboration is back, no more “social”. For those of you unfamiliar with Inhi, she’s one of the driving forces behind 30+ acquisitions that IBM has made in the data and analytics space. Most recently, she was in charge of the Weather Channel acquisition. IBM placing Inhi here shows serious commitment to getting ICS back on track.
• While there was very little in the way of product announcements (seriously if another IBM tells me that Connections now has nested folders I am going to scream) Verse and Connections showed improved user experiences, new integrations with partner applications, and glimpses of how they will leverage IBM Watson’s “cognitive” capabilities to help automate common tasks to help people get work done. Connect 2016 was more about what’s coming and less about what’s available now.
• IBM has started working on a new collaboration tool, currently called Project Toscana, which seeks to provide a more modern take on how people perform core collaborative tasks such as sharing images, videos, files and notes, creating project teams, answering questions, etc. than IBM’s current offerings. Think of it as “if you were going to build a collaboration app in 2016, where would you start” as opposed to “what should we add/change to our decade old platform."
• Terms like IBM Watson, IBM BlueMix, Cognitive Computing and IBM Design are everywhere. It’s a new vocabulary for some of the long time attendees/customers, but necessary to learn if you plan on proceeding in the ICS world. Long time customers and partners, don’t expect a lot of news around Notes/Domino. IBM is certainly not ending them, but they are not the core of ICS's future. Verse is the new email client. BlueMix is the new platform for building collaborative applications. Toscana is (could be) the new Connections.

Now let’s dive into detail about the points I made before the conference. You’re going to see below that the individual scores are not that great. However, I don’t want them to take away from the fact that IBM Connect 2016 was a good event and for the most part very positively received by the customers and partners I spoke with. That said, as an industry analyst I don’t just experience one event a year or deal with a single vendor. My ranking are based on my knowledge of the industry as a whole and provide IBM guidance on where they need to improve.

Vision - First and foremost, I want to sit in the audience and pretend I have no previous knowledge and see if I leave with a clear understanding of how IBM helps personal productivity and team collaboration (both internal and external). I want to hear how the IBM collaboration tools fit into the larger IBM vision, not just how other parts of IBM (like Watson and BlueMix) are helping collaboration. How does collaboration fit into cognitive computing? How does collaboration fit into application development? Not the other way around. Microsoft has made their vision clear, "Reinvent productivity and business process in this mobile-first, cloud first world”. I’d like to see something like that from IBM. I know IBM's company vision revolves around the Cognitive-era, so I expect we'll be hearing a lot about this at Connect.

Score (7/10) - As expected, IBM did a good job of explaining that cognitive computing is the way forward for the company. After all, Watson is currently one of their main differentiators. Other vendors such as Microsoft (CNTK) and Google (TensorFlow) certainly have their own Artificial Intelligence tools/platforms, but they are not household (or should I say boardroom?) names the way IBM Watson is. I would have liked to have seen more indications of how ICS is important to IBM, not just how other IBM technologies play a role in ICS. For example, IBM has made a big deal of their partnership with Apple to create iOS business applications. Why not embed collaboration into all of those and show them off at IBM Connect?

IBM showed two new projects that show the direction they are taking. The first called Orient Me, revolves around their existing Verse and Connections products. Orient Me is user experience that:

• Adds the “Important to me” banner that is currently at the top of IBM Verse to IBM Connections
• Expands “Important to me” to include groups (rather than just people)
• Adds a new Action Centre that shows notifications, outstanding tasks and favourite items
• Provides a new home page for all of IBM’s cloud offerings that surfaces the content that is most important to each person. For those of you familiar with Microsoft Delve, Orient Me provides similar functionality. For example, if you log on it may show you all the people, pages, posts and files associated with a project that you’re currently working on, even if those objects are spread across a variety of IBM Connections communities.

The second is called Project Toscana. Toscana is the result of IBM taking a look at the core collaborative functions that people do such as sharing statuses, asking questions, sharing files and creating content, and reimagining how you would assemble those into a product if you were starting today. To put it simply, IBM Connections is showing it’s age and seams, and Toscana is a way to modernize the collaborate elements of IBM’s portfolio by reassembling them in different ways. Toscana will also allow developers and 3rd parties to add new features and functions.

As part of Toscana IBM also showed a lightweight collaborative document editor. While this is nice, IBM is way behind Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, DropBox Paper, BoxNotes, Google Keep and several others in this area.

My thoughts: Over the next few years IBM could bring together Verse and Connections into a single product, surfaced with the work they are doing in Toscana. Instead of multiple products with multiple user experiences, Toscana could be the single communication and collaboration platform from IBM. No more Notes/Domino/Verse versus Connections versus Sametime versus IBM Docs versus IBM Files, etc, etc, etc. Just one tool that adjusts to the context, needs and preferences of the person using it.

Customers - I want to hear new customer references. Big ones. Name brands. Not upgrades. New customers. Nothing proves success like customers.

Score (7/10) - IBM did an ok job here. The marque customer of the week was Lufthansa Group, who will be deploying IBM Connections to 120,000 people, 40,000 of which are switching from Jive Software. They also mentioned Flex Contact Center which will be deploying IBM Verse to 11,000 employees. Also long standing customers like Bosch, TD Ameritrade, Colgate Palmolive and others presented on their deployment. This is a very important area, especially with Facebook already citing Royal Bank of Scotland, Caldwell Banker, Club Med, Heineken and Lagardère as customers and their product has not even shipped to the public yet.

Business Partners - One of the keys to Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and even Slack’s success is size and momentum of their business partner ecosystems. These vendors have a large number of companies building addons and integrations for their tools. Those vendors each have robust application catalogs/stores/marketplaces that enable people to extend their products with a few simple clicks (and maybe a credit card). In almost every product briefing I am in new products support “Exchange and Gmail” or “work with Office365”, but I very rarely hear IBM mentioned. I’d like to learn if IBM Verse and/or Connections has made any progress in these areas.

Platform - Similar to the point above about add-ons, what is IBM doing to help developers build stand-alone collaborative applications? The IBM application platform is BlueMix, I hope to leave with a good understanding of how developers use it to build collaborative applications. Vice versa, what components of IBM collaboration can be embedded into other applications? What incentive do developers have to build on IBM technologies versus Salesforce1, AWS, Azure, etc?

Combined Score (5/10) - IBM did a nice job during the keynote of highlighting integration with Box and Salesforce, two very important partners. While several times during the week I saw IBM talking about how many integration they have and showing a long list of connectors, they usually neglected to mention these are created by IBM Business Partner AppFusions, not IBM. The partner pavilion looked better than it did in 2015, and the partners I spoke with said they had a much better week this year. IBM announced integration with TrustSphere, which queries LinkedIn for relationship data about Connections profiles. I saw some really nice demos from companies like Actiance, Ephox and Kaltura and Kudos which I suggest all IBM customers take a look at. There were a few sessions for developers to learn about Xpages, BlueMix and Watson, but the event was missing the massive buzz of something like Salesforce’s Trailhead developer zone. IBM says there will be more emphasis on partners at their IBM InterConnect conference in Vegas, but I think they missed an opportunity here. Salesforce, Microsoft, Google and even Slack are growing their partner ecosystems. IBM needs partners to make Verse, Connections and Toscana a success. I look forward to eventually seeing a “runs in Verse” logo.

Investments - IBM’s largest investments these days are around data and analytics. Their various acquisitions and partnerships with companies like Twitter (which they should buy now since the stock is so low), The Weather Company, and Box are all part of a strategy to get their hands (well algorithms) on as much data as possible. That data is then fed into IBM Watson to hopefully derive insights which can help improve business outcomes. I’d like to see IBM show similar commitment to analyzing the vast amounts of employee interactions that take place in email, calendar, contacts, social networking, etc. Google (with Google Now), Microsoft (with Delve Organization Analytics), and Salesforce (with SalesforceIQ) are far ahead of IBM in these areas. Microsoft is on a productivity/collaboration buying spree lately, having acquired Accompli, LiveLoop, Sunrise, Wanderlust, VoloMetrix, MileIQ and most recently Talko. I’d like to see IBM show some sign of investment in collaboration.

Score (1/10) - There were no announcements of this type at IBM Connect, however I am hopeful the 1/10 will quickly increase. As mentioned above, the announcement of Inhi Cho Shu as the new GM of ICS could be a massive game changer. In Inhi’s previous role as VP of IBM’s Analytics division she was part of over $20B, yes that’s billion, in investment via dozens of acquisitions. Let’s hope IBM provides her this type of opportunity in the ICS division.

Business Outcomes - One of the strengths that SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft and Infor have is that their social tools are deeply integrated with their business process software (such as CRM, HR, ERP, Finance, Legal, etc). IBM has done a good job integrating social into Kenexa, but what are they doing in the other areas? How does IBM’s collaboration software help a sales team close a deal or a supply chain discuss a shipment? Will IBM be partnering in any of these areas? Acquiring? Building? Will IBM provide any templates for specific business processes and/or integrations? Similarly, what about industry verticals? IBM has always had strong sales/services around verticals, so how about having tailored collaboration offerings for healthcare, manufacturing, energy, media, etc.?

Score (5/10) - During the keynote IBM played out a scenario that revolved around Marketing, however it did not include integrations with any of the most common marketing tools like Marketo, Eloqua, Constant Contact, HUbSpot, ExactTarget, or even Hootsuite which IBM does have integrations with. Repeat that sentence for things like supply chain, manufacturing, or any other industry. IBM keeps talking about “New Way To Work” but they are not showing it. Verse and Connections are certainly improving the way people communicate, connect with colleagues and share information, but they are not yet fundamentally changing the way business professionals do their jobs. IBM has great offerings in these areas with their Apple and IBM business applications. I’d love to see those apps be infused with components of ICS’s portfolio. That would make for some truly fantastic demos.

Innovation - When I think back over the last decade or so of the tours I've had of IBM Research's Innovation Labs, I can’t think of anything that has made it into shipping software, or even into the hands of the public to look at. Microsoft on the other hand releases new “garage" products all the time. Microsoft is also rapidly adding new products such as Delve, Sway, Planner (beta) and GigJam (beta) that truly change the way people work. IBM Verse has done a nice job at integrating frequent contacts, email and calendar on a single screen, but it’s time to do more than just make a better email client. I’d like to see IBM redefine the way we create content, share information, connect with colleagues/prospects, plan/attend meetings, organize and execute projects, etc. I’ve not seen any improvement in calendar nor IBM Activities in many years. That needs to change. For more on this topic, see my report: Collaboration Vendors Shaping the Future of Work.

Score (5/10) - Once again the IBM Innovation Lab was one of my favourite parts of the week. As expected several of the projects revolved around Watson/AI such as “Enterprise Cognitive Assistants” and “eAssistant: Cognitive Assistance for Conservation Auto-Triage and Briefings”. While these projects are exciting, unfortunately I didn’t see anything that I’ve not seen from IBM’s competition… many of which are already well past the lab stage and are already shipping. I didn’t see anything about how the integration of IoT and collaboration is going to change the future of work. There were no large touch screens, virtual/augmented reality glasses, motion sensitive controllers, clear/curved glass surfaces or modular furniture stretching my imagination about the future workspace. IBM’s researchers are some of the smartest on the planet, they need to be given free reign to push the envelope of what comes next in personal productivity and team collaboration.

 

In Conclusion

Overall (7/10) - The title of my original blog post was “IBM Connect 2016 - A New Hope Awakens”. Star Wars references aside, I do think Connect 2016 did just that… it gave customers and partners hope that things are improving for IBM Collaboration Services. For the first time in a few years IBM feels like they are not only on a better path but they also have a better attitude about it. IBM Connect 2016 put a little bit of swagger back into IBM’s step, but they have a very short window to prove they can deliver.

 

UPDATE Feb 9, 2016: I should have included IBM Design. They are critical to the success of ICS products. They had a great Design Lab, and ran several interactive design sessions. People have also asked me about Notes/Domino and Sametime. Honestly, I didn't attend any sessions about them or really hear IBM mention them much. If you have info you want to share about these areas, please leave a comment.

Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity IBM 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 Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

Announcing the Sixth Annual Constellation SuperNova Awards

Deadline for applications August 8, 2016

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 nine individuals who demonstrate true leadership in digital business through their application of new and emerging technologies. We’re searching for leaders and teams who used disruptive technologies to transform their organizations. Special recognition will be given to projects that seek to redefine how the enterprise uses technology on a large scale.

We’re searching for the boldest, most transformative technology projects out there. If you or someone you know has what it takes to compete in the SuperNova Awards, fill out the application here: 

Timeline

• February 8, 2016 application process begins. 
• August 8, 2016 last day for submissions.
• September 7, 2016 finalists announced and invited to Connected Enterprise.
• September 12, 2016 voting opens to the public
• September 21, 2016 polls close
• October 27, 2016 Winners announced, SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner at Connected Enterprise 

Rewards

• One ticket to Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2016

• Three month subscription to Constellation's research library

• Three month membership in Constellation Executive Network, including three month access to Constellation Insights

Judges

Technology thought leaders, analysts, and journalists selected for their futurist mindset and ability to separate substance from hype. The SuperNova Award Judges carefully evaluate each SuperNova Award application against a rigorous set of criteria. Judges will identify individuals who demonstrate true leadership in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies.  Want to catch a judge's eye? Judges look for projects whose elements can be replicated in other enterprises.

Learn more about the SuperNova Award Judges.

Categories

•  Internet of Things - A network of smart objects enables smart services. (examples: sensors, smart ‘things’, device to purchase)
•  Data to Decisions - Using data to make informed business decisions. (examples: 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. (examples: enterprise social networks, collaboration)
•  Future of Work: Human Capital Management - Enabling your organization to utilize your workforce as an asset. (examples: talent management)
•  Matrix Commerce - Commerce responds to changing realities from the supply chain to the storefront. (examples: digital retail, supply chain, payments, omni-channel retail)
•  Next Generation Customer Experience - Customers in the digital age demand seamless service throughout all lifecycle stages and across all channels. (examples: CRM, customer experience)
•  Safety and Privacy - Strategies to secure sensitive data (examples: digital identity, information security, authentication)
•  Technology Optimization & Innovation - Innovative methods to balance innovation and IT budgets. (examples: innovation in the cloud, ENSW cost savings, cloud ERP, efficient app production)

Last year's winners

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 Supernova Awards AR Executive Events 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

Communities Add Business Value: Verint Advances Customer Engagement with New Release of Telligent Social Community Software

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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Verint System, Inc and Telligent announced a major new release of its Telligent Community^™solution. Among the latest advancements to the Telligent Community are the new community management tools and user experience capabilities, workflow enhancements, new content management and moderation functionality, and ongoing API investments, as well as solution availability in a Community as a Service (CaaS) model.

These advancements are designed to further organizations’ use of actionable intelligence that flows through their communities as they focus on the advancement of strategic objectives, such as gaining a holistic view of customer service effectiveness, integrating social experiences on the web and supporting digital transformation initiatives. 

The Telligent Community social software platform— which is available in SaaS, on-premises and now CaaS deployment models—enables customer service and digital marketing organizations within a business to create compelling, online, branded communities for customers, partners and employees to collaborate and engage. This new release marks the first community product introduction to follow the acquisition of Telligent by Verint in 2015.

Community Management Advancements for Increased Efficiency: The suite of Telligent applications and services features advanced management capabilities designed to reduce the time and resources required to manage the community. Among these are new moderation functionality, updates to leaderboards, search engine optimization (SEO) updates, new content management tools, and enhancements to question and answer (Q&A) workflow for customer support use cases. All of these enhancements are designed to free the community owner to spend more time with customers.

Staging and Publishing Workflow Enhancements to Simplify Deployments: New workflow capabilities in the Telligent solution enable users to stage and preview changes and updates to the community prior to rolling them out into live user environments. For Telligent customers upgrading from previous versions or upgrading widgets, these staging and publishing enhancements can save valuable time and effort, and simply workflow and deployment.

Addition of Intelligent Content Management and Moderation Capabilities: Also new to the Telligent Community is the introduction of analytics, user reputation and abuse reporting to enhance and simplify workflow associated with moderating content and users. These expanded moderation capabilities provide services across all content published within the community and add a process that enables content authors to appeal when content is incorrectly moderated. This represents yet another advancement designed to ease the workload of the community manager.

New Community as a Service Offering: In addition, the Telligent solution is now available in a Community as a Service (CaaS) model. By using CaaS, organizations can benefit from the full suite of applications, services and management tools offered by Telligent Community. The CaaS offering is a Telligent managed service solution that enables customers and partners, and their developers, to build the unique, creative community experiences they desire.

Ongoing Investment in the API Economy: For developers, the solution features a host of advancements, including moving many of Telligent Community’s integrations to open source on GitHub. It also has new editors for managing content, as well as editors for managing all design elements, such as CSS. Further enhancements involve expanded APIs, WebHooks and application tracing, all designed to simplify development efforts for customers and partners that want to build on the Telligent platform. The solution also includes updates to its widget studio functionality for managing the full user experience.

More Words From The Executives: “Telligent is delighted to bring these new capabilities to market as we continue to invest in and grow our business in social software for customer and employee communities,” says Rob Howard, vice president and general manager for social communities, Verint Enterprise Intelligence Solutions.^™ “These latest advancements are designed to offer our customers more deployment model options, enable 100 percent customization and simplified management, and add advanced functionality for sharing ideas and feedback.”

Customer communities serve as a natural extension to customer engagement optimization, and Verint offers communities as part of a comprehensive platform with ties to engagement management, customer analytics and workforce optimization. Using the Telligent solutions, organizations can uniquely provide actionable intelligence across customers’ omnichannel experiences to include voice, chat, email, web self-service, and customer and employee communities. Leveraging community software, companies can foster customer-to-customer and employee-to-employee collaboration and trust, support and drive enhanced self-service and social support, lower service costs, and enable destinations for dynamic digital marketing campaigns, while fostering new levels of customer and employee engagement.

 As communities become more and more important to companies, as the research in my paper has shown, it’s important to a businesses strategy to include a community. You can download an excerpt and learn more about my research findings on the business value to communities, that goes far beyond just Customer Service.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

 

 

Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience B2C CX Chief Customer Officer

From Safe Harbor to Privacy Shield

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 in the week the EU and the USA 'hammered' out a framework that is supposed to replace the invalidated Safe Harbor agreement.

 

You can find the EU press release here, which includes a good summary of events, too. 
Earlier I recorded my quick take while (how appropriate) being in Europe - take a look:
 

 

 

No time to watch - here are the takeaways:

 

• Not too much progress - Many elements (e.g. yearly review) was part of Safe Harbor, too. Now the EU has in writing that the USA will not by default do 'en masse' data espionage.
   
• Long road - The agreement was massive time pressure to be drafted, as enterprises and vendors were not in compliance since October 6th 2015 decision by the EU High Court. On Wednesday the data privacy expert of all 28 EU members reviewed it and gave themselves some time to digest the proposal. It will have to pass all 28 country parliaments, which by itself is a Herculean task.
   
• No certainty - It is likely that privacy activists like the famous / infamous Max Schrems will keep suing and probably challenge this agreement, too, which creates uncertainty for enterprises and vendors.
   

MyPOV

We live in the age where legislation does not keep up with technical progress. The Safe Harbor invalidation is a perfect example of how both the executive and the legislative branch  are behind digital reality and what the jurisdicative branch sees as not acceptable encroachment on citizen's privacy. Ironically the next revision is likely not review proof either - creating more uncertainty. 

 

Enterprises who are not compliant after the invalidation of Safe Harbor need to weigh their options. What is the business risk of non compliance vs. the cost of coming to compliance. For vendors there can be no real option than compliance, as they are responsible for their customer's operational compliance. If your vendor is not compliant with pre Safe Harbor state, enterprise executives should start the conversation with them asap. In case an enterprise stores EU consumer, customer data in the US today, time to explore the remediation, a solution - as much desired - is, unfortunately more out with this currently proposed framework.  


------------

I covered the EU High Court decision in October 2015 here - take a look for more background. Also follow up the view of my colleague Steve Lockstep who is on deserved vacation this week here. 

 

More Musings Posts

• 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 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization New C-Suite Data to Decisions Security Zero Trust AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

Machine Learning and Customer Experience: Wise.io Introduces First Intelligent Auto Reply Functionality for Customer Support And Customer Experience

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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Wise.io, which delivers machine learning applications to help enterprises provide a better customer experience,  announced the availability of Wise Auto Response, the first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations. Using machine learning to understand the intent of an incoming ticket and determine the best available response, Wise Auto Response automatically selects and applies the appropriate reply to address the customer issue without ever involving an agent. By helping customer service teams answer common questions faster, Wise Auto Response removes a high percentage of tickets from the queue, freeing up agents’ time to focus on more complex tickets and drive higher levels of customer satisfaction.

 

How Does it Work? Wise Auto Response identifies common customer inquiries that can be responded to with a high level of confidence – such as password resets and basic product functionality, or standard “thank you” email templates that don’t require hands-on follow up – and automatically responds without the need for any manually written business rules.The newfunctionality complements the current suite of predictive applications offered by Wise.io, including Wise Routing, which automates the support ticket triage process, and Wise Recommended Response, which provides a ranked shortlist of appropriate macros and templates for each new customer inquiry.

 Wise Auto Response is built on four core components:

●      Contextual learning. When a new ticket arrives, Wise reads the content of that ticket – including text, data fields, and timestamps – and ranks all available templates on their appropriateness, based on how a templates was used to successfullyrespond to customer issues in the past.

●      Self-aware confidence level. The application is aware of how confident it is that thetop-ranked template is the correct response for the customer issue. That degree of confidence is used to decide whether a reply should be sent automatically or suggested to a human agent, based upon the cost and consequences of being wrong.

●      Controlled automation. The support manager retains a high degree of control over what is automated, including restrictions on eligible templates, confidence thresholds and response timing. Reports also provide a complete view into what customer issues have been “auto responded” to.

●      Continuous improvement. Compared to traditional approaches that require support managers to manually adjust business rules, the Wise application adapts seamlessly to new customer issues and response templates. By intelligently learning how agents engage and incorporating that knowledge into its confidence level and response ranking, the application drives consistency and efficiency across the entire support team.

Wise Auto Response is available for most major support systems, including Zendesk and Salesforce Service Cloud. For more information on Wise.io’s suite of customer service automation applications,including classification, routing, and response,  you can visit: www.wise.io.

A Word From The Executives: Francesca Noli, VP of Marketing at Product Madness said, “Wise Auto Response has dramatically eased the burden on our support agents, allowing us to reply to half of all tickets automatically.Now we are able to focus agent attention on more complex, customer-facing issues like payment problems, which have a direct impact on our bottom line. Wise gives us the best of both worlds: it has the power of an artificial intelligence system like Watson, along with the lightweight integration we need to successfully apply machine learning to our service operations quickly, easily and cost effectively.”

Jeff Erhardt, CEO at Wise.io said, “We’re on a mission to radically transform the business of customer support, and Wise Auto Response is a natural extension of the other applications we have on the market that we’re achieving great success with. By automating simple communication and augmenting other interactions that still require the human touch, companies are realizing the value of machinelearning-based routing and response to optimize the entire customer experience.”

If You Want to Know More About Wise.io, Here’s a Quick Overview:  Wise.io delivers  customer experience through machine learning. Leveraging cutting-edge data science and built on a powerful machine learning engine that learns from past patterns to predict future behavior, Wise customer service applications help business users regain control over the ever-growing volume of customer inquiries.By maximizing existing investments and augmenting human decision making with predictive analytics,Wise.io enables enterprises to efficiently scale customer service while increasing the level of customer care. Companies ranging from Silicon Valley startups to the largest Fortune 500 corporations rely on Wise applications to better engage with their customers. Founded in 2012,Wise.io is headquartered in Berkeley, CA and backed by Voyager Capital. Follow at @wiseio.

Humans have done the hard work for years, manually responding to common, repetitive support requests. With Wise Auto Response, machine learning can now take advantage of that history to ensure customers receive a fast response to straightforward questions, while allowing agents to focus on higher value customer engagement. It’s a very interesting application of machine learning and one that will make customer experiences better and customer service more effective and efficient.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Jive Delivers Enriched Interactive Intranet And Customer Advocate Solutions Across Devices

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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Jive Software, Inc. announced the latest release of its industry-leading internal and external community solutions, including a bold and beautiful redesign of its entire product portfolio. Additional features like peer-to-peer recognition, enhanced SEO, global translation capabilities and updates to Jive’s purpose-driven apps deliver a complete, engaging experience that drives brand affinity for external communities and employee engagement for its interactive intranet offering.

Ofer Ben-David, executive vice president of engineering at Jive, said, “A great user experience is critical in driving adoption, enabling productivity, and providing the ultimate work experience, whether for employees, customers or partners. And just as important, these experiences have to be just as vibrant from a mobile standpoint as from a laptop. Jive is where our customers get their work done, day in and day out. With our latest releases, we are delivering an exceptional experience across every device.”

What Does Jive-in Deliver for Employees? Jive-n interactive intranet release unites, engages and delights employees for better business outcomes. New features optimize work processes by more deeply engaging a company’s most valuable resource – its people.

• Visually appealing core content: Newly redesigned blog posts delight and draw-in the user at first glance, while ideas and polls make the most popular items pop. In addition, users can now have group images thematically so as to tell a visual story. Aside from content, Jive has also redesigned some of the interaction elements focusing on more effective and thoughtful information rendering
• Improved calendars: Employees can quickly distinguish between different event types, and see an at-a-glance view as they browse various events in their calendar.
• The entire intranet in your pocket:With Jive Daily, the flagship mobile app for Jive-n cloud, the entire workforce can create, edit, comment, share, browse, search and vote – all while on-the-go. In addition, Jive’s other purpose-driven mobile apps have also received new updates, including a new user interface for Jive Circle and a new group chat feature for Jive Chime.

“The rapidly changing nature of work has deeply impacted just about every aspect of business – especially when it comes to engaging employees,” said Tim Wike, vice president of communications platforms at Thomson Reuters. “By utilizing Jive to create our own ‘Hub’, we are enabling employees to connect, collaborate and work better together.”

What Does Jive-x Deliver for Customers? Jive-x release transforms prospects into customers and customers into advocates. Jive-x provides a connected digital hub that delivers the right conversations in a fully branded experience.

• Seamless support ticketing experiences: Jive-x support centers now integrate with ServiceNow’s ticket management system, allowing community members to interact with a support person, edit their ticket, and mark it, all from within the Jive experience. This builds on Jive’s broad portfolio of deeply integrated applications including Zendesk.
• Enhanced SEO for more reach and engagement: Jive-x customers report that 80% of their traffic comes from organic search, Jive-x community’s communities are even easier to find on Google search with auto-populated Google site link and video sitemap codes.
• Helpful translation services: Jive-x now enables users to consume and read content in whatever language they choose. With one click, community members can translate content and comments using popular translation services like Google Translate, Microsoft Translator and Lionbridge.

In addition to this release of its internal and external community solutions, Jive also announced WorkHub and new, tailored packages for businesses and vertical industries:

As brands are considering communities, they need to really look at the business results they want to achieve. Communities provide so much more than what has been written about, i.e., Customer Service enhancements. You can find more in the research I recently conducted where you will find details on what else you can begin to expect from online communities.

If you have set up a community, love to hear more about what your experiences are with respect to business results.

@drnatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst

Covering software that enhances better customer and employee customers and while enhancing a business’s results.

Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Sales Marketing Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity B2C CX Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

IBM Adds Yet More Cloud Data Services To Its Portfolio

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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IBM adds cloud services for database deployment, graph analysis, predictive analytics and data-enrichment, hoping to attract developers and data scientists to IBM Bluemix.

IBM on February 4 added a handful of new data and analytics services to the list of more than 25 now available on the IBM Bluemix cloud platform. The list includes IBM Compose Enterprise, the IBM Graph database service, IBM Predictive Analytics and IBM Analytics Exchange.

As is typical with press releases, the details of the announcement where cryptic and buzz-word ladened, so I talked to Adam Kocoloski, CTO of IBM’s Analytics Platform Services Marketplace, to get more detail. Here’s what I learned along with my own analysis.

IBM Compose Enterprise: When IBM acquired ComposeIO (now Compose, an IBM Company) last July, it accelerated its ability to help development teams with delivery of web-scale apps by enabling them to quickly containerize and deploy open-source databases on multiple public clouds (today that list includes AWS, DigitalOcean and IBM Softlayer). Compose Enterprise puts the same platform in the hands of enterprise IT so they can deploy MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, PostgreSQL, RabitMQ and a few other distributed, open source products in containerized fashion on their private clouds. The service eases the task of clustering, containerizing, upgrading and backing up database instances in a uniform way.

MyPOV: This is a great move, giving customers a private-cloud/IaaS containerized database deployment option. As a side note, at one point (the company says it was two years ago), Compose supported deployment on Microsoft Azure. Not sure why that option went away, but it would be nice to see Azure and Google on the public cloud option list along with AWS and Softlayer. The more portable the container, the better.

IBM Graph: This is a managed, cloud-based graph database service that employs Apache TinkerPop and the Gremlin graph traversal language as its interface. As Wikipedia describes it, Apache TinkerPop and Gremlin are to graph databases what the JDBC and SQL are to relational databases. Developed in 2009, Gremlin is supported by notable OLTP graph databases including Neo4j, OrientDB and Tital as well as OLAP graph processors Giraph and Spark. Graph approaches are well suited to use cases including IoT, real-time recommendations, fraud detection, and network analysis.

Why use IBM Graph as opposed better known graph databases (like Neo4j, Titan or GraphDB) delivered as a service? Kocoloski said the graph data store under the hood of IBM Graph is “an implementation detail” that’s not exposed to the service user. “Because we’ve standardized on the TinkerPop API, we can experiment with different engines for different use cases. Many graph databases support TinkerPop, so it’s possible to use Neo4j one day and swap it out for something else the next without rewriting the application.”

MyPOV: IBM had a big hand in pushing TinkerPop to join the Apache Software Foundation. I suspect it did so for the same reasons IBM put big support behind CouchDB, an open source, NoSQL rival to the likes of MongoDB and Couchbase. (It did so after acquiring Cloudant, a database-as-a-service company that based its product on CouchDB.) Yes, both CouchDB and TinkerPop are open source projects, but in both cases IBM can exert a lot of influence. While there’s plenty of competition for MongoDB and Neo4j services and support, IBM is the dominant support provider for CouchDB and the only support option for IBM Graph. In short, IBM stands to benefit more if customers use IBM Graph, a commercial offering with open source TinkerPop and Gremlin under the hood.

IBM Predictive Analytics: IBM says this new service allows developers to “easily self-build machine learning models from a broad library into applications.” As I detailed last year, IBM has put a big push on Apache Spark, redesigning or replatforming more than 15 analytics and commerce offerings to run on Spark. IBM says this “dramatically accelerates real-time processing capabilities.”

Predictive Analytics is aimed at putting predictive analytics in the hands of more users. “Not everyone is going to be comfortable dropping down into Spark and working with MLLib or writing their own Scala jobs,” said Kocoloski. “We’re trying to give people an introduction to the world of multivariate analysis and machine learning.”

MyPOV: The key mode of democratization in this new service is an auto-modelling capability with roots in SPSS and that is currently limited to models exposed in SPSS. Open source Spark is an enabler under the hood, but it’s another service offering that gets back to an IBM commercial product.

IBM Analytics Exchange: This data exchange today offers a catalog of more than 150 public datasets along with a way to blend private data with public data to come up with freshinsights. Exchange is also a foundation for metadata and business data management in the cloud, said Kocoloski. The Exchange will ultimately offer more data sources and make it easier for customers to find relevant data sources. IBM also has a separate data-as-a-service business called Insight Cloud Services, which offers high-value data including Twitter Data and data from The Weather Company (an acquisition finalized last week). The Exchange will also be “a foundational component” of Insights Cloud Services, said Kocoloski. In short, think of the Exchange as enabling plumbing for exposing and blending all sorts of data.

MyPOV: The ability to offer data in the cloud is of huge and growing importance, so the more the better. I look forward to seeing more data sets and a single, integrated catalog serving up everything from widely available public data to unique, high-value sources such as The Weather Company. I do have a minor quibble with the name “Analytics Exchange,” as it seems what we’re talking about here is a data exchange or data-as-a-service infrastructure, not a place where analytics are developed.

MyPOV Overall

The real power of these offerings is cumulative. It’s not any one, tactical service that makes IBM’s case, it’s the combined breadth of offerings on Bluemix that creates and one-stop shop for the developer and data scientist. These data and analytics services are a fraction of the overall catalog, as there are also Watson cognitive services, mobile services, DevOps services, web and application services, business analytics services, storage and security services and so on. The broader and more coordinated the portfolio and platform becomes, the more compelling it becomes as a cloud-based platform for delivering next-gen, data-driven apps.

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IOT; Introducing a Market Disruption A strategy for Market Leaders based on IoT Platform Collaboration

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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When faced with a new competitive situation the phrase ‘Build, Partner or Acquire’ is often used to sum up the possible responses. But are the three options enough when faced with the challenges of a global interconnected, interactive Smart Services business? In a market place potentially powered by hundreds of thousands IoT players individual Smart services can such simple contained options work for Market Leaders? Or is there a new more appropriate option for this new business and technology model?

Very few enterprises are systematically researching the IoT start-up activity within their sectors as they consider the new entrants too small, and scattered, to be a threat. This also creates an attitude that removes consideration of their potential as Partners, or Acquisitions in creating a market disruptive move. 

IoT startups have received incredible cumulative investment since 2010. There are two obvious conclusions: first, the technology and business-savvy VC funds see IoT has the disruptive business force that will build significant new value for new businesses; second - and for this exercise of more concern - is that in many sectors, IoT startups have more investment to spend on disrupting the market than the existing market leaders have to spend on defending, or renewing their positions.

The relative ease of gaining Investment has created very large numbers of IoT start-ups in most, if not all, business sectors and markets. The low profile period of incubation to turn investments into products is ending and in 2016 the impact will become real. Invariably, these new players have set their sights on some aspect of the market leader’s existing business. As an example, analyzing Honeywell’s product range in the Building Controls industry, 31 startups are specifically targeting one or more Honeywell products for a market disruption by IoT smart services.

How many Market Leaders can name their new IoT startup competitors, let along know which parts of their current revenue models are under threat? By the time erosion of profitable parts of the business have started it’s very late to respond. Current strategic initiatives may be in place, but are they going to be quick enough, or agile enough?

Many market leaders have, with other market leaders, formed consortiums to try to shape the emerging IoT market their advantage using standards. Unfortunately, progress for any consortium built around ‘coopetiton’ members is slow. The competition is well-financed, single-minded startups that do not need consensus to move first, seizing connections, data, and market share for a defacto standard.

The following statements define their activities, impact, and possible abilities to drive new competitive rules into the existing market place;

• A wholly new set of “values” overturns traditional grounds of choice.
• The ‘noise’ of startup players will create new interest within the sector.
• Using App Shops gets access to the market bypassing usual routes
• Venture capital investments encourage and enable disruptive moves.

Recent experience has shown that, within a few quarters, a new innovative smart service from an unknown startup can be catapulted into a scale of market awareness beyond conventional marketing means. The democracy of the Internet allows the meritocracy of the new Digital Service product to be recognized, and promoted, globally very quickly!

The numbers of “black swans” or “unicorns,” defined, as companies that rise above a $1 billion valuation in a few years, has never been higher as digital business allows speed and access to markets at hitherto unknown rates.

Market leaders find it difficult to think about their hard won market in terms of the factors that will result in its destruction. But the reality is that their Corporate Products and passive Services are facing competitive Disaggregation. Replace by buyers switching to customise Re-Aggregation using selected Smart Services that match their precise requirements.

Digital Business Disruption and Transformation occurs as the customers choose to select and bundle Smart Services to match their perceived value, rather than be forced to take the current product bundle. The key to success is that as the customer finds new higher value then payment can be higher. Those who move first to lead this transformation expect higher margins from the higher customer value.

Todays IoT startups have the benefit of a connected Cloud and App shop Digital Economy to move quickly with relatively low investment costs to access profitable cash rich opportunities. A current market leader is denied many of these opportunistic advantages and looks to find new ways to create and add innovative products to their current position. A handful of additional Smart Services may actually add to numbers and rate oif the market dis-aggregation rather than improve the competitiveness of the traditional market.

The form and nature of IoT and Smart Services make the options of Build, Partner or Acquire difficult to use beneficially against such fragmented markets and competition. Instead a new option of Collaborate, or more particularly the form of market leadership collaboration practiced by players such as Amazon 

The strategic use of current market leadership assets to build an Industry Ecosystem Smart Services Platform with an App shop to induce IoT startups to empower your leadership. Think of Apple, or Google Android, as examples.

Market Leaders forget that they own a powerful mix of data, connections and customers that correctly combined can create a new Industry Ecosystem. Designing and deploying a platform using these advantages offers the new startup competitors a tempting and well targeted choice as a route to market, turning attackers into Collaborators. The resulting industry ecosystem reaffirms brand leadership and control whilst enabling new innovative forces to be harnessed and empower the enterprise.

IoT based Smart Services are both made possible, and directly increase in value, in proportion to the number of connections, services and data available for complex event processing into insightful outcomes.  Market leaders consistently don’t recognize how much value they have built since 2000 in Internet based technologies that can form the basis for an ecosystem platform strategy.

More than a decade of adding Internet, Web, Mobility and, more recently, Social Marketing initiatives have provided most companies with a surprisingly rich collection of capabilities to underpin their new competitive Internet (IoT) market strategy.

The Internet of Things shares the common foundation of the Internet. IoT adds different functionality that enables a new generation of disruptive business capabilities. However there are many synergistic alignments allowing the benefits of earlier Internet based waves to be re-used. More importantly these assets are not available to the new wave of competitors.

An excellent example of this approach is John Deere, a global leader in Agricultural Machinery who have successfully consolidated and built on earlier moves in Internet, Web, Mobility, and Social tools to establish a market-disruptive IoT platform. The first-mover advantage, together with the customer access, data, and connections, encouraged potential attacking start-ups (combined with significant existing Agri-Businesses) to join and multiply the customer advantages delivered.

The reuse of customer relationships and accumulated data in an open collaborative Ecosystem Platform has allowed John Deere to collaborate with innovative startups and their services and strengthened their own industry leadership and brand.

John Deere Example:

The MyJohnDeere.com industry Ecosystem platform delivers a complete value package to farm more efficiently in both increased yields and reduced costs. This in turn relates to the increasing use of the term “Precision Farming” in the Agri-Business sector. The strategy has transformed individual market corporate products, from tractors to seed supply, into a comprehensive set of Smart Services optimized around individual farmers. Importantly the platform makes available in a cohesive manner dozens of new innovative Smart Services from Startups that add a range of new innovative farm operational values.

John Deere developed its experience to launch its market-disrupting IoT Platform over a period of five years due to its business focus moving year by year – from a Web presence through mobility to smart app to IoT platform progression. Today, John Deere has a first-mover advantage by acting before the market leadership was threatened by IoT startups, and the company has enlisted many of the IoT startups to become market partners in their Agri-Business IoT ecosystems.

The John Deere’s timeline of adding Initiatives that built value for its market disruptive IoT based strategic move:

2011: The era of mobility and telematics introduced ‘JDLink telematics’, a first move into connecting John Deere tractors with simple sensing functionality based on GPS to remote data collection. The initial data collection might have been limited, but the value in creating a new type of relationship with the end customer around data created the first ongoing value for reuse.

2012: The era of smartphones, tablets and smart apps added John Deere Mobile Farm Manager. Farmers quickly proved to be very willing to use smartphones and tablets to run a new generation of apps. John Deere moved to closer interaction with its customers by using the low cost ease of apps and downloads to offer a broader range of services, all of which strengthened the bond around shared data and value generation. More sensors and sensing capabilities continue to be added to John Deere products to support apps focused on precision farming.

2013: A further era of progress sees John Deere Farm Sight realizing the power of connecting the ecosystem of John Deere dealerships into a range of smart services for reliable operational maintenance. A move that not only added new value to John Deere customers but also added new business value for dealerships themselves and encouraged dealerships to add additional services. Further additions to the range of sensing values were added, concentrating on operational and cost management.

2014: John Deere was ready to go ahead with opening its myjohndeere platform to the agri-business industry as a whole, creating a data and connection-rich IoT ecosystem platform that would attract start-ups and encourage agri-businesses to make use of its unique positioning and capabilities. By now, John Deere’s agricultural products are a well-integrated IoT fog computing cluster centered on the tractors reporting on many kinds of field and farming conditions.

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