The Hottest Cloud-based Marketing Startups of 2015

Apttus, Booker, Lattice Engines, Segment and Tubular Labs are the five hottest cloud-based marketing startups of 2015.
13 of the hottest 34 cloud-based marketing startups are from the Bay Area, followed by Los Angeles with 3, and Bangalore and New York, both with 2.
14 are in Pre Series A, 7 in A-Stage, 5 in B-Stage and 3 in C-Stage funding rounds.

These and other insights are from a quick analysis completed today using Mattermark Pro, in response to reader requests for more research on marketing startups.

Mattermark uses a combination of artificial intelligence and data quality analysis to provide insights into over 1 million private companies, over 470,000 with employee data, and over 100,000 funding events. In the interest of full disclosure I’m not today and have never done any consulting work of any kind with Mattermark.

Finding The Hottest Cloud-based Marketing Startups

To find the hottest cloud-based marketing startups, an initial query requesting startups competing in the cloud computing and marketing industries was completed. Next, advanced query tools in Mattermark Pro were used to filter out all startups that had exited as indicated by their stage status in Mattermark’s data. This filtered out startups who had been acquired, completed an IPO or had exited through other means. The table below is the result of an analysis completed today with Mattermark data. You can download the table here in Microsoft Excel format.

The Mattermark Growth Score shown in the table below and downloadable Excel file is a measure of how quickly a company is gaining traction at a given point in time. It incorporates the Mindshare Score (web traffic, social traction) as well as business growth metrics (e.g. employee count over time, funding). The underlying assumption is that companies who see growth across these signals are shipping product and talking to customers, and are more likely to continue to grow as a result. This score is not meant to provide guidance on which startup to invest in. Rather it’s a measure of momentum across the metrics and KPIs that Mattermark measures.

Filed under: Analytics, Cloud Computing, Cloud Computing Forecasts 2011, Cloud startups, Louis Columbus' blog, SaaS, SaaS Forecasts Tagged: Apttus, Booker, Cloud Computing, Lattice Engines, Louis Columbus' blog, SaaS, SaaS ERP, Salesforce.com, Social Media Analytics, Software-as-a-Service

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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#SAPtd Las Vegas 2015 Report- Analyics, HCP, and Fiori BUILD

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…...

We had the opportunity to attend SAPtd (aka TechEd / dCode) conference in Las Vegas this week. The event had similar attendance to least year, a vastly expanded (and improved) conference space, compared to a year before - though no SapphireNow style level (which is the best conference floor I have seen in the last 12 months).

So take a peek:

No chance to watch - read below (keep in mind this is not from an overall SAP announcement perspective, but for the audience, SAP developers).

Fiori BUILD - SAP customers have been challenged by suboptimal user interfaces for the longest time. Fiori addresses this, as it turns out the price tag was not really the issue for customers, even now that Fiori is free, way too many SAP users are still working with not so great user interfaces. To make the work of designers more easy, the new Fiori BUILD tool makes it easier for a designer to even take screen layouts out to users and collect feedback on the mochup's usability. We will not see the majority of SAPtd attendees become UI designers, but they may as well use a tool to create applications with a better user interfaces.
HCP and VORA - We saw live usage of tax and translation services in HCP, and the usage of VORA, unfortunately not with any code (relevant for the audience).
Cloud for Analytics - SAP brings together all BI, GRC and newer assets into one product family. Core pillars are for now the Cloud for Planning product and the Digital Boardroom (built with the latter). More to come.

Analyst Tidbits

S4/HANA - The biggest news overall for me came in a briefing meeting where SAP clarified the 'digital core' - more importantly how much substantial functionality will be available in November with 1511 release of S/4HANA release (first on premises, then in the cloud a few weeks later). It is substantial beyond the early S4/HANA scope of Finance. If it all materializes, SAP is showing greater speed in creating S4/HANA than I would have anticipated, so certainly the biggest surprise of the conference, good new for SAP customers.

Co-Innovation - SAP is innovating internally and contributing back to the product, I had the chance to meet with CIO Helen Arnold, building a employee-sourced enabled ticketing system on top of HP is not every CIO's slice of bread, so good to see how HCP enables innovation.
SAP Digital - Makes progress, but probably needs to be even more aggressive. A year ago SAP pointed to a marketplace for developers, that has not been yet implemented, not sure whose charter that is - but it vital for developer success.

MyPOV

A good SAPtd for SAP, where more of the technical details were in the single sessions than the keynotes. The key product for SAPtd is HCP, and it would have been good to see and and learn more of HCP. It was good to see that Leukert lead with the product, but the real direct value impact from new capabilities came from the new Fiori BUILD capabilities. The message for customers is pretty clear, use HCP, new innovations are coming with micro services, VORA, but it is still early. Cloud for Analyics is a fresh start, Cloud for Planning is a robust planning tool and the new Digital Boardroom is in a maturity state where it makes sense for aggressive enterprises to take an honest look at the product.

On the concern side SAP needs to cater more to the audience of the event. SAPtd is the key event to move the technical experts, and to show them how to excite their enterprise and how to make money in the next 12 months (are many attendees are freelancers or small entrepreneurs) is pivotal. So SAP should not make the mistake to show and announce product progress no matter what the next event is. To a certain point SAP is victim of its own success, as in the past it was Sapphire for the What? and then SAP TechEd for the How?. Now product release cycles are so fast that SAP is looking for the next event... but it will be key for SAP not to forget who the audience is at SAPtd. The Tuesday keynote was more like a Sapphire than a TechEd / dCode keynote. Anybody doubting, compare 2014 (see here) and 2015 Tuesday keynotes, 2014 was the standard to beat and SAP fell short here.

Nonetheless attendees were forgiving and just went to the sessions (after all they are used to Sapphires) to learn more details, but the opportunity to move 5000+ developers as a group was missed. For me the major takeaway was how far S4/HANA seems to have come, more to check in the next weeks.

More on overall SAP strategy and products:

Event Preview - SAP TechEd 2015 - watch / read here
Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here

First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here.

And more about SAP technology:

News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.

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

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

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Event Report - HR Tech 2015 - Analytics, Compliance and more

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

We had the opportunity to attend the HR Tech conference this week in Las Vegas. New record attendance with close to 30k attendees, record exhibitors, sessions etc. it is clear if you are looking for the latest in HR, you need to be at HR Tech.

So take a peek:

If you can't watch - here are the key takeaways

Analytics - This remains a key trend to make HR applications better for end users. Hope you could make it to the panel I was honored to moderate on Monday, with the key analytic leaders of Castlight Health, Cornerstone, Equifax Workforce Solutions, Ulimate Software and Workday. We tried to shed some light on why it cannot always be explained why an analytical applications makes a certain decision, hope it resounded with the audience. Unfortunately both Meerkat and Periscope failed... so it can't be shared. But the 500 attendees for sure enjoyed the panel, thanks to the great panelists I had.
Talent Managmement is alive - We not only see innovation in Recruiting, but also in Performance Management. And working Performance Management is key to make overall Talent Management work. So let's hope that the latest advances on more small time cycle feedback and coaching, coupled with e.g. anonymous feedback, will make a difference.
UI Innovation is alive - Vendors can't stand still on improving their UIs, which is great news for enterprises, as adoption will accelerate. Making it easier for users to use HR applications is a win / win for enterprises and vendors alike.
Compliance remains key - ACA offerings have now matured and can be found with almost every vendor. Enterprises should look for breadth and depth on the compliance vendor side, so they don't create a compliance integration problem, on top of the existing integration problems.
Adoption - Clearly enterprises are using more from the same vendors, so integration provided by vendors works for both sides, the vendors and the enterprises.

MyPOV

Clearly the event to be if you are in HCM, don't miss Chicago next year!

More on HR Tech coverage:

HR Tech 2015 Preview - take a look / read here
HR Tech 2014 Takeaways - take a look / read here
HR Tech 2013 takeaways - read here
What to look for at HR Tech 2013 - read here

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

Future of Work Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Sales Marketing Security AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI business Marketing IaaS Disruptive Technology Enterprise Acceleration Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief People Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer

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What Storage Industry Consolidation Means for Applications Customers

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

These are heady times for the storage industry of late, what with Dell’s pending $67 billion acquisition of EMC and Wednesday’s announcement that Western Digital will buy SanDisk for $19 billion.

Dell CEO Michael Dell said this week the combined company will be committed to its entire storage product line. As for SanDisk, Western Digital explained its rationale for the deal in a press release:

The combination is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM). With this transaction, Western Digital will double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segments.

Overall, a lot of money and installed base is about to change hands in the storage world. What may not be immediately apparent, however is the fact there are implications for enterprise software customers as well, says Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller.

“Storage matters for next-generation apps, as all use cases deal with big data scale,” Mueller says. Flash storage is also key to accelerate the delivery of insights within applications, he adds.

“It’s ironic: as storage gets cheaper and becomes commoditized, on the other side, data—which leads to storage—is more important than ever, determining where next generation-applications are being built," he adds.

The Bottom Line

Consolidation in the storage industry means software customers will have scalable partners for solid-state storage and other storage mediums, Mueller says. But the downside of excessive consolidation—potentially higher costs—is no different in this instance.

Tech Optimization Chief Information Officer Chief Procurement Officer

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Tech Startup RevJet Reveals World’s First Creative Side Platform (CSP)

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…...

One way to enter the marketplace is to do all your development stealth-style and then announce to the world what you have created. And that, in fact is what RevJet, a tech start-up has done. Atter a year of confidential development, the marketing technology corporation revealed the first-of-its-kind Creative Side Platform (CSP), which extends it’s marketing technology to incorporate the ad creatives that undergird the world’s annual $500 billion media spend directly under the real-time control of marketing departments and their creative agencies.

So What Does This Mean to You? With the CSP, marketers and their creative agencies can now effortlessly construct, view, serve, measure, and automatically optimize all their ad creatives for all their media buys across all formats — including mobile, social, video and programmatic ad campaigns — all from a single platform.

What Type of Results Are Companies that use RevJet Experiencing?

In its first few weeks operating on the RevJet CSP, Microsoft rapidly achieved 100+% performance improvements across diverse digital ad campaigns via dozens of rounds of effortless, automatically optimizing ad creative experiments.

“For years, I’ve preached to my team that we must always be experimenting with ad creatives, but we’ve never had anything like the RevJet CSP to make it happen,” said Grad Conn, CMO lead for Microsoft’s Centralized Marketing Organization. “Their CSP is the first truly comprehensive ad creative platform built to facilitate effortless creative experimentation at its very core. We’re quickly adapting to life on the CSP and are thrilled to onboard four of our creative agencies and two DSPs.”

What’s Different about RevJet? The RevJet CSP is the first and only comprehensive platform designed to enable continuous, automated, high-velocity ad creative experimentation and drive perpetual performance improvement for ad creatives of any format. The underlying CSP technology is already battle-tested in the marketplace, having propelled LifeStreet Media to a $100+ million exit and a market leadership position amongst Facebook app developers.

RevJet empowers marketers to automatically optimize the creative send to specific audiences in real time across channels and media. As ad tech and marketing tech converge, a platform like RevJet could be used with the whole content marketing process. For Marketers who choose this, it could give them differentiating capability compared to the competition. In addition, brands that building marketing cloud solutions should consider RevJet a potential differentiator.

Who is Backing RevJet? Nautic Partners, the Providence-based private equity firm, announced its $66 million LifeStreet investment in 2012, and in October 2014 announced a technology spinoff along with plans to launch RevJet as a standalone marketing technology startup. RevJet is backed by $2.5 billion private equity firm Nautic Partners.

And a Word From the Founder and CEO “Our CSP is purpose-built to extend marketing technology’s reach, finally unlocking the $500 billion dollars’ worth of pent-up value trapped within the world’s ad creatives,” said Mitchell Weisman, RevJet founder and CEO. “Tapping into this massive value is only possible by scalably increasing the performance of ad creatives across all devices and formats. Having already used the core CSP technology to build and sell a leading media company for over $100 million, we’re confident the CSP can drive the world’s media spend to go 2x to 3x further.”

Want to Learn More? RevJet CEO Mitchell Weisman and Microsoft’s Diana Choksey will be speaking about the future of creative and tech at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Austin this coming Tuesday, October 27th. Learn more here.

My POV: What’s really interesting is the convergence of technology, as well as silo functional departments in brands. Perhaps software will be the driving force to get departments that don’t always collaborate to do so. Another example of how corporate politics should be a white collar crime – i.e., not collaborating. But the digital disruption is driving more the changes to technology; it’s affecting people, process and technology.

@DrNatatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

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Michael Dell's DellWorld Keynote Was Notable for What He Didn't—Or Couldn't—Say

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Dell CEO Michael Dell had promised to deliver a "new theory of the universe" during his Dell World 2015 keynote on Wednesday. Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

Rather, Dell spent well over an hour running down the virtues of his company's pending $67 billion mega-merger with EMC, listing the vast array of products and services the combined entity will bring to market, as well as its main strategic plans.

In doing so, Dell employed some high-minded rhetoric indeed. “We are going to build the world’s infrastructure for the next 20 or 30 years," he told the Dell World audience. "You’re going to cure cancer. You’re going to feed and water the world.

You're going to create hope and opportunity on a global scale.”

Seven Big Targets

The Dell-EMC "dream combination," it will focus on digital transformation, the Internet of Things, software-defined data centers, big data analytics, hybrid cloud computing, mobility and security, Dell said.

Meanwhile, EMC has an "unmatched reputation" in the Fortune 1000, while Dell is equally strong the midmarket and small business world, he added.

Dell declared EMC the best in the industry at incubating new technologies. The combined company will also mirror EMC's federated business structure, according to Dell.

The merger is the largest in tech history and will take EMC private. It's often said the advantage of going private means companies can focus on innovation without the constant pressure to raise revenue and profits publicly-owned ones face.

Dell did provide one interesting statistic as evidence this is true: Dell's patent filings increased by 27 percent over the past year, which is a company record. It has more than 8,000 issued and pending patents, he added.

The Bottom Line

This was a product-heavy, feel-good keynote—replete with a cozy and jokey onstage conversation between Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella—and not the blueprint for a new tomorrow.

What vision Dell did spell out is dependent on a successful merger and integration with EMC, a job that's far from done and which carries significant risk.

But Dell's talk didn't—or in fairness, couldn't—address some of the most pressing customer questions about the deal, such as product rationalization and overlap, how the companies' cultures will merge, and potential changes to sales and support operations.

Also missing from Dell's strategy rundown? Any substantive discussion of enterprise applications. Obviously, these aren't a core offering of either Dell or EMC, but the lack of attention to the topic was a bit surprising when you consider that all of the strategic areas Dell-EMC will pursue underpin the emerging next generation of enterprise applications. Too much for one keynote, perhaps.

Data to Decisions Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer

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How Dell and Microsoft's Azure-Powered Box Underscores An Inflection Point for Cloud

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Microsoft and Dell have announced a new private cloud appliance that isn't exactly a new idea—they released a larger, more expensive version last year—but nonetheless underscores that cloud computing has reached another inflection point.

From the release:

Microsoft and Dell announced Cloud Platform System Standard (CPS Standard), the newest addition to the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS) family. CPS is the industry's only integrated system with a true hybrid cloud experience, built on optimized Dell modular infrastructure with pre-configured Microsoft CPS software, including the proven Microsoft software stack and popular Azure services.

The hybrid cloud experience comes from the platform's consistency with Azure, enabling agile deployment and operation of workloads and allowing customers to build multi-tiered, scalable applications.

CPS Standard arrives ready to be plugged in and can be up and running in as little as three hours, while operations, patching and updates are simplified with an automated framework.

In case of a datacenter outage, CPS Standard features archival backup to Azure and failover to Azure that is easy-to-activate, reliable and cost-effective...Its modular design allows customers to start smaller and incrementally scale from four to up to 16 servers based on business needs.

Customers have the option of renting the appliance from Dell for $9,000 a month, and a basic configuration can run about 100 virtual machines, according to IDG News Service.

Dell is also offering payment arrangements through its Cloud Flex Pay program. Following a six-month term, "customers have several options available, including the ability to extend the evaluation period, continue to use the solution, return it or take ownership of it, according to a statement.

The Bottom Line

So what about that inflection point? There are several matters here to ponder, says Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller.

For one thing, the industry initially tried to forklift software that was built for the on-premises world and tried to move it to the cloud, with mixed results, he says: "Now cloud software is coming back on-premises to run standard appliances."

This trend is important in a few ways, Mueller notes.

For one, "IT professionals learn cloud management tools and can run real cloud systems right away," he says. Second, it gives customers a consistent choice of where they'd like to deploy. Finally, "it provides standardization which always drives easier adoption—when you get the standard right," Mueller says.

Data to Decisions Chief Information Officer

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SAP TechEd: Inside Cloud For Analytics

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,…...

SAP’s new platform for BI, planning and predictive analytics promises simplicity and consistency, but it will require a fresh start for BusinessObjects or Lumira customers looking to move to this new cloud.

SAP can point to many benefits in building Cloud for Analytics, it’s new cloud-based BI, analytics and planning platform, from scratch, but one drawback is that BusinessObjects and Lumira customers won’t be able to bring dashboards or reports currently used on premises into this new cloud.

Before I get to this drawback, let’s review all there is to like about SAP Cloud For Analytics. For starters, it will include components for BI (meaning reporting, dashboarding, data-discovery and visualization), business planning, predictive analytics and, eventually, governance, risk and compliance (GRC). The starting point for Cloud for Analytics was Cloud for Planning, the budgeting and planning application introduced last year built on the HANA Cloud Platform. No surprise, then, that the planning component of Cloud for Analytics, renamed “SAP Cloud for Analytics for Planning,” is available immediately.

SAP Cloud for Analytics will include components for data-discovery and visualization, planning and predictive analytics.

As for the rest of the platform, the BI component, which draws on and replaces SAP Lumira Cloud, is expected to be available as soon as next month (and surely by year end). The Predictive Analytics component is expected to show up in the first half of next year (ideally by Sapphire). The GRC component isn’t on a hard timeline yet, so there’s talk of first introducing risk-analysis capabilities within the other components of the platform.

The benefits of Cloud for Analytics start with having BI, predictive analytics and planning all on a single platform – a unique combination in the cloud. SAP is also promising consistent and modern user interfaces that will be easy and intuitive for business users. Pricewise SAP is sticking with the Lumira Cloud freemium approach, starting with a free, basic BI service before graduating to more robust, paid levels of service starting at $25 per-user, per-month. Power-user licenses spanning multiple components and including the most advanced capabilities will top out at more than $1,000 per user, per month.

From what I’ve seen, the new platform delivers a clean design with lots of data-visualization elements. On speed and performance, Cloud for Analytics runs on the in-memory HANA Cloud Platform, so expect fast, in-memory performance.

At TechEd, SAP executives stressed that BusinessObjects and Lumira Server and Lumira Desktop are not going away. There’s a roadmap of new releases and planned innovations for all of these products. Anticipating hybrid deployment scenarios, SAP says Cloud for Analytics will be able to tap into existing BW, Lumira and BusinessObjects data and metadata as well as BusinessObjects Universes. There’s also bi-directional integration between Cloud for Analytics for Planning and SAP Budgeting, Planning and Consolidation (BPC). In another nice touch, Cloud for Analytics will be able to access on-premises S/4HANA and BW data without replication.

As for that one drawback, customers running BusinessObjects and Lumira on-premises will have to rebuild dashboards and reports they’ve accumulated in on-premises deployments if they want to run them on Cloud for Analytics. You can use the same data, metadata and Universes, but reports and dashboards won’t migrate to this HANA-based platform. As has long been the case, you still have the private-cloud option to migrate and run BusinessObjects and Lumira Server deployments as hosted, managed services. But that’s not the kind of agile, multi-tenant, always-current cloud service that many customers are looking for.

MyPOV on SAP Cloud for Analytics

SAP made a conscious choice to start with a clean sheet. We haven’t seen all of the components of the platform as yet, but it will be an attractive option if it lives up to expectations on consistency, ease of use and in-memory performance. It’s a good fit for customers if they’re fine leaving the legacy dashboards and reports on-premises while building out new reports, dashboards and applications in the cloud. And this approach also makes sense if you’re taking a day-forward approach, whereby new dashboards, reports and analytic uses center around new cloud-based apps and data sources.

If you have hundreds (or thousands) of dashboards and reports, as many SAP BusinessObjects customers do, and you want to take them into the cloud, managed services are the only practical option. Many BusinessObjects customers are ready to let go of the old content and start from scratch, but this limitation means that third-party cloud options may be as easy to embrace as Cloud for Analytics. Tapping existing data sets and metadata isn’t the hard part of changing BI tools and platforms.

The good news for customers is that there’s a world of new BI and analytics options in the cloud. Amazon announced two weeks ago that it’s jumping in with QuickSight. Salesforce has revamped and is putting a second push into Salesforce Wave. Microsoft is steadily adding options and capabilities to Power BI. Tableau and Qlik are moving more aggressively into the cloud. And next week we’ll see new analytics and BI cloud services from both IBM and Oracle. We’re clearly seeing plenty of innovation and the fresh competition, and that should help keep prices competitive.

AWS re:Invent: Five Takeaways On New Services

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From Relational Databases to Graph Database Interpretations - Creating Business Value through determining relationships in IoT Data

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…...

Much has been said about Big Data analytics, usually in the context of a definable set of Business goals that allow, equally definable, context to be placed on the data collected. Internet of Things, IoT, massively increases the amount of data points, or flow, as well as looking for a real-time interpretation. To see unique â€˜Insightsâ€™, or to launch reactive processes, requires a wholly different approach to conventional databases and analytical tools.

Data Graphs are emerging as the Data model for IoT architected solutions building on successful deployments for interpreting complex Social Media data.

Research report now available: The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Fog Computing together with Cloud Computing lays down the connectivity architecture to deploy and operating billions of Devices in a cohesive manner. However the Business Value doesnâ€™t lie in the connectivity, but in the data and real-time insights that have had no obvious relational Database context. The very different manner in which a Data Graph stores data is uniquely suited to IOT data flows and the connectivity architecture of Fog and Clouds.

What is a Data Graph, and how, is it the answer for the specific challenges of IoT? Rather than starting with a technology definition, it might be easier to start by understanding the benefits with a real example. A popular and well-known deployment of Data Graph that delivers a unique business value unobtainable by conventional means is Google Photos. Google does not sell storage so on the face of it providing free storage for millions of photos doesnâ€™t make sense, but it does sell advertising. If Google can find a way to profile people better, then its core business proposition, and resulting revenues, from targeted advertising increases.

Google Photos uses Graph Data to provide an analysis of stored photos to figure out from unrelated, undefined photo collections, what a personâ€™s interests and personal relationships might be. The challenge is how to do this at scale and in a timely manner to make advertising offers both relevant and immediate to actions.

A in-depth look at exactly why and how Google use Data Graph can be found in Blumenthals article â€œGoogle Photos a visual graph of people places and thingsâ€. If you personally wish to experiment with using the power of Data Graphs to search through complex data then the CNet article defining â€œFive Ways to put Facebook Graph Search to useâ€ provides a practical guide.

With the understanding of what Data Graphs can do, then it is easier to understand what a Graph Database actually is, and even more important why it is so important in the emerging global landscape of mass IoT devices. However this is not the place to provide a fully detailed explanation merely to draw attention to the rising importance of Graph Data. For a greater level of understanding there is an excellent video tutorial that will help both business and technology managers entitled Graphs to power Connected Things. The simple, working summary explanation would go as follows;

Graphs represent data by common denominators and connections; as such Graph Databases are therefore a natural way to represent the connected IoT environment and store originating data. There is no other type of database that works in this manner and enables facilitates rapid matches to be made from the huge amount of complicated relationships and interdependencies that make up an IoT environment.

As might be expected with the rising popularity of the topic there is a huge amount of useful information on Graph Databases to be found on Wikipedia. This includes some highly informative tables of most, if not all, the popular Graph Database types as well as comparisons of their functionality and APIs. This alone makes it a very valuable resource for anybody contemplating developing a Graph Database for a project and wishing to make an informed choice. Wikipedia also notes that Neo4J is the most popular and widely deployed Graph Database, a point the snap shot illustration below listing types of deployment by well-known companies makes clear, as well as showing the level of interest by major Enterprises.

Graph Databases are important part of IoT capabilities, and architecture, due to their unique characteristics that mimic the very structure of a connected interactive network of data flows. The much-hyped Business Value said to emulate from the growth in IoT Devices and the availability of new forms of data requires the use of Graph Databases in association with to a new generation of Analytics and Event Processing.

Irrespective of role, both Business and Technology, managers increasingly must work to understand the art of the possible, to define and deploy competitive business plays. Data is well understood to be at the heart of this, with Graph Data becoming the new differentiating capability in the world of connected IoT Devices.

Resources

The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)

More on Graph Databases:

An excellent presentation that brings together all aspects of Graph used to support IoT; http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/filesDBKDA15/graphsm_privat_popovici.pdf

Oâ€™Reillyâ€™s eBook explaining Graph Databases for those involved in development; http://graphdatabases.com/?ref=blog&_ga=1.93704735.303205197.1444547872

A link to a huge real time example plotting aircraft movements and used to illustrate the scalability of Graph; http://graphofthings.org

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Dell to Reveal 'New Theory of Universe': Highlights from Dell World 2015 Press Conference

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Dell CEO Michael Dell’s opening press conference at Dell World 2015 was rather short in length, but it delivered some interesting nuggets and sound bites nonetheless. Call it the appetizer for what should be quite a hearty enterprise meal this week in Austin, Texas. Here’s a look at some of the highlights from Tuesday’s press event in Austin.

Dell’s New ‘Theory of the Universe’

While Dell’s massive, $67 billion merger with EMC is far from concluded, Michael Dell didn’t shy away from discussing the deal and hinting at how the combined entity will go to market.

Buying EMC gives Dell a strong position in “the IT of tomorrow,” along with valuable new sales channels, the ability to co-innovate, coupled with Dell’s “world-class supply chain” and the ability to operate as a privately held company, he said.

During his keynote on Wednesday, Dell will reveal a new “theory of the universe” that Dell-EMC will try to prove out: “You'll get a sense of strategically where we're heading as a company, how we can deliver tremendous benefits for our customers, and how well-positioned the new company will be."

“This is complicated and doesn’t lend itself to sound bites,” he added. “What we see is a number of things going on. First of all, you have all the CIOs out there trying to fund digital transformation by reducing cost in their current infrastructure. There’s also this move to virtualization, hyper-converged systems where the silos that had been built up in the second platform of IT are starting to go away. It’s very important to be able to lead in that next wave of IT.” Dell-EMC will be able to lead in both existing and new technologies, Dell said.

POV: The timeworn IT industry phrase "end-to-end solutions" was actually invoked a number of times during the press conference, which doesn't bode particularly well for the reveal of a truly new idea. Dell's keynote needs to paint the picture of the combined company's plans with some specifics and real-life customer examples.

It's All About Scale

HP CEO Meg Whitman recently slammed the Dell-EMC deal in a leaked memo, saying integrating the company will be “a massive undertaking and enormous distraction for employees and their managers.” Of course, HP itself is in the process of dividing into two companies, one for enterprise and the other for personal systems and printing.

Dell seemed bemused when asked about Whitman’s comments. “Well…. Hmmm. HP is a great VMWare partner,” he said to laughter. “I don’t have any other comment. I think she got some of the facts wrong, but we’ll let the facts speak for themselves.”

“We have a different viewpoint as to how our company should evolve than HP does,” Dell added. “First of all we think that scale is important. When you look at this industry the companies the have succeeded in the volume data center space have been attached to large PC businesses and client businesses. The volumes really matter. I also think at the very moment there is an explosion in devices … the connection between device and data center is very important. We also find customers don’t want more suppliers, they want fewer suppliers.”

At an executive summit Dell held recently, “the CIOs were telling us, this is great,” he said. “You’re making our jobs a whole lot easier.”

Dell did acknowledge that integrating the company will require “a whole lot of work,” and said that it’s already underway among both EMC and Dell executives.

POV: Dell-EMC will achieve additional scale immediately after the deal is done, of course. But how effectively the integration plan gets executed could determine how quickly the combined entity takes additional market share, as well as keeps existing customers happy. Rival vendors—including HP—will certainly be circling large accounts of both companies, looking to poach. The good news is that this type of courtship provides customers leverage with any deal.

All-In on PCs

Dell is “fully committed to the PC business and all the hardware as you move up the stack,” said Jeffrey Clarke, president of client solutions. “We believe controlling the edge devices as well as all the things that happen in the infrastructure.”

Expect Dell to make a big play in Internet of Things device technology going forward as well, coupling that with its security assets, Clarke said.

One questioner suggested the PC business has become stale, feature and innovation-wise, which made Clarke bristle a bit. Dell recently shipped the industry’s smallest 13-inch notebook with a UHD screen and 18 hours of battery life, he said: “I think we’ve not seen the end of PC innovation—we’re just at the beginning of it.”

POV: Nobody would expect Clarke to say much of anything different about Dell's PC business, but his comments about selling up the full stack have some interest. One questioner asked whether Dell-EMC might move into selling integrated systems combining servers, storage, networking and various combinations of enterprise software, a la Oracle. No direct answer was given, but such a move isn't difficult to imagine given the software assets EMC brings to the table through VMWare and more.

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From Relational Databases to Graph Database Interpretations - Creating Business Value through determining relationships in IoT Data

From Relational Databases to Graph Database Interpretations - Creating Business Value through determining relationships in IoT Data

Research report now available: The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Resources

The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Dell to Reveal 'New Theory of Universe': Highlights from Dell World 2015 Press Conference

Dell to Reveal 'New Theory of Universe': Highlights from Dell World 2015 Press Conference

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