IBM acquires StrongLoop - nodejs comes to BlueMix

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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This morning IBM acquired StrongLoop - a key player in the nodejs space. Instead of writing a blog post - I went with the new medium - video...
 

So take a peek...
 

MyPOV

Overall a good move by IBM, delivering on the API Economy vision, that was formulated about 2 years ago at the software units global analyst event. BYOL is powerful and will bring a large IaaS platform to nodejs developers courtesy of BlueMix and SoftLayer. What it will mean for the opensource dynamics of nodejs - we will have to see. We have not seen (or missed) larger commitments by IBM to the community. And one more thing to learn about BlueMix - which is growing fast - but needs to educate developers, so hearing that a BlueMix garage offering will be available right away is good news for ecosystem development. 

Alteryx Does Self Service, Big Data Processing, Too

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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Alteryx Analytics 10.0 brings self-service data prep and analysis to high-scale platforms with in-database processing on Amazon Redshift, Cloudera Impala, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Spark and Teradata.

Can analytics upstart Alteryx give data analysts the best of both worlds?

On the one hand, Alteryx Analytics 10.0, the company’s software release announced last week, supports self-service data prep and data analysis with simplified desktop software. At the same time the product gives customers options for broad collaboration and big-data processing power on centralized platforms. Here’s how Alteryx is attempting to do it all.

Founded in 2010, Alteryx started out as predictive and geospatial analytics specialist with self-service data-prep and analysis capabilities. The trouble was it was growing slowly with an all-or-nothing entry-level deployment that started at $60,000, including an analytical designer, data-blending capabilities and third-party geospatial and enrichment data.

In 2014 Alteryx totally changed its go-to-market strategy, borrowing a page from the land-and-expand playbook of partner Tableau Software. Instead of the all-in approach, the vendor decided to offer the Alteryx Designer desktop at $4,000 per user. For collaboration around analytic apps and workflows created on the Designer, there are two options. The cloud-based Alteryx Gallery, which runs on Amazon and costs $1,500 per user, per year, lets you publish unlimited private galleries. Alteryx Server, which costs $45,000 for the server software (unlimited users), is the on-premises option.

Alteryx Analytics gives data analysts tools for building and sharing self-service data-prep and geospatial- and predictive-analysis workflows and applications.

The land-and-expand approach has worked. Two years ago Alteryx had roughly 200 customer firms, but today that figure is over 1,000, with more than 350 new customers in the first half of this year alone. Customers typically start with two to four Designer seats for data-analyst types and quickly add more as the word spreads.

Designers build analytic apps and reports for a broader community of end-user consumers, such as salespeople or marketing staff. As demand for these apps and reports grows, companies add Alteryx Gallery users or the Alteryx Server so analysts aren’t bogged down emailing copies. Gallery and Server users just need a browser to run apps, workflows and reports on their own.

Many customers use Alteryx entirely for its self-service data-prep capabilities, running workflows to serve up fresh data sets that are analyzed in other tools. Tableau and Qlik, for example, are both partners, and one or the other is used by roughly 30 percent of Alteryx customers.

The Alteryx Analytics 10.0 release delivers two big advancements. First, to make the product easier for newbies and increase the likelihood they’ll buy the product after a 14-day free trial download, the company has updated and simplified the interface (see screen shot below). The new menu eliminates the bells and whistles, but once accustomed to the basics, user can hit the “+” button to access advanced predictive and spatial-analysis capabilities.

The Alteryx Analytics 10.0 release features a simplified interface aimed at speeding adoption by trial customers.

A second big push with Alteryx Analytics 10.0 is extending high-scale data-analysis capabilities. Alteryx introduced in-database processing capabilities in the 9.5 release whereby users could push high-scale data-blending or data-analysis jobs down into Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database. The 10.0 release extends this in-database processing to Amazon Redshift, Cloudera Impala, Apache Spark and Teradata.

The idea with in-database approaches is to push the processing to the center of data gravity. The obvious advantage is avoiding data movement, taking advantage of the processing power of a big, honking database and avoiding investments in yet more infrastructure.

MyPOV on the Alteryx Self-Service Approach

The standing criticism of all self-service-oriented products has always been the danger of misinterpretation and misuse of “ungoverned” data. I’ve always thought this issue, which is always raised by incumbent vendors with IT-centric systems, is a bit overblown, but it is worth thinking through. An Alteryx exec made the point that IT is completely in control of corporate data sources, and data-analyst types (who are the users of Alteryx Designer) aren’t likely to be granted access unless they’re knowledgeable about the source in question.

It may be that analysts in this or that department may know their stuff. But the more data you’re likely to blend and the more important the predictions and analyses, the more you’d want and need consistent data models and data definitions. So in my view, with great freedom to explore, blend and analyze comes great responsibility to make sure that data is interpreted and analyzed in consistent ways across departments and locations.

A second issue to keep in mind with Alteryx is its close relationship with both Tableau Software and Qlik. That tie has kept Alteryx out of the basics of data-visualization and reporting (although 10.0 does bolster interactive visualization in support of validating predictive models). At the same time, recent Qlik and Tableau releases have introduced very basic built-in predictive capabilities — though they pale in comparison to what Alteryx offers.

My point is that many customers might want to have a comprehensive data discovery, analysis, visualization, reporting and advanced analytics environment from a single vendor. That’s what SAS is going after with its built-from-scratch, Web-based SAS Visual Analytics/Visual Statistics product. Others pursuing this combination include IBM with IBM Watson Analytics and SAP with Lumira and SAP Predictive Analytics.

Long term, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a Qlik or Tableau acquire Alteryx. On the other hand, all three vendors have done quite well by keeping things simple, focused and distinct from the consolidated legacy suites that have mashed together multiple BI and analytics products and ended up being expensive, complex and anything but consistently integrated.

Alteryx is certainly thriving in its current form, with clear, competitive pricing and focused products and options aimed at specific uses and users. Alteryx can’t take credit for starting the self-service movement, but it has been a leader in bringing it to data prep and advanced analytics.

Salesforce Announces Salesforce App Cloud - A Unified Platform for Building Connected Apps

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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This morning we heard from Salesforce announcing the Salesforce App Cloud, bringing together former efforts on force.com, Saleforce1, Heroku etc. Surprising timing, but then this is the vendor with a former CMO as CEO – so I am sure they know what they are doing on the messaging side – but still wonder what is left for Dreamforce – next week.

 

So let’s dissect the press release (it can be found here) in our customary style:

 

SAN FRANCISCO—September 10, 2015—Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world’s #1 CRM company, today announced Salesforce App Cloud, the next evolution of the Salesforce1 Platform. App Cloud integrates the platform services Salesforce is known for—including Force, Heroku Enterprise and Lightning—with new shared identity, data and network services to empower CIOs to deliver connected apps for any business need. In addition, App Cloud’s platform services include Trailhead, a new interactive learning environment for all Salesforce app creators, and the AppExchange, the largest enterprise app marketplace in the world. Delivering all of these services on Salesforce’s trusted cloud infrastructure, App Cloud empowers CIOs with everything they need to build apps fast in any language they want, for any device, and manage them in a single enterprise cloud environment.

MyPOV – Good to see Salesforce bringing together the branding for all its development platforms, which ends the source of substantial confusion in the ecosystem and as well as on the messaging side. And good to see it is not only messaging but also substantial work and heavy lifting that has taken place to make this happen – on both an identity, data and networking level. And any evangelist will be happy to the see knowledge distribution platform – a key tool for developer success – mentioned in the first paragraph (Trailhead). 

In this burgeoning app economy, CIOs face enormous demand from their businesses to deliver apps that connect with customers, employees and even products, across every device. The lines between apps for consumer engagement, connected devices, and enterprise management are blurring. Now an app can connect drivers, cars and passengers, all in a single connected experience. Yet, CIOs are contending with siloed development platforms that are not able to produce apps that span different technical architectures and address multiple use cases. And, companies have increasing requirements around compliance and governance for their entire portfolio of apps.

MyPOV – Salesforce is right that for a long time we have seen dedicated development tools and platforms for specific product problems. Mobile vs social vs real time vs parallel etc. The vendor is not totally innocent here, starting with the former Salesforce1 for mobile, which lead to a number of misunderstandings. [Update September 11 - Salesforce AR correctly points out that Salesforce1 for mobile is still around.] And Salesforce is right that enterprises want (and need) holistic development tools, as the new applications they build need to work for their enterprise in a holistic way and fashion. […]

Salesforce App Cloud—the Unified Platform for Delivering Connected Apps Fast

Salesforce pioneered the enterprise Platform as a Service market when it launched the Force platform in 2008. And today, Salesforce is the leading enterprise PaaS. The new App Cloud extends that leadership. CIOs are now empowered to build, scale and deploy mobile, web and wearable apps in a unified environment with new platform services including:

? Heroku Enterprise—Private Spaces, Regions and Identity: Heroku Enterprise offers everything that developers love, with new capabilities that give CIOs the control they need. Now, Heroku Enterprise enables developers to create connected apps using network, data and identity services shared across the App Cloud. With Private Spaces, businesses can run apps in a dedicated Heroku private space with direct access to Salesforce's trusted infrastructure and to customers’ on­premise data from legacy systems. With Regions, companies can choose to run their apps in metro areas throughout the world­­including Dublin, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Northern Virginia and Oregon­­based on accessibility, compliance or other requirements. In addition, with Identity, Heroku Enterprise is connected to Force with bi­directional data sync, single sign­on and robust role­based access controls.

MyPOV – Good to see Salesforce moving Heroku closer to the overall platform. As much as Heroku was and is its standalone platform, the value for Salesforce customer was and is to connect Heroku projects with their existing Force.com based products and projects. Making it easier for customers is always a good move and will be highly welcome. Security innovations like Private Spaces is something enterprise want and have been waiting for since a long time. With the support of Salesforce Identity single sign-on and role based access control is provided for Heroku, equally important for customers.

What Salesforce has effectively done, is rolling out Heroku more on the AWS infrastructure (the list of locations above is pretty much AWS data center locations) and connect those securely between the AWS and Salesforce data centers, effectively creating a cross cloud platform PaaS, most likely an industry first.

? Salesforce Lightning—The Future of Modern Apps: Salesforce Lightning is a new metadata­driven platform service that is highly customizable, enabling anyone to build modern, connected app experiences that empower people to work faster, smarter and the way they want. Now anyone can create engaging user experiences by simply dragging and dropping components—pre­built, reusable building blocks, such as maps, calendars, buttons, and number entry forms. And, with Salesforce Lightning Design System, every developer has a how­to guide and code for building beautiful apps.

MyPOV – When building next gen Applications developers and increasingly business users look for easy and fast ways to build applications. Lightning, announced a year ago at Dreamforce 2014 is Salesforce’s tool for this and it is good to see it as part of the fold of the announcement.

? Trailhead—Interactive Learning for All Salesforce App Creators: App Cloud includes Trailhead, a new interactive learning environment. Incorporating gamification, Trailhead guides all Salesforce app creators—from developers and business admins to end­users, marketers and data analysts—through the basic building blocks of App Cloud’s services. Trailhead allows them to test their knowledge while earning points and badges to celebrate their achievements. Content in Trailhead is organized in trails to give users everything they need to know about developing apps with the App Cloud, and is available free of charge. To date, more than 35,000 app creators have participated in Trailhead training, and have earned more than 120,000 badges during its beta release.

MyPOV – Important to see the knowledge distribution tool as part of a platform announcement, as users should get productive fast. Salesforce has done a good job with Trailhead, gamification being a highlight that works across developer generations. More importantly is the content and it is key for Salesforce to provide it timely and in high quality as it has done in the past – also going forward (see below).

With services for rapid app development, modern user experiences, integration, mobile app dev, identity management, compliance, governance and more, App Cloud is the most comprehensive and agile platform available to CIOs to deliver their app portfolio. App Cloud also includes an ecosystem of 2.3 million developers, who have built 5.5 million apps, and the AppExchange, the world’s largest enterprise app marketplace, which features more than 2,700 ISV apps and 40 Lightning Components. All of this runs on the industry’s most trusted enterprise infrastructure that delivers approximately 3.7 billion transactions every business day.

MyPOV – Interesting to see Salesforce sharing adoption numbers – and 2.3M developers, 5.5M apps, and 2.7k ISVs are very impressive numbers and so is the 3.7B daily transactions. Over the last 15 years Salesforce has built up a veritable ecosystem of developers and ISVs, but the market remains competitive, more below.

Comments on the news:

? “CIOs need a way to develop apps for the connected world,” said Tod Nielsen, executive vice president of App Cloud, Salesforce. “App Cloud brings together all of Salesforce’s leading platform services, empowering IT leaders with an integrated, trusted platform to quickly build connected apps for every business need.”

? “We’ve built more than 200 apps on Salesforce, and most of them were built by ‘citizen developers,’” said Herry Stallings, AVP of Applications Development, USAA. “Salesforce gives us all the cloud services we need to achieve incredible speed and scale in our app development, allowing us to keep innovating and grow our business.” […]

MyPOV – Always good to see customer quotes using the products, looks like USAA has built a lot on the Salesforce platforms. And it is good to see Salesforce acknowledge the need to connect the ‘two worlds’ of Force.com based products and solutions with applications built on Heroku.

Pricing and Availability

? Heroku Private Spaces, Regions, and Identity are scheduled to be available in early 2016. Pricing for the new services will be announced at the time of general availability.

? Lightning Experience will be available in all Salesforce languages, except Arabic and Hebrew.

? Lightning App Builder and Components for Lightning Experience on the desktop are expected to be in pilot in October 2015 and expected to be generally available in Q1 2016. Access to both is included in all CRM and Force admin licenses.

? Salesforce Lighting App Builder and Components for mobile apps are generally available with the current release of Salesforce and are included in all CRM and Force admin licenses

? Salesforce Lightning Design System is currently available for free and can be accessed at http://salesforce.com/designsystem

? Trailhead is expected to be generally available in October 2015

? All other App Cloud services are available today and offer per user and consumption­based pricing

MyPOV – Kudos to Salesforce for transparency on availability and pricing of product, a good practice the vendors has been showing since a while and a good example for the industry. Customers and ecosystems appreciate the clarity.
 

Overall MyPOV

It is good to see Salesforce creating value for customers, making it easier for customers (both end users and ISVs) to build applications that span the two prominent Salesforce platforms, the Force.com based world and the Heroku world. Single Sign-On, Identity, network security are all key capabilities CxOs will value when deciding on platforms to build next generation applications. Adding declarative capabilities with Lightning is key step for more productivity to build applications more efficiently. And coming out with Trailhead in a timely fashion is key for adoption.

But the most remarkable part of the Salesfroce App Cloud announcement is that Salesforce is effectively announcing a cross cloud platform PaaS. The vendor is usually coy at admitting that Heroku runs on top of Amazon AWS, and the rest of Salesforce runs in Salesforce data centers. Now customers and partners can more easily build applications across both platforms, effectively creating the first multi-cloud PaaS. While other PaaS products allow deployment of finished applications across other clouds, an important capability, the Salesforce App Cloud brings two platforms together. And it gives customers – given that they build on the Heroku side of the offering, a wide variety of physical deployment options that matter today both from a data sovereignty and performance perspective. And adding the private spaces capability to Heroku will help dissolve some cloud fears and concerns at worried customers, a good move. 

On the concern side this is Salesforce bundling together many of its announcements and deliveries of the past, integrating them and bringing them together is good news, but you can wonder what took Salesforce so long? Why take the (confusing) detour via Salesforce1 – App Cloud could have been announced in 2014, maybe even 2012. And while I am certain that the engineers work hard at Salesforce, I can’t follow the product strategy and marketing messaging. Remember, Heroku was once mentioned as the replacement for Force.com based applications at a Dreamforce (2010?)? The open source future of Salesforce. Water under the bridge, but it really comes back to understand the balance between responsibility towards the installed base on the one side and innovation on the other side. Not being able to deploy Salesforce App Cloud solution beyond AWS is a downside compared with e.g. popular enterprise like Pivotal CloudFoundry or IBM Bluemix, but what hasn’t happened can still be. Nothing hinders Salesforce to bring Heroku to e.g. Azure, GCP, IBM SoftLayer etc.

For now a good step in the right direction, a multi-cloud PaaS innovation, making it easier for customers and partners to build next generation applications an now unified platform – the Salesforce App Cloud – both from a messaging and architecture perspective. We will check it out more at Dreamforce next week, you can bet on that, stay tuned.
 

Digital and the Future of Marketing

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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There have been some massive improvements in the world of technology – with automated content and engagement platforms seeming to do amazing work. Just look at the journalism robots created by Associated Press that now publish around 3000 stories every quarter. This is journalism content “without a human byline”. It is a cocktail of 1 part excitement, 1 part absolute dread. After all, what happens when those “journo bots” turn their attention to marketing?

It’s time for us to grapple with the future of marketing

I recently spoke at the Marketo MarketingNation roadshow – and discussed our marketing-technology future. I will leave you to watch the video in your own good time, but I will also raise a couple of points:

• Data is not your only answer – you need to work with the PANDA principles to deliver broad and deep value as a marketer
• You need to create not inherit the future – what is the future you’d like to see? If you have a vision for a creative and vibrant marketing career, it’s time for you to step forward and voice those ideas
• Time to skill up – if you don’t have any tech skills, it’s time to work on that. As we rush towards an increasingly connected customer experience model, technology will feature more and more. It’s essential you at least have the foundations (this is covered in the presentation)
• Get some digital muscle on your Board – the same principles apply to Boards. Without the digital expertise available at a strategic level, you’re business longevity will decline. It’s time to bring diversity and divergent thinking onto your Board.

On criticism of Frank Gehry

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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A letter to the editor, Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 2011.

The ABC screened a nice documentary last night about Frank Gehry's UTS Business School building. The only thing spoiling the show was Sydney's rusted-on architecture critic Elizabeth Farrelly having another self conscious whinge. And I remembered that I wrote a letter to the Herald after she had a go at Gehry in 2011 after the design was unveiled. Where would sad little damp squib critics be without the 'starchitects' they love to hate?

Letter as published

Ironically, Elizabeth Farrelly's diatribe against Frank Gehry and his UTS design is really all about her. She spends 12 flabby paragraphs defending criticism (please! Aren't Australians OK by now with the idea of critics?) and bravely mocking Gehry as "starchitect".

Eventually Farrelly lets go her best shots: mild rhetorical questions about the proposal's still unseen interior, daft literalism about buildings being unable to move, and a "quibble" about harmony. I guess she likewise dismisses Gaudi and his famous fluid masonry.

Farrelly's contempt for the university's ''boot licking'' engagement with this celebrated architect is simply myopic. The thing about geniuses like Gehry and Utzon is that brave clients can trust that the results will prevail.

Embeddable Functions Are (Finally) Coming to Customer Service

In December of 2014 something weird began to happen: we were introduced (or rather, re-introduced since the concept has been around for some time) to embeddable apps and uses.

Zendesk announced their embeddable API as a way to bring specific components from the application (like tickets and channel management) via  widget into other applications.

At the same time, Actuate introduced a platform for embeddable analytics, providing a similar approach – you can bring analytics and visualization in real-time into any other app or application via their API and widgets.

There were others, still under development, that are going in the same direction and I cannot disclose – yet.

Mind you, embedded value inserted in other apps or applications is not new.  It has been at least 15 years since we started promoting the value of in-app knowledge bases for field service and remote workers (can you imagine an airline technician trying to fix and engine that has to go back to a desktop computer to look at pictures and instructions? used to be that way).

But this is different.  This is not about just one function (highly customized and heavily bloated to be honest – that is what we used to have) being created specifically to be used independently.  This time we are talking about leveraging the power of the cloud – not just technology.

You likely heard me before talk about the ability of cloud-based platforms (middle layer in a proper three-tier open cloud architecture) to deliver value anywhere.  Leveraging the services made available by the platform the SaaS layer (the interface, also the software layer proper) can deliver anything that is entitled to access.

This is what is making apps and applications far more flexible (and way smaller) than ever.  If i can just bring the small functionality i need to complete my job into my screen easy and effortless then I (the individual user) can build apps that fit my need for that specific model (not to mention IT can do whatever they want as well).  This takes the burden of developing away from IT and away from complex sessions of requirements and so forth and gives the citizen programmer access to more power and flexibility.

It seems that December of 2014 was not that long ago – yet we are starting to see the second generation of embedded technology emerge already.  Indeed, the newer vendors (more cloud savvy, more flexible and dynamic, smaller and more nimble) are starting to offer what they call in-app functionality.

Whether its HelpShift (one of the early vendors to offer in-app support for gaming platforms), or SparkCentral (who just released their in-app messaging for customer service last week – and what prompted me to write this) we are seeing far smaller, more powerful, and easier to use in-app functionality that allows any user (still today being used via IT – but the product can easily allow any user to embed the functionality in their own-grown apps) to use what they need where they need.

The next step is to take IT out of the equation (sorry, like you guys – but you have too much going on to deliver apps quickly and effectively… need to let the citizen programmer take over) and where we are seeing Salesforce start down that road with the Lighting set of tools they announced last year at Dreamforce and greatly expanded two weeks ago with the introduction of The Lighting Experience (or whatever marketing deemed it to be – I am sorry, I am not that good at slogans).

There is an immense amount of value in creating small (atomized, applications as I used to call them 10 years ago — simply apps as they are called today) apps that perform very specific functionality.  In addition to delivering on the true value of cloud computing (yeah, who needs a browser? we just leverage the internet as a transport network and be done with it!) it also empowers the user to be more mobile, connected, and effective.

I expect to see the next generation of in-app empowered apps and applications begin to hit contact centers in the next few months and better adoption over the next 18-24 months until we reach mainstream adoption sometime in the 2017-2018 timeframe.  Although I always say my timeframes are short (and optimistic) and you should always add something to them – i am starting to get the feeling that this time is different… this time, I think i am long.

What do you think?

Planning to use in-app functionality in your apps and applications? Have already something under way? let me know below in the comments… would love to know more about what’s happening.

disclaimer: where to start? let’s see… Salesforce is a client (and, btw, I am presenting the latest and greatest Evolution of Customer Service at Dreamforce next week – come see me!).  SparkCentral was a client (inactive now) and likely going to be a client again – yeah, they like me that much.  HelpShift was a client and I sit on their board of advisors and I hold equity (should go without saying, but — i am nothing if not honest).  Moxie was a client (inactive now, but likely going back to active).  Actuate (acquired by OpenText) was a client (inactive right now, but we are working on something soon) and a good friend of mine Allen Bonde is there.  Zendesk is not a client per-se, but I have some involvement with them in Latin America via one of the many commercials endeavors I have in Latin America (read it with an accent, sounds much better).  There are many more clients (both active and inactive) and I pretty certain that I could’ve used (and missed) others that are doing things around this area.  I am not using vendor names as a way of endorsement but as examples. If I missed you, feel free to drop the info in the comments – only time I won’t delete your spammy comment :).  Otherwise, as you likely know, I am all about trends and not about endorsing vendors or technologies.  I am highlighting a trend and not promoting a vendor.  If any of the vendors mentioned here expected or would like preferential treatment because of their mention — ha! yeah, right… reputation above compensation, my friends.

How Productivity Drives Customer Engagement

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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Wondering how to get the ROI out of your CRM software? There’s many things that will affect it. One is productivity and it’s affect on customer engagement. According to the Journal of Experimental Psychology,1 every time a user switches programs or applications, there is a 40 percent reduction in productivity. (1) What brands need is a design principle that allows organizations to manage their customer-facing activities in a single experience, with no need to export or switch, drastically reducing the time to completion and saving time by automating fundamental tasks.

How to Solve The Issues Related to Productivity and Customer Engagement: One way to solve these issues is with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, which is their latest customer engagement solution. It has announced a comprehensive upgrade which includes:

• Advancements in intelligence
• Mobility and
• Service, with significant productivity enhancements to help businesses and workers achieve more.

The new enhancements are designed to increase productivity for organizations by providing a simple and seamless experience across their Dynamics CRM application and their employee productivity applications like email, Excel, OneDrive for Business for easier task management, an enhanced mobile experience for the worker on the go, and enriched data and analytics, all of which will be available later this calendar year.

How Does Productivity Affect Customer Engagement? Through an enhanced Excel experience within Dynamics CRM, complete with new Excel templates for various tasks, functions and scenarios, users can now efficiently toggle between functions as opposed to time-consuming and complex exporting, enabling them to augment their customer processes with simple, familiar analysis within their CRM experience.

Organizations will also have access to their documents within Dynamics CRM via integration with OneDrive for Business and new document generation capabilities. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 release also introduces Delve functionality into the application. Powered by Office Graph, Delve helps users increase productivity by surfacing key content — enabling salespeople to discover information that may help them with their opportunity or account, such as popular sales presentations and proposals.

What Needs to Be Done with Date to Turn It Into Actionable Insights? Turning data into intelligent action is a cornerstone of business transformation and productivity, and the new Dynamics CRM release includes data management and advanced analytics capabilities powered by Cortana Analytics Suite. This includes Azure Machine Learning that can enable business insights so that sales reps are able to predict their customers’ needs.

How Mobility Affects the Customer Experience Mobility is core to productivity, and the next version of Dynamics CRM will provide full offline capabilities for sales and service professionals on phones and tablets and across all major mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows). The release also introduces the ability to create task-centered mobile apps to streamline the completion of sales-related activities on the go and next-generation Cortana integration to surface core deals, accounts and activities within the personal assistant.

My POV: While we don’t always remember to connect the dots between what employees are doing and how that affects the customer experience, it’s probably one of the most important things to consider. Happy employees make happy customers. Grumpy employees turn customers off and increase attrition. And attrition is expensive in an age where products are commoditized and prices are leveled. The differeiantor? Customer Experience. Something we’ve been talking about for over 20 years. Guess I will just keep talking about it till the whole world “gets” it.

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

(1)  Rubinstein, Joshua S.; Meyer, David E.; Evans, Jeffrey E. (2001). “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,” 27(4), 763–797

(2) http://news.microsoft.com/2015/09/08/microsoft-reinvents-productivity-with-upcoming-release-of-customer-engagement-solution/

IoT – don’t focus on the hype, keep the use cases in mind.

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Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

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An interesting article came out end of August that looked at some “gadgets” that should have just stayed dumb. A good read that highlights some everyday items that probably should have stayed out of the IoT spot light. Click here for the article.

But are we missing the bigger picture with IoT? I agree with Christopher Mims from the Wall Street Journal about the over smartening of banal items – plates, pans, drinking cup to name a few. Click here for the piece. Not every object in our every day lives need to be connected. However, as prices come down, use cases for some of these gadgets might become more appealing. Let’s look at some that @internetofshit called out:

• The connected bottle of wine – yes tracking my $5 bottle of wine is a little silly. But think about the importance of track and trace for items such as your cough syrup or baby formula. Ensuring they have not been tampered with or counterfeited. How about monitoring perishables such dairy. From a distributor stand point, being able to track and trace a bottle of Coke or Pepsi could have long reaching impacts on the supply chain, being much more precise with regards to stocking and inventory management. Read a recent case study I wrote about how Free Flow Wines tracks their time/temp sensitive inventory. 
• Smart water fountain for pets – do you really need to monitor your pets’ water intake? Probably not. But having access to controlling the dispensing of water and food? There are already plenty of products on the market that have timers to dispense these items. Why not make that smarter? The pet business is a $55b + annual market in the United States alone, with over 3% growth annually. Providing customers with a smart pet food/water dispenser where the pets’ intake could offer an alternative for those who are not always home but still want to ensure their loved pets get the necessary food and water. Consumers spend money on their pets, as if they were their children. In many ways they are. That $55b market doesn’t seem too silly, that seems like real money.
• Connected socks – Wow, $199 socks…yikes. Even someone like me who loves their socks (just check my instagram page – @gcourtin – for my sock selection) that is a high price tag. But let’s imagine that price tag comes down. At $20 – $50 consumers might start purchasing these items. Why? Companies like Adidas are already putting connected devices in their soccer boots to provide players and coaches with a large amount of data to craft better training regimes. Think it is silly? Click here to read a great piece on how the German national soccer team used this to win the World Cup. Runners, soccer players, basketball players, football teams and the list goes on, of athletes that could gravitate to this type of performance data. Granted this might already become available via the shoes, but if the socks are less expensive they might get to that market first.
• Smart jars and water bottles – These could fall under the connected kitchen/home category. Do I need to know exactly how much water I drink a day? Or exactly what the nutrition content of the items in my jars? It might sound like a little overkill. What about a use case of tying in your water intake with your Fitbit or Apple Watch or smart phone? Does anyone not believe that personal health tracking devices are not firmly entrenched? Extending this into our consumption does not seem like a big stretch. The smart jar might one day be connected to a larger food supply chain. Large CPG companies such as P&G and Unilever are always interested in getting better data on the actual usage of their products. Even players such as Amazon and Google might want to find a way to have customers use these smart containers so they can better replenish items at the home.

I agree that sometimes these devices appear to be technology looking for a problem to solve. But with some aspects of IoT it might be just that at some level. We are still in the early stages of IoT. And with that there remains many skeptics, issues that still need resolution (privacy and security being two of them) and at times too many things being made “smart” for the sake of it. What we need to focus on is not the devices and gadgets that are being connected, rather the use cases that these connected devices might open up.

Now where are my connected socks?

10 Ways Big Data Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management

Bottom line: Big data is providing supplier networks with greater data accuracy, clarity, and insights, leading to more contextual intelligence shared across supply chains.

Forward-thinking manufacturers are orchestrating 80% or more of their supplier network activity outside their four walls, using big data and cloud-based technologies to get beyond the constraints of legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems. For manufacturers whose business models are based on rapid product lifecycles and speed, legacy ERP systems are a bottleneck.  Designed for delivering order, shipment and transactional data, these systems aren’t capable of scaling to meet the challenges supply chains face today.

Choosing to compete on accuracy, speed and quality forces supplier networks to get to a level of contextual intelligence not possible with legacy ERP and SCM systems. While many companies today haven’t yet adopted big data into their supply chain operations, these ten factors taken together will be the catalyst that get many moving on their journey.

The ten ways big data is revolutionizing supply chain management include:

• The scale, scope and depth of data supply chains are generating today is accelerating, providing ample data sets to drive contextual intelligence. The following graphic provides an overview of 52 different sources of big data that are generated in supply chains Plotting the data sources by variety, volume and velocity by the relative level of structured/unstructured data, it’s clear that the majority of supply chain data is generated outside an enterprise. Forward-thinking manufacturers are looking at big data as a catalyst for greater collaboration. Source: Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain Management: Trends and Related Research. Presented at 6th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Bali, 2014

• Enabling more complex supplier networks that focus on knowledge sharing and collaboration as the value-add over just completing transactions.  Big data is revolutionizing how supplier networks form, grow, proliferate into new markets and mature over time. Transactions aren’t the only goal, creating knowledge-sharing networks is, based on the insights gained from big data analytics. The following graphic from Business Ecosystems Come Of Age (Deloitte University Press) (free, no opt-in) illustrates the progression of supply chains from networks or webs, where knowledge sharing becomes a priority.

• Big data and advanced analytics are being integrated into optimization tools, demand forecasting, integrated business planning and supplier collaboration & risk analytics at a quickening pace. These are the top four supply chain capabilities that Delotte found are currently in use form their recent study, Supply Chain Talent of the Future Findings from the 3^rd Annual Supply Chain Survey (free, no opt-in). Control tower analytics and visualization are also on the roadmaps of supply chain teams currently running big data pilots.

• 64% of supply chain executives consider big data analytics a disruptive and important technology, setting the foundation for long-term change management in their organizations.  SCM World’s latest Chief Supply Chain Officer Report provides a prioritization of the most disruptive technologies for supply chains as defined by the organizations’ members.  The following graphic from the report provides insights into how senior supply chain executives are prioritizing big data analytics over other technologies.

• Using geoanalytics based on big data to merge and optimize delivery networks.  The Boston Consulting Group provides insights into how big data is being put to use in supply chain management in the article Making Big Data Work: Supply Chain Management (free, opt-in). One of the examples provided is how the merger of two delivery networks was orchestrated and optimized using geoanalytics. The following graphic is from the article. Combining geoanalytics and big data sets could drastically reduce cable TV tech wait times and driving up service accuracy, fixing one of the most well-known service challenges of companies in that business.

• Big data is having an impact on organizations’ reaction time to supply chain issues (41%), increased supply chain efficiency of 10% or greater (36%), and greater integration across the supply chain (36%). The Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain: Hype or Here to Stay? Accenture Global Operations Megatrends Study found that companies are achieving significant results using big data analytics to improve supply chain performance and gain greater contextual intelligence.

• Embedding big data analytics in operations leads to a 4.25x improvement in order-to-cycle delivery times, and a 2.6x improvement in supply chain efficiency of 10% or greater. Accenture found that embedding big data into supply chain operations accelerates supply chain processes a minimum of 1.3x over using big data on an ad hoc basis. Source:   Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain: Hype or Here to Stay? Accenture Global Operations Megatrends Study

• Greater contextual intelligence of how supply chain tactics, strategies and operations are influencing financial objectives.  Supply chain visibility often refers to being able to see multiple supplier layers deep into a supply network.  It’s been my experience that being able to track financial outcomes of supply chain decisions back to financial objectives is attainable, and with big data app integration to financial systems, very effective in industries with rapid inventory turns. Source: Turn Big Data Into Big Visibility.

• Traceability and recalls are by nature data-intensive, making big data’s contribution potentially significant. Big data has the potential to provide improved traceability performance and reduce the thousands of hours lost just trying to access, integrate and manage product databases that provide data on where products are in the field needing to be recalled or retrofitted.
• Increasing supplier quality from supplier audit to inbound inspection and final assembly with big data. IBM has developed a quality early-warning system that detects and then defines a prioritization framework that isolates quality problem faster than more traditional methods, including Statistical Process Control (SPC). The early-warning system is deployed upstream of suppliers and extends out to products in the field.