The secret lesson for corporates from the world of startups

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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• Unnecessary competitive disruption – smaller businesses can easily capture mindshare, momentum and a raft of unhappy customers simply because companies don’t have the agility to address emergent threats.
• Higher levels of customer dissatisfaction – if customer experience projects are subject to this same lack of responsiveness, then customer satisfaction is more likely to quickly result in customer churn and lower NPS.
• Market irrelevance – today’s customer is hungry for differentiated experience. Slow response to market challenges simply means that your market moves elsewhere. And they do so “at the speed of digital”.

But all is not lost. There are four key lessons that corporates can learn from the world of startups. And they can all be easily implemented, trialled and scaled with a minimal investment. I explain more here.

Jive Circle: Useful Employee Directory App That’s A Secure Way To Quickly Search, Discover And Connect With Colleagues

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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Jive Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: JIVE), announced a new mobile application with the release of Jive Circle.  Jive Circle is a secure app for employees to quickly search and discover other employees in their organization. Jive Circle seamlessly integrates with the Jive Chime real-time messaging app, which provides employees a fast way to connect with colleagues.

I generally don’t write about the future of work or employee-facing applications. However, I see the importance of them. Why are they so important? I cover the customer-facing applications. And how an employee treats a customer is directly related to how they feel about the company they work for, the tools they have to work with and how easy it is to get their work done. If the employee experience is bad, it’s difficult to expect the customer experience to be good.

With the world increasingly mobile and with workforces are more dispersed than ever, people are looking for new ways to instantly reach colleagues. Jive Circle, is driving innovation in the way employees connect. And when employees connect, customers get the help they need, and the customer experience is better. It’s really that simple.

What is Jive Circle? It’s a:

• A dynamic employee directory for quick search, discovery and connection with teammates. Employees can quickly search a visual organization chart and identify subject matter experts across the organization. A simplified browse feature allows employees to easily filter and find information about their colleagues. Once a colleague is identified, a press and hold feature prompts connection icons for immediate contact via click-to-call, email or Jive Chime. Soon, Jive Circle will also feature a new calendar sync function that gives insight into who within the organization is joining meetings.
• Enhanced security with the ability to add, edit and deactivate users. An ISO 27001 certified company with more than fourteen years of experience in the communications software space, Jive developed Circle with industry security best practices such as third-party testing and leverages the security of the Amazon Web Service environment. Additionally, IT administrators can easily import employee information to create accounts and build out their organization for the app, plus Jive Circle is built as SaaS, cloud-based software, which does not require any IT maintenance or installation.

If you are really curious, go see more at www.jivesoftware.com/circle. You can subscribe to updates regarding the Jive Circle early access program. It is available across iOS and Android devices.

How are your employees connecting to make better customer experiences?

@DrNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Articulate Your Business Case or Lose Customers To Competitors

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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We Are Out of The Hype Cycle: Digital and Social Applications Must Solve Business Issues: I know when I first started to learn about social media and digital applications, I could see how they could change business. It made sense to me. I think because I am an early adopter. I’m referring to Geoffrey Moore’s technology adoption curve. There’s the innovators, who create all this cool new software. And then there’s early adopters like me, that look at those innovator’s inventions and realize the impact they can make.

Having been in this business for a long time, one of the things that I realized was that not everyone can see the value of social and digital. It’s not an intuitive thing for them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just is what it is. And that’s why businesses (vendors) who are in the business of selling products and services really need to take a look at their product management and product sales teams. Are they organized to sell to those that “already” get the value? That’s like selling ice to Eskimos. The people who get it, already bought your product.

MY POV: Where the rubber is now meeting the road is learning how to articulate the business value that digital and social applications, products and services provide. I am lucky to hear a lot of briefings on new things. However, what I am finding is that some companies need to really look at where the marketplace is in adoption of the new technology and perhaps shift some of their marketing messaging, but even more important to look at who are the persona(s) that they are developing products and services for? Are they for the early adopters? It’s a small part of the marketplace. Or is is for the early / late majority? That’s a much larger part of the marketplace.

Early Majority Want Your Help to Say Yes: And that part of that part of the marketplace (early majority) requires something different to convince them that they need this “new” product. They want to know what business challenges does it solve? They want to be shown how someone else had a “burning issue” and this product or service solved it and what the outcomes were.

If your sales pitch is not lined up that way, you maybe missing the market on the largest part of the marketplace. Don’t take it from me; reread  Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm— it’s all about changing how you market and sell as the marketplace matures. Those who do, will find prosperity and those that don’t, won’t.

What Do You Need To Do Now? The key is to be able to articulate the business value. What is the business issue that your product or service solves? To know that, a business has to be really clear on who they are selling to. That means they need to define various personas and know what those personas face as daily challenges. They need to map out the-day-in-the-life of that professional. And they need to do this by going and talking to 10 or 20 or 100 of them. Don’t assume anything. Then align the challenges those professionals face with the solution you offer and can show an early majority person how your new “product or service” can solve their issue better than anyone else.

References, References, References: And having customer references is key, especially early majority customer references. Why? Because early majority folks convince other early majority people to take a chance at these new technology, processes and services. They believe each other more than they believe the vendor or even sometimes an analyst.

Watch Your Language: There’s lot’s of language issues in the current marketing of software and products / services. Almost everyone can claim to be influencing some aspect of customer experience. And by not articulating the business case of how that product or service clearly affects the bottom line, the buyer is confused and that slows the sales cycle down.

Understand Buying Signals: Your potential customers probably won’t say anything; they might say things like, “Hmmm looks interesting. Call me in a few months.” or “Send me a brochure.” NOTE TO SELF: Those are NOT buying signals. They are polite ways of saying, “I don’t have time for this; I don’t see how this applies to why my hair is on fire; I am not sure how I would apply this to what is happening in my department or company and I certainly have no idea how I am going to explain this in a business case to get my boss to say yes.”

Do The Work: Don’t make your customer do the hard work. Create those business use cases. Create scenarios that the early majority can see themselves in. Articulate, even if it’s a back of the envelope calculation, the return on their investment. If you do this, it will make all the difference in your sales cycles, in your revenue and profits and your market position. If you don’t, someone else will.

Time to take another look at where the marketplace is in the maturity of the digital disruption and stop all the fanatical “speak” and get down to business. At least that’s my take. What’s yours?

@Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Hootsuite and the Instagram Integration You’re Still Waiting For

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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Instagram has been wildly successful in building an alternative and deeply connected community of users. And I say “community” for a reason. Far more than the one-to-one-to-one connection that has made Facebook so popular and adoptable, Instagram’s connection architecture provides an easy way to connect people with similar interests and passions. And it does so whether that passion lasts only an instant or a year.

And while some brands have been able to build vibrant communities around their Instagram accounts, it’s often a hit and miss affair. It’s hard to keep track of the growth of a community base, almost impossible to gather key metrics, and even the simplest publishing functionality is notably missing.

Until now.

Hootsuite has announced that Instagram will now be integrated into their social media dashboard. This means that Hootsuite users will be able to:

• Schedule and publish Instagram content
• Monitor and engage with conversations on Instagram
• Create team based workflows.

With content marketing becoming an ever-more important component of marketing strategy, this new integration provides marketers with a simple and easy way to bring that content marketing strategy to life.

To get started:

• Ensure you have the latest version of Hootsuite installed on your smartphone
• Turn on Instagram notifications in the Hootsuite Settings
• Start publishing.

Now, for the bad news.

While you can schedule Instagram posts, you still need to manually post to Instagram from your device. The Hootsuite integration just notifies you at the appropriate time that the post is ready to go. So, unfortunately, those wanting to seriously engage with Instagram as a brand and marketing channel will need to struggle with the lack of API integration.

This means Instagram will remain a promising but ultimately immature channel for most serious brand marketing activities. At least for now.

Card Not Present fraud trends (sadly) back to normal

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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The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) releases card fraud statistics every six months for the preceding 12m period. For years, Lockstep has been monitoring these figures, plotting the trend data and analysing what the industry is and is not doing about it. A few weeks ago, statistics for calendar year 2014 came out.

As we reported last time, despite APCA's optimistic boosting of 3D Secure and education measures for many years, Card Not Present (CNP) online fraud was not falling as hoped. And what we see now in the latest numbers is the second biggest jump in CNP fraud ever! CY 2014 online card fraud losses were very nearly AU$300M, up 42% in 12 months.

Again, APCA steadfastly rationalises in its press release (PDF) that high losses simply reflect the popularity of online shopping. That's cold comfort to the card holders and merchants who are affected.

APCA has a love-ignore relationship with 3D Secure. This is one of the years when 3D Secure goes unmentioned. Instead the APCA presser talks up tokenization, I think for the first time. Yet the payments industry has had tokenization for about a decade. It's just another band-aid over the one fundamental crack in the payment card system: nothing stops stolen card numbers being replayed.

A proper fix to replay attack is easilt within reach, which would re-use the same cryptography that solves skimming and carding, and would restore a seamless payment experience for card holders. See my 2012 paper Calling for a Uniform Approach to Card Fraud Offline and On" (PDF).

Abstract

The credit card payments system is a paragon of standardisation. No other industry has such a strong history of driving and adopting uniform technologies, infrastructure and business processes. No matter where you keep a bank account, you can use a globally branded credit card to go shopping in almost every corner of the world. The universal Four Party settlement model, and a long-standing card standard that works the same with ATMs and merchant terminals everywhere underpin seamless convenience. So with this determination to facilitate trustworthy and supremely convenient spending in every corner of the earth, it's astonishing that the industry is still yet to standardise Internet payments. We settled on the EMV standard for in-store transactions, but online we use a wide range of confusing and largely ineffective security measures. As a result, Card Not Present (CNP) fraud is growing unchecked.

This article argues that all card payments should be properly secured using standardised hardware. In particular, CNP transactions should use the very same EMV chip and cryptography as do card present payments.

News Analysis: Infosys One-Year After Vishal Sikka

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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With heavy contributions from Sachin Gosavi, VP of South Asia

Infosys Makes Strides In Its Own Digital Transformation Journey

On June 12th, 2014, Infosys announced the August 1, 2014 appointment of Dr. Vishal Sikka to the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) role.  At the time, Constellation believed this appointment marked a significant industry development and gave Infosys an opportunity to embark on a much needed transformational journey.

Constellation’s analysis of Sikka and his executive team’s first year shows significant progress in not only the structural transformation, but also the market perception of Infosys.  By all accounts Vishal Sikka and his team have succeeded in:

• Revitalizing the sagging employee morale.  Employee morale had tanked to an all time low prior to Sikka’s arrival.  In fact, the annual numbers indicate a sizable drop in attrition rate (from Annualized Consolidated 26.4% in June 2014 to Annualized Consolidated 19.2% in June 2015).  .
  
  Point of View (POV): Turning around the sagging employee morale and readying them for a product and platform thinking is no doubt the highlight of the new CEO’s first year at Infosys.   Measures such as massive-scale design thinking training, internal crowd-sourcing of ideas through Murmuration, dress code relaxation and a shift in self-directed management style have already made an impact.  Improved performance has also mitigated most nay-sayers who now see a clearer direction for not only their own careers, but also the future of Infosys.  Constellation expects the organization to fully change the internal culture from a command and control structure to one where employees are empowered to make more impactful self directed decisions.

• Focusing on IP creation and platforms.  A renewed focus on software and platforms included the creation of Infosys Information Platform (IIP) and Infosys Automation Platform (IAP) to complement existing Edge products and platforms.  The arrival of Silicon Valley software expertise complements the brain trust in Bangalore and around the world.  On the inorganic front, the acquisitions of Panaya and Skava (*subject to statutory approvals) in quick succession showed vision in automating through software.
  
  (POV): Constellation believes that the focus on IP investment is much needed and also required to compete in the shift to digital.  The IIP platform is one of many more to come where software provides economies of scale over hours.  The other big area is how Infosys competes.  It now goes into the market more unafraid to reach for more strategic deals and also more of the technology budget.   Going forward, Constellation believes that creation of successful platform architectures, continued acquisition and integration of IP assets, and a customer focus on continuous innovation will help Vishal achieve the scale required to achieve the escape velocity required to stand out.  While Infosys still has a lot of work to transform itself into a true product & latforms player, Vishal and his team have solidly placed the required foundational blocks in place to change the narrative from time and materials shop to IP creators.

• Revitalizing the brand.  Often seen as a “has-been” success story, Infosys faced a crisis of client confidence with a series of high-profile departures prior to Sikka’s arrival.   The new Infosys has changed the tenor of client conversations with a focus on innovation, board room and CXO level issues, and the impact of technology on business.
  
  (POV): Vishal’s impact was immediate.  CEO’s of major Global 2000 companies who never met with past CEOs were eager to meet with Sikka about deals.  A series of successful Infosys Confluence customer events, high profile wins, and shift in customer engagement, have helped transform the brand perception.  While much has to be accomplished to compete for the time and attention of CXO’s, the current trajectory is promising for clients, employees, and shareholders.

The Bottom Line: Clients Have A Credible Option For A Technology Partner

For clients, the year has cleared the uncertainty emanated from multiple exits at the top prior to June 2014.  When organizations are in transition, they need strong leaders who can show what is possible and how one can get there.  Sikka's arrival brought hope that Infosys could make the transition into the digital age and move from has been to relevant player.

More importantly, steering a large, T&M-model IT Services shop on an IP and Product driven path while transforming culture and brand takes time.  Infosys is making the move from advisor to innovator (see Figure 1).  While the transition will take 18 to 24 months to complete, this transition reflects a 3 to 5 year journey.   While the outside world has seen the improvement in morale, the move to design thinking, the shift to innovation, and the push towards IP over services, what’s to come remains the long term structural changes required to build a future in a services company.

As with all big changes, it’s hard to tell what’s changing when you are in the midst of it.  Constellation beleives most Infosys employees will realize that they had gone through the biggest transformation the company has ever seen by the end of 2017

Existing clients and prospects should:

1.  Take advantage of the Design Thinking workshops Infosys is hosting and start the discussions around newer areas of engagement. “Start small and scale as per the success metrics” is the appropriate approach for them as of now.
2. Use this opportunity to find a partner to co-create and co-innovate with.
3. Determine opportunities to achieve scale in optimizing costs to fund innovation

Figure 1: Creators and Innovators Trump “Trusted Advisor” in Next-gen IT services

Your POV.

Have you changed your view of Infosys? Do you agree with our assessment?  Let us know your experiences.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR(dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Will Instagram’s Advertising Platform Hurt Its Popularity?

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Instagram announced this week that it will open up the advertising flood gates to businesses seeking access to its 300 million monthly users.

The illusive Instagram ad, which previously required personal contact with an Instagram sales person, lots of advance planning, and large budgets will soon be less, well, illusive. Using 3rd party advertising apps, marketers and adverting agents will soon be buying and managing advertising in the same manner they do on Facebook, Instagram’s sister network.  Further, they will be able to do so through a single interface instead of being forced to flip through different devices. It’s this cross-platform integration that makes this news all that much more interesting for marketers.

As reported by Business Insider, the Instagram Ads API is the latest in a series of moves the platform has made to start opening up the money jets. Back in June, alongside announcing the API test, Instagram announced that all of Facebook’s ad-targeting tools will be opened up to Instagram advertisers. In the same month it also launched “Shop Now” buttons and other messages for advertisers to link outside the app. And earlier this year Instagram introduced “carousel ads,” allowing marketers to fit more images into one single ad.

This is truly major news; Instagram’s users share over 70 million photos and videos each day. Further, the majority of users are 16 and 24 years old (41%), the mecca of target audiences for advertisers (35% of users are between the ages of 25 and 35).  The value of Instagram’s audience is undeniable, a fact that was not lost on Facebook, which purchased the social media network in the spring of 2012 in a deal valued at over a billion dollars.

Marketers Ruin Everything

Reaction has been swift; “marketers ruin everything” seems to be the most common sentiment among users and pundits. The new advertising rules on Facebook have been drawing similar criticisms, both for the increasing number of paid posts showing up in peoples’ news feeds and its inaccurate targeting.

Facebook has also been under attack for its “double-dipping” advertising policy when it comes to business pages. The social network asks businesses to increase follower counts by purchasing Facebook ads but then throttles the business’s posts so that less than 5% of the followers earned organically or through paid advertising actually see the business’s posts. You want to get your message to those followers you paid to acquire? No problem, give Facebook even more money and they’ll gladly oblige.

Few consumers will condemn a social network that is offered free of charge to users for attempting to make money through inline advertising, yet most will jump to criticise marketers for doing a poor job executing those campaigns or the networks for intrusive and irrelevant ad placement.  Consumers accept advertising as a necessary evil in their social engagements but are also quick to ignore campaigns and ads that become too intrusive. In fact, a study by Adobe and PageFair found that the number of people using blocking software, for example, rose 70 per cent last year in reaction to the increasing number of ads being shoveled at us online.

Will Instagram’s Advertising Platform Hurt Its Popularity?

Consumer opinions may not matter; analysts predict Instagram’s new advertising API to be a windfall for the social network.  EMarketer suggests that Instagram will earn almost $600 million from advertising in the next year.

To Instagram’s credit, they have found a way to make their ads less obtrusive than those found on other digital platforms including news sites, YouTube, and Facebook. There are no “page take over” ads (yet), no forced viewing of advertising video content (yet) as seen on Google, and no auto-play of videos from paid posts (yet) as seen on Facebook.  Yet.

Instagram’s “swipe to view” posts are effective ads in that the user does not see any additional content or calls to action (CTAs) until they choose to swipe left or right on an image.

The key for Instagram and marketers alike will be to ensure that their targeting algorithm and content mix is bang on. For example, my Instagram posts (and those of the people I tend to follow on that network) are predominately cigars, single malt whiskey, and Liverpool football club. If sporadic advertising within my Instagram stream introduced me to Cigar Aficionado’s latest article or Laphroigh’s latest whisky, I’d would most likely welcome the posts.

If, on the other hand, the network follows Facebook’s lead and presents advertisements for cheap rum or Middle East travel destinations (yes, that happened), Instagram and I may have a short term future.   Worse, if they co-mingle usage data among social networks and present ads on Instagram based on my usage pattern on Facebook or other networks, Instagram and I (and I suspect many others) will plan a “conscious uncoupling” with the social media giant.

I’m not optimistic.

Sensei Debates

What are your thoughts? Will the increased advertising soon to be seen on Instagram hurt its popularity?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Eg0

The post Will Instagram’s Advertising Platform Hurt Its Popularity? appeared first on Sensei Marketing.

SuperNova Award 2015 Deadline Extended

New deadline August 14, 2015

You now have a few more days to complete your SuperNova Award application! The new deadline to apply for the only awards to honor leaders in disruptive technology is August 14, 2015.

All finalists of the SuperNova Awards are awarded one complimentary ticket to Constellation's Connected Enterprise executive innovation summit.* The application takes only about five minutes to complete. Gather all the information about your disruptive technology project, and submit your application now!

Revised timeline

• August 7, 2015 August 14, 2015 last day for submissions.
• September 2, 2015 finalists announced and invited to Connected Enterprise.
• September 14, 2015 voting opens to the public
• October 2, 2015 polls close
• November 4, 2015 Winners announced, SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner at Connected Enterprise 
•  

We're searching for the rebels, catalysts, and innovators that are shaping the future of technology! If you led the implementation of a disruptive technology for your organization, we want to hear your story!

Complete the SuperNova Award application in 3 steps

*limit one per finalist. Transportation and lodging not included. 

Best Selling Author and Executive Coach Ram Charan Speaking at Constellation's Connected Enterprise

Constellation is pleased to announce world renowned business advisor and best selling author, Ram Charan, is speaking at Connected Enterprise. 

Ram Charan will teach you The Attacker's Advantage, skills needed to identify and disable disruptive forces. 

About Ram Charan

Ram Charan is advisor to the business world's elite.  He has spent the past 35 years serving as coach and advisor to executives such as Jack Welch, Jeffrey Immelt, and John C. Hodgeson. He is known for his pragmatic approach to solving the modern era's complex business problems. His solutions to business problems are praised as actionable and widely applicable.

Charan's work takes him around the globe and gives him an up-to-date, insider view of how economies and leading companies operate. Through keen observation and analysis, he forms powerful insights that help business leaders face their toughest challenges in the areas of growth, talent development, corporate governance, and profitability. His timely concrete advice is a powerful tool in navigating today’s uncertain business climate. Former Chairman of GE Jack Welch says Charan “has the rare ability to distill meaningful from meaningless and transfer it in a quiet, effective way without destroying confidences,” while Ivan Seidenberg, the former CEO of Verizon, calls Charan his “secret weapon.”

Charan is a best selling author of 15 books. Execution, which he coauthored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy in 2002, was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He also has written for publications including Harvard Business Review, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, Chief Executive and USA TODAY.

Charan holds MBA and doctorate degrees from Harvard Business School, where he graduated with high distinction and was a Baker Scholar. Charan served on the faculties of Harvard Business School and Northwestern University before pursuing consulting full time.

Session Information

November 5, 2015 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.

Insights From The Attackers Advantage And Lessons In Leadership
Ram Charan will teach attendees The Attacker’s Advantage, the ability to anticipate and deal with the biggest threats facing business
 

Is the Future of BlackBerry in Secure IoT? Notes from BlackBerry Security Summit 2015

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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On July 23, BlackBerry hosted its second annual Security Summit, once again in New York City. As with last year's event, this was a relatively intimate gathering of analysts and IT journalists, brought together for the lowdown on BlackBerry's security and privacy vision.

By his own account, CEO John Chen has met plenty of scepticism over his diverse and, some say, chaotic product and services portfolio. And yet it's beginning to make sense. There is a strong credible thread running through Chen's initiatives. It all has to do with the Internet of Things.

Disclosure: I traveled to the Blackberry Security Summit as a guest of Blackberry, which covered my transport and accommodation.

The Growth Continues

In 2014, John Chen opened the show with the announcement he was buying the German voice encryption firm Secusmart. That acquisition appears to have gone well for all concerned; they say nobody has left the new organisation in the 12 months since. News of BlackBerry's latest purchase - of crisis communications platform AtHoc - broke a few days before this year's Summit, and it was only the most recent addition to the family. In the past 12 months, BlackBerry has been busy spending $150M on inorganic growth, picking up:

• Secusmart - voice & message encryption (announced at the inaugural Security Summit 2014)
• Movirtu - innovative virtual SIM solutions for holding multiple cell phone numbers on one chip
• Watchdox - document security and rights management, for "data centric privacy", and
• Athoc (announced but not yet complete; see more details below).

Chen has also overseen an additional $100M expenditure in the same timeframe on organic security expansion (over and above baseline product development). Amongst other things BlackBerry has:

• Rekindled Certicom, a specialist cryptography outfit acquired back in 2009 for its unique IP in elliptic curve encryption, and spun out a a new managed PKI service.
• And it has created its own Enterprise Identity-as-a-Service (IDaas) solution. From what I saw at the Summit, BlackBerry is playing catch-up in cloud based IDAM but they do have an edge in mobility over the specialist identity vendors in what is now a crowded identity services marketplace.

The Growth Explained - Secure Mobile Communications

Executives from different business units and different technology horizontals all organised their presentations around a now comprehensive product and services matrix. It looks like this (before adding AtHoc assuming that deal closes):

And so the BlackBerry theme makes good sense: they're striving to lead in Secure Mobile Communications. In that context, for me, the highlights of the Security Summit were as follows.

The Internet of Things

BlackBerry's special play is in the Internet of Things. It's the consistent theme that runs through all their security investments, because as COO Marty Beard says, IoT involves a lot more than machine-to-machine communications. It's more about how to extract meaningful data from unbelievable numbers of devices, with security and privacy. That is, IoT for BlackBerry is really a security-as-a-service play.

Chief Security Officer David Kleidermacher repeatedly stressed the looming challenge of "how to patch and upgrade devices at scale".

MyPOV: Functional upgrades for smart devices will of course be part and parcel of IoT, but at the same time, we need to work much harder to significantly reduce the need for reactive security patches. I foresee an angry consumer revolt if things that never were computers start to behave and fail like computers. A radically higher standard of quality and reliability is required. Just look at the Jeep Uconnect debacle, where it appears Chrysler eventually thought better of foisting a patch on car owners and instead opted for a much more expensive vehicle recall. It was BlackBerry's commitment to ultra high reliability software that really caught my attention at the 2014 Security Summit, and it convinces me they grasp what's going to be required to make ubiquitous computing properly seamless.

Notably, COO Beard preferred to talk about economic value rather than the bazillions of devices we are all getting so jaded about. He said the IoT would bring about $4 trillion of required technology within a decade, and that the global economic impact could be $11 trillion.

BlackBerry's real time operating system QNX is in 50 million cars today.

AtHoc

AtHoc is a secure crisis communications service, with its roots in the first responder environment. It's used by three million U.S. government workers today, and the company is now pushing into healthcare.

Founder and CEO Guy Miasnik explained that emergency communications involves more than just outbound alerts to people dealing with disasters. Critical to crisis management is the secure inbound collection of info from remote users. AtHoc is also not just about data transmission (as important as that is) but it works also at the application layer, enabling sophisticated workflow management. This allows procedures for example to be defined for certain events, guiding sets of users and devices through expected responses, escalating issues if things don't get done as expected.

"CHACE"

We heard more about BlackBerry's collaboration with Oxford University on the Centre for High Assurance Computing Excellence, first announced in April at the RSA Conference. CHACE is concerned with a range of fundamental topics, including formal methods for verifying program correctness (an objective that resonates with BlackBerry's secure operating system division QNX) and new security certification methodologies, with technical approaches based on the Common Criteria of ISO 15408 but with more agile administration to reduce that standard's overhead and infamous rigidity.

CSO Kleidermacher announced that CHACE will work with the Diabetes Technology Society on a new healthcare security standards initiative.
The need for improved medical device security was brought home vividly by an enthralling live demonstration of hacking a hospital drug infusion pump. These vulnerabilities have been exposed before at hacker conferences but BlackBerry's demo was especially clear and informative, and crafted for a non-technical executive audience.

MyPOV: The message needs to be broadcast loud and clear: there are life-critical machines in widespread use, built on commercial computing platforms, without any careful thought for security. It's a shameful and intolerable situation.

Wither the handset?

There was an elephant in the room for most of the day, and that was handsets. Several hours passed before anyone from BlackBerry even mentioned a handset. In the media Q&A session over lunch, the question on many minds was eventually given voice: should BlackBerry get out of handsets altogether?

The answers at first were stilted and unconvincing. They said the corporate strategy was all about profitability not product; they said the Summit was focused on security platforms not cell phone features. But John Chen later gave what was to my mind the most credible explanation. He plainly insists that BlackBerry continues to support the things that have been sold to customers, and that includes an ongoing commitment to the handset product line.

Privacy

I was impressed by BlackBerry's privacy line. It's broader and more sophisticated than most security companies, going way beyond the obvious matters of encryption and VPNs. In particular, the firm champions identity plurality. WorkLife by BlackBerry, powered by Movirtu technology, realizes multiple identities on a single phone. BlackBerry is promoting this capability in the health sector especially, where there is rarely a clean separation of work and life for professionals. Chen said he wants to "separate work and private life".

The health sector in general is one of the company's two biggest business development priorities (the other being automotive). In addition to sophisticated telephony like virtual SIMs, they plan to extend extend AtHoc into healthcare messaging, and have tasked the CHACE think-tank with medical device security. These actions complement BlackBerry's fine words about privacy.

Conclusion

So BlackBerry's acquisition plan appears to have gelled. It now has perhaps the best secure real time OS for smart devices, a hardened device-independent Mobile Device Management backbone, new data-centric privacy and rights management technology, remote certificate management, and multilayered emergency communications services that can be diffused into mission critical rules based M2M messaging. It's a powerful portfolio that makes strong sense in the Internet of Things.

BlackBerry says IoT is 'much more than device-to-device'. It's more important to be able to manage secure data being ejected from ubiquitous devices in enormous volumes, and to service those things - and their users - seamlessly. For BlackBerry, the Internet of Things is really all about the service.