Five Reasons to Apply for a SuperNova Award

The SuperNova Awards honor leaders that demonstrate excellence in the application and adoption of new and emerging technologies. 

Deadline for applications is August 7, 2015. 

5 reasons to apply for a SuperNova Award:

1. Exposure to the SuperNova Award judges, comprised of the top influencers in enterprise technology
2. Case study highlighting the achievements of the winners written by Constellation analysts
3. Complimentary admission to the SuperNova Award Gala Dinner and Constellation's Connected Enterprise for all finalists*
   *(November 4-6, 2015) lodging and travel not included
4. One year unlimited access to Constellation's research library
5. Winners featured on Constellation's blog and weekly newsletter

Timeline

• August 7, 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 

In its fifth year, the Constellation SuperNova Awards will recognize eight individuals who demonstrate true leadership in digital business through their application and adoption of new and emerging technologies. We’re searching for leaders and teams who have innovatively applied disruptive technolgies to their business models as a means of adapting to the rapidly-changing digital business environment. Special emphasis will be given to projects that seek to redefine how the enterprise uses technology on a large scale.

We’re searching for the boldest, most transformative technology projects out there. Submit your clients for a SuperNova Award by filling out the application here: 

Learn more about the SuperNova Awards. 

What to expect when applying for a SuperNova Award. Tips and sample application.  

 

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Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics Analytics Automation Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Quantum Computing Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service developer Metaverse VR Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Operating Officer

Sell The Smallest Unit You Can Lesson 3 From Disrupting Digital Business

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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Get All 10 Lessons Learned From Disrupting Digital Business

As with the beginning of every revolution, those in the midst of it can feel it, sense it, and realize that something big is happening. Yet it’s hard to quantify the shift. The data isn’t clear. It’s hard to measure. Pace of change is accelerating. Old rules seem not to apply.

Sometimes when you are in the thick of it, it’s hard to describe what’s happening.  In the case of digital business, these models have progressed over the past 20 years.  However, non-traditional competitors have each exploited a few patterns with massive success. However, as the models evolved, winners realize there are more than a handful of patterns.

Lesson 1 – Transform Business Models And Engagement

Lesson 2 – Keep The Brand Promise

Lesson 3 – Sell The Smallest Unit You Can

In fact, the impact is significant and now quantifiable with 52% of the Fortune 500 gone since 2000 and the average age of the S&P 500 company in 1960 is down from 60 years to a little more than 12 projected in 2020.  That is a 500% compression that has changed the market landscape forever in almost every industry.

Over the course of the next 10 weeks, I’ll be sharing one lesson per week.  For traditional businesses to succeed, they will have to apply all 10 lessons from Disrupting Digital Business in order to not only survive, but also relearn how to thrive.

Unit Cost Pricing Models Transform What You Sell

The digital age requires brands and organizations to figure out what the smallest increment of a product or service can be sold.  The traditional adage of not selling the razor but selling the blade holds true as we disrupt digital business models.  We just have to take that model to the smallest increment.

For example, instead of selling large volumes such as a case of coke, we shift to selling you smaller and smaller units.  So let’s go from selling you a 2-liter of coke, to a can of coke, to ultimately a sip of coke.  It may sound absurd but, how much would you pay for a sip of coke?  For the services industry, let’s take professional services.  As an analyst, what’s the smallest unit I could sell you of a service.  Can I go from selling you a day of consulting, to an hour of advisory, to a minute of inquiry?

Once you can imagine this smallest increment of a product or service sold, you now have the ability to deliver new experiences and outcomes to create new brand promises.  This is the key to deconstructing your existing unit cost pricing models and breaking free to the digital level.

Homework

Time to break out your pricing models.  Take your top personas and re think what’s the smallest unit of a product and/or service that can be delivered.  Once you can imagine that smallest unit cost of delivery, think of how you can create new bundles that deliver on that promise

The Complete 10 Lessons Learned From Disrupting Digital Business

For those attending the full keynotes and book tours, you’ll get the complete session and in many cases a copied of a signed booked.   For those following virtually, I’ve provided the slimmed down slide share deck for your use.

You now have the 10 lessons learned to disrupt digital business in your hands. You can take this information and change the world in front of you or choose to sit on the knowledge as the world passes you by and digital darwinism consumes your organization.

I trust you will do the right thing. And when you want some company, come join us as a client at Constellation Research where we’re not afraid of the future and the art of the possible.

Get The Book Now. Remember: Digital Darwinism is Unkind to Those Who Wait 

Purchase on Amazon
Bulk Orders: contact [email protected]
About Disrupting Digital Business

Join the Digital Disruption Tour. Events in London, and Amsterdam!

Your POV.

Are you ready to disrupt digital business?  Have you ordered the book?

Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

 

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Social: The Present is Mobile. The Future is Wearable

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 was a time when the battle for social media was simply one of recognition. For some time, brands and businesses held out. Restricting firewall access to social networks. Directing marketing spend to broadcast. Ignoring the trending shift to digital across a range of categories – from marketing to HR, supply chain to finance.

Now, this pent up force has been loosed and it is transforming the way that we work, why we work and how we work faster than we could have anticipated. As a result, we are seeing disruption almost everywhere we look:

• Who – this is not just about “digital natives” or “digital immigrants”. We now have no choice but to adopt a “digital nomad” perspective. We need to move with the digital times, building and refining skills, networks, and connections. It’s touching every one of us in profound ways.
• What – we used to be able to cordon off “home” and “work”. These days, there is only what Nina Simosko calls a life continuum. What we consider work is no longer restricted to what we do and is becoming more closely aligned to “what and who we are”. This is having an enormous impact on the nature of work, the workplace and what it means to have “purposeful work”.
• Where – the disruption began at home, in our palms and quickly spread through the networks.  But as we know, culture eats location, and that means our “where of working” is infinitely more mobile, flexible and time-shifted. This is challenging workplace structure, services and cohesion.
• Why – We are paid to work but businesses continue to struggle with motivation, morale, and engagement. As our Baby Boomer generations retire, we will be left with a massive experience and capability gap within our organisations. To attract the best talent, we’ll need a much better understanding of the needs and expectations of our employees.
• How – this is where the most obvious disruption and transformation is taking place. The “tools of our trades” are increasingly digital, data driven and mobile.

Kate Carruthers brings this together elegantly in this presentation made at the recent CeBIT conference in Sydney. She makes the point that we need to keep looking towards the horizon – for while the present of social is mobile. The future is wearable and the internet of things. And that future is not far away. In fact, it’s already in your pocket.

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

Infographic Friday: The Customer Experience

Russell Scibetti

Founding Editor, The Business of Sports
The Business of Sports

My name is Russell Scibetti and I have an extensive background in sports business, including CRM and database marketing, interactive and digital marketing, social media, corporate sponsorships and activation, and applied market research. From 2007 to 2014, I worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives. In 2014, I joined KORE Software as their VP of Product Strategy, where I am responsible for the strategic vision, planning and development of the KORE ProSports Ticketing, Sponsorship and Suites/Premium software products. I earned my MBA in Sports Business from the W.P. Carey…...

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1

It’s time for another edition of Infographic Friday. Today’s content comes to us from Revel Foundry regarding customer experience and loyalty. While this specific infographic is not sports-specific, I feel there are several key lessons that apply to the industry, especially around the live event experience as compared to at-home viewing.

• 40% of customers what holistic, omni-channel improvements. We can’t think of the elements of a fan experience in silos. True experience improvements takes coordination across many departments.
• More than 50% of online purchasing decisions are customer-controlled. With more and more ticket purchasing happening online without direct fan conversations, these elements of reputation and word of mouth are more critical than ever.
• 70% of customers stopped doing business with a brand following a poor experience. There are many things that can lead to a poor experience at a stadium, from long lines to unruly patrons, so even small changes here could have large impacts on retaining fans.
• 81% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Teams wants ways to justify more expensive tickets, and outside of the on-field product, this should be the best way to do it.

My last point to add is that the optimal customer experience will vary across your customer base. What a 25-year old, tech-savvy, single-game buyer wants compared to a 50-year old, long-time season ticket holder wants in their live experience are usually not the same. As you work on your live experience strategy, use research to make sure an improvement for one group doesn’t turn into a detractor for another group.

Check out the full infographic below or click here to see the original PDF and article at revelfoundry.com.

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Progress Report - Acumatica shows good progress on its unique path

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We were invited to the first Acumatica analyst summit in Boston this week. For a vendor’s first event of this type, the summit was very well attended with key analysts in the audience, certainly kudos for a first event.

 

So here are my Top3 takeaways from the meetings:

A unique strategy – Acumatica is probably the only vendor in the enterprise software space that does not have a direct sales force, but exclusively sells through channels. That has happened before, but the products were standardized with little need to no demand for customization. For an ERP suite it is unique. The consequences are twofold in my view


 

• Acumatica can focus CAPEX on product and does not have to invest precious funding dollars on expensive sales people, who need time to ramp up and learn how to sell the product, before they get into the ‘black’ for their employers.

• Acumatica needs to focus on a very flexible, standard based product. As Acumatica does not know where partners will take the product, it needs to create value to attract them and at the same time make it easy to adopt its platform / product. 

With over 1000 customers and only 120 employees, Acumatica has a pretty unique employee population and cost structure. The bulk of the employee population works in R&D, Acumatica did not disclose specific numbers, but we think this is a safe assumption. In the go to market Acumatica needs to spare no effort to get partners up to speed quickly. The ramp up, training and marketing / sales options are attractive, with executives in charge who understand partner enablement well from their previous work experience.
 

Acumatica Marketecture

Standards and Flexibility rule – For the longest time SaaS providers have maintained that SaaS cannot be customized. Ironic as early SaaS pioneers NetSuite and Salesforce always offered customization options from the very start. Acumatica is no different and has created a powerful customization framework that allows the addition and insertions of fields, screens and control elements. Nothing teaches better than practice, and when Acumatica signed up Visma (largest Nordic ISV) to build their new product on its platform, it had to learn a more flexible and multi-tiered approach to extension and customization. The original one level for customer customization was taken by Visma, so nothing was left for its customers. But by now Acumatica has addressed this in a pretty elegant extension framework, which for a number of extensions does not even require a restart of the application, as it used dynamic and declarative (late) binding. 

 

Acumatica Deployment Options

At the same tune, standards are key - Hitting on an innuendo from Microsoft’s Build conference (my takeaways here), Acumatica made the point with ‘who wants to learn ObjectiveC’ (for those reader who don’t know that is Apple’s proprietary apps programming language). So for Acumatica it is support for C# and Microsoft SQL Server / Azure DB as well as MySQL. Using the powerful OData protocol Acumatica makes it easy for customers and partners to export, view and manipulate data. And it opens partnerships with e.g. Microsoft for Office365 and PowerBi. Acumatica is also flexible in terms of tenancy, as it supports a shared all, share apps / dedicated DB and shared nothing deployment arcitecture. And the vendor also sees deployments across different architecture, private partner clouds as well as public cloud, where (for now) fellow Seattle neighbor Amazon AWS is the most popular option. Finally Acumatica has invested in a mobile platform that allows a tech savvy user to build and deploy self-built mobile applications. A key step accounting for the trend of enabling the departmental, business end user.

On the roadmap Acumatica plans more capabilities to enrich the platform, e.g. more advanced workflow functionality, more pre-built mobile applets to aid partners to build mobile applications and deeper insights on what is happening inside of the Acumatica system in real time (BAM). 

 

Acumatica UI

xRP – a cloud ERP for late comers – Moreover we had the chance to sit down with the xRP team and talk to some early adopting partners. There are a lot of service providers and ISVs out there who are being caught in the transformation of enterprise software to become cloud based. For service providers the move to cloud is both a threat and an opportunity. A threat as implementation budgets shrink dramatically, an opportunity as the deep understanding of best practices garnered from many implementations opens the chance to become a product provider. And then there are still a lot of ISVs who for whatever reason have missed moving their core offering to the cloud. An alternative scenario has been that they only offer complimentary functionality to other enterprise automation areas. As a side note this happens even with successful vendors – see the recent NetSuite and Ultimate and SAP and IBM partnerships (see here and here). And as a testament of the market need, Acumatica has seen over 60 xRP signing up for the offering, which is only available since barely 9 months. The first ones of these partners are live, another proof point of the Acumatica platform.
 

MyPOV

The enterprise software value chain has been a traditional one stop shop for marketing, sales, implementation and support for the longest time. Digital disruption will come to the enterprise model sooner or later, with viral selling, flush marketing, almost no sales teams, partner enablement and business user empowerment as the key trends. It is good to see a vendor practicing a lot of that today, which should make Acumatica pretty disruption proof for things happening in enterprise software sooner, than later.

On the concern side Acumatica is still very small. It needs to make sure its core offering is modern and in tune with 21st century practices. Partnering with Magento for commerce is a good move, but Acumatica cannot do similar partnership for more modern best practices too many times, otherwise it risks to become a ‘backbone’ for other partners. And then its days will be counted, so the vendor not only needs to make sure the product has a modern and attractive architecture (we give Acumatica good grades here) but its core automation capabilities need to stand the test of time as well. Lastly the user interface is short before looking dated, a common challenge, as consumerization of IT is moving user interface best practices faster than ever.

But for now it is good news for Acumatica and its customers, a good platform, flexible deployment and fast ramp up times are what enterprises and partners need. It will be interesting to see Acumatica grow in the years to come, you can count on us to observer.

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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

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Don't Forget About Small Data

Russell Scibetti

Founding Editor, The Business of Sports
The Business of Sports

My name is Russell Scibetti and I have an extensive background in sports business, including CRM and database marketing, interactive and digital marketing, social media, corporate sponsorships and activation, and applied market research. From 2007 to 2014, I worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives. In 2014, I joined KORE Software as their VP of Product Strategy, where I am responsible for the strategic vision, planning and development of the KORE ProSports Ticketing, Sponsorship and Suites/Premium software products. I earned my MBA in Sports Business from the W.P. Carey…...

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I'd like to share an article that I wrote for a recent sports-business themed issue of W.P. Carey Magazine (a publication from my MBA Alma Mater) that discusses the value of "small data" in sports and in business overall.

“Big data” and analytics has had a tremendous impact on the business of professional sports in the last decade, but the industry has lagged behind others in adopting customer relationship management and data modeling. Still, sports provides plenty of examples showing that data doesn’t always need to be “big” to be valuable. Smaller data points can generate a large impact, and I’ve learned over time that the most valuable source of small data is your front-line staff.

The front-line sales and retention teams are key to sustained ticket revenue in sports. Most businesses have similar staff that spend 90 percent of their workday communicating with customers, and each conversation is an opportunity not just to sell, but to collect valuable insights. CRM is the best vehicle to enable this, but more than conversation notes and expected close percentages, these interactions should be used to create robust customer profiles and insights.

Within sports, we identify several key fields that often come up in conversation: favorite player, who attends games with them and even what they don’t like about the team. We train the staff to have open conversations with fans, listen for these key topics and ask questions to delve deeper. Then within CRM, these data points are created as structured fields such as dropdown lists and checkboxes. The structure aspect makes the data more actionable than open-ended text — no worries about typos or shorthand.

In your industry, you might not have favorite players or game attendance, but I suspect there are other parallels. For example, if I’m selling cars, I’d want to ask who else may use the vehicle. Just as with sports tickets, the buyer is not always the final user, and that changes what product is the best fit. You must identify the most relevant questions for your business goals, even if sometimes the questions are not obvious.

Learning a fan’s favorite type of music may not seem relevant until there is an opportunity to offer concert tickets to help retain a high-value customer, or when the stadium operations staff chooses what music to play during timeouts. I know one team with 51 “small” data points that their staff can capture. By listening to the conversations between the staff and fans, collection efforts expanded, with each point tied to an actionable business objective. Don’t be afraid to align staff and data collection goals with incentives. If staff are judged solely on sales metrics, spending time asking these questions might not seem personally important, even though it is critical organizationally.

Finally, remember that when aggregated, small data also supports big data strategies, identifying common customer types and emerging trends, which in turn allows you to be more responsive. The days of simply waiting and measuring results are over. Use of data, both big and small, must be an ongoing, integrated process from the front lines to the back offices.

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

Event Report - Informatica World 2015 - Product Progress and New Approaches

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend Infomatica’s user conference Informatica World, happening this week in Las Vegas at the beautiful Cosmopolitan property in Las Vegas. The conference is well attended with over 2500 attendees (up from 2300 last year), attendees are in general positive mood and looking forward to learn more about new product functionalities. Uniquely presentations (at least the ones I attended) are always setup with a few slides and then demos with a ton of Q&A. Informatica definitively has the Doers at this conference judging from the caliber of the questions.

 

 

So here are my Top 3 takeaways from event:

Informatica stays the course – It was good to see that Informatica keeps building on its Intelligent Data Platform – IDP – and had five key new functionalities shown in the Day #1 keynote. With an intelligent offering for IoT with Project Atlantic, that has the goal to make sense of machine data and connect it with business data, Informatica may well have a future champion for the IoT age. Improved BigData management is coming with Project Sonoma. MDM gets enriched with Social360, brining social data into the MDM process. And Secure@Source brings important security innovations to Hadoop. The most interesting of the overall 5 in my view is Rev, the end user oriented data presentation and data analysis tool originally code named SpringBok. Business user enablement is the risk that disrupts potentially all enterprise software vendors, so it’s good for Informatica to have a horse in the game, which may help disrupt the market. More in detail is my News Analysis (here), also check out my colleague Doug Henschen’s takeaways (here).

 

Breya opens the Day #2 Keynote

Traction with Cloud Integration Products – We spoke to a number of customers and Informatica spokespeople on the Cloud Integration products, as part of our next generation Applications coverage. When enterprises and ISVs build a new enterprise software solution in 2015 it is very likely that they create an integration problem, as the new software does not run as an isolated solution. Informatica has been in the cloud integration market since almost 10 years, and is now seeing some benefits of an early mover: Over 3500 customers and 6B transactions are impressive statistics. The Informatica offering differentiates from many other products in the integration space by providing deep integration into endpoints, e.g. Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Workday etc. Informatica maintains these, not a trivial task, given the fast release cycles of cloud products. But by now Informatica has maintained a number of these endpoints over a few years, so initial customer concerns can now be countered with a proven track record.

It was interesting that Informatica is helping adoption of the product with crowdsourcing best practices. Enterprises seldom want to go first, and technologists like to reach out to colleagues that have done the same or something similar. So with Discovery IQ users can see, who else has done the same or similar integration, certainly a modern and very helpful approach to increase adoption, foster a support community and ease common early project concerns. Equally Informatica has an integration market place, where integrations can be monetized, if desired. 

 

Informatica Cloud Product Portfolio

 

Informatica is traditionally doing a lot of business with ISVs, but it seems that the vendor is pushing even harder for these partnerships recently. At the same time Informatica is working closely with IaaS providers (most prominent are Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure) et al. Certainly a clever move to empower ISVs (and customers) to move their data to the cloud. No surprise the most common use cases are around BigData.

And lastly we also see the drive for the empowerment of the (business) end user. With Infomatica’s Cloud Data Wizard for Salesforce, which makes it easier for users to connect Salesforce with other applications (Box and NetSuite are mentioned in the press release here), the vendor has another chip at the table (sorry for are in Las Vegas).

 

Sample of pre-package integrations of Informatica Cloud

Making life easier with DaaS – partnering with Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) – In a surprise move Informatica and Dun & Bradstreet announced a partnership already on Monday (see the press release here). In the past enterprise were confronted with a sizeable load of integration work to make a similar scope happen. Though most prominent CRM solutions have pre-built D&B interfaces (the teams of yours truly build these 3 times for 3 different vendors), implementing them was always tedious. Not only did they have to be setup, tested and validated, separate contracts had to be negotiated and signed with D&B. With the partnership of both vendors, Informatica customers can now enrich and procure their integration scenarios with D&B data in a single stop with Informatica. A significant simplification as anyone who has taken such an integration live can certainly attest.

It is also a start for Informatica into the DaaS market, which offers more opportunities to partner for the vendor as well as an additional revenue opportunity. It is early time for DaaS, but good to see the lead if Informatica amongst the enterprise integration players.
 

MyPOV

A good user conference for Informatica customers and the vendor. Good progress across all product lines and more value out of the integrated IDP offering. Reducing the time and cost to implement is certainly a value for users and Informatica delivers along those value propositions across its product portfolio. Informatica has replaced the complex pricing for cloud integration with a simpler, tiered endpoint pricing that should help sales and adoption.

It also looks that Informatica – at least for the attendees I spoke to – has been able to dissolve potential concerns around being taken private by a Private Equity player recently. It was good for Abbasi to tackle the subject directly in the keynote, but Informatica still has to share where the investment going forward is going to be, using the usual argument of being able to transform the company without the quarterly reporting pressures. The smart money is on transfomation from a perpetual license to a subscription business, and a large R&D investment. From the announcements at Informatica World it looks more like the same course, extending existing products.

As for concerns we can only raise the general enterprise software risks of quality and execution. Informatica needs to deliver the new features with good quality. It is well positioned against the threat from being disrupted by departmental users, as it has some good offerings, too, but e.g. a new player like Workato (more here), could change the enterprise integration game.

But for now its full steam ahead for Informatica, we will be watching.


More on Informatica:

• News Analysis - Informatica's Sohaib Abbasi showcases Innovations for the Age of Engagement - read here
• Future of Work - One spreadsheet at a time, Informatica Springbok - read here
• Informatica pushes the cloud integration stakes - read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions User Conference informatica ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Cloud CCaaS UCaaS Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer