Registration Opens for Inaugural Constellation Digital Disruption Tour

First Stop Scheduled for April 22 in Melbourne

Executives Learn How to Identify Disruptive Trends and Craft Digital Business Models

Today Constellation Research announced that registration is live for the inaugural Digital Disruption Tour, a series of executive-level seminars that show attendees how to effectively conquer disruptive forces in the era of digital business. The first stop of the tour is scheduled for April 22, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia at The Deck.  Constellation will host subsequent events in San Francisco, Atlanta, London, and Amsterdam. Speakers including Constellation analysts, early adopters, and founder, R “Ray” Wang will will identify disruptive trends that business leaders must address in the digital era. R “Ray” Wang will share insights from his book Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Many of the rules that governed business in the 20^th century do not apply in the digital era. Since 2000, fifty-two percent of the Fortune 500 has fallen off the list as a result of mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, or replacements. Success in the digital era requires a new business education and a new skill set that enables the executive to create business models that take advantage of the digital economy. The Digital Disruption Tour will identify the trends governing business in the digital era, and equip executives with the knowledge to excel in digital business.

The Constellation Digital Disruption Tour is particularly suited to senior executives from non-technology companies.

“The impact of digital disruption is real. Savvy leaders will recognize the great opportunity the digital economy presents, learn all they can about the new business landscape, and be prepared to dominate digital disruption,” said Constellation Research founder, R “Ray” Wang. “Digital Dariwinism is unkind to those who wait.  The Constellation team is looking forward to preparing the brightest minds in business for the challenges of the digital economy.”

Digital Disruption Tour Dates:

• April 22, 2015 - Melbourne, Australia
• May 4, 2015 - San Francisco, California
• May 14, 2015 - Atlanta, Georgia
• June 18, 2015 - London, United Kingdom
• June 22, 2015 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

 
To register for the Digital Disruption Tour please visit http://www.constellationevents.com/.

Follow the Digital Disruption Tour on Twitter with the hashtag #cxotour.

For sponsorship opportunities, contact [email protected]

Death, Taxes and Supply Chain Disruptions!

pending

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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It is that time of the year again here in the United States…tax day. You know how the saying goes:

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

—Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789

• Acts of nature are unpredictable. Yes floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, blizzards, ash clouds, hurricanes and the list goes on, of natural events are unpredictable and constant. While one day we may be able to control the weather and other natural phenomenon (according to some James Bond villains) today we remain at the mercy of Mother Nature. Our abilities to predict acts like the weather are better but certainly not 100% accurate. And we have have to find good ways of pinpointing where earth quakes and volcanic eruptions will occur.
  

   

   

• Macroeconomic drivers are constantly changing. Exchange rates, the price of oil, deflation and other economic characteristics are driven by government, corporation and human action, but sometimes we cannot really understand the outcomes of these acts. Of course at some level of supply chains entities can afford to pay for influence at these economic levels…but even that does not ensure full control or understanding of outcomes.
• Humans…yes we are unpredictable at the end of the day. When I studied political science and economics I always struggled with the notion of a “rational” actor or state. What is rational to me might not be to you and vice versa. Yet all of our theories started with some assumptions around “rational” behavior. Of course the same is true within our supply chains. Whether it is a buyer, a worker, a partner or any other human within the supply chain we cannot always assume we understand their behaviors and actions.

So what does this mean? When it comes to our supply chains we should focus on three rules:

1. Embrace the growing amounts of data and sources of that data. While data is not the panacea for our ills,it can provide clearer picture of what is happening and where things are being impacted. The growth of data as well as what is producing the data (think IoT) opens the door for companies to get a greater understanding of their supply chain. This digital disruption will only continue to grow in importance – maximize the value for your supply chain.
2. Constantly push yourself to keep an eye on possible new business models. Anyone who has been in business, gone to business school or just read a business publication knows that the secret is to always be ahead of your competitors with “paradigm” changing models. True. But not easy to identify. However within our supply chains we do not need to always identify but more – be open to discovering and leveraging these opportunities when they present themselves.
3. Focus on what you can control. Understand what you cannot control and think about how it can impact your supply chain, but focus on what you can control. The data should help you better understand what is possible as well – but there must be a discipline as to what is controllable and what is not. Within the context of modern supply chains, this discipline is even more crucial.
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Like death and taxes, disruptions to your supply chain will be a constant. The good thing is that new digital aspects have given supply chains a fresh arsenal of solutions and business processes to offer solutions to meet this disruptive realities.

Quips: The Long Tail On Intel's Latest Earnings

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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The latest FIDO Alliance research

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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I have just updated my periodic series of researh reports on the FIDO Alliance. The fourth report, "FIDO Alliance Update: On Track to a Standard" will be available at Constellation Research shortly

The Identity Management industry leader publishes its protocol specifications at v1.0, launches a certification program, and attracts support in Microsoft Windows 10.

Executive Summary

The FIDO Alliance is the fastest-growing Identity Management (IdM) consortium we have seen. Comprising technology vendors, solutions providers, consumer device companies, and e-commerce services, the FIDO Alliance is working on protocols and standards to strongly authenticate users and personal devices online. With a fresh focus and discipline in this traditionally complicated field, FIDO envisages simply "doing for authentication what Ethernet did for networking".

Launched in early 2013, the FIDO Alliance has now grown to over 180 members. Included are technology heavyweights like Google, Lenovo and Microsoft; almost every SIM and smartcard supplier; payments giants Discover, MasterCard, PayPal and Visa; several banks; and e-commerce players like Alibaba and Netflix.

FIDO is radically different from any IdM consortium to date. We all know how important it is to fix passwords: They're hard to use, inherently insecure, and lie at the heart of most breaches. The Federated Identity movement seeks to reduce the number of passwords by sharing credentials, but this invariably confounds the relationships we have with services and complicates liability when more parties rely on fewer identities.

In contrast, FIDO's mission is refreshingly clear: Take the smartphones and devices most of us are intimately connected to, and use the built-in cryptography to authenticate users to services. A registered FIDO-compliant device, when activated by its user, can send verified details about the device and the user to service providers, via standardized protocols. FIDO leverages the ubiquity of sophisticated handsets and the tidal wave of smart things. The Alliance focuses on device level protocols without venturing to change the way user accounts are managed or shared.

The centerpieces of FIDO's technical work are two protocols, called UAF and U2F, for exchanging verified authentication signals between devices and services. Several commercial applications have already been released under the UAF and U2F specifications, including fingerprint-based payments apps from Alibaba and PayPal, and Google's Security Key from Yubico. After a rigorous review process, both protocols are published now at version 1.0, and the FIDO Certified Testing program was launched in April 2015. And Microsoft announced that FIDO support would be built into Windows 10.

With its focus, pragmatism and membership breadth, FIDO is today's go-to authentication standards effort. In this report, I look at what the FIDO Alliance has to offer vendors and end user communities, and its critical success factors.

Australian Social Media Cheat Sheet

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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Detailed statistics and information on social media in Australia continues to be a challenge. While there are pockets of data here and there – we rarely see a side-by-side comparison of user data and benchmarking information. So it is great to see this cheat sheet available. Shared by the folks from Reinventure (over on LinkedIn), it compiles (mostly) Australian data from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter – with Pinterest data pulled from global data.

The infographic provides some great high level stats, pros and cons for each of the platforms and some useful comparison benchmark data. The data appears to be current as at February 2015 and includes sources like Social Media News, YouTube press statistics and DirectTarget.

News Analysis - Workday supports UK Payroll - now speaks (British English) Payroll

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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Payroll and related services are somewhere beyond 80 to 90% of HCM enterprise spend, and making sure that an enterprises is compliant with legal and statutory updates, as well as it can pay its employees correctly and on time is a ‘must have’ for HR Leaders. So big news today comes from Workday – as the vendor is adding Payroll support for the UK in Workday 24, its 3rd vendor supported country (Workday supports USA and Canada already). 

Let’s dissect the press release (you can find it here) in our customary style:

Workday, Inc. (NYSE: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced the general availability of Workday Payroll for the UK. Organically built as part of Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), the new payroll application enables customers with UK employees to address the full spectrum of enterprise payroll needs, providing administrators with the flexibility, control, and insight required to support the unique aspects of their organizations.

MyPOV – Good move, from our customer interactions, enterprises want native / organic payroll support as they need this area of automation to work 99.999% of the time. Less vendors involved, less manual work, less moving parts are always good news to get to that uptime.

Workday also announced momentum for Workday Global Payroll Cloud, a partner program that helps customers reduce the costs associated with deploying, integrating, and managing third-party payroll solutions. Partners offer certified, bi-directional, pre-built integrations between Workday HCM and other payroll systems to provide a comprehensive view of global payroll data. With 85 countries now certified in Workday Global Payroll Cloud, customers including Groupon, Johnson & Johnson, PineBridge Investments, and Zoetis have achieved greater visibility into global payroll actuals, payroll process automation, and streamlined integration between payroll and other HR systems.

MyPOV – Key for Workday to balance organic vs. partner provided payroll out. Customers and partners need / want to know where Workday will build its own ‘organic’ payroll and where it will be partner business. Workday has done a good job enabling a modern bi-directional interface for 85+ country payrolls via 16 partners, enabling customers to see a global view of its payroll actuals in Workday (technology tidbit: brought in-memory), while still being able to use local payroll providers in each country that offer the desired level of service.

 

iPad User Interface

Workday Payroll for the UK
Payroll has traditionally been a complex undertaking for global organizations, particularly due to the various regulations and laws for each country. Workdays flexible and intuitive payroll applications delivered in the cloud have alleviated many of these challenges with functionality that addresses regulatory and legislative changes. Workday Payroll for the UK follows on the success of the company's payroll applications for the U.S. and Canada, with Workday Payroll for France expected in 2016.

MyPOV – Workday is right to point out, that payroll is a large challenge for enterprises. Thanks to the cloud a lot of the need to implement and test legal and statutory changes has now shifted to the cloud providers, away from the enterprises. A significant relief for payroll practitioners, especially on the technical / IT side.

Customers using Workday Payroll for the UK benefit from:

Automatic tax updates - New tax updates are automatically applied through a cloud delivery model, eliminating the need for regular upgrades and patches required by on-premise payroll systems.

MyPOV – Good to point out the inherent value of cloud (and BPO) based Payrolls.

Powerful and flexible calculation tool - Workday's robust calculation engine makes it easy to handle complex requirements. Users can run payroll calculations as often as needed and payroll-processing time is drastically reduced from hours to minutes.

MyPOV – Good to see – ad-hoc payroll calculation (not sure if supported) for single workers / employees to see over time and take away home pay are key modern capabilities of payrolls today. 

High configurability - Unlimited earnings, deductions, pay groups, and pay frequencies can be easily configured by payroll administrators to support calculation and reporting needs. Accumulations, balance periods, and pay balances, as well as complex processes such as off-cycle and retroactive payment processing, are also supported.
MyPOV – Good to see Workday supporting these key payroll features.
Support for UK-specific statutory requirements

 

Workday Payroll for the UK offers a modern system with support for pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) statutory taxes including National Insurance, student loans, statutory absence payments, and court orders. It also provides an exception reporting capability, audits, and alerts to prompt users, ensuring improved accuracy with payroll calculations as well as real-time information (RTI) reporting.
MyPOV – Key for payroll to work – and good move by Workday to mention support of more recent legislative changes in the YK around PAYE and RTI support. 

Anytime mobile access - With one self-service application, employees can check pay slips and payment elections -- any time, on any device. The flexibility of the cloud also gives administrators the ability to process payroll from anywhere at any time.

MyPOV – Now a ‘must have’ feature for payroll, good for Workday and customers that the vendor ships mobile access in the first release. 

Real-time analytics and reporting - Organizations can now see what they are actually spending on workers via pre-built reports and analytics for payroll insights. With the same reporting format used throughout Workday HCM, users can combine datasets to increase the context for decision making.
MyPOV – Also a ‘good to have’ feature – enabled by the technology platform a modern payroll is built on – and good for Workday to have this capability in the first version of the UK Payroll.

 

iPhone User Interface

Workday Global Payroll Cloud
Workday Global Payroll Cloud is the foundation of the company's global yet local approach to payroll, where customers benefit from a unified view of HR and payroll data in a central HCM system while leveraging local payroll providers that meet the specific requirements of individual countries. With Workday Global Payroll Cloud and Workday's country-specific payroll applications, business leaders have greater visibility into the true cost of the global workforce with real-time analytics on global payroll actuals in a single currency or country-specific analytics in a local currency.

MyPOV – The definition of ‘cloud’ has been stretched by many vendors, and if this is a ‘cloud’ one could argue. What matters is that Workday goes to great lengths to certify 3rd party payroll providers interfaces, giving customers peace of mind. At the end all payroll vendors in the global space rely on partners to complement their native / ‘organic’ payroll platform support. 
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Comments on the News
"With companies moving to the cloud faster than ever, we are excited to deliver UK payroll to alleviate a huge piece of the complexity faced by these organizations," said Leighanne Levensaler, senior vice president, products, Workday. "As our customers continue to grow their operations around the world, we will keep advancing the breadth and depth of our payroll solutions to ensure they can achieve a unified view of HR and payroll."

"Workday has made it possible for us to standardize and streamline our payroll integrations across 60 countries," said Usman Afzal, director of HR operations, Zoetis. "Workday Global Payroll Cloud has helped us create a common interface with one central source of HR data. That has simplified our lives with respect to global reporting, vendor management, and ongoing maintenance."

MyPOV – Notable that the gentleman from Zoetis refers to Workday Global Payroll cloud – not the UK payroll. But UK customers will take their time to test and validate the UK payroll – and it is not clear from the press release when they got to use the payroll and could validate it in test runs. It may be with them only with Workday 24.

Availability
Workday Payroll for the UK is now available as part of the company's latest release, Workday 24.

MyPOV – So if customers only got their hands on the real code with the last week release of Workday 24 – we should not see live customers in 3 (simple) to 6 months (moderate complex scenarios) live on the Workday UK Payroll.

Overall MyPOV

As mentioned in the introduction, a working payroll solution is key for enterprises's people strategies, as it gives the peace of mind and freedom to pursue more strategic people related projects. All too often we see that payroll (and compliance) challenges put more strategic people projects on time out in the best case. In the worst case, executive teams lose confidence in the HR leadership, and will be more conservative when asked for budget for strategic HR transformation projects.

So it’s good news for Workday customers that Workday has added support for the UK payroll. Now we will have to see how quickly and well customers can get to the benefits and be live on the UK payroll. It will also be a good test for the Workday compliance teams and product architecture, as payroll implementations often take so long, that new legal and statutory changes happen during the client implementation. But that is the same for all vendors in the payroll business.

From a payroll complexity, the UK ranks relatively low in the world, we expect the France payroll (planned by Workday for 2016) to be a more formidable challenge.

And finally Workday has done well extending its country support via the Workday Global Payroll Cloud to 85 countries. But we know from enterprises that decision makers see a difference between partner based and vendor based payroll support. As Workday lags the ERP Top 3 (SAP, Oracle and Infor) as well as its co-opetitors ADP and Ceridian in vendor supported countries – it will be interesting to see how decision makers will weigh the importance of vendor based payroll support going forward. As for Workday it looks that partner strategy is set – as Workday highlights its recent partnership with Payroll Inc. in Japan (see here).

In my view large customers in large markets (Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Brazil etc.) will over time force Workday to provide vendor based payroll support for these markets. But that is speculation and only the future (and maybe some people in Pleasanton) could tell.


 

More on Workday

 

• Workday 24 - 'True' Analytics, a Vertical and more - now needs customer proof points - read here
• First Take - Top 3 Takeaways from of Workday Rising Day 1 Keynote - The dawn of the analytics era - time to deliver Insight Apps - read here
• Progress Report - Workday supports more cloud standard - but work remains - read here
• Workday 22 - Recruiting and rich Workday 22 are here - read here
• First Take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) Analytics matter - read here
• Workday Update 21 - All about the user experience and some more - read here
• Workday Update 20 - Mostly a technology release - read here
• Takeaways from the Salesforce.com and Workday parnership - read here
• Workday powers on - adds more to its plate - read here
• What I would like Workday to address this Rising - read here
• Workday Update 19 - you need to slow down to hurry up - read here
• I am worried about... Workday - read here

 

More on Payroll:

 

• Could the paycheck re-invent HCM – yes it can – read here.

• And suddenly, payroll matters again! Read here.

You can find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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

Water shortage – supply chain disruption that isn’t easily avoided

pending

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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The headlines about the California drought have been a constant drum beat about the issues we face with this most vital of global resources. Of course when you look at what we here in New England suffered through this winter, it is hard to fathom a water shortage! Sometimes it is also surprising to read about water issues when over 70% of the planet is covered by water. But much of that water is not fresh water, only 2.5% of the global water is fresh water, and of that 70% is trapped in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. Access to fresh water will continue to be a major global issue. And an underlying one for our supply chains.

• Agriculture – no surprise here. The numbers from California demonstrate the heavy reliance on water usage. With the Golden State’s farms using a whopping 80% of the state’s water – it is clear this industry remains a leader when it comes to water consumption. Couple this with a growing global population, the agriculture supply chain will find itself under greater strain to meet this demand while controlling their usage of water. It will be interesting to see if this supply chain starts employing tactics that we are seeing in manufacturing – near shoring. When states like California supply 80% of the global almond supply, yet that crop consumes 10% of California’s water – or 1.1 gallons per almond. Granted it is easier said than done since crops require much more than just water – soil and weather play major factors in crop growth. But moving crops to different location is not that easy.
• Manufacturing – industries such as chemical, beverage, steel, paper production to name a few are heavily reliant on water. By some estimates it takes 80,000 gallons of water to produce on automobile, 700 gallons on water for one cotton shirt and 24 gallons of water for 1lb of plastic. Supply chains have become more efficient when it comes to the manufacturing process, reducing some of the water strain from that angle. However, as our product supply chains are introducing products at a faster pace, and therefore taking out goods from the supply chain at an increased pace – the strain on the water usage is under pressure from that perspective.
• Future of work – these water issues are not simply about how we produce goods, but the workers within the supply chain are also impacted. It goes beyond Californians’ not being able to water their lawns and their quality of life. But in regions such as northern China, parts of India, the Middle East and sub Saharan Africa the issue of water directly impacts the work force. While some of these regions might offer affordable labor and new markets, if that population is more concerned about securing water that will impact their roles as workers as well as consumers.

The bottom line is the latest water shortage in California is a reminder that natural disruptions are omnipresent within our supply chains. Of course our supply chains cannot control natural occurrences such as droughts. But when it comes to simulating our supply chain networks, determining our planning and sourcing we must factor the possibility of these disruptions.  Our supply chains function in a system that is still driven by natural forces. Those are variables we are the mercy of…understand how they can impact your supply chain. Ignore them at your own peril.

GetSatisfaction: The Controversy Cannot Hide The Facts

If you follow the news you know that GetSatisfaction was acquired by Sprinklr last week (link to press coverage).

Almost immediately the press and analysts went into congratulatory overdrive.  However, shortly after the acquisition was announced, less than flattering news about the transaction trickled out – including this piece on Business Insider today (grain of salt: its business insider – the yellow press of business journalism) where one of the founders complain.

It is not, as you likely know by now, my place to take sides on fights that don’t involve me.  Ask my daughters – broken bones (sticking out) and blood are the only two reasons I get involved (thankfully never got to that).  Let the parties figure out the reasons for the fight and better yet – the reasons not to.

There are two issues though, that bear analyzing:

1. the role of communities in marketplaces and workplaces
2. the proper way to fund and support a startup

I’ll make it easy – I cannot contribute something worthwhile to the second one in a blog post; it is a very customized-personalized thing that changes from one to the next and whoever says different is just selling you a — well, their services.

I will gladly contribute to the first one – because i’ve been saying this for far longer than i remember: Michael Maoz (of Gartner fame and a good friend and former colleague while I was there) and I talked about this in 2002-2004 and then had to give it up since no one cared.

I wrote plenty about it before, including a difference between the many ways communities are shaping up to be.  Still, no one cared.

Now, y’all do.  Sort of – at least starting to.

Communities are (should’ve been) the only reason we started social networks and why social matters to organizations.  And they are the (renewable) power source for business transformation going forward.  Communities is something you, Mr/s. business person, should care about deeply – and yet, more than 85% of “youz” don’t.

I don’t have sufficient visibility into the dealings behind the acquisition, but I can tell you one thing: this is not the last.  If you look at the “communities providers” vendors they are all in the same: working through the resistance of 85% of the market that doesn’t get what communities are and what they do – and using the other 15% to propel them forward.

We will see more acquisitions like this very soon, in the next few months.  We will see more vendors with great technologies being folded into more complete social and even CRM suites.  We will see more dreams shattered (likely) and some realized.  We will see the beginning of the rise of communities to become mainstream (rule of thumb: 30% adoption in the marketplace) and to realize their potential.

One more thing: I am not talking about community managers and purposefully built communities.  That’s training wheels stuff when it comes to communities.

I am talking about the model that GetSatisfaction embraced and was unable to sustain in the market: ad-hoc, open, freely moldable and shapeable communities where people come to share power and knowledge – and no one controls or brands.

If you are interested in forums and structured communities you still don’t get the concept of communities for business.  This is not your grandpa communities – that was just more “training wheels” stuff.  This is about providing an infrastructure and let interested parties build and power communities.  Very different model than what you are thinking (and I know this because i talked to many of “you” every week).

What do you think? (comments below, use them)

Decyphering Bitcoin and the Blockchain

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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No doubt you’ll have heard about Bitcoin by now. It’s that disruptive technology that is keeping Financial Services CEOs awake at night. JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, in his annual letter to shareholders warned investors and the banking industry that “Silicon Valley is coming” – suggesting that there are hundreds of startups focusing on the financial services technology space (“fintech”) and that traditional banking will need to double down on its innovation efforts.

[Startups] … are very good at reducing the ‘pain points’ in that they can make loans in minutes, which might take banks weeks. We are going to work hard to make our services as seamless and competitive as theirs. And we also are completely comfortable with partnering where it makes sense.

But his particular focus on next generation payments systems like PayPal and Bitcoin were called out for special attention.

Here in Australia, these new systems have been the subject of a Senate Hearing Committee investigating digital currencies.

But how does Bitcoin work? Sean Carmody, Head of Credit Risk at Westpac put together this presentation that explains the technical underpinnings of Bitcoin – the blockchain. It explains:

• Why virtual currencies are a happening thing – the perfect match for a virtual world
• The problem with virtual currencies – how to prevent people simply “copying” a digital currency
• The innovation in the “blockchain”

And while the presentation does get technical, it is also eye-opening. Technology may be transforming the way that currencies can operate (now and into the future) – but TRUST remains a vital ingredient in currency transactions. And as Sean suggests, Bitcoin may not be the winner in the digital currency race – but it has fired the starter’s gun.

Email In Real Life

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Kudos to my friends at Workfront for putting together this great parody on email.