News Analysis - IBM and SAP partner for cloud success - good move

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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Earlier today IBM and SAP announced a partnership to move the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud onto IBM’s cloud.
 

 

So let’s dissect the press releases in our typical new analysis and implications style:

ARMONK, N.Y. and WALLDORF, Germany— Oct. 14, 2014: SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that SAP has selected IBM as a premier strategic provider of Cloud infrastructure services for its business critical applications – accelerating customers’ ability to run core business in the cloud. The SAP® HANA Enterprise Cloud offering is now available through IBM’s highly scalable, open and secure cloud. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will expand to major markets with the addition of the IBM cloud data centers. This is expected to enable customers to deploy their SAP software around the globe in a faster and more secure environment that is backed by IBM's proven cloud capabilities.

MyPOV - So IBM gets the first mover advantage becoming a 'premier strategic provider' for SAP cloud infrastructure. In early 2014 IBM announced to expand to 40 data center locations over the next quarters, an investment that is well under way for IBM (our take here). Given traditional cloud players like e.g. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have not responded formally with an announcement to expand to 40 locations, too – if SAP really cared for global coverage then there was not better option than IBM’s cloud infrastructure that is powered by SoftLayer (our take on the acquisition here) as well as IBM's Cloud Managed Services data centers, which IBM has build prior to the SoftLayer acquisition. And SAP is probably one of the enterprise vendors more sensitive to data location and data privacy laws, giving global experience, coverage and customer demand. 

"We look forward to extending one of the longest and most successful partnerships in the IT industry,” said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. “The demand for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA in the cloud is tremendous and this global agreement with IBM heralds a new era of cloud collaboration. We anticipate customers will benefit from this collaboration and expansion of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud."

MyPOV – Interesting that McDermott refers to HANA and Business Suite on HANA only – SAP runs  more than these two products in the SAP Cloud, which is also the home of the acquired SAP applications, Ariba, SuccessFactors, Hybris and probably (not announced and confirmed) Concur soon. So we will need to learn more which applications (and with that related load) SAP is bringing to the IBM cloud. If it’s only Business Suite on HANA that would be certainly a lot of potential, but a lot of future and not current load. But as almost all acquired products have a roadmap to be 'ported' to HANA - 2015 should see the full potential of the partnership.
“This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud,” said IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty. “It builds on our two companies’ long history of bringing innovation to business, and extends IBM’s position as the premier global cloud platform. Our secure, open, hybrid enterprise cloud platform will enable SAP clients to support new ways to work in an era shaped by Big Data, mobile and social."  
 
MyPOV – Similar to the Apple announcement, it’s again not ‘Ladies First’. So we may speculate that IBM wanted this partnership more than SAP, or that SAP is senior partner here. Unrelated Rometty is surely right that this is a significant milestone for both vendors. IBM gets load, and SAP gets data center access around the globe.
  
Together, IBM and SAP have the expertise, solutions and cloud infrastructure to deliver SAP business solutions on the IBM Cloud. SAP brings the power of realtime through in-memory computing capabilities of SAP HANA combined with the ability to run mission-critical business applications, like SAP Business Suite, in a cloud environment. IBM brings enterprise depth and the open architecture of IBM Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer — enabling customers to securely manage SAP workloads from trial to production on a consistent infrastructure, with transparency and control over where data resides. In addition, customers will benefit from the technology and services from both companies that offer industry-specific best practices, enabling customers to transform their organizations. SAP and IBM customers of all sizes will benefit from this joint collaboration of two of the most trusted companies in the industry.

MyPOV – Some reading between the lines: The SAP scope got extended in comparison to the above quote from McDermott, leaving room to other applications 'like' the SAP Business Suite. Good and makes sense. Interesting enough the section also refers to ‘trial’ – something that traditionally does not happen for SAP applications – but something this partnership could enable more efficiently. And then IBM stresses its large consultant force knowledgeable of SAP. But if this partnership is gated to the IBM services on the consulting side, then I think it will not reach its potential. We will have to see if SAP / IBM can attract additional customers beyond existing IBM consulting customers. It remains one of my concerns for IBM cloud that it is run out of the services division, with the risk of too much focus of consulting centric services.
  
Key Benefits to Enterprises of All Sizes

· Customers can take advantage of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud with the global footprint of IBM Cloud. This enables customers to put data to work with SAP HANA and business applications in the IBM Cloud built for speed, transparency and control.

MyPOV – Location matters both for regulatory compliance and performance of cloud deployments. IBM Cloud does very well here.

· SAP HANA will run on IBM Cloud to provide an open-standards-based approach that will help create the foundation to more easily integrate existing technology investments with new workloads.

MyPOV – We will have to understand in more details on what machines HANA will run in the IBM Cloud. [Update from IBM, October 15th 2014: HANA on SoftLayer is using SoftLayer bare metal servers, HANA on IBM Cloud Managed Services for SAP us using the IBM System x appliance.]

· IBM and SAP are committed to security for enterprise customers in the cloud. The IBM Cloud provides visibility and control to enable enterprises to apply and extend their security best practices into a cloud environment.

MyPOV – Both the bare metal capabilities and recent Intel TXT partnership (read more here) will help in the aspect of security.

· Companies will now have additional reach and scale to more easily start locally and scale globally with cloud capabilities and also comply with data residency and other regulatory mandates.

The Four Pillars

Brian Katz

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Brian Katz is a director at pharmaceutical company Sanofi, where he manages mobile initiatives, including mobilizing the salesforce, building best practices for developing apps, handling BYOD initiatives, enabling new devices and form factors for success, and looking at ways to innovate in the mobile space for Sanofi. He started his career working with a multi-national New York financial company as an email architect, designing and maintaining their email and communications systems, which also involved supporting their mobile computing platforms. ...

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Note: Special Thanks to Jessica M. H. Smith for some editing and a few ideas, she’s a class act

Robert F. Kennedy said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” It’s among the scores of failure quotes meant to encourage us to take chances and turn our defeats into victories. Daring greatly in the app world is important, but it doesn’t mean that you have to fail or suck into order to build a brilliant app.

Building an app is easy. Find a few developers, give them the specs, and you’re off to the races. If you’re really lucky, had some vision, and great developers, you end up with a hit. More likely, you’ll end up with a crapplication, those apps that you use once and never use again unless forced. They’re difficult to use and really don’t help you accomplish anything.

This isn’t much of an issue if you’re building your app for the public, if they don’t like your app they will just find another one in Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store. On the other hand, building an app for your business and employees can involve huge risks. If they don’t like your app they will find alternatives that work better but may be less secure.

The question isn’t whether you should be building brilliant apps for your business (you should) or whether your CIO thinks apps are vital – they do. The question is: what are app development best practices for your business, and on what principles are they built?

You have to start with the four pillars whenever you are designing an app. It isn’t just something to go on a device, but an experience for the user that helps them get stuff done.

When you base all of app development on the four pillars and you add a dose of the business requirements to the mix, you are going to build a great app that meets your business’ needs. Identity Identity and access management (IAM) are hugely important when you are designing any experience. Who is the person using your app, and what should they be accessing? It doesn’t matter whether you are Facebook or an email app, you need to know who the person is that is accessing the app. This requires that you build interfaces for querying someone’s identity and that you have access permissions on your content. If you start with designing an IAM framework that your developers can plug into, then it becomes much easier for them to build an app properly. Security Most app projects take a dim view of security. They’ve spent years dealing with security “slowing” their projects’ releases, and they care more about meeting the needs of the business and hitting a deadline. This “slowing” is usually due to the fact that security wasn’t consulted until the end of the project when it was ready for release. This puts the security team in an impossible place. They have to figure out what an app does and then make sure it has a low risk. It is easy to see how this becomes an antagonistic relationship. The right approach to building an app involves Security throughout all phases of app building. The security team itself must strive to build frameworks and secure APIs so that developers are following secure principles whether they realize it or not. The only way for security to stay ahead of the needs of the developers and provide the building blocks that they need is to be part of the process from the beginning. As they understand the business’ and user needs, they can work on making those connections secure and less risky to achieve. The security team will learn that no isn’t the only answer, but that they have to say yes and show how to achieve that yes. They have communicate and work like partners with the business, rather than treating them like an obstacle course to get through when a project is finished. FUN principle FUN in this case is an acronym for Focus on the User Needs. Many times, especially in the enterprise, development is solely based around the business requirements. The user needs fall between the cracks. This isn’t just an issue with the developers, but also with the business itself. Companies are too frequently focused on the perceived outcomes rather than how the user works and what they need to get things accomplished. Developers need to insist on focus groups and user previews if the business isn’t already providing it. The lack of focus on users tends to lead to scope creep and monolithic apps that are difficult to use. Note: there is a difference between user wants versus user needs. User experience (UX) No matter how much work you put into an app, if it doesn’t have a great user experience , it will become a failure. There are too many options for your users in the OS app stores. If they don’t like the UX of the app you created for them, they will choose an equivalent app that meets their needs better. The fact that you can force your employees to download an app and ostensibly use that app leads to the rise of shadow innovation. Your employees want to get their work done and will find ways (other apps) to do that. You need to remember that in the end, mobile isn’t about giving them a device or an app, it giving them an experience which allows work to be done without hardware or software getting in their way.

When you set up your foundation for developing apps with these four pillars, all you need to do is feed business requirements in and watch as your team builds great apps that are popular among your employees. Remember, the goal of mobile is enablement, helping your workforce to be flexible and agile while improving productivity and efficiency.

Event Report: Behind The Creative Cloud Announcements At #AdobeMAX

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…...

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Adobe Launches Massive Creative Cloud Update

Over 6000 art directors, designers, artists, production professionals, influencers, and users descended to the LA Convention Center for the annual creative class pilgrimage known as Adobe MAX. This year's event lived up to all expectations with massive product announcements, important partnerships, and a delightful trademark Adobe Sneaks session.

Source: Copyright © 2001 -2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

Constellation unpacks the key announcements for 2.8 million members now part of the two-year old Creative Cloud family:

• Creative Profile brings the Creative Cloud all together. Adobe brings the entire suite together with Creative Profile. More than identity, users can move from device-to-device, app-to-app and assets such as photos, colors, fonts, brushes, shapes, text styles, graphics, files, and other assets contextually appear when needed. Point of View (POV): The genius behind Creative Profile is the ubiquitous access and creation. Creative profile is a unification engine across all properties and provides Adobe the ability to deliver personalization at the individual level. After years of integration, Adobe shows what happens when a suite is redesigned at the atomic (vector) level. The Adobe team gains massive reuse of code and design. Side benefits include faster development and release cycles. Users can move easily between mobile and desktop and back.

• New apps capture the spirit of mobile. A flurry of new mobile apps for capturing inspiration on the go include Adobe Brush CC, Adobe Shape CC, and Adobe Color CC. The new Adobe Brush CC allows designers to create unique brushes on iPad or iPhone for reuse across Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Photoshop Sketch, and Adobe Photoshop CC. Adobe Shape CC allows you to capture shapes through a variety means including a smartphone camera and create new shapes on iPhone or iPad. Adobe Color CC captures colors as themes based on the photos that inspire them. Adobe also announced the public beta of the Creative SDK for iOS and the availability of an Android SDK through private beta. (POV): Mobile is more than a device but a way of expression. The new mobile apps highlight how mobile solutions should take full advantage of native capabilities from cameras to touch by allowing users to capture inspiration on the fly. While the current solutions only support iOS devices, expect more advancements to emerge as the Microsoft Windows partnership gains traction and calls for Android continue to escalate. In addition, the ability to leverage Creative Cloud sync means mobile and desktop are ubiquitously connected. Despite the limited number of public API's, the availability of the Creative SDK enables developers and partners to build new solutions and expand the adoption of the Creative Cloud over time.

• Updates to the June release of Adobes mobile apps, plus a new mobile video editing app, show Adobe's responsiveness to customer input. Adobe Illustrator Draw features a streamlined user interface. Adobe Illustrator Line allows users to send work to Illustrator CC with access to vector paths for editing. Adobe Photoshop Mix gains a new cut out feature and is now available for iPhone. Adobe Photoshop Sketch can send artwork straight to a .PSD file. The new mobile app, Adobe Premiere Clip allows users to take a quick smartphone video and edit on the mobile device with integration back to Premier Pro for deeper editing. (POV): New features and advancements drew "oohs and ahs" from the audience during the main stage keynotes. In speaking with over 50 attendees, the common denominator was the surprise that Adobe has been able to keep up with the flurry of enhancements.

• Adobe makes key updates to desktop tools. Photoshop CC adds 3D printing capabilities and improved Touch Support for Windows 8. Illustrator CC adds a wicked cool Curvature tool and new Touch support for Windows 8. Flash Pro CC gets improved WebGL support and custom brushes. DreamWeaver CC gains expanded Live View and Creative Cloud Extract. Premiere Pro CC supports search bins and GPU-optimized playback. Adobe Muse CC includes SVG suport and Synchronized Text. After Effects CC adds enhanced 3D pipeline and HiDPI support. InDesign CC includes Interactive EPUB support and a new Color Theme tool. (POV): Attendees feel that Adobe has been very responsive to feature requests and enhancements. The new desktop tools improve user experience, time savings, and growing support for Windows 8 devices. The link back to desktop tools from mobile apps show the convergence of mobility and design in the creative spirit.

• New Creative Cloud services enable connected creativity and collaboration. Creative Cloud Market provides curated content. Creative Cloud Extract allows web designers and developers to share and access design information such as fonts, colors, and CSS when coding mobile and desktop designs. Creative Cloud Libraries adds a common asset management service for colors, brushes, text styles, and vector images. Talent Search provides a market place for creative talent and top brands and companies. (POV): New services continue to expand the value of the Creative Cloud ecosystem. Behance, TypeKit, and file sharing paved the way. Adobe is in a unique position to completely dominate the creative class experience from digital and creative tools provider to talent market place and creative class ecosystem.

Figure 1. The Scenes from #AdobeMAX 2014

Source: Copyright © 2001 -2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

The Bottom Line: Adobe Continues To Dominate Mind Share Among The Creative Class

This year's Adobe MAX demonstrated how the full power of a Creative Cloud suite can accelerate time to market innovations for not only users but also the Adobe development team. While the push to Creative Cloud may have started from a need to address IP theft and license management, the reality is a series of technical and business benefits that come from rearchitecting the suite for the cloud. In addition, the growing partnership with Microsoft shows how Adobe can create a potential hedge against Apple despite Apple's dominance among the creative class. Overall the Adobe team executed an excellent balance of product announcements, partnerships, and ecosystem enhancements.

Your POV.

Feeling creative? How do you use Adobe's Creative Cloud? Let us know your experiences with Adobe. Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Resources

What are ‘true’ analytics - a manifesto

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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A lot is being called analytics today – so it’s time to remind ourselves what ‘true’ analytics really are, and use this definition to force the abusers of the term analytics to call their offerings something else.

 

Let’s remind ourselves what analytics are

• Analytics take an action for the user.
• In a business application context – analytics may also recommend (but force ranked) a number of actions.

 

‘True’ Analytics exist

Here are some examples of older and more recent ‘true’ analytics in action

• When your ABS system in your car decides to kick in for you.
• When the auto pilot in a plane takes action on course because of a deviation.
• When Google Now decides to wake you up earlier because traffic is bad.
• When FICO’s Falcon declines or approves a credit card transaction.
• When a recruiting application force ranks which applicants to talk to for higher hiring success
• …

Why do we seldomly see ‘true’ analytics?

‘True’ analytics are hard as they must use a predictive model to come to the action or at least to the recommendation. And the result of that model must be a better outcome for the user (e.g. the ABS breaking for you) or reasonable (the list of recommendations is trusted and followed). To find, validate and have the business user trust these result of these predictive models is a significant challenge for any software provider. Intrinsically business users – rightfully or not – think they know better than the ‘machine’ – so it needs some trust building before a business user will unleash a model.
 

Easy and tougher use cases

It’s easy to trust the model when humans don’t have a chance to make the call. Take the FICO Falcon fraud use case, the 0.2 seconds to make the call between fraud and not fraud cannot be done by a human, so if the analytical software works correctly – it saves big bucks.

It’s trickier when there is more time, more latitude and the user may be replaced by the model. Take recruiters who pride themselves to find the best candidates out of a sea of potential recruits like needles in the haystack. So for a recruiter to trust a model to the point of e.g. Google Now moving your wakeup call up – which would be inviting the candidates for calls – takes a big step.
 

There is value in other stuff

Analytics is not everything. Visualizations, Modelling, interactive data exploration – all have their place and benefits in the world of business. But let’s call them on what they are and not confuse them with analytics.
 

How to find out it’s not ‘true’ analytics

Here are some easy guidelines even for a non-technical business user to see what not analytics is:

• If you can see colors and a chart – it’s not analytics. (Think your car asking you – do you want a bar chart of a pie chart on the reasons why the ABS should kick in).
• If you hear talk of ‘actionable insights’ – it’s likely not analytics. Because if the vendor was sure what the right action would be – the software should take them – and then we would have ‘true’ analytics.
• If you hear ‘what if analysis’ – it’s likely not analytics. There is a place for ‘what if analyses – but it does not take an action.
• If you hear talk about ‘insights’ – it’s likely not analytics. Yes insights are important – but insight without action is useless. When a system helps business users to find insights – its fine – but not analytics. 

 

YourPOV

Do you agree? Time to call out the ‘false’ or ‘faux’ analytics.

Disrupting the Music Industry – Vodafone and Spotify buddy-up

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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Today’s announcement making Spotify Premium available to Vodafone mobile subscribers amps up the pressure on the music and media industries with more disruption on the horizon.

They say that the number one reason that startups fail is due to distribution. It’s not a poorly designed product, or an inexperienced team or even bad customer experience. The challenge, as it is for any new business, is reaching a market.

Now, it used to be that we knew where to find music – on radio stations, at record bars and on Countdown. As a kid, I’d go and see Mrs Fry at Sandy’s Music in Dee Why (and yes, it is still there). With her son, Nigel, they were the go-to people when it came to new music – from the most interesting punk coming out of the UK through to the emerging Birthday Party more locally, they had their finger on the pulse. They could steer you through both country and western, knew the difference between Boy George and Marilyn and would even keep an autographed single behind the counter for you.

Nigel and Jenny were the central node in a local music marketing network. And each week, they inspired their customers with stories of new music, artists and breakthrough video clips. Their knowledge and passion was extensive and their enthusiasm was contagious. Each person would leave the shop knowing just a little bit more about the music they were about to listen to. In effect, they were creating and cultivating advocates – people who would influence their friends and family through music.

But the shift to digital has transformed this kind of relationship. Our music discovery is no longer curated in the same way by the programming directors, radio hosts or record bar owners. It’s at the mercy of algorithms, networks and big data stores. And it feels like it … but I digress.

Most importantly, we are playing under new rules of distribution. Music needs to find its audience – and increasingly, that audience exists at the end of a data stream. The device that transforms that stream into music is a phone. And this places mobile phone networks in a powerful position.

With the ink now drying on the Vodafone + Spotify partnership, Voda customers will have access to the Spotify Premium package as part of their plan – that’s $11.99 a month in value. And while the deals are not yet up on the website, I’d expect you can chat with customer service about it.

But this is not the end of the line for the music industry. Nor is it for the media industry. After all, disruption also breeds opportunity – and the very thing that made Sandy’s Record Bar popular is still the thing that we crave. And for all the technology under the sun, we haven’t been able to replicate that yet.

Minds + Machines – don’t forget the importance of what is attached to those minds

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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I went to GE’s event titled Minds + Machines 14 in New York City. An event focused on the Industrial Internet. At the crux of the event was a discussion of the impact greater analytics and smarter machines are having, the keys to the Industrial Internet. Some of the discussion points put this phenomenon in perspective. That today for $0.08 you can purchase 1 million transistors…not too long ago for that nickel and 3 pennies you could only get one transistor, and when computing started it cost 5 times that amount. It is now cheap enough to bring intelligence to the majority of machines and “things” that are in our world.

There were some great customer stories, such as the City of San Diego being able to add intelligence to their 6,500 streetlights and allow them to more efficiently manage outages. Rather than the mayor’s office getting a call from an angry voter, the lights can inform maintenance of needed repairs. CSX highlighted their ability to do better asset management and therefore ensure they reduce “unplanned” outages of their locomotives.

Not your father’s GE

AirAsia spoke about using the data that they can gather through their partnership with GE to better optimize the routes their airplanes fly, and even when they turn on and off their engines when the planes are taxing. All this translates to tremendous savings in fuel consumption, a key savings when you consider 50% of their costs are in fuel purchases. Here are three take-aways from an educational day:

• GE – the software company for the Industrial Internet. During the conference and in a press release that went out at the same time, GE announced that its Predix business was generating $1b in sales and was on pace to have 1500 dedicated employees in the Bay Area by end of year. Impressive numbers for your refrigerator manufacturer. But this should come as no surprise. As GE chairman Jeff Immelt said in his opening remarks – “You probably went to bed last night thinking you were a manufacturing company and woke up this morning to realizing your are a software and analytics company.” Every business is now about software, data and analytics. There are no longer big pieces of dumb metal and plastic. The jet engines, locomotives, MRI machines, wind turbines and other products of our industrial age are now smart and getting smarter. The data these devices, coupled with software and analytics are what our businesses are about.
• It is about the people stupid. An underlying theme, and one that I am fully in agreement, is that we cannot ignore the human element in all this. On the contrary, we need to even more sensitive to the role of people. In the industrial revolution, people were treated and looked at with cold calculation. Child labor was used because kids had smaller hands and could perform tasks adults did not have the dexterity to perform. Labor was necessary to make the coalmines in England or the Model T assembly line in Detroit hum along. But the rights of that labor were ignored if not exploited, which gave to the rise of unions and even revolution and bloodshed. Fast forward to today and what some are seeing as another industrial revolution – this one powered by the Industrial Internet. Similar to the industrial revolution of last millennium, this work force will also undergo some changes. Unlike the last industrial revolution, this work force is empowered. Companies need to think about how the Industrial Internet will impact jobs – some lost and some gained. There is also a tremendous amount of change management that will come into play. By being able to measure such a wide swath of processes, companies will and have already uncovered inefficiencies and will look to implement process changes. But that requires your labor force to adjust some of their “tried and true” ways of doing things. AirAsia gave an example of having to work with pilots, many who had over 20 years flying time, on how they were doing their jobs. The data was a great measuring stick as to adding efficiencies. But remember the saying “you can’t teach and old dog new tricks.” It will take more than better data and analytics to get that dog to roll over.
• Finally, there is a hope…maybe a dream…that by adding this level of intelligence and analytics to the system that we can get closer to achieving a globally optimized supply chain. I can see that vision. But I am not sure I can fully buy into it. Not that I am a pessimist. On the surface the ability to put sensors all over the world…literally…can allow us to dream of this becoming a reality. Having all those sensors communicate with one another. And overlaying the intelligence into the system means we can finally have a supply chain where we have perfect information in real time. Of course there is much more to an optimized global supply chain than just having perfect data. Having better, real time access to the mountains of information the Industrial Internet promises, is a step towards a better supply chain. But to assume that all is limiting an optimized supply chain is this data is too simplistic.

GE’s Minds + Machine 14 was a great reminder of the changing digital world around us. Not only are our devices more connected, but also we are able to connect an ever-increasing amount of products. We are only beginning to see the impact that has on our businesses and supply chains. As the technology continues to mature, we need to watch how the people side of the equation evolves.

Weekly Recap - Week ending October 10th 2014

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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• HP splits in two - Enterprise and PCs & Printer
• My Event Report of IBM's Enterprise conference (read here)
• Attending Couchbase Connect and presenting about the future of Enterprise Application Development
• Cornerstone acquires Evolv
• Briefings at HR Tech Conference
• The panel we had with Brian Sommer (TechVantive), Narinder Singh (Appirio) and Mike Krupa (Mercer) - where we unfortunately missed Naomi Bloom
• Lumesse decides to develop on Salesforce1 for its next generation applications
• Ray's Friday keynote at HR Tech Conference

• HP splits into two - Enterprise and PCs & Printers 
• Progress Software user conference in Orlando

Event Report - IBM Enterprise - A lot of value for existing customers, but can IBM attract net new customers?

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 the IBM Enterprise conference in Las Vegas, the event designed for users of IBM’s STG (Server and Technology Group) products. Attendance rose by 30+% to over 3600 professionals, drawn to the event by a large number of training and certification sessions. It was good to see a more global audience than what I have seen at other IBM events for other parts of its large software portfolio.

Here are my Top 3 takeaways by the three STG areas - Power, mainframe and storage:

1. IBM keeps creating value for the mainframe - The often pronounced dead mainframe is doing well and contrary to many reports, is not going away anytime soon. Too many critical workloads run on mainframes today, one often used example at the conference is that it is pretty much impossible to withdraw money from an ATM anywhere in the world without interacting with a mainframe. IBM claims that about 55% of worldwide enterprise transaction need a mainframe to fulfill them.
 

Slide from Rosamilia keynote

Back at the STG analyst meeting us blogged about interesting and surprising use cases (mobile for instance) – so let’s look what IBM announced at Enterprise: The addition of BigData and analytical capabilities for the mainframe. This enables use cases like social media analysis and fraud, we will need to check in with IBM in a few months for use cases. Equally interesting is the announcement of IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack for System z- allowing to run the mainframe like any other OpenStack resource, from one pane of glass.

Slide from Balog keynote

2. New Power Systems - IBM is not standing still with Power and fresh off the sales of its x86 server business to Lenovo even labels the Enterprise press release of Power as a replacement for x86 servers - well that was quick. IBM stressed the expansion of the OpenPower Foundation that during the conference reached 60+ members (the press release still had 59) – which underlines a dynamic community. I expect Open Power getting even more traction as Power is now the only platform for many other vendors to partner with IBM. And no surprise IBM is stressing the Power architecture’s ability to handle BigData well. IBM said that Power now offers up to 20% better price performance than Intel Xeon based systems, based on September 2014 SPEC Benchmark.
 

And for a moment we are reminded we are at hardware conference - Rosamilia and Balog unveil a new Power Servder

3. Storage becomes software defined – As previewed earlier at the STG analyst summit, IBM offers a number of new software defined storage options. The vendor did not get tired to stress that IBM was recently proclaimed the leader in flash storage by our colleagues at IDC. The interesting observation for me was, that IBM is practically forced into software defined storage. As IBM has System Z and Power as remaining architecture and as well wants to support a variety of existing customer system architectures, while not building storage systems for each platform - it pretty much needs to find a software defined solution to get storage done on its new storage machines. It was interesting to see such a system, offering 1 petabyte in flash storage. And let’s not forget the SoftLayer option, where IBM announced backup to the cloud. For customers operating on these platforms, these are good forces to align with.

Benefits of Software Defined Storage - from Thomas' keynote

MyPOV

A good event for IBM customers using System Z and Power Servers. Mainframe customer were able to clearly see that IBM is not leaving them behind, but keeps offering new options to bring new load to the mainframe. Power customers can be assured that IBM invests into Power, one of the main interests (relatively absent at the event, but there was a parallel event in New York) of IBM is Watson, and that alone will give Power a significant market share. Getting more software to run on Power will be crucial for IBM, new announcements like e.g. the one of Suse help, but more still needs to be done in my view. 

On the storage side my key realization at the event was, that IBM needs to make software defined storage a success. Offering the new flash based systems for System Z, Power etc. on the respective platforms will not scale so IBM needs (and wants) to provide a single (Flash based ideally) storage server and direct the storage needs from different platform to it. Given IBM customers have a similar and likely even more heterogeneous system landscape – a good goal alignment.

Overall IBM is focused on creating value for its platforms – if this will be enough to create brand new usage and sales for System Z and Power based server’s remains to be seen. Watson is a great potential growth driver for Power, but mainly created by IBM’s own decision. The big news would be net new System Z customers not only here and there but consistently buying the mainframe for a 21st century use case. We will see if 2015 will have that in store – or not. 

Dumbing down Snowden

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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Ed Snowden was interviewed today as part of the New Yorker festival. This TechCruch report says Snowden "was asked a couple of variants on the question of what we can do to protect our privacy. His first answer called for a reform of government policies." He went on to add some remarks about Dropbox, Google, Facebook and encryption, and that's what the report chose to focus on. The TechCrunch headline: "Snowden's Privacy Tips".

Mainstream and even technology media reportage does Snowden a terrible disservice.

I've listened to the interview.  After being asked by a listener what they should do about privacy, Snowden gave a careful, nuanced, and comprehensive answer over five minutes.  His very first line was 'this is an incredibly complex topic' and he did well to stick to plain language throughout.  He canvassed a great many issues including: the need for policy reform, the 'Nothing to Hide' argument, the inversion of civil rights when governments ask us to justify the right to be left alone, the collusion of companies and governments, the poor state of product security and usability, the chilling effect on industry of government intervention in security, metadata, and the radicalization of computer scientists today being comparable with physicists in the Cold War. 

Only after all that, and a follow up question about 'ordinary people', did Snowden say 'don't use Dropbox'. 

Consistently, when Snowden is asked what to do about privacy, his answers are primarily about politics not technology. When pressed, he dispenses the odd advice about using Tor and disk encryption, but Snowden's chief concerns (as I have discussed in depth previously) are around accountability, government transparency, better cryptology research, better security product quality, and so on. He is no hacker in the conventional us-versus-them mould.

I am simply dismayed how Snowden's sophisticated analyses are dumbed down to security tips. He has never been a cyber Agony Aunt. The proper response to NSA overreach has to be agitation for regime change, not do-it-yourself cryptography. That is Snowden's message. 

Dear Citrix, I Want To Work Here!

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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Yesterday I attended the opening of Citrix's new office in Raleigh, North Carolina. This new facility was built upon the foundation of an old factory and warehouse and will be used primarily by employees working on the ShareFile product family. But the scope of this building is much larger for community around it. Just a 10-15 minute walk from downtown, this new office is in an area dominated by abandoned warehouses. Citrix has spent more that 3 years working with local, state and federal officials to open this new office, with the hope that this will rejuvenate the area, bringing new businesses, housing and transportation to the area. The Governor, Mayor and other local politicians joined Citrix's executive team in the ribbon cutting ceremony.

MyPOV

In an era where technology is making it easier than ever to work anytime from anywhere, it's still important to create spaces where people want to gather to dream and create. As someone who's worked as a remote employee for more than a decade I can tell you, all the mobile devices and web-conferences in the world don't fully replace human interaction. Much like the cool startup offices found in Silicon Valley, Citrix has created a space where their staff wants to come to work. I candidly interviewed several employees yesterday and they could not be happier about this new facility. They talked about the cost of living in Raleigh compared to places like New York and San Francisco, the weather and walking or biking to work instead of having an hour or longer commute. After touring the high-tech open floor plan with desks that raise and lower, dual monitors, gym, and rooftop cafeteria I can honestly say I'm pretty jealous about their working environment. Right now the only issue is there is not much surrounding the office, but that's the point... this is intended to motivate stores and restaurants to open in the area. I hope Citrix invites me back in a year to see the progress that's been made.

Until then, here are some of my thoughts and pictures from the day.