Marketing Led Sales – a new era for Hubspot and CRM

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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Back in the beginning of 2013, I released a research report into the field of marketing automation. It investigated the challenges faced by marketers – from the explosion in digital and social channels to the newly emerging connected consumer and sought to map out the strengths of the various marketing technology vendors and their software offerings. In this report, I had identified that:

HubSpot looks to upset the apple cart.

With the focus on inbound marketing I predicted that HubSpot was well placed to become a future category leader.

At the recent INBOUND2014 conference, HubSpot announced a bold new offering – HubSpot CRM. Now, HubSpot, along with many other marketing automation platforms have long provided a simple CRM-style database – or tight integration to dedicated customer relationship management platforms such as Salesforce. But this feels different. It is different. It is FREE – as part of your HubSpot subscription.

But it’s not the pricing (or lack thereof) that feels revolutionary. It’s the fact that the HubSpot CRM reverses the priority of CRM – from sales first to marketing first. So now, rather than CRM and sales leading the customer process, HubSpot reaches out through its marketing platform to engage customers and then automatically connects them through to the sales teams seamlessly. The CRM platform works almost behind the scenes, logging your sales emails, phone calls and leads as they are made, not after the fact. And because it is part of the one platform, the marketing data that has been accumulated through various touch points, from web, to download, to webinar and so on, is also immediately available to the sales team as the relationship moves closer to conversion.

This new extension to an already powerful mid-market solution will strengthen what is already an attractive software platform. More importantly, it presents small and medium businesses with a compelling proposition – all in one, integrated sales and marketing automation.

And while this is a welcome mid-market addition, I am most excited about what this means for those organisations actively engaged in strategic digital marketing. Sure, most companies are shifting to digital, but those organisations with a mature approach to digital will be able to quickly deploy this kind of solution to create a competitive advantage. With HubSpot CRM, customers – and the customer experience – is more tightly connected to the sales process. It’s marketing led sales, not sales driven marketing. And this is a revolution that has been waiting in the wings.

Now I can’t wait to see what the next act brings.

Simply Secure is not simply private

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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Another week, another security collaboration launch!

"Simply Secure" calls itself "a small but growing organization [with] expertise in usability research, design, software development, and product management". Their mission has to do with improving the security functions that built-in so badly in most software today. Simply Secure is backed by Google and Dropbox, and supported by a diverse advisory board.

It's early days (actually early day, singular) so it might be churlish to point out that Simply Secure's strategic messaging is a little uneven ... except that the words being used to describe it shed light on the clarity of the thinking.

My first exposure to Simply Secure came last night, when I read an article in the Guardian by Cory Doctorow (who is one of their advisers). Doctorow places enormous emphasis on privacy; the word "privacy" outnumbers "security" 16 to three in the body of his column. Another admittedly shorter report about the launch by The Next Web doesn't mention privacy at all. And then there's the Simply Secure blog post, which cites privacy a great deal but every single time in conjunction with security, as in "security and privacy". That repeated phrasing conveys, to me at least, some discomfort. As I say, it's early days and the team is doubtless sorting out how to weigh and progress these closely related objectives.

But I hope they do it quickly. On the face of it, Simply Secure might only scratch the surface of privacy.

Doctorow's Guardian article is mostly concerned with encryption and the terrible implementations that have plagued us since the dawn of the Internet. It's definitely important that we improve here - and radically. If the Simply Secure initiative does nothing but make encryption easier to integrate into commodity software, that would be a great thing. I'm all for it. But it won't necessarily or even probably lead to better privacy, because privacy is about restraint not secrecy or anonymity.
As we go about our lives, we actually want to be known by others, but we want those who know us to be restrained in what they do with the knowledge they have about us. Privacy is the protection you need when your affairs are not secret.

I know Doctorow knows this - I've seen his terrific little speech on the steps on Comic-Con about PRISM. So I'm confused by his focus on cryptography.

How far does encryption get us? If we're using social networks, or if we're shopping and opting in to loyalty programs or selected targeted marketing, or if we're sharing our medical records with relatives, medicos, hospitals and researchers, then encryption becomes moot. We need mechanisms to restrain what the receivers of our personal information do with it. We all know the business model at work behind "free" online services; using encryption to protect privacy in social networking for instance would be like using an armoured van to deliver your valuables to Bernie Madoff.

Another limitation of user-centric or user-managed encryption has to do with Big Data. A great deal of personal information about us is created and collected unseen behind our backs, by sensors, and by analytics processes than manage to work out who we are by linking disparate data streams together. How could SS ameliorate those sorts of problems? If the SS vision includes encryption at rest as well as in transit, then how will the user control or even see all the secondary uses of their encrypted personal information?

There's a combativeness in Doctorow's explanation of Simply Secure and his tweets from yesterday on the topic. His aim is expressly to thwart the surveillance state, which in his view includes a symbiosis (if not conspiracy) between government and internet companies, where the former gets their dirty work done by the latter. I'm sure he and I both find that abhorrent in equal measure. But I argue the proper response to these egregious behaviours is political not technological (and political in the broad sense; I love that Snowden talks as much about accountability, legal processes, transparency and research as he does about encryption). If you think the government is exploiting the exploiters, then DIY encryption is a pretty narrow counter-measure. This is not the sort of society we want to live in, so let's work to change the establishment, rather than try to take it on in a crypto shoot-out.

Yes security technology is important but it's not nearly as important for privacy as the Rule of Law. Data privacy regimes instil restraint. The majority of businesses come to know that they are not at liberty to over-collect personal information, nor to re-use personal information unexpectedly and without consent. A minority of organisations flout data privacy principles, for example by slyly refining raw data into valuable personal knowledge, exploiting the trust citizens and users put in them. Some of these outfits flourish in the United States - the Canary Islands of privacy. Worldwide, the policing of privacy is patchy indeed, yet there have been spectacular legal victories in Europe and elsewhere against the excessive practices of really big companies like Facebook with their biometric data mining of photo albums, and Google's drift net-like harvesting of traffic from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

Pragmatically, I'm afraid encryption is such a fragile privacy measure. Once secrecy is penetrated, we need regulations to stem exploitation of our personal information.

By all means, let's improve cryptographic engineering and I wish the Simply Secure initiative all the best. So long as they don't call security privacy.

SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur - and the push into spend management

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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• Large user base - As SAP wants (and probably needs) to be a leader in cloud - spend management apps deliver the users. SAP would not have been #1 in users even before Concur if it had not acquired Ariba.
   
• Stable revenue - SAP wants (and needs) cloud revenues. Spend revenue are stable and have less of a need to keep a salesforce around immediately as other SaaS software categories.
   
• Little competition - The other SaaS player - including Oracle have little interest in the category - for now. So SAP can acquire avoiding bidding wars (remember Retek?).
   
• Up sell - Spend management applications are an easy up sell / cross-sell item for the SAP salesforce. Same buyers, more SAP install at the customers.
   
• Synergies - What companies spend needs to get funded and updated in an enterprises 's Financial and Purchasing systems. SAP owns many of these, so getting rid of an interface and let SAP own it is an intuitive synergy to decision. makers. 

Implications, Implications. 

Implications for SAP customers 

• SAP customer how don't use SAP T&E and ConcurGood news if they don't use competitor products. Wait and see what SAP will come up with and look at the ROI of a travel spend management and T&E project. If a competitor product(s) is used - then stay where you are. Monitor SAP process and announcements though.
   
• SAP customers who use Concur Generally good news. Check what contacts say for material change in control. Ensure support and call SAP asap in case there are roadmap dependencies.
   
• SAP customers who use SAP spend management and T&E appsTime to call SAP asap and get reassurances in operation. Secure potential roadmap items contractually. Monitor carefully what SAP ans to do and be proactive. Use ASUG and other user groups as a forum. 

Implications for Concur customers 

Implications for Partners 

Implications for competitors 

MyPOV 

Event Report - Infor's Inforum - It was all about verticals, now it is getting horizontal with vertical depth

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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I had the opportunity to attend Infor’s yearly user conference in New Orleans. The event was very attended with over 6000 participants and was filled with pretty strategic announcements for Infor, customers, partners and competitors. I previously blogged about my Day 1 Keynote takeaways – you can find them here.
 

Tough to make a call for the Top3 event highlights – but here you go:

1. Vertical vs Horizontal

For a long time Infor has positioned itself as the vendor that goes the extra mile to build vertical functionality. Sometimes the vendor even calls it micro-verticals, and Infor is starting to make a name for themselves in this area. CEO Charles Philips shared a conversation with a potential customer in real estate, who stated that the whole industry does not see much support from the other enterprise software vendors. And there can be no question that Infor has some very deep functional assets across the many vendors the company had acquired.

So far so good for Day 1- but then the Day 2 keynote add significant horizontal functionality plans to the agenda. Not only did Infor announce a new Financials product – Philips said they are the first vendor to do so in the last 10 years (well SAP may want to argue), but also a new HCM product, the two being bundled into the new CloudSuite Corporate product. Head of Product Soma Somasundaram went over the design principles for the new Financials product (press release here), and they are all good ingredients for a promising future. And to be fair, Infor executives during the keynote tirelessly described additional vertical features that are planned to be part of the product. So a key focus of upcoming R&D is going to be on horizontal functionality, but coupled with deep functional depth. Unfortunately Infor did not share a roadmap, so the audience was left with an unclear timeline of what will be delivered when. Certainly early days, but a roadmap will be key for Infor to flesh out.
 

Soma Somasundaram introduces new Infor Financials (thanks to @RalphRio for picture)

2, Cloud if you want

Infor keeps building on Amazon’s AWS as its public cloud partner, we covered the original announcement at the AWS Cloud Summit in San Francisco here. In the meantime Infor has complemented AWS with additional capabilities that the vendor needed to make its application portfolio run on AWS. During an executive Q&A COO Pam Murphy shared that all products can be up and running in 30 minutes. That is a far cry from the 2-3 minutes a traditional AWS AMI image sees, but very fast if you consider that Infor has to spin up quite complex product architectures to enable their products to ruin on AWS. And its superfast if you consider the times involving installing the same onsite. It’s likely the software download (or the unwrapping of the DVDs) will take longer than 30 minutes.

But despite all the marketing attention for CloudSuite Infor allows their customers do deploy all their products on premise as well. And while some may argue that this makes Infor not an ‘all –in cloud vendor’ – it’s the choice customers want. From the conversations with customers it certainly it is encouraging for them to see other customers starting to run CloudSuite on AWS, and their experiences will be key for the next wave of adoption. That said we didn’t see (yet) a live CloudSuite customer on stage (or missed it as I watched the Day 2 keynote between hotel, taxi and airport).

Scibelli introduces glide (thanks to @alanlepo for picture)

3. Ion is the (not so) secret (anymore) weapon

Market Move - Cisco wants to buy Metacloud - getting more into the cloud game

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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This morning Cisco announced its intent to acquire Pasadena based Metacloud. It has been quiet over at Cisco since the launch of the Cisco Intercloud earlier this year. So it’s a good sign we some action around Cisco’s cloud plans.
 

Let’s dissect the press release in our usual style, commenting on the new:

[…] Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held Metacloud. Based in Pasadena, Calif., Metacloud deploys and operates private clouds for global organizations with a unique OpenStack-as-a-Service model that delivers and remotely operates production-ready private clouds in a customer’s data center.

MyPOV – Metacloud is one of the many vendors looking to make it big in the OpenStack market. It’s OpenStack as a service model is an interesting, but not unique approach (e.g. Platform9 was covered by us in a blog post recently. But given the relative complexities enterprises face installing and operating OpenStack private cloud, this will certainly help Cisco’s Intercloud customers and may well attract prospects.

Metacloud’s OpenStack-based cloud platform will accelerate Cisco’s strategy to build the world's largest global Intercloud, a network of clouds, together with key partners to address customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the robust demands of the Internet of Everything. Since announcing its Intercloud strategy in March, Cisco has made rapid progress, enlisting key technology partners, service and cloud providers, all of whom are standardizing upon the Cisco Cloud Services architecture, which is based on OpenStack open source software for building private and public clouds.

With OpenStack gaining global acceptance through its ability to handle any workload on any hypervisor on any public or private cloud, the ability to manage OpenStack installations at scale is a critical component of Cisco’s Intercloud strategy. Cisco’s acquisition of Metacloud’s remote managed OpenStack Private Cloud-as-a-Service platform will play an increasingly important role in accelerating Cisco customers’ journey to the cloud, enabling enterprises to match the as-a-Service operational benefits of public cloud with the security and control provided by private cloud. Metacloud also will allow service providers to combine their public cloud deployments with remotely managed OpenStack private clouds, and to deliver unique Intercloud offerings to their customers.

MyPOV – I am sure Cisco has made progress – but it was less visible than above states – it recently partnered with RedHat on an integrated OpenStack datacenter infrastructure.

“Cloud computing has dramatically changed the IT landscape. To enable greater business agility and lower costs, organizations are shifting from an on-premise IT structure to hybrid IT – a mix of private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise applications,” said Hilton Romanski, senior vice president, Cisco Corporate Development. “The resulting silos present a challenge to IT administrators, as choice, visibility, data sovereignty and protection in this world of many clouds requires an open platform. We believe Metacloud’s technology will play a critical role in enabling our customers to experience a seamless journey to a new world of many clouds, providing choice, flexibility, and data governance.”

MyPOV – We agree on the direction, but MetaCloud is also interesting in the opposite sense, that a service provider runs an on premise private cloud. There will be enterprises who will chose to monitor their OpenStack powered private cloud through a public cloud console, but the larger potential are customers who simply don’t want to manage their own data center anymore. This is an opportunity for Cisco and partners. And many customers may be open to purchase Cisco Severs – having space in their data centers – if Cisco can show that operating them is cheaper than in other (public?) clouds.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Metacloud employees will join Cisco’s Cloud Infrastructure and Managed Services organization led by Faiyaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president. The acquisition of Metacloud is expected to be complete in the first quarter of fiscal year 2015, subject to customary closing

MyPOV – And there we have it – joining the ‘… managed Services’ organization. Certainly a good business opportunity.

Overall MyPOV

Certainly a good move by Cisco, that like other OpenStack players has realized that there are not only benefits using OpenStack, but serious complexities in implementing and operating OpenStack clouds. If my speculation is right, the Metacloud capabilities will give Cisco the opportunity to run more customer data centers as a service for them. It may also give Cisco the opportunity to run other hardware vendors’ servers. Let’s not forget that for Cisco professional services – always assuming performed right – are helping the company’s overall margin. The future will certainly hold some interesting dynamics here.

And lastly – as I have pointed out before – the crux of the overall cloud game is – who spends the CAPEX for the servers and data centers? The large public clouds maintain themselves, but later entries in the cloud market have to do a lot of investment to catch up. Metacloud allows Cisco to have its customers buy servers – located in a customer or a Cisco datacenter – and even administered by Cisco or a 3rd party. As long as the TCO looks more attractive than the status quo or other buying alternative, then all ends well.

Infor is Hooked On Collaboration, Design and Data

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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This week enterprise software vendor Infor held their annual customer conference in New Orleans. While Infor may not be a household name the way Microsoft, Google, SAP or Oracle are, they are a massive multibillion dollar company that focuses on solving specific business needs of over 73,000 customers. Rather than simply making CRM or ERP software, Infor focuses on tailoring solutions for specific industries. For example, 95% of the largest aerospace companies use Infor. As do 80% of the major teaching hospitals in the US. Some of the other key verticals for Infor include Automotive, Hospitality, Fashion and Food and Beverage.

So why would I attend a conference for enterprise software business processes if that’s not what I cover in my research?  Simple. Because over the last few years Infor has focused heavily on improving the way people use their software to get their jobs done. To accomplish this developed Infor Ming.le, an enterprise social networking tool that adds collaboration features seamlessly into their product portfolio. Infor Ming.le enables people to communicate and collaborate within the specific content of their jobs while using Infor products like SX.E for product distribution. With Infor Ming.le integrated into Info Sales reps can discuss a customer’s account, mechanics can communicate around fixing a part, or doctors can coordinate all aspects of a patient’s treatment. These specific use-case driven collaboration workflows are what I call Purposeful Collaboration. 

Some thoughts:
- Infor Infor Ming.le is a relatively new offering, which up until now has only been available to Infor’s on-premises customers. However coming very soon, Infor Ming.le will be available as a cloud hosted offering on the Infor Xi platform. 

- Infor Ming.le offers similar integration of collaboration and business processes software as competitive products like SAP JAM and Oracle Social Network, while platforms like Epicor and Netsuite are currently lacking these features. 

- One area Infor Ming.le needs to improve upon is partner ecosystem and 3rd party add-on products. For example, I’d like to see integration with unified communications (chat, web-conferecing), file sharing and task management products. Infor Ming.le does have an API that allows for extensibility, and this week I spoke with one of Infor Ming.le'€™s largest customers and they told me about integrations they have done Twitter and MailChimp. I will be covering this in more detail soon in an upcoming Case Study.

- One of my favourite meetings of the week was with Infor Ming.le customer Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority. The are using Infor Ming.le to improve communication by posting questions and presentations in the social network instead of emailing them, as well as modernising the repair process used by their technicians. In the past a mechanic would remove a part, take it to the supply room and wait until they were given a replacement. Now they take a picture of the part, upload it to Infor Ming.le and by the time they get to the supply room the part is waiting for them. Why did I like this meeting so much? Because they the average age of their employees is between 45 and 60. This was a perfect proof point for the message Constellation Research has been pushing around social networking NOT being just for millennials. Companies need to focus on the Digital Proficiency (the combination of skill and comfort with technology) of their people, not what year they were born.

Create Experiences People Love

In addition to integrating collaboration into business processes, Infor has also invested heavily on improving the user interface and user experience of their products. In none geek-speak, that means they want to make them pretty and easy to use.  To do this, they created their own internal design studio in New York named Hook and Loop. This group has grown from 15 people last year to over 100, making them one of the largest design teams in NYC. Note: creating a dedicated design team in not unique to Infor as IBM, Citrix and many other enterprise software vendors have done the same thing.

Hook and Loop has in interesting design philosophy. They explained that the way people use software has evolved from command lines to graphical user interfaces and they now want to take that to the next stage with what they call natural user interfaces. A natural user interface allows people to conduct a business process in an experience that is so familiar to them that no training is required.

For example, instead of a standard screen of rows and columns of data, Hook and Loop envisions medical software that borrows from the look of the Periodic Table of Elements. In the image below staff, rooms and patients are linked together visually allowing easy access to all the data and actions that doctors and nurses need to get their jobs done.




Infor has similar ideas on how to improve the user experience across several industries. I look forward to seeing them push the boundaries of what people are accustomed to with enterprise software.  



As their slogan says, “Infor: Beautiful business software designed for your industry.”



Finally, Infor announced a new division in the company, Dynamic Science Labs. Similar to how they established Hook and Loop in NYC to focus on design, Dynamic Science Labs (based in Cambridge MA right near MIT) will focus on Analytics and Insights.  CEO Charles Phillips discussed how most of today’s Business Intelligence (BI) tools produce information that people already know. For example, a manager dashboard that shows the sales numbers over the last 4 quarters. Infor wants to deliver information that can look deeper into the patterns of why things are happening and ultimately provide predictive measures to stop negative business impacts before they occur.



This concept ties into my research into Personal or Social Analytics, where instead of just having a to-do list or project plans, employees will have tools that provide them real time guidance on what they should and should not be working on.  Imagine combining several data sources such as email, social media, CRM, supply chain, product tasks and more to produce real-time (daily, hourly or even immediate) guidance on what you should be working on and with whom.

I look forward to working with Infor as they think about the future intersections of analytics and collaboration software, and how data and machine generated insights can help people get their jobs done more effectively.
 

New Paper Coming: The collision between Big Data and privacy law

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 a new academic paper due to be published in October, in the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy. Here is an extract.

Update, Jan 2015: The paper is also available at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). 

The collision between Big Data and privacy law

Abstract

We live in an age where billionaires are self-made on the back of the most intangible of assets - the information they have about us. The digital economy is awash with data. It's a new and endlessly re-useable raw material, increasingly left behind by ordinary people going about their lives online. Many information businesses proceed on the basis that raw data is up for grabs; if an entrepreneur is clever enough to find a new vein of it, they can feel entitled to tap it in any way they like. However, some tacit assumptions underpinning today's digital business models are naive. Conventional data protection laws, older than the Internet, limit how Personal Information is allowed to flow. These laws turn out to be surprisingly powerful in the face of 'Big Data' and the 'Internet of Things'. On the other hand, orthodox privacy management was not framed for new Personal Information being synthesised tomorrow from raw data collected today. This paper seeks to bridge a conceptual gap between data analytics and privacy, and sets out extended Privacy Principles to better deal with Big Data.

Introduction

'Big Data' is a broad term capturing the extraction of knowledge and insights from unstructured data. While data processing and analysis is as old as computing, the term 'Big Data' has recently attained special meaning, thanks to the vast rivers of raw data that course unseen through the digital economy, and the propensity for entrepreneurs to tap that resource for their own profit, or to build new analytic tools for enterprises. Big Data represents one of the biggest challenges to privacy and data protection society has seen. Never before has so much Personal Information been available so freely to so many.

Big Data promises vast benefits for a great many stakeholders (Michael & Miller 2013: 22-24) but the benefits may be jeopardized by the excesses of a few overly zealous businesses. Some online business models are propelled by a naive assumption that data in the 'public domain' is up for grabs. Many think the law has not kept pace with technology, but technologists often underestimate the strength of conventional data protection laws and regulations. In particular, technology neutral privacy principles are largely blind to the methods of collection, and barely distinguish between directly and indirectly collected data. As a consequence, the extraction of Personal Information from raw data constitutes an act of collection and as such is subject to longstanding privacy statutes. Privacy laws such as that of Australia don't even use the words 'public' and 'private' to qualify the data flows concerned (Privacy Act 1988).

On the other hand, orthodox privacy policies and static data usage agreements do not cater for the way Personal Information can be synthesised tomorrow from raw data collected today. Privacy management must evolve to become more dynamic, instead of being preoccupied with unwieldy policy documents and simplistic technical notices about cookies.

Thus the fit between Big Data and data privacy standards is complex and sometimes surprising. While existing laws are not to be underestimated, there is a need for data privacy principles to be extended, to help individuals remain abreast of what's being done with information about them, and to foster transparency regarding the new ways for personal information to be generated.

Conclusion: Making Big Data privacy real

A Big Data dashboard like the one described could serve several parallel purposes in aid of progressive privacy principles. It could reveal dynamically to users what PII can be collected about them through Big Data; it could engage users in a fair and transparent exchange of value-for-PII transaction; and it could enable dynamic consent where users are able to opt in to Big Data processes, and opt out and in again, over time, as their understanding of the PII bargain evolves.

Big Data holds big promises, for the benefit of many. There are grand plans for population-wide electronic health records, new personalised financial services that leverage massive retail databases, and electricity grid management systems that draw on real-time consumption data from smart meters in homes, to extend the life of aging 'poles and wires' while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The value to individuals and operators alike of these programs is amplified as computing power grows, new algorithms are researched, and more and more data sets are joined together. Likewise, the privacy risks are compounded. The potential value of Personal Information in the modern Big Data landscape cannot be represented in a static business model, and neither can the privacy pros and cons be captured in a fixed policy document. New user interfaces and visualisations like a 'Big Data dashboard' are needed to bring dynamic extensions to traditional privacy principles, and help people appreciate and intelligently negotiate the insights that can be extracted about them from the raw material that is data.

Why CDOs Attend Connected Enterprise

Demands for CDOs across all industries reached fever pitch five minutes ago, but that's old news to you, isn't it? You were on board years ago. Other C-suite residents may argue that a CDO should be assisted by the patronage of a more established department; however, you know the organization needs an unencumbered leader to drive a digital-first mindset into your organization's DNA.

It's time for you to attend Constellation's Connected Enterprise. CDOs who attend Connected Enterprise are early adopters. Their organizations recognize the promise of digital. CDOs attend Constellation's Connected Enterprise to learn how to create digital strategies that meet the unique requirements of their organizations. 

CDOs Attend Connected Enterprise for Early Adopter Digital Transformation Strategies 

Connected Enterprise's sessions will teach you how to create a strategy to infuse a digital-first mindset into your organization's DNA. You'll learn how to rise above legacy expectations and write a CDO charter that serves the needs of your organization. You'll learn from successful Silicon Valley CDOs how to best steer your digital transformation once your strategy's wheels are in motion. 

Chief Digital Officer Sessions:

• EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Infusing a culture of Innovation In an Age of Digital Transformation
• VISIONARIES: Which Comes First- Digital Transformation or Globalization?
• VISIONARIES: How Does Digital Transform the Customer Experience?
• EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Industry Spotlight - How Sports Has Changed With Digital Business
• EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Lessons Learned from Silicon Valley Digital CXOs

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HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS

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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I am sure SAP executives would probably play back the whole HANA marketing and product naming story if they could - given the confusion that was created in the initial enthusiasm around the HANA in memory database with HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and other HANA xxx products and initiative.

But it’s time to revisit what is happening a few weeks before TechEd / dcode around HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and SAP was gracious enough to recently brief me on progress, upcoming new features and latest uptake.

Improved – Purpose

For a PaaS platform it is key to understand what kind of applications can be built, potentially run, operated and built with. Naturally PaaS players with evolving PaaS capabilities prefer to be more nebulous than clear on this key area - as the capabilities of the platform expand and naturally vendors don’t want to lose developers to other platforms because of a too restrictive positioning.
 

So credit goes to SAP to provide more clarity in this area, with three major usage scenarios being the focus of HCP now:

1. New Cloud Apps - SAP wants a portion of the ‘born on the web’ apps, which makes sense - but is probably the most competitive area of the three scenarios.
    
2. On-Premise Apps - Building cloud extension to on premise apps with the help of HCP is the most common scenario for SAP internally, and a good one to draft in as a potential HCP user.
    
3. Cloud Apps - Building cloud extensions to cloud solutions. For SAP that would be e.g. putting new cloud based apps on top of SuccessFactors or Ariba, another scenario that is relevant for SAP and with that decision makers should have a relatively high comfort level HCP can help them for the same or similar project scenarios.

MyPOV - SAP is smart at packaging these 3 different scenarios in the usage of HCP – all three of them being close to what SAP needs to do internally anyway, so why not make it good enough / attractive enough for customers and partners attempting to do the same.

Improved – Platform Capabilities

So the marketecture slide for HCP looks as below.
 

And while the bottom part is fairly know and stable since the launch of HANA, the top boxes are part of where I see news and changes:

• Line-of-Business Apps - It is now clear that SAP will develop its new Line of Business Apps with HCP. First products like Simple-Finance are being built on HCP. More will come.
   
• Hybris on CloudFoundry - Interestingly the recent SAP acquisition hybris will build its next generation platform on top of CloudFoundry, which becomes / is part of HCP.
   
• Customer / Partner Apps - SAP expects customers and partners to build their application – based on the three above mentioned scenarios with the help of HCP.

MyPOV – For the longest time SAP development and platform tools have been proprietary, despite all attempts to make ABAP and the ABAP platform a ‘standard’ business platform. . If there is a standard programming language these days for business applications, it is certainly more Java and Java byte code compatible languages…. than ABAP. So it is good to see that SAP is supporting these languages, but equally probably the most popular large enterprise PaaS, CloudFoundry (here is my News Analysis of the partnership announcement). That this happens as part of the hybris project should serve as a good confidence building point for users of HCP, as SAP needs to deliver the next version of hybris and wants to run that largely in its own (or partner) data centers. So the CloudFoundry integration into HCP has to succeed – otherwise SAP will be in a totally different challenge. Lastly – by building commerce functions as part of HCP, SAP creates another attractive reason to use HCP always - assuming SAP will provide good enough commerce functionality and will open it up to HCP users –as they key next generation application capabilities of commerce are ‘baked’ into the platform.

Notable is also the very bottom – with using both SAP and partner datacenters. And while SAP started out doing everything themselves, they have signed up partners on the data center side, will be good to check-in at another opportunity to see how these partners are supported and how successful they are at this early point of product life for HCP.

Lastly note the subtitle of the slide: “The in memory PaaS.” That is certainly a genuine statement as HANA runs on RAM – but also harbors some concerns, more on that below.

SAP is using the following three packages for HCP

1. Infrastructure Services - This is the closest SAP will dabble into the IaaS world. If a customer has a HANA license, SAP will operate it – as part of the infrastructure services. It is BYOL as already earlier announced for HEC last year.
    
2. DB Services - This is the package that will be key for enterprises who will want to build on HANA, and deploy to HEC, using HCP as the PaaS.
    
3. Application Services - Here SAP throws in its weight around business APIs, and allows customers to build higher level applications (remember ‘composite apps’?) on top of these. Certainly with a different license construct than the other two packages, fair enough.

More on the services offerings around the announcement earlier this year is here.

MyPOV – With these three packages SAP covers the key license needs of the most common usage scenarios. And it makes sense to break these into more granular packages as SAP has done as the cloud game is all about load derived economies of scale – so the more load SAP can get e.g. for its Infrastructure Services, the better for the overall success of SAP in the cloud.

Improved - Outlook

It is always key to look at the plans ahead when making a decision for a PaaS. And SAP has recently expanded these plans:

 

With the extension to other database services – starting with the Sybase products HCP becomes a broader PaaS tool. We mentioned the support of CloudFoundry before, with the addition of docker SAP offers something for the container crazed demand that we see these days. And we have already mentioned the AppServices. Here SAP shares a similar vision like IBM with its BlueMix (also CloudFoundry based) vision of an API economy.

MyPOV – It was already key to see SAP opening the runtimes to Java, node.js and standard support for HTML5 with SAP UI5. The ultimate test on the database side will be to see when SAP will not only support in-house databases (Sybase, MaxDB etc) – but also other leading databases (Oracle 12c, IBM DB2 etc.) and NoSQL databases (Hadoop, MongoDB, Couchbase etc). The opening of the database support will be key in terms of customers and developer classifying HCP as a general PaaS player or a SAP ecosystem play. The addition of docker is a very good move, again my preference is a load perspective. SAP as a later entry in the IaaS game needs to chase loads to drive up utilization of its data centers. And it may be the same customers that recently drove VMware to support docker that may have had a word with SAP, too. And certainly docker makes a nice developer story.

Finally the Apps Services area is an interesting differentiator. SAP will have to make clear how these APIs will be licensed, supported and operated, but a functionally rich enterprise Paas is a powerful value proposition that both Salesforce.com (see here) and IBM (see here) are already using.

But don’t pop open the champagne yet…

Schrodinger's Privacy: A Master Class

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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Master Class: How to Protect Your Customer's Digital Identity and Personal Data

A Social Media Week Sydney event #SMWSydney
Law Lounge, Sydney University Law School
New Law School Building
Eastern Ave, Camperdown
Fri, Sep 26 - 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

It's often said that technology has outpaced privacy law. Many digital businesses seem empowered by this brash belief. And so they proceed with apparent impunity to collect and monetise as much Personal Information as they can get their hands on.

But it's a myth!

Some of the biggest corporations in the world, including Google and Facebook, have been forcefully brought to book by privacy regulations.
So what does privacy law really mean for social media businesses in Australia?

In this Social Media Week Master Class I will:

• unpack what's "creepy" about certain online practices
• show how to rate data privacy issues objectively
• analyse classic misadventures with geolocation, facial recognition, and predicting when shoppers are pregnant
• critique photo tagging and crowd-sourced surveillance
• explain why Snapchat is worth more than three billion dollars
• analyse the regulatory implications of Big Data, Biometrics, Wearables and The Internet of Things.

We couldn't have timed this Master Class better, coming two weeks after the announcement of the Apple Watch, which will figure prominently in the class!

So please come along, for a fun and in-depth a look at social media, digital technology, the law, and decency.

Register here.

About the presenter

Steve Wilson is a technologist, who stumbled into privacy 12 years ago. He rejected those well meaning slogans (like "Privacy Is Good For Business!") and instead dug into the relationships between information technology and information privacy. Now he researches and develops design patterns to help sort out privacy, alongside all the other competing requirements of security, cost, usability and revenue. His latest publications include:

• "Big Privacy: The new standard for Big Data Privacy" from Constellation Research, and

• "The collision between Big Data and privacy law" due out in October in the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy.