Customer Engagement Optimization Twitter Chat with @rwang0 & @drnatalie

Join R "Ray" Wang and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff for a Twitter chat to discuss the latest trends, policies, and business models around customer engagement.

Details

• October 10, 2014 10:00a.m. PT/ 1:00p.m. ET
• Participate using the hashtag #VerintChat 
• @rwang0 and @drnatalie will answer your #custserv, #custexp, #custengagement questions!

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 – focus on the decision makers to empower your supply chain

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 just returned from a successful week spent at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. A nice perk for being in the Bay Area at this time of the year was summer was in full swing! While it was raining buckets back in Boston, I was enjoying the close to 90-degree sunny weather…as I ran between meetings. The conference revolved around Oracle’s push into the cloud, talk of the importance of mobility, smarter access to big data and the demotion of Larry Ellison to CTO…okay the last item was some good humored self deprecation from Mr. Ellison himself while on stage for his keynote Tuesday. He even apologized for missing last year’s main stage demo since he had been pulled into watching some boat race.

Not a bad trophy to have at your event…

Anyways, the area I was focused on was what Oracle was doing in the supply chain and retail/CPG spaces. Oracle did not disappoint with the large number of sessions dedicated to these spaces. So let’s look at 3 things I took away from both the CPG/Retail sessions and the Supply Chain sessions -

The shift in power in the CPG-Retail spaces means a change in how we address it:

• In the retail space Oracle discussed a persona-based approach for their offerings. Clearly traditional retail sub segments are not behaving the way they once did – the customer persona is becoming the driving force not the retail sub vertical. Retailers need to approach personas when it comes to how they best address the consumer need. It is the consumer that will dictate what the rules are. The retailer, with help from their service providers, need to focus on addressing the different personas they are servicing and build the software and solutions around this. This is what we are seeing with Matrix Commerce – as the number of intersections between the consumer and commerce supply chain grows, so does the need for the solution vendors to offer more nimble solutions. Oracle provided an example of how they could work with retailers to equip the retailer with an enhanced view of the customer. They designed a system that allowed the retailer to associate a persona to the way the consumer interacted with the retailer – pulling information from all possible channels. Allowing the retailer to more effectively address the consumers’ needs. Oracle Retail, staying true to what was being discussed on main stage, highlighted the fact the solution had a mobile aspect. Why is this important other than following the buzz? It places the information and analytics in the hands of those working on the retail floor. The mobile delivery of data and analytics means the people at the store level can make better decisions and service the customer in a much more personalized and effective manner. Getting the information closer to the decision makers.
• We are all aware that consumer influence has increased vis-à-vis retailers and CPGs. Oracle highlighted how their solutions are helping CPG companies to be even more efficient and effective in their relationship with the retail channels. Once again it boils down to focusing on better usage of retailer data and the subsequent enhanced collaboration that allows an effective partnership between CPGs and their retailers to meet increasingly savvy consumer requirements. Sony discussed working with Oracle to overhaul their managing of sales and promotions for their PlayStation products and how it was sold through retail channels such as Wal Mart, Gamestop, Target, Amazon and Best Buy. At the core Sony and Oracle worked to harmonize and ensure they had the most reliable data and a system of record from which to build upon. From this they worked on putting together an S&OP process that allowed for Sony to do greater analysis of the insights they were getting from the retailers and how Sony could do a more cost effective and smarter job in marketing and selling the PlayStation. Sony was able to look across all their channels, coupled with other sources of data, to improve their planning cycles for the PlayStation. As they stated – they have a very large competitor, with very deep pockets…so Sony has to do it smarter and more efficiently. Focusing on the fundamental blocking and tackling with the help of Oracle gives Sony a competitive edge in the space.
• Finally, and this was something I heard through many of the sessions for CPG and retail, but there is a real emphasis on how to take advantage of the confluence of mobile – big data – analytics – cloud and focusing on how to drive down more intelligence closer to consumer touch points. This is really about empowering all the players that are close to the consumer, the best data and analytics to make the right decision on the ground. Think about it, you and I as consumers have gained tremendous power in the past decade. Between the transparency the internet has given us to the ability to carry that internet everywhere we go – we as consumers have suddenly put intelligence and insight right into our purses and pockets. The Oracle solutions targeting CPG and Retailers are looking to give the same level of intelligence to the store associates servicing these smarter consumers. The reality is the large systems used to drive CPG and Retail businesses are vital for running the businesses at a macro level. But the trick is how to empower those that are “on the front lines” to have a similar impact on the process.

The overarching theme for CPG and retail was to provide the complete end-to-end solution and platform that will allow for this transformation. Overall they touched many aspects of what we are seeing in Matrix Commerce. The ability to push data and analytics down to the closest touch point of the consumer is vital to reducing the friction that often flares up at those levels.

Supply chain continues to be about better planning…but also easier access to improved execution

• My kingdom for a better plan! Clearly planning remains at the heart of supply chain…really at the heart of business and dare I say life? Yet for some reason it has a bad connotation at times. Yes we all know that all plans carry one similar trait: they are WRONG. But the reality is we really cannot do much without those plans. What was interesting in the discussions of planning was not that Oracle was professing a 99.9% accurate plan, or a faster plan but looking at offering a more responsive planning method. Since being responsive is different that being efficient. Again pulling on the themes of big data – cloud – analytics, they discussed continuing to work on their planning engines that are digging deeper into the data as well as making them more accessible within the planning organization. Panasonic Avionics (they are the division of Panasonic that builds and maintains many of the in flight entertainment units you may leverage when you are flying), for example, has a very challenging supply chain to service. With long component lead times, capacity constraints, high demand volatility and a large array of materials to service (they mentioned that they still need to support some systems that use video tapes!), Panasonic Avionics really needed a system that was able to rapidly identify where the plan would impact the product. In order to properly achieve this, Panasonic and Oracle needed to ensure the planning engine could truly understand the complexity of the BOM and identify where each part of that BOM could be impacted by any fluctuation in the plan. They highlighted the ability to improve the granularity of the information being pulled into the planning process, as well as the ability to run multiple plans to provide the most robust scenarios. The speed at which Panasonic Avionics was able to refresh their plans allowed for rapid insights into potential issues.
• Embracing the cloud – but not just for lower TCO and faster implementations. Like many vendors, dare I say most vendors; there was a strong message around putting solutions up in the cloud. Good. I agree with this thinking. What I also agree with, and what Oracle made clear was this does not mean you have to ignore continuing to offer on-premise solutions. When I sat through a session on Oracle’s transportation and global trade solutions being moved into a cloud offering, what was refreshing was the fact that they made a point to discuss continuing to offer the solution on premise. And that both would maintain the same high level of functionality. The same was true for the discussion around supply chain planning functionality and its migration to the cloud. What was evident was that Oracle seems to grasp the notion that while the cloud is important; it does not prevent them from continuing to offer and support on-premise offerings. I do think that the strategy to give a choice is important and will allow them to target mid-market and individual business units in larger enterprises. Long gone are the days of massive system overhauls and implementations. Supply chains need nimble solutions to keep up with their ever-changing environment.
• Making supply chain solutions even more business friendly. Let’s face it, when it comes to the supply chain function within business, it is still fighting for a place at the big table. Yes we hear of more companies with CSCOs, but I would still wager that number is small compared to CMOs, CFOs, CIOs and yes CEOs. But my last take away from the supply chain discussions is the way Oracle appears to be addressing this issue. For example, they spoke of better tying in what is happening in the supply chain to the marketing side of the house. The solutions stressed the need to drive analytics and better information down the planning stack – get as much rich information where it matters. Decoupling the financial flow from the physical supply chain to better understand how the two interact. Individually these are all nice efforts, but put together they indicate a view of the importance of the holistic supply chain – one that starts on a solid platform where the right data is leveraged. This mirrors what was spoken about on main stage Tuesday, and the overall drive by Oracle to ensure cross channel and cross identity customer experience. How true that is at the core of supply chain – being able to ensure the best view of the customer’s needs and orders.

Oracle’s overall Value Chain solutions are all rowing in the right direction. When you add to the discussion the continuing evolution of Oracle’s Warehouse Management solution that has added Yard management – clients have the ability to access a full suite of execution modules. When it comes to Matrix Commerce, one key need for the commerce supply chain is to ensure the elimination of friction, friction that arises from supply chain blind spots. Not having the full view of your fulfillment can cause supply chain blind spots to sprout.

Oracle continues to maintain its status as a “mega vendor.” Their breadth and depth in terms of solutions and industries make them a serious contender in most situations on the market. We will continue to watch with intent how they address the area.

Tagged: #oow14, Oracle, Oracle Open World, Supply Chain

Owning the Customer Experience is a Marketing Function

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

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

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The landscape in which businesses operate has changed dramatically in modern times, yet the roles of marketing executives and departments have been slow to change. According to consulting firm Deloitte, the influence and agenda of marketing executives have expanded, yet their organizational context has not fully caught up — they often have only indirect input on many of the critical customer and marketing-related decisions enterprises need to make. Navigating these tensions is what today’s chief marketing officers (CMOs) face.

Clearly, there’s a conflict at the core of marketing departments today.

The Conflicted Marketing Function

Marketers are expected to support the sales function and are measured by  short-term successes; yet true and sustainable success is only achievable through long-term customer development efforts.  Sales executives demand more quality leads, yet today’s quality customers are acquired when existing customers become advocates and influence their like-minded friends and colleagues to become customers.

Marketing is tasked with creating and building the business’s brand, yet increasingly a business’s brand is established by existing customers and shareholders sharing their experiences with that business, not by the advertisements and sponsorships brainstormed by marketers.

Businesses turn to marketers to embrace new digital marketing technologies, yet measure their success via short-term metrics such as the number of followers and mentions instead of the net effect of that social media activity on the business’ bottom-line.

Achieving Return on Marketing Investment

Business leaders, including marketing chiefs, argue that achieving – or even understanding – the return on investment from marketing efforts is difficult.  Traditionally, this has been true. Measuring ROI from marketing efforts requires some control of the entire customer life cycle, something few have been allowed to manage if they even knew how to do it.

Marketers, emboldened by the real-time engagement and response offered via digital and social media, are changing their fortunes – and that of their businesses – by taking ownership of the entire customer experience. Customer life cycle marketing is the practice of creating consistent experiences at each touch point in the relationship between a business and its customer – from the first cold-call, to the follow up sales meeting, to solution integration, to billing and customer service.

Creating Advocates

Bain & Company and Satmetrix, through the development of their Net Promoter Score (NPS), have proven that new customers acquired from the recommendation of existing customer advocates are more profitable customers than those acquired through traditional marketing efforts. As a result, marketers can provide a better service to their businesses by focusing on moving existing customers from satisfied customers to loyal customers, and from loyal customers to business advocates.

Creating advocates is not as straightforward a tactic as many will lead you to believe. Advocates are not merely happy and satisfied customers; they’re customers whose use of a product or engagement with a business is inextricably intertwined with their daily experience. These are the customers who voluntarily advocate for the brands they love. The recommendations issued by these types of customers  yield greater business benefit than recommendations offered by paid endorsements or by gamified social media celebrities.

How to Create Experiences

Here’s a short analysis of by The Economist Group on ways modern businesses have create the experiences required to earn advocacy.

1. Establish emotional markers along the customer journey.

Create delight in the experience; don’t just create better products: It’s important for marketers to address the holistic end-to-end customer experience and think about brand engagement, customer delight, and growth. Experience innovation is as much about how to delight as how to deliver. You remember the first time you got flew Virgin Airlines, the first time you walked into an Apple store. These experiences are emotional markers for these brands.

2. Weave your business into the customer’s lifestyle.

It’s about looking at the whole customer “ecosystem,” not just where you play today. Finding innovation opportunities often requires looking beyond your narrow product category. Thinking about the larger ecosystem—the opportunities to meet customer needs in the spaces surrounding your core product or service offering– allows you to expand your base and opportunities for growth. For example, Starbucks has developed a larger ecosystem that extends beyond morning coffee into daylong “moments of connection” across multiple food and beverage categories. New formats include a wine bar concept, with mobile payment and reward apps to enhance loyalty.

3. Don’t follow the current trends; seek the trend currents.

It’s about being customer-focused, but not customer-led: Experience innovators recognize that consumers can’t tell you about the things they really need but haven’t yet imagined.  And consumers can’t articulate how they will do things differently in the future. An example of this is when Delta brought the lounge directly to the gate, creating a new experience among travelers who had never thought of the gate as a café and social destination.

4. Focus on the end-to-end experience, not a single flagship product

Brand the total experience; don’t just deliver “a breakthrough idea:” Great experience innovation isn’t coming up with a single idea, but delivering a connected journey from one brand. Disney delivers magic with bracelets that optimize your waiting time in the park, new cruise and vacation experiences, and carefully curated apps that bring the experience to life for kids.

Sensei Debates

Should marketing own the entire customer relationship, not just the branding and lead acquisition functions?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The post Owning the Customer Experience is a Marketing Function appeared first on Sensei Marketing.

Platforms: What FinancialForce, Xactly, and Hubspot Understand

Platforms – can’t live with them… pass the potatoes.

I know, we all hate platforms.

The crux of the problem is explaining what a platform is and how it works, I can write for ages about the details and go into nitpicking details – and never publish.  The closest I got to it was the post I did when SFDC announced Salesforce1 (the platform, not the message of a mobile client attempt at confusing users).

But the issue remains: how to explain platforms easy and simple?

Then, it hit me as I was sitting at conference after conference these past weeks: use examples.  I collected some of the most obvious ones these past months and I want to share them with you to try to elucidate on what platforms are and how they work.

Defining a Platform

If there was ever a fool’s errand it is to try to get y’all to agree on what a platform is.  I know better than that.

However, before we start I want to give you a short version of  what I call platforms (and what you should also, if you want to be right… ok, ok, just messing with you…).

First a proper definition, but not from Webster’s (who misses the point by simply stating it is an OS – which is a very basic form or platform, but not related to cloud computing), but form Wikipedia (after disambiguation, ended up in computing platform) that says:

A computing platform is, in the most general sense, whatever pre-existing environment a piece of software is designed to run within, obeying its constraints, and making use of its facilities. Typical platforms include a hardware architecture, an operating system (OS), and runtime libraries

Some of the critical pars of this definition are: environment, self-contained, and with specific resources to leverage the environment at least as I read it, but I may be biased. Also, by “hardware architecture” I interpret Cloud Computing in the context of this post and my future writings.

In cloud computing, a hardware / software architecture combination, the platform is the middle layer that provides essential, secure, scalable, and repeatable services that are then leveraged by the SaaS and IaaS layers to run operations.  Think of it as a “traffic cop” that ensures that the right element (data, function, integration point, more) goes where it is supposed and ends up in the right place, after providing it with the right resources to get there.

The easiest way to think about a platform (PaaS) in cloud computing is to look at the requirements:

• A component of a three tier open cloud architecture (entails being able to communicate with any IaaS or PaaS or SaaS component directly without point-to-point integration) – see figure below

• A collection of functions delivered like a service (see some of the examples in the picture above); if you want to call them APIs, do so – but make sure they are open, discoverable, and secure as services at the very least (there is lot more about this coming in future posts).

I am in awe of the many versions and approaches I am finding (as well as failed attempts).  I will highlight a few, but know that I’m merely pointing you to some of the most mature I found; there are many, many others not included here (I cannot cover everything in one post, sorry).

The Platform-to-Platform Play

FinancialForce.is a very interesting play on platforms, as they are both an application leveraging Force.com (Salesforce1) as a platform and a platform on their own.  Depending on what solutions you implement you are either using a service that is delivered on top of Force.com (Salesforce1) or their own platform that also connects to Salesforce1 (Force.com) to provide additional services.

As you see in the chart above, there is an inherent element to cloud-based platforms that is to connect to other platforms and FinancialForce has done this quite well.  By establishing these connections between platforms they both deliver a value add via  new platform that can easily integrate into exiting ones as well as leverage previous investments the customer may have made.

This is the way organizations will leverage the solutions and power provided them by vendors in the cloud: through an aggregation of multiple services delivered by a myriad of platforms providers.

The traditional role of the vendor as a seller of software that does everything end-to-end is coming to an end and being replaced by vendors that connect platforms and offer services on top of them.

The Leveraged Outcome Play

The second example is something that Xactly showcased earlier this year: a new service based on the outcomes generated by the established service they provide.

If you don’t follow Xactly they have a service that helps organizations manage their compensation strategies and tactics.  They do this by delivering data points showing  what others are doing (anonymously) and use that information, together with real-time performance data, to manage compensation for sales people.

In a world that is dramatically changing the value and purpose of the salesperson, Xactly offers organizations an easy way to manage their performance and to reward the right behaviors with proper compensation dynamically and flexibly.

One of the things that Xactly noticed was that they had access to reams of data about more than compensation: who the people were, how they acted, what they did and didn’t do, what worked and didn’t, etc.  All that data started to show insights that were too useful to be abandoned.  Xactly at first used them to share with their clients, in a non-methodic manner, as casual insights.

Along the way they figured two things: one, the insights could be a  product once they figured a method to share them consistently with customers who wanted to know not only how they compared to others, but also what worked and didn’t for others.

Second, it was not only that specific data that made sense-  but the model.  The model of collecting data, any data, from transactions and operations as part of cloud-provided services.  This model, together with the data and the insights, became the basis for a new service they provided via their existing platform by simply leveraging the outcomes and the results of the other services.

This is what platforms do divinely well and easy: extend what has been done into many different new directions with minimal effort.

The Extending Functionality Play

Another platform example that I noticed recently was Hubspot.  At their recent user conference they announced that in addition to the Marketing Automation functionality they were already offering they would begin to offer more basic CRM functionality (related to Sales and Pipeline management as well as contact management).

This was partly led by requests from their clients and partly by them noticing that the data was the same and if they could add a few more reporting and operations functions to the cadre of services their platform offered they could extend the functionality of their platform – but more importantly do so in a way that delivered what customers wanted to see.

Hubspot focus was not only on the data they could add to their existing database, but more on the functions that their customers could not complete with other offerings as well as extending the functionality of their functional and reporting services.

By extending the functionality of their platform (adding new services) they were able to deliver more value to their customers and also showed them how easy it was to do so, enabling future requests for added functionality to come in to them and they can fulfill them – continuing the cycle.

Other Examples

One more place where I am seeing the rise of platforms play is in the CRM Idol competition.  Now on its fourth year, we are used to seeing the contest showcase the main technical challenges, and solutions, offered by new and starting CRM vendors.

During the previous years we saw plenty of focus on social, analytics, big data, marketing automation, and small medium businesses – but this year we are seeing a lot more focus on delivering all these solutions as platforms or even as services for other platforms.

While I cannot name names yet (as the contest is still underway and I cannot show favoritism) you can see the list of participants and draw your own conclusions.  However, know that I am more impressed by the technology deployment approach via platforms this year than at any other time.

Please keep in mind that these are just a few examples of what I am seeing as there are many other plays I didn’t highlight (but will going forward).

OK, your turn – flame on (I feel so old saying that)… Troll on… whichever you prefer.  Tell me what I missed and what you noticed.  Caveat: if you are vendor touting your own solution, likely that your comment will be “spamatized”.

What do you say?

Four Corners' 'Privacy Lost': A demonstration of the Collection Principle

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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Tonight, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners program aired a terrific special, "Privacy Lost" written and produced by Martin Smith from the US public broadcaster PBS's Frontline program.

Here we have a compelling demonstration of the importance and primacy of Collection Limitation for protecting our privacy.

About the program

Martin Smith summarises brilliantly what we know about the NSA's secret surveillance programs, thanks to the revelations of Ed Snowden, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post's Barton Gellman; he holds many additional interviews with Julia Angwin (author of "Dragnet Nation"), Chris Hoofnagle (UC Berkeley), Steven Levy (Wired), Christopher Soghoian (ACLU) and Tim Wu ("The Master Switch"), to name a few. Even if you're thoroughly familiar with the Snowden story, I highly recommend "Privacy Lost". I'll update this blog in the next few days with a link to the ABC's downloadable version of the program.

The program is a ripping re-telling of Snowden's expose, against the backdrop of George W. Bush's PATRIOT Act and the mounting suspicions through the noughties of NSA over-reach. There are freshly told accounts of the intrigues, of secret optic fibre splitters installed very early on in AT&T's facilities, scandals over National Security Letters, and the very rare case of the web hosting company Calyx who challenged their constitutionality (and yet today, with the letter withdrawn, remains unable to tell us what the FBI was seeking). The real theme of Smith's take on surveillance then emerges, when he looks at the rise of data-driven businesses -- first with search, then advertising, and most recently social networking -- and the "data wars" between Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

The interplay between government surveillance and digital businesses is the most important part of the Snowden epic and it receives the proper emphasis here. The depth and breadth of surveillance conducted by the private sector, and the insights revealed about what people might be up to creates irresistible opportunities for the intelligence agencies. Hoofnagle tells us how the FBI loves Facebook. And we see the discovery of how the NSA exploits the tracking that's done by the ad companies, most notably Google's "PREF" cookie.

One of the peak moments in "Privacy Lost" comes when Gellman and his specialist colleague Ashkan Soltani present their evidence about the PREF cookie to Google - offering an opportunity for the company to comment before the story is to break in the Washington Post. The article ran on December 13, 2013; we're told it was then the true depth of the privacy problem was revealed.

My point of view

Martin Smith takes as a given that excessive intrusion into private affairs is wrong, without getting into the technical aspects of privacy (such as frameworks for data protection, and various Privacy Principles). Neither does he unpack the actual privacy harms. And that's fine -- such a program is not the right place to canvass such technical arguments.

When Gellman and Soltani reveal that the NSA is using Google's tracking cookie, the government gets joined irrefutably to the private sector in a mass surveillance apparatus. And yet I am not sure the harm is dramatically worse when the government knows what Facebook and Google already know.

Privacy harms are tricky to work out. Yet it's clear that no harms can come from using and abusing Personal Information if that information is not collected in the first place. I take away from "Privacy Lost" a clear impression of the risks created by the data wars. We are imperilled by the voracious appetite of digital businesses that hang on indefinitely to masses of data about us, while they figure out ever cleverer ways to make money out of it. This is why Collection Limitation is the first and foremost privacy protection. If a business or government doesn't have a sound and transparent reason for having Personal Information about us, then they should not have it. It's as simple as that.

Martin Smith's program highlights the symbiosis between government and private sector surveillance. The data wars not only made dozens of billionaires but they did so much of the heavy lifting for the NSA. And this situation is about to get radically more fraught. On the brink of the Internet of Things, we need to question if we want to keep drowning in data.

Four Corners' 'Privacy Lost': A demonstration of the Collection Principle

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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On October 6, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners program aired a terrific special, "Privacy Lost" written and produced by Martin Smith from the US public broadcaster PBS's Frontline program.

UPDATE: The program we saw in Australia was a condensed version of PBS's two part The United States of Secrets from May 2014. 

Here we have a compelling demonstration of the importance and primacy of Collection Limitation for protecting our privacy.

About the program

Martin Smith summarises brilliantly what we know about the NSA's secret surveillance programs, thanks to the revelations of Ed Snowden, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post's Barton Gellman; he holds many additional interviews with Julia Angwin (author of "Dragnet Nation"), Chris Hoofnagle (UC Berkeley), Steven Levy (Wired), Christopher Soghoian (ACLU) and Tim Wu ("The Master Switch"), to name a few. Even if you're thoroughly familiar with the Snowden story, I highly recommend "Privacy Lost". I'll update this blog in the next few days with a link to the ABC's downloadable version of the program.

The program is a ripping re-telling of Snowden's expose, against the backdrop of George W. Bush's PATRIOT Act and the mounting suspicions through the noughties of NSA over-reach. There are freshly told accounts of the intrigues, of secret optic fibre splitters installed very early on in AT&T's facilities, scandals over National Security Letters, and the very rare case of the web hosting company Calyx who challenged their constitutionality (and yet today, with the letter withdrawn, remains unable to tell us what the FBI was seeking). The real theme of Smith's take on surveillance then emerges, when me looks at the rise of data-driven businesses -- first with search, then advertising and social networking -- and the "data wars" between Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

The interplay between government surveillance and digital businesses is the most important part of the Snowden epic and it receives the proper emphasis here. The depth and breadth of surveillance conducted by the private sector, and the insights revealed about what people might be up to creates irresistible opportunities for the intelligence agencies. Hoofnagle tells us how the FBI loves Facebook. And we see the discovery of how the NSA exploits the tracking that’s done by the ad companies, most notably Google’s “PREF” cookie.

One of the peak moments in "Privacy Lost" comes when Gellman and his specialist colleague Ashkan Soltani present their evidence of the PREF cookie to Google - offering an opportunity for the company to comment before the story is to break in the Washington Post. The article ran on December 13, 2013; we're told it was then the true depth of the privacy problem was revealed.

Weekly Recap - Week ending October 3rd 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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• My takeaways form the Oracle HCM Analyst Meeting (read here)

• My takeaways from the Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware Analyst meeting (read here)

• 5 tips for Oracle HCM and Oracle Technology customers when dealing with Oracle

• Constellation Takeaways from Oracle OpenWorld with Natalie, Guy, Ray and me (watch here).

Other key news / events of the week - I wasn't able to blog about

• Tibco goes private, acquired by Vista Equity Partners - read here
• IBM launches Kenexa Talent Insights - read here

Some of the news coverage from press who talked to me:

Constellation Research takeaways of Oracle OpenWorld

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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It was both a technology challenge (Holger lost network as moderator and could not rejoin in video & audio, Ray did a good jop roping him in via chat) and a bad hair day as Guy did not turn on his camera... 

Enjoy and let us know what your Oracle OpenWorld Takeaways have been!

More News from the Information Revolution Front: Who's More Progressive - Airports, Movie Theaters, or the NFL?

Chris Meyer

Chris Meyer is a thought leader focusing on the information economy, globalization and business innovation. His latest book is "Standing on the Sun".
Got Nerve

Chris's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as an entrepreneur, executive, consultant, author, and the leader of a think tank.

 Based on the ideas in his 2002 book Future Wealth, Chris developed a plan for a business based on a network of thought leaders. He joined The Monitor Group in 2006 to develop this idea as Monitor Networks, where he was Chief Executive from 2004 to 2009. In 2006, he co-founded Monitor Talent, to take these ideas forward operationally. Prior to joining Monitor Group, he was the Director of the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, from 1995 until its closing in December 2002. The Center fostered the conversation of leading issues among the business community, developed public conferences,…...

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Three industries provided connectable dots today.

First, the FCC announced that the blackout rule — which has prevented the broadcast of NFL games in a team’s home market unless the stadium is sold out — “has become outdated,” and will repeal it to eliminate unnecessary regulation and leave the question “to private solutions negotiated by the interested parties.”  The New York Times article points out that when the rule was created, ticket sales were a large contributor to a team’s income, but today most revenue comes from television.  And in 2013, only two of 256 NFL games were blacked out. Note that this doesn’t require the teams to broadcast the games that don’t sell out.

Nonetheless, the NFL “is fighting desperately to keep the FCC rule intact", filling terrifying briefs to the Commission saying “the eventual result likely would be decrease in the amount of professional sports on broadcast television.” Meanwhile, the National Cable Television Association sensibly points out that ticket prices have a lot more to do with whether fans go to the stadium. (You’d think temperatures would matter, but half the games blacked out in 2011 were in San Diego and Tampa Bay.)

In a second skirmish, Netflix announced a deal with the Weinstein Company and IMAX Theaters to open it first original movie, the sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, simultaneously on Netflix and in IMAX theaters. The Weinstein Company has already agreed to make Netflix it’s exclusive U.S. subscription TV service for its first-run films stating in 2016. These moves attack the “windowing” paradigm of studios releasing films to theaters exclusively for three months.  Netflix, of course, already challenged television’s release model when it offered the entire season of House of Cards at once, arguing that their approach fit consumers’ wishes to binge. “What I am hoping is that it will be a proof point that the sky doesn’t fall,” said Netflix Content Officer TED Sarandos. “These are two different experiences, like going to a football game and watching a football game on TV.” Hmmn. 

In this performance, the role of the monopolist will be played by the three dominant theater chains.  Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, and Cinemark, “have aggressively opposed any encroachment on their release window, maintaing that any shortening would encourage consumers to stay home,” according to one report.  “Regal..has wasted no time in slamming” the deal, and AMC will “boycott” the movie, and its “parent company Wanda may not carry it in China,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.  “‘No one has approached us to license this made-for-video sequel in the US or China, so one must assume the screens Imax committed are in science centers dn aquariums,' AMC said in a terse statement.” Terse doesn’t quite cover referring to a movie with a budget of ten times the original Crouching Tiger’s $23 million as “made for video.” And, umm, Imax. The Reporter headline was “Major Blow for Netflix, Imax,” by the way, apparently taking little interest in the customers or industry evolution.

Today's final threat to life as we know it is United Airlines’ decision to include the ability to book Uber through it’s smartphone app.   The marketing director for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority told United’s VP for Marketing that “a lot of airports…are against Uber, because the drivers are not vetted and not regulated,” displaying more faith in the local Hack Bureau than crowdsourced reviews. United “want[s] to provide functionality. Our customers want it. They told us they like it and they’re using the product.” Weird, right? 

So, the answer to “Who’s More Progressive” is none of them — in each case the owners of the “bottleneck facility,” as we used to call the RBOCs back in the day, are protecting their ability to collect economic rents, while United, Weinstein, Netflix and the FCC have the customer's back. The NFL, theater moguls, and airports seem unconcerned with whether they are actually creating value for anyone but themselves. How many times do we have to see this movie?  Oh, I mean video.  – CAM

Event Report - Oracle OpenWorld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - both are big

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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Oracle’s vision - It became once more clear what Oracle’s vision is - an integrated technology stack engineered by Oracle, from storage beyond SaaS all the way to value added services like DaaS (if not familiar that's Data as a Service). Operated by Oracle for the customer - or if the customer wants to, operated by them on premises. Even though Oracle is now ‘all in’ on the cloud message - it was last year that Larry Ellison admitted he gave up and would now use the ‘buzzword’ - the company strictly supports the dual deployment capabilities. Interesting enough the deployments options are important for customers, in one of the Q&As Thomas Kurian shared that there were over 20 customer that have gone full circle - moving cloud to on premises and back or vice versa. It is also clear that Oracle sees cost competitiveness on the IaaS layer as critical, as various executives said that Oracle will match Amazon AWS or Google Cloud platform prices, whoever is cheaper. It is clear that Oracle tries to commoditize the IaaS tier as much as possible, making up for revenue and profitability on the PaaS and SaaS side. Certainly an attractive strategy for Oracle.

Computing Eras (from Mendelsohn's presentation)

12c comes along - It is over 2 years now that Oracle has announced 12c. We talked to some customers and they attest it is working and they are seeing benefits. If these TCO benefits were similar or in the range of what Oracle talked about at OpenWorld 2012 remains to be seen. The real scale test for 12c is anyway Oracle’s usage for DBaaS and moving its SaaS apps to it. Andy Mendelsohn multiple times mentioned that Oracle will be moving the Taleo Talent Management products to 12c first - which should make an interesting showcase. But 12c had to be ready also to enable Larry Ellison’s ‘2 click keynote’ of moving both a database and an applications from on premises to the cloud. And it looks like that works - even though Ellison joked ‘it could break anytime as it is live software’. But it was more than the 2 clicks announced in Ellison’s Sunday keynote - nonetheless Oracle has created a huge value proposition for customers - to move on premise applications to the (Oracle) cloud. For customers tired of maintaining their older apps (and paying their DBAs) - there is now (or soon) a viable alternative to run these apps. Ellison was (rightfully) proud that Oracle lived up to its commitment to move customers along, as the company has through all recent technology changes.

Oracle's in memory approach (from Mendelsohn's presentation)

The in memory features of 12c seem to be working well, too. Mendelsohn gave a few database 101 lectures on the pros and cons of row vs column storage and how Oracle enables both - on disk and in memory flavor - at the discretion of the customer. And Oracle was not tired to point out that to take advantage of in memory applications did not have to be re-written (positioning vs SAP HANA) and could write to memory, too (positioning vs Microsoft SQL server in memory option). Surprisingly there were few customer success stories and use cases - but they may not have been surfaced to me. But in general an indication that Oracle customers are conservative to move to new database releases - I heard a number of customers saying that the never move to R1 - but wait for R2. 12cR2 is coming soon so it will be time to check in on the uptake of both in memory and pluggable databases / multi-tenancy. But even if customers may be slow to uptake these features, they are core to power Oracle’s ‘as a Service’ business. So one way or the other the 12c features will get a lot of usage soon.

Database (not Application!) Multitenancy (from Mendelsohn's presentation)

The platform - If you attended and read about OpenWorld and did not hear about platform as a service (PaaS) message something has gone badly missing. In keynotes and sessions Oracle speakers would not get tired of stressing how Oracle is shipping a PaaS - but also uses and makes the same available for customers to do work on higher in the stack products, like SaaS and DaaS. The demos Ellison showed in his 2nd keynote like e.g. creating an employee of the month application for Fusion HCM showed that in action (though much was prepared beforehand). The work horse in the platform is Fusion Middleware, less with its traditional middleware features around SOA and ESB, but more on its composition, mobile and integration capabilities. And there is some merit to the argument, in the past Oracle Applications would certainly use the Oracle Database - but the uptake of Oracle tools and later Fusion Middleware were another story. The challenge was Oracle Applications was always only one customer of the technology stack - an important one certainly - but Oracle platform products usually had to run on faster cycles than the applications could. Enters the SaaS world with multiple releases per year and all of a sudden release - and with that uptake cycles between enabling platform technology and applications consuming those can be synched. It remains a heck of a prioritization effort – balancing the Oracle internal Applications requirements vs best of breed market requirements – but Oracle is deep pocketed enough to fund probably most of both. The vision is certainly remarkable and it’s good to see that e.g. where we have the insight – with Oracle’s cloud HCM products – the work has already begun to uptake, expose, elevate to the Oracle PaaS platform.

Oracle PaaS Portfolio (from Kurian's presentation)

Engineered Top Down? – My impression of the Oracle endeavor has been that it is heavily top down oriented, starting with the Applications. Quick reminder – Fusion started around 2004. So Oracle has been working on SaaS applications much longer than e.g. PaaS / DBaaS / DaaS or IaaS. All the former are lower level components of the tech stack. In the ideal world engineers want to start bottom up normally. When I asked Thomas Kurian about this, his view was that the SaaS applications have been built on these services all the time, citing Java as the example. And that is certainly a valid point – but it would be phenomenal if Oracle would not have to do some kind of re-work to make its SaaS applications run on all the just into live coming technology and platform products.

Oracle SaaS Portfolio (from Kurian's presentation)

Massive Task – The creation of the next Oracle technology effort is a massive effort with a five digit number of engineers working on it. To make sure all these project run well together and synch up on time is a massive task. When I asked Kurian was fair enough to say the latest (and probably newest) effort – IaaS – is what is giving him the most gray hair. So customer need to watch for product maturity and keep an eye on quality, not that they would not anyway – but a more complex (and powerful) technology stack needs appropriate attention. To put it into perspective – only the combined R&D efforts of IBM are in similar scale – and IBM does not claim (and does not need to) for all of it to work together. Oracle has accepted a much tighter locking of its tech stack components. That is more work and risk to create – but has benefits on the upside for customers when it all works together. 15 or so years ago Oracle had a similar vision - the database and the combination of Forms and Reports would run its Applications. Well that never took off back then (separate blog post sometime) - and it's a different age. Both capabilities and challenges are a magnitude 2 2 larger than back then. So Oracle needs to get it done.
 

Oracle Cloud Scale as of June 2014 (from Kurian's presentation)

Adoption – When even a vendor builds something new – it not only needs to get it done technically with the right quality – but also get adoption in the customer base. And that happens through sales people and partners. It was good to see that Oracle has acknowledged that its salesforce was one of the first sceptics initially, but now the vendor has put in the incentives to get the new products sold. At the same time Oracle is looking at partner enablement, not only on the services side, but also on the product side. Kurian shared that Oracle has already had conversation with over 60 ISVs. Nonetheless Oracle needs to look at this area and produce the numbers in customers and revenue dollars. When I asked Mark Hurd on this he shared that Oracle doubled the applications sales force and will be on top of the challenge. Glad to hear it’s realized – but it needs to be tackled and addressed.

MyPOV

For the longest time I have been critical of how Oracle may be able to match the prices of Amazon and / or Google. But a back of a napkin calculation showed me how: If Oracle can only convert 20% of existing load that it run on premise with DB and Java in the next 5 years – then it is larger than AWS and / or Google, easily. And with that comes purchasing and bargaining power with the suppliers Oracle needs to deal with in its cloud roll out. And we all know cloud is a scale game.

The next area to watch is how well integrated vs. consumable the Oracle stack will be at the end of this exercise. There will be customers who will want to consume it all – and then there will be customers who only want pieces of that technology stack – lock in fear and other reasons will apply. Oracle uses standards – as far as available and applicable at these intersection – but if this will allow Oracle to capture both sides of the business, remains to be seen.

Overall things are coming together for Oracle in 2014 – which was by OpenWorld 2013 blog post header (see here) – a number of announced products are being made available in the next few weeks, more in winter, then spring and summer 2015. OpenWorld 2015 will have in place all that Oracle announced at this OpenWorld – in the meantime there needs to be a lot of precision flying – for customers, partners and Oracle. Mistakes will be costly on either side. Stay tuned.