What’s New About Google I/O?

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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Today Google I/O ‘s keynote on Google Enterprise news included info on:

• • Google Drive for Work
  • Google Docs
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Android Developer Features for the Enterprise
  • Google Play for Education

Google Drive for Work is Google Enterprise’s new product offering for Google Apps. At $10/user/month includes unlimited storage for each user, new auditing and reporting tools for IT administrators, and Google Apps Vault (Google archiving tool). Drive for Work still includes the entire core Apps suite, but adds these new additions which were highly requested features. The Core Enterprise offering, Google Apps for Business, will remain at $5 per user per month.

With respect to Google Docs,  Quickoffice is now fully integrated into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android, your Chrome browser. And it will soon come to iOS. This means you can open, edit, save and send Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files from your favorite device. You no longer have to buy additional software.

How will Google Cloud Platform change developer’s productivity and data analytics? The Google Cloud Platform team introduced new features and services for developer productivity and data analytics in the cloud, including:

o    Cloud Debugger: a new tool to help you debug your applications in production with minimal performance overhead.

o    Cloud Trace: to get deep insights into the performance of your cloud application. 

o    Google Cloud Monitoring: powered by Stackdriver, designed to help you identify and address unusual behavior across your application stack.

o    Google Cloud Save: the new version enables your Android applications to synchronize data between devices with push notifications.

o    Cloud Dataflow: a fully managed service for data processing that can execute either in batch or streaming mode with automatic optimizations.

What about the Android Developer Enterprise? The next version of Android will include a number of new features for Enterprise users and IT administrators, such as a separate containers to manage and secure business data. This new experience will deliver:

• A more secure mobile experience for business users and
• Provide business users and IT administrators with the ability to adapt to evolving enterprise mobility trends. 

Google is engaging all major partners across the Android ecosystem to create a consistent and improved mobile work experience on Android devices. And they announced a partnership with Samsung to contribute Knox to this standard set, and also announced support from many of the other key OEMs. Google is also working on integrating with the key mobile device management players in the market.

There was expansion of Google Play for Education to Chromebooks in US K-12 schools. What does Google Play for Education do? It helps teachers find and share educational content. This gives teachers the freedom to adapt their approach based on students’ current needs and interests. Google Play for Education started with tablets, but with teacher feedback, Google saw that teachers wanted to use it to find apps, books, and videos for Chromebooks, too.

And that’s the scoop on Google!

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Latest research by Natalie Petouhoff

How Delta Uses Microsoft Dynamics and Avanade to Create Next Generation Customer Experiences

Oracle Moves its Focus From the CIO to the CMO

Key Requirements for Vendors When Briefing Software Analysts

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

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In any given week, analysts hear many pitches. What may not be apparent is “How engaged is the analyst?”  So if you are a vendor, how do you engage an analyst? First, don’t be one of those people who is more interested in getting through all your slides in the short period of time you have with the analyst versus really having an engaging conversation with the analyst.

Slides are important as a visual representation of the product and / or services, but more important is the conversation that happens between the vendor and the analyst. Presenting a slide deck where only the vendor presents and the analyst has no time to comment or interact, is not engaging and doesn’t really help the analyst understand your software.

Most analyst have been listening to vendor pitches for years. And after a while they all sound very similar. The only way often times an analyst can grasp what is new or different, is if the vendor has really done their homework prior to presenting to the analyst and can articulate the following things in the first three slides:

1. What does your company do?

2. Who are your top 5 competitors?

3. Why is, what you are offering, so different and so much better those top 5 competitors?

Analysts don’t want a linear presentation with the history of the company, with how many employees… We don’t really always believe when vendors say they have “displaced” this vendor and that vendor. If all the vendors who said they displaced another vendor were true, then no one would have software.

What we want, as analysts, is to quickly assess in the first 5 minutes is “Why am I listening to this presentation?” (Besides the obvious, which is, it is our job to take vendor briefings… )

The issue is that most vendors don’t really know the answers to the top three questions. Why? Because it takes a lot of work to do a SWOT analysis, to understand what your company does and to be able to message that in a unique and interesting way.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve seen nearly the same slide deck from different vendors in the same week, month or year. What I mean by this is that the content on the slides – even though they are different vendors — is very similar. So if the vendor can’t tell me why they are different, better, unique… it makes it very difficult for us, as analysts, to describe to end-users of software why they should consider a particular vendor over another one.

It’s up to the vendor to really do the SWOT analysis and know your competitors and how you are different or better than your competitors. What I find is that most vendors don’t spend the time to do this exercise. The issue is that when a vendor doesn’t do this, the presentation doesn’t really inform the analyst what they need to know to help recommend them to their  network of end users.  Which is part of what a vendor wants – they want the analyst to know enough about the vendor to make a recommendation to their end-users so the vendors can make more sales.

The net-net is that the analyst’s attention is not captured in the way that the vendor would like or perhaps thinks that is happening during the briefing.

The solution? Before briefing an analyst, make sure that your first three slides are about:

1. What does your company do? What problem(s) in a company does it solve? Who does it solve those business problems for? What roles? Do you know what keeps that role up at night and why does your solution solve their problem(s)?

2. How does your software solve that problem for that role? What are the details — the how to’s –how does the software solve those issues for that role better than any other software company?

3. And why is your software able to solve those problems differently and better than any other competitor? What is your competitive edge?

I hope that vendors that want recommendations to buyers take the time to either go through this exercise themselves or get help to create conversations and presentations that do engage analysts. If vendors are able to do this, they will make the conversation between the analyst and the software vendors richer, more productive and in the end, both parties will end up with what they both want – analysts to have a clear picture of the marketplace and the vendor to get more sales.

@drnatalie

Have a disruptive technology implementation story? Get recognized for your leadership. Apply for the SuperNova Awards for leaders in disruptive technology.

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Latest research by Natalie Petouhoff

How Delta Uses Microsoft Dynamics and Avanade to Create Next Generation Customer Experiences

Oracle Moves its Focus From the CIO to the CMO

Event Report - MongoDB is a showcase for the power of open source in the enterprise

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the chance to attend the opening day of MongoDBWorld in New York. The event, which was the company's first global user conference, was very well attended, with about 2000 attendees and made the Sheraton Time Square in New York look too small a venue for the event.

Here are my top 3 takeaways from Day 1:

• The data deluge is here – If anyone was doubting that there is a boom of unstructured data that enterprises need to deal with, then MongoDBWorld would have stopped them doubting the trend. The market is no longer in the R&D / trial phase where we have seen BigData and NoSQL interest even 2 years ago – but enterprises are building real, hands-on, value generating applications in this space now. The vendor and tool market has matured and there are more choices than ever to build your BigData applications. When MongoDB CEO Max Schireson mentioned in passing that 90% of the relevant data for enterprises was created in the last two years only – there was no surprise or shock in the audience, but nothing than validation. After Schireson it was the turn of Cloudera CTO Mike Olson to share his view on the next 10 years of BigData, and no surprise – more data, mostly machine generated, is on his horizon. And it was intuitively clear that only machines will be able to help humans understand the deluge of BigData that is coming – no surprise if you are seeing the future from Olsen’s / Cloudera’s vantage point.

• Next generation apps are NoSQL apps – With the background of the explosion of relevant unstructured data that business need to deal with, we had most of the relevant players to build next generation applications attending and exhibiting MongoDBWorld.. Not only were there quick an agile tool vendors like e.g. PentaHo and Logi Analytics, but also key PaaS vendors like IBM with BlueMix and RedHat with OpenShift. And even venerable Progress Software and an unlikely participant - if you take a 2 year perspective - like Terradata were there. Pretty much proof that vendors have realized that enterprises want and need to build BigData centric, next generation applications and MongoDB is one of the key database enabling this trend.

• Opensource and IP / Services combo is very powerful– Lastly MongoDB is a great showcase for the successful trend of bringing together open source coupled with enterprise desired services and products. With many of the largest open source projects on the way – consider e.g. OpenStack – there can be no question anymore that the power of community development has over taken what single vendors can create on the product side with their very own R&D efforts. Instead of that, they focus on creating products that enrich the value of the open source products. MongoDB adding back up services for its database itself is a great example for adding key services / product that enterprises need and are ready to pay for. And a look at MongoDB adoption with 7M+ downloads, 150k+ Online Education Registrants, 500+ Technology and Services Partners, certainly proves the point empirically. And the speakers came from enterprises and public sector users (complete list here).

MyPOV

A conference that was planned (conservatively) for 800 attendees and then is bursting at the seams with almost 2000 is a proof point of a strong trend. Here it is the rise of the BigData use case for enterprises that are building applications or at least looking for tools in the space. We see this as a part of the bigger trend to the No Design Database era – where during the creation of these applications, no to little design dependencies in regards of potential insights need to be taken.

Moreover it is another proof point of the emergence of New York as a technology place that we have seen previously with e.g. Infor and ADP.

For MongoDB, now it is now impertaive to grow as fast as it can, with all the related challenges in finding scale and keeping quality. The big guys that stored transactional information (Oracle, IBM, Microsoft etc.) will find their way to attractive BigData offerings. Their strength will likely be to blend structured and unstructured data seamlessly, in a way that their existing ecosystem is able to leverage BigData with very little additional investment on the skill side. Until then it’s the time for vendors like MongoDB – and when the Big Guys enter the market – we will see how it goes…

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Latest reports by Holger Mueller

How ARCA Re-Organized Sales and Put Revenue Growth into High Gear

Globalization, HR, and Business Model Success

What to Expect When Applying for a SuperNova Award: Selecting a Category

This is the second in a series of posts designed to help you submit your best SuperNova Award application.

In this post I'll define the SuperNova Award categories so you can submit your application to the most relevant category. 

SuperNova Award Categories

• ​Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: an examination of the policies, technologies, and collaboration frameworks required to balance the speed of technology adoption with the security and scalability requirements of enterprise IT. Sample technologies (not limited to): mobile, BYOD, cloud storage, gamification, video. 
• Data to Decisions: solutions that enable data-driven decisions across the entire organization. Sample technologies (not limited to): big data, master data, data quality, analytics, reporting, visualization tools, cognitive applications
• Digital Marketing Transformation: how organizations will make the shift from analog to digital marketing. Sample technologies (not limited to): ad tech, marketing automation, promotions, creative technology, social business, marketing cloud
• Future of Work: solutions that address confluence of technological, demographic and cultural trends challenging the traditional work paradigm. Sample technologies (not limited to):  collaboration, hr tech, learning and management, talent, space design, unified communications, video, productivity
• Matrix Commerce: analysis of the disruptive pressures influencing the commerce paradigm. Commerce faces rapidly changing business models and new payment options that are often misunderstood and poorly integrated. Sample technologies (not limited to):  ecommerce, mcommerce, supply chain, digital signatures, payment technologies, billing
• Next Generation Customer Experience: the technologies transforming traditional 'customer service' into a next generation customer experience where social, mobile, and analog channels meld to provide streamlined customer service.  Sample technologies (not limited to): CRM, customer service, customer experience, loyalty, gamification, social, communications, video, community, marketing cloud
• Technology Optimization & Innovation: solutions and strategies that optimize the cost of ongoing support thereby enabling investment in innovation & strategic advantage. Sample technologies: ERP, apps strategy, IT budgeting, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, cloud technology.

Now get started on that application! Navigate to the SuperNova Award application, and log in or create a Constellation account. http://constellationr.com/node/2108/apply

If you have any questions about the Awards, feel free to contact me directly: Courtney[at]ConstellationR[dot]com. 

​Previous post:
Explaining the SuperNova Awards Application and Application Checklist

Resources:

SuperNova Award Application checklist

SuperNova Award application

2013 SuperNova Award winners

The IoT of your supply chain – the rise of the machines

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 wrote a post a few months ago about IoT (internet of things) and how it was “big data” with a new suit. I also read a tweet that gave me pause for thought by Simon Jacobson that raised the question about IoT use cases -

how soon till we see #IoT use cases beyond remote monitoring and maintenance? asset reliability important but more uses needed #rsteched

It is an interesting comment. IoT right now, much like Big Data, is all about the ability to collect data from more and more “things” in our universe. The ability to collect the data is becoming increasingly powerful. Whereas in the past you would rely on your plant supervisor to visually monitor the performance of a printing press, now you have hundreds or thousands of sensors that can communicate in real time with monitoring software to ensure the health of that machine. Companies like Caterpillar are putting sensors on a greater number of their products, allowing consumers and Caterpillar, to monitor their earth movers, trucks and other machinery.  For a more current example of how IoT is everywhere, all one has to do is look at the tragedy of Malaysia Air flight 370 – it was the GE produced engines that were constantly pinging the maintenance servers that gave investigators a better sense of the direction of the plane’s flight. But these examples reinforce with Simon was saying – these are all about remote monitoring.

When will our supply chains see IoT moving beyond “just” remote monitoring and asset management examples? That is where M2M (Machine to Machine) will begin to play a larger role. I spoke earlier this year with Toolsgroup, a supply chain solution vendor, and they spoke to me about their working with Costa coffee and their coffee distribution machines. So how does a coffee vending machine have a role in all this? Initially this story is all about improved monitoring for improved inventory management. How Costa Coffee dispensers are being “smarter” in how they communicate to ensure more efficient fulfillment. Up to this point it is really about monitoring. But let’s take it to the next level.

With greater machine learning, could the dispensers become smarter with marketing to the individual consumer? You purchase a soy milk latte from the machine. That machine can now learn your preferences if that is what you have been purchasing at other machines. Could you imagine that their is data being exchanged between other systems? Maybe where Costa coffee materials are sold or maybe partner goods are offered. Machine to machine learning, could lead to greater machine to machine communications. Now the machines could communicate and proactively push coupons or deals to your mobile device about a soy milk and coffee bean bogo offer. Yes there is some big brother aspects to this…but get used to more of that with IoT.

We are just beginning to see how IoT will impact supply chains. What we know it is doing is bringing a greater amount of information from a larger number of sources that we otherwise had access to. What we are still determining is what kind of data we will be getting and how we can use the data – for more than simply monitoring.

Have a disruptive technology implementation story? Get recognized for your leadership. Apply for the SuperNova Awards for leaders in disruptive technology.

What Does a Silicon Valley Immersion Trip Look Like?

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The…...

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Thank You ESADE 2014!

What Does It Look Like?

Some of Our Guest Speakers

• Jordi Argente, Spain California Chamber of Commerce
• Dr. Kate Berzukova, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Santa Clara University
• Dave Blakely, Senior Director, IDEO
• Gabriel Broner, Vice President, Software Development and Product Innovation at SGI
• Dr. Kumar Sarangee, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Santa Clara University
• Tad Milbourn, CEO and Co-Founder, TiempoApp
• Dr. George Mohler, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Santa Clara University and Chief Scientist, PredPol
• Dr. James Spohrer, IBM, Director IBM Global University Programs and leads IBM’s Cognitive Systems Institute

How Can You Be Involved?

Have a disruptive technology implementation story? Get recognized for your leadership. Apply for the SuperNova Awards for leaders in disruptive technology.

Monday's Musings: Insights From GE's Global Innovation Barometer Show Executives Need To Be Disruption Ready

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Disruption, Collaboration, and The Future Of Work Highlighted In Latest Edition

Last week, June 16, 2014, GE unveiled the 2014 results for its “Global Innovation Barometer“. In the 4th annual survey, the GE team commissioned Edelman Berland to phone interview 3209 senior business executives between April 2, 2014 and May 30, 2014.  Interviewees represented VP level and higher respondents from twenty-six countries including Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, UK and USA.  The average age of respondents was 44 years old and 31% represented C-Level decision makers.   Four key areas of findings focused on:

1. Macro trends show how essential innovation is to overall strategy. The study showed that 80% of respondents believe that people in their coutnry live better today than 10 years ago because of the impact of innovation on their life and on their country.  However, 47% felt that technological innovation will increase inequalities.  Collaboration (47%), convergence of technology (32%), big data (25%), and industrial internet (25%) show some mindshare gains in terms of companies with a strategy or process to make the most of these new technology trends (See Figure 1).

   Figure 1.  Businesses Embrace New Trends In stages
   

2. Glocalization emerges as a key requirement for successful innovation. 82% of organizations interviewed believe that innovation is a global game.  Meanwhile 73% believed that innovation needs to be locatized to serve specific market needs (See Figure 2).  This leads to the need to “Think Glocal”  Survey results also show that Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea lead the perceptions that constraints create innovation opportunities for those willing to invest.

   Figure 2. Organizations must think glocal in order to deliver on innovation
   

3. Delivering on new business models creates challenges on successful innovation projects.  Over 60% of respondents found it difficult to define an effective business model to support new ideas and make them profitable, creating a challenge killing the ability to innovate.  In addition, understanding customers and anticipating market evolutions (84%),  attracting and retaining the most talented and skilled individuals (79%), and adapting and implementing emerging technologies (67%) rose to the top three critical requirements for innovation (see Figure 3). Figure 3. Customer Understanding And War For Talent Remain key Critical Requirements For Innovation
   
4. Speed and agility to innovate better is more mantra than reality at most organizations.  The survey showed 67% of respondents agreed that success in innovation requires companies to quickly adapt and implement emerging technologies (see Figure 4).  Concurrently, 57% consider the internal inertia and the incapacity to be nimble, failing at rapidly converting ideas into actions is a challenge limiting their business’s ability to innovate efficiently.

   Figure 4. Organizations Find It Hard To Deliver on Agility Despite The Benefits

The Bottom Line: GE’s Global Innovation Barometer Highlights Growing Sophistication Among Executives To Embrace Or Prepare For Business Model Disruption

The latest GE Global Innovation Barometer is a must read for all executives. As organizations enter a world of digital business and digital transformation, the findings show that most leaders realize that unless they disrupt, they will be disrupted.  Moreover, a growing sense for co-creation, co-innovation highlights the benefits of collaboration.  This trend correlates with increasing requests from market leaders and fast followers to identify startups and other forward thinking organizations to partner with.  With 70% of respondents identifying big data as a critical foundation for digital business and digital transformation, organizations expect to not only optimize business efficiency, but also 69% of respondents expect to use big data to improve the innovation process.   Finally, organizations strangely expect their governments to provide a framework to support top drivers of innovation either by fighting bureaucracy and cutting red tape (87%), ensuring business confidentiality and trade secrets are adequately protected (86%), and better aligning student curriculum with the needs of business (85%).

Constellation sees the overall findings as positive for innovation in the enterprise.  As organizations enter the next phase of business model disruption via digital, the attraction and retention of key talent, the internal agility of new business models, the adoption of new technologies, and real leadership amidst change are key success factors for this digital transformation.  The GE Global Innovation Barometer does a great job of quantifying the sentiment leading into 2014.  The hard work of getting the job done is ahead but at least it’s no longer unknown.

Have a disruptive technology implementation story? Get recognized for your leadership. Apply for the 2014 SuperNova Awards for leaders in disruptive technology.

Your POV.

How are you preparing for innovation and business model disruption? Is your organization ready for digital? What do you think of the GE Report? Let us know how you are getting there and what first steps have worked.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Lead by Letting Go: Women of the Channel Keynote

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence. Her award-winning book, The…...

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Last week I had the honor of opening Women of the Channel West. This conference focuses on women in the information technology channel community -- some of our top technology sales strategy leaders. The San Francisco event was the first time this conference had come to the west coast and I think we did a great job hosting. Here is a gracious summary of my keynote by Kari Hamanaka,  including quotes from the audience. It thrills me that they found the ideas actionable and that they plan to put them into use.

My slides are here and I’m happy to talk with anyone about the meat behind the images. I had the chance to push the limits of how we might "lead by letting go" across work, leadership, education, and mentoring.

The full speaker list is here (click for abstracts), including the amazing closing keynote by Holly Green on being “elite.” The workshops were also standouts and I especially enjoyed connecting with Luanne Tierney as she is part of the growing Santa Clara University women in business network. Her 12 strategies for for success in the future world of work are dead on.

The Big Picture

Kari Hamanaka also did a great job summarizing the sessions by Riverbed’s Michele Hayes and Avnet’s Therese Bassett. Keys: Be willing to be afraid, promote your wins, and understand your employees’ needs and goals. Some of my favorite moments:

• Hayes’ story of her escape from Alcatraz swim and the perspective that puts on work.
• Bassett speaking the truth of, "There is no greater buzzkill than to say we want you to be engaged so that you can pound out more work.”

Don’t stop with my snippets, take a look at Hamanaka’s summary and the full list of the talks and workshops. Let me know if you'd like to know more about how you can lead by letting go. 

Progress Report - IBM BigData and Analytics have a lot of product potential, time to show it

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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We had the opportunity to attend IBM’s BigData & Analytics Summit 2014 held in June 11th and 12th in New York. Needless to say, that IBM has a staggering portfolio of Analytics and BigData products and services, just consider 15000 employees in the Strategy and Analytics practice. And the good news is that when IBM talks about analytics, it’s the ‘true’ analytics – the one that take an action, or at least suggest one (more on ‘true’ analytics here).

From many insights and learning points, here is the distillation of my top 3 takeaways:

• Transformative Power of Analytics – While there is almost no vendor not talking about analytics today, there are fewer that understand ‘true’ analytics like IBM. What sets IBM apart is the understanding that analytics are truly transformational, and not just in one business dimension, but spanning all professions and business processes. Smith had a great slide representing the transformation for the C-Suite which illustrates well what impact BigData and Analytics have on enterprises and their care takers. And she delivered the punchline that executives that do not understand these key trends we be challenged in their careers and are likely going to trouble the success of their enterprise.

• Speed matters – It was also good to see that IBM realizes there is a limited time window for the opportunity to be one of the key players to leverage the transformation enabled by BigData and Analytics, so speed is of the essence. And IBM has certainly gained even more speed in 2013 as the below chart illustrates both trough internal R&D and acquisitions. 

• Watson is the differentiator – As previously stated, the cognitive capabilities of Watson are a key differentiator for IBM’s products and services. With the Watson Foundations IBM is betting on an ecosystem of consultants, developers, startups and mature ISVs to build cognitive applications on top of Watson Foundations. With BlueMix there is now a modern PaaS platform available that should help the adoption of next generation applications (in general, but also in the BigData and Analytics) space. 

MyPOV

IBM has a very attractive portfolio of capabilities across its analytical and BigData capabilities. Complemented with Watson, SoftLayer and BlueMix this becomes an even higher potential combination, as next generation applications can be built in a modern PaaS (BlueMix), leverage cutting edge cognitive insights (Watson) and can be deployed efficiently and flexibly through SoftLayer datacenters.

IBM now needs to make all these products work together, create value for IBM customers and partners and deliver more next generation application showcases. We know that IBM can build and deliver these with the help of GBS – but the real yardstick is to see them delivered as true cloud products, that create insights and spontaneous benefits to business users with no (or very little) involvement of consultants and IT professionals.

IBM’s massive GBS business in these regards is both a blessing and a curse. It’s is a blessing, that allows IBM to go further than any of its competitors and allows IBM to gain valuable insights from customer engagement. E.g. the transformative nature for the C-Suite is not as well understood in the market by competitors – and most likely the result of deep, cross project harvested, consulting insights delivered courtesy of GBS. The curse for IBM is, that it may fall short in regards of aggressive standardization, mass adoption based on viral distribution of its products, as well as the “holy grail” of analytics, the self-service setup and enablement of analytical applications by business (end) users. But that is still a few years out, realistically – so plenty of time for IBM to address and handle this challenge.

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