News Analysis: Infosys Lands SAP's Former CTO, Vishal Sikka, As New CEO

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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With contributions from Sachin Gosavi, Vice President of South Asia

Infosys’ First Outsider CEO Lands From Silicon Valley

On June 12th, 2014, Infosys announced that Dr. Vishal Sikka as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the company effective August 1, 2014.  Dr. Sikka will be inducted as a whole-time director of the Board and CEO & MD (Designate) on June 14, 2014 (see Figure 1).  The Global IT services firm also announced the following organizational changes:

• Departure of N.R. Narayana Murthy. The current Executive Chairman will step down on June 14th 2014.  Murthy will be designated as Chairman Emeritus with effect from October 11, 2014
  
  Point of View (POV): The devolution of the Executive Chairman’s office on June 14, 2014 signals that a new era will emerge in leadership.  Any thoughts of family dynasty have been demystified as Dr. Rohan Murty, whose appointment was co-terminus with the Executive Chairman, will leave the company on June 14, 2014.

• Departure of Mr. S. D. Shibulal. The current CEO & MD will leave on July 31, 2014.  He will also step down from the Board on July 31, 2014.
  
  (POV): Shibu has completed his mission in stabilizing revenues at Infosys while providing time to identify a successor.  He transitions the company at a critical chapter in Infosys’ history.  Elevating 12 leaders to Executive Vice President makes sense as Sikka will need a deep bench and develop a future A-team.

• Announcement of U.B. Pravin Rao as COO. As of June 14, 2014, Rao will take on the role as Chief Operating Officer.  Pravin was formerly the President and whole-time director.
  
  (POV): Rao is a 25 year veteran that will provide continuity for Infosys.  Constellation believes that Rao will be important in helping Sikka bridge the future models for services companies in an IP world.

Figure 1. The Tweet Stream Between Vishal and NRN

What does it mean for Infosys and its clients?
Most notably, The move signifies Infosys’ commitment to something new, and a heavier focus on higher margin IP products and non-linear services. It also shows that the firm is not afraid to try something different. Considering other changes at the top order, Infosys board has clearly given Dr. Sikka a free-hand and a very longer term mandate. Constellation expects Dr. Sikka’s selection to re-invigorate Infosys’ focus on Products, Platforms, IP and Innovation. His Silicon Valley background and network would also infuse the much-needed acquisition zeal into Infosys growth strategy.

However, when Infosys begins to gear up for a higher margin IP products model, the firm will have to educate and carefully address the stakeholders concerns with respect to financial performance in the shorter term. Building IP, Products, Platforms is not only a longer term game, but also calls for sustained sizable investments. Once rolled out and if accepted by the market, these products, platforms become cash cows, and companies find it easy to fund their research and development of future products. Maneuvering services business to fund this IP quest for future growth is the biggest challenge Dr. Sikka faces. Add to it the pre-requisite change of mindset and re-skilling from services delivery to software development.

Clients of Infosys and other IT Services vendors are today looking for partners to help design and build new products and services, as in most cases, their research and development budgets are slashed and yet they need to access innovation and scale. As more and more clients have begun treading the co-innovation path with vendors, a technology visionary of Dr. Sikka’s credentials at the helm of Infosys augurs well for them.

Shifting Blocks of the Industry
As most Indian IT services firms have maxed out their current business models, we see the key players transitioning from services to building IP to remain ahead in the game (see Figure 2). These firms have proven their ability to operate and execute on infrastructure and delivery. The next battle is to offer trusted advice to clients on the path to innovation and IP creation. Dr. Sikka was successful in re-elevating SAP’s relevance as an innovator, and his most notable accomplishments at SAP include a design thinking approach to software development, the SAP HANA platform, and the push to cloud and mobile for SAP. Infosys could not have figured a better strategist than him if they were to tap the sizable, but equally tricky from a partner perspective, opportunity in the Third Party Maintenance (TPM) area.

Figure 2: Creators and Innovators Trump “Trusted Advisor” in Next-gen IT services

The Bottom Line: Sikka’s Arrival To re-invigorate Infosys

Constellation believes that Vishal can play a significant role in transforming the aging time and materials, body shop model into a more modern one focused on Products, Platforms, IP and Innovation.  Vishal’s background in identifying, building, developing, and selling new products and services from his SAP experience will hopefully serve as a catalyst to reinvent new business models within Infosys.  In addition, the hive off of wholly-owned subsidiary, Edgeverve Systems Ltd could play a role in elevating a new Infosys 3.0 strategy or provide the nexus for innovation across Infosys.  For now, customers and prospects can expect Infosys to move from services to building IP.

As noted earlier at the time of Mr. N R Narayana Murthy’s Return To Infosys As Executive Chairman of the Board, Constellation believes Infosys has taken a good shot at transformational innovation with Dr. Sikka’s selection. For Dr. Sikka, transforming Infosys into an IP-led powerhouse in the next 3 to 5 years will be the real litmus test.

The arrival of a product innovation advocate such as Dr. Sikka to lead the change is an deftly done decision.  Now comes the hard part, transforming the culture.

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SapphireNow - SAP finds its path to a (unique) cloud

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 participate at SAP’s SapphireNow conference in Orlando. The conference was well attended with significantly over 20k participants.

But first - the showfloor. Even 3 events later analysts and vendors still talk about it. No longer the traditional separation of keynote hall and food hall – but have all together, keynotes, food, show floor, briefing area, theaters etc. lead to a very good conference experience. Design aspects were clearly considered, colors were great and the keynote area was deliberately too small to hold all attendees, but with screens all over the hall everyone who wanted to follow the keynotes was able to follow them. And kudos to SAP also for making events open, e.g. the press conferences were in the public area, where general attendees could watch and listen in first hand.

Top 3 Positive Takeaways

It was hard to pick the top 3 – but for the sake of time here they are:

HANA is the platform, Suite on HANA is the application

About a year ago we found that HANA was technically there, the 2014 takeaway is that the Suite on HANA has certainly arrived, with abundant proof points of customers actively using the Suite in production. And references and proof points validate the customers move explicitly as their decision and with the SAP’s strategy around building more on HANA as well implicitly. SAP and its customers are now reaching the point where technology is no longer restricting the speed of their business, but thanks to HANA technological advances exceed human processing capabilities and with that current business practices. The validation point to look for – and we found it multiple times at different customers – is enterprises needing to take a pause and figure out how to conduct business going forward. This is a good place for SAP and customers to be – but SAP now needs to listen attentively and find the right practices to productize these new best practices in its next generation product. And as we know finding the right balance here is what the art of enterprise software applications is. Getting this formula right is the base of long term vendor and customer success.

Equally important is that SAP has delivered most (SAP claims all) of its vertical code in the different industry solutions. This is again an amazing engineering achievement, given the different levels of invasiveness of industry code into the suite. Never shy, SAP declared to have the first Industry Cloud – but in our view let’s get more customer proof points and some technical details, first - before we pop the champagne bottles open. 

Simplified Financials

SAP presented its first larger next generation product with Simplified Financials. It was demoed by SAP CIO Helen Arnold, along with demos of Suite on HANA customers Conagra and John Deere. Later designated CFO Mucic was on stage talking about the benefits (SAP is live since late April) – and they are tangible. As aggregation can be run on the fly, drill downs from on-the-fly- aggregates can go down to the single records, business practices in Finance will change. It may have been too early even for SAP to talk about these – 5 weeks is a short time frame. Let’s hope we see and hear more on how best practices in Finance running on HANA (or other in memory databases) should look like. And the impacts and opportunities to rethink Finance are massive. But it's good to see SAP renovating (and innovating) at the core of ERP, in Finance. 

HANA Energizes SAP

It’s good to see how HANA is the power that energizes and galvanizes SAP. Not even four years ago Sapphire had a hint of inertia and statics on all sides – customers, partners and SAP employees. That is mostly gone now and it is good for the whole ecosystem – as well as the market. SAP now needs to keep the momentum going, and from our meetings with the go to market side with McDermott and Enslin there is little doubt that will happen.

It is also key to notice that SAP is doing the necessary steps to make the cloud DNA obsolete – in the direction that everything is cloud. Organization decisions like to have the Head of Product of SuccessFactors, Krakovsky run all of HCM development (including the ECC aka R/3 parts), have an executive from SuccessFactors run the HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) are good moves to propagate cloud DNA across SAP.

Top 3 Concerns

Cloud View

Not surprisingly, but now with validation and probing with Plattner and Leukert, SAP has a very database centric view of cloud computing. If you take a look at the key 3 computing resources, storage, networking and compute, storage is the least dynamic. While you need to scale network and compute load as needed, storage is not really scalable. Information just has to be there, and SAP decided with HANA to keep that information in memory. Consequently the view on code and compute is of a more static nature than other enterprise vendor’s view of cloud. If you have all your data in memory, a few double digit Gigabit of code are only a rounding error when sizing a (dedicated) HANA system for a customer. There are benefits with the dedication like security concerns, tangibility etc. but it is not the elastic cloud interpretation we see from SAP’s competitors. For them you do not ‘size’ a system – it’s all about not even being able to size the load. Take the showcase of Google Cloud with the British Royal Wedding last year, or the Azure showcase around the Sochi Olympics. Granted, these are not enterprise applications, but shouldn’t the load of enterprise applications be equally elastic? Especially when considering that no one knows the best practices for the digital economy and running an enterprise on in memory technology.

All this leads to SAP’s view that customers run dedicated systems in SAP’s HANA Enterprise Cloud. And SAP certainly has the deep pockets to keep costs attractive and competitive – but savvy customers and observers will remain concerned here.

But then – let’s not forget that a unique interpretation of technology gave SAP a leg up on its foes back in the 90ies. The SAPGUi client never knew the primary keys of records displayed, but was a display terminal server, very much a browser, contrary to the common client server definition of the client knowing the primary keys of data records displayed. The irony is, that this design uniqueness made R/3 2-3 times more scalable than mainstream client server architectures of the competition. The tragedy is that SAP never realized that it had a thin client solution with R/3 already – the ‘browser’ fit on a floppy disc. So SAP may take a unique path to cloud and may get rewarded for standing out – once more. Speaking with Yoda – Risky it remains.

Renovating in flight

There are two fundamental ways to write new software - isolate the team and build the next generation (SAP tried with byDesign, sending teams even off to another location in St. Leon-Roth) or you trickle innovation in with the same product teams while they maintain previous versions. And you innovate step by step. Given the byDesign outcome – SAP is going down the latter path. 

The good news is – this is pretty much the SaaS path. But SAP has its ECC releases to maintain – so it will be interesting how development under Leukert will be organized and be able to ship quality releases.

Financial Prospects

With the popular move to make Fiori, Personas and even Simplified Finance free of charge to maintenance paying customers, SAP has certainly done the right thing to keep customers happy and additionally has delivered a proof point for the value of being a maintenance paying customer. The vendors competing on the 3rd party support market will not be able to deliver similar innovation – to be fair their customers may also not expect them to deliver anything similar.

The concern is that the move reduces the bulk of the future SAP revenue stream to the HANA database licenses and other technology licenses, like e.g. Lumira. That is certainly a viable path, but usually does not yield similar revenue growth potential than selling business applications. SAP certainly has not given up building business applications, .but given the breadth of its offering in regards of automating the enterprise, and it will have to work hard to explain to its customers why a new license for a new product is warranted. This and other explanations will be key for making the overall simplification message credible. 

With the team around Leukert being busy with simplification, aggregate busting and re-factoring, we should expect SAP not to be shy on the acquisition front, as major chunks of license revenue from applications will likely only come from acquired revenue in the next years.

MyPOV

Overall a good Sapphire for SAP. HANA is working, the Suite is on HANA, the Verticals are coming and making things simpler is a welcome message for CEOs trying to tame complexity… But doing things simply is complex in itself – as McDermott pointed out in his keynote. On the flipside SAP needs to explain to investors where the license revenue of the future will come from and tame the challenges of renovating its software in flight. If SAP’s dedicated system, database centric view of cloud, which is unique in the marketplace will be a pro or a con remains to be seen. SAP and its customers got away with a unique architecture last century once before and nobody really cared back then. If 201x is different than 199x – only the future can tell.

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IBM Watson and Genesys Partner to Power Smarter Customer Experiences

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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IBM and Genesys (www.genesys.com), a leading provider of customer experience and contact center solutions, today announced a partnership that will transform how organizations of all sizes differentiate their customer experience by tapping the power of IBM Watson to transform the way brands engage clients across customer service, marketing and sales through data-driven insights and automated actions.

 WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU?

The combination of the Watson Engagement Advisor with the Genesys Customer Experience Platform to is reportedly positioned to transform how organizations worldwide engage with their customers across customer experience touchpoints and channels of communication. This partnerships will allow Genesys to develop a learning system that can better serve consumers in their self-service applications and contact centers because The Watson Engagement Advisor enables natural language solution learning and adapts and understands market and organizational data quickly and easily, and gets progressively smarter with use, outcomes, and new pieces of information.

 WHAT IS A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF HOW THE WATSON ENGAGEMENT ADVISOR HELPS CUSTOMER SERVICE AGENTS?

The partnership will aid and assist a brand’s customer service agents to provide fast, data-driven answers, or simply sit directly in the hands of consumers via mobile device, chat session or online interaction. In one simple click, the solution’s “Ask Watson” feature can quickly help address customers’ questions, offer feedback to guide their purchase decisions, and troubleshoot their problems.

Because today’s consumers are a tweet, post, phone call, email or web chat away from reporting an issue or asking a question, and nearly half expect a response from businesses within a span of minutes, according to Edison Research, companies need to get a lot smarter about how they operationalize real-time customer service. Brand customer representatives who field these inquiries are often backlogged with time-consuming issues or questions that require detailed, accurate responses not often readily available to them – which can lead to an inconsistent customer experience. We’ve all been there – called a contact center and knew more about what we were asking than the company did. Perhaps this will help agents become closer to being able to provide real-time customer service.

DOES THIS MEAN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT DATABASES ARE BEING REINVENTED? 

Contact center agents can gain access to a cloud-based Watson advisor that reads and uncover insights from millions of pages of data-driven content within seconds, from product guides to call transcripts. The result: cognitive computing that will augment a contact center agent’s knowledge and shift their time from searching for answers to discovering timely insights that solve problems, facilitate new opportunities, and improve the customer experience.  

WHAT IS A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF HOW THE WATSON ENGAGEMENT ADVISOR HELPS CUSTOMERS?

Genesys customers will gain the additional value of a Watson cloud-based advisor that thinks, learns and provides expert insights, while combing through millions of pages of data within seconds for customers and the contact center agents who serve them. As a result, Genesys customers can tap into the body of data that Watson understands and puts to work and use that knowledge to deliver more actionable and satisfying responses to customer inquiries in their self-service applications and contact centers.

HOW DOES THIS CONNECT A CUSTOMER AND A COMPANY TO PROVIDE BETTER SERVICE?

Imagine yourself as a bank customer, home from work and doing late night research on mortgage loans after your children are in bed. You may see a feature or rate that you like, but you have detailed questions that require expert advice. You can call, email or tweet the brand, but it’s after-hours. Many brands dont even pay attention to tweets much less have someone answering questions at night. Often that customer would not have access to a customer service agent until the next day.

Now envision the following experience: at any time of night, you can access a web chat advisor that has access to the bank’s data-driven content around mortgages, and through a natural language interface, understands your questions and history interacting with the bank. Not only will the application educate you on all things mortgage shopping, but it will also provide a formal offer that can be presented by a mortgage expert at a convenient time scheduled by you.

The idea is that with the Watson Ecosystem, Genesys customers will gain access to a cloud-based advisor that, within seconds, can read and uncover insights from millions of pages of data-driven content, from product guides to call transcripts to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The result: cognitive computing will augment agents’ knowledge and free their bandwidth from searching for answers, to creatively thinking of how they can further help a customer or even make a sale. This, in turn, will allow Genesys clients to deliver on their brand’s promise to the nearly 80 percent of consumers who say that the contact center is involved in defining the customer experience. SOURCE (IQPC)

 WHAT INDUSTRIES DOES THIS SOLUTION PROVIDE BETTER SERVICE FOR?

Leveraging its experience and deep domain expertise across industries including banking, insurance, and retail, Genesys will integrate access to the cloud-based Watson to its Customer Experience Platform empowering their customers with the ability to interact through a natural dialog leveraging Watson’s understanding and intelligent natural language response. Now consumers can tap into Watson to gain insight and answers faster than possible with knowledge management solutions.

HOW WILL THIS IBM AND GENESYS PARTNERSHIP AFFECT SELF-SERVICE?

The desire for self-service is there – both from the company’s point of view (reduce call volume, etc…) and customers are tired of calling into a contact center only to be disappointed. But while self-service has been a leading “idea” it rarely delivers an experience that doesn’t garner the customer to try to get help in another channel, often the phone channel. This defeats the purpose of self-service and reduces the first contact resolution — one of the most important indicators of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The IBM Watson and Genesys solution provides organizations with the ability to identify when a customer needs to speak with a customer experience representative, rather than continuing in a self-service application. For example, if a customer reaches a point in conversation during a self-service interaction that could prompt either customer churn or a timely sales opportunity, Watson’s knowledge of pre-defined business guidelines allows the solution to signal when it is time to transfer the conversation to an agent.

The customer is not arbitrarily transferred to just any agent among the potentially hundreds who work at a call center. The solution pinpoints the exact agent to handle a customer’s inquiry, based on specific factors such as an agent’s experience, channel used, training and even license to discuss or sell a given product and then transfers the customer with the accompanying detail of the self-service interaction. This could mean a shift to reducing call volume and increasing first contact resolution – if it works as indicated. Case studies will be interesting to hear how brands are actually putting it to use.

WHAT DOES THE CEO OF GENESYS THINK ABOUT THE NEW PARTNERSHIP?

Paul Segre, President and CEO, Genesys says, “This combined solution delivers sophisticated yet simple to manage knowledge capabilities to transform self-service systems and human interactions into positive brand impressions. With Watson, our new solution provides a transformational customer experience with a natural and informed transition from self service to agent assistance to yield better business outcomes.”

WHAT DOES THE MIKE RHODIN, SVP OF IBM WATSON GROUP THINK ABOUT THE NEW PARTNERSHIP?

Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President, IBM Watson Group says, “By tapping into IBM Watson’s cognitive intelligence, Genesys is infusing a personalized assistant into every customer interaction. Customer engagement is a natural fit for Watson, empowering brands with information driven insights. This is a key example of how a new era of cognitive computing applications will transform industries and professions and revolutionize how decisions are made.”

About Genesys

Genesys is the market leader in multi-channel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions in the cloud and on-premises. We help brands of all sizes make great CX great business. The Genesys Customer Experience Platform powers optimal customer journeys consistently across all touchpoints, channels and interactions to turn customers into brand advocates. Genesys is trusted by over 4,500 customers in 80 countries to orchestrate more than 100 million digital and voice interactions each day. Visit us at www.genesys.com or call us at +1.888.436.3797.

IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing

Three years after its victory on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!, IBM Watson has evolved to represent a new era of computing, where by 2017 it is predicted that 10 percent of computers will be able to learn as Watson does. Today, Watson is no longer just the world’s most famous game-playing computer. IBM has put Watson to work in various industries. In healthcare, IBM is co-developing an application with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and partnering with WellPoint, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Additionally, IBM has partnered with numerous colleges and universities across the country to teach Watson capabilities and cognitive computing technology to the next generation workforce. In 2013, IBM announced the introduction of the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, the first Watson offering designed to improve customer experience, putting the power of Watson within reach of everyone.

IBM’s mission to spark a new generation of Watson-powered apps is just the latest milestone in developing cognitive system offerings that help its clients and partners succeed.

For more information on IBM Watson, please visit www.ibmwatson.com

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Webinar: Big Privacy

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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I'm presenting a Constellation Research webinar next week on my latest research into "Big Privacy" (June 18th in the US / June 19th in Australia). I hope you can join us.

We live in an age where billionaires are self-made on the back of the most intangible of assets - the information they have amassed about us. That information used to be volunteered in forms and questionnaires and contracts but increasingly personal information is being observed and inferred.

The modern world is awash with data. It's a new and infinitely re-usable raw material. Most of the raw data about us is an invisible by-product of our mundane digital lives, left behind by the gigabyte by ordinary people who do not perceive it let alone understand it.

Many Big Data and digital businesses proceed on the basis that all this raw data is up for grabs. There is a particular widespread assumption that data in the "public domain" is free-for-all, and if you're clever enough to grab it, then you're entitled to extract whatever you can from it.

In the webinar, I'll try to show how some of these assumptions are naive. The public is increasingly alarmed about Big Data and averse to unbridled data mining. Excessive data mining isn't just subjectively 'creepy'; it can be objectively unlawful in many parts of the world. Conventional data protection laws turn out to be surprisingly powerful in in the face of Big Data. Data miners ignore international privacy laws at their peril!

Today there are all sorts of initiatives trying to forge a new technology-privacy synthesis. They go by names like "Privacy Engineering" and "Privacy by Design". These are well meaning efforts but they can be a bit stilted. They typically overlook the strengths of conventional privacy law, and they can miss an opportunity to engage the engineering mind.

It's not politically correct but I believe we must admit that privacy is full of contradictions and competing interests. We need to be more mature about privacy. Just as there is no such thing as perfect security, there can never be perfect privacy either. And is where the professional engineering mindset should be brought in, to help deal with conflicting requirements.

If we're serious about so-called Privacy by Design and Privacy Engineering then we need to acknowledge the tensions. That's some of the thinking behind Constellation's new Big Privacy compact. To balance privacy and Big Data, we need to hold a conversation with users that respects the stresses and strains, and involves them in working through the new privacy deal.

The webinar will cover these highlights of the Big Privacy pact:

• Respect and Restraint
•  
• Super transparency
•  
• And a fair deal for Personal Information.

June 18, 2014 1:00p.m. PT/ 4pm ET

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

News Analysis - Progress Software acquires Modulus - gets hip and bridges the old with the new

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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Somewhat surprisingly Progress Software this morning announced the acquisition of Cincinnati based Modulus. Not so surprising if you follow Progress more closely and see the significant steps the vendor is taking to create value for its large install base.

So let’s take a look at the press release:

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS), today announced it has acquired Cincinnati, Ohio-based Modulus, a privately held company that provides a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for easily hosting, deploying, scaling and monitoring data-intensive, real-time applications using powerful, rapidly growing Node.js and MongoDB technologies. Financial terms were not disclosed.

MyPOV – A key move by Progress that discloses all the value propositions that Modulus brings to Progress and its customers. A fast way to deploy to deploy next generation applications leveraging PaaS techniques, node.js and MongoDB.


The Modulus Node.js and MongoDB cloud platform is designed to simplify and speed development of the new generation of scalable, always connected business and consumer apps that are constantly monitored and optimized for the best experience. The Modulus platform is ideally suited for real-time mobile, SaaS, social and Big Data apps that run across distributed devices and can seamlessly handle floods of data requests with built-in performance monitoring and analytics.

MyPOV – A good description on what Modulus does – deliver next generation applications that are highly scalable, distributed across devices and delivered through the cloud. All application attributes that Progress has been traditionally lacking for its applications, and recently (the last 2-3 years) been adding capabilities both through internal development and acquisitions.


The Modulus platform is offered both as a hosted service and can also be deployed by enterprises in public, private and hybrid clouds as well as in an on-premise infrastructure. Modulus Enterprise is the first and only enterprise Node.js PaaS available as a licensed product, allowing businesses and ISVs to deploy next-generation apps faster and at a lower total cost. With Modulus, more time can be spent on creating and modernizing apps and less time worrying about deployment infrastructure.

MyPOV – Modulus’ flexible deployment options, all the way to private cloud have certainly made the vendor more attractive to Progress, as Progress customers for a number of reasons still have a significant portion of on premise deployed applications. Progress has realized that for a number or reasons, these customers will not move their applications to the public cloud, so thanks to Modulus’ private cloud deployment, modern platforms like node.js and MongoDB as well as techniques like continuous deployment and application monitoring will be available for Progress customers.


Founded in 2012, Modulus has more than 450 customers of all sizes and is a leader in the Node.js community. Progress is committed to continuing and expanding Modulus' contributions and role in this community. The core technologies that Modulus supports are among the fastest growing in the industry. Node.js is designed for easily building high performing, scalable network applications using the ubiquitous JavaScript programming language. MongoDB is the leading NoSQL database system and is designed for scalability, performance and high availability.

MyPOV – Nothing documents providing value to customers better than rapid growth in the customer base – and with Modulus having 450 customers in only a little more than two years of existence is certainly a key proof point. Progress customers can now build their next generation applications with modern, state of the art technologies that last but not least are also popular with the developer community.

Surely in less than a few hours after the release there will be pundits deploring an end of innovation here, but Progress would be foolish of not continuing to support the Modulus product commitments and roadmap. In contrary – I would expect Progress to double down on the Modulus side as the offering is something Progress has been chasing to create since a number of years – a modern PaaS platform.

With the addition of the Modulus capabilities into its PaaS portfolio, Progress now offers the industry's most comprehensive set of cloud, mobile, hybrid and on-premise development, data and business rules technologies.

MyPOV – Let’s leave the marketing beside – the key thing is that Progress has become a lot more attractive to its customer base. Progress also has a whole new set of reasons its existing customers to keep looking at the vendor and keep building applications with Progress tools.

Overall MyPOV

A very good move by Progress. Now it needs to create and publish the roadmap of bringing proven and appreciated Progress capabilities to the new Modulus platform. And as well harmonize and communicate how Modulus fits in the overall Progress PaaS strategy, something I am sure the team around CTO Padir is been working on. Lastly I am sure a whole lot of millennial developers will have the answer on the question ‘Progress who?’ figured out on June 9th 2014. Not a bad side effect for the proven and venerable Progress Software.

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Watson the Doctor is no laughing matter

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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For the past year, oncologists at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York have been training IBM's Watson - the artificial intelligence tour-de-force that beat allcomers on Jeopardy - to help personalise cancer care. The Centre explains that "combining [their] expertise with the analytical speed of IBM Watson, the tool has the potential to transform how doctors provide individualized cancer treatment plans and to help improve patient outcomes". Others are speculating already that Watson could "soon be the best doctor in the world".

I have no doubt that when Watson and things like it are available online to doctors worldwide, we will see wonderful overall improvements in healthcare outcomes, especially in parts of the world now under-serviced by medical specialists. As with Google's self-driving car, we will probably get terrific gains averaged across the population from replacing humans with machines. Yet some of the foibles of computing are not well known and I think they will lead to surprises.

For all the wondrous gains made in Artificial Intelligence, where Watson now is the state-of-the art, A.I. remains algorithmic, and for that, it has inherent limitations that don't get enough attention. Computer Scientists and mathematicians have know for years that some surprisingly straightforward problems have no algorithmic solution. That is, some tasks cannot be accomplished by any universal step-by-step codified procedure. Examples include the Halting Problem and the Travelling Salesperson Problem. If these simple challenges have no algorithm, we need be more sober in our expectations of computerised intelligence.

A key limitation of any programmed algorithm is that it must make its decisions using a fixed set of inputs that are known and fully characterised (by the programmer) at design time. If you spring an unexpected input on any computer, it can fail, and yet that's what life is all about -- surprises. No mathematician seriously claims that what humans do is somehow magic; most believe we are computers made of meat. Nevertheless, when paradoxes like the Halting Problem abound, we can be sure that computing and cognition are not what they seem. We should hope these conundrums are better understood before putting too much faith in computers doing deep human work.

And yet, predictably, futurists are jumping ahead to imagine "Watson apps" in which patients access the supercomputer for themselves. Even if there were reliable algorithms for doctoring, I reckon the "Watson app" is a giant step, because of the complex way the patient's conditions are assessed and data is gathered for the diagnosis. That is, the taking of the medical history.
In these days of billion dollar investments in electronic health records (EHRs), we tend to think that medical decisions are all about the data. When politicians announce EHR programs they often boast that patients won't have to go through the rigmarole of giving their history over and over again to multiple doctors as they move through an episode of care. This is actually a serious misunderstanding of the importance in clinical decision making of the interaction between medico and patient when the history is taken. It's subtle. The things a patient chooses to tell, the things they seem to be hiding, and the questions that make them anxious, all guide an experienced medico when taking a history, and provide extra cues (metadata if you will) about the patient's condition.

Now, Watson may well have the ability to navigate this complexity and conduct a very sophisticated Q&A. It will certainly have a vastly bigger and more reliable memory of cases than any doctor, and with that it can steer a dynamic patient questionnaire. But will Watson be good enough to make it available direct to patients through an app, with no expert human mediation? Or will a host of new input errors result from patients typing their answers into a smart phone or speaking into a microphone, without any face-to-face subtlety (let alone human warmth)? It was true of mainframes and it's just as true of the best A.I.: Bulldust in, bulldust out.

Finally, Watson's existing linguistic limitations are not to be underestimated. It is surely not trivial that Watson struggles with puns and humour. Futurist Mark Pesce when discussing Watson remarked in passing that scientists don't understand the "quirks of language and intelligence" that create humour. The question of what makes us laugh does in fact occupy some of the finest minds in cognitive and social science. So we are a long way from being able to mechanise humour. And this matters because for the foreseeable future, it puts a great deal of social intercourse beyond AI's reach.

In between the extremes of laugh-out-loud comedy and a doctor's dry written notes lies a spectrum of expressive subtleties, like a blush, an uncomfortable laugh, shame, and the humiliation that attends some peoples' experience of ill health. Watson may understand the English language, but does it understand people?

Watson can answer questions, but good doctors ask a lot of questions too. When will this amazing computer be able to hold the sort of two-way conversation that we would call a decent "bedside manner"?

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Additional Resources

Three Billion was a Snap - Why even selfies deserve data protection
Data to Decisions

Tales of the One in Ten

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of  award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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But then something happens that he could never have imagined.

Watch and share and help change someone else’s story.

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The Enterprise Mobility Problem

Brian Katz

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

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The question needs to be asked whether these enterprises should care. The BYOD (Bring your own device) faithful will insist that the enterprises must care, as employees will use any device they fancy and they must be ready. Security will insist on it, as the new features are always new things to be blocked until the din reaches the crescendo of caring, forcing them to truly examine if an issue exists, most often it doesn’t. Yet, we let it go unsaid, in almost every corner enterprises are looking at mobility wrong, except for the few in that rarified air.

You see, mobility is this bell that all are ringing, loud and clear. They have seen the drummer and are marching to his beat, handing out smartphones and tablets left and right. Apple is cleaning up in the enterprise and Samsung is starting to make some headway for Android. It’s like an episode of Oprah, you walk into work one day and look beneath your seat and there’s a tablet or smartphone waiting. If you are really lucky there might even be a few apps preloaded or the companies that really get it have an app store already setup and ready to go, filled with apps that fit your needs.

The funny thing is, 6 months later, they all start asking where all the new productivity is that they read about in every Wall Street Journal or even the New York Times. They thought that all they had to do was hand the devices out. They setup basic PIM functionality. Everyone can get their email, contacts and calendaring on their devices. According to IBM they should be getting an extra hour a day of productivity from each person. Some think that if they give their users smartphones and tablets they should get two extra hours each day.

Along the way, these companies forgot what they were doing in the first place. They built their business and created a strategy for growth and profit. They hired good people and gave them the tools they needed to get their jobs done. Then these shiny little objects that came with stories of unheard of productivity and efficiency distracted them. It caused them to stray from the basics that made them good companies in the first place. There was no strategy when these mobile devices were rolled out, other than they would work. They forgot that mobility is just another tool in the arsenal of their workers. These tools required jobs that could be done with them. The jobs couldn’t be done exactly the same way they had been in the past because those tools already existed. They had to be suited for a new way of working. They had to be fit to their workers wants and needs. They necessitated a loosening of the old ways of doing things and needed to give heed to new apps and devices that allowed more flexibility and agility.

Mobile devices, in and of themselves, are pointless. They aren’t tools. It’s only when you combine the mobile devices with the right apps, that they become tools fit to the right need. It’s when they take an old business process and turn it on its head because they enable a new, better way for it to be performed that they are successful. It’s when it allows someone to enter information in a system instantaneously after it is acquired versus the old way of writing it down, walking back to their desk and inputting it that it becomes efficient. When a pilot no longer has to carry 20 pounds of manuals for a flight and then leaf through to find the right page, but instead just types in the search box of their tablet to find the right procedure that it becomes successful. When approvals that required an email, a web browser, a SharePoint session, and a complete approval flow taking 30 minutes in total and a PC become a mobile app where the manager reviews the case and clicks approve in 2 minutes, then you’ve become successful.

An enterprise can ignore the goings on in mobile or throw themselves whole hog into giving their workers devices, but until they integrate mobile into their business strategy, processes and procedures, all they’ve done is spend a lot of money on some really shiny toys.

Reflections on the Future of the Cloud at SAPPHIRENOW

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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In this post panel debrief, R "Ray" Wang shares his insights regarding the future of the cloud and shares how the cloud enables the transformation to digital. 

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