News Analysis: Going Deeper Into The Apple And IBM New Business Model Alliance

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 Research Inc. He…...

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Global Partnership Signals Expansive View Of Digital Business Disruption

On July 15th, 2014 IBM’s Ginni Rometty and Apple’s Tim Cook announced in Cupertino, CA a strategic partnership to transform enterprise mobility (see Figure 1).  IBM has committed up to 100,000 employees to the initiative.  Apple has not disclosed its investment effort.  The announcement, made at Apple’s Infinite Loop HQ, addressed four strategic joint initiatives between Apple and IBM that enterprise leaders should watch carefully:

• IBM will build a new class of industry specific enterprise solutions. IBM intends to build more than 100 MobileFirst enterprise solutions including native apps.  These applications will be built native for iPhone and iPad.  The applications will include industry specific solutions that take advantage of IBM’s big data and analytics prowess. Key components include iOS apps, ERP for iOS, and app integration and management.
  
  Point of View (POV): In conversations with Fred Balboni and Marie Wieck of IBM, the senior executives hinted at a predictive component to these new class of enterprise applications.  Constellation believes these will take advantage of contextual features in iOS 8 such as messaging, enterprise management, and notifications that will be released Fall 2014.   In addition, the new SDKs for iHealth and iHome present new opportunities for patient care and potentially building management at the enterprise level.

• IBM will deliver a set of mobile management services optimized for the iOS and iCloud. IBM Intends to deliver not only device management, but also security, mobile integration, and analytics for enterprise Apple customers through a MobileFirst Platform for iOS.  Key development platform capabilities from integration, analytics, cloud storage, and workflow will come from IBM’s Bluemix Mobile for iOS.  IBM MaaS360 for iOS will provide  mobile device management capabilities in security, device management and apps catalog.
  
  (POV): Constellation estimates that the market share of enterprise iOS in North America is well over 80% versus other devices in the Global 2000 sized companies.  IBM has the opportunity to help Apple address many enterprise security concerns.  While Apple is not exclusively standardizing on IBM’s mobile first offerings, the close relationships should give mobile management competitors some heart burn.  IBM is Apple’s preferred partner.  That being said, Apple may want to partner more closely with device manufacturers attempting to address the enterprise class security concerns CIO’s and Chief Security Officers (CSO’s) have raised with bring your own device (BYOD) programs.  IBM is also free to partner with other manufacturers such as Samsung or Blackberry.

• IBM will provide enterprise class AppleCare services. IBM Global Technology Services will provide AppleCare service and support offerings with technical advocates and 2 to 3 years of coverage.  Support services include 24 x7 English phone and email for end users, toll free calls routed to Tier 2 phone advisors, 1 hour IT level support for P1 tickets, fee-based, technical onsite support. On the service side, IBM will provide on-site repair/replacement for Mac and iOS, consistent service experience, replacement of iOS device coverage, service and support activity reporting. IBM will deliver on behalf of Apple customer services such as device activation.
  
  (POV): Apple’s Achilles heel comes from the inability to service enterprise customers.  Today, customers sign up for joint venture or show up to the Apple Store Genius Bar for support. Corporate customers expect a more comprehensive capability and IBM has a track history of delivering in the enterprise.  IBMs expertise from the PC days and support of Lenovo will prove reassuring to enterprise accounts.

• IBM will provide logistics expertise to apple. IBM Global Services will deliver supply, secure and activate, and management services.  Customers can  buy, finance and lease through IBM Global Finance.
  
  (POV): The last leg of the enterprise experience is the supply chain logistics and procurement.  Through the Emptoris assets, IBM Global Services, and IBM Global Finance, clients can procure Apple products the same way they would IBM hardware.  Enterprise procurement officers will find comfort with this approach versus Apple’s currently byzantine approach.

Figure 1. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Apple CEO Tim Cook at 1 Infinite Loop In Cupertino, CA

The Bottom Line: Digital Business Transformation Requires Co-Innovation And Co-Creation At Scale

The IBM and Apple global partnership may surprise for many companies and industry watchers. Just 30 years ago, the two companies fostered a bitter rivalry in the personal computing wars.  However, Apple’s strengths in consumer and IBM’s expertise in the enterprise create a unique win-win opportunity to take IBM’s big data and analytics expertise, mobile management capabilities, and logistics prowess and combine them with Apple’s enterprise market share penetration, new iOS 8 capabilities, and desire to create digital business models in new industries.

Given the public and current challenges IBM faces on meeting EPS, this deal should provide massive benefits for customers and shareholders for the mid to long-term.  Apple customers should rejoice that an enterprise option will exist with a partner who lives and breathes enterprise.  While competitors such as Google and Microsoft will most likely respond with similar announcements, customers are the primary beneficiary of this focus on the enterprise.  More importantly, the long term ramifications in providing new vertical solutions creates new possibilities to co-create and co-innovate in digital business.

Your POV.

Will your organization look to IBM as the link to enterprise for Apple?  What do you think of the partnership with IBM and Apple?  How will this change your mobile strategy? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with your mobility and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing mobile readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

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• News Analysis: Acquisition Of Fiberlink Fills Key Gap In IBM’s One-Stop Mobile First Strategy
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• Monday’s Musings: The Chief Digital Officer In The Age Of Digital Business
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• Monday’s Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
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Personal Log: Social Media Detox, Not Sure I Like It

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 Research Inc. He…...

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The Great Fire Wall Is Alive And Well

This morning I arrived in Beijing, China. It’s my first visit to the Chinese capital and I’m excited to speak about innovating in the Cloud at Oracle’s Cloud World event (see Figure 1). Upon arrival, I went through my usual motions of logging in to wifi, taking pictures and tweeting out.  The only challenge, China’s Great Internet Fire Wall was up and running.  I quickly found out that I couldn’t tweet, post a picture on to Flickr, search on Google, and even view a YouTube video.  Every search on the web felt like parental controls had been applied.  I was frustrated. My ability to connect with the digital world had been taken away from me.

Figure 1. Oracle’s Cloud World Beijing Kicks Off July 24th At The China World Trade Center

Like any connected digital citizen, I did the next best thing I could with my free time. I cleaned out the 457 emails in my inbox.  I at least had email service.  In fact, I was getting 40 mbps download speed.  After flirting with zero-inbox for about an hour, I got bored.   Not being able to scan TweetDeck, I rediscovered Yahoo! and Bing.  (Off the record: both search engines still could use a lot of work).  I tried relighting my Weibo and Line accounts but realized I had no friends on those services.

Losing immediacy of my normal social channels forced me to spend more time on a task uninterrupted.  The circumstances reminded me of a time just five years ago where I wasn’t constantly engaged or from this perspective, distracted.  At first it felt good to have the time to think.  But not being able to engage was what drove me nuts.

The Bottom Line: The Predisposition To Be Social Is Inherently Human

All i can say is I’m not sure I like being disconnected.  I’m not sure I like not having immediacy.  In fact, I hate feeling disengaged.  With just 18 hours to go in Beijing, I can tell you, I can’t wait to get to Singapore where the great firewall is no longer up and get back to being connected and engage. Till then, I’ll be twitter silent.

Your POV.

Have you been in China?  Do you feel isolated or do you use the government approved social media sites?  Any tips for tunneling out?  Thanks in advance for your feedback. Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

The post Personal Log: Social Media Detox, Not Sure I Like It appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

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As AWS dominates, Rackspace grows, and IBM, Microsoft and Cisco arrive by year end, does Australia need a sixth global IaaS provider

Founder, capioIT
calitolIT

Phil is the founder of capioIT, a research analyst firm focussed on driving change in the analyst and research market through innovation and collaboration, with a strong focus on IT services and BPO strategies in the Asia/Pacific region. He has 17 years' experience in corporate strategy, consulting and market intelligence, gained in a diverse range of organisations and industries. Prior to founding capioIT, he established the Australian and Services business units at Springboard Research. Prior to Springboard Research, Phil was responsible for driving analyst firm IDC's research in the services marketplace across the Asia/Pacific region. During his 6 years at IDC, Phil led a large multi-national team of analysts across a range of IT related services with a particular focus on IT…...

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1

AWS currently is the dominant provider of IaaS in Australia from a revenue, perception and capability perspective. Its connection with the market has been nothing short of extraordinary. In a recent capioIT client meeting, we saw a client looking as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. The simple reason, his board had finally approved use of AWS. Not the cloud, not IaaS, but AWS.

He is not alone. Virtually every major private sector organisation in Australia, and an increasing number of public sector authorities and agencies that we meet with are at the minimum considering AWS and IaaS for many and varied workloads. Of course Rackspace has been in Australia for longer than AWS, and has had success, albeit constrained at times as it pursues a different service model to AWS.

Not surprisingly, the public and hybrid cloud provider market has long noted the geographic, compliance, security and business benefits of locating data centres in Australia. The investment in Australia by global IaaS providers is accelerating at a rapid rate.

By the end of 2014, IBM IaaS subsidiary SoftLayer would have opened two locations in Sydney and Melbourne, Microsoft Azure will be up and running and the Cisco Intercloud run data centre that Telstra is building will be also operational.

As a result by Christmas, Australia will have five global cloud and IaaS providers. This is not even considering the smaller Australian providers, (who typical to Australian enterprise and government IT) is playing a secondary competitive role, as well as traditional IT Services providers such as Dell, HP and Fujitsu who have missed the market significantly. Dell has talked about building a data centre in Australia for approximately 3 years without an announcement let alone turning over a shovel of dirt.

Public and private sector organisations in Australia will adopt a hybrid cloud model, private clouds and even traditional outsourcing models are not disappearing. What this growth and investment does mean is that the opportunity for latecomers to the market is increasingly limited.

The question becomes one to understand if there is an opportunity for Google to offer compute services with a local data centre, or to rely upon Taiwan and Singapore or the US as locations. Similarly VMware have announced a Japanese location to complement the UK and US, but are considering Australia without committing publically to a timeframe.

The bottom line is that the market is increasingly crowded. capioIT believes that long term there is only room for 4 global IaaS providers. AWS will be one, Microsoft Azure most likely another and the rest will have to fight it out or consolidate. Australia may be an early location for the fever pitch battle for the future of IaaS. We will watch with some excitement from the sideline.

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IBM and Apple – Enabling the Individual Enterprise

Founder, capioIT
calitolIT

Phil is the founder of capioIT, a research analyst firm focussed on driving change in the analyst and research market through innovation and collaboration, with a strong focus on IT services and BPO strategies in the Asia/Pacific region. He has 17 years' experience in corporate strategy, consulting and market intelligence, gained in a diverse range of organisations and industries. Prior to founding capioIT, he established the Australian and Services business units at Springboard Research. Prior to Springboard Research, Phil was responsible for driving analyst firm IDC's research in the services marketplace across the Asia/Pacific region. During his 6 years at IDC, Phil led a large multi-national team of analysts across a range of IT related services with a particular focus on IT…...

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1

Much has been written about the announcement by IBM and Apple around their announcement of a partnership to increase enterprise mobility outcomes for organisations of varied size, industry and geography. Clearly it is seen as a positive move for both organisations and if executed upon will transform enterprise mobility.

Three points that have been missed by many commentators are critical.

The first is execution. All partnerships only show value when the parties are able to execute for real clients and this is no exception. If the partnership is simply a signed photo-op between Armonk and Cupertino then it is simply a hollow announcement. What will matter is how Apple and IBM execute the relationship on the ground in all the territories that it operates from Sydney to Santiago, Singapore and Shanghai. Local subsidiary politics and culture will need to be pushed to the side to allow clients to benefit from an integrated localised execution.
The second point relates to the apparent shock that IBM and Apple are working together on the basis of a Super Bowl advertisement that ran in 1984. Corporate antagonism may linger, but deals and pragmatism rule organisations such as IBM and Apple. A two second web search will inform that the two firms have actually worked in a client/provider basis for several years. Until recently selling off its Call Centre BPO business, IBM provided call centre support for Apple customers in the Asia Pacific region.
Third is the vision.

Clearly Apple brings the device and usability. IBM brings the enterprise and analytics. The ability to put the full power of organisational information in the hands of a democratised level of employees and users is where the two firms hope that the “Individual Enterprise” will be created. Faster and more accurate business decisions, collaboration, and organisational “hustle” is the potential outcome.

If this can be executed at the client and market level then the real value can be created for organisations. If it is built, structured and contracted by head office then it will be another case of potentially revolutionary technology partnerships dying as a result the typical technology dysfunction. The answer lies with Apple and IBM

 

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News Analysis: Netsuite Acquires Venda For Digital Commerce And EMEA Expansion

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 Research Inc. He…...

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Netsuite Sees Venda As Key To EMEA Expansion

On July 17th, 2014, San Mateo, CA based NetSuite announced the acquisition of London based Venda for an undisclosed sum.  Since General Manager Andrew Lloyd’s arrival in January 2011, NetSuite has made several acquisitions to bolster its standing in the world of Matrix Commerce with OrderMotion in May 2013 for order management expertise and Retail Anywhere in January 2013 for multichannel commerce.  Customers and prospects should care about the deal because:

• NetSuite gains an EMEA presence. Venda brings over 75 customers mostly based in EMEA to NetSuite.  Notable brands include Arsenal Football Club, BBC Worldwide, The British Museum, JVC, Laura Ashely, Metropolitan Museum of Art, McLaren Automotive, Orange, Sharp, and Tesco.
  
  Point of View (POV): Venda’s micro vertical specialization includes key areas such as apparel/accessories, art galleries/museums, consumer electronics, pharma/beauty products, specialty retail, sporting, and telecom/media.  The deep focus on micro-verticals

• Venda adds matrix commerce credibility to NetSuite. Venda’s Convergent Commerce approach addressed many of the key matrix commerce components of any channel, demand signals, supply chains, digital enablers, and analytics (Figure 1).  While not perfect, customers chose Venda over other options for a more complete digital commerce solution and vertical expertise.  Venda also offered comprehensive ecommerce design, build, operational and support services,
  
  (POV): Customers seeking a more robust offering across all touch points should consider NetSuite Suite Commerce. The solution addresses complex business models for (B2B, B2C, B2B2C, P2P, etc.).  Constellation sees Venda as two tier Matrix Commerce offering with more advanced customers evolving to NetSuite Suite Commerce.

Figure 1. Venda’s Convergent Commerce Approach Provided Many Matrix Commerce Requirements

Source: Venda

The Bottom Line: The Goal Must Be Campaign To Commerce Not OmniChannel

As vendors seek to build out the key components of matrix commerce, customers and prospects can expect continued consolidation in the market. However, the goal isn’t just better commerce or order management. The vendors with a long term vision must build out the campaign to commerce capability. Why? Organizations and brands no longer sell products nor services.  Customers are buying experiences and outcomes.  This requires design thinking around the overall buyer experience.  The shift from selling products to keeping brand promises requires solutions that deliver end to end campaign to commerce.  Vendors who can deliver on marketing, sales, service, and commerce will win.  Netsuite’s acquisitions and SuiteCommerce offerings hint at this understanding of the matrix commerce requirements (see Figure 3).  Time will tell if they build out or acquire the full matrix commerce road map that customers seek.

Figure 3. Components Of Matrix Commerce Support A Buyer Centric Design

Your POV.

Ready for matrix commerce?  Are you a Venda or NetSuite customer?  Do you see synergies in this acquisition?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

 

The post News Analysis: Netsuite Acquires Venda For Digital Commerce And EMEA Expansion appeared first on A Software Insider's Point of View.

 

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Postcard from Monterey 2 #CISmcc

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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Second Day Reflections from CIS Monterey.

Follow along on Twitter at #CISmcc (for the Monterey Conference Centre).

At CIS 2013 in Napa a year ago, several of us sensed a critical shift in focus amongst the identerati - from identity to attributes. OIX launched the Attributes Exchange Network (AXN) architecture, important commentators like Andrew Nash were saying, 'hey, attributes are more interesting than identity', and my own #CISnapa talk went so far as to argue we should forget about identity altogether. There was a change in the air, but still, it was all pretty theoretical.

Twelve months on, and the Attributes push has become entirely practical. If there was a Word Cloud for the NSTIC session, my hunch is that "attributes" would dominate over "identity". Several live NSTIC pilots are all about the Attributes.

ID.me is a new company started by US military veterans, with the aim of improving access for the veterans community to discounted goods and services and other entitlements. Founders Matt Thompson and Blake Hall are not identerati -- they're entirely focused on improving online access for their constituents to a big and growing range of retailers and services, and offer a choice of credentials for proving veterans bona fides. It's central to the ID.me model that users reveal as little as possible about their personal identities, while having their veterans' status and entitlements established securely and privately.

Another NSTIC pilot Relying Party is the financial service sector infrastructure provider Broadridge. Adrian Chernoff, VP for Digital Strategy, gave a compelling account of the need to change business models to take maximum advantage of digital identity. Broadridge recently annoucned a JV with Pitney Bowes called Inlet, which will enable the secure sharing of discrete and validated attributes - like name, address and social security number - in an NSTIC compliant architecture.

Mind bending

Yesterday I said in my CISmcc diary that I hoped to change my mind at #CISmcc about something, and half way through Day 2, I was delighted it was already happening. I've got a new attitude about NSTIC.

Over the past six months, I had come to fear http://www.nist.gov/nstic/">NSTIC had lost its way. It's hard to judge totally accurately when lurking on the webcast from Sydney (at 4:00am) but the last plenary seemed pedestrian to me. And I'm afraid to say that some NSTIC committees have got a little testy. But today's NSTIC session here was a turning point. Not only are there a number or truly exciting pilots showing real progress, but Jeremy Grant has credible plans for improving accountability and momentum, and the new technology lead Paul Grassi is thinking outside the box and speaking out of school. The whole program seems fresh all over again.

In a packed presentation, Grassi impressed me enormously on a number of points:

• Firstly, he advocates a pragmatic NSTIC-focused extension of the old US government Authentication Guide NIST SP 800-63. Rather than a formal revision, a companion document might be most realistic. Along the way, Grassi really nailed an issue which we identity professionals need to talk about more: language. He said that there are words in 800-63 that are "never used anywhere else in systems development". No wonder it's still "hard to implement identity" (in Grassi's words)!
  [Incidentally I chatted some more with Andrew Hughes about language; he is passionate about terms, and highlights in particular that our term "Relying Party" is a terrible distraction for Service Providers whose reason-for-being has nothing at all do wo with "relying" on anyone!]
• Secondly, Paul Grassi wants to "get very aggressive on attributes", including emphasis on practical measurement (since that's really what NIST is all about). I don't think I need to say anything more about that than Bravo!
• And thirdly (though he said a lot more) Grassi even asked "What if we got rid of LOAs?!". This kind of iconoclastic thinking is overdue, and was presented as part of a push to revamp the way government's orthodox thinking on Identity Assurance is translated to the business world. Grassi and Grant don't say LOAs can or should be abandoned by government, but they do see that shoving the rounded business concepts of identity into government's square hole has not done anyone much credit.

Just one small part of NSTIC annoyed me today: the persistent idea that federation hubs are inherently simpler than one-to-one authentication. They showed the following classic sort of 'before and after' shots, where it seems self-evident that a hub (here the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange FCCX) reduces complexity. The reality is that multilateral brokered arrangements between RPs and IdPs are far more complex than simple bilateral direct contracts. And moreover, the new forms of agreements are novel and untested in real world business. The time and cost and unpredictability of working out these new arrangements is not properly accounted for and has often been fatal to identity federations.

The dog barks and this time the caravan turns around

One of the top talking points at #CISmcc has of course been FIDO. The FIDO Alliance goes from strength to strength; we heard they have over 130 members now (remember it started with four or five less than 18 months ago). On Saturday afternoon there was a packed-out FIDO show case with six vendors showing real FIDO-ready products. And today there was a three hour deep dive into the two flagship FIDO protocols UAF (which enables better sharing of strong authentication signals such that passwords may be eliminated) to and U2F (which standardises and strengthens Two Factor Authentication).

FIDO's marketing messages are improving all the time, thanks to a special focus on strategic marketing which was given its own working group. In particular, the Alliance is steadily clarifying the distinction between identity and authentication, and sticking adamantly to the latter. In other words, FIDO is really all about the attributes. FIDO leaves identity as a problem to be addressed further up the stack, and dedicates itself to strengthening the authentication signal sent from end-point devices to servers.

The protocol tutorials were excellent, going into detail about how "Attestation Certificates" are used to convey the qualities and attributes of authentication hardware (such as device model, biometric modality, security certifications, elapsed time since last user verification etc) thus enabling nice fine-grained policy enforcement on the RP side. To my mind, UAF and U2F show how nature intended PKI to have been used all along!

Some confusion remains as to why FIDO has two protocols. I heard some quiet calls for UAF and U2F to converge, yet that would seem to put the elegance of U2F at risk. And it's noteworthy that U2F is being taken beyond the original one time password 2FA, with at least one biometric vendor at the showcase claiming to use it instead of the heavier UAF.

Surprising use cases

Finally, today brought more fresh use cases from cohorts of users we socially privileged identity engineers for the most part rarely think about. Another NSTIC pilot partner is AARP, a membership organization providing "information, advocacy and service" to older people, retirees and other special needs groups. AARP's Jim Barnett gave a compelling presentation on the need to extend from the classic "free" business models of Internet services, to new economically sustainable approaches that properly protect personal information. Barnett stressed that "free" Has been great and 'we wouldn't be where we are today without it' but it's just not going to work for health records for example. And identity is central to that.

There's so much more I could report if I had time. But I need to get some sleep before another packed day. All this changing my mind is exhausting.

Cheers again from Monterey.

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Postcard from Monterey #CISmcc

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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First Day Reflections from CIS Monterey.

Follow along on Twitter at #CISmcc (for the Monterey Conference Centre).

The Cloud Identity Summit really is the top event on the identity calendar. The calibre of the speakers, the relevance and currency of the material, the depth and breadth of the cohort, and the international spread are all unsurpassed. It's been great to meet old cyber-friends in "XYZ Space" at last -- like Emma Lindley from the UK and Lance Peterman. And to catch up with such talented folks like Steffen Sorensen from New Zealand once again.

A day or two before, Ian Glazer of Salesforce asked in a tweet what we were expecting to get out of CIS. And I replied that I hoped to change my mind about something. It's unnerving to have your understanding and assumptions challenged by the best in the field ... OK, sometimes it's outright embarrassing ... but that's what these events are all about. A very wise lawyer said to me once, around 1999 at the dawn of e-commerce, that he had changed his mind about authentication a few times up to that point, and that he fully expected to change his mind again and again.

I spent most of Saturday in Open Identity Foundation workshops. OIDF chair Don Thibeau enthusiastically stressed two new(ish) initiatives: Mobile Connect in conjunction with the mobile carrier trade association GSM Association @GSMA, and HIE Connect for the health sector. For the uninitiated, HIE means Health Information Exchange, namely a hub for sharing structured e-health records among hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, labs, e-health records services, allied health providers, insurers, drug & device companies, researchers and carers; for the initiated, we know there is some language somewhere in which the letters H.I.E. stand for "Not My Lifetime".

But seriously, one of the best (and pleasantly surprising) things about HIE Connect as the OIDF folks tell it, is the way its leaders unflinchingly take for granted the importance of privacy in the exchange of patient health records. Because honestly, privacy is not a given in e-health. There are champions on the new frontiers like genomics that actually say privacy may not be in the interests of the patients (or more's the point, the genomics businesses). And too many engineers in my opinion still struggle with privacy as something they can effect. So it's great -- and believe me, really not obvious -- to hear the HIE Connects folks -- including Debbie Bucci from the US Dept of Health and Human Services, and Justin Richer of Mitre and MIT -- dealing with it head-on. There is a compelling fit for the OAUTH and OIDC protocols here, with their ability to manage discrete pieces of information about users (patients) and to permission them all separately. Having said that, Don and I agree that e-health records permissioning and consent is one of the great UI/UX challenges of our time.

Justin also highlighted that the RESTful patterns emerging for fine-grained permissions management in healthcare are not confined to healthcare. Debbie added that the ability to query rare events without undoing privacy is also going to be a core defining challenge in the Internet of Things.

MyPOV: We may well see tremendous use cases for the fruits of HIE Exchange before they're adopted in healthcare!

In the afternoon, we heard from Canadian and British projects that have been working with the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) program now for a few years each.

Emma Lindley presented the work they've done in the UK Identity Assurance Program (IDAP) with social security entitlements recipients. These are not always the first types of users we think of for sophisticated IDAM functions, but in Britain, local councils see enormous efficiency dividends from speeding up the issuance of eg disabled parking permits, not to mention reducing imposters, which cost money and lead to so much resentment of the well deserved. Emma said one Attributes Exchange beta project reduced the time taken to get a 'Blue Badge' permit from 10 days to 10 minutes. She went on to describe the new "Digital Sources of Trust" initiative which promises to reconnect under-banked and under-documented sections of society with mainstream financial services. Emma told me the much-abused word "transformational" really does apply here.

MyPOV: The Digital Divide is an important issue for me, and I love to see leading edge IDAM technologies and business processes being used to do something about it -- and relatively quickly.

Then Andre Boysen of SecureKey led a discussion of the Canadian identity ecosystem, which he said has stabilised nicely around four players: Federal Government, Provincial Govt, Banks and Carriers. Lots of operations and infrastructure precedents from the payments industry have carried over.
Andre calls the smart driver license of British Columbia the convergence of "street identity and digital identity".

MyPOV: That's great news - and yet comparable jurisdictions like Australia and the USA still struggle to join governments and banks and carriers in an effective identity synthesis without creating great privacy and commercial anxieties. All three cultures are similarly allergic to identity cards, but only in Canada have they managed to supplement drivers licenses with digital identities with relatively high community acceptance. In nearly a decade, Australia has been at a standstill in its national understanding of smartcards and privacy.

For mine, the CIS Quote of the Day came from Scott Rice of the Open ID Foundation. We all know the stark problem in our industry of the under-representation of Relying Parties in the grand federated identity projects. IdPs and carriers so dominate IDAM. Scott asked us to imagine a situation where "The auto industry was driven by steel makers". Governments wouldn't put up with that for long.

Can someone give us the figures? I wonder if Identity and Access Management is already more economically ore important than cars?!

Cheers from Monterey, Day 1.

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Oracle Adds LinkedIn Support To Their Social Publishing Platform

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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This past week at Oracle's Marketing Cloud Interact 2014 conference they announced the addition of LinkedIn as one of the destinations that their Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform can publish articles to. The Oracle Social Marketing Cloud Service (OSMCS) enables marketing professionals to create, publish and monitor content across multiple web sites from a single location. The new LinkedIn capability expands the existing Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube destinations.  



MyPOV: As the number of social media and social networking sites increases, marketing professionals have an increasingly difficult time making sure their content reaches the correct audience via all the right channels. LinkedIn Company and Showcase pages are an important destination for brands, so at a time where LinkedIn is removing access to their API from almost all partners, this new feature is an excellent addition for Oracle customers.



Collaborative Marketing Campaigns

Since it's inception, Oracle Social Network (OSN) has always been focused on integration with Oracle's core business applications such as CRM, ERP, HR, etc. While engaging with customers and prospects happens outside an organizations firewall, it's important than employees be able to collaborate internally as they plan and track their marketing efforts. Constellation Research expects to see Oracle showcase deep integration between OSN and the various Oracle Marketing Cloud products (Eloqua, Responsys, BlueKai, etc.) later this year at Oracle OpenWorld.



 

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Event Report - CeridianINSIGHTS 2014 - Ceridian innovates and adds key functionality

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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And here are my top 3 takeaways from the event

• Ceridian delivers – It is always good to see when vendors deliver. When Ceridian laid down its ambitious product roadmap back at their analyst event in Boston in March of this year – many colleagues (and myself, too) were worried if the company could deliver. To give credit to the product team, they indeed did – there was a lot of innovation – a new user interface, performance management and a document solution to name some key ones. 

The new Ceridian User Interface (UI)

• The new user interface is certainly the most impactful. As all new user interfaces (UI) it is built in HTML5 – and with that struggles with information density. This becomes especially noticeable given the extreme richness of the previous Dayforce UI, which was built on Microsoft Silverlight. But Ceridian starts with Employee Self Service (ESS) and there information density it less of a concern. To give Ceridian credit, given Dayforce’s Workforce Management (WFM) roots, the new UI has a calendar and is ready for time entry. These are done well, but it remains to be seen how Ceridian can address more functional richer user interface requirements for Manager Self Service (MSS) and for professional users, like HR managers who work with the Dayforce product day in and day out. It is only fair to note that this is not a Ceridian specific challenge, but an overall HTML5 challenge the enterprise software industry struggles with. 
  
   

  
  

  My biggest concern around the user interface is that it may not be enough forward looking. Ideally vendors don’t want users to go through user interface revisions more often than every 3-4 years. For that the interface needs to ‘work’ but also have enough elements to not make it look ‘stale’ in a year or so. To be fair to Ceridian, the new user interface paradigm keeps known elements (like the top menu bar), which will help user adoption. Difficult tradeoffs but I’d like to see vendors in general err on the side of future. And Ceridian is not fully done with the user interaction – so will be good to see how the user interface evolves. Finally – the user interface was one of Ceridian’s biggest weak spots as mentioned earlier, so credit goes for addressing this right on.
  
  The Performance Management module is done well and competitive from the start. Multidimensional goals are nicely presented and intuitive to be used. With the existing (and remarkably popular Recruiting) module, Ceridian now has the key Talent Management pieces in play, and a roadmap till 2016 to build out the less important other Talent Management functionalities) (read more here).
  
  The new Documents functionality addresses one of the challenges that HR departments (and enterprises) have – the appropriate storage and sharing of personal employee documents. I’d say a lot of HR professionals are travelling home from Las Vegas with a good solution to a key problem in their department and enterprise. 

The new Ceridian BI / Dashboarding Product

• Ceridian does the hard stuff – What became clear to me at the conference is that Ceridian is one of the few vendors that do all the ‘hard’ stuff. And with that I mean Payroll and Workforce Management. These functional areas by themselves are challenging to build, but they get much harder due to ever changing legal and statutory changes. Add labor laws and union contracts to the picture and things are very complex, or hard. With that Ceridian provides a lot of peace of mind to its users, but needs to articulate more how the mastering of the hard topics helps enterprises to become more effective and competitive. Ceridian could answer questions like how a shift composition affects product or service quality and with that customer satisfaction. Or dynamically change shifts based on better customer fit in customer facing teams. Or many of the scenarios I have described earlier here and here on what could be done with the paycheck. 

The Global Roadmap

• Global Focus – It is good to see that Ceridian keeps pushing the global aspect of modern HCM solutions, as our research shows, globalization is a trend that only gets stronger. Making sure the people aspect of a globalization strategy is taken care of is key. And while the people aspect always mattes in any strategy execution – it is vital in terms of speed to action for a globalization strategy. Today Ceridian can pay in over 60 countries – beyond the traditional markets in Canada, USA and UK. It is step wise bringing these localizations in the Dayforce user interface, making visibility and access easier. Currently Ceridian has about half a dozen countries visible in Dayforce – moving to a teenage number in 2015. 

MyPOV

It is good to see how well Ceridian delivers to the roadmap it has published. It is key in order to overcome traditional Ceridian delivery issues under previous regimes – and to build the trust in the customer base that the rest of the (long) roadmap – till 2016 – will be delivered in time. Enterprise software is the business of trust and vendors earn that by delivering working software at the communicated dates.

Overall I would like to see Ceridian be more aggressive in both messaging / vision and technology strategy. Innovations like the new Documents module are valuable and powerful – but are again more operational (like Payroll and Workforce Management) than strategic, moving the needle for the enterprise using Ceridian. On the technology side the company makes solid, but conservative decisions. I mentioned the new User Interface earlier, the same approach is also seen in the area of Business Intelligence, which is a valuable, but implemented in a traditional (or conservative) technology approach. To be fair – both examples are first steps, a lot can follow and you can rest assured we will be watching closely.

In the meantime the Ceridian product offering is attractive for any enterprise looking for an integrated HCM system comprising HR Core, Payroll, Workforce Management and key Talent Management functionalities. With the addition of ACA needed automation and the existing LifeWorks product and the global capabilities – Ceridian is certainly a vendor to consider in buying decisions.


Also on Ceridian

• First Take - Ceridian INSIGHTS Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
• Progress Report - Ceridian makes a lot of progress - but the road(map) is long - read here
• Ceridian transforming itself and with that the game – read here

And unrelated to Ceridian - but how important payroll can be for HCM innovation:

• Could the paycheck reinvent HCM - yes it can - read here
• And suddenly... payroll matters again - read here

 

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