| Constellation Research

Infor Ming.le Provides Purposeful Collaboration

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…...

New York based Infor may not be a household name the way IBM or Microsoft is, but the tech giant has close to 13,000 employees, 70,000 customers and $3B in annual revenue. Infor's main business comes from providing business applications (such as CRM, ERP, HR) to specific industries such as pharmaceutical, aerospace, automotive and healthcare. Leveraging their expertise in these "vertical solutions", they then then develop more granular applications, or micro-verticals. For example, for heathcare they provide solutions in areas like fleet (ambulance) maintenance or nurse scheduling.

My interest in Infor is in the excellent way they have integrated collaboration capabilities directly into their business applications. Rather than just providing an enterprise social network, Infor developed Infor Ming.le, which runs seamlessly across their vertical solutions providing collaboration features directly in the context of where people are working. For example, below you can how an employee can start a conversation directly from within a Sales Order. The post will link back not only to this order, but also to the customer record in CRM and the part number in ERP.

Infor has put a great deal of work into making Infor Ming.le attractive and easy to use. In fact, they created their own in-house design firm named Hook & Loop that is responsible for the overall user experience of Infor Ming.le.

Currently Infor Ming.le is only available on-premises, but a cloud version is planned for Q3 of this year.

Customer Considerations

It is clear that Infor Ming.le has been designed from the ground up to be deeply integrated not just into the look of Infor's business applications, but into the workflow of the way people use them. Existing Infor customers should certainly look at adding Infor Ming.le to the products they currently use, thus enabling employes to stop just working and start working together.

For company's choosing a vendor, Infor is not alone at delivering collaboration capabilities within enterprise applications. Other options include SAP JAM, Oracle Social Network, Salesforce Chatter and Microsoft is starting to provide Yammer integration with Dynamics. When evaluating, look very closely at the level of integration each vendor offers with business applications, the deployment/hosting options, mobile access and extensibility for 3rd party add-on. During your technical evaluation, make sure to read about Infor ION, the architecture behind Infor's business applications and Infor Ming.le collaboration platform.

Future of Work Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity infor Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer

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First the Internet of Dumb Things and only then the Internet of Smart Things

We are going to quickly connect lots of things that were never intended to be connected to the Internet, to the Internet.

In essence, the phrase “Internet of Things” essentially describes a network of connected objects other than computers, tablets, and mobile devices that for the most part were never designed for the Internet.

As I furthered my studies and experiments with the Internet of Things writing “A Framework to Humanize the Internet of Things through Verbs” I landed on the question of “so what if we connected all of these things to the Internet?

Initially I was elated with excitement, and the excitement stemmed from the incorrect assumption based on my experiences of computers. I somehow automatically assumed that once we connected “things” to the Internet, these things will be smart as heck, heck they will be as smart as the things that are currently connected to the Internet, computers, tables, and mobile phones.

Well not so fast, and as I continued to study and experiment in the phenomenon designing mentally for the maturity model, the business models that will emerge, and the design of the industry that will ensue, I landed on the following two constructs.

There is a difference between the Internet of things already built, and things that will be built. We are going to connect things to the internet that are dumb, framing the “Internet of Dumb Things” #IoDT? and it will be a journey to the Internet of Smart Things #IoST?. Let’s not assume that because a “thing” is connected to the Internet, it will be as smart as computers.
There will be categories of things already built or to be built clustered by the intelligence of said things. Once connected, some things will do more than others and the level of “smartness” will vary widely. Some of the categories I am thinking through are:
1. The Internet of DUMB Things.
2. The Internet of CHATTY Things.
3. The Internet of OBEDIENT Things.
4. The Internet of USEFUL Things.
5. The Internet of SMART Things.

And so I continue to foster the vision arriving at conclusions. Here is where my last bout of indulgence left me.

The Internet of Things will depend more on GE, Siemens and similar “thing manufacturers” than it will ever depend on Cisco.
When all things are connected, broadband will feel like my 14.4 Kbs modem from college as the pipes are simply not big enough for things, and suddenly the copper or fiber rush will be sexy again.

I write as a labor of love, in exchange I ask for comments that challenge my thinking

-Richie

New C-Suite Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Chief Information Officer

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Lead Like a Pro

Terri Griffith

Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University

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

Book Title: Lead Like a Pro: How Great Executives, Team Leads, Equestrians, Golfers, Dancers, and You Do More With a Lighter Touch

It has been said that the United States is experiencing a jobless recovery. The redesign of work is partially the cause. Are you ready to lead your organization in this environment?

I'm kicking off my next book project and will take on the future of work from its design to its leadership. You will learn how some of the best known companies, and many you may not have heard of, work with their people, technology, and organizational practices to lead with a lighter touch. What they've found is that, like pro equestrians, golfers, and dancers, you can't keep a death grip and do great things.

Light Touch for A Long Drive

Lead Like A Pro will show how to build individual, team, and organizational strength such that excellence is supported throughout the organization, rather than reliant on rigid rules or directive management. Sam Snead, the famous golfer, is said to have described the best grip for a long golf shot as the same as holding a baby bird in your hand. You’ll find the same advice from professional equestrians, dancers, baseball players, CEOs, and team leads.

Use a light touch for greater success. Develop clear and meaningful tasks, goals, and technology tools to support the organization’s direction, complementing or substituting for formal rules that may reduce engagement or become obsolete with quickly changing environments. Work with the best individuals and teams, as employees or contractors, and help them refine their skill sets. Flexibility, transparency, and increasing worker accountability result in greater performance, the ability to quickly adapt to changing customer needs, and opportunities to leverage a global workforce. We are symphony conductors rather than engineers designing cogs in a machine.

Why?

If you can figure out how to lead in a light handed way, you win. You lead by letting go of the more rigid structures that were valuable when employee turnover was low and environments didn’t move at the pace of the Internet. Our likely future needs leadership via flexible systems of people, technology, and organizational practice as well as interpersonal relationships.

What?

Lead Like a Pro leverages research from around the world to show how to decide when to loosen your grip and when to hold tight. Detailed examples from over ten organizations, ranging across start-ups and mid-sized organizations to the Fortune 100, are supported by forty years of research. The results are a toolkit of design strategies to strengthen three foundations of work: direct feedback from the work itself, support from modern technology, and the on-going development of expertise. These foundations apply whether the work is done by long-term employees, contractors, or crowds sourced from around the world. The three foundations are placed in context with modern considerations of where the work is done (e.g., in the office, at home, in a co-working space) and leader communication (e.g., face to face or on-line).

Amplify leadership in global settings
Mix technology tools and services to support management and innovation at all levels
Leverage employees’ contributions through work done by crowdsourcing and contractors

We’ll also cover how you transition from a more tightly held model to one with a looser grip.

Opportunity

You're in on the ground floor. What do you need want to know first?

Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Executive Officer

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Event Report - NetSuite powers on with targeted innovation

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…...

We had the opportunity to attend NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference in San Jose this week. It was a successful event for NetSuite with over 6500 attendees overall, great partner presence while still being a walk able event at the McEnery convention center.

As usual NetSuite has released a barrage of news releases – so let’s look at my top 3 takeaways from the event:

A new user interface – This has been an area where NetSuite has been lagging compared to other web competitors and it is good to see the company making progress on this front. While the new UI seems to be only a small improvement at first look, once looked at it in detail it delivers tangible benefits to NetSuite users. From the demos we saw we expect the Dashboards and the improved List Pages as the major usability improvements users will experience. But let’s not forget that NetSuite does something very well that most competitors do not do – support the professional users really well. The NetSuite table control remains one of the best controls out there in the market place. On the flipside NetSuite needs to probably re-think that the one size fits all user interface will be hard to maintain when having to service the professional user and the casual user really well. And NetSuite is moving more towards the casual user with its push to provide more HCM automation (more below). Lastly it’s only fair to remember that NetSuite allows probably the highest degree of customization of its apps amongst the larger web players, and that makes UI innovation and renovation a little trickier than in other places. So NetSuite has bought probably 2-3 years of time before having to come up with a completely new user interface. (Here is the UI press release).

Picture take at new UI Demo

Re-inventing the General Ledger (GL) – Clearly one of the most impressive areas NetSuite showed at SuiteWorld was the innovation on the GL, with its new SuiteGL offering. Finance departments and their leaders will be excited about the new capabilities to create customer GL Lines (coming with NetSuite Version 2014.2 in the 2nd half of 2014), custom Transaction Types (coming with NetSuite Version 2015.1 in the 1st half of 2015) and custom GL Segments (you guessed it – coming with NetSuite Version 2015.2 coming in the 2nd half of 2015). So quite a staggered roll out – but that will give Finance departments time to learn and implement the new capabilities). NetSuite will also have to address potential fears and concerns around compliance and performance when creating custom GL code. But that’s a good problem to have versus facing the alternative of a ‘take it or leave it – this is SaaS’ approach to GL (which is often heard in the industry) (and the press release is here).

Goldberg presents SuiteGL

HCM traction – It is only about 6 months ago that NetSuite acquired TribeHR. NetSuite’s HCM strategy has gone through quite some directional changes – from a multi partner approach a SuiteWorld 2013, to a partnership with Oracle Fusion HCM for large accounts (over 2000 employees, we covered it here) and then to the acquisition of TribeHR (we covered it here). And HCM is a huge potential market for NetSuite, which on its own had only covered Payroll for the USA and Incentive Compensation, now with TribeHR it covers Core HR, Recruiting and Performance Management. So quite some progress in 12 months that should give NetSuite customers enough to evaluate using more of NetSuite HCM automation. The social DNA that TribeHR brings to HCM is certainly a good differentiator – and Goldberg did not get tired in the keynote to show the benefits of running HCM together with Finance and Sales automation.

And no surprise – HCM was the first area of automation Goldberg showed in his keynote. It was good to see that TribeHR functionality is already available in NetSuite look and feel -always one of the early steps after an acquisition. In meetings with the former TribeHR CEO Joseph Fung and his team it was good to see that the TribeHR talent is on board and excited to be part of NetSuite. Not surprisingly there is s a strong push to bring HCM country localization to core HR. And SuiteWorld also feature the launch of TribeHR on iOS (press release here) a good solid mobile application featuring Employee Directory, Time Off Management, Recognition Management and not surprisingly for social savvy TribeHR team – a news feed. So encouraging first steps by NetSuite in the HCM area – it will now have to chart a roadmap in the next 6 months and share it with customers and prospects to give them a chance to align their HCM automation needs with the NetSuite HCM roadmap.

TribeHR Employee Profile in NetSuite UI

Implications, Implications

So what does this mean for...

NetSuite customers & prospects – Customers should be appreciative of the investment NetSuite is making. It is key that a SaaS provider keeps innovating and doing good housekeeping activities without customers noticing too much. The new user interface will be certainly an asset coming later in 2014. When NetSuite has formulated a roadmap for its HCM offering we recommend customers to evaluate the existing and coming HCM offerings. There is a lot of benefits to make from running an integrated suite in the cloud and if you look across all enterprise automation, HCM was one of the last pieces NetSuite needs to address.

NetSuite partners – There can be no doubt there is traction in the NetSuite platform. Now it’s time to differentiate and chart a course how to carve out an attractive niche in the NetSuite ecosystem. Cloud integration and complimentary technical and functional offerings are the looming opportunities.

NetSuite – Good progress and good to see the company challenging and improving its product all the way to the core. NetSuite now needs to show it can keep delivering to its many promised deliverables. But that is business as usual now. Becoming more global beyond North American and particularly how to get traction in APAC will be the overall commercial NetSuite topics to watch.

Competitors – If you were hoping for NetSuite to rest – that hope did not materialize. Certainly NetSuite feels the burden and responsibility of over 20k customers – but that’s what competitors also want to get. Differentiation options loom around more standard based cloud stacks, reporting, persona driven user experience and BigData, maybe even Social and Collaboration.

MyPOV

NetSuite is showing good progress and looks to be on track with its ambitious development agenda. We welcome the aggressive hiring on the R&D side as otherwise these plans are not unlikely to all realize themselves. It’s good to see NetSuite actively tackling issues around user interface and reporting, but much more needs to be done (a year ago our key takeaway was the aging UI – read here). And it’s likewise good to see NetSuite tackling the HCM area, a huge potential for NetSuite and its customers – but NetSuite needs to chart and then communicate its course for HCM first.

More about NetSuite

Why NetSuite acquired TribeHR - read here
Act III the cloud changes everything - Oracle and NetSuite with a touche of Deloitte - read here
Act III and final day - A tale of two conferences - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
The middle day - 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

New C-Suite Future of Work Tech Optimization Data to Decisions netsuite SuccessFactors workday salesforce AI Analytics Automation CX EX Employee Experience HCM Machine Learning ML SaaS PaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Enterprise Software Enterprise IT Leadership HR IaaS Disruptive Technology Enterprise Acceleration Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

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Progress Report – Cornerstone completes Talent Life Cycle - what’s next?

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

We had the opportunity to catch up with the Cornerstone executive team for almost a day of briefings around the Cornerstone user conference in San Diego this week. And it was a packed agenda, with CEO Adam Miller kicking off, followed by Product Management leadership, Services leadership, Product development leadership and three customer success stories.

Here are my top 3 takeaways of the briefing and the conference:

Good fundamentals – Cornerstone is certainly showing solid to good fundamentals. The company has a clear vision – be a ‘specialist [for talent management] amongst generalists [for all of HR]’ and keeps building on that. It certainly is good that Cornerstone is one of the fewer SaaS provider to have an ambition and plan to achieve profitability soon. When polling executives on their plans and challenges in their respective functions on the path to profitability we heard good and realistic assessment of the challenges. Profitability is a key factor to watch for HCM (and all SaaS) vendors – as ultimately vendors have to turn that corner, and while turning, there may be adverse reactions for their R&D investment, which hits SaaS customers particularly hard. Not the case for Cornerstone, which is very positive news.

But Cornerstone goes beyond financial health, it was good to see that the company is also addressing technology health. All vendors acquire significant technical debt over time, and it is key to address that better sooner than later. For SaaS vendor addressing technology debt is a significant challenge, as they need to innovate while keeping the lights on. We can’t share too many details but it is good to see Cornerstone doing the good and necessary housekeeping activities its customer expect and deserve.

Slide from Analyst Briefing Presentation

Vision of Talent Management – Cornerstone has reached completion in Talent Management, with which it means the full talent lifecycle from Recruiting, over Onboarding, Learning, Performance Management, Compensation and Succession Management. The new Onboarding module completes that cycle now. Now that all key areas of Talent Automation are there – it’s key for Cornerstone to keep differentiating from smaller single automation area vendors (mostly startups) and strengthen the integrated Talent Management Suite story versus similar competitors and the ERP vendors. For that Cornerstone will have to demonstrate thought leadership and help its customers to come along for the transformation that their enterprises need to undertake to become an enterprise with an integrated Talent Management system.

Slide from Analyst Briefing Presentation

A marketplace – These days we see marketplaces popping up left and right – but mostly by the PaaS (see IBM and HP in recent weeks) vendors – not the enterprise automation vendors. And while there have been plenty of learning and courseware marketplaces – there has not been a category (here Talent Management) encompassing marketplace. So credit to some thought leadership and innovation goes to Cornerstone. The vendor will certainly select the usual partners – that are on the marketplace already – the real value will be tapped though when customers will be sharing best practices and custom work. The intriguing element is that Cornerstone has all the assets to make such a collaborative, customer sourced market place reality. Consider a Belgian (totally coincidental country pick) tax compliance report that just got legislated: Cornerstone has the collaboration abilities for its Belgian customers to collaborate, coordinate and share the creation of such a custom report. How that could be and would be monetized is a very different story, but it all starts with the customer enablement code.

MyPOV

A good user conference for Cornerstone, with energized customers and a vibrant ecosystem. The vendor now needs to keep innovating not only in architecture and infrastructure – but also for its Talent Management products. A new Onboarding is a good job, but Onboarding is a table-stake and will not win the integrated Talent Management battle.

The good news is, that management has realized this and we are eager to see what is coming next. In the meantime Cornerstone must improve its Recruiting functionality and must keep an eye on Learning to keep its strong market and functional position in that automation area. So plenty of work ahead, we will check back soon.

MIT Sloan Management Review: Culture Top Factor In Achieving Success With Analytics

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…...

New global study from MIT Sloan Management Review finds that companies face challenges in maintaining a competitive advantage with analytics, as more companies avail themselves of analytical tools and that culture is the most important factor in achieving success with analytics.

This is a very important finding because using the analytics that are available today can completely transform a company. However, the company has to be ready to take the information and feedback from the analytics and do something with it.

This global survey of more than 2,000 business executives and personal interviews with over 30 senior managers, also finds that companies must continuously innovate with analytics to maintain the edge it affords. This is exactly what the paper I wrote about spoke of – CMOs are no longer just marketers. CMOs are the buyers of technology and they are drivers of revenue, innovation and differentiation. There’s no hope to be a blue ocean strategy company without this. But how many companies are really taking big data, analytics and culture to heart?

“A strong analytics culture with decision-making norms include the use of analytics, even if the results challenge views held by senior management,” said David Kiron, executive editor for MIT Sloan Management Review. “This differentiates those companies from others, where often management experience overrides insights from data.”

So the big question for leaders today is, “Do you want to know what is being said about your company and are you prepared to make changes?” I wrote about organizational change management years ago. What’s interesting is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The technology we have today has gotten more powerful and provides us with more information, knowledge and if we use it correctly, wisdom and insights.

The question is senior leadership ready and are those that use these tools and software properly trained in how to gain the insights from the software? Those are just some of the change management issues that go along with technology purchases. That’s never changed, but it seems in the light of this current study, the evidence for it being the case is being made even stronger with an actual study.

Look forward to connecting and hearing your thoughts!

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

How to work with Dr. Natalie — VP & Principal Analyst | Constellation Research, Inc.

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SAVE THE DATE!
Constellation’s 4th Annual Connected Enterprise
The Executive Innovation Conference | October 29th-31st

Half Moon Bay, CA | Ritz Carlton

Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation Future of Work ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer

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End of an era at JDA – Hamish Brewer leaves supply chain vendor

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

Today JDA announced the changing of the guard at the head of the company with long time JDAer – Hamish Brewer moving on. Interim CEO Baljit (Bal) Dail will take over until a full time CEO is found. From an outside perspective this is a surprising announcement. However, from a business stand point this makes sense.

Since the acquisition/merger with Red Prairie in April 2013, the dynamics for JDA has changed. What has been a strategy of acquiring new revenue streams – see Manugistics and i2 acquisition – could not be sustainable. At some point JDA will need to compete with organic development of its own and revenue if it hopes to challenge the likes of SAP and Oracle. It looks as if the board determined that Hamish was not the right person for this new challenge. Mr Brewer does deserve a lot of credit for being able to cobble together a family of supply chain vendors and not only keep the ship afloat but also continue to drive JDA forward.

Whether it is Mr Dail or a new CEO, they will face some challenges:

How will JDA continue to drive and grow revenue. JDA has the classic problem of a large business, the good is they have a large portfolio of products the negative they have a large portfolio of products. In such verticals as automotive they are facing challenges from the likes of Kinaxis. In the S&OP space the likes of SteelWedge offer a viable option. Of course they always have the threat from SAP and Oracle.
Speaking of product portfolios…JDA, like many legacy vendors, straddles the world of on premise and cloud offerings. While I think there remains room for both, I think the value that comes from being more “cloud heavy” will start to out weigh on premise. For example companies such as One Network or E2open have leaned heavily on the cloud and in doing so are able to bring added benefits of creating turn key networks. Users who need to integrate large networks of suppliers, customers and partners via their solutions into their supply chain network will lean more and more towards cloud heavy offerings.

The new CEO for JDA will face some interesting challenges. However, the company still has a number of arrows in their quiver. It will be interesting to see how the company moves forward. And what type of background the next CEO has will go a long way in determining where JDA finds itself in 5 years.

Disclosure: I worked at i2 Technologies for 5 years. I left i2 Technologies prior to being purchased by JDA in 2010.

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Tech Optimization Matrix Commerce Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Supply Chain Automation Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software IoT Blockchain ERP Leadership Collaboration M&A Chief Supply Chain Officer

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Citrix Synergy Conference: It’s About User Experience

Barry Murphy is the Senior Vice President of Product Marketing and Strategy at X1.  In this role, Barry leads X1's product marketing function, aligning X1's offerings to market needs for search and information access, eDiscovery, cloud and virtual search, and social discovery. Barry joins X1 from eDJ Group, where he was an analyst and thought leader in information governance, eDiscovery, records management, and content archiving. Previously, Barry was Director of Product Marketing at Mimosa Systems, a leading content archiving and eDiscovery software provider. He joined Mimosa after a highly successful stint as Principal Analyst for eDiscovery, records management, and content archiving at Forrester Research. Barry received a B.S. from the State University of New York at…...

Citrix-Synergy-2014-300x165

I had the pleasure of attending the Citrix Synergy event in Anaheim, CA.

Thanks to our partner Citrix for putting on a world-class event with excellent sessions, interesting labs, a comfortable exhibition area, and some great parties. Of note was the party put on by the M7 Global Partners that featured an in-demand cigar bar and a rocking performance by Thundherstruck, the female AC/DC tribute band. The Synergy conference was truly a great experience.

Experience was the theme of the week; user experience, that is. As Citrix CEO Mark B. Templeton said in his opening keynote, “it’s all about being happy.” In order for business workers to be happy, the IT systems they leverage must not be a source of frustration.

Citrix understands that, in order for IT projects to achieve success, business workers need an experience that will allow them to not only adopt, but embrace the solutions IT teams roll out. A good user experience is necessary for both business workers and IT. More than ever, IT teams need to control costs while also accounting for security. The challenge for IT is doing this in the context of the consumerization of IT. Business workers have very high expectations of being able to access and interact with information on the devices they want, where they want. In an increasingly mobile world, virtualization is one way to securely deliver applications and information to business workers.

To that end, Citrix showed how it aims to deliver usable solutions such as XenApp, XenDesktop, and DaaS. Business workers will be able to access desktops and applications when and where they need them. And, with ShareFile, IT will have a solution that allows for on-premise, Cloud, and hybrid storage environments – that is a powerful way to save money while maintaining tight security requirements.

What Citrix customers and prospects will want to remember is that one key to making virtualization and hybrid Cloud solutions work is a good productivity search (the ability for workers to easily find the information they need to do their jobs) experience for business workers. Desktop virtualization requires turning off operating system indexing in order to conserve virtual resources – that makes productivity search impossible without a solution like X1 Search 8 Virtual Edition that decouples indexing services from the client search interface that lives on the desktop.

It is the cloud search and hybrid environment search, too, that are key to making projects successful in today’s IT departments. Organizations store information on-premise and in the cloud and need to be able to search across all of that information. A majority of the cloud search solutions on the market today require downloading the content from the cloud in order to index and search it, which defeats the purpose of putting the content in the cloud in the first place. It is not just cloud search – it is the ability to search across data both on-premise and in the cloud, as X1 Rapid Discovery can do, that is required in today’s fast-paced, information-fueled business world.

New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Event Report SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Executive Events Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

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Event Report - Microsoft TechEd Day 1 Keynote - Top3 Enterprise Takeaways

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Today the Microsoft TechEd conference kicked off in Houston with the first keynote, largely delivered by Brad Anderson, who called in colleagues for separate demos.

And here are my top 3 takeaways from the keynote

The future is the Hybrid cloud – There can be no doubt that Microsoft keeps investing in the direction of hybrid cloud. And the direction certainly makes sense for Microsoft given where its customers are right now. Making the move to cloud easy is key for Microsoft’s success in the enterprise. Active Directory hold the keys - and Microsoft never gets tired of showing the benefits.

API consumption visualized

It’s the IT guy, stupid – Even though Anderon and other presenters did not mention it expressively – it’s clear that the pitch of TechEd was for the IT executive and his right hand – the system administrator. Backup in the cloud, fail over for sites, and securing, controlling mobile applications and securing mobile Office capabilities were featured prominently.

Creation of a RemoteApp

Launch of RemoteApp – Being able to make Apps available remotely has long been a bread and butter service for most IT organization. Being able to now deploy these Apps to Windows Azure and have users not only consume them on Windows devices but also (through containers) on iOS and Android is very powerful. And there are all the benefits of the cloud – elastic scaling or resources – so enterprises will only pay for what they use.

MyPOV

A very good start at Microsoft TechEd – nicely tying together the recent events around CloudforMobile, Build, Sharepoint etc. Anderson did a great job bringing together all the messages and loose ends these events left open. And certainly Microsoft is a master at connecting the higher grounds (i.e. its strong points) – tirelessly connecting ActiveDirectory, Officer and a daily growing Azure.

More about Microsoft:

First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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Read more about Event Report - Microsoft TechEd Day 1 Keynote - Top3 Enterprise Takeaways

First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Three weeks ago Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella was back in SFO for another announcement – after cloud for mobile and Office for iOS, then appearance at the build conference, now it was the database’s turn.

The event felt a little bit over scripted, and I could never figure out why Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner was on stage for over 30 minutes between CEO Satya Nadella and then product over Quentin Clark. It also felt a little bit too academic. While we are getting used to Nadella’s conceptual approach – ok ambient intelligence and ubiquous computing are new buzzwords we better get used to fast – I was not sure if we needed a scripted formula for the data dividend that Turner presented.

Slide from Keynote

And overall I was surprised by the little coverage the event had – after all Microsoft SQL server is one of the (if not the) most used database on the planet. So Microsoft adding in memory capability should be (and is in my view) a big deal. At the end of the day it looks like an underrepresented tech milestone to me – similar like Infor’s recent announcement to deploy their products in production on AWS (my takeaways here).

Turner presenting

Here are my 3 Top takeaways from the event

Microsoft goes organic – And with organic I mean – non disruptive. We heard it at least a dozen times – SQL Server 2014 will not require new hardware, new programs etc. (the positioning goes against SAP HANA here) but administrators will be able to move selected tables to in memory. With that Microsoft follows SAP (HANA) but is ahead of other RDBMD vendors (e.g. Oracle, IBM) to make it easy to exploit in memory capabilities, both for transactional and analytical use cases. And no surprise here – as Microsoft needs to (and its customers certainly appreciate) the investment protection in hardware and software. The real question is – how much will Microsoft customers be able to move the needle of their business applications with in memory technology on their existing hardware and existing software architectures. Or with some incremental investments. Only customers will know at the end of the day.

Excel is the higher ground – Day in and day out more intelligence work is done in Microsoft Excel than any other intelligence tool. For Microsoft to leverage Excel as the higher ground makes tremendous sense. It’s a tool millions of business users have on their desktop and use every day. Today this audience mostly and largely works on a ‘XLS datamart’ – in the sense that these users take the data and then work on it locally on their spreadsheet. Changing the nature of Excel from the personal productivity tool that runs locally to the tool that runs on (shared) in memory data and (shared) Bigdata clusters will be a new position the user base will have to learn.

Slide from Keynote

Co-existence with BigData – In line with previous announcements, most recently at the build conference, Microsoft wants Bigdata to co-exist with its relational data. And that makes sense as existing investment and market share are protected. The event was a little light on how the new PolyBase technology will work and bridge the gaps between classic OLTP and Hadoop – so we will need to learn more. But an easy programmatic combination of the SQL and NoSQL worlds is something very powerful and valuable for enterprises.

MyPOV

Microsoft joins the in memory market after a long wait. It’s not too late as SQL Server customers are loyal and competitors not much ahead. The organic approach will make it easy for customers to evaluate the new SQL Server 2014 ad hoc and opportunistically. Using familiar Excel is a huge asset for Microsoft and customers. Couple it with Polybase – and if this combo may enable a business end user to query in memory Bigdata and get insight – a very powerful combination.

On the flipside I missed the mention of the Microsoft Universal App – a key new construct from the build conference. And yes – not all Universal Apps will be RDBMS style apps – but most of them will be RDBMS and NoSQL apps. So an opportunity missed in my view. And Microsoft also shied away from the largest RDBMS use case it has in house- moving the Dynamics products to SQL Server. The answer to that – only some people in Redmond will know. So let’s see what the news is coming from #msteched this week.

More about Microsoft:

Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.

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