Monday's Musings: Why May 12th, 2014 Is One Of The Busiest Weeks In Enterprise Software Conferences

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

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

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Ten Enterprise Software Events To Check Out And Follow The Week of May 12th, 2014

The Monday after Mother’s day was traditionally the week of the America’s SAP User Group and SAP’s big show, SAPPHIRENOW.  However, this year the 20,000 plus attendee and over 250 partner sponsored show moved to June 2nd in order to avoid the traditional Mother’s Day madness for event organizer’s and sponsors. With SAPPHIRENOW's guilt based pull out, competitors rushed in to fill the void in this coveted time slot.  In fact, the week after Mother’s Day is a great time for large events for three reasons because it:

• Catches the attention of decision makers in the planning cycle. The time slot is prime time before summer.  The weeks before Mother Day and Memorial Day are the last focused weeks of business before the summer breaks, graduations, and vacation time before Memorial Day Weekend.
• Accelerates first half deal flow.  Deals began in Q1 and Q2 often see an acceleration to close with an event during this time slot.  Events in Q3 and Q4 risk a very tight deal acceleration towards common fiscal years and budgetary planning cycles.
• Beats the hot weather. Favorite conference spots such as Orlando, Florida, Las Vegas, Nevada, and New Orleans, Louisiana ramp up in temperature into the 90′s and 100′s past June.  The atmosphere for business grinds to a hot in these conference cities.  In addition, lower cost venues in Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville, become quite muggy and sticky.

The Top 10 Events For Enterprise Software With A Digital Disruption Focus

Here’s the list of shows as they impact Constellation’s business themed research approach to the digital business disruption ahead (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. Constellation’s Business Themed Research

Consumerization of IT. This theme examines the policies, technologies, and collaboration frameworks required to balance the speed of technology adoption with the security and scalability requirements of IT.

• ITR Trend 2014 Executive Forum ( Follow along on twitter at #ITRTrend ).  ITR is Japan’s largest end user focused research analyst firm. Constellation provides a keynote to their flagship event at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo and the topic will be Digital Transformation and Disruption.  This is one of the largest independent end user focused events in Japan.
• Microsoft TechEd (Follow along on twitter at #MSTechED ). Catch the live stream from the George R. Brown convention center in Houston, TX.  Constellation expects the show to highlight more of the progress on the Azure Cloud, System Center improvements, SQL Server improvements, and of course another battle to win over mobile phone developers.

Data to Decisions. This theme looks at how leaders gather key insights from your data, transform insights into actionable information, and then make the right decisions.

• Anaplan Hub 2014 (Follow along on twitter at #Hub2014 ).  Anaplan is a cloud business planning and execution vendor gaining massive traction in the market.  The faithful gather at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA to hear from CTO Michael Gould, CEO Frederic Laluyaux and their vision of what’s next.  More importantly, Constellation’s clients attending the event expect to gain best practices sharing in connecting other cloud systems and their source data into the Anaplan product.
• Informatica World (Follow along on twitter #Infa14 ).  Watch the preview sneak peaks from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Constellation expects the show to highlight a new product introduction, success in the master data management space, continued movement into the cloud, new products for big data, and the preparation for new areas such as the Internet of Things.  The Ray Kurzweil keynote is a major highlight.
• ITR Trend 2014 Executive Forum ( Follow along on twitter at #ITRTrend ).  ITR is Japan’s largest end user focused research analyst firm. Constellation provides a keynote to their flagship event at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo and the topic will be Digital Transformation and Disruption.  This is one of the largest independent end user focused events in Japan.
• Microsoft TechEd (Follow along on twitter at #MSTechED ). Catch the live stream from the George R. Brown convention center in Houston, TX.  Constellation expects the show to highlight more of the progress on the Azure Cloud, System Center improvements, SQL Server improvements, and of course another battle to win over mobile phone developers.

Digital Marketing Transformation. This theme guides leaders on how to straddle the analog and digital marketing world.  Understand the success stories and the lessons learned as leaders must work in an evolving paradigm.

• IBM Smarter Commerce ( Follow along on twitter at #SmarterCommerce ) Hosted at the Tampa Bay Convention Center in Tampa Bay, Florida, the IBM Smarter Commerce show brings together commerce, customer experience, supply chain, marketing, merchandising, integration, file transfer, and legal all under one room within the IBM umbrella.  The special opening general session keynote is with Ron Howard on Day 1.  Constellation’s clients expect the show to showcase who digital transformation and digital business will evolve for IBM customers.

Future of Work. This theme analyzes the confluence of technological, demographical and cultural trends challenging the traditional paradigm of work. Where we work, when we work, how we work, what we work on, and why we work have dramatically shifted.

• Cornerstone On Demand Convergence ( Follow along on twitter at #CSODConf ).  Back at the San Diego Marriott Marquis in San Diego, CA, Cornerstone On Demand celebrates its 12th annual user conference.  Constellation’s Holger Mueller will be speaking at the event on the Future of Work.  Attendees can expect more about how work will be reimagined, what new partnerships CSOD will sign, and some new product announcements.
• Sitrion (NewsGator) (Follow along on twitter at #Collective14).  Situated at the former Peabody Hotel now the Hyatt Regency Orlando, the event brings together hundreds of customers from both the original Newsgator company and the HR SelfService company Sitrion. Constellation expects the future of work solutions provider to show case new announcements in the social work place space, mobile enterprise, and HR self service.

Matrix Commerce. As the world revolves around the buyer, channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment options, enablers, and big data will converge to create what Constellation coined in 2011 as Matrix Commerce.

• IBM Smarter Commerce ( Follow along on twitter at #SmarterCommerce ) Hosted at the Tampa Bay Convention Center in Tampa Bay, Florida, the IBM Smarter Commerce show brings together commerce, customer experience, supply chain, marketing, merchandising, integration, file transfer, and legal all under one room within the IBM umbrella.  The special opening general session keynote is with Ron Howard on Day 1.  Constellation’s clients expect the show to showcase who digital transformation and digital business will evolve for IBM customers.

• SuiteWorld by Netsuite ( Follow along on twitter at #NSW14 ).  The Netsuite faithful gather at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.  Constellation expects more partnership announcements, developments in matrix commerce, improvements in integration, and success stories in two-tier ERP.

Next Generation Customer Experience. This theme explores new engagement models as customers don’t care what department they receive their experience and organziaitons shift from engagement to delivering experiences and outcomes.

• IBM Smarter Commerce ( Follow along on twitter at #SmarterCommerce ) Hosted at the Tampa Bay Convention Center in Tampa Bay, Florida, the IBM Smarter Commerce show brings together commerce, customer experience, supply chain, marketing, merchandising, integration, file transfer, and legal all under one room within the IBM umbrella.  The special opening general session keynote is with Ron Howard on Day 1.  Constellation’s clients expect the show to showcase who digital transformation and digital business will evolve for IBM customers.
• Gainsight Pulse 2014 ( Follow along on twitter at #PulseConf2014 ) The second annual customer success event kicks off at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco, CA with over 600 registered attendees.  Malcolm Gladwell is the headliner as this new movement of customer success management.  Constellation’s clients expect to attend to hear the latest case studies and see how others have made customer success management a core competency inside recurring revenue companies focused on delivering outcomes and experiences while keeping brand promises.
• Experience 2014 The CEM Conference by Medallia (Follow along on twitter at #Medallia ). Medallia’s Experience 2014 event hosted at the Half Moon Bay Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, CA brings together CEM professionals around the world.  Attendees can expect in-depth and detailed best practices sharing among a wide range of customer experience management projects.

Technology Optimization. Technology Optimization & Innovation advises CIOs seeking to invest in innovation and strategic advantage while optimizing the cost of providing ongoing support.

• Anaplan Hub 2014 (Follow along on twitter at #Hub2014 ).  Anaplan is a cloud business planning and execution vendor gaining massive traction in the market.  The faithful gather at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA to hear from CTO Michael Gould, CEO Frederic Laluyaux and their vision of what’s next.  More importantly, Constellation’s clients attending the event expect to gain best practices sharing in connecting other cloud systems and their source data into the Anaplan product.
• Informatica World (Follow along on twitter #Infa14 ).  Watch the preview sneak peaks from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Constellation expects the show to highlight a new product introduction, success in the master data management space, continued movement into the cloud, new products for big data, and the preparation for new areas such as the Internet of Things.  The Ray Kurzweil keynote is a major highlight.
• ITR Trend 2014 Executive Forum ( Follow along on twitter at #ITRTrend ).  ITR is Japan’s largest end user focused research analyst firm. Constellation provides a keynote to their flagship event at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo and the topic will be Digital Transformation and Disruption.  This is one of the largest independent end user focused events in Japan.
• Microsoft TechEd (Follow along on twitter at #MSTechED ). Catch the live stream from the George R. Brown convention center in Houston, TX.  Constellation expects the show to highlight more of the progress on the Azure Cloud, System Center improvements, SQL Server improvements, and of course another battle to win over mobile phone developers.
• SuiteWorld by Netsuite ( Follow along on twitter at #NSW14 ).  The Netsuite faithful gather at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.  Constellation expects more partnership announcements, developments in matrix commerce, improvements in integration, and success stories in two-tier ERP.

The Bottom Line: The Digital Business and Digital Transformation Theme Will Hit Mainstream By Summer of 2014

A common theme from these events will be the pace of change in the market and the need to build a culture of innovation.  Broad shifts from technology coverage of social, mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications give way to a realization that digital transformation is among us.  Market leaders and fast followers have already started their digital business efforts by converging these five pillars of digital business technologies and building a culture for digital.  The development of Digital DNA will help  organizations transform business models with digital technologies.  As conference attendees seek best practices, they should ask fellow attendees and speakers, “How are you dominating digital disruption?“

Your POV.

Ready for digital disruption? Do you go to a lot of enterprise software events? What are the top takeaways or benefits you get from the events?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Digital Sheep and Digital Goats

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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My Constellation Research colleague Alan Lepofsky as been working on new ways to characterise users in cyberspace. Frustrated with the oversimplified cliche of the "Digital Millennials", Alan has developed a fresh framework for categorizing users according to their comfort with technology and their actual knowledge of it. See his new research report "Segmenting Audiences by Digital Proficiency".



This sort of schema could help frame the answers to some vital open questions. In today's maelstrom of idealism and hyperbole, we're struggling to predict how things are going to turn out, and to build appropriate policies and management structures. We are still guessing how the digital revolution is really going to change the human condition? We're not yet rigorously measuring the sorts of true changes, if any, that the digital transformation is causing.

We hold such disparate views about cyberspace right now. When the Internet does good - for example through empowering marginalized kids at schools, fueling new entrepreneurship, or connecting disadvantaged communities - it is described as a power for good, a true "paradigm shift". But when it does bad - as when kids are bullied online or when phishing scams hook inexperienced users - then the Internet is said to be just another communications medium. Such inconsistent attitudes are with us principally because the medium is still so new. Yet we all know how important it is, and that far reaching policy decisions are being made today. So it's good to see new conceptual frameworks for analyzing the range of ways that people engage with and utilise the Internet.

Vast fortunes are being made through online business models that purport to feed a natural hunger to be social. With its vast reach and zero friction, the digital medium might radically amplify aspects of the social drive, quite possibly beyond what nature intended. As supremely communal beings, we humans have evolved elaborate social bearings for getting on in diverse groups, and we've built social conventions that govern how we meet, collaborate, refer, partner, buy and sell, amalgamate, marry, and split. We are incredibly adept at reading body language, spotting untruths, and gaming each other for protection or for personal advantage. In cyberspace, few of the traditional cues are available to us; we literally lose our bearings online. And therefore naive Internet users fall prey to spam, fake websites and all manner of scams.

How are online users adapting to their new environment and evolving new instincts? I expect there will be interesting correlations between digital resilience and the sophistication measures in Alan's digital proficiency framework. We might expect Digital Natives to be better equipped inherently to detect and respond to online threats, although they might be somewhat more at risk by virtue of being more active. I wonder too if the risk-taking behavior which exacerbates some online risks for adolescents would be relatively more common amongst Digital Immigrants? By the same token, the Digital Skeptics who are knowledgeable yet uncomfortable may be happy staying put in that quadrant, or only venturing out for selected cyber activities, because they're consciously managing their digital exposure.

We certainly do need new ways like Alan's Digital Proficiency Framework to understand society's complex "Analog to Digital" conversion. I commend it to you.

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

Musings - The era of the No-Design DataBase

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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I have been spending some thoughts on the whole area of data base innovation that we are witnessing these days. The post of colleague and friend Vijay Vijayasankar looking for a better name than the popular NoSQL sparked those thoughts even more. 
 

And then it suddenly became clear to me – for the longest time people have been starting any serious database work with design, design of a schema to be precise. And there was nothing wrong with it – storage was sparse and super expensive, so people had to make sure that no byte was wasted, requiring that the storage format was super efficient. Down to the (bit (for the older ones of us) and the) byte.

Today storage is cheap, no matter if people want to store information on spinning rust (a.k.a. HDD) or SSD or RAM chips. And with that – for most of the new database types we see – the design component has become irrelevant, even stronger – is not even part of many of the new databases we see these days.

So could be the common thread of the new database boom the absence of a design component, the disposition of schema design step that was and is key for the success of any relational database? Let’s take a look:

• Hadoop & friends – A classic example for no design. Just store, cheaply mostly, don’t worry for what purpose and query, just store. No design and thought needed to enter data into a Hadoop database (well we may even say cluster). Check.

• Columnar (often in memory) databases – The whole beauty of columnar database is that you don’t have to worry about about schema. Just feed the name value pairs at storage time. Check.

• Purpose built databases – These are databases built for a specific purpose and they are very good at that. MongoDB as an example comes to mind. Again no design needed, the design has been done before you get the product, and it’s very good at what the database being designed for. Check.

So could there be something the whole ‘No Design Database’ observation? It certainly appeals to people to be able to do that – otherwise we would not witness the success of these new databases. And to use one of the most developed offerings of the relational database world – the data warehouse – we all know how painful and critical the design phase is. Very painful for the business people, who need to imagine all the questions they want the data warehouse to be able to answer – before they can use it. So being able to just store all that ‘stuff’ without getting tons of questions by the technical people, is of huge value to the .. business people.


Is there something to the era of the No Design DataBase? The NDDB? Please comment.

Can the Commonwealth Bank of Australia redefine the CIO

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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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) CIO Michael Harte recently resigned to take the role as Chief Operations and Technology Officer at Barclays Bank in London. Harte was the most lauded technology executive in Australia and ensured that the CBA had technology leadership in banking regionally and amongst the broader Australian corporate environment. He will leave a significant legacy and personality that has allowed the CBA to differentiate itself against its competition.

The first issue to address is the impact that this will have on the technology capabilities of the CBA. If the process has been executed as well internally, as it is considered externally, then it should be business as usual through the transition. It is reasonable to assume that the technology strategy and execution supported by the board will continue. Whilst it was led by one person, it was executed by many both in and out of the organisation.

The CIO role at the Australian big banks is under significant disruption. It has been in recent time an unprecedented unstable environment. It not coincidentally it aligns with the need for banks (and all organisations) to completely reinvent the way in which they manage technology within their organisation through cloud, analytics, digital and governance investments.

The advantage for the CBA is that it is the only bank in Australia who is positioned technology wise to shift to a digital, analytics and governance based future of technology.

I do not believe that the new CBA CIO will come from within the ranks of existing CIO’s in Australia. If the succession planning in CBA by Harte has been successful then an internal hire is a possibility.

What is essential is not going to be banking sector experience, rather an executive who understands the requirements of new business order to deliver an accelerated integrated digital strategy, an analytics function that drives business outcomes and a governance structure to manage that manages efficiency and compliance.

It is an incredibly exciting opportunity and a real chance for the IT department to prove future value that is measured on innovation and business outcomes. This is the perfect opportunity to create today, the CIO of the future with the focus on Information and Innovation, not on managing desktops, networks and middleware platforms.

Teradata Delivers: Teradata QueryGrid™ – Teradata Database 15 – Teradata Active EDW 6750

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

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

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Organizations are struggling to capture and interpret data that is spread across various analytic systems, each system handling different types of processing and data. The space to be the leader in big data analytics market and data warehouse is getting more crowded every day. The buzz words, B.I.G. data have taken new meaning as quants enter the market place as one of the top jobs. Today Teradata  talked to us about these 4 key market trends:

1. Driving towards specialized analytics engines

2. New user groups that want more scripting and procedural language support

3. The desire for simplicity of data integration through schema-on-read

4. Demand to operationalize big data insights accelerates need for performance.

What does this mean to you?

If you are able to use all the systems and integrate them, you would have a logical data warehouse with multiple systems, analytical techniques, programming languages and a diverse data types. This couldn’t be more important as I indicated in my report on Marketing Optimization paper.  It’s the age old problem of business users (CMOs) vs IT people who do care about the issues that Teradata spoke about. The key for any vendor is to understand what keeps the business user up at night and how to translate what the technical improvements make their day easier or the results they are measured on, better.

Essentially Marketers and other users of big data want to be about to run the right analytics on the right platform.  You also want the processing integrated. Often people want to use the data but not worry about where the data resides and they want easy access to data and analytics through existing tools. The point is to optimize, simply and orchestrate processing across and beyond the Teradata UDA.

Teradata has delivered three important innovative products to solidify Teradata’s position as a leader and pioneer in the data and  and again demonstrate their engineering prowess. What are those products?

1. Teradata QueryGrid™ - This is for a business user who wants to ask an important question and get a solid, reliable answer. The reason it would be interesting from an IT user is that there is no complex data movement and IT resources that need to be shuffled around and can reduce costly data duplication.

2. Teradata Database 15 - Teradata Database 15 provides support for Teradata QueryGrid. It enables the Teradata to be a single, seamless coordination point for users to have self-service access to data and analytics across multiple disparate systems. This means the delivery of a flexible schema-on-read so that companies can quickly adapt to change in source data and helps them to monetize the Internet interactions. What this means is that it empowers developers to interact with data using the tools and skills they already have. It also increases the high availability so that business have confidence in the data’s delivery.

Related articles

• Teradata launches new database to help businesses monetise the Internet of Things
• Gartner, IBM, Teradata make Big Data announcements
• Partners Amplify Teradata Database Analytic Power
• Teradata Unveils QueryGrid Analytics Platform

News Analysis - Today's Billion in Cloud investment is HP's and it goes to Helion

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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In a webcast today HP announced its new cloud brand – HP Helion. The event was largely scripted, not sure why it was so formal – and for all the fans of a no slide presentation – take a look at it and let me know what you think – you can find it here.

So let’s dissect the news from the press release:

HP today introduced HP Helion, a portfolio of cloud products and services that enable organizations to build, manage and consume workloads in hybrid IT environments.

HP Helion incorporates existing HP cloud offerings, new OpenStack® technology–based products, and professional and support services under a unified portfolio to help meet customers’ specific business requirements.
 
MyPOV – So it’s about a brand name for bundling HP products and services together.

HP also is extending its commitment to OpenStack technology and hybrid IT delivery—spanning traditional IT, public, private and managed clouds. HP plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next two years on cloud-related product and engineering initiatives, professional services and expanding HP Helion’s global reach.
 
MyPOV – So the Billion will be stretched out over two years (see Cisco, too) and spend in R&D, Professional Service and global rollout. Probably the number HP would have planned to invest anyway into cloud – but still good to make the case, given all the 1 Billiom investment announcements around cloud.

As a result of more than three years of running OpenStack cloud services at scale in enterprise environments, HP understands that organizations require solutions that are open, secure and agile. As a founding platinum member of the OpenStack Foundation and a leader in the OpenStack and Cloud Foundry™ communities, HP has taken a central role in developing technologies that are built to meet enterprise requirements and to deliver OpenStack technologies and Cloud Foundry-based solutions to the global marketplace. […]

MyPOV – And here is the cue on how HP plans to pitch HP Helion – as the enterprise ready hybrid cloud. Build from a vendor who understands enterprise and offered to the enterprise. Certainly worth the differentiation versus Amazon and Google, not sure how well it works against IBM, Microsoft and Oracle who can claim a similar enterprise pedigree. HP certainly deserves credit for being an early and significant investor into the progress of OpenStack.

As part of the HP Helion portfolio, HP is introducing several new cloud products and services, including:

· HP Helion OpenStack Community edition—A commercial product line of OpenStack that is delivered, tested and supported by HP. Available today, the community edition is a free version ideal for proofs of concept, pilots and basic production workloads. An enhanced commercial edition that addresses the needs of global enterprises and service providers will be released in the coming months.

MyPOV – Very smart move of HP to make a free community version of HP Helion OpenStack available. It proves two things that matter to HP: For one that HP can leverage its large investment in OpenStack and that investment pays off in faster time to market, or at least HP enriched OpenStack code earlier in HP customers hands. And earlier access can be translated into speed, that can be translated into go to market and with that into a competitive advantage. If HP can upkeep the pole position of making new community editions of the latest OpenStack versions (this one is 3 weeks after GA of OpenStack Icehouse), it certainly becomes part of perception and with that value HP can leverage as a differentiator with against OpenStack competitors. Of course we need to wait when the usual suspects will deliver their OpenStack Icehouse versions. And secondly it’s a commitment that HP wants to enable developers by getting them a free community edition as early as possible. And with support of up to 30 nodes it’s not a low capability freebie, but a reasonable edition to test and create larger loads.

· HP Helion Development Platform—A Platform as a Service (PaaS) based on Cloud Foundry, offering IT departments and developers an open platform to build, deploy and manage applications quickly and easily. HP plans to release a preview version later this year.

MyPOV – Not a surprise move by HP, given its investment into Pivotal / Cloud Foundry. Little was said about how that offering will differentiate itself, apart from running on HP hardware and cloud software. HP did not even mention if and how (we certainly expect) other HP software assets can be leveraged in the HP Helion Development Platform – which effectively is a PaaS.

· HP’s OpenStack Technology Indemnification Program—Protects qualified customers using HP Helion OpenStack code from third-party patent, copyright and trade-secret infringement claims directed to OpenStack code alone or in combination with Linux code.

MyPOV – This is a first, and clear differentiator for HP (for now). Not only conservative CIO and CFOs balk at the potential liability issues resulting from IP infractions from Open Source software they use. HP raises the ante on the other OpenStack competitors in this regards, and with entering an unlimited liability guarantee (as mentioned in the webcast) – shoulders a lot of potential risk. And in my view this is a very attractive offering, that prospects and customers will likely force HP competitors to offer too.

· HP Helion OpenStack Professional Services—A new practice made up of HP’s experienced team of consultants, engineers and cloud technologists to assist customers with cloud planning, implementation and operational needs.

HP Helion OpenStack–based cloud services will be made available globally via HP’s partner network of more than 110 service providers worldwide and in HP data centers—HP operates more than 80 data centers in 27 countries. HP plans to provide OpenStack-based public cloud services in 20 data centers worldwide over the next 18 months. HP will also enable HP PartnerOne for Cloud partners to deliver and resell OpenStack-based cloud services.
 

MyPOV –  No surprise that HP will offer Professional Services for all its products where they are applicable, HP Helion makes no exception. HP gives an interesting insight in regards of the 80 data centers in 27 countries it has today, which is a large footprint. But then OpenStack services will be available in only 20 data centers in 18 months from now – so a far step from e.g. the 40 locations announced by IBM. It certainly is a good move to use partner data centers and include partners in the rollout. Partners can even resell HP Helion, certainly an acknowledgement to the key role partners play for HP.

The new HP Helion cloud products and services join the company’s existing portfolio of hybrid cloud computing offerings, including the next-generation HP CloudSystem—recently ranked as the leader in the Forrester Wave report for Private Cloud Solutions(1)—HP Cloud Service Automation (CSA) software for managing hybrid IT environments, HP’s managed virtual private cloud offering and a range of cloud professional services.

MyPOV – Good to mention how HP Helion fits in with HP CloudSystem and CSA, something only addressed in the Q&A of the webcast. Needless to say it all fits together.
 

Overall MyPOV

With little less than 4 weeks before HP Discover, one has to wonder why HP had this event now, but HP certainly stole a significant portion of Discover thunder. There was no surprise in the announcement, HP did what HP was expected to do – an enterprise emphasis, a security emphasis and a leading position in supporting OpenStack and a good position with CloudFoundry.

I missed how HP Helion ties together with the products announced last year with HAVEn – as all these software assets need to work seamlessly together. Not announcing and presenting them together and not seeing Fink and Kadifa together at a cloud announcement is a surprise to me. Customers and partners of HP bet their business on these software assets to tightly work and operate together and not mentioning and presenting them together begs a big question ‘why?’

The IP indemnification is a smart but aggressive move that will likely be appreciated by customers and with that find imitators. Good for OpenStack customers. A good event for HP that now needs to deliver in product and on the customer success side.


More about HP

• A tale of two cloud GAs - Google & HP - read here
• The cloud is growing up - 3 signs from the news - read here
• To HAVEn and have not - or: HP Bundles away - read here

Workday 22 - Recruiting and a rich Workday 22 are here

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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Today Workday unveiled its latest Update, Workday 22 – including the addition of Recruiting to Workday’s HCM solution portfolio. Recruiting has been long anticipated, and already a lot previewed at earlier conferences (all the way back to Workday Rising in September 2013), but Workday 22 has a lot of new functionality, too. Contrary to the past Workday changed the release announcement format from a webcast to an event held in San Francisco to kick off a four city road show, in my view a good move, showing how far the company has come.

 

And no surprise, most of the event focused on the new recruiting module, presented by Leiganne Levensaler and balanced out by the rest of Workday 22, presented by Mike Frandsen.

The new kid on the block – Recruiting

Screenshot from Workday website

• Continuously looking for talent and organizing them into talent pools – both internally and externally comes to mind, regardless of an open hiring requisition.
• Seamless processes across Workforce Planning, Sourcing, Hiring and Onboarding.
• Managing the candidate experience, including providing candidates access to a company's branded career site, where they can apply or share to their social networks.
• Leveraging social networks both for job referral as for application completion.
• Using smartphones and tablets to enable both the application as well as the interview process, including interview collaboration across the hiring team.
• And so on.

What else is in Update 22

MyPOV

• First Take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) Analytics matter - read here
• Workday Update 21 - All about the user experience and some more - read here
• Workday Update 20 - Mostly a technology release - read here
• Takeaways from the Salesforce.com and Workday parnership - read here
• Workday powers on - adds more to its plate - read here
• What I would like Workday to address this Rising - read here
• Workday Update 19 - you need to slow down to hurry up - read here
• I am worried about... Workday - read here

• Musings - What is the future of Recruiting? Read here
• Why all the attention to Recruiting? Read here

Microsoft Announces Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

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

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If you are a Microsoft house, you’ll be glad to know that  Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012  R3 is now GA (generally available) in 36 countries. What is Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3? It is built to help businesses take advantage of cloud services, run agile operations that exceed customer needs, engage customers on their terms across the Web, social, apps and mobile fronts.

For Microsoft, this is significant release because it is extending it’s mainstream support for customers upgrading to, or purchasing, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 by 2 years, to October 11, 2018. This support is extended to provide all customers with the standard product support lifecycle transition timeline. This extended support timeline gives customers more flexibility to choose the best timing for their business to upgrade to the next major release.  What I am seeing is that if you want your technology to be agile and flexible, one of the best ways (and sometimes the only way is if you move to the cloud. The question is are you ready? Is IT ready? Are the functional areas ready? Are the functional departments collaborating with IT to make this happen? Who is making the business case to make the change?

If you want more additional details, about this you can go to the Support Lifecycle Policy website here.

And here’s a link to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 in action by viewing its virtual launch event at  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erp-ax-overview.aspx.

Evidentiary Challenges to Social Media Evidence Now Routine When Best Practices Not Utilized

X1

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…...

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This past month of April saw a surge in case law involving social media cases with 112 cases published on Westlaw, representing a substantial increase from January of this year. There is no question that the volume of social media cases continues to rapidly increase each month. Note that this survey group only involves published cases on Westlaw. With less than one percent of total cases resulting in published opinions, and considering this data set does not take into account internal or compliance investigations or non-filed criminal cases, we can safely assume that there were tens of thousands more legal matters involving social media evidence that were adjudicated, or otherwise resolved last month alone.

What I found particularly compelling about these 112 April cases, is that six of those cases involved evidentiary challenges to social media based upon improper foundation and authentication grounds. Specifically, those cases are:

In the first case listed, Smith v. State, the Defendant’s sole basis for appealing his capital murder conviction was that the prosecution’s Facebook evidence consisting of simple screen prints was not property authenticated. The Mississippi Supreme court noted in its decision that the prosecution offered minimal circumstantial evidence to establish the authenticity of the Facebook pages and no evidence to demonstrate that the photos were not altered.  However, in upholding the conviction, the court ultimately determined that direct evidence testimony in that case was sufficient.

In People v. Anderson, the defendant appealed his sexual conviction for sexual assault by asserting ineffective assistance of counsel, due to his counsel’s failure to object when screenshots – not full electronic copies – of Facebook evidence were used to convict him. Specifically, the defendant contended that the metadata from his alleged Facebook messages would have revealed that the victim actually used passwords she stole from defendant’s home to forge the Facebook messages from defendant on her own electronic devices, and thus was provided ineffective counsel by failing to object accordingly at trial.

These cases, along with Commonwealth v. Banas, which we featured last month, where a Massachusetts court disallowed Facebook screenshots on authentication grounds,   illustrate the perils of relying on mere printouts of key social media evidence. Without utilizing best practices and instead relying on mere screen prints of social media and other website evidence, at best a party faces a court challenge that would require up to tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees to defend. At worst, the evidence may be disallowed, which could very well be dispositive of the case or at least severely impair a party’s position.

The much better approach is for the proponent of social media evidence to collect and preserve such evidence with best practices technology to establish a proper foundation by 1) automatically generating MD5 hash values of the evidence and collection logs including date stamps at the time of collection; 2) collecting all available metadata associated with social media items; and 3) collecting the full account as opposed to limited and incomplete segments. Only with this approach can the proponent of the evidence represent that best practices were employed in the collection and preservation of the social media evidence in question.

Salesforce's ExactTarget Marketing Cloud combines Radian6 and Buddy Media into the Social Studio

Salesforce.com’s ExactTarget Marketing Cloud unit has combined Radian6 and Buddy Media into a single offering called Social Studio.

Consolidating these social tools allows the company to sell a one-stop social solution, reflecting a maturing market on the client side where most companies have gotten their social media management (organization, process, and now tools) in order.

ExactTarget can now consolidate its focus on winning marketshare on a bigger stage: marketing, inclusive of social media. Over the past five years, social media has been a catalyst driving technology innovation and marketing opportunity. Now that most brands have figured out where to play and how to win in social, the focus returns to the big picture and bigger budgets.

The Radian6 Buddy Media Social Studio offers everything a brand requires to manage social media: collaborative workspaces, calendars and workflow, multi-platform publishing, listening, and content analytics. I expect the offering to compete primarily against Oracle’s Social Cloud, Sprinklr SxM, and Adobe Social. However, the ExactTarget, Adobe, and Oracle solutions are parts of larger marketing  clouds and enterprise platforms, which can help open doors to the larger budgets of the CIO and influence of the CMO, beyond the scrappy social media team that exists at many brands.

The Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud

Brands will be increasingly offered incentives to commit to a single vendor’s marketing cloud and must weigh the benefits and discount of a single solution versus the risk and cost of self-integrating best-in-class point solutions. Very few brands operate entirely under a single vendor’s cloud today and this is a zero-sum game. For example, JetBlue is referenced as using Radian6 Buddy Media social studio and last week JetBlue was referenced as a Responsys customer. What happens next? Does JetBlue convert to the entire Oracle Marketing Cloud, ditch Responsys for ExactTarget, or continue to operate different tools in what appears to be different silos of the organization? Most brands are going to be asking themselves similar questions over the months ahead.

Challenger brands may believe that “you don’t have to be the biggest to be the best.” However, the market is clearly heading in a direction that values the ability to deliver on a truly customer-centric perspective. Adobe’s Marketing Cloud has a master marketing profile and Oracle’s Marketing Cloud has a universal customer profile.  Brands need a single perspective on the customer across the entirety of MARKETING, not just social media. Ultimately the large marketing clouds will win while incorporating innovative features from smaller startup vendors. Although the product name is a mouthful, the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Radian6 Buddy Media Social Studio is an inevitable step towards consolidation and single-source management of the customer relationship/experience.