Event Report: Epicor Recaptures Mojo With Insights 14

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

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

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Management Team Changes Provide A Breath Of Fresh Air To Culture, Customer, and Products

Over 4000 customers, prospects, and partners gathered April 27th to 30th for the flagship Epicor customer conference, Insights 14, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The event provided the $968M revenue, 20,000 customer, Austin based software company an opportunity to showcase changes in management, a new product, and a reaffirmation of its technology partnership strategy.  Takeaways from the event include:

• Change at the top harkens a new management philosophy . Veteran software executive and task master, Joe Cowan brings over 25 years of experience from companies such as Baan, Invensys, EXE Technologies, Manugistics, and Interwoven.  Since his arrival as CEO in October 2013, new talent such as Janie West, Chief Product Officer has arrived and the corporate headquarters moved from tax and regulatory burdened California to Austin Texas.  In addition, the company announced the Hiring Heroes program to hire 100 veterans over the next 12 months as part of its giving back initiative.
  
  Point of View (POV): Conversations with the executive team and partners indicate that Joe’s no-nonsense style has already made an impact.  Product quality, deadlines, and accountability have been drilled back into the company.  From one-on-one conversations, Joe appears to reignite the need to innovate around the customer and to ensure that customers have the full support to successfully implement products.  Customers, prospects, and partners can expect a shift from the inward process mentality of the last management team to a more outbound customer centric culture.

• Launch of Epicor 10 builds on lessons learned from Epicor 9 and customer driven innovation. Epicor 10 starts with 5 key principles: collaboration, choice, responsiveness, simplicity, and mobility (see Figure 1).  The product launch included a six month beta testing phase from early adopter clients.  Reference customers live and running on Epicor 10 include Allambi Youth Services, Boers & Co Fine Metalworking Group, Cyclicron Engineered Cylinders, LLC, Enpress LLC, Habasit America, Hallmark Building Supplies, Humtown Products, MK Products, and XT (previously Xstrata Technology)
  
  (POV): Despite much fanfare at launch, the previous release of Epicor 9 failed in the market not for lack of vision, but for lack of quality and customer delivery.  Full SOA architecture, multi-tenant cloud delivery, and next generation platform was not enough.  Customers felt abandoned by the poor quality of code and the lack of customer support.  Lessons learned from the Epicor 9 debacle include a significant investment in services and organizational readiness.  New migration tools and assistance include upgrade tools proven via beta program, improved skills certifications, and significant partner enablement.  Conversations with early adopters indicate major improvements.  The full adoption of Microsoft SQL Server and the removal of the Progress Technology components results in 200 to 300% decrease in time for upgrade and a reduction of 40 to 50% in size of migrated database.  Most early adopters gave Epicor high marks for a much smoother migration and deployment process. The tide has turned for Epicor with ERP version 10.

Figure 1. The Five Principles Behind Epicor ERP 10

Source:Epicor Software

• Standardization on Microsoft Stack For Core Technology. Epicor’s core architecture, ICE 3.0, places exclusive bets on Microsoft.  The technology foundation now runs on an end to end Microsoft technology stack. Epicor ERP version 10 is optimized for SQL Server 2014 and can take advantage of the data engine, analysis and reporting services. Automated back up can be conducted in the cloud with Windows Azure storage containers.  The core ICE 3.0 framework includes 1300 business services out of the box, enterprise search patterned after consumer grade patterns, and a business activity query tool that allows organizations to manage unstructured data from social networking and transient business processes.  The new expenses and time keeping app on Windows App Store highlights the mobile strategy on Microsoft.
  
  (POV): Removal of the remaining Progress Technology and Support for Oracle database reduces the code complexity and improves overall performance for customers. Early customer benchmarks show four times the scalability and up to double the performance.  Epicor is wise to streamline its technology stack and align with Microsoft.  Customers can take advantage of Windows Azure for Infrastructure as a Service (IasS) options. Meanwhile, Epicor can tap a base of over 650,000 Microsoft partners to extend reach and build on top of the ICE 3.0 platform.  However, Epicor may want to make its mobile bets beyond Microsoft as enterprise adoption remains low for Window Phone. In addition, issues with the Microsoft SQL Azure team in delivering a database worth for systems of record continue to limit not only Epicor, but also other enterprise software providers in delivering the full stack in Azure.

• Introduction of Commerce Connect Platform With Epicor ERP Version 10. M.
  
  (POV): Epicor’s Retail business continues growth trajectory with over 500 retail brands, 100,000 stores, 300,000 registers, 37,000 mobile devices, and 100 retailers in 47 countries.  Key customers include significant brands such as GNC, Jones New York, Michael Kors, Payless ShoeSource, Pier 1 Imports, Roadrunner Sports, Tumi, UnderArmor.  Retailers at the conference lauded Epicor for delivering on key road map features, attention to customer success, and successful customer growth strategies.  Companies such as UnderArmor reported significant gains in mobile ROI such as 11% higher averaged dollar per transaction, 8% higher units per transaction, and 20 to 45% of transactions executed on a mobile device.

Figure 2. Screenshots of New Epicor Products


Source: R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights Reserved.

The Bottom Line: Time To Reconsider Epicor 10 In Short Lists
Over the past 18 months, Constellation has pulled Epicor ERP version 9 from short lists in vendor selections due to the poor quality of the release and poor customer reference checks. At Insights 14, Constellation validated Epicor ERP version 10 customer reference checks, spoke with 7 live customers, met with key partners, and grilled the management team on Epicor ERP version 10. These data points give Constellation renewed confidence to add Epicor ERP version 10 back into short lists. Meanwhile, Epicor’s Retail solutions have continued to deliver significant benefits for customers and should be considered in most vendor selection efforts. The success stories for major brands show continued innovation and market momentum for retailers seeking matrix commerce solutions.

Figure 3. Flickr Feed of Insights 14 Highlights

Source: R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights Reserved.

Your POV:

 

Are you looking at ERP and CRM replacement? Do you need specialized requirements for your industry?  How are you doing this today? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

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* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
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Look Up From Your Screen

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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This is another one of those great reminders, ironically shared by the medium it critiques. There are some brilliant lines in it. My favourite is probably "Give people your love not your like." The timeline section of meeting his wife, getting married, having a daughter, becoming a grandfather, then becoming a widow had me in tears.

So when you watch something like this you nod and say "that's so true", but what do you do about it?
Will you declare a "tech free" day at your home?
Will you take your kids to the park?
Will you go for a walk with your wife and leave your phone at home?
Will you learn to draw a map on a piece of paper instead of relying on Google?

Of course social media is not all bad, not in the least. It allows us to connect with vast amounts of people, share moments that really matter, reconnect with friends and family and make new ones.

I think the core message is BALANCE.  Ok, I've blogged and shared this, now I'm going outside.



Thank you Gary Turk

Future of Work Chief People Officer

Oracle Marketing Cloud: AKA #ModernMarketing

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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The Oracle Marketing / Social Cloud 

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d say what Oracle wanted to get across in this event is that while being customer-centric, with an enterprise ready solution, Oracle wants to make the Marketer’s life easier.

 The ideas of the Marketing / Social Cloud are that your company would be able to:

• Unify Data
• Engage Audiences
• Analyze Performance and
• Extend the Ecosystem.

 Shifts Happen: CIO and CMO Side-By-Side

The idea of a long awaited shift perhaps, has come. CIO’s and CMOs side-by-side, making decisions including people, process and technology. It’s not a new concept, but it’s one that has been needed and wanted, but few software companies or those that buy the software (vendor clients) have delivered on it because it takes a lot of emphasis on the people and process than often the technology. And that means that the CEO needs to believe it and lead  the way. As I always say, “Fish always stinks most at the head.” MY POV: If your CEO doesn’t believe this, you are in for a fall. This shift they called: #M0dernMarketing (that was the event’s hash tag)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oracle’s Focus on the CMO as the Purchaser of Technology

The Marketing Cloud / Social Cloud Event at the Art and Design Museum was by design orchestrated there to  redesign Oracle’s focus on not only what modern marketing is, but also that Oracle’s clear intention to acknowledge and serve the role of the CMO as a main buyer of technology.

In listening to the various executives, Mark Hurd, Kevin Akeroyd, Andrea Ward, Erica Brooks, Reggie Bradford Carolyn Love, Chris Lynch (I’m sure I missed a couple of people and I apologize) and the whole AR Staff (AR = Analyst Relations) – Brenda Conner and Christine Wan…  You could not only hear it in the words they were saying, but you saw it in their unspoken body language that they see the CMO as playing a large part in the decision of the technology budget as well as the importance of closing the gap between CIOs and CMOs.

Oracle is making a bet on the CMO and they are probably correct. The budget for technology is going there.  The question is who will get the bulk of the marketing / social budget? Agencies, Consulting Firms or Software Companies? What’s so– is that to do this kind of marketing at — scale for large enterprises, technology is needed. How many agencies are really ready to have an IT consulting arm? How many consulting firms can get out of their own way and stop thinking that their main product is systems integration? It’s strategy to make all this tech result in a bottonm-line, measurable result.

What’s a CIO to do?

Traditional software sales used to be directed to the CTO or the CIO. But the lack of common goals between the IT and the functional business areas (CMOs) often made it difficult to come to a common decision. As a system integrator and analyst, I was often the facilitator of such discussions. It was never pretty; often uncomfortable and seemed oddly obvious to me that they needed to agree or  agree to disagree and make concessions- a necessary component, yet fiefdom behavior was tolerated, the norm or encouraged. What’s a CIO to do? focus on the business not maintenance or easy upgrades. The tech business changed and it has to serve the lines of business. Not saying that maintenance is not important, but maybe the business results should come first?

I once calculated the hours we spent – weeks and months on a project trying to get people to “get on the same page.” The value of salaries of the FTE’s involved in such discussions was a large, negative ROI. Yet it kept happening. It’s part of what made systems integrators so rich in years past. People inside organizations couldn’t get along, so they’d have other people try to help with the conflict resolution.

I always thought politics in corporate America should be considered a white-collar crime – at least a waste of shareholder dollars. The hours people spent on maneuvering to get what they “wanted” to happen – was— and is an incredible waste of time and money.

Honest, genuine, authentic collaboration is much more effective and efficient. And the only this that will change it would require a different type of leadership and capabilities – old patterns broken; new behaviors created and rewarded. Perhaps it could only happen in a dream. It feels like I am saying the same thing I said 20 year ago. Maybe that was a dream? Or maybe the technology just was not able to deliver on the promise? (The later I know is true)

The Marketing and IT Divide Is Preventing Progress

One of the slides in the presentation showed that the #1 thing the CMO wants is not the same as what the CIO wants. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. After doing many value selling / personas selling workshops with CMOs, CIOs, CEOs, Customer Service Professionals – what keeps each of them up at night is very different and what you– and you a as a sales person, might sell them as is very different—that is if you were lucky enough to be given solution peronsa selling training somewhere along your career. These findings from the slide are from Accenture.

• CMO #1 ask is: Deploy better marketing execution and platforms (#6 for CIOs)
• CIO #1 ask is: Better marketing measurement and campaign optimization (#8 for CMOs)

I must be a hybrid of a CIO and CMO because they were both in my top capabilities for marketing in my marketing optimization paper. (Sees like the time for divisions are over – whether its government or software companies. That’s where you get my interest. Start collaborating already. Didn’t you watch the movie A Beautiful Mind? Forgot about the sad parts — but when its a win – win, we all win. And when it’s a win-loose, we all loose. Look at Washington DC. Come on already.

People Need to Understand Why They Should Change

As SAS applications have become the norm, the lines of business are now purchasing software, often without the consent, much less the knowledge of the IT group. Perhaps the most significant difference is that Oracle’s Marketing and Social Cloud presentation ( and the group that presented) did acknowledge the organizational change management required to make sure the technology actually delivers on the promise.

I’m not saying Oracle is in the business of organizational change management, but they did acknowledge that the ability of a large organization like theirs (and or others who buy their platform) must larrn to adopt change, to integrate their acquisitions and work collaboratively. This is should be on the top of their mind.

Oracle mentioned using organizational change management when the bought and began integrating their various acquisitions over the past two years. Those acquisitions created quite a 2 year timeline graphic including Vitrue, Involver, Eloqua, Collective Intellect, Compendium, Responsys, BlueKai, and others….

My POV: It’s a smart and necessary move to use organizational change management as part of how you get things to work together- people, process and the technology. After years of experiencing large CRM software projects be put to pasture (projects in the $500M dollar range 20 years ago)– yep they just stopped the project and completely abandoned it, I know first hand it doesn’t matter how fabulous the technology if the the employees don’t adopt it.

But software has not always delivered on that promise; often because the organizational change management piece was down played, ignored or made fun of; I remember seeing projects where it was often crossed off the SOW (State Of Work.)

Mark Hurd made a great point also in saying that when you by point solutions and add it to a solution platform, the more layers you have to add to get the software to talk to each other, the more problems you’ll encounter down the road. And that point alone has had a lot to do with their choice in whom to buy. (Start-up folks who are developing companies to be bought- hear that loud and clear. It’s one of the criteria things they look for — ability to integrate with their current stack.)

WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU as the CMO and CIO: The Marketing and Social Cloud Oracle Groups do understand the value of organizational change management and bring idea that to the companies they are selling software to. Organization may have to develop their own organizational change process or higher a consulting or advisory firm- but at least it’s a topic of conversation that 20 years ago was mute. Now CIO and CMOs must work together.

Moving The Oracle Customer to The Cloud Oracle also announced a customer-to-cloud initiative (customer here meaning Oracle’s customers or businesses; not consumers.) It’s a drive to move Oracle on-prem clients to the cloud. What’s the plan to help on-premise clients move to the cloud based systems? One option is to use the support credits they have not cashed in yet. Being in the cloud seems to be a necessary part of being able to access all the wonderful capabilities the Marketing / Social Cloud offers, so there’s even extra reason to consider it.

Individual customers like Wiley, Verizon and Comcast shared some of their stories and how they had improved various metrics or gotten a return on the investment.

What’s clear is that the leadership at Oracle understands that whether its B2B or B2C, it’s all P2P (people to people) customers of all kinds listen to each other more than they listen to advertising and marketing. It doesn’t mean you stop those activities, but it does change the dynamics between Marketing and Advertising and where the dollars are spent. Advertising, cookies and other options need to create a new future for themselves, and now.

It also means that whatever promises the Marketer’s are making, they company needs to deliver on them. And often where the proof of the delivery of the “promise” is in how the customer is handled in Customer Service.

MY POV: It’s not just Marketing, CIOs, Social, the Cloud, but also Customer Service — all customer facing and non-customer facing departments need to work together to make the best possible experiences for customers. When a company can do that, customer become advocates. Advocates become the driver of word of mouth. Word of mouth trumps advertising (by 78%: From Neilsen) Word of Mouth drives Customer Lifetime Value –> bottom-line revenue, profits and margins. (I did ask about RightKnow – the Customer Service Acquisition. The answer was they are investing in R&D. Let’s hope so.)

BIG DATA Can Turn into Big Results

What I want to see the most? How EXACTLY the Customer Experience is going to drive revenue and advocacy. I get it theoretically and have been teaching it in my classes at UCLA for years now and wrote about it in 2000. I even used the words customer experience and customer advocacy in a white paper I wrote – way before social. What I want to see is how the attribution of each part of the marketing funnel / pretzel is given, how it affects the sale / the advocacy and drives customer lifetime value. When a company can measure that, Modern Marketers will reign.

And all this big data, if used well, can help a mediocre company rise the top to the top. And even become a White Ocean brand. A great company can become an even better Blue Ocean company . But will it happen? That’s what the next 2 years are about.

There’s lot’s of acquisitions of software companies happening right and left. But acquisitions alone won’t work. Integration of the acquisition, along side a truly focused, customer-centric culture, top-to-bottom is critical. No lip service allowed. It’s gotta be real. It’s gotta be measurable and the executives have to understand it and understand how its measured and how that metrics an be terms of ROI. Wall Street’s quarterly meetings should require it.(My POV)

Mark  showed us how Oracle is using the marketing and being a modern marketer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who will win? It’s the big software company that can actually execute contentiously and consistently with an integrate system that gets business results that will emerge the winner.

I’m on pins and needles. Stayed tuned!

@DrNatalie

Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Childish Thoughts

van Essche & Associates

Paul van Essche is the founder/owner of the independent management and tech consulting firm van Essche & Associates. He is a Swiss and South African citizen with qualifications in electronic and industrial engineering as well as project and business management. He has 29 years experience gained in over 20 countries on five continents in multiple industries, serving a range of blue-chip firms and international organizations. One of his specialities is Change Management: he has successfully effected radical change in some of the most resistant business environments. Paul has been independent since 1999, is an accomplished public speaker and negotiator, and is bilingual (English-French).  ...

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1

I have the eyebrow-raising honor and immense pleasure of being father to four children, all girls, who's ages span a quarter of a century. I am now into my third (quarter of a century), enjoying the realization that the more one knows, the more there still is to know and discover, including, and mostly, from one's offspring. Any mildly attentive parent has - hopefully - experienced that nirvanic feeling of seeing both the world and themselves through their child's eyes, and gained fascinating perspective in the process. As an avid user, observer and commentator of/on life and technology, my kids are the golden geese of user-experience data points and priceless insights, accentuated in my case by their temporal spread. Being with them and melding into their worlds (insofar as they will let me), be they toddlers or young adults, is probably the closest I or anyone will ever get to time travel. 

These things therefore, I now know to be not absolutely but mostly and increasingly true: Facebook is for old people. Old, narcissistic voyeurs to be more precise. Email will follow fax is following typed letters and quill-penned parchments into documentary history. Wikis, google docs, drop-boxes and the like are pioneering forays into the new world of truly shared and beautifully liberated information, but we haven't seen the real breakthrough just yet (we're not even at Betamax vs VHS). MS-Office documents are information prison cells. Document management systems are little better than shared drives or any other storage medium and they are all the prisons. Microsoft will go the way of Novell (MS is bigger so it will take much longer - it wouldn't suprise me if their next play was major consulting). The smartphone has not yet peaked in its ability to integrate multiple, increasingly vital functions of our lives, but that too will rise and then level off, just like the height of sky-scrapers and the speed of air-travel. When you think about it, the Blackberry was always destined to die. Apple is nearing the end of its current s-curve and urgently needs a paradigm shift to maintain dominance (some have tried to imply that Apple is for old people but not successfully). Samsung smartphones just aren't that good or original - the difference is that they spend more on marketing than most of the world's countries do on running themselves (and that's a true statement) . The internet of things is very exciting but hugely fragmented for now and due for large-scale consolidation (witness the recent purchase of Nest - more to come there). Laptop computers as we know them now are on the way out, following the trend already set by traditional desktops, and if either survive it'll be in an unrecognizable format, especially OS-wise (tablets used with bluetooth keyboards are just the first example of this ground-gaining shift). The extraordinary gap between home and office technology will continue to close, as it is already with iPhones replacing BBs as officially endorsed corporate devices. Traditional ERP is going to die too (yay!) but all too slowly (boo). Growing pains aside, Workday can and should be a genuine game changer. Transactional data and substantive content are becoming less and less distinct; the transmogrification of constructs as simple as invoices is already underway. Real innovation truly is a garage thing, at least in mentality, and cannot be bought or mandated: money can help but is no guarantee (The only thing that Google+ and Garage have in common are two gs). Young peoples' ability to filter and ignore advertising on line (and on TV, for that matter) is growing; marketing paradigms will struggle to adapt. And so, everything we think is for sure really isn't - a big shift is brewing and some major trends are about to emerge and change how we do things yet again. If I knew exactly what I'd be very wealthy, but I feel the wind unmistakably.          

Did I get all that from my kids? Well ok, some of it is mine, but definitely under their influence. Still, most is theirs: the older two are both business analysts, one of them fast becoming a process re-engineering and business effiiceny specialist, persuading her multinational employer to avoid defunct solutions (like lifeless, old-school ERP) and successfully implementing several of an emerging palette of highly effective tools such as K2, Podio, the Atlassian suite, Basecamp and many more. The other has moved from re-designing billing systems into creative marketing, and is helping her firm target younger audiences through mechanisms they relate to, with quality information they relate to, rather than carpet-bombing them with phony messages which are immediately recognized as such, on any open channel available. Both young ladies are of course highly connected, but you can't get them to respond to an email in under a week. They communicate avidly through apps I've never heard of, IM'ing with whatsapp predominantly for now (yes, I have that one), but always probing for something better. My 14-year old is an artist, has always shied away from math and science, but since discovering tumblr (and a few others I can't recall) is now writing html with more expertise than a professional and wants to do a web programming course this summer right after her arts camp in the Adirondacks. Document files and emails don't even exist in her deeply-engaged on-line experience, but she gets by fabulously, submitting homework on line, and winning nation-wide essay competitions the while. And the baby, well, I'm not letting her near any electronics for another few years. The child kept quiet in the restaurant or on the plane with cheap cartoons on a phone or tablet just hurts me to watch; ours is engaged, doesn't act up, enjoys the food and interaction and all-round experience. What I learn from her is to be in the moment, observe, breathe and laugh. All I know for sure is that for her, Windows will always be just panes of glass, without the need for a capital W, unless at the beginning of a sentence.    

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

Cisco Does A Song And Dance With Jive

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

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

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Today Jive Software and Cisco announced they are partnering to provide integrated collaboration and unified communication (UC) solutions.  There are two main components to the announcement:

1) "By combining Jive's industry-leading enterprise collaboration platform with Cisco's real-time technologies like WebEx and Jabber, the result is a complete communication and collaboration offering"

For customers using both technologies, a seamless experience between both styles of work will be a welcome benefit. For example, being able to launch a WebEx meeting directly from with a Jive Community or start a Jabber conversation directly from Jive'??s activity stream.  

However, the combined offering will not make them unique in the collaboration market. Other vendors which already provide a seamless experience between collab and UC include:
- IBM with IBM Connections and IBM Sametime
- Microsoft with Office365, Yammer and Lync
- Citrix with GoToMeeting and Podio
- Salesforce.com with Chatter, although so far we'??ve only seen the result of their DimDim acquisition provide chat, they have not yet released integrated web-conferencing
- Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise) has invested heavily into Ansible, their new collaboration and UC platform

Also, new entrants to the market are coming at a rapid pace, including:
- A team of former Yammer executives runs Fuze which provides web-conferencing with a heavy focus on working together, not just having meetings
- LogMeIn is pushing their popular web-conferencing product Join.me into the enterprise space and working on integration with their file sharing and collaboration too Cubby

2) "Cisco and its partner network will now resell Jive solutions as a fully integrated component of the Cisco collaboration family."

I don't see much of a downside to this for Jive, as having an extra channel can only lead to more sales. However, I don'??t predict this with have a large (think doubling) impact on their revenue either. Cisco'??s channel has already proven to be unsuccessful at even selling their own collaboration solution, as WebEx Social (which began as Cisco Quad) never really gained much steam in the market. Also to complicate things, in March Cisco announced a similar partnership with Google, saying they will be working on integrations between WebEx/Jabber and Google Apps for Business. So which product will the Cisco channel by pushing, Google Apps or Jive Software?


Outstanding Questions

In 2012, Jive acquired unified communication company meetings.io. What does the deal with Cisco mean for that technology? Will they be focusing on Jabber and WebEx instead?

Will the WebEx/Jabber integrations work with Jive'??s on-premises deployments, or just their cloud versions?

Last year Cisco acquired social task management vendor Collaborate. This product competes directly with the company Jive acquired, Producteev. Jive has invested heavily in Producteev, so where does that leave the Collaborate product? Perhaps Cisco acquired it mainly for the URL collaborate.com?


MyPOV

This type of integration is not new to Jive, as they have done similar deals with Box for file sharing and Bunchball for gamification. This allows Jive to focus on their strengths, while their partners fill in the other areas of collaboration. For Jive customers the addition of WebEx will be a welcome feature. Jive already offers excellent integration with Microsoft Outlook and Office, the addition of web-conferencing and chat will only make the platform stronger. For example, in use-cases such as customer support, an agent may be able to switch between answering questions in a Jive Community and directly providing answers via either a chat or web-conference. 

Similarly, for Cisco discontinuing WebEx Social will allow them to focus on the communication aspects that they are known for and let Jive focus on the collaboration tools. But what does this mean for WebEx Social customers? How smooth will the migration be to Jive, or does this open the door to move to another competitive product. Nike one of Jive's original customers made a big splash when they switched to become a lighthouse customer for WebEx Social. However, some departments at Nike remained on Jive, so perhaps there will be a full migration back for them, or will they look at alternatives like Microsoft? How many customers move from WebEx Social to Jive and how many move to competitive offerings remains to be seen.
 

Cisco's sunsetting of WebEx Social is another example of how it requires more than just having a good product to be successful in the social business market. Last year VMWare sold off their Zimbra and SlideRocket products, which at one time were speculated to become part of a VMWare branded collaboration offering combined with SocialCast.

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Oracle launches the Oracle Marketing Cloud

1

Yesterday Oracle formally announced the launch of the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

If you’ve been watching the industry, you may be wondering “didn’t they already have a marketing cloud?” They’ve had all of the pieces, yes. Before yesterday there was an Oracle Social Cloud comprised of the solutions formerly known as Vitrue, Collective Intellect, and Involver. And the company had other marketing solutions including Eloqua, Responsys, Compendium, and BlueKai. As of yesterday, those pieces are now formally brought together as a single solution:

This launch matters in the context of Oracle’s overall go-to-market and here’s what matters:

1) Potential for revenue growth.

Oracle is a $40 billion company. According to President Mark Hurd, the marketing cloud gives Oracle an application to sell in to a new audience: the marketing department. The market for enterprise applications is dominated by a handful of heavyweight contenders including SAP, Oracle, and IBM. All three of these firms are interested in leveraging their longstanding CIO/CTO relationships to connect with the CMO and become the enterprise system of record. The Marketing Cloud business is worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” modeled as annual recurring revenue and selling in to complement financials, operations, and other systems would be a strong source of revenue growth for the company. But Oracle can’t walk into a CMO’s offer with a menagerie of acquired point solutions — the single Marketing Cloud product allows sales to offer an enterprise-level platform.

2) Integration will make or break the Cloud.

Marketing Cloud General Manager Kevin Akeroyd stated the critical success factor in the near-term competitive landscape: “anyone with access to capital can acquire companies, but whoever integrates best will win.” This requires integration of code in order to facilitate data sharing between solutions; in Oracle’s case, it offers a Universal Customer Profile as the customer-centric backbone of its systems. Moreover, change management is just as important in ensuring post-merger integration success and the Oracle teams cite a high retention rate of management from Vitrue and other firms indicating positive results.

3) There’s something missing.

Oracle openly acknowledges there’s additional work to be completed in building out the Marketing Cloud solution. Although AppCloud offers connections to a wide variety of point solutions, Oracle still needs a tightly integrated solution to deliver on the need for marketing metrics tied to business objectives. And not just social media measurement or web analytics — marketers need customer-focused omnichannel metrics with proper attribution to understand campaign performance.

Final thought: social becoming increasingly siloed

It’s interesting to see Oracle’s Social Cloud subsumed by the larger Marketing Cloud. While social media had its heyday and undoubtedly plays an important role in customer engagement strategy, it’s ultimately just one element in the larger marketing picture. Over the course of this year, look for the word “social” to disappear from product offerings and marketer lexicons, just as “.com” disappeared from company names and logos once brands discovered that digital business is really just “business.”

In the other direction, the cloud competition is becoming increasingly expansive and the stakes can’t get much higher. James Bond fans might remember the video game that Sean Connery plays in Never Say Never Again called “Domination,” that delivers electric shocks to the loser. Except in this case the price of defeat is going to cost a lot more than $267,000.

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Event Report - IBM Impact - what a difference a year makes - and off to a good start

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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MobileFirst (Pun intended)

And while Mobile loomed already at Day 1 - it was even more prominent on Day 2- where most of the keynote was dedicated to mobile. IBM has expanded on the Worklight product (acquired a little more than two years ago) and is making it easier for customers to build mobile applications on premises. Given that BlueMix also has mobile development capabilities, IBM now needs to educate customers on where to build which kind of mobile application. The good news is, that the app as the outcome are more or less the same - but the way how to build these mobile apps - conventionally on premises or on a PaaS (BlueMix) - makes for a very different development, deployment and operations scenario. It will be very interesting to see which paths IBM customer will have chosen in a year from now.

And as a testament of the new and fast moving IBM, the recent Cloudant acquisition that happened during Pulse - is a key asset that IBM makes available for mobile development. And to help customers to come up to speed even faster, IBM is providing a number of pre-packaged applications, called Ready Apps. As with all pre-packaged efforts - they need to stand their value in practice, but the demos we have seen were promising. The vertical flavor IBM has put into them certainly helps them to be more ready for consumption - or at least a significant reduction of implementation costs. To a certain point Ready Apps are a sign of the IBM to come - which is definitively less about hardware, and probably less about services and more about software. Prepackage offerings like Ready Apps certainly move the needle towards software.

Screenshot a Ready App - Retail for role of Store Associate

To foster adoption and education, IBM will open 18 IBM MobileFirst studios around the globe - a standard play book move. The question certainly is, how many innovation center like locations does an IBM customer need to visit to come up to speed - but mobile certainly has enough gravitas to deserve its own centers (right next to the BlueMix Garage - which will show mobile development in a PaaS).
 

Doing good things with IBM technology

IBM keeps following its direction of looking for early adopters in the healthcare space (see the recent hospital references). At Impact it was a partnership between Corriel Life Sciences and CareKinesis, that will use IBM technology (Softlayer, WebSphere, Cloudant were mentioned) to help seniors with counter indications of prescribed pharmaceuticals. Certainly an area where improvement is needed and it’s good to see technology benefitting mankind. Will be interesting to see, where the project will be in a few quarters from now.
 

More services in the BlueMix Garage

On the BlueMix side IBM announced 30 additional new cloud services - quite remarkable if you keep in mind that BlueMix was just announced in February. And of course it is easier to do this in the cloud age, and yes it is CloudFoundry, which has an active ecosystem, so IBM does not need to do all the work. Pitney Bowes picking BlueMix was an interesting, but logical choice. To get more traction IBM will have to show similar partnership at a rate of half a dozen a quarter. Let’s not forget that IBM not only has to make the platform work and get developers to build on it - IBM also needs to attract service providers to expose and provide their services to the BlueMix platform. A chicken and egg problem - as you cannot get the one without the other - so it will be interesting to see, how IBM will expand BlueMix services and uptakes.

Of course customers need to learn more about BlueMix and IBM announced to open up (surprise surprise) BlueMix garages - grungy enough to attract developers at least in name - in practice we will have to see. Good choice with the first location being in San Francisco - if IBM can attract developer beyond the honeymoon and trial phase there - then it will work in other locations, too. Partnering with the Galvanize co-learning space (or Incubator?) is certainly a smart move. Maybe location will become a competitive battle ground for PaaS vendors? We will see and look forward to visit.

 

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