My Top 10 Tweets From February 2014

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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Below are my top 10 tweets from Feb 2014 based on combined number of replies, favourites and retweets. I weighted each of those three actions equally.
Feb 2014 Top Tweets

News Analysis: FinancialForce.com ERP Arrives To Signal The Era Of Best Of Breed Cloud Suites

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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FinancialForce Debuts Its Full ERP Suite

On Februrary 19th, San Francisco headquartered, FinancialForce.com announced the launch of its full suite of ERP offerings built on the Salesforce1 platform.  Backed by investments from UNIT4 and Salesforce.com, the cloud based vendor began as a single ledger financial management system built on the Salesforce.com Force.com platform.  The announcement and product launch shows how FinancialForce:

• Delivers a full ERP suite on the Salesforce1 platform. The platform brings together a series of organic products and recent acquisitions in HR, supply chain, and project management (see Figure 1).  The December 2010 acquisition of Appirio's professional services automation assets form the Professional Services Automation offering.  The 2013 acquisitions of Vana Workforce and Less Software brought the human capital management (HCM) and supply chain management (SCM) capabilities.
  
  Point of View (POV): The management team at FinacialForce.com was smart to bring in acquisitions built on the original Force.com platform.  Post merger integration was greatly simplified as the products shared a common architectural base.  More importantly, the acquired solutions were easily upgraded to the Salesforce1 platform to create an end to end ERP cloud based ERP suite.  Customers gain the full advantages of the Salesforce 1 platform and integration with the core Salesforce CRM offerings.

• Demonstrates focus on long term growth and viability .  FinancialForce.com showed 80% year over year growth in revenue run-rate compared to 2012.  Headcount grew 62% year over year with over 260 global employees.  Furthermore, customers represent a global base with 27 countries and users in 45 countries.
  
  (POV): Cloud has gone mainstream and customers now expect their cloud companies to demonstrate viability.  The mergers and acquisitions required to build a full cloud ERP suite signal a maturity by FinancialForce.com and the market.  Early customers of the full suite provide positive references on both the synergies of the ERP offering and the flexibility of the Salesforce1 platform for extensibility.

Figure 1. FinancialForce.com Launches A Full Integrated ERP Suite

The Bottom Line: Cloud Apps Consolidate As Customer Interest Increases

As cloud adoption continues to accelerate, customers must battle a host of challenges with best of breed point solutions in the market. As with the on-premises applications world, the need for master data, common integration points, business process harmonization, upgrade compatibility, and identity still remain as challenges in the cloud world.  Integrated best of breed cloud suites have an inherent advantage over point solutions.  Hence, further consolidation will occur as customers expect a seamless experience.  In FinancialForce.com case, the integration at the platform level provides as seamless integration to Salesforce as possible in the market.  This recent development now puts FinancialForce.com in similar short list with Acumatica, Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics, and NetSuite for end to end cloud suites for the two-tier and mid-market.  Based on hundreds of conversations with buyers, expect the next stage of cloud mergers and acquisitions to focus on analytics solutions as current offerings only provide simple reporting.

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.

Please let us know if you need help with vendor selection efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
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• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

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• Event Report: Seven Trends From This Year’s Human Resources Technology Conference 2013 (#HRTechConf)
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Reprints

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Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

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

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Research Summary: Next Generation CIOs Aspire To Focus More On Innovation And The Chief Digital Officer Role

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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Executive Summary

Constellation shares with its clients the fourth annual groundbreaking survey of CIOs later this week.  The 2014 survey interviews respondents about their priorities by CIO persona.  Constellation identified infrastructure, integration, intelligence, and innnovaiton as the four personas of the next gen CIO in 2011.

Survey results show that while CIO’s prefer to spend more time on innovation projects, most CIOs must spend their time battling the reduction of cost in IT delivery.  In the shift towards dominating digital disruption, CIOs can only move as fast as their organization’s DNA will allow while driving transformation. Using Constellation’s organizational DNA framework, CIOs can understand how much change they can expect their organization to consume and gauge their ability to impact the thought process and culture.  An excerpt of some of the findings can be found below:

A. CIOs Must Battle Keeping The Lights On Despite A Desire To Focus On Innovation

In Constellation’s recent CIO survey of 119 respondents, over 44% expressed that reducing the cost of IT delivery remained the number one priority (see Figure 2).  However when asked what should be the number one priority almost 44% expressed that bringing innovation to the business was the number one requirement (see Figure 3).

Figure 1. CIOs Still Prioritize Reducing IT Costs

Figure 2.  Bringing Innovation to the Business Is Top Of Mind On The CIO Agenda

B. CIOs Must Overcome Three Barriers To Bringing Innovation To The Business

Hence, CIOs have known what they need to do; yet the sheer burden of reducing IT costs creates a conundrum as organizations move on in technology investments.  Despite line of business leadership, CIOs are often consulted.  However, three key factors prevent CIO’s from bringing innovation to the business:

1. Not having a seat at the management table. Slightly less than 45% of CIOs report to someone other than a CEO, President, or COO (see Figure 3).  The lack of a seat at the management table hinders CIOs from serving in the persona of Chief Innovation Officer.  Organizations who have a CIO report to the CEO often represent more innovative organizations that value the impact that technology plays in enabling business innovation.
2. Keeping the lights on. Constellation surveys often show that between 70 to 80% of all IT budgets are focused on legacy and infrastructure projects.  Until CIOs can reduce their IT spend, the CIO must continue to play the persona of Chief Infrastructure officer.  Meanwhile, the personas of the Chief Integration Officer continue to consume a greater role, as systems must be connected to external networks, customers, partners, and suppliers.
3. Growing budgets of shadow CIOs. Conversations with Constellation’s clients indicate that most line of business executives intend to increase spending by 20 to 25% on technology related projects for 2014.  This rising importance of line of business technology investments proliferate due to cloud, mobility, and big data project requests.  Shadow CIOs continue to exist and fulfill the Chief Intelligence Officer and Chief Innovation Officer personal.  This is why tech spending is up, yet IT spending is mostly down.

Figure 3: 44% of CIOs Do Not Have A Seat At The Management Table

The Bottom Line: Rise Of The Chief Digital Officer Is Here.

Constellation expects a chief digital officer role to emerge that may include the personas of the Chief Innovation Officer and the Chief Intelligence officer.  The emergence of the chief digital officer (CDO) is essential for the new age of digital business.  Though the current debate often centers on whether the CIO or CMO will win out or whether chief digital officers may arise from an expanded role for the CIO, we see these arguments as shortsighted.   The role will transcend both the CIO and CMO, as digital initiatives will require new skill sets.

See the full Constellation report in March to understand the priorities for each of the four personas of the next generation CIO.

Your POV.

Are you still seeing the world through the lens of Social, Mobile, Cloud, Analytics, and UC/Video?  Are you a next gen CIO?  Does this resonate with your agenda and experience?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Breaking Bad @Project Management: Winning Strategies for the PM, PMO & Executives #pmot

Here’s a recent presentation I delivered with AMD’s  Isabel Merlano at Microsoft Project Conference 2014.  In this session, we shared  common scenarios on how the different approaches taken by project managers and Project Management Offices (PMO) could make an organization’s project management environment complex and challenging for the different project stakeholders. We then showcased how Microsoft portfolio and project management solutions can be maximized to address varying pain points around schedule management, resource management and project reporting.

Another week and IBM investes another billion - this week it is (a) BlueMix / PaaS

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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Over  11,000 attendees convened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for the annual IBM Pulse event.  The event focused heavily on cloud and mobile and served as the backdrop to unveil BlueMIx, Big Blue’s PaaS platform for year’s to come.  Adding to the seriousness of the announcement, IBM, made a $1B commitment to BlueMix.  Side note: We have learned from recent announcements around SoftLayer data centers and Watson that when IBM is serious about something, it makes a one billion dollar investment.

Conversations with attendees indicate a very energized and excited crowd.  Concurrently, IBM organized a developer conference, trendily called Dev@Pulse

BlueMix - lot's of Blue on a Greenish platform

BlueMix is IBM's PaaS product for the years to come. The project started over two years ago, was shepherded under veteran Danny Sabbah and must have gone through some pretty substantial iterations. Remember two years ago IBM had not invested into Pivotal - so there must have been a (true) blue ambition at some point. In fact, the future will tell what led to the investment in April 2013 (more here).  The shift was a change for the better since it committed IBM into a community of multiple vendors which this week led into a new oversight committee for Pivotal. 

So under the hood BlueMix runs on Pivotal's Cloud Foundry (hence the green - or what color is Pivotal's branding?) - but IBM enriches it in many ways:

• Attractive user interface - IBM has done a good job creating an attractive user interface to run and tie applications on BlueMix. Of course you can go back to command line, but interestingly IBM shared that developers want to be more productive, too - so we will see how much mileage the overlaying user interface will get. 

• 'Any' programming language - IBM devised BlueMix to be open and for developers to bring their code and 'just' deploy it. And that's a great design ambition but of course hard to do in the real world - so today IBM can do Java, Javascript, PHP, PERL and Ruby (not all supported by its own IDEs though). 

• Patterns prominently loom - IBM's pattern technology, originally devised with WebSphere - is getting good usage as part of BlueMix and is probably key to make the magic in the background work. Environments get more complex by the day - so the automation tool and it's capability are key for BlueMix's success. 

• A rich platform - IBM keeps exposing services and tools to BlueMix - most prominent right now are the Xtify push services. MongoDB was there and of course Cloudant (freshly announced acquisition) now, too. The extensibility here is key for IBM to augment BlueMix in the coming quarters, Watson services will be the clearly differentiating crown jewels. 

• Of course, SoftLayer - Almost needless to say IBM will run BlueMix on SoftLayer technology. Probably a good move to cater to a security sensitive audience that is re-assured by SoftLayer's bare metal capabilities, extended localization and transparency down to the machine level.

Softlayer is the go forward answer for all things cloudy

Not surprisingly IBM keeps strengthening its SoftLayer commitment. Reading between the lines it is clear that the SoftLayer x86 legacy cannot support the Power based Watson plans - so not surprisingly IBM is bringing SoftLayer to run Power based systems. There was some confusion what's being brought to who - SoftLayer to Power or vice versa - but that is all good for a company like IBM finding and charting its course to cloud.

Likewise IBM will invest more into the DevOps visibility and capability of SoftLayer resources. SoftLayer had more of a run-time DNA in the past for their clients, so bringing the additional flexibility to run more and better development cycles with SoftLayer only augments the platform.
 

BlueMix Moves Beyond the Big Blue Legacy

There are a few takeaways that this is not our father's IBM: 

BlueMix is the key asset as a platform to get IBM to the API economy, from a PaaS perspective and SoftLayer takes care of the infrastructure.

In spring 2014 IBM's future looks remarkably better than 12 months ago.

Here are some Storify Tweet Collections of the keynotes of Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3.

Six Trends Influencing Digital Disruption in 2014 webinar recording

Today we presented the webinar "Six Trends Influencing Digital Business Disruption in 2014". Please find the webinar recording and slides below.

Download slides here

Download Constellation's 2014 Outlook on Dominating Digital Business Disruption

First take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) analytics matter

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 it's earnings press release Workday of February 26th, the company disclosed the acquisition of Identified, a San Francisco based start-up that had specialized on recruitment success using analytical algorithms.

A recap of Identify

The company has tremendous talent and started with condensing social network information into tangible (and if you will actionable) candidate profiles, compiled out of available information from social networks. With that Identify reverses the classic recruiting process - that expects candidates to come to the recruiting company - into a mini headhunting process - where the recruiter can start actively looking for candidates.

Needless to say the collection, identification and creation of a candidate profile are no trivial task and Identify spend significant time on this, creating their patent pending SYMAN process. The recent demos of the product then showed the search over these profiles. Back in January we missed some analytical tools beyond the candidate profile that would help the recruiter focus on the right candidates without going through the overall result list, e.g. a scoring model to serve the best candidates to the recruiter. Good news was - this was on Identified's roadmap.

But then it looks like Identified seemed to have run out of steam on the business side. And probably needed more capital to build engagement and interaction functionality for recruiters, more ATS functionality and also had to cater to the need for mobile support for recruiters. The com had taken 22.5M in funding, Workday disclosed the acquisition was 15M - not a good exit unfortunately. 

Why Identify for Workday?

Workday is currently building its recruiting solution, expected in the first half of 2014, but its first release will miss sourcing functionality. My expectation is that Workday will do a replay of the playbook we have seen with 3rd party compensation data. Use it's new BigData Analytics product capabilities to either look at social network data and / or the classic sourcing providers and put it onto it's AWS based storage for BigData Analytics. Then use the SYMAN algorithms to collect and condense to a candidate profile and serve these to the users of its new recruiting product.

This has a number of pretty intriguing consequences:

• Innovative Recruiting - Workday will be able to serve the best external candidates into a recruiting scenario. Ideally not even to the recruiter, but to the manager opening the requisition.

• Real Analytics at work - The condensation and serving of the best candidate requires some real analytics (the one that take an action or suggest something). Identified can provide them - if the can find the way to serve the best candidates.

• Workday BigData Analytics at work - Many observers and me have given Workday a hard time on the current BigData Analytics offering to be neither of those. If Workday does what Identify enables them to do - this would really be BigData (structured and unstructured data with the 3Vs - Identify demos claimed to run on 1B+ candidates) and Analytics (condensation, scoring).

myPOV

3 Ways to Maximize Social Media at SharePoint Conference #spc14

If you live and work in the world of SharePoint, next week is the SuperBowl event – over 10,000 people will be attending SharePoint Conference 2014. It’s great to see a fantastic lineup of sessions, speakers and activities. In fact, I would love for you to join me in these activities that I’ll be a part of:

Monday Mar 3

10:30am – 11:00am
AvePoint Booth Book Signing: SharePoint for Project Management 2010

12:40pm-1:10pm
Nintex Booth Presentation: How to Inspire, Thrive and Drive Purposeful Collaboration

3:45pm – 5:00pm
SPC100 Session: Beyond Deployment: How Can IT Inspire, Motivate and Drive Sustainable Adoption

9:00pm – 12:00am
AvePoint Red Party

Tuesday, Mar 4

1:45pm – 3:00pm
SPC209 Session – Winning User Adoption Strategies from Best Buy, Nationwide Insurance and Trek Bikes

5:00pm – 6:15pm
SPC276 Session – Lead the BYOD Revolution: Effectively Manage a Multi-Device & Multi-Generational Workforce

7:00pm – 10:00pm
SPC14 Evening Event: Las Vegas Motor Speedway

I’m also very excited to see that the buildup has started and community engagement is brewing thanks to social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Yammer. Make sure you follow @SPConf and #SPC14 on Twitter to be updated on the latest and greatest buzz. As the excitement is heating up and you’re preparing for this amazing event, I’d like to share 3 tips on how you can maximize social media at #SPC14:

1. Schedule Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yammer posts

If you are part of the SPC14 event team, a speaker or sponsor,  I highly recommend you use scheduling tools to post regular reminders, announcements, activities, and session schedules. This way, you don’t have to worry about posting it manually. I use SocialOomph, IFTTT and Buffer to schedule my posts.

2. Be a trusted friend and not a used car salesman

It breaks my heart to see people/companies coming out of the woodworks and only post on social media whenever there are major events like this. The last time they tweeted was at the last Microsoft event. Even worse, it’s all about them – “Come to our booth to see how fantastic we are”. Postings like these are perceived as noise and no different from a used car salesman pitching.

I highly encourage y’all to be sincere when engaging in social. While it’s okay to talk about your service or product, it’s shouldn’t just be all about that. For example, you can share key points during sessions, maybe ask other people’s opinion or connect people with relevant subject matter expertise.

3. Utilize social to interact with audience during a session

I love to use social media to engage the audience when I am presenting. I would schedule tweets, embed tweets in powerpoint and even allow my session attendees to vote using twitter to show the results realtime on the screen. Check out this tool from Tim Elliott that lets you do this.

Any other tips you care to share?  I look forward to seeing you next week and please connect with  me on twitter!

HootSuite Launches Managed Social Media Security & Compliance Service for Enterprises

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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HootSuite Managed Security & Compliance Services educate and empower enterprises to protect their brand and reputation

To help enterprises protect their brands as they scale social media across their organization, HootSuite has announced the launch of its Managed Security and Compliance Services. This new offering provides organizations with security and compliance tools to protect their brand and social media assets from internal and external threats. This is critical that organizations figure out social compliance. It’s one thing to focus on engagement of your customers. It’s another to make sure that ALL the engagement is of the type of engagement is “on brand” and keeps the brand in integrity.

“While businesses have adopted social media in record numbers, the lack of governance puts enterprises at risk for online security and compliance breaches,” says Greg Gunn, VP Alliances, Business Development, and Platform at HootSuite. “Our new managed services are designed to equip the enterprise with the right tools and response plans so they can safely use social media to grow their business while protecting their brand.”

HootSuite’s Managed Security and Compliance Services creates a secure, complete environment for policy management and enforcement across an enterprise’s entire organization, protecting its brand and data against a full spectrum of security and compliance threats. This is even more important for organizations within regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and insurance, as well as those that are publically traded and require persistent monitoring of their brand reputation.

Who’s using it? Check out ING DIRECT. “The nature of social media means that your brand’s reputation is often at risk,” says Jaime Stein, Senior Manager of Social Media at ING DIRECT. “Therefore, it’s important to have your team aligned and prepared to handle any situation that could compromise customer service or brand reputation. HootSuite’s Situational Simulation prepared our communications team for our recent company re-naming launch so that when it took place, our team was able to handle the response from our clients and the public effectively and efficiently.”

HootSuite’s new Managed Security & Compliance Services features include:

• Social Media Asset Audit: Identify and govern both authorized and unauthorized social media profiles. The audit creates an Access Control Map, which allows administrators to outline legitimate profiles and determine which users can post to those profiles. We also help to remove illegitimate profiles to restore brand reputation.

• Situational Simulations: Create a response plan for managing situations that could cause a drastic spike in activity volume on Twitter or Facebook. The exercise then engages users across the organization to react to a social media surge in a controlled environment using the HootSuite dashboard. Upon completion, HootSuite provides an executive summary and recommendations on ways to enhance the process and strategy.

• Social Media Profile Monitoring: Monitor company-owned social media profiles for any security and compliance breaches. This ongoing service provides custom notifications when changes are made to account profiles to provide prompt alert if a hijacking occurs, and real-time content moderation to ensure all content conforms with predetermined compliance policies.

To learn more about managing risk in the enterprise, sign up now for HootSuite’s live webinar, “Managing Risk In a Social Organization: What Every CIO Needs to Know,” on Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at 11:00 a.m. EST. The webinar will feature insights from Nick Hayes, Security and Risk Analyst at Forrester Research; Lissette Santana, Branding and Stakeholder Communications Manager at PPL Electricity; and Sharad Mohan, Director of Customer Success at HootSuite.

More information:

• Webinar Registration: http://wcc.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=lobby.jsp&eventid=751188&sessionid=1&mode=preview&key=2C538DF01A8DB6DBFD2B4442986C44D9&previewtype=prelive
• Managed Services: http://socialbusiness.hootsuite.com/hootsuite-managed-services.html
• Blog Post: http://blog.hootsuite.com/hootsuite-managed-services
• Media Kit: http://media.hootsuite.com/media-kit