It’s Important To have Intelligent @Mentioning

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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As the size of our social networks grow (meaning we connect with more people) it's important that the tools we use make it simple to interact with the right people at the right time. (context matters!) I've found that some collaboration platforms do this well, while others do not.

Here is a good example from Yammer.  Notice when I type "@k" it first suggests Kevin Young, he is not the only person in my network who's name starts with K, but he is person I interact with most frequently. The next two suggestions are based on last name's starting with K. Notice "Ku" is listed before "Ke", that's because I interact with Ganesh more often in Yammer than Brent.




Google+ takes this a step further, not just focusing on the names of the people you interact with most often, but prioritising names of people from the specific conversation. In the example below I've typed "@j", and even though "Je" comes before "Jo" and "Joa" would come before "Joh", notice "John Tropea" is the name that is first suggested. That is because John has already been active in this specific conversation.




Compare that to how poorly Facebook manages @mentions.  In the example below I've typed "@chr" and it brings up 3 of my friends named Chris, none of which have been part of this conversation. Yet "Chris Crummey" has been but his name is not displayed.  #Fail




Today most people use type-ahead to mention people, but some platforms are starting to make more object types accessible. For example, both Jive and Confluence do a good job of allowing people to type-ahead to link to pages.




So while social networks are not yet physic, they are getting better at making intelligent predictions, suggestions and recommendations.  I have lots of ideas for how they can still be vastly improved and am enjoying working with software vendors on this.
 
What are your favourite examples of products that do this really well or really poorly?
 

Marketing Transformation Future of Work Chief Customer Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Welcome to the New Constellation Website!

We are excited to announce the launch of our refreshed website with a design built around you.

Please note our new web address: 

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What to expect on the new website today:

• More media content: webinars, keynote speeches, Connected Enterprise recordings
• Curated insight around a Business Problem or  Role
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Don’t Give Up

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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1

Creativity is hard work. Actually, work, life, everything is hard work.

For every 100 good ideas that you put up, you’ll be lucky to see one take root.

For every “yes” that you get, there’ll be dozens of “nos”.

And for every spark you ignite in others, there’ll be whole audiences of blank faces.

Remember, too, it all takes time.

Effort.

Resistance to the resistance.

But your time will come.

If you hold tight.

Push through that last mile of indifference.

And self-defeat.

Learn.

Be humble.

And generous too.

But most of all.

Don’t give.

Up.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Inspired by Stan.

Marketing Transformation Chief Executive Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Marketing to Marketers – Just Add ICE

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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1

The five forces of the Consumerization of Information Technology (CoIT) do not just affect the chief information officer (CIO). The impact of social media, Big Data, analytics, mobility, cloud computing and unified communications will be felt across every business unit and across every enterprise.

However, it is the office of the CMO – the organizational executive responsible for the “front of house” – which will be increasingly exposed to the challenges presented by consumerization. As a result, marketing leaders will face significant new strategic and technology decisions in the next two years.

Outdated theories and metrics, however, frame the practice of business marketing and continue to inhibit the ability of marketers to respond to the rapidly changing consumerized landscape. CMOs need to plan and execute against a new vision of the connected consumer.

The connected consumer, who uses a range of digital and social networking technologies, discovers, debates and decides on purchases in a completely new way. These processes occur almost completely independent of your brand, your communications and the messages they carry. The connected consumer may share your Facebook fan page with friends and buy your products on the way home. She or he may be your greatest critic or your staunchest defender. They blog, tweet, write reviews, self-publish books and hold online film festivals. They are influencers in their own right.

Marketers need to adopt a long-term view that demotes the campaign-based thinking that has dominated the marketing agenda for decades, replacing it with a focus on relationships, value and customer experience.

Companies that are prepared for the future do three things right when it comes to digital marketing. First, they understand the customer journey as a series of flows between touch points over time – and plan and execute their marketing plans accordingly. Second, they understand the power of data and analytics to create a deeper understanding of that customer and the approaches that can deliver customer engagement at scale. And finally, CMOs are recasting the marketing funnel to model and map the customer journey to better direct their marketing investments.

My report into re-casting the marketing funnel for consumer engagement set out the new touchpoints that marketers need to map against their buyers journey. But this, of course, requires an understanding of that journey not from the brand point of view – which is inside-out – but from the outside-in. And this requires additional thought, planning and preparation. In fact, it needs education.

One of the great successes of Google has been it’s relentless focus on technology. This has also been one of its great failings – and lies at the heart of its lack of success with social networking. With search – where Google clearly dominates, they have followed the ICE approach:

• Interest – create interest and intrigue in the solution by generating immediate VALUE
• Contextualise – help EDUCATE the audience in this new world by contextualising the old vs new with patterns of user behaviour
• Evangelise – show, support and evangelise the OUTCOMES of the new behaviour in the new context

Not only have new behaviours emerged thanks to Google search – whole industries have been built, careers have flourished and our personal and professional lives have been shaped in new ways. Except in small pockets, this has not happened with other Google solutions.

But things are slowly changing.

The Think with Google website has become one of my favourites over the last year or so. Their recent work on the How to Go Mo website took a huge step in educating and empowering marketers in their quest to understand mobile marketing. And now, this planning tool on the customer journey helps explain some of the complexity around multi-channel / omni-channel marketing, analytics and attribution.

If Google wants to see more marketers getting value out of their digital marketing investments (which is in everyone’s best interest), then more of this work will be required. Having great technology is only half of any answer (or maybe even less). Without the people, you don’t have a party. For that, you need ICE.

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Cisco Identifies Major Opportunities with Customer Collaboration Solutions

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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At the recent Cisco Customer Collaboration Analyst Event, Cisco identified its key initiatives for the coming year and its plans to continue to capture market share with its customer collaboration strategy. It also demonstrated how its continuous improvement in its collaboration product line earned increased market share against contact center competitors.  Cisco credits its recent success is in providing its customers with robust end-to-end solutions and its sound financial position, which especially appeals to larger enterprise customers. During the last year It has made significant gains with competitive wins against Avaya and other established contact center solution providers.

 Cisco is prioritizing the following four areas for its customer collaboration solution:

• Differentiate customers’ experience with video solutions.  Video provides the opportunity to deliver a more intimate customer experience without the cost for face-to-face interactions. Healthcare, high-end retail and financial services are early adopters for providing customer service across multiple video endpoints, such as kiosks and smartphones.
• Offer mobile support from smartphone applications.  Interactions with smartphone applications will outpace social media and become a primary channel for seeking customer support.  Customers want direct service from within their mobile application and do not want to to repeat information already provided on their mobile device before live assistance is requested.
• Deliver scalable cloud solutions. Many customers are considering a cloud solution rather than invest in premise based equipment for upgrading their contact centers.  Cloud solutions represent a fast growing market opportunity for Cisco
• Maximize resources with consolidated and departmental solutions.  Many aging contact center operations have acquired too much equipment based on earlier network limitations. Multi-site customer support operations now realize real savings by consolidating sites and simplifying management and operations. This is especially important as companies now realize they require complex multi-channel support.

Cisco is also expanding into the Internet of Everything (IoE) that represents an innovative project to link people, processes, data and things to deliver higher impact customer experience. Cisco intends to partner for the data component and create intelligent applications that proactively connect products (things) to the Internet and automatically send out a signal when a problem is identified to customers and product support organizations.  Automobiles, electronics and high end appliances are examples of products that would benefit from IoE solutions. The process piece is where Cisco believes it has a major advantage and will use its decisioning engine to identify problems and proactively send outbound notifications.  While this initiative is in its early stages, this endeavor will potentially revolutionize how companies serve its customers through increased automation and result in significant reduction of cost for customer support.

As Cisco continues to expand is its marketing reach it believes the simplification of its product offerings has made it easier for partners to sell its entire portfolio of collaboration products.  The delivery of differentiated customer experience requires an ecosystem of applications, services and strong partnerships contribute to Cisco’s success in this area.  As future technology disruptions, such as WebRTC, Big Data, predictive analytics and proactive customer support change the nature of customer service, it is essential that companies, such as Cisco, remain flexible and innovative to address this changing paradigm.  However, for now Cisco has established a competitive edge on its major competitor Microsoft in the contact center and customer collaboration area and has plans to keep up its momentum.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Polls and Surveys: Who's Missing In Our 2013 #BigData landscape?

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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Big Data Vendors Seek To Move From Data To Decisions

The move from Data to Decisions examines the enablement of data-driven decisions across the entire organization.  Holistic, data-informed decisions require a multi-diciplinary approach that incorporates performance monitoring with traditional business intelligence technologies. Gather key insights from your data, transform insights into actionable information, and then make the right decisions (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Shift From Data To Decisions

Source: Constellation Research, Inc. (right click to see the expanded image)

Four Sub Categories Emerge In The Big Data Landscape

Little shortage of solutions and vendors exists in the burgeoning big data  market. At last count, Constellation found 200+ vendors claiming to provide solutions.  As part of our research, we’re looking at big data in 4 sub categories (Figure 2):

• Data sources. Information providers, structured data, content management, and unstructured data.
• Information and orchestration. Acquisition tools, BI Appliances and VLDW, No SQL/New SQL, and governance.
• Insight. Analytics and BI Visualization Tools.
• Decisions and actions. Decision management, BPM, and CEP.

Figure 2. The Big Data Solutions Landscape

Source: Constellation Research, Inc. (right click to see the expanded image)

Your Help Requested

Between now and May 15th, we’re looking to complete this market overview and mapping. If we’ve missed a vendor or solution you are using, please let us know. In return for your time, we will add you to our Newsletter and include you in our Big Data Research panels (if you are a buyer).  For vendors who think we’ve missed them, we’re more than happy to take a look and see what you have. Just drop us a line by clicking here to mail

Resources

• Tuesday’s Tip: Focus On The Business Outcomes, Not Technology With Big Data
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Beyond The Three V’s of Big Data – Viscosity and Virality
• Monday’s Musings: The Three V’s of Big Data
• Research Report: Rethink Your Next Generation Business Intelligence Strategy
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

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.

Copyright © 2001 -2013 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

 

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Comprehensive Guide to WebRTC Published by Constellation Research

SALT LAKE CITY – April 25, 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. the research and advisory firm focused on disruptive technologies today announced the publication of “Ten Things CIOs Should Know about WebRTC: Anticipating and Preparing for Massive Disruption to Your Communications Environment and Engagement Strategies” by Constellation Vice President and Principal Analyst, Dr. E. Brent Kelly. This research report analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, and potential impact of WebRTC. This report is designed to arm CIOs with the research necessary to help them understand the potential positive and negative impacts of WebRTC on their organizations.

Download the report snapshot

This report reveals ten things CIOs should know about WebRTC including:

• Where’s the money for you in WebRTC?
• How WebRTC will disrupt the current communications industry
• Why Microsoft opposes WebRTC as it is presently constituted
• How WebRTC will play into the world of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets
• Eight recommendations: how to prepare for WebRTC now

WebRTC is an emerging standard that enables real-time voice, video and data sharing in a web browser without the need for browser plugins.  Potentially billions of devices supporting a browser – PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets and a host of new devices – from a variety of manufacturers  will be real-time communications-enabled. This report is designed to provide CIOs and decision makers with the right balance of depth and breadth to help them understand what WebRTC can do for them as well as what it can do to them.

“WebRTC may prove to be as disruptive to communications and collaboration as the World Wide Web was for information,” said Dr. E. Brent Kelly. “The transformative power behind WebRTC is that ordinary web developers using JavaScript APIs can craft fully functioning voice, video and data collaboration applications or embed these capabilities within other applications with just a few lines of code.”

This report fits into Constellation’s business-focused research themes: The Future of Work, Consumerization of IT, Technology Optimization, and Next Gen Customer Engagement.

 

THE REPORT
More information about Ten Things CIOs Should Know about WebRTC: Anticipating and Preparing for Massive Disruption to Your Communications Environment and Engagement Strategies can be found here: http://www.constellationr.com/research/ten-things-cios-should-know-about-webrtc

 

ABOUT E. BRENT KELLY
Dr. E. Brent Kelly is Vice President and Principal Analyst covering [the Future of Work, Consumerization of IT, and Technology Optimization]. [Brent’s] current research focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, cloud, video, and mobility.

 

COORDINATES
Profile: http://constellationr.com/users/ebkell
Twitter: @ebkell
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brent-kelly/29/659/409/
Geo: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Register for the webinar:

Ten Things CIOs NEED to Know About WebRTC
Date/Time: May 23, 2013 8:30a.m. - 8:45a.m. PT/11:30a.m. - 11:45a.m. ET
Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/895954862

Press Contacts:
Contact the Media and Influencers relations team at [email protected] for interviews with analysts.

Sales Contacts:
Contact our sales team at sales[at]ConstellationR[dot]com.

 

 

Future of Work New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer

Constellation Research to Provide Opening Remarks at IT Trend 2013

SILICON VALLEY, California., and TOKYO, Japan –April 25, 2013 – Constellation Research, Inc. and ITR Corporation today announced that Constellation COO Dennis Kanemitsu will provide opening remarks at IT Trend 2013, ITR's annual executive forum.

Kanemitsu will introduce Constellation to ITR’s audience and highlight how the established partnership between Constellation Research and ITR will bring innovation-focused thought leadership to the Japanese market.

Since it’s inception in 1999, IT Trend has bloomed from a small gathering of innovation-minded IT practitioners to the conference it is today: with an anticipated 1000+ attendees. The growth of the event marks, not only the expansion of ITR's presence in the independent research space, but an increased interest in disruptive technologies and business models. 

Opening remarks will begin at 10a.m. at the Keiko Plaza Hotel, Tokyo. 

 

ABOUT IT Trend
The IT Trend is an executive forum which has been held by ITR since 1999.  This year’s theme is “Strategic IT Guidelines for Innovation and Creativity”.  The forum will highlight issues affecting the current trends in the IT industry.  ITR analysts will provide sessions on how IT executives can prepare for the near future.  Sponsors include:   Infoteria, Informatica, NTT Comware, and Kyocera Communication Systems.  Media sponsors include:  Nikkei BP (ITpro, Nikkei Computer, Information Strategy), ITmedia Executive, CIO Magazine, EnterpriseZine, IT Leaders, Softbank Business+IT, and C|net.

 

ABOUT ITR
ITR is a research and consulting company specializing in the field of IT to support decision-making and problem-solving of a customer's business.  ITR provides neutral and objective information that respects the professionalism of a customer’s business environment, climate, culture and individuals.  They view their business issues through their customer’s eyes.?For more information about ITR, please visit http://www.itr.co.jp.?Contact ITR directly at i [dot] info [at]  itr [dot] co [dot] jp.

 

ABOUT CONSTELLATION RESEARCH
Constellation Research is a research and advisory firm focused on disruptive and emerging technologies. This renowned group of experienced analysts, led by R "Ray" Wang, focuses on business themed research including the Future of Work, Next Generation Customer Experience, Big Data and Insights, Matrix Commerce, Digital Marketing Transformation, Technology Optimization and Innovation, and Consumerization of IT and the new C-Suite.?Constellation's collection of prestigious analysts brings real world experience, independence, and objectivity to client solutions that span cross-role, cross-functional, and cross-industry points of view. 

Clients join Constellation Research for a fresh and business focused perspective. Unlike the legacy analyst firms, Constellation Research is disrupting how research is accessed, what topics are covered, and how clients can partner with a research firm to achieve success.  Over 100 clients have joined from an ecosystem of buyers, partners, solution providers, c-suite, board of directors and vendor clients.

?****?Contact Constellation Research, Inc. directly at Contact [at] ConstellationR [dot] com.?Constellation Research, Constellation SuperNova Awards and the Constellation Research logo are trademarks of Constellation Research, Org. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies

 

Data to Decisions Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

Pentaho Acquires Webdetails for Great UX

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Test

Joseph is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  Covering all things related to Data Management and Analytics, he focuses on making better decisions through using new sources of data, innovative ways of interweaving the volumetric flow of data of increasing compexity, and disruptive techniques for drawing inferences and making predictions from that data. Sensor networks Mobile devices Machine-to-machine interchanges Machine-to-human interactiions Sensor Analytics Internet of Things Sustainability Self-quantification Since 1978, Joseph has been involved with renewable energy research, developing advanced statistical methods for complex system analysis, and creating analytical techniques and management methodologies for solving business,…...

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Today, Monday, 2013 April 22, Pentaho completed the acquisition of long-time partner, Webdetails.

Pentaho offers one of the most complete data management and analytics suites available both as an open source solution, its Community Edition, and as an Enterprise Edition:

• included target database [HSQL or MySQL], with the ability to use any RDBMS,
• extract, transform and load servers and clients, KETTLE, Carte, Pan and Spoon,
• online analytical processing server, Mondrian,
• metadata management,
• report development,
• schema development,
• dashboard development,
• data mining, WEKA,
• and a BI server to tie it all together.

Webdetails is a 20-person strong consultancy based in Portugal, founded by Pedro Alves, focused on building Pentaho solutions for its customers, and on data visualization. In addition to the consulting work, Webdetails has become the major committer for the open source Community Development Framework project, originally developed by Ingo Klose. In the course of their work, as inspired by the muse of customer needs, Webdetails has grown the original CDF project into a full suite of OSS data visualization and dashboard projects, CTools. Over the past year, the talented web details user experience teams, seems to have put out a new CTool almost monthly.

• CDF - community dashboard framework
• CDE - community dashboard editor
• CBF - community build framework
• CDA - community data access
• CCC - community chart components
• CST - community startup tabs
• CGG - community graphics generator
• CDC - community distributed cache
• CDB - community data browser
• CDG - community data generator
• CDV - community data validation

Pedro Alves is an extremely well-respected member of the Pentaho community, leading community events and training, appearing often in the forums and IRC, and staying connected through Twitter and Skype. Recently, Pedro was highly active in helping to create the Pentaho Marketplace, which provides direct access from the BI Server web interface for users, to a series of plug-ins for the BI Server, including CTools, and other community and third-party projects.

I have the pleasure of knowing Pedro, and several other of the Webdetails and Pentaho teams. This week I was able to speak with Pedro, as well as Davy Nys, Vice President, EMEA & APAC at Pentaho, and Doug Moran, one of Pentaho's Founders.

Pedro doesn't feel that the acquisition will change Webdetails, in that both the UX and consulting teams will continue as before. However, both community and enterprise users of Pentaho will feel the impact of both teams, as the lessons learned from Webdetails consulting projects are implemented by the UX team, not only in the Dashboards and data visualizations tools, but also, per Davy, in the overall UX throughout all the Pentaho products. Having worked with Pentaho tools as a practitioner in the past, I know that business users will appreciate this as Pentaho becomes both easier and more pleasant to use. The data scientists will also appreciate more and better tools to draw the story out of the data, and present it to the subject matter experts and business leaders in an Agile fashion.

As Pedro mentioned, most things won't change, such as the fact that CDF is the underpinning of all of Pentaho Dashboards, or the pace of development of new CTools. Several are currently underway. One that I can mention grew out of a request by the Mozilla Foundation, for a file and data browser for the Hadoop distributed file system [HDFS] that would be as easy as the file browser in any modern operating system. The result is CVB - community VFS browser. One thing that will change is that more of the CTools will make their way into the main branch of the EE product as they reach the appropriate state of maturity and stability.

Pedro has many plans for CTools, and for facilitating data visualization through Pentaho. But in addition to continuing his role as the general manager of Webdetails, and Chief Architect of CTools, Pedro will also be assuming the role of Senior Vice President of Community for Pentaho. As a long time friend of the Pentaho community myself, I have to say that there couldn't be a better choice.

One of Pentaho's Founders, Doug Moran, was the "Community Guy", who stayed in this role until the start of 2011, following the original community guy, Gretchen Moran. Doug's philosophy is that any open source community needs to stand on its own to be organic and strong. The Pentaho community is one of the strongest in the OSS DMA space, and as a result, Doug felt comfortable focusing elsewhere, and assumed management of all of Pentaho's "big data" products and Instaview initiatives. As SVP of Community, Pedro will be mostly focused within the company to integrate the community internally and help drive the corporate strategy for community. He'll continue to participate in the community, but as the Pentaho BeeKeeper model, developed by Pentaho CTO & Chief Geek, James Dixon, his main concern will be to assure that there is a rich environment for community innovation. As part of that, Pedro will also be actively pursuing ways to grow and leverage the Pentaho Marketplace. Doug also pointed out that the Pentaho community is also hugely valuable for QA and as a training ground for the best Pentaho developers. This is sure to continue with Pedro in his new role. Doug and Pedro have worked together since the early days of Pentaho, when Pedro decided to quit his job, and, with his wife, create a company devoted to professional services for Pentaho projects and products. This strong relationship between the original Community Guy and the new SVP of Community can only help to make an already strong community even better and more creative.

Davy pointed out to me that there has been an increase in customer demand for Dashboards that were in essence, apps within Pentaho. This might happen through a plan that Pedro has to make it very easy to create such dashboard-based apps without any programming ability, and then publish them to the Marketplace. This planned community plugin kick-starter [CPK] will use CDE to create the front-end, and the Pentaho Data Integration software, KETTLE and Spoon, for the backend logic. I believe that both internal and external consultants, integrating Pentaho into an organization's decision making process, will find this ability exciting, as many of these system integrators are not Java developers. The ability to push such apps to the Marketplace will also be embraced by both CE and EE users, as most customers are excited by the idea of openly sharing their solutions, and enjoy the resulting community recognition.

As the innovations related to the big data and data science movements become more important, Davy told me that Pentaho has seen great interest in four areas:

• EDW optimization,
• exploratory analytics,
• machine learning [WEKA, mahout & R], and
• leveraging Hadoop to scale.

 

Webdetails fits very well into creating a finer exploratory analytics experience for the customers, and will make Pentaho a superior choice for big data. Combined with Instaview, and with the proper roadmap, it may even push Pentaho into the new Data Grok market, not only helping users answer the questions they have, but actually pointing out the questions that the data set can answer, even if the user didn't think of it.

Both CE and EE users and customers of Pentaho should welcome this acquisition, and look forward to the better UX and data visualization. Most importantly, they should plan on how they can contribute to, and benefit from the Pentaho Marketplace, as it becomes an important part of the Pentaho ecosystem.

Other Resources:

1. Pedro Alves on Business Intelligence: "A new challenge - Webdetails Joins Pentaho"
2. Pentaho page about announcement: Bringing the art of the possible to life
3. Webdetails page about the announcement: The future of business analytics changes today
4. Pentaho Blog: Webdetails and the Art of the Possible
5. Press Release English: Pentaho Acquires Dashboard and UI Specialist Partner Webdetails

Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer