Oracle and Salesforce.com: The Great Detente

President, Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.
Computer Economics and Strativa, Inc.

Frank Scavo is skilled at formulating and communicating IT strategy, developing the business case for new systems, and facilitating the selection of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and supply chain management. He is also an expert in benchmarking IT spending and staffing levels for end-user IT organizations. Frank was one of the first tech bloggers, beginning in 2002 with his launch of the Enterprise System Spectator providing independent analysis of issues and trends in enterprise applications software and the strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages of the vendors that provide them. Frank has been quoted as an IT expert in numerous business and industry publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, ZDnet, eWeek, Datamation,…...

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Salesforce.com and Oracle today announced a "new strategic partnership." For their mutual customers, the announcement represents a welcome thawing of relations between the two companies. But it remains to be seen whether it represents a strategic change of direction for Salesforce.com.

Not a Radical Departure for Salesforce.com

The press release is quite short, just five paragraphs, outlining five points of partnership:

• SFDC will standardize on Oracle Linux.
• SFDC will deploy Oracle's Exadata engineered systems in its data centers. 
• SFDC will deploy the Oracle Database and Java Middleware Platform as part of its cloud infrastructure.
• Oracle will integrate salesforce.com's cloud apps with Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud.
• Salesforce.com will also implement Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Financial cloud apps for its own internal use.

So, what exactly in this announcement represents a fundamental change in direction for Salesforce?

• SFDC's infrastructure is already based on Linux, so standardizing on Oracle Linux is a minor change.
• SFDC's applications already make use of Oracle's database as the lower-level physical data store.
• The press release provides no detail on how SFDC will make use of Oracle's Exadata boxes. If they are merely used to replace commodity storage devices, there would not be any change to the basic architectural design of SFDC's infrastructure.
• Oracle's integration of Fusion HCM and financial system with SFDC is merely an application integration initiative. 
• SFDC's implementation of Oracle Fusion HCM and financial applications is a routine "win" announcement. 

The second bullet could potentially be the most radical departure for SFDC. Oracle's new database release, 12c, could provide the capability for SFDC to run multiple pluggable databases (one for each customer) within a single container database. This would represent a fundamental shift for SFDC away from its single multi-tenant database architecture in favor of Oracle's pluggable database approach.

Nevertheless, the fact that there is no mention of 12c or pluggable databases in the press release makes me seriously doubt that SFDC intends to fundamentally change its platform architecture. I have a question pending with SFDC on this point and will update this post if and when more information becomes available.

Thawing of Relations

What I do find significant in this announcement is that Oracle and Salesforce.com have apparently buried the hatchet, at least for now. For their mutual customers, now and in the future, this is good news.

Customers are not well-served by vendors sniping at each other, and the verbal tiffs between Benioff and Ellison over the past few years, frankly, have become annoying. Hundreds of customers have interfaced Oracle Applications with Salesforce.com's cloud apps. But until now they have done so without the explicit support of Oracle. Customers will be pleased if the two companies can cooperate in providing standard integration. Hopefully, both parties will start acting like adults and doing what is in their joint customers' best interest.

Workday Is Odd Man Out

If there is a competitive target in this announcement, it has to be Workday. SFDC will implement Oracle’s HCM and will integrate its Sales Cloud with Oracle’s HCM and also with its Fusion Financials product. This puts Workday in an awkward spot in that Workday leverages Force.com for its platform-as-a-service capabilities. It will be interesting to see how Workday reacts to this détente between Oracle and Salesforce.com.

While the use of Oracle Fusion within SFDC doesn’t mean much to SFDC customers, it does give bragging rights to Larry Ellison against Workday. Interestingly, NetSuite's CEO Zach Nelson was recently taking pot-shots on stage at Workday during NetSuite's Suiteworld conference. At the time, I took it as a sign of Workday's competition with NetSuite in financial applications. Now I see it as part of a wider competitive alignment. Both Zach Nelson and Marc Benioff are Oracle alumni and both have close ties to Larry Ellison. The three now seem to be joining in solidarity against Workday and validating that Workday is a threat to all three.

Regardless of the competitive posturing by these major enterprise technology providers, the Oracle/Salesforce detente is welcome news for customers.

Update, 11: 30 a.m. PDT. Dennis Howlett spoke with Aneel Bhusri, co-CEO Workday, who says that he doesn't anticipate any impact from the Oracle/SFDC announcement.

Update, 12:15 a.m. Salesforce.com replied to my inquiry indicating they are unable to provide additional details at this time on the announcement.

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News Analysis: Oracle’s Cloud Strategy - Revisionist History or Cloud Genius?

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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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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This is a joint post with my colleague Holger Mueller who looks at IaaS/PaaS and Future of Work technologies for Constellation Research.

At a press conference on June 24th, 2013 with Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, and Oracle’s President Mark Hurd announced a cloud partnership where Azure customers will be able to run Oracle Database (no version mentioned, but Constellation expects this to be 12c), Oracle Weblogic, and Java.

Oracle also announced availability of Oracle Linux for Azure customers. Constellation believes that the deployments of the Oracle 12c, Weblogic and Java stack pieces will be deployed on Oracle’s Linux.  Should this be true, the approach makes sense, as this is a tested and proven hardware and software combination. Further, Microsoft has already begun to run parts of Azure on Linux.

The partnership alliance poses significant implications for both vendors and more importantly customers moving to the cloud for three reasons:

• Java comes to Azure, a sign of pax in the .NET vs Java wars. For Applications to run on Azure, they needed to be built in CLR generating programming languages. Now, with the licensing of Java by Microsoft as part of this partnership, Java applications will run on Azure. This opens doors for Java applications on the Azure cloud, as well as general more portability for Java applications. And Azure becomes a friendly cloud for the 9 million+ Java developers out there.
  
  Point Of View: Microsoft and Oracle strike a win-win here.  Microsoft gains more language derived potential for expanding Azure and Oracle adds a marquee cloud stack to support Java.  Given the substantial overlap of enterprise customers on both Microsoft and Oracle, customers will benefit from more cross cloud compatibility for Java while supporting Azure for IaaS.

• Azure will run Oracle Weblogic and the Oracle Database. Microsoft will support Oracle Linux in Azure as the foundation to run the middleware and the database stack.  Though the press release and the press conference did not specify which Oracle database, Constellation speculates this is for Oracle Database 12c. In addition, Oracle announced license mobility for customers who want to run software on Azure and bring Oracle Linux to Azure..
  
  (POV): Interesting enough when Larry Ellison spilled the news for this announcement during the Q4 Oracle earnings call, this was not about the Oracle Database, but very specifically about Oracle 12c. It’s not clear why 12c is not specifically referenced in the press release – but with the ORacle 12c general availability slotted for June 25h, 2013, this moment may not have been the time to steal the thunder.  Of note, it is not only the database, but also the Weblogic application server which will be deployed on Azure. This comes as a surprise at first, but given the work Oracle has done to integrate the former BEA flagship product with 12c and Java – it was a question of taking whole technology building and avoiding too many interfaces. Why run Java apps through Biztalk to an Oracle database?  Constellation views this as a smart move by both companies, as it allows Azure customers to utilize more of the Oracle products, that are more and more entwined due to the Fusion and Exaxxx products.

• The hypervisor is where Microsoft and Oracle draw a line in the sand. Oracle will support Microsoft’s hypervisor Hyper-V to be the demarcation line between higher level application code and the Oracle products that now run in Azure.  The combined offering will be running on Hyper-V, which creates some headaches for Oracle on the hypervisor level as Constellation predicted, and will be supported by Oracle support as running on Windows Azure. .
  
  (POV): This poses some engineering work for the Oracle hypervisor teams, but nothing impossible to achieve. And the benefits are tangible, Hyper-V built applications will now be able to run on the Oracle Database (12c, and on Oracle Linux). This will give a lot of performance critical (think Dynamics) applications that were limited by SQL Server scalability before, new breathing room.  Microsoft was able to protect higher level applications of its technology stack with this agreement and at the same time Oracle benefits from a whole ecosystem of Hyper-V compatible applications. The cost of supporting Hyper-V for Oracle, which is tangible, is however dwarfed by this additional market potential. And it gives Mircosoft an important leg up against VMware’s vSphere.  Constellation believes this has significant implications in the cloud stack wars among Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, and VMware.  In unusual candidness for these  Oracle listed the current and future deliverables for the alliance in an blog post here.

Why did this happen?

As previously mentioned, this would have been a very good April Fool’s headline – even back on April 1st 2013. So this alliance comes as a surprise pretty much to all industry observers, at least we have not seen anyone claiming to see this one coming.

Constellation can only speculate what has driven Oracle and Microsoft to become frenemies and co-opitors. But the usual drivers are customers and technology. Customers could be the biggest driver for this alliance (e.g. a large public sector client that has standardized on Azure but requires Oracle, maybe for security or scalability reasons).  Why? Oracle has achieved significant and game changing elasticity through the de-coupling of metadata and user storage in Oracle 12c. In the due diligence process Microsoft must have looked at this design point and it must have been clear, that SQL Server would not be able to match this. It will be interesting to see in the months to come, what the real drivers to this alliance have been.

Lastly it necessary to mention that primarily Microsoft, but to a certain point also Oracle are interested in differentiating their cloud offering versus Amazon’s AWS and Google’s GCE. And this alliance certainly helps in this process.

Implications for the market

Over the past decade, Oracle has emerged as the laggard in the cloud market.  VC’s had advised their startups not to build on Oracle to avoid the cost overhead and legacy database technology.  Yet Larry Ellison remains the rare master of Sun Tzu’s Art of War strategies.  In this latest effort, he shows his determination to serve as the arms dealer for cloud infrastructure.  Announcements on partnerships with Amazon,  Dell, now Microsoft and soon with Salesforce.com and NetSuite show his determination to remain relevant in the cloud, albeit very late to the party.

The irony is that it all comes back to the original view of Ellson – that the cloud is nothing else than servers connected to the internet. And to a certain point that is what the Oracle Linux machines with running Oracle 12c, WebLogic and Java will do. Only they will be more elastic than other commercial database offerings, but we will have to see what happens on more detail at the 12c announcement tomorrow.

For the overall cloud market this forms a positive development as amongst the dedicated cloud stack vendors – AWS, Google, Microsoft and Oracle – this forms a level of reuse and commonality that previously has not been thought to be possible. Java applications now run on all of the four aforementioned cloud stacks. The Oracle database runs in all but Google. As does Oracle Linux (we assume that’s also how AWS deploys Oracle). So we are not at all at a time of interoperability – but this alliance is certainly propelling the cloud further in these terms.

The Bottom Line: The Irony is the Database Back Again?

At the end of the day two veterans of the enterprise software industry, Hasso Plattner and Larry Ellison are re-inventing their companies through database innovations. It looks like enterprises still want and need to store data reliably and efficiently. May it be in memory with HANA or may it be with better overall elasticity for 12c. No mention of cloud. Remarkably both innovations would have been beneficial for their respective companies even in a pre cloud era. So yes, the database is back. And with that a chance to rebuild and re-invent the whole enterprise technology stack upwards.

Our POV: The Cloud Wars Have Just Begun, Customers Poised To Win

This is the positive announcement expected over the weekend. The cloud sure makes strange bedfellows, and is the real driver and winner. Both Messrs. Nadella and Hurd clearly identified that. With the addition of Java to the overall mix, more interoperability has been achieved than customers would have expected and overall this is good news for the cloud, and more importantly, for Microsoft and Oracle’s customers and partners.

Before customers can rejoice, availability, pricing and customer successes must come first.

Your POV.

Ready for the Microsoft – Oracle Alliance?  Will you run Oracle in Azure?  Are you waiting for SQL Azure?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Resources

• Oracle 12c: End of multitenancy as we knew it
• How the cloud can make unlikeliest bed fellows

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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Digital Ad Spend Grows But What About the Investment?

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

When I look at infographics, I am looking not just at the facts and figures (boring) – I am looking a the underlying story. I want to understand what is taking place behind the numbers. I seek insight and connection between the sources of information, the behaviours of the industry and opportunities for the future.

So this infographic from Invesp, fired up my neurons.

Summarising the state of play for the digital advertising industry globally, it shows just how dominant Google remains in the face of challenges from social networks. A staggering 42.6% of ad spending finds its way into the search giant’s coffers, while Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft duke it out for less than half of that combined.

From an industry point of view, growth in digital advertising indicates a certain level of health. It shows that digital has firmly moved out of the experimental mode and is now a core part of a marketer’s arsenal. But it also raises significant questions – after all, if spending is increasing, are we also seeing a rise in investment? And by investment I mean:

• Evaluating and implementing marketing platforms and technologies: Pumping more budget into digital is going to also shift the focus towards digital engagement. After all, a digital call to action can result in a click, a download, a sale and so on … and if that is the case, what investments are marketers making in terms of marketing platforms and systems of engagement? Which platforms are you evaluating for marketing automation or social media management? How are you tracking conversion, monitoring the velocity of online conversation and improving rates of conversion? CMOs should evaluate their marketing processes and look for automation opportunities.
• Building the capacity and experience of your teams: The digital marketing skills gap continues to widen. For decades, marketers have been forced to do more with less – and now as the demand for digital skills accelerates, many CMOs find themselves responsible for teams who have transitioned from into “digital” from more “traditional” marketing fields. This has resulted in teams with limited or poor digital experience, basic skills and little time to build capacity. CMOs should carry out a Digital Skills Audit as a matter of priority.
• Investing in customer engagement strategy: Much of our marketing strategy is built around maximising the value of channels. It’s time to stop this nonsense. We need to map customer journeys and then invest in engagement that adds value to the customer experience at key “moments of truth”. This means stepping away from the channel. Even if that channel is “digital first”. 

Have your say

What have I missed? What have I mis-read? What else needs to be improved?

Marketing Transformation Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics Analytics Automation Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Quantum Computing Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service developer Metaverse VR Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Chief Executive Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Operating Officer

Analysis of Intuit's Acquisition of Elastic Intelligence

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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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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Late last week the news came out, that Intuit had acquired Elastic Intelligence, maker of the Connection Cloud product - one of the few cross platform, cloud enabled BI solutions in the market. Intuit will use Connection Cloud to complement capabilities of their QuickBase solution.

 

We look at this event from the Future of Work, Data to Decisions and Consumerization of IT perspective - respectively through the lenses of our analysts Holger Mueller and Alan Lepofsky. Click here to navigate down to the Advice and Point of View sections.

 

The Collaboration Take

 

One of the basic tenets of enterprise collaboration software is that it allows people to work together to achieve a common goal. Example goals include planning an event, creating marketing material, closing a sales deal, or any one of a thousand other use-cases where people work together to get their jobs done. Without a consistent structure for entering information, the data in these collaboration platforms becomes difficult to search, filter and report on. Products that use form-based entry solve this issue by having people enter information into specific fields rather than into a blank wiki page, blog entry or community forum.

 

Intuit QuickBase has been around for more than a decade, allowing people to create applications without having to be an application developer. The acquisition of Connection Cloud and its future integration with QuickBase should allow people to integrate data from other enterprise systems into the QuickBase applications they create.

 

For example, an organization may be able to create an application for the Sales team that pulls in data from both their CRM and their ERP system, allowing them to get an account overview that is not available in either of those systems on its own.

 

The SaaS Take

 

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the growth engine for enterprise applications in general. The unique nature of QuickBase is its capability to get end-users to build and maintain surprisingly elaborate business application. The extensive library of partners and building blocks gives QuickBase users a powerful but end user manageable arsenal of onality.

 

SaaS vendors need to continuously expand their capabilities and the addition of business intelligence functionality is a key value add for QuickBase.

 

The BigData Take

 

One of the biggest challenges for enterprises today is how to create value from big data projects. Though Connection Cloud does not necessarily fall under a big data play - the result of using the product can likely result in one. With the capability of using many of the leading SaaS OLTP products as a data source, Connection Cloud is one of the few products to provide out of the box cross SaaS product business intelligence... and with the combination of multiple OLTP sources - data volumes could quickly  move to (lower end) big data volumes.

 

It will be interesting to see if Intuit can capitalize on the big data trend - especially in the light of maintaining end user ease of use.

 

The  Enterprise Take

 

One of the most interesting developments in enterprise applications has been end user programming - for quite some time now. No vendor has really tackled the challenge with a workable solution - but Intuit is one of the closer vendors to successfully address the topic with QuickBase.

 

Through the combination of the existing applications and the capabilities of Connected Cloud, which enable more business intelligence content, Intuit’s lead in this area will be solidified. And it makes a whole new set of applications possible. While previously all OLTP vendors had a  lock on BI and reporting solutions to run on their own application and product framework - it may now be possible to build QuickBase applications on top of that. This gives QuickBase a new value proposition to build applications.

 

Another possibility is, that Intuit will not use Connected Cloud solely for the pedestrian reporting and BI needs - but to extract more data from the SaaS OLTP applications. This would make the integration of QuickBase with SaaS OLTP easier and again open new dimensions of QuickBase application scope.

 

However, like before - Intuit will have to address the write back problem. Right now QuickBase makes it easy to build one way applications, in the sense that you take data from another system, import it and work on it in QuickBase.

 

Likewise it supports island applications with self contained data storage in QuickBase.  What Intuit needs to address are circle applications that will allow users to start in 3rd party applications, provide value through a QuickBase application and then return that back to that (or another) 3rd party application. Or better for QuickBase - start there, hand over data to 3rd party, process something there, and then return to QuickBase. It  matters in enterprise applications where business processes get started and lead to final outcomes.

 

 

Advice For Customers

 

This is good news for QuickBase customers, who get key capabilities added to the product. It’s time to re-evaluate scope of your existing QuickBase applications and see how the additional capabilities will add value to these solutions. Likewise, with the expanded capabilities it’s time to see which new applications you may decide to build with QuickBase.

On the flipside - the formerly amicable relationship between Elastic Cloud and SaaS OLTP vendors, may now change given QuickBase’s competitive status for the overall enterprise applications landscape. So monitor how many connections the Connected Cloud product will have when run by Intuit.

 

Advice For Partners

 

This is exciting news and as customers revisit their application portfolio, you should review your product roadmaps and service offerings. How can the future additional capabilities of QuickBase make your offerings stronger and more attractive in the market, how can these capabilities help address new automation areas? These and similar questions should be addressed quickly.

 

Advice For Competitors

 

You should not be surprised, as Intuit will keep investing into QuickBase. You will need a strategy to address the power of end user programming and the disruptive nature of that trend to the conventional enterprise applications space - may they be SaaS or classic on premise applications. Intuit (and others) have not fully figured out this one yet - but someone will come along sooner than later and you need to be ready. While Elastic Intelligence enhances Intuit’s integration capabilities, they are still weak on collaboration/enterprise social networking features. In today’s “social business era”, vendors than provide a strong set of collaboration features such as Liking, Commenting, Rating and Sharing should utilize this as a competitive advantage.

 

Advice for Intuit

 

This is a great move, you will have to make sure you integrate the more complex BI capabilities in a user friendly way into QuickBase - and make them configurable, usable and extendable by a skilled business end user. Likewise you need to address the circle natured applications we mentioned earlier. Intuit’s next acquisition should focus on improving their enterprise social networking capabilities, enabling people to create, collaborate on and share information in QuickBase applications.

 

OurPOV

 

A good acquisition by Intuit, that helps further differentiate QuickBase. Adding new additional scope to its current application scope with business intelligence capabilities, provides  QuickBase with extended usage attractiveness to both customers and partners. Keeping QuickBase easy and intuitive to use is the emerging challenge. We look forward to hearing more details on roadmap, pricing and availability.

 

Data to Decisions Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bed Fellows

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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When revisiting the Oracle earnings call of this week, it is pretty obvious that Oracle is trying to position Oracle 12c pretty much everywhere as the cloud database of choice. And not only position and try to sell – but make it an integral part of the cloud tech stack of well-known partners (NetSuite), lesser known partners (salesforce) and even competitors (Microsoft).

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

Is Oracle 12c the end of multi-tenancy as we knew it?

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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Oracle released it's Q4 numbers, and the usual strong but entertaining statements on achievements and the competition were heard on the earnings call. Andrew Nusca over at ZDNet has done a great job to extract the 25 striking things from that call, you can find it here. You can find the webcast here and a transcript here.

During the call Larry Ellison also gave a preview of events scheduled for next week in regard to the next Oracle database release, Oracle 12c. Oracle 12c was announced back at OpenWorld in 2012 - as the first pluggable database that would separate user data from metadata and allow multiple tenants in the same database.

Multi-tenancy Confusion

There is  now some confusion around the term multi-tenancy. Though in general there is agreement that multi-tenancy means the co-existence of multiple tenants for shared resources - there are now two interpretations of the term.

The classic multi-tenancy term was related to the database sharing data elements (or records) across tenants. That design was critical for the first and early SaaS vendors - as they needed to share precious data base resources. Often this is referred to as a tenant striped database. 

The Oracle view on multitenancy is that user data becomes the tenant - and as you can run multiple user data stores (or containers as Oracle calls them) in the same database - you have a multi-tenant database. Oracle complements this by separating the metadata from the user data and can point multiple user data stores to a common set of metadata, thus achieving better hardware utilization and with that better elasticity of the database. Or in other words - you can run more database on the same server with 12c.

The key advantages of 12c

As already mentioned above, the separation of the user data from the meta data allows 12c to use less resource than its predecessors and with that a better hardware utilization. Better hardware utilization with putting  more user data on the same machines is better elasticity of the offering, which is key for anything cloud these days.

But there are  more key advantages to this tenant concept. First of all, the standard tool you may want to run on the database are still available to run - with no changes to the the security model. A BI tool like e.g. .SAP's Business Objects can just run on the 12c database - with no modification. To the user its just looking at the database as with no multitenancy. In the striped multi-tenancy case the unmodified tool would give access to all tenants data - something clearly not desirable if you want to stay in business as a SaaS vendor.

Moreover you can move and copy the user data more easily. And you can change the schema both on the metadata and user data separately - and then just point upgraded versions to the right partners of metadata and user data. Big advantage for upgrades and high availability.

And finally most enterprise software needs some way to customize it. With the striped multi-tenancy model this was very limited - as all tenants were on the same schema. With the new multi-tenancy architecture - more can be done to the individual schemas of a tenant. Theoretically anything and independent from the tenants - but of course with a price when upgrading, no discussion needed.

Is this new?

Not really - most SaaS and PaaS vendors today will store one tenants data in a separate database, often even on separate servers. The advantages are  mentioned beforehand - and often database scalability even drives to that design (more about that next week). But these vendors pay the price with a higher operating cost -- all their databases run with the overhead of a one to one relationship of user and metadata - which results in a larger footprint and with that higher cost to operate and less elasticity. 

Oracle's innovation is to provide the separation of meta data and user data from each other and achieving better elasticity for the offering. If Oracle will be able to make the upgrade to 12c transparent in the sense that a pre 12c Oracle database user may take advantage of 12c easily and e.g. be able to unstripe the older usage - will remain to be seen. It will make adoption of 12c much easier.  

Big expectations

Larry Ellison mentioned events next week to provide more details on 12c - and the endorsement of NetSuite, salesforce and... Microsoft. And while NetSuite was hardly a surprise - salesforce was more surprising. But Ellison had almost kind words for Marc Benioff. Now what Microsoft may do here - will be very interesting - expect lots of speculation till the event.

MyPOV

Oracle was not shy to tout 12c back at OpenWorld and now in the Q4 earnings call. With missed earnings - maybe a diversion strategy - but when 12c ships - it will change multi-tenancy as we knew it. And can't wait for the partnership announcements Oracle said the company would make next week. Heightened expectations. 

My latest take on Oracle overall can be found here - takeaways from the Oracle analyst summit. 

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How hard is multi channel CRM in 2013?

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I have previously shared my not so optimal experience installing Office365 from Microsoft, and raised my concerns on the status of customer service in this post. But the OfficeSaga Part 1 kept giving through the last week - so it compelled me to write a little more on the state of multi-channel CRM in 2013 - which seems to be pretty sad. Here is the new storify collection. 

During the heyday of CRM in the late 90ies of last century, it was all about the chase to treat customers consistently across interaction channels and across organizational functions. The demo of the informed sales rep, who aware of a customer service / customer support situation, steers to a sensitive customer interactions, was seen at every CRM show / demo. Likewise the mirror scenarios - where customer service professionals are made aware of impending sales and treat the customer accordingly. Seen too often to ever forget. 

In 2013 the situation has gotten a little more complex - as customers can not only be interacted with face to face and through the phone, but they may also show up at your web store and in the social media. But still the promise of multi-channel - or often as a buzzword now omni-channel - CRM is that the customer will be treated consistently across the interation channels and all actors on the enterprise side are informed across organizational boundaries.

 

The test: Install Office365

 

As mentioned I chronicled already my close to 24 hour challenge to install Microsoft Office. But the case was closed with my 3rd install - with the help of Microsoft 3rd party support. But in the week after the surprises started.

 

In-Function Disconnects

 

I was surprised when the first 3rd level support consultant was following up with me on the successful install of Office365. That would be great customer service if indeed I had not been successful installing Office365 - but I was successful. And I referenced the case number in the interaction with the second 3rd party engineer.

But ok - giving the benefit of the doubt I replied with thanks and good news. After all my lesson learnt from this is - get to 3rd level support asap - good to have a relationship with two 3rd level support professionals at Microsoft.

And then witness my surprise that the same engineer followed up again - a day later with the same question - if all was good with my Office365 installation...  at this point I decided to no longer reply.

What should have happened in perfect CRM? The agents should have looped back with me if my Office365 is running well now. They also could have called me - as they have all my phone numbers - even more personal, but ok.

 

Surveys are great - they need to work

The OfficeSaga Part 2 got even more lively - when I started to receive links to feedback surveys. 

Great practice - only the first two links didn't work. Using Chrome first I was suspecting a potential Mirosoft issue and tried IE - also no luck. Back to Twitter and tell @Office - and what do I get on Twitter - the next non working link. Than nothing.

The next day I get my 3rd request to fill out a feedback survey - which then worked - both in Chrome and IE. 

And it sounds plausible to test links to sites / surveys before you send them to customers. And if you have a Twitter conversation - granted it's a challenged one due to the 140 char limitation - don't end it - drive it to closure.

 

More in function disconnects

The highlight and by now the last one I hope - was getting a call from a sales rep for the Small Business Division, if I wanted to buy the Office365 version for small business, as my free trial had expired. 

 

 

Looks like a very good sales practice - only I had purchased one year subscription already when I switched laptos - pondering the eventuality that I was not allowed to switch machines during the free trial period... 

And similar like the service rep who should have known that the case was closed - the sales rep should have saved the call to me as I had purchase Office365 already.

 

Advice to CRM users

If you sell and service customers across channels - do so consistently. If you haven't recently - test your systems from the outside - and hopefully you do not run into negative surprises.

 

Advice to CRM vendors

Check if you multi-channel story is complete and working. Do all users interacting with a customer have consistent information and access to the customer's past interactions?  Check your timed actions - are they still in synch with business reality? Can users quickly validate the latest status of a customer before interacting with the customer?
aaa

 

MyPOV

It looks to me that the state of multi-channel CRM is in a more dire state than I thought. If an enterprise like Microsoft, who is also a vendor of CRM systems, does not have a best in class implementation of CRM - hab bad may this be with regular end users? 
And yes - consistent multi-channel CRM is hard - but what customers expect and deserve in 2013.  Time to make it real.

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Bridging the Social Chasm

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

When IBM’s Center for Business Value released its 2011 report into the relationship between social media, marketing and brands, it revealed a “perception gap”. On the one hand, marketers had an understanding that their connected consumers “wanted” or even “expected” a certain style of interaction through social media. And on the other hand, there was the hard reality of what those customers actually wanted. The gap between the two was the distance between two competing realities.

But is anyone listening?

In reality, we are not really dealing with a gap. It could be better described as a “mismatch” – after all, a “gap” would indicate some alignment. But the problem for brands is that the distance between the two sets of expectations is growing. We are now dealing with a widening chasm in the world of customer experience.

Two years after IBM’s original report, even a casual investigation of most branded social media would indicate that the chasm is becoming more pronounced as brands continue to shift their marketing spend and resources into digital and social media (Gartner’s US Digital Marketing Spending Report indicates that 25% of the marketing budget is now devoted to digital).

But when it comes to business effectiveness, more budget is not necessarily always the answer (though there would be few marketers who would refuse an increase, I am sure). To bridge the social chasm, business must begin to re-think, re-action and re-calibrate their organisational approach to social:

• Re-think: Start with what you know. Create a new social baseline and audit all your activity for assessment. Real time analytics and dashboards such as those from Anametrix can provide the kinds of decision-ready data that is essential to informed decision-making

• Re-calibrate: If you have started a social business program in the last two years, it’s now worthwhile assessing its impact. Have you achieved the original milestones? Has the program had the kind of impact that you expected? Take a look at R “Ray” Wang’s 50 use cases that help demystify social business and think through the business processes and workflows that are business critical. Are your social programs impacting business results? If not, it may be time to recalibrate.

• Re-action: This is no time for social business fatigue. No one ever said that change was easy. And equally, no business achieved competitive advantage by being complacent. It’s time to re-action the business programs that are core to your strategy.

What’s your experience?

Interestingly, this recent workplace research study by Microsoft revealed that there is also a chasm between business management and the workforce. Teams not only expect or demand more collaboration – about 17% of people are actively ignoring IT policy and installing social tools independently. This is delivering some value to the business – with 60 percent of participants in the Microsoft study indicating that their use of social tools has increased productivity – but this would be a far cry from the billions of locked-in value that McKinsey Global Institute’s 2012 study revealed.

If businesses can’t work to unlock the value in the low hanging opportunities within their own business, how long will customers have to wait?

It seems like there are whole industries on the brink of disruption. Social may not be the driving force, but it could be the trigger.

Microsoft Social Tools in the Workplace Research Study by Mark Fidelman

 

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Getting Glass With Google Glass

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 I went with a friend of mine to the Google campus (known as the GooglePlex) to pick up his Google Glass.

MyPOV

It's certainly an interesting experience. It's really impressive how clear the display is and how good the camera is. The audio is a bit quiet. I would not call them "comfortable", but they are not invasive. I imagine after a day or two you probably forget you're wearing them.

Google Glass does not do anything my (Google) phone can't do (pics, video, directions, search, weather, stocks, etc), it just does it hands-free. It's important to note, this is NOT augmented reality yet, meaning the data is not yet being overlaid on top of the real world, just on a little display at the side of the glasses. I am sure there will be some amazing apps when these are really released. I'd love to see a golf GPS app!

My overall take is that the ability to have information easily accessible (or recordable) is clearly important. Having it displayed contextually (without the need to search) based on what you're seeing will be really powerful. Is Google Glass the final answer? Of course not. At some point we'll view information displayed on your own glasses or contact lenses, via holograms in the air in front of us, or eventually embedded directly into our eyes/brains. We'll look back at Google Glass similar to how we now view the original mobile phone (Motorola DynaTAC) or tablets (Apple Newton).

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