Upcoming Technologies Set To Change The Way We Interact With Our Surroundings

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…...

Read more

I can't wait for these technologies to be part of our daily lives.  Which do you want the most?

Tactus Technology, transparent physical buttons that rise up from a touchscreen surface



Leap Motion, control your computer in three dimensions using just your hand and finger movements  



Google Project Glass, augmented reality glasses



Samsung Youm, flexible screens for phones, tablets, etc.



Under Armour, dynamic clothing that can be a flexible display (just ahead to 40 seconds)

Waving Goodbye to Posterous

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. ...

Read more

I have long been a fan of Posterous. It was a platform that was ridiculously easy to use – and was a great introduction to social media for those who were (or remain) cautious of technology and online publishing.

But when Twitter acquired Posterous in 2012, it was only a matter of time before it was made redundant. And now we know that Posterous will be turned off on April 30, 2013. Making the announcement on the official Posterous blog, founder, Sachin Agarwal, thanked the users and supporters of Posterous and explained how to backup and download your site:

1. Go to http://posterous.com/#backup.
2. Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking “Request Backup” next to your Space name.
3. When your backup is ready, you’ll receive an email.
4. Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.

I’ve started the process of moving the various Posterous sites that I have created. I will probably move them to a WordPress site of some kind – when I have the time … but I do so a little sadly.

Posterous’ ease-of-use was a phenomenal wake-up call to the rest of the web world. It will be a shame to see it disappear. Let’s hope the Posterous focus on simplicity impacts the Twitter product roadmap. After all, we don’t need more features, we need a better experience in our use of technology. And for my money, simplicity it the key.

Repeat After Me - There Is No One Perfect Tool

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…...

Read more

I'm tired of people talking about how social software solves everything and call for the end of email.

Let me make my opinion perfectly clear: No one tool is perfect for all scenarios and no tool is effective without the right use-cases and process for using it.

Phones have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Email has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Forums/Communities have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Blogs have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Wikis have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
News Feeds/Activity Streams/Status Updates (social networks) have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Instant Messaging/Chat has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Web Conferencing/Hangouts have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
File sharing has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Social Bookmarking/Pinboarding has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Location based check-ins have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.

The list goes on.

Choose the right tool for the job.


 

Lead The Enterprise Revolution: 5 SharePoint Trends You’ll Want to Follow in 2013

Consumerization of IT, aka BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Movement
It’s so easy and convenient for business people to bring their own devices or even procure web-based tools that meet their business needs. Gone are the days of businesses fully relying and waiting on IT to provide them with a relevant solution.

Lightning Speed of Business
Our global economy and the exponential growth of technology have expedited business transactions worldwide. Sales cycles are shorter, immediate access to a global market is the norm, and the competitive barrier to entry has been lowered. Who would have imagined a viral video watched by 1.2 billion people worldwide in less than six months can generate $8M USD in ad revenue? Is your enterprise adequately equipped to adapt to this new reality?

Doing More with Less
The global economic crisis in the past few years has forced organizations to cut their expenditures and be more prudent in their investments. We are expected to do more with less. Thanks to technology platforms, such as SharePoint, doing more with less can certainly be achieved. However, unless business needs are strategically aligned with your SharePoint investment, it’s nothing but a glorified network share. Sound familiar?

Grassroots Social Collaboration
Gone are the days where you’ll pick up the phone or send an email to a subject matter expert asking for help. With the proliferation of consumer social tools, information workers are used to collaborating with their peers anytime, anywhere, with any device. How are we supporting this mode of collaboration in the enterprise?

Read the rest of the article at Digital WPC

What’s in Your Startup DNA

There’s plenty of hype around startups – and around the founders of those startups. We buy books (books, really? Yes!) written by startup entrepreneurs, attend talks, download podcasts and go to  conferences. Sometimes it can feel like meeting a rockstar rather than a business person.

But for every startup, there are countless others, often behind the scenes, who have helped drive those startup successes and the failures that they are built on.

This great presentation by Yevgeniy Brikman is the view from the front row. It talks about the nitty gritty of startups. It’s not the big ideas or the grand plans. It’s the stuff that makes the business tick. And it makes you think … what’s in your startup DNA – and how deep does that go.

Cornerstone for Salesforce: Optimizing CRM Investment

Alumni: Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Yvette Cameron was VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc. focusing on next generation HCM processes and technologies, and is founder of NextGen Insights. Yvette is now a Constellation Research alumna. , Title: Big Ideas CRM concepts will transform HCM processes for new levels of Employee Engagement and Business Results Companies are investing heavily to understand and optimize their customer relationships, but less so with their employee relationships. We must apply the tenets of CRM to HCM processes to understand, engage and align the workforce, because customer success begins with employee success. From “Command and Control” to “Engage and Inspire” Traditional work practices and business structures are evolving at an unparalleled rate. New thinking and disruptive…...

Read more

Since 2009, a small, independently operated but wholly owned subsidiary of Cornerstone OnDemand has been developing and delivering cloud-based LMS capabilities built natively on the Force.com platform (Salesforce.com’s platform for building enterprise applications).  Operating under the name “CyberU”, the solution went live on the AppExchange in October 2010, and now claims more than 70 clients including Marketo, LinkedIn, Virgin America, Box, and Salesforce.com which itself uses CyberU to deliver and track training for all internal and external users (the “extended enterprise”) globally.

Today, Cornerstone OnDemand announced the availability of “Cornerstone for Salesforce”, effectively rebranding CyberU and reinforcing its commitment to bringing learning and training directly into the business applications used by employees, partners and customers every day.

Cornerstone for Salesforce – a different focus

Where Cornerstone OnDemand has been focusing on enriching the capabilities and value proposition its talent suite (spanning the Recruiting Cloud, Learning Cloud, Performance Cloud and Extended Enterprise Cloud), the Cornerstone for Salesforce solution focuses on enriching the daily interactions taking place within the Salesforce applications with embedded training and development.

Bringing business intelligence, social and transactional support into enterprise business applications (like CRM, Financials, Manufacturing and others) reflects the trend toward more “purposeful applications”; a focus on “getting work done” more intuitively and effectively. The capabilities of Cornerstone for Salesforce reflect common learning management requirements, but the design intent is to have the LMS enable training and learning at the point where it is needed – i.e., while supporting a customer or while managing a sales opportunity – instead of having the LMS be “place you need to go for learning’’.

The Cornerstone for Salesforce capabilities include:

• eLearning, including instructor-led and virtual learning support;
• Certification and compliance for sales teams, employees, partners and customers;
• Individual and team development planning;
• Just-in-time training (training recommendations triggered from actions within the Salesforce application, such as changes in opportunity status, or when a new product is assigned to a sales or services team member);
• Individual and manager dashboard reporting and analytics;
• Social learning via integration with Salesforce Chatter;
• Embedded performance development and training through integration with Salesforce Work.com;
• A unified user experience and common reporting and analytics engine across the Salesforce platform; and
• Immediate integration with thousands of Salesforce AppExchange partners including hundreds offering support for eCommerce, surveys, assessments, and quizzes.

In addition to the capabilities mentioned above, consider also the extensibility of the Cornerstone platform. Unlike the packaged service offerings of yesterday’s legacy software (where custom development is repurposed to other clients through a pre-packaged consulting engagements), SaaS providers like Cornerstone can develop custom code for clients – or provide the development platform for clients’ own use – and enable other clients to access these innovations through a downloadable library of solution extensions. SaaS by its nature accelerates the pace of innovation; an extensible platform amplifies that acceleration even more.  Not every SaaS vendor takes this approach today, but Cornerstone has been supporting this for years. Cornerstone for Salesforce  empowers its partners and customers with an extensible LMS platform.

My POV

The launch of Cornerstone for Salesforce  is an important move for Cornerstone as more and more organizations look to the AppExchange and natively developed Force.com applications to extend their Salesforce.com investment.

Today Cornerstone supports three distinct platform offerings:  Cornerstone OnDemand, Cornerstone for Salesforce, and CSB (formerly Sonar6).  Rather than being distractions, I expect each offering will inform the other with best practices and lessons learned.  (We’ve seen this already, as the innovative “helicopter review” from the CSB solution is making its way into the Cornerstone Performance Cloud; and the domain expertise from the Cornerstone Learning cloud heavily influenced initial Cornerstone for Salesforce capabilities).

The Cornerstone OnDemand suite and CSB solution will continue to be important options for buyers in the HCM marketplace.  For Salesforce.com customers, a new option has emerged.

Cornerstone for Salesforce is a market-tested solution, with large clients (such as Salesforce.com) relying upon it today for learning and training across their extended enterprise.  Cornerstone for Salesforce should be on the shortlist of any Salesforce customer seeking intuitive, contextual learning and development support for its employees, partners and customers.

Filed under: Cloud, Cornerstone OnDemand, HCM, Learning and Development, Mobile/Social, SaaS HCM, Salesforce.com, Talent Management Tagged: Apps Strategy, Cloud, constellation research, Cornerstone OnDemand, CSB, CSOD, future of work, HCM, HR Tech, LMS, Mobile, Next Generation apps, SaaS, salesforce.com, Social, Social Enterprise, Social Learning, Software as a service, Talent Management, yvette cameron

News Analysis: Adobe Behances The Creative Class With $150M Community Acquisition

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…...

Read more

Behance Empowers The Creative Cloud To Make Ideas Happen

On December 20th, 2012, Silicon Valley based Adobe Systems announced the acquisition of Behance, a digital portfolio and community site for creative professionals.  Constellation sources estimate the purchase price north of $150M.  Founded in 2006, the SoHo, New York based company raised 6.5M in May 2012 from Union Square Ventures prior to the acquisition.  The acquisition expands two key areas for the Adobe Customer Experience set of offerings:

• 1. Empowers the creative class through connetivity. CEO and Founder of Behance, Scott Belsky noted that, “The creative industry has always been plagued with inefficiency and disorganization. But when we come together, we can use connectivity and transparency to our advantage. The prospect of using Adobe’s reach to connect the entire creative community is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to empower the creative world.”
  
  Point of View (POV): Behance is LinkedIn meets Pinterest for the creative class.  Since 2006, this people to people (P2P) driven creative community showcases and celebrates over 3 million projects and 30 million images.  A host of curated galleries, smartly designed iPhone apps, online store, and rich developer API power the community platform.  Among the design community, Behance is the dominant independent resource to showcase past projects.

• 2. Expands creative and design market leadership.  Adobe provides the creative tools for design through Creative Suite.  Behance focuses on discovery, inspiration, and collaboration.  Scott Belsky stated “If the tools we use to create are connected with how we showcase and discover creative work, we can help usher in a new era of idea exchange and collaborative creation.  It’s about time our tools integrated with the way we discover, inspire and collaborate. For too long, the creative world has struggled with a disconnected creative process. Creation should be inherently collaborative – and must evolve more frequently than typical software upgrade cycles.”
  
  (POV): At this point in time, Creative Cloud has not enabled public sharing between clients and teams.  Yet, Behance changes this approach and supports public sharing.  Users will expect Adobe to integrate Behance with Adobe’s Creative Cloud starting with easier content sharing from Creative Cloud and Adobe apps.  If Adobe successfully integrates the two products, customers will win as the synergies should lead to the empowerment and enablement of creative meritocracy.

The Bottom Line: Adobe Ups The Ante In The Battle For Customer Experience

Adobe, IBM, and Oracle are in a three way horse race to dominate the customer experience management space.  Today Behance acquisition widens Adobe’s lead in the creative tools and communities space.  As Adobe expands in the marketing and design side of customer experience equation, IBM and Oracle focus on the process automation, analytics, and traditional execution areas of marketing and commerce.  Fortunately for the vendors and unfortunately for most customers, one can not purchase a complete suite from within one vendor.  Hence, customers will be working with a patchwork of solutions in order to deliver end to end customer experience and digital marketing transformation for the foreseeable future.  Early adopters and fast followers will pave the way while cautious adopters will wait or vendors to acquire and integrate the suite.

Your POV.

How are you showcasing your creative portfolio?   Where do you look for design inspiration? Do you have an idea what tools are more effective than others?  Will you still stay with Behance post Adobe?  Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your business strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
• Considering a crowdsourcing and prediction markets strategy
• Developing your social business/digital marketing  strategy
• Designing a data to decisions strategy
• Create a new vision of the future of work
• Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
• Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy

Related Research:

• Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise
• Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions
• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012 #CRME12
• Trends: The Battle for CMO Mindshare
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musing: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement
• Friday’s Features: Using Attensity Analyze 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For @united @southwestair @virginamerica
• Event Report: Lithium Network Conference 2012 #LiNC
• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
• News Analysis: Lithium Technologies Adds $53M in Financing
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Product Review: Google+, Consumerization of IT, and Crossing The Chasm For Enterprise Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• News Analysis: Salesforce.com Acquires Radian6 For $316M
• Monday’s Musings: Q1 2011 State of Social CRM and CRM From An EMEA Point Of View
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• News Analysis: Jive Fills Warchest, Ready to Battle Enterprise Software Giants And IPO?
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• News Analysis: Lithium’s Acquisition of Scout Labs Ups The Ante in Social CRM
• News Analysis: Biz360 Acquisition Signals Attensity Group’s Move Into Social CRM
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position
• News Analysis: Jive and Radian6 Partner – Great For Business, But Could Fragment IT Systems
• Event Report: Salesforce.com Pushes Social CRM Technology — But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• Personal Log: Altimeter Group – Helping Organizations Bridge The Technology Obsolescence Gap
• Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

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 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!

Video: Maximize #Project2013 with #Office365 for Project Management Success #pmot #sharepoint

How to Drive Sustainable SharePoint Adoption in Your Organization

News Analysis: Oracle Bets Long on Acme Packet for IP Communications

Alumni: Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.  Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his well…...

Read more

On February 4, 2013 Oracle announced that it was purchasing Bedford, MA based Acme Packet for $1.7 billion. Acme Packet will be a division within the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit. 80% of this unit’s revenues comes from the carrier business, 20% is in the enterprise space. With Oracle’s gigantic software footprint and the mega trends outlined above, Oracle has an opportunity to propel Acme Packet’s SBC sales into all areas of Oracle’s broad software business.

Initially, there was some surprise about this acquisition: why would Oracle, a software company, buy Acme Packet, a networking company? Constellation believes the acquisition is a highly strategic move on Oracle’s part that deserves some explaining.  This point of view is based on my own knowledge of the networking and communications space, and information from fellow analyst Ray Wang, who follows Oracle on the software side.  The acquisition is significant for a few reasons:

•  Oracle seeks to  improve  its communications middleware.  Acme Packet provides session delivery network solutions.  These solutions offer secure delivery of next-generation voice, data, and unified communications services and applications across IP networks.  The company has over 1900 customers across service providers and enterprises.

• Point of view (POV): While one doesn’t run across Oracle at all in the enterprise communications market, Oracle does have a strong carrier business built around OSS and BSS systems. In addition, the company has leading CRM, HCM, ERP, PoS, and other enterprise business software solutions.  Buying Acme Packet is a foundational part of Oracle’s consumerization of technology strategy. Acme Packet’s session border controller (SBC) products provide security for IP-based communications along with gateway capabilities that enable the different carriers’ implementation of IP- based voice protocols to interoperate with one another.

•  Acme Packet enables Oracle To address consumerization of technology for key industries. In many industries such as technology, healthcare, communications, and government, there is a need to prioritize message delivery.  For example, delivering a 911 call should have more priority than a download of a movie on a network.  In other cases, bring your own technology to work requires new techniques for successfully delivering voice and data.

•  POV: On the mobile device front, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will soon become the standard way voice traffic is carried from mobile handsets. VoLTE is an all IP technology, eliminating reliance on the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Acme Packet’s SBCs are critical for security and routing of this kind of communications traffic.  In the broader communications space, reliance on the PSTN decreases almost daily. Wireline telephony companies are continually reporting fewer and fewer subscribers in nearly every country. As enterprise communications and consumer communications transition to all IP technology, SBCs are necessary.

An emerging development in the web browser space is the introduction of WebRTC in which the capability to communicate using voice and video will be native to the browser. This means that there will no longer need to be browser plugins (i.e. Google Hangouts) or third-party software (i.e. Skype) needed for voice and video over IP. One can imagine a world in which a billion browsers are instantly communications-enabled, on all types of devices including PCs, tablets, smartphones, and new form factors yet to be developed. Securing all of these IP communications streams and transcoding between the different communications protocols is where Acme Packet is the market leader.