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… Read more

Thank You For Your Support

SoftwareInsider.org generated almost 10 million page views in 2012 (see Figure 1).  This does not include syndication through Constellation Research, Forbes (discontinued in 2012), Enterprise Irregulars, Computerworld UK, and other great media partners.

Figure 1.  Software Insider Achieved 9.8M Page Views for 2012

Classic Posts Address The Key Fundamentals In The Disruptive Technology Shift

Four posts have made the all time favorite list and address the 5 consumer technology forces that influence enterprise software.

1. Monday’s Musings: How The Five Consumer Tech Macro Pillars Influence Enterprise Software Innovation
2. Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM and The New Rules of Relationship Management
3. Tuesday’s Tip: Understanding the Many Flavors of Cloud Computing
4. Best Practices: Five Simple Rules for Social Business

2012 Top 40 Reflects A Broader Shift To Business Outcomes And Technology Adoption

Analyst Relations and the World of Influence - The top blog post of 2013 discussed the future of the industry analyst versus legacy analyst firms.

• 1. Event Report: IIAR UK Forum – The Future of the Industry Analyst (Legacy vs Disruptive)

Consumerization of Technology and The New C-Suite – The impact of technology on the C-suite has never been greater.  As business strategy relies more on technology, CMOs, CFOs, and other line of business heads can expect to work more closely with the CIOs and CTOs.

• 7.  Trends: The Battle For CMO Mind Share

• 13. Monday’s Musings: Why Are Innovative CIOs Betting Less On Cloud And Virtualization?

• 21. Monday’s Musings: Understand the Four Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption

• 22. Quark Summary: What CFO’s Need To Know About SaaS And Cloud Integration

• 25.Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Five C’s of Customer Engagement

Data to Decisions- Big data took the market by storm in 2012.  2013 will be more about how to go from data to decisions as organizations hope to move from insight to decision management.

• 10. Monday’s Musings: Beyond The 3 V’s Of Big Data – Viscosity And Virality

• 11. Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real Time, Achieve Right Time

• 19. Friday’s Features: Using Attensity 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For United, Southwest Air, and Virgin America

• 20.Tuesday’s Tip: The Big Question In Big Data Is… What’s The Question?

• 36.  Vendor Events: Putting Big Data Streaming And Analytics To Work

• 38. Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Randy Guard, SAS Institute

• 39.  News Analysis: Tidemark Gains 24M in Series C Funding, Redpoint Ventures Leads Round

Digital Marketing Transformation- The shift to digital from analog has hit marketing.  How CMO’s move to support new digital marketing techniques focus on the technology and policies required for success.

• 7.  Trends: The Battle For CMO Mind Share

• 9. Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

• 11. Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real Time, Achieve Right Time

• 12. Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business

• 30.  Monday’s Musings: Why Customers and Prospects Expect Clearer Rules About Content Marketing

The Future of Work - Where you work, what you work on, when you work, and why you work are changing.  A key area has been social business and the impact on performance and getting work done.

• 9. Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

• 15. Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement

• 23.  News Analysis: The Implications Of Oracle’s Acquisition of Taleo

• 35.  Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With The Real Problem In Social Business Adoption: The People

Matrix Commerce – A new paradigm has shifted around the buyer.  These buyer centric models drive the future of commerce as payment options, channels, demand signals, supply chains, frictionless enablers, and big data converge.

• 9. Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

• 11. Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real Time, Achieve Right Time

• 25.Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Five C’s of Customer Engagement

Next Generation Customer Experience – An overwhelming series of posts focused on transforming customer experiences.  This new world of customer experience is changing expectations and influencing customer interactions.

• 2. Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons Learned In Customer Experience

• 4. News Analysis: Kana Enters MidMarket With Trinicom Acquisition

• 8. Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012

• 9. Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

• 11. Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real Time, Achieve Right Time

• 12. Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business

• 14. News Analysis: Lithium Technologies Add $53M In Financing

• 15. Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement

• 16. Product Review: SAPs Recalls App – The Cross Over From Enterprise To Consumer Begins

• 19. Friday’s Features: Using Attensity 6.0 To Compare Customer Sentiment For United, Southwest Air, and Virgin America

• 24. Event Report: Lithium Network Conference 2012 (LINC)

• 25.Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Five C’s of Customer Engagement

• 26. Event Report: Clarabridge Customer Connections 2012

• 29. News Analysis: Informatica Launches MDM 9.5

• 33.  Research Summary: Best Practices – Consolidated CRM Deployments Drive Paths To Modernization and Social CRM #SCRM

• 35.  Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With The Real Problem In Social Business Adoption: The People

• 37.  News Analysis: IFS Acquires Metrix To Boost Mobility and Service Management

• 40. Event Report: Dreamforce X (#df12) Emergees As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For  The Enterprise

Tech Optimization and Innovation – Saving money on the cost of technology ownership drove most of the top posts for 2013.

• 6. Quark Summary: Does SAP HANA Change Your Database Strategy For SAP Apps

• 13. Monday’s Musings: Why Are Innovative CIOs Betting Less On Cloud And Virtualization?

• 17. Tuesday’s Tip: Five Cloud/SaaS Contract Negotiation Tips For 2012

• 18. News Analysis: Usedsoft vs Oracle Ruling Opens Up Monopolistic Practices By Software Vendors

• 22. Quark Summary: What CFOs Need To Know About SaaS/Cloud Integration

• 27. Event Report: Pre-SapphireNow Questions Every Attendee Should Be Asking SAP

• 28. Research Summary: Three Simple Software Maintenance Strategies That Can Save You Millions

• 29. News Analysis: Informatica Launches MDM 9.5

• 31. News Analysis: Spinnaker Expands JD Edwards Support With Versytec Acquisition

• 33. Research Summary: Best Practices – Consolidated CRM Deployments Drive Paths To Modernization and Social CRM #SCRM

• 34. Tuesday’s Tip: Act Now To Leave The Door Open For SAP Third Party Maintenance Options

Technology Policy and Channels – The Washington Ideas Forum garnered the most interest along with consumer privacy.

• 3.  Event Report: Washington Ideas Forum Highlights America’s Current Challenges In Technology Policy

• 12. Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business

• 32. Event Report: Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 #WPC12

Mergers and Acquisitions – Kana, Oracle and IFS acquisitions raised the most interest in 2012.

• 4. News Analysis: Kana Enters MidMarket With Trinicom Acquisition

• 23.  News Analysis: The Implications Of Oracle’s Acquisition of Taleo

• 37.  News Analysis: IFS Acquires Metrix To Boost Mobility and Service Management

Executive Profiles – Brad Smith of Intuit and Randy Guard of SAS Institute took top slots in these profiles on Cloud Computing and Social Business.

• 5. Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Brad Smith, Intuit

• 38. Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Randy Guard, SAS Institute

Your POV.

What was your favorite post of 2012?  Are you ready for 2013? Submit for the 2013 SuperNova Awards at SuperNovaAwards (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

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 developing your disruptive technology adoption strategy.

Disclosures

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!

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… Read more

The Inside Story On Oracle Fusion Apps At The End of 2012

Constellation sat down with Steve Miranda, Oracle’s Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development to discuss the state of Oracle Fusion Apps in a no-holds barred honest conversation about what’s working, what’s not, and what to look forward to in 2013.

R “Ray” Wang (RW): Steve Miranda is Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development. He is responsible for leading all aspects of product strategy, product development, and product delivery for Oracle’s applications and related cloud services. This includes Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle’s newest products for customer service and support, commerce, and talent management.

Mr. Miranda joined Oracle in 1992 and has held a variety of leadership positions within the development organization. In 2007 he was asked to lead the engineering of Oracle’s next-generation suite of software applications, Oracle Fusion Applications. Under Mr. Miranda’s leadership, Oracle has continually delivered on its promise to help its applications customers innovate and remain competitive while leveraging their existing IT investments and increasing the value of those investments with new Oracle products and services.

Prior to Oracle, Mr. Miranda worked at GE Aerospace. He holds degrees in mathematics and computational sciences from Stanford University.

CATCHING UP ON ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS TRACTION

(RW): As 2012 is coming to an end it is a good time to reflect on how Oracle Fusion Applications has been doing this year. It would seem that Oracle’s been quite quiet about Oracle Fusion Applications throughout the year. Is the product selling? What’s the state of the Oracle Fusion Applications product lines?

Steve Miranda(SM): Oracle Fusion Applications is doing very well. We’re actively selling the product. In fact, we already have over 400 customers on Oracle Fusion Applications. We’re doing better than Salesforce.com when they started. Keep in mind, we have a rich customer base looking for innovation.

RW: When you say “Oracle Fusion Applications is selling well”, is that the whole suite or components of Oracle Fusion Applications?

SM: We are actively selling the product. More than 400 customers are on Oracle Fusion Applications, that’s any part of Oracle Fusion Applications, not including RightNow, Taleo, Oracle Business Analytics, or Oracle Fusion Middleware. Two thirds of the customers have chosen to deploy in a SaaS model. Then the second largest deployment model but far below are on-premise and the rest are hosted in our managed services.

RW: Does “managed services” means they own their own license, right?

SM: That’s correct. What’s powerful about these deployments patterns is that customers are accessing innovation faster than before. We are at over 100 live customers and are averaging one go-live a day right now.

RW: I understand that Oracle deployed Oracle Fusion Applications internally? How was that experience in “drinking your own champagne”?

SM: Ray, that’s correct. We did drink our own champagne and we are now using Oracle Fusion CRM internally instead of Siebel.. We have a global single instance for the business. When we deployed, we started out with 2 instances to show case a co-existence approach and an end-to-end Oracle Fusion Applications approach. As of June 1, 2012, Oracle Fusion CRM was up around the world. All the territories, forecasting, quotas, sales force automation, and contacts are in Oracle Fusion CRM globally.

RW: Is it one instance now?

SM: Yes. We also went live w/ Oracle Fusion Financials Accounting Hub on the back end. We replaced Hyperion and Oracle E-Business Suite GL and also went live June 1, 2012. We’ve already done several month-end closes and we also have Oracle Fusion Talent Performance Management up live. Employees and managers are now doing goal setting and appraisals.

RW: To be honest with you Steve, we aren’t seeing Oracle much in head to head competitive new deals. We don’t see big press releases about new wins. Where are the customers? Who’s buying what and why?

SM: Well, first of all, many of our existing customers are coming to us about Oracle Fusion Applications. Second of all, and you may not believe this, we’re not focused on publicity, but rather we want to ensure customer success.. Each go-live is very important to us. In our first set of go-lives, we have 10,000 customers who want to talk to the first 10 go lives. We also don’t want to overwhelm our initial customers.

Let me give you some details and examples so you understand the breadth and depth of what the Fusion Apps base looks like and so there’s no confusion. Here’s a selected slice:

CRM on SaaS

1. Green Mountain Coffee went live and uses it for resellers. This was a reimplementation. They also turned on Oracle Fusion Partner Relationship Management and the Microsoft Outlook integration.

2. Acorn Paper deployed Oracle Fusion Sales.

HCM on SaaS

1. Brocade Networks has Oracle E-Business Suite as their core HR product. They are also running Oracle Fusion Talent Management and Oracle Fusion Compensation Management in the cloud. They have been live for over nine months now.

2. Elizabeth Arden runs Talent and Core HCM in SaaS for their EMEA regions. Right now they have PeopleSoft in the US.

3. Zillow went live with SaaS HCM.

4. Principal Financials have been live for 2 years on Oracle Fusion Talent Management, Oracle Fusion Compensation and Oracle Fusion Procurement. They actually didn’t want to be in the cloud. They started in the cloud and are moving back on premise. This shows the power of Oracle being able to give customers choice of deployment options that do not lock them in. We extracted their SaaS data and then installed their on-premises instance. The next set of their talent reviews will be on-premise.

Why? Their culture is on-premises. Many financial services organizations want to own their software. To be clear, this wasn’t about customizing the software. This is not about security or regulatory. This is purely culture.

There’s also quite a demand for our managed services offerings in HR. And we beat Workday head to head because of our depth of functionality and global capabilities.

We also won UBS in Summer 2012 for core HR and benefits. A key reason – we passed security and regulatory review. We are going to host them out of our Ireland data center. We’re supporting massive staged environments.

At Society Generale we won core HR and we are also going to host them out of our Ireland data center.

Financials

On the financials product, we have had a number of Fusion Applications wins as well (yes all are on prem)

1. The PGA is on Oracle Fusion Financials GL and also went live w/ subledger accounting.

2. Shellpoint Partners runs Oracle Fusion Financials

3. Red Robin, the fast food chain is running Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications in parallel for inventory, subledger financials, HR Talent, and Payroll.

4. Keppel energy in Singapore runs Subledger Accounting in Oracle Fusion Financials

RW: This is a good list. So let me ask this again, why keep such a low profile? In a world of marketing hype, this doesn’t add up, especially in a valley full of chest thumping egos.

SM: Ray, you may find this hard to believe, but Oracle is going for credibility. We want to show where this works and we want to make sure our next wave of customers have no issues.

REVEALING THE REASON FOR THE LONG MARCH TO ORACLE FUSION APPS

RW: Let’s flash back 7 years ago when Oracle Fusion Applications was announced with great fan-fare at City Hall. You were “half-way”, what’s the back story?

SM: Today, we laugh about it, but in all seriousness, we started the clock too early. When we acquired PeopleSoft, we had a release of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). Then, we bought BEA, Siebel, and Hyperion. Each acquisition changed the targets.

RW: So you basically underestimated how much work it’d take?

SM: To be blunt, yes.

RW: If you had a chance to start all over, what would you have done different?

SM: If I had to do it over again, we would have gone to market sooner with less depth. Our original design point was to create a path for our existing customers facing a changing world. Scoping down a product did not make sense. Parity would instantly become an issue.

Yet, somehow, the world changed in the past 5 years. Customers are now more willing to give up other features and benefits for the cloud.

Instead, we had initially gone very deep. Then we decided to go to market sooner with less functionality and be credible. I’d admit, we misjudged how much to roll out and how much was needed. The design points have changed. We’ve also agreed not to announce products until they are released with successful customers.

RW: What’s the current go to market strategy? How do you plan to get customers and prospects excited about Oracle Fusion Applications? What’s worked so far?

SM: First of all, we are avoiding the hype. It may seem hard to believe that Oracle’s been under hyping their achievements. We learned from the Oracle Fusion Applications announcement 8 years ago. Maybe we had a severe reaction, but we focus on making the customer successful. The software has to work. We keep the conversations honest. We show how we’ve been good partners. We show how we’ve made it successful. We’re delivering. That’s the message we’re getting out there.

LEARNING WHEN AND WHY ORACLE FUSION APPS WINS.

RW: Okay, let’s say I agree with you that earning credibility makes sense. Why is Oracle Fusion Applications winning? Let’s go head to head with some popular vendors like Salesforce.com, SAP, and Workday.

SM: Versus Salesforce.com – we lose when customers want to go the cloud and don’t need Outlook integration. But if you want more than just contact management, and it’s not just about sales productivity we win because of our ability to deliver territories, sales campaigns, and quota.

Versus SAP – when the customer is interested in enterprise cloud that’s why we are winning. We win on cloud because we have more depth and breadth. Taleo takes on SuccessFactors head on.

Versus Workday – EU regulations (e.g. Societe Generale and UBS). When we do the functional bake off versus SaaS competitors and our customers want a deep functional product. We compare well. Our UI is new enough and good enough. The tablet stuff or Outlook Integration in CRM also shows well.

ANSWERING THAT HAIRY ISSUE ABOUT MULTI-TENANCY

RW: Steve, you used the term SaaS quite loosely at Oracle. Not that I’m a SaaS bigot, but multi-tenancy is a common requirement in the definition of SaaS by many analysts. What’s the status of Oracle Fusion Applications being delivered with an option for multi-tenancy?

SM: Ray, we’re shooting for enterprise class and choice. We believe and many of our customers agree that we have better options than multi-tenancy. Time and time again, our clients express an aversion to co-mingling data. They want us to have a hard physical separation. They want us to have a virtual private database.

RW: Isn’t that really just multi-instance like Taleo and RightNow, which weren’t pure SaaS plays?

SM: If we can emulate the SaaS business model, the uptime, the benefits, and deliver a virtual private database, we think our customers will be happy with that. We have a SaaS business model. We give customers choices to take the product on-premises or even own their software if their culture dictates that. I think the choice angle is more powerful than the arcane details of multi-tenancy. The end result is similar. To be clear, Oracle Fusion CRM, Oracle Fusion HCM, and Oracle Fusion ERP are all multi-tenant SaaS solutions.

RW: We may disagree on definitions of SaaS where I believe we need multi-tenancy as a requirement for it to be SaaS, but I do agree with you that customers do want choice on deployment options. One key area we’re seeing in vendor selection is the ability to switch between the many options. This could be an important and key differentiator. Microsoft is the only other competitor who can allow their customers this level of choice in enterprise apps.

SM: I would agree with that.

RW: We’ve heard in the past about many problems stabilizing Oracle Fusion Applications for on-premise delivery. What’s the status of Oracle Fusion Applications being delivered on-premise.

SM: We’ve stabilized Oracle Fusion Apps for on-premises. Most ERP purchases are on-premises based on customer demand. Boeing Commercial bought Oracle Product Information Master (Item Master) and Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). Alcoa bought HCM on-premises. PGA and Activision are also on-premises.

CHARTING THE ORACLE INNOVATION PATH FOR FUSION APPS

RW: Constellation defines the five forces of consumerization as social, mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications? Oracle Fusion Applications was designed over 7 years ago. That was a different world and design point. What initiatives in the road map address these areas of innovation?

SM: One piece where this is going to weave a lot is with the customer experience (CX) messaging. Business happens today with a more fluid mix of social online and multi-channel. Go to social, online, m-commerce. A lot of industries in service will distinguish themselves with better customer experience. We think we can deliver this among the assets in social, collaboration, and marketing. Right now, customers have a single dashboard and call center. In the future they have to traverse different channels including Twitter, Facebook ,and Pinterest. You respond to a call and a tweet wherever and whenever.

RW: So tell me what’s Oracle’s Cloud strategy?

SM: Oracle’s building enterprise-grade cloud application that are designed to work as a suite. These first set of products is not as deep as Oracle E-Business Suite on globalization and they won’t support manufacturing. However, we aren’t going to lose the functionality and feature war.

RW: Where are you on social?

SM: The social component (or what was traditionally collaboration) are embedded into business process. You can’t do it after the fact. While we don’t cover everything today, we are focused on delivering social in business events.

RW: What about analytics and big data?

SM: Analytics is not an after thought but designed from the ground up. Oracle Fusion Business Intelligence was rearchitected at the middleware level.

RW: What about mobility?

SM: To be honest, we have still some work to do in mobility. We extended Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) to include ADF mobile. Now you can achieve write once and render natively in both iOS and Android. In addition to that we built a native iPad tablet app specifically to handle off-line scenarios and deliver a more native feel to the application (this is what we call Oracle Fusion Tap).

We also avoided making a bet on a mobile technology. We bet on a technology that allows us to move fast. #iPad was in the lead before. Now we focus on HTML5 and standards. Native needs to take advantage of the device capabilities such as the camera and the phone.

We still need to design for tablets and touch UI.

THE FUTURE OF ORACLE FUSION APPS

RW: What’s the strategy for Oracle Fusion Applications in vertical industries?

SM: Customers and partners can build on top of Oracle Fusion Applications using our platform as a service (PaaS) offering. You get the database container.

RW: What shall we expect in the next major release of Oracle Fusion Applications?

SM: Customers can expect stability. We won’t have major releases of Oracle Fusion Applications in the foreseeable future. We have incremental innovation. In fact, we changed our release nomenclature. We will release four quarterly releases and may even move to four months. This should provide a good cadence of incremental interactive development.

For the back office HR and Finance our goal is to support all geographies, legislative and regulatory, and globalization requirements.

On the front office side and supply chain, we’re going to build out more verticals. The key areas are Telco and pharma. For Supply chain we’re investing in Edge applications. We’ll have a Fusion version of Oracle Demantra and eventually a big push to move core manufacturing to Oracle Fusion Applications.

For Supply chain we expect much of the supply chain in the cloud to become more of an exchange. The trading communities will migrate to an exchange type of model

RW: How do you keep innovating fast enough?

SM: I’m not worried about speed. I’m worried about moving in the right direction.

RW: Thanks for your time Steve.  We appreciate the time and candor.

SM: My pleasure.

Your POV

Are you an Oracle customer?  How do you feel about Oracle’s strategy?  Have you had successes? Any issues?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

To be considered for Market Maker 1:1 series, please reach out to Elaine (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Disclosure

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

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,… Read more

Traditional contact centers represent a highly regulated industry with multiple metrics to identify performance and costs.  Most companies use measurements to determine how effective they are in handling customer issues and achieving high customer satisfaction ratings.  But the huge growth in social, mobile and self-service channels has left many customer service organizations without a means to measure and monitor performance on these growing channels.  Dimension Data’s “Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2012, Dimension Data plc” revealed that only 9.9% of companies surveyed measured costs and time for social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and speech self-service.   Additionally, only 6.1 % measured their performance for smartphone mobile application support.  These results indicate incredible oversight by most companies and pose a serious risk to customer support operations.

This issue most likely occurs because companies delegate social media response to a separate group within marketing that is not connected with the core contact center organization.  Also, most mobile apps do not have a software feature that provides a direct link into contact centers when customers need live support.  While most companies want to increase customer use of self-service channels, a surprisingly low number (19%) have deployed advanced speech recognition capabilities today according to this same benchmarking report.  Speech enabled voice portals that capture the intent of the caller significantly increase task completion without assistance and results in significant cost reduction.

Companies cannot afford to wait until this problem gets worse and customer satisfaction declines to correct this problem.  There are many vendor solutions available today that provide effective e-service monitoring solutions.  Leading cloud e-services vendors, such as Kana and Oracle RighNow Cloud Service provide turnkey solutions across all channels.  Premise-based contact center solutions from Avaya and Cisco also provide social media support modules within their contact center suites.  Additionally, Genesys and Interactive Intelligence provide integrated mobile app support, as well as social channel monitoring and measurements to deliver an integrated experience to smartphone users.  There are additional e-services software service providers and I expect new entrants in 2O13 for all-inclusive e-service products to help remedy this situation and enable contact center managers to accurately measure and monitor performance across all channels.  Selecting the right vendor for your company to solve this major shortcoming should be a major priority for 2013.

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,… Read more

Early in November, I attended a series of analyst briefings offered by Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), outside of Seattle. The briefings and interviews with MBS executives  provided an opportunity to catch up on where Microsoft is going with its Dynamics line of business applications. Coming away from the event, I was impressed with several overall trends that are encouraging Microsoft to move up-market, into territory that for many years has been dominated largely by SAP and Oracle.

I recently developed these thoughts more fully in a new research report, Microsoft Dynamics Stepping onto Enterprise Turf. This post provides a brief introduction.

Evolving Market Solutions

In the early 2000’s, Microsoft jumped into the business applications market by making acquisitions that brought Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta into its product portfolio. These products, aimed at small and midsized businesses, established the perception that Microsoft was aiming its business applications primarily at smaller companies. When it came to enterprise applications for global organizations, Microsoft was viewed as out of its league. Those were markets for players such as SAP, Oracle and other vendors with multinational capabilities.

But the market landscape is changing. Over the past year, the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) division has been demonstrating that it is capable of delivering two of its business applications—Microsoft Dynamics AX (the descendent of Axapta) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM—to large and multinational organizations. Moreover, Dynamics product enhancements now rolling out will accelerate this trend.

Four Needs Encouraging the Up-Market Move

There are at least four customer needs that create an opportunity for Microsoft to move up into larger enterprises, as shown in the figure nearby.

• Multinational localizations, formerly a requirement only for large companies, are being are increasingly demanded even by small businesses.
• The desire of organizations large and small to manage their people, facilities, and equipment as one global resource pool.
• The continuing pursuit of improved productivity and tighter control, through worldwide business process consistency. 
• The need of global organizations to have operating systems that are appropriate to serve the needs of both their large and small operating units.

The MBS division continues, of course, to offer software that is aimed at small and midsized businesses (SMBs), those with single-site operations or with limited international presence. Microsoft reseller and systems integrator partners often introduce Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision), Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains), and Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon) in these situations, sometimes in combination with Microsoft Dynamics CRM for customer relationship management.

Nevertheless, larger enterprises can now take Microsoft Dynamics under consideration when selecting a vendor for its enterprise business applications. In the large company market, it is Dynamics AX along with Dynamics CRM that form the solution offering. Although MBS is seeing success with large organizations in several industries, the retail sector appears to be particularly receptive to Microsoft's move up-market.

Although the Tier I ERP providers--SAP and Oracle--are well entrenched in the world's largest corporations, if Microsoft is able to compete effectively at this level, it will give enterprise buyers additional choice and options that they have not had in the past.

My full report discusses in detail the four customer needs that are driving Microsoft Dynamics up-market and three ways in which Dynamics now has become capable of serving these large organizations. Challenges facing Microsoft in gaining market share among larger companies are also discussed. The report concludes with examples of customers that illustrate the move of Dynamics into the enterprise market and recommendations for large enterprise buyers who are considering Microsoft Dynamics.

Related Posts

Microsoft Dynamics ERP on Azure: What Are the Benefits
What’s new with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

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… Read more

If you’re considering a move to the Cloud for your payroll technologies, you’re not alone.  In a recent survey by Constellation Research, Inc. partner Computer Economics, 40% of companies considering payroll technology investments reported such investments involved a move to the Cloud.

Why the mass migration?  In a recent webinar on the topic, I outlined six key benefits of Cloud-based Payroll.  In short, organizations moving their payroll to the cloud are doing so to reap the many benefits of SaaS while ensuring the core objectives of Payroll are met:

1. Quality.  Innovations arrive faster and are adopted more rapidly in the Cloud than with traditional on-premises and hosted software.  With true, multi-tenant SaaS, clients are always on the latest release of the software, enabling organizations to move from periodic jumps to continuous innovation in user experience, workflows and capabilities. If you think this doesn’t matter to user experience, think again.  Organizations routinely report higher levels of  satisfaction with the usability of SaaS solutions over traditional offerings across all user roles (end users, managers and administrators).
2. Cost optimization.  An immediate value to organizations – and a large factor behind the movement of technology buying from IT into the line of business – is how easily and quickly SaaS solutions can be deployed to solve immediate business needs.  SaaS solutions are implemented on average 82% faster than on-premises solutions and require only 22% of the resources in ongoing staff compared to on-premises shops, freeing up members of the payroll team to focus on more strategic initiatives. (Source: CedarCrestone 2012-13 HR Systems Survey, 15th ed.)
3. Risk Mitigation. While many still cite security concerns as a top reason for keeping payroll technology in-house, the reality is that SaaS providers typically excel in security measures (including access controls, backup and recovery, and myriad other potential vulnerability points) due to the large volume of disparate clients continuously pushing their own systems audits and inquiries. SaaS Payroll providers also take on responsibility for ensuring all legal/regulatory changes are applied, tested and available.  With tens, hundreds or thousands of customers utilizing these services, it ensures many more eyeballs watching for and reporting any occasional “misses” from the provider and an accompanying rapid response to such issues.
4. Control.  Managing payroll on premises does not guarantee that the payroll organization has the controls it desires over its technologies and processes. (If you’ve ever waited for your IT organization to apply an update or manage an enterprise upgrade, you know this all too well.)  Outsourcing payroll further reduces an organization’s span of control, especially with regard to timing of process flows and reporting/analytics. With SaaS, the payroll organization gets full control over process timing (data entry, audits, check runs, quality checks, adjustments, etc.); anytime access to data, analytics and reporting; and the assurance that the software is always at the latest release with the most recent changes in legs/regs applied and tested.
5. Flexibility.  SaaS solutions, by design, support the dynamic nature of a business – the ability to rapidly scale hardware needs to support dramatic increases or decreases in resources are inherent to these solutions.  But flexibility in the payroll world also means the ability to quickly integrate to local payroll solutions across the globe, to respond to ever-changing time and pay regulations, and to meet the dynamic needs and priorities of the company.  SaaS-based payroll solutions leverage the emerging best-practices in cloud-based integrations, ensure the fastest time to readiness in response to changing regulations, and provide the foundation for business agility in global operations.
6. Insight.  Multi-country payroll almost demands a SaaS solution, as it invariably requires integrations to local payroll providers in countries where a smaller number of employees reside or where major payroll providers have not yet standardized an offering.  Those myriad integrations frequently lead to delayed  visibility into the actual payroll costs across the globe, causing surprise ‘hits’ to financials. Just over 50% of global organizations today report having a global system of record, and hence are hampered by not having all the global data transparency necessary for timely, strategic decision making.  SaaS Payroll providers can rapidly integrate and manage a global view of the payroll activities of an organization, both minimizing financial risks while making available a broader base of data from which to glean additional insights.

Furthermore, when part of a broader global SaaS HRMS platform, SaaS Payroll moves from an administrative to a strategic play as it provides the ability for organizations of any size to dynamically scale operations and to securely plug into global capabilities, and thus engage and compete on a global scale.

Many other facets of SaaS Payroll are explored in this webinar, including a view into social enablement of payroll processes as well as how SaaS can future proof the career of today’s payroll leadership.

The question of SaaS for Payroll, or for any other HCM related initiative, has clearly moved from “Why” to “Why Not?”

Catch the webinar replay here:  The Changing Landscape of Payroll: Moving to the Cloud

Related articles

• Workday Rising: the analysts’ take (zdnet.com)
• CloudPay Raises $16M From Pinnacle, Rho, Others (pehub.com)
• ZenPayroll Launches Cloud-Based Payroll Service With $6.1M In Seed Funding From CEOs At Yammer, Box, Yelp And Dropbox (techcrunch.com)

Filed under: Cloud, Future of Work, Global HCM, Workday Tagged: Apps Strategy, best practices, Business, Business and Economy, Cloud, Cloud computing, constellation research, future of work, HCM, HR, HR Tech, Next Generation apps, Payroll, Social Enterprise, Software as a service, Trends, Workday, yvette cameron

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: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

It's that time of year where analysts gaze into our crystal balls and make predictions about the trends we expect to see in the upcoming months. My thoughts about 2013 are based on the hundreds of conversations I've had with social business product vendors and customers over the last twelve months. Below I'll list my top predictions for 2013, but if you only have a moment here are the mains idea that I want to share:

For customers, 2013 will be a year of taking action. Over the last few years organizations have invested a great deal of resources into learning about the technological and cultural shifts required for social business transformation. Now they can move past the struggles explaining "Facebook for the Enterprise" and instead focus on implementing the social features that will help their employees get their jobs done.

For product vendors, 2013 will be less about creating shiny new features and more about helping their customers (and prospects) derive real business value from their platforms. Yes, of course there will still be innovations in user experience, mobile access, analytics and many more, but for the next little while the "competitive feature wars" will be less important than proving they understand how to help organizations succeed.  

In other words, "Less talking, more doing."


Now let's get into some specific areas that I believe will contribute significantly to the way employees get their jobs done in 2013. I'm going to skip covering obvious topics like increased adoption in mobile, cloud and gamification and focus on what I refer to as "Structured Collaboration". I'm not talking about imposing rigid rules or strict processes. Structured Collaboration occurs by adding just a little extra organization to the things people create and share. You'll notice a few of the items below don't actually involve new or innovative concepts. Still, these topics all contribute to improving the way employees get their work done.


Collaborative applications for specific business purposes. Over the last few years, companies have worked to get their employees comfortable with the concepts of sharing information openly (i.e. social) via tools like blogs, wikis and activity streams. In 2012 the next stage of social was popularized by the overused phrase "add social features to core business applications." This involves augmenting tools like ERP, HR, and CRM tools. That's great, but there are still several unique business processes that are not served out of the box by these core platforms. For these, companies have previously relied on tools like Lotus Notes applications, spreadsheets or custom developed databases. In 2013 we'll see organizations building custom applications on cloud based platforms like Force.com, Amazon, Microsoft Azure, as well as tools like Podio, Filemaker and Quickbase. These structured applications make it easier for employees to create and share information in a consistent format (via fields, forms and views) versus authoring simple unstructured pages in wikis or community forums. Unlike previous generations of collaborative applications, these new apps will include all the expected social features (comments, liking tagging, streams, etc) and cloud app integrations (file sharing, CRM, calendar, etc.) people have come to expect.  

Information will be structured around projects. In 2012 I wrote a lot about Social Task Management (STM), the combination of traditional project management tools with enterprise social networking. By associating status updates, task assignments and shared content with specific projects, employees can become far more organized and get their work done more effectively. In 2013 STM features will become more mainstream in social business platforms, and employees will begin to use these tools to help organize the abundance of information currently being shared randomly in social networks. Some platforms like IBM Connections and Traction TeamPage have had STM features for years, and newer platforms are adding STM via acquisitions, like Jive purchasing Producteev. There will certainly be more STM vendors acquired in 2013, and some startups will shutdown or pivot as the market consolidates.

Personal Task Automation helps employees get their jobs done. While Business Process Automation (BPA) tools have been around for years, they are traditionally only used by system administrators and application developers to link together or integrate complex corporate processes like invoicing, resource planning or inventory control. In 2012 web sites like IFTTT and Zapier introduced a new generation of workflow tools that use simple rules and actions to automate tasks which span popular web-based applications. Example: If your name or company is mentioned on a social media site it could trigger the creation of a new page in your favourite note taking application. These tools are simple enough that non-technical people can configure them, but the issue is they are stand-alone web sites that require individuals to have accounts, they are not an integrated part of a platform supported by corporate IT. In 2013 these features will begin to surface in enterprise collaboration suites, enabling employees to configure triggers and actions based on their internal business processes. For example, say a product manager uploads a presentation about an upcoming release, personal task automation could automatically set up a web conference to train the Sales team and notify the marketing team to include the new content on the company web site. With personal task automation, employees could save time by reducing manual tasks and cut down on mistakes that occur when people forget to perform certain actions.  

Keep track of information from multiple applications. Remember when blogs first become popular? You had to manually surf from site to site each day to see if there were any updates. Then along came "News Aggregators" or "Feed Readers" (like Google Reader) that pulled all the updates into a single inbox making it easier to keep up to date. A similar scenario is now playing out, this time with dozens of different types of cloud based applications, like file sharing sites, social networks, support forums, CRM apps, financial and invoicing sites, etc. The more cloud based applications you use, the harder it is to keep track of what's going on. Enter Cloud Application Aggregators like Hojoki, Kitedesk, CloudWork, CloudSnap, CloudHQ, Pinterest and others. These sites provide a single place to work with multiple applications. If these vendors can add enterprise grade features in areas like security, directory, administration and compliance then they will begin to gain traction with large organizations, especially those that follow a "best of breed" approach to choosing collaboration solutions.

Elearning makes a comeback as social learning. In 2011 the hot area for "social" was Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. In 2012 it was Human Resources. In 2013 one of the most talked about verticals for "social" will be education, training and certification. The recent improvements in technology and culture around "social" form a perfect environment to foster collaborative learning. Employees are now more comfortable with sharing ideas and best practices, it's easier to author and share documentation and mobile devices provide access from almost anywhere.

It's time to turn that webcam on at work. The industry has been talking about video conferencing for almost a decade, but outside of vendor product demos, how often is video really used? Improvements in camera technology (especially on mobile phones and tablets), less bandwidth challenges (improved codecs and faster home network connections) and cultural acceptance (e.g. Google Hangouts) are now at a point where the use of video during web-conferences could finally become a reality.  

Stop letting those great conversations go to waste. Remember when you had that great idea on that conference call last month, but no one wrote it down and now you can't remember the details? Startups like HarQen are looking to solve this issue by indexing and tagging audio, making it easy to find information and take action on tasks. I first found out about HarQen at Oracle OpenWorld and I hope to see features like this built into all web conferencing and chat solutions. Imagine putting this together with the Social Task Management and Personal Automation topics I mentioned above. I can't count the amount of times I could have benefited from a solution like this.

Wild Card: Reality gets an upgrade.
Ok, I'll throw one fun idea out there, augmented or blended reality. For those of you not familiar with this area, it involves displaying additional content in the context of the real world by looking through something like your mobile phone, tablet or special glasses. For example, looking at a catalog though the camera on your phone and seeing 3D models of the products displayed above the page. There are several vendors in this space, including Metaio, Layar and Aurasma. Currently some of the most common use cases are selling/marketing consumer products, enhancing video games and providing additional information to manufacturing and life sciences/healthcare processes. But imagine adding a "3rd dimension" to collaboration tools such as activity streams, profile pages, of even presentations and spreadsheets. I don't think there is tremendous business value there yet, but new ideas have to start somewhere, so perhaps we'll see a few fringe uses of augmented reality at work in 2013.


Bonus: Collaboration Companies To Watch in 2013

List alphabetically below are a few of the collaboration startups that I believe will make news in 2013. I'm not going to go into detail about them here, but anyone looking for more information should contact me to set up advisory sessions.

• Atlassian
• Box
• Evernote
• GetSatisfaction
• Huddle
• Igloo
• Okta
• TechSmith
• ÜberConference

So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? What do you think I left off? What do you hope to see in 2013? What do you hope NOT to see in 2013?

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,&nbsp;Everybody Wants to Rule The World&nbsp;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… Read more

Pace of Innovation Exceeds Ability To Consume

Rapid innovation, flexible deployment options, and easy consumption models create favorable conditions for the proliferation of disruptive technology.  In fact, convergence in the five pillars of enterprise disruption (i.e. social, mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications), has led to new innovations and opportunities to apply disruptive technologies to new business models.  New business models abound at the intersection of cloud and big data, social and mobile, social and unified communications, and cloud and mobile.

Unfortunately, most organizations are awash with discovering, evaluating, and consuming disruptive technologies.  Despite IT budgets going down from 3 to 5% year over year, technology spending is up 18 to 20%.  Why?  Amidst constrained budgets, resources, and time limits, executives are willing to invest in disruptive technology to improve business outcomes.  Consequently, successful adoption is the key challenge in consuming this torrent of innovation.  This rapid pace of change and inability to consume innovation detract organizations from the realization of business value.

Organizations Fall Into Four Personas Of  Disruptive Technology Adoption

A common truism in the industry is “Culture trumps technology”.  As organizations apply methodologies such as Constellation’s DEEPR Framework in improving adoption, leaders must first determine which of the four personas best fits their organization’s appetite for consuming and innovating with disruptive technologies.

The personas of disruptive technology adoption assess organizational culture in two key axes (see Figure 1).  The first is how incremental or transformational an organization looks at applying disruptive technology to business models.  The second assesses how proactive or reactive an organization is in carrying out new initiatives.  Based on these dimensions, the four personas include:

1. Market leaders. Market leaders prefer to drive transformational innovation.  They look at technologies as enablers in disrupting business models.  They see competitive differentiation in delivering outcomes to customers. Market leaders accept failure as part of the innovation process.  They fail fast and move on.
2. Fast followers. Fast followers prefer to react to the success of market leaders and their experiments.  When they sense success, they tend to jump in.  Fast followers do not like to fail and rapidly apply lessons learned from market leaders into their road maps.  Fast followers tend to deliver scale in the markets as a counter balance to arriving later in the market.
3. Cautious adopters. Cautious adopters proactively deliver incremental innovation.  They tend to take a more measured approach and spend more time studying how they can improve an existing success than creating a transformational change.  Cautious adopters often come from regulated industries where security and safety are paramount objectives.
4. Laggards. Laggards tend to procrastinate on applying innovations to their business models.  They prefer not be bothered by trends and will only react when the trends have moved beyond mainstream.  They see value in waiting as prices will drop over time as success rates increase over time.  Laggards enjoy waiting.

During the interviews and discussions with the 2012 Constellation SuperNova award participants, key questions emerged in the decision process on whether to adopt or pass on a disruptive technologies.  These questions aligned well with the four personas of disruptive technology adoption.

Figure 1.  Organizations Should Understand Which Persona Of Disruptive Tech Adoption Describes Them Best

The Bottom Line: Apply Adoption Strategies To Persona Types
Executives should look at the four personas and determine which set of questions would best reflect how their organization approaches disruptive technology.  Based on the four personas, executives can expect the following:

• Market leaders challenged to determine what not to adopt. Market leaders need a good process and criteria to determine what technologies to pass on.  Seasoned organizations have developed disciplined methodologies to determine what to adopt and what not to adopt.
• Fast followers must learn how to scale and when to lead. Scaling innovation is difficult.  However, fast followers prepare their culture to make rapid shifts.  Leaders establish trigger points and prepare their organization for the potential shift.  Fast followers will take the lead when they see a significant advantage.   However, for the most part, fast followers prefer to learn from the market leaders and wait for the right opportunity to react.
• Cautious adopters must move out of their six sigma mindset to grow. Proactive incremental innovation leads to steady successes.  However, breakthrough and transformational innovation requires a different culture.  Both can co-exist in an organization but a separate team must be established to push the boundaries.  Cautious adoption traits should be pushed out to the operating level and emerge as every employees skill set.  Transformational innovation techniques should be paired with quantifiable metrics.
• Laggards will fall behind. The corporate digital divide between the those who apply disruptive technologies to new business models and those who choose to wait and see will continue to grow.  The business model shifts have destroyed iconic companies from Kodak to Sears.  Without an incentive to move beyond a reactive and incremental approach, laggards will be overtaken by more agile and innovative organizations.

Your POV.

Ready to fight change management and adoption head on? Have a story on how you’ve applied disruptive technology? Submit for the 2013 SuperNova Awards at SuperNovaAwards (at) ConstellationR (dot) com

Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with developing your disruptive technology adoption strategy.

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Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With The Real Problem In Social Business Adoption – The People!

Monday’s Musing: Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement

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Disclosures

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 – 2012 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
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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: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

Update: Apparently not everyone is aware of the saying from which the title of this post was taken. "The King is Dead. Long Live the King" is a positive statement, alluding to the continuity of leadership when the throne changes hands. With that in mind, read on...

Over the last few days I've had dozens of inquires about my thoughts of IBM removing the name Lotus from Lotus Notes and Domino, effectively putting to rest the Lotus brand name. Rather than respond to everyone individually, I figured I'd post my Lotus eulogy here.

I started with IBM in 1993 as a coop student working with Lotus Notes 2.1a and left in 2008 when I went to work at Socialtext. During those years I had the privilege of working with one the most significant collaboration portfolios of all time. Many people consider Notes the progenitor of all the "enterprise social" hype we are in the midst of today. Back then it was called Groupware, and I remember one of the original slogans, the 3C's: "Communicate. Collaborate. Coordinate." Oh how well that message still resonates. Over the years the Lotus portfolio grew, adding products like Sametime, Quickr and eventually Connections. I remember Carl Kriger and Jim Cavalier doing demos of Notes applications running on mobile devices (Nokias, Palm Pilots and Blackberry) more than a decade ago... long before the reign of iPhones and Android. I remember Gary Devendorf doing demos of Lotuscript as he created all sorts of collaborative applications. Gosh I remember when there were product managers not for entire product lines, but for specific features; like Sean Condon being responsible for Domino clustering and replication, two technologies that most products still can't duplicate today. I remember when iNotes first appeared providing web based access to mail, years before people were fighting for invites to this thing called "Gmail beta". Oh how ahead of the times Lotus was. Yes, I still feel the scars from the rants about Lotus Notes on Slashdot and the User Experience Hall of Shame. Yet so many applications today have tabs along the top to access content and/or use screens filled with icons to open applications... just like Notes. I guess "There's an app for that" has been around for a long time. No, I've not forgotten the missteps like Workplace, J2EE and the two-lane highway but today is a day to focus on the positives. I spend so much time in the "2.0 world" watching startups with these brilliant ideas... all the time thinking "Lotus did that a decade ago." Yes, Notes was (is) far more complicated than it should have been, but it really was a brilliant product. Thank you Lotus for providing me a great start to my career. I'll always remember you, and look forward to watching your descendants in the IBM Collaboration family carry on your mantra as expressed in poster below... "Helping people work together is what Lotus does best."

For anyone doubting IBM's commitment to the Notes product, I encourage you to watch this video on IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition, where they demonstrate the upcoming release.

As for my specific thoughts about the name change, I still stick with what I said at the beginning of 2011: "Years ago I talked about how I wished the brand names would go away completely. Finally the lines are blurring between the brands and technologies from each group are finally being combined. All the divisions of IBM are involved as social features are mixed with analytical tools, cloud storage, compliance and other management tools. So how do you name that? Die-hards in the "yellow bubble" can protest all they want, but I think the best thing for everyone would be to just call it all IBM software. That did not happen this year, but I think it is something everyone should expect at some point."

Reminiscing about Lotus caused me search out the response I posted back in 2008 to vowe's question "What would you do, if you were in charge of Lotus?" It's a fun read, I encourage you to take a look.

I'll leave you with a few items from the history book to enjoy.

I AM! (trivia, who drew the original poster?)

Lotus 50 Million Super Humans - 1999

Helping People Work Together Is What Lotus Does Best

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: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

I spend a great deal of time advising software vendors ranging from stealth startups to the world's largest enterprise software companies. While I am optimistic about many of the innovations I see coming, I'm also troubled by some of the recurring themes.

The slides embedded below are from the presentation I gave at the excellent Defrag 2012 conference. They highlight three of the areas I would like to see software vendors improve upon.  It's a bit hard to follow without me narrating, but here are the general themes:

1. Activity Streams have great potential, but they need to become much more manageable. Slides 3-8 highlight some of the issues with just throwing everything into the stream. Slides 9-13 cover some of the ways to reduce the clutter and enable people to focus on the information relevant and/or important to them. The methods range from better manual filters (which few people use) to automated filtering of streams based on the context of what you're working on.

2. People are ego-centric, tools should provide a way for them to focus on content from their point of view. With all the hype around social, community and sharing... many vendors have strayed away from making it easy for people to find their own content. Files they created. Comments they made. Tasks they have to do.  Slides 14-17 talk about making it easier for people to work in a a "me" centric manner, or what I call 'Don't forget the Me in social media."

3. Analytics should focus on helping make decisions, not just show pretty pictures. The point I make during slides 18-19 is that many vendors use analytics as eye candy. They show splashy graphs, leader boards and top ten lists. The problem is, that type of information rarely helps people get their jobs done. The next generation of analytics needs to provide more contextual relevance, helping people access the content, colleagues and communities that can help them make decisions faster and more accurately.
 

What areas would you like to see improved in the tools you use at your job?