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

Acquisition Brings A Proven Multi-Channel Cloud Based Service Offering To The Growing Mid-market

Sunnyvale, CA based KANA announced on April 24, 2012 it’s acquisition of Netherlands based Trinicom, a multichannel, customer contact software provider serving over 200 companies in the BeNeLux market.   Trinicom’s flagship T5 all-in solutions addresses multichannel customer service through email response management, web self-service, call management, live chat, “letter, fax, and desk contact”, chat bot, and knowledge base.   The acquisition marks KANA’s entry and commitment to:

• Addressing the under served mid-market. Trinicom brings enterprise class customer service and engagement tools to mid-sized businesses.  KANA states in its press release that “mid-sized organizations in both public and private sectors are increasingly seeking enabling technology to support emerging customer experience needs and to build, enhance, and extend relationships with customers.”  Why? Mid-market companies seek enterprise class solutions that don’t require the enterprise levels of staffing, support, and infrastructure.  Trinicom brings the expertise in sales, marketing, and support for the mid-market to the traditionally enterprise focused KANA management team.
  
  Point of View (POV): Trinicom suite of products for key service industries succeeds given its mid-market focus.  In general, these organizations have 20 to 200 customer service professionals.   Referenceable and successful customers come from banking, education, internet, insurers, non-profit, publishing and media, retail & eCommerce, telecom, travel & transport, and utilities (see Figure 1).  In fact, Trinicom delivers an end to end offering across social, web, and agent desktops.  Past clients expressed general satisfaction with go live times less than three months and on average within six to eight weeks.  Most clients praise the rich configuration tools which allow clients easy adaptation without expensive customization.

• Gaining a SaaS based deployment option. KANA today offers on-premises and hosted deployment models for its enterprise customers. Trinicom brings its SaaS based technology and Cloud business model to KANA’s existing deployment options.  Trinicom’s SaaS operations in Northern Europe complement Kana’s global data center reach.
  
  Point of View (POV): KANA’s lack of a SaaS offering has led to some loss in deals as the market shifts to SaaS as the defacto standard.   The good news – the Trinicom acquisition gives KANA customers and prospects more choice in immediate deployment options. Subsequently, KANA gains a SaaS foundation for future offerings in both the mid-market and enterprise.

• Expanding customer and revenue base. KANA currently serves 600 commercial and 250 public sector organizations. Trinicom adds key global capabilities and European market expertise.  For instance, Trinicom will expand KANA’s presence in the local public sector market in EMEA.
  
  Point of View (POV): The acquisition expands KANA’s customer and revenue base into the growing and profitable mid-market.  KANA gains an immediate opportunity to service the mid-market and effectively compete with eGain, Eptica, Moxie, and Parature.  More importantly, Trinicom opens up a lucrative mid-market public sector opportunity.

Figure 1. Trinicom Spans A Range Of  Service Verticals In The Mid-Market

Source: KANA

Recommendations

As with major acquisitions, the following recommendations apply to existing customers:

• Review existing contracts. Existing Trinicom customers should negotiate longer term contracts at current rates.  Communicate areas for improvement in the contract and relationship.
• Engage with the new management team. Document and push for prioritization of future feature requirements.  Identify service and support transitions.

Prospects should consider the following:

• Include in short lists. Mid-market prospects should add KANA into the short lists for multichannel customer service.
• Evaluate KANA’s full set of offerings.  Consider what aspects of KANA match to the organization’s requirements.

The Bottom Line:  KANA’s Positioned As A Key Player In Emerging CRM Consolidation

Backed by Accel-KKR, KANA is the centerpiece of the private equity’s firm’s investment in enterprise software.  As the CRM market enters into another round of consolidation amidst disruptive trends in social, mobile, cloud, big data, and unified communications, customers and partners can expect KANA to acquire and expand its reach in customer service, CRM, and customer experience software.

Your POV.

KANA and Trinicom customers how do you feel about the acquisition?  Do you expect KANA to expand its SaaS offerings?  What areas do you think KANA should invest in?  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 Social CRM/ Social Business efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing social business/social CRM readiness
• Developing your social business/ social CRM  strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

• 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
• 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
• 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: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• 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
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• 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 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.
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

Forward And Commentary

SAP’s made big claims about HANA and its capabilities today and into the future.  This Quark goes into the details and Constellation’s point of view.

A. Executive Summary

Both HANA as an architecture and database alternative indicate SAP’s future direction and next-generation approach. Consequently, numerous clients and SAP customers have inquired on whether or not they can replace their underlying Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) in their SAP Business Suite with HANA. Constellation believes SAP HANA is a critical technology that SAP customers should evaluate and understand as the roadmap reveals itself. This report primarily describes the role HANA will play for use with SAP Business Suite and in future SAP applications.

B. Research Findings

Since 2008, SAP has hinted at a real-time data platform approach to its middleware and application infrastructure based on the power of in-memory database (IMDB) technologies. IMDBs are a database management system that stores data directly onto the main memory of a computer. In an IMDB, the memory resident data has one minimum backup copy on disk, but the primary copy lives permanently in memory. Traditional on-disk databases cache data into main memory for access but the primary copy permanently lives in storage.

Thus, IMDBs have faster access times than disk-optimized systems that rely on cumbersome and slower input/output (I/O) calls. The result – the ability to provide real-time information in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds to the user or a downstream consumption feed. IMDBs play a key role as big data requires faster processing times and real-time streaming. More importantly, social, mobile, and machine-to-machine requirements require real-time and contextual right-time delivery of information.

The research shows four main themes:

1. In-Memory Computing Is at the Heart of SAP’s HANA Roadmap and Architectural Vision
2. HANA Puts SAP in Conflict with Key DB Partners but Is the Right Strategy for Next Gen Apps and Independence
3. Currently HANA Is Not Available for Immediate RDBMS Replacement for SAP Business Suite
4. However, HANA Is Already Playing a Growing Role in Non- SAP Business Suite Scenarios

Recommendations: Explore HANA for Analytics, BW Replacement but Not Yet for Database Replacement

The HANA vision represents SAP’s future platform. Constellation makes three recommendations in the report as SAP unfolds its mid-term and long-term strategy.

C. Report Links

The report is part of Constellation’s Unlimited Quark library and the individual report is available for purchase.

Your POV

Will you replace your database with SAP?  What’s the compelling business case and when would you do it?  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 enterprise apps strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Reviewing your Apps Strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

Wang, R “Ray.” “News Analysis: The Implications of Oracle’s Taleo Acquisition.” Software Insider. February 9th, 2012.

Wang, R “Ray.” “News Analysis: SAP Buys SuccessFactors for $3.4B Signals SAP’s Commitment To Cloud, HCM, and Social.” Software Insider. December 3rd, 2011.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT.” Software Insider. December 3rd, 2011.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation.” Software Insider. October 4, 2010.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1.” Software Insider. July 27, 2010.

Reprints

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

Disclosure

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

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

Copyright © 2001 – 2012 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!

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

SAP in its press conference last week provided a major update on its database and mobility strategy. In my first post, I outlined my view of SAP’s database strategy. Now, in this second post, I provide my perspective on SAP’s mobility strategy.

SAP recognizes mobility as a critical element of its product strategy going forward, along with social business, cloud, and in-memory computing. But as some of my associates been hammering over the past two years, success in mobility requires SAP to enable thousands of small development firms and individual developers to build applications for SAP. Not just a few large system integrators or ISVs: SAP needs the enterprise equivalent of Apple’s App Store ecosystem.

SAP’s thinking on this front has been evolving. After its Sybase acquisition, it put the “Sybase Unwired Platform” (or SUP, but now renamed, the SAP Mobility Platform) at the center of its mobility strategy. You want to build mobile apps for SAP? Wonderful—buy, borrow, or otherwise get access to the SAP products you want to integrate with, plus an instance of SUP, and have at it. The problem was, however, that this approach limits the number of developers to the following categories:

• Large or midsize ISV-partners of SAP, who were willing to make the investment in an SAP development environment, to develop mobility apps for sale to current and future SAP customers. This would be a small number.
• System integration partners of SAP, who had live project opportunities that included mobility apps as deliverables. The SI could use the client's SAP development environment. These resulting apps would be to meet the needs of a specific client, although the SI might reuse the code in future projects. But this approach would produce few apps for a wider audience.
• Individual developers or small SAP partners who understand SAP’s middleware and development architecture well enough to forgo use of SAP’s platform and can write mobility apps directly against SAP’s back-end databases. This is where many "app store" type apps could be produced. But here is where small developers come up against a brick wall: SAP does not make it easy to gain access to trial or development versions of many of the SAP products that a mobility programmer would need.

For some reason, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM are able to make life easier for small developers. But for a hint of what it’s like for a small developer to work with SAP, take a look at this blog post (on SAP’s own SCN community site!): Why Does SAP Make This So Complicated?

Two Good Announcements, But More Work Needed

SAP, to its credit, appears to understand the problem. In its announcements, two were especially noteworthy in terms of addressing the needs of the developer masses and in terms of filling out SAP’s own mobile apps portfolio.

• First, to enable those thousands of developers, SAP announced partnerships with three leading mobility development tools providers: PhoneGap (recently acquired by Adobe), Appcelerator, and Sencha. These will allow developers, working with tools they are already familiar with, to build apps using a new OData connector to integrate with SAP’s back-end systems. In addition, these tools will allow many simple apps to be built without having to rely upon SAP’s Mobility Platform.
• The second big announcement was that SAP is acquiring Syclo, which has its own mobility platform as well as a suite of well-regarded field service and asset management applications. SAP said that what it is really after here is not the platform (which overlaps functionality of SAP’s Mobility Platform) but the field service apps. This is another step in SAP building out its portfolio of its own out-of-the box mobile apps. Based on my own work with clients, I know that field service and asset management, in fact, are top use cases for mobility in enterprise systems. If SAP can continue to buy or build collections of key mobility apps like Syclo’s, it will begin to fill out the major white spaces in its mobility portfolio, while still leaving much room for third-party developers to fill in the rest.

These are welcome announcements, but will they be enough? I don't think so. These announcements give the developers new tools, but they don't address the problem of getting access to an SAP development system for testing. Some of my associates, such as Vijay Vijayasankar and Dennis Howlett, echo this concern:

Dennis writes,

Needless to say there is a major hitch: developers who want to build apps with SAP data need access to a NetWeaver instance to test and model. Customers would have that, but small developer shops without an SAP license would not have that access without pricey, hair-pulling hurdles, which Sikka acknowledged during the press conference was a “19th century” approach. When pressed on this issue, SAP’s Fawad Zakariya, VP of Mobility and a key player in mobility ecosystem development reporting directly to Poonen, asserted that good news on this front was coming.

In a similar vein, Vijay writes,

I cannot stress enough on the licensing and monetization model to be figured out upfront – without that, access to software is practically meaningless. Developers have a lot of choice today, including many OSS choices. SAP needs a compelling story for them to use SAP technology….

… we are not sure how SAP handles the licensing/pricing in this scenario . And without that clarity coming real quick – I doubt if scores of developers will jump in and start developing cool apps. Sanjay Poonen responded on twitter few days ago than SAP will get it right quickly, and I totally trust him to do so – hopefully by SAPPHIRE in Orlando.

So here we have it. SAP is making significant progress to curry favor with small developers, but it still doesn't have a total solution to enable them with access to test versions or sandbox instances of SAP back-end systems.

Listen to the Developers

Some of my associates are still concerned that SAP has not found the right “pricing model” for mobility apps, but I think that is last year’s debate. Although not part of the formal announcements last week, it appears SAP is working on a pricing scheme that differentiates between major functional mobility apps, casual apps, and even “free” apps. Add in occasional one-off “enterprise pricing” for very large corporate deals, and I don’t think pricing needs to be an obstacle. Everyone can make money and customers can pay appropriately.

But the licensing problems are more systemic within SAP and most likely face legal or organizational resistance based on “how we’ve always done business.”

I am not a mobile apps developer. Therefore, I have no experience on which to judge when SAP will have all the pieces in place to encourage, in the words of SAP, one million developers to bloom. I can only look to those small developers already within SAP’s ecosystem for their reaction—when they are happy, then I’ll know SAP is on the right path. And what I’m hearing from them so far is that they’re still concerned about the licensing issues.

With SAP as the largest enterprise application company in the world, the mobility announcements are welcome news, but we still don’t have a total solution to enable thousands, let alone, millions of developers. I look forward to hearing about progress reported out of the SAPPHIRE conference in a few weeks.

You can watch a video of the entire press conference.
 

Related Posts

SAP’s Database Strategy Faces an Uphill Battle
SAP in Transition on Mobile, Cloud, and In-memory Computing
SAP Innovating with Cloud, Mobile and In-memory Computing

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

Last week I attended a half day SAP press conference in San Francisco, on the subject of SAP’s strategy for database technology and mobility. Both are hot topics in enterprise software, and there were plenty of announcements. In fact, it’s quite easy to get lost in the weeds. So, in this first of two posts, I’ll try to summarize what I see as the big picture for SAP’s database strategy.

SAP Positioning Itself as a Database Company

When SAP acquired Sybase in 2010, it said it was doing the deal primarily Sybases's mobility platform. But Sybase also has its traditional relational database products, leading with its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database. At the same time, SAP itself has been rolling out its HANA in-memory database (IMDB) technology. Until now, these two database products were managed separated, but no longer. SAP is consolidating all its database offerings—HANA and Sybase’s—along with middleware and tools, under one management unit.

There were many tactical announcements. SAP announced general availability of its BW business intelligence product on HANA, and its plan to make HANA available later this year as the database of choice for its small business customers of its Business One ERP product. In addition, customers later this month will have the flagship Sybase ASE database available as a deployment option for SAP’s Business Suite and All-in-One products.

SAP rolled out all of these announcements under the banner of its plan to become known as a database company.

Database Migrations Difficult to Justify

After the press conference, one SAP executive sensed my ambivalence about this plan. With Oracle taking an ever-increasing adversarial position toward SAP, I can understand SAP’s discomfort with having a large percentage of its best customers running on Oracle’s database. At the same time, the other two major providers of relational databases (IBM and Microsoft) are SAP-friendly. IBM is SAP’s largest system integration partner, while SAP and Microsoft often find their technology interests aligned. So, how do you threaten Oracle while not also threatening IBM and Microsoft?

Furthermore, does SAP honestly believe that existing SAP customers are going to migrate in droves from Oracle, IBM’s DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server to HANA or ASE? In the case of business analytics, there may be some movement toward HANA, yes, as the value of in-memory performance for analytic applications is somewhat easy to envision. But what about SAP’s business applications, such as Business One, All-in-One, and the Business Suite? With all the challenges and demands placed on CIOs these days, it’s difficult to imagine an installed SAP customer undergoing a database migration, simply to eliminate some Oracle, or DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server licenses. SAP insists there is business value for HANA in some transaction processing—and I can see that, say, in supply chain management. But is that enough to justify a database migration? Even less so, why would a customer swap out Oracle, DB2, or Microsoft for ASE, which is essentially a like-for-like product? I just don’t see it.

In side-bar discussions, SAP executives basically agree. Alright then, so the target is net-new application customers? But here the challenge is essentially the same. In most cases, business apps prospects already have skills and experience with Oracle, DB2, or MS SQL Server. Are they really going to want to invest in learning Sybase ASE, or HANA? Unless they can completely eliminate those other database platforms from their environments, going with Sybase or HANA is adding to their complexity, not simplifying things.

I think that selling databases is going to be harder row to hoe than SAP is making it out to be.

Subsidizing HANA May Meet Complications

Perhaps recognizing the challenge, SAP realizes it is going to have to sweeten the pot, especially for HANA. So, at the press conference, SAP announced that it is putting up some serious money, through two funds:

• For new and existing customers: a $337 million fund to subsidize services for SAP customers to convert to HANA. I assume the initial target for these funds will be in migrating business analytics customers to HANA.
   
• For technology start-ups: a $155 million venture capital fund through SAP Ventures for start-ups to build new apps on HANA.

It’s encouraging that SAP is putting its money where its mouth is. For customers, making a database change may not be cost-justified without some help from SAP. Moreover, tech start-ups may need some financial encouragement to build new products on HANA.

However, I see complications with each of these funding efforts.

• With the customer fund, there may be issues with SAP’s partners. By funding SAP’s own services to assist with HANA, SAP is taking work away from partners, who typically play a key role in SAP implementations and migrations. In response to my question on this, SAP executives said that it will bring partners into this work at some point in the future.
  
  Nevertheless, I have to believe that, at first, partners will view SAP as increasing its share of services at the partners’ expense. This is especially true under current economic conditions where customers can only absorb a certain amount of change at once. Moreover, by delivering HANA services directly, SAP delays giving partners the HANA experience they will need for the future. SAP can solve this problem, of course, by ponying up the money but letting customers choose whether to use SAP’s professional services group or partners to deliver the services, or by co-delivering services with partners.
   
• For start-ups, HANA may not be as attractive as SAP thinks. Looking back at SaaS and other tech start-ups over the past decade, most of them chose to build on open-source database technologies, such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. The reason, of course, is that open-source infrastructure minimizes their own costs as they grow. It also leaves more customer budget available to invest in the application, instead of the required infrastructure.
  
  I once asked a start-up executive why his firm was building on MySQL instead of Oracle. He replied, “Oracle scales technically, but it doesn’t scale economically.” I have to wonder if HANA will face the same resistance, even with funding from SAP Ventures. A quick check with associates indicated that there are already open-source in-memory databases (IMDBs), including CSQL and VoltDB. I have no knowledge of the capabilities of these products or how they compare with HANA. It is likely that HANA is head and shoulders above open source alternatives. But Oracle’s flagship database was and still is head and shoulders above open source capabilities, and that didn’t stop cloud start-ups from using MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Ultimately, very few organizations want to buy databases—or middleware. They want business applications, and those apps require databases and middleware as part of the technology stack. So, when SAP talks about becoming a database company, it’s hard for me to become excited.

Perhaps SAP already knows that it's going to be difficult. Earlier this year, it began floating the idea of making its goal, "to become the No. 2 database provider by the year 2015." But by the time of the press conference, the goal had been watered down to “becoming the fastest growing database provider.”

When you are starting from such a small market share, becoming the “fastest-growing” is not a very high bar.

Update, Apr. 16: Some deeper questions on Oracle's database strategy from Jonathan Wilson. And, a good post from Vitaliy Rudnytskiy, pointing out that HANA is more than an "in-memory database."

Related posts

SAP in Transition on Mobile, Cloud, and In-memory Computing
SAP Innovating with Cloud, Mobile and In-memory Computing

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

Forward And Commentary

This trends report examines how changing expectations among business leaders and the consumerization of IT will shape the future of insights and decision-making. As organizations make the move from transactions to engagement to experience, a new type of analytics will be required.

A. Introduction

Business leaders seek better insights for smarter decision-making. Unfortunately, today’s traditional intelligence tools were designed for two-dimensional transactional systems. As data from consumer trends such as mobile, social, cloud, big data, and video make their way into the enterprise, organizations seek new tools to discern insight from these new engagement and experiential systems.

The shift from transaction to engagement to experience depends on better business analytics. Success requires that new business analytical tools support the information supply chain as data moves from a cacophony of upstream data sources to new and innovative downstream modes of consumption.

B. Research Findings – Why the Move from Transaction to Experience Requires Better Analytics

Leaders seek more than just reporting and dashboards, they expect to make real decisions. A recent Constellation Research survey identified key expectations from business analytics to include: supporting business strategy and planning; optimizing costs across the value chain; identifying hidden patterns and relationships in big data; providing context for relevant engagement; and predicting demand in networks.  Along with these key trends, the report discusses the:

1. Five Consumer Forces Influence the Future of Analytics
2. How Business Leaders Move Beyond Simple Reporting and Dashboards in Their Expectations of Business Analytics
3. Why Organizations Seek Insight to Make Better Decisions in the Shift from Transaction to Experience
4. How Big Data Provides the Key Element in Moving from Real- Time to Right-Time

Figure 1. Moving From Transaction To Experience

(Right-click to see full image)

The Bottom Line: Business Analytics Must Support Decision-Making Across the Information Supply Chain

The shift from transaction to engagement to experience depends on better business analytics. Success for business leaders requires that new business analytical tools support the information supply chain as data moves from a cacophony of upstream data sources to new and innovative downstream modes of consumption (see Figure 7).

• Classify. Incoming information must be tagged and associated with relevant metadata and context.
• Transform. Information must be converted to standard and conventions that can be consumed by all sources.
• Augment. Related information must be attached to the data.
• Secure. Access to, securing of, and masking of information must be applied.
• Deliver. Information and insights should be delivered to the relevant input nodes.
• Refresh. Periodic updates to information must be performed to keep data relevant.

C. Report Links

See how analytics play a major role in the shift from transaction to experience.  Buy the full research report on the Constellation Research website.

Your POV.

How are you using analytics to improve engagement and experience? Let us know your experiences.  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (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, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

Copyright © 2001 – 2012 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

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

Wednesday, April 25, 2012
10:00 am Pacific
1:00 pm Eastern

Presenters
Ray Wang
Principal Analyst and Chief Executive Officer
Constellation Research, Inc.

Patrick Morrissey
Vice President
Tidemark

Jennifer Maddox
Director of Product Marketing
Tidemark

Why the Move from Transaction to Experience Requires Better Analytics

Business leaders seek better insights for smarter decision-making. Unfortunately, today’s traditional intelligence tools were designed for two-dimensional transactional systems. As data from consumer trends such as mobile, social, cloud, big data, and video make their way into the enterprise, organizations seek new tools to discern insight from these new engagement and experiential systems.

In fact, leaders seek more than just reporting and dashboards, they expect to make real decisions. A recent Constellation Research survey identified key expectations from business analytics to include: supporting business strategy and planning; optimizing costs across the value chain; identifying hidden patterns and relationships in big data; providing context for relevant engagement; and predicting demand in networks.

The shift from transaction to engagement to experience depends on better business analytics.  Success requires that new business analytical tools support the information supply chain as data moves from a cacophony of upstream data sources to new and innovative downstream modes of consumption.

Why Does Everyone Need Analytics?  Because work—as we know it—soon won’t be as we know it.

Think real time. Connect finance and operations together with plans, forecasts, budgets, and a global view of the business so that everyone can see what they need, the way they need it.

Think mobile. Manage your business anywhere with a swipe of your finger from an iPad or mobile device by updating plans, doing real-time analysis, and collaboration.

Excel who? Think analytics for all.

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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

Clarabridge “Turns Up The Heat” On Delivering Context For Customer Experience

CEO, Sid Banderjee, opened up Clarabridge‘s 4th annual user conference to 350 customers at the Doral Golf & Spa in Miami, FL on March 5th, 2012.  Clarabridge, a sentiment and text analytics software provider helps companies discern insight from their text based customer feedback and the growing plethora of social and mobile data points.  The goal – aggregation of insights from qualitative analytics that transform key organizational processes in customer experience, new product development, and employee satisfaction.

Clarabridge has shown success with a Global 1000 customer list that spans key verticals in technology/telco, retail/CPG, manufacturing, travel/hospitality, financial services/insurance.  Major clients include Bank of America, Best Buy, Cisco, Dell, Disney, Fidelity, General Mills, Hilton, IHG Hotels, Kaiser Permanente, Marriott, Siemens Sony, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Verizon, Visa, Walgreen’s, Walmart, and Zynga.

Some highlights from the event include:

• Keynote from customer experience transformist Bruce Temkin. Bruce’s keynote discussed how organizations apply Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs to augment customer experience.  Temkin highlighted his VoC Maturity assessment methodology that drills in on six key areas – detection, dissemination, diagnosis, discussion, designing, and deploying.  The key quote from Bruce was “Customer feedback is cheap, actionable insight may be valuable, but taking action on insight is precious. VoC programs are useless unless you act on what you find”
• Best practices discussions from Global 1000 companies.Leading brands such as Acer, Best Buy, B/E Aerospace, Charming Shoppes, Choice Hotels International, Inc., Dell Inc, Expedia, Estée Lauder, Fidelity Investments, GE Appliances, United Airlines, Sage, Verizon, Vodaphone, Wendy’s, Walmart, and Zynga shared best practices.   Experiences from Wynn Parrish, VP Product Support of B/E Aerospace showd how customer management and warranty liability could be minimized.  Michael Silverman at Silverman research highlighted how Unilver uses VOC for internal employee programs.  One of the highlights was Jared Anderson (Best Buy) and Jonathan Sunberg’s (Confirmit) panel on voice of the customer at the leading edge/
• Official details on the Clarabridge 5.0 launch. The launch of Clarabridge 5.0 provides the foundation for a customer insight data analytics hub (See Figure 1).  As part of the launch, Clarabridge Collaborate adds integrated notifications and alerts.  A new satisfaction scoring and sentiment transparency capability brings customer satisfaction scores into the equation to determine customer loyalty and retention programs.  Many attendees expressed interest in the new theme and event detection capabilities which provide custom categorization models to quickly surface new trends.  Last but not least, the natural language processing engine now supports Italian, Dutch, and Japanese.

Figure 1. Transforming Feedback Into Insight

Figure 2. Scenes From Clarabridge C3

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Source: R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.
The Bottom Line: Voice of Customer Programs Key to Improving Customer Engagement

VOC’s provide a time honored tradition in capturing a customer’s expectations, preferences and aversions.  As the first step to any social business program, listening is critical to success.  Without understanding the customer or competitive landscape, organizations lack the insight required to address the root causes behind customer satisfaction and experience.  Customer service professionals can expect these techniques to extend beyond text based systems.  Early adopters to social business know they must build competencies in social media monitoring, text analytics, and social analytics.  In fact, organizations will see a digital divide grow in customer experience between those who use VOC techniques beyond social and those who fail to fast follow early adopters.  Why? Because customer experience is the only defensible position in today’s market.

Your POV

What strategies and tactics are you using to drive engagement?  How do you measure success.  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 Social CRM/ Social Business efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing social business/social CRM readiness
• Developing your social business/ social CRM  strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

• 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
• 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
• 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: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• 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
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• 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 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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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.&nbsp; 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. <br> 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… Read more

1. A wideband audio conference anchored in the Asterisk PBX. All participants used a Cisco phone along with a mono headset.
2. A narrow-band audio conference anchored in the Asterisk PBX. All participants used a Grandstream phone with a mono headset.
3. A wideband audio conference anchored in Dolby’s media server. All participants used Mac personal computers with USB-based stereo headphones and spatial speaker orientation was enabled.

• Dolby is on to something with its media server and client audio technology. The audio experience is clearly superior.
• When multiple people speak, Dolby’s audio is second to none. This is important because in an audio-only conference, there are no visual cues that enable people to avoid speaking over one another. This happens rather frequently, and the ability to distinguish these words and phrases is very helpful. Usually once people realize that someone else is speaking, one person stops, but this ability to distinguish words in these situations may relieve some of the cueing issues found in regular audio conferences.
• The Dolby solution does require stereo speakers or a stereo headset. This is an issue because most Bluetooth headsets and many high-end call center and executive Bluetooth, DECT, and wired headsets have only one ear bud or speaker. Dolby indicated that it is speaking with Bluetooth chipset manufacturers, encouraging them to develop stereo capabilities. (Plantronics was, interestingly enough, just across the hall from Dolby at this event, so the stereo headset message clearly got to that manufacturer.) At issue here is whether people will change their behavior and broadly adopt stereo headsets. From a vanity perspective, stereo headsets with a wire or a band connecting the ear buds or speakers will mess up a coiffed hairdo. Worrying about someone’s hair is possibly trivial, but probably not, particularly in an office setting or where people regularly switch between audio-only and video conferences.
• Dolby needs to address how the solution will work in a conference room. People will not come into a conference room and put on a headset.  

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.&nbsp; 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. <br> 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… Read more

1. Computer presence (logged in, tapped on keyboard lately),
2. Telephone presence (in a call, not in a call)
3. Calendar presence (in a meeting, not in a meeting)
4. Mobile phone presence (not all IM/presence engines can do this, but some can)
5. Location (some try to determine location automatically; for others, you must set it)
6. “What’s Happening” status (a simple message one can type into the buddy list indicating what one is presently involved with)

1. Update your presence status (or better yet, get a system that does most of the updating automatically). If the presence status is wrong, people won’t trust it and will use other methods to contact one another.
2. Don’t sleuth. It is annoying when someone sits on the network watching the presence status of others while not revealing their own. If you don’t want people to bother you, simply log off, and they will know to send you an email – or better yet, change your status to DND (do not disturb), and the person will send you an email.
3. Ask before you call. It is a courtesy that is both respectful and time saving. Most often, the person you are trying to contact will respond that they can take the call or tell you when they can take it. It just saves leaving a voice message or completely interrupting someone.
4. Keep IM to short transactions. If a conversation goes beyond just a few back and forth text exchanges, it is often faster and more productive to escalate the conversation to a phone call.