This list celebrates changemakers creating meaningful impact through leadership, innovation, fresh perspectives, transformative mindsets, and lessons that resonate far beyond the workplace.
Digital Health, Cybersecurity & Leading Tech Change in Healthcare | DisrupTV Ep. 48
In DisrupTV Episode 48, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar host a conversation with:
We had the opportunity to attend the SAP Capital Market event, held February 9th 2017 at the New York Stock Exchange. The event is for the analyst community, mainly for the financial colleagues, but with a good representation from the industry side, too Traditionally SAP unveils some product news at the event – as SAP did two years ago with the launch of S/4HANA (my blog of the event is here).
Competition in the IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) markets is getting fiercer all the time, but now Microsoft has come up with an additional differentiator besides cost and performance to lure customers to its Azure service: Protection from patent troll lawsuits.
We've started an innovative leadership research project within our global Constellation Research ecosystem to feature executive profiles like this one of David Chou, one of our Constellation Executive Network members. David's arguably the gold standard as an active Twitter Top 100 Social CIO who I mentioned in this earlier blog post.
Hear David live on DisrupTV at
Microsoft has made significant pricing cuts for Azure virtual machines and blob storage, in a move that suggests 2017 will see competition heat back up among cloud providers on the basis of cost and not just functionality. Redmond announced the cuts in a blog post:
Digitally savvy customers are in control now more than ever before. The companies that earn their business know how to gain their attention and keep it by creating seamless customer experiences, regardless of the communication channels and even if those channels switch midstream. One of ways to ensure seamless customer experiences is to align marketing and sales functions closely.
Siemens' longtime chairman is stepping down at the end of this year, and the massive German industrial conglomerate has made a telling choice in the man who will replace him: Former SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe. In a statement, current chairman Gerhard Cromme laid out the rationale:
We had the opportunity to attend ADP’s ReThink conference, held in Barcelona January 31st till February 2nd 2017. The event is for global customers and prospects of GlobalView, ADP’s global HCM product with a strong foundation in payroll. It was a record event in attendance, the combined companies have a total of 3.5T US$ in revenue… that’s almost the GDP of Germany.
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has already made three acquisitions in 2017, and the rationale for all of them ties back to December 2015, when HPE unveiled its Composable Infrastructure strategy.
Mozilla has abandoned its effort to create an open-source IoT (internet of things) platform with the dissolution of its Connected Devices group, a move that has resulted in about 50 layoffs and provides a lesson about the competitive stakes already present in the IoT market.
I'm honoured to be moderating next week's #FutureOfWork Think Tank hosted by Adobe. This event is part of the NewCo Bay Area technology festival.
My incredible panelists are:
The demise of Microsoft's venerable Visual Basic programming language has been predicted for years—arguably, as far back as 2002 when Redmond introduced the .NET framework—yet it has continued to survive and maintain a sizable developer base to this day.
On Jan 12, WalkMe acquired Abbi. WalkMe is one of the leading vendors in the growing Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) market. DAP tools help guide employees though proper use of their business applications, and help assist customers while navigating a brand's website. Think of DAP tools as the modern evolution of the help file.
Cisco's strong position in networking technology puts it in an ideal place for smart building and IoT innovation. This is embodied by Cisco's new Catalyst Digital Building Series switch. Here are the key details from a company blog post:
Every month, one of our featured Constellation analysts discusses what trends in disruptive technologies that forward-thinking business leaders need to pay attention to during exclusive monthly conversations open to Constellation Executive Network members. Think of it as non-fiction storytelling, the Constellation Research way.
Product launches are always supported with marketing messaging, but that’s for immediate sales prospects, and not necessarily a guide to the strategic direction of the vendor. Examining new partnering agreements and acquisitions usually gives a much clearer strategic insight, as both usually require investment with Board approval. That kind of justification normally makes the move part of an agreed strategic direction. Viewed in this way 2016 was an interesting year and offers some clues to the various market positions of the major IT vendors.
We had the opportunity to attend Acumatica Summit, held in San Diego from January 29th and going till February 2nd 2017, in lovely San Diego. The event was well attended, with substantial growth of attendees and partners. [For the record – on the Mueller / Reed / Sommer (MRS) scale the conference was even “exceptionally well attended” as we all were there (see here).
Cindy Zhou, Constellation Research VP & Principal Analyst, covers digital marketing and sales effectiveness and the key market trends. She discusses where the lines between sales and marketing are blurring and the increasing power of the customer.
If you are not a Constellation Executive Network member yet, join our analysts in this private community to talk shop and solve business problems in real time.
It’s been four years since I attended the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference, Retail’s Big Show. With over 35,000 attendees this year, the sector is going strong albeit the overall mood seemed more serious compared to the last time I attended. With a disappointing holiday season for Macy’s, Sears, and The Limited (all announcing store closings and shifting investments online) and the rising success of Amazon, what is the retailer of the future supposed to do?
Throughout the show, the infusion of tech and retail dominated the sessions, exhibitor