deal architect

Burning Platform: Data-Infused Apps

In the 45th episode of the series, we have Pete Schlampp, EVP Product Development at Workday.

Last week, I had the chance to present to some Chief Data Officers. I made the point that 2020 was an inflection point for data and analytics. We saw countless new data streams - related to COVID-19 data, the new census, shortened sports seasons stats, polls from the turbulent US elections, countless supply chain disruptions and many more. We also saw a new generation of players that leverage enterprise data go public and otherwise gain prominence - Snowflake, Palantir and C3.ai among them.

Workday is better known for its transaction capabilities in finance, hcm and procurement but it has gradually become an analytics powerhouse with acquisitions like Adaptive, Platfora, Gridcraft and others. During the pandemic they launched several bite sized apps which leveraged their analytics which I profiled in the Analyst Cam including VIBE for diversity management  and Vaccine Management. 

As Aneel Bhusri, the Co-CEO recently said "the future is about data, insights and predictions" 

So it was nice to spend time with Pete, who has been the key architect of Prism Analytics which is the cornerstone of many of the apps. We also discuss his expanded role which extends beyond analytics, his world view of "data-infused applications", machine learning and the role of Workday partners and their domain knowledge in the creation of many more bite-sized apps.

 

Analyst Cam: Tercera

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

This time, it is Chris Barbin, presenting on his new fund and advisory firm, Tercera. Chris was one of the co-founders of Appirio, a pioneering cloud systems integrator. They built practices around Salesforce, Google, Workday and others starting in 2006. A decade later they were acquired by Wipro, the large global outsourcer.

His focus now is SIs who are building practices around what they call the "third wave of the cloud" - ISVs like Okta, Snowflake, Splunk, Slack and others while also those focused on new  markets for Salesforce, Workday etc. He has also put together a nice board of advisers to help these firms navigate the changing cloud landscape.

Many investors still avoid professional services startups and that becomes Chris's opportunity.  It is an invigorating conversation with one of the savviest services executives I have known.

In fact, 12 years ago he was profiled in this blog as a "cloud pioneer". He continues to be one.

 

Burning Platform: Workday Nation

In the 44th episode of the series  we have Webb Armentrout, Group VP, Global Partners at Workday.

Workday has historically done a better job managing its SI ecosystem than many other vendors including some I have written books about. They certify at the individual consultant level and require re-certifications with every new semi-annual release. They have also kept their partner count relatively small to allow for better collaboration and management at the firm level.

We discuss how the pandemic, related WFH and need for virtual implementations severely tested the SIs, and how they have collaborated with Workday, its customers and often with each other during the trying period. Emily McEvilly, Chief Customer Officer had given me a preview in our conversation in November. (Toward the end, Webb brings up meeting at Concourse B at Atlanta Hartsfield airport. We had spent a few minutes before the formal conversation discussing our respective admiration for Delta Airlines which is based there)

We also discuss the likely changes as Workday partners leverage its Extend development platform, as Workday evolves to more solution selling, more verticals and countries as it marches toward a major milestone of annual revenues of $10 billion. The addition of Chano Fernandez as Co-CEO, the promotion of Emily McEvilly and other executive moves reflect the increased scope Workday is taking on.

Clearly the ecosystem will need to step up, and I will keep pushing for more automation in their delivery but the Workday track record to date has been reassuring and bodes well for a smoother evolution.  

 

Burning Platform: Industry Clouds

In the 43th episode of the series  we have Jujhar Singh, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Salesforce Industry Clouds.

Salesforce has had significant vertical momentum, especially in the last year. See my interview with Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh last May, my Analyst Cam posts from their Summit last June where they showcased 12 "industry cloud" tracks - Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 and my October note about Salesforce's "acrobatics"

Jujhar Singh does an amazingly rapid-fire update across many of those industries in the video below.

Bob Evans of Cloud Wars recently placed Salesforce as # 1 in his listing of Industry Clouds. He used revenues, vision and other rating factors.

I was already convinced of Salesforce vertical momentum last year, and Jujhar reinforced it this week, so I agree with Bob for 3 additional reasons

1. Salesforce's industry functionality is in a multi-tenant cloud. Most of the other vendor industry functionality and customer bases are still largely on-prem or in private clouds and other single tenant settings
2. Salesforce functionality reflects a more modern state of industries. Most other vendor industry functionality was developed over a decade ago or even further back and has been updated only mildly - spray painted as I like to call it. Their industry apps looked dated before 2020. With the pandemic forcing so many changes (see the many episodes of industry specific interviews I did in this series last year) many of their industry offerings look outright ancient now. 
3. Salesforce has leveraged vertical application partners on its platform better than the others (and frankly, I would like them to do even better with these focused partners) - with players like Veeva, nCino, Vlocity and many others

Jujhar invited my audience to this year's Industry Summit coming up in  June. I would highly encourage it - you can register here 

The Analyst Cam: Acadian Ventures

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission), as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Jason Corsello who presents on his fund Acadian Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in "future of work" - the talent/HCM part of that rapidly changing world especially after the turmoil of 2020.

I have known Jason for years both as an industry analyst, and then in his role as an executive at Cornerstone OnDemand.

He is very well connected in HCM world and it shows in the portfolio he has already invested in, and in the limited partners/advisory board he has put together.

Burning Platform: Work Anywhere - Tertiary Towns and Rural Revival

In the 42nd episode of the series we have Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. We had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. Next, we had Tammie Hilend, CIO at the space tech company, Maxar who discussed how she has done her demanding job on the road in her RV 

Zoho has long had a very different approach to talent - they build it versus buying it from other companies or prestigious universities. They have long located themselves in secondary cities in Japan, Netherlands, Mexico, the US. The CEO, Sridhar Vembu has long had a passion for Rural Revival - see my interview with him last year after he relocated from Silicon Valley to rural India. 

Raju describes their move from Pleasanton, CA to Austin, TX. Quality of life and cost of living for employees are far more important to him than universities and airports are to other companies. Now, with Austin attracting so many other companies, he describes how they are shifting focus to even smaller towns in Texas and even more so in India.

In keeping with the rural revival theme, even the Austin location has become more of an organic, employee-nurtured farm.

He compares this distributed talent model to the move we have seen in computing - from a centralized, mainframe to a network model.

It is a fascinating conversation. He readily admits they don't have all the answers or that it will work for others, but post-pandemic, if we all don't explore such models and changes in lifestyle shame on us.

Coding + Farming just may be a winning combination!

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing Part 2

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Below is Part 2 of the presentation, Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 made about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. Part 1 ran yesterday here. 

Burning Platform: More work from Anywhere

In the 41st episode of the series we have Tammie Hilend, CIO of Maxar Technologies

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. Couple of weeks ago, we had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai.

This time is Tammie Hilend who has been working from her RV as she travels around the US. Her company, Maxar is in space technology. Her COO, Jeff Robertson had presented at the start of the pandemic last year about the complex protocols they had to consider during the lockdowns especially when it comes to some of their sensitive, classified work.

Tammie describes her personal experience managing her demanding job from the road. With Starlink and many of Maxar's telecom customers generating excitement about satellite internet, it is timely to hear about her bandwidth around the road. As she says, managing around extreme weather has been more of challenge.

She also describes how in her other role managing facilities they are reimagining their "future of work" including work locations and hybrid formats.

It is a fascinating conversation. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We can ALL be digital nomads.

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 spent a generous hour briefing me about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. I am running Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow.

Dmitri starts with an update on the TA Associates investment in Unit4 with a valuation in excess of $ 2 billion.

Several things I liked in the presentation

• The new architecture reflects the seismic changes in the industry since Unit4 launched its first gen cloud in 2017 - lot more focus on microservices, ML etc. From a user point pov, there are digital assistants, smart automation, instant mini apps and a lot more mobility. You can see a lot of his influence from recent time at Google.

• There is a lot more thought on migrations and upgrades. His Intuit background shows up in a lot more user controlled destiny versus dependence on IT or SIs.

• I like that the first 15 early adopters are a microcosm of Unit4's global differentiation and focus on services verticals like nonprofits, higher education etc. I particularly liked the portion around industry specific "mesh" architecture.

Next up - hope to interview some of the early adopter customers.  Well, Part 2 before that, tomorrow.  

 

Burning Platform: The future of "as a service"

In the 39th (yesterday) and 40th (today) episode of the series  we have Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, two of the pioneering influencers in the SaaS/cloud marketplace.

In part 2 below we talk about how business models are evolving and how servitization has become a significant trend in every industry vertical, not just in enterprise technology - as Phil calls it Everything as a Service.

In part 1 yesterday we had taken a walk down memory lane on how the SaaS, cloud infrastructure and platform economies have evolved over the last 25 years.

Burning Platform: 25 years of "as a service"

In the 39th (today) and 40th (tomorrow) episode of the series  we have Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, two of the pioneering influencers in the SaaS/cloud marketplace.

In part 1 below, we take a walk down memory lane on how the SaaS, cloud infrastructure and platform economies have evolved over the last 25 years.

In part 2 tomorrow we will talk about how business models are evolving, new entrants, and how servitization has become a significant trend in every industry vertical, not just in enterprise technology.

Burning Platform: Digital Nomads

In the 38th episode of the series we have Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons.

Mark Brooks has been working and living for ages across the world - in Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. He explains his checklist on how he decides on places to call office and home for his family. He also describes the creative way he does virtual schooling for his daughters with tutors from around the world.

He also spends some time on his specialty - advising dating sites and how technology keeps helping that sector continue to grow at a nice pace and how those technologies will affect the future of work for all of us

It is a fascinating conversation. And one for employers and politicians everywhere to factor. People do vote with their feet. And their choices keep expanding around the world

Analyst Cam: Zimit CPQ for Services

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

James Cramer, CEO of Zimit, a Workday Ventures portfolio company presented to me about their CPQ (configure, price, quote) capabilities aimed at the enterprise services markets. The majority of CPQ tools in the market today are aimed at product makers.

Zimit CPQ is not just a quote generator, it functions as a proposal engine and can embed text like staff resumes, customer references and methodologies.

They have an impressive range of customers - services arms of software vendors, digital agencies, embedded services in industrial companies. Also telling that their customers are not just project oriented but are also using other business models like outcome based pricing, pass-through hyperscaler charges etc.

Listening to James present, you marvel at how rapidly the enterprise services economy has evolved in the last decade. Add to that the virtual deployments the pandemic accelerated last year. Not your Dad's service economy.

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Vaccine Cloud

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Over the last year, I have been impressed with a variety of pandemic and related crisis -driven applications Salesforce and its partners have launched. They have helped with contact tracing of 200 million people, source over 60 million pieces of PPE, helped process millions of SBA PPP loans. I have profiled them here, here, here   

In that tradition, it was nice to have Meredith Flynn-Ripley, SVP Product Growth and GM at Salesforce present on their Vaccine Cloud. It is designed to help 3 broad constituencies - public health authorities, healthcare providers and employers with the whole lifecycle of vaccine management including education, communications, scheduling, inventory management and certifications.  

Meredith does a nice job in 20 minutes covering a lot of ground. As she mentions, Salesforce is starting to deliver a similar scale of results to over 150 customers and millions of vaccinations in this critical endeavor.

 

Analyst Cam: Unit4 Executive Briefing

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Mike Ettling, CEO and Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 joined me for a corporate and product briefing.

Mike spends time on the recent announcement that they have received a  majority investment from TA Associates, a leading global growth private equity firm and about the exit of the previous majority investor, Advent International.  He discusses what TA liked in the services verticals they are focused on to value them in excess of $2 billion

Last May, I had interviewed Mike about leadership during a crisis.  I asked him to provide an update and starting around 10.45 he invokes the Zulu philosophical concept of Ubuntu which roughly translates to 'I am because of who you are'. That has guided him through life and especially in the crisis that started last year. Later in the conversation, in keeping with the recent spat between two much larger competitors , I asked both of them if they wanted to take shots at any competitors. I joked they were 'boring" but I like their high road - "we focus on customers, not competitors"    

Dmitri provided an update on the ERPx release. In October, he had presented (starting around 28.00 here) about the rollout. They are on schedule with 15 early adopter customers across industries and geographies he describes.  Dmitri also addresses my point that the hyperscalers have gained momentum not just at the infrastructure layer, but also at the platform layer. How does an application vendor like Unit4 navigate this major shift in the industry?

We cover lots of other ground during the session. Dmitri will be back to present more details in a session later this week. 

 

Enterprise La La Land

I wrote last week we would likely hear more detail around application modules and customers and subsidiaries to explain Larry Ellison's claim during his earnings call about Oracle snatching customers from SAP. Bob Evans has interviews with executives from each on Cloud Wars. 

SAP's DJ Paoni's responded "Of the 100 or so customer names cited by Oracle, 80% are planning to make “significant investments” with SAP in 2021"

Steve Miranda of Oracle is more specific. But in some ways they both raise even more questions.

Steve primarily talks about HCM, SCM and EPM applications, three of the most fragmented enterprise application categories. HCM is still heavily outsourced, particularly in the payroll and benefits area. So is SCM to 3PLs and increasingly by merchants to fulfillment by Amazon or Shopify. The whole analytics space was turned upside down last year as I wrote here with many new data streams and many new players like Snowflake, C3 and Palantir, each of which had successful listings. 

I realize Steve did not have hours with Bob but when you are talking "ERP replacements" I would think you would talk major chunks like core financials, manufacturing etc. And if not manufacturing, vertical applications like retail banking, utility billing etc.  

Similarly with customer scope. He mentions Marriott, a company I know pretty well as a consumer, having spent over 4 years (yes!) of my life sleeping in their rooms. Many of their properties are run by franchisees who often have their own systems. They have a number of brands like Springhill Suites and Courtyard which have unique processes. Besides, a global company like Marriott has "one of each". Steve had them on a panel in 2014 (see here), Salesforce profiled them even more fully at their event in 2018.  If anything, it makes Paoni's point that customers continue to buy from SAP AND Oracle AND many others.

So, after reading the earnings call transcript,  my question was which modules and at which customer subsidiaries did Oracle replace SAP? Now I need to narrow that expectation much further - which features and how few users did they manage to move?

The good news is most customers realize Magic Quadrants and vendor marketing are the equivalent of a satellite snapshot when you are shopping for real estate. You use them to narrow the neighborhoods you should be looking at. The hard work comes later - lots of house tours, inspections, paperwork etc.

I was even more puzzled by Steve's point about speed at which the enterprise market is moving as he tries to explain how they stole customers from SAP    

He says "But in the past few years, that has changed dramatically, and I think the big reason behind that change is the speed of innovation the cloud offers." “But now, with the cloud, it happens every 90 days. That’s an enormous difference.”

I think Steve is conflating the pace at which SaaS vendors deliver multiple releases a year -  bite-sized collections of fixes and features - with complete modules. The pace at which application vendors have delivered modular functionality in the cloud is actually disappointingly slow. Salesforce and NetSuite were some of the earliest SaaS vendors in the late 90s. In the 20 years since, if you chart a grid of available SaaS functionality by industry and country, we are not even at 20%. Try finding many insurance claims processing or fintech applications in SaaS mode. Try finding many which support regulations in Indonesia, Russia and Nigeria.

Over the same period look at what Amazon has done to shake up so many sectors. Watch my interview last week with Robin Gaster, author of a new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

The problem is while both SAP and Oracle have brilliant enterprise architects at the top, they just don't have process or industry visionaries like Amazon does to completely reshape sectors. They are much more comfortable talking nuances of databases.

If anything, 2020 completely changed the definition of "speed" in every industry. We have all seen the amazing speed at which COVID vaccines have been developed, approved and distributed. Watch Jack Barrett, CEO of a community bank describe how they processed more PPP loans in a little over a month what usually takes them years  Watch Lou Von Thaer, CEO of Battelle describe how quickly their vaporized hydrogen peroxide-based Critical Care Decontamination System scaled when N95 masks were in critically short supply in March. In 4 months, they had disinfected and extended lives of over 2 million masks.  I had plenty more such sessions last year.  

So many new applications came to life in 2020 as I wrote last week.

"Telemedicine in health care, distance learning in higher education, mobile banking, PPP loan processing. vaccine management, HR diversity analytics, virtual real estate tours, remote field service, digital mortgages, eCommerce, warehouse automation, last mile delivery and so much more in every industry."

I would love to hear both Oracle and SAP talk about those applications. It's been a year since the pandemic started. That to me would be a better showing of speed.

Even better, Oracle and SAP should quit looking at each other. In the last decade, it wasn't just Amazon which grew much faster. Google, Facebook and agencies ran away with the digital marketing spend. Contract manufacturers like Foxconn and design firms dominated the product innovation space. GE, Siemens and others are leading the industrial IOT game.

Time for both to dramatically expand their TAM. Their market share of corporate technology wallets has been dropping for a long time. Sniping at each other only highlights they are living in the past. 

Burning Platform: Amazon, automation and society

In the 36th (yesterday) and 37th (today) episode of the series we have Dr. Robin Gaster, President, Incumetrics Inc. and Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. We discuss various aspects of Amazon's growing empire from his new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

In part 2 below we talk more about Amazon and other automation trends which accelerated during the pandemic. Throughout both episodes, we cover Amazon's amazing growth and its impact on retail, book publishing, data centers, ecommerce and many other industry sectors. The discussion is part admiration especially from a consumer pov, part concern from a societal pov about Amazon's ruthless efficiency.

 

Analyst Cam: Vida Health

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Stephanie Tilenius, CEO of Vida Health, a Workday Ventures portfolio company presents on their solution leveraging a network of therapists, nutritionist and coaches in every one of the 50 US states.

Vida focuses on "holistic health" - physical and mental with a focus on chronic conditions such as diabetes and anxiety. Chronic conditions drive 90% of US healthcare spend. A whopping 41% is spent on 12% of the population who have 5 or more such conditions.

She provides several examples of improved patient outcomes when they get what Vida calls "integrated, polychronic" treatment such as a 33% greater improvement in A1c when diabetes and mental health were treated together.  Their key message is point solutions often miss the mark.

The pandemic dramatically accelerated adoption of telemedicine. Personal health data grew significantly as we adopted digital fitness equipment and trackers. Add to that digital networks like this one. It is a symbiotic relationship - plenty of data for Vida's machines to create more personalized support and matching with providers.

They have grown nicely in the last 5 years - with 1.9 million covered "lives' and a network of over a thousand service providers with the fees paid for by employers and healthcare payers. 

Burning Platform: Relentless Amazon

In the 36th (today) and 37th (tomorrow) episode of the series we have Dr. Robin Gaster, President, Incumetrics Inc. and Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Institute of Public Policy.

We discuss various aspects of Amazon's growing empire from his new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

In part 1 below we cover Amazon's amazing growth and its impact on retail, book publishing, data centers, ecommerce and many other industry sectors.

The discussion is part admiration especially from a consumer pov, part concern from a societal pov about Amazon's ruthless efficiency.

We also talk about Amazon and other automation trends which accelerated during the pandemic.

Part 2 link

Analyst Cam: Plex acquires Kors Engineering

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Ben Stewart, VP of Product Strategy and Dave Mofars, VP of Product Marketing at Plex Systems presented on their recent acquisition of Kors Engineering and its MACH2 integration platform that interacts with shop floor machines.

Plex and Kors have partnered for nearly two decades and the combination made even more sense as we see increased automation in the shop floor with enterprises bringing more manufacturing back in the face of blue collar labor shortages.

It blends well with the Industrial IoT strategy Plex has been pursuing. MACH2 focuses on the What, the IOT detail allows for pursuing the WHY such as details on machine health.

 

Burning Platform: Entrepreneurial Trends

In the 34th (yesterday) and 35th (today) of the series we have Brad Feld, Founding Partner, Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway who leads the global ecosystems business at Techstars,

In this episode, they discuss new opportunities they are investing in, the challenge of mental health and new opportunities they see there, and the changed environment for startups with a new administration in the US.

Burning Platform: Startup Communities

In the 34th (today) and 35th (tomorrow) episode of the series we have Brad Feld, Founding Partner, Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway who leads the global ecosystems business at Techstars,

In the episode below, they discuss their book, The Startup Community Way  

They also discuss how the pandemic has led to population shifts away from several urban centers and the resulting opportunities and challenges for new startup communities. They discuss how things are likely to shake out as we come out of the pandemic. Brad describes the trajectory the city of Boulder, CO has seen over the last few decades in its evolution as a startup magnet.

In tomorrow's episode, they will discuss how the world has changed for entrepreneurs with the pandemic and with the new administration in the US.

Oracle Earnings Call - a missed opportunity

Larry Ellison is one enterprise software exec I have not spent much time with. Oh, I have seen plenty of Oracle OpenWorld and other keynotes. I mean in a small group setting. He has always let Ray Lane or Charles Phillips or Mark Hurd deal with industry analysts - he spends a bit more time with Wall Street analysts.

And yet over the years, I have learned and admired so much of what he has done for sailing, tennis, hospitality, education, aviation, automobile, sartorial and other worlds. In a way, I am glad we don't spend much time with him - I would bug him with all kinds of questions about these activities.

Alas, we cannot ignore the less exciting world of enterprise software. One of Larry's strengths is that he has cultivated a pithy look and feel to Oracle branding. His taunting of competitors on Oracle earning calls continues that trademark marketing. To me, it's a version of the Avis "we try harder" positioning. It is a way of associating yourself with whoever is a market leader - Microsoft one day, Salesforce or Workday another day, more recently Amazon and SAP. As an added bonus, hopefully, that gets under the skin of those competitors and has them waste time and effort to prove he is wrong.

He spent 1,901 words in his prepared comments and more in the Q&A on SAP in last week's earnings call. More specifically, he named names - what he says are customers who have moved/are moving away from SAP applications to Oracle's. And he took out a microscope to measure the distance between where Gartner places both vendors on various Magic Quadrants. That may have SAP scampering for weeks to respond. And I suspect Gartner analysts and customer attorneys to speculate which specific modules and which global subsidiaries he was referring to.

Missed opportunity - especially since in relative terms, Larry does not spend much time talking about his applications. We are in early 2021, still in the middle of a global pandemic. Very few customers meddled in 2020 with their big, hairy, legacy applications. From what I can tell, there were not many moves to next-gen SAP ERP nor to next-gen Oracle.

Instead, I would have liked Larry to talk about which vertical edge applications Oracle delivered to help his customers morph and survive in a "from-home" and pandemic economy. Telemedicine in health care, distance learning in higher education, mobile banking, PPP loan processing. vaccine management, HR diversity analytics, virtual real estate tours, remote field service, digital mortgages, eCommerce, warehouse automation, last mile delivery and so much more in every industry. Further, I would have liked to hear how Oracle services and his SI ecosystem have moved to virtual delivery. What has Oracle learned from autonomous database deployments that can be applied to application management? 

I would love to have those conversations in a small group setting with Larry. Nice bonus would be to have him talk about technology in this year's America's Cup, sustainability on his island, Japanese culture and so much else:)

The Analyst Cam: IFS Cloud launch

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

IFS is hosting its Cloud Launch event today and tomorrow. You can register here to watch the packed agenda. I have excerpted about 20 minutes from today's keynote in the video below.

CEO Darren Roos had given us a sneak preview of the event here.  In his keynote today, he reiterated his messages around digital business models and "moments of service" and the role of cloud platforms in their delivery. At 3.43 Ann-Kristen Sander, Sales Director highlights the complex industrial and services verticals like aerospace and defense the IFS cloud is meant to serve. There are plenty of sessions on each industry in the next couple of days. At 4.11 Amy Eager, Technical Solution Consultant talks about the multiple deployment modes for the IFS cloud and portability across them. At 4.43, Cathie Hall, SVP of Product Experience describes the concept of Lifecycle Experience that comes with the IFS cloud.

At 5.46, Christian Pedersen, Chief Product Officer introduces an early adopter, "Pioneer customer", CIMCORP which provides robotics to automate warehouses and distribution centers. I included this segment in its entirety in the video below. I love all the scenarios presented including field service scheduling and mixed reality support. Very different from most enterprise vendor demos which mostly emphasize white collar processes and slick analytics and often ignore blue-collar, operational areas.

The whole event reflects the vibrant new branding CMO, Oliver Pilgerstorfer had described here .

Very nice start to the event.

2021 - just like 2020

OK, don't freak out. 2021 will hopefully not be as miserable as 2020. However, from a Deal Architect content point of view, 2021 can only look back at 2020 with envy.

We initiated or accelerated contributions to 5 series in 2020:

• 75+ executives shared their heroics and industry perspectives in the Acrobatics during the Crisis series
• 60+ vendor executives and analysts presented on new products and surveys in the Analyst Cam series
• 50+ folks proudly described their hobbies, charities, personal pursuits in the Technology and my Passion series
• 20+ analysts and influencers commented on industry trends in the Burning Platform series
• 25+ Florida towns are profiled in the West Coast on the East Coast series

We uploaded over 3,000 minutes of video to our YouTube channel.

2021 is turning out to not be a slouch, even as our advisory business has picked up.

Here is the content progress to date:

Analyst Cam

Otpimizely: Digital Experiences

Zoho: ZohoDay excerpts

Zoho: ZohoDay Social Hour

Supply Chain Matters: 2021 Trends

IFS: Cloud sneak preview

SAP: Industry Cloud

IFS: Rebranding

Adobe: Developers Live

Workday: Vaccine Management

Rimini Street: Investor Day

SAP: RISE with SAP

IT Central Station: Tech Buying Trends

Cella Technologies: Optimizing material handling on shop floors

C5MI: Industry 4.0

Burning Platform

Business Continuity with Mark Smith of Ventana Research 

A review of RISE with SAP with Dennis Howlett of Diginomica

Exciting world of Citizen IT with Amit Zavery of Google Cloud

More on RISE with SAP with Geoff Scott of ASUG

Evolving expectations of CX with Mark Taylor of Cognizant Digital Experience

Developers, developers...with James Governor of Redmonk

Modern Decisioning with Bret Greenstein of Cognizant

Global Grand Challenges with Jyoti Banerjee of North Star Transition

Technology and my Passion

Barbara Boardman Beekeeping

Susanne Beck Jigsaw Puzzles

Sandy Silverberg Broadway Productions

Alan Alper Pandemic positives

Rob Kugel Diving and Reef Check

West Coast on the East Coast 

St. Petersburg - more of the new Pier

St. Petersburg - Sunken Gardens

St. Petersburg - Museum of Fine Arts

St. Petersburg - Sunken Gardens with Google Lens

St. Petersburg - Mobility of every sort

Tampa Bay Area - a living museum

Tampa - River Walk prep for Super Bowl 55

Tampa - Raymond James Stadium - Super Bowl 55

Tampa - River Boat Victory Parade - Super Bowl 55

 

The Analyst Cam: Optimizely

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I had a chance to catch up with Alex Atzberger, who I know from his tenure as President of SAP's CX unit. He had joined as CEO of Episerver, a Swedish content and commerce vendor. Last year, they acquired Optimizely founded by ex-Google execs to bring A/B testing and more sophisticated experimentation to the marketing world. Earlier this year, Episerver rebranded itself Optimizely to emphasize continuous optimization as Digital Experiences, recommendation engines and next-best action support have become even more important during pandemic WFH settings.

Alex presents below on the combined capabilities and 9,000 customers - many major brands - and of other acquisitions like InSite which brought commerce capabilities aimed at manufacturers and distributors. We also discuss other digital experience and privacy related regulatory trends.

 

Burning Platform: Global Grand Challenges

In the 33rd episode of the series is Jyoti Banerjee, co-founder of North Star Transition.

I first met Jyoti a quarter of a century ago and have always known him for focusing on better corporate reporting and finance. He has been globally influential in the Integrated Reporting movement. More importantly, he has also been an "impact investor" for two decades in various greentech/cleantech initiatives around the world. I heard him present on his work on the Wales Transition Lab and invited him to be part of this series. I like the systemic thinking he is bringing there by involving farmers, insurance companies, public health, environmental and other government agencies.

As background, in The New Polymath, I had written about the globe's "Grand Challenges". I have been frustrated at the progress over the last decade. Jyoti is similarly frustrated at how little progress we are making on the environment and other sustainable goals. My view of systemic thinking, however, is slightly different than his. As some of you know I have developed my "multiple locomotive" model from my travels to over 70 countries. In my view the biggest, most affluent countries need to all step up to power the global "freight train" when it comes to the environment, trade, immigration, policing of hot spots and many other challenges. It has been easy to expect the US and couple of other countries to carry most of the burden.

You can see both our points of view come out in the episode. I tell him he is expecting too much from corporations in the Western world when we should also be calling out China, India, Russia, Germany, Japan and many other countries. Why continue to criticize the US whose emissions have been going down for the last decade and not challenge China which is now the world's biggest polluter and just accept their 2060 Net Zero emissions horizon? If things are really dire, we cannot be giving concessions to India, Russia, China and others to continue to use coal. Offline, I told him after more than a decade EVs still have only 3% global market share. Part of the reason - even with 25% lighter bill of materials, EVs are priced 50% or more than internal combustion vehicles. In most countries, the utilities that power EV batteries still largely run coal and fossil fueled plants. Solar and wind are still not that competitive in spite of massive subsidies. In some ways, that makes your EV dirtier than your Humvee. We should have the courage to call out ALL the slackers.

Definitely watch starting at 14.00 what he describes of his work in Wales and what he describes around the systemic work in Finland around cardiac health  But please watch the whole episode. You may not agree with everything Jyoti or I say, but it will hopefully make you challenge simplistic mainstream, woke thinking and get impatient like the both of us with ALL the slackers.

 

The Analyst Cam: ZohoDay Social Hour

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Zoho marches to a different drummer than other software companies as I have written here, here, and here. 

So, during the recent ZohoDay event they, of course, had to host a very different virtual social hour for the analysts

With growing investment in Austin, TX they have been emphasizing Western themes in their events and swag (like the stuff they mailed ahead of this event). Try getting analysts to comply! In the video below you see analysts with all kinds of headgear, costumes and gestures. BTW, I am guilty as charged: I wore my Bucs gear to celebrate our Super Bowl victory and to annoy fellow analysts who have publicly said they don't like our quarterback, Tom Brady.  I mean, who does not like the GOAT? :)

Sandy Lo, who heads analyst relations for Zoho, put an amazing variety show together. And she was helped by the impressive new virtual event platform Zoho showcased during the evening - Backstage OnAir. 

I have excerpted a quarter of the show.  It is kicked off by Sandy trying to get a mob of analysts to behave.

At 3.25 is a magician, Anders Boulanger. He is a Zoho customer. In his day job, he is CEO (and founder) of Engagify. How many customer CEOs have entertained you at a vendor event?

At 7.59 is the Zoho band, RMD (RENDU MANI DOSA) performing from Chennai, India. Read Paul Greenberg's profile on the band here. They recently also competed in his CRM Playaz Battle of the (vendor) Bands. 

At 12.30 are more talented Zoho employees - dancers in the Zoho Dance Group and Zohotrix Crew.

At 15.47, Brent Leary takes over as DJ, and tried to get the analysts to emulate the Zoho dancers. Some did, some just put on their grumpy analyst faces. Did I already say it is tough to herd analysts?

Coordinating this hour with at least 25 entertainers must have taken Sandy even longer than it took her to put the ZohoDay sessions together.

Very nicely done!

The Analyst Cam: ZohoDay Excerpts

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Zoho marches to a different drummer than other software companies as I have written here, here, and here.   They hosted a 2 day virtual analyst event last week. It was packed full of sessions. They had a dozen "primer videos" available a week in advance (and I helped critique one a couple of weeks prior). That allowed for parallel "huddles" during the actual event, and plenty of time for the executive keynotes and for q and a.

Their new virtual event platform, Backstage OnAir was crisp and supported chat, audio and video participation by one of the largest analyst gatherings I have seen in the last year.

I have excerpted below from presentations by CEO Sridhar Vembu and Chief Strategy Officer, Vijay Sundaram.

Sridhar, as usual, was inspirational. He discussed how the industry led by Apple is moving to vertical integration even as the pandemic and global tensions are encouraging distributed, regional models. This will mean a splintering of workforces, many to rural locations and require better collaboration technologies but even more different cultures and management philosophies.

He had already moved from California to rural Southern India in late 2019. It is remarkable to see how much he gets done there in business and increasingly in his civic duties there - he was recently honored with the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honors. Yet he continues with a very modest life - he drives a $2,000 electric rickshaw. I had a longer interview with him here 

Vijay provides an update on how Zoho navigated the challenges of 2020. His presentation shows their continued care of customers and generosity to employees.  

I have another episode here about the Social Hour they hosted.

Very nicely done. And about their new event platform - knowing them they will price and bundle it at rates their customers absolutely adore.

The Analyst Cam: Supply Chain Matters 2021 Trends

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings and analyst presentations, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

In December, Bob Ferrari had joined me on an episode of Burning Platform to discuss the many supply chain disruptions in 2020 and how to renew them with more resilience in mind 

He presents in this episode from his firm's report - 2021 predictions for industry and global supply chains. It also defines his firm's research agenda for the year.

We cover lots of industries, scenarios and impact on enterprise software. He also discusses how the purview of SCM expanded significantly in the last year.  

You can also download a free copy of his report by registering here. 

 

 

Burning Platform: Modern Decisioning

In the 32nd episode of the series is Bret Greenstein, SVP and Global Markets Head of AI & Analytics at Cognizant.

'How has COVID changed the way customers are looking at analytics?" - I asked that in this post which covered 12 data streams and use cases from 2020. 

I invited Bret to talk about how the world changed with his client base and from his regular interactions with Chief Data Officers.

He presents with a series of simple questions like What Happened? Why did it happen? How did we miss that? and provides plenty of examples.

A compelling case for why decisioning needs to be refreshed. Very effective set of questions enterprises should be asking post-pandemic about their data strategies and analytics.

Thank you, Dennis Howlett

Dennis has announced he is retiring. I knew it was coming - he would often fret he did not have enough time for his large and growing family - but I would have bet it would be towards end of this year. Or next. I am glad I managed to record a couple of episodes with him in the last few weeks.

We had our fair share of disagreements - show me someone who has been spared that by Dennis? :) But I admired several things about him and let me share a few things you may not know about him

a) he is a Polymath

Every few months I would learn something new about him.  Listen to his bio in the excerpt below - it will blow your mind.  And he does not even mention here what he has been up to recently - building and painting 1/35 scale armored vehicles (three in progress and 18 more in his 'stash' he says)

b) a true blogging pioneer.

It hit me when Dennis, Frank Scavo and I recorded a Christmas episode. We took a walk down memory lane - see excerpt below. Each of us has been blogging for 15+ years. He was a purer play than either of us. Frank and I had advisory distractions. I spent a fair amount of time on my many books. He dedicated the last phase of his career to making enterprise blogging and the independent analyst model a respected source of industry influence.

c) he made time for so many

He was a whisperer to so many in the industry - check out the flattering comments on his LinkedIn post where he announced his retirement. I was constantly amazed how he could find the time. I certainly benefited - he reviewed every one of my books.

So, Dennis, thanks for the many laughs and cries. Enjoy time with the family and your train rides.

But please come back and record more episodes from time to time. I want the opportunity to say it a few more times - GFY :)

The Analyst Cam: IFS Cloud sneak preview

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I had a chance to catch up with Darren Roos, CEO of IFS and he gave me a sneak preview on the IFS Cloud which it will launch on March 10.

It's been good to see IFS use the pandemic to accelerate its focus on enterprise service and asset management (see this episode with use cases like Rolls Royce), the investment in its cloud and also its rebranding. CMO Oliver Pilgerstorfer provided details of the branding exercise in this episode here. 

Following my conversation with Darren in video below is a snippet of the vibrant displays IFS has at Times Square in New York, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and Piccadilly Circus in London.

More details on the cloud offering to follow after the launch in a couple of weeks.   

The Analyst Cam: SAP Industry Cloud

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

SAP hosted for analysts a Industry Cloud briefing last week. I have excerpted below about 15 minutes from an hour long session.

Peter Maier, President Industries and Customer Advisory kicks it off and I liked that he gave several examples of new industry functionality. SAP (and in fairness other large vendors) often talk about industry qualifications in generalities and about past efforts ignoring that every industry turned upside down last year.

I had interviewed him last May and you can definitely see progress. 

At 6.50, Peter and Kai Finck, who heads Industry Cloud Program respond to a question about industries where SAP has seen most momentum in the last year.

At 9.15, Svend Wittern, who heads Industry Strategy and Peter explain that business networks where SAP plays a big role with horizontal functionality from Ariba, Concur and others are increasingly moving to industry versions.

At 12.18 Ralph Stemler, who heads Industry Ecosystems mentions that strategy firms like McKinsey may be partnering with SAP and getting into the IP business with their industry knowledge

At 13.30 Steffen Schad, Product Manger, SAP Business Technology Platform talks about how partners and customers are starting to use the platform (including recent acquisitions of Signavio and AppGyer) to build industry functionality

Overall, I liked the momentum Peter showcased, but I still don't think SAP is thinking small enough. It has missed the boat on so much demand we saw for vertical edge apps like telemedicine, distance learning in higher ed, warehouse automation, last mile delivery in retail and food service, virtual open houses in real estate in the last year. It is still focused on big "intelligent enterprise" type positioning which will take years to flesh out.

Also, in the next briefing, it would be nice to hear much more specifically about how strategy firms (and the traditional SI partners) and low code tools are helping develop specific industry functionality. Similar about how RISE with SAP is being verticalized. 

Look forward to more of these periodic briefings. 

The Analyst Cam: The IFS Rebranding

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Today is a huge day for IFS with a major rebranding exercise. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO gave me a sneak preview of the many dimensions of the project. They considered changing the name IFS, but kept it and instead added an energetic new logo, a new typeface, a focus on the tagline of "Moment of Service" (with their growing service management and enterprise asset management/maintenance focus) and a vibrant new shade of purple. They also have a major launch of the IFS Cloud in a couple of weeks

The video below leads off with that "reveal", then with my session with Oliver. In the middle of the interview are high-visibility displays they have at 3 iconic places around the world - Times Square in New York, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo and Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Piccadilly Circus in London will have the big finale next week.

At the end of the interview is an asset which focuses on the Moment of Service theme.

I have been to each of the 4 display locations in the last few years. With the pandemic curtailing travel, the locales brought back to me "wow" memories - as I am sure it will for many of IFS's global customers.

The whole thing is very tastefully done. I hope IFS sets up a gift store with swag to showcase the new art and colors. I definitely would like a couple of items!  

In the meantime, kudos to Oliver and his team. Amazing amount of work - particularly with having to navigate all the quarantine restrictions around the world

The Analyst Cam: Adobe Developers Live

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I attended a few sessions at the Adobe Developers Live event and have excerpted about 20 minutes from two very interesting sessions, both hosted by Bertrand Delacretaz, and involving Principal scientists and senior software engineers at the company.

The first is from a q&a with Roy Fielding, co-author of the HTTP protocol and inventor of REST. He talks about the evolution of HTTP from early days ( the whole www was a grand total of 48 pages when he started!) to current work on QUIC & HTTP/3. I particularly liked the audience q&a where he was asked what makes him go "wow" as he sees the evolution. I wished he had more time for the question about how state and other actors are trying to limit access to so much of the content we take for granted on the Web. The full session is here. 

The event was also aimed at what Adobe calls "experience builders" - their big differentiator. So, I enjoyed and have excerpted starting at 9.27 from a panel with Ian Boston, Tomek Rekawek, and Carlos Sanchez, on how they successfully migrated Adobe Experience Manager to the Cloud. While many vendors have moved single tenant, on-prem apps to the cloud in the last decade, it is always fascinating to hear about the innovations in each move. This panel discusses efficiencies like the Golden Repository and automation in the form of hibernation that they engineered into the solution. The full panel session is here.

You may enjoy other sessions from the event - the replays are here.

The Analyst Cam: Workday Vaccine Management

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series.

Barbry McGann, Executive Director, Office of the HRO at Workday returns to present on the new Vaccine Management solution. It expands on their Return to Workplace offerings. She had previously presented in this series on their VIBE offering (which is acronym for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity)

The Vaccine Management solution addresses multiple goals - as a way to educate employees on a growing variety of COVID vaccines (mRNA, vector, protein subunit etc), to guide them where and how to get vaccinated, to allow them to confidentially report the vaccination details. In turn, corporations can identify employees who should be prioritized as vaccine inventories become more widely available in the health ecosystem. They can use the data to make smarter decisions on which offices and sites to safely reopen and plan on workforce availability and related workspace and resource (like PPE) needs.  There are plenty of dashboards and compliance analytics.

Barbry says 60% of companies are encouraging employees to get vaccinated (though not necessarily mandate it). No wonder the initial interest in this solution has been huge. They had over 1,900 registrations (a record for Workday) for a recent webinar on the solution.

Burning Platform: Developers, Developers...

In the 31st episode of the series I am joined by James Governor, co-founder of Redmonk.

In September 2000, Steve Ballmer was ahead of most executives in loudly cheering for software developers. The video below leads off with his exuberance at Microsoft's 25th anniversary celebration. Since then. we have seen an explosion in developers in every corner of the world.

James has had a front row seat to these changes. Along with Stephen O'Grady and others at Redmonk they are a bit more subdued than Ballmer but they have been influential cheerleaders for developers, DBAs etc - and not just those with the Microsoft flavor.

James' view is we have gradually moved away from top-down dev mindsets to bottom- up ones facilitated by the intersection of Cloud Computing, Open Source and Social Coding

We cover wide ground - the trend towards more buy v build in the industry, the growth in citizen developers (see also the session with Amit Zavery of Google Cloud here), software quality, vertical differences. We discuss the growth of software communities around the world - he has some really interesting comments about Salesforce Trailblazers and the relatively untapped community in Nigeria. We also discuss Armenia, China and India and several other parts of the world.

Lots of positive energy from James - as there is in the rapidly multiplying developer pools around the world.

Burning Platform: Evolving Expectations of CX

In the 30th episode of the series I am joined by Mark Taylor, SVP and Global Practice Lead at Cognizant Digital Experience.

I first met Mark when I profiled Cognizant's research on the spurt in voice interfaces in 2020 in this Analyst Cam episode. He has lots of experience in the digital agency world and brings a very different perspective on evolving expectations of customer experience than you hear from most CRM vendors.

He emphasizes the importance of a brand "to act like a human". As he eloquently puts it "The voice of a brand is no longer a metaphor, it is a reality." Technology should allow a brand to do that with empathy at scale. 

We discuss several verticals and how the pandemic has accelerated the "direct to consumer" trend in many of them.

I love how he cites examples from several leading brands around the world.  And how ML and other technology should allow you to blend "intimacy with industrialization". He covers a lot of ground in 22 minutes.

 

Burning Platform: More on RISE with SAP

In the 29th episode of the Burning Platform series is Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG (Americas' SAP User Group). He provides perspective on RISE by SAP - the recently announced SAP initiative. See Analyst Cam post about it here. Dennis Howlett of Diginomica had provided his feedback here. 

Geoff and ASUG had worked with SAP in envisioning RISE and he provides that nuanced perspective and that of his membership. We have a friendly debate on the topic - we keep it light hearted weaving in the Super Bowl and the iPhone 12.

I make the point that RISE is a complex bundle. In his keynote, Christian took at swipe at the term "simplification". That's been SAP's mantra for the last decade or so. Key execs like Christian, Juergen Mueller  and Thomas Saueressig are articulate about RISE. I told him I was reminded of Thomas Kurian's encyclopedic knowledge when he was at Oracle. We discuss if that level of intimate product knowledge can carry over further down the organization, in the field and in the partner ecosystem. Geoff rightfully points out SAP deals with complex, global customers - anything like RISE cannot be simple.

SAP has historically not done a great job managing its SI partners, so how would RISE improve that? The pandemic has shocked the SI ecosystem with WFH and travel restrictions and pressure on them to automate operations. It would be nice for RISE to build on that not just continue to pass along poor SI performance. Geoff  points out he would also like SAP to deliver more tooling to automate implementations.

During the pandemic we have seen customers move to bite-size, industry specific projects. Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, others have accordingly made some adjustments. We discuss why RISE with S/4 looming large does not come across as bite-sized, or verticalized enough. Geoff provides the perspective that he is seeing growing interest in S/4 in his membership. Throughout March ASUG is running a series of S/4 Best Practice sessions and they are seeing huge interest - register here 

We also discuss the BPI imitative, SAP's hyperscaler partners and much more. I think Geoff does a nice job explaining which SAP customers should care about RISE and why.