deal architect

The UX dilemma

Workday showcased to a few of us yesterday Release 21 and the repeated and striking theme was the drop-dead gorgeous UI design in the screenshots we saw from a web screen (as in home menu below with move away from the previous wheel metaphor), an iPhone, an iPad.

Craig Frederighi of Apple explains why iOS7 did away with skeuomorphic principles

“This is the first post-Retina (Display) UI (user interface), with amazing graphics processing thanks to tremendous GPU (graphics processing unit) power growth, so we had a different set of tools to bring to bear on the problem as compared to seven years ago (when the iPhone first launched). Before, the shadowing effect we used was a great way to distract from the limitations of the display. But with a display that’s this precise, there’s nowhere to hide. So we wanted a clear typography.”

Hyundai invited me to an event a few months ago where they showed how with eye tracking and gestural controls they hope to reduce the number of knobs and buttons in a car.

All this is nice to see and with Microsoft tiles, Samsung’s rumored move away from its TouchWiz just a small part of the tsunami of UX changes. 

But you have to stop and ask should HR and finance staff not be taken away from too much data entry? Should not time sheets and travel expenses be automated at source? Does prettier UX actually get us away from that goal?

The flatter iOS7 is leading at least some to complain about input speed and battery issues

Consumer Reports has been studying the impact of UX in cars and reports that 2/3rds of respondents 65 and older who owned a car with an installed infotainment system had lots of trouble operating it.

UX is a complex area and the good news is enterprise software designers are getting feedback like never before from consumers as we report experiences with our Ford myTouch, Siri, Fitbit, Nest thermostats and countless other devices.

There are unique demographic nuances, training implications, productivity impacts. In many ways, we are just starting a brand new journey. The good news is the views are very enjoyable. Ask to see a demo of Workday 21 and  see what I mean.

Eclectic Events

I like to vary the events I go to each  year to get more of a industry and geographic diversity and am looking forward to some new ones over next couple of months (or ones I have not been to in a while) for a day or two each

HIMSS

Microsoft Convergence

CeBIT

Cornerstone Convergence 

See you there?

Ubiquitous technology

CES this year was unusual this year because no single device or tablet dominated attention. Instead there was a showcase of wearables, smart kitchens, smart cars etc. It reflected the growing ubiquity of technology in our lives.

It was my cue to reopen the 2009 guest series on how science/tech is helping evolve hobbies/interests on the innovation blog. So, I invited a number of contributors and 5  have already contributed with many more coming in the next few weeks.

They are stunning in their diversity and their passion – enjoy and please consider joining the gallery if you have an interesting hobby or interest

Birding – Margaret Newman

Ham Radio – Peter Coffee

Fitness – Jarret Pazahanick

Hockey – Eric dirst

Cycling – Nick Hortovanyi

Not your Dad’s GoDaddy

I requested an introduction to Arne Josefsberg, the new CIO at GoDaddy. I have profiled innovations in the Microsoft Azure, the Facebook Prineville and Google’s data centers in my books. I wanted to learn more about the infrastructure at the largest web hosting firm in the world – over 55 million domains registered, 5 million sites hosted, 350 million emails processed each day and other striking metrics like 2.5 million cyberattacks thwarted each hour. Not surprisingly, Arne has worked at or with executives at each of the Azure, Prineville and Google elite data center environments. We spent a bit of time on the OpenStack commitment at GoDaddy, but far more interesting was his description of how the business is evolving since new CEO Blake Irving came over from Yahoo! last year.

I wrote recently about the growing spectrum of offerings VARs are bringing to SMEs – video surveillance, point-of-sale etc. GoDaddy wants to fly lower, but with a global brand. It plans a store with an even broader set of application and infrastructure services to the lower end of the SME market. It estimates there are 28 million businesses in the US with 5 employees or less. This audience, with minimal IT expertise, needs highly reliable and turnkey services and GoDaddy is building its portfolio of services in 3 ways:

a) Acquisitions

GoDaddy has made a steady stream of acquisitions including Outright and Ronin for online accounting and invoicing, Locu which offers discovery marketing (exposes businesses to 200-million consumers per month through its partnerships with Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor and other channels) M.dot for developing mobile web sites and Media Temple a vertical play aimed at creative professionals.

b) Partnerships

These include a large relationship with Microsoft to offer Office 365 as GoDaddy’s exclusive core business-class email and productivity service. Others include a payment solution partnership with First Data and web content hosting to  over 2 million WordPress sites.

c) Globalization

If the US market offers plenty of promise, the 125 million small shops worldwide offer an even more tantalizing opportunity. Arne says GoDaddy could be in 60 countries in the next couple of years. They are particularly excited about their success in India.  They have offered .IN domain names for 5 years and  launched full-scale operations in India last year and saw revenue there grow 86%. They presumably have also learned from their China experience where in 2010 they stopped registering Web sites in response to concerns about censorship and privacy protection.  As it grows globally, GoDaddy has invested in large data centers in Amsterdam and Singapore. That’s mostly for latency reasons but Arne also said customer “trust in region” is another driver. Other investments are going into UX and other enhancements to handle multiple languages, currencies in prep for the 60 country presence.

Arne used the word “trust” several times during the call. I asked him if that meant GoDaddy would need to change its “fun” image.  Fun yes, Racy no he said would be the changed branding. Also likely global, with Jean-Claude Van Damme as example of a recent pitchman.

I guess we will see that February 2 – GoDaddy has made a splash each year with its Super Bowl commercials. But no matter what GoDaddy is no longer going to be known as just the company with affordable web domains. 

Update - the SuperBowl commercial is available to preview. It's not racy, continues with Danica and focuses on the acquired Locu GetFound functionality

 

The growing maturity of crowdsourcing

On the New Florence blog, I have tracked the steady growth of crowdsourcing. For the longest time it was about bite size tasks which could be sourced through Amazon Mechanical Turk or contractor sites like eLance.

But you can see the complexity of projects and the range of services keeps growing

MESH01’s development project

Seismic surveys at Shell

Flight operations optimization at Alaska Airlines

Hubs like Zipments for courier services, Instacart for grocery shopping and Homejoy for home cleaning

As we have seen in previous disruptions to labor markets, incumbent models don’t just give up easily. Just like employees tried to sabotage outsourcing attempts, expect to see the equivalent of Parisian taxi drivers protesting the Uber model, but crowdsourcing is clearly moving up the value chain. 

Marco Polo 2.0

First entry this year in a series on innovation from places you do not typically expect much innovation from

The Invisible Bike Helmet – Sweden

Big Data of International Technology Patents – Washington, US

TGVLabs – France

Florida Poly Futuristic Campus – Lakeland, US

Low tech milk refrigeration – Uganda

The Queen’s Terminal -  Heathrow, UK

Colorful Tech Scene – Miami, US

Chef Robots – Portugal

Raincar – Germany

Sochi Olympics infrastructure – Russia

Glass Artisans – Poland

Last year’s many entries in this series were summarized here

The Real Deal: Jon Reed on Young Technologists in a changing Man-Machine world

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well.

From Google’s driverless cars to Amazon’s delivery drones, it would be silly to pretend machines are not taking over many activities humans have been trained to do. In the December Workday Predict and Prepare videocast, I touched on that as one of the 2014 predictions and you can see the dialog Naomi Bloom and I had about impact on jobs and the HR function. In the last few weeks, the Enterprise Irregulars have had a thread going on the topic and Jon Reed of Diginomica was especially eloquent about what he is telling younger people about changing job markets.

Jon has published a book on the virtues of the entrepreneurial life that was inspired by his conversations with college grads about their future prospects in an automated world. Here is a short version:

We find ourselves in a situation where even higher education is out of step with where the world is headed. I have a lot of friends with PhDs that are basically irrelevant to how they are making a living (to be fair, some are happy teaching).

The critical thinking I learned in college was probably invaluable, but for those youngsters who are not entrepreneurial and creative out of the box, I think there is an argument to be made that trade crafts such as plumbing and electric and carpentry are not such terrible skills to have (with modern applications such as solar power and geo thermal installations and so forth) – and may be a far better use of time than a four year degree.

Advanced degrees still offer options in some fields, what I worry about is kids who either don’t finish college or who land in the working world with a general bachelor’s degree and nothing else. I am friends with a number of such folks around here as I write in a couple of the local cafes and brewpubs, and if you’re not careful you can get stuck in an extended period in the lower end of the service industry where the money might sometimes be ok (e.g. bartending, waiting tables) but the future prospects and advancement are minimal.

What I advocate in my conversations and more formal talks with young people are:

- Develop an entrepreneurial approach to your career (make job moves pro-actively and pursue challenges aggressively)

- Develop a personal brand by giving away meaningful content (publishing, code sharing, videos, etc)

- Foster creative skills but don’t count on making money on your intellectual property. View intellectual property as a way to build visibility around your area of mastery which can then be monetized via speaking, consulting, or better job offers.

- Live lean and develop an enforced savings mentality that includes not only retirement savings at a young age but cash reserves, to be invested in both “safer” (e.g. precious metals and real estate) and “speculative” investments (e.g. a stake in a startup or small business). Lean living will also give you more flexibility to take “high upside” opportunities such as an equity role in a startup.

- Develop a “continuing education” mindset about your chosen area of mastery. Constantly invest in learning and networking opportunities around your chosen profession/skill.

- Pursue areas you are passionate about but also consider how marketable such areas are. Use the Internet to market test ideas to get a better understanding of how audiences will respond to your ideas and to reduce some of the risk of pursuing new ventures (e.g. accelerate the feedback loop via blogging on various topics to gauge audience interest, etc).

- As Vinnie might say, be a polymath, learn several related disciplines and always work to connect siloed thinking into new possibilities. Develop related financial and business skills, not just a technical or trade proficiency. Learn how to negotiate and sell so that you can cut deals favorable to your interests. Straddle technology and business.

- Don’t put too much faith in job stability, develop “career capital” that goes beyond one employer. If an employer prevents you from sharing content and being involved in your field in a public manner, change employers.

- Put money into assets beyond your job. Don’t count on salary alone to ensure your livelihood.

- Adapt and change, it’s the only constant.

- Pay it forward whenever you can.

Oh, and: put your phone down and get some real work done.

Jon is a co-founder and frequent contributor to diginomica.com, where he blogs and videocasts on enterprise trends.

SAP’s Analytical Credibility

Cloud revenues are just 4% of total 2013 revenues. Three of its senior cloud executives from SuccessFactors and Ariba acquisitions have moved on in the last year. Its own internally developed BYD shows little traction after years of investment.

Yet Bill McDermott claims “We are one of the few global tech companies that has successfully managed the transition to the cloud while growing our core business and improving our profitability at the same time”

On his blog, Vishal Sikka taking a dig at Oracle says

As industry leaders, we must do better. It behooves us to tell the truth to our customers, our partners and our employees.  We do not serve our stakeholders well by mis-statements and omissions of key things we know to be true. “

But has SAP ever acknowledged HANA has penetrated less than 1% of its own customer base. If anything its fans will chime and ask to ignore the customer count of 251,000 on its own site. That btw means it has less than .1% of all Oracle, Microsoft and IBM database customers.

Here’s what’s baffling. Why does SAP not trade its maintenance revenues for free cloud and HANA licenses? In doing so, it will also unshackle its customers of grossly over priced partner data center, apps maintenance and upgrade charges which cloud vendors like Salesforce and NetSuite are showing can be delivered quantum more efficiently.

SAP runs financials for some of the largest companies in the world. It clearly wants to become the analytical engine of choice for them. But it has zero analytical credibility when it blatantly ignores the reality of its own financials and market share.

In Vishal’s own words “It has become something of a recurring theme, to mis-state and distort things.”

Enterprise Un-Credibility

I am reading news from CES this week including that from a “personal cloud” company, Lyve Minds, a Seagate Technology startup. It made me ponder how believable the offering would be if an enterprise software company had announced it.

3 years after much fanfare and publicity from the Jeopardy! outing, the Wall Street Journal estimates Watson has generated less than $ 100 million for IBM. IBM of course keeps talking futures like it estimates Watson to generate $10bn in annual revenue within 10 years.

I have pointed out a few times, HANA has penetrated less than 1% of SAP’s own customer base in the 4+ years it has become priority 1 for the vendor. To that SAP fans will always protest – but it has been GA for much less time (as if that stopped enthusiastic customers from ever adopting new technology) or the 250,000 customer number is wrong (then tell SAP to change its customer count on its web page)

Oracle has taken much grief for its claim it was “Halfway to Fusion” – way back in 2006. Microsoft sat around with several billions worth of shiny Azure data centers mostly empty till recently when Office365 started to take off. 

A metric I really like is “what percent of a company’s revenues come from products introduced in last 5 years”. Apple has become the standout benchmark for that with over 60% from iOS products but even older industrial companies like Emerson Electric and GE pay close attention to the stat. Most enterprise software companies do very poorly on that metric.

SaaS vendors like Workday have taken pains to manage the bite size expectations of increments they deliver in every release, but for the most part, enterprise vendors have a significant credibility gap when they announce new products.

Infor: bringing science to HRM

In the Workday Predict and Prepare videocast last month, one of my predictions was HR is at the cusp of an analytical revolution as it learns to leverage sensory, social and yes, plenty of HR data. I used examples like UPS operations research and its ORION project which has led to minimization of left turns for driver routing and start ups like Knack which are using games to help companies better analyze potential recruits.  I wanted to also showcase some use cases Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor had shared with me in a meeting a few days prior. But Charles had requested I not disclose them till Infor was ready to share its acquisition of PeopleAnswers, which it has today.

PeopleAnswers’ elevator pitch is attitudes more than skills are better predictors of employee performance.  Its behavioral scientists have over the last decade working with customers like Audi, Hertz and Neiman Marcus derived 39 attributes like ambition,  flexibility and empathy which help in better recruiting, work assignment and other HR decision making.

Charles gave me an example of empathy in nursing work assignments. Two nurses with similar credentials would do differently in healthcare settings. One who scores higher on the empathy scale would be a  better candidate for the maternity ward versus an orthopedic ward.

PeopleAnswers’ “big data” comes from statistically designed online interviews it helps administer to 20 million applicants annually. They shared with me another use case which looked at employee theft, a major issue in retail. Working with a sample of over 50,000 participants across 7 retailers with specific “termination reasons.” they found strong link between low behavioral fit to the job and an increase in theft terminations. Of course, moving that nugget to the front of the recruiting process is now helping many of PeopleAnswers retail customers.

Infor, in its marketing, is emphasizing “cloud” in its announcements of the acquisition. To me, Infor’s real value proposition is its growing micro-vertical transaction processing functionality, and with PeopleAnswers now a piece of the verticalized analytical puzzle. I expect more Infor products and announcements of industry specific analytics beyond just the HR angle. But this is a significant start for a functional area swimming in all kinds of data but which historically has prided its “touchy feely” side.