deal architect

An interesting Convergence

I have a feeling Kirill Tatarinov, EVP for Microsoft Business Solutions, is going to have a more nuanced version of this statement come March 3 at his conference in Atlanta

“No-one has done cloud ERP!”

I bet Zach Nelson and Aneel Bhusri and Jason Blessing and Steve Miranda disagree with him – some more vehemently than others.

Actually Kirill explained Microsoft’s differentiation better in another answer

“There is one very large organization that I spent a good chunk of time with last month. In all the discussions we’ve had, we haven’t even talked about the mode of deployment. We’ve given them the assurance that it will run on the Microsoft cloud and that they can put it in their data center.”

With many of the Microsoft VARs offering their own private clouds, there is yet another flavor he can offer.

Which is why he can point out at least some European organizations are spooked by the NSA disclosures. But even they are looking at regional clouds, not dismissing public clouds completely.

Actually his new CEO, Satya Nadella, fresh from his successful Office365 launch will likely join Zach and Aneel and others in suggesting a bit more of a nuanced answer in Atlanta:)

Discontinuing SAP coverage

Couple of years ago I asked SAP to take me off their events list. I kept asking questions and not really getting answers from its executives and I felt like a jerk writing lukewarm or negative blog posts after being a guest.

I have also reduced my SAP coverage on this blog, but find SAP has become even more removed from the questions I have been asking. As I recently told a friend at SAP “(You) may have moved on newer stuff like HANA but your customers are 98% in the situation they were in 3-4-5 years ago. They still pay SAP and partners $ 50 billion+ a year. They may not be bitching to you as much but they have in many ways given up on SAP and are back to custom development and buying from others. So what they tell me forces me to not forget the past - because it is still the present”

Unfortunately I sound like a broken record and everything I do write about SAP  just riles its very proud supporters. You have to admire the intensity of their commitment to SAP but it leads to needless arguments on social media. That’s time better used for my innovation books and blogs.

So, I will not post about SAP on this blog any more. Readers, there are plenty of blogs and tweets from SAP fans which will keep you informed.

As I have done for 25 years, I will continue to advise consulting clients about SAP matters. I will also continue to profile interesting and innovative use cases that come out of the HANA customer base on New Florence.

Vendor Vertigo

I read this morning an Apple fan’s uncharitable view of Google and it occurred to me we all spent so much time on Apple v Microsoft, Oracle v SAP, IBM v HP type gossip, that we forget all the good technology work that is being done in corporate settings.

Well, in my small way, here is my counter balance – a column on Sand Hill celebrating the corporate technologist. 

It will get a much smaller set of page views than the Apple/Google column, but  you know what – last time I checked much as I admire both of them my car, my home appliances, the planes I fly and most other things in my life come from a very different set of suppliers – and I am more than happy to acknowledge all the innovations they are delivering.

The SAP HANA ecosystem – the excitement and the caution

Sorry, Aneel and Marc but if someone were to ask me the most exciting event in the last decade of software, cloud enterprise applications would come in second. The phenomenonal growth of consumer mobile ecosystems would get my first ballot. Thousands of apps and new entrepreneurs, millions of customers, billions in volume and  revenues.

So, it is exciting to see an enterprise vendor like SAP emulate that consumer tech phenomenon. It says it has grown its HANA startup ecosystem to over 1,000 startups in 55 countries in 18 months. If it follows the trajectory of the iOS and Android stores it could be hugely transformative to SAP’s traditional big elephant sales, big SI go-to-market model.

But that is a big IF. 

Here are some caution signs along the way:

Can SAP learn to price to sell?

You could argue iOS and Android apps were underpriced. Indeed an entrepreneur told me about Steve Jobs: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing developers to sell their apps for 99 cents” SAP on the other hand comes from the other end of the spectrum. Its legacy ERP ecosystem is the costliest in the industry – storage per gb, support costs per user, upgrade costs etc. Over the last couple of decades, SAP has been unable or unwilling to police its ecosystem. As an HANA entrepreneur I would smile and go “what’s wrong with that?” As a customer I would go “Will history repeat?”

Is the analytics platform space overcrowded?

4 years ago when SAP started pitching (the predecessor of) HANA it looked differentiated in the in-memory analytics space. Today that landscape is much more crowded with Vertica, MongoDB, Cassandra, Netezza, Amazon RedShift and countless others chasing the Big Data market. The vertical focus of many HANA startups like FeedZai’s on credit card fraud and NexVisionIX on retail will clearly help them – but the underlying platform is not that exclusive any more

Is analytics too narrow a focus?

The smartphone camera, accelerometer, GPS chip, Bluetooth capabilities each led to a wide range of photo, navigation, wellness and other apps categories in the Apple/Google stores. With HANA, the analytics focus while hot today may not be broad enough. Customers are looking at telematics, robotics, countless other areas beyond advanced analytics in their innovation areas.

Can SAP resist the marketing temptation?

There is also the risk  that  SAP will duplicate its track record with its communities. The millions of SCN and SDN members turned into  potent marketing machines with their blogs and tweets. Most customers on the other hand could not really articulate the value of the communities. 1,000+ HANA entrepreneurs could be used similarly when the real proof point should come from extent of customer adoption and related revenues

Personally, instead of startups in 55 countries, I would have loved to see just 55 startups with several million of revenue and capital by now. A 1,000 + startups (already) must be taxing SAP’s resources, not  to mention the scrum for capital which you need plenty of  for enterprise class (compared to iOS) apps.

So it will be fascinating to watch how this ecosystem grows over the next few years and how it morphs SAP along the way.

Our revenue - but not our customer

It’s been a decade but I still remember it vividly because I was so shocked. An American Airlines supervisor refused to let me stand by on an earlier flight because as he put it “You are not our customer. The ticket belongs to Travelocity”. The fact that American got 90+% of that ticket value or that American could have likely sold my later, prime time seat at higher revenue did not seem to matter to this man. The earlier flight took off with an empty seat and I think I have flown American only once since – and only because Delta cancelled a flight and put me on American.

We live in an omni-channel world these days. Retailers allow us to buy on-line but pick up items at a local store. Amazon uses plenty of affiliates. We deal with each other via email, phone, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc etc. Channels naturally come with conflicts but rare is an experience like I had with that American employee.

Till, that is our  recent experience with Holland America Lines.

My wife and I saw a Holland cruise starting on December 18 . It was different enough and short enough to leave our aging dog while the kids were on holiday from college.  The Holland website would not allow us to book it directly and sent us to its agent, Affordable Tours, who booked it for us. We also tried to book insurance through Holland and were told to go to the agent again, and we booked trip cancellation with CSA. I should have known by now we were going through the American experience - We want your revenue, but you are not really our customer.

Our dog got sick around the 11^th and progressively got worse (he passed away on 19^th). I reached out to Holland via Twitter, and got no response. We posted a request on its Facebook page. It must mostly be monitored by  fans, not employees and we got unwelcome suggestions like “Be a responsible pet owner -- if your dog is dying, put him down and go on your cruise. Why let the dog suffer?” For someone who has never known our dog who was a long term part of the family, I thought it was awfully insensitive and was surprised Holland employees did not intervene. I guess more of the “he’s not our customer” attitude.

One of their employees suggested we call their contact center. When I did the agent basically told me since we had booked through an agent we would have to deal with them. When I told her we had tried to book directly with Holland, she hung up. Not kidding.

I went back to the Affordable (who was helpful throughout but it must take them days to get responses from Holland) and asked if we could send our kids instead. She got word from Holland we could swap one person for an additional $ 140. When I said neither of us wanted to leave a dying dog she said Holland only allows one passenger change. She suggested we cancel and she would try to get a future cruise credit from Holland. We agreed and told her to cancel but have not heard from her again. CSA told us that was not a covered event under their policy but did refund our premium.

I naively sent a letter to the CEO Stein Kruse expecting a somewhat better response. The response from one of his staff “we are sorry to know your travel professional (italics mine) did not….”

And she makes this wonderful offer “a Special Upgrade …on a future cruise”

Seriously, Holland you think we will send more revenue your way? After neglecting nearly 10 opportunities to treat us like a customer?

The world is going to keep getting more and more channel-fragmented with the associated conflicts. But a simple rule of thumb has never changed -  if you get the majority of the revenue from a transaction, learn to take charge.

A month of passion

Starting on January 13, there has been a gallery of 15 guest posts on New Florence about how science and tech are evolving people’s passions, hobbies, interests. Even more impressive few repeat the ones from the similar 2009 series.

Please enjoy each and if you have an interesting work-life balancing activity, please consider contributing. I will help you embellish your draft.

Live to Air Broadcasting – Robert Lavigne

Urban Walks – Giovanni Rodriguez

Working Out - Ben Pring

White-Collar Rock – Krishnan Chatterjee

Target Shooting  - Scott Schenker

Genealogy – Catherine Marenghi

Classic Rock - David Deal

Museums  - Jeanne Achille

Music - Brad Callahan

Environmental Conservation - Mark Crofton

Birding – Margaret Newman

Ham Radio – Peter Coffee

Fitness – Jarret Pazahanick

Hockey – Eric Dirst

Cycling – Nick Hortovanyi

The Big Data of Innovation

Next month, the New Florence blog will celebrate two milestones  - its 9th birthday and 4,000 posts. Add to that the 00s of hours of my consulting and book case study interviews and I have a nice database to analyze for patterns.

NF is categorized by nearly 50 topics from Data Visualization to 3D printers  and I periodically summarize the global sources they are coming from, but even more interesting is to see the “entities” they are coming from. It is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope – but here is a loose categorization.

Large technology vendors – 25%

Amazon, Apple. Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, SAP etc etc …get plenty of media and analyst coverage which should suggest they get the majority of NF posts. Actually they make up only about 25% of this blog’s coverage. When you look at innovation projects at (business) customers the tools of these vendors are usually too horizontal or too expensive to make too much of a dent. They have much more impact on back office and infrastructure IT.  NF does like to write about the operations of these vendors  - their supply chains, their data centers  etc– and how they are themselves innovating. Of course with their sprawling portfolio of skills, these vendors can pull together machine learning. cloud infrastructures and other assets which allow them to create standout solutions, just wish they did so consistently.

Large non-tech companies – 25%

Ever since my 2011 research for The New Technology Elite where I cataloged 75+ industries which are embedding technology in their products and services, this blog has cataloged product, process, marketing and business model innovation at companies like BMW, Corning, Delta Airlines. GE, Keurig, Lego, Siemens and countless others.  Most bloggers and media find this innovation boring or difficult to categorize in their market TLA classifications. Still others in an honest moment will tell you they don’t make any money from these companies so feel little incentive to profile their innovations.

Fast growing vendors – 15%

This blog has cataloged a number of SaaS/cloud and mobile vendors over the years. Entrepreneurs and VCs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere provide a steady diet of posts. It is a joy to see firms like Workday and Appirio and HireVue and FireEye evolve and thrive years after I first write about them. Often a trip to Toronto or Lexington, KY will allow for opportunities to profile local tech communities. I also like to stay in touch with VARs who keep expanding their portfolio of products  into innovative POS, collaboration and other technologies for SME customers who typically have light internal IT capabilities

SME non-tech customers – 5%

I find the German Mittelstand – its ecosystem of mid market companies – fascinating and profile companies from there and often similar ones from Japan, Poland and elsewhere. Ditto with creative and artisanal communities in the US, Italy and elsewhere.

Academia/Research Units – 5%

Basic research at several universities, at labs at Microsoft, GE, elsewhere and papers from professors I meet through book research and stay in touch with provides a bit of a different and forward looking dimension to the blog

The “Calendar” – 10%

Events and holidays which repeat every year like the State of the Union speech and St. Patrick’s Day and those that repeat every few years like the Olympics provide a steady stream of posts. The changing technology and design thinking provides a nice timeline of innovation and our zeitgeist – the changing spirit of our times.

Personal Life – 10%

The guest series I ran in 2009 and am running again this year where people talk about how science and technology is helping evolve their passions/hobbies provides a fascinating glimpse of how pervasive technology is in life. As houses and cars and clothes get “smarter” they provide plenty of other posts.

Unexpected Places – 5%

Search the blog for Estonia, Dubai, Singapore and you will see plenty of  posts. Uganda and Ukraine have far fewer but the blog likes to also profile what may appear low-tech but helps evolve life for its citizens and qualifies as innovation.

The percentages I have above change quite a bit from year to year as companies and regions ebb and flow with their innovation output. But when I hear people complain they see innovation slowing down, I tell them they are not looking wide enough.  I am part of many communities across these areas and unfortunately folks in each believe they are the only innovative people. I also see too many analysts and bloggers cling to their unique market segments be it CRM or data centers and “project” innovation from that view out.

The NF pace of posts keeps accelerating. Based on average of 100 posts a month in last few months, New Florence could have a 1,000 post year. In contrast, the first 1,000 posts took the blog 3 and a half years to achieve. And this pace accelerates even though my definition of what qualifies for including on the blog keeps getting much more demanding. 

9 years later with this wave of relentless innovation I am even more convinced this is what Florence must have felt like during the European Renaissance and glad that I named the blog what I did.

Photo Credit

What color is your influence?

I read this week Klout “is evolving from a service that told you how much influence you had in terms of a numerical value, to a service that now tells you why you’re influential and how you can improve on that”.

And my reaction was did the Klout score ever accurately quantify “influence”?

5 items from this week should explain what I mean

I ran into Ron Hanscome, Gartner analyst at Oracle HCM World. Ron, knowing I would understand as an ex-analyst, said the HR tech market is hot based on a metric of client queries he is measured on. Few people outside Gartner get to see those metrics so tend to measure Gartner influence by its Magic Quadrants and event presentations.

At the same event I spent some time with Bertrand Dussert of Oracle. He is also a columnist at Forbes and clearly influential that way. But in the session he told us he spends most of his time meeting Chief HR Officers of large, global companies. To me the latter, un-quantified to the outside world, is likely even more influential.   

At the event, couple of folks asked me where my friend Ray Wang was. “He is tweeting about the show. He must be here”. I had to smile to myself and say Ray did not get to be a prolific tweeter (over 120,000 tweets) by not also being a prolific frequent flyer and spending time with a very wide range of clients and events.

Dennis Howlett recently tweeted “It was exactly 1 year ago today that I decided my time was done with #ZDNet. 9 months after launch we're a tad shy of 1 mill PVs.”  Impressive number but also  makes you curious about the demographics of the eyeballs. Do they belong to the hundreds of customers Ron and Bertrand talk to? Do they also read Ray’s tweets?

Steven Kotler writing about the“ROI of Reading” says “Books are the most radically condensed form of knowledge on the planet. Every hour you spend with Rise is actually about three years of my life.” I saw the article courtesy of John Hagel, a famous author and even more famous supporter of indie book stores.

So here’s my question: What color is your influence? And how do we measure it?

The unheralded corporate technologist

When I present at events I have been known to ask corporate technology executives such as CIOs and CTOs in the audience to stand up so I can applaud them. I have long believed our industry gives way more credit (and wealth) to vendor executives and that is my small  way of acknowledging the corporate technologist.

So I was really pleased Karl-Heinz Streibich asked me to interview (mostly) corporate C  level execs across 10 countries for his book, The Digital Enterprise.

The Software AG press release describing the book details many of the executives

• acatech (German National Academy of Science and Engineering): President Prof. Dr. Henning Kagermann explores the wide range of stakeholders involved in the transformation to a digital enterprise.
• Accenture: Senior Managing Director for Austria, Switzerland and Germany Frank Riemensperger explains why the best businesses must develop a “digital vision”.
• Allianz Group: CIO Dr. Ralf Schneider on balancing the opportunities and risk generated by massive volumes of customer and product data.
• BBVA S.A.: CTO Ramón Laguna on rapidly scaling technology to implement the goal of becoming a Tier-1 global investment bank.
• Coca-Cola Enterprises: CIO Esat Sezer look at how cloud computing will drive the next generation of productivities.
• Daimler AG: CIO Dr. Michael Gorriz and Information technologist Dr. Kai Holzweissig on driving the digital enterprise with linked data.
• Datev eG: CEO Prof. Dieter Kempf examines bringing industrial level IT security to small and medium sized businesses.
• DB Systel GmbH: Chairman of the Board Detlef Exner on how German railways are addressing a new generation of digital customers.
• Deutsche Telekom: CEO of T-Systems and Deutsche Telekom Board Member Reinhard Clemens explains why traditional network providers can – and must – develop mew business models.
• DFKI GmbH (German Research center for Artificial Intelligence): CEO Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster on how semantic product memories promise to reshape how products are manufactured, shipped, sold, consumed, traced and recycled.
• Echo Entertainment: CTO Rob James details how technology-enables innovation can better address their VIP customers.
• General Electric: Global technology director William Ruh on how 50 billion interconnected machines will drive the Industrial Internet revolution.
• Hubert Burda Media: CEO Dr. Paul-Bernhard Kallen looks at turning a German magazine company into an enterprise for entrepreneurs.
• MAPFRE: CTO José Manuel Inchausti Pérez discusses how satellites have transformed their business and help create more agile services.
• Nissan: CIO Celso Guitoko describes how to design “smarter” products.
• Qualcomm: CIO Norm Fjeldheim speaks of how to provide highly personalized and contextualized customer experiences.
• Siemens AG: Member of the Board Prof. Dr. Siegfried Russwurm on how the fourth industrial revolution will create a paradigm shift in required workforce qualifications.
• Staedel Museum: Director Max Hollein on how a digital visit to the museum is a sensual experience.
• Standard Chartered PLC: CIO Jan Verplancke details the roll-out of mobile banking across several continents.
• Statoil ASA: Vice President Magne Fransten on safety through technology in harsh operating environments.
• Technische Universitaet Darmstadt: Chairman, Information Systems faculty Prof. Dr. Peter Buxmann looks at new risk scenarios and enabling new business models.
• TUI InfoTec GmbH: CEO Heinz Kreuzer on using social media, real-time analytics, big data and mobile devices to create a more enjoyable customer experience.

  The Kindle version of the book is only $ 3.99 and all earnings are going to charities. So, please download and join me in applauding these executives for the amazing and largely unappreciated innovation they – and countless other corporate executives - are delivering.

Innovations at Sochi

Technology which has gone into the construction of the Olympics facilities and preparing the athletes for the events

The engineering and construction feat at Sochi

Elite auto designers at the Games

Snow “manufacturing”

Technology to help athletes compete better 

Compensating for “imperfect bodies”