deal architect

Oracle HCM World: “Fracking” for Talent

Thomas Smouse, VP of Administration and HR at Newfield Exploration, an attendee at Oracle’s HCM event this week in Washington, DC, appropriately framed for me the rapidly changing talent market. The oil and gas industry has been transformed with innovations in “horizontal drilling” technologies and “unconventional” hydrocarbon sources. That has dramatically reshaped the US energy position in the last few years. While Newfield continues to rely on talent networks in the traditional oil patch – cities  like Houston, Tulsa and Denver – Smouse said it is starting to mine talent which has been working in newer shale fields in Pennsylvania and elsewhere = “unconventional” places.

Fredrik Rexhammar of Swedbank presented another perspective as he described how their digital needs (mobile, online banking) demand very different skills while they continue to nurture talent needed to support their traditional, personal touch, large network of branch banking across the wide country.

Keynotes and breakout sessions during the event provided glimpses of this “we are not in Kansas anymore” talent landscape. Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, discussed how Oracle has taken the risk of accelerated college recruiting for its sales force and the joys and challenges of dealing with Millennials in the workforce.

It’s way more than Millennials, of course, it is about multi-generational talent management as this Oracle slide showed

Then there is the global angle. Condi Rice, former US Secretary of State, peppered her talk about geopolitics with other Millennial and other young talent perspectives. “Immigration keeps the US young” ,“Our 12-K crisis is our biggest national security risk” and  “China will get old before it gets rich”. 

Kraig Eaton of Accenture discussed a variety of organizational models he sees clients experimenting with including one the HCM audience cringed about – “Abolish HR” . 

In a breakout with analysts, Bertrand Dussert, VP HCM Transformation and Thought Leadership at Oracle who spends most of his time with HR executives in the Fortune 500 mentioned the most common discussion theme is how to build a small, solid core of top 200 “athletes”.  Chris Leone, SVP of HCM Development at Oracle spent the first 15 minutes of his keynote discussing “digital transformation”  and how players like Lyft, Airbnb and Amazon have transformed their industries.

Notice a pattern here? Many of the sessions were about strategy and policy. What’s striking is this was not at a McKinsey or BCG gathering. This was hosted by a technology vendor.

In some ways, as Microsoft did at Convergence couple of weeks ago, HCM World was less about feature/function. While Microsoft made it a showcase of its wide portfolio of technology offerings. Oracle turned this into more of a showcase of consumer and social technologies it is leveraging in its HCM offerings – see my note here about Oracle’s Consumer Grade HCM.

And in a breakout with analysts, Hurd turned the conversation to his technology and highlighted Oracle’s momentum in the cloud applications market. 800 new SaaS customers, including 220 in HCM signed up in its third quarter ending February 28.  Hurd pointed out Q2 was similarly strong and the momentum should continue in Q4.

There was animated discussion among the analysts whether this was an indication Oracle is moving down market with its offerings. More likely, given a wide portfolio of organic and acquired HR offerings, customers who adopt even a tiny sliver of the offerings get included in that “HCM” count. 

Vendors and analysts get excited about such market shares. Customers, in turn, appreciate hearing from peers about common challenges and solutions, and HCM World provided plenty of opportunities to do so. They learned about innovations of “horizontal drilling” and the possibility of “unconventional places” in their quest for talent.

Enterprise Software Churn: The NetSuite edition

This continues a series showcasing customers which are adopting two-tier, ring fence, third party maintenance strategies or outright replacing their core enterprise applications. Previous posts have highlighted UNIT4, Microsoft, Rimini Street , E2Open and Infor. 

NetSuite has shared with us many similar examples:

In two-tier settings

The agricultural cooperative, Land O'Lakes has been rolling out NetSuite across several global locations while continuing to leverage J.D. Edwards. EnterpriseOne, Endeca and other Oracle products. ASICS which produces high performance footwear, apparel and accessories is rolling out NetSuite as it expands across S.E. Asia while using SAP for corporate functions.

Replacements

Brother Max, which focuses on care and feeding products for babies and toddlers replaced SAP’s BusinessOne with NetSuite. Penguin Computing has replaced SAP R/3. RedBuilt, the commercial construction contractor, replaced SAP and PeopleSoft functionality. Point6, maker of high performance apparel and Lovesac, a furniture maker replaced Microsoft Dynamics. As MongoDB, the database vendor, accelerates its growth it has replaced Intacct. Slingshot Sports has replaced Sage Peachtree.

Today, NetSuite also announced a far reaching alliance with Ultimate Software, the leading cloud HCM vendor and that should open up significant new  opportunities for both and cause ripples in other sectors of the software industry

Individually, you could dismiss them as small cracks in the frozen tundra, but there are many such cracks if you use a wide angle lens. I will continue to profile other such “snapshots” and show why I believe they are an indication of  coming significant churn in the enterprise software market.

S/4HANA – Customer Survey

When SAP announced S4 in February, several analysts commented (see my post here) there were scores of unanswered questions. What does the product release roadmap look like beyond the Simple Finance? When will industry specific applications become part of the S4/HANA suite? What is the ROI for this product migration?  What are the pricing/licensing and support considerations? TEC's principal analyst P.J. Jakovljevic takes an in-depth look at S/4HANA in a report (sub required) which just came out and asks more questions.

SAP and its partners have since provided answers to some of the questions, and in turn raised other questions.

Missing from this dialogue  - what do SAP customers think of S4 and migration to this platform?

Independent Support provider Rimini Street recently launched an SAP Application Strategy Survey to get a pulse on what SAP customers are thinking at this very important juncture and their plans going forward: Are customers happy with their existing SAP Business Suite applications or will they upgrade to the latest version/enhancement pack?  Will S4/HANA factor into their plans or will they wait and see? How do they perceive the value of SAP support and maintenance today?

I will be keeping close tabs on the survey results as I expect to see some very interesting data points and hearty discussions on these topics leading up to SAP’s SAPPHIRE conference in May.

The survey is aimed at SAP customers. If you are a SAP partner or employee, please encourage customers to participate. The survey takes approximately 5 minutes. Participants will receive a copy of the full research report upon completion of the study towards the end of April.

SAP’s Continuing Myopia

In SAP Nation, I wrote

“SAP has a tendency to write code, and then hand it over to its partners. It fails to think enough about customer deployment issues.”

More of that focus on what happens in their labs and not at customer sites comes from Bernd Leukert, head of SAP development, as he announces a database bundle via ISReport

“To end these double-payments SAP has created a new license-bundle that contains SAP HANA, Sybase ASE and Sybase IQ. Companies that use SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA can now terminate their licenses for Oracle, IBM or Microsoft an run parts of their SAP-systems with SAP HANA and – without additional payments– with Sybase ASE or in an environment of SAP HANA Dynamic tiering withSybase IQ“.

Nice, but what does it cost to move from another database to Sybase? Retrain your DBAs, convert stored procedures, plenty of testing, changing documentation etc etc.  I would bet all that is many, many times the savings in database maintenance (the licenses were likely paid a while ago at most customers).

The bigger question it raises is, even if you don’t move to Sybase, you have to factor at a longer term, two database scenario with S/4. That means two sets of systems management tools , two sets of back up environments, two sets of recovery procedures ( other databases have 3 to 4 decades lead on HANA when it comes to all that ),  integration between apps on HANA and other database. Not free – not by a long shot.

Leukert also claims S4/HANA is 35% cheaper to run in this extended interview (Google translation below)

“We have built a service factory that handles all modifications in customer systems under the microscope and first divided into several categories. The first part are those adjustments that are present in the system, but no longer used. These can be completely eliminated. In our experience, this is a surprisingly high percentage. The second category relates to adjustments that customers have made a long time ago, but which now can be mapped in the standard. This will be returned to the system default. The third category are modifications that are still vital today. This we move into the Extension Framework or make them in the HANA Cloud Platform from.”

Again, this is done in a clinical SAP setting. In the real world, partner and customer add 9X more to what SAP costs (see model in SAP Nation).

Let’s see the benchmarks in a decent sample of customers and see if S/4 reduces costs. I would bet a lot of  money, for the first few years, the costs will actually GO UP. The migration to S/4 will be labor intensive and so will the operations, with the typical hype cycle in outsourcers, those with S/4 experience will demand premiums. Add capex for memory intensive hardware etc.

Enterprise Software Churn: Infor’s co-existence scenarios

When I was researching SAP Nation, I was impressed with how many customers are swapping out software, moving to third party maintenance, “ring fencing” the core solution with specialist tools, and implementing two and three tier strategies – different solutions for headquarters, large and small subsidiaries.  I presented a sample of case studies in the book.

I have been running a series of blogs following up on the book research - see earlier posts on UNIT4’s successes in the UK local government sector, Microsoft in two-tier settings, Rimini Street for third party maintenance and E2open in “ring-fence” scenarios.

Infor, as the third largest ERP software vendor, has been sharpening its message over the last few years with its micro-vertical strategy, a significant focus on UX and by leveraging Amazon’s formidable infrastructure cloud. It has also been integrating its own portfolio of software assets with its ION middleware. They obviously prefer to win customers outright, but I was impressed they shared with me a long list of customers where they co-exist with SAP and other ERP software in two-tier, surround and replacement settings.

Examples include Peters, the leading Australian ice cream maker. Upon being spun off from Nestle, they replaced SAP with Infor M3. Mahler, a Nestle sub in S. America, continues to use Infor supply chain and other functionality. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Kellogg, the cereal company both use Infor’s Enwisen for their HR shared services around an SAP ERP Core. Akzo Nobel, the global paint and coatings company and ABB Power Technologies AB have a variety of Infor functionality surrounding SAP. 

 I expect them to continue this momentum.

Individually, you could dismiss them as small cracks in the frozen tundra, but there are many such cracks if you use a wide angle lens. Over the next few weeks I will profile other such “snapshots” and show why I believe they are an indication of coming significant churn in the enterprise software market.

Déjà vu–All over again

Almost to the day, two decades ago, I got a recruiting call. A few weeks later I was a Gartner analyst and over the next 5 years was part of the roaring 90s of ERP projects stoked by Y2K, reengineering, client/server architectures and other drivers.

Last week I drove with 3 other analysts at the Plex Summit. They reminded me I was the youngest in the car. Each has vivid memories, from their varied perches, of that phase. I am going to the Oracle HCM event this week, and notice the Diamond sponsors are Accenture, Deloitte and PwC. Brings back memories of my alma mater and other Big 8 firms.

There are throwback signs every where. That’s goodness in those memories if customers learn from history. Buzzwords from that era are showing up again…so here comes the reminder “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

“The Suite always wins”

History - The Suite salesperson won. The Suite buyer ended up with shelfware. Which funded acquisition of similar functionality which was supposedly already in the Suite. Whose integration took another few years. In meantime, the brochures continue to talk about “integrated, wall to wall…”

“ROI”

History - You thought that had something to do with payback on your investment? It was French for King. You anointed several minor princes in software and outsourcing world. And “Value Engineered” their portfolios.

“Rapid”

History - Few of the outsourcers/SIs have acquired Chinese construction companies who can raise a skyscraper in 15 days. They are still incented to bill by the hour, work 4 days a week, and charge you 25 to 30% of fees in travel expenses.

“User Experience”

History - For a brief moment in the 90s, enterprise software caught up in look and feel with your PC apps. Since then it has lagged your social apps, your mobile apps, and increasingly your car and home apps. Try screaming at your enterprise software. Make a nasty gesture. Unlike your car or Nest, it won’t even understand you are not happy. 

“Best practice”

History – the phrase was perfected by consultants who had never  set foot on a shop floor. In a warehouse. In a delivery truck. Entered a multi-line customer order with a unique promotion code. Explained what negative inventory means. And IFRS. And Octroi. And SPED.

“Continuous improvement”

History - The outsourcer proposals were splattered with terms like Six Sigma and CMM Level 5. In the reference calls, the customers laughed uncontrollably when you asked how much year on year improvement they actually saw.

“Customer advocacy”

History - User groups sold you on what your fees bought – training sessions and social events. But ask them for a catalog of their “victories”. Where have they successfully lobbied with the vendor for lowered pricing or significant new functionality? Where have they publicly disagreed with the vendor? Usually a very short list. But the margaritas at the events are pretty good.

“Magic Quadrant”

History – Last time customers depended on a MQ prepared by some guy named Vinnie, they ended up spending $ 300 million. Each.

“One Microsoft” evolves

In the last couple of years, I have posted a few entries on how Microsoft has been leveraging its wide portfolio of assets – to win Delta business, and here, here and here

Headed to its annual Convergence event in Atlanta I did not see much on that messaging so was a bit concerned Microsoft had reverted to its silos and this event would be more about feature-function around its ERP and CRM offerings.

Boy, was I wrong. Instead of messaging they let their demos and their customers do the talking

In the CRM demo part of the keynote Julia White, GM for Office, showed a vision of next-gen selling using an opportunity for a 3D printer proposal and presentation. It was a showcase for CRM, Office365, Skype for Business, Cortana personal assistant, Surface Hub display, Delve, Apple and Microsoft mobile hardware and predictive pipeline analytics  from Insidesales.com

The customers profiled in various sessions played to Microsoft’s positioning of “intelligent cloud”. They represented cloud, machine-learning and leverage of Internet of Things in a wide range of industries. See more (with graphs) in this post on New Florence but they represented asset-heavy ones like Ford (which is using the Azure cloud for various connected services and has partnered with Microsoft for its Sync infotainment system) , Rockwell Automation (using the Azure cloud to monitor asset health) and Wash (an operator of laundromats which described how Microsoft helps in a low margin industry to deliver differentiating service calls and how it is starting to help with dynamic pricing ) and asset light ones like Accuweather (which amalgamates a wide range of weather related data feeds to provide forecasts and other useful weather/climate data), J&J Services (a UK food service provider which described how machine learning is making their eCommerce portal far more interactive). Marston Pubs and  Taverns in the UK discussed Microsoft tools for social engagement. Pandora (which runs a nimble supply chain across thousands of jewelry stores, factories in Thailand and HQ in Denmark).

While exciting, I do see two challenges from this much wider Microsoft positioning

a) Its services channel will struggle to keep up.  Today it is pretty siloed with Dynamics, O365, Azure and other specialists. Pulling a wider portfolio of MS technologies may require some mergers in the services ecosystem. It will also help larger outsourcers like IBM (which was an “Executive Platinum” sponsor of Convergence) but risk some of the same challenges SAP and others have had with the larger outsourcers in their ecosystems.

b)  With the market in churn, I am seeing at least the replacement ERP and CRM market as somewhat tactical. Feature/function, cloud architecture discussions are still fairly basic.  At Convergence I heard several analysts bitch they did not hear much about AX and other detailed areas.  As I profiled last month Microsoft continues to do well with the current churn in the market and hopefully will not lose that momentum. 

Plex Systems: Celebrating Makers

During a plant tour on Wednesday, I was asked if most vendors organized such visits for analysts. I had to confess I have been to data centers, call centers, R&D labs but not to many factory visits. Most ERP vendors have avoided the shop floor like the plague, and certainly would not highlight it on an analyst visit.

Not so Plex Systems, which had not one, but two such visits during their analyst summit in Michigan. One was to the Sanders Chocolate factory, and another to the simulated Edge Corp factory at their HQ.

The stunning St. Patrick’s Day sunset contrasted with reminders of a brutal winter – the still frozen lakes and the pothole filled roads. The spring thaw was a good proxy for the manufacturing Renaissance in the US and Plex is poised to take advantage. 

It has evolved from traditional strengths in the discrete auto and aerospace component supplier segments to growing presence in food and beverage and some other process sectors. It is moving up market as larger enterprises deploy it for MES, quality and other functionality in two-tier and surround, hybrid settings.

Plex’s Manufacturing Cloud continues to scale very nicely. Over 175,000 users log in from over 20 countries. 36 million pages are served every day. Over 40 TB of data is delivered each month. That translated to 37% growth in net bookings last year.

The day was full of blue collar talk. Jargon such as auto-release, LPN barcodes, recipes and trace ability was common.  Metrics focused on scrap, pull efficiency and inventory turns.

The customers who presented make gritty thermostats and valves. There was a certain nonchalance that the Plex software just worked.  As a Sanders executive put it “we were not going live on Plex, we were going dead on our AS/400”

To me, a small detail from the day summarized the “maker” attitude that pervades Plex. The chocolate plant hygiene required us to wear jackets and hair covering (in photo below). As we lined up for the tour, we picked out jackets from a rack. They had been customized with Plex and Sanders logos. How did they know the chest sizes of the guests? They had not asked us. The analyst relations team “guestimated”  them and produced them with a handful of suppliers. That’s modern manufacturing. Mass customization at affordable economics and just-in-time. And software which allows customers to go live and run smoothly with a nonchalance.

Photo Credit: Plex

Bruce J. Rogow on SAP Nation

Bruce J. Rogow is the closest to a Yoda in the IT Industry. With his background at Nolan, Norton, then Gartner, now as principal at IT Odyssey (where he crisscrosses the country in his car visiting CIOs and cataloging their successes and challenges) and  ICEX (which facilitates knowledge exchange programs for Enterprise Architects and Data Center Executives from large, mainly global firms), he has seen just about everything in our industry.

He kindly took the time to read SAP Nation and over a nice dinner gave me plenty of feedback. The book has been fortunate to get plenty of media and Amazon reader reviews, but this was one of the most comprehensive - he showed me his dog eared copy.

I invited him to write it up and share the review. Whether you have read the book or not, I encourage you to read his commentary as it is one on the state of CIOs – in SAP world and beyond.

“Overall, I found the book very informative related to many of the aspects of what has been one of the two or three most dominant Information Technology Master Platforms of the past twenty plus years. Vinnie has put a number of issues and questions on the table.

As I read the SAP Nation the following thoughts developed:

1.Soft Factors: I have found from my experience that most of the challenges and failures with SAP (and other ERPs) relate to soft factors of behavior, culture, cultural resistance, lack of detail thinking, politics & ownership, inability to adjust to the nuances of the business and CEOs who are quick to agree to an ERP but wouldn't understand or force the change required. Much of the blame for this should be laid at the feet of the 3rd parties, pundits and CEOs who ignored or paid lip service to these issues and blindly pushed their self-serving agendas forward. The book brought out many other technical aspects I hadn't been privy to. The comments in the book by John Dean (former CIO of Steelcase) absolutely resonate with my experience.

2.True Management Consultancies: Where are they when we needed or need them? There used to be real, objective, independent Management Consultancies that saw an ethical barrier between evaluation/risk management/making recommendations and being the “doacy”. Unlike management consultancies, “Doacies” are firms whose primary revenue driver is the large project work of design, implementation or ongoing operations. These “Doacies” masqueraded as management consultancies that would benefit far more from the gigantic implementation project than an objective analysis of client need and capability. If the companies who hired doacies to do the evaluations were naïve enough to not realize the conflict of interest, they deserved the problems they encountered. Business in general suffers from the current “consultancies”.

3.Why Hasn't the Market Worked?: I agree with your premises, but it makes one wonder…if SAP is so widespread, over resourced, under efficient and prone to failure/problems….. Why hasn't the market worked to bring forth successful alternatives? If this huge, lethargic, self-serving SAP Nation is focused on feeding at the trough, why haven’t other alternatives emerged over 20+ years? Not even the supposed  “IBM monopoly” lasted this long?

4.Another Estimation Approach to Size SAP Nation: Start with the total overall spend Globally Total IT Spend (GTITS)? This would include the failures, write-offs, etc. CIOs tell me that 25-40% of their total IT spend is associated with their ERPs (ERP%). What % of ERPs is SAP (%SAP)? So, it becomes a rather simple equation= GTITS x ERP% x %SAP. Then add #5 below.

5.Your Estimate of SAP Nation is Conservative: Folks who have implemented or tried to implement an ERP tell me that the costs of internal business resources are equal to or more than the cost of outside or IT resources and software. SAP Nation doesn’t include these costs.

6.Prisoner of Their EgoSystem: It is not just SAP that becomes a prisoner of their own EgoSystem. It has happened to almost every major vendor as I said in my contribution to SAP Nation. It is amazing that Lou Gerstner was able to pull a Lazarus with IBM.

7.Assimilation & Organizational Change: Deploying an ERP or HANA or whatever does not equate to use, assimilation, adoption, benefiting from or the obtaining the change associated with a major system.  These are the major failings to me. Failure to get material benefit is far more concerning than a cost or time overrun. The doacies, SAP, pundits and others don’t seem to be concerned with use, assimilation, adoption, benefiting from or obtaining the change associated with a major system other than the opportunity for follow-on work. Vinnie could have written an entire book on this.

8.The Guys in the Cloud are Great, but What Does that Have to Do With Legacy Firms?: I keep hearing about all of these spinoffs or green fields that are able to totally use a cloud based ERP approach. Great. However, these green fields or fresh starts have little relevance to the issues of a legacy, established firm. Given, there are examples of legacy firms being able to convert a portion of their ERP to a Workday or other cloud based approach, but has anyone done a forklift, total migration?

9. Demand Chains: As you mention in the book, the focus of IT is now expanding to include the front office and revenue generation & business development as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). Over the next decade we are likely to see platforms emerge for the generation of revenue or the demand chain much as we have seen the evolution of ERP for Supply Chain and back office administration.

10.Nokia: It is a Finnish and Norwegian company. This is the one factual error I could find in the book.

11.Moore’s Law vs. Rogow’s Rule: The world moves ahead in a balance between Moore’s Law (along with Newton and others) and my Rule which is: Despite Moore’s Law, things can’t move faster than civilization, culture and behavior can buy and assimilate stuff.

12. Asset & Financial Management: IT is and has been an Asset Management game as you allude to in the book. However, the players don’t seem to know the game, hire the right players, get the right tools or even develop the right game plan.

13. Falling for The Pundit/Consultant/Vendor Self-Serving But Irresponsible Demagogue Mantra: “You fools are spending 80%+ to keep the lights on!!! Shame on you!”  As stated in #12, IT is an Asset Management game. The basic management economics are depicted in this graphic that is a derivative of what Nolan, Norton & Company developed with clients many, many years ago.

 

You must start with the non-discretionary expense related to running and properly maintaining, supporting and enhancing existing applications. Prudent IT stewards start with what it costs to run their IT portfolio (Production Cost) of current & previous IT investments. Proper Maintenance, Enhancement & Support are a % of the production cost and are a must to preserve the value and contribution of the previous IT investments. Then, separate funding analysis is required to refresh or replace what you have and for new IT investments. Those NEW IT investments and some replacement investments result in an increase (drop down) of future Production and Maintenance/Enhancement/Support costs. Would you want to fly on an airline that did not know their M+E+S/Prod and shifted it to so they could only buy new planes…BTW, you get to fly on one of the old ones. This does not mean you don’t do all possible to have the most efficient production as well as M+E+S approaches. However, robbing Peter (P, M+E+S) to pay Paul (New Development) may make the current CIO look good, but beware what is left in their wake.

14. Getting Beyond the Procurement: Too much time and energy is spent on the procurement of an ERP by folks who in many cases do not have to live with it and are clueless. They do the wedding and the prenuptial, but others have to live with the marriage.

15. SAP Nation May Be Small Potatoes Compared to Outsourced Nation: The damage, loss of internal critical skills or lack of innovation being experienced in many firms by poor outsourcing is far more costly and impactful than SAP Nation. Perhaps Vinnie will look at that in the future. “

Whither technology journalism?

I write this as hundreds of media folk are in Austin at SXSW probably dissecting what happened to GigaOm. My perspective is more as media consumer – a voracious one who scrounges hundreds of articles for my blogs and my books – and an occasional contributor – as guest columnist and interview fodder for several publications

Here is what I have seen over the last couple of decades

a) Inadequate enterprise technology coverage

Industry analysts, pubs like InformationWeek and blogging sites like ZDNet and Diginomica aside, there is strikingly little coverage of enterprise tech. I had hoped with Om and Stacey, GigaOm would have had more telecom coverage. Yes, consumer spending on technology has caught up with enterprise spend, but there are still trillions in enterprise software,  telecomm, data center and other spend which do not get enough coverage. The common reasoning I hear is “that stuff is boring”. That it may be, but there is still plenty of money in that beat. Enterprises spend billions  with Gartner, Forrester, user groups, consultants to get access to that coverage.

b) Even less coverage of corporate technology innovation

In my research for the book, The New Technology Elite, I could not find a single industry which is not making its products,  services and business models more digital. There is plenty of industrial, marketing, cleantech, healthtech, nanotech and other innovation going at GE, P&G, Corning, Daimler and most other corporations. I find it puzzling that media companies based in New York, London, Berlin ad elsewhere get all excited about a Google driverless car or the Apple Watch but ignore innovation happening within driving distances of their offices    

c) Hardly any investigative reporting

There is annual Pulitzer prize in the category of investigative journalism. In the last 15 years, even as technology has permeated every aspect of our work and life, just one finalist has explored a technology angle. A few stories stand out like Consumer Reports coverage of iPhone 4 antenna problems, Obamacare site problem coverage, and those on Foxconn’s  China workforce issues, but many other technology topics have been lightly touched. Several have asked me jokingly “is there a contract out on you?” for writing SAP  Nation. My head scratching response is why have more journalists not jumped all over the $ trillion in IT spend, much wasteful, in that economy? There are so few Brian Krebs who stands out for covering data breach/security stories.

The tech industry deserves a stronger fourth estate. Personally, I think there are plenty of topics and dollars to support it.  We need a set of writers and editors who are willing to cover innovation and controversial topics which are just not getting enough focus.