deal architect

The Analyst Cam: Aternity Briefing

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. 

Bill Hewitt, CEO presented to me on Aternity's Digital Experience Management (DEM) platform. They are in the business of helping enterprises minimize digital disruption which looms even larger as millions of users are now working from their basements or wherever.

Their platform allows enterprises to monitor:

• End User Experience on any physical, virtual, or mobile device.
• Application Performance across end users, networks, and other cloud-native applications
• Device Performance along with self-healing to automatically resolve issues.

I particularly liked the IT and Business use cases he touches on at 6.14 including support for software license usage/negotiations and SLA management. The benchmarking he discusses around 9.15 could be very useful as it leverages data they have been collecting from 3 million SaaS endpoints they help monitor.

At 10.26 he discusses their partnership with Intel. They are working with the vPro platform group to add chipset level data to their other instrumentation and give CIOs even more data on WFH and other devices and their interaction with enterprise applications.

The Analyst Cam: Workfront Briefing

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. The key word is "excerpt" - no more than 15-20% of what is presented during the session, to keep the video length more easily consumable for readers. 

Workfront focuses on enterprise work management. I have been impressed how they bring structure to a number of previously unstructured processes in media, product design and other areas. These are increasingly digitized but tend to have a complex web of projects, and most have a high degree of quality and compliance activities to worry about. It's not an area where most large transaction process vendors have paid much attention.

More broadly, their focus is hugely important these days as the "future of work" has become the "present of work" with brand new COVID-19 driven WFH formats, the need for new measurement and management skills, new re-opening protocols, planning for multiple and rapidly changing scenarios etc.

The agenda included 10 speakers and a fairly long Q&A session, so the 4 segments I excerpted are meant to highlight Workfront's nuanced perspective on many topics that come up these days as executives review the state of work.

Kicking off my excerpts is Erica Gunn discussing the productivity change curve they have seen in the during the recent crisis. At 3.42, Aleks Bass presents on growing interest in outcome based work management, away from task based formats (I am seeing plenty of interest in this in the outsourcing world as travel challenges force them to work largely from remote locations). At 12:24, Darin Patterson presents an Automation Maturity Model for knowledge work. At 17.57, Alex Shootman, CEO responds to questions about WFH productivity during the crisis and other WFH issues such as 'surveillance' of workers and the need for new leadership skills in enterprises and a related discussion in the room about outcome based work.

Marc Benioff and "Market Relevance"

I liked Marc Benioff's recent comments particularly around Oracle and TikTok

“Because I’m mostly worried about the companies that aren’t making aggressive moves. I’m calling CEOs who are friends of mine who are in paralysis and who aren’t making moves, and I’m saying, Look, you’ve got to get into participation. You’ve got to get out of paralysis and into participation. Larry Ellison is the master of relevance. This is a move to make him relevant. This is so important.”

I am afraid, though, Marc's definition of "relevance" will mostly be viewed from the lens of M&A and other financial market moves. Marc himself stays relevant at a societal level, is usually responsive to customers (I emphasize the word usually because a number of customers grumble about how SaaS vendors have become as greedy and inflexible as on-premise ones), Salesforce has been regularly showcasing its vertical moves. 

He leads by example but I would like to extend his definition - based on what I have heard from my interviews with countless C level executives as they have pulled heroics during this crisis.

If you have a large on-premise customer base, how did you help your customers with their WFH and sustainability moves and their requests for maintenance relief?

It's pretty clear on-prem applications were a pain as they required back flips around VPN provisioning, rapidly scaling up or down as companies moved tens of thousands of  employees to WFH. As climate change becomes more of a "burning" issue it is clear that hypercsalers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have far better PUE and other metrics than the data centers most on-prem applications run on today.

So, in Oracle's case while Zoom has helped (and TikTok's workloads will help further) its cloud infrastructure cred, I would ask what it did for its large PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Business Suite and other on-premise customer bases. I have long believed and told have them they should have "lifted and shifted" their application customers to OCI, instead of trying to convince them to move to Fusion or NetSuite. I wrote this back in 2016.  Also, was Oracle easy to deal with as CIOs who were in badly hurt sectors or countries asked for maintenance relief?

Not just Oracle, I would like to hear similar from SAP, IBM, Infor, Microsoft and others with large on-prem customer bases.  

How did you help your customers with what I call vertical "edge" applications?

We have seen what I call vertical "edge" functionality help companies survive or even thrive as their markets changed literally overnight. I would like to hear examples of how vendors helped with examples like:

• Telemedicine in healthcare
• PPP loan processing capabilities and mobile apps in banking
• Distance learning in higher education
• Drive-thru processing in food service and retail
• eCommerce and robotic warehousing in retail
• Last mile delivery in groceries, restaurants even car buying
• Remote home buying and digital mortgages in real estate

How have your analytics capabilities kept up with massive changes in the last few months?

I wrote this while listening to SAP's Data and Analytics summit last week, but I would like to hear from every vendor how their analytics have responded to 

• chaotic, broken down supply chains, massive eCommerce and last-mile logistics spikes and significant opportunities for next-gen supply chain analytics and IoT mining,
• a relentless stream of continuous planning as CFOs updated forecasts and scenarios almost hourly.
• healthcare planning heroics as we opened pop-up clinics, expanded diagnostics and ICU capacity overnight, scrambled for PPE inventory, parachuted medical personnel from wherever, accelerated clinical trials for vaccines.
• citizens who have seen countless public health visualizations on COVID positives, hospitalizations, fatalities etc. from Johns Hopkins and other sources. (btw, the term "single source of truth" that is bandied by analysts is cause for caution these days as media has cherry picked this health data in its reporting. The need for pandemic modeling agencies similar to the National Hurricane Center has become obvious. )
• an explosion in video content from telemedicine, streaming TV, digital real estate, countless Zoom sessions and related emergence of a new generation of video analytics
• WFH productivity, gaming and other metrics
• intense focus on diversity and inclusion HCM metrics
• more precise outage mapping and storm tracking given the spate of forest fires and hurricanes this summer, and sustainability metrics as climate change becomes more of a "burning" issue
• trading data even for a much more Wall Street-savvy cohort of Millennials thanks to sites like Robinhood and due to unprecedented market volatility
• a new wave of polling data and sentiment analysis in the US elections
• data from sports with seasons which will definitely show asterisks - without fans in stadiums, teams in bubbles, shortened playoffs etc.
• a changing competitive landscape as vendors like Snowflake and Palantir are getting a lot more attention given their massive IPO/public listings.

If you are "services-heavy", how have you adjusted to a travel challenged economy and changes to your business model?

Brian Sommer and I discuss in this Burning Platform episode the impact on SIs and outsourcers as travel is increasingly challenged and few customers want outsiders at their facilities. 

As a result, many vendors (and customers) are moving to more outcome based and away from headcount and timesheet based contracts. I would like to hear more about that evolution. I am also hearing more buyers express concerns about security and privacy of employees of their service providers as they themselves WFH. How are vendors responding to those concerns?

Not every vendor is talking much about how they have evolved in the last few months. Many are just hoping the bungee snaps right back so they can go back to selling what they had in the bag in January. That could well happen, but for now, it would not meet my definition of "market relevant".

Burning Platform: Episode 3 - School Buses or RVs

In this episode of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SIs and outsourcers.

With travel challenged, they will need to move to much more remote projects and support. In doing so, they also have the opportunity to rethink their delivery models and include more shared services and automation.

SAP Data & Analytics Analyst Summit - a review

I was invited to an analyst summit on SAP's Data and Analytics portfolio of products. What a remarkable difference from last year! I had flown to a similar event in Vancouver - first to Seattle, then taken a bus across the border (I enjoy taking buses and trains during my travels). This year it was virtual using ON24. I participated and took screen shots on my iPad while racking up FitBit steps. Missed the spectacular Pacific Northwest scenery and hospitality, but this was a bit more productive.

More impressively, the SAP analytics product portfolio has become much more coherent. Last year, each of the products had slightly different slides and messages. This year, they had similarly wide coverage around HANA Cloud, Data Warehouse Cloud,  Augmented BI and Planning, Data Intelligence and Master Data Management.  A bit jargon-heavy - they were presenting to analysts, after all - but much better integrated and with considerably more emphasis on the cloud.

There were several production nuances I appreciated. They stayed on time across the 3 days. Quite a feat. No confusing NDAs - all the presentations were public (though I am waiting for permission to use some of the video from the NHL presentation). Every evening, SAP helpfully shared the slides for the day and the recording with an index with timestamps. They encouraged questions through the chat window (disclosure - I find q&a on ON24 a bit limiting. You tend to type short questions, and the answer time is usually limited. I much prefer verbalizing questions on Zoom. But ON24 gives you more flexibility on presentations, surveys etc.) and were generous with gift cards to encourage questions. Even a cheerful 10th birthday celebration for HANA. So, the production quality overall was excellent.

Timo Elliott of SAP kicked off the event asking a panel 'How has COVID changed the way customers are looking at analytics?"

At home, his question led me to ask review what I have learned from executive interviews in my "acrobatics during the crisis" series and I jotted down 12 data streams and use cases I hoped would be covered during the 3 days:

1) chaotic, broken down supply chains, massive eCommerce and last-mile logistics spikes and significant opportunities for next-gen supply chain analytics and IoT mining,

2) a relentless stream of continuous planning as CFOs updated forecasts and scenarios almost hourly.

3) healthcare planning heroics as we opened pop-up clinics, expanded diagnostics and ICU capacity overnight, scrambled for PPE inventory, parachuted medical personnel from wherever, accelerated clinical trials for vaccines.

4) citizens who have seen countless public health visualizations on COVID positives, hospitalizations, fatalities etc. from Johns Hopkins and other sources. (btw, the term "single source of truth" that is bandied by analysts is cause for caution these days as media has cherry picked this health data in its reporting. The need for pandemic modeling agencies similar to the National Hurricane Center has become obvious. )

5) an explosion in video content from telemedicine, streaming TV, digital real estate, countless Zoom sessions and related emergence of a new generation of video analytics

6) WFH productivity, gaming and other metrics

7) intense focus on diversity and inclusion HCM metrics

8) more precise outage mapping and storm tracking given the spate of forest fires and hurricanes this summer and sustainability metrics as climate change becomes more of a "burning" issue

9) trading data even for a much more Wall Street-savvy cohort of Millennials thanks to sites like Robinhood and due to unprecedented market volatility

10) a new wave of polling data and sentiment analysis in the US elections

11) data from sports with seasons which will definitely show asterisks - without fans in stadiums, teams in bubbles, shortened playoffs etc.

12) a changing competitive landscape as vendors like Snowflake and Palantir are getting a lot more attention given their massive IPO/public listings.

Somewhere in the vast SAP customer base across verticals, I am sure you could find customers who could talk about the realities I list above, and in passing some of the items were covered during the event. I was particularly pleased to see a presentation from Greg Notch of the NHL. He focused on the SAP-NHL Coaching Insights App for iPad. Real-time analytics and visualization from the ice rink - a good metaphor for what every executive would like to see in their own industry settings. It was reinforced on live TV as the Stanley Cup Finals are played this week and you see coaches and players looking intensely at their tablets.

Most of the other sessions focused more on longer-term projects. They were professional and included presentations from customers like Siemens and Stryker. 

I know this is SAP's reality - multi-national customers with plenty of complex needs with mountains of data and legacy products to carry forward. But I am not sure they would meet Greg Tomb's filter.  He had presented a month ago about SAP's Amplify initiative - a focus on bite-size projects with remote teams that have been selling in the last few months.

In fairness, I could have asked via the Chat format about some of my points but not sure they would have had enough time to elaborate. Look forward to more direct conversations with SAP executives and customers. And similar with all other vendors who compete with data and analytical products. There is a brave new world of analytics they all have to compete for.

The good news for SAP is the products and the case studies they presented will be more relevant next September. Or possibly June or November? When exactly? Now, that is a Looking (into the future) Glass analytic application most companies would pay SAP dearly for as they navigate projections of U, V, W, L economic recoveries.   

New Normal: A conversation with Eric Dirst of DeKonsultere

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Eric Dirst. He is President of DeKonsultere LLC, providing CIO/COO/Board level services to small/mid-size companies & portfolios of VC/Private Equity firms, Chief Technology Advisor at Align Capital Partners, CTO at Cloud5 Communications, and CIO at Renew Corp.

He previously had executive positions at Adtalem and DeVry, which are leading for-profit trade and tech educational institutions and was CIO at Sirva (Allied Van Lines)  President of DeKonsultere, LLC.

Given his long background in higher education, we talked about heroics as universities, colleges rushed to migrate from campus to distance learning and massive scaling demands on tech providers like Blackboard. We discuss likely business model changes as education moves more on-line and about changes in labor needs post-COVID and how the education sector needs to evolve to support more trade and blue collar skills. We also discussed the elaborate testing, contact tracing and other protocols as campuses re-open.

We also talked about pivots and acrobatics in the startups he advises.

Very pragmatic point of view.

Burning Platform: Episode 2 - Bumper quarter

New Normal: A conversation with Darren Roos of IFS

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Darren Roos who is CEO of IFS, which is a leading European vendor of ERP, field service and asset management software. He has had other successful stints at SAP and Software AG. He joined me from his home in London, UK

He talks about heroics in his customer base. He pays them tribute with the term "challenger mindset" and calls them "beacons of light in the darkness". In the US, he cites Munters (they manufacture and service air treatment solutions and saw an acute need to have field technicians conduct complex service calls) and Raven Industries (which jumped in to make PPE). COBA (in the UK switched its operations within weeks to manufacture medical tubing). Induflex in Denmark did similar. Some of IFS' customers were involved with the UK NHS rapid construction of Nightingale hospitals to handle the surge of COVID-19 patients.

I particularly liked his comments in the leadership section about "over communicating" during a crisis and how partners like TCS are stepping up to do remote projects in a travel-challenged environment.

Overall, very optimistic session and nice to get a positive point of view about the UK and Scandinavia, and a very different vertical perspective focused on complex, asset intensive businesses.

Burning Platform: A new series on hot Enterprise topics with Brian Sommer

Brian Sommer and I go back nearly 30 years. We ran parallel Software Intelligence units at Andersen (now Accenture) and PwC (that unit is now part of IBM) and competed. The competition was tough at a professional level, but respectful at a personal level. He was one of the first people I called for counsel when I got a job offer from Gartner. At Gartner, I had to analyze Andersen so I got to torture Brian :)

We then co-founded a marketplace, IQ4hire. Our ambition was to digitize the entire SI/outsourcing sales and procurement process. It was ahead of its time in a world (our plans included proposal engines and video consultant resumes) where relationship selling ruled, but the rigor we codified two decades ago has allowed both of us to bring rigor to many a project since.

Many readers see us at vendor events. Many clients see us together on advisory projects. We look at problems from very different perspectives - something most clients appreciate. We also try to do so with humor. In (very) different ways, we are both story tellers as I wrote here. 

So, not surprisingly we talk quite often on a wide range of topics (and crack plenty of jokes and tell stories). During the COVID-19 pandemic, our conversations have moved to Zoom. We thought it would be fun to share some of our recent conversations about enterprise technology.

Here is the first episode in a series of hot topics - titled the Burning Platform. Notice on the cover how cool the man is, even in the face of the raging fire. That is a good metaphor for how we approach enterprise problems. We will share these on a regular basis, minus much of the snark, family talk and politics that creeps into our conversations.

It is a roughly 10 minute format. The first episode is about how on-premises and cloud applications have fared during the pandemic, and why customers still cannot easily jettison old, ugly on-premises baggage. We also make some recommendations.

Look forward to your feedback, and the opportunity to help you through complex enterprise issues. And do so with much needed humor in these crazy times!

New Normal: A conversation with Kevin Parikh of Avasant

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Kevin Parikh, CEO and Chairman of Avasant, a digital research, benchmarking and advisory firm.

We cover wide ground around heroics he has seen in his IT focused client base. We also spend time on his book, Digital Singularity, which he describes as human experience meeting technological omnipresence as it gets embedded all around us in sensors and smaller devices. His view of Singularity is very different from that of Dr. Ray Kurzweil which is much more about man-machine convergence. Kevin emphasizes the subtitle of his book over and over - the case for tech in service of humanity.

I particularly liked his optimism around using maturing technologies to re-imagine the world as we recover from the crisis. He says like we sat on video and collaboration till the recent crisis, we have been underutilizing IoT, AI and advanced data processing. I liked the examples he cites - how he recommended rebuilding Dominica and the Caribbean broadly with wireless tech given the repeated damage from hurricanes, the moonshot race and similar opportunities around world to think differently around today's challenges. More of his vision are in this corporate video.

He rightly is proud of the private sector as it continues to be outcome and data focused in a world of disinformation and political maneuvering. He ends with his own examples of leadership - internships for his employee's young, and in turn encouraging his employees to spend time on charitable activities.

A very positive, optimistic conversation.