deal architect

Burning Platform: Exciting world of Citizen IT

In the 28th episode of the Burning Platform series is Amit Zavery of Google Cloud. We discuss the exciting growth in no-code, Citizen Development.

Amit and I discuss how the pandemic has revealed several problems in on-prem systems and also that most cloud application packages were mostly horizontal in reach. Boutique vendors had to step up in many industry areas like ecommerce, fulfillment, telemedicine, distance learning, digital real estate etc. It would suggest we are at a tipping point where customers will need to build more rather than wait to buy functionality from their traditional vendors for agility in the changed world.

Yet, IT has it hands full with new issues around WFH, previous dev backlogs, enhanced security focus. It would suggest more of a focus on low- and no-code development to bridge the gap. Not just dev - we have seen acceleration in democratization of analytics, integration with other enterprise apps, the ability to use voice interfaces to do so much without much IT involvement.  Amit describes how healthcare workers stepped up to build fairly sophisticated hospital applications.

The impact on small businesses has been even more dramatic. Restaurant owners have been forced to adjust to a digital world of customer interaction and last mile delivery. Small merchants have been forced to embrace e-commerce, real estate agents adjust to virtual open houses and digital mortgages. They have become tech-savvy in a hurry. It's not just DevOps - it's digital business transformation.    

We also discuss platforms of SaaS vendors like Salesforce, those of mostly on-prem vendors like IBM and Oracle, and those of hyperscalers like Google.

In the past, citizen IT tools have led to a lot of duplication and proliferation - millions of spreadsheets, Lotus Notes databases everywhere. We discuss how to put guard rails to avoid similar sprawl this time around and also factor security concerns which leads cynics to call this "shadow IT"

Amit has long been a cheerleader for low-code, no-code. His excitement comes through very clearly. We are definitely at a major inflection point in the industry. We have a lot more tech-savvy users and citizens than we did a year ago. That is exciting and scary at the same time. 

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Investor Day

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

I have been encouraging Rimini Street to share more info on its global reach and operational "secret sauce" like they did in this episode where they described how they deliver tax and regulatory updates as part of their support earlier than the much bigger software publishers.

So, I was really pleased to see that in their virtual investor day last week, they focused on customer case studies, addressable market shares and operational details. In fact, the CFO, Michael Perica waited his turn till the last session of the event, just before the analyst q&a.

I have excerpted about 15% of the 2 hour, 45 minute session, and in some sessions a number of the speaker's slides. You can watch the whole webcast by registering here. 

Leading off  after the Forward Looking caveat is Seth Ravin, CEO and Chairman who provides a historical perspective since the company was founded in 2005, and the expanded focus starting in 2015 to include application management services.

At 5.27, Sebastian Grady, President shares case studies across 8 industries and geographies.

At 8.46, David Rowe, CMO discusses addressable markets. I love that he actually describes components of his marketing technology stack. Didn't I mention they were serious about discussing operational details?

At 12.10, Gerard Brossard, COO discusses how the field is being reshaped to reflect a much more global Rimini customer base and for a sales force with many more products in their bags.

At 17.09, Brian Slepko, EVP Global Service Delivery discusses root cause analysis at Rimini, the continuous improvement culture and their TLR (Tax, Legal and Regulatory) group. 

At 21.39, Daniel Winslow, Chief Legal Officer provides his perspective on the long running court battles with Oracle.

This is definitely not your Dad's Rimini Street! I first wrote about them in 2006. They have gone through many twists and bruising legal battles, and have emerged stronger and much more differentiated.  

Head over to the whole webcast on the Rimini site to hear fuller comments from each of these execs, from the CFO and also listen to the Q&A. 

Burning Platform: A review of RISE with SAP

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here . Last couple of months, we have had several guests - Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research, Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere, Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters, Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy, Sandra Lo of Zoho, Bob Evans of Evans Strategic Communications, Paul Coetser of Big Blue Ventures and Mark Smith of Ventana Research

In the 27th episode of the series is Dennis Holwett, co-founder of Diginomica. Like me, he is a long-time SAP watcher and we discuss last week's RISE with SAP event. I had written about the event in the Analyst Cam series here. 

We cover a lot of ground - it is the longest episode of Burning Platform.

RISE is a complex bundle - in fact, in his keynote Christian took at swipe at the term "simplification". That's been SAP's mantra for the last decade or so, but key execs like Christian, Juergen Mueller  and Thomas Saueressig are pretty articulate about product details. I told him I was reminded of Thomas Kurian's encyclopedic knowledge when he was at Oracle. We discuss if that level of intimate product knowledge can carry over further down the organization, in the field and in the partner ecosystem.

Dennis responds to my observation that Christian led off with his SI partners and had the hyperscalers further down in his presentation. Shades of the old SAP or signs of likely co-opetition with the hyperscalers especially at the platform layer?

During the pandemic we have seen customers move to bite-size, industry specific projects. Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, others have accordingly made some adjustments. We discuss why RISE with S/4 looming large does not come across as bite-sized, or verticalized enough.

I told him I thought RISE would focus more on execution mechanics and economics. Instead they broadened the product mix with the Signavio and the MS Teams announcement and glossed over what will be hairy execution and contractual issues. SAP has historically shown little ability to manage its SI partners, can it additionally manage the hyperscalers and its own broad product portfolio and deliver coherent economics, SLAs etc?

We discuss the changing hyperscaler landscape. IBM has joined the Big 4 - AWS, Azure etc in the SAP infrastructure stack mix, but not Oracle. During the pandemic, Oracle appeared to pick up some momentum with customers like Zoom and TikTok. Oracle, at least at the database layer, is also more prevalent in the SAP customer base. We discuss how customers are likely to navigate SAP's choices.  

We do agree that SAP should never be underestimated. It has an amazing global customer base, spread across industries and is increasingly cultivating a dynamic, young executive suite.