deal architect

The Analyst Cam: SuccessFactors Analyst Day

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

SuccessFactors had an analyst update this week. I have excerpted from the session.

I left out 3 big chunks, the first two of which were under NDA

-  The new Chief Revenue Officer, Maryann Abbajay presented metrics for the year to date and presented logos of over 100 big global brands with over 100k users.

- Amy Wilson, SVP, Products and Design, presented on an expanded vision of 'Learning". She wanted that kept under wraps for now

- Lots of questions from fellow analysts. I did not want to include them without their permission.

Still, there is plenty of interesting content in the video below

Jill Popelka, President kicks off with a confident State of the Business. She shares they now have 164 million global users, discusses SAP Work Zone for HR, Litmos learning business unit and their "back to work" services as companies reopen physical work sites (and what Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday and others have also been emphasizing)

At 8.07 Amy talks about HXM - Human Experience Management leveraging the Qualtrics unit and a focus on the "whole self" of employees. She also spends a fair amount of time around the journey for on-prem customers to the cloud. As she says their legacy payroll dates back 4 decades - how to plan for the next 4? BTW, at 6.28 I ask a question about CIOs looking to stay with their legacy HCM software but moving that to a hyperscaler and to third party maintenance. They answered that. I also asked what automation SAP was investing in to make migrations to the cloud less people dependent especially in a world of travel restrictions. They did not have enough time to respond to that.

At 26:30 Meg Bear, SVP of Products and Brian Ellison, CTO have a fireside chat around various architectural topics. Brian covers 5 themes that are driving their technology vision.   

Overall, they covered lots of ground. I saw plenty of focus on employee experiences, Learning and on SAP's hybrid on-premise/cloud customer base.

The Analyst Cam: Zoom Zapps

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. 

One of the biggest winners from the WFH economy has been Zoom. The scale at which they have grown in the last few months is mind boggling. At their user conference, Zoomtopia, last week, CEO Eric Yuan shared that Zoom now supports more than 3 trillion annualized meeting minutes and handles 300 million daily meeting participants.

We have been glad to do our little part :) Most of the sessions in the various series in our blogs - Business Acrobatics during the crisis, Burning Platform and this one - Analyst Cam have been recorded on Zoom. Most of my book interviews and case studies over the last few years have been recorded on this platform.

At the event, they announced Zapps, which are best of breed applications integrated into the Zoom experience for seamless productivity and engaging experiences. My friend, Ross Mayfield has long been a pioneer in the collaboration category (what was called Enterprise 2.0) and has helped Zoom develop this initiative. In the video below, Ross presents a company update, then a demo of Zapps. He showcases some of the 35 launch apps to ship by the end of the year - some are horizontal like Rev for transcription, others are aimed more at verticals like Kahoot! for high school education.  

VC Shervin Pishevar has announced a ZappFund and tweeted "There will unicorns built as Zapps. So many categories up for grabs. This feels like f8 and Apple App Store (2008). So many possibilities!" So, the Zapps ecosystem should grow rapidly - everything about Zoom has shown it can scale at phenomenonal rates.

The Analyst Cam: Avasant Research study of COVID-19 impact on IT

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. 

Computer Economics, now part of Avasant Research, has benchmarked IT spending for over two decades. Frank Scavo, President, Avasant Research presented to me an abridged version of their recent benchmark survey of the impact of COVID-19 on IT Organizations.  

He presents fascinating trends in the 20 minute conversation below. You can also get a 70 page executive summary of the survey by signing up here. 

As he describes towards the end, they are working on another checkpoint survey to be released in December. If you like to be part of that or other surveys they are constantly conducting, sign up here and you will qualify for their research publications valued at over $6,000 at no charge. 

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street - the "secret sauce"

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.

Rimini Street has provided third party maintenance to Oracle and SAP customers for 15 years now. They now support 3,500 customers in most global markets and says they have delivered $5 billion in customer savings.

During the pandemic, we have heard about many frustrations with on-prem applications supporting WFH, scaling etc, and significant IT cost pressures. I invited Rimini to give me an update on what they are seeing in the market. Two Rimini execs presented to me.

Jason Kotsaftis, Sr. Director Product Marketing presented about a recent survey of 200 PeopleSoft customers. I ran that segment last week 

Hari Candidai, GVP, Global Thought Leadership and Research provided a corporate update and shared some of their "secret sauce". Rimini is known for much lower cost than the publishers. I have always believed their superior customer service and their support of customizations to the core software is even higher value. So, I am glad Hari spent plenty of time describing how Rimini delivers

He kicks off with a Q2 update.

He next describes how Rimini delivers tax and regulatory updates earlier than the software publishers. Starting at 5.10, Hari describes their TLR group of 200 CPAs and other professionals which monitors tax and other regulatory sites for updates that apply across 200 countries. In reaction to COVID, most governments introduced measures like PPP loans, tax relief for specific industries, for tele-working, etc. Rimini delivered 3,500 COVID related updates during Q2.

At 12.18 he describes how their processes, increasingly assisted by AI, are helping them deliver to an SLA of 10 minute response time for Priority 1 tickets. He also says the AI has helped reduce resolution time by 23% - by making smarter allocations of tickets to the most qualified support staff.

Starting at 17.27 he compares Rimini support to that from the software vendors. It's not even close.

Hari makes a compelling presentation. I could only joke I would rather pay twice as much for much slower, poorer customer service!

The Analyst Cam: Rimini Street - PeopleSoft Customer Survey

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.

Rimini Street has provided third party maintenance to Oracle and SAP customers for 15 years now. They now support 3,500 customers spread across global markets.

During the pandemic, we have heard about many frustrations with on-prem applications - how they supported large number of WFH employees, how difficult they were to scale up or down, and about increased scrutiny on IT costs. I invited Rimini Street to give me an update on what they are seeing in the market. Two Rimini execs presented to me.

Hari Candidai, GVP, Global Thought Leadership and Research provided a corporate update and shared some of their ‘secret sauce‘ - how they deliver regulatory updates earlier than the publishers can, and how their customer service is so much more responsive, even at their much lower cost. I will run his segment in another episode of The Analyst Cam.

Below is the presentation from Jason Kotsaftis, Sr. Director Product Marketing about a recent survey of 200 PeopleSoft customers. He talks about their grudging move to PeopleSoft Release 9.2 and experience with Oracle's move to "continuous innovation" in the form of frequent updates. Many customers are reporting effort of 3-5 resources for 4 to 6 weeks for integration testing and other tasks for each update.  They also describe limited functionality they get from this "treadmill". They do so to stay current and not have tickets rejected when they do need Oracle support. In addition, most are also paying an AMS vendor for support in addition to the Oracle annual maintenance. 

He also discusses interest in PeopleSoft customers about moving to the cloud. Interestingly, many are reporting interest in IaaS, not SaaS. And even when they are moving to SaaS they are taking a best of breed approach not just evaluating Oracle's SaaS offerings.

Lots of interesting insights in this 20 minute presentation. Many of the survey insights also apply to other packaged applications from Oracle and those from other on-prem vendors.  

BTW You can download the survey by registering here 

 

The Analyst Cam: Apple Hi, Speed event

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

I watched the Apple iPhone 12 launch event live

While the focus of the event was on speed and the highlight was 5G compatibility of the iPhone, to me the camera, the imagery, the MagSafe and other accessories, the Home Pod mini, the music, the overall production quality (see more on that at New Florence) kept me totally engrossed, taking screenshots on my iPad and even watching a replay.

Below is just an excerpt of roughly 2 minutes. I would highly recommend watching the whole show of over an hour here.

 

The Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx 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 Unit4 product team gave me a sneak preview of their ERPx product being showcased today at their virtual customer event, X4U.

I have excerpted about 30 minutes in the video below from the 75 minute briefing. 

Matthias Thurner, Chief Product Officer kicks it off with a corporate overview, the people centric industries and geographies Unit4 focuses on

At 9:26, Dmitri Krakowsky, ex-Google who has been advising Unit4 on future product directions, runs through some of the ERPx design principles. They leverage the Microsoft stack and reflect contemporary thinking like easy communication with the digital assistant Wanda which interacts via Slack, Teams or Skype instead of traditional e-mail.

I also liked his modesty - it has a realistic acknowledgement that for most customers today ERP represents Enterprise with a small e - it only delivers 25% or so of the total wall to wall functionality they need.

At 21.32,  Dimitri runs through a quick demo of Smart Invoices and the Extension Kit

At 26.10, Claus Jepsen, Chief Technology Officer and Dimitri go through some of the architectural and functional components and availability of ERPx.

I found it a very crisp briefing. I am sure as a result of X4U plenty of customers will want to learn much more. And I am sure analysts will have questions about migrations, feature parity across releases, hyperscalers beyond Microsoft.

According to Unit4: 

"New capabilities will now be developed in cloud. This enables us to make use of the Microsoft Azure technology stack for building, testing, deploying, and managing our ERP and additional cloud services.
The benefit of releasing capabilities via cloud is that they will not affect our customer’s ERP core installation, significantly reducing the impact of onboarding new functionality.

New capabilities can be made available for ERP 7 if specific features are deemed necessary or of particular interest for our on-premise customers."

Look forward to more conversations with them. 

The Analyst Cam: Zoho Workplace

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. 

Zoho launched Workplace last month - it is a suite of 9 applications to compete against Office365 and Google tools. The positioning is Workplace allows you to "seamlessly collaborate with your teams, no matter where you are, and get more done in less time."

I got an hour long briefing - I have extracted 20 minutes below

Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer kicks it off with some background on what he calls Zoho's "hidden gem". The suite has been evolving for 15 years and has adapted to the changing nature of work as it has become more remote with WFH, has become mobile-first etc.

At 11.25 Aarthi Elizabeth, Product Marketing Manager provides an overview of the 9 components that make up the suite.

Finally, my favorite part - at 13:36 Aarthi shows how the suite is not just horizontal. She does a nice walkthrough of use cases for the suite in the construction industry.

An epidemic (of content) during the pandemic

My two blogs, Deal Architect and New Florence have averaged 800 posts a year over the 15 years they have been running. 7 books have added another 2,000 pages.

A subtle shift occurred during the last two quarters which reflect the pandemic. The bulk of the posts are showing up in thematic series I have launched or accelerated. And a lot more of their content is in the form of videos and images.

The Analyst Cam

I have been excerpting videos from events, briefings, demos, presentations I have been invited to in my industry analyst role. As most of these have moved to virtual format, it has allowed to embed a shortened version with my commentary. Gives readers a bit of a "being right there" feel. Index of those posts is here. 

Acrobatics during the crisis

I have been interviewing (mostly via Zoom) C-level execs across industries about business acrobatics during the crisis. They have talked about heroics in healthcare, moving thousands to work from home, diversity initiatives, pivots, rapid innovation, massively scaling up or down. Has kept my spirits - and that of my audience - positive in the midst of the doom and gloom. It has also given me an amazing number of data points on changing markets to share with my advisory clients. Index here. 

Burning Platform

Weekly commentary with my colleague, Brian Sommer on trends we have been seeing in enterprise world such as: Are we finally seeing a end of life for on-premise applications? How will work from home formats evolve? These are a roughly 10 minute video format - meant to be both entertaining and educational. Index here. 

Passion Play

In this series, guest writers have written about their passions - hobbies, charities etc and how they have evolved with technology. I started this series a decade ago, and accelerated it this year to give people positive things to talk about and read. Index here. 

The Pandemic Diary

It would be nice for all of us to contribute to a time capsule about the pandemic. For some of us it would mean painful memories. Ours would be a bit more positive. Below is an extract from our Google Drive focused on the pandemic months.  I have long written copious notes about our family's travels. It started off as a tool to entertain my kids. During the pandemic, I have kept weekly notes and taken 000s of photos and videos on various COVID distancing and other signs, Johns Hopkins and other public health graphs but mostly as my wife, daughter and I have explored local places, cooked new meals etc. We share a few on Instagram and Facebook.  You may end up seeing another series titled "The West Coast of the East Coast" - living as we are on the Gulf Coast of Florida.  

A reader left a comment on New Florence this week

"Vinnie, I am constantly amazed on the variety of subjects you talk about."

and I responded

"Thank you! Better than politics:)"

The pandemic has allowed me to open up a fire hydrant of new content. Hopefully, it helps many stay somewhat positive in the troubling times we live in. 

The Analyst Cam: Neeley Board of Advisors, TCU

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.

This time it is not a vendor, but a Business School. The world of higher education has been turned upside down as campuses cope with the challenges of COVID-19, budget crunches, the loss of summer internships and job offers for students and the accelerated focus on diversity and inclusion this summer.

I am on the advisory board of the Neeley Business School at Texas Christian University. I had interviewed Dean Daniel Pullin as part of the acrobatics series in May 

Last week, we had our bi-annual board meeting. This one was virtual and with the Dean's permission, I have excerpted about 10% below. You will get a better sense for the "acrobatics" this school and many others around the world have had to perform during the crisis

It is in four parts:

• Dean Pullin kicks off with a nice summary of some of the accomplishments and challenges

• At 4.10, Associate Dean Bill Moncrief describes in fair detail the complexities of moving from campus to on-line education in 10 days and the challenges of teaching in hybrid mode - some students in-class and some on-line.

• At 11.13, Associate Dean David Allen describes the growing number of graduate level offerings. Given what the pandemic has done to supply chains and to our healthcare, I was particularly excited to hear of the verticals Neeley has branched into. Similarly as I have written here, the world of analytics is going through an exciting new phase so nice to see the new Business Analytics offering 

• At 15:58, Stacy Graub and Ann Tasby present on what they call Return on Inclusion. Neeley has been pioneering around diversity and good to see how their accomplishments keep growing.

Neeley is a relatively small school but it consistently punches above its weight. I left out some very impressive student presentations during the session - very poised and polished. I myself had a wonderful time there as a student. It has since become much more picky - not sure I would get in today:)  

For your recruiting and training needs, I would highly recommend you check out Neeley.