deal architect

Burning Platform: Not your grandpa's Services economy

In the 48th episode of the series we have Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group, a research firm focused on IT, business process, and engineering services since it was founded in 1991.

I enjoy catching up with Peter on a regular basis to get his perspective on trends in outsourcing and the broader IT, BPO, strategy services market.

He says the market is broadly strong - "rising tide raises all boats" - with the confluence of digital transformations, modernization projects/ related legacy outsourcing and pent up demand from projects slowed down or postponed in 2020.

What's different is the influence of hyperscalers like Google and Amazon and strategy firms like McKinsey, BCG and Bain. We also discuss the trend of "servitization" - where industrial and other sectors are generating more service revenues around their products and moving to "as a service" models with subscription revenues and outcome based models.

BTW, on the last point about servitization, I have been researching that trend in detail over the last few months. You will hear more from me on that in the next few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this conversation.  

We cover wide ground, as is common with my conversations with Peter. I always learn something new from him.

The Analyst Cam: Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future

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

Ben Pring of Cognizant makes a repeat appearance, this time giving us a sneak preview with couple of themes from his new book with regular co-author, Paul Roehrig.

The book is about the beast that technology has become in our personal lives and how to tame and regulate it. He makes a great point. In the early days of the automobiles, roads did not have lane markings, street signs, traffic lights. Within a couple of decades they were common place. He says we need the same on the information highway.

I tell him my libertarian instincts are suspicious of government regulation. I am already bothered by the censorship social media giants are engaging in. And from a productivity and sanity pov, I am worried about how much time and energy we waste on social media. To me, personal responsibility as parents and good citizens should kick in. 

They raise a number of troubling points. It is a short book, but a long letter at 176 pages:) Check it out on Amazon here.  

Analyst Cam: Everybody wants to rule the world

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

I know the title suggests it is about the Tears for Fears hit. Sorry, click here for that:)

My good friend Ray Wang makes a repeat appearance, this time giving us a sneak preview of couple of themes from his upcoming book due out on July 13. You can pre-order it here.

He talks about how delivery services like DoorDash became the interface to customers during last year's lockdowns/everything from home and are reshaping the restaurant sector. I have pointed out many industries had a similar reshaping in 2020 as "edge" applications like telemedicine took off in healthcare, distance learning in higher education, 3PLs took over ecommerce fulfillment, virtual open houses transformed real estate.

I am looking forward to my advance copy and especially what he thinks of policy changes we should be considering as what he calls new Digital Giants emerge. Ray is one of the few analysts who I can talk to freely on those topics. We had a lively session a few months ago here 

We also don't spent much time on Magic Quadrants or Waves. The business world is changing way too fast for old categories and acronyms. We need new ones like Ray's DDDN.

Analyst Cam: Tercera

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

This time, it is Chris Barbin, presenting on his new fund and advisory firm, Tercera. Chris was one of the co-founders of Appirio, a pioneering cloud systems integrator. They built practices around Salesforce, Google, Workday and others starting in 2006. A decade later they were acquired by Wipro, the large global outsourcer.

His focus now is SIs who are building practices around what they call the "third wave of the cloud" - ISVs like Okta, Snowflake, Splunk, Slack and others while also those focused on new  markets for Salesforce, Workday etc. He has also put together a nice board of advisers to help these firms navigate the changing cloud landscape.

Many investors still avoid professional services startups and that becomes Chris's opportunity.  It is an invigorating conversation with one of the savviest services executives I have known.

In fact, 12 years ago he was profiled in this blog as a "cloud pioneer". He continues to be one.

 

The Analyst Cam: Acadian Ventures

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

This time it is Jason Corsello who presents on his fund Acadian Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in "future of work" - the talent/HCM part of that rapidly changing world especially after the turmoil of 2020.

I have known Jason for years both as an industry analyst, and then in his role as an executive at Cornerstone OnDemand.

He is very well connected in HCM world and it shows in the portfolio he has already invested in, and in the limited partners/advisory board he has put together.

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing Part 2

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. 

Below is Part 2 of the presentation, Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 made about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. Part 1 ran yesterday here. 

Analyst Cam: Unit4 ERPx Briefing

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. 

Dmitri Krakovsky, Chief Product Officer of Unit4 spent a generous hour briefing me about the rollout of the ERPx version announced last October. I am running Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow.

Dmitri starts with an update on the TA Associates investment in Unit4 with a valuation in excess of $ 2 billion.

Several things I liked in the presentation

• The new architecture reflects the seismic changes in the industry since Unit4 launched its first gen cloud in 2017 - lot more focus on microservices, ML etc. From a user point pov, there are digital assistants, smart automation, instant mini apps and a lot more mobility. You can see a lot of his influence from recent time at Google.

• There is a lot more thought on migrations and upgrades. His Intuit background shows up in a lot more user controlled destiny versus dependence on IT or SIs.

• I like that the first 15 early adopters are a microcosm of Unit4's global differentiation and focus on services verticals like nonprofits, higher education etc. I particularly liked the portion around industry specific "mesh" architecture.

Next up - hope to interview some of the early adopter customers.  Well, Part 2 before that, tomorrow.  

 

Burning Platform: The future of "as a service"

In the 39th (yesterday) and 40th (today) episode of the series  we have Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, two of the pioneering influencers in the SaaS/cloud marketplace.

In part 2 below we talk about how business models are evolving and how servitization has become a significant trend in every industry vertical, not just in enterprise technology - as Phil calls it Everything as a Service.

In part 1 yesterday we had taken a walk down memory lane on how the SaaS, cloud infrastructure and platform economies have evolved over the last 25 years.

Analyst Cam: Zimit CPQ for Services

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. 

James Cramer, CEO of Zimit, a Workday Ventures portfolio company presented to me about their CPQ (configure, price, quote) capabilities aimed at the enterprise services markets. The majority of CPQ tools in the market today are aimed at product makers.

Zimit CPQ is not just a quote generator, it functions as a proposal engine and can embed text like staff resumes, customer references and methodologies.

They have an impressive range of customers - services arms of software vendors, digital agencies, embedded services in industrial companies. Also telling that their customers are not just project oriented but are also using other business models like outcome based pricing, pass-through hyperscaler charges etc.

Listening to James present, you marvel at how rapidly the enterprise services economy has evolved in the last decade. Add to that the virtual deployments the pandemic accelerated last year. Not your Dad's service economy.

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Vaccine Cloud

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. 

Over the last year, I have been impressed with a variety of pandemic and related crisis -driven applications Salesforce and its partners have launched. They have helped with contact tracing of 200 million people, source over 60 million pieces of PPE, helped process millions of SBA PPP loans. I have profiled them here, here, here   

In that tradition, it was nice to have Meredith Flynn-Ripley, SVP Product Growth and GM at Salesforce present on their Vaccine Cloud. It is designed to help 3 broad constituencies - public health authorities, healthcare providers and employers with the whole lifecycle of vaccine management including education, communications, scheduling, inventory management and certifications.  

Meredith does a nice job in 20 minutes covering a lot of ground. As she mentions, Salesforce is starting to deliver a similar scale of results to over 150 customers and millions of vaccinations in this critical endeavor.