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.
I had a chance to catch up with Darren Roos, CEO of IFS and he gave me a sneak preview on the IFS Cloud which it will launch on March 10.
It's been good to see IFS use the pandemic to accelerate its focus on enterprise service and asset management (see this episode with use cases like Rolls Royce), the investment in its cloud and also its rebranding. CMO Oliver Pilgerstorfer provided details of the branding exercise in this episode here.
Following my conversation with Darren in video below is a snippet of the vibrant displays IFS has at Times Square in New York, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and Piccadilly Circus in London.
More details on the cloud offering to follow after the launch in a couple of weeks.
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.
SAP hosted for analysts a Industry Cloud briefing last week. I have excerpted below about 15 minutes from an hour long session.
Peter Maier, President Industries and Customer Advisory kicks it off and I liked that he gave several examples of new industry functionality. SAP (and in fairness other large vendors) often talk about industry qualifications in generalities and about past efforts ignoring that every industry turned upside down last year.
I had interviewed him last May and you can definitely see progress.
At 6.50, Peter and Kai Finck, who heads Industry Cloud Program respond to a question about industries where SAP has seen most momentum in the last year.
At 9.15, Svend Wittern, who heads Industry Strategy and Peter explain that business networks where SAP plays a big role with horizontal functionality from Ariba, Concur and others are increasingly moving to industry versions.
At 12.18 Ralph Stemler, who heads Industry Ecosystems mentions that strategy firms like McKinsey may be partnering with SAP and getting into the IP business with their industry knowledge
At 13.30 Steffen Schad, Product Manger, SAP Business Technology Platform talks about how partners and customers are starting to use the platform (including recent acquisitions of Signavio and AppGyer) to build industry functionality
Overall, I liked the momentum Peter showcased, but I still don't think SAP is thinking small enough. It has missed the boat on so much demand we saw for vertical edge apps like telemedicine, distance learning in higher ed, warehouse automation, last mile delivery in retail and food service, virtual open houses in real estate in the last year. It is still focused on big "intelligent enterprise" type positioning which will take years to flesh out.
Also, in the next briefing, it would be nice to hear much more specifically about how strategy firms (and the traditional SI partners) and low code tools are helping develop specific industry functionality. Similar about how RISE with SAP is being verticalized.
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.
Today is a huge day for IFS with a major rebranding exercise. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO gave me a sneak preview of the many dimensions of the project. They considered changing the name IFS, but kept it and instead added an energetic new logo, a new typeface, a focus on the tagline of "Moment of Service" (with their growing service management and enterprise asset management/maintenance focus) and a vibrant new shade of purple. They also have a major launch of the IFS Cloud in a couple of weeks
The video below leads off with that "reveal", then with my session with Oliver. In the middle of the interview are high-visibility displays they have at 3 iconic places around the world - Times Square in New York, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo and Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Piccadilly Circus in London will have the big finale next week.
At the end of the interview is an asset which focuses on the Moment of Service theme.
I have been to each of the 4 display locations in the last few years. With the pandemic curtailing travel, the locales brought back to me "wow" memories - as I am sure it will for many of IFS's global customers.
The whole thing is very tastefully done. I hope IFS sets up a gift store with swag to showcase the new art and colors. I definitely would like a couple of items!
In the meantime, kudos to Oliver and his team. Amazing amount of work - particularly with having to navigate all the quarantine restrictions around the world
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.
I attended a few sessions at the Adobe Developers Live event and have excerpted about 20 minutes from two very interesting sessions, both hosted by Bertrand Delacretaz, and involving Principal scientists and senior software engineers at the company.
The first is from a q&a with Roy Fielding, co-author of the HTTP protocol and inventor of REST. He talks about the evolution of HTTP from early days ( the whole www was a grand total of 48 pages when he started!) to current work on QUIC & HTTP/3. I particularly liked the audience q&a where he was asked what makes him go "wow" as he sees the evolution. I wished he had more time for the question about how state and other actors are trying to limit access to so much of the content we take for granted on the Web. The full session is here.
The event was also aimed at what Adobe calls "experience builders" - their big differentiator. So, I enjoyed and have excerpted starting at 9.27 from a panel with Ian Boston, Tomek Rekawek, and Carlos Sanchez, on how they successfully migrated Adobe Experience Manager to the Cloud. While many vendors have moved single tenant, on-prem apps to the cloud in the last decade, it is always fascinating to hear about the innovations in each move. This panel discusses efficiencies like the Golden Repository and automation in the form of hibernation that they engineered into the solution. The full panel session is here.
You may enjoy other sessions from the event - the replays are here.
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.
Barbry McGann, Executive Director, Office of the HRO at Workday returns to present on the new Vaccine Management solution. It expands on their Return to Workplace offerings. She had previously presented in this series on their VIBE offering (which is acronym for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity)
The Vaccine Management solution addresses multiple goals - as a way to educate employees on a growing variety of COVID vaccines (mRNA, vector, protein subunit etc), to guide them where and how to get vaccinated, to allow them to confidentially report the vaccination details. In turn, corporations can identify employees who should be prioritized as vaccine inventories become more widely available in the health ecosystem. They can use the data to make smarter decisions on which offices and sites to safely reopen and plan on workforce availability and related workspace and resource (like PPE) needs. There are plenty of dashboards and compliance analytics.
Barbry says 60% of companies are encouraging employees to get vaccinated (though not necessarily mandate it). No wonder the initial interest in this solution has been huge. They had over 1,900 registrations (a record for Workday) for a recent webinar on the solution.
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.
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.
I explained here I have been trying to fit the many Analyst Cam episodes - vendor demos, analyst surveys, excerpts from vendor events - into a 20 to 30 minute format. Events have been the hardest to force -fit. It is tough to excerpt from hours of sessions into 20 minutes. Vendors need permissions from customers. Events folks are exhausted and the last thing they want to do is get me many GB of video.
Still, I persist and I requested SAP share video from their RISE with SAP session this week. They delivered the videos promptly but they deleted customer and partner sections from the CEO Christian Klein keynote (likely due to permission issues). They shared the Q&A with Christian, but I decided to let the Christian keynote dominate the 20 minute excerpt below.
Christian's fluency with the broad SAP portfolio is nothing short of brilliant. I remember seeing a Thomas Kurian presentation when he was at Oracle which was as impressive. Enjoy his mastery of the "Business Transformation-as-a-service" offering below.
In addition, I would recommend you spend some time on a few other sessions during the day, particularly the sections I highlight in them:
Thomas Saueressig of SAP talks changing business models, sustainability and many other global trends with Gabriela Azzali, Chief Transformation Officer, Orica and Ulrich Stoerk, Chairman of the Management Board, PwC Germany here
Juergen Mueller of SAP does a deep dive around the Business Technology Platform and involves Damian Bunyan, CIO, Uniperand Liz Fasciana, Global SAP Offering Leader, Deloitte Consulting here
The Business Process Intelligence section with Rouen Morato of SAP and with Gero Decker of Signavio, that SAP announced it is acquiring starts at 8.15 here
The customer sections in Christian's keynote with Dr. Roland Busch, Deputy CEO, Siemens and with Jodi Monelle, Founder and CEO and Kees Kruythoff, Chairman and CEO of LIVEKINDLY are at 8.15 here
The section about Collaboration and integration of MS Teams with Satya Natella, CEO of Microsoft is at 31.30 here
The complexity of the offering led to a number of questions. Here is the Q&A with Christian. Disclosure - none of the questions are mine, certainly not the one which asked "aren't you a bit late to the party?" With a young baby and a demanding CEO role, I doubt he has energy left to go to many parties :)
I will be sharing my analysis from the day over the next couple of weeks and in a couple of Burning Platform sessions with other analysts. But here is a quick take:
a) I am pleased to see so much focus on the public cloud. Just about two years ago, I told Christian I was worried how many S/4 projects were on-prem and in private clouds. I told him he risked a repeat of ECC overruns. Worse, it would be difficult to apply ML concepts with data siloed across so many data centers
b) I understand why he had to highlight all his SI partners - but with the pandemic and travel restrictions they have been learning to do virtual projects and use more tooling and automation. I wish he had focused on how they have evolved. SAP and its customers cannot afford the old way of doing projects.
c) One of the biggest payback areas in justifying a move to S/4 is retirement of ECC customizations. I fear the BPI/Signavio tools and the army of SIs will get the green signal to launch another large wave of customizations, this time bloating S/4.
d) During the pandemic we have seen a move to bite-sized projects like the SAP Amplify initiative and in vertical "edge" areas - like telemedicine in healthcare, digital real estate, distance learning in higher education, automated fulfillment in retail and many others. What SAP presented was mostly horizontal processes and far from "bite-sized"
e) The contracting for RISE appears very ambitious. While that is good business for advisers like Deal Architect, no business executive enjoys months of negotiations when they are under extreme pressure to get their digital projects going.
For now enjoy the brilliance from Christian, Thomas, Juergen and others. Nobody would accuse them of being small thinkers.
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.
I have had several industry analysts join me in my Burning Platform series over the last several weeks. I invited Russell Rothstein, CEO and co-founder of IT Central Station which offers a crowdsourced knowledge platform that helps technology decision makers to better connect with peers and other independent experts who provide advice without vendor bias.
I thought he would provide some insight into the many IT categories his site tracks from Firewalls to RPA tools. Instead, he did something that most analysts have smartly stayed away from in 2021 - making predictions after most went so wrong in 2020.
Russell makes 6 predictions on how enterprise tech procurement will change this year.
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.
During the last few months we have seen growing interest in bite-sized applications in various vertical sectors. I have written about edge applications like telemedicine in healthcare, eCommerce and fulfillment in retail and food, distance learning in higher ed and many others.
Jason Prater and Marty Black, both ex-Plex, presented on their startup, Cella Technologies which is focused on waste on the shop floor. Machines often wait for materials (which have often traveled thousands of miles without an issue) while handling staff drive around in forklifts with walkie talkies. They are like taxis looking for pickups when digital technologies like "ride-sharing for forklifts" could eliminate the gap. Machines are getting smarter and predictively issuing requests. In the meantime, COVID has amplified the already difficult task of hiring workers for plants, their absenteeism and reduced productivity.
They say the waste from such "downtime waiting around" often exceeds that from scrap in many facilities.
They also describe other use cases to connect MES to the supply chain.
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 Marty Groover, Partner, C5MI. C5 in the company name comes from his background in the Navy for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Counter-intelligence. He also spent years at Caterpillar and is now a big advocate for Industry 4.0 - digital factories and the industrial Internet of Things.
With ubiquitous sensors, machines are talking a lot more, and we are learning to understand their language. Marty talks about their Live Factory concept with uses cases like WIP and critical parts tracking, and others involving predictive maintenance around industrial assets.
He covers a lot of ground in under 15 minutes. You may also enjoy the longer interview I did with him in May here.
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