deal architect

Burning Platform: Episode 2 - Bumper quarter

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 Josh Bersin of Josh Bersin Academy

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 Josh Bersin, one of the best analysts on HR trends and a major influencer in his role as Dean at the Josh Bersin Academy.

The expression goes "what does not kill you makes you stronger". I kept thinking about that as Josh talks about what HR execs and staff have had to endure during the last 6 months - employee physical and mental health issues, transition of workforces to WFH, massive scaling up/down, stress of economic uncertainty, highly charged diversity and inclusion discussions, distance learning, automation plans as companies reconfigure supply chains, physical site re-opening protocols, leadership and resilience in a deep crisis.

We also talk about the changing HCM vendor landscape. Vendors like Salesforce with Work.com, ServiceNow and Facebook are increasingly part of the HR conversation in addition to many niche vendors, and leaders like Workday, SAP and Oracle.

We have long talked about HR becoming truly strategic. That time may have arrived. It is a really uplifting conversation.

Sidetrade: Machine learning applied to customer invoices and collections

Let me say at the outset, my hype antenna goes up whenever a vendor talks about machine learning. It comes from years of frustration with machines which have supposedly been trained to transcribe voices. Even the hyperscalers only deliver 85 to 90% accuracy when it comes to transcribing my book and blog interviews. I used to think it was the noise in my audio recordings. After all, if doctors can dictate their complex lingo and get pretty good automated transcription what is so complex about my workloads? Well, machines can learn their individual voices and accents - doctor handwriting is a bigger challenge, I think:).

In my case 95% of the voice is not mine - it is that of my interviewees. In tech, many of them have strong German, Indian, Chinese, S. African and other accents. And also in tech we use all kinds of big words and acronyms (thanks, Gartner!).

Machines can be trained well if you can limit the taxonomy they are expected to learn and then you expose them to LOTS of relevant data. It's the latter part where most vendors fail to measure up. They may have a number of large on-premise customers. Vendor machines cannot easily access that data - they are either not allowed to access the customer data center or even if the data is extracted, customers rarely give them permission to benchmark against other customers. If they are in the cloud, they do have easier access to the data, but few have sought or received permission to anonymize the data and use it for ML.

Which is why I was intrigued to hear about Sidetrade and its database of accounts receivable and cash collection data accumulated over 20 years - representing over 300 million invoices valued at over trillion dollars. I invited David Turner, the CMO to talk about their value proposition and have extracted 20 minutes from his presentation below. He discusses his Augmented Cash application and two of his large  customers - Manpower and XPO Logistics.

The pandemic has been good for business. Q2 was the strongest in their history. Cash flow is king with the global economy in turmoil and their insight delivered via their bot, Aimie clearly helps collectors.

You would think ERP and CRM vendors would be all over this with their order processing and eCommerce capabilities? Sidetrade depends on them to process customer orders, do the billing and record the cash collections. (Sidetrade has a roadmap to itself offer some of the transaction processing) But go back to my comments above. Those vendors likely don't have enough real-life customer collection data available to train their machines.

Salesforce's acrobatics

Jim Cramer at CNBC pointed out the irony that ExxonMobil, a major carbon contributor as an oil and gas company is being replaced by Salesforce in the Dow Jones Industrials Index. Salesforce is a major supporter of the WEF's 1T.org initiative to plant a trillion trees by 2030 to offset the effects of climate change.

The official communication said it was related more to Apple's recent stock split and the need to add more tech to the index. However, to me it is another example of CEO Marc Benioff willing to take positions where most other corporate executives fear to tread - on diversity, homelessness in San Francisco and so many other causes - and increasingly being recognized for it. I have been impressed how many other executives mention Marc as an inspiration in the "acrobatics during the crisis" Zoom series I have been running. They have been doing so, unsolicited. 

Of course, it is not just his leadership around "purpose". Salesforce has deftly pivoted its product mix during the pandemic. I could see it in the interview I did with Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, EVP, Industries in May.  She was talking about Salesforce's work helping various verticals including public health officials and with partner nCino helping community banks process thousands of PPP loans

The Work.com launch has been brilliant. One executive after another has told me site re-open protocols are turning out to be much more complex than lockdown processes - which themselves were not easy as thousands were being moved to WFH. Schools, college campuses, sports teams, amusement parks are facing even more urgent and complex reopening scenarios. 

As part of my recent interview with Tony Prophet, the Chief Equality Officer I wrote "Salesforce is a company which elevates equality as a core value and has been widely recognized as a company which is leading conversations on moving to a broader stakeholder, not just shareholder, focus. Given how well it has done for shareholders, the stakeholder goals are even more ambitious and Tony is clearly a key player in that effort and as he advises "aim high".  

I know of customers who think Salesforce tries to be "woke" and support too many social causes. Well, after their product and financial performance (they just reported a blowout quarter) during the pandemic, I say - if they can walk the tightrope, let's just watch in awe.

Extra! extra! The dead has arisen!!!

As Brian Sommer and Ray Wang reported on Friday in this video I was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral for on-premise software. In that role, I was allowed to the grave site where no media followed - most were too busy tweeting about the demise. So I was one of the few who witnessed a miracle. We heard a groan and it was old OP. We helped him out, and I stayed the weekend with radio silence to see how he fared. I visited him in the hospital this morning where he is in stable condition.

Here is a condensed version of our conversation (and sanitized for the foul language he used in describing us analysts):

OP - Vinnie, you have not been too nice to me the last few years, but I get my revenge. You get to tell the world that the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

VM - OP, first of all its good to see you so lucid. Hope you don't mind calling you OP. Impressive that you remember your Hemingway.

OP - And I hope you don't mind me calling you illiterate. It was Mark Twain from London in 1897

VM - 1897? so Brian was right - you are as old as the hills.

OP - is that Sommer you talk about? Tell the SOB, I saw his snarky eulogy. And tell him and Ray, I will be around long to torment them.  

VM - Now hold on OP, it's not just Brian and Ray. You are not too popular with customers. And you have gotten uglier by the day, and have all kinds of patches and band aids....

OP - this conversation is finished...

VM - the pandemic and work from home trend truly exposed your weaknesses. Most CIOs describe the extra VPN provisioning and other effort it took to keep you going. Cloud applications on the other hand were a dream.

OP - OK, smartypants, then why have they kept me around? Because cloud solutions cannot deliver all the complex industry and geography specific functionality. I delivered essential services just like healthcare and Amazon Prime workers did. And this is the gratitude you show me?

VM - well, cloud vendors are working on those industry solutions...

OP - good luck waiting for that. They have been promising them for a decade. Besides, even if they do, will customers have the massive migration budgets during the recession? Till cloud vendors automate the migration, they will continue to depend on their expensive SI partners

VM - not exactly, with travel restrictions, SIs are moving to remote delivery models...

OP - If you believe that one, then I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

VM - OP, you really don't believe things have to change?

OP - With friends like Larry and Hasso, I am used to a certain lifestyle. Why should I change?

VM - because customers are talking to Google and Amazon and Microsoft about lifting and shifting you out of their data centers and moving it to their hyperscale ones.

OP - you mean I wont live in a suite any more?

VM - actually it gets better. They are also talking to firms like Rimini and Spinnaker to service you...

OP - Mercy... no more caviar - they will only serve me hot dogs? Can you do anything about it?

VM - I will see if Larry can move you into his infrastructure cloud, but even there you will be working pretty hard. You know Zoom ran 7 petabytes of video a day through his data centers a couple of months ago

OP - that sounds like way, way too much work...

VM - well I have a better idea. Why don't you announce your retirement?

OP - Hasso did exactly that and said I would be gone by 2025, but customers don't seem to believe him ...heheh

VM - no, you need to step up, teach cloud vendors all your unique industry and geography knowledge and I will see if we can get you a decent pension and a small place on the beach.

OP - Too hot...how about on a lake?

VM - OP, quit worrying. You have had a traumatic few days. Just work on a smooth transition, and we may even get you a customized bobble head

OP -  man the one you have looks ugly but I guess after decades I do look that way. Can you arrange a red hat for him?

VM - Red hat?

OP - No not that one, one which says OP

VM - you mean Opie? We will have to check with Ron Howard.

OP - who, what? Look, I am feeling rough. Just get me the best deal you can, Mr. Deal Architect and I will gracefully, gradually fade away in a few years.

VM - OK, but no trickery. Teach cloud vendors all your industry and geography knowledge and how to automate the migration. By the way, you really gave us a scare, but I am glad you are bouncing back and are as feisty as ever.

OP - and Vinnie, nothing will please me more than to see you grovel and be nice to me. Stay healthy, yourself.

Enterprise tech learns that small is beautiful

SAP Nation 3.0, which was published last year, took me 6 months longer than I had planned. When I looked at the first draft, it was dominated by S/4HANA. I told Stacey Fish, who was helping me navigate SAP I needed more coverage of other parts of SAP. In the end, the book has plenty of case studies and executive profiles around AIN, C/4HANA, IBP, ML, Qualtrics, SuccessFactors and other SAP products. Which created another problem - my editing team told me all the acronyms were confusing. You think? So we added a section upfront titled 'Do you speak SAPese?" which includes a taxonomy of TLAs, an index to the case studies by country and industry, and a listing of a wide range of customer strategies like ring-fencing and third party maintenance we describe in the book

The challenge has been to get SAP itself and its partners to speak "SAPese" in this broader vernacular. In my opinion, there has been too much focus on terms like "Intelligent Enterprise" and selling the big S/4HANA upgrade.

I have seen a glimmer of hope in the last few weeks as SAP has shed light across 6 analyst briefings on other segments of its portfolio.

The most emphatic was in a presentation that Greg Tomb and team delivered Tuesday on what they call their Amplify initiative - watch the replay here. Greg said the pandemic has led customers to ask SAP to ask for "bite size projects" and "immediate value" around "problems they face today." Focus on areas like "learning" given WFH, digital commerce, smart sourcing etc. He used words like "implementations in days and weeks". "flexible licensing", "Big SIs selling $50 to 100K projects" I have not heard often in my three decades covering SAP. Importantly, it has encouraged SAP to show off many of the products that do not get as much exposure.

Of course, most of what Greg described is horizontal, cross-industry functionality. In interviews I have done with Peter Maier here and Bob Stutz here you also get a feel for industry specific functionality from SAP.

If anything, in the last 4 months, I have seen an explosion of interest in what I call vertical "edge" applications - PPP loan processing, mobile banking and digital mortgage processing in fintech, telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in education, ecommerce fulfillment and last mile delivery in retail, drive thru and home delivery for food service, shop floor and warehouse automation as customers re-examine supply chains and many more. Many more opportunities for SAP to explore.

I have heard similar from SAP's competitors about their new, often, bite-sized offerings. Workday using its planning and HCM capabilities and leveraging IBM Watson has developed a solution to help companies safely reopen sites. Salesforce's Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh described to me their vertical "edge" applications, often with partners on the Force.com platform, in this conversation.   

As with everything in this phase, the question to ask is "how far will the bungee snap back?" When the economy starts to recover, will these vendors and partners go back to big "elephant hunting" and large, on-site projects?  Importantly, will customers allow them to?

A demo - how quaint!

Rootstock gave me a demo this week of their Low-Code, Business-Driven Cloud ERP software release. I have extracted below 3 minutes from an hour-long Zoom session.

This press release describes five areas where "citizen developers" can increase their productivity using Salesforce Lightning and its Einstein AI platform that Rootstock is built on.

You know what? I found it a treat. The last few months we have focused on heroics as CIOs moved thousands to WFH. In my Zoom series, I have heard of many vertical "edge" applications in healthcare, retail, mortgage processing, higher ed, banking which have allowed customers to survive and often thrive during the COVID19 crisis. We have seen how projects have moved overnight to zero-travel, remote implementation and support. All that is pretty earth shattering.

In contrast, we have seen also been part of tone-deaf vendor events where they still pretend they can sell 2-3 year projects which require plenty of on-site presence and they mostly talk about products which were in the bag in January and now look dated.

So, it was good to have Tom Brennan, Rilene Simpson and Tammy Delatorre focus on something down to earth, but which makes ordinary users, and certainly power users much less dependent on IT and SIs.

  

New Normal: A conversation with Rob Enslin of Google Cloud

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives 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 Rob Enslin, President, Cloud Sales at Google.

I have known Rob over the years from his long stint at SAP. He is not one to brag but if you parse some of the statements he makes in the video below, you get a sense for the tectonic changes coming to most economies and how technology will play what he calls a "massive role". The formidable range of offerings Google and Alphabet already offers to consumer world will increasingly be leveraged by the enterprise. With Thomas Kurian and Rob that should accelerate.

He touches a wide range of industries across the conversation - auto makers, banks, food and beverage, hospital, universities, call centers, public sector agencies, travel companies. He covers scenarios such as running a virtual annual general meeting, banks moving from branch to digital banking,  machine inspection of shop floors and automation of thermal checks at airports.

He describes how many customers start with "lift and shift" of legacy apps to Google infrastructure for the cloud economics, scalability and security. Then they start to leverage Google's machine learning, collaboration, vast data sets (like health related ones from Google Health and Calico), mapping and other digital assets.

I was struck by his personal productivity during the shelter at home. He describes a day of customer calls to Japan, Indonesia, Germany, Brazil, Florida, New York and California. Organizing all that a few months ago would have required 2-3 week trip. He says Google has always been a video-savvy workplace (which has also made their WFH a lot easier), but he says it is striking how the rest of the world has moved that way.

He is rightly proud that the cloud has managed to support so much traffic without too many hiccups - all the massive uptick in ecommerce, video, banking and trading volumes, telemedicine and other digital activity from home. As he asks - could we have done that a decade ago? 

He also touches on delivery models and how even complex machine learning projects are being supported remotely. He expects much more productivity going forward in delivery of services.

When I asked him about leadership, he complimented Google leadership like the CEO Sundar Pichai for decisiveness - about quickly moving to work from home, ending large group meetings, being conservative about moving back into physical workplaces. He also cites his personal experiences during the dot.com recession in the early 2000s, and that in the 2008 financial meltdown as helping him lead during this crisis. He says he shares with his employees how he personally relaxes. He also participates in many virtual happy hours, virtual Peloton group rides with staff.  

He was immensely popular at SAP  - read this post I did on his earlier career and his leadership style. No surprise he has continued that at Google.

I found it an extremely uplifting conversation. I think you will too.

Oracle Nation update

Last August, I had floated the idea of writing Oracle Nation. This blog post laid out the reasons why I was thinking about it. I added in a comment the changing industry landscape I hoped to explore

"The next wave of apps are going to be in vertical operational areas and many geographies beyond the bigger Western countries. The competition will change as more customers are moving back to custom developed and even building industry solutions for sale. Also there will be more regional players and others on Google, AWS and Azure platforms. Got to factor all that in my decision."

Oracle and I discussed various options. They offered access to 6 events around the world as a way for me to meet customers and Oracle executives to interview. That was very generous and would have given me a very nice exposure to Oracle's global reach. However, none of the events was vertically focused. And, honestly, I find conferences a tough place to get decent face time with executives. Much better to catch them in their comfort zones in their offices. Not that it would have mattered. Given the COVID-19 crisis, most of those events have been cancelled.

I also managed to get a dialogue going on verticals. Mike Sicilia, EVP of Oracle's global business units, gave me a nice overview of key verticals such as hospitality, retail and utilities. We were supposed to arrange for drill downs into many of the sectors but again COVID-19 has disrupted scheduling.

I had hoped to re-engage and make Oracle part of the "acrobatics during the crisis" Zoom series I have been running. However, the Oracle executive I approached declined. I understand. While the vast majority of executives I invited have participated, some have not - they don't want to come across bragging during the crisis or for other reasons.

In background, to get a 360 degree perspective I had also talked to Oracle partners, competitors, user groups. Long and short - my books tend to be case study heavy and I don't think I can get a broad enough range of customers for the book.

I will be honest - in my polling I got several comments that I should instead write about SaaS leaders like Salesforce, Workday and ServiceNow or the hyperscalers, Amazon, Microsoft and Google (Oracle IaaS is showing more recent momentum but did not come up much in my earlier conversations). The acrobatics and digital transformations during the crisis (watch the interview I did here) are also really timely fodder for a possible book. BTW these conversations are showing a lot of interest in vertical edge applications (like telemedicine, drive-thru support, PPP loan processing etc) less ERP or other transactional system refreshes in the short-term. Less tech focused, I have also thought about writing a book on US policy matters - our middle class, immigration, global trade etc. I find there are plenty of what I call "toxic myths" about those topics.

Seriously, I am learning so much from my Zoom interviews and can share them on a much more timely basis that I plan to continue doing those. I have several more great executives lined up.

Oracle is continually fascinating. There will be a time and place when we will be able to engage meaningfully. Just not this year.