deal architect

A disappointing start to Dreamforce

I wrote last week I am excited about Salesforce's verticals and that I planned to watch many of the industry sessions scheduled at Dreamforce today. However, last year's CEO Marc Benioff's keynote did a really nice job showcasing customer case studies - I shared this post with several other vendors asking them to use as a guide for their own customer stories. So, I was hoping for a redux and set aside a couple of hours to listen to this year's opening keynote - here is a replay.

Marc and his team did profile a couple of customers - State Farm Insurance and Louis Vuitton. However, the focus was more product-centric and rushed. Just did not have, at least for me,  the same impact last year's format did.

Worse, there was a protest which interrupted the session. I have been reading Marc's new book, Trailblazer, and while I admire the positions he has taken on LGBTQ issues, gender pay equality and homelessness among others I have been wondering if that just attracts more causes which clamor for his and the company's attention. I got my answer during his keynote. CNBC reports

"A man standing near the stage started reading from a piece of paper, criticizing Salesforce’s contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

 “Okay, we’re going to let you talk for 30 seconds,” Benioff said to the man. “But, however, at the end of the 30 seconds, you have to agree that you’re going to leave. Do you agree?”"

A giant digital timer on the screen then began ticking down. “We’re going to put the clock up. You have 28 seconds left,” Benioff said."

"Minutes later, another protester started shouting, but the comments were inaudible.

“We’ve heard from your group, and we will [be] happy to have a further conversation with you,” Benioff said. “We gave you your time. We will continue to give you other opportunities to speak. Thank you very much.”

I thought Marc handled the protesters very well and even scored points when he said he supported free speech. But with the timer and a security lady in the picture you got the distinct sense that Salesforce was prepared for this and even bigger protests outside Moscone. Honestly, I was filled with dread - what next?

I had hoped Benioff would do his fireside chat with Tim Cook of Apple as part of the keynote. It was actually later in the day when I had a conflict. Instead, the stream had a fireside chat with Anand Giridharadas, Editor-at-Large for TIME. His focus was what he calls "Voluntary Virtue" - the faux concern he thinks the wealthy show in solving societal issues like inequality. He talked about his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He was particularly tough on Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase. (btw I am a Chase customer and personally think their customer service sucks but I thought Anand was unfair to Jamie). More than anything as an editor of a leading magazine I wish he had been balanced. Instead he focused on the two ends of the wealth bell curve and ignored our still-substantial middle class. I tweeted him after the session

By now, I was distracted with calls and had the Dreamforce feed in background. I did see bits of pieces of two sessions which both focused on AI and ethical issues. 

I am approaching the decade milestone of The New Polymath. In that book, I had laid out many thorny technology-led ethical issues. I had interviewed lawyers, academics and analysts on these issues including Dr. Herman Tavani, professor of computer ethics at Rivier College. I had observed

"Clearly, this walking encyclopedia on cyberethics is not being leveraged enough by technology practitioners and future business leaders. (Professor James Moor at Dartmouth also confirmed he is not often consulted by technology vendors.)

In the last few years I have seen it flip. We are proactively worrying about potential ethical issues around AI and autonomous cars when they are years from becoming mainstream. As one panelist observed " AI is like teenage sex: everyone says they’re doing it, but no one actually knows what it is." Exactly, but we still seem to spend hours fretting about potentially biased algorithms, not about the productivity and payback from these new technologies. In contrast, long festering ethical issues I had laid out in my book are still being ignored.  

Look, Dreamforce has always been a "different' conference. It is a Tony Robbins type rah -rah, scream your throat hoarse event. You run into will.i.am and Deepak Chopra and Colin Powell and Richard Branson and who knows who else here.

But at the end of the day, I shuddered that a certain line may have been crossed at Dreamforce. I go out of my way to avoid political media, and in this sanctuary of a tech and innovation event, I should feel sheltered from that.    

I just hope today's vertical sessions focus much more on innovative customers and products. Yes, feel free to call me boring.  

I will see Josh's five and raise him ten!

Josh Greenbaum has a fascinating post - how Microsoft and SAP plan to take over the enterprise software market. There is much in there I agree with. All the recent executive changes - Jen, Christian, Bill, Bob - are exciting for the industry. Microsoft's infrastructure cloud is on a roll - the SAP "Embrace" and the DoD JEDI contract only add to the momentum. But I see much bigger changes in the enterprise software market beyond what SAP and Microsoft will touch.

To me, Google, Facebook, Amazon and agencies like Accenture with their share of digital advertising and CMO access will continue to significantly influence and morph the CRM space

The customer service segment will be significantly reshaped as IoT, satellite, drone based concepts mature. I expect industrial asset makers like Siemens and Caterpillar and logistics providers like UPS and Amazon to also be major players.

Contract manufacturers like Foxconn and Flex and boutique design firms will have more than their fair share of influence in the product engineering and manufacturing areas.

Amazon, Alibaba and other big commerce sites will continue to commoditize fulfillment functionality for countless SMEs and set a bar for broader supply chain and logistics functionality.

Robotics and other automation vendors will reshape many a business process. Similarly, Google will help many an enterprises rethink processes with machine learning.

A whole bunch of customers are themselves reshaping their industry specific operational systems with custom development and specialist startups - they are tired of waiting for modernized vertical packaged software.

Major economies like China, Japan, Brazil and others have seen so far only modest traction with modern enterprise applications. I have a feeling regional players will have a bigger role in the next few years.  

Josh has a lot of ink about activist investors. To me, they play a vital role in shaking up status quo, but smart as they are, I dont see them as significantly reshaping technology markets. In later, more mature markets, private equity investors have more influence in consolidations and other seismic changes. But we are not at the stage in the current iteration of enterprise software.

Net-net to me : SAP and Microsoft will continue to do well in traditional transactional areas. But the definition of the "enterprise" continues to rapidly expand, and I see a very fragmented market for the next few years.     

Of course, Josh may well be right. My little bet is my ticket to what will be a wild ride. Cannot wait for the 2020s!

Constellation Research event: Expansive, respectful vibe

Let's face it - industry events are increasingly formulaic. Most vendor conferences are predictable - keynotes and product futures, rock bands, large partner booths. Most research firm events tend to be siloed around their category definitions and what currently excites them. So, I particularly enjoy events like Cognizant Community which are about conversations with peers, mind expansion, and not so much about bragging or selling.  

I had a chance to spend a day at Ray Wang's Constellation Connected Enterprise event this week. The event honored a wide number of innovative customer executives, definitely different from other events where vendor executives dominate. It is different from the Cognizant vibe - the content here was much more dense and rapid fire. But I liked the panel and fireside chat formats. Way too many events have one talking head after another. I find in my own presentations, the conversational style with a moderator improves audience engagement. Of course, in the 30 minute CCE session format, there is not much time for audience questions. Instead you get to ask questions one on one. In fact, many attendees were outside networking. Ray had opened the event with - 'you are all here because you are intelligent, innovative...and impatient'. I was clearly a rookie - most attendees had been to 3 or more of the 9 annual CCE events. They get their value from the networking outside the sessions. Impatience personified:)

The wide breadth of sessions was refreshing, if covered a bit shallowly. CCE had sessions on sports, economics, fintech and much more. People know me as a SAP or an outsourcing analyst, but the reality also is my New Florence blog has racked up close to 7,000 posts over the last 15 years and books like the New Polymath have focused on the exponential payback from combining cleantech, healthtech, agritech and more. I enjoy diversity in topics.

I could have participated in the event remotely. Every session was streamed like this chat with Aneel Bhusri of Workday. Every session had a visual story from Heather Willem artists like the one above and below. Given Ray's own prolific Twitter habits, the audience provided instant feedback in tweets on every session. However, I am glad I was there in person and here is what I observed in the few hours I was on-site

Honoring the Past

Ray had his parents in the audience. That was very respectful as was his fireside chat with Vint Cerf. It was good to see on-stage executives from MicroStrategy, Tibco, Infosys. These companies are not dead by any means - they are reinventing themselves. It was good to see Jim Cavalieri of Salesforce and Aneel Bhusri of Workday in different sessions look back and honor Marc Benioff. In many ways, it was nostalgic and feel-good. As an industry, we don't do enough of that.

Savoring the Present

To me it is puzzling that so many people are miserable and angry when the economy is so vibrant. I like meeting content people so it was nice to spend a few minutes with Ray's wife, Tina who balances so much with a smile. Ditto with Ray's associates like Dion, Holger and Nicole who are always positive. I only had one meal at the event but have to point out several people at my lunch table went back for the to-die-for crab bisque. The administrative and event staff did an excellent job with logistics.  Dr. Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics had an informative and humorous session on the world economy and assured the audience the US economy is healthy short-term given its energy and manufacturing balance, but cautioned about longer term impact of national debts and aging demographics.

Inviting the Future

It was nice to see Ray's son, Nathan and his school mates at a table - a good metaphor for what's coming next. There were sessions on spatial computing, blockchain, quantum computing, global opportunities. In my conversations I heard of next-gen applications - very little mention of today's vendors, much more of start-ups, custom development, platforms from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. 

Some quotes out of hundreds I heard give you a clue to the future world that was discussed - not all positive, but should give you a flavor for the variety of conversations

• The notion of pure anonymity on the internet may evaporate
• We need to get beyond Next Best Action to Next Best Conversation. If you don’t understand me, how can you support me?
• Teach your kids French. Africa will play a big role in the future and French is a common denominator on that continent.
• 3D designs that look crappy look REALLY crappy in VR
• Digital strategy should run parallel to corporate strategy - Under Armour needs have evolved from apparel footwear industry features to that of a fitness platform
• We are significantly increasing our attack (vulnerability) surface as we head into 5G and with massive amounts of IoT.
• Tracking your lettuce from farm to store doesn’t implicitly add security or prevent it from spoiling. It made zero sense to me when I first heard that use case and it still makes zero sense today.
• “Our equipment works equally well on the earth or the moon for intelligent data processing. We will have mining operations on the moon in about 15 years.“

If you were looking for a string to pull all the pearls together, sure Ray has it. I was only there for a third of the event so have no right to expect that. His loyal fans who show up every year will likely say - who cares? It is a good forum to enjoy Ray's hospitality, get some pretzel logic, energize body and soul and to renew long-term friendships. Mission accomplished. Glad I could be part of it.  

Gradually, then suddenly

Lots of people are rattled by all the executive changes in the industry over the last few months ...Bill McDermott and Rob Enslin at SAP...John Donahoe at ServiceNow...Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian at Oracle ...Charles Phillips at Infor....Bob Stutz at Salesforce....

There is plenty of speculation ... Call me old fashioned, but I take the long view and being one degree of separation removed from many of these executives, I prefer to do my usual 360 degree calling around. Besides, as a colleague said "The signals were there if you knew where to look". Hemingway was even more poetic when he wrote “How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”  

To me, change is healthy. And often builds up over a couple of decades. Unlike many, I am not that agitated by what is happening in Washington or London. I ignore the shenanigans and the political media but I can see why we got to where we did. And look at ways to adapt to the changes.

Same thing with enterprise tech. In my recent book, I cataloged the last twenty years and described how Apple near dead, Google, Amazon, Foxconn and many others, mere babes then have thrived. I looked at how over a million on-prem customers have not budged. How 80% of the geographic and vertical white spaces have not been filled with modern solutions. Systems integrators continue to try and do business the same old, labor intensive ways they did in the last go-around. 

It would be silly to not expect major changes given this build up. The key is not to confuse individual with corporate trajectories. The good news is we are seeing new leaders like Jen Morgan get a chance to put her imprint. With McDermott headed to ServiceNow and Stutz to SAP, we will see plenty of activity in the customer/revenue-centric segment of the market. There will be lots more activities in areas that did not see investment in the last few years.

Here's my advice to customers. Take time to revisit your application portfolio. There are plenty of opportunities to modernize, consolidate, better integrate your applications. Your legacy has security and compliance risks and plenty of recruiting risks as you look to attract younger talent.

To vendors - question what may have worked over the last decade or so. Plenty of new opportunities and threats to focus us.

There will be plenty of distracting noise and speculation as we are seeing in politics.   Ignore all that, disrupt yourself and embrace the change.  Lots coming.

A wide open race in enterprise software

If you are into speeds and feeds, last week in sports was particularly interesting. It marked the 19th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's improbable win at the Talladega Superspeedway. Seemingly hopeless in 18th place with just 4 laps to go, Earnhardt somehow went on to win that NASCAR race. It was his last major win. Watch the last few laps in the video below.

Earlier in the week, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya ran 26.2 miles in Vienna is a record-breaking time for a marathon in just under two hours. It was not an official race but it showed the art of the possible when technology (supplied by Nike, INEOS and others) and technique come together as I posted on New Florence. 

As we approach the end of this decade, I have thinking a lot about the race in enterprise software.

In my recent book. I looked at the last 20 years in software. By many metrics, the pace of change has been glacial. Over a million on-prem customers have not migrated core applications to modern cloud or in-memory architectures. On the vendor side there are all kinds of neglected white spaces when you look at industry or country specific coverage.

And yet the vendor landscape has changed considerably. You could argue Apple, Amazon and Google have had more of an influence on enterprise applications than did SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, Workday and others have become major players. Plenty of global and vertical players are nipping at the heels. With customers building more than buying applications players like VMWare have become more influential. Service providers have evolved - many these days are as much contract manufacturers, digital agencies and third party maintenance providers. Telcos are gearing up for a next wave of 5G and satellite services. Customers are themselves becoming tech vendors as they make their own products and services smarter with software and sensor support.

When I talk to CIOs these days, I hear of opportunities and challenges like vendor end-of- life dates, automation, digital transformation, multi-cloud leverage and application portfolio consolidation. They increasingly worry about their recruiting profile as younger tech staff show little interest in supporting their legacy applications.  Vendors are themselves showing signs of big change - there is new management in the last few months at SAP, Infor, Oracle and Unit4.

It should be an exciting next few years. May be the roaring Twenties again? But they also raise some interesting questions: Will we see an Earnhardt break away from an increasingly crowded vendor market? In that race he was described as"...suddenly, seeming out of nowhere, Earnhardt charged forward, parting the field like Moses parting the Red Sea.."

And who like Kipchoge is working on stuff that makes you go wow. 

In my role, I am paid to help clients put bets, so I have my views on the likely Earnhardts and the Kipchoges.  But I would love to hear your perspectives. Comment away!

 

RIP Mark Hurd

Larry Ellison hinted at this in his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld last month. He joked he did not have many friends and that he would hate to lose Mark Hurd. In a corny way that was quite a tribute to the man, who at 62 passed away way too young.

Over the years I had come to respect the man - we had conversations around complex supply chains and global policy matters. Most people did not realize how analytical he was and made Oracle marketing a digital marvel and made their sales organization much younger. He had an interesting presentation style and preferred to come off the stage and podium - that puzzled some folks but I thought it was humble of him to come down to the level of his audience.

His presentations always invoked data on market trends. Which is where I did not always see eye to eye with him. Given the market opportunities he presented, I wondered why Oracle's products and investments did not always take advantage of those white spaces.

It's not the time to bicker. Oracle and the whole tech industry has lost a disciplined operational executive and as a personal tribute, I have to add, we have lost a damn good analyst.  

RIP.

Why the changes at SAP may be timely for the industry

Since Thursday evening I have heard from many if I am surprised by the changes at the top at SAP

My answer is "only slightly"

From Sapphire in May, I wrote after some of the changes earlier in the year

"Nick Tzitzon, EVP of Marketing and Communications had told me "we have individuals in some cases who collectively have worked for SAP for 100 years, and who decided that it was time to try something else in their career. Does this not happen in every company?" Hasso Plattner was even more emphatic when he told a few of us that several customer executives have marveled at the smooth transition. He told us SAP is much "younger" now and he has never been more proud of the company. Watch this keynote and see the energy of execs like Christian Klein, Ryan Smith, Jen Morgan and others."

At the event, Bill McDermott had asked me what I thought of the new-gen of executives.  In background, I had heard from many customers as I was writing SAP Nation 3.0 that their legacy ECC (and PeopleSoft and Baan) systems were increasingly a recruiting liability as they tried to hire younger tech talent. So, SAP's changes were in line with what many customers were experiencing. 

However, there are more executive changes since at SAP. So people ask did McDermott need to leave along with Rob Enslin and others this year? Who exactly are Jennifer and Christian? What's wrong at SAP?

Let me try and address them. I have not talked to Bill since Thursday but his decision to leave after 10 years as CEO is really not that dramatic. According to Korn Ferry, the average Fortune 500 CEO tenure is less than 5 years.

People speculate he wilted under pressure of activist investors. Frankly, as I wrote in the book, the last 3 years have been quantum more demanding.

"That (McDermott HBR) interview was conducted before President Trump came to office. I imagine there are now additional challenges in being an American CEO of a European company."

About Jennifer, Fortune included her in its list of the 50 most powerful women in the world. They described her meteoric rise at SAP "going from head of regulated businesses (till January 2013) to overseeing all of the Americas, Japan, and Asia Pacific in just five years.”

In my book, I cataloged the Digital Transformation that Christian has led within SAP. This extract should give you some dimensions of the complexity

"We are tackling the whole value chain at SAP. We are looking end to end, looking at marketing, sales, finance, service and support, cloud operations and the cloud infra- structure. That’s the first aspect of our transformation. Next, we are infusing machine learning, IoT, predictive analytics and these new technologies to bring the intelligence into play. It’s about adapting business processes to the new digital age. It’s about fixing the data architecture. Last but not least, it’s about change management, and taking the people with you. In the end, everything that we do in the cloud impacts our 90,000 employees and our 400,000 customers.”

They are both impressive executives. The Co-CEO arrangement is unusual, but not at SAP. McDermott was co-CEO with Jim Hagemann Snabe for several years. They replaced Léo Apotheker, who himself was once an co-CEO.

Honestly, I think the industry needs a jolt. While the book overall is positive to SAP, it highlighted the under-achiever performance of the industry in the last two decades. I mean that to include SAP and Oracle and Salesforce and Workday and Infor and IBM and HP and many others.

Amazon shows authors "popular highlights" that a cluster of readers mark on their Kindles. Chapter 2 of the book looked at the disappointing performance of enterprise vendors. The majority of the highlights so far for my book are in this chapter - see some extracts below, courtesy of Amazon's algorithms

Page 32

In the meantime, SAP and its competitors, who mostly focused on each other while trying to one- up each other and impress Wall Street, have missed out on large opportunities emerging around them. (the chapter discussed cloud infrastructure, smart products, digital advertising, IoT and many other markets that new entrants like Amazon, Google, Foxconn, Siemens and others took advantage of)

Page 40

In October 2018, Oracle co- CEO Hurd predicted that 80% of business applications would be in the cloud by 2025. Today, even after two decades of cloud computing, industry and geographic coverage is spotty — by my estimate, less than 20%.

Page 45

More alarmingly, we are starting to see customers get tired of waiting for vendors and go back to building their own replacement systems. With microservices, open source and other options, we are seeing the pendulum swing away from buy back to build. That’s a stunning reversal from the 1990s.

Page 53

However, they don’t have enough process visionaries who can dream up next- gen shop floors, emergency rooms or warehouses. So you see the industry continue to invest in infrastructure, platforms and tools.

 

If Jennifer and Christian only focus on financial performance, they will do little to change the industry trajectory. We desperately need them to aim differently. Much as I respect what McDermott did, I am looking forward to the next era at SAP with that hope.

A tumultuous couple of decades

As I was filing our quarterly Form 941 last week, it hit me that we have entered the last quarter of this decade. As I flew into LaGuardia on Monday, it took me back two decades to my time at Gartner. In October 1999, there was nervousness about the damage Y2K could cause, but also euphoria at the phenomenal few years many tech vendors had enjoyed. The introduction of the euro promised another bonanza for the near future. Enterprise vendors, particularly two sectors that I followed - enterprise applications and service providers - had reason to feel very good about themselves.

In New York this week I heard an optimistic Mike Salvino , the new President and CEO of DXC, at a HfS event. I heard similarly optimistic (for different reasons) Cognizant executives at one of their events the day before - they also have a new CEO. I also kept up with the celebratory mood at HR Tech in Vegas virtually.

At Gartner, I had followed SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and their SI partners. CSC, EDS and HP Services were players back then.  They continue to live on in the form of DXC, founded a couple of years ago. Cognizant had revenues of less than $ 100 million in 1999. It has grown like a rocket with over $16 billion in revenues now. HR Tech was only 2 years old in 1999. But the backwaters of the HR function had led the client/server applications market. This time around, it has similarly led the cloud applications market.   

There is lots to appreciate and applaud.

However, the even bigger lesson of the last couple of decades is the many missed opportunities. Outsourcers missed out on the cloud infrastructure market. It was theirs to lose and so far, players from left field like Amazon and Microsoft have benefited. After 20 years of cloud applications (Salesforce was born in 1999), application vendors can barely cover 20% of the country/industry grid. At the HfS event last week, the biggest attention was on robotic process automation (RPA). Hardly any talk of Amazon's Kiva warehouse robots, or UPS's drones or other operational automation. Or automating the labor intensive outsourcing space. CRM vendors completely missed out on the digital advertising market. Google, Facebook, and digital agencies have made out like bandits in the vacuum. SaaS vendors had an amazing business model which bundled multiple contracts - the license, the maintenance, the hosting, the application management - into one. Then they got greedy like their on-premise competitors. I saw Bruce Rogow, my former Gartner colleague in New York and he told me he sees in his travels CIOs struggle with new opex/capex funding paradigms. Instead of delivering a knock out punch, SaaS vendors mostly co-exist with their on-prem competitors. Outsourcers saw every one of their clients develop smart products and let contractor manufacturers like Foxconn and Flex dominate that market. They have let GE, ABB and others generate excitement about the IoT space.

Vendors ask me, what's next? Blockchain, machine learning, quantum computing, sure. But much bigger opportunities will persist from those missed in the last two decades. A new generation of vendors will move in. Vendors will cannibalize each other. And here is the most important nugget. Customers learn from their mistakes - I am seeing that in the new wave of SAP related services. In writing my recent book, I saw much more caution about using SIs as they implement S/4HANA. There is a "fool me twice, shame on me" vibe.

So, forget about doing business as usual. The best thing every vendor can do as we enter a new decade is to be introspective, even if Wall Street is pleased with your performance. Ask the tough questions - how the hell did we miss as many markets as we did? And how do we re-organize to make sure and not miss so many markets again?  

Exciting times ahead.

TAMyopia

When I was at PwC in the early 90s, I remember we used to throw out statements like "we have 40 to 50% market share in the SAP (or PeopleSoft) implementation market" When I got to Gartner I saw their competitors were saying similar stuff. So, I started telling them - "no, actually you have less than 10%" . The tune of at least some of them turned to "we have 50% market share of deals we choose to chase". Choice - certainly their prerogative which segments or verticals they chose to focus on. But it's not a reflection of Total Addressable Market.

One of my favorite advisory projects is helping vendors challenge their previous definitions of TAM.

I have seen plenty of dysfunctional behavior from technology vendors of every shape when their TAM definition is narrow  - salespeople chasing deals convenient to them, not what the leadership would have approved, marketing claims to deliver functionality in areas which their R&D had no intention of developing in any meaningful manner, CFOs and investment committees which don't approve enough R&D and Capex needed to keep their entities competitive.

In my recent book, I outlined several trillion dollar markets that many technology vendors have missed since the late 90s. Those included smart products, digital marketing, IoT, cloud infrastructure, various verticals - - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Foxconn, GE, Siemens and a whole bunch of vertical players have thrived in those markets even as many technology vendors ignored them. Download the chapter from my recent book  in link here if you want to read about all the missed markets.

Many of those markets were brand new ones or what in MBA school we called adjacent markets so you can understand why so many vendors ignored them - even as they now wish they had entered those markets. But even in their core focus markets, I have seen many a myopic definition of TAM. Here are a few examples

a) Automation and Outsourcing

When I wrote Silicon Collar three years ago, I chose the title because it felt like traditional definitions of white, blue, pink collars were dated as technology was reshaping every job, everywhere. We all wear a Silicon collar these days.  I had examples of robotics, drones, machine learning, CGI, exoskeletons, robotic process automation (RPA) and other automation in the oil patch, in accounting, in films, in winemaking, garbage collection and many other sectors. I wasn't dreaming this up - executives at sophisticated companies were in the book describing their experiences.

So, it has been a bit disconcerting to see so many outsourcers have glommed onto RPA as their major (in many cases only) focus when it comes to automation. Even more cynically, most outsourcers do not take seriously repeated customer expectations to automate their own labor intensive services.  

b) Data Centers and networks

I cannot believe how envious many vendors are of AWS's and Azure's recent success. On the other hand, I cringe when I hear software vendors and many outsourcers say "glad we didn't have to invest billions in Capex". The reality is less than a decade ago HP(with EDS), Oracle (with Sun), IBM, Accenture, Verizon, Deutsche Telecom and other telcos populated and ran data centers and networks for the world. The emerging cloud infrastructure market was theirs to lose and they have done so - spectacularly, so far.

Many SaaS vendors view the cloud infrastructure market as a bonanza - let someone invest the Capex, we will just rent it for cheap. It's not really that cheap and increasingly they are being expected to support multiple clouds. Zoho has continued to invest in its own data centers and passing along those savings to customers. The time will come for other software vendors to similarly hedge their bets. They will have to expand, or at least, morph their market definition of infrastructure.

c) "Glo-ver" in SaaS

I have increasingly been pointing out a huge under-achievement in the enterprise applications market. After two decades of cloud and in-memory applications, only about 20% of a grid across countries and industry processes has a decent choice in contemporary architecture. Myths persist such as "verticals are a sink hole". Sure if you dont do it right, but go see how much lock-in revenue and margins SAP has enjoyed with its vertical investments in the early 2000s.

I have accelerated my coverage of applications and executives who are focused on the white spaces - see some of that coverage summarized here in a trend I call Glo-ver  expansion in focus.

Back to helping vendors challenge their previous definitions of TAM.  Those are fun projects when the vendor is willing to open up. I must be honest though - many vendors look to influence analysts, not use them much for intelligence. So, they would rather posture they have "50% market share in deals they choose to chase".  

Seriously, I hope that changes. Too many vendors are defining markets too narrowly and finding their competitors have done the same and a result too many are chasing after the same, narrow markets. That is a sure path to commoditization.  Trust me - I have seen it repeated many a times over the last three decades. There is little safety in those numbers.

Occupation: Advisor, Analyst, Author

In my four decades of global travel, I have always hesitated about the correct occupation to list on a landing card or tell a passport officer (apparently I am not the only one who agonizes about that answer). At PwC, the answer used to be consultant or advisor, and I am sure I noticed a couple of immigration officers smirk at that. At Gartner, the answer was analyst, till an officer asked me "so why are you not using your diplomatic passport?" and I had to say "not that kind of analyst". I felt the most welcome ever entering Canada a few years ago. The immigration officer practically hugged me when I said I was an author. That did not last. Couple of trips later, in some other part of the world, that answer triggered the question "so how many copies of your books are you carrying?" Ergo, let's figure out how much customs duty you owe.

I should say AAA - as in advisor, analyst, author as my professional bio describes me. But then they would assume I worked for the automobile association.  Can you imagine how long I would hold up the immigration line?

AAA confuses far savvier clients of mine. Many of them see my 7 books and assume I am an academic. My accountant does not understand all the different revenue and spend categories that apply to each. Vendors see analyst and wonder why I don't do Magic Quadrants. Still others have no idea I write the New Florence blog - 15 years and 6,000 posts later. The Deal Architect name has led to inclusion on mailing lists for architecture magazines.

But deep inside I know if I were to unbundle AAA I would probably not get a nice reader review like this

'Mirchandani not only does his homework but seems to have first-person access to everyone who’s anyone in the technology sector, so the quotes peppering the text are all germane and keen'

Even better are those from my advisory clients who say "Thank you for stopping us from making a $20 m mistake" or others who say "you opened our eyes to all the white space in the market we were not addressing"

They don't get hung up on monikers. They do ask me how I manage any conflicts of interest. Otherwise, they just know the blend of AAA brings them a very different perspective and much higher payback than what they get from others. 

Curious - would love to hear from readers what unusual experiences you have had with immigration and customs.