deal architect

Long live long-form content

I have just finished work on my eighth book. Correction - it’s NOT my book. I have narrated it for a visionary tech CEO and his incredibly innovative team. We interviewed over 50 of their customers, partners, executives and industry watchers. You will hear more about the book and the impactful trends they are driving in the next few weeks when they finish the imagery and other production details.  I have also contributed a foreword to a book about automation in SAP world. You will similarly hear more about that shortly.

Every one of these books has been written since Mashable declared ‘How Twitter conquered the world in 2009’. Yes, social media has taken off exponentially in the last decade - and I have contributed thousands of blogs, videos and tweets to the world. But I am here to tell you books continue to be a far better format for storytelling. If you want entertaining, yet logical, content there is nothing like the long, written and graphical form.

The recent project showed me a book can be written in a few weeks, not years. We created the first draft in roughly 3 months. I have used Zoom interviews for previous books, but this time every single conversation (across 12 countries) was digital thanks to Teams and Zoom. The transcripts, by themselves, totaled over 2,500 pages. Then there was plenty of other industry research.

The intensity reminded me books are hard work and authors, editors, transcriptionists, project managers and designers deserve plenty of kudos. My way of saluting is to invite them to my video series. Here are some authors I have profiled in the last few months.

Sabrina Horn: Make it, don't fake it 

Ray Wang: Everybody wants to rule the world 

Ben Pring: Monster 

Robin Gaster: Behemoth - Amazon Rising 

Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway: The Startup Community Way 

Rich Karlgaard: Late Bloomers 

Evangelos Simoudis: Transportation Transformation 

Many more coming. If you are an author or a publisher, happy to consider profiling your upcoming book. And if you have long thought about writing a book, I am here to cheer you on. Please drop me a note.

Burning Platform: Leading with authenticity

In the 49th episode of the series we have a repeat appearance by Sabrina Horn, CEO of Horn Strategy

We discuss her new book "Make it, don't fake it". The book shows how authentic leadership eliminates the need for the shortcuts that sabotage success. “Fake it till you make it” just doesn’t work—at least not long enough to build a sustainable business.

It is being released this coming Tuesday. She sent me an advance copy and it has great quotes and monikers  - Fake-o-meter, "Work-life balance? Here’s why I gave up on it" and " Leader and loser both begin with the letter L" but overall it is about values in  the tech industry which is overwhelmingly driven by unicorn valuations and Wall Street attention. 

It is part autobiography, part thank you to mentors like Dave Duffield and Geoffrey Moore,  her parents, her employees and kids, but chockfull of examples on how to behave ethically in a variety of situations.  She must identify "50 shades of lies"  - some of the 'white lies" variety, some of the other extreme, fraudulent kind. She has spent a lifetime in PR, so this must have taken plenty of introspection on whether she and her firm(s) advised clients on doing the right thing, not just hyping what they had in their bags. 

We also discuss activism around so many "causes" these days - racial/ gender matters, equality, climate change etc.

I particularly like the fact that she wrote the book during the pandemic. While so many of us were so distracted by the crisis and the politics of 2020 she managed to concentrate on her first book, and it is an excellent one.

Get a copy of the book, in the meantime, enjoy the sneak preview below.

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.  

Thank you, Dennis Howlett

Dennis has announced he is retiring. I knew it was coming - he would often fret he did not have enough time for his large and growing family - but I would have bet it would be towards end of this year. Or next. I am glad I managed to record a couple of episodes with him in the last few weeks.

We had our fair share of disagreements - show me someone who has been spared that by Dennis? :) But I admired several things about him and let me share a few things you may not know about him

a) he is a Polymath

Every few months I would learn something new about him.  Listen to his bio in the excerpt below - it will blow your mind.  And he does not even mention here what he has been up to recently - building and painting 1/35 scale armored vehicles (three in progress and 18 more in his 'stash' he says)

b) a true blogging pioneer.

It hit me when Dennis, Frank Scavo and I recorded a Christmas episode. We took a walk down memory lane - see excerpt below. Each of us has been blogging for 15+ years. He was a purer play than either of us. Frank and I had advisory distractions. I spent a fair amount of time on my many books. He dedicated the last phase of his career to making enterprise blogging and the independent analyst model a respected source of industry influence.

c) he made time for so many

He was a whisperer to so many in the industry - check out the flattering comments on his LinkedIn post where he announced his retirement. I was constantly amazed how he could find the time. I certainly benefited - he reviewed every one of my books.

So, Dennis, thanks for the many laughs and cries. Enjoy time with the family and your train rides.

But please come back and record more episodes from time to time. I want the opportunity to say it a few more times - GFY :)

Burning Platform: Developers, Developers...

In the 31st episode of the series I am joined by James Governor, co-founder of Redmonk.

In September 2000, Steve Ballmer was ahead of most executives in loudly cheering for software developers. The video below leads off with his exuberance at Microsoft's 25th anniversary celebration. Since then. we have seen an explosion in developers in every corner of the world.

James has had a front row seat to these changes. Along with Stephen O'Grady and others at Redmonk they are a bit more subdued than Ballmer but they have been influential cheerleaders for developers, DBAs etc - and not just those with the Microsoft flavor.

James' view is we have gradually moved away from top-down dev mindsets to bottom- up ones facilitated by the intersection of Cloud Computing, Open Source and Social Coding

We cover wide ground - the trend towards more buy v build in the industry, the growth in citizen developers (see also the session with Amit Zavery of Google Cloud here), software quality, vertical differences. We discuss the growth of software communities around the world - he has some really interesting comments about Salesforce Trailblazers and the relatively untapped community in Nigeria. We also discuss Armenia, China and India and several other parts of the world.

Lots of positive energy from James - as there is in the rapidly multiplying developer pools around the world.

Burning Platform: Exciting world of Citizen IT

In the 28th episode of the Burning Platform series is Amit Zavery of Google Cloud. We discuss the exciting growth in no-code, Citizen Development.

Amit and I discuss how the pandemic has revealed several problems in on-prem systems and also that most cloud application packages were mostly horizontal in reach. Boutique vendors had to step up in many industry areas like ecommerce, fulfillment, telemedicine, distance learning, digital real estate etc. It would suggest we are at a tipping point where customers will need to build more rather than wait to buy functionality from their traditional vendors for agility in the changed world.

Yet, IT has it hands full with new issues around WFH, previous dev backlogs, enhanced security focus. It would suggest more of a focus on low- and no-code development to bridge the gap. Not just dev - we have seen acceleration in democratization of analytics, integration with other enterprise apps, the ability to use voice interfaces to do so much without much IT involvement.  Amit describes how healthcare workers stepped up to build fairly sophisticated hospital applications.

The impact on small businesses has been even more dramatic. Restaurant owners have been forced to adjust to a digital world of customer interaction and last mile delivery. Small merchants have been forced to embrace e-commerce, real estate agents adjust to virtual open houses and digital mortgages. They have become tech-savvy in a hurry. It's not just DevOps - it's digital business transformation.    

We also discuss platforms of SaaS vendors like Salesforce, those of mostly on-prem vendors like IBM and Oracle, and those of hyperscalers like Google.

In the past, citizen IT tools have led to a lot of duplication and proliferation - millions of spreadsheets, Lotus Notes databases everywhere. We discuss how to put guard rails to avoid similar sprawl this time around and also factor security concerns which leads cynics to call this "shadow IT"

Amit has long been a cheerleader for low-code, no-code. His excitement comes through very clearly. We are definitely at a major inflection point in the industry. We have a lot more tech-savvy users and citizens than we did a year ago. That is exciting and scary at the same time. 

Burning Platform: Diversity Trends in Tech

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests like Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica.

The BLM movement this summer has brought more urgency for HR and procurement groups to diversify employee and supplier bases. Related to this, I did interviews with two prominent African-American tech executives, Tony Prophet, Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce  and Charles Phillips, Chairman at Infor. Also a presentation by Barbry McGann of Workday on their new VIBE product which allows companies to better visualize employee diversity from multiple dimensions.  The Tech sector should be proud of its efforts.

While the recent intense focus is nice to see, it would be remiss to not point out we have been making steady progress for a long time. I invited Cindy Jutras, President of Mint Jutras to talk about her 45-year career at software vendors and analyst firms, and draw from her experiences on how gender and ethnic-based diversity have evolved in the industry. I add my own experience as an immigrant and someone who has worked in and traveled to 70 countries and seen the US "from the outside in" in the video below.

I particularly liked Cindy pointing out the movie, "Hidden Figures" about a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a critical role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. As she says "we have come so far"

We also touch on age discrimination. Silicon Valley and outsourcers tend to be focused on young recruits, but even corporate IT tends to be ambivalent about older employees. The pandemic has resulted in many older employees who are traumatized or those who finally having spent more time at home with families and have relished the experience. Both categories are opting for early retirements. These accelerated (and unplanned) exits may also bring more of a focus on the age attribute as companies refine their diversity policies.

It is a not a "woke" conversation. It is a realistic discussion about why a system of meritocracy, more enlightened executives and driven individuals work better than forced mandates for diversity.

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. 

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.

Ten enterprise trends from the COVID-19 pandemic

In December, I wrote decade-end perspectives on enterprise software and services. You can read them again here and here.  

So, how has the pandemic changed the landscape? In many ways, it has exposed the weaknesses of many software and services vendors. In other ways, it has opened up brand new opportunities. Here are ten observations from many executive interviews - nearly 50 of which are public in this series on "acrobatics during the crisis" I have been running here 

1) Moore's Law is being applied to humans with stunning results

In all the doom and gloom around the virus, it is easy to miss the amazing acrobatics we have witnessed both in healthcare and life sciences. Telemedicine, pop up hospitals, medical professionals parachuting in wherever needed. Healthcare professionals have learned so much from the Italy and NY experience - how not to overuse ventilators, how to flex ICU capacity. Therapies like Remsdesivir, Dexamethasone and Convalescent Plasma have kicked in. All kinds of vaccines are being developed, clinical trials being accelerated like never before. It's too early to declare victory but if the current spike in positives that many US states are experiencing had happened in March, we would have seen far worse crowding in hospitals and many more fatalities.

It has opened the eyes of executives in every industry to opportunities in healthcare  -  a fifth of US GDP is spent on that sector. Auto companies helping with ventilators, distilleries making hand sanitizers, everyone looking to make or disinfect PPEs, technology companies helping with contact tracing, statisticians looking to improve pandemic modeling and on and on

However, just because you serviced that sector in January does not guarantee you continued success. The expectations of exponential improvements in functionality and speed of delivery have been raised and there are competitors approaching from everywhere. Just look at COVID testing. The US has done over 50 million tests in just 4 months and yet the process feels so slow and cumbersome. There is immense pressure to move to 10-15 minute test results available at point of care. That's coming - and soon, given the speed at which our expectations are running.

2) Cloud apps supported WFH well....but....

In interview after interview, CIOs have talked about the heroics it took them to provision employees as they moved to WFH. Most also compliment how well SaaS applications scaled and supported WFH in comparison to on-premise applications, especially in self-run data centers. But dig a bit deeper and they also share all the complex protocols they are having to factor as they reopen plants, warehouses, stores, delivery vehicles, airplanes and other sites where physical presence is critical and WFH cannot help. Ask them what those on-prem systems supported and many will tell you about critical operational areas that SaaS applications have not tackled yet. Even if they could support those areas, justifying a move to SaaS in today's economic conditions is tough. If anything, moving legacy applications to IaaS looks more appealing.  Others tell you about problems with WFH in several countries with poor last-mile connectivity, and with employees with kids at home (increasingly complicated by complex decisions around whether school districts can re-open physical classrooms after summer). Long and short, be careful selling WFH support as your most beneficial "feature".

3) Video was not the only killer app

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is a cult gathering for many investors. It was a virtual event this year. More emphatically, Warren Buffett talked about his long time partner, Charlie Munger who was not at the meeting "Charlie at 96 is in fine shape. His mind is as good as ever. His voice is as strong as ever, but it just didn’t seem like a good idea to have him make the trip to Omaha for this meeting. Charlie is really taking to this new life. He’s added Zoom to his repertoire. So he has meetings every day with various people, and he’s just skipped right by me technologically." 96 year old Charlie and many other senior citizens whose last technology upgrade was a Kindle reader have adopted Zoom. All of us have our Zoom bombing stories. I could add to those my experiences with MS Teams, Google Meet, Skype, ON24, Streamyard and other platforms. I have been cataloging the art form of virtual backgrounds - see here. So, yes, video has definitely been a killer app in the last few months.

But, even more so have been revenue facilitating, industry-specific technologies. Telemedicine in healthcare, PPP loan and mortgage processing and mobile banking in fintech, drive-thru support for the food industry, last mile logistics for grocery stores and restaurants, contactless checkin at airlines and hotels, distance learning in education - the list is long of applications which were life savers for certain industries. Your grandparents probably know all about Zoom but likely have no clue about nCino or Teladoc or Shopify though these vendors have allowed many customers to survive and even thrive in the last few months.   

4) Get ready to hear more about these two acronyms

L+S - "lift and shift" legacy applications to cloud infrastructure at hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft and Google. Do it to reduce your data center costs. Do it to improve security and scalability. Yes purists will argue you don't get multi-tenancy advantages of SaaS. Yes, but SaaS may not offer the industry functionality. Additionally, SaaS vendors continue to depend too heavily on partners for labor intensive migrations. Interestingly, I had called Oracle's IaaS opportunity bigger than that of Amazon's back in 2016. That called for L+S of their PeopleSoft, JDE, EBS customers. Since then. Oracle's 3 big IaaS competitors have grown their cloud footprint significantly. 

3PM - Third Party Maintenance never went out of fashion. In a recession, companies will look at it even more. With travel restrictions, the remote support model of 3PM vendors may allow them to even expand their footprint to broader Level 2 and 3 support.

5) The world is definitely not flat

In a world of travel restrictions and two-week quarantines, globalization is increasingly a dirty word. The reality is COVID-19 was not consistent in its geographic impact. The global recovery is already shaping up as uneven. It will mean new opportunities for regional players, expanded software functionality to markets that are recovering quicker, a redistribution of global delivery centers and reshaping of global supply chains. Now is the time for buyers and vendors to also be rethinking their global IT supply chains and offerings.

6) Remote services are only the start

I wrote a paper at Gartner in 1998 where I pointed out just the travel expenses (not their much higher fees) of systems integrators were often greater than the cost of the software they were implementing. I also pointed out the productivity impact of 4 day SI on-site weeks and health issues from continuous, long-term travel. Buyers and vendors would agree on ways to cut that back on travel, but it was grudging. Even offshore vendors which had honed the discipline of remote support were proposing much more on-site support. Suddenly, there is no more grudging. Remote diagnostics, remote delivery, remote support are hot. But it should not stop there. Outsourcers should be thinking about shared services  - data conversion, testing, training "factories" from where specialists should be helping multiple customers, not just one project at a time. And as that knowledge gets codified to then move to automate many of the tasks.   

7) Executive Changes at Vendors

Many people have been puzzled by sudden executive changes at a couple of large vendors. I am expecting many more. Aging workers and execs across industries are looking at early retirement or at least slowdown scenarios. The last 3-4 months have been traumatic. I have heard of unbelievable efforts and wonder if the pace is sustainable. Many of these execs look at their pipelines and workloads and think the next couple of years will not be much fun.  Or they have finally had time with family and want a bit more of that. Given uncertain markets, layoffs combined with new employees from M&A opportunities, I am expecting to see many new executive faces

8) Digital Twins - with an emphasis on Twins

In my conversations I have repeatedly heard about digital acceleration during the crisis. In this interview with Tamas Hevezi I discussed examples from a wide range of industries - healthcare, retail, banking, higher ed and many countries like Japan and Germany. 

However, I am worried we will starve the physical/analog experience for customers and employees. Ideally, we end up with parity between the digital and physical worlds. Let's treat the twins equally well. 

9) Full-spectrum automation

In my book, Silicon Collar, published in 2016, I had profiled automation trends across a wide range of work settings - at accounting firms, on the basketball court, in banks, on the battlefront, in digital agencies, in the oil patch, in R&D labs, on shop floors, in wineries, in the warehouse and many more. During this crisis, I have heard of many more use cases for drones, kiosks, shop floor and warehouse robots and autonomous vehicles.     

Most of the software and services world has largely defined automation as machine learning and RPA. HR groups have watched automation from a distance - the lead has often been taken by operational executives. Lots of changes are needed as a new wave of automation arrives.

10) Certainty is even more elusive than toilet paper

Partly because it is hurricane season and I live in Florida and partly because pandemic modeling has been so chaotic globally, I have increasingly been thinking about my case study on the National Hurricane Center and my update from a visit there in 2018  The NHC has long understood the track of a hurricane (what they call cyclones) swings wildly and they talk in terms of "cones of uncertainty". In their lingo it is "The cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone, and is formed by enclosing the area swept out by a set of circles (not shown) along the forecast track (at 12, 24, 36 hours, etc). The size of each circle is set so that two-thirds of historical official forecast errors over a 5-year sample fall within the circle." The NHC has tons of historical data, but they refresh it for each hurricane with data from satellites, Hurricane Hunter flights, sensors on buoys, dropsondes and many other sources. I am seeing CFOs shorten planning horizons dramatically, I am seeing them move to continuous planning and frequent re-planning. Certainty is an elusive commodity these days.  I hear vendors talk ML but they are still largely working from historical, internal data. They need to step up and help customers think in econometric terms with a lot of external, constantly refreshed data.

To the last point about uncertainty - the last few months have been humbling. So much noise yet so many new signals to process. I am sure I will be writing about even more trends in coming weeks.