Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here . Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras and Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research
This time it is Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. He follows architectural, platform and other technological underpinnings of application vendors like SAP and Workday and of hyperscalers like Amazon and Google.
He talks about how the public cloud has scaled amazingly during the pandemic. He also says first-generation SaaS players will have to adjust to the growing strength of the hyperscalers. SAP has been talking about its 4+1 strategy and Salesforce has announced Hyperforce. He sees an opportunity for application vendors to not emphasize their platforms but to re-imagine business processes. Traditionally, they have relied on customers and SIs to help them codify business process logic - now they can lead using new technologies like ML that their traditional sources of guidance are not that familiar with as yet.
We talk about AWS, Azure and Google and why Europe still does not have a player like Alibaba. We discuss the prospect for Oracle in this segment.
We talk about how it has been an amazing year for new data streams - COVID-19, election polling, census, shortened sports seasons, all kinds of planning/forecasting scenarios, video streams and new players like Snowflake and Palantir. In the enterprise world, we routinely talk about "single source of truth" Yet the citizen on the street is actually cynical of much of the data because definitions are inconsistent and the media has been cherry picking data to suit its narrative. It's the Mark Twain's quote updated for today - Lies, Big Lies and Big Data. We talk about how to build trust in data.
We discuss developer communities - Salesforce Trailblazers, SAP breathing new life into ABAP, Apple, Microsoft and Google expanding their developer communities and what that means in the meta context of building v. buying enterprise applications.
Finally, we have some fun. You can see his playful side and how he convinced a Starbucks barista to brand my cup as "Sugar Daddy". I was the only one on the Southwest plane who did not realize it, even though they were laughing at me. He finally showed me a photo of my cup. No more freebies for him:)
Really invigorating session.
Innovation Season
My innovation blog, New Florence will celebrate its 15th birthday this March. It will have clocked over 6,500 posts. I recently looked at various patterns on that blog. Innovation stories and news ebb and flow from different industries and geographies. One particular search tried to identify the most active phase of the year I get to curate from. I would have sworn it would have been the enterprise conference season when I attend a number of events.
I was wrong - it was actually a "quarter" from the end of November through early March. Here's some of what shows up on a regular basis, year after year.
Holiday festivities
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and the Chinese New Year always allow opportunities to highlight spectacular decorations, fireworks and meals. Black Friday, holiday deliveries and returns allow for showcasing advances in ecommerce, same day delivery and reverse logistics.
Winter travel
The growing global passenger traffic and weather challenges always allow for showcasing how airports, airlines, traffic control and meteorologists are perfecting their craft.
Industry events
Plenty of innovation is showcased at CES, NRF (Retail) and HIMSS (Healthcare) events. In the past, the Detroit Auto Show in January would also provide fodder.
Sporting/entertainment events
The NFL SuperBowl commercials lineup usually brings out the best from Madison Avenue. The game itself allows for reviewing stadium, on-field and broadcasting technologies. Daytona 500 showcases auto and broadcast innovations. The Oscars usually allow for a review of how STEM is helping Hollywood innovate. Fashion weeks in Paris, Milan and elsewhere, the Westminster Kennel Dog show in New York often provide other ideas. Every four years, the Winter Olympics provide inspiration.
End of year
There are usually plenty of "best of year" and "forecast for next year" stories to select from.
Other inspirations
The US President's State of the Union address, Bill and Melinda Gates annual foundation letter, Warren Buffett's annual Berkshire letter, and the WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland usually have nuggets of progress in healthcare, government and elsewhere.
It's not to say the rest of the year does not provide innovation inspiration - I average a post a day, come rain or shine, but for this "quarter" from late November through early March, I could easily have 4-5 posts a day.
I will share thoughts on other patterns I noticed across the 6,500 posts over the course of the next few months.
January 09, 2020 in Industry Commentary, Innovative Business Uses of Technology | Permalink | Comments (0)