Enterprise hits and misses - January 18
- Summary:
- Jon's cheeky weekly review of which enterprise software articles hit (or didnít) on diginomica & beyond - for the week ending July 27, 2015.
diginomica hit: Managing four specific SaaS risks – it could be trickier than on-premise by Den Howlett
quotage: "Evaluating the SaaS risks going into any software agreement is never easy and there are inevitable compromises. Those I have outlined are among those that are less talked about than the usual fare around security but are of significant importance."
myPOV: Sparked by recent content on diginomica and elsewhere, Den ventures into the buying risks connected to SaaS, including lock-in, lock-out, technology switching and the cost of bandwidth. Then there is the matter of functionality compromises when moving from a deep "legacy" platform to a modern SaaS iteration. It's good to see cloud mythology give way to open discussions on the nuances of risk and fit.
diginomica picks: my fave piece by each diginomica contributor- Stuart - Digging into a recent Salesforce marketing study, Stuart finds some comforting truths in Social, mobile top marketing spend priorities, but email delivers the ROI. Sidenote: I just got back from a digital publishing event where the continued potency of email was also a big talking point.
- Jessica - BYOD has posed tricky policy issues for companies across the globe. In Albemarle plans to split its BYOD costs with employees, Jessica has the story on how Albemarle is using a split billing solution to separate out business and personal usage on the same device.
- Phil - Applying his "false cloud" BS detector, Phil analyzes Unit4's cloud push in Unit4 surges ahead with SaaS transformation. Of particular interest: how Unit4's FinancialForce.com launch has "contaminated" their overall cloud strategy - in a good way.
- Derek - Will NoSQL make a deeper enterprise push in 2015? Basho's CEO certainly thinks so (sidenote: I do too). Derek continues his excellent series on NoSQL companies in Capital is being thrown at NoSQL – CEO Adam Wray argues the case for Basho.
- Janine - 2015 is shaping up as a doozy in the HR space; Janine continues her analysis of HR guru
Josh Bersin's HR outlook in 2015 – tumultuous times for HR. At the core: a shift from an HR-as- systems-of-record approach to a view towards HR as an analytics-driven engagement platform. - Brian - Forging on with his series handicapping the vendor outlook for 2015, Brian unfurls his Companies and themes to follow in 2015 part 3: the HR dimension.
- Martin - Tablet sales have stalled - find out why Martin sees this as a sign of a bigger change in Why we're not taking the tablets.
- Chris - Chris Middleton crossed the pond to the massive NRF 15 show and filed a plethora of interesting stories, including NRF 15 : eyewear firm Luxottica has vision of online customer experience, which has links at the bottom to several more pieces. Chris also filed on SAP's retail outlook (SAP provided the flight/hotel expenses for the trip): NRF 15: Baby you can drive my CAR – SAP on retail’s big picture.
Vendor analysis, diginomica style - Den digs into SAP's complicated - but upbeat - Q4 2014 earnings numbers in SAP provides investor relief in Q4 2014, what about the long term outlook?. Making sense of the acquisition impact and cloud/network revenue transitions is a theme Den will return to this week. Have I mentioned that the diginomica team tends to argue with each other? Yeah, we disagree sometimes, but for the benefit of better discussions (or so well tell ourselves!). In that spirit, check out Den's different take on the Salesforce marketing report in I’m not quite buying Salesforce Marketing Outlook 2015.
Jon's grab bag - A pair of vintage rants heading your way via Stuart's British Prime Minister’s Snapchat ban is an electioneering empty threat and Derek's Digital #fails: EE and Virgin Media prove that Digital Britain is a joke. And don't think we'd let the riveting Facebook at Work announcement go without commentary. Den covers it in Facebook at Work – you in or out?, adding a caveat about product availability in digibyte: Facebook at Work – the non-review (By the way - hold on to your disbelief - I'm in, but that's for another time).
And, in New Clues – the rise of the post-Cluetrain clueless, Den riffed on the Cluetrain updates, which include some caustic "will they ever learn?/they better learn" lessons for Internet marketers and would-be social media ninjas.
Best of the rest
Enterprise futures, near and not-so-near by several smartiesquotage: "The expectations when it comes to the enterprise app experience are now no different than those for consumer apps. The app better be easy to use and intuitive, and if it’s mobile, it better be able to capture data within seconds as well as display relevant data instantly." - Quenton Wall
myPOV: Like me, you're probably butt-weary of 2015 predictions pieces, but indulge me for one more batch, which are less predictions and more of a summary view of enterprise re-invented. Kick off with Quenton Wall's Five big themes driving enterprise data and app development in 2015, wherein he makes fun of generalized predictions while trying to go a more interesting route but exposing development and data issues that must be reckoned with.
In another Cloud Ave missive, 14 Principles of the Future Organization, Jacob Morgan breaks down the disrupted workforce and cites the issues in play, from flatter structures to more women in senior management roles, which Morgan points out remains a huge gap. And, I'd argue, a sticking point to the evolution he envisions.
Larry Dignan adds to the mix with a thorough breakdown of Constellation's latest research in Boardroom priorities in 2015: Can IT deliver? Note: glad to see "building a high performance culture" made the cut, though it's not always clear what that means. Re/code adds one more interesting twist via Welcome to the Predictive Enterprise.
Other standouts
- The Consumer Electronics Show in transition - Originally published under the provocative title of Why The Consumer Electronics Show Is Dying, Steve Denning's piece now appears as CES: A User's Guide To The New Economy. Either way, it's an unsparing view, zingers like "According to C/Net, the hottest thing in the whole show was, get this, a paperweight."
- Oracle's cloud plays under the microscope - Oracle continued its upbeat swing of cloud news with some fresh analysis, first from Larry Dignan in: Oracle woos cloud customers: Time for a kinder, gentler enterprise experience? Doug Henschen also reported on Oracle's cloud pricing in Oracle Details Cloud Cost-Cut Plan. I continue to be skeptical about whether the incumbent on-prem vendors like SAP and Oracle and IBM can deliver the "pure cloud" from a business model AND technical standpoint, but there's something to be said for smartly investing from a deep war chest and leveraging acquisitions. It does make the market more interesting if the deep pockets are in all-in on the cloud game - though it makes it a beast to wade through all the marketing, don't it?
Honorable mention
Sloppy P.R. charticles considered harmful - a very specific - but still enjoyable - rant about PR chart abuse. Also some nuggets on how to avoid using flawed research and being, well, credible.
Software Audits Continue to Rise: Understand the Software Vendor’s Audit Playbook - Veers into self-promotion, but some good advice along the way.
Why Marketing Has a Branding Problem - As efficient as dismantling of the nearly-archaic marketing playbook as you will see.
Customer engagement: digital and physical - Views from a field practitioner who actually has to prove customer engagement in real life circumstances.
Even the Guy Who Designed the iPod May Not Be Able to Save Google Glass - Wearables have a bright future, but Google Glass might not be a part of it.
Whiffs
So the banking and collections industry are petitioning the FCC for permission to robocall you on your cell phone, as long as they claim the call is a wrong number. Talk about a pondscum on the bottom of the pool business model! No, correction, these folks are the the pus that infects the mucous... that cruds up the fungus... that feeds on the pond scum.
More whiffery comes via the handwringing about these very interesting (and in-depth) Teenager's views on social media. I'm not sure if the responses by older folk are prompted by a desire to remind the teenager that they are still under a curfew, but it's amazing how little value the so-called adults provided to the conversation.
In this (inferior) Grown-Ups View on Social Media, the Grown-Up in question ends up looking like the adolescent, with childish descriptions of social platforms that read like text messages (e.g. "LinkedIn: Completely necessary, just like jobs. Jobs are important, actual teens! Remember, it's not what you know, but who you know. Sort of. You should probably know some stuff, too."). It's generally not a good thing when a teenager beats you in nuance.
Granted, An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media was better, with strong points on why you can't take anecdotal views for demographic gospel. But I have to apply some demerits for a blog that felt more like a "go to your room!" lecture than a conversation. The blogger seems annoyed to have had to write the piece. So is the reader.
Officially Off-Topic
So as a long-time Massachusetts winter victim enthusiast and lifehacking ninja (though it's not in my Twitter bio - whoops!), I read 12 Hacks For Surviving This Freezing, Icy Weather with interest. Missed some obvious ones - perhaps wearing clothes in layers in too obvious, but one that took me too long to learn: change your socks frequently. That's right. Change socks. Learned that via "Survirvorman" - wet/damp clothes are often the biggest problem.
What I Learned from Being Catfished for Twelve Years was one of the more affecting pieces I read this week. Made me want to move to Mars, which as it turns out, would not be too difficult, given that there are only two obstacles, according to this article (though one of them, severe radiation, doesn't sound so straightforward). Hopefully Elon Musk will finish his good-intentioned Internet for outer space by then.
Speaking of cynicism, this mockery of our worship of algorithms was timely. On a more upbeat note, if you haven't tried Google Maps' walking directions, give them a go sometime, I was using them all over New York City, and I didn't step in a single pothole. See you next time...
Which #ensw pieces of merit did I miss? Let us know in the comments.
Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed. “myPOV” is borrowed with reluctant permission from the ubiquitous Ray Wang.
Image credits: Cheerful Chubby Man © RA Studio, Happy Children © Anna Omelchenko, Waiter Suggesting Bottle © Minerva Studiom, Overworked Businessman © Bloomua, Businessmen with business trophy. Cheerful young businessman © BlueSkyImages - Fotolia.com, Snowboarder Crashing © dismagwi - Fotolia.com - all from Fotolia.com
Disclosure: SAP, Oracle, NetSuite and Salesforce are diginomica premier partners as of this writing.