Enterprise hits and misses - quick hit Sapphire Now special, plus cyber insecurities via WannaCry
- Summary:
- In this special hit-and-run edition: a preview of SAP's high stakes Sapphire Now - and how to track it on diginomica. Plus: cybersecurity reckons with WannaCry (and Trump). Your whiffs include security questions of questionable value, and Facebook getting creepy with teen targeting.
Here's your truncated-but-hot version of hits and misses, spiked with a Sapphire Now preview with attitude.
diginomica three - my top three stories on diginomica this week- OpenStack Summit - Edward Snowden, open source and the power of 'The Collective' - No Snowden hero worship for Martin - but a fruitful rumination on how open-source-done-right can enable business transparency. Not to be overlooked: open source communities need more vigilance to avoid being another seeding ground/back door for malicious exploits, scum-breeding ransomware punks, and productivity-sapping malware.
- Will Trump’s cyber-security Executive Order work? - Jerry's answer: too early to say. Like other executive orders, "This one reads more like a plan to develop a plan than an actual blueprint." I'll add: not for agencies running old versions of Windows, as we learned the WTF way this week.
- Has Macy's left it too late to strike the online/offline balance in retail? - Stuart's latest retail missive puts the omni-channel heat on Macy's, as in: "The posterchild for the retail sector armageddon." Ouch. Painful transformation - or desperate/misguided fire sale? Stay tuned.
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my top choice from our vendor coverage:
- Build17 - AI, Big Brother, Brave New World and other cliches - Microsoft's developer event got surprisingly
fawningupbeat reviews from many quarters. I knew I could count on Stuart to bring some AI-hype-weary barbs. Otherwise sounds like Nadella brought the right cloudy developer message. - Runner up: Brian posted his latest in State of Manufacturing ERP - Part 4 - Rootstock and NetSuite. Worry not - I'll get to this monster series next week. Speaking of shop floors, yours truly donned the white jacket in PowerPlex 2017 - Trojan Battery puts industry analysts through the lead acid battery test.
A few more vendor picks, without the quips:
- ServiceNow CEO John Donahoe: ‘We are filling the enterprise white spaces’ - Derek
- Oracle's cloudy day in the sun - Denis
- Infor's Duncan Angove - riding out the retail sector turbulence - Madeline
Sapphire Now rundown - how to get your diginomica fix
Three things you can count on from this year's Sapphire Now:
- SAP is going to make an impassioned case for its digital/innovation roadmap amidst an indirect access media deluge of its own making.
- diginomica will film a motherload of customer videos and, if all goes as planned, some views from user group leaders.
- We'll pull all the case studies, snark, and backchannel bits into the most coherent analysis our on-the-ground team of Den Howlett, Jon Reed, and contributor Dick Hirsch can summon. Rumor has it we'll pull in some prime outside bits, such as Holger Mueller's Storify of the Twitter high points - if there is such a thing?
"Sounds lovely Jon - how do I track this tasty commentary?"
- The diginomica.com home page will have our latest stories and customer video writeups on the top widget.
- You can view the preview pieces to date in our Sapphire Now 2017 hit list, and check back as more pieces are added.
- The tweetstream can be monitored via the Sapphire Now and ASUG hashtags.
My advice for SAP: tackle the hard stuff (e.g. auditing fears) head-on, don't get too caught up in an AI/IoT flogfest at the expense of highlighting S/4HANA customer success tales, and show customers you are thinking like the cloud company you aspire to be. That means simplifying pricing, data consumption/integration and ease of use on every level. Now Bill McDermott's got a high stakes speech to make, and I need to swap this cold muffin for something hot. Stay tuned...
Bonus - if you want to play some real inside baseball, watch how the keynotes/news on SCP match up with Dick Hirsch's Sherlockian SAP Cloud Platform: the multi-cloud (almost) realized - a SapphireNow 2017 tech preview. SCP team members told me Hirsch is very close but a couple twists are in store.
Best of the rest
Picking two standouts:- A deep SAP watcher goes deep - Joshua Greenbaum couldn't manage to stuff his SapphireNow thoughts into one blog, so we have a two-partner that stands with the best work I've seen from him. I was partial to part two, appropriately titled SAP Goes to SAPPHIRE 2017, part II. Contrasted to the customer concerns I've heard, Greenbaum treads lightly on the audit issue, but he fleshes out the keeper question: will SAP be a part of its customers' next-gen digital pursuits?
- On Critical Infrastructure, Maintenance, the NHS, Politics and Cthulhu - When I first met James Governor many security patches ago, he was huddled over his heavily-stickered laptop, blog stylin'. I guess it's like riding a bike as Governor has been popping a few wheelies lately. This piece puts the WannaCry brouhaha in context; you don't have to get all the UK specifics to glean from this one.
- Related: also see the intentionally
linkbaityconfrontational - and probably valid - Upgrade already! If you're still using Windows XP, you're a menace to society, by Jason Perlow.
Whiffs
Didn't get to this creepo-targeto last week:
Report: Facebook helped advertisers target teens who feel “worthless” [Updated] https://t.co/feMoYW7dQt -> creepy is good for biz I guess
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) May 1, 2017
Last week, Den sent me a slew of security-as-comic-relief moments from Troy Hunt, and boy can we use some comical/harmless security gaffes right about now. Here's one keeper:
Hmm but that got me thinking, aren't we missing out on some great security questions? Like
"Who did you first dry hump with?"
"What was name of Avril Lavigne's body double after her death was covered up?"
And in honor of Facebook: "Who unfriended you in the last seven days?"
Over to you, Clive.
By definition, a truncated hits and misses excludes some worthy content. If you read an #ensw piece that qualified, let me 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.