Enterprise hits and misses - Infor does AI, Workday does PaaS, the media does IBM Watson
- Summary:
- This week - Infor unfurls its AI play; Workday explains its PaaS moves. IBM Watson gets - and gives - a critique, and the future of work gets another flogging. Plus: your whiffs.
quotage: "This high level problem of how to blend AI and machine learning together with humans and human decision-making, and how to think about AI in the context of building these collaborative and symbiotic teams between humans and AI agents, is an area we are highly interested in exploring at PARC." - PARC's CEO, as per Martin Banks' PARC’s next goal - helping AI to be more responsible.
MyPOV: The AI debate rages on as vendors roll out sexy "AI" announcements and enterprises struggle with the promise of automation at scale. To help us decipher, we have Martin on PARC, a classic tech organization that has weathered a few storms, still owned by that brand-of-prior-glory, Xerox. A key issue PARC is working on: building algorithms that will help machines (quickly) explain why they arrived at a conclusion.
This matters for automated decision-making at scale, because right now to implement such a system means humans trusting machines almost blindly. This leads to PARC's "symbiotic" workplace, with machines/humans in a new type of collaboration.
Arguing for a more balanced debate on AI/future of work, Howlett takes on "Zebra argument" in Your Sunday mind bender. The future workforce and the Zebra economy. (The Zebra argument is that, short version, we must all become enterpreneurial to rise above this automated new world). Den isn't sure that will fly for a middle class under duress, or for those who are victims of sudden job less from these seismic shifts.
So why should enterprises care, you ask? Because while "sourcing the best talent" should be pre-occupation enough, it won't be nearly enough if societal instability undermines financial markets. Welcome to the age of thinking-and-caring-broadly. Which brings us to Elon Musk, and Stuart's dissection of Musk's alarmist hyperbole (The robots are coming to kill us - and Elon Musk wants US Governors to stop them). I won't try to settle that here. As Stuart urges with a half-smirk: "Discuss!"
Vendor analysis, diginomica style.
Inforum 2017 coverage: At Infor's annual user conference, AI took center stage (I know, shocker!). Derek assessed the news in Infor launches Coleman AI platform to ‘rethink ERP’ - but questions remain. Yours truly dug into Infor's retail pursuits, with some intruiging Whole Foods/Amazon twists in Infor's retail ambitions - on machine learning, Whole Foods, and where the traction is. More customer use cases to follow, but here's a couple:
Workday goes on summer PaaS and mid-market picnic - While some of us were lounging in the sun, Workday upped the ante on its PaaS plans, as well as its midmarket strategy. In my view Workday's lack of a PaaS/API solution was their biggest competitive weakness, so - look out folks. Den and Brian were on the case:
- Workday's PaaS - answers to your questions show significant progress - Den gets the skinny on Workday's PaaS plans, including opening into new industries (even manufacturing?). Plus this bit: Q: "Will there be a Salesforce style community?" A: "I think stay tuned on this, it is easy to imagine."
- All you need to know about Workday in the mid-market - Den and Brian tag team this one, with gobs of nuance.
Also see: SAP South Africa - the company speaks about alleged corruption - Den shares SAP's view on this concerning story.
A few more vendor picks, without the quips:
- Microsoft turns up the AI heat on tech, ethics and saving Planet Earth - Stuart
- Intel fights to maintain data center business as competitors encroach - Kurt
- Infosys is off to a cautious start as it posts better than expected Q1 FY2018 results - Den
Jon's grab bag - Jerry asks: Can Big Data cure America’s opioid abuse nightmare? Heroin/opioid is a serious, even tragic problem where I live. I was skeptical about big data making a difference, but reading Jerry's piece made me think twice. Gary filed 'Uber meets Tinder' in life-saving mobile app for NHS staff, a neat use case about supporting the mental health of our medical practitioners (and no, it's not really Tinder!).
I read Stuart's latest Netflix redux with eyebrow-raising interest ( Netflix reminds that content is king, localised content even more so). I'm gobsmacked Netflix is adding so many subscribers on the backs of its original content, which I think is either overrated or downright pedestrian, paling in comparison to the HBO catalog for example. But lots o' peeps must disagree, so I reluctantly give my thumbs up. Finally, who better than Stuart - the Dr. Who of the pesky question - to ask necessary questions about the Gig Economy and annoying many with the answers.
Best of the rest
Lead story - IBM Watson is just fine - or is it?myPOV: Sensational reports on the struggles of incumbent vendors have a way of going viral. A Jefferies Report questioning the value provided by IBM Watson/AI went semi-viral, picked up by outlets such as TechCrunch (Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check - you can get a link to the Jefferies report via TechCrunch).
If the in-depth Jefferies report has a weakness, it's an over-reliance on one dead end Watson project. The TechCrunch piece attempts to rectify that but falls short. IBM's Vijay Vijayasankar offers a rebuttal in IBM Watson is just fine, thank you! It's never easy to defend your own company. The strongest part of Vijayasankar's rebuttal are: specifics on Watson' broad adoption in the health care industry, as well as explanation as to why Watson's "conversation recall" aids it in customer service use cases.
These kinds of public debates are useful to buyers, even if some of the articles are fanboyish biased inadequate. The Jefferies report is imbued with sell-side expertise and a shareholder value agenda. Jefferies' biggest mistake is the "Oh, and Gartner agrees with us" toss-in, as if Gartner is now writing on stone tablets. (Gartner was agreeing that the AI market will take some time to mature from an adoption/revenue standpoint, which is perhaps the most bloody obvious analyst take of the year). Meanwhile, it is absolutely pedestrian shocking to learn that a TechCrunch writer is more partial to Google, Amazon and Apple than IBM.
Yes, it's fair to say that IBM Watson will face stiff AI competition and whatever head start advantage on "general AI" they had is giving way, or perhaps in some cases lost. But, the enterprise AI market is not a general AI market. It's an industry-focused market. Just because Google is rocking on AI doesn't mean it has the health care project experience IBM does. True- IBM has a lot to prove in this market. Google and Amazon have a lot to prove in the enterprise also. That competition is healthy - so we move on.
I will soon be test driving Watson on my Alexa, and I'll find out for myself if Watson's contextual interface is superior. Meantime, amidst the viral slugfest, don't lose track of HfS' IBM partners with Automation Anywhere: Great for AA, but IBM’s cognitive automation strategy just got more confusing - a much more informed critique.
Other standouts: Diversity in tech gets a fresh look. This was a big week for diversity-in-tech coverage. Michael Krigsman of CXO Talk published a video review featuring four of Workday's female executives (Workday: Female senior execs speak out on women in technology). Practical tips came by way of The New Stack in Geeks on the Ground at ChefConf Answer Basic Questions about Diversity.
Gartner's Hank Barnes opened up about his own views in Women In Sales - A Missed Opportunity? The diversity-is-tough theme comes out in The Woman Hired To Fix GitHub’s Troubled Culture Is Leaving, And Employees Are Worried.
Honorable mention
- Analysis Of The Next-Generation Mobility Value Chain - Evangelos Simoudis' blogs on the changing auto industry require some effort, but the deep time he's put into the automotive space shows.
- 10 reasons why you're not a thought leader (and how to fix them) - I rarely use the phrase "must read" in the hopes that when I use it, folks might care. Must read.
- MongoDB, Platform Company? - Stephen O'Grady assesses a platformy trend, with MongoDB as the latest pivot. (Yikes, I used the wankword pivot!!!)
- Why Facebook’s “Fake News” button won’t help against Russia. It’s all about the algorithm - If you can handle the political slant there is useful stuff for businesses on the inner workings of Facebook's algo and why
your content gets the shaftit surfaces what it does. - The incredible shrinking time to legacy. On Time to Suck as a metric for dev and ops - James Governor gets best-post-title-of-the-week in a landslide, with "time to suck" as a metric for us to add to our dashboards.
Whiffs
Quickie whiffs this week. Let's start with a robot:
Security Robot Given The Gift Of Intelligence Chooses To Drown Itself https://t.co/qs5slLAN7O -> somewhere, Albert Camus is smiling
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) July 18, 2017
- Not-the-best-marketing-move award goes to - Author Of The Book “How To Survive Bulls Of Pamplona” Gored While Running With Bulls.
- Self-whiff on me for doubting Elon Musk's hyperloop concept - Hyperloop One's First Real Test Is a Whooshing Success.
- "Modern story I wish was funny but is actually pretty tragic" award - Wildlife photographer broke after being sued by monkey over copyright ownership.
- "This could easily have been me" award - Thousands sign up to clean sewage because they didn't read the small print.
- The "work Game of Thrones into hits and misses award" - In Defense of Cersei Lannister - Umm... no. She's walking soulrot. And if I could prove it here without spoilers, I would. See you next time...
This is a truncated "Jon feels the road burn" version of hits and misses, which by definition excludes some worthy content - from diginomica and beyond. If you read an #ensw piece that qualifies, let me know in the comments as Clive always does.
Updated immediately after publication, 8:30 pm US PT, as I felt my analysis of the IBM coverage needed strengthening.
Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed. 'myPOV' is borrowed with reluctant permission from the ubiquitous Ray Wang.