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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Gaurav Dhillon, SnapLogic

Published on July 27, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Cloud Computing.  The interviews provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  A full list of interviewees can be found here.

Gaurav Dhillon, CEO and Chairman, SnapLogic


Biography

An early investor in SnapLogic, Gaurav joined as CEO in 2009 when he saw the tremendous potential for the company’s cloud and on-premise integration products, strategy, and unique business model. Gaurav has spearheaded the rapid growth of the company and manages its financing, products, strategic relationships, and operations.

As the former CEO of Informatica Corporation, (Nasdaq; INFA) a silicon valley company that he co-founded in 1992, Gaurav feels that there is more to be accomplished in connecting companies’ applications and data sources. He should know; as he was Informatica’s first employee, and CEO for more than 12 years, where he led Informatica from a startup idea to a leading software enterprise with customers and operations around the world. His tenure at Informatica included the initial company launch, its successful IPO, and expansion to Europe and Asia. He was the leading figure in developing alliances with major technology players, ultimately forging a broad acceptance of the vision he pioneered in the software industry. Prior to Informatica Gaurav held management and engineering positions at Sterling Software and Unisys Corp.

The Interview

1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Cloud Computing is changing the world for your customers?

Gaurav Dhillon (GD): Three main changes impacting our customers today are the increasing number of business applications and application providers on the market, new application delivery platforms, and growing sources of complex data. Companies today use a much wider selection of best-of-breed, highly specialized applications than ten or fifteen years ago, many of which are cloud-based. These solutions are not hosted or accessed on-site over a Local Area Network during normal business hours, as was most common with legacy applications from the 20th century.

In addition, vast quantities of valuable business data now reside outside enterprise applications – in cloud-based solutions, externally purchased data, government-supplied information, and even social media streams and mobile sources. The majority of this data is non-relational, and often comes from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that don’t provide access to underlying databases. All of these cloud-driven factors make integration a much more difficult task than it was just ten years ago, and drive demand for a modern connection architecture like SnapLogic’s.

2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(GD): Cloud computing is allowing companies to exploit the power and ease of the consumer Web to connect the Business Internet. By leveraging Web standards and private or public clouds, any organizations can be as responsive, accessible, and adaptable as the best consumer Internet services. In the age of the QR (Quick Response) code, information from sources like mobile devices and social media, as well as all kinds of new specialized applications, is growing faster in the cloud. In order to benefit from this, companies require data they can trust, at the exact moment it’s needed. With this, they can shift their business focus from the rear-view mirror to an over-the-horizon radar that looks ahead to accurately anticipate future customer needs before anyone else.

Many companies are fundamentally transforming their IT strategies to make this all possible. Rather than relying on cumbersome stacks of enterprise applications to run their business, IT leaders are employing a new kind of loose coupling to create what Amazon’s Werner Vogals coined a “collection of services” – built, borrowed, or bought – that meets their exact technology needs. This disruptive approach results in a directory meta-application, which links (like a browser calling up a Web page) to every individual application, cloud service, or Web site employees need. As a result, the whole is made greater than the sum of its parts, and businesses can achieve unprecedented speed to innovation and speed to insight.

3. What is the next big thing in Cloud Computing?

(GD): Ray, this might not be the next big thing tomorrow, but in the not-too-distant future, I think a big opportunity for cloud computing will be to power the “Internet of Things” and all the fascinating possibilities that creates. Remember how quickly bar codes shifted from being used for basic inventory management to enabling never-before imagined analytics for manufacturers and retailers via data warehousing? That changed retailing forever, and a massive new market around analyzing bar codes was established, which is probably ten times the size of the original market for managing inventory.

We think we have Big Data today, but when we start putting sensors and RFID tags on the physical objects we use daily, and collect more and more data from our fitbits, appliances, cars, etc., we’ll have a humongous new after market for analyzing the streams of information that flow from those things. Only cloud computing will be able to handle this next phase of Big Data and help us benefit from it.

4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?

More…

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Charlie Isaacs, Alcatel-Lucent

Published on July 25, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Social Business.  The interviews  provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  A full list of interviewees can be found here.

Charlie Isaacs, eServices and Social Media Engineering, Alcatel Lucent


Biography

Charlie Isaacs has a track record of R&D leadership, starting with GTE (eventually became Verizon), where he served as Vice President of Engineering and headed a group of over 200 engineers working on Government and commercial applications. Following GTE, Mr. Isaacs held R&D leadership positions at Answer Systems (acquired by Computer Associates), and served as Chief Technology Officer at Broad Daylight (sold to Primus) and at Primus Knowledge Systems until Primus’ acquisition by ATG. Charlie served as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Customer Officer at Kana Software, Inc. Mr. Isaacs holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an MBA from California Lutheran University. When Charlie left KANA in 2009 and prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent, he developed and delivered a Social Media strategy for two different companies. Charlie has over 15 years of CRM experience.

The Interview

1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Social Computing is changing the world for your customers?

Charlie Isaacs (CI): Our customers are recognizing that their customers are extremely well-armed with information required to get the best deal possible, and to make the best buying decision based on accurate and trusted sources–their friends, influencers, and trusted advisors. Our customers are recognizing that they have to need to possess the same information that their customers are using, which includes information about their competition. They also know that their customers have zero tolerance for a bad customer experience and will go elsewhere if they can’t get instant help on a problem that arises, or if anything in the buying process becomes difficult. Our know that they need to use every channel and every vehicle possible to respond to their customers needs because each demographic relies on a different social communication mechanism, and some demographics might jump from channel to channel and social outlet to social outlet. At the same time we are finding that we (Alcatel-Lucent Genesys) have an unfair competitive advantage because when the customers have a huge issue they just want to talk to a human immediately, and few companies offer every channel and every social capability combined with instant voice communication.

2.What makes social computing disruptive?

(CI): Social Computing is disruptive because it is a huge equalizer. Companies selling products and services no longer have the upper hand. If they are selling a crappy product or service the word will get out immediately. Talk about transparency–companies become transparent whether they want to or not. This is disrupting the way companies do business, they way consumers shop, and the way customers are supported.

3. What is the next big thing in Social Business software?

(CI): The next big thing is product-orient social. (I call it object-oriented social, but I have been accused of being a nerd for doing so.) With product-oriented social technology the product is aware of who you are, why you are standing in front of it, and what you are trying to do with it–and the “product” will help you accomplish your goal. For example, if you are standing in front of a TV set at Walmart and you can’t find a store clerk to help you, you should be able to wave your mobile phone across the TV and have it deliver a custom menu that provides you with answers to your questions. The menu should allow you to find an expert instantly (anywhere in the world.) It should help you buy the TV and have it delivered to your house. This “next big thing app” should provide you with comparison shopping and if it finds a cheaper TV down the street at Best Buy, you should be offered a coupon by Walmart to keep you in the store. The coupon should allow you to price match, give you loyalty points for buying the TV, or whatever the analytics indicate that the offer should provide to you at that moment. The next big thing app should automatically scan your friends network for others who have bought this TV (depending on privacy settings) and you should be able to reach out to that friend for a review or for help understanding how it works. And finally, after you have bought the TV, if it breaks a year later you should be able to scan that TV with your smartphone again and it should give you troubleshooting steps or information about your warranty or service.

4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Social Computing?

More…

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Zach Nelson, NetSuite

Published on July 22, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Cloud Computing.  The interviews  provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  A full list of interviewees can be found here.

Zach Nelson – President and CEO, NetSuite


Biography

Zach Nelson has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the high-tech industry, where he has held a variety of executive positions spanning marketing, sales, product development and business strategy with leading companies such as Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and McAfee/Network Associates. Nelson has been CEO of NetSuite since 2002. One of top 10 visionary CEOs in the Silicon Valley, Nelson led NetSuite’s successful IPO in 2007. Under his leadership, NetSuite has become the leading provider of cloud computing business management software suites in the world. Nelson holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from Stanford University

The Interview

1.     Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Cloud Computing is changing the world for your customers

Zach Nelson (ZN): The original idea behind Information Technology (IT) departments within corporations was to apply technology to gain competitive advantage. But the client/server application paradigm hijacked IT and forced those resources to spend most of their time and energy managing vendors’ products. Many studies show that a vast majority of IT resources and investments have historically been spent on maintaining legacy technology, and that does little to advance your own business. Cloud computing frees IT to make your own business better, instead of enriching the software companies. And it happens much, much more quickly, which is how Groupon was able to deploy the NetSuite financials/ERP suite in 26 international subsidiaries in just three months, instead of the years it would have taken them with conventional software.

2.     What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(ZN): The cloud – or more specifically web-native applications — eliminates all of the effort that used to be necessary to make technology work. Once you’ve done that, you can start accomplishing things which were impossible with client/server systems. The early conventional wisdom said that you couldn’t run complex processes in the cloud. I disagree. It is obvious from what NetSuite’s customers have accomplished that you can actually run more complex processes in the cloud than you could with on-premise software. And the fact that you can do so faster, better, and cheaper is tremendously disruptive.

3.     What is the next big thing in Cloud Computing?

(ZN): Obviously the mobile device trend will become more important for the cloud, and from our perspective that means making it easier for buying, selling, ordering and customer servicing to happen from a myriad of mobile devices. The ability to aggregate large amounts of data across multiple companies and industries will make it easier for companies to benchmark their performance versus their rivals’ as well.

4.     What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?

More…

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Press Release: Advanced Analytics And Decision Services Pioneer Neil Raden Joins Constellation Research, Inc.

Published on July 19, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Santa Fe, New Mexico – July 19, 2011
1:30 PM (GMT -5:00) Pacific Standard Time

Constellation Research Inc, a next generation research analyst and advisory firm helping clients achieve business value from emerging and disruptive technologies, announced today that Neil Raden has joined as a Vice-President & Principal Analyst. With over 30 years of industry experience, Neil has served as a developer, consultant, and industry analyst in all areas of decision services including business intelligence (BI), information integration, data warehousing, statistical/predictive modeling, decision automation, and IT systems integration including architecture, planning, project management, and execution.

Neil was an instructor at the first TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) in 1995 and is a current member of the BBBT (Boulder BI Brain Trust). Neil is the author of over forty thought leadership papers and hundreds of articles. He is the co-author of the book “Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions” Prentice Hall, 2007.

Neil’s vast industry experiences include founding Hired Brain’s Inc and Archer Decision Sciences.  As President, he’s provided expertise in “classic” consulting services and implementation practices in BI, analytics, and decision management.  Areas of expertise include search, semantic technology and information integration, as well as operational BI, including real-time, decision automation, and closed loop systems.  Previous roles include Chairman of the Advisory Board at Sandia National Laboratories, Co-Founder of Smart Enough Systems, LLC, and Actuary for Property and Casualty at AIG.

Neil is one of the top analysts in his fields of coverage:

  • Advanced Analytics
  • Implications Of Big Data
  • Next Generation Data Warehouse
  • Decision Management
  • Clarifying Healthcare Outcomes Research
  • Genomics and Big Data

More…

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Monday’s Musings: Auction Sites Such As Deal Umpire May Level The Playing Field Among Daily Deal Sites

Published on July 18, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang


Merchants Must Break Free From Daily Deal Site Hysteria

Following up on the April 4th post about the damage caused by daily deal sites such as Groupon, merchants continued to send feedback about the challenges they face.  Those who use daily deal sites express the following:

  • Peer pressure to participate. Customers and prospects flooded by daily deals try out competitors.  Merchants afraid that lack of participation will hurt the business. A large restaurant chain VP noted, “Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.  We need to raise awareness above the fray, but the prize for winning is a losing business model”
  • Attraction of a low value, price sensitive customer base. Instead of attracting brand conscious, high value customers, merchants end up with bargain hunters.  Over time, merchants have had to raise prices to make up for losses with daily deal sites.  A high end spa owner complained, “I’m attracting the wrong customers and aggravating my loyal customer base.  Everyone now wants a bargain and we’ve got no more margin to give”
  • Inability to negotiate favorable terms. A lack of transparency on terms results in higher takes of percentage of revenue. Merchants lack visibility and expertise to secure better terms.  CMO of a large hospitality chain stated, “The terms for the deals stink.  We need some pricing pressure to move the pendulum back towards the center”.

New Daily Deal Auction Sites Create Win-Wins for Merchants And Daily Deal Sites

Auction sites such as Deal Umpire provide a market between merchants and daily deal sites.  These market places, if successful, will deliver two key benefits for merchants such as:

  • Visibility in deal terms among various daily deal sites. Deal site profiles include key information such as revenue split, payout terms, subscriber reach, subscriber demographics, deal site business model, credit card fees, media coverage, marketing materials, and when a deal can be featured.
  • Competition for daily deal business. The market place concept brings together multiple deal site programs into once place.   With competitive forces in play, merchants can drive pricing pressure on daily deal sites for lower revenue share and more favorable terms.

Merchants using a market place benefit with:

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Lyle Fong, Lithium Technologies

Published on by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Social Business.  The interviews  provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  A full list of interviewees can be found here.

Lyle Fong, CEO & Co-Founder Lithium Technologies

Biography

Lyle Fong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Lithium Technologies, helping great companies build a brand nation and delivering the next generation of customer relationships.

Prior to starting Lithium Technologies, Lyle co-founded GX Media, where he was the CTO. He drove the development of Gamers.com, which was rated the #1 independent gaming portal by Nielsen NetRatings. Lyle was instrumental in raising a total of $15M in funding led by CMGI, negotiating multi-million dollar technology licensing deals with Dell, Sony, AltaVista, and Ziff- Davis, and spearheading the spin-off of Lithium Technologies.

The Interview

1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Social Computing is changing the world for your customers

Lyle Fong (LF:) Social computing is more than a communication and social media revolution and it’s more than a set of technologies. Customers expectations have fundamentally changed and they are continuing to evolve and mature. At its core social computing allows companies to rapidly react to the changes in behaviors and expectations.

We have traditionally seen two routes for companies stepping into this space. Usually organizations started with a support community platform, then went to expand outwards, connecting on Facebook. Its not long before they realize it’s not enough – they need a more comprehensive way of managing customer conversations across social networks and web site as opposed to a silo community. More recently we have seen many companies jumping into a Facebook fan page, collecting lots of fans, but soon realizing that there was a need for much deeper conversations between the company and their customers. Organizations were shouting at their customers with PR and ads. The result – organizations were pushing customers away, exactly the opposite of their intention. This time around we are breaking down the walls. You have to ask, “What happens when we treat customers as part of the company?” We are now watching our customers embrace that and create amazing results.

2. What makes social computing disruptive?

LF: Let’s dig deeper into customer behaviors and expectations.  They are not just highly connected, they are always connected.  People are spending more time online more than watching TV.  Customers participating in social media now surpasses porn as the #1 activity on the web.  This pervasive level of communication through Twitter followers and Facebook friends, means that customers have unparalleled access to information, and they trust each others opinions, not that of the company.  So, how do we engage them?  This topic is beyond technology and beyond social computing.

Our customers are basically disrupting their own businesses, re-engineering themselves with new business models.  One of them has 30,000 employees and are figuring out any way to disrupt themselves as they don’t get disrupted by up and coming and competitors.  The adoption is quick – for TomTom, they had 20,000 cases handled and $150,000 return within two weeks of launch.  Brands start by asking, “How do we build a new relationship with our customer?” We even have customers, like giffgaff/O2 in the UK, who engineered themselves to not need a call center/support team, everything is dealt with by the community, fast. 90% of questions are answered in under 5 minutes – a great outcome for a national wireless telcom!

3. What is the next big thing in Social Business software?

LF: Beyond social, brands are keen to move beyond Facebook and Twitter. Right now the technology is only a small piece of what’s needed to enable the transactions. Hence, the socialnomics quote  “The ROI of social is that your business will still be around in 5 years” — is becoming more valid. The next wave of innovations, case studies, and stories will showcase organizations making strategic transformative moves hand in hand with their best and most passionate customers. This whole move will be all around the social customer. We have many stories to share – The Home Depot, Best Buy, Verizon, AT&T, – we just launched Skype across 8 languages – Sephora tells us their superfans spend 10X more then regular customers – the list goes on.  Seeing more and more companies achieve this goal is what’s inspiring!

We see a lot of failures coming from those providers that address social customer solutions with a technology.   They don’t realize that the motivation for an internal employee is far different than what motivates a customer.  For example, who has the most capability for damaging your brand on the social web?   You better hope it’s not your employees.  Moving forward, brands must work with business partners that truly understand how to embrace and reward the social customer.

4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Social Computing?

More…

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Product Review: The New TweetLevel And Blog Level Provide Critical Tools For Influencer Relations And Marketing Professionals

Published on July 14, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

TweetLevel Competes In A Crowded Field Of Social Analytics Vendors Focused On Twitter

Since Twitter shut off its access to its APIs, companies who rank influence of twitter users have had to find other alternatives.  Jonny Bentwood, Head of Analyst Relations and Strategy at Edelman, is the master mind behind the original TweetLevel, and two new offerings:  The New TweetLevel and BlogLevel (see Figure 1).  While there are other options to compare twitter users and bloggers in the marketplace such as Empire Avenue,  Klout, PeerIndex, and TwitterGrader, TweetLevel is purpose built to compare influencers.

Figure 1. The New Tweet Level And Blog Level

Applied Science In Action And Influence Flows Drives The Scoring Methodology

Using Topsy as the harvesting tool, TweetLevel applies a considerable amount of research from the work at the Web Science team at the University of Southampton led by Professor Dame Wendy Hall of the Web Sciences Institute. Analytical data focuses on a context of a particular topic and channel and how information flows among tweeters.

Influential people are classified as idea starters, amplifiers, curators, commentators or viewers.  The algorithms determine who’s important, what topic areas may be growing, what’s being shared, what else are users talking about (see Figure 2).  In addition to all the other levels of who’s important or not in the previous areas, the software gives more credit to those who create versus those who spread ideas. Extra weight is given to those who are highly engaged.

Meanwhile, BlogLevel applies the same science and ranks importance at the post level.  The posts most discussed on twitter and optimized for search rank higher.  More importantly, the service has the capability to show context in one’s area of influence.

Figure 2. Rich Analytics Permeate The TweetLevel and BlogLevel Products

More…

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