Archive for the ‘IBM’ Category

« Older Entries

Press Release: Social Business and Enterprise Collaboration Software Veteran Alan Lepofsky Joins Constellation Research, Inc.

Published on October 3, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Toronto, Ontario, Canada – October 3rd, 2011
11:21 am (GMT – 5:00) Eastern 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 Alan Lepofsky has joined as a Vice-President & Principal Analyst.  With close to 20 years of experience in enterprise collaboration software, Alan is an expert in how social software can be used to improve the core business processes that organizations rely on.

“There is a transformation going on in the way employees connect to their peers, share information and engage with their customers. I’m excited to help companies make educated decisions as they evaluate and ultimately deploy social software. I want to make sure they choose the vendor that provides the best overall fit, instead of just looking at a check list of features.” – Alan Lepofsky

Prior to joining Constellation, Alan spent 3 years as Director of Marketing at Socialtext and before that, 14 years in a variety of roles at IBM/Lotus. He’s an active blogger and speaker in the Enterprise 2.0/Social Business community, where he shares his thoughts on the business benefits of open communication and collaboration.  Alan graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A.Sc. in Engineering. His major was Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Business and Entrepreneurship.

Key elements of Alan’s research coverage will include:

  • Evaluating the enterprise social software landscape
  • Augmenting and integrating business process with social software
  • Tracking the changes in modern software interfaces including activity streams, visual data representation, mobile access, etc.
  • Exploring how enterprise software can adapt patterns from popular entertainment platforms such as videos games, television and movies
  • Revealing the impact of new collaboration tools
  • Researching the intersections of personal and group productivity
  • Documenting and sharing best practices in social business

In addition to the above coverage areas, Alan will be building a social business community on social business within Constellation Research and helping the firm adapt leading practices.

“With so many social media pundits pontificating about fluffy theoretical concepts, our clients expect us to deliver visionary and pragmatic points of view. Alan brings both the industry and enterprise credibility required to delight customers and serve as a strategic advisor to innovators in the social business space.  I’m personally looking forward to the impact he’ll bring internally as we adopt leading practices”, said R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO.

Please join us in welcoming Alan Lepofsky to the Constellation Research Family and newly expanded Toronto office!

COORDINATES

Twitter: @alanlepo
Linked In: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo
Geographical Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Google+: http://www.gplus.to/alanlepo
Email: alepofsky (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

 

About Constellation Research, Inc.*
Constellation Research is a leading research analyst and advisory firm guiding organizations and their leaders through the hype and buzz of the latest disruptive technologies.  Constellation takes a holistic approach in achieving business value for board members, marketing, technology, operations, human resource, and finance executives.

The firm’s analysts deliver pragmatic, creative, and impactful research focused on business value, profitability, and market differentiation.  Research analysts bring real world experience, independence, and objectivity to our clients.  Most analysts bring over 2 decades of hands-on experience in working with senior leaders in enterprise organizations.

Constellation serves the needs of buyers and end users who seek insight, guidance, and advice in dealing with a dizzying array of disruptive business models and technologies.  The firm provide the bridge between legacy optimization and future innovation.  Constellation also advises sellers from both the buyer‚s point of view and how to deliver value to their customers.

Constellation builds partnerships with its clients.  The client and their organization’s success is Constellation’s only mission.

Insight. Inspiration. Impact.

*Constellation Research, Constellation SuperNova Awards and the Constellation Research logo are trademarks of Constellation Research, Inc. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

Press Contacts:

Contact the Media and Influencers relations team at press@ConstellationRG.com for interviews with analysts.

Sales Contacts:

Contact our sales team.

Kieran Barr

Email: Kieran (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com
Office: +1.206.409.5009
Twitter: @kierobar

David Stanley
Email:David (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com .
Office: +1.719.357.7826
Twitter: @kiwigate

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business

Published on August 15, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Confusion Persists In The Social Business Market

As with any new disruptive technology, the social business solution landscape faces a dynamic, confusing, and converging market. As vendors seek to grab mind share and market share, customers and prospects remain confused as to what are the right business problems to address with social business. However, rampant confusion among users hampers efforts to solve business issues. Three key factors accelerate this level of confusion:

  1. Early adopter market. Constantly changing conditions force customers to alter original plans as executive sponsorship fluctuates from intense to pensive and back to intense in short cycles. Projects remain secretive for competitive advantage reasons. Consequently, prospects lack strong case studies to build off of despite peer groups, adoption networks. Prospects seek metrics that matter and relevant use cases.
  2. Consumerization of IT. With increased social media penetration, success in consumer grade products highlight the potential for enterprise adoption. However, most enterprise class products remain one to two generations behind in achieving similar capabilities. As business users gravitate towards simple, scalable, and sexy attributes; IT departments seek to rein in shadow IT efforts with safety, security, and sustainability requirements.
  3. Marketing mayhem. Fast paced markets always generate hype in marketing messages. Hence, legacy collaboration, community platform, CRM, unified communications, integration platform, and office productivity vendors seek to reposition themselves and address the emerging and trendy social business use cases customers seek.

Social Business Vendors Converge Towards Business Value Sweet Spot

The vendor landscape for social business market represents a diverse and broad collection of solutions.  Vendors approach the market from multiple heritage points, technologies, and markets.  Four key criteria cut across two axes (see Figure 1):

  1. External facing vs internal facing.  External facing includes customers, partners, and suppliers.  Internal facing include employees and trusted networks within the corporate firewall.
  2. Platforms and infrastructure vs purpose built solutions.  Platforms and infrastructure referred to core technology solutions.  Purpose built solutions address specific applications.

Figure 1. Social Business Vendors Converge Towards Business Value Sweet Spot (Working Draft)

More…

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Alistair Rennie, IBM

Published on June 20, 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.

Alistair Rennie - General Manager IBM Collaboration Solutions, IBM Software Group

Biography

Alistair Rennie is General Manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions, IBM Software Group.  Alistair was appointed to this position in January, 2010.  As general manager, he has oversight for an extensive portfolio of social, collaboration, and Web experience solutions designed to empower people to be more effective, responsive and innovative within the context of the work they do.  This portfolio includes IBM branded, Lotus Software branded, and Websphere branded software that enables businesses to communicate, collaborate, increase productivity, and enable organizations to design their Web experience with personalized applications.  Rennie is also a member of the IBM Integration and Values team, a select group of executives who provide leadership across IBM on various business and strategic issues.  On the public service side, Alistair is also IBM Senior State Executive for Massachusetts, providing leadership for IBM in the community statewide.

The Interview

1. Tell me in two minutes or less why social computing is changing the world for your customers

Alistair Rennie (AR): For our customers, their fundamental expectation is (improving) business outcome.  They have watched social computing evolve in a consumer context.  In the back of their minds, they wonder if the ideas and the concepts of social computing have all the potential in the world to evolve into a viable business platform.

A typical IBM or enterprise customer cares about applying these advancements to speed, innovation, and differentiation.  When they look at where this comes from, there’s only so much progress in terms of how organizations can compete and automate backroom processes and systems that deal with finite decision making processes. Where they see a chance to connect with their customers and drive innovation, they realize all of those things are dependent on people.  Organizations are highly dependent on how people become visible, how they connect, make decisions, and connect those decisions to the actual processes that run the business.  They see this as a platform to fundamentally unlock the potential of the people in their organizations for competitive advantage.

2. What makes social computing disruptive?

(AR): Once you take into account how people work with each other in the organization, a lot of things come into the picture.  If you think about the type of work people do in the enterprise, this work increases in visibility with social computing.  With better visibility, we have the ability to understand measurement and interaction.  Now, we can optimize these decisions.

For example in retail banking,  many of the loan origination decisions are accomplished by groups.  In general, that’s not repeatable, so how do you apply a social lens to a more defined lending process?  More importantly, how do you expose outcomes to be more visible?  If you are in retail banking, how would you leverage the banking relationship for the branch manager speaking to you as a client?   How do you recreate the people process as a foundation of the business.  The disruptive part is taking systems that have been transactional in nature and wiring them for person to person (P2P) interactions.  At the end of the day, these will be visible and measurable.

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

(AR): Beyond Social – if you follow this thread of how do you become more viscerally connected on a people dimension, the next question is how do I tie this into process?  We are starting to see the beginning of deep conversations with clients about enterprise app development.  How do you build social out as a platform and enable lots and lots of quick focused applications?  How do we build to a model of connecting social into the systems of record that run a business?  How do you tie to work flow without making it (too) cumbersome?  What does the infrastructure stack look like for social? How do you rethink enterprise apps development to include social elements in processes?

The second thought is better instrumentation.  We have a real time sense of what’s happening in a community.  Now add a big push around analytics into the platform and getting to real time response around people centric processes.

The third big thing will allow people to rethink the process itself and the design of the firm and enterprise itself over time.  For example, what does an extended supply chain look like over time when people are tied together in a social platform?  What does employment mean when you have experts connected through social networks with well regarded reputation and a talent exchange?  What does it mean to how you put an organization together, small or large. What does it mean in terms of new product cycles and innovation cycles.

Mid term what is the structure of an organization look like over time. Social will be a fundamental influence of new org design.

More…

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

Research Report: Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011

Published on January 4, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Organizations Seek Measurable Results In Disruptive Tech, Next Gen Business, And Legacy Optimization Projects For 2011

Credits: Hugh MacLeod

Enterprise leaders seek pragmatic, creative, and disruptive solutions that achieve both profitability and market differentiation.  Cutting through the hype and buzz of the latest consumer tech innovations and disruptive technologies, Constellation Research expects business value to reemerge as the common operating principle that resonates among leading marketing, technology, operations, human resource, and finance executives.  As a result, Constellation expects organizations to face three main challenges: (see Figure 1.):

  • Navigating disruptive technologies. Innovative leaders must quickly assess which disruptive technologies show promise for their organizations.  The link back to business strategy will drive what to adopt, when to adopt, why to adopt, and how to adopt.  Expect leading organizations to reinvest in research budgets and internal processes that inform, disseminate, and prepare their organizations for an increasing pace in technology adoption.
  • Designing next generation business models. Disruptive technologies on their own will not provide the market leading advantages required for success. Leaders must identify where these technologies can create differentiation through new business models, grow new profit pools via new experiences, and deliver market efficiencies that save money and time.  Organizations will also have to learn how to fail fast, and move on to the next set of emerging ideas.
  • Funding innovation through legacy optimization. Leaders can expect budgets to remain from flat to incremental growth in 2011. As a result, much of the disruptive technology and next generation business models must be funded through optimizing existing investments. Leaders not only must reduce the cost of existing investments, but also, leverage existing infrastructure to achieve the greatest amount of business value.

More…

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

News Analysis: Oracle and IBM Partner On Java

Published on October 11, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Collaboration Puts Java In A Safe Place

On October 11th, 2010, both Oracle and IBM announced an alliance to collaborate on the future development of Java.  A quick assessment shows that:

  • Oracle and IBM intend to drive Java innovations. Oracle initiated a call to IBM to discuss collaboration efforts around Java.  As a result, Oracle and IBM intend to allow developers and customers to build and innovate based on Java investments and the OpenJDK reference implementation.  Both tech giants agreed to reiterate their commitment to the Java Community Process (JCP) as the official standards body.   The scope of the alliance includes the OpenJDK project, the open source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) specification, the Java Language, the Java Development Kit (JDK), and Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

    Point of View (POV):     As fierce competitors and close partners, the largest research and development investors in Java have agreed to jointly collaborate and develop Java SE.  Both Oracle’s “Red Stack” and IBM’s “Blue Stack”depend on Java for success.  The result – Java developers and customers gain stability and confidence that the future of Java remains secure.  Rivals can expect an Oracle IBM alliance to drive innovations in web apps, cloud standards, and mobile innovations.

The Bottom Line:  Java Now Back On Equal Competitive Footing With .NET

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun left many Java watchers uncertain about the future of Java.  In some ways, today’s olive branch announcement is akin to “Mideast Peace” and allows the Java ecosystem to thrive and compete head on with Microsoft’s .NET ecosystem.  With the Java and .NET wars moving into the cloud, mobile, and appliance market, today’s announcement shows common sense and logic remains paramount among even the fiercest of rivals.  In addition, the alliance takes IBM out of the Apache Harmony efforts with Google, which could result in either a Java fork for Android or Android on Open JDK.

Your POV.

Does this announcement surprise you?  Did you expect Oracle and IBM to collaborate?  Are you breathing a sigh of relief on the collaboration?  You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.

How can we assist?

Buyers, do you need help with your apps strategy and vendor management strategy?  Trying to figure out how to infuse innovation into your tech strategy? Ready to put the expertise of over 1000 software contract negotiations to work?  Give us a call!

Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can help:

  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Evaluating SaaS/Cloud options
  • Assessing apps strategies (e.g. single instance, two-tier ERP, upgrade, custom dev, packaged deployments”
  • Designing innovation into end to end processes and systems
  • Comparing SaaS/Cloud integration strategies
  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration
  • Engaging in an SCRM strategy
  • Planning upgrades and migration
  • Performing vendor selection

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  Both IBM and Oracle are clients of Insider Associates, LLC. For the full disclosure policy please refer here.

Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

News Analysis: New HP Leadership Indicates Interest In Enterprise Software

Published on September 30, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Two Seasoned Software Veterans Join Hewlett-Packard

On September 30th, 2010, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced two significant changes in its leadership structure.  Former SAP CEO Léo Apotheker was named as CEO; and Kleiner Perkins partner and former Oracle COO, Ray Lane was named as non-executive Chairman.  These two appointments signal a seriousness to shake things up for the better at HP because:

  • Cloud computing and consolidation forces hardware companies such as HP to seek higher margins. Most hardware vendors face single digit margins in their core business.  To bolster margins, many vendors acquired system integration and BPO firms.  For example, HP purchased EDS and Dell acquired Perot Systems.  The next logical step requires the hardware vendors to get into software (see Figure 1).  Software margins hover from 10% to 50% depending on the market.  Expect a hardware vendor such as Cisco, Dell, or HP to acquire a cloud based company such as Salesforce.com or Rackspace to move into the software business.  HP should go on the SaaS/Cloud offensive if they want to deliver rapid innovation to customers and break the cycle of dependence on packaged apps vendors such as Oracle and SAP.  HP can challenge Oracle through a complete cloud stack of SaaS, Paas, DaaS, and IaaS by investing in white spaces in the solution road map with verticals and other pivot points that have not been well served.  In addition, expect forms of SaaS BPO to emerge as clients seek best of breed SaaS and hybrid deployments.
  • Oracle’s acquisition of Sun follows the 1970′s IBM playbook and HP will compete with Oracle in the long run. Oracle’s going after the “golden age of computing”.  The impact — the tech industry reverts back to the beginning of a 40 year innovation cycle.  For example, mainframe time sharing manifests as SaaS/Cloud.  AS/400 and integrated computing evolves into appliances or cloud in a box.  Oracle’s strategy takes silicon to software and signals a need to deliver turnkey verticalized, integrated offerings.  Should HP continue to just serve in the commoditized infrastructure market, Oracle will beat HP in joint accounts for thought leadership and mind share.  Oracle’s going after the high end server market and the verticalized appliances market.  HP must have something to offer business leaders other than faster, better, cheaper boxes.  Software solutions are admission to the party.  HP could and should partner more closely with SAP in the short term to double up and battle Oracle.

RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Tech Budget (Part 2) – Cloud Computing

Published on August 9, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to a part 2 of a multi-part series on The Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model.  Part 2 describes how the cloud fits into the model.  Subsequent posts will apply the model to these leading vendors:

      The aggregation of these posts will result into a research report available for reprint rights.

      Cloud Computing Represents The “New” Delivery Model For Internet Based IT Services

      Technology veterans often observe that new mega trends emerge every decade.  The market has evolved from mainframes (1970′s); to mini computers (1980′s); to client server (1990′s); to internet based (2000′s); and now to cloud computing (2010′s).  Many of the cloud computing trends do take users back to the mainframe days of time sharing (i.e. multi-tenancy) and service bureaus (i.e cloud based BPO). What’s changed since 1970?  Quite plenty — users gain better usability, connectivity improves with the internet, storage continue to plummet, and performance increases in processing capability.

      Cloud delivery models share a stack approach similar to traditional delivery.  At the core, both deployment options share four types of properties (see Figure 1):

      1. Consumption – how users consume the apps and business processes
      2. Creation – what’s required to build apps and business processes
      3. Orchestration – how parts are integrated or pulled from an app server
      4. Infrastructure – where the core guts such as servers, storage, and networks reside

      As the über category, Cloud Computing manifests in the four distinct layers of:

      • Business Services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – The traditional apps layer in the cloud includes software as a service apps, business services, and business processes on the server side.
      • Development-as-a-Service (DaaS) – Development tools take shape in the cloud as shared community tools, web based dev tools, and mashup based services.
      • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Middleware manifests in the cloud with app platforms, database, integration, and process orchestration.
      • Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – The physical world goes virtual with servers, networks, storage, and systems management in the cloud.

      Figure 1. Traditional Delivery Compared To Cloud Delivery


      More…

      RSS feed for comments on this post. — TrackBack URL

      Older Posts »