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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

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Press Release: Alexandre Mesquita To Lead Constellation Research’s Entry Into Spain, Portugal, and Latin America

Published on September 12, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Monta Vista, California – September 12, 2011
10:21 AM (GMT -8:00) Pacific Standard Time

Constellation Research Inc, an emerging and disruptive technologies research and advisory firm, announced that Alexandre Mesquita has joined as a Vice President of Sales for Spain, Portugal and Latin America.  Mesquita brings over 15 years of experience in sales, consulting, and marketing.  Specifically, he has proven experience in selling independent research and end user advisory services in this region to support strategic business decisions at US$1B+ organizations.

Mesquita will engage with both buy side and sell side clients. His responsibilities will include:

  • Managing business development and sales efforts in Spain, Portugal and Latin America
  • Establishing partnerships between companies and Constellation’s expert knowledge base
  • Helping organizations accomplish their business objectives around Mobile, Software, BI, SCM, ERP, PBS, CRM, Collaboration, Analytics, UC, Gov 2.0 and Social.

Prior to his current role, Mesquita was a Sr. Consultant at Saleforce.com, where he supported the direct sales team at organizations with more than 1,000 employees in Latin America.  Before that, he was a Regional Director for this region at Forrester Research, where he built a team of Country Managers (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico) and Associates, managed marketing actions, the P&L and finally, worked with the vertical and horizontal research teams to incorporate the local knowledge.

“I’m looking forward to working with one of the most renown and experienced collection of disruptive technology analysts.  Building out Constellation’s presence in the Spain, Portugal, and Latin American markets won’t be easy but I’m up to the challenge.  We’ll be partnering with our buy side clients to craft the right mix of research and services that meet the local requirements.  As a global organization, our goal is to meet the local needs, not dictate an arrogant and specific regional view that many legacy analyst firms often enter the market with.”

Before Forrester, Mesquita was an Alliance Manager at IBM, the same position also held at PwC Consulting, where he managed strategic alliances with Intel, Oracle, Siebel, SAP, HP, Microsoft, and other IT service vendors like Stefanini. Mesquita holds a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Nichols College in Massachusetts, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Brasília in Brazil.

“Alexandre’s ability to bring a cross-cultural point of view will help us find the right mix of disruptive technology research and pragmatic advice for this rapidly growing region.  Mesquita’s legendary ability to craft long-term strategic relationships with buy side clients will help us grow the business and I’m looking forward to his operational expertise to help take us to the next level. ” noted R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO.

As part of the Constellation Customer Experience, Constellation works with clients to collaboratively design Research-as-a-Service solutions and partner on crafting the appropriate advisory solutions.

Please join us in welcoming Alexandre Mesquita to the Constellation Research family!

COORDINATES

Twitter: @amesquit
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandremesquita
Geo: Miami, FL, USA
Phone: +1.786.564.4246
Email: Alexandre (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.

Press Contacts:

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

For a list of open positions, come visit us.

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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…

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Event Report: SAUG Summit 2011 Attendees Show A Shift From SAP Centricity To Purpose Built

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

Summit Brings A Cadre Of Thought Leaders To User Group Attendees


The SAP Australian User’s Group held their annual summit once again at the Sydney Convention Centre in Darling Harbour from August 2nd to August 4th.  With around 600 attendees, the keynotes covered many of the hot topics about SAP ownership, road maps, and best practices. Some highlights include:

  • Christian Thompson, Director of Information Services at CITIC Pacific Mining discussed their experiences with growth and to go cloud or not.
  • Jeff Word, Vice President of Product Strategy at SAP shared the latest SAP Technology strategy in his keynote and delivered a standing room only, four hour deep dive, on HANA that was a must attend event.
  • John Kelvie, IS Director at Fonterra outlined how their company replaced legacy systems with SAP for a future SAP road map. John provided detailed examples of what worked and what didn’t.
  • Bridgette Chambers, CEO of the America’s SAP User Group (ASUG) introduced the concept of Infinite ROI. She expressed how to take advantage of timeless software.
  • Malcolm Humphries, BI Solutions Architect at Fonterra; and Keith Murray, Global Product Manager for SAP In-memory computing at IBM shared real-world experiences of how BWA can be deployed and the realities of the SAP’s new HANA in-memory product. This session blew away most marketing fluff presentations at Sapphire 2011 this year.

In addition, breakout sessions focused on industries, solutions, business/analytics, and IT organization/Technology, and BOBJ.  Of particular interest was the excellent session put on by Peter Dee, Head of Upgrade Centre, SAP Asia Pacific Japan. He provided some pragmatic approaches to managing cost effective upgrades.

Meanwhile, the mobile sessions, BI sessions, and solution manager sessions received a lot of attention.  Of note, Australian SAP Mentors Matt Harding, Paul Hawking, Ingo Hilgefort, Nigel James, John Moy, Graham Robinson, and Tony de Thomasi were in attendance providing their wisdom and insights throughout the event.

Australian SAP Users Upgrading But Moving Away From SAP Centric Strategy

Traditionally an SAP only and SAP centric market, conversations with attendees confirmed a significant shift in approach.  Cloud computing, mobile enablement, business pressures, and the need to align with business strategy have driven many Australian SAP customers to stray away from a single vendor approach.  For instance, on the mobile side, SkyTech’s offerings show good penetration.  For collaboration solutions SharePoint and Yammer appear to have gained mind share.  CRM remains dominated by Salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM.  Analytics discussions include Business Objects but IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion, QlikTech, and other cloud based solutions show significant presence in conversations.

During the Future of Enterprise Software and SAP keynote, an informal poll of the 650+ attendees revealed the following SAP strategies (see Figure 1):

  • Stay with status quo: 15%
  • Move to shiny new SAP: 20%
  • Stabilize SAP and augment: 25%
  • Modernize SAP and surround with best of breed: 40%

Figure 1. Four Paths To SAP Optimization

With 65% of the respondents considering solutions outside the SAP sphere, SAP HQ should take note that the Fortress SAP approach no longer holds true in ANZ.  The good news – 60% of respondents have made the decision to upgrade to the latest SAP products and remain interested in having SAP as part of their long term strategy. SAP remains in good relationships with its key customers. While customers do see SAP as a core part of their strategy, it is not the only strategy.

More…

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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…

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business And Cloud Computing

Published on May 29, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Executive Profile Series Delivers The Inside View On Disruptive Technologies

Starting this week, we’ll be kicking off an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Cloud Computing and Social Business.  The interviews should provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  The transcript of the 30 minute Q&A’s will follow a common format:

Cloud Computing

  1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Cloud Computing is changing the world for your customers
  2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?
  3. What is the next big thing in Cloud Computing?
  4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?
  5. Where do you see technology convergence with Cloud?
  6. If you weren’t focused on Cloud Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?
  7. What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

Social Business

  1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Social Computing is changing the world for your customers
  2. What makes social computing disruptive?
  3. What is the next big thing in Social Business software?
  4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Social Computing?
  5. Where do you see technology convergence with Social?
  6. If you weren’t focused on Social Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?
  7. What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

Scheduled Interviews Include A Who’s Who List Of Industry Thought Leaders And Market Makers

Cloud Computing

Social Business More…

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Research Summary: Market Overview – The Market For SAP Optimization Options

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

Forward And Commentary

This market overview provides a starting point to SAP customers seeking optimization solutions.  The document delivers actionable advice and insights into a proven collection of software solutions.  As part of the full series, best practices documents will follow with in- depth case studies and a critical product evaluation of this growing market of SAP optimization solutions. 

A. Introduction

With the average Global 2000 ERP deployment nearing 11.5 years in service, ERP customers face a significant challenge with updating their existing investments. Installed pre-Y2K, users have attempted to work around the best practices of the ‘90s while seeking innovation and application agility. Subsequently, SAP users face three main challenges:

  1. Higher cost of ownership that reduces overall ROI.
  2. An aging and brittle infrastructure that hampers innovation.
  3. Increasing complexity that hampers greater adoption.

B. Research Findings

As SAP customers choose their go- forward apps strategy, interviews from 100′s of clients show that four paths emerge (see Figure 1):
  1. Stay with status quo;
  2. Move to shiny new SAP.;
  3. Stabilize SAP and augment; and
  4. Modernize SAP and surround with best-of-breed.
Figure 1. The Four Paths Of SAP Optimization

 

Consequently, an $80.1 billion third-party SAP ecosystem has emerged to address nine key areas (details on each vendor in the official report):

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