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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Brad Smith, Intuit

Published on February 2, 2012 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.

Brad Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer of Intuit

Biography

Brad Smith became Intuit’s president and chief executive officer in January 2008, culminating a five-year rise through the company where he successfully led several of its major businesses. Intuit is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, financial institutions, consumers and accounting professionals, and is consistently ranked as one of the most-admired software companies and best places to work.

As the company marked its 25th anniversary in 2008, Smith celebrated the past while creating a strategic vision that recognizes important market shifts that will serve as growth catalysts for Intuit’s future. Among the most significant trends is the accelerating shift to a “connected services” world, where people and businesses increasingly go online to manage their lives, and abandon the traditional paper-based, human-produced, brick-and-mortar bound services of the past. Intuit is uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends and help drive the shift to a connected services economy.

In the midst of this change, Intuit’s mission remains enduring: To be a premier innovative growth company that improves its customers’ financial lives so profoundly that they can’t imagine going back to the old way. The company’s strategy builds on this sense of purpose and foundation of success, while capitalizing on the current market shifts to accelerate Intuit’s business performance.

Before being named CEO, Smith was senior vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Small Business Division. Appointed to this position in May 2006, Smith was responsible for the company’s small business division which included the portfolio of QuickBooks, Quicken and Payroll products, serving 7 million small businesses. Before moving to the small business division, he led the company’s Consumer Tax Group in San Diego from March 2004 through May 2005. The group produces TurboTax, the nation’s leading consumer tax preparation software.

Smith joined the company in February 2003 as the vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Accountant Central and Developer Network in Plano, Texas. Previously, he was senior vice president of marketing and business development at ADP. Smith also held various sales, marketing and general management positions with Pepsi, Seven-Up and Advo, Inc.

Smith earned his master’s degree in management from Aquinas College in Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marshall University in West Virginia.

The Interview

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

Brad Smith (BS):

Ray this plays in our favor. We see the old paper-based, human produced bricks and mortar economy quickly shifting to connected services. As you get more devices in people’s hand and the digital generation coming of age growing up with PlayStations, iPods, and iPads, the shift is inevitable. People are going online to manage their lives. Here are some interesting anecdotes:

Historically our challenge with small businesses was getting them out of a shoe box. Now you have more and more of small businesses starting up. They see opportunities to save time and money. We have one million customers on SaaS solutions in small business. Customers gain a tremendous win. They get better value in terms of the ability to discover additional products and services, and they get anytime access online or with a mobile device. Overall, they gain a higher lifetime value for their customers.

Take the tax business, 75% of the filings are online. The fastest growing product for us is Intuit Online Payroll. Everything is happening in the mobile phone. Our customers preference is that they want data in the cloud, and they want to have proof that it’s secure. They want to, and can get access to multiple devices, anytime and anywhere. This is transforming our customers and their lives.

2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(BS): This is where I’ll give you 3 anchor points:

1. From a social perspective cloud allows a massive base of users and employees to get involved to create the value. I’ll talk about Brainstorm.  Two of our newer employees, Tad and Vlad, identified that we had a problem. Employees had lots of great ideas but they didn’t necessarily go anywhere because people didn’t know about them. So they invented a tool called Brainstorm. It’s a tool for employees to log ideas, comment on ideas, find ideas to work on, and mobilize teams to implement. We now can answer each other’s questions. Brainstorm allows us to collaborate in 60 cities. This used to happen only in a conference room. Since its launch, employee contribution has fueled more than 5,500 ideas which have materialized into nearly 250 new products or features that have been launched in the commercial market.

2. From a mobility point of view, here’s what’s opening up our eyes. Six billion people in the world and two billion have access on the PC but guess what? Five billion are walking around with a phone. This is crossing the digital divide. We’ve got a whole new set of services for people who didn’t have access. For years we’ve had a vision since Scott bought TurboTax – the 10 minute tax return. Now, 60% of Americans can use their iPhone, take a picture of their W-2, and in the 1040 EZ we can pull the info off the picture and pull it into the return. This is SnapTax. Isn’t that amazing? Mobile also allows us to use sensory capability and GPS for helping someone find the right deal. Take a picture of a receipt and it’s loaded in QuickBooks. We now redefine how data is entered for the customer.

3. From a global view, it’s so much easier to take a service to multiple countries and localize the offering to meet a customer’s needs. Cloud enables both social contribution and user contribution. Cloud makes it easier for us to provide services a customer wants. Mobile, tablet, and iPad can easily access the data in the cloud.

Cloud is changing business models, reaching a broader array of customers and enabling them to participate in the process.

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

(BS): Ray, cloud computing is about putting the power of data at the center. Two key components drive the next big thing – privacy and security of that data. You have to trust and earn the trust of the customer to do things that benefit them. Companies like LinkedIn and Facebook are trying to learn how and what the right way to use this kind of information. The first point is ensuring the stewardship of the data.

The second point is how do you use this data to create more customer value? One example is what we’ve done for the QuickBooks franchise- in particular; QuickBooks Online trends for small businesses. A four person florist in Boston can now compare their cost of goods and see whether or not they have a better or worse performance with a similar business in another city. It can be lonely as a small business owner without having someone to talk to. One powerful way to improve customer value is to take the data, aggregate it, and anonymize it. One of the big things we’re focusing on right now is, can we get to a unique and common identity so that we can find all this information for you and we can know who you are and all the different pieces of your life and treat it with the right privacy.

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

More…

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Research Summary: Demystifying Enterprise Gamification For Business

Published on December 7, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Purpose and Intent

Much hype surrounds the topic of gamification. Often seen as a technique to add engagement to existing tasks, projects, marketing campaigns, and initiatives, the term gamification unfortunately lacks the seriousness it deserves. This report seeks to change the point of view and demonstrate where gamification plays a role in the enterprise. More importantly, executives will discover how gamification can drive behavior and outcomes through both monetary and non-monetary incentives in enterprise class settings.

Executive Summary

Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes. Originating from the video game industry, many of these pioneering concepts now play a key role in driving incentive and behavior management for both brands in the consumer world and internal scenarios in the workplace. Enterprise gamification is a user experience (UX) and consumerization of IT (CoIT) trend that will take the market by storm in 2012. Constellation believes that by 2013, more than 50 percent of all social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification component.

In interviews with 55 early adopters of enterprise gamification, Constellation identifies the three core pillars that include measurable action, reputation and incentives. By creating triggers through both monetary and non-monetary incentives among customers, employees, partners, suppliers and other interested parties, organizations can secure sustainable engagement and drive business outcomes such as improved marketing response from external communities, sustained long-term customer loyalty, increased collaboration among internal teams, or enriched onboarding, delivering success with new hires, partners, and customers.

Enterprise gamification requires an application of psychology and behavioral economics to incentivize outcomes. Because enterprise gamification maps closely to human behavior, organizations will want to follow Constellation’s best practices in appealing to the “Seven Deadly Sins” for gamification design.

Research report surfaces leading practices from 55 early adopters

Some highlights of the report include:

  • Details on who’s using gamification across the enterprise
  • The three pillars of enterprise gamification
  • The six elements of sustainable engagement
  • Sustainable behaviors to drive desired business outcomes
  • The Seven Deadly Sins to Optimize Gamification Design
  • The top gamified business processes for the enterprise (see Figure 1)

Figure 1. Marketing, Customer Service and HR Processes Lead in Gamified Processes

More…

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News Analysis: SAP Buys SuccessFactors for $3.4B Signals SAP’s Commitment To Cloud, HCM, and Social

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

SuccessFactors Acquisition Puts SAP In Direct Competition With Workday And Taleo

SAP (NYSE:SAP) announced its $3.4B acquisition of SuccessFactors (NYSE: SFSF) as it seeks to bolster its position in the Cloud and more importantly in the rapidly growing strategic HCM market.  Based in San Mateo, CA, USA, SuccessFactors brings over 15 million subscription users from 3,500 customers in 168 countries.  The company has 1450 employees and has been one of the SaaS/Cloud darlings of the industry.  When completed, SuccessFactors will remain an independent entity renamed, SuccessFactors, an SAP company.  Lars Dalgaard, Founder and CEO, SuccessFactors will lead the cloud business for SAP.  A quick analysis of the news reveals:

  • SAP seeking a comprehensive and complementary HCM solution. SAP believes the combination of SuccessFactors and SAP will create a comprehensive HCM solution, marrying strength in enterprise applications with people-focused cloud applications. Today, SAP serves the market with a comprehensive and international Core HR and payroll.  Other on-premise offerings include talent management, workforce analytics, and shared services delivery. Key offerings from SuccessFactors include areas such as talent management, recruiting management, goal management, performance reviews, and business execution.  Further, SAP believes the core SFSF offerings will be an attractive to more than 500 million employees of SAP customers .  SAP has 15,000 HCM deployments (not customers) that could benefit from one-stop shopping.

    Point of View (POV):     While the core offerings provided a solid approach, these applications remained in the systems of transaction world and lacked many of the newer requirements for systems of engagement.  In fact, many customers left SAP to go to SuccessFactors to accelerate innovation in the talent space. The rise of Taleo, Workday, and Ultimate Software comes from the lack of general innovation in the HCM space by legacy vendors such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP.  Cloud computing provided the opportunity to deliver rapid innovation to customers.  Consequently, existing customers will welcome the move while best of breed purists will have to overcome the surprise and determine how innovative they expect SAP to become in HCM.
  • SuccessFactors’ provides SAP with massive cross-sell opportunities. SAP believes the core SFSF offerings will be an attractive to more than 500 million employees of SAP customers .  SAP has 15,000 HCM deployments (not customers) that could potentially go for one-stop shopping from SAP.

    Point of View (POV):     SAP sees the acquisition as a great cross-sell opportunity for other cloud apps and analytics.  Other opportunities include CRM, Collaboration, Travel, and Procurement in the cloud.  In the past two years, Success Factors has made the shift to focus on business performance execution and provides a real time decision making platform.  While customers can acquire a solution from one vendor, the integration of the various cloud platforms may prove to be a challenge.  However, from a financial play, Co-CEO, Bill McDermott sees this as an easy way to meet his 2015 target of €20billion and move towards the 35% margin he seeks to bring shareholders.

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Vendor Event: Workday Predict And Prepare 2011

Published on by R "Ray" Wang

Title: Workday Predict And Prepare 2011
Start Date: 2011-12-07  11:00 am PST
End Date: 2011-12-07   12:00 pm PST
Location: Webinar Link

For the fourth year in a row, join the country’s top IT, HR and Talent Management analysts and consultants for their predictions of next year’s critical trends, plus their advice on how you should prepare for them.
Their predictions include

  • SaaS becomes mainstream, and IT’s job becomes integrations
  • Companies will “rip and replace” legacy systems even faster than before
  • Self-service will become social, mobile and more gamified
  • Talent Management as a separate software category will disappear
  • Mobile will soon become employees’ first contact with enterprise software
  • Companies will do Master Data clean up in order to do Analytics

    • Sponsored by Workday, Predict and Prepare features Knowledge Infusion CEO Jason Averbook, HR technology guru Naomi Lee Bloom, and R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO of Constellation Research.

    Their roundtable is moderated by Bill Kutik, host of The Bill Kutik Radio Show® and Firing Line with Bill Kutik, technology columnist for Human Resource Executive® and co-chair of the magazine’s 15th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition.

    Your questions will be addressed throughout the discussion.

    Register here!

    Disclosure

    Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

    Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

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    Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Oscar Rodriguez, Extreme Networks

    Published on September 15, 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.

    Oscar Rodriguez, CEO of Extreme Networks


    Biography

    Oscar Rodriguez has served as President and CEO of Extreme Networks® since August 2010, providing strategic leadership for the company as it delivers high-performance Ethernet network solutions and services to enterprises, data center hosting companies and carriers. Oscar is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of executive leadership experience spanning sales, marketing and operations.

    Prior to Extreme Networks, Oscar served as the CEO of Movius Interactive Corporation, a messaging, collaboration and mobile media solutions company. Prior to Movius, he served as Chief Marketing Officer for Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise Business Group. Prior to that, he served as CEO and President of Riverstone Networks, a network company focused on Metro Ethernet switching. Oscar also served as President of both the Enterprise Solutions division and the Intelligent Internet division at Nortel Networks. Oscar serves on the Board of Directors for EXAR Corporation, a Silicon Valley semiconductor company.

    Oscar is on the Dean’s Board of Advisors for the College of Engineering at the University of Central Florida. He holds a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Central Florida, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    The Interview

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

    Oscar Rodriguez (OR): I’ve been in the network and computing industry for 25 years, and in my view, prior to the cloud, you had to buy all the hardware yourself, roll things up into the server, build your own data center, and figure out disaster recovery. Then you had to add your own capex and operating budget, staff up the team, and provision for more capacity. It’s insane. The cloud removes all these headaches.

    Moreover, a large cloud provider can provide cost savings and lets a service provider amortize many tenants over months. Like traditional service providers in telecom, it’ll be very inexpensive for the large and medium enterprise to get extra network capacity in peak times. Not only do you get this with the cloud, but you also get opportunities to own less and turn capex to opex. You also limit the types of experts you need to have on staff. We’re turning the world upside down!

    2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?

    (OR): What is disruptive about the cloud is the close linkage it has with today’s increasingly mobile world. Take Netflix video being 49% of Internet traffic, delivered either to TVs over wireless or a laptop by someone at an airport. There is Apple iCloud too. All this is evidence that Computing is going out in the cloud. Users at the same time are mobile and can access their information and entertainment more flexibly.

    What all this means is the capability to truly get access to information no matter where you are, with security considered. In the past you had to put a VPN in place and if you ran off the cell phone’s VPN browser, it was cumbersome. This limited users as to how, when, and where their information was accessible. Most of the time, the constraints were based on the type of device you were carrying. The client side of client/server app created limitations.

    However, the Cloud is pretty much available wherever you are. You only need a broadband connection, wired or wireless. Cloud services, such as Virtual Desktop (VDI), are turned on its head. Adding to it, iPads and competing tablets are on the market and have introduced a whole new breed of apps, opening even more windows of opportunity.

    What it means is that it doesn’t matter if you have personal or business devices. You can enable a personal device to access networks and services with security and full control of the IT department. You don’t dictate the device anymore, but you dictate the environment. The result is that all these things now make us more mobile.

    When you look at where we are at Extreme Networks with our vision, we promote a world where mobility is more than just wireless. The network should be a key part of where people can move around. For instance, in the consumer space, you could be on vacation but easily access your work network with your iPad. Professional and consumer life allows for this blending. With the cloud, blending doesn’t mean you are tethered by a device.

    The improved economics enable cloud services to amortize infrastructure over many users, with consumer devices accessing the enterprise, end-users owning the device as ‘prosumers,’ and the ability to provide these services regardless of device, is where we’ve evolved to. Now users can access corporate resources as they need to and they can use a collection of cloud services coming about as well.

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

    (OR): I think this is fundamentally a disruptive situation. With Cloud computing, Disaster Recovery of information and resources that are easily available to consumers is really the next big thing.

    I’m old enough to have used 3730 terminals and punch cards. Those were captive resources back then. You basically could only run a few applications. Apps were dictated by infrastructure ownership. A new service like iCloud is the tip of the iceberg.

    With the network, we are enabling the content provider, or the business provider, access to information and services. Disaster Recovery like this usually sounds like an enterprise business thing, but imagine that in a disaster, such as the recent hurricane in New York, your personal, legal, and financial information can be provided post-disaster very easily and predictably.

    The Cloud reinvents how people store their information and where it’s available to them, and you can make sure it’s secure and safe.

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

    (OR): Extreme Networks is an infrastructure vendor. We really make the Cloud happen because we create the data and communications networks. This is our 15th year as a company and we’ve been public over 10 years. The space is catching up to what we are espousing – it’s really collapsing everything into Ethernet and IP. And the virtualized environment needs a virtualized network.

    Today we create much faster networks addressing a range of customers, from the more specialized facilities such as cloud hosting companies all the way to really large data centers of the enterprise. Just as the cloud is more efficient, our network uses less people to operate it due to simplicity. We make sure the network is intelligent, and that it adjusts itself automatically, either inside a cloud data center, or in multiple data centers.

    We make sure the customer has a network fabric that allows for interoperability, and that is open and provides control and visibility as virtual machines are moving from one data server to another. This is all in lockstep with what our end-users are demanding to improve their networks in the face of cloud computing.

    Many are coming to watch videos on the cloud. More and more virtual machines are being served. As these are served up, the network has to react and adjust itself on its own. It needs to be automatic, virtualized, and also to have the physical characteristics. Extreme Networks enables the first two.

    5. Where do you see technology convergence with Cloud?

    (OR): Virtualization, with storage and switching, is an important inflection point. Before HyperV, we had banks of servers storing data, but very inefficiently. You almost grew customers with every data center. Now with the virtualized cloud model, you can balance CPU cycles. Storage is virtualized so every server is working harder.

    The other inflection point is mobility. It changes how we work. We sell network gear, and we know people are doing this. No longer do we just have plug in wired ports. Mobility is about you being able to have anywhere access to information. We see an environment where we have to make mobility seamless. The network should recognize the users and help them with accessing resources regardless of how they connect. When the network recognizes one person, it recognizes each one of us with different attributes and levels of access.

    Just as importantly, our vision includes that the network, from the edge to the data center, through features like QoS, bandwidth shaping, and policy, should know what your preferences and needs are for mobility and cloud services. Security and access to services will all go with a user into the cloud no matter where you are on the planet.

    6. if you weren’t focused on Cloud Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?

    (OR): I think one of the things that’s a coming disruptor is the concept of machines becoming aware – the Internet of Things (IOT). Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication will take off. There are more machines than humans. Smart grid is a subset of this. Eventually in the consumer space, this type of communication and volume in network connectivity will outstrip what’s happening today. Even though it’s still nascent, we should pay attention to it.

    7. What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

    (OR): I have to say the Star Trek Transporter.   Not only do you avoid the security line, it’s disruptive on travel.

    Your POV

    What do you think? Got a question for Oscar?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

    Additional interviews will be added and updated!  To be considered for the series, please reach out to Elaine (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

    Reprints

    Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

    Disclosure

    Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, see the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

    Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

     

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    Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Sudhakar “Rama” Ramakrishna, Polycom

    Published on September 14, 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.

    Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Unified Communications Solutions, and Chief Development Officer, Polycom

    Biography

    Ramakrishna joined Polycom in 2010 as senior vice president and general manager of unified communications solutions, and chief development officer. Ramakrishna was promoted to executive vice president in February 2011. He is responsible for defining and delivering best in class unified communication products and solutions and driving revenue growth and profitability.

    Ramakrishna brings a wealth of strategy and execution experience to Polycom. Before Polycom, Ramakrishna was Corporate VP and GM for Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations at Motorola. Ramakrishna was instrumental in scaling the 4G (WiMAX and LTE) and Software business, and led large multi-function teams of more than 2300 employees, and businesses across the globe. Previously, Ramakrishna held senior management roles at Stoke Networks, 3Com, U.S. Robotics and other companies.

    Ramakrishna has extensive experience working with enterprise and carrier/operator customers. His areas of technology focus include wireless, MoIP/IP telephony, data networking, security, and IP convergence-related technologies and services. Ramakrishna has significant experience in organization development, strategic planning and execution, incubating and scaling new businesses, and was involved in strategic partnerships with Huawei, Siemens, and several mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

    Ramakrishna earned a Master’s of Science degree in Computer Science from Kansas State University. He received his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Ramakrishna holds and has filed several patents in the areas of IP telephony, soft switching and load balancing.

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

    Sudhakar “Rama” Ramakrishna (SR): The cloud helps separates the core from the chore. Customers for whom IT is not their core business can save enormous time, energy, and resources by leveraging Cloud based infrastructure and solutions. With cloud computing becoming more and more accessible, it allows enterprises to divest themselves from the infrastructure build outs and focus on what they do best; i.e., their core business. By freeing up precious resources, customers can invest more effectively in their core business and drive improved business results and growth.

    2.  What makes cloud computing disruptive?

    (SR): The key disruptions come from two areas: 1) The superior economics and 2) The velocity of innovation and application deployment. The underpinnings of cloud computing are not new. However, this is now the right time to make it happen. Why? Bandwidth is faster, cheaper and more ubiquitous AND the security issues and barriers to adoption have been eliminated. Companies are leveraging “Cloud Platforms” to develop innovative applications in a variety of fields in a scalable, secure, and economic fashion.

    Cloud based solutions are also accelerating the adoption of Unified Communications (UC). Our customers are eager to deploy UC in the cloud. Service providers can drive and monetize assets more effectively in the cloud.

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

    (SR): Cloud will evolve to include more applications and create more effective ways for people to communicate, collaborate, and be productive – all while leveraging superior economies of scale. Cloud solutions can be deployed in a variety of configurations – Private, Public, and Hybrid. In addition to delivery models in the cloud, companies will evolve in how they adopt the cloud. We can expect better B2B and B2B communications where Cloud solutions are delivered to enable Unified Communications in a secure, scalable, interoperable, and cost effective manner. I also believe that Cloud computing platforms will foster a new breed of application developers that work across organization and geographic boundaries to greatly increase the speed of innovation and bring new services to market.

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

    (SR): As we address the needs of new segments such as SMB, we are enabling cloud through service provider partners. Our Polycom RealPresence Platform supports carrier-grade UC with the reliability, universal bridging, and massive scalability required for cloud-delivery. This platform delivers the industry’s only universal bridging software that supports up to 75,000 device registrations and 25,000 concurrent sessions. This platform will enable the roll-out of ‘video-as-a-service’ offerings to SMB and enterprise customers.

    We are also focused on driving interoperability as service providers roll out video cloud services. In June, we announced with 14 major service providers – including Verizon, AT&T, Airtel, Telefonica, and BT – the Open Visual Communications Consortium, to bring together a diverse set of architectures and standards. We can then leverage these standards to improve integration and interoperability to avoid technology islands, and make video conferencing as easy as making a phone call, across all devices and networks. This will drive significant adoption and help us drive faster innovation. We are serving as the catalyst that brings all of these service providers together. How quickly we can accomplish this is a testament to the importance and impact of the cloud. Polycom and the OVCC organization expect to begin bringing open video exchange cloud services to market as early as mid-2012.

    5.  Where do you see technology convergence with Cloud?

    (SR): Ray, I see tremendous possibilities. The web and various versions of mobile technologies will be more ubiquitous. One of our recent innovations is to integrate our UC applications to a wide range of mobile devices. We are actively serving the need for users to Bring Their Own Devices (BYOD) to enterprise settings – CIOs are increasingly enabling applications on devices of their users’ choice, which drives improved user satisfaction, lowered costs and greater productivity! Via our device and cloud innovations, we are extending the boundaries of the enterprise and giving users more choices to communicate, collaborate, and be more productive regardless of their location! Our RealPresence Platform, which is Cloud ready, enables us to do so.

    6.  If you weren’t focused on Cloud Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?

    (SR): Ray, if I were not working in the technology field, I’d be studying real time behavioral economics. In an increasingly converged world where there is almost no information asymmetry, I’ve been wondering how macro and micro economic theories change and how they impact human behavior. In this context, how might traditional economics change or be relevant? What do we need to learn and do to make effective decisions in this world?

    7.  What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

    (SR): Teleportation of course. Like others, I am a big Star Trek fan. I grew up watching and reading about StarTrek. It’s hard not to like any of the gadgets from the PADD (personal access display device) to the communicator. Just think of the impact – taking an idea and making it real, more importantly, taking an idea that is fictional and making it real!!

    Your POV

    What do you think? Got a question for Rama?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

    Additional interviews will be added and updated!  To be considered for the series, please reach out to Elaine (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

    Reprints

    Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

    Disclosure

    Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, see the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

    Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Parker Harris, Salesforce.com

    Published on August 29, 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.

    Parker Harris, Co-Founder and Executive VP of Technology


    Biography

    Parker Harris founded salesforce.com along with Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez in the spring of 1999. As executive vice president, Harris oversees the development of all software for salesforce.com.

    Prior to founding salesforce.com, Harris developed Web application and salesforce automation expertise at Left Coast Software, a private consulting company he co-founded, as well as at Metropolis software, an early pioneer in field sales force automation subsequently acquired by Clarify.

    He graduated from Middlebury College with a bachelor’s degree in English literature.

    The Interview

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

    Parker Harris (PH): If you think back to classic customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) way back when, the software was designed for top down and nearer to the organizations you were selling to.  They’d have SFA and management software.  Executives would buy SFA to drive down process and gain some visibility.

    Social computing is doing what agile methodology is doing to our process – it’s breaking down our visibility.  By flattening time and space,  social computing and business is unlocking credible potential within business.  For example, individuals and organizations that weren’t connected before are now connected together.   This changes how people work, makes people more productive, and changes the relationship of the org with the customer.

    2. What makes social computing disruptive?

    (PH): The technology ignores the hierarchy of the corporation.  Social ignores the classic relationship of the customer with corporation.  Customer is now buying directly from the corporation and going to them for help and support or being marketed to.  Instead it’s happening from a number of different angles.  People are being marketed to for games in their interactions with friends from FaceBook.  Those trying to get support for their iPhones don’t’ necessary trust their carriers so they ask their friends for help.

    As a company, we see the consumerization of the world happen.  These disruptive technologies start in the consumer space.  Amazon was disruptive to eCommerce.  We looked at that model and said how can that happen to business.  Facebook has changed how people interact with each other.  In the busienss world, they are changing how they are working with each other and the customer.  This is quite disruptive.  Social challenges classical work structures and the hierarchies of management.  Social challenges the decision making structure and challenges the classic customer relationship chains and how they work.  We are in the middle of that revolution.  We are building technology to keep up with what’s happening in the world.  It’s transforming the way people are working.  We’re bringing the enterprise to the world.

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

    (PH): The next big thing is starting with how a company connects its employees to each other.  The goal – make them more effective at their work.  There is both a portal approach and a community solution.  On the community level, you are connecting external people to your company.  Just as I see the firewalls in a company go away, the idea that there is some wall between your company and the rest of the world is slowly disappearing.  This will happen with the pervasiveness of social.

    As you put it, individuals are becoming more important. Individuals will be working with colleagues both inside and outside of their company.  We bring different social bonds with each context of our engagement.  All of the hand offs today are coarse but in the future, this will feel like a fluid relationship.  It won’t feel like you are shifting gears between companies and shifting into the consumer place from where social is going. Talking to a friend about dinner, you already shift between these worlds.

    What’s big?  Facebook is doing some of this already.  I talked to David Sacks on what Yammer is doing. They are supporting OpenGraph.  You’ll start to see this giant web and all the different players playing in it.  Eventually this will become an open world or open system.  As a result,  not any one company or system or technology will win.

    Keep in mind, the Internet was born as an open standard and started from the military.  How do we get new things like this that are open where everyone adopts.  The big thing for me is openness and the connective tissue being created as walls are going down.  Walls to your house, company, school, and new groups are forming.  Why can’t I create a social group and bring you into that when I’m selling. If I had a lawyer involved and we were acquiring a company, why can’t we get them all involved and share things.  This fluid nature of groups is what excites me.

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

    More…

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