Issue seven of The Broker continues to explore the latest moves in the market, and updates from our Partners.
Signature News on Competitor Alliances
The Softlyze team had a great time, with clients and partners, at the Gartner IT Sourcing, Procurement, Vendor & Asset Management Summit 2019, in Dallas, earlier this month.
During a session titled How Procurement Can Better Align With Sourcing and Vendor Management, Matt Corsi with Gartner said, “Are you buying too much? Which you probably are.” He reiterated that Asset, and Vendor Management should support Sourcing, specifically for requirements gathering.
During the session titled The Rise of the Digital Natives: Generation S and Their Impact on YOU, Victoria Barber with Snow Software said to “support, and enable people in their day to day life.” She described how the number of IoT devices, and the volume of data from these devices is growing exponentially, so how is all this managed, and how does this effect the IT architecture? She also illustrated how generation S will question traditional procurement, as bureaucratic.
Partner Updates
Workday’s Acquisition of Adaptive Insights Exceeds Expectations
In acquiring Adaptive Insights, Workday has seen significant success on multiple levels. The planning system is attractive to CFOs, including companies like Airbus and AstraZeneca. Most of the over 4,000 Adaptive customers were using it before the acquisition, adding to Workday’s 3,000 customers for HR, and 700 for Financials. With the attractiveness of cloud-based business planning, Adaptive is key in attracting new clients for Workday, who may begin with planning services and then expand to HR and financial, and in expanding current HR and financial customers to include planning. Expectations in the success of Adaptive Insights’ acquisition for CEO Aneel Bhusri, cofounder Dave Duffield, and CEO Tom Bogan were exceeded, and predictive momentum is perceived positively.
Microsoft In First Place, but for How Long?
3-5 years ago, there was little dispute to the market dominance of Amazon Web Services continuing for decades. Although, Microsoft’s enterprise cloud is projected to exceed $47 billion for their 2019 fiscal year. There might be a tendency to expect Microsoft’s dominance, as AWS was expected. Could another cloud leader overtake first place in the near future? With the acquisition of Red Hat, IBM is expected to reach $21 billion in revenue, while SAS has enjoyed growth rates of around 40%. Google’s CEO Thomas Kurian is driving a customer-centric vision which shows potential in enterprise customer respect, go-to market capabilities, and business customer credibility.
*Cloud revenue predictions according to Bob Evans, Cloud Wars
Customer Experience, Beyond Just Products
Playing an influential role in cloud services, companies are employing tactics to convey their use in customer’s success, as a catalyst for prime positioning in the transformative future. One way to do this is describing each product, and the successes experience by customers. This approach might appeal to financial analyst, although describing vision is much more effective when appealing to customers wanting an edge in the coming years. Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff, and Keith Block do this by saying, “with Customer 360, we’ve never been better positioned for the future.” While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes the company’s vision in serving it’s customers as “creating new businesses with them, innovating with them, and earning their trust”.
At a Glance
HPE - Mining data might best be approached with a new perspective. Instead of building a model to test, big data can be analyzed via algorithm discovery. AI detects patterns, and then runs tests, which produce results that may, or may not match known outcomes. The idea is to discover what might not even be known, as something unknown. This is just one example of the many new uses for AI, which is expected to increase the global economy by $15.7 trillion, according to a PxC study. This boost will come by ways of new jobs, more consumption, higher inventory capacity, and broader acceptance. There are a few concerns, mainly security, and finding and keeping AI experts. Safer ways to analyze quality data can bring confident insight into how best a company improves their customers’ experience.
Dell - Jennifer Felch is Dell’s new Chief Digital Officer, which combines the roles of CIO and change agent for digital transformation. About her vision, she says, “As we drive our strategy from the perspective of the customer experience and operational excellence, I’m confident we have the right people, processes and technology to level up our digital transformation and improve the way we work.”
Symantec - Symantec’s white paper, released July 2019, reported a 400% increase in ransom ware attacks, averaging 50 enterprises each month. File-based ransomware barriers and software updates are a start, but the only defense is a backup and restore procedure. It’s best to have this plan in place before an attack, when detecting the ransomware before the encryption begins can only happen with advanced monitoring and alerting.
Imagicle - Imagicle Cloud Licensing was released this summer, 2019. In setting up a Smart Account, customers can manage all their Imagicle licenses from the Imagicle serverless cloud, allowing “easy activation, a real-time view of activities, and centralized management”.
Announcing New Partners
Adobe
Malware Bytes
White Canyon
Forms on Fire
DeviceMagic
Buffalo
Carahsoft - Technology Distributor
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