Tag: enterprise

Let’s Talk About Me | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

American country music artist Toby Keith’s hit song “I Want to talk about me” reminds me of a phenomenon in today’s services world — too many providers’ conversations with customers are unproductive.

Service providers are very eager to grow their revenue in their existing accounts. As the market matures, this is clearly the fastest, less costly way to grow. Customers often ask their providers to demonstrate that they can bring innovation. The problem is the provider comes back with products. That approach doesn’t align with the customer’s expectations. Clients think: “Let’s talk about me and my issues, not you and your products. Help me with my issues.”

As anyone in a marriage knows, you have to listen to the spouse’s whole day to understand what the issues are. Clients typically are not able or willing to succinctly articulate their needs. They will talk to providers about what they’re struggling with and what’s going on in their business. Out of that knowledge come issues they’re working on or potential issues they want to work on.

It’s rare that customers will have thought something through to the extent that they will say: “I want to do this” or “here’s how I want to do that.” A clear articulation of the customer’s needs and issues is particularly rare for the empowered, senior individuals.

Service providers need to engage their customers in broad discussions and at multiple levels (junior, mid-level management and senior management). And out of those discussions comes a picture of the issues and needs that they are working on or need to work on. Then the provider can talk to the client about those issues.

That talk-about-me conversation will be productive and may lead to work. And the client will feel satisfied that the provider did not “sell” something to them but, rather, helped them on their agenda.


Photo credit: Marc Wathieu

Cloud Moves | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Moving work from an enterprise data center to the cloud is not a lift-and-shift transaction. Cloud moves involve reengineering processes. The good news is that providers are emerging with innovative solutions for deploying to the cloud. We’re watching their progress, as we believe they will disrupt the traditional players in the services market.

I blogged before about CSS Corp Cloud Services’ solution for cloud migration. Redwood Software and its RunMyJobs platform is another proven automated cloud migration solution. Redwood’s solution includes automation consultants who are skilled in reengineering high-value processes and packaging them for cloud migration through Redwood’s RunMyJobs platform. The solution is especially effective for problematic legacy applications.

Meeting enterprise needs

Both of these specialist firms provide interesting capabilities for moving production opportunities to the cloud with ease. They have a demonstrated and growing track record of successfully deploying applications into the cloud in a way that meets the robust security compliance, performance and resilience requirements of sophisticated large enterprises.

The impending disruptive nature of RunMyJobs and other such automated cloud migration technologies raises some hard questions about traditional service providers’ capabilities.

All I Need to Know Is Men Are Stupid And Women Are Crazy | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Comedian George Carlin commented that men are stupid and women are crazy — and that the reason that women are crazy is that men are stupid. My observation is that it’s a strikingly similar dynamic to what’s occurring in large enterprises’ spend decisions in the global services market today.

Business stakeholders are “stupid.” They’re off doing their own thing, making snap decisions, stringing together solutions with half-tested as-a-service offerings and believing those solutions will scale up to meet enterprise production needs.

CIOs are “crazy.” They’re tearing their hair out, so to speak, in frustration over the business stakeholders’ actions. They try to engage business stakeholders in conversations, but the biz folks don’t have time for that. Furthermore, the CIOs’ funding has been taken away and given to the business stakeholders.

There is no time to plan, so CIOs must show a complete offering rather than going through a meticulous planning process. And CIOs are told they are accountable for security and compliance, yet they are not given the ability to shape the new solutions going in place. The situation is turning them into crazy people.

Why they talk past each other

CIOs and business stakeholders march to different drums, thus frustrating each other to the point of being stupid or crazy.

But in a way it makes perfect sense since both operate in their own world. And neither perspective is irrelevant. It’s just that the perspectives and operational goals differ in those two worlds, so they misunderstand each other. The business units misunderstand the CIO, and the CIO misunderstands the business units. In the words of Winston Churchill, they are two nations divided by a single language. They both talk technology, but they talk past each other because they come from completely different places.

Carlin’s opinion is that as long as men are stupid, women will be crazy. My opinion: As long as business stakeholders focus on business needs that get met in immediate gratification through SaaS and proofs of concept, the CIOs will be crazy. Look out for some very complicated discussions when it comes to funding and scaling the SaaS and proofs of concept across the enterprise.

Will Cloud Kill The CIO? Survey Says No | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the facts from hype in enterprise cloud adoption. This is why Everest Group and Cloud Connect continue to conduct our annual joint survey to understand why and how enterprises are migrating to the cloud, and what they are migrating to the cloud. Check out my blog on InformationWeek for more findings on the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey. Here’s an excerpt:

If supermarket tabloids covered enterprise cloud adoption, their headlines would scream “The CIO is Dead,” “Security Concerns are Old News,” and “Cloud Makes Consumption Easy—No External Help Required.” And as we perused these headlines in the checkout line, we would wonder how much truth lay behind the hype.

To distill fact from fiction, the Everest Group launched the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey in 2012, in conjunction with Cloud Connect and UBM TechWeb. We have just completed the third annual survey of enterprises and vendors and will share the results in Las Vegas on Monday, March 31, at Cloud Connect Summit, co-located with Interop.

Read more on InformationWeek

You can also download the full survey summary report here.

Enterprise Mobile Apps – Are We Done? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

The state of today’s enterprise mobile apps industry is akin to the dark side of a jungle: a dense forest and tangled vegetation, inhabited by hundreds of largely unfamiliar animals and plants that rely on its delicate ecosystem to survive, perhaps to thrive. This is creating frustration among stakeholders including the CIO, CFO, CMO, and CEO, who believe they might have over-invested in mobility initiatives.

However, this is far from the truth. Mobile apps have a long way to go in enterprise. Yet, to avoid the earlier pitfalls, enterprises and technology providers need to be fully aware of the following dangers in the mobile apps jungle:

  1. Business process transformation: Few enterprises or technology providers even consider that enforcing mobile access to an existing business process may be a poor idea. Making the end-user consume the same business process albeit through a different, perhaps “cooler,” app is not true mobility. User interest will not last if the business process is itself unsuitable for mobile. At the same time, not all business processes require this change. Enterprises must be selective in changing business processes while undertaking the mobility journey. Consultants, vendors, and others with vested interests will always extol the virtue of business process transformation for mobility, but enterprises should be very wary of this aggressive spiel.

  2. Line of business collaboration: In their desire to be the first movers, many line of business managers are creating all kinds of mobile apps with little collaboration with other business units. Given the increasing influence of non-CIO budget centers to approve technology funding, the tried and tested processes of application development are being compromised under a convenient, self-pleasing argument that mobile apps do not require a structured or “traditional” approach.

    Will this ad-hoc development blow up in our faces? I think it will. Can we prevent this? Unfortunately not. Business users are happy getting the needed application functionality on mobile devices, yet no one is thinking about the mobile application lifecycle. A long-term technology adoption framework is an unthinkable thought for these budget owners. They do not believe collaboration is their mandate or their responsibility. Their KPIs are linked to business outcomes, not to channelizing or seamlessly introducing mobile technology, and thus they will rarely ever have an incentive to create the needed structure.

  3. Cost of mobility: Enterprises and technology providers need to understand that while business agility, flexibility, and access is all good, the cost of these should not outweigh the rewards. Therefore, enterprise mobility should be viewed in its entirety to understand whether the incremental business has come at a greater cost of management and complexity. Yet the existing mechanisms across enterprises, where different unconnected lines of businesses are creating their noodly soups of mobile apps, does not engender great confidence that they will take a view of the broader picture any time soon.

  4. Mobility governance: It is fashionable these days to ignore any advice from someone who wants to instill structure or a governance model on enterprise mobility. Governance is perceived as “anti-growth” and “uncool.” Given this perception, few technology managers, despite their strong opinions, express any sentiments against the ad-hoc enterprise mobile strategy. This is a recipe for disaster.

So what can enterprises do to quash the mobile apps jungle’s beastly flora and fauna?

  1. Be selective about changing/transforming the underlying business process while mapping to mobile apps
  2. Create an environment that incentivizes lines of businesses to collaborate rather than compete in creating the next “cool” mobile app
  3. Adopt a lifecycle management approach to mobile apps
  4. Balance the growth objectives with the cost implications of enterprise mobility
  5. Incorporate an “eagle eye” to govern mobility projects

If you are undertaking an enterprise mobile application initiative and want to share your experiences and perspectives, please comment below or reach out to me directly at [email protected].

Enterprise Cloud Adoption: 5 Hard Truths | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

Originally posted on InformationWeek


Last fall I had the honor of sitting on the selection committee for the inaugural ICE (Innovation in Cloud for Enterprise) Awards, sponsored by the Cloud Connect show and Everest Group. The experience taught me how large enterprises are adopting cloud computing in ways that are often compelling, sometimes surprising, and occasionally breathtaking.

The winner, Revlon, Inc., presented an impressive case for how it leverages cloud to achieve organizational transformation that boosts competitiveness and consumer wallet share.

As impressive as each individual entries was, there were five recurring themes that emerged across the enterprise cloud adoption stories we read. While certainly not scientific, they reflect what enterprises themselves report as important factors in the success of their cloud deployments.

1. Identify a compelling reason to step out of the comfort zone.
We’ve read about the importance of senior management buy-in to achieve success in cloud transformation. But what we found in the award entry submissions is that the truth is even starker: Senior management must believe that cloud adoption is critical to organizational survival.

The high-level driver might be one of the ethereal themes we read about in the tech press: Product or service differentiation, moving to market faster with new services, or getting closer to the customer through big data analysis. However, the visceral driver is always primal: We do this or we’re going to suffer at the hands of our competitors.

Read more on InformationWeek

Big Data Analytics in 2014: 5 Things That Won’t Happen | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

While talking about a new year’s next cool thing or development is a thoroughly enjoyable ritual, discussing what will not change provides valuable lessons for technology adoption strategy and investment planning, and highlights potential future disruptions.

So what are the five things that will remain more or less the same in 2014 for big data analytics?

  1. Hadoop will NOT REPLACE ETL: The nine-year old platform has achieved great traction, and its mindshare has significantly increased. Well-known analytics providers such as Cloudera, Hortonworks, and MapR have supported it for a couple of years, and even the big boys such as IBM and Pivotal have embraced it. However, Hadoop’s proponents are positioning it as a panacea for all the ills of big data. The antagonists are equally up to the task, denouncing it as one of the important, yet small, pieces of the puzzle. Most Hadoop proponents confuse ETL as an “activity,” rather than a “process.” The way in which ETL is performed in a Hadoop framework set-up may differ, but it does not make ETL redundant or replaceable.

  2. Analytics will still be UNDEMOCRATIC: Innovative data analysis and visualization technology players such as Tableau, QlikView, Alteryx, and Tibco (Spotfire) have gained traction as “end user” friendly products. And mega providers such as SAP have increased their efforts in this direction (e.g., rebranding SAP Visual Intelligence as SAP Lumira). However, despite significant efforts to “consumerize” big data analysis and move the power out of the ivory towers of data scientists, 2014 will witness only incremental changes in this regard. 

  3. Big Data will still be a PROJECT: Organizations always pilot a new technology before they put it into mainstream production. However, this attitude defeats the purpose of big data analytics. To gain real advantage from the deluge of data, companies must engrain a big data mindset into their DNA, rather than treating it as a silo “project.” Will 2014 see organizations jettisoning their age-old habits to wholeheartedly adopt big data analytics? Not according to my market conversations.

  4. Real talent will be TOUGH to find: Every technology transformation comes with “talent imposters,” and organizations desperate for talent will hire some of these and then repent later. Unfortunately, most of the existing data warehousing and business intelligence analysts masquerade themselves as “big data talent.” And the mushrooming of big data certifications and aggressive resume fabrication will not make organizations’ hiring task any easier in 2014.

  5. Integration will be a CHALLENGE: Technology providers such as Attunity, Dell Boomi, Talend, and Informatica have created multiple solutions to integrate disparate data sources for a consistent analysis framework. Most of these solutions work with data sources such as Amazon Redshift, IBM PureData System for Analytics (Netezza), HP Vertica, SAP HANA, and Teradata. However, organizations continue to face challenges in seamlessly integrating these, and are thus unable to extract meaningful value from their big data analytics engagements. While we’ll see major improvement in this area in 2014, a world in which different data sources are seamlessly integrated and analyzed will still be a mirage.

With cloud-based data management, modeling, and analytics disrupting the landscape, coupled with the rise of in-memory computing, the big data market will continue to surprise: we’ll see technology providers entering “unknown” domains, competing with their partners, and even cannibalizing existing offerings.

What are your takes on big data analytics in 2014 and beyond?

Reflections on Impacts on the Global Services Industry in 2013 | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

It’s the time of year when we turn our attention to reflecting on what happened over the the past 12 months and weigh the significance of the year’s events. I think we can showcase 2013 in five primary aspects.

1. Market growth

First let’s think about the market itself. We began the year expecting more robust growth, but I was disappointed in the first two quarters. The developing markets did not sustain their level of growth as in previous years, so we saw a drop-off in the developing markets space.

However, the market has gotten stronger over the year. So taken as a whole, I think it’s disappointing in light of our expectations, but we certainly are finishing with growing momentum. We’re seeing signs of growth in the United States, Canada, UK, Germany and the Nordics.

Net-net, 2013 brought a modestly positive level of growth but didn’t meet expectations.

2. Changing of the guard

This year the differences among the Indian heritage firms emerged more distinctly.

  • Cognizant and TCS are setting a torrid growth pace.
  • We have seen the rebound of the smaller firms such as Virtusa and Syntel outperform even Cognizant and TCS.
  • HCL doubled down on infrastructure and is preparing to try to accelerate its BPO and apps offerings.
  • TCS seems to have made its growth and platform plan work.
  • Infosys is going back to its roots in labor arbitrage.
  • On the MNC side, IBM made strides to close the gap that Accenture had opened up in the transformation space. Big Blue made a commitment to increase its consulting and transformation expertise.
  • We also saw the rise of the Big Four and significant steps forward by the audit-related consulting and integration practices. The largest of the four, Deloitte, is playing an increasingly prominent role in major transformation. E&Y and PwC are taking steps to join them with PwC buying Booz Allen consulting and E&Y coming out with an audacious growth plan to get to $51 billion by 2020.

Due to these significant differences in both growth and product offerings, the industry players are no longer moving in lock-step.

Furthermore, the industry has almost uniformly taken an increased interest in building industry-oriented offers and verticals and has shifted down that path.

3. Acquisitions

It has been a fairly quiet year for major acquisitions. Although there seems to be plenty of interest in inorganic growth, 2013 did not show big movements in that regard.

4. Impact of cloud

In the past 12 months we saw central enterprise organizations, CIO, CTO and shared service organizations taking tangible steps to embrace the cloud or next-gen models. Although that has had a very modest impact on revenue, it’s clear that they have moved from a “watch” to a “drive” posture. Where previously cloud was almost the exclusive providence of the business stakeholder units, 2013 showed that the enterprise is prepared to take a more active role in those decisions.

Although cloud had some modest impact on the industry in terms of growth, it foreshadows significant changes in the future.

5. Immigration and H-1B visa reform 

Immigration reform and its associated H-1B visa reform raised its head and had a bigger impact than we anticipated. Service providers found that it was harder to move talent around globally. It became more difficult to get U.S. visas; and in the iGate-Royal Bank situation it became harder to get visas into Canada. Certainly the thresholds and scrutiny were raised around talent entering the UK and Europe.

The year brought the rising prospect of structural changes to immigration legislation; if enacted in the U.S., Canada and Europe, it would further complicate the free movement of labor. The net result is that it would not destroy the labor arbitrage model, but it would make it more expensive and lower the profit margins for some providers.

There is uncertainty and potential risk around the law, if enacted by Congress, raising further barriers for the movement of talent. Already we have seen two major developments in 2013.

First, the GICs (Global In-house Centers) or captives continue to solidify their situation and incrementally increase their influence in the industry. The industry experienced the normal handful of exits, but there were more than offset by new starts of GICs or captives.

More importantly the past year saw the GICs deepen their value proposition to their parents; they became more self-confident, extended their reach into more important functions and started taking over some third-party management functions that hitherto were executed out of the parents’ domestic operations.

A second aspect of industry change linked to immigration this past year is re-sourcing — moving work from low-cost locations into higher-cost locations. There has been a lot of talk about this. Although we saw little evidence that it happened in a material way in 2013, I think the prospect looms that at least some adjustments will be made.

As the industry matured and can better segment workloads, it is clear that the one-size-fits-all offshore talent factory does not fit every situation. Buyers are becoming more selective about what goes into those talent factories and what work is done domestically or in close proximity to the origination of the work.

The net result of that is, although 2013 did not bring a shrinking of work, we saw a reallocation of work. The actual numbers have continued to grow and increase, but buyers intentionally put more work into a right-sourcing model. So there was a modest overall impact on this in 2013, but it is something to watch in the future.

Of the five areas described, if I were to select the one that likely will have the greatest long-term impact on the industry and greatest impact in 2014, it would be immigration and H-1B visa reform. If Congress enacts the law, it could have a very significant impact on the industry. And if Senator Durban were to get his way with the H-1B visa provisions, it would go a long way toward leveling the cost advantage that the Indian heritage firms have over the MNCs.

OpenStack Hong Kong Summit 2013 – The Battle Is On | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

The OpenStack Foundation invited me to be a part of its Hong Kong Summit on November 5-8. While the event traditionally has focused on developers, this year the Foundation also made it a point to include leading adopters. The OpenStack-based cloud service providers community consisted of innovative start-ups, medium-small sized companies, and the big boys, such as Blue Box, Canonical, Cisco, Cloudscaling, DELL, DreamHost, eNovance, Gigaspace, HP, IBM, Mirantis, Nebula, NetApp, Piston Cloud, Rackspace, Red Hat, RightScale, SwiftStack, VMware, and Yahoo.

While my work spans global technology and IT services, with a wider area of interest than only cloud (or OpenStack), I was happy to be a part of this event and witness the passion, commitment, and real investments being made in OpenStack.

So what did the Summit tell the market?

What’s working

  • Despite being only three years old, OpenStack has made significant progress as one of the leading cloud platforms for infrastructure services
  • The OpenStack community, comprised of developers, sponsors, and users, is rapidly growing (over 1,600 developers and 250 companies)
  • There is a growing intent within the OpenStack foundation to communicate with the outside world about the increasing adoption and maturity of the OpenStack platform
  • Different technology companies are now integrating OpenStack and its support in their product strategy, even though some of these organizations believe that OpenStack may disrupt their business model
  • Various buyers from technology companies are asking these providers about their OpenStack strategy, and even pushing them to support it

What are the challenges?

  • As technologists at heart, OpenStack developers are passionate about the coolness of the technology, but have difficulty articulating the business impact and market perspectives
  • While it’s easy to track the number of OpenStack downloads, there’s no process to track or estimate the real adoption
  • OpenStack’s inability to communicate with buyers that despite the rapid “new developments and features” (which this Summit further propagated), there are multiple functions that are enterprise ready across its compute, storage, and network projects
  • Despite rapid growth in the community, the number of contributors working dedicatedly full time on OpenStack is not significantly growing, and there is a constant dearth of suitable talent
  • With the increase in community in terms of number of contributors, geographies, expertise, etc., a method for channelizing this energy in a meaningful way is missing

Despite the challenges, OpenStack is perhaps the strongest candidate for being the leading cloud platform and may soon witness an inflection point. It is providing a new lease of life to hosting providers that are now transforming to offer cloud services and could simply not have afforded a proprietary technology. It is enabling global collaboration to solve real business problems, and offering a true enterprise-class cloud platform that many adopters (especially those frustrated with proprietary expensive technologies) are finding very useful.

The David versus Goliath battle between open source and proprietary technologies will always continue. However, there are times when one solution can change the entire industry and buyer perception. OpenStack has that capability and, despite being fairly new, its on-the-ground adoption, and increasing developer base suggests that it can be a flag bearer of open source cloud platforms, much the same way Linux was for open source operating systems.

While hybrid cloud platforms will be the norm in enterprises, OpenStack will be the leading contender for creating private and public clouds. Both cloud service providers and enterprise buyers will adopt this platform to develop scalable infrastructure to support business growth.


Photo credit: Phil Wiffen

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