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May 20

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Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts, 2017

  • Cloud computing is projected to increase from $67B in 2015 to $162B in 2020 attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%.
  • Gartner predicts the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18% in 2017 to $246.8B, up from $209.2B in 2016.
  • 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017.

Cloud platforms are enabling new, complex business models and orchestrating more globally-based integration networks in 2017 than many analyst and advisory firms predicted. Combined with Cloud Services adoption increasing in the mid-tier and small & medium businesses (SMB), leading researchers including Forrester are adjusting their forecasts upward. The best check of any forecast is revenue.  Amazon’s latest quarterly results released two days ago show Amazon Web Services (AWS) attained 43% year-over-year growth, contributing 10% of consolidated revenue and 89% of consolidated operating income.

Additional key takeaways from the roundup include the following:

  • Wikibon is predicting enterprise cloud spending is growing at a 16% compound annual growth (CAGR) run rate between 2016 and 2026. The research firm also predicts that by 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will reach $43B in revenue, and be 8.2% of all cloud spending. Source: Wikibon report preview: How big can Amazon Web Services get?
Wikibon Worldwide Enterprise IT Projection By Vendor Revenue

Wikibon Worldwide Enterprise IT Projection By Vendor Revenue

Rapid Growth of Cloud Computing, 2015–2020

Rapid Growth of Cloud Computing, 2015–2020

Worldwide Public Cloud Services Forecast (Millions of Dollars)

Worldwide Public Cloud Services Forecast (Millions of Dollars)

  • By the end of 2018, spending on IT-as-a-Service for data centers, software and services will be $547B. Deloitte Global predicts that procurement of IT technologies will accelerate in the next 2.5 years from $361B to $547B. At this pace, IT-as-a-Service will represent more than half of IT spending by the 2021/2022 timeframe. Source: Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions, 2017 (PDF, 80 pp., no opt-in).
Deloitte IT-as-a-Service Forecast

Deloitte IT-as-a-Service Forecast

  • Total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments will increase 15.3% year over year in 2017 to $41.7B. IDC predicts that public cloud data centers will account for the majority of this spending ( 60.5%) while off-premises private cloud environments will represent 14.9% of spending. On-premises private clouds will account for 62.3% of spending on private cloud IT infrastructure and will grow 13.1% year over year in 2017. Source: Spending on IT Infrastructure for Public Cloud Deployments Will Return to Double-Digit Growth in 2017, According to IDC.
Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Forecast

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Forecast

  • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) adoption is predicted to be the fastest-growing sector of cloud platforms according to KPMG, growing from 32% in 2017 to 56% adoption in 2020. Results from the 2016 Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey indicate that cloud adoption is now mainstream and accelerating as enterprises shift data-intensive operations to the cloud.  Source: Journey to the Cloud, The Creative CIO Agenda, KPMG (PDF, no opt-in, 14 pp.)
Cloud investment by type today and in three years

Cloud investment by type today and in three years

AWS Segment Financial Comparison

AWS Segment Financial Comparison

  • In Q1, 2017 AWS generated 10% of consolidated revenue and 89% of consolidated operating income. Net sales increased 23% to $35.7 billion in the first quarter, compared with $29.1 billion in first quarter 2016. Source: Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits.
Comparing AWS' Revenue and Income Contributions

Comparing AWS’ Revenue and Income Contributions

  • RightScale’s 2017 survey found that Microsoft Azure adoption surged from 26% to 43% with AWS adoption increasing from 56% to 59%. Overall Azure adoption grew from 20% to 34% percent of respondents to reduce the AWS lead, with Azure now reaching 60% of the market penetration of AWS. Google also increased adoption from 10% to 15%. AWS continues to lead in public cloud adoption (57% of respondents currently run applications in AWS), this number has stayed flat since both 2016 and 2015. Source: RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report (PDF, 38 pp., no opt-in)
Public Cloud Adoption, 2017 versus 2016

Public Cloud Adoption, 2017 versus 2016

  • Global Cloud IT market revenue is predicted to increase from $180B in 2015 to $390B in 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17%. In the same period, SaaS-based apps are predicted to grow at an 18% CAGR, and IaaS/PaaS is predicted to increase at a 27% CAGR. Source: Bain & Company research brief The Changing Faces of the Cloud (PDF, no opt-in).
60% of IT Market Growth Is Being Driven By The Cloud

60% of IT Market Growth Is Being Driven By The Cloud

  • 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017. Additional technologies that will have a significant financial impact in 2017 include the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence (AI) (16%) and 3D printing and virtual reality (14% each). Source: 2017 BDO Technology Outlook Survey (PDF), no opt-in).
CFOs say cloud investments deliver the greatest measurable impact

CFOs say cloud investments deliver the greatest measurable impact

Cloud investments are fueling new job throughout Canada

Cloud investments are fueling new job throughout Canada

  • APIs are enabling persona-based user experiences in a diverse base of cloud enterprise As of today there are 17,422 APIs listed on the Programmable Web, with many enterprise cloud apps concentrating on subscription, distributed order management, and pricing workflows.  Sources: Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud 2017 and 2017 Is Quickly Becoming The Year Of The API Economy. The following graphic from the latest Bessemer Venture Partners report illustrates how APIs are now the background of enterprise software.
APIs are fueling a revolution in cloud enterprise apps

APIs are fueling a revolution in cloud enterprise apps

Additional Resources:

May 7

Five Ways CPQ Is Revolutionizing Selling Today

CPQ, Salesforce CPQ, enosiX SAP to Salesforce Integration Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) continues to be one of the hottest enterprise apps today, fueled by the relentless need all companies have to increase sales while delivering customized orders profitably and accurately. Here are a few of the many results CPQ strategies are delivering today:

  • Companies relying on CPQ are growing profit margins at a 57% greater rate year-over-year compared to non-adopters.
  • 89% improvement in turning Special Pricing Requests (SPRs) into sales by automating them using a cloud-based CPQ system.
  • 67% reduction in reworked orders at a leading specialty vehicle manufacturer due to quotes reflecting exactly what customers wanted to buy.
  • 23% improvement in upsell and cross-sell revenue by having the CPQ system intelligently recommend the optimal product or service that has the highest probability of purchase and best possible gross margin.
  • CPQ strategies excel when they are designed to reach challenging selling, pricing, revenue and operational performance goals versus automating existing selling workflows.

Another factor fueling CPQs’ rapid growth is how quickly results of a pilot can be measured and used for launching a successful company-wide launch.  Pilots often concentrate on quote creation time, quoting accuracy, sales cycle reduction, automating Special Pricing Requests (SPRs), up-sells and cross-sells, perfect order performance, margin improvements and best of all, winning new customers. These are the baseline metrics many companies use to measure their CPQ performance. Throughout 2017 these metrics across industries are accelerating. There is a revolution going on in selling today.

5 Ways CPQ Is Revolutionizing Selling Today

Cloud- and SaaS-based CPQ solutions are quicker to implement, easier to customize to customers’ requirements, and available 24/7 on any Internet-enabled device, anytime. Many are designed to integrate into Salesforce, further accelerating adoption seamlessly.  The following five factors are the primary catalysts revolutionizing selling today:

  1. Designing in excellent user experiences (UX) is the new normal for CPQ apps – CPQ vendors are competing with the quality of user experiences they deliver in 2017, moving beyond packing every feature possible into app releases. This is having a corresponding impact on adoption, increasing the number of sales representatives and entire teams who can get up and running fast with a new CPQ app. The net result is reduced sales cycles, growing pipelines, and more sales reps actively using CPQ apps to increase their selling effectiveness.
  2. Integrating with legacy CRM, ERP and pricing systems in real-time are using service-oriented frameworks gives sales teams what they need to close deals faster – Legacy CPQ systems in the past often had very precise field mappings to 3rd party legacy CRM, ERP and pricing systems. They were brittle and would break very easily, slowing down sales cycles and making sales reps resort to manually-based approaches from decades before. In 2017 there are service-oriented frameworks that make brittle, easily broken mappings thankfully an integration practice in the past. With a loosely coupled service framework, real-time integration between CRM and ERP systems can be quickly be implemented and sales teams can get out and close more deals. Leaders in the area include enosiX, who are enabling their customers’ sales forces to enter sales orders into SAP directly from Salesforce, saving valuable selling time and increasing order accuracy.
  3. Competing for deals using Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and Intelligent Agents are force multipliers driving greater sales – Salesforce’s Einstein is an example of the latest generation of AI applications that are enabling sales reps and teams to gain insights that weren’t available before. Combining customer data with these advanced predictive data analytics technologies yields insights into how selling strategies for different accounts can customize to specific prospect needs. Selling strategies are more effective and focused when AI, machine learning, and Intelligent Agents are designed in to guide quoting, pricing and product configuration in real-time.
  4. CPQ apps optimized for mobile devices are enabling sales reps to drastically reduce quote creation times, sales cycles and increase sales win rates – For many companies whose sales teams are in the field calling on accounts the majority of the time, mobile-based CPQ apps are how they get the majority of their work done. Salesforce’s Force.com is one of the leading platforms CPQ software companies are relying on to create mobile apps, further capitalizing on the already-established levels of familiarity sales teams have with the Salesforce platform.
  5. The vision many companies have of synchronizing multichannel and omnichannel selling as part of their CPQ strategies is now attainable – One of the greatest challenges of expanding sales channels is ensuring a consistently high-quality customer experience across each. With on-premise CPQ, CRM and ERP selling systems, this is very challenging as there are often multiple database systems supporting each. This is a breakout year for omnichannel selling as cloud-based CPQ systems and the platforms they are built on can securely scale across all selling channels a company chooses to launch. Being able to track which CPQ deals emanated from which marketing program, and which channels are the most effective in closing sales is now possible.

Mar 27

Why IT Projects Fail

There are many reasons why IT integration projects fail.  From the lack of senior management support to imprecise, inaccurate goals, IT integration projects fail more often than they have to. Based on consulting I’ve done with system integrators, distribution providers, financial services firms, logistics providers and manufacturers, five core lessons emerge.  One of the most innovative companies taking on these challenges is enosiX, whose customer wins at Yeti Coolers, Vera Bradley, BUNN and others provide a glimpse into the future of real-time integration.

  • Middleware forces IT integration projects to focus only on moving data instead of improving business processes.
  • Not having a clear idea of the goals the integration needs to attain in the first place.
  • Sacrificing application response times, data accuracy and user experience in never-ending middleware projects.

Five Lessons Learned From IT Integration Failures

The following lessons learned are based on my experiences and work with IT departments, Vice Presidents of Infrastructure, Enterprise Systems, Cloud Platforms, CIOs, and CFOs. The lessons learned from them are helping current and future IT integration projects increase the odds of success.

  1. Selecting middleware or an integration platform not capable of offline, mobile use with the ability to synchronize in real-time once connected. The fastest growing areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are being fueled by the real-time availability of data on mobile devices. In Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) and Quote-to-Cash (QTC) workflows, tethered and untethered use cases dominate. To be competitive, any company relying on these two strategies to sell must have an integration framework capable of delivering data in real-time that enables quick app response times, higher performance, and a better user experience. IT integration projects that don’t take this requirement into account nearly always fail.
  1. Selecting an integration solution that requires time-consuming, expensive training and has a steep learning curve. When a given middleware, integration technology or framework is too difficult for IT to learn and use, projects fail fast. The middleware landscape is littered with companies whose marketing is covering up products that have non-existent to mediocre documentation and learning materials. One of the primary factors behind Salesforce’s exceptional growth is their commitment to making the user experience on their platform immediately scalable to each application developed and launched on it. Within 30 minutes, sales teams are often up and running with new apps, successfully selling as a result. Integration frameworks that don’t force system users to change how they work are the new gold standard and are driving the market forward.
  1. Using middleware for business process logic integration when it is designed for data only. Attempting to use middleware for business process logic workflows can get complex and costly fast. It’s one of the main reasons IT integration projects don’t deliver results. In reality, the most valuable aspects of any integration project are the business processes and supporting logic that is automated, streamlined and tailored to a businesses’ unique needs, revolutionizing it in the process. This point of failure happens when IT architects push middleware beyond its limits and attempt to do what more streamlined integration frameworks are designed to accomplish. Business process logic is core to the future of any IT integration project. It is surprising that more organizations don’t look for integration frameworks that have this capability designed into the core architecture.
  1. Failing to consider how data transfers can be minimized or eliminated in the planning and deployment of an integration project. The more customer-centric a project, the more the variety and depth of data transfers required for the integration to be complete. Data transfers grow exponentially and can challenge the scale of a middleware platform quickly. The most successful IT integration projects aren’t data transfer-intensive, they are business strategy driven. One of the most effective best practices of integration is not having to move the data at all. Using an SOA-based framework as a means to enable data consumption without having to perform lengthy ETL processes is the future of integration. By definition, middleware relies on a series of tightly-coupled integration points designed to move data asynchronously. In contrast, SOA-based frameworks are designed to enable real-time synchronous communication through the use of loosely-coupled connections that can flex in response to business process requirements.
  1. Failure to plan and anticipate how a change in one cloud platform or enterprise application including those running on Salesforce’s Force.com, a SAP R/3 system and other platforms impact the entire company’s IT stability. The VP of Infrastructure for a globally-based gaming and hospitality chain told me he and his team often are given the challenging task of bringing up new casino and hotel operations offices globally in two weeks. He sends in an advance team to determine how best to integrate with any legacy on-premise systems. The team also works to integrate any unique Salesforce apps that need to be included into the main Salesforce instance at the tab level, and to determine how best to integrate into the SAP R/3 procurement system. System security is the highest priority during the integration pilot and go-live work.  The company has standardized on a series of network adapters and connectors that are designed to shield all traffic across the network. He told me that just one API change in the IT stack supporting their SAP R/3 integration would cause all adapters to quit working, report an error condition and force debugging to the line level.  They learned this during a go-live with a Reno property. Today all changes to middleware are run in a pilot mode in a sandbox first, and the company is looking to get away from middleware entirely as a result.

From the enosiX blog post, Why IT Integration Projects Fail.

Jan 16

3 Ways To Improve Selling Results With SAP Integration


sap-integrationThe more integrated the systems are supporting any selling strategy, the greater the chances sales will increase. That’s because accuracy, speed, and quality of every quote matter more than ever. Being able to strengthen every customer interaction with insight and intelligence often means the difference between successful upsells, cross-sells and the chance to bid and win new projects. Defining a roadmap to enrich selling strategies using SAP integration is delivering results across a variety of manufacturing and service industries today.

Getting more value out of the customer data locked in legacy SAP systems can improve selling results starting with existing sales cycles. Knowing what each customer purchased, when, at what price, and for which project or location is invaluable in accelerating sales cycles today. There are many ways to improve selling results using SAP integration, and the following are the top three based on conversations with SAP Architects, CIOs and IT Directors working with Sales Operations to improve selling results. These five approaches are generating more leads, closing more deals, leading to better selling decisions and improving sales productivity.

 3 Ways SAP Integration Is Improving Selling Results

  1. Reducing and eliminating significant gaps in the Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) process by integrating Salesforce and SAP systems improves selling and revenue results quickly. The following two illustrations compare how much time and revenue escape from the selling process. It’s common to see companies lose at least 20% of their orders when they rely on manual approaches to handling quotes, pricing, and configurations. The greater the complexity of the deal is the more potential for lost revenue.  The second graphic shows how greater system integration leads to lower costs to complete an order, cycle time reductions, order rework reductions, and lead times for entire orders dropping from 69 to 22 days.

3 Ways To Improve Selling Results With SAP Integration

3 Ways To Improve Selling Results With SAP Integration

  1. Having customer order history, pricing, discounts and previously purchased bundles stored in SAP ERP systems integrated into Salesforce will drive better decisions on which customers are most likely to buy upsells, cross-sells and new products when. Instead of having just to rely on current activity with a given customer, sales teams can analyze sales history to find potential purchasing trends and indications of who can sign off on deals in progress. Having real-time access to SAP data within Salesforce gives sales teams the most valuable competitive advantage there is, which is more time to focus on customers and closing deals.  enosiX is taking a leadership role in the area of real-time SAP to Salesforce integration, enabling enterprises to sell and operate more effectively.
  1. Improving Sales Operations and Customer Service productivity by providing customer data in real-time via Salesforce to support teams on a 24/7 basis worldwide. The two departments who rely on customer data more than sales need to have real-time access to customer data on a 24/7 basis from any device at any time, on a global scale. By integrating customer data held today in SAP ERP and related systems to Salesforce, Sales Operations, and Customer Service will have the visibility they’ve never had before. And that will translate into faster response times, higher customer satisfaction and potentially more sales too.

Additional Reading:

Accenture, Empowering Your Sales Force

Aberdeen Group, Configure-Price-Quote: Best-In-Class Deployments that Speed The Sale

Aberdeen Group, Configure/Price/Quote: Better, Faster Sales Deals Enabled

Aberdeen Group, Sales Enablement Advances In Configure/Price/Quote Solutions

Forbes, What’s Hot In CRM Applications, 2015: Why CPQ Continues To Accelerate

Forbes,  Cloud-Based CPQ Continues To Be One Of The Hottest Enterprise Apps Of 2016

Forbes, Five Ways Cloud-Based CPQ Increases Sales Effectiveness And Drives Up CRM Adoption

The Sales Management Association,  The Impact of Quoting Automation: Enabling the Sales Force, Optimizing Profits, and Improving Customer Engagement

Dec 22

4 Comments

Five Key Take-Aways From North Bridge’s Future Of Cloud Computing Survey, 2015  

  • bostonSaaS is the most pervasive cloud technology used today with a presence in 77.3% of all organizations, an increase of 9% since 2014.
  • IT is moving significant processing to the cloud with 85.9% of web content management, 82.7% of communications, 80% of app development and 78.9% of disaster recovery now cloud-based.
  • Seeking simple and clear relationships, over 50% of enterprises opt for online purchasing or direct to provider purchasing of cloud services. Online buying is projected to increase over the next two years up to 56%.
  • Vendor leadership/consolidation continues to take hold with 75% of enterprises using fewer than ten

These and many other insights are from North Bridge Growth Equity and Venture Partners’ Future of Cloud Computing Survey published on December 15th. North Bridge and Wikibon collaborated on the study, interviewing 952 companies across 38 different nations, with 65% being from the vendor community and 35% of enterprises evaluating and using cloud technologies in their operations  The slide deck is accessible on SlideShare here:

Key takeaways from the study include the following:

  1. Wikibon forecasts the SaaS is worth $53B market today and will grow at an 18% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2026. By 2026, the SaaS market will be worth $298.4B according to the Wikibon forecast. The fastest growing cloud technology segment is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), which is valued at $2.3B today, growing at a CAGR of 38% from 2014 to 2026.  Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) has a market value of $25B and is growing at a 19% CAGR in the forecast period.  Please see the graphic from the report below and a table from Wikibon’s excellent study, Public Cloud Market Forecast 2015-2026 by Ralph Finos published in August.

SaaS Graphic from North Bridge study

 

Public Cloud Vendor Revenue Projection

  1. Cloud-based applications are becoming more engrained in core business processes across enterprises. The study found that enterprises are migrating significant processing, systems of engagement and systems of insight to the cloud beyond adoption levels of the past.  81.3% of sales and marketing, 79.9% of business analytics, 79.1% of customer service and 73.5% of HR & Payroll activities have transitioned to the cloud. The impact on HR is particularly noteworthy as in 2011; it was the third least likely sector to be disrupted by cloud computing.
  1. 78% of enterprises expect their SaaS investments to deliver a positive Return on Investment (ROI) in less than three months. 58% of those enterprises who have invested in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) expect a positive ROI in less than three months.
  1. Top inhibitors to cloud adoption are security (45.2%), regulatory/compliance (36%), privacy (28.7%), lock-in (25.8%) and complexity (23.1%). Concerns regarding interoperability and reliability have fallen off significantly since 2011 (15.7% and 9.9% respectively in 2015).
  1. Total private financing for cloud and SaaS startup has increased 4X over the last five years. North Bridge and Wikibon found that average deal size rose 1.8X in the same period. The following graphic provides an overview of cloud and SaaS finance trends from 2010 to present.

cloud and saas financing

 

Nov 8

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Salesforce On The State Of Analytics, 2015

  • analytics predictions 2015Between 2015 and 2020, the number of data sources analyzed by enterprises will jump 83%.
  • 9 out of 10 enterprise leaders believe analytics is absolutely essential or very important to their overall business strategies and operational outcomes.
  • 54% of marketers say marketing analytics is absolutely critical or very important to creating a cohesive customer journey.
  • High performing enterprises are 5.4x more likely than underperformers to primarily use analytics tools to gain strategic insights from Big Data.

These and many other interesting insights are from the 2015 State of Analytics study from Salesforce Research. Salesforce conducted the study in mid-2015, generating 2,091 responses from business leaders from enterprises (not limited to Salesforce customers). Geographies included in the study include the U.S., Canada, Brazil, U.K., France, Germany, Japan, and Australia.  While Salesforce is a leading provider of analytics, the report strives to deliver useful insights beyond just endorsing their product direction.

10 insights and predictions on the state of analytics include the following:

  • Between 2015 and 2020, the number of data sources analyzed will jump 83%. Salesforce Research found that the number of data sources actively analyzed by businesses has grown just 20% in the last five years. This is projected to accelerate rapidly, attaining a compound annual growth rate of 120% in the 10-year forecast period. High performing enterprises will be relying on a projected 50 different data sources by 2020, leading all performance categories tracked in the study.

data explosion

  • Relying on manual processes to get all the data in one view (53%) is one of the greatest challenges enterprises face today. Additional factors driving enterprises to integrate more data sources into their analytics applications include finding that too much data is left unanalyzed (53%), spending too much time updating spreadsheets (52%), and analysis is performance by business analysts, not end users of the data (50%).  All of these factors and those shown in the graphic below form the catalyst that is driving greater legacy, 3rd party and broader enterprise data integration into analytics applications.

lack of automation

  • 9 out of 10 enterprise leaders believe analytics is absolutely essential or very important to their overall business strategies and operational outcomes. In addition, 84% of high performers are projecting that the importance of analytics will increase substantially or somewhat in the next two years. 65% of all business leaders surveyed are predicting that the importance of analytics will increase substantially or somewhat in the next two years.

analytics is critical to driving business strategy

  • High performing enterprises are 4.6x more likely than underperformers to agree that data is driving their business decisions. In addition, 60% of high performing enterprises’ leaders agree with the statement that their organizations have moved beyond numbers keeping score to data driving business decisions. Salesforce Research also found that 43% of high performers rely on empirical data, developing hypotheses and then experimenting and observing the outcomes before making a decision.

data drives decisions

  • Driving operational efficiencies and facilitating growth (both 37%) are the two areas enterprises are initially focused on with analytics today.  Once analytics apps are delivering insights and are part of daily workflows, enterprises expand their use into optimizing operational processes (35%), identifying new revenue streams (33%) and predicting customer behavior (32%). The following graphic provides a comparison of the top ten use cases.

analytics every corner

  • High performance enterprises consistently analyze more than 17 different kinds of data across their analytics apps.  In contrast, underperforming organizations only analyze 10 different data sources, and moderate performers, 15. The following graphic provides an overview of the top ten most-used sources of data.

companies track a wide variety of data

  • High performers are 3.5x more likely than underperformers to extensively use mobile reporting tools to analyze data wherever they are. 55% of high performing enterprises are more likely to be extensively using mobile reporting tools to analyze data.  The following graphic compares mobile analytics adoption across high, medium and low performing enterprises.

top teams tap mobile analytics

  • Speed of deployment (68%), ease of use for business users (65%) and self-service and data discovery tools (61%) are the three top three priorities leaders place on selecting new analytics apps.  Mobile capabilities to explore and share data (56%) and cloud deployment (54%) are the fourth and fifth factors leaders mentioned.  The following graphic compares the decision factors that go into selecting an analytics app.

decision factor analytics app

  • Industries who have the greater analytics adoption today (over 50% of users active on apps and tools) include high tech (36%) and financial services (32%). Automotive (30%) and media & communications (30%) also have attained significant adoption.

adoption

  • High performing enterprises are 5.4x more likely than underperformers to primarily use analytics tools to gain strategic insights from Big Data. Leaders in high performance enterprises see the value of Big Data (76%) to a much greater extent than their lower performing counterparts (14%).   High performing enterprises are 3.1x more likely than underperformers to be confident in ability to manage data from internal systems, customers, and third parties.

Oct 24

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The Hottest Cloud-based Marketing Startups of 2015

  • What's Hot in CRM, 2012 Apttus, Booker, Lattice Engines, Segment and Tubular Labs are the five hottest cloud-based marketing startups of 2015.
  • 13 of the hottest 34 cloud-based marketing startups are from the Bay Area, followed by Los Angeles with 3, and Bangalore and New York, both with 2.
  • 14 are in Pre Series A, 7 in A-Stage, 5 in B-Stage and 3 in C-Stage funding rounds.

These and other insights are from a quick analysis completed today using Mattermark Pro, in response to reader requests for more research on marketing startups.

Mattermark uses a combination of artificial intelligence and data quality analysis to provide insights into over 1 million private companies, over 470,000 with employee data, and over 100,000 funding events. In the interest of full disclosure I’m not today and have never done any consulting work of any kind with Mattermark.

Finding The Hottest Cloud-based Marketing Startups

To find the hottest cloud-based marketing startups, an initial query requesting startups competing in the cloud computing and marketing industries was completed. Next, advanced query tools in Mattermark Pro were used to filter out all startups that had exited as indicated by their stage status in Mattermark’s data. This filtered out startups who had been acquired, completed an IPO or had exited through other means. The table below is the result of an analysis completed today with Mattermark data.  You can download the table here in Microsoft Excel format.

hottest cloud-based marketing startups

The Mattermark Growth Score shown in the table below and downloadable Excel file is a measure of how quickly a company is gaining traction at a given point in time. It incorporates the Mindshare Score (web traffic, social traction) as well as business growth metrics (e.g. employee count over time, funding). The underlying assumption is that companies who see growth across these signals are shipping product and talking to customers, and are more likely to continue to grow as a result. This score is not meant to provide guidance on which startup to invest in.  Rather it’s a measure of momentum across the metrics and KPIs that Mattermark measures.

Mar 3

1 Comment

The Best Cloud Computing Companies And CEOs To Work For In 2014

Job Growth2014 continues to be a year marked by the accelerating hiring cycles across nearly all cloud computing companies.

Signing bonuses of $3K to $5K for senior engineers and system design specialists are becoming common, and the cycles from screening to interviews to offers is shortening.  The job market in the cloud computing industry is leaning in favor of applicants who have a strong IT background in systems integration, legacy IT expertise, business analysis and in many positions, programming as well.

One of the most common questions and requests I receive from readers is who the best companies are to work for.  I’ve put together the following analysis based on the latest Computer Reseller News list The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2014.  

Using the CRN list as a baseline to compare the Glassdoor.com scores of the (%) of employees who would recommend this company to a friend and (%) of employees who approve of the CEO, the following analysis was completed.  You can find the original data here .  There are many companies listed on the CRN list that don’t have than many or any entries on Glassdoor and they were excluded from the rankings below.  You can find companies excluded here. If the image below is not visible in your browser, you can view the rankings here.

results

The highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor as of February 23rd include the following:

  • Jeremy Roche of FinancialForce.com (100%)
  • Robert Reid, Intacct (100%)
  • Randy Bias, Cloudscaling (100%)
  • Sridhar Vembu, Zoho (98%)
  • James M. Whitehurst, Red Hat (96%)
  • Larry Page, Google (95%)
  • Christian Chabot, Tableau Software (95%)
  • Aneel Bhusri, Workday (94%)
  • Bill McDermott & Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP (93%)
  • Marc Benioff, Salesforce (93%)
  • David Friend, Carbonite (93%)

Feb 16

Best- And Worst-Performing Cloud Computing Stocks Feb. 10th To Feb. 14th And Year-to-Date

cloud computing forecast update 2012The five highest performing cloud computing stocks year-to-date in the Cloud Computing Index are Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), Fusion-IO (NYSE:FIO), Qualys (NASDAQ:QYLS) and Workday (NYSE:WDAY).  A $10K investment in Akamai on January 2nd of this year is worth $12,901 and $10K invested in F5 Networks is worth $12,509 as of market close yesterday.   IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP share prices are included for comparison.

best performing YTD Feb 14

Akamai delivered better-than-respected results for their latest fiscal quarter and year, gaining $436M in revenues for fiscal Q4 and $1.578B for fiscal year.  Media Deliver Solutions revenue increased 19% year over year to $207.5M in revenue.  On their latest earnings call earlier this month, Akamai also says that traffic for gaming, social media, software and video downloads all continue to accelerate.  Support and Service revenues grew 36% year over year, reaching $36.3M in fiscal Q4, and Performance And Security revenue reached $192.2M, increasing 18% year over year.  Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal Q4 was $192M.

The following graphic compares how $10,000 invested on January 2nd of this year in the highest performing cloud computing stocks, in addition to IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are valued today.

total dollar value 10K feb 14 2014

Please see the full Cloud Computing Index for market caps, average volumes, 52-week high and low share prices, Earnings per Share, Price/Earnings Ratio, and Beta.  I am using the Google Finance Portfolio option to track the performance of these stocks.  For information on how this index was created, see the description at the end of this post.  I do not hold equity positions or work for any of the companies mentioned in this blog post or included in the Cloud Computing Index and this post is not meant to provide investment advice.  It is simply a glimpse into the performance of these company’s stock prices over time.  The following is this week’s Cloud Computing Index.

Cloud Computing Stock Index February 14

Best Performing Cloud Computing Stocks, February 10th to February 14th, 2014

Capturebest performing for the week feb 14

Worst Performing Cloud Computing Stocks, February 10th to February 14th, 2014

worst performing for the week feb 14

Best Performing Cloud Computing Stocks In 2014

best performing YTD Feb 14

Worst Performing Cloud Computing Stocks In 2014

worst performing YTD Feb 14

Comparing Cumulative Stock Performance Performance of the Cloud Computing Index over the last year is compared to NetSuite, Salesforce, IBM, Oracle and SAP is below. This index has been up 27.58% over the last year, with NetSuite (NYSE:N) up 63.84%, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) up 43.50%, IBM (NYSE:IBM) down 8.59%, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) up 9.10% and SAP (NYSE:SAP) up .14%. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

trending

Specifics on the Cloud Computing Stock Index I used The Cloud Times 100 as the basis of the index, selecting twenty companies all of which are publically traded.  The latest edition of the Cloud Computing Index is shown here.  The filter applied to these companies is that 50% or more of their revenues are generated from cloud-based applications, infrastructure and services

Sep 7

Predicting Enterprise Cloud Computing Growth

69% of enterprises who have separate budgets for cloud computing are predicting spending increases this year and into 2014.

This is one of several key take-aways from a research study published today by TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research.  TheInfoPro Wave 5 Cloud Computing Study is based on research completed in the first six months of 2013, and relies on live interviews with IT management and primary decision-makers in midsize and large enterprises in Europe and North America. You can view details of TheInfoPro Cloud Computing Overview Program and methodology here.

Additional key take-aways from the study include the following:

  • The worldwide cloud computing market will grow at a 36% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2016, reaching a market size of $19.5B by 2016.
  • 38% of enterprises surveyed break out cloud computing budgets, while 60% include cloud-related spending as part of their enterprise-wide IT budgets.  TheInfoPro asserts that cloud computing’s benefits of greater business orchestration and reduced time-to-market have led to a change in budgeting approaches.
  • The median enterprise cloud computing budget is $675,000 and the mean enterprise cloud computing budget is $8,234,438.  The study found the largest enterprise cloud computing budget at $125M.  The following graphic provides a distribution of cloud computing budgets by range.

cloud-computing-budget

  • Internal Private Cloud (35%), Cloud Provider Assessments/Strategy Planning (33%), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (31%) and Software-as-a-Service (30%) are the top four cloud computing-related projects enterprises are working on right now.  Cloud Provider Assessments/Strategy Planning have seen the largest increase, attributable to more enterprises looking to better support strategic plans with more agile, efficient IT organizations.

top-challenges-graphic2

  • 83% of enterprises face significant roadblocks that hold them back from moving beyond cost reduction to faster time-to-market and better orchestration of their businesses. Respondents mentioned that politics, budget, time and staff are the main sources of roadblocks to getting more value out of their cloud computing investments. The majority of these roadblocks are not related to IT.  They include lack of clarity regarding organization and budget (37%), resistance to change (16%) and lack of trust (visibility and reliability) (15%).  The following graphic illustrates the enterprise cloud journey as defined in TheInfoPro Wave 5 Cloud Computing Study.

deciphering-the-cloud-journey

  • Consistent with many other enterprise cloud computing surveys, security is the biggest pain point and roadblock to cloud computing adoption (30%).  Migration and integration of legacy and on-premise systems with cloud applications (18%) is second, and lack of internal process (18%) is third.  The following graphic shows a rank ordering of cloud computing-related pain points.

cloud-related-pain-points

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