• Cloud ERP is the fastest growing sector of the global ERP market with services-based businesses driving the majority of new revenue growth.
• Legacy Services ERP providers excel at meeting professional & consulting services information needs yet often lack the flexibility and speed to support entirely new services business models.
• Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) is quickly emerging as a must-have feature in Services-based Cloud ERP suites.

From globally-based telecommunications providers to small & medium businesses (SMBs) launching new subscription-based services, the intensity to innovate has never been stronger. Legacy Services ERP and Cloud ERP vendors are responding differently to the urgent needs their prospects and customers have with new apps and suites that can help launch new business models and ventures.

Services-based Cloud ERP providers are reacting by accelerating improvements to Professional Services Automation (PSA), Financials, and questioning if their existing Human Capital Management (HCM) suite can scale now and in the future. Vertical industry specialization is a must-have in many services businesses as well.  Factoring all these customer expectations and requirements along with real-time responsiveness into a roadmap deliverable in 12 months or less is daunting.  Making good on the promises of ambitious roadmaps that includes biannual release cycles is how born-in-the-Cloud ERP providers will gain new customers including winning many away from legacy ERP providers who can’t react as fast.

The following key takeaways are based on ongoing discussions with global telecommunications providers, hosters and business & professional services providers actively evaluating Cloud ERP suites:

Roadmaps that reflect a bi-yearly release cadence complete with user experience upgrades are the new normal for Cloud ERP providers

Capitalizing on the strengths of the Salesforce platform makes this much easier to accomplish than attempting to create entirely new releases every six months based on unique code lines. FinancialForce, Kenandy and Sage have built their Cloud ERP suites on the Salesforce platform specifically for this reason. Of the three, only FinancialForce has provided detailed product roadmaps that specifically call out support for evolving services business models, multiple user interface (UI) refreshes and new features based on customer needs. FinancialForce is also one of the only Cloud ERP providers to publish their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) already to support their current and next generation user interfaces.

Cloud ERP leaders are collaborators in the creation of new APIs with their cloud platform provider with a focus on analytics, integration and real-time application response

Overcoming the challenges of continually improving platform-based applications and suites need to start with strong collaboration around API development. FinancialForce’s decision to hire Tod Nielsen, former Executive Vice President, Platform at Salesforce as their CEO in January of this year reflects how important platform integration and an API-first integration strategy is to compete in the Cloud ERP marketplace today. Look for FinancialForce to have a break-out year in the areas of platform and partner integration.

Analytics designed into the platform so customers can create real-time dashboards and support the services opportunity-to-revenue lifecycle

Real-time data is the fuel that gets new service business models off the ground. When a new release of a Cloud ERP app is designed, it has to include real-time Application Programming Interface (API) links to its cloud platform so customers can scale their analytics and reporting to succeed. What’s most important about this from a product standpoint is designing in the scale to flex and support an entire opportunity-to-revenue lifecycle.

Having customer and partner councils involved in key phases of development including roadmap reviews, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and API beta testing are becoming common

There’s a noticeable difference in Cloud ERP apps and suites that have gone through UAT and API beta testing outside of engineering.  Customers find areas where speed and responsiveness can be improved and steps saved in getting workflows done. Beta testing APIs with partners and customers forces them to mature faster and scale further than if they had been tested in isolation, away from the market. FinancialForce in services and IQMS in manufacturing are two ERP providers who are excelling in this area today and their apps and suites show it.

New features added to the roadmap are prioritized by revenue potential for customers first with billing, subscriptions, and pricing being the most urgent

Building Cloud ERP apps and suites on a platform free up development time to solve challenging, complex customer problems. Billing, subscriptions, and pricing are the frameworks many services businesses are relying on to start new business models and fine-tune existing ones. Cloud ERP vendors who prioritize these have a clear view of what matters most to prospects and customers.

Live and build apps by the mantra “own the process, own the market”

Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) and Quote-to-Cash (QTC) are two selling processes services and manufacturing companies rely on for revenue daily and struggle with. Born-in-the-cloud CPQ and QTC competitors on the Salesforce platform have the fastest moving roadmaps and release cadences of any across the platform’s broad ecosystem. The most innovative Services-focused Cloud ERP providers look to own opportunity-to-revenue with the same depth and expertise as the CPQ and QTC competitors do. 

Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place October 31 – November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 21st Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.
All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices – computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors – connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.
With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing IoT strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @ThingsExpo in Silicon Valley. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is as «IoT-Ready» as it can be!

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Global cloud IT infrastructure revenues hit $8 billion (£6.2bn) in the first quarter of 2017 going up almost 15% year over year – with Cisco the big winners, according to IDC.

The analyst firm has put out the latest figures on its Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker (below), and found Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) could not be separated at the top, with Cisco behind. The two main players saw their revenues dip compared with this time last year; Dell hit $1.289bn compared to HPE with $1.118bn, with a decrease in revenue of 0.2% and 8.6% respectively, while Cisco, in third with $902 million, saw its revenue go up 8.7%.

iCharts

It’s worth noting at this juncture that despite the disparity IDC declares a statistical tie if there is a difference of one percent or less between vendor revenues. It’s also worth noting that HPE’s revenues are combined, as of Q216, with the New H3C Group, a venture announced in May last year between HPE and Tsinghua Holdings.

Looking at regional figures, vendor revenue from cloud IT infrastructure sales grew fastest in Canada at 59.1%, followed by Asia Pacific – excluding Japan – at 18.7% and Japan at 15.3%. The US and Western Europe saw growth at 15.1% and 8.9% respectively.

“After a weak performance during 2016, storage purchases for cloud IT environments had a strong rebound in the first quarter, driving overall growth in this segment,” said Natalya Yezhkova, IDC research director for enterprise storage in a statement. “Overall, the first quarter set a strong beginning of the year for the cloud IT infrastructure market.

“With positive dynamics in purchasing activity by hyperscalers across all technology segments we expect a strong year ahead for the fastest growing public cloud segment,” Yezhkova added. “And as end users continue to embrace the benefits of private cloud infrastructures, spending in this segment will also expand.”

According to a missive put out in April by IDC, overall 2016 vendor revenue was $32.6 billion, at a 9.2% climb year on year.

Using either DevOps or cloud is good for your organisation – but using both is better.

That is the verdict of a report from Freeform Dynamics and CA Technologies, which polled 929 IT professionals on how well their organisations were meeting their software delivery objectives.

Almost half (48%) said they focused primarily on traditional delivery of software and applications, with 20% using cloud and DevOps extensively. 17% said they were predominantly a cloud house, compared to 15% for DevOps.

Yet despite this seeming disparity, transformational initiatives were very popular among those polled. The overwhelming majority (96%) are looking at operational efficiency – getting IT to do the same things but faster and cheaper – while operational and digital transformation were cited by 88% and 85% of respondents respectively.

When combining cloud and DevOps, respondents saw on average an 81% improvement in overall software delivery performance, almost double the speed of delivery, and 80% better predictability of software performance.

Speed of delivery and cost control brought the most advantage to organisations who had committed to DevOps before adding cloud, the research noted. When the analysis was done but flipping over with those who had committed to cloud first, the figures were similar.

“Both cloud and DevOps are ways to reduce friction in the delivery process, and the KPIs where friction have the greatest effect are speed and cost control,” the report noted. “Another key factor through all of this is that cloud minimises the need for people to ask others to take action… so if a developer needs a new test machine or a specific software tool, say, they can get it without having to involve system administrators or the ops team.”

Ultimately, the report argues that if the IT team’s performance levels are mixed, or if the company is falling short in terms of broader service delivery, then a combination of cloud and DevOps may be the answer. “Cloud, whether public, private or hybrid, changes the game in terms of expectations and mindsets from a software delivery and operations perspective. Of course there are pitfalls and distractions that need to be avoided, but done right, cloud can remove a lot of the barriers and friction.”

You can find out more and download the full report here (registration required).

• By 2035 AI technologies have the potential to increase productivity 40% or more.
• AI will increase economic growth an average of 1.7% across 16 industries by 2035.
• Information and communication, manufacturing and financial services will be the top three industries that gain economic growth in 2035 from AI’s benefits.
• AI will have the most positive effect on education, accommodation and food services, and construction industry profitability in 2035.

Accenture Research and Frontier Economics have published How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovation. The report is downloadable here (28 pp., PDF, no opt-in).The research compares the economic growth rates of 16 industries, projecting the impact of Artifical Intelligence (AI) on global economic growth through 2035. Using Gross Value Added (GVA) as a close approximation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the study found that the more integrated AI is into economic processes, the greater potential for economic growth. 

One of the report’s noteworthy findings is that AI has the potential to increase economic growth rates by a weighted average of 1.7% across all industries through 2035. Information and Communication (4.8%), Manufacturing (4.4%) and Financial Services (4.3%) are the three sectors that will see the highest annual GVA growth rates driven by AI in 2035. The bottom line is that AI has the potential to boost profitability an average of 38% by 2035 and lead to an economic boost of $14T across 16 industries in 12 economies by 2035.

Key takeaways from the study include the following:

AI will increase economic growth by an average of 1.7% across 16 industries by 2035 with Information and Communication, manufacturing and financial services leading all industries

Accenture Research found that the Information and Communication industry has the greatest potential for economic growth from AI. Integrating AI into legacy information and communications systems will deliver significant cost, time and process-related savings quickly. Accenture predicts the time, cost and labor savings will generate up to $4.7T in GVA value in 2035. High growth areas within this industry are cloud, network, and systems security including defining enterprise-wide cloud security strategies.

AI will most increase profitability in education, accommodation and food services, and construction industries in 2035

Personalised learning programs and automating mundane, routine tasks to free up colleges, universities, and trade school instructors to teach new learning frameworks will accelerate profitability in the education through 2035.  Accommodation and food services and construction are industries with manually-intensive, often isolated processes that will benefit from the increased insights and contextual intelligence from AI throughout the forecast period.

Manufacturing’s adoption of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), smart factories and comparable initiatives are powerful catalysts driving AI adoption

Based on the proliferation of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices and the networks and terabytes of data they generate, Accenture predicts AI will contribute an additional $3.76T GVA to manufacturing by 2035. Supply chain management, forecasting, inventory optimisation and production scheduling are all areas AI can make immediate contributions to this industry’s profits and long-term economic growth.

Financial services’ greatest gains from AI will come automating and reducing the errors in mundane, manually-intensive tasks including credit scoring and first-level customer inquiries

Accenture forecasts financial services will benefit $1.2T in additional GVA in 2035 from AI. Follow-on areas of automation in Financial Services include automating market research queries through intelligent bots, and scoring and reviewing mortgages.

By 2035 AI technologies could increase labour productivity 40% or more, doubling economic growth in 12 developed nations

Accenture finds that AI’s immediate impact on profitability is improving individual efficiency and productivity. The economies of the U.S. and Finland are projected to see the greatest economic gains from AI through 2035, with each attaining 2% higher GVA growth. The following graphic compares the 12 nations included in the first phase of the research.

Sources:

• Accenture Report: Artificial Intelligence Has Potential to Increase Corporate Profitability in 16 Industries by an Average of 38 Percent by 2035

• Accenture: How AI Boosts Industry Profits And Innovation 

In today’s cloud based world, automation is key enabler for success. Yet, folks are scared of automation due to risk of losing job. However automation needs to be seen as a way to keep your job in and not out. Wikipedia definition of automation is «Automation or automatic control, is the use of various control systems for operating equipment such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention.» The key word in this definition is the last few words » reduced human intervention». Given automation is associated with reducing or eliminating human intervention, it often scare’s us to automate our job with the risk of losing our job. However, does automation really results in your job out or its actually a way to keep your job in?

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In its 2017 State of Malware Report, Malwarebytes Labs recorded a 267 percent increase in ransomware between January 2016 and November 2016, with over 400 different variants in total. The report noted that while malware authors mostly relied on ransomware to make the bulk of their revenues, there was an increase in ad fraud as well. Botnets and mobile malware also continue to expand and evolve. The report predicts that until IoT devices become secure out of the box, botnets will get even bigger and pose an even greater threat to the internet – and any company connected to it.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that DXWorldExpo has been named “Global Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Digital Transformation is the key issue driving the global enterprise IT business. Digital Transformation is most prominent among Global 2000 enterprises and government institutions.

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In his opening keynote at 20th Cloud Expo, Michael Maximilien, Research Scientist, Architect, and Engineer at IBM, discussed the full potential of the cloud and social data requires artificial intelligence. By mixing Cloud Foundry and the rich set of Watson services, IBM’s Bluemix is the best cloud operating system for enterprises today, providing rapid development and deployment of applications that can take advantage of the rich catalog of Watson services to help drive insights from the vast trove of private and public data available to enterprises.

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