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Top 25 IoT Startups To Watch In 2019

By on February 20, 2019

  • 26,792 startups are relying on IoT as one of their main technologies to launch new products and services and support platform-based business models according to Crunchbase.
  • 78.4% of IoT startups Crunchbase tracks have had two funding rounds or less with seed, angel and early-stage rounds being the most common.
  • IoT startup funding reached $16.7B in Q4, 2018, with last years’ funding levels 94% over 2017 according to Venture Scanner.
  • By 2020, 50% of IoT spending will be driven by discrete manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and utilities according to the Boston Consulting Group.

The most successful IoT startups selling into enterprises excel at orchestrating analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and real-time monitoring to deliver exceptional customer experiences. As a group, these top 25 IoT startups are showing early potential at enabling profitable new business models, revitalizing industries that have experienced single single-digit growth recently. Each of these startups is taking a unique approach to solving some of the enterprises’ most challenging problems, and in so doing creating valuable new patents that further fuel IoT adoption and growth.

The top 25 startups are concentrating on how to make IoT a growth catalyst for enterprises by designing in AI integration at the platform level. McKinsey found that 27% of AI early adopters are more likely to report using AI to grow their market than companies only experimenting with or partially adopting AI. 52% are more likely to report using it to increase their market share. These and many other survey results are from McKinsey Global Institute’s Artificial Intelligence: The Next Digital Frontier? (PDF, 80 pp., no opt-in).

Top 25 IoT Startups To Watch In 2019

The following list of 25 IoT startups are based on an analysis of their ability to attract new customers, current and projected revenue growth, patents’ current value and potential, and position in their chosen markets. Presented below are top 25 IoT startups to watch this year:

  1. Armis Security – Armis takes a unique approach to provide visibility into IoT-enabled devices that are unmanaged across an IT network. The company’s solutions treat every IoT device as a threat surface, enabling enterprises to prohibit access to IoT devices and networks based on security guidelines. Another unique aspect of this company’s approach to deployment is the ability to use an enterprises’ existing infrastructure for rapid deployments. Founded in 2015 the company has active customers in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and high technology industries. Armis Security has raised a total of $47M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Apr 9, 2018, from a Series B round of $30M from Bain Capital Ventures and Red Dot Capital Partners. Crunchbase reports Armis Security has $2.1M in revenue annually and competes with DigiCert, Skybox Security, and Aruba Networks most often in sales cycles.
  2. Crate.io – Crate.io’s open source SQL database features integrated search for storing and analyzing machine data in real time. The company was founded in 2013 with the purpose of providing SQL developers with an open source SQL database to capture, analyze and manage their machine learning and AI-based data. CrateDB is an open source distributed database offering the scalability and performance of NoSQL with the power and ease of standard SQL. The CrateDB Cloud for Azure IoT is a turnkey data layer, offered as a hosted cloud service on Azure, enabling faster development of IoT platforms and data-driven smart factories. Most CrateDB customers use it for operational analytics workloads, performing fast time series, geospatial, text search, machine learning queries against streams of data and data at rest in Industrial IoT, enterprise cybersecurity & systems monitoring in all industries, smart city and building infrastructure, Vehicle fleet tracking & management and marketing analytics. The company has raised $17.9M in funding over 4 rounds.
  3. Dragos – Dragos specializes in industrial (ICS/IIoT) cybersecurity. Their cloud-based Dragos Platform collects, detects, and automates asset inventorying and visualization, threat detection through threat behavior analytics, and security operations and incident response workflows. Dragos also has a Threat Operations Center that provides customers access to dedicated ICS incident response and threat hunting services as well as industrial specific intelligence reporting on vulnerabilities, threats, and community events. Dragos has raised a total of $48.2M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Nov 14, 2018, from a $37M Series B round with Canaan Partners.
  4. Drayson Technologies – Drayson Technologies provides an IoT platform startup that is combining wireless charging technology and machine learning software to create smart sensor networks that deliver greater energy and cost efficiencies to its customers. Drayson is known for its expertise in energy-efficient and cost-effective IoT data collection and analysis, which also contributes to their customers’ ability to reduce the cost of deploying, owning and running IoT networks.
  5. Element Analytics –Element Analytics is rapidly establishing itself as a startup to watch in the fields of chemicals & refining, manufacturing, metals & mining, pulp & paper, and upstream oil & gas. Their Element Platform helps industrial organizations easily and rapidly use industrial time-series data to improve production efficiency and product quality. Their platform prepares time-series data, enriches it with analytically relevant context, creating greater contextual insights. The Element Analytics platform also enables machine-learning modeling to surface reliability, productivity, and sustainability insights for operations. Element Analytics has raised a total of $22M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Jan 8, 2018, from a Series A round. Kleiner Perkins participated in the first two rounds, funding a total of $7M.
  6. FogHorn – FogHorn is a fascinating startup to watch because they excel at embedding real-time analytics and machine-learning support into size- and space- constrained commercial and industry IoT application areas. Realizing that industrial manufacturing and distribution sites often have unreliable Internet connections if they have any at all, Foghorn has designed a miniaturized, scalable complex-event processing (CEP) software engine that is capable of producing analytics in real-time. The FogHorn Lightning™ platform includes the CEP software engine, enabling high-performance edge computing, advanced analytics, Machine Learning, and AI to be implemented highly constrained environments of IIoT. The company has also created a new class of high-performance programming language called Vel ™ which transforms any gateway, programmable logic controller (PLC), industrial PC, or another edge device into an advanced edge computing system. FogHorn has raised a total of $47.5M in funding over 4 Their latest funding was raised on Oct 4, 2017, from a Series B round. The FogHorn Technology Platform is shown below:

  1. GEM – GEM specializes in providing IoT, analytics, and machine learning platforms and solutions for the manufacturing industry, with a specific focus on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and predictive maintenance. The company has been able to gain customers in energy, retail, and GEM’s value proposition is based on their ability to increase manufacturers’ OEE levels through greater real-time insights. The GEM Precare platform captures operational data and KPIs in real-time including availability, OEE, performance, quality, MTBF, MTBA, machine statuses, status reasons, and alarms. The following is an example of the GENM technology platform:

  1. IoTium – This is a fascinating company to track due to their patented technology that enables secure connections between Network as a Service (NaaS), legacy onsite systems and cloud-based applications. Customers include CBRE, Emerson, Intelligent Buildings, Obernel, Rexnord, and Sunbelt Controls. IoTium is well positioned to gain new customers in building and industrial automation, oil & gas, manufacturing, transportation, and smart city industries. IoTium has raised a total of $22M in funding over 2 rounds with investors GE Ventures, March Capital, and Juniper Networks. Their latest funding was raised on Sep 19, 2018, from a Series B round.
  2. InfluxData – InfluxData created InfluxDB, their Open Source Platform specifically designed to analyze metrics and events (time series data) for DevOps and IoT applications. Whether the data comes from humans, sensors, or machines, InfluxData enables developers to build monitoring, analytics, and IoT applications at scale, delivering measurable business value quickly. The company reports having 400 customers including Cisco, eBay, IBM, and InfluxData has raised a total of $59.9M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Feb 13, 2018, from a Series C round.
  3. Karamba Security – Karamba Security is focused on solving the security challenges of connected vehicles. The company offers Electronic Control Unit (ECU) endpoint security to protect any vehicle with an IoT connection or IP address. What makes this startup so interesting is how they are using patented technologies to reduce IoT-based attacks on vehicles by blocking them autonomously. Internet connectivity or extensive developer work is not needed to implement Karamba across a vehicle fleet. Each device can be reset to its factory settings, eliminating the threat of a vehicle being hacked. Karamba Security has raised a total of $27M in funding over 4 Their latest funding was raised on Apr 10, 2018, from a Series B round.
  4. MachineMetrics – What makes MachineMetrics an interesting company to watch is their innovative approach to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to discover new insights into manufacturer’s data that improve product quality and performance. It’s one of the first startups to combine Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI and provide a scalable platform for discrete manufacturers and heavy equipment builders. They’ve also developed an expertise at edge connectivity in manufacturing environments that have enabled greater real-time visibility and more meaningful manufacturing analytics than has been possible in the past. They’re using AI to drive their prescriptive and predictive alerts. MachineMetrics has raised a total of $13.4M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Dec 11, 2018, from a Series A round. The following is a Workstation View from the MachineMetrics Production platform:

  1. MagicCube – MagicCube is a device independent IoT security platform that protects against on-device, cloud, and network attacks. The MagicCube solution secures digital transactions on any device, in transit, and in the cloud with the same level of security as device hardware solutions without the complexity and cost associated with hardware deployments. MagicCube, Inc. has raised a total of $10.7M in funding over 2 Their latest funding was raised on Aug 8, 2017, from a Series A round.
  2. Myriota – What makes Myriota a fascinating company to watch is their innovative advances in ultra-low-cost satellite Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and the alliances they are creating, including on with SpaceX. Myriota’s nano-satellite was launched into space aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December 2018. Myriota uses exactEarth’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation for its connectivity solutions. Myriota is a global leader in low-cost satellite IoT connectivity, providing aggregated sensor reading, environmental sensing, and online tracking and condition monitoring of remote assets. The company has raised a total of $15M in funding over 1 round. This was a Series A round raised on Mar 26, 2018.
  3. Particle – Particle is an Internet of Things (IoT) device platform that enables organizations to develop and fine-tune connectivity across operations using scalable APIs and software development resources. Particle’s development platform is designed to provide organizations with the tools they need to prototype IoT solutions to scale quickly and securely. Over 150,000 product builders in more than 170 countries and half of the Fortune 500 have deployed connected IoT devices powered by Particle. Particle’s customers include NASA, SpaceX, consumer hot tub manufacturer Jacuzzi, and Venture-backed by Root Ventures, Spark Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Particle is based in San Francisco, CA and Shenzhen, China. Particle has raised a total of $35.8M in funding over 7 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 19, 2017, from a Series B round.
  4. Samsara – What makes Samsara noteworthy is their prioritizing how sensor data can increase the safety and efficiency of physical operations, contributing to productivity gains while reducing costs. Samsara is attracting customers from the transportation, logistics, construction, food production, energy, and manufacturing industries with their ability to improve the safety, efficiency, and quality of operations. Samsara builds sensor systems that combine wireless sensors with remote networking and cloud-based analytics. As of February 2019, the company has over 5,000 customers and has a run rate of 200,000 new devices being added every year. Samsara has raised a total of $230M in funding over 5 Their latest funding was raised on Dec 28, 2018, from a Series E round. An example of the company’s Fleet Summary is shown below:

  1. SCADAfence – SCADAfence provides cybersecurity solutions designed to ensure the operational continuity of industrial (ICS/SCADA) networks. The startup excels at integrating Industrial IoT, analytics, realtime monitoring and machine-to-machine connectivity to provide scalable cybersecurity solutions for production networks. As of February 2019 the company has customers in the pharmaceutical, chemical, food & beverage and automotive industries. SCADAFence offers a solution suite that includes continuous real-time monitoring of the industrial environment as well as lightweight tools designed to automate the process of security assessment. The suite provides visibility of day-to-day operations, detection of cyber-attacks and forensics tools designed to improve responsiveness. SCADAfence has raised a total of $10M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Nov 21, 2017, from a Series A round.
  2. SequoiaDB – SequoiaDB develops and provides commercial support for the open source database SequoiaDB, a document-oriented NewSQL database that supports JSON transaction processing and SQL query. Their database can either be a standalone product to interface with applications providing high performance and horizontally scalable data storage and processing functions or serve as the frontend of Hadoop and Spark for both real-time query and data analysis. It is designed to integrate with Spark, Hadoop/Cloudera. SequoiaDB has raised a total of $40M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Sep 19, 2018, from a Series C round.
  3. Sight Machine – This is a fascinating startup to watch, I’ve been tracking Sight Machine for several years. The company is succeeding at attracting Fortune 500-level manufacturers as clients by providing them with AI-driven insights into how they can improve operations. Sight Machine’s AI and analytics platform, purpose-built for discrete and process manufacturing, uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to help address critical challenges in quality and productivity throughout the enterprise. The platform is powered by the industry’s only Plant Digital Twin, which enables real-time visibility and actionable insights for every machine, line, and plant throughout an enterprise. Sight Machine is optimized to run on the major cloud platforms including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. The company has raised a total of $30.5M in funding over 5 Their latest funding was raised on Dec 23, 2017, from a Series B round. An example of a Sight Machine dashboard is shown below:

  1. Splice Machine –. Splice Machine provides an open-source dual-engine RDBMS for mixed operational and analytical workloads, powered by Apache Hadoop® and Apache Spark™. The Splice Machine RDBMS executes operational workloads on Apache HBase® and analytical workloads on Apache Spark. Splice Machine is known for its ease of development and use for IoT-based applications and is successfully offload operational and analytical workloads from Oracle, Teradata, and Netezza legacy systems. The company excels at ETL, operational reporting or real-time applications and use cases. Splice Machine has raised a total of $40M in funding over 4 Their latest funding was raised on Dec 20, 2017, from Salesforce Ventures.
  2. SWIM.AI – Swim provides edge-based software that executes real-time analytics and machine learning for enterprises, equipment manufacturers, smart-cities, and IoT and IIoT businesses. Its software locally processes and analyzes massive volumes of streaming data from devices/sensors/equipment where it is created, reducing network volumes, and generating real-time machine-learning business insights. Swim deploys its software at the edge to transform data into insights in real-time and delivers them to businesses, staff, operators, and customers. Swim has successfully been deployed and is in use in existing equipment and brownfield environments. In manufacturing customers’ operations Swim is improving real-time synchronization across multiple systems, reduce project implementation costs, optimizing efficiency using machine learning insights from full resolution edge data and making insights available via real-time APIs. Swim.ai has raised a total of $10M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 17, 2018, from a Series B round. Swim’s model is shown below:

  1. Tulip – Tulip was started by a team of engineers out of the MIT Media Lab, and the company’s platform is based on over ten years of research in digital manufacturing. Their self-service technology fills the gap between rigid back-end manufacturing IT systems and the dynamic operations taking place on the shop floor. Tulip’s Manufacturing App Platform combines research in intelligent hardware sensors, computer vision, assistive user interfaces, and applied machine learning. Tulip was launched to bring these latest technological developments from the lab to the factory floor. Today, Tulip’s Manufacturing App Platform is deployed at dozens of global customers in six countries across multiple industries including Electronics, Aerospace & Defense, Medical Devices, Footwear, Pharmaceuticals, and Contract Manufacturing. Tulip Interfaces has raised a total of $13M in funding over 3
  2. Tuya Smart – Tuya Smart is an IoT solution provider for device manufacturers. Their platform enables fast, agile app development, allowing smart device manufacturers to bring their product to market quickly and at competitive prices. Tuya Smart is founded by Jerry Wang, a founding executive of AliYun, Alibaba’s cloud division, along with a group of veterans from Alibaba, Baidu and Haier Electronics. With extensive knowledge in cloud computing, software development, and hardware and supply chain management, Tuya Smart’s team is enabling manufacturers to produce next-generation smart, connected products. Tuya has raised a total of $200M in funding over 3 Their latest funding was raised on Jul 24, 2018, from a Series C round.
  3. Uptake – Uptake Technologies provides a predictive analytics and asset performance management (APM) platform gaining traction in key industrial IoT market segments today. The Uptake platform analyzes data from inside a company and from third party sources to predict and prevent failures, uncover hidden profits, and discover new opportunities to healthcare, insurance, locomotives, construction, manufacturing, and other industries. Uptake Technologies offers a platform for equipment monitoring, diagnostic troubleshooting, event, and condition prediction, and task management to improve uptime, streamline operations, and spot growth opportunities. Key customers include Caterpillar, Progress Rail, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and the U.S. Army.
  4. VDOO– VDOO has developed a platform of automated solutions to help IoT makers put the right security in their devices before release and enable post-deployment security. The end-to-end platform takes the maker from security analysis to implementation guidance to certification and enables IoT makers to quickly add the right security to their devices with minimal resources. VDOO’s solution is built upon a comprehensive taxonomy of IoT devices and consists of five interrelated and integrated products including the Security Requirements Generator, Security Gap Analysis, Actionable Security Plan, Certification, and Post-Deployment Security Enablement. VDOO has raised a total of $13M in funding over 1 round. This was a Series A round raised on Jan 17, 2018.
  5. Xage Security – Xage provides decentralized security services for industrial manufacturing and distribution businesses including oil and gas, transportation, and utilities. The Xage architecture relies on blockchain to provide a distributed, scalable and highly reliable data store that prevents hackers from attacking and gaining access through any threat surface in an organization. Xage takes a unique approach to using blockchain to thwart hacking attempts at scale, by simultaneously protecting every active ledger in an organization. Xage Security has raised a total of $16M in funding over 2 Their latest funding was raised on Dec 28, 2018, from a Series A round.

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Digital Transformation’s Missing Link Is Zero Trust

By on February 18, 2019

Motion blur of train moving to City

  • Enterprises will invest $2.4T by 2020 in digital transformation technologies including cloud platforms, cognitive systems, IoT, mobile, robotics, and integration services according to the World Economic Forum.
  • IDC predicts worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations will reach $1.97T in 2022.
  • Digital transformation software and services revenue in the U.S. is predicted to reach $490B in 2025, soaring from $190B in 2019, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.49% according to Grand View Research published by Statista.
  • Legacy approaches to Privileged Access Management (PAM) don’t protect the new threatscapes digital transformation initiatives create, making Zero Trust Privilege essential for enterprises.
  • B2B customers, including manufacturers looking to replace legacy production equipment with smart, connected machines, have high expectations when it comes to product quality, ease of integration, and intuitive user experiences. Replacing factories full of legacy assets with smart, connected machinery is one of the most powerful catalysts driving digital transformation today. Innovative smart, connected machinery and the performance gains they provide are the oxygen that keeps customer relationships alive. That’s why digital transformation forecasts from the World Economic Forum, Grand View Research, IDC, and many others predict perennial growth. The many forecasts reflect a fundamental truth: digital transformation done with intensity creates a customer-driven renaissance for any business.Businesses digitally transforming themselves are succeeding because they’ve made themselves accountable and transparent to customers. Earning and protecting that trust is the heartbeat of any business’ growth. 51% of enterprises invest in digital transformation to capture growth opportunities in new markets, with 46% investing to stay in front of evolving customer behaviors and preferences. Brian Solis’ excellent report, The State of Digital Transformation, 2018 – 2019 Edition (31 pp., PDF, opt-in) shows how digitally transforming any business with the customer first leads to greater growth. The graphic from his study illustrates this point:

    Closing The Digital Transformation Gap With Zero Trust

    Gaps exist between the results digital transformation initiatives are delivering today, and the customer-driven value they’re capable of. According to Gartner, 75% of digital transformation projects are not aligned internally today, leading to delayed new product launches, mediocre experiences, and greater security risks than ever before. Interactive, IoT-enabled experiences and products are expanding the threatscape of enterprises to include Big Data, cloud, containers, DevOps, IoT systems, and more. With that comes a host of new exposure points, many of which allow access to sensitive data that must be protected with modern Privileged Access Management solutions that reduce risk in these modern enterprise use cases.

    The new security perimeter is identity. Forrester estimates that 80% of data breaches are caused by privileged access abuse. Every smart, connected machine that replaces legacy production equipment is another identity that defines a manufacturer’s security perimeter.

    As the use cases and adoption of smart, connected machines proliferate, so too does the urgency that manufacturers need to replace their legacy approaches to Privileged Access Management (PAM). Relying on outdated strategies for protecting administrative access to all machines needs to be replaced with a “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach.

    IT needs to improve how they’re protecting the most privileged access credentials, the ‘keys to the kingdom,’ by granting just-enough, just-in-time privilege. Of the many cybersecurity approaches available today, Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) enables IT to grant least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment.

    The more diverse any digital transformation strategy, the greater the risk of privileged credential abuse. Thwarting privileged credential abuse needs to start with a least privilege access approach, minimizing each attack surface, improving audit and compliance visibility while reducing risk, complexity, and costs. Leaders in Zero Trust include Centrify, MobileIron, Palo Alto Networks, and others. Of these companies, Centrify’s approach to Zero Trust to prevent privileged access abuse shows the greatest potential for securing digital transformation initiatives and strategies.

    How To Secure Digital Transformation Strategies

    IDG Research found in their Security Priorities for 2018 study that 71% of security-focused IT decision-makers are aware of the Zero Trust model and 18% of enterprises are either running pilots or have implemented Zero Trust.

    Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) is the force multiplier digital transformation initiatives need to reach their true potential by securing administrative access to the complex mix of machinery and infrastructure – and the sensitive data they hold and use – that manufacturers rely on daily.

    Starting with a strategic perspective, ZTP’s contribution to securing digital transformation deployments apply to every area of planning, pilots, platforms, product, and service data being designed to stop the leading cause of breaches, which is privileged credential abuse. The following graphic illustrates how ZTP needs to span every aspect of an enterprise’s digital transformation capabilities.

    Source: World Economic Forum, Digital Transformation Initiative, May 2018

    Conclusion

    By 2020, 30% of Global 2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10% of revenue to fuel their digital transformation strategies according to IDC.  European spending on technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations is forecasted to reach $378.2B in 2022. The perennial growth these forecasts promise is predicated on enterprises delivering new experiences and innovative products, which create the oxygen that keeps their customer relationships alive.

    Amidst all the potential for growth, enterprises need to realize every new infrastructure element, machine, or connected production asset is a new identity that collectively comprises the fabric of their security perimeter. Legacy cybersecurity approaches won’t scale to protect the proliferating number of smart machines being put into use today. Relying entirely on legacy approaches to PAM, where privileged access to systems and resources only inside the network are secure, is failing today. Smart, connected machinery and the products and experiences they deliver require an entirely new cybersecurity strategy, one based on a “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach. Centrify Zero Trust Privilege shows potential to meet this challenge by granting least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment.

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Polishing brand ERP

By on February 18, 2019

Kudos to Cindy Jutras for her study “Real Facts About ERP Implementation”. Her survey showed that two-thirds of respondents graded their ERP implementation as “successful” or “very successful.” The survey found 31% thought their ERP project was at least a partial success, while 2% thought they were “not very successful.” Only one out of 315 thought their ERP deployment was a failure.

ERP needs more positive press. In my upcoming book SAP Nation 3.0, I have several case studies of customers who have implemented S/4HANA “greenfield” and others who have migrated from ECC. The great news – most had modest expectations, did pragmatic implementations and had small doses of big brand SIs. There are other sections on its ByD SME focused product including the fact that “the best compliments they get from customers is that their IT expense around ByD does not grow anywhere as fast as their revenues.” I also have several case studies which talk of their experiences with Plex, Workday and other products.

Having said that, we also need to point out realities in ERP world and the fact that the majority of SAP, Oracle, Infor, Unit4 and other on-prem customer bases are not migrating to their newer products. Several reasons why

Manufacturing, and business, is global

A fundamental tenet of manufacturing is to make things close to demand. With middle classes growing around the world, manufacturing in China, Vietnam, Slovakia, Mexico and other countries is not at all unusual. Even more importantly, these plants get moved around the world at dizzying speed. The U.S., with its strong economy, is seeing lots of manufacturing move back here. All this calls for ERP vendors to globalize and in a hurry. Franck Cohen of SAP told us about a multinational customer who asked him, “We love your public cloud but you have to offer us 189 countries localization out of the box.” Customers got that in on-prem versions – why should they expect less in the cloud?

We are surrounded by automation

Today’s shop floors and warehouses have robotics, wearables, sensors and AR goggles. Our 3PLs have telematics. Our accounts payable can use AI for fraud detection, our expense processing uses receipt image processing. We need UX which works on noisy floors where your hands need to be free from keyboard and mouse.  It is amazing how many ERP vendors pretend as if all that only happens on planet Pandora. It’s our reality and it is embarrassing that ERP vendors are not delivering processes which reflect this changing man/machine mix.

We need to emphasize the operational part of ERP

Part of the bad image ERP got in the last wave was customers mostly implemented white collar, HQ type functions. They missed out on the plant, the warehouse, the shipping dock, the R&D lab and the quality control areas. That’s where the high-value payback happens. We run the same risk this time around. We have vendors who have none of this operational functionality but still call themselves ERP vendors. There are other vendors who claim to have extended ERP to insurance, retail, utility or healthcare but have no operational books of record which support claims processing, merchandising, customer billing or clinical functionality for those industries. Let’s call them what they are  – “accounting” or “CRM” vendors not ERP or vertical industry vendors.

We keep sending mixed messages

I see vendors justify their moves to next-gen products by telling customers to retire their old customizations. Then they turn around and tell them to use their platforms to write new customizations when that should be delivered as part of their functionality.  I see vendors who say “manufacturing should be done on-prem, not in the cloud”. Then they glibly talk about machine learning. How much can machines learn if so much data continues to be squirreled away in customer data centers?

We need to expect more – way more – from SIs and resellers who implement and maintain ERP

As an industry, we have implemented or upgraded ERP software tens of millions of times. It is absurd that we tolerate the failure rates and cost overruns that has become synonymous with ERP. Every aspect of ERP was a reason to gouge – close to 100% gross margins on software, ridiculous MPLS circuit and storage pricing, you name it. Offshore vendors who could show CMM Level 5 continuous improvements suddenly forgot that discipline when it came to ERP support. Much of what is delivered by SIs and outsourcers can and should be automated – see several ideas here

The ERP brand definitely needs polishing. There are plenty of us like Cindy who are willing to step up to emphasize the positive. But part of that needs to be tough love. We have to demand more from ERP vendors and their ecosystems.

 

(Cross-posted @ Deal Architect)

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Let’s Take the Cult out of Silicon Valley Culture

By on February 18, 2019

I am big believer in strong corporate cultures.  Culture can be used to set powerful norms.  Culture can bind people in an organization to a common set of values bigger than their quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs).  Culture helps attracts the right people to your organization – and can drive out the wrong ones when they get swarmed with corporate antibodies for showing the wrong values and behaviors.

Culture, to paraphrase Henry Ford’s thoughts on quality, is what happens when no one is watching.

But never forget the first four letters of culture spell “cult” and too often, in Silicon Valley at least, corporate cultures become corporate cults:

For many Silicon Valley companies, culture is a point of pride and is meticulously captured in long slide presentations, such as the Netflix or HubSpot culture decks. [2]

When culture turns to cult in Silicon Valley, it’s often arguably benevolent – a strong leader espousing a visionary worldview combined with positive incentives for employees to spend as much time as possible with each other and/or at work.  The company provideth all:  free transportation, interesting work, fun recreation, great food, social events, perhaps (indirectly) even a significant other.  So why not spend all your time with the company? [3]

But sometimes Silicon Valley cults are not benevolent – Theranos being the best recent example.  Continuing to work in such environments, prioritizing the needs of the cult over common sense and business ethics can do lasting damage to your personal relationships, to your health,  and to your career.

cultsI first started studying corporate cults when Business Objects was competing with MicroStrategy back in the 1990s.  I found this book, Corporate Cults:  The Insidious Lure of the All-Consuming Organization, and had a few conversations with its author, Dave Arnott.

The first thing I learned from Dave was that, if you’re competing against a cult, that you should not attack it.  Attacking it, per Dave, only makes the cult stronger as the attack drives member together to defend the cult.

Consider some of the following similarities between cults and startups:

  • Charismatic leadership. Startups are often led by charismatic people, passionate about their beliefs and persuasive that the company is on a broader mission. [4]
  • Isolation from friends and family. This happens naturally at startups with long work hours, but is often exacerbated by the culture committee’s active social and events calendar.
  • Homogeneous recruiting. MicroStrategy supposedly preferred recruiting in its early days not just out of MIT, but out of one specific fraternity.  Many startups recruit similar people, all from the top programs across the country.
  • Hazing and rites of passage. Many startups have rigorous bootcamps where only the best get through.  Trilogy’s three-month bootcamp was the intense I’ve heard of.
  • Elitism.  Once recruited and having passed bootcamp, members are reminded of how much better they are than anybody else.  For example, HubSpot loved to tell recruits (based on specious logic) that it was harder to get into HubSpot than Harvard.
  • Specialized vocabulary.  At HubSpot, you’re not an employee, but a “HubSpotter.”  You don’t delight your customers, you give them “delightion.”  No one ever “quits” or is “fired,” former employees “graduate.”  How pleasant.
  • Demands for absolute loyalty.  Theranos did this frequently: “if anyone here believes you are not working on the best things humans have ever built, of if you’re cynical, you should leave.”
  • Excommunication of former members.  Former employees are more “dead to us” than “working somewhere else.”  Theranos was particular brutal in this regard, not only frowning on continuing relationships with former employees but subjecting them to constant surveillance and stunning legal harassment.

I’m not saying long work hours, free lunch, and and ping pong tables are bad.  I am saying that many Silicon Valley cultures border on cults.  Leaders should pay attention to this and try to avoid falling into common cult patterns, for example, by ensuring diverse recruiting programs, by building on-boarding programs that are more training than brainwashing, and by creating a culture that values dissenting opinions.  [5]

Employees should keep an eye out for lines getting crossed.  As they say with authoritarian leadership, it’s a boiled-frog problem — it happens slowly, you don’t notice any changes, and then wake up one day in an authoritarian regime.  Don’t let that happen to you, waking up one day to discover that you’re working at a malevolent corporate cult.

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Notes

[1] Hint:  if everything is too secret, if management is routinely caught lying to customers and investors, if anyone who challenges management is summarily fired, and if you hear things like “if you don’t believe [our new product] is the most important thing humanity has ever built, you should quit now” – then you should probably go find a new job.

[2] Which nevertheless didn’t stop HubSpot from getting a good mocking in Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble.

[3] Some would certainly argue that even this is unhealthy.  Dave Arnott would argue there should be a line between “who are we” and “what we do.”  Even benevolent cults somewhat dissolve this line.

[4]  Which was so marvelously parodied in HBO’s Silicon Valley in a minute-long montage of founders pledging “to make the world a better place through Paxos algorithms” or “make the world a better place through canonical data models to communicate between endpoints.”

[5] Which is particularly important in a culture led by a strong leader.

 

 

(Cross-posted @ Kellblog)

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Snowed in at the @OpenText Analyst Summit 2019

By on February 18, 2019

Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s CEO and CTO, kicked off the analyst summit with his re:imagine keynote here in Boston amidst a snowy winter storm that ensures a captive audience. He gave some of the current OpenText stats –100M end users over 120,000 customers, 2.8B in revenue last year — before expanding into a review of how the market has shifted over the past 10 years, fueled by changes in technology and infrastructure. What’s happened on the way to digital and AI is what he calls the zero theorem: zero trust (guard against security and privacy breaches), zero IT (bring your own device, work in the cloud), zero people (automate everything possible) and zero down time (everything always available).

Their theme for this year is to help their customers re:imagine work, re:imagine their workforce, and re:imagine automation and AI. This starts with OpenText’s intelligent information core (automation, AI, APIs and data management), then expands with both their EIM platforms and EIM applications. OpenText has a pretty varied product portfolio (to say the least) and is bringing many of these components together into a more cohesive integrated vision in both the content services and the business network spaces. More importantly, they are converging their many, many engines so that in the future, customers won’t have to decide between which ECM or BPM engine, for example.

They are providing a layer of RESTful services on top of their intelligent information core services (ECM, BPM, Capture, Business Network, Analytics/AI, IoT), then allow that to be consumed either by standard development tools in a technical IDE, or using the AppWorks low-code environment. The Cloud OT2 architecture provides about 40 services for consumption in these development environments or by OpenText’s own vertical applications such as People Center.

Barrenechea finished up with a review of how OpenText is using OpenText to transform their own business, using AI for looking at some of their financial and people management data to help guide them towards improvements. They’ll be investing $2B in R&D over the next five years to help them become even bigger in the $100B EIM market, both through the platform and more increasingly through vertical applications.

We’ll be digging into more of the details later today and tomorrow as the summit continues, so stay tuned.

Next up was Ted Harrison, EVP of Worldwide Sales, interviewing one of their customers: Gopal Padinjaruveetil, VP and Chief Information Security Officer at The Auto Club Group. AAA needs no introduction as a roadside assistance organization, but they also have insurance, banking, travel, car care and advocacy business areas, with coordinated member access to services across multiple channels. It’s this concept of the connected member that has driven their focus on digital identity for both people and devices, and how AI can help them to reduce risk and improve security by detecting abnormal patterns.

(Cross-posted @ Column 2)

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AI and the implementation consultant

By on February 11, 2019

I recently read an article which said “AI will not replace accountants and auditors, but accountants and auditors that use AI can replace those that don’t.”

I predict that will also be true of implementation consultants in the next few years. SAP has invested in automation to analyze current ECC configurations, and to inspect custom mods at customers looking to move to S/4HANA. Oracle, as part of its SOAR initiative has other conversion tools. Plex has a project applying ML to examine parameter settings across their customer base. Incorrect settings lead to inefficiencies and errors. Extrapolate that and with AI, consultants should be able to configure parameters much quicker and more accurately. The toolbox keeps growing.

My premise was reinforced when I was talking to a roofer recently. If you look at how that industry has evolved and how it can routinely replace roofs in a day, you see similar opportunities to make implementation projects quicker, cheaper and importantly, much more predictable.

Before you laugh and think implementation projects are way more complex, review this video of EagleView which applies AI to imagery and allows roofers to better scope their jobs. No two roofs are alike, and EagleView has case studies where the proposals can be done at 60 to 70% less effort than before.  With drones, robotic crawlers and other automation the industry will become even more efficient.

The ERP, CRM etc SI market similarly has data on millions of projects. These projects mostly follow similar steps – parameter configuration, data conversion, end user training, testing etc. In 2001, Jim Holincheck (who then went on to Gartner and Workday), Brian Sommer and I were part of a startup which had built early project configurators and proposal engines. With today’s CPQ, PSA and other technologies and data from projects from another 18 years, I am confident we can similarly apply machine learning and other automation to IT projects.

Let’s continue the comparison. With EagleView you don’t have to climb roofs to estimate jobs, Similarly with technology projects we can move to remote delivery models – saving on travel costs which often exceed the cost of the software being implemented. Offshore vendors have been doing that for decades. Modern roofers use automated conveyors to port shingles and other materials from truck to roof, and return debris back to recycle trucks. That’s where we need much more automated enterprise class data conversion capabilities. With improving ETL and services architectures, IT projects should move to similar conveyor thinking.

Roofers tend to use specialty teams – one strips the old shingles, felt and other sealants, another inspects the plywood for rot and replaces pieces, others apply ice and water shields. Some use staple guns, others use magnetic rollers to tidy the work. Still others use digital cameras for their testing and documentation. The systems integration industry will likely move to similar specialization. Expecting a project team to do all the tasks is sub-optimal. We could have specialized training or testing teams as shared service centers.

The building blocks are in place. The toolbox keeps growing. It may take a disruptive set of new SIs or software vendors to bring them together. But safe to say “implementation consultants who use AI and other automation will replace those that don’t”.

 

(Cross-posted @ Deal Architect)

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Price Qualification: The Tiffany Way

By on February 11, 2019

Most salespeople are familiar with so-called BANT qualification:  does the prospect have Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe in order to make a purchase?  While Solution Selling purists dislike BANT (arguing that it’s great way to find existing deals that have been already rigged for the competition), most sales organizations today use BANT, or some form of it, for lead qualification and scoring.  Typically, in an enterprise SaaS company, a sales development rep (SDR) will not pass an opportunity to sales unless some form of BANT qualification has been performed.

The purpose of this post is to drill into how you should do price (i.e., budget) qualification, which I believe is far more subtle than it appears:

  • People can sometimes spend far more than they are spending (and/or imagine they can spend) once they realize the total cost of owning their current system and/or the total benefits of owning a superior one.  Great salespeople, by the way, help them do precisely that.
  • SDRs barking average configuration prices or, worse yet, price list items (e.g., “enterprise edition has a base fee of $100K/year plus $2.5K per admin user/year”) can either scare away or anchor bias prospects to given price points.

For example, let’s say that your company sells a high-end planning/budgeting system (average cost $250K/year) and you find a prospect who is spending $50K/year for their existing planning/budgeting system, which isn’t delivering very good results.

  1. It’s inflexible and doesn’t allow the VP of Finance to make the reports the CFO repeatedly requests.
  2. It’s arcane and requires highly paid consultants to come several weeks/quarter in order to make changes and performance maintenance on the basic setup.
  3. It’s slow, so users are frustrated trying to load their budgets, and instead mail them to Finance via spreadsheets, asking Finance to do the loads, creating a significant amount of incremental work for the finance team.

How are we supposed to price qualify this opportunity?  Ask the prospect:

  • How much they want to spend?  Answer:  as little as possible.
  • How much budget they have?  Answer:  $50K.
  • How much they are paying for the existing system?  Answer:  $50K.

As an SDR, are you supposed to pass this ostensibly $50K opportunity to a salesrep who normally does $250K deals [1]?  If you’re smart, you know they have the money — those consultants in problem 2 might run $100K/year, they probably have to hire an extra analyst or two to solve problem 3 at $80K/year each, and problem 1 — which is career threatening for the VP of Finance — is, as Mastercard likes to say, “priceless.”

What’s more, what do you say if the prospect tries to price qualify you?

You know, we don’t have a lot of money for this project so I need to know the typical price of your system?

What do you say then?  $50K and jeopardize the deal downstream when the salesrep proposes $250K?  $250K and possibly scare them off at the start — even though you know the total cost of their existing system might be bigger than that today?

Capture

I’ve always liked Tiffany’s a reference point for this.  As you may know, most Tiffany’s stores are divided in two.  On one side — typically the smaller, more crowded one — you can buy jewelry from $200 to $2,000.  Then there’s the other side, where the security guard hangs out, that’s bigger and less crowded, and where the jewelry costs from $10K to $200K+.

The thing I find funny about Tiffany’s is that somehow, magically, most people seem to figure out what side they belong on.  And when they don’t, the staff don’t ask you how much money you have — they tell you broad price ranges on each side of the store.

The keywords, in an enterprise software context, being “broad” and “ranges.”  So, in our scenario, I think the best initial answer to the pricing question is:

That’s a hard question to answer at this point.  Each customer and every situation is different.  Our systems scale across a broad range of needs and, as a result, prices typically range from $50K on the low end to $500K+ on the high-end.  Based upon what I know about your situation, I’d recommend that you have a conversation with one of our account managers so we can better understand your challenges, our ability to meet them, and establish a clearer price point for so doing.

Your goal is to neither scare them off nor anchor bias them to a lower price (“sure we can do that for $50K”) that later results in disappointment or, worse yet, a feeling your company can’t be trusted.

Finally, the great part about the Tiffany analogy is that most enterprise software companies actually do have both sides of the store — corporate sales and enterprise sales, often each selling different and appropriately priced editions of the software. While few SaaS companies actually segment between the two based on deal size, they typically use other variables that are intended to act as direct proxies for it.

# # #

Notes

[1] The answer in most SDR models would be “yes, just pass it” so the hard part isn’t the decision to pass it, but how to do so without anchor biasing the prospect to a $50K price.  (“Whoa, the SDR told me you could do this for $50K; he asked how much budget I had and I told him precisely that.”)

 

(Cross-posted @ Kellblog)

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Time for more vertical integration in enterprise software

By on February 8, 2019

As SaaS vendors took off in the early 2000s, I was encouraged by their business model. They had collapsed software, hosting, application management and upgrades into one contract. But in recent years I have seen a reversal and a lot of fragmentation. So, vendors are leveraging AWS or Azure for their infrastructure. Is that showing up in lowered prices or more investment in functionality? Not that obvious. Application vendors are encouraging others to use their PaaS to develop apps with new functionality. If your PaaS is so good how come your own developers are not using to deliver more for what you are already being paid for? Vendors are bringing in “brand name” SIs into their ecosystem and risking the overruns and failures of old. What they need is more of their own services in small doses and a generation of “born in the cloud”, open source, and ML and IoT savvy operational firms. I also see vendors brag about creating millions of jobs in their ecosystems – hold on – for what and who’s paying for that?

I was pleased to see in my research for SAP Nation 3.0, SAP take the lead and offer various tools to help customers migrate to S/4HANA. Customers talk in the book about automation in the form of Simplification Lists and pre-checks for customizations, others talk about its Activate methodology. Still others talk of small doses of its Leonardo ML consulting support and Value Assurance teams. Others mention support from Innovation Centers around the world.

I know software vendors have hangups about growing services staffing. My attitude is provide them in small doses, but take accountability and deliver better outcomes.

Two conversations in the last few months with software CEOs – both serial entrepreneurs and savvy investors – have raised, for me, the bar for vertical integration.

Brad Keywell, founder and CEO of Uptake Technologies, an Industrial AI software is a founding investor in Tempus and co-founder of Groupon, Echo Global Logistics, MediaOcean, Drivin, and the venture capital firm Lightbank. He is also involved in a variety of philanthropic initiatives. He is many ways an “outsider” to enterprise software and his pov is

“Through learning how (and why) the enterprise software world got to where it is today, I very clearly see the foundational flaws that have led to incredibly low customer satisfaction scores for the legacy enterprise software leaders. There is a lack of accountability, given that there’s been a divorcing of software from system integration, which is then decoupled from implementation. And, often, that’s decoupled from optimization over time.

Most troubling, the customer is left taking all of the risk, outlaying all of the money, and then holding the bag if the implementation is a failure – the legacy risk-reward model is out of whack. Legacy software vendors ask for money but then avoid accountability for outcomes. The customer takes all of the risk, and too often is forced to write off huge investment.

Uptake believes in delivering applications that produce impactful outcomes. We deliver much more certain efficacy, therefore reducing the customer’s risk and greatly enhancing our customers’ return. We deliver impact, and that’s really what operators are thirsting for.”

Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, is similarly a serial entrepreneur and investor and in many ways also an “outsider”. During my recent visit for Zoho Day I was impressed in how many small and big ways, Zoho takes charge. As I wrote here, their R&D productivity is impressive and keeps improving. For the same price point, they keep delivering significantly more functionality to customers without involving expensive SIs or ISV partners. They run their data centers more efficiently than buying even from hyperscale IaaS providers.

But it doesn’t end there. The creative team came to my attention because they created portraits of the visiting analysts. As Vijayan, the artist who drew some of the portraits pointed out here “Our primary work involves creating graphics/ illustrations for the marketing collateral including the website. We are one creative studio for the entire 40+ Zoho products!”

BTW, Infor had done similar with their captive Hook+Loop design agency.

I was also intrigued by the Zoho office space in Pleasanton and its use for hosting events. I was shown a plan Raju Vegensa, the Chief Evangelist wrote a few years ago. Here are some extracts which show Zoho taking charge in many areas most other companies would just hand over to someone else

“We started going down the ‘standard’ path of redesigning the space by hiring an architect and an interior designer. A few weeks into the process, I realized that there was a significant disconnect between what I wanted in the space and what the architect and interior designers have been showing me. We were going down the path that didn’t reflect who we are. That was when the realization hit me – there is no way an external designer or an architect or any firm can know what you want, what your culture is, how people interact within your office etc. Unless they are part of the company, unless they deeply understand the culture of the company, they cannot design the space. So a building’s design, the flow between spaces should reflect the way the company works. To do this well, the design should come from within the company. That was a light-bulb moment. So we took the design in-house and designed the space the way we wanted it.

The colorful Zoho cubes were created by one of our customers – Pillow Goddess. The customized Zoho colored bikes in the office were created by one of our customers Mission Bicyles. Before converting our building into an event space, I did a basic calculation – how many events do we have to host at the building to break-even on our investment to convert the space into an event center. It came down to around 18 events. Few years into it, we hosted over 20 events in the space. We also opened it to the Pleasanton community where local events (like Hackathon for kids, Hack like a girl) are hosted and local catering company serving food for all our events ever since.”

That much vertical integration takes effort, but from a customer pov the outcomes are usually that much more pleasant. I hope we see software vendors take more accountability in a wide set of activities.  There is just too much fragmentation and finger-pointing today.

 

 

(Cross-posted @ Deal Architect)

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Software Maintenance "Empty Calories"

By on February 6, 2019

At a conference in 2006, I presented a Top 10 list of technology expenses which to me represented “empty calories”. Top of that list was Software Maintenance with the likes of Oracle, IBM and SAP

Unbelievably, in the dozen years since, a vast majority of on-prem customers have not moved to the cloud and the value from on-prem maintenance delivered by the publisher has gotten even worse. Over the last few weeks, I have talked to executives at third party maintenance (3PM) vendors like Rimini and Spinnaker Support. Between them they are now supporting close to 2,500 customers worldwide. I will share more of those conversations in the next few weeks, but here are some macro trends:

a) 3PM often results in 70 to 90% savings. Beyond the half-off vendor maintenance cost, 3PM vendors allow customers to reduce their Level 2 and 3 outsourcing support or to redeploy those resources to new developments. The image vendors like to paint of the CIO who goes with 3PM is that of a procurement cheapskate who is trying to save a few bucks. Even 50% savings is not just a “few bucks”

Tom Grooms, CIO of CF Industries is far from a “cheap procurement” guy. He is a savvy change agent. He migrating from SAP ECC to S/4HANA in the cloud, one of the earliest customers to do so (many others are moving to S/4 on-prem). At the same time, as they migrate, he has moved his highly customized ECC environment to Rimini Street. As he told me “My decision (to go with 3PM) was shocking to SAP but my feedback to them was, ‘You know, don’t try to get me to pay back support. You should treat us like a new customer and pitch me on what is new.”

This is not Grooms’s first 3PM rodeo. At, his previous job as CIO of Valspar, he had moved to 3PM around Oracle applications. Prior to that, he had done that with PeopleSoft support at Medtronic. Grooms knows value from technology spend.

To SAP’s credit, I have seen it be mature and even match in many, but not all, cases when customers do decide to go with 3PM. Those customers continue to buy other products from it. Welcome to a world of heterogeneity. Here’s a glimpse of the quantum more heterogeneous world we are moving toward. No point in pouting, threatening, ruining relationships.

b) Application vendors like to mock customizations around their software. Ironically, they are themselves encouraging a new wave of customizations using their PaaS. Many customizations are indeed frivolous but others reflect holes in delivered vendor functionality, especially when it comes to vertical or geographic coverage. A vendor recently bragged to me that one of their customers had retired thousands of customizations when they moved to a newer release. My question back was “when were the customizations written? Probably 10-15 years ago. Good that they could be replaced but if they are looking for the 2019 digital shop floor could they get that from you?” No response back. Most application software reflects business practices which is circa 2010, not 2019 – that is a major reason why customers write customizations. They don’t write them because they have surplus budgets lying around.

Mock is one thing. Vendors outright refuse to even handle tickets if they touch a customization. 3PM vendors, in contrast, gladly handle them. As Grooms told me “Interestingly, the change management [with third party maintenance) that I didn’t anticipate was with my own team. They would do all this legwork, do all this research and cut and paste everything themselves. The last thing they would attempt to do is to call the vendor. We had to retrain people to say, “Don’t do the research. Don’t worry about it. Just call right away. That’s what they’re good for and that’s what they do.’ They probably thought, ‘Oh great, we’re saving all this money but it’s not going to be any better.’ Well, no, we save the money and it’s real support. It’s what support is supposed to be.”

c) Vendors have been arguing they provide better security than 3PM vendors do. Lisa Morgan writes in Forbes “The cost of inadequate cybersecurity—lawsuits, regulatory fines, reputational damage, intellectual property theft—can be exponentially higher than the 18% to 22% annual maintenance fees software developers charge.”

I wish she had taken the argument further – will Oracle indemnify a customer for those lawsuits, fines, damage etc if a root cause analysis shows their software is responsible for a breach or an intrusion? I highly doubt it – and few customers have the battery of lawyers Oracle has at its disposal. So, frankly her argument is weak without specific protection guarantees.

d) After paying maintenance for years if you decide to move to vendor cloud versions you are told to license new SKUs, to pay conversion fees and other charges. You have been a good citizen, paid maintenance at full list and that’s your reward? More to my point the value from maintenance has declined in the last decade or so.

Look, I am fine with whatever allows you to sleep better at night. I understand why CIOs stay with the original publisher. They have bigger things to worry about. But I would encourage them to assign a direct report and take a fresh look at 3PM. The 2,500 3PM customers are sharing their experiences with each other. Bryan Bee at EBSCO told me with delight “We did multiple reference calls (about 3PM) and each time it was like, man, this is too good to be true.”

In the meantime, I do shake my head at software publishers who continue to look back longingly at their past, when they should be peddling the joys of multitenancy, machine learning and other features in their next-gen products.

Grooms said it best “Show us something that we would need to take our business forward, because what we had in (the on-prem version) was basically memorializing everything we had done in the past.

 

(Cross-posted @ Deal Architect)

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Slides from My SaaStr Annual 2019 Presentation (5 Questions CEOs Struggle With)

By on February 6, 2019

Thanks to everyone who attended my session yesterday at the amazing — and huge — SaaStr Annual 2019 conference in San Jose.  In this post, I’ll share the slides from my presentation, Five Questions SaaS CEOs Wrestle With (and some thoughts on how to answer them).

The folks at SaaStr recorded the session, so at some point a video of it will be available (but that probably won’t be for a while).  When it is up, I will also post it to Kellblog.

In some sense definitionally, there were two types of people in the audience:

  • CEOs, who hopefully received some fresh perspective on these age-old, never-quite-put-to-bed questions.
  • Those who work for them, who hopefully received some insights into the mind of the CEO that will help make you more valuable team members and help you advance your career.

As mentioned, please send me feedback if you have examples where something in the presentation resonated with you, you applied it in some way, and it made a positive impact on your working life.  I’d love to hear it.

Here are the slides from the presentation.

(Cross-posted @ Kellblog)

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