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Why Percipio Excels as a Learning Experience Platform: A Market Milestone

In a recently published Market Milestone, Todd Maddox, Ph.D., Learning Scientist and Research Fellow for Amalgam Insights, evaluated Percipio, Skillsoft’s Learning Experience Platform from a learning science perspective—the marriage of psychology and brain science. This involves evaluating the training content and delivery to determine whether it engages psychological processes and learning systems in the brain effectively.

Amalgam’s overall evaluation is that Percipio is highly effective.
Pecipio’s ELSA (Embedded Learning Synchronized Assistant) addresses the need for organized and easily accessible content as well or better than most competitor’s platforms. ELSA provides just-in-time, searchable and suggested content, all seamlessly integrated into the employee’s flow of work.

Percipio also engages the task appropriate system in the brain. The “watch”, “read”, “listen” framework allows learners to utilize the medium that is most effective in the current context and facilitates microlearning for a targeted and concise understanding of some concept or macrolearning for a deeper dive and understanding. The emphasis on storytelling and scenario-based content, when appropriate, engages emotional systems that upregulate processing in both the cognitive and behavioral skills systems in the brain. The addition of “practice” (to be released in 2019) will facilitate the development of behavioral skills directly in the workplace.

For more information, read the full Market Milestone at http://learn.skillsoft.com/Website-AR-Amalgam-Insights-The-Learning-Science-Perspective-View-Full-Report.html.

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Oracle Delivers a FOSS Surprise

Tom Petrocelli, Amalgam Insights Research Fellow

An unfortunate side effect of being an industry analyst is that it is easy to become jaded. There is a tendency to fall back into stereotypes about technology and companies. Add to this nearly 35 years in computer technology and it would surprise no one to hear an analyst say, “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.” Some companies elicit this reaction more than others. Older tech companies with roots in the 80’s or earlier tend to get in a rut and focus on incremental change (so as not to annoy their established customer base) instead of the exciting new trends. This makes it hard to be impressed by them.

Oracle is one of those companies. It has a reputation for being behind the market (cloud anyone?) and as proprietary as can be. Oracle has also had a difficult time with developers. The controversy over Java APIs (which is really a big company spat with Google) hasn’t helped that relationship. There are still hard feelings left over from the acquisition of Sun Microsystems (a computer geek favorite) and MySQL that have left many innovative developers looking anywhere but Big Red. Oracle’s advocacy of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been at best indifferent. When the FOSS community comes together, one expects to see Red Hat, Google, and even Microsoft and IBM but never Oracle.

Which is why my recent conversation with Bob Quillin of Oracle came as a complete surprise. It was like a bucket of cold water on a hot day, both shocking and at the same time, refreshing.

Now, it’s important to get some context right up front. Bob came to Oracle via an acquisition, StackEngine. So, he and his team’s DNA is more FOSS than Big Red. And, like an infusion of new DNA, the StackEngine crew has succeeded in changing Oracle on some level. They have launched the Oracle Kubernetes and Registry Services which brings a Container Engine, Kubernetes, and a Docker V2 compatible registry to the Oracle Cloud Service. That’s a lot of open source for Oracle.

In addition, Bob talked about how they were helping Oracle customers to move to a Cloud Native strategy. Cloud Native almost always means embracing FOSS since so many components are FOSS. Add to the mixture a move into serverless with Fn.  Fn is also an open source project (Apache 2.0 licensed) but one that originated in Oracle.  That’s not to say there aren’t other Oracle open source projects (Graal for example) but they aren’t at the very edge of computing like Fn. In this part of the FOSS world, Oracle is leading, not following. Oracle even plans to have a presence at Kubecon+CloudNativeCon 2018 in Seattle this December, an open source-oriented conference run by The Linux Foundation, where they will be a Platinum Sponsor. In the past this would be almost inconceivable.

The big question is how will this affect the rest of Oracle? Will this be a side project for Oracle or will they rewrite the Oracle DNA in the same way that Microsoft has done? Can they find that balance between the legacy business, which is based on high-priced, proprietary software – the software that is paying the bills right now – and community run, open source world that is shaping the future of IT? Only time will tell but there will be a big payoff to IT if it happens. Say what you will about Oracle, they know how to do enterprise software. Security, performance, and operating at scale are Oracle’s strengths. They are a big reason their customers keep buying from them instead of an open source startup or even AWS. An infusion of that type of knowledge into the FOSS community would help to overcome many of the downsides that IT experiences when trying to implement open source software in large enterprise production environments.

Was I surprised? To say the least. I’ve never had a conversation like this with Oracle. Am I hopeful? A bit. There are forces within companies like Oracle that can crush an initiative like this.  As the market continues to shift in the direction of microservices, containers, and open source in general, Oracle risks becoming too out of step with the current generation of developers. Even if FOSS doesn’t directly move the needle on Oracle revenue, it can have a profound effect on how Oracle is viewed by the developer community. If the attitude of people like Bob Quillin becomes persuasive, then younger developers may start to see Oracle as more than just their father’s software company. In my opinion, the future of Oracle may depend on that change in perception.

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Why It Matters that IBM Announced Trust and Transparency Capabilities for AI


Note: This blog is a followup to Amalgam Insights’ visit to the “Change the Game” event held by IBM in New York City.

On September 19th, IBM announced its launch of a portfolio of AI trust and transparency capabilities. This announcement got Amalgam Insight’s attention because of IBM’s relevance and focus in the enterprise AI market throughout this decade.  To understand why IBM’s specific launch matters, take a step back in considering IBM’s considerable role in building out the current state of the enterprise AI market.

IBM AI in Context

Since IBM’s public launch of IBM Watson on Jeopardy! in 2011, IBM has been a market leader in enterprise artificial intelligence and spent billions of dollars in establishing both IBM Watson and AI. This has been a challenging path to travel as IBM has had to balance this market-leading innovation with the financial demands of supporting a company that brought in $107 billion in revenue in 2011 and has since seen this number shrink by almost 30%.

In addition, IBM had to balance its role as an enterprise technology company focused on the world’s largest workloads and IT challenges with launching an emerging product better suited for highly innovative startups and experimental enterprises. And IBM also faced the “cloudification” of enterprise IT in general, where the traditional top-down purchase of multi-million dollar IT portfolios is being replaced by piecemeal and business-driven purchases and consumption of best-in-breed technologies.

Seven years later, the jury is still out on how AI will ultimately end up transforming enterprises. What we do know is that a variety of branches of AI are emerging, including Continue reading Why It Matters that IBM Announced Trust and Transparency Capabilities for AI