Year: 2018

Recommended Audience: Chief Learning Officers, Chief Human Resources Officers, Learning and Development directors and managers, Corporate Trainers, Enterprise Librarians and Content Managers, Instructional Designers, Corporate Communications, Product Managers with a Content or Learning focus.

Key Takeaway: L&D-based gamification is ignoring major swathes of personality and human motivation, which prevents most current business approaches of gamification from being effective.
Continue reading Why Learning And Development Efforts Misuse Gamification (One-Size-Does-Not-Fit-All)

On March 14, 2018, the great Stephen Hawking passed away. As a scientist, evangelist, and public figure, Hawking has been one of the preeminent voices in science over the past 50 years based on his primary research, his best-selling writing including “A Brief History in Time,” and his media appearances in pop culture bastions such as the Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory.

He is the most inspirational and memorable scientist of our generation. But what is it that made him great and what can we take away from his life that can improve what we do? As an IT researcher, my mission is far less ambitious than Hawking’s. But even so, there are a few lessons I like to think I learned from him Continue reading The great Stephen Hawking has passed away

Recommended Reading for: Finance, Sales Operations, Supply Chain Management, IT Management, and Enterprise Strategy Personnel
Companies Mentioned: Anaplan, IBM, SAP, Oracle, Microstrategy, Tableau, DataRobot, TROVE Data, Louis Vuitton, Premji Invest, Salesforce Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baillie Gifford, Granite Ventures, Industry Ventures, Meritech Capital, Constellation Research, Ventana Research, IDC, Mint Jutras, ISG, Gartner, Apps Run the World, TechVentive

On March 6th and 7th, 2018, Amalgam Insights attended Anaplan Hub 18. Anaplan has been on Amalgam analysts’ radar for several years, as we consider Anaplan’s Hyperblock foundation and ability to serve multi-departmental planning in enterprises without a year or more of setup to be fundamental advantages. As we have covered this company, we have been waiting for Anaplan to reach its breakthrough moment where it takes its place as one of the true market leaders in enterprise applications. It is in this context that we attended Anaplan Hub and judged our interactions with Anaplan executives, customers, and partners.

This report provides updates on Anaplan’s key business metrics, executive insights from an analyst-only panel, keynote and product announcements, a 2018 perspective on customer success stories with Anaplan, and Amalgam’s expectations for Anaplan in 2018 and beyond as both a real-time planning application and a Platform as a Service.

Anaplan Key Business Updates
Continue reading Anaplan States Planning Is Dead, Focuses on the Era of Real-Time Decision

Gamification entered the enterprise world in the mid-2000s. At the time, a number of startup companies (e.g., Bunchball, Gigya, Badgeville, Foursquare and SCVNGR, to name a few) entered the market with the promise of increased employee engagement through point, badge and similar compensation and incentivization schemes. These are collectively referred to as gamification. The underlying assumption was that people would complete tasks and goals more quickly and more accurately because the incentives were present.

These solutions targeted customer loyalty, sales enablement and some marketing initiatives, but the most successful applications were in sales. Despite raising significant capital, the majority of these companies folded because client’s internal adoption was low, and in many cases, these offering were no more effective than simply posting current sales results or sales metrics on the wall.
Continue reading Why Enterprise Gamification is Broken (The Psychological Science of Motivation and Effort)

Note: this blog consists of excerpts of the Market Milestone written on this topic. For the full report, go to our Research section

On February 21, 2018, MindBridge Ai announced updates to its Ai Auditor platform, which is designed to analyze financial data with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools for financial audits. These updates include
Continue reading MindBridge AI Opens Up The Audit with Natural Language Processing and Integrations with NetSuite and Intacct

Blockchain looks to be one of those up and coming technologies that is constantly being talked about. Many of the largest IT companies – IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle to name few – plus a not-for-profit or two are heavily promoting blockchain. Clearly, there is intense interest, much of it fueled by exotic-sounding cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The big question I get asked – and analysts are supposed to be able to answer the big questions – is “What can I use blockchain for?”
Continue reading Blockchain! What is it Good For?

On February 15th, I received an update on Vodafone’s current Unified Communications business in a briefing led by Peter Terry-Brown and Craig Marshall.

Key metrics that got my attention included Vodafone’s current base of 4.7 million One Net users, 10% growth Year-over-Year in the UC business, and a massive increase in their multi-national pipeline. The adoption of these offerings are starting to accelerate as global trends for TDM retirement are forcing enterprises to re-evaluate network and voice infrastructure options and to consider SIP, cloud, network, and unified communications innovations. These trends are strong in light of Vodafone’s overall positioning as the largest voice carrier in the world with over 60 billion minutes per month and the #2 mobile subscription provider in the world behind China Mobile.
Continue reading Vodafone Unified Communications Briefing: February 15, 2018

We have just published a new document from Tom Petrocelli analyzing Red Hat’s $250 million acquisition of CoreOS and why it matters for DevOps and Systems Architecture managers.

This report is recommended for CIOs, System Architects, IT Managers, System Administrators, and Operations Managers who are evaluating CoreOS and Red Hat as container solutions to support their private and hybrid cloud solutions. In this document, Tom provides both the upside and concerns that your organization needs to consider in evaluating CoreOS.

This document includes:
A summary of Red Hat’s Acquisition of CoreOS
Why It Matters
Top Takeaways
Contextualizing CoreOS within Red Hat’s private and hybrid cloud portfolio
Alternatives to Red Hat CoreOS
Positive and negative aspects fcr current Red Hat and CoreOS customers

To download this report, please go to our Research section.

Companies Mentioned: Axonify, Degreed, EdCast, Fivel, Grovo, Pathgather, Percipio, and Qstream

A recent study by Deloitte suggests that the #1 problem facing companies revolves around employee engagement, turnover, and the corporate culture, with 87% of companies rating these as important imperatives, and 50% rating them as urgent. Learning may be the key, with companies utilizing effective Learning & Development (L&D) environments showing higher levels of engagement, reduced turnover, and positive corporate cultures.

The operative term here is “effective” L&D. Stale textbook and slide show training is obsolete and ineffective. Effective learning content is compelling and engaging, is available in multiple media (text, video, audio), and is available 24/7 on multiple platforms (mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop). Effective learning content is readily available in short bursts to address a specific question without disrupting the workflow, or as a series of short bursts for a deeper dive. Many Learning Management Systems (LMS) are embracing these properties and are showing improvements in initial learning and proficiency.
Continue reading The Brain Science that Drives Corporate “Training for Retention”

Note: This blog contains excerpts from an Amalgam Insights Market Milestone covering this funding round in greater detail. To get the full story, please download the report.

On January 23, 2018, Zylo, a SaaS (Software as a Service) Optimization platform based in Indianapolis, Indiana, announced a $9.3 million funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Salesforce Ventures and the Slack Fund. In addition, previous investors High Alpha Capital, GGV, SV Angel, and Hyde Park Venture Partners also participated in this round. Zylo has previously been covered by Amalgam Insights in multiple reports and webinars as a market leader in the SaaS Optimization space and this funding round marks Zylo as an early leader in the battle to manage enterprise SaaS spend.
Continue reading How does Zylo’s Series A Funding Round Affect the SaaS Optimization Market?