Last week, I attended Strata Data Conference at the Javitz Center in New York City to catch up with a wide variety of data science and machine learning users, enablers, and thought leaders. In the process, I had the opportunity to listen to some fantastic keynotes and to chat with 30+ companies looking for solutions, 30+ vendors presenting at the show, and attend with a number of luminary industry analysts and thought leaders including Ovum’s Tony Baer, EMA’s John Myers, Aberdeen Group’s Mike Lock, and Hurwitz & Associates’ Judith Hurwitz.
From this whirwind tour of executives, I took a lot of takeaways from the keynotes and vendors that I can share and from end users that I unfortunately have to keep confidential. To give you an idea of what an industry analyst notes, following are a short summary of takeaways I took from the keynotes and from each vendor that I spoke to:
Keynotes: The key themes that really got my attention is the idea that AI requires ethics, brought up by Joanna Bryson, and that all data is biased, which danah boyd discussed. This idea that data and machine learning have their own weaknesses that require human intervention, training, and guidance is incredibly important. Over the past decade, technologists have put their trust in Big Data and the idea that data will provide answers, only to find that a naive and “unbiased” analysis of data has its own biases. Context and human perspective are inherent to translating data into value: this does not change just because our analytic and data training tools are increasingly nuanced and intelligent in nature.
Behind the hype of data science, Big Data, analytic modeling, robotic process automation, DevOps, DataOps, and artifical intelligence is this fundamental need to understand that data, algorithms, and technology all have inherent biases as the following tweet shows: Continue reading 28 Hours as an Industry Analyst at Strata Data 2017
On September 13th, 2017, Riverside Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, announced the acquisition of Calero Software from Clearlake Capital. Calero manages more than $6 billion of annual telecom, mobility, and cloud spend for more than 3,000 customers in 40+ countries and provides managed mobility services for more than 400,000 devices, making it one of the largest technology expense management solutions overall behind Tangoe’s $38 billion+ in technology expense management and Flexera’s $13 billion+ in software expense management. (Cass does not break out its telecom spend, but Amalgam believes it to be similar in scale to Calero.)
This blog covers Amalgam’s perspective on:
Why Clearlake sold Calero?
Who is Riverside Partners, a relatively new player in the TEM space?
If you are interested in any of these topics, please sign up to attend by clicking on the webinar title link. And if you are interested in a deeper dive of any of these topics, please email Amalgam’s Director of Client Services, Lisa Lincoln.
For more information on each webinar, please look below:
Upcoming Webinars (All Times in Eastern Time Zone):
Recommended Audience: Telecom Directors and Managers, Network Directors and Managers, Mobility Directors and Managers, IT Procurement, IT Finance, IT Architects
Amalgam Insights has been covering the Telecom Expense Management (TEM) market for over a decade. In May of 2017, Gartner released “Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services, 2017”. In this guide, Amalgam believes that eight key vendors were overlooked that can provide enterprise-grade services and represent billions of dollars in technology spend including:
* A pioneer in Robotic Process Automation
* The largest standalone TEM in Europe
* A SaaS solution partnering with IBM, Unisys, and Verizon
* A Fortune 1000-focused vendor with 100% referenceable clients
* A fast-growing technology management platform built on ServiceNow
* A commercial and government-focused vendor with over 4 million lines under management
* The largest Australian provider with over 500,000 items under management
* One of the Bay Area’s best rated places to work with IoT, data center, & SD-WAN management offerings
Recommended Audience: Chief Data Officers, Chief Analytics Officers, Analytics & BI Managers, Analytics & BI Program Leaders, Enterprise Information Management Managers, Enterprise Architects, Enterprise Applications Managers
Amalgam Insights believes that the key to success for artificial intelligence is embedded AI aligned to role-specific and industry-specific challenges. The goal is to provide focused outputs that enhance the best judgment of subject matter experts. This leads to a core mission of Amalgam Insights: improving the consumption of enterprise technology. Based on these assumptions, Role-Based Expert Enhancement Platforms (REEPs) are the future of embedded Artificial Intelligence.
Based on interviews with dozens of enterprise application platform users, application vendors, and machine learning providers, Amalgam Insights describes how lessons from embedded BI and application analytics can be used to create the next-generation of embedded AI and embedded machine learning applications.
Recommended Audience: CIO, CFO, Procurement officers, IT Finance, IT Sourcing.
Telecom Expense has traditionally been the most challenging of IT costs to manage. With the emergence of Software-as-a-Service, Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, and software defined networks, the rest of the IT world is quickly catching up.
This webinar will provide best practices for expanding your existing telecom expense management program into a bigger IT management program to take advantage of the robust capabilities and vendor management experience already in TEM. This presentation will include anonymized end user examples and a list of IT, cloud, and telecom management vendors with experience in managing non-telecom expense categories.
Recommended audience: CIO, CFO, Chief Procurement Officers, Finance Directors and Managers, Controllers, IT Procurement, Procurement Directors and Managers, Sales and Marketing Operations Directors and Managers
In this webinar, Amalgam introduces a new set of solutions focused on enterprise SaaS expense management, a $40 billion+ global market that is largely unmanaged at this point.
Amalgam estimates that less than 5% of SaaS spend is currently centrally managed. The other 95% is hiding in expense reports and one-off accounts that escape corporate control. No rules, no buik discounts, no disputes, no contract enforcement or negotiations.
Stop the insanity! Learn which vendors to consider to manage an expense that may now represent $5,000 or more per employee in your organization.
Recommended Audience: CIOs, CFOs, Enterprise Architects, IT Project Managers, IT Procurement, IT Service, IT Finance
Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service is growing rapidly as companies replace obsolete data center servers and storage with “The Cloud.” As companies use more services from multiple regions and even multiple vendors, Cloud Computing becomes yet another management headache where discounts, service levels, and IT governance can go unenforced.
This webinar provides key tips on the Cloud Service Management market, including the drivers, best practices and top vendors including, but not limited to:
CloudHealth Technologies Leads Cloud Service Management with $46 Million Series D Round
Recommended Research for: CIOs, CFOs, IT Controllers, Finance, IT Service Managers, and Business Managers purchasing cloud services.
Amalgam Insights has just published a Market Milestone describing why CloudHealth Technologies’ $46 Million Series D round is important for executives seeking to manage their cloud environments. At a time when multi-cloud management is imminent and businesses manage over $40 billion in cloud computing spend, CloudHealth Technologies’ Series D Round provides the resources to pursue international business and larger enterprise deals.
To learn more about CloudHealth Technologies and its role in a Cloud Service Management market that Amalgam estimates will be over $900 million in 2025;
Note: This topic is of key importance for CFOs using or considering a subscription-based business model and for CIOs tasked with aligning technology to revenue recognition. Part 2 of this topic is 4 Key Executive ASC 606 Lessons Microsoft is Teaching Us.
On July 20, 2017, Microsoft announced a very successful Q4 FY17 where they announced both successful GAAP and non-GAAP results.
· Revenue was $23.3 billion GAAP, and $24.7 billion non-GAAP
· Operating income was $5.3 billion GAAP, and $7.0 billion non-GAAP
· Net income was $6.5 billion GAAP, and $7.7 billion non-GAAP
· Diluted earnings per share was $0.83 GAAP, and $0.98 non-GAAP
When I represented Amalgam Insights at Inforum, I was wondering if I would be a fish out of water. After all, I am not an ERP analyst. I am not a retail analyst. I am not an HR technology analyst. And those are the first three things I think of when Infor comes to mind. As an analyst who focuses on technology consumption and bridging gaps between the CIO and CFO, I was wondering what would grab my attention other than Infor’s acquisition of Birst.
I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity of Infor’s vision of supporting industry-specific technology consumption. Infor ended up bringing up three key ideas that are core to the future of technology consumption and will end up being strategic considerations for the future of IT. Continue reading Infor and the 80% Solution: Coleman, Birst, GT Nexus, and CloudSuites
In HPE’s General Session and subsequent presentations, several key themes emerged in HPE’s positioning. The most obvious is that, in consolidating HPE’s offerings to servers, storage, and networking, the company is now focused on being the arms dealer for hybrid IT support. This is based both on the core HPE portfolio of technology and services as well as removing the business services and complementary technologies that were previously seen as competitive to potential HPE competitors. This fundamental change should serve HPE well.
In mid-May, Amalgam Insights (AI) attended IBM Vision, an event focused on business performance, both as an attendee and a presenter. This has been my favorite IBM tradeshow for several years, as it focuses directly on key concerns that I have looked at throughout my career: financial management, enterprise governance, and compliance. Because everyone at this show is focused on some form of BI, performance management, or risk, it is easy to speak with a business user, consultant, or IBM professional at this show and to quickly find common professional ground.
This year, I took three key findings away from IBM Vision that should be of ongoing value for financial departments within the enterprise.
