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

But the part that got my attention was a relatively minor 2 paragraph note near the bottom of the earnings announcement on ASC 606 revenue recognition:
Continue reading Microsoft “Early Adopts” New ASC 606 Revenue Recognition Standard

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

Recently, Amalgam Insights attended HPE Discover, HPE’s semi-annual show devoted to its enterprise offerings. Our firm was especially interested in seeing how HPE would position itself after having divested much of its software portfolio to Micro Focus and then spin-merging its Enterprise Services division with CSC to form DXC Technology on April 1st of this year.

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.

How HPE found its focus

Continue reading How does the 2017 version of HPE support enterprise IT departments?

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.

• The Maturity of IBM’s Cloud Analytics Capabilities
• Promontory Digital’s Role for IBM and IBM Watson
• IBM’s DataFirst Method for Analytic Consulting
Continue reading The Evolution of IBM’s Cloud, Watson, and Analytic Consulting at IBM Vision

Amalgam Insights (AI) recently attended Informatica World 2017, where executives, partners, and customers provided backing for Informatica’s ability to support “The Disruptive Power of Data,” (an Informatica-trademarked phrase) as well as its positioning as the Enterprise Cloud Data Management leader.
Continue reading Informatica Unleashes AI, Brand, Cloud, and Data-Driven Disruption at Informatica World 2017

[Updated May 3rd with links to additional coverage from AOTMP, Blue Hill Research, Oracle Dispatch, StraTEM Consulting, and the Wall Street Journal]

On April 28, Marlin Equity Partners, an investment firm with over $3 billion in capital under management and the current owner of Telecom Expense and Enterprise Mobility Management vendor Asentinel, announced entering an agreement to purchase Tangoe for $6.50 per share for a transaction estimated at $242.6 million in cash.

Continue reading The Definitive Guide to the Asentinel-Tangoe Merger: Marlin Equity Partners Agrees to Acquire Tangoe

On April 25th, enterprise application company Infor announced that it planned to acquire Birst, one of the leaders in the standalone Cloud BI world. Birst is expected to remain as a standalone solution and Infor will become Birst’s largest ISV as Birst becomes the analytic back-end for Infor-based applications. Amalgam Insights (AI) finds this to be interesting based on our long history of analyzing Birst.
Continue reading AI Analyzes Infor’s Intent to Acquire Birst, A Cloud BI Trailblazer

tl;dr: in the world of 2017 where these practical BI issues still reign supreme, a practical Michael Saylor has shown up to preach on MicroStrategy’s capabilities. Both the stock market and MicroStrategy competitors should take notice.

On April 19th, MicroStrategy World 2017 had its executive keynote session in DC. I’ve attended MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) World in the past as an industry analyst and was interested in seeing how the keynote would come across from afar as an Amalgam Insights (AI) Principal Investigator.

The keynote started with an introduction by CMO Mark Gambill and an interesting demonstration of MicroStrategy Usher being used to track attendee movement across the exhibition hall.
Continue reading Michael Saylor Focuses on the Platform at MicroStrategy World 2017

Price is the ultimate test of value. Amalgam cannot emphasis this enough. No matter how valuable you think your product or service is, the ultimate business test of that value is whether someone is willing to buy it at the listed price.

One of my favorite topics in enterprise software is pricing. Despite the work done in value-based pricing over the past 50 years, the vast majority of pricing exercises still start with either a very basic cost-plus or percentage-based ROI model. This assumption has a key issue: it assumes that your product is a commodity. To explain why and to explain how to take a more value-based approach, consider what a price is.

There are many ways to break down price and many roles that price plays from a marketing and sales perspective. But as a starting point, the model AI uses to translate value into price comes from 3 basic components: Reference Price, Differentiated Value, and Price Positioning
Continue reading Why Cost-Based Pricing Doesn’t Work: Amalgam Insights’ primer on value-based pricing

When I attended Hub17 in San Francisco, representing Amalgam Insights (AI), I was looking forward to seeing how Anaplan’s go-to-market approach had changed, kept an eye out for key announcements, and looked for clues from the executive team on where Anaplan was heading next. In the process, AI also got some unexpected highlights and guidance on the future of the company.

Anaplan caught AI’s attention a number of years ago when it officially launched the Hyperblock, originally built by Michael Gould, to provide a combination of cube, cell-based, and columnar database architectures. This approach provided a foundational technology that was well-suited to massive and enterprise-scaled models. Once this technology was combined with a go-to-market productization that allowed business users to access the planning and modeling aspects of Anaplan in 2013, Anaplan became a strong solution in the enterprise planning market.

Since that time, Anaplan has been growing quickly and currently goes to market with a “Connected Planning” focus that represents the multiple use cases that Anaplan often supports.
Continue reading Anaplan Hub17 Brings Connected Planning to the Enterprise