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Inside our Slack Channel: A Conversation on Salesforce acquiring Tableau

As you may know, analysts typically only have the time to share a small fraction of the information that they have on any topic at any given time, with the majority of our time spent speaking with clients, technologists, and each other.

When Salesforce announced their acquisition of Tableau Monday morning, we at Amalgam Insights obviously started talking to each other about what this meant. Below is a edited excerpt of some of the topics we were going through as I was preparing for PTC LiveWorx in Boston, Data Science analyst Lynne Baer was in Nashville for Alteryx, and DevOps Research Fellow Tom Petrocelli was holding down the fort in Buffalo after several weeks of travel. Hope you enjoy a quick look behind the scenes of how we started informally thinking about this in the first hour or so after the announcement.

When the Salesforce-Tableau topic came up, Tom Petrocelli kicked it off.

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Market Milestone – Google to Buy Looker to Transform Business Analytics

Key Stakeholders:

Chief Information Officers, Chief Technical Officers, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Analytics Officers, Data Monetization Directors and Managers, Analytics Directors and Managers, Data Management Directors and Managers, Enterprise Architects

Why It Matters:

Google’s proposed $2.6 billion acquisition of Looker provides Google with a core data engagement, service, and application environment to support Google Cloud Platform. This represents an impressive exit for Looker, which was expected to IPO after its December 2018 Series E round. This report covers key considerations for Looker customers, GCP customers, and enterprises seeking to manage data and analytics in a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment.

Top Takeaway:

Google Cloud Platform intends to acquire a Best-in-Breed platform for cloud analytics, embedded BI, and native analytic applications in Looker. By filling this need for Google customers, GCP has strengthened its positioning for enterprise cloud customers at a time when Amalgam Insights expects rapid and substantial growth of 25%+ CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) across cloud markets for the next few years. This acquisition will help Google to remain a significant and substantial player as an enterprise cloud provider and demonstrates the latitude that Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has in acquiring key components to position GCP for future growth.

INTRODUCTION

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Knowledge 2019 and ServiceNow’s Vision for Transforming the World of Work

In May 2019, Amalgam Insights attended Knowledge 2019, ServiceNow’s annual end-user conference. Since ServiceNow’s founding in 2004, the company has evolved from its roots as an IT asset and service management company to a company that supports digital workflow across IT, HR, service, and finance with the goal of making work better for every employee. In attending this show, Amalgam Insights was especially interested in seeing how ServiceNow was evolving its message to reflect what Amalgam Insights refers to as “Market Evolvers,” companies that have gained market dominance in their original market and taken advantage of modern mobile, cloud, and AI technology to expand into other markets. (Examples of Market Evolvers include, but are not excluded to, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Informatica, and Tangoe.) Continue reading “Knowledge 2019 and ServiceNow’s Vision for Transforming the World of Work”

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Blackberry Successfully Transitions into a Software Company: Mission Accomplished

In April 2019, Amalgam Insights attended BlackBerry’s Analyst Summit, a collection of high-profile industry analysts and financial analysts who were provided with the key highlights of BlackBerry’s accomplishments over the past year. This day included BlackBerry’s top executives including CEO John Chen, President and Chief Operating Officer Bryan Palma, Chief Financial Officer Steve Cappelli, Chief Marketing Officer Mark Wilson, Chief Technology Officer Charles Eagan, and a collection of subject matter experts across security, the Enterprise of Things, mass communications, and Blackberry’s key verticals including automotive, government, and healthcare.

Above all, the key takeaway from BlackBerry’s Analyst Summit is that BlackBerry’s transformation  into a software and services company is complete.

A Successful Transformation

When John Chen first joined Blackberry roughly 2000 days ago, BlackBerry was a 7 billion dollar mobility company focused on its once-iconic handsets, but losing money hand-over-fist in the era of the iPhone and Android. Although Apple and Google had taken over the handset market, BlackBerry’s leadership at the time was reluctant to take the hard steps necessary to transform into a digital company and to take full advantage of its intellectual property. In this 2011-2012 time period, I was among the analysts who were criticizing BlackBerry for its inability to separate devices, software, and services and hoped that BlackBerry would move to Android, QNX (a 2010 acquisition) or another operating system that would be more flexible and app-friendly than BlackBerry.
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Quick AI Insights at #MSBuild in an Overstuffed Tech Event Week

We are in the midst of one of the most packed tech event weeks in recent memory. This week alone, Amalgam Insights is tracking *six* different events:

This means a lot of announcements this week that will be directly comparable. For instance, Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, SAP, and ServiceNow should all have a variety of meaty DevOps and platform access announcements. Google, Microsoft, SAP, and possibly IBM and ServiceNow should have interesting new AI announcements. ServiceNow and Red Hat will both undoubtedly be working to one-up each other when it comes to revolutionizing IT. We’ll be providing some insights and give you an idea of what to look forward to.

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How is Salesforce Taking on AI: a look at Einstein at Salesforce World Tour Boston

On April 3rd, Amalgam Insights attended Salesforce World Tour 2019 in Boston. Salesforce users may know this event as an opportunity to meet with their account managers and catch up with new functionalities and partners without having to fly to San Francisco and navigate through the colossus that is Dreamforce.

Salesforce also uses this tour as an opportunity to present analysts with the latest and greatest changes in their offerings. Amalgam Insights was interested both in learning more about Salesforce’s current positioning from a data perspective, including the vendor’s acquisition of Mulesoft as well as its progression in both the Einstein Analytics and Einstein Platform in providing value-added insights and artificial intelligence to Salesforce clients.

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Five Vital Sourcing and Vendor Management Recommendations for Complex Technology Categories

As part of Amalgam Insights’ coverage of the Technology Expense Management market, we provide the following guidance to sourcing, procurement, and operations professionals seeking to better understand how to manage technology expenses. In immature or monopoly markets where one dominant vendor provides technology services, vendor management challenges are limited. Although buyers can potentially purchase services…

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Hyoun Park Discusses Cloud Pricing on CIO.com

Money Bubbles in the Clouds

On CIO.com, analyst Hyoun Park discusses recent cloud pricing changes by Oracle, Amazon, and Google in context of understanding who is actually providing the cheapest cloud. In this blog, Park posits that Oracle’s new Universal Credits for IaaS and PaaS usage are fundamentally different from the traditional pricing models for cloud and shows that the enterprise cloud is coming of age.

One of Park’s assertions is that the most granular pricing may not be the cheapest because the complexity of detailed pricing prevents companies from optimizing their costs. Will this trend affect your cloud costs?

To learn more, click through to CIO.com and read this article: “Is the cheapest cloud pricing flexible or granular?”

Also, join Hyoun’s webinar to learn more about managing cloud costs on BrightTALK: Cloud Service Management: Managing Cost, Resources, and Security