Tableau will add customers and seats with best practices, new capabilities and utilization of Salesforce’s sales teams

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Tableau aims to help enterprises create a data-accepting culture

From the opening keynote to the breakout sessions, Tableau was consistent in its message that many enterprises are falling short of their analytics goals. Part of the reason why these enterprises are falling short of their goals is because of their corporate cultures, in which people do not understand the value of their data and business users are apprehensive about manipulating data. To help chief data officers and data analytics advocates shift company culture, Tableau created the Tableau Blueprint. In the analyst breakout session “Leading to Data Culture,” Tableau VP of Product Marketing Mark Jewett defined a data culture as “the collective behaviors and beliefs of people who value, practice and encourage the use of data to improve decision making.” Tableau Blueprint is a free, 190-plus page document of best practices curated from Tableau customers that have successfully shifted toward a data-accepting culture. Shifting a company’s culture to be accepting of data necessitates an executive team that makes it a strategic priority, as well as implicit changes such as cultural habits and explicit policies and resources. Implicit changes may seem ambiguous, but TBR believes that creating an environment in which employees feel comfortable and encouraged to learn about data analytics will breed a data-literate workforce that can better utilize Tableau’s products, enabling customers to achieve a greater return on their technology investment. Tableau Blueprint incorporates this ethos into each step of the customer’s journey, from bringing Tableau onto their infrastructure to training their employees on Tableau to creating an ecosystem that can answer questions for their Tableau users. While Tableau Blueprint will largely be used by data advocates within an organization, TBR expects that Tableau’s consulting partners will also use the set of best practices when implementing Tableau for their enterprise customers.

To further ensure customers are getting the most out of their Tableau products and realizing their strategic objectives and business goals, Tableau’s customer success teams help customers throughout their journey, from acquiring licenses to post-implementation. This is a strategy that Salesforce, which acquired Tableau, has used since its inception, leveraging its customer success team to help customers — and partners — through customer management, customer support, and advisory and consulting services. Tableau collaborates with partners as well, but TBR expects that Tableau’s customer success group will become more akin to that of Salesforce in offering support to both customers and partners as the two vendors collaborate to help customer and partner ecosystems utilize their Salesforce- and Tableau-integrated systems.

Tableau Conference 2019 (TC19) took place in Las Vegas, where Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky, Chief Product Officer (CPO) Francois Ajenstat, Senior Product Manager Graeme Britz and others presented to 18,000 Tableau customers and partners as well as the analyst community. Some of the keynote topics included new augmented analytics and self-service data management features, as well as changes to the company’s strategy. These topics were complemented by success stories from enterprise customers, such as Nissan, highlighting how Tableau helped transform their organization.

Mavenir ready to prove it is possible to transform mobile network economics

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TBR perspective  

Mavenir’s message is resonating with the market, and its reputation among CSPs is strengthening. In a few short years, the upstart vendor has gone from an M&A amalgamation of disparate businesses to a cohesive, relevant vendor that is now being considered alongside incumbent Tier 1 network vendors for projects at leading CSPs worldwide.

Mavenir is a legitimate contender to supply solutions that will comprise the new webscale-like network architecture CSPs are eager to implement to stay competitive and participate in new value creation in the digital era. The vendor’s greenfield play to provide cloud-native solutions is unique and is a key differentiator from incumbent OEMs that continue to push their relatively expensive, inflexible and closed systems. CSPs are intrigued by Mavenir’s virtualization offerings, not only with the low price points and total cost of ownership (TCO), but also with the performance of their systems in trials and now, with vRAN in some select commercial production environments.

TBR believes Mavenir will become one of the leading telecom network vendors in the digital era and will take measurable share from incumbent vendors during the 5G network build cycle, not only in RAN, but also in the mobile core and digital enablement-related platforms. Though Mavenir is a small fish in a sea of goliaths, the company is able to hold its own by trumpeting its software-first mantra as a means of redefining mobile network economics.

Mavenir’s assessment of where the market needs to go is spot on. CSPs must evolve to become more webscale-like in nature, adopting a network architecture that is dynamic, agile and able to support the demands of the digital era as well as new business models that can be scaled and supported at fundamentally different economics compared to the traditional architecture. More of the same will not work anymore, and CSPs must think and act differently to stay relevant and profitable in the digital era. CSPs are intrigued by the claims Mavenir is making pertaining to radically different mobile network economics and there is desire among CSPs to hear from the vendor about how it can deliver on those promises.

TBR believes Mavenir’s biggest, most impactful play is in the RAN space, which is an approximately $40 billion market and is ripe for significant disruption. RAN is the domain that will be the catalyst to transform Mavenir from a relatively small vendor by revenue (around $500 million this year) into a multibillion-dollar global powerhouse.

Mavenir provided a corporate strategy overview and updates on each of its business units at its third annual analyst day. The vendor is well aligned with underlying trends in the telecom industry, particularly network virtualization and open infrastructure. Mavenir now claims to have product offerings across several network infrastructure domains, including RAN, mobile core, IMS (particularly, VoLTE and RCS), Unified Communications & Collaboration (Mobile Business Fabric), network security and digital enablement platforms, such as for private networks, OSS/BSS and mobile advertising (Aquto). The company’s software-first, hardware-agnostic approach is timely as communication service providers (CSP) accelerate their transformations into digital service providers.

Fujitsu, digital trust and the future of technology

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Strike a balance between the utilization of data and the protection of data

Opening the event, Hiroshi Tsuda, head of Security Laboratory at Fujitsu Labs, set the tone by acknowledging that every enterprise and consumer must understand the balance between the utilization and efficiency of data and the associated privacy and protection. Other speakers and panelists at the symposium echoed that theme of balance, each taking a different spin on how balance could be achieved and, most importantly, who bears the responsibility for striking and maintaining balance, as well as remediating any negative consequences caused by mistakes. Tsuda also presented the results of the Fujitsu Global Digital Transformation Survey Report, a survey of 900 business leaders in nine countries that provides insight into their process in digital transformation and to clarify how business leaders around the world perceive trust.

Delivering the Fujitsu Keynote, CEO of Fujitsu Labs Hirotaka Hara explained that the company’s long-standing slogan, “Reliability and Creativity” had been replaced with “Digital Trust and Co-Creation.” For Fujitsu, “digital trust” includes pushing for social acceptance of AI, which requires IT services vendors and technology companies to create “explainable AI” to overcome current reluctance among many companies and individuals to fully accept judgments made by algorithms, rather than humans. In TBR’s view, Fujitsu’s expressed appreciation of the challenges in AI adoption comes as a welcome relief from the hype heard from other IT services and software vendors. Further, the updated slogan reflects a clear evolution from basic reliability of technology and systems to more essential and compelling trust, while the shift from creativity to co-creation moves the conversation from Fujitsu acting alone in R&D to interacting with clients, creating together.

Advancing the trust theme, Hara explained that Fujitsu Laboratories “ensures digital trust through technologies, to include a wide range of solutions, ideas and competencies, such as smart contracts, authentication, compliance, data traceability management and cybersecurity — all with trust at the center.” Multiple IT services vendors and consultancies throughout 2019 have centered events, presentations and use cases around trust, but few have described the ecosystem and diverse elements as comprehensively as Fujitsu. And few have been as direct and succinct as Fujitsu, which stated, “Digital trust is the foundation to achieving digital transformation.”

In TBR’s June 2019 Digital Transformation Insights Report: Voice of the Customer, we quoted the CEO of a global healthcare company on trust and the various roles IT services vendors and their clients must play. Echoing Fujitsu’s sentiments around trust, that CEO said, “Responsibility needs to be an integral part of the overall business and technology landscape for any company, and I strongly suspect that we will see a resurgence of some of the other traditional roles and technology.” In all, Fujitsu, through Hara’s remarks and comments made throughout the day, demonstrated a grounded, hype-free understanding that the challenges of digital transformation do not come from the technologies, but from the ecosystem and the people. And the initial steps to transformation depend on digital trust.

Fujitsu Laboratories Advanced Technology Symposium (FLATS) 2019: Around 400 people gathered in Santa Clara, Calif., for a full day of presentations and panels centered on data security and the need to balance user and regulatory requirements around privacy with expectations around rich online experiences, leading to deep discussions about ethics, transparency and trust. Hosted by Fujitsu Laboratories and attended by more engineers than entrepreneurs, the event surprisingly stayed focused on applying technology for societal good, to build ecosystems of trust, and to protect consumers’ data and privacy. Fujitsu Labs showed off its ground-breaking technological advancements and innovations in an exhibit hall but kept main-stage conversation rooted in the application of technology in a messy and uncertain world.

IoT continues to contribute moderately to vendor revenue growth, as vendors embed IoT in their offerings

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IoT is becoming more deeply embedded in vendors’ offerings and messaging

IoT continues its moderate revenue and gross profit growth as vendors and customers become more familiar with what IoT is and how it can be applied. Increasingly, IoT is an expected part of vendors’ offerings, one of a set of tools that can be used to solve business problems and address business opportunities. IoT continues to be viewed more as a technique than a specific market or technology, but increasingly familiar use cases and more mature packaged solutions and components have made it easier to work with.

TBR expects the IoT market to continue to grow, gradually accelerating over at least the next five years. This means IoT will constitute an increasing percentage of vendors’ revenues. Because IoT is just one tool, however, less attention will be paid to its role. It is embedded in messages as well as in products and services, and customers have come to expect its availability.

Customers are increasingly addressing the costs of moving and storing data and are therefore beginning to migrate to a hybrid edge-cloud architecture

IoT has the potential to generate enormous amounts of data, depending on what is being measured, how often, and how precisely. Without data life cycle policy and management, data accumulates without limit and project costs increase over time. An edge-cloud hybrid architecture processes data near the edge and transmits a limited amount of summarizing data to a central data center or cloud service for further analysis and long-term storage. The hardware and software tools for this approach are available but will become much easier to implement going forward.

While IoT revenue and IoT projects are growing, IoT is less prominent in vendors’ marketing communications

IoT is transforming from a product or service line to a capability or a product or service extension. Marketing IoT as a capability or extension allows vendors to scale back marketing and sales costs to a level commensurate with lower-than-first-expected IoT revenues. Successful vendors have repositioned IoT to support their main product or service line and to reinforce, rather than confuse, their main message. This results in a simpler message that is easier for salespeople and customers to understand and evaluate. It has also resulted in more differentiated IoT offerings, because the offerings are specific to each vendor’s overall strategy.

TBR’s Commercial IoT Benchmark is a semiannual publication that highlights current commercial IoT revenue and gross profit for a select list of 28 vendors. The benchmark leverages financial models and projections across a diverse set of IT and operational technology (OT) components. In addition, it outlines the major vendor-based drivers and trends shaping the market. The benchmark examines multiple IoT segments, including business consulting, IT services, ICT infrastructure, software, security, cloud services and connectivity.

UiPath amplifies the RPA’s value that comes from scale

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UiPath’s position as one of the leading vendors defining the robotic process automation (RPA) market comes with responsibilities for managing expectations across stakeholders, and the company knows it. Enhancing its value proposition by adding the necessary layers of technologies and deploying business-led frameworks internally and with alliance partners helps it build use cases of scale, a necessary attribute to maintain growth momentum, as RPA is no longer a siloed, line-of-business-led initiative, but rather a node in an enterprisewide automation initiative. 

UIPATH’S ENHANCED AND EXPANDED TECHNOLOGY STACK PROVIDES A SOLID FOUNDATION TO REACH SCALE

Solving the productivity paradox has become the guiding light for UiPath’s product development as the company seeks to gain broader stakeholder buy-in. RPA tools continue to be largely selected and utilized by business customers, but the need for democratizing data while addressing larger IT complexities is compelling UiPath to ensure ease of use of its offerings for the broader user community. Targeting new personas beyond RPA developers, including business analysts, citizen developers and testers, expands UiPath’s core platform addressable market but also raises expectations around ROI. By enhancing and adding features including design tools (e.g., Studio, Studio X, Studio T), management tools (e.g., Orchestrator, Cloud Platform, AI Fabric), apps (e.g., Forms, Tasks, Chatbots) and insights (e.g., RPA, Business Analytics), UiPath’s end-to-end automation suite captures the entire cycle of plan, build, manage, run, engage and measure.

While the build, manage and run stages are somewhat legacy capabilities, expanding into the plan cycle, which was accelerated through the acquisition of Netherlands-headquartered ProcessGold and enabled through the launch of UiExplorer, helps UiPath act as an arbitrator of the dilemma “Should a company automate a bad process or fix the process first?” by applying a scientific plan for implementing RPA one process at a time. TBR also sees the purchase of ProcessGold as an attempt for UiPath to increase its value proposition for higher-value design thinking workshops. While we do not expect UiPath to be a threat to its consulting partners’ core expertise, wrapping advisory frameworks with AI-enabled process mining tools could address the dilemma sooner. The engage and measure pillars of the UiPath Platform suite provide the connective tissue between the deeper collaboration between humans and robots as well as pave the way for the company’s pragmatic AI vision of building intelligent systems that provide the proper tools and skills. How to measure and report the true business impact of RPA implementation, however, remains up for debate, as enterprise buyers approach automation differently. As UiPath strives to reach scale, the inevitable question of “What’s next?” is rather loaded considering the hype around AI, the possibilities of automation and the future of RPA. During the conference UiPath released the AI Fabric solution in private mode, first announced in April, to address the barriers of AI and RPA working together including in operations, technology and processes. As the notion of AI fabric is breaking down siloes between RPA and data science teams through features such as intuitive interface, operationalizing AI models and closing the RPA-AI data feedback loop, AI Fabric is a timely response to buyers’ adoption of AI, which for many is still in a pilot phase.

For the second year in a row TBR attended the annual UiPath Forward conference, the focus of which has shifted dramatically from regionally oriented in 2018 to global in 2019, reflecting the company’s efforts to build a framework and portfolio offerings developed and delivered through integrated scale. And stories of scale were not lacking: The conference hosted close to 3,000 attendees this year — twice as many as last year — and demonstrated expanded capabilities of the core UiPath Platform. UiPath also announced two acquisitions and shared four dozen client stories onstage. Under the slogan “Reboot Work,” the conference amplified the broader need for rebooting customer experience and business overall, which in many cases is easier said than done, but client stories shared during the conference showed pain points are lessening, reflecting on UiPath’s Automation First vision with “automation is the application” framework at its core.

Microsoft outduels Amazon for JEDI

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Microsoft beats out Amazon after contentious competition for DOD’s JEDI award

Late on the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 25, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced it had selected Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for its lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, the Pentagon’s plan to adopt a general-purpose cloud infrastructure first announced in November 2017. The notification of JEDI’s winner came at an odd time — we saw the first notification of Microsoft’s win at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Releasing news or documents late on a Friday afternoon is sometimes referred to as a “Friday news dump” by members of the media, a technique that can thwart in-depth media analysis of bad news or unfavorable developments affecting the story’s source.

Regardless of why the DOD chose to announce the winner of the biggest single cloud contract to date in federal IT (and one of the biggest IT contracts in federal IT history) when it did, Microsoft is now poised to capture potentially billions in revenue as the DOD’s leading cloud vendor on JEDI, an award with a $10 billion ceiling and a potential 10-year life span if all options are exercised. Vendor selection for JEDI has been ongoing for over a year, plagued by multiple protests, internal investigations, and conflict-of-interest allegations by and between the initial four contestants, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft and Oracle (NYSE: ORCL). The acrimony kept the DOD from awarding JEDI by its original target date of April 2019, though the agency eliminated IBM and Oracle in April in the first “down-select” of the vendor review process.

Amazon was once the ostensible front-runner, but Microsoft’s approach to hybrid cloud may have won out in the end

Amazon won the $600 million cloud award with the CIA in 2013, beating out AT&T (NYSE: T), IBM and Microsoft, an engagement many industry observers expected would act as a springboard for Amazon to future cloud work in the federal IT sector. After JEDI was announced in late 2017, industry analysts believed Amazon, the market share leader in the cloud space, and its ongoing cloud work in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) would help clear the way to victory on JEDI. Amazon’s alliance with VMware (NYSE: VMW) was key to winning the CIA cloud work, as VMware was estimated to be hosting between two-thirds and three-quarters of government workloads running on the cloud at the time. Amazon had also enhanced the security of its cloud offerings to accommodate defense- and intelligence-grade data assurance needs by steadily obtaining new authorizations to host government data at increasingly higher security levels. As the vendor selection process for JEDI moved along, however, concerns arose that JEDI’s single-source structure would diminish the DOD’s flexibility in choosing cloud vendors and technologies. There were also indications during 2019 that the DOD’s cloud migration strategy was increasingly favoring a more piecemeal and unhurried transition to the cloud. The DOD’s evolving cloud preferences seemed to shift the JEDI competition in favor of Microsoft’s hybrid cloud approach that blends exiting IT infrastructures with new cloud systems while leveraging partners to a greater degree in the migration process. 

Peering over the edge with 5G

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Edge and 5G computing working together: It just makes sense

5G and the edge exemplify the ‘co-influenced’ trend

The afternoon opened with an exercise whereby small groups were asked to define the relationship between the edge and 5G. The somewhat laborious attempt to define the edge in the context of 5G (or vice versa) exemplified the fact that technology is developing so rapidly, the terminology to define it does not exist yet. While the communal search for a word could have dragged on for the better part of the afternoon, the group, pressed for time, settled on the term “co-influence.”

These small group breakouts led to lively discussion, and provided insight around how co-dependency does not exist between the edge and 5G as well as how there are no hard-and-fast rules as to which precedes the other and/or which is the greater influencer. Edge technology, while not a spotlight stealer, was cast in a leading role at a conference that in previous years was solely dedicated to 5G. After a morning of 5G transport immersion, the afternoon sessions highlighted that the industry is recognizing that both technologies already have a symbiotic relationship no matter what definition is used.

5G and connecting the world via the edge

Despite the excitement about what the future holds with 5G, there is widespread acknowledgement that the technology is still extremely new and that there are very few use cases highlighting extensive deployment success and in only a few highly controlled markets. Indeed, many of the event’s examples spoke to the potential of 5G and showed fascinating benefits, but within controlled testing environments.

Outside the lab, potential exists for edge to help 5G scale massively as billions of devices will be connected and widely distributed worldwide by the end of 2019. While a fraction of devices are as ubiquitous smartphones, the rest will consist of connected wearables, drones and sensors on just about every wearable or implantable imaginable. The proliferation of edge computing provides an increased network of diverse devices, enabling a means to process, filter and protect data locally, which, in turn, plays a key role in enhancing the value of 5G networks.

On Oct. 10, over 200 5G transport industry professionals gathered in New York for a day packed with presentations and discussions around the deployment of advanced 5G transport networks as well as the integration of edge cloud infrastructures and services. The event, hosted by Light Reading, brought together industry thought leaders from Verizon, Juniper Networks, Corero, ZenFi, MetTel, Ericsson and Fujitsu, among others, who led discussions on a range of topics covering edge concepts, mobile connectivity solutions, and technology structure, architecture and design. While 5G transport was the overarching topic, discussion around the edge factored heavily into the event. For the first time in the history of the 5G transport conference, one of the two afternoon tracks was dedicated to the relevance and importance of edge technology as it relates to 5G.

Ecosystems and trust: What KPMG brings to blockchain

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‘It’s not about the enterprise anymore; it’s about the ecosystem’

Opening the event with KPMG’s view of innovation and technology, including specifics around blockchain, National Managing Partner for Innovation and Enterprise Solutions Fiona Grandi and Global Blockchain Leader Arun Ghosh emphasized that achieving meaningful blockchain adoption requires moving beyond the enterprise to the entire ecosystem. In these remarks, particularly when KPMG stressed its role as a network provider, a “trusted layer” across a platform and an ecosystem, TBR heard echoes of the “Business of One” framework and the gradual shift within the IT services, consulting and technology space toward more robust partnering — and clients that expect more from their vendors’ ecosystems. Trust, as repeatedly invoked by KPMG, echoes the firm’s DNA as one of the Big Four, a firm trusted with clients’ financials, systems and regulatory obligations. Neatly pulling these two ideas together — the increasing need to play across an ecosystem, and KPMG’s core value around trust — Ghosh said one key question the firm helps clients answer, when considering blockchain, is quite simply, “Can I create a trusted ecosystem?” If clients can answer that question, they are prepared to move beyond what Grande described as a nonstarter position around blockchain. “When [clients] say, ‘We want it on blockchain,’ they haven’t thought it through,” Grandi said. On a more concrete level, KPMG’s leaders stressed the firm’s role in helping clients move toward smart contracts, a core use case for blockchain’s distributed ledger technology. Smart contracts, as KPMG’s U.S. blockchain program lead, Tegan Keele, summed up nicely, do not automate processes; they remove manual tasks. To remove those manual tasks, businesses comprising the ecosystem have to reach a consensus on process diagrams to establish the governance flows for the blockchain.

One specific example from the day stood out to TBR. KPMG professionals described a large-scale operations consulting engagement, including “pain and trust point mapping,” that led to a blockchain-enabled solution providing farm-to-table provenance, starting with the government agency responsible for licensing the farms. We will explore below how a government-mandated blockchain could enhance societal goals around welfare and certification, but the key characterization of KPMG’s role came from Ghosh, who said the use case highlighted the firm’s overall goal for blockchain, which is to “create [a] common, real-time, trusted source of the truth to help solve industry’s most critical issues … create an ecosystem around something that already exists, then add a layer of trust, enabled by blockchain.”

‘Those who get it want to create their own ecosystem and control it’

Understanding how KPMG defines the core values of blockchain requires also understanding how clients and technology partners see the firm itself, including what KPMG brings to innovations, engagements and solutions. Throughout the event, KPMG ceded the stage to clients and technology partners, such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), that repeated a few key themes on what KPMG brings to blockchain. Most frequently, these speakers noted KPMG’s industry expertise, especially as related to specific business processes and industry-centric regulatory challenges. On this second point, one client stated that KPMG’s trusted brand and regulatory expertise were essential in the blockchain space “to drive institutional adoption.” Another client said KPMG brought a “holy trinity of expertise” around business processes, applicable technology and change management. (Note: In TBR’s view, change management remains a critical, if sometimes neglected, element of all emerging technology adoption and digital transformation. As multiple clients and consultancies have said, “The people, not the technology, are the problem.”) A technology partner said blockchain is a “team sport” and that “KPMG has deep process expertise in life sciences and supply chain,” two elements that had been critical to the partner’s joint engagement with a U.S. pharmaceutical giant. TBR also noted that multiple KPMG clients described the firm as a systems integrator (SI), fitting with KPMG’s approach to let the solution drive decisions around the technology stack, products and software.      

McDermott will support ServiceNow’s ambitions to fill enterprise application gaps left by vendors like SAP

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On Oct. 22, 2019, ServiceNow announced Bill McDermott, who resigned from SAP less than two weeks prior, would be taking over John Donahoe’s position as CEO at the end of 2019. McDermott’s experience in the enterprise software space will inform ServiceNow’s innovations in and around business applications from SAP and its closest competitors.

McDermott’s knowledge of the enterprise applications space is key

At its core, ServiceNow has a very different software portfolio than SAP, but considering the strategic objectives ServiceNow recently laid out, McDermott is well equipped to steer the company toward continued leading financial performance. As ServiceNow aims to engage more deeply with Global Elite partners such as Deloitte and Accenture, and to develop solutions that fill enterprise software gaps as it has with mobile onboarding and financial close automation, McDermott’s enterprise applications experience is a good fit. In addition to his global partner and enterprise customer relationships McDermott brings a deep and unique understanding of the “gaps,” or workflow disconnects, around enterprise applications that ServiceNow has identified as its key growth areas.

That said, it is a toss-up whether McDermott’s guidance will help ServiceNow avoid innovating into competitive overlap or steer the company directly into applications competition. With his knowledge of the functionality and gaps in broad enterprise applications suites like SAP Business Suite for HANA (S/4HANA), McDermott can direct ServiceNow’s innovation to either fill gaps or directly compete on specific functions. With that uncertainty, this appointment should put SAP, Oracle and Workday on high alert through 2020, as McDermott’s influence becomes more clear.

Notably, ServiceNow has been undergoing other executive changes, with former CFO Mike Scarpelli leaving to follow Frank Slootman (ServiceNow’s CEO before Donahoe) to Snowflake. McDermott has indicated that ServiceNow and Donahoe have already given McDermott the leeway to influence the CFO replacement process, and there is opportunity for McDermott to further shape ServiceNow through other executive appointments.

Core to ServiceNow’s capabilities, the Now Platform has long been overshadowed by the applications built on top of it. ServiceNow’s dilemma with the Now Platform is not how to enhance the capabilities, but how to brand the portfolio in such a way that the platform becomes as ubiquitous with the ServiceNow brand as the early IT workflow products have, while still capitalizing on the company’s ability to innovate into ― and capitalize on ― niche solution areas.

Centricity of technology and talent: Atos keeps growing in North America

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New Artificial Intelligence Lab in Texas will facilitate Atos’ collaborative innovation work with clients

On Oct. 3 Atos held a ceremony for the launch of its new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab in partnership with Google Cloud (Nasdaq: GOOGL). The Atos AI Lab, so far the largest of Atos’ labs, is located on the first floor of Atos’ office building in Irving, Texas, and joins a global network of labs, the rest of which are located in London, Paris, Frankfurt and Munich. The lab will work with clients in North America to build clients’ understanding around AI and define use cases for data analytics and machine learning with the goal of improving their business performance. Collaborating with Atos and Google, clients will be able to jointly develop solutions that are specific to their business and industry needs. TBR noted that the lab is a very bright, flexible and laid-back environment that enables ideation and creative thinking by combining digital experience and design thinking methodology. Another thing that stood out during our discussions with Atos’ North America leadership team is that North America is becoming a region for the company’s innovation. Atos is instilling a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship and creative thinking in North America and creating intellectual property that is brought back to Europe to be utilized with clients in Atos’ main geography. Because these kinds of collaborative centers play an important role in vendors’, including Atos’, ability to groom talent and leadership, the proper messaging about specific technology capabilities, such as around Google, will help Atos stay abreast of the next wave of partnership models. According to TBR’s Digital Transformation Insights Report: Cross Vendor, published in September 2019, partnerships will also evolve in the long term, as in their current form, the technology diminishes differentiation among all parties. This evolution could create siloed, federated-like model enterprises, which bring a different set of challenges. However, with the expectations coming from the advent of open data standards amplified through blockchain, TBR anticipates such hurdles will be easy to overcome.

Establishing a talent base will improve Atos’ ability to generate IP in North America

Early in the event, Walsh spoke of the “centricity of technology and talent” summarizing Atos’ view of itself, its clients and its ecosystem — a sentiment echoed repeatedly by Atos executives throughout the day. In TBR’s view, Atos recognizes that its strength lies not in strategy consulting but instead in staying centered on technology while trying to help clients solve business problems. Atos also recognizes that talent, not technology, will differentiate consultancies and IT services vendors from each other as everyone pursues digital transformation. On multiple occasions during the event, as both part of the formal presentations and in side-bar discussions, Atos executives stressed the company’s commitment to training, reskilling, developing and retaining top talent across all of its lines of business (and geographies, although most of the event centered on North America). Wagner’s description of purpose-built, SAP-centric teams around consulting, Google Cloud Platform and the CTO was as much about the talent Atos needed to recruit and develop as it was about the organizational changes Atos needed to make and the SAP capabilities it needed to acquire.

In all, the Texas event confirmed to TBR that Atos’ strategy and execution in North America have shifted into a substantially higher gear, as the company accelerates its push to bring U.S.-led initiatives to the front of this very European company. One small indication: According to Walsh, Atos North America now generates more IP to share with Atos Europe than Europe develops to send to the U.S. TBR does not expect Atos’ U.S. headquarters in Irving to replace Atos’ global headquarters near Paris any time soon, but the gravitational pull of success will make the next few years interesting for Atos. 

Supporting its strategy to expand in North America, France-based digital transformation company Atos held its second annual North America industry analyst event at its North America headquarters in Irving, Texas. The event took place in Atos’ Business Technology Innovation Center (BTIC), which is part of a network of nine BTICs that Atos uses as a platform for hands-on innovation with customers and partners. Using a balanced mix of presentations, innovation showcases set up at the BTIC, one-on-one sessions, and North America client examples — one of which, a public sector organization, was presented live on stage — Atos showed the industry analyst community that its expansion in the region is accelerating. Atos is using acquisitions, such as that of Syntel, to expand its portfolio and resources, improve its service delivery model, and drive profitable growth in North America.