Big Data and Analytics: Where's the Value Proposition

By Sandy Borthick
Industry Analyst, Big Data & Analytics
Stratecas | Frost & Sullivan






Advancements in computing and network technologies have always driven big changes in the ways we live and work, sometimes quickly, but more often over a span of years. First comes the better, faster, cheaper technology, which stimulates new programming languages and tools, as well as new software applications. Then, as these applications are deployed and embraced, they become part of our work processes and they modify our behavior.

Big Data technologies, along with the accompanying paradigm changes in data processing and the evolution in analytic software applications, are just in the earliest stages of transforming our world. The blatant hype has died down a bit, and the pace of experimentation and implementation has picked up. Trade show conferences are beginning to feature some of the early adopters, sharing how they have used Big Data and analytics to find new insights that lead to improved business processes, increased revenues and reduced costs. Other organizations are paying attention, studying up and starting to wonder if they could achieve similar results.

Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan offers this Stratecast Perspectives & Insight for Executives (SPIE) to assist these organizations and their solution providers. Having previously detailed the components of the Big Data and analytics market, and described the marketing challenges being faced by the vendors, this SPIE takes a step back to explore the basic value proposition for Big Data and analytics, and to discuss the several issues that will have to be addressed to convert that value from conceptual potential to quantifiable business success.

To read more, download the PDF.

10 Things Most Exceptional CIOs Never Do

By Richie Etwaru

Group VP
Clouding and Digital Innovation

Cegedim Relationship Management

The list below is from over two decades of observations in first, second, and third person. Before publishing I asked over 50 Fortune 1000 CIOs and CTOs to review and comment; their feedback is included.

At the core of these 10 things most exceptional CIOs never do is going against the grain and the herd, and embracing counter intuition. Whether you embrace counter intuition systematically, or selectively, most of the items below suggest in their cognitive DNA counter-intuitive thinking:

1.    They do not try to define innovation - It's difficult to define innovation, and if you do define innovation it means that you will set up a single process to do or capture it the way you define it. Wrong – most exceptional technology leaders learn that innovation comes in many flavors, inside-out, outside-in, evolutionary, and revolutionary. If you define it, you have one process; if you do not, you learn there are many processes needed to do or capture the many types of innovation.

2.    They never have secret projects - The knee-jerk reaction is to have little secret projects, or "black ops" type projects. Exceptional technology leaders will tell you that you need to do innovative projects in the open and allow folks to see, smell, and marvel in their artistry. What you want is for everyone to copy the behavior of the few innovating. If you lock them in a secret room, no one knows, and no innovative behavior gets copied.

3.    They are never surprised by failure – A certain percentage of technology projects fail; that’s the nature of the beast. Exceptional technology leaders set these expectations for failure with their operating committees and investment governance stewards early in the process. When failure happens, it is never a surprise; it is usually, "Well that one falls in our failure bucket we prepared for."

4.    They never start projects themselves - Folks that want/try to build a prototype usually struggle to wow business stakeholders. This is because you have to get the business stakeholders involved before you can build anything. Some leaders I know do not even draw a project in PowerPoint before engaging the customer. Every project is started by the customer, whether it was on the customer's own conscious accord, or the customer unconsciously prompted leadership to do so.

5.    They resist the need for PMO - Certain processes in large organizations do not thrive with the presence of the project police, while others do. Most exceptional leaders I consulted agreed that a PMO in the wrong place at the wrong time can be catastrophic. Some processes need low rigor, some mild, and only some the high rigor that comes with a PMO presence.

6.    They do not break projects into phases - Large phases (one, two and three) are logical "kill points" for projects. Most projects get killed after phase one, and very frequently this is because phase one is a minimally viable product that does the least that can be done, but does it well. Two things happen, the business stakeholders see no reason to fund phase two and/or three (I mean they already saw something that kind of works), and the technology leader never gets to build phase two, which would deliver efficiency, or phase three, which would create business value. Have 24 phases, not three.

7.    They never worry about a target state - We can barely predict what our families will do in a year, yet we try to predict what companies of thousands of employees should be like three to five years out with a target state. Even worse, once there is a targets state, the "target state police" start to invalidate changes to the market place and new innovations by activating the "Well, it does not fit into the target state" card, essentially locking the company away from the world for three to five years at a time. Exceptional technology leaders create a governance culture to enable an evolving model, not a target state.

8.    They do not try to build hero products - Very rarely can you build a single product that solves all of your customer’s ailments in a vacuum. You cannot build standalone solutions; you have to build a product that works with others. The days of platforms with stocks of information are over; exceptional technology leaders build ecosystems with flows of information. Most folks suggested that they build as little as possible, and instead act as a maestro that orchestrates other products.

9.    They never wait on innovation - Exceptional technology leaders do not wait to see what happens to new innovations, they disdain being a fast follower, and they are habitual early adopters. They buy innovation commercially (and many times invest in the startups) early in the innovation cycle and way to the left on the diffusion of innovation bell curve. Waiting to see what happens to an innovation means paying more for it, and being late to the party.

10.    They do not read leadership books - There are almost a million books on leadership available for purchase on Amazon.com. All noise, an echo chamber, if I may. Exceptional leaders systematically and pragmatically go against the status quo. They thrive in counter-intuition. As technology commoditizes and the herd gets larger and larger, go in the opposite direction.

This article was originally posted by Richie Etwaru on LinkedIn.

Mobile Worker Applications: Prebuilt or Custom? In-House or 3rd-Party?

By Jeanine Sterling

Principal Analyst
Mobile & Wireless Communications

Frost & Sullivan

One of the key questions a business has to grapple with when implementing a new mobile software app for its employees is “Do we build or do we buy?”

There are pros and cons to each approach, of course. Creating a fully customized application takes time, money and sometimes internal IT resources. However, it promises a solution that is tailor-made to address the business’s unique needs … and it increases the level of confidentiality and control that some firms feel they must retain.

A prebuilt or prepackaged application – whether it’s a 100% out-of-the-box solution or an app that’s 70-80% complete and just needs some fine-tuning – is usually cloud-based. It can be deployed more quickly (taking weeks or days, instead of months or years). It’s typically much more affordable (priced on a monthly per-user basis). And it demands far less time and energy from the company’s IT employees.

In a survey of North American mobile and wireless decision-makers last August, we asked current users of four different mobile apps to describe their approach.  We’ll be asking the same question in this year’s survey for comparison purposes.

Per the chart below, some interesting facts emerge:

• Simple out-of-the-box implementations – with no customization required – are a distinct minority with newer applications. However, this seems to change as an application category becomes more established and standardized. While 28 percent of wireless email users have implemented out-of-box, only 7-8 percent of newer apps (in this case, mobile sales force automation and mobile workforce management solutions) do likewise. One of the newer M2M apps – tracking portable and semi-stationary assets in the field – follows this same trend.

• Smaller businesses (fewer than 500 employees) are more likely to implement out-of-the-box when it comes to wireless email and mobile workforce management apps.

• Prepackaged solutions hold the majority position at this time. Businesses seem to prefer the advantages that come with prebuilt applications – ranging from 61 percent of mobile asset tracking users to 58 percent of mobile SFA users to 52 percent of mobile workforce management users. The proportion of prebuilt wireless email apps is the lowest of this group at 41 percent, but it is still more popular than the out-of-box or customized options.

The percentage of businesses currently using fully customized applications range as follows:

• Wireless email – 21 percent
• Mobile asset tracking – 30 percent
• Mobile sales force automation – 35 percent
• Mobile workforce management – 41 percent

What about the use of third-party experts to handle any customization needs?  Are businesses more apt to hire help or do the custom work themselves?  As of August 2013, the trends were as follows:

• For prebuilt mobile applications that required some customizing, businesses are roughly just as likely to use a third-party partner as do the custom work themselves in-house.

• For fully customized mobile applications, however, customers are much more likely to develop the application in-house with their own IT personnel. Depending upon the application category, 60 to 70 percent of the businesses opting to create a fully customized app do so utilizing their own staff. Larger businesses are more likely than smaller firms to use a third party when customizing.

Prebuilt preferred over custom. In-house development preferred over third-party. Will these trends hold in the mobile business apps sector?  We’ll begin to do some longitudinal analysis after the 2014 responses come in.

 

People, Processes, Technology: 3 Keys for Security Leadership

By Richard Noguera

Head of Information Security

The Gap

When I get introspective about myself as a leader, it's often because I've had a flash of doubt. In other words, I sometimes wonder if I made the right call on any given topic during especially stressful times. And through the course of self-analysis, I am often reminded of Ray Dalio and reflect on what makes me tick as a leader.

I'm a process guy that thrives in the company of good people. More often than not, I find my operational peers to be extremely technically focused. So as a people and process person, I'm typically at odds with those peers. That's not to say that I'm not technically competent, I'm just not comfortable asking an engineer to step aside so that I can correct the flawed line of source code, running config, FW policy, or ACL at the drop. My peers however, not necessarily those immediate to me, largely believe this is a functional must-have. And interestingly, one that I am often presented with, directly and indirectly, at least once a month.

Information Security was begot by Information Technology. So naturally, most leaders expect CISOs to be nearly entirely technically driven. Arguably, this works – if not required – when you operate in organizations like Google, Facebook, or Yahoo! Beyond the Technology sector though, the balance between people, process, and technology is critical to success. Consider Retail, an industry sector largely built on brick and mortar and Loss Prevention. Here, Information Security cannot be driven without understanding the Store Operations and employees in the field. With approximately >90% of retailers not technically driven, and often prone to compromise by the phishing/spam campaigns that the Finance and Technology sectors have identified several years ago, success in Retail requires a strong people and process focus in order to maximize the benefits of technology. Recent breaches in the sector only stress the need for balanced people, process, and technology capabilities.

So to simplify, my view is that Security Leaders must have strong capabilities in the following domains:

• People – Communicate, educate, and motivate their superiors, peers, and subordinates effectively. Customers, partners, and employees are always the first line of defense. 

• Process – As it relates to the business and what it does, leaders must manage Information Security itself as a business and maintaining controls consistently to minimize human error risk.

• Technology – Effectively identify, qualify, and remediate threats holistically across the cloud/mobile connected enterprises across an ever changing technical landscape. 

So when these flashes occur, I remember that I'm here because I chose to be, and make a call based on the people, process, technology information I have in hand. And if my assessment of the situation isn't right, I can course correct with my team the next day.

This post original appeared on Justin Somaini’s Cyber Security Blog.

Act Now and Save on Registration for Our Next IT Think Tank

Never before have CIOs and IT teams been so critical to the company's growth strategy, and never has it been so important to showcase IT's impact on the business. While there are definitely challenges ahead, this is a time of significant and electrifying change for IT executives. New industries, business models, and products will emerge, organizational roles and relationships will be redefined, and IT will be at the epicenter of it all.

Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce the 3^rd Annual ConNEXTions 2015: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, featuring a unique format designed to help CIOs and other IT professionals navigate this new environment and plan for the future. In an effort to maximize the value of this think tank and its interactive discussions, Frost & Sullivan has invited a selection of cross-vertical IT leaders. Most of the content will be PowerPoint-free, relying on interactive discussions to engage you and your peers in small groups and facilitate candid discussions and cross-industry leaning. The date and location have been confirmed for February 8-10, 2015, in San Francisco.

For this year’s event, Frost & Sullivan has invited representatives from sectors such as:

• Information and Communication Technology (eBay, Expedia, Yahoo!, Xerox, Honeywell)
• Financial Services (The Blackstone Group, Charles Schwab, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo)
• Government Administration (U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, City of Palo Alto, California Department of Public Health, Office of Management and Budget)
• Healthcare and Medical Devices (Abbott Laboratories, Cardinal Health, CVS Caremark, United Health Group, Quest Diagnostics)

Building close relationships with peers in other organizations and industries will be critical for IT leaders to develop the innovative ideas and best practices needed to help their companies succeed in the future. Past participants agree the unique format of a Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange offers the best opportunities to network, build relationships, and share best practices with peers.

To reserve your spot in this innovative information technology think tank, be sure to take advantage of Frost & Sullivan’s new Colleagues and Clients referral program. If you refer a colleague who signs up for the event, you will receive a $250 discount on your registration. And if someone you refer signs up before September 30^th, he or she will receive a $500 discount.

To maximize your savings and make sure your company is represented at the event, register now for the 3^rd Annual ConNEXTions 2015: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, or pass the word along to a technology person in your organization who will benefit.