Event Report: Microsoft Convergence 2014 Day 1 Demonstrates Solid Momentum and Mindshare ( #CONV14 )

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Microsoft Convergence Kicks Off In Atlanta

The annual Microsoft Convergence customer event kicked off on March 4th, 2014.  Far from the days of the Stampede in Fargo, North Dakota, the event shows how far the Microsoft Dynamics customers, partners, and products have progressed.  Over 12,000 attendees including customers, partners, staff, and prospects gathered in Atlanta, GA for the largest Microsoft Enterprise Applications conference.  The sold out event featured a volunteer program on Day 0 and a good number of partner meetings the weekend before.  Analysis from four key announcements on Day 1 include:

• Microsoft Dynamics gaining momentum on the large enterprise and divisions of large enterprises. Key customers presenting in the opening keynote include Chobani, City Harvest Inc, Delta Airlines, Lotus F1 Team, New Belgium Brewery, and Weight Watchers.  These presenting customers share a key theme of customer centricity and a Microsoft enterprise backbone.  Moreover, many showcase the devices and services theme set by former CEO Steve Ballmer.
  
  Point of View (POV): Constellation sees a growing trend where organizations and brands move to Dynamics for both CRM and ERP.  The ability to integrate back to other Microsoft technologies such as SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Services provides both a pull and a push.  As organizations think about consolidating vendors and moving to the cloud, the Microsoft Dynamics team provides some compelling options in manufacturing, retail, distribution, public sector, professional services, and travel and entertainment.  The launch of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise License at $200 per user per month show cases the move upmarket.

• Dynamics CRM users gain key marketing and social capabilities. Microsoft announces the next release of Dynamics CRM in Q2 of 2014.  Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, which was formed from the Marketing Pilot acquisition , debuts to assist with campaign management.  The service and support offering gains new features such as Unified Service Desk along with closer integration to recently acquired Parature.  Newly launched Microsoft Social Listening launches at no additional charge for Dynamics CRM Online professional license holders.
  
  (POV): The rewrite of acquired entity Marketing Pilot provides some improvement to the original product.  Parity at the Exact Target and Hubspot level will take at least two to three more releases.  Release of unified service desk paired with Parature, provides a powerful combination in customer service and support.  Microsoft Social Listening finally provides customers with a social tool that has been sorely missing in the line up.  More importantly, in CRM and customer experience, the mobile access options have not forced customers onto Windows Phone and instead have provided native support of iOS and Android..

• Dynamics ERP users prepare for new releases. Dynamics GP gets a release for Q1 2014 that includes identity management, workflow, and self service companion apps.  Dynamics NAV shoudl receive an update in Q4 2014.  More importantly, the team announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 for May 1st 2014.  Key themes include mobile enablement, support for deployment on Windows Azure in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) layer, and an end to end apps and services framework.  .  The cross offering with the Windows Azure team is the Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services which improve implementation times and enable agile updates.
  
  (POV): Microsoft has kept its promise to update the Dynamics ERP product lines, despite the flagship product investment in Dynamics AX.  The support of Dynamics AX at the IaaS layer provides enterprise class capabilities in high availability, data and disaster recovery, and rapid deployments of pre-configured environments.  However, the inability of the SQL Azure team to meet performance requirements for not only the Dynamics team, but also other ISV OEM’s continues to keep major enterprise apps from full deployment of database at the PaaS layer.  The good news for customers, Microsoft has continued to improve the product lines and keep a steady cadence of upgrades and updates beyond traditional maintenance releases.

• Partnerships with major SI’s  and ISV’s continue to grow . IBM, Avanade, Capgemini and Hitachi lead the list of highlighted Dynamics practices.  A partnership with Dominion expands the global ISV alliance in the dealer management vertical.
  
  (POV): The Microsoft Dynamics team is taking a dual prong strategy on partnerships.  On one end, investment in global system integrators expands reach and vertical delivery.  On the other end, GISV partnerships provide a great base of platform usage and micro-vertical offerings.  Some examples include Angila Business Solutions (Food Supply Chain), Escher Group (Retail Automation), Ferranti Computer Systems (Utilities), I.B.I.S. (Manufacturing and Distribution), and Incadea (Auto Software), and Tyler Technologies (Public Sector).

The Bottom Line: Microsoft Dynamics Matures Into A Short List Option For Enterprises and Brands

Microsoft is now seen as a neutral and trusted player in the enterprise.  Prospects and customers seeking both standardization and innovation now turn to Microsoft Dynamics in their short lists.  Most customers and prospects are in an ERP and CRM replacement cycle and the mainstream adoption of social, cloud, mobile, and analytics tilt the favor to many of Microsoft’s offerings.  Many customers and prospects begin by modernizing divisions using two Tier ERP and deploying enterprise wide cloud based CRM.  Meanwhile, global system integrators and global ISV’s see an opportunity to partner instead of compete.

In general, the shift to devices and services at the corporate level will help create synergies for the Microsoft Dynamics team.  Further, leadership changes with Satya Nadella as CEO should help the Microsoft Dynamics team given his rotation through the division.  However, any reduction of marketing and development resources will hurt growth as these competitive markets require proper investment to compete with well-funded and high profile Silicon Valley based start-ups.   Overall, the future looks bright for customers, prospects, and partners in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem.  Customers and prospects should keep Microsoft Dynamics in the short lists.

Your POV.

 

Are you looking at ERP and CRM replacement? Do you need specialized requirements for your industry?  How are you doing this today? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with vendor selection efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

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Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

 

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The Best Cloud Computing Companies And CEOs To Work For In 2014

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2014 continues to be a year marked by the accelerating hiring cycles across nearly all cloud computing companies.

Signing bonuses of $3K to $5K for senior engineers and system design specialists are becoming common, and the cycles from screening to interviews to offers is shortening.  The job market in the cloud computing industry is leaning in favor of applicants who have a strong IT background in systems integration, legacy IT expertise, business analysis and in many positions, programming as well.

One of the most common questions and requests I receive from readers is who the best companies are to work for.  I’ve put together the following analysis based on the latest Computer Reseller News list The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2014.  

Using the CRN list as a baseline to compare the Glassdoor.com scores of the (%) of employees who would recommend this company to a friend and (%) of employees who approve of the CEO, the following analysis was completed.  You can find the original data here .  There are many companies listed on the CRN list that don’t have than many or any entries on Glassdoor and they were excluded from the rankings below.  You can find companies excluded here. If the image below is not visible in your browser, you can view the rankings here.

The highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor as of February 23^rd include the following:

• Jeremy Roche of FinancialForce.com (100%)

• Robert Reid, Intacct (100%)

• Randy Bias, Cloudscaling (100%)

• Sridhar Vembu, Zoho (98%)

• James M. Whitehurst, Red Hat (96%)

• Larry Page, Google (95%)

• Christian Chabot, Tableau Software (95%)

• Aneel Bhusri, Workday (94%)

• Bill McDermott & Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP (93%)

• Marc Benioff, Salesforce (93%)

• David Friend, Carbonite (93%)

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Meet @LZulli: He Grooms High School Students To Be SharePoint Experts #spc14

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If I can go back to high school and pick my own teacher, it would be Mr. Louis Zulli Jr. – a teacher from  Centre of Advanced Technologies in  Tampa, Florida. He  spearheaded a fantastic magnet program that lets high school students develop SharePoint solutions for the school. Examples of these impressive solutions:

• IOS, Android and Windows Phone  apps that leveraged SharePoint to display teacher’s assignments, school events and class times;
• Silverlight-based application providing a virtual tour of the campus;
• Integration of SharePoint with Moodle;
• An Academic Planner web application allowing students to plan their classes, submit a schedule, have them reviewed, track of the credits of the classes selected and whether a student’s selections meet graduation requirements;
• An innovative campus Hall Pass system that leveraged jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, XML, JSON, REST, List Data Web Services and features integration with IOS, Windows 8 and swipe card hardware.

These 16-18 year old kids graduates high school with hands on experience not only in SharePoint, but have already build their foundation in project management, business analysis, requirements development, quality assurance, user testing and agile software development.

Lou’s story was showcased today at the SharePoint conference keynote and I had the opportunity to catch up with him:

Also, checkout his presentation from SHARE conference where he explains how the program started and he shows the solutions his students developed:

Kudos Mr. Zulli! Hats off to your great work and paving a promising future for these next generation leaders!

 

 

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Doug Laird Joins Couchbase

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Siebel veteran Doug Laird has joined Couchbase as its Chief Marketing Officer. Laird will lead marketing world wide and is charged with establishing the company as the market leader for enterprise NoSQL. At Siebel Laird was Vice President of Marketing reporting to Pat House. 

Prior to Couchbase Laird was at Wildfire, where he served as CMO for its social media marketing business through the company's acquisition by Google for a reported $400 million. Prior to that, Laird served as vice president of marketing at QlikTech.  While Laird was at QlikTech the company increased annual revenue from $80 million to $321 million and had one of the best performing technology IPOs of the 2010. 

"We are delighted to have Doug join our management team at this pivotal time," said Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Couchbase.

Couchbase is a fast-growing provider of enterprise-class NoSQL databases.  Global companies are driving this explosive market growth as they look for database technology that can support the scalability, reliability and high-performance requirements of highly interactive, mission-critical applications. Couchbase clients include Amadeus, AOL, Cisco, Concur, LinkedIn, Orbitz, Salesforce.com, Shuffle Master, and Zynga.

"The NoSQL market is evolving into two distinct segments -- small, grassroots developer-led projects, and business-critical applications that require massive scale," said Laird. "Market success is no longer defined by the number of downloads and LinkedIn skill counts, but by the ability to support mission critical applications. This presents a huge opportunity for Courchbase."

Couchbase is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and is funded by Accel Partners, Ignition Partners, Mayfield Fund, and North Bridge Venture Partners. 

The company has a number of open positions listed around the globe on its jobs page in Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Training among other areas.

Laird can be reached at 650-417-7500.

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Peter Kim Joins Constellation as Chief Strategy Officer

Constellation Research announced today the appointment of Peter Kim as Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst. Kim, whose research focuses on Digital Marketing Transformation, expands Constellation’s ability to provide marketing leadership research/solutions to its early adopter clients worldwide. The addition of Kim, a leading analyst in digital marketing and social business, signals Constellation's growing momentum in bringing together the brightest, innovation-minded analysts to serve its early adopter clients the most comprehensive analysis of disruptive technologies.

As Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst, Kim will focus on the intersection of marketing and technology, where brands need more help than ever orchestrating platforms and service providers to deliver innovative customer experiences. Kim’s research agenda will provide guidance to CMOs, CXOs, and business strategists in the rapidly evolving area of Digital Marketing Transformation.

“Constellation Research has been disrupting the research industry model and I’ve sought to do the same in my work over the past two decades as a strategist, marketer, consultant, and industry analyst,” said Kim. “I’m delighted with the opportunity to take my talents to Constellation Research.”

Peter Kim was previously Chief Solutions Architect at Dachis Group, a multi-million dollar business advisory firm that pioneered the discipline of social business design. Prior to Dachis Group, Kim was an analyst at Forrester Research, where he helped brands take advantage of the rapid rise of corporate social media.

“I'm truly excited to have Pete on the team as a colleague and peer.  His ability to identify astute insights for marketing executives and grow multi-million dollar businesses is bar none in the industry research world”, said R “Ray” Wang, Constellation Research Founder and Chairman “Pete's arrival will help our clients with co-creation and co-innovation in world of digital disruption.  His domain expertise will bring gravitas to our Digital Marketing and Customer Experience business themes.  We're honored to have him on the team."

Peter Kim Biographical Information
Peter is Chief Strategy Officer at Constellation Research, Inc. Prior to Constellation, Peter held a variety of roles at Dachis Group including Chief Strategy Officer, where he built a multi-million dollar strategy consulting practice from scratch and guided the firm to a successful exit via acquisition. Previously he was an analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on the intersection of social technology and marketing strategy where he won awards for best research and top keynote.

Earlier, Peter led international marketing operations and was head of global digital marketing at PUMA AG.

Peter has been quoted by media outlets including CNBC, CNN, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal and featured as a speaker at events including SXSW, Web 2.0 Expo, and Enterprise 2.0. He is co-author of the book Social Business By Design and drives global industry discourse at beingpeterkim.com and as @peterkim on Twitter.

Peter holds degrees from the Darden School at the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania.

Peter Kim’s 2014 Research Agenda
Research will focus on Digital Marketing Transformation and Customer Experience.

•  Social Business and Beyond
•  The New Marketing Technology Stack
• Delivering on the Promise of Omnichannel
• The Realities of Real-Time Marketing
• Advocacy in the Age of Big Data
• How To Select the Right Marketing Service Provider
• Rebooting the Advertising Agency

COORDINATES
Twitter: twitter.com/peterkim
Profile: https://www.constellationr.com/users/peterkim
Blog: beingpeterkim.com
Geo: Austin, Texas

Press Contacts:
Contact the Influencer relations team at contact@ConstellationR.com.

Sales Contacts:
Contact our sales team at sales@ConstellationR.com.

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Microsoft Announces Office Graph - Connecting People And Content

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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Today at the SharePoint Conference 2014 (#SPC14) Microsoft unveiled Office Graph, a new architecture layer that maps the connections between people and content across the Office 365 family of products. Office Graph is not something people will see directly, instead it is a "behind the scenes layer" that will be used by developers to create user experiences that surface the information in various ways. Think of it more like the electrical wiring running through your house. You don't interact with the wires themselves, but they do provide a way for devices to connect to plugs to get power.

In tandem with the Office Graph announcement, Microsoft previewed Project Oslo, their first user experience powered by Office Graph. Oslo uses Office Graph data generated from Exchange, SharePoint and Yammer and displays relevant content in a modern mosaic style user experience.



What does "relevant content" mean? Well, instead of sorting documents by the standard file-manager-esque name, date and time attributes, people can now find and sort content based on that has been shared with them, that they have viewed and/or liked, as well as the content that is trending. (presumably meaning the most commented and liked within their network of connections) This could represent a big step forward in helping people sort through the huge amounts of information in their organization or community. With the right information surfaced (pun intended!), people can more easily and accurately discover the content relevant to their work.

Office Graph is clearly the evolution of the work Yammer was doing around Enterprise Graph, so it's good to see that Yammer (most notably Adam Pisoni) is having a significant impact on Microsoft, versus the other way around. Perhaps some of the people that scoffed at the $1.2B acquisition price tag may want to revisit their initial reactions?

At the moment Oslo is a Windows 8 application, but ideally it will become an integrated component of products like Outlook, SharePoint and Office. That said, I can also see the merits of a stand-alone application... imagine Oslo being similar to magazine style newsreaders like FlipBook or Zite, but for the business content within your organization.

Similar to how Oslo displays information about content, it also shows the connections people have with their colleagues. In addition to the standard "Manager, Peer and Direct Reports" hierarchy, Oslo displays the people you are working with as well as the intersection of people you and another person are working with.



It is important to note that Oslo is just a preview of the type of things Office Graph could make available. With a deep understanding of how people and content are connected, it is my hope that Microsoft will make it easy for people to learn more about the reach and impact their contributions are having to their organization. Imagine knowing more about who's reading your blog posts, downloading your presentations, replying to your Yammer posts, etc. I call this area Personal Analytics, or #smalldata. With Personal Analytics people will be able to see which things they should spend more time on, and which things they should focus less on. Jive Software does a good job of this today with their Impact Metrics feature, so it will be interesting to see how quickly Microsoft, or perhaps their business partner community, creates similar functionality.

For Customers and Business Partners

I don't believe today's announcements will have a large impact for Microsoft customers right away. Rather, Office Graph and tools like Oslo represent a step forward in Microsoft updating the underlying architecture needed to for improved product integration. For example, today Microsoft has to do a lot of magic (ok, it's code, not actual supernatural capabilities) to map identities and user profiles back and forth across products like Outlook, Yammer, Skype and Lync. Office Graph should make that easier, both for Microsoft, customers and Business Partners to build their next generation products and services.

Today's Microsoft announcements comes a few months after IBM announced Mail Next, their project to improve the way people combine email and social capabilities. Based on early looks, IBM Mail Next appears more focused on email and task management, where Microsoft Oslo is more focused on Office document type content. Personally, I really like the user experience of Oslo... edge to Microsoft on that one. It will be interesting to see how both companies move these projects forward and how customers react.
 

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Video Interview On SharePoint And Purposeful Collaboration

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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I had the pleasure of speaking with the always charismatic Dux Raymond Sy last night about collaboration, social business, SharePoint and other enterprise software topics.  Below is the 6 min video and if you want to hear more about this, please come to my SharePoint conference session at 10:45am on Tuesday.

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Siebel Twitter Integration - Overview

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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In his blog, How to Siebel?, long time consultant Jim Morse describes how to use Siebel with Twitter.

I have seen couple of questions regarding use of Google Analytics with Siebel CRM, but no one seems to answer completely. This article is created to answer those questions.

When it comes to web analytics there is no parallel to Google Analytics, I am not selling Google Analytics, but people who have already used GA before can understand the need of powerful web analytics tools and how Google Analytics fills the gap.

This article will give you steps to create Google Analytics account and to embed the tracking code in Siebel.

Google Analytics can be used with Siebel CRM applications for both internal like Siebel Financial Services and external customer facing applications like eService or eSales. Only requirements from Google to use tracking are:

• User must be able to reach the ga.js/analytics.js JavaScript file at http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js or https://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js.
• Intranet Application must be accessible through a fully qualified domain name such as http://intranet.example.com, application need not to be internet hosted application to use google analytics.

If your application can satisfy these requirements then you can create GA code and embed it to the Siebel Application.Once it is setup one can report on user behaviour demographic and many more metrics in GA.

I have used GA's Universal Analytics(newer version of GA) and created custom dimensions to store Active View Name, Application Name and Login User on Google.

 

Additionally I created events to capture the user interaction application. You can create event to business specific needs like: product configurator or service request creation or tasks.

How to embed Google Analytics tracker in Siebel Open UI?

Add the following code in postload.js file under the public directory, this code will be executed always when ever view is refreshed in Open UI. Code shown in bold is added after creation of dimension shown above.

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'YOUR_CODE', 'yoursitename'); ga('send', 'pageview'); ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name")); ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName")); ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName")); ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

How to embed Google Analytics with Siebel HI?

Add following code to the swecommon.js for high interactive applications, this js is also executed allways after page refresh in HI applications.

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'YOURCODE', 'yoursitename'); ga('send', 'pageview'); ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name")); ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName")); ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName")); ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

Caution : Do not track customer information such as user details using custom dimesions and metrics as it is against the google analytics policy and could be against the organisation policy as well.

After all this is done you would be able to see the analytics information in your google account.

Now you can do full fledged analytics on your user interactions. My favorite is real time analytics, which one is your favorite?

Happy Analytics :)

Used with permission

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Every American Parent Should Teach their Children about Patents, and here is why.

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In 2012, California generated more than 25% of the patents granted by the United States Patent Office (USPO) with almost 35,000 patents granted to citizens or organizations from California; the USPO granted a meek approximate 8,500 patents to citizens and organizations from New York, and as few as 32 from Alaska.

Startling? Not so much, but hold your horses, in 2012 Japan filed almost twice the amount of patents filed by citizens and organizations from California with the USPO granting almost 53,000 patents to citizens and organizations from Japan, Germany at approximately 15,000 (about half that of California), and the United Kingdom at approximately 6,000 (around the amount form New York).

This may not seem troublesome on surface since while California has approximately 40 million residents, Japan has approximately 130 million residents. So the pure magnitude difference may explain. What is interesting is the trend.

In the last three years (2010-2013) the amount of patents granted by the USPO to foreign origin patents versus domestic originated patents has crossed over the 50% mark, and has stay above 50% for three years. Just recently as 1970, this percentage was below 30%.

Why is this worth thinking about?

You can debate opinion, and political and cultural beliefs, but the numbers are black and white. Geographies that file more patents are more productive (jobs, earning etc.) than geographies that do not. Below is an except from the National Journal published February 1st 2013 - Why Patents--Yes, Patents--Matter to Economic and Jobs Growth.

Metro areas that produce a lot of patents--and the inventiveness that that implies--are more likely to see above-average gains in population, productivity, jobs, and education, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit research and policy think tank. And the bottom fourth of metro areas, the ones that produce the fewest patents, could gain as much as $4,300 per worker over a decade if they amped up their patent production to match the top fourth.

"If we were able to get the roughly 250 metropolitan areas that do very little patenting up to the level of the 100 that do a great deal of patenting, we'd be richer in an extraordinary way," says Jonathan Rothwell, a lead researcher on the study. "It would make really a huge difference to economic development."

The report suggests the administration may potentially provider incentives for low-patenting states and cities.

Do we have enough patent and intellectual property awareness in America?

Surely, most Americans must know something about a patent. There are blockbuster patent lawsuits in the news, we are presented with advertising of services that can "patent our ideas" on television and radio, but how many Americans know/feel like they either:

1. Know enough to file a patent of their own?
2. Can afford filing a patent?
3. Will benefit if filing a patent?

I did not learn about patents until about the age of 25, and I was insanely lucky to find co-founders who explained to me why it was important that our start-up business filed a patent. How many Americans learn this by 25, and how do Americans become more intellectual property aware even younger?

We can expect the administration to launch something like "CitizenIP.gov" or "CitizenPatent.gov" eventually as a companion to the incentives being suggested above, but will that be enough? I do not believe so, I am debating that we need to start educating children as early as possible on the nuances of intellectual property, innovation, and patents.

After all children are more divergent in thinking, more creative, dream more, and fear less intellectually than adults; they are perfectly designed to help regain America's patent status in the world, and according to the excerpt and the report above, can potentially design more productive lives for themselves if "patent schooled".

Below is a popular video where the great Sir Ken Robinson, discusses the paradigm shift needed in education, and the high levels of divergent thinking in children suited for creativity and intellect property generation.

So should we teach our kids about intellectual property rights, patents and innovation?

Well, turns out I have no expertise at this. While I have been a child and have some first hand experience, I have no children of my own. So I asked some of the leading thinkers, who have children of their own. Most are pro patent-schooling.

Ray Wang, Principal Analyst, Founder & Chairman at Constellation Research, Inc. is on the pro side of the debate.

"We have examples of brilliant young minds ignorant of IP rights, failing to build promising companies and futures for themselves, and our country" "the results of not knowing are disastrous to American citizens as we see a global increase in patent land grabs by large organizations, and the reemergence globally of patent trolls"

John Nosta, Forbes.com contributor, and founder of NostaLab sees it similarly, but with a contextual edit.

"I think we need to examine the context, and presentation for children, we may waste efforts and risk boring and alienating children if we attempt to teach 'intellectual property' and 'patents'" "however, if we can frame the knowledge and retrofit it for children, it is a brilliant way to extend creativity and bridge the growing gap between childhood/academics and adulthood/reality"

A few folks on the opposing side of the debate were not comfortable being quoted, but there are folks that believe that we should not inundate children with commercial constructs such as patents and intellectual property.

I say we should absolutely teach our children about patents and intellectual property, and when/if I have children, with their mother's permission of course, I squarely plan on delivering to my children corporate awesome sauce as early as I can.

-Richie

Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Chief People Officer

The strengths and weaknesses of Data Privacy in the Age of Big Data

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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The abstract of my Computers, Freedom, Privacy 2014 conference presentation. 

Synopsis

Many Big Data and online businesses proceed on a naive assumption that data in the "public domain" is up for grabs; technocrats are often surprised that conventional data protection laws can be interpreted to cover the extraction of PII from raw data. On the other hand, orthodox privacy frameworks don't cater for the way PII can be created in future from raw data collected today. This presentation will bridge the conceptual gap between data analytics and privacy, and offer new dynamic consent models to civilize the trade in PII for goods and services.

Abstract

It's often said that technology has outpaced privacy law, yet by and large that's just not the case. Technology has certainly outpaced decency, with Big Data and biometrics in particular becoming increasingly invasive. However OECD data privacy principles set out over thirty years ago still serve us well. Outside the US, rights-based privacy law has proven effective against today's technocrats' most worrying business practices, based as they are on taking liberties with any data that comes their way. For example, regulators in Australia, the Netherlands, Korea and elsewhere found that when Google's StreetView cars collected Personal Information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, there was a privacy breach regardless of the fact the data was in the 'public domain'.  And in Europe, Facebook was forced to shut down its photo tagging service and delete all facial recognition templates, because users were not even aware of the network's automatic biometric identification, much less had consented to it. 

So to borrow from Niels Bohr, it appears that technologists who are not surprised by data privacy do not understand it.

The cornerstone of data privacy in most places is the Collection Limitation principle, which holds that organizations should not collect Personally Identifiable Information beyond their express needs. It is the conceptual cousin of security's core Need-to-Know and Least Privelege principles, and the best starting point for "Privacy-by-Design" (that is, ICT architecture should begin with analysis of what PII is really needed for the mission, and then restrict itself accordingly). The Collection Limitation principle is technology neutral and thus blind to the manner of collection. Whether PII is collected directly by questionnaire or indirectly via biometric facial recognition or data mining, data privacy laws apply.

It's not for nothing we refer to "data mining". But few of those unlicensed data gold diggers seem to understand that the synthesis of fresh PII from raw data (including the identification of anonymous records like photos) is merely another form of collection. The real challenge in Big Data is that we don't know what we'll find as we refine the techniques. With the best will in the world, it is hard to disclose in a conventional Privacy Policy what PII might be collected through synthesis down the track. The age of Big Data demands a new privacy compact between organisations and individuals. High minded organizations will promise to keep people abreast of new collections and will offer ways to opt in, and out and in again, as the PII-for-service bargain continues to evolve.

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