Strategy & Transformation

Flourishing in the modern marketplace relies on an organisation’s ability to make the right choices.

To avoid being left behind in an evolving world it is critical for organisations to jump at opportunities for transformational growth. However, acting without sufficient planning is fraught with risk.

Transformation can only happen when an organisation is aligned on its strategic intent, and IT leaders need the resources to drive great choice-making across their organisation.

From planning to delivery, IBRS can cut through the confusion and guide your organisation all the way through its transformational journey. Our advisors have first-hand experience delivering digital transformation projects and can develop a tailored roadmap to deliver the outcomes you want.

The Latest

9 March 2021: Dropbox has acquired DocSend for US$165 million. This is a welcome addition to managing the risks associated with information management in a collaborative environment.

Why it’s Important

Dropbox’s acquisition is not about organic growth, as DocSend’s client base of 17,000 users is dwarfed by Dropbox’s estimated 600 million. The deal is more about positioning Dropbox against the likes of Adobe Document Cloud, by allowing organisations to track what happens to information once it is shared. Being able to manage and track document access is a critical aspect of modern, enterprise-grade file sharing which is needed for secure collaboration. It is a feature missing in most collaborative platforms - at least out of the box.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Development team leads
Business analysts

What’s Next?

Being able to manage access and track who’s accessed a document is a good start for closing the governance issues of most collaborative platforms (e.g. Teams, Slack, Zoom, Zoho, etc.) However, organisations should look at adopting a zero trust model for information assets, involving identity management linked to access controls and an ‘encrypt everything by default’ mentality.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 March 2021

The Latest

11 March 2021: Talend, a big data / data integration solutions vendor, has signed an MOU to be acquired by private equity giant Thomas Bravo for US$2.4 billion, representing a nearly 30% premium on its current share price.

Why it’s Important

Talend has been aggressive with the development of its solutions in the last few years, in particular in the area of managing data quality. During one-on-one briefings with IBRS, the company has demonstrated considerable flexibility in its roadmap and the willingness, and agility, to take cues of the emerging needs of clients.

Conventional wisdom is that once tech firms get subsumed by private equity, innovation declines as business drive turns to ‘rent seeking’ behaviour. This is especially true for funds that have a portfolio of well-established (legacy) technologies. A review of Thomas Bravo’s current and prior investments places Talend in a fund that previously held the likes of Attachmate and Compuware. Attachmate (now owned by Micro Focus) was seen to be aggressive with audits during the period it was owned by Thomas Bravo. On the surface, this could be cause for concern about the future direction of Talend.

However, there are significant differences. Talend has a growing user base, is positioned in a market segment that is still evolving and has at least a decade of product innovation to come.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Business intelligence / big data teams
Data management leads
Procurement

What’s Next?

Over the next half-decade, an acquisition of Talend by Thomas Bravo is likely to deliver a continued commitment to market-led innovation. There is enough head-room for the fifteen-year old Talend to continue deploying new capabilities at pace that keeps clients happily buying more services.

However, as the market for big data management solutions matures - especially shared data catalogues - pressure may start to mount for Talend to refocus on extracting more revenue from clients with proportionally less investment in development. Yes, that is a worst-case scenario, and it is not unique to Talend nor its deal with Thomas Bravo.

Even so, organisations looking to invest in big data management solutions need to be viewing their investment futures over a decade. Such solutions quickly become fundamental platforms for the business and will be difficult (and expensive) to replace as they become increasingly embedded. Keep the long-term scenario in mind.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 March 2021

The Latest

23 February 2021: The appetite for crowdfunding of tech startups looks to remain strong, with the fledgling accounting software vendor Thrive securing AU$3 million through the Birchal service.

Why it’s Important

There are two lessons to take from this announcement.

First, commercial crowdfunding is a growth area that will favour niche tech start-ups. As more success stories emerge, this has the potential to re-invigorate the Australian startup community, which has been lagging.

Second, it highlights the likely capabilities to be introduced in SaaS-based financial solutions: namely AI-powered automation and machine-learning decision support.

Who’s impacted

CIO
CFOs
Individual investors

What’s Next?

There is the potential for larger organisations to set aside funds to invest in startups. CIOs and CFOs may wish to watch the crowdfunding space that may provide relevant solutions to their needs, or secure services that may complement or even compete with their organisation. While IBRS acknowledges this strategy will not be suitable for the majority of organisations it works with, there is the possibility this will become more common over the next decade, especially for startups in security, Cloud management and cost control, AI-powered automation and machine learning-based decision support systems.

While Thrive is unlikely to be of interest to CIOs, being targeting squarely at SMEs and sole traders, the vendor’s goals leverage AI to automate much of the account process and provide recommendations, highlighting where development dollars will be going for many SaaS-based accounting solutions.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 15 March 2021

The Latest

23 February 2021: Creatio has just taken US$68 million in funding, joining the current investment frenzy in low-code platform vendors.

Why it’s Important

Creatio started life as a BPM vendor in 2011, and introduced its low-code platform in 2013, making it one of the better established of the new generation of low-code vendors. This round of investment is relatively small, compared recent activity in the low-code platform market. Even so, it is yet more evidence that the market for Cloud-based low-code is on the boil. These low-code platform vendors are spending their new-found cash on the following, in order of priority:

global market expansion: setting up new offices and hiring channel managers, which means more vendors will be entering the ANZ market more aggressively
buying additional elements of the ‘low-code everything’ stack: including business process mapping / management (BPM), robotic process automation (RPA), API management (APIM) and rules engines
buying market share with acquisitions: as we saw recently with Nintex procuring K2

The challenge for buyers of low-code platforms is that while the market is beginning to see a great deal of change and competition, their ICT investments need to be considered for the long-term - at least a decade. This is due to the need to invest the skills, processes, governance and change management to get the promised returns on whatever low-code is selected.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Development team leads
Business analysts

What’s Next?

When considering low-code platforms (and it is likely your organisation will have more than one, in order to meet different needs) look for the investment and development road map of the vendors. In particular, determine if the vendors have a viable strategy to develop skills and support resources locally, either directly or through channel partners. Also, explore their road map for delivering more than just eforms and workflow, but moving to acquire or develop a ‘low-code everything’ platform.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 15 March 2021

Conclusion:

Digital transformation initiatives will drive organisations to grow existing skills and develop new competencies. Unless this need to grow is recognised and plans developed to train geeks in advance, projects will falter and delays will frustrate stakeholders.

To avoid failure it is imperative that organisations develop workplace initiatives to close the (presumed) skills gap, and ensure the business case for the transformation includes funds to train the right people (geeks) and upskill them. Unless the initiatives are identified, and funds allocated, sponsors will need to continually ask for more resources – a career-limiting activity.

Details: Alan Hansell; 11 March 2021

Conclusion:

Traditional Enterprise Architectures (EAs) were introduced to tighten IT control over the type of technology to be used and ensure IT developers comply with IT standards. While this control driver was essential to ensure cost-effective solutions, it was introduced at the expense of efficiency. Without reducing the essential controls, modern EAs should shift the current focus to continuous service improvement. This will permit a flexible mode of work (e.g. anywhere, anytime, any device) and enable businesses to transform, grow and survive in the digital world.

Details: Wissam Raffoul; 11 March 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

Conclusion:

As-a-Service machine learning (ML) is increasingly affordable, easily accessible and with the introduction of self-learning capabilities that automatically build and test multiple models, able to be leveraged by non-specialists.

As more data moves into Cloud-based storage – either as part of migrating core systems to the Cloud or the use of Cloud data lakes/data warehouses – the use of ML as-a-Service (MLaaS) will grow sharply.

This paper summarises options from four leading Cloud MLaaS providers: IBM, Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

Details: Dr. Philip Nesci; 11 March 2021

Conclusion:

For many years Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have faced endless questions about whether Microsoft (MS) and other suppliers meet the requirements for an enterprise-grade solution. The main components of the office suite (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and the Windows operating systems for desktops and servers, has been de facto standards for most organisations for many years.

With Microsoft’s success with Azure (Cloud and infrastructure), Dynamics (enterprise resource planning (ERP)), Office 365 (collaborative workplace platform) and the PowerPlatform (analytics and low-code workflow development), MS is now competitive in almost every aspect of the enterprise solution space. Your organisation’s approach to determining the value proposition for any supplier is the same as it has always been – maximum gain with minimum pain. The MS offering in both terms of capabilities, service support and security has matured significantly and now offers a much-improved value proposition that organisations should consider.

Details: Mike Mitchelmore; 10 March 2021

Australian businesses expecting the hassles of the COVID-19 pandemic to vanish in 2021 are in for a rude shock, according to business analyst firm IBRS, which as also released a new report on the future of the IT space. The firm's 'Future of Work' expert, and IBRS advisor, Dr. Joseph Sweeney said improvements in IT departments were required because customer organisations will remain threatened by sporadic coronavirus incidents for some time yet.

The IBRS report, titled Trends for 2021-2026: No new normal and preparing for the fourth-wave of ICT, outlines misconceptions businesses have regarding the timeline of the pandemic and that a new, fourth-wave of ICT architecture is emerging in response to the challenges that will linger after the vaccine rollout.

Full story.

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 05 March 2021

There is more innovation going on behind the scenes in Australian organisations than they are being given credit for. IBRS advisor, Dr Joseph Sweeney, who specialises in the areas of workforce transformation and the future of work stated, Australian organisations have led the world in the uptake of virtualisation which now has Australia leading in terms of Cloud adoption. 'World-leading Australian innovation was emerging in how Cloud-based services could be used to make internal operations more efficient, which was less glamorous than some of the consumer-facing apps being developed by emerging fintech companies, but equally worthwhile." said Dr Sweeney.

“One area of innovation IBRS has identified over the last year is a rapid update of low-code platforms to allow less-technical staff to be involved in digitising business processes,” he said. Citizen developers aren't just limiting themselves to e-forms but are using a full range of low code tools and vendors are reporting sales growth of over 30%.

Full story.

Details: Joseph Sweeney; 02 March 2021

The Latest

01 March 2021: ServiceNow released the latest quarterly edition of its platform.

Why it’s Important

ServiceNow provided the latest quarterly release in March 2021. In this version, called ‘Quebec’, ServiceNow has revised its support model and incorporated major changes to enable the effective upgrades from either New York, Orlando or Paris versions.

A streamlined support structure will help CIO and ITSM team on a ‘learn, prepare and upgrade’ model.

Learn: Identify your upgrade path and consider the release highlights.
Prepare: Choose the tools to perform a risk and value assessment of the upgrade. Use the upgrade value calculator, the playbook to maintain platform health and a risk assessment of platform customisations.
Upgrade: Maximise the upgrade value by reviewing over 78 release highlights across core functionality, ITSM workflows, AI, asset management, security, risk and cost, customer and field service workflows, employee workflows ,safe workspace, and workspace service delivery

One of the big winners is the telecommunication sector, with enhancements to the product cataloguing, order management and open API’s to assist with alarm management. A new processing engine has been created to automate alerts and incidents.

Who’s impacted

CIO
ITSM functional Leads
DevOps leads
Security Leads

What’s Next?

ServiceNow clients should set time to review the release notes for Quebec and consider the ‘learn, prepare and upgrade’ literature to determine whether they are ready for the upgrade. If so, plan and execute once the risks and value are clear.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 01 March 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

The Latest

In late January, Google presented a detailed report entitled “Operating the cleanest cloud in the industry” to analysts. The private briefing detailed Google’s current status as a ‘net zero-carbon emitter’ (meaning it offsets any carbon emissions from its current operations with other programs). It also outlined its plans to be running entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030.

Why it’s Important

All of the hyperscale Cloud vendors - Google, AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Alibaba - have well-documented strategies to reduce their reliance on carbon-based fuel sources. Their strategies are all similar and simple: reduce energy consumption (with accompanying higher computing density) and development of renewable energy sources as part of data centre planning. Their efforts in this area are not just for environmental reasons, there are significant cost benefits in the immediate term to being free of fossil energy supply chains. All also see competitive advantages, not just against each other, but against on-premises data centres.

As these Cloud vendors announce not only net zero-carbon emission targets as being met, but zero carbon energy targets, the issue of sustainable ICT will once again start to emerge as a serial consideration for CIOs and data centre architects.

IBRS and BIAP (via the IT Leaders Summits) have tracked CIOs interests in the topic of green IT. An IBRS study in 2008 had sustainable ICT being rated as “very important” for 25% of CIOs and “somewhat important” for 59% of CIOs. Since then, interest in sustainable computing has plummeted year-on-year. The IBRS / BIAP data for 2016 had 6% of CIOs rating sustainable ICT as a priority. By 2020, less than 0.5% of CIOs rated sustainable ICT as a priority.

With the growing call for action on climate change and the economic advantages the hyperscale Cloud vendors will have by moving to carbon-free energy sources, the pressure to provide sustainable ICT metrics will re-emerge.

Who’s impacted

CIO
CFO
Data centre leads
Infrastructure architects

What’s Next?

CIOs and infrastructure leads for organisations running on-premises services / data centres should expect a swing back to discussions of sustainability. However, unlike the 2000’s, the benchmarks for sustainability will be set by the hyperscale Cloud providers. By 2025, all Cloud vendors will start using their leadership in sustainable ICT as a selling point for policy-makers to mandate Cloud computing, or possibly even place unattainable goals for architects of on-premises data centres.

Rather than waiting, CIOs should review previous strategies for sustainable ICT, with the expectation that these will need to be updated and reinstated within the next 3-5 years.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 February 2021

The Latest

17 February 2021: At the Learning with Google global event, the Cloud giant announced a slew of new education-oriented features for its education productivity suite. Previously called G Suite for Education, the Google Workspace for Education is now being aggressively commercialised.

What’s included

The free tier service - now called Google Workspaces for Education Fundamentals, had found strong acceptance in Australia by providing educators and students with collaborative learning capabilities.

This free tier now has three paid tiers, each with increasing levels of security and manageability.

Standard: Adds security and analytics capabilities. The new features are aimed at improving traceability and providing more nuanced access rights to information.
Teaching and Learning Upgrade: Adds features to better manage the classroom experience.
Education Plus: Combines all the features of the previous tiers, in addition to extra management capabilities.

In addition, Google increased the baseline storage capacity for educational institutions to a whopping 100 TB, and added online-learning features to Google Meet.

Why it’s Important

Google and Microsoft are locked in a fierce battle for ‘hearts and minds’ in education. Both vendors know that student’s experiences with their productivity platforms today, will set expectations and habits for the workforce of tomorrow. This battle extends beyond the productivity suite to device, operating systems and ultimately, the entire digital workspace.

By introducing features that have been much in demand by education (especially K12) into commercial tiers, Google is fundamentally changing its stance in this war. In most State K12 and private education systems, Principals have the final say on the extent to which Google or Microsoft is used in classrooms. Often the decision is delegated down to the teachers and often both vendor’s offerings sit side by side.

Google’s evolving commercial stance means that this can no longer be the case. Given the total national cost (as ultimate schools are funded through State and Federal funds) educational policy setters now need to consider taking a side in the battle.

Who’s impacted

Educational policy makers
CIOs
Educational ICT strategy leads
Principals and senior leadership of higher education institutions
Digital workspace teams

What’s Next?

Stakeholders within education need to immediately begin the laborious task of evaluating Google’s and Microsoft’s offerings, not just from the perspective of current offerings, but from their likely future directions. While the need to rationalise to one platform today may not be a burning priority, the need will increase over the next decade.

Stakeholders outside of education should monitor the decisions of education networks, as the platforms they select will impact new staff expectations and work habits.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 February 2021

Conclusion:

Thinking that the pandemic will soon be past and some form of new normal will emerge, be it working from home or office work, or a hybrid mix - is a misconception. Even with a vaccine, the pandemic will continue in isolated, difficult to predict pockets, and cause sporadic rapid changes to work practices for the foreseeable future. Organisations will need to be able to quickly flip-flop work environments rapidly, and work processes - and thus technologies - must evolve to meet the challenges of the 'age of uncertainty'. A fourth wave of ICT architecture is emerging, with a focus on information over architecture, low-code everything and powered by algorithms.

Find attached at the bottom of the article a free downloadable PDF copy of the trends for 2021-2026 executive presentation deck.

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 18 February 2021

The Latest

10 February 2021: Competition for highly secure hyperscale Cloud capabilities for government services has been boosted with Oracle joining forces with Australian Data Centres (ADC) to provide Canberra-based services. Oracle now has three Australian regions for managed Cloud, with Sydney and Melbourne.

Why it’s Important

Oracle’s Cloud service is highly attractive for organisations looking for a simpler Cloud transformation journey for critical, Oracle-based solutions.

Last year, Oracle’s SaaS solutions in the areas of security, human services, and health were certified as offering PROTECTED data capabilities. ADC has a strong presence in the Australia government, already running sensitive workloads and being connected to the secure Intra-Government Communications Network (ICON). By leveraging ADC’s footprint in Canberra, Oracle is now able to meet the second part of the trust equation: the physical safety of the environment.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Cloud migration teams

What’s Next?

Oracle now joins Microsoft in offering a specialised, highly secure Cloud capability for government agencies in Canberra. Agencies looking to quickly adopt a Cloud first strategy now have clear Microsoft and Oracle trajectories that include a physical presence, while AWS approaches the PROTECTED Cloud stance solely through a service-by-service model. When considering Cloud migration, agencies should review the extent of Oracle in their ICT architecture and factor this into the Cloud platform (or platforms) to be selected.

Related IBRS Advisory

The evolution of SaaS offerings for legacy systems

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 12 February 2021

The Latest

2 February 2021: Google has announced general availability of Dialogflow CX, it’s virtual agent (chatbot) technology for call centres. The service is a platform to create and deploy virtual agents for public-facing customer services. Google has embraced low-code concepts to allow for rapid development of such virtual agents with a visual builder. The platform also allows for switching between conversational ‘contexts’, which allows for greater flexibility in how the agents can converse with people that have multiple, simultaneous customer service issues.

Why it’s Important

While virtual agents are relatively easy to develop over time, two key challenges have remained:

the ability to allow non-technical, customer service specialists to be directly involved in the creation and continual evolution of the virtual agents
the capability of virtual agents to correctly react to humans’ non-linier conversational patterns.

Google’s Dialogflow CX has adopted aspects of low-code development to address the first challenge. The platform offers a visual builder and the way conversations are developed (contexts) can be described as ‘program by example’. While there are third-party virtual agent platforms that further simplify the development of agent workflows (many of which build on top of Dialogflow), the Google approach is proving sufficient for non-technical specialists to get heavily involved in the development and fine-tuning of virtual agents

Who’s impacted

CIO
Development team leads
Business analysts

What’s Next?

If not already in place, organisations should establish a group of technical and non-technical staff to explore where and how virtual agents can be used. Do not attempt a big bang approach: keep expectations small, be experimental and iterative. Leverage low-code ‘chatbot builder’ tools to simplify the creation of virtual agent workflows, while leveraging available hyperscale cloud platforms for the back end of the agents.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 11 February 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

The Latest

20 January 2021: In its 2020 Q4 quarterly earnings report, Citrix announced it is buying Wrike, a Cloud-based, collaborative project management service, for US$2.25 billion.

Why it’s Important

The market for collaborative workforce management tools has grown sharply in 2020. Prior to the pandemic, products such as Write were generally procured by business stakeholders. The ICT group’s ability to mandate a specific collaborative workforce management tool was limited due to the ease of acquiring such tools, strong user preferences based on past experiences with tools and waves of vendor’s branding activities. As a result, most organisations have a myriad of collaborator workforce management tools, including: Wrike, Monday, Trello, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Planner, Plutio and others.

However, as outlined in IBRS’s whiteboard session on Disruptive Collaboration, this situation is unsustainable. These Cloud-based tools can not only create pockets of documents and sensitive information, but also act as barriers for different teams to work together when they each have different tools.

Citrix’s acquisition of Wrike is a sign that the market for such tools may be starting to consolidate.

However, for existing Citrix customers and for Wrike customers, the acquisition will have little direct impact at this time.

Who’s impacted

Project managers
Business stakeholders involved with workforce management / project delivery

What’s Next?

ICT groups should seek out which workforce collaboration tools are in use across the organisation. Longer term, plans should be in place to begin limiting the number of tools in an effort to improve information management and compliance, collaboration between disparate teams and reduce the security footprint.

Related IBRS Advisory

Disruptive Collaboration (whiteboard session)

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 11 February 2021

Conclusion:

For enterprises and small to medium businesses (SMBs), Artificial Intelligence (AI) opportunities are widespread and industry-specific. Each industry will grapple with conversations to understand how AI can:

Create competitive advantage.
Complement existing business.
Disrupt, or even destroy the business model that exists today.

What businesses need to plan for is that AI engineering and AI ops are destined to be the essential umbrella to govern AI in the coming decade. Hyper-automation (HA) of business processes will see some business models fail whilst others thrive into the 2030s.

Details: Mark Unwin; 09 February 2021

Conclusion:

Minimising risks from systems specification errors and cyber risks from network intrusions when an enterprise-wide digital transformation is underway is a daunting task, as many stakeholders could be impacted. Depending on the severity of the error or network intrusion, an incident could damage a brand’s image and shareholder confidence in the board. In the public sector, a cyber incident could result in the leaking of citizens’ private data and put an unwelcome spotlight on ministers and bureaucrats.

While boards are ultimately responsible for monitoring and minimising risks, they must ensure management creates a risk abatement framework and strategy, and executes it. The problem is compounded when the organisation’s aim is to transform or reshape its business model and the changes proposed are resisted by staff concerned at possible job losses or fear of failure – risks which must be addressed in the strategy.

Details: Alan Hansell; 09 February 2021

Conclusion:

Too often, information communications technology (ICT) and business analytics groups focus on business intelligence and analytics architectures and do not explore the organisational behaviours that are required to take full advantage of such solutions. There is a growing recognition that data literacy (a subset of digital workforce maturity¹) is just as important, if not more important, than the solutions being deployed. This is especially true for organisations embracing self-service analytics².

The trend is to give self-service analytics platforms to management that are making critical business decisions. However, this trend also requires managers to be trained in not just the tools and platforms, but in understanding how to ask meaningful questions, select appropriate data (avoiding bias and cherry-picking), and how to apply the principles of scientific thinking to analysis.

Details: Joseph Sweeney; 09 February 2021

The Latest

27 January 2021: M-Files, which provides a document and content management solution, has raised US$80 to develop an AI to analyse, categorise and manage enterprise information.

Why it’s Important

There are two forces driving the destruction of traditional electronic documents and records management (EDRMS) solutions:

collaboration, which breaks legacy information lifecycles, and
the explosion of information types and stores, which hinders the ability to have a single repository of digital records

When combined, it becomes clear that legacy EDRMS solutions are not only incapable of providing the flexibility needed to manage enterprise information is a way that enables new ways of working, but also cannot address the ‘mess’ (really, complexity) of these work practices.

Leading EDRMS vendors are looking to leverage AI to address this ‘mess’ by:

analysing and automatically applying meta-data / classifications to information
determining which information policies need to apply to content, and enforcing such policies automatically
seeking out information across an organisation for the purposes of applying information lifecycle policies, e-discovery and security.

By investing in AI, M-Files is ensuring it remains relevant and able to compete in the future of enterprise content management.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Information Managers

What’s Next?

While legacy products such as TRIM (now Micro Focus Content Manager) remain in place and are being supplemented by add-on solutions (eg. Micro Focus Control Point), the future will be products with AI taking centre stage within the core information management functionality.

Organisations considering their future information management strategies must factor the disruptive impact of collaboration, including the Office 365 platform, and the ever growing amount, variety and location of information. EDRMS solutions that feature AI as a core component should be short-listed.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 02 February 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

Future of Work expert and IBRS advisor Dr Joseph Sweeney has made seven recommendations towards good Microsoft Team governance after surveying and speaking to 80 CIOs across Australian organisations.

Microsoft Teams usage grew to more than 44 million global daily active users during COVID-19 and has still continued to grow. Dr Sweeney's findings discovered a number of concerning issues for organisations with Teams implementation and the risks associated with them. Businesses rushed to deploy Teams in a way that left them at risk of exposing critical data and damaging productivity.

Dr Sweeney emphasised Microsoft hasn't created an insecure environment with Teams. "Out of all the vendors Microsoft actually has a really good security Story" said Dr Sweeney. "The problem is, a lot of organisations in the rush to get people working from home turned Teams on, and they've deployed (it) without full consideration of all of these new risks."

Full story.

Related Articles

Microsoft teams governance: Emerging better practices

Better Practice Special Report: Microsoft Teams Governance

Details: Joseph Sweeney; 28 January 2021

The Latest

15 January 2021: Samsung released a set of three Galaxy S series smartphones, aimed at the consumer market. All models support 5G. The high-end model - the Galaxy S21 Ultra - has features that rival its flagship executive-level smartphone, the Galaxy Note. In addition, the announcement stressed Samsung’s workplace features:

Wireless DeX for using smartphone as desktop
Office 365 integration
Knox Suite for device management and end-point security.

Why it’s Important

Despite the market for smartphones declining sharply in 2020 (a drop of 16 percent), Samsung gained around 5% market share. The decline in the market is due to consumers retaining their smartphones for longer periods of time due to the increasing costs of premier devices.

Samsung’s efforts to sell into enterprises - blending consumer and enterprise features - are proving effective in shoring up its strength against rivals. The vendor has been making inroads into the enterprise space with both consumer-grade devices and semi-ruggedised devices. The S21 series of devices support Samsung’s enterprise security features, DeX and the Knox (as well as third-party) end-point management services.

The devices also include new cameras that make them attractive for field-based asset management activities. The S21 Ultra is a large format device that supports pen-input (via an add-on pen and case) positioning it against Samsung’s popular Galaxy Note.

Who’s impacted

Field support teams
Telecoms / comms teams
Workforce transformation strategists
End-point / security teams

What’s Next?

While Samsung’s DeX feature is interesting, IBRS has seen very few organisations launching DeX desktop experiences from smartphones. For now, this remains an ‘experimental’ idea, limited to tech. However, launching DeX desktop experiences from tablets is growing in popularity.

Samsung is betting heavily on 5G, especially in regard to new services on its devices. The new cameras can produce not only high-resolution images, but high-colour sensitivity (12-bit) RAW images and depth of field information, which open up new applications for asset management, field maintenance, and design. Any files that leverage these camera capabilities will be large. 5G networks will make such files viable in field applications.

From recent client research, IBRS notes that organisations using premium consumer-grade devices (namely Apple and Samsung) for field force tasks overestimate the battery life of these devices, and as a result, the replacement cycle needed. When such devices are used for ‘typical’ consumer use, batteries last for 3-4 years before their capacity diminishes to a point where they are problematic. In contrast, such devices used for field-forces result in batteries decaying within 2 to 2 ½ years. Therefore, buyers of enterprise smartphone devices need to monitor device health, adjust their device procurement lifecycles - and budgets - accordingly.

Samsung’s new S21 range supports enterprise features and cameras that make them attractive for field use. The range of price points for the S21 series make them attractive against their rival in enterprise smartphones.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 January 2021

The Latest

11 January 2021: IBRS interviewed low-code vendor Kintone, exploring its unique capabilities. The Japanese company is looking to expand its presence in the Australian market through traditional channels and some unexpected partners.

Why it’s Important

As detailed in the ‘VENDORiQ: Cloud low-code vendor Webflow secures US$140 million’, the low-code market is growing rapidly. Kintone Australia is a subsidiary of Cybozu, one of Japan’s largest software companies, which was founded in 1997. The firm’s platform focuses as much on collaboration around digitised processes as it does on the development of applications - with every process having ‘conversational threads’. The firm’s clients in Australia are predominantly Japanese firms with local operations.

Who’s impacted?

Development team leads
Workforce transformation leads

What’s Next?

Kintone addresses the low to mid-range of the IBRS spectrum of services for eforms and low-code environments. It is suited for less-technical staff (including business analysts) to create structured processes that include collaboration.

Kintone’s approach is worth noting, since many of the processes digitised by low-code platforms are replacing ad-hoc, messy processes that are often managed with manual activities and collaboration. There is an active evolution from manual, collaborative processes to digitised processes.

Kintone has a stable financial base via its strength in the Japanese market. Skills, training and support for Kintone are comparatively weak in the domestic market. However, Kintone is looking to partner with IT services organisations and partners with strengths in providing printing and digitisation technologies.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 January 2021

The Latest

14 January 2021: IBRS interviewed Appian, a low-code vendor that specialises in providing business analysts and developers with a platform to deliver custom enterprise applications. The vendor has seen strong growth in the later half of 2020 due to organisations needing to quickly develop new applications to address lockdowns and new digital service delivery demands. The vendor also detailed how it is leveraging machine learning to guide users through the development of applications. The use of machine learning to recommend low-code application designs and workflows is a key differentiator for Appian.

Why it’s Important

As detailed in the 'VENDORiQ: Cloud low-code vendor Webflow secures $140 million', the low-code market is growing rapidly. Appian is a major global vendor in the low-code market. It positions itself above the non-technical / citizen-developer tools such as Forms.IO, but below the specialised development team platforms such as OutSystems. Appian’s ‘sweet spot’ is teams of business stakeholders working with business analysts and developers to jointly prototype and then put into production applications.

Appian has been expanding the use of machine learning algorithms to application design. During application development, the algorithms will make recommendations on fields that are needed on forms, workflow steps, approval processes, etc.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Development team leads
Business analysts

What’s Next?

When selecting a low-code platform, organisations should be very clear about who the stakeholders are, who will use the platform, the project management model for application development and the applications to be developed.

In the case of Appian, there is clearly a close alignment with Agile business methodologies, which extend beyond the ICT group as outlined in the 'IBRS Snapshot: Agile Service Spectrum'.

The use of AI during the development applications is a feature more than a gimmick. This ‘guided’ approach to design not only speeds up application development, but by analysing a large body of existing applications and drawing inferences based on usage and effectiveness, it helps ensure that ‘best practices’ in workflows are not overlooked.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 January 2021

The Latest

12 January 2021: Webflow, a Cloud-based low-code vendor, has secured US$140 in investment. The new round of investment values the vendor at US$2.1 billion.

Why it’s Important

The low-code market exploded over the last year. Newer entrants, such as Webflow (founded in 2012), are attracting significant venture capital. Just 17 months ago, Webflow took $72 million investments which valued the company at $400 million. The new investments thrust the vendor into unicorn status. At the same time, well-established low-code vendors such as Nintex and Microsoft are consolidating and expanding their portfolios to include robotic process automation, process modelling and integration tools.

The market for low-code is not yet at the peak of its feverish growth, but IBRS cautions that current rates of investment and hype are unsustainable. There will be turmoil as the mark begins to consolidate, likely in 2023 to 2026.

Who’s impacted

CIO
Development team leads
Workforce transformation leads

What’s Next?

Low-code development is not a new concept. However, the uptake of Cloud platforms, common data models, robot process automation and business modelling are extending the notion of low-code development from simple ‘e-forms’ tools to services that enable enterprise-grade process digitisation.

The pandemic and working from home has supercharged the need for process digitisation, and low-code vendors are all seeing strong sales growth.

Unfortunately, the term ‘low-code’ is starting to become meaningless, as vendors that provide very different application development tools and platforms attach the term to their products. IBRS recommends organisations view ‘low code’ as a broad term that covers a spectrum of capabilities, as detailed in 'How to succeed with eforms Part 1: Understand the need'. It is likely that most organisations will need to acquire two low-code products to cover different parts of this spectrum: one product aimed at non-technical staff for simple e-forms, and another product to increase the agility of pro-developers in the ICT group.

Consider the financial backing and stability of a vendor when selecting low-code tools, as market consolidation is on the horizon. You do not wish to be developing business processes on a platform they will outlive.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 22 January 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

With the rush to deploy Teams to enable remote work in 2020, the majority of organisations have not yet fully considered the highly disruptive nature of deep collaboration. Governance has been largely overlooked in the effort to ‘just get people working’. IBRS outlines the seven critical areas of governance that must be immediately addressed for Teams to be sustainable and to mitigate the new risks (and benefits!) of deep collaboration. Find attached a PDF of the webinar to download for free. Or to view the webinar, click on the video below.

Attachments:
Microsoft Teams governance - Emerging better practices.pdf

Details: Joseph Sweeney; 13 January 2021

Conclusion: Most organisations have vast pools of data (a. k.a. information assets) lying underutilised, as many IT and business professionals are unsure where it is stored and are unaware of its value. To turn the situation around organisations must strive for data mastery¹, which is the ability to embed the data into products and services to increase efficiency, revenue growth and customer engagement.

Details: Alan Hansell; 11 January 2021

Conclusion: To improve call centre resources scheduling, some organisations have implemented software agents to either improve users’ experience and/or reach the right expert at the right time. However, self-service success depends on the quality of information available to the software agent and its analytical ability to provide reliable recommendations. Any deficiency in these resources will leave the software agent with no alternative but to call the live agents, thereby making the investment in agent technology questionable. Organisations should assess the software agent maturity and determine which level should be reached to fulfil the business imperatives. This note provides a self-assessing approach to address software agent shortcomings.

Details: Wissam Raffoul; 11 January 2021

Conclusion: Agility to respond to change has become essential. Compared with previous years, CIOs are expected to produce results over longer periods of time, now expectations have become much higher. Stakeholders are expecting results as soon as possible. With the trend geared towards an increase in technology dependence, the pressure of delivering results has therefore increased for CIOs and IT leaders.

Part of this new set of expectations is improved efficiency and productivity, which in most cases requires a thorough evaluation of business processes to garner potential inefficiencies. One of the primary tools organisations have at their disposal is the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Eventually, it all boils down to whether or not the migration to S/4 HANA can be justified in terms of value-add-services. Implementation effort and run costs are only a part of the business case, not the whole.

Details: Mark Unwin; 11 January 2021

Conclusion: Regardless of its digital strategy, many organisations have not been positioned to properly leverage the digital and data assets that are available to them. A Chief Data Officer (CDO) role can improve this situation by advancing an organisation’s data portfolio, curating and making appropriate data visible and actionable.

The CDO position is appropriate for all larger organisations, and small-to-large organisations focused on data-driven decision-making and innovation. These organisations benefit from a point person overseeing data management, data quality, and data strategy. CDOs are also responsible for developing a culture that supports data analytics and business intelligence, and the process of drawing valuable insights from data. In summary, they are responsible for improving data literacy within the organisation.

Details: Joseph Sweeney; 11 January 2021

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

Conclusion: It is no longer viable for telecommunication providers to simply offer Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks for voice connectivity or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) links to connect office and data centre locations. Nor does it make good business sense for the telco or for the customer.

The modern architectures of Cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), mixed with the need to maintain on-premise for critical elements are key components that support most digital strategies. Using older telecommunications architectures with fixed connections and physical infrastructure for routing and switching can be costly, and can stifle agility and therefore productivity.

However, modern telecommunication architectures bring an ability to virtualise connections and network switching. The abstraction of these capabilities allows dynamic management of the services providing substantial agility, as well as potential productivity gains and cost savings to the customer.

Details: Mike Mitchelmore; 11 January 2021

The Latest

8 Dec 2020: AWS has announced plans to open a second region in Australia in the second half of 2022. This venture will consist of three availability zones supporting hundreds of thousands of AWS customers. This promotes lower latency, enhanced fault tolerance, and resiliency for critical Cloud workloads.

Why it’s Important

This is not a competitive response to Microsoft Azure, which already has several data centres across Australia. Instead, it is the result of Amazon's continuing growth in the market. AWS needs to build significant additional domestic capacity to meet expected demand up to 2025. Hence, doing so in a new location provides AWS an additional benefit with on-shore multi-zone resilience.

A new AWS region in Melbourne will also fuel different organisation innovative efforts. Government, private organisations, and the education sector will continue to transform their research and development endeavours that aim to protect, prioritise and benefit people across the country.

Who’s Impacted

Cloud architects
Cloud engineers

What’s Next?

In practical terms, this move has little direct impact on most organisations’ Cloud strategies. However, it does provide an additional option for resilience for organisations that need to keep all data on-shore.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 17 December 2020

The Latest

2 December 2020: Salesforce introduces Hyperforce. This move is a re-architecture of Salesforce’s design to continually support its global customer base. It has B2B and B2C performance scalability, built-in security, local data storage, and backward compatibility.

Hyperforce allows Salesforce solutions to be run on a hyper scale Cloud service based on the client’s choice. These solutions include:

Sales Cloud
Service Cloud
Community Cloud
Chatter
Lightning Platform (including Force.com)
Site.com, Database.com
Einstein Analytics (including Einstein Discovery)
Messaging
Financial Services Cloud
Health Cloud, Sustainability Cloud
Consumer Goods Cloud
Manufacturing Cloud
Service Cloud Voice
Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Billing
Customer 360 Audiences

Why it’s Important

Being able to move a SaaS solution to the Cloud based on client's preference, is a radical departure from convention for most major SaaS vendors. It is likely to be followed by other SaaS solution vendors, though Oracle’s close ties with Netsuite and Microsoft Dynamics with Azure, suggest Salesforce’s two main rivals will not be following this strategy any time soon.

This is a long-overdue overhaul for the entire Salesforce architecture as it needs to offer both architectural and commercial elasticity to aid customer’s global digital transformation.

It solves data sovereignty issues and provides all the advantages of using public Cloud resources. It also reduces implementation time despite being an enhanced architecture designed from the ground up to help customers deliver workloads to the public Cloud of choice.

Who’s Impacted

CIOs
CTOs
CRM leaders
Salesforce developers

What’s Next?

While the Hyperforce announcement is welcoming, there are still loopholes in the horizon. The solution is not available for on-prem implementations of the major Cloud vendors. Meaning, Hyperforce is not a path to an on-prem or hybrid Cloud solution.

For Australian organisations that aim to gain more control over how Salesforce stores information, either for compliance or cost control, to bring it closer to other Cloud services, Hyperforce is worth considering. It offers greater flexibility but also comes with a greater need for managing resources and costs.

Before making any decision on moving to Hyperforce, Salesforce clients should have clear understanding of the following migration aspects:

Who will do the migration (i.e. the client or Salesforce)?
Who will deal with the public IaaS provider on a daily basis?
How will the current service cost be impacted?
Who will be responsible for the service management of public IaaS including the service desk?
What are the new risks that should be identified and mitigated?
Are there any changes to the current backup arrangements?
Are there any changes to the disaster recovery and business continuity arrangements?
How will the current change management arrangements change?
How the exit fees might change?

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 17 December 2020

The Latest

2 December 2020: Salesforce Einstein is being extended into the Mulesoft automation and data integration platform. The newly announced Flow Orchestrator enabled non-technical staff to transform complex processes into industry-relevant events. The new AI-assisted MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce will allow an organisation to integrate data from multiple systems, including third-party solutions.

Why it’s Important

AI enables business process automation as a key technology enabler that favours organisations with a Cloud-first architecture. Salesforce will leverage its experience and connections with selling to organisation’s non-IT executives to secure a strong ‘brand leadership’ position in this space.

Who’s Impacted

CIOs
CTOs
CRM Leaders

What’s Next?

In mid-2019, IBRS noted a significant upswing in interest in Mulesoft and integration technologies more broadly from the non-ICT board-level executives. In particular, COOs and CFOs expressed strong interest in, and awareness of, process automation through APIs.

Digging deeper, IBRS finds that Salesforce account teams, who are well-known for bypassing the CIO and targeting senior executive stakeholders, are also bringing Mulesoft into the business conversation. Also, Microsoft is expected to double-down on AI-enabled business process automation with the PowerPlatform.

As a result, the addition of Salesforce Einstein AI into the discussion of automation and integration is expected to land very well with COOs and CFOs.

CIOs need to be ready to have sophisticated discussions with these two roles regarding the potential for AI in process automation. Expectations will be high. Understanding the possible challenges of implementing such a system takes careful consideration. CIOs should be ready to build a business case for AI-enabled business process automation.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 10 December 2020

The Latest

2 December 2020: DXC Technology is partnering with Microsoft to create modern workplace experience. This effort is aimed at addressing the demand by enterprises to improve workplace agility, which has come into sharp relief during the pandemic.

Why it’s Important

This announcement clearly shows Microsoft’s strategy for securing not just segments of the enterprise architecture of the future but the lion’s share.

Enterprise companies are driving the business transformation to enhance collaboration, increase mobility, and improve customer engagements. This announcement comes as competition such as Salesforce heats up through several acquisitions, and Microsoft’s long-time rival, Oracle, makes inroads into new models of SaaS.

Who’s Impacted

CIO / CTO
Enterprise software architecture team

What’s Next?

Microsoft, like all vendors, has a strategy to extract ever more revenue from its clients. However, Microsoft's unique position in the market gives it huge power. Understanding how Microsoft will evolve its services and licensing models is essential for keeping budgets in control.

As explored in this week’s Salesforce Slack announcement, IBRS sees that one option for the future digital workplace architecture is based on five platforms.

A platform consisting of central systems of record (e.g., CRM, ERP, etc.) in the Cloud or Cloud-like environments
An integration platform that surrounds the mentioned platforms
A one (or likely two) low-code platform(s)
A platform that provides the needed collaboration tools
A federated information management platform.

Indeed, Salesforce is buying the platforms it needs and integrating them then, leveraging its strength in selling it to both technical and non-technical executives. On the other hand, Microsoft is starting from a position of technical strength and deep connection with the systems integrators.

This is evident with the DXC agreement, which is a classic strategy. Leveraging larger SIs as a strategy to deliver a future digital workplace architecture, with Microsoft 365 and Teams (collaboration), Dynamics 365 (core systems), Power Platform (low code and automation), and Power BI (business intelligence).

Related IBRS Advisory

Book an Advisory Session on Microsoft Strategy

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 10 December 2020

Talk to an IBRS Advisor

The Latest

2 Dec 2020: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack. The forthcoming merger of Salesforce and Slack provides an avenue for a new operating system of how e-commerce organisations and companies grow and succeed in the digital space. The merger is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022.

Why it’s Important

Salesforce has struggled to shore up offerings in the collaborative side of the business, which will evolve to be an important part of modern CRMs and ERPs, along with low code dev and integration for process automation and business intelligence tools for analytics. The planning acquisition of Slack rounds out Salesforce’s ‘magic four’ components of a modern digital workplace.

The Slack acquisition aims at heading off increasingly strong competition from Microsoft’s Dynamics, the Power Platform, Power BI, and Teams.

Who’s Impacted

CIOs
CFOs
COOs

What’s Next?

Consider your future digital workplace architecture based on these five high-level platforms:

A platform consisting of central systems of record (e.g., CRM, ERP, etc.) in the Cloud or Cloud-like environments
An integration platform that surrounds the mentioned platforms
A one (or likely two) low-code platform(s)
A platform that provides the needed collaboration tools
A federated information management platform

Though these five platforms need not all come from the same vendor, nor even be made up of a single vendor’s solutions, Microsoft, Salesforce, and little-known Zoho are all vying for the entire set. The competition for the overall ‘Enterprise Digital DNA’ will heat up significantly through to 2025.

IBRS expects Salesforce and possibly Microsoft to make new investments in information management platforms from 2021 to 2022. There will be rapid expansion, followed by feverish consolidation of the low code platform market.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 10 December 2020

The Latest

5 December 2020: Australian education solution vendor Tribal, has upgraded its digital learning design chatbot. The move is illustrative of how chatbots can be leveraged to aid complex tasks - in this case, learning content, delivery, and leaner coaching.

Why it’s Important

Chatbots are not unique to Tribal. However, Tribal is demonstrating how such agents can deliver new capabilities into the LMS market, which can be glacial in the adoption of innovation. The Tribal chatbot is aimed at improving knowledge transfer inside an organisation. It assists domain experts to build learning content and share knowledge by recommending approaches to online training.

Who’s Impacted

CIO / CTO
Service delivery teams

What’s Next?

Like most forms of AI, chatbots will make their way into organisations through their addition to existing software solutions, either via paid upgrades or as part of the ongoing improvements of SaaS solutions. Chatbots will increasingly act in an advisory manner or as a guide for complex processes inherent in the vendors’ solutions.

As a result of this trend, staff will be presented with a growing number of chatbots embedded in different vendor’s solutions, each serving a specific purpose. This itself will present a new challenge for digital maturity and staff satisfaction.

Related IBRS Advisory

Details: IBRS Advisor Team; 10 December 2020

Conclusion: Organisations wishing to re-engineer their old legacy systems to modernise their environments, leverage the power and cost-effectiveness of Cloud and prepare themselves for the future should explore the new SaaS offerings when developing their service go-to-market strategies and tenders.

Details: Wissam Raffoul; 08 December 2020

Conclusion: The true benefit of digital strategies is in the thinking, reviewing, assessing and critical evaluation of where the current state is and where the target needs to be. Organisations that have commenced digital transformation have recognised that capability development and ownership of the strategy can make or break success. It is critical to be brutally honest about capability and skills to get to the target.

Details: Sue Johnston; 08 December 2020

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