The Supply Chain: 5/20/2015

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  • IBM Empower 2015: The Evolution of Supplier Engagement General Session
    The Empower event took place last week, I have been scanning the web to see if any video was released:

    The recent CPO study from the IBM Institute for Business Value highlights the changing relationship between the enterprise and their suppliers. The procurement organization and its internal stakeholders are the conduit to innovation and value held within the supply chain. Unlocking that potential is key to driving the next wave of transformation and evolution. Join us in the Empower general session to hear the debate about what’s next for procurement and learn from your peers on what they are doing to release the value from their supply base.

  • Why businesses should combine NPS with analytics

    Alec Gardner, general manager ANZ, Teradata, says, “Businesses should be using data analytics in conjunction with NPS to enhance customer satisfaction, and in many cases, even help predict NPS.” “Doing this lets companies use data analytics to proactively seek customer sentiment using channels such as social media well ahead of the customer’s intention to contact the company,” Gardner says. ”Discovery analytics from big data sources lets companies gain new insights about competitors as well as their own products or services.”

    http://itbrief.co.nz/story/why-businesses-should-combine-nps-analytics/

  • What to Ask, and Not Ask, Your Cloud Hosting Provider

    Don’t Ask: What is the provider’s availability record? This may seem like a very important question, and it is. However, it should be noted that if you’re researching a reputable hosting provider, many of the organizations that report on downtime don’t look at the clients of the provider, but only at the provider’s website. This can create false positive or negative results, since it isn’t a customer production environment.

    http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/from-under-the-rug/what-to-ask-and-not-ask-your-cloud-hosting-provider.html

  • I read this Fast Company article this morning and thought it would be good to share (I think this will sound very familiar to something happening in July):
    THE MESSY BUSINESS OF REINVENTING HAPPINESS

    It is a tale of corporate politics, personal feuds, and turf wars. But it also the story of a success, even though the project didn’t fully deliver on its massive ambitions. This is what happens when a huge corporation tries to reinvent itself. This is what you have to do when you better make it work.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3044283/the-messy-business-of-reinventing-happiness#!

Supplier Report: 5/16/2015

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IBM news continues to be dominated by Watson Health.  Nothing new was announced this week, but analysts are catching up with the news and highlighting the trends.

Oracle and EMC continue their less-than-graceful transition to the cloud.  Oracle is looking at lower cost (from their own hardware) Open Stack framework, while EMC also focuses on bringing a more flexible cloud solution to market.

And just because… Verizon buys AOL (for their content like Huffington Post and TechCrunch…probably).

IBM

Oracle

  • Oracle Trying On OpenStack For Size

    Still, even if Oracle can define $7 billion of its revenue as “cloud” this year, it would still represent less than 20% of last year’s $38.3 billion in revenue. Having its own true cloud, built on an open source infrastructure like OpenStack, would accelerate the move to true cloud economics. So might buying a profitable, growing OpenStack cloud provider like Rackspace(NYSE:RAX), but that’s purely speculation

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3183236-oracle-trying-on-openstack-for-size

  • The incredible rags-to-riches story of Oracle founder Larry Ellison

    “The very first version was Oracle Version 2,” he admitted at a customer conference last year. Their ploy worked. Oracle’s first customer was a big one: the CIA. It later became the most popular database ever sold. That success paid off for Ellison — according to the Wall Street Journal, he was the highest paid executive in the US before he stepped down as CEO in 2014.

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/rags-to-riches-story-of-larry-ellison-2015-5

  • In Google Versus Oracle, Obama’s Administration is Torn

    It’s a complicated and very technical issue, something that is not necessarily the forte of the Supreme Court. The fight over what is defensible as copyrighted work or not is far from resolved at any level, this is just the most high-profile manifestation of it. If the Supreme Court does take the case and rule on it one way or another, it could have a lot of long-term implications for how patents and trademarks on API code are treated. If Oracle wins, expect plenty more claims of ownership and a lot of litigation to come, at least in the short term. If Google wins, there will be less of that. That’s why Google’s argument includes the idea that without that code, the company wouldn’t have succeeded, meaning that innovation would be slowed if Oracle were to win.

    http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2015/05/15/obama-torn-over-google-googl-vs-oracle-orcl-court-fight/

EMC

  • Why ‘Project Horizon’ spells long-term gains for EMC

    According to Clarke, Project Horizon is a “big departure” for EMC from the extensive ECM platform it has become associated with over the past few years. “With one of the largest portfolios of ECM capabilities, its platform has often been criticized as being too complex and expensive to implement,” Clarke claims. “By contrast, Project Horizon is built on Pivotal Cloud Foundry and will offer a choice of cloud deployments.

    http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/575000/insight-why-project-horizon-spells-long-term-gains-emc/

  • EMC “eating its young” to survive say analysts

    Above all, Furrier suggested, “They need to take care of their current situation — they need to get out of the box business.” In the current competitive market, Furrier advocated that EMC “build an OS for the data center and enterprise,” despite the disruption this might cause. Furthermore, Furrier put forward the notion that “EMC has to become a utility platform with a business model that can compete in the current era.” The “game-changing moves” that EMC needs to make, said Furrier, should be “real-time, API-based” and include “unlimited compute.”

    http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/05/11/emc-eating-its-young-to-survive-say-analysts-emcworld/

  • EMC: Rise of third platform could spell end for businesses unwilling to adapt

    As alluded to by Goulden, the rise of the Information Generation and their preference for third-platform apps and services poses a major challenge for enterprises, which will need to adapt the way they work to the way this group of users likes to consume services.

    http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500246008/EMC-claims-rise-of-third-platform-could-spell-end-for-businesses-unwilling-to-adapt

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