Happy New Year dear readers and I hope 2011 is filled with success for you all. With the New Year come resolutions and predictions and I've read more than a few. So staying with the theme, I thought I'd venture a few predictions of my own on the information and cloud industries just for fun.
Prediction 1 - Organizational shake up at Thomson Reuters Markets. Although the A-Team group's Andrew Delaney has been on this since mid-last year, I think this year is where changes finally occur. An influx of external talent into the Enterprise and Sales & Trading organizations, a major sales re-org kicked off this year and poor performance by some of the Investment & Advisory segments leads me to think some shuffling is due. Sources also tell me of a general hiring freeze through Q1 of 2011 which also has preceded organizational changes in the past, seems to indicate some shifting of the deck-chairs.
Prediction 2 - Factset finally expands into Investment Banking with more gusto. Reading through the recent Factset filings indicate they have been steadily investing into their stable of content assets with high value into the IB space. Enhancements to the ex-TF Worldscope data (now called Factset Fundamentals), new issues, M&A data as well as other PE/VC data sets, seem to indicate they are ready to go after the junior banker/knowledge worker space. They might not have all the necessary assets for the senior banker but their partnership with Dow Jones supports that sub-segment.
Prediction 3 - InfoGroup enters the financial services space. Clare Hart, CEO of InfoGroup, is too smart and too experienced not to. Add to it her recent hire Gemma Postlethwaite from Thomson Reuters to run products and content, tells me they are shifting from serving only the sales and marketing segments. Ms. Postlethwaite has significant experience in the Investment Banking space and built the latest Thomson Reuters Banking desktop product. As well, her experience in managing the data alliances for the Investment & Advisory division of Thomson Reuters more recently, gives her insight into the other competitors and their relative content strengths. Its a good hire and indicates to me Infogroup to make a push into financial services, specifically in Investment Banking before year end.
Prediction 4 - Market data accelerates into the cloud - and not through big name vendors. As I've mentioned before, smaller cloud-based 'data vendors' are starting to appear to support off-trade floor uses of market data. This is the year one or two make their presence known. While the name vendors - Thomson Reuters and IDC mainly - invest in a 'market data cloud' themselves, I expect firms of all sizes look to other providers. Firms are already realizing the 'standardized' data product of the vendors is limiting and in often interferes with their data strategies. Access to raw, "as prepared" data directly from sources, rather than the packaged data through data vendors, will become increasingly in demand and impact on big-box vendors adversely. A couple firms will start to break-through and will start to erode large vendor revenues for off-trade floor data needs.
Prediction 5 - Apple acquires Salesforce.com. With Mr. Jobs health in question, Apple will need a strong voice and leader to support if not replace Mr. Jobs for the overall good of the company. As Microsoft has shown, putting a good operations guy in the number 1 seat doesn't lead to maintaining a leadership position and innovation. These company traits start at the top and Mr. Benioff's resume is solid enough to replace Mr. Jobs. As I said in a prior post, back in June of last year, the tie-up of Apple and SFDC complete both firms and puts them as the sole competitor to Microsoft, outside of search and gaming. SFDC sees the iPad and Apple technology platforms as the clear winner and placed a firm-wide bet on the Apple products. However, should Mr, Jobs condition be debilitating, and we hope it is not for nothing else than for him and his family's sake, Apple will need to find a new head as the firm faces increased competition on its core businesses and seeks to expand into the enterprise market. That search for a new CEO should start and end with Mr. Benioff.
There you have it, 5 fearless predictions for 2011. Appreciate comments on any or all of them, but we will see in 12 months time if any are actually accurate. If anyone has any predictions of their own, love to hear them.
Until next time....
Showing posts with label Infogroup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infogroup. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, June 14, 2010
Dallas - Threat or Opportunity?
I just finished reading a little article from InfoWorld on Microsoft's Dallas project. For those who don't know what Dallas is, Microsoft hopes Dallas to be "the iTunes for data" according to Douglas Purdy, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer for data and modeling. Dallas is important for Microsoft's cloud strategy since it promises to be the data warehouse/store for apps running on Azure, Microsoft's cloud infrastructure.
According to a Dallas program manager, Microsoft intends Dallas to be "broker for discovering information", something well underway with data from InfoGroup, NASA, Zillow and the Associated Press available through Dallas. At a high-level, the plan is to expose information from providers through a series of APIs (application programming interfaces) or hosted within Azure by the data owner. One assumes if the data is held off-Azure, Dallas/Azure will offer a standardized api with support tools to allow scalability for data providers - essentially a proxy service whereby users wishing to consume data from a number of sources need only program to one service yet call multiple content offerings - a data nirvana for a number of heavy data users such as investment banks and hedge funds.
Thus the challenge - is Dallas a threat or opportunity?
Well, like most things depends on who you are, quite frankly.
For a firm like Mashery, a API management provider, Dallas and Azure might very well be a huge threat to their business. Mashery currently boasts customers such as Thomson Reuters, Hoovers, ZoomInfo, the New York Times and Trulia (a real estate information provider), Dallas effectively could offer a competitive solution, with the backing off an industry leader with a distribution network of millions of firms. Ouch.
For tier-two information providers, Dallas offers a huge opportunity as a data distribution channel whereby customers can access their information easily and integrate it with their office productivity tools. For example, for a firm like Dow Jones, plugging into Dallas would in theory allow for an investment banking customer to seamlessly integrate data into hosted pitch-books that leverage Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, thus simplifying the work flow in which a junior banker needs to simply update the template, (i.e. replace company A with company B) replace the data, update the book and publish it through the Azure cloud to others within the firm - a far easier and cleaner method than exists today.
For Salesforce.com, Dallas is also a threat. Despite the acquisition of Jigsaw by Salesforce.com, Salesforce.com lacks broader information that is needed across the enterprise - Jigsaw's contact and company data is targeted more for sales and some marketing types. With the right content sources, Dallas can address Jigsaw's competitive advantage and move beyond the Salesforce.com value due to broader need for information. Salesforce.com hasn't fully (or at least publicly) stated a broader content strategy to compete with Dallas although I do know someone did pitch this need last year to them. Perhaps Jigsaw is the start of such a strategy - it remains to be seen.
For customers, particularly the large investment banks, hedge funds and asset management firms that consume huge quantities of information for a number of different business purposes, Dallas is a huge opportunity. These firms use a number of sources - internal and external - for both business operations and compliance purposes, Dallas offers a single warehouse/api to pull this information together. And, with Microsoft allowing storage of data by customers, the opportunity for a single master copy of data is within reach. Clearly there are operational risks and regulatory issues to be considered but there is the possibility.
Finally for those large information providers such as Bloomberg, Standard & Poors and Thomson Reuters, Dallas is both a threat and opportunity. The threat really lies in what's possible. If customers or 3rd party application providers can build complex, .NET apps on Azure that are as good or better than what these vendors offer themselves, customers may simply move to these hosted apps and away from the terminal products these firms offer. This shift would then dictate customers wanting 'only the data' something I'm not sure these firms want to provide. Should they resist, the opportunity exists for the raft of smaller tier-two and niche information providers to grow.
However, there is an opportunity as I said. If one of these leaders can embrace the Azure platform, the distribution channel it offers and get the commercials right - they can readily gain to the expense of the others. Since Microsoft has hundreds of millions of users of its software and office productivity tools, a new economic model can significantly shift the playing field to the detriment of the others - perhaps for good.
According to a Dallas program manager, Microsoft intends Dallas to be "broker for discovering information", something well underway with data from InfoGroup, NASA, Zillow and the Associated Press available through Dallas. At a high-level, the plan is to expose information from providers through a series of APIs (application programming interfaces) or hosted within Azure by the data owner. One assumes if the data is held off-Azure, Dallas/Azure will offer a standardized api with support tools to allow scalability for data providers - essentially a proxy service whereby users wishing to consume data from a number of sources need only program to one service yet call multiple content offerings - a data nirvana for a number of heavy data users such as investment banks and hedge funds.
Thus the challenge - is Dallas a threat or opportunity?
Well, like most things depends on who you are, quite frankly.
For a firm like Mashery, a API management provider, Dallas and Azure might very well be a huge threat to their business. Mashery currently boasts customers such as Thomson Reuters, Hoovers, ZoomInfo, the New York Times and Trulia (a real estate information provider), Dallas effectively could offer a competitive solution, with the backing off an industry leader with a distribution network of millions of firms. Ouch.
For tier-two information providers, Dallas offers a huge opportunity as a data distribution channel whereby customers can access their information easily and integrate it with their office productivity tools. For example, for a firm like Dow Jones, plugging into Dallas would in theory allow for an investment banking customer to seamlessly integrate data into hosted pitch-books that leverage Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, thus simplifying the work flow in which a junior banker needs to simply update the template, (i.e. replace company A with company B) replace the data, update the book and publish it through the Azure cloud to others within the firm - a far easier and cleaner method than exists today.
For Salesforce.com, Dallas is also a threat. Despite the acquisition of Jigsaw by Salesforce.com, Salesforce.com lacks broader information that is needed across the enterprise - Jigsaw's contact and company data is targeted more for sales and some marketing types. With the right content sources, Dallas can address Jigsaw's competitive advantage and move beyond the Salesforce.com value due to broader need for information. Salesforce.com hasn't fully (or at least publicly) stated a broader content strategy to compete with Dallas although I do know someone did pitch this need last year to them. Perhaps Jigsaw is the start of such a strategy - it remains to be seen.
For customers, particularly the large investment banks, hedge funds and asset management firms that consume huge quantities of information for a number of different business purposes, Dallas is a huge opportunity. These firms use a number of sources - internal and external - for both business operations and compliance purposes, Dallas offers a single warehouse/api to pull this information together. And, with Microsoft allowing storage of data by customers, the opportunity for a single master copy of data is within reach. Clearly there are operational risks and regulatory issues to be considered but there is the possibility.
Finally for those large information providers such as Bloomberg, Standard & Poors and Thomson Reuters, Dallas is both a threat and opportunity. The threat really lies in what's possible. If customers or 3rd party application providers can build complex, .NET apps on Azure that are as good or better than what these vendors offer themselves, customers may simply move to these hosted apps and away from the terminal products these firms offer. This shift would then dictate customers wanting 'only the data' something I'm not sure these firms want to provide. Should they resist, the opportunity exists for the raft of smaller tier-two and niche information providers to grow.
However, there is an opportunity as I said. If one of these leaders can embrace the Azure platform, the distribution channel it offers and get the commercials right - they can readily gain to the expense of the others. Since Microsoft has hundreds of millions of users of its software and office productivity tools, a new economic model can significantly shift the playing field to the detriment of the others - perhaps for good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)