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 data as a service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data as a service. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
Data-as-a-Service
Dun and Bradstreet have fired the open salvo in the pending Data-as-a-Service war, with their D&B 360 product. D&B 360 is an open API which allows customers to access the full breadth of D&;B data to power a customer's applications. Integrated with Salesforce.com, D&B 360 enables a customer to pull in data over 160 million companies stored in the D&B databases for sales and marketing.
This is a big step, as it suggests that D&B is drawing some clear lines for customers, partners and potentially competitors as well, to where D&B is investing and considers its core value to customers. As I noted in my previous post (The Next Great Information Company), information providers need to make some choices as to where they will specialize and consider their core business. For D&B, leadership in financial risk management applications as well as sales and marketing solutions marks the extent of the application business potentially. However, for their data and information, there is an opportunity to grow revenues significantly as other ISVs learn to leverage the D&B data for other business purposes.
At Dreamforce next week, the Salesforce.com signature event, D&B plans to announce additional details and explore with prospective customers and ISVs how D&B 360 can help them. It will be interesting to see where they take this innovative solution.
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On another front, I hear there is a ground-swell of start-ups to deliver a 'data cloud' much like the solution D&B and offers. This is a good thing. Much like Salesforce.com's push to SaaS CRM solutions and the subsequent embrace of the cloud by Microsoft and others, having a healthy vibrant stable of data-as-a-service providers offers customers choice and keeps costs down.
In a conversation with a couple old friends the other night, we discussed if the data cloud truly is viable. Some of the issues they raised were primarily around what traditional providers have stated as their core value - we link all the data bits together and 'normalize' the data. True, but it is still a valid point?
There have been a series of very interesting articles from the A-Team Insight group that highlight to me that the answer is no.
Just this week there were 3 separate pieces that demonstrate that customers are actively looking to work around the vendor data structure, thus paving the way to a seamless data cloud. From this week's A-Team Insight (A-Team Group.com) there were articles from Deutsche Bank, Northern Trust and Goldman Sachs, which indicated each are: a) breaking down internal data silos; b) taking a more enterprise-wide approach to data management; and c) (in the case of Goldman) establishing their own centralized symbology service. Although this in itself isn't news, (larger firms have always had individual identifiers), what is news is that there seems to be more open talk of ending vendor identifiers - or at least their complexity.
This was clearly drawn in the same A-Team report, where David Berry, member of the Information Providers User Group and head of market data sourcing and strategy at UBS, clearly states customers are, to paraphrase from Howard Beale in Network, 'mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore'. As Berry is quoted in the piece: "Vendors introduce complexity into the market by attempting to differentiate themselves on the basis of instrument identification and this should be eliminated". A clearer line in a sand has never been drawn.
To me, the initial lines of breaking the large vendor monopoly are starting to appear. It will be interesting to see where we are in 12 months time.....
This is a big step, as it suggests that D&B is drawing some clear lines for customers, partners and potentially competitors as well, to where D&B is investing and considers its core value to customers. As I noted in my previous post (The Next Great Information Company), information providers need to make some choices as to where they will specialize and consider their core business. For D&B, leadership in financial risk management applications as well as sales and marketing solutions marks the extent of the application business potentially. However, for their data and information, there is an opportunity to grow revenues significantly as other ISVs learn to leverage the D&B data for other business purposes.
At Dreamforce next week, the Salesforce.com signature event, D&B plans to announce additional details and explore with prospective customers and ISVs how D&B 360 can help them. It will be interesting to see where they take this innovative solution.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On another front, I hear there is a ground-swell of start-ups to deliver a 'data cloud' much like the solution D&B and offers. This is a good thing. Much like Salesforce.com's push to SaaS CRM solutions and the subsequent embrace of the cloud by Microsoft and others, having a healthy vibrant stable of data-as-a-service providers offers customers choice and keeps costs down.
In a conversation with a couple old friends the other night, we discussed if the data cloud truly is viable. Some of the issues they raised were primarily around what traditional providers have stated as their core value - we link all the data bits together and 'normalize' the data. True, but it is still a valid point?
There have been a series of very interesting articles from the A-Team Insight group that highlight to me that the answer is no.
Just this week there were 3 separate pieces that demonstrate that customers are actively looking to work around the vendor data structure, thus paving the way to a seamless data cloud. From this week's A-Team Insight (A-Team Group.com) there were articles from Deutsche Bank, Northern Trust and Goldman Sachs, which indicated each are: a) breaking down internal data silos; b) taking a more enterprise-wide approach to data management; and c) (in the case of Goldman) establishing their own centralized symbology service. Although this in itself isn't news, (larger firms have always had individual identifiers), what is news is that there seems to be more open talk of ending vendor identifiers - or at least their complexity.
This was clearly drawn in the same A-Team report, where David Berry, member of the Information Providers User Group and head of market data sourcing and strategy at UBS, clearly states customers are, to paraphrase from Howard Beale in Network, 'mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore'. As Berry is quoted in the piece: "Vendors introduce complexity into the market by attempting to differentiate themselves on the basis of instrument identification and this should be eliminated". A clearer line in a sand has never been drawn.
To me, the initial lines of breaking the large vendor monopoly are starting to appear. It will be interesting to see where we are in 12 months time.....
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Data Clouds - Part 2
So, what was my proposal? To refresh your memory from my last post, I was fortunate to explore the capabilities of the Salesforce.com cloud and what it could offer data vendors. As an application platform, although there are some limitations, there are real possibilities specifically in the off-trade floor businesses such as investment banking and wealth management among others. As a distribution platform to enable customers easier access and integration of information sources into existing and new Force.com apps, the platform offers real promise. But there was a third area I explored which I saw as a game changer.
One issue today is accessing clean and accurate data, not to mention the on-going support and maintenance of that data. This includes not only customer and financial data sourced from inside the firm but externally sourced information which a firm depends on. For larger financial institutions, this is getting to be a business onto itself. Firms spend millions of dollars and thousands of person-hours addressing the issue of data and data quality. The cost doesn't include data center space, servers and other infrastructure to support the number of applications needing the data stored therein. In addition, much of this work is duplicated across firms.
Vendors generally offer datafeeds or APIs to push information out to customers who then store and replicate the data across their enterprise - highly inefficient. While looking at Salesforce.com and a firm they acquired, Jigsaw, I saw an opportunity. For vendors, much of what they do is data collection and data quality - why not move this 'business', this function into the cloud? Why not run a cloud-based data management business for customers? Why not do for data management what the cloud did for infrastructure management?
This was my proposal - for TR to get out of providing data collection and management services for one customer (effectively, TR) and provide the same service in the cloud - starting with customer data on Salesforce.com - and go from there.
The response was simply this - TR doesn't run a data management service. Yes, that's right, according to a couple of my former colleagues - one of the world's largest information providers doesn't operate a data management service. Now to me, data management is the core of what TR does (not to mention what Bloomberg or Factset or S&P and others do); the applications and other 'products' each offers are an off-shoot of this core business.
So here's the opportunity for a vendor - go back to your first principles, start offering a data management service for customers. Start moving to where customers store and want their data (and other data) to be located. Use the years of experience in building data management systems to build and run your customer's data systems. Accenture and other consulting firms do it, why can't you? You are all fighting over the same pie, create a new market and expand what you do, don't limit yourselves. What you can't do is try and offer a 'product'. Don't look to sell another software solution or another 'configurable' data platform - its not what people want.
If you can't figure out the difference, well good luck to you.....
One issue today is accessing clean and accurate data, not to mention the on-going support and maintenance of that data. This includes not only customer and financial data sourced from inside the firm but externally sourced information which a firm depends on. For larger financial institutions, this is getting to be a business onto itself. Firms spend millions of dollars and thousands of person-hours addressing the issue of data and data quality. The cost doesn't include data center space, servers and other infrastructure to support the number of applications needing the data stored therein. In addition, much of this work is duplicated across firms.
Vendors generally offer datafeeds or APIs to push information out to customers who then store and replicate the data across their enterprise - highly inefficient. While looking at Salesforce.com and a firm they acquired, Jigsaw, I saw an opportunity. For vendors, much of what they do is data collection and data quality - why not move this 'business', this function into the cloud? Why not run a cloud-based data management business for customers? Why not do for data management what the cloud did for infrastructure management?
This was my proposal - for TR to get out of providing data collection and management services for one customer (effectively, TR) and provide the same service in the cloud - starting with customer data on Salesforce.com - and go from there.
The response was simply this - TR doesn't run a data management service. Yes, that's right, according to a couple of my former colleagues - one of the world's largest information providers doesn't operate a data management service. Now to me, data management is the core of what TR does (not to mention what Bloomberg or Factset or S&P and others do); the applications and other 'products' each offers are an off-shoot of this core business.
So here's the opportunity for a vendor - go back to your first principles, start offering a data management service for customers. Start moving to where customers store and want their data (and other data) to be located. Use the years of experience in building data management systems to build and run your customer's data systems. Accenture and other consulting firms do it, why can't you? You are all fighting over the same pie, create a new market and expand what you do, don't limit yourselves. What you can't do is try and offer a 'product'. Don't look to sell another software solution or another 'configurable' data platform - its not what people want.
If you can't figure out the difference, well good luck to you.....
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Data Clouds - Part 1
While at Thomson Financial/Thomson Reuters, I was given the opportunity to explore the capabilities of the Salesforce.com platform initially as a proof of concept for integrating Thomson data into the Force.com cloud. During this period, I saw the future of the information industry and a new paradigm of how ‘information products’ are delivered; one which I hoped to see Thomson grab and change the industry. Alas, it was not meant to be but nonetheless, recent events and discussions further enforce my belief that the time is near where there will be a change in how information is delivered to customers.
After I completed the proof of concept, thanks to some smart folks at Okere/Fujitsu in executing my requirements, the future appeared. What I saw was a future where an information vendor, like Thomson, could fundamentally shift its operating model, expand into new markets and leverage Salesforce.com not only as a CRM tool but as an application platform, a distribution network and more importantly, a model whereby they can shift out of siloed mainframe databases and complex delivery systems they have now and open up their content to the mobile/cloud-based world we live in today.
The Salesforce.com platform itself is very flexible and easy to build out some complex functionality and workflow. With the introduction of Java, this likely will result in more impressive visual tools and better usability. Although some functionality needed for financial services might be out of range as this time, I suspect as the platform grows, many of the tools now available through vendor applications, will be available – specifically those within the “off-trade floor” disciplines such as Investment Banking, Investment Management and Wealth Management.
There are some ‘restrictions’ currently in the platform, but they are more a function of how the firm sees itself as a CRM player and can be worked around. Nonetheless, as an application platform, there is the possibility to rewrite many of the solutions vendors offer for those segments mentioned above with added functionality and at a reduced cost.
As a distribution network, Salesforce.com allows for easy integration of bundled services into a firm’s “Org” (or Salesforce.com instance in the multi-tenet environment), which means a customer on the platform using the CRM tools, for example, can be ‘entitled’ for a subset of data from a vendor very easily and with a great deal of confidence of the security. In fact, due to the tiered nature of the platform, different user profiles can be permissioned for different data sets and even data fields. Further, an information vendor can ‘lock down’ their content ensuring the data isn’t changed or altered by the customer (or can be depending on the controls in place). Finally, due to packaging controls offered through the platform, information providers can easily see who is accessing their information and how and offer new commercial models instead of the pure monthly subscription rate.
Using the platform tools would allow an information vendor to offer ‘packages’ of information, tailored for each customer with extensive protection and tracking capability while reducing cost of delivery for both themselves and customers. In effect, once the data source is ‘plugged’ into the platform, any one of the nearly 2 million users on the platform can access the data while being tracked for that use.
Using this model, ISVs wishing to serve a market, but require specific information can also access these data packages and either license directly for the data and pass on the cost to their customers or the information vendor can sell directly to the ISV’s customer for the data.
Effectively, Salesforce.com’s platform can become the “iTunes of data” by information providers leveraging the tools and building the delivery model I pioneered while at Thomson.
Add to it, the cross-platform integration Salesforce.com has natively built and information from a provider can be accessed through Facebook, Linked In, Google, AWS and other cloud platforms.
There is an even more compelling opportunity which I explored, one that was deemed pretty controversial and shifted the definition of what an information vendor did for customers. I’ll explore that next time….
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I would be remiss in thanking those of you who offered their congratulations for my inclusion in the Forrester Research book “Empowered”. The experience and being included in the book is very humbling and one I would do again. Thank you again to those at Thomson that were supportive of both my effort that lead to the mention as well as my being included in the final book, I greatly appreciate it.
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