WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: an interesting survey from VMware provides insights into the thousands of technology solutions that must be monitored when you deploy on cloud computing environments.

WHY IT MATTERS: software as a service has been growing exponentially for years and the trend continues. This report analyzes the SaaS spend in organizations. I find their analysis of the 10 categories where companies overspend very interesting.

WHY IT MATTERS: I like the way RSG bundles solutions in categories that make sense and often are unique in the research landscape (as opposed say to gartner and forrester). Yet their analysis, and this post, highlight that the world of Customer Data Platforms - CDPs - remains confusing at best. 

WHY IT MATTERS: this report from gartner review the top 12 buzzword you need to master for your geek xmas cocktail conversations ;-) As often with these, they are very generic and could end up being very difficult to implement. Nevertheless they point in the right direction, globally.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting to see that software solutions that reach maturity - such as ERPs - have a tendency to specialize. This quadrant highlights leaders in a specific market (product centric enterprises). I wonder when we will start to see the same with eCommerce... Not that specialized solutions don't exist but that the industry remains so immature that companies are in their first or second versions of eCommerce and thus gravitate to generalist solutions like shopify, magento, etc.

WHY IT MATTERS: 3 major players in cloud computing are battling it out on sales rather than technology as the platforms mature and the enterprise adoption skyrockets. Gartner quadrant provides overview of the major players. Google is immature, AWS has aggressive sales tactics and Azure offering is confusing.

WHY IT MATTERS: a good overview, well presented of tech trends for executives. Beware: for long-term strategy discussions only!

WHY IT MATTERS: short eBook on trends and use cases for edge computing in retail. Useful to realize that cloud is not just about centralized computing mainframe-style, but must be paired with edge computing as we do with laptops and cell phones...

WHY IT MATTERS: the opportunity of cloud computing remains whole as per this analysis from McKinsey. One chart of the benefits should convince the most reluctant CIOs that cloud is a good thing.

WHY IT MATTERS: always interesting to track internet traffic from the infrastructure providers. Here Cloudflare but also Akamai, etc.

WHY IT MATTERS: this post is a bit theoretical for someone not bathing in digital transformation all day as I do (mostly). It explores what could come next but more importantly stresses an important fact: we now have a new platform - the mobile phone - in our pockets that has the potential to transform our world. We have started to see this with eCommerce - physical retail stores become irrelevant and we can price compare from anywhere - but we have yet to see the real impact of eCommerce+mobile+cloud+5G. THIS is what I think about most days...

WHY IT MATTERS: with every product moving to a SaaS, pay as you go, model, retention has become a key metric to consider. This post delivers insights into retention metrics for GOOD and GREAT retention numbers. I'd love to see similar posts on email open rates, ecommerce conversion, app usage, etc.

WHY IT MATTERS: this report on the use of software as a service in companies - think products like salesforce.com, office365, mailchimp and others. The data is clear: SaaS solutions are popular and no one seems to be in charge. This will have serious implications in terms of accountability, security, privacy, regulation compliance, economies of scale, etc. Who will manage that?

WHY IT MATTERS: cloud computing Gartner quadrant analyzed to show that Seattle region is home to the industry leaders.