“When I think out over the next two or three years, and even the next few months with coronavirus, it feeds into this whole digital transformation movement,” says Splunk CEO Doug Merritt. “If this becomes a new normal and we start to adapt to more of a social distancing that just means more digital usage. There are a lot of great digital technologies we can all lean on so that we can still move forward with business.”
Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk, discusses how the coronavirus is feeding into the digital transformation movement in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Coronavirus Causing Business To Lean On Digital Technologies
It’s a brave new world. I think we’re all going to learn this in the coming months. Like every other company should be doing, we’re putting our employees health and safety first. We are encouraging people to work from home. We are a Zoom customer and a Slack customer. There are a lot of great digital technologies we can all lean on so that we can still move forward with business.
We’ve got a great install base of 20,000 customers that actively use Splunk. Over 80 percent of our revenues come from that install base. My hope is that for a lot of the transactions, they’re just expansions or additional capabilities from some new products that can be attached to the existing contracts. We’ll see we’ll see like we all do. I didn’t think well going into 2020 that I’d be a CEO of a company that was going through something like coronavirus.
Coronavirus “Social Distancing” Feeds Digital Transformation
When I think out over the next two or three years, and even the next few months with coronavirus, it feeds into this whole digital transformation movement. If this becomes a new normal and we start to adapt to more of a social distancing that just means more digital usage. The companies that we are all relying on, all the digital properties, have Splunk as their backbone to make sure that their services work effectively.
Whether it’s Slack or Zoom or AWS as a overall customer of ours, if we all turn digital that falls into the trend we’ve been seeing. We now need to make sense of what’s happening in that digital environment. We need to make it resilient and we need to make it safe, which means more Splunk.
Coronavirus “Social Distancing” Feeds Digital Transformation Movement – Splunk CEO
DocuSign is moving into AI with the acquisition of Seal Software, maker of AI-driven contract analysis, for $188 million in cash.
DocuSign is one of the leading electronic contract platforms, providing a way for companies to share, organize and sign electronic documents. DocuSign already resells Seal’s software as part of its DocuSign Agreement Cloud. The acquisition will drive further integration between the two platforms.
“As the Agreement Cloud company, DocuSign is about digitally transforming the very foundation of doing business: agreements and agreement processes,” said Scott Olrich, DocuSign’s chief operating officer. “We believe that AI will play a vital role in this transformation. And by integrating Seal into DocuSign, we can benefit from its deep technology expertise and its broad experience applying AI to agreements.”
According to the statement, “Seal is recognized as one of the pioneers in AI-driven contract analytics. Its technology can rapidly search large collections of agreements by legal concepts (rather than just by keywords); automatically extract and compare critical clauses and terms side-by-side; quickly identify areas of risk and opportunity; and deliver actionable insights that help solve legal and business challenges.”
DocuSign will continue to sell Seal’s software, in addition to integrating it with DocuSign CLM.
“For DocuSign customers, these capabilities will mean faster, more efficient agreement processes. Seal customers will in turn benefit from deeper access to the full capability of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud—especially document generation and advanced workflows.”
DocuSign’s acquisition of Seal Software illustrates the wide-ranging industries AI continues to impact.
At the recent Social Media Day Jacksonville 2018 conference, Carlos Gil, founder of Gil Media Company, spoke about current social media marketing strategies. In an entertaining and informative talk, Gil spoke about the challenge of getting companies like Win-Dixie to understand that they should be engaging with their customers on the device their customer is always paying attention to, and that’s the cell phone.
It’s not about advertising either, it’s about being part of the conversation, being a brand that matters. Here are selected excerpts from Gil’s talk below that highlight this challenge:
The Only Metric that Matters Is Sales
The only metric that matters today is sales. Most of us, if not all of us, know that the reason why we’re on social media is that we want to drive more revenue for our businesses. You go to any CMO or CEO and for them, social media is just nice to have. The reality is that social media is the lifeline between you and your customers.
Oftentimes, we see metrics being referred to as reach, clicks, impressions, but the only metric that really matters is the sale.
I often get asked by businesses and marketers, should I be on Instagram, Snapchat, or something else? My answer to them is very simple, go where your audience is. Each one of these social networks gives you reach and helps put you in front of people who are potential buyers or existing buyers from your brand or your competition. If you are targeting millennials, Snapchat and Instagram might be good to focus on.
Simply think about your business and go where your audience is.
Revise Strategy from One-To-Many to One-To-One
We’re talking about sales, we’re talking about driving revenue. Since the beginning of time sales has always been one-on-one. I think the biggest mistake that marketers are making is they think I’m going to get on social media and I’m gonna have access to reach all of these people. I have all of these followers, but the reality is that most people are not paying attention to the content that you’re posting. This is why you should revise your strategy from being about one-to-many but more one-to-one, and you should stop focusing on the numbers.
Recently, I was working with a client that said to me, we have 30 million social media followers globally but we’re reaching a very small percentage. I looked at the CMO and said, you don’t have 30 million followers, in reality, you have like 300 or less. Their jaw dropped and they were shocked because the reality is that you can’t touch everyone that’s out there.
Social media operates in real time, and with the way content moves, content is relevant today and it’s irrelevant 15 seconds from now.
Millennials Don’t Want to be Sold, They Want to be Engaged
Millennials don’t want to be sold, they want to be engaged. Millennials are really at the forefront of a lot of what we do. For example, I work a lot with real estate agents and they often say that you have to look at the data of who is your target buyer. In the case of realtors, 30 years old is the average age of a first-time homebuyer. You’re not going to reach that customer sending them direct mail.
However, if you run Facebook Ads, if you have any sort of presence in social meeting, you can find a way to get in front of them then. You have a much higher likelihood of promoting your brand and getting that lead. The same thing applies to most businesses.
Go Where Your Customers Are… the Mobile Phone
I work with both B2B and B2C and you have to go where the current is, you have to go where the customers are. The reality is this is your audience today. People aren’t paying attention to really what’s in front of them besides their cell phone.
I’m sure if you go to any boardroom meeting today and you look around, what do people do when they show up, they put their iPhone first thing in front of them.
When I was working at Winn-Dixie back in 2014, we’re doing this campaign where we’re trying to take market share away from Walmart, Target, Burger King and McDonald’s, I made a comment to our CMO at the time. I said why are we focusing so much on doing direct mail at home marketing and instead, why aren’t we doing SMS and push notification ads? Why aren’t we reaching people on the device that they go to the bathroom with and that they use all the time?
We use cell phones for virtually everything that we do, so guess what, the light bulb has to go off if people are using this device all the time and they live by it your marketing has to now appeal to the device itself.
It was funny because in 2014 that CMO looked at me and says huh, SMS is never gonna take off, mobile marketing is never gonna take off!
Marketing is Like Finding Your Match on Tender
You’ve got this high propensity of customers, Millennials, they’re all using social media. I think the biggest challenge that we all face is how do we reach people at the right time and ensure that our content resonates with them? This is why I say that marketing is like finding your match on Tinder.
Business marketing is very much like dating. You’ve got a lot of people out there in this digital ocean and if your content is not appealing to that audience then they’re gonna keep swiping.
In a big win for Slack, Business Insider (BI) is reporting that IBM is deploying the messaging app to all of its 350,000 employees.
Slack is locked in a rivalry with Microsoft Teams, with the two companies battling for the corporate messaging market. Microsoft Teams recently doubled Slack’s user base, and has kept the pressure up with TV ads. In spite of Microsoft’s momentum, however, IBM has chosen Slack as its messaging app of choice. This, in turn, helps Slack make the case that it can compete with Microsoft on the largest scale, in the most mission-critical environments.
“Going wall to wall in IBM — it’s basically the maximum scale that there is, so we now know that Slack will work for literally the largest organizations in the world,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told BI.
Konrad Lagarde, director of IBM Toolbox, told BI that one of the reasons IBM went with Slack was their willingness to meet IBM’s needs. When Lagarde first starting using the app, teams were limited to 2,000 individuals. With some departments larger than that, IBM needed an app that could scale better and Slack was willing to add the necessary features.
IBM also likely chose Slack over Microsoft Teams as a result of increasing competition between the two computing giants. Microsoft is second in the U.S. cloud market, and IBM has increasingly staked its future on moving into the cloud. In fact, IBM’s recent earnings were buoyed by its cloud business. Just as many retail companies are turning to Microsoft rather than relying their prime competitor Amazon, IBM probably wants to avoid relying on a company it directly competes with.
Either way, today’s announcement is good news for Slack and will likely help the company continue to attract business, both large and small.
“Digital transformation is the biggest opportunity of our time,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. McDermott says there are three things that any c-suite executives will tell you:
We have to create great customer experiences to attain fierce customer loyalty.
Employee engagement and really getting employees inspired about working for their company is essential to win the talent war.
Step function productivity improvement generated from digitization is necessary to get cost down where it should be and revenue up where it has to be to win.
Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, discusses how digital transformation is the biggest opportunity of our time in an interview on CNBC:
Digital Transformation is the Biggest Opportunity of Our Time
Now I’m at ServiceNow and I’m so excited about this cloud future and digital transformation. I have been all over the world and met hundreds of customers in the last three months. Digital transformation is the biggest opportunity of our time. There are basically three things that any c-suite executives will tell you. One, we have to create great customer experiences to attain fierce customer loyalty. Two, employee engagement and really getting employees inspired about working for their company is essential to win the talent war. And three, step function productivity improvement generated from digitization is necessary to get cost down where it should be and revenue up where it has to be to win.
ServiceNow is the platform that essentially is the platform of all platforms. Every environment in the enterprise today is a heterogeneous environment. We are that cross-platform integration engine of the 21st-century economy which is why ServiceNow is growing faster than all of the companies in the cloud.
You’ve Got To Move Everything To a Modern Cloud Architecture
Here’s the root cause of the problem (of executives hesitating on digitization). It took 50 years to build the chaos, the complexity that exists in these enterprises. When you’re talking to these executives they don’t know what to do. That’s because they don’t know how to dig their way out of the mess. The fact is they’re not going to dig their way out of the mess. The fact is they are not going to did their way out of this mess. These systems of record will stay there for long periods of time.
A system of innovation, a system of action, over these systems of record (is what is needed), where you can integrate the data into a new generation workflow in the cloud. Workflow designed experiences can take the mess and move it into a modern cloud architecture so they can execute their mission. The light bulbs go on when they see the solution. Unfortunately, and sadly, the vendors who got them there in the first place are telling them to buy new messes and add it on to the old mess. You have got to leave that old mess alone, put a tourniquet on it, and move everything to a modern cloud architecture, a modern workflow.
Digital Transformation is the Biggest Opportunity of Our Time, Says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott
“We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage,” says Equinix CEO Charles Meyers. “The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds.”
Charles Meyers, CEO of Equinix, discusses their huge under the radar role in facilitating the massive digital transformation in progress with companies worldwide. Meyers was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:
There’s A Very Deep Demand Pool For Data Centers
We continue to see a really strong set of underlying secular demand drivers for the business. We’re seeing real strength in the business globally right now. Broadly, we’ve seen the sector respond very well. We think there’s a very deep demand pool for data centers. I do think that Equinix plays a very unique role in the market and our differentiated position is allowing us to even outperform relative to our peers. Public cloud adoption is a major catalyst for our business. As enterprises are adopting public cloud and looking at hybrid and multi-cloud as their architecture of choice we’re seeing really strong demand.
We may not be a household name but I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re probably impacting the lives of millions of consumers on a day to day basis working with (many big-name companies such as Salesforce and Netflix). We play a very important role in terms of interconnecting our customers sometimes to public cloud providers, sometimes to SAAS providers like Salesforce, sometimes to other members of their supply chain, and sometimes to networks. A really big part of our legacy and history has been interconnecting people to networks. The interconnection story is a really central piece of the Equinix story.
Equinix Is The Best Representation Of The Digital Edge
Equinix is in fact the best representation of the digital edge today. That is the point at which people are interconnecting their private infrastructure with public cloud infrastructure, with networks, and with other members of their supply chain. When you hear about edge, oftentimes that edge is in fact within an Equinix facility and being interconnected over private interconnection facilities that are facilitated by Equinix.
Typically, when inside one of our facilities, we’re unlike some wholesalers which might have one or a very small number of customers, we tend to have a larger number of customers in any individual facility. They are distributed across the site typically in private cages or sometimes in shared caged environments or shared rack environments and they have their equipment. They’re all obviously very secured and something that’s available just for them to access. But they’re all across the facility. You typically wouldn’t be able to see who the customer is because they are very sensitive about that from a security standpoint.
Firms Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage
We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage. The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. So we’re seeing strong demand. I think the trade tensions, etc. probably affects some level of sentiment but we have not seen that impact the demand profile for our business.
What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds. They’re using a variety of public clouds to house some of their workloads. So that hybrid multi-cloud environment is really the architecture of choice for enterprise customers of all sorts. Retail is actually an incredibly strong segment for us. That architecture of choice, hybrid and multi-cloud, is a major driver for Equinix’s business.
Business Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage – Equinix CEO Charles Meyers
“We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game,” says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie. “This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year.”
Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, discusses how the company is driving its massive growth by focusing on enterprise solutions that are sold by the seat, in an interview on CNBC:
The Category For Experience Management Is Massive
The category for experience management is massive. Companies today are differentiating their products and services by their ability to be customer-centric. Everybody has access to off-the-shelf software and you can buy keywords on Google and you can target folks on Facebook but the ability to really be sensitive to what your customers care about and want is critical. Usabilla is the solution that we acquired earlier this year. They have a customer in KLM Dutch Airlines who was able to improve their app experience by a 2.8 to a 4.2 rating using our product. It really is about, can your managers and can your marketers listen to that feedback, understand the bugs, and then deliver and take action. That’s what survey software can do.
We don’t compete with Adobe and Salesforce at all. Frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of Salesforce customers who need to be buying enterprise survey software. We exist in the Salesforce ecosystem and really try and help Salesforce customers get better data and get sentiment data from what their customers really care about. Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, those are big systems of record. They provide you a lot of operational data. Where SurveyMonkey competes and thrives is delivering for customers that sentiment data. How am I really doing? What can we improve upon? That’s where we’re selling a solution into the Salesforce ecosystem and we partner with Salesforce in a really productive way. It’s part of the reason they bought into our IPO last year.
Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful
We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game. This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year.
We set about on our IPO last year and told investors our plan to make this business a lot more valuable. The two key driving factors first is to elevate our sales motion to sell directly to the enterprise. That has been wildly successful. We doubled year-over-year a hundred percent growth in revenue in the sales channel. We now have almost 5,000 customers, up 60 percent year over year. We now compete in that ecosystem and we have a really disruptive product. Consumers love our product. We’re now selling into the organization with a really talented sales team.
There’s Been So Much Account Sharing On SurveyMonkey
Our team’s product is the collaborative self-serve product. We have a unique opportunity here. There’s been so much account sharing on SurveyMonkey over the years and in the current security environment, we’re asking people to pay for their own seat. That has driven a really healthy paid user growth. We see continued growth in those two areas. As I said, growth for us we’ve accelerated growth now twenty percent year-over-year, but we do it a disciplined way. We’re still able to deliver over $13 million dollars of unleveraged free cash flow in the quarter. We’re just not a company that’s going to grow at all cost. We want to have both healthy growth and disciplined cash flow.
We use politics in a fun way to help get a beat on what’s going on out in the world. Just like we ask questions about if you are potentially interested in buying an electric car or what do you think of Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, we also ask questions of the two and a half to three million people on our platform every day of who might you vote for and what issues are important to you. That really does give us a particular read on what American consumers are thinking.
Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful, Says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie
“Mobile is coming to the enterprise, finally,” says ServiceNow CEO John Donahoe. “It’s been a long time coming. Our release in Q3 will have native out of the box consumer-grade mobile capability. So now any ServiceNow customer can have a brilliant mobile onboarding app so that their new employees can get up to speed quickly and seamlessly. We are very excited about the mobile capabilities coming in Q3, native out of the box so every one of our customers can build them in a low-code or no-code way.”
Our customers are very excited about mobile coming to the enterprise. It’s been a long time coming. Our release in Q3 will have native out of the box consumer-grade mobile capability. So now any ServiceNow customer can have a brilliant mobile onboarding app so that their new employees can get up to speed quickly and seamlessly. You can show a young new employee, a millennial, that you are in fact a modern company that helps get them onboard and productive quickly.
Also, the Now Mobile app which will allow employees to get their questions answered, problems reported and then dealt with, and get information. All my approvals are now in one place where I can check them. We are very excited about the mobile capabilities coming in Q3, native out of the box so every one of our customers can build them in a low-code or no-code way. Mobile is coming to the enterprise, finally.
We feel very good about our growth. We feel very good about our customer and very good about our prospects. We are just focusing and executing so our customers get those great experiences.
We Feel Very Good About the Relations We Are Building
We now have 766 customers that are a million dollars and greater. We signed 14 customers that are a million dollars and greater in the quarter. That’s just symptomatic of the fact that we now work with 75 percent of the global 500. We are increasingly a strategic partner with those customers. Of our top 20 deals, 17 had three or more products. We feel very good about the relationships that we are building with our largest customers, which are the world’s largest companies and governments.
Our relationship with Microsoft is a very good one. We are initially focusing on US federal business where Microsoft has a strong presence as do we. We have a huge federal business and our datacenters have a certain security clearance. Microsoft Azure has the highest security clearance. Rather than us trying to replicate that, we are going to partner with them to take advantage of that Azure capability and jointly call on US federal customers.
We are doing the same with federal customers in Australia and increasingly we will look at other government markets. We have 20 different product integrations with Microsoft and a long history with them. We think there is a lot of shared opportunity together.
RPO Is the Best Forward-Looking Indication of Our Business
We do think RPO is a very good indication and probably the best forward-looking indication of our business because it demonstrates what kind of revenue you can expect going forward. Our current RPO grew 35 percent in the quarter. We feel very good about the outlook and future of our business. We raised guidance for the full year, both on revenue and billings. We see a lot of opportunity and we have a lot of strong momentum. We are focused on building those customer relationships that drive that growth.
Mobile Is Finally Coming To the Enterprise, Says ServiceNow CEO John Donahoe
“Every company is going through a massive digital customer transformation,” says SalesforceCEO Marc Benioff. “When you see this transformation happening it’s just incredible to watch. I mean this is as big as Y2K was for the tech industry. Every company is going through it. Every one of these major transformations is exactly that, it begins and ends with the customer.”
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses their blowout earnings quarter and how the massive digital customer transformation is driving their growth in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Massive Digital Customer Transformation
Every customer is going through a massive digital customer transformation. When you see this transformation happening it’s just incredible to watch. I mean this is as big as Y2K was for the tech industry. Every company is going through it. Every one of these major transformations is exactly that, it begins and ends with the customer.
The federal government was one of the most exciting things that happened in the quarter. It wasn’t just the USDA. It was also the Department of Education and the Department of Interior. It was many departments actually. They’re going through a huge digital transformation in the U.S. federal government and Salesforce has been able to offer many of those agencies is the rapid successful digital transformation that they need. We even had a 10,000 person event in Washington, D.C. during the quarter. That continues to be a fantastic growth area for us.
We’re number one in CRM which is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. Every company in every industry and every government is recreating themselves with their customer. This is what’s driving our growth. It’s pure and simple.
Mark Benioff added these comments during the earnings call:
Every Digital Transformation Begins and Ends With the Customer
Just last month, IDC Worldwide Software Tracker ranked Salesforce the number one CRM for the sixth year in a row. And I’ll tell you that is more important than ever, especially so many of our customers are going through these tremendous digital transformations. We all know every digital transformation begins and ends with the customer. And when I’m with these CEOs all over the world, this is really front and center in their mind. It’s probably as exciting to them and it’s important to them as it was to CIOs, who are buying for Y2K, which is almost 20 years ago. I think the digital transformation remains just a huge growth opportunity for our entire industry.
Still In the Early Days of the Digital Transformation
Well, there are many, many companies in the very early days. In fact, if you talk to one of our largest consulting partners, they’ll tell you less than 20% of their strategic customers have been engaged in the digital transformation, but there’s a lot of room for them in the marketplace.
So, we have an opportunity here again around this digital transformation and one of the beauties of a product like Trailhead and My Trailhead is helping these companies through their transformation and scale them up with modern technology because the modern worker has to have modern skills. And that’s what Trailhead and My Trailhead really provide the customers. So we really are coming out with an amazing innovation at the right time to satisfy the needs of these customers
Every Digital Transformation Begins and Ends With the Customer, Says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
IBM announced it has added artificial intelligence (AI) to its TRIRIGA facilities management solution.
TRIRIGA is an integration workplace management system, that helps customers manage their workspace and facilities. By utilizing existing real estate to its maximum potential, companies can reduce waste and save money on operating cost and real estate purchases.
According to the press release, “the new TRIRIGA Assistant, a smart, conversational AI tool which uses natural language processing to help users quickly and easily engage with the spaces around them. TRIRIGA Assistant can help remove the hassle of coordinating with colleagues to schedule and reserve conference rooms, submit service requests such as lighting and catering, or locate a colleague’s assigned workspace.”
IBM sees workplace management as a critical part of a company’s efforts, one that can improve workflows, boost productivity, cut costs and improve bottom lines.
“Employees and real estate are key elements to organizational growth and development, driving companies to create cost-effective and engaging workplaces that help attract and retain top talent,” said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., general manager, AI Applications, IBM. “The implementation of TRIRIGA with embedded AI provides corporations and facility managers with insights into how they can more effectively utilize space across their enterprise. This technology can help companies address the growing expectations of today’s modern workforce and achieve better business results.”
TLA, TOS, GAAP, SEO, GDPR, CCPA, NTP, RTM—the acronyms in business are endless. Now Microsoft Search is making it easier for employees to find out what their companies’ acronyms means, according to a company blog post.
Microsoft Search is an enterprise feature the company rolled out across Office 365 in 2018. Today Microsoft announced the Acronyms feature, which “helps users navigate their company’s often-confusing alphabet soup.”
The feature will pull data from public sources using Bing, as well as include any custom definitions the company uses internally. The feature is “smart enough to pick out definitions for your search terms appearing on the company’s internal sites, in documents, Teams and SharePoint sites, Yammer channels, and so on. Microsoft Search ensures that the privacy and security of the mined data is maintained. You only see Acronyms mined from data that you have access to.”
The blog post details how system admins can start using the Acronym feature. In the meantime, this is one of those small, quality-of-life improvements that, while not revolutionary, should still improve efficiency and reduce frustration.
“When people look at what’s happening with Amazon trying to get into their businesses, the need to transform is also front and center for every c-level executive,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “Given that Adobe’s been through our own transformation and has software they want to hear from us and they want to experience that same benefit that we have been able to see.”
When we talk about helping businesses transform we do every aspect of it. We help them create that experience and help them understand how to attract customers. That last mile of transacting with customers is so critical. Adobe was a company that actually innovated tremendously but we had a two-tier distribution channel. We have two businesses. We have the creative business and we have the enterprise business. If you look at what we’ve been able to accomplish in the long run and the two tailwinds that we have, we continue to be really optimistic about Adobe’s prospects.
When we completely moved to the cloud we recognized that every other company would go through what we did. Namely, how do you engage with your customers digitally? Do you understand how to acquire them and how do they use your software? I think sharing our learnings with other people gives us incredible credibility in the enterprise and we learn from these customers.
Creating a Real-Time Customer Profile is So Critical
In enterprise software, this third generation, which is all about customer experience management, I think it’s the companies who recognize that you have to partner with an entire ecosystem to create this real-time customer profile that’s absolutely so critical. That’s why our partnerships, whether they be with ServiceNow or Microsoft or the other cloud kings is so critical in enabling our customers to completely transform themselves.
What we have been able to do is create this real-time customer profile. People are really within an enterprise saying how do I create native applications? ServiceNow is clearly the leader in IT Service Management. What John (Donahoe) has done is truly special. I think partnering with them to enable IT professionals within an enterprise to use Adobe’s Customer Experience Management with ServiceNow’s IT Service Management, that was a natural.
The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive
Design and creativity have never been more important. Everything has a screen. So people are creating content, whether that’s a car, whether that’s a retail experience, whether it’s a basketball stadium. Adobe is the content provider that enables all of these screens to be delivered with incredible content. Given design is more important and given mobile devices are in every single place, that’s a tremendous tailwind.
Secondly, when people look at what’s happening with Amazon trying to get into their businesses, the need to transform is also front and center for every c-level executive. Given that Adobe’s been through our own transformation and has software they want to hear from us and they want to experience that same benefit that we have been able to see.
I’ve talked about how video is explosive. II think what Disney is doing both with their own service as well as with more control of Hulu is really saying people are consuming more and more content digitally. So providing the analytics for that, providing the digital rights management for that, the right ability to audience segment in terms of who you are attracting, a lot of that is what Adobe powers. This is not just for Disney but for frankly all the major media companies in the world.
Adobe Powering Big CPG Companies Through a Digital Transformation
The big CPG companies are going through the following question. They have sometimes hundreds of millions or billions of people using their products and they just don’t necessarily know who they are. Giving them that insight into how they create this incredible customer database, how they understand usage patterns, and how they understand what these people want. If we can provide that insight to companies then all the CPG companies can recognize that this direct relationship will enable them to innovate at a faster pace.
For example, what Unilever is trying to do is really say we have this tremendous distribution network but what they’ve tried to do even with Dollar Shave Club is really say, “How do we create an incredible customer database?” But the same thing is happening across Colgate or Procter & Gamble. We are partnering very heavily with Unilever as they embark on this digital transformation and understanding customer patterns and customer sentiments across the world.
The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive, Says Adobe CEO
Fresh off of winning the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI contract, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is expecting a “halo effect,” according to Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi.
“Halo effect” was a term used frequently in regard to Apple products, starting with the iPod. If customers liked the iPod enough, and were impressed with the Apple experience, it might entice them to purchase a Mac. That halo effect has since expanded to iPhones, iPads and Watches. Microsoft is now in a position to generate a halo effect of its own in the cloud market.
While Windows may be the dominant player in the desktop market, it’s a distant second in the cloud arena, with 15.5% compared with AWS’ 47.8% market share. A significant deal—not to mention Microsoft’s recent Impact Level 6 Pentagon security certification—could entice other government agencies to invest in the software giant for their cloud needs, creating an ever-expanding halo effect. Nadella believes the JEDI contract could do just that, but also emphasized the need to stay grounded and not become overly confident.
“Any big deal has a halo effect,” Nadella told Sozzi in an exclusive interview. “But to me, the most important thing is not to take any deal you won as some guarantee for future success but to stay humble, stay grounded on what we need to continue to do, which is be obsessed about customer needs. That’s what got us here.”
After years of convincing customers they should rent server space and computing power, Amazon is in the business of selling rack servers. It’s a major shift in strategy for the company, as it bows to market realities and embraces a hybrid approach.
Hybrid cloud options contain a mixture of onsite and cloud servers, giving customers options and flexibility that one alone would not provide. In an effort to stay ahead of Google and Microsoft, Amazon is embracing the idea.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced AWS Outposts at the AWS re:Invent 2019 conference.
“Over the past several years, AWS has delivered services like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), AWS Direct Connect, and Amazon Storage Gateway to make it easier for customers who want to run their on-premises datacenters alongside AWS. In 2017, AWS collaborated with VMware to introduce VMware Cloud on AWS, giving the vast majority of companies who are virtualized on VMware the ability to use the same on-premises VMware tools that they had been using for years to manage their infrastructure on AWS. Still, some customers have certain workloads that will likely need to remain on-premises for several years such as applications that are latency sensitive and need to be in close proximity to on-premises assets. These customers would like to be able to run AWS compute and storage on-premises, and also easily and seamlessly integrate these on-premises workloads with the rest of their applications in the AWS Cloud. Early attempts by other vendors have fallen short – unable to provide the ability to use the same APIs, the same tools, the same hardware, and the same functionality across on-premises and the cloud, therefore unable to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience to customers.
“AWS Outposts solves these challenges by delivering racks of AWS compute and storage, with the ability to run services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) on this AWS-designed infrastructure. AWS Outposts will initially come in two variants:
For customers who want to use the same VMware control plane and APIs they’ve been using to run their infrastructure, they will be able to run VMware Cloud on AWS locally on AWS Outposts. This variant, called VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, delivers the entire VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) – compute, storage, and networking infrastructure – to run on-premises and managed as a Service from the same console as VMware Cloud on AWS, using AWS Outposts and enables customers to take advantage of the ease of management and integration with AWS services that they enjoy today.
For customers who prefer the same exact APIs and control plane they’re used to running in AWS’s cloud, but on-premises, they can use the AWS native variant of AWS Outposts. These customers will have the opportunity to run other software with native AWS Outposts, starting with a new integrated offering from VMware called VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, which will feature popular VMware technologies and services that work across VMware and Amazon EC2 environments, like NSX (to help bridge AWS Outposts to local data center networks), VMware AppDefense (to protect known good applications), and VMware vRealize Automation (for workload provisioning).
“In both cases, AWS will deliver the racks to customers, install them (if customers prefer), and handle all maintenance and replacement of racks. These AWS Outposts will be an extension of a customer’s Amazon VPC (in the closest AWS Region to each customer), and customers can seamlessly connect from their AWS Outposts to the rest of their applications in AWS or any other AWS service.”
Oracle’s October 2019 Critical Patch update contains 219 security patches across virtually all of Oracle’s product families.
The company strongly recommends all customers apply the Critical Patch Update immediately, as many breaches are a direct result of not applying security updates when they become available.
“Oracle continues to periodically receive reports of attempts to maliciously exploit vulnerabilities for which Oracle has already released security patches. In some instances, it has been reported that attackers have been successful because targeted customers had failed to apply available Oracle patches. Oracle therefore strongly recommends that customers remain on actively-supported versions and apply Critical Patch Update security patches without delay.
“This Critical Patch Update contains 219 new security patches across the product families listed below. Please note that an MOS note summarizing the content of this Critical Patch Update and other Oracle Software Security Assurance activities is located at October 2019 Critical Patch Update: Executive Summary and Analysis.”
For customers who have skipped previous updates and are concerned that the October 2019 update may not include a needed patch, Oracle recommends reviewing previous Critical Patch Update advisories to determine the best update path.
More information, including the specific products impacted, can be found here.
Lowe’s slogan is “do it right for less.” While that primarily applies to home repair and improvement, the company is also applying it to the world of software development.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Lowe’s is looking to retool its e-commerce solutions. The goal is to have 80% of the applications it uses be built internally by 2020. This will involve looking at their application portfolio and replacing commercial, off-the-shelf applications with custom replacements. This will involve hiring as many as 2,000 software engineers, data analysts and infrastructure specialists.
As Mark Driver, research vice president at Gartner, Inc. told the WSJ, “we’re in an age where people have their clothes custom fit. The same thing goes with software; it’s about gaining that advantage.”
This is just the latest move on the part of the home-improvement giant to modernize its IT infrastructure. Shortly after being hired as CIO, Seemantini Godbole told analysts and investors the retailer’s technology was “well behind leading retailers in terms of strategy, architecture, process maturity and capabilities.” Ms. Godbole helped unveiled a plan to invest $500 to $550 million per year through 2021, in an effort to modernize the retailer’s decade-old e-commerce system.
The announcement by Lowe’s is just the latest in a solid growth trend for the custom software development market, as companies increasingly turn to custom solutions to achieve tighter integration, better performance and lower cost.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says that Salesforce is now entering the fourth stage of computing, the pursuit of Single Source of Truth. The official name is Customer 360 Truth and it is a new set of capabilities that allow companies to connect, authenticate and govern customer data and identity across Salesforce. The goal is to provide a complete view and deeper understanding of every customer so that companies can deliver extremely personalized customer experiences.
Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses Customer 360 Truth at their annual Dreamforce conference with Jim Cramer of CNBC:
Single Source of Truth – A Computer Science Holy Grail
360 Truth is another amazing thing that we’re introducing here (at Dreamforce 2019) that has been the holy grail of computing. It’s what we call SSOT, the single source of truth. We’ve had three amazing waves of computing. They are stems of record, systems of engagement, and systems of intelligence including AI. We’re now entering the fourth stage of computing. It’s the pursuit of Single Source of Truth, and we’ve built that into our platform.
This is a computer science holy grail that we’ve been trying to put together for a long time. Now because we acquired MuleSoft and because we acquired Tableau we are closer to providing for our customers the Single Source of Truth for their customer information.
Enables Companies To Build a Single Source of Truth
The company describes Customer 360 Truth as a new set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships. They say it connects data from across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more to create a single, universal Salesforce ID for each customer.
All of a customer’s previous interactions and shared preferences are brought together to create a complete view so companies can better serve and even predict their needs, whether addressing a customer service problem, creating a personalized marketing journey, predicting the best sales opportunities or surfacing product recommendations.
Salesforce Launches Single Souce of Truth | Benioff: A Computer Science Holy Grail
From the Salesforce Press Release:
The Holy Grail of CRM: A Single Source of Truth
Nearly 70 percent of customers say they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints. However, organizational and technical complexity often gets in the way of meeting these expectations. Companies have legacy infrastructure and data silos, leading to fragmented data and fragile integrations between systems. Inconsistent methods for accessing, reconciling and activating customer data make it challenging for companies to deliver connected experiences across these systems. As a result, companies often have multiple usernames, email addresses, or purchase histories for the very same customer across different systems, and managing a customer’s consent and contact preferences across the business becomes harder as new data regulations come into play.
Having a source of truth—a single, trusted place that brings together all the customer data needed to deliver amazing experiences—has been the holy grail of CRM. Today Salesforce is delivering it.
Deliver a Trusted, Personalized Customer Relationship With Customer 360 Truth
Customer 360 Truth enhances data management across Salesforce apps and other systems, and provides instant access to consistent, reconciled customer data. Services include:
Customer 360 Data Manager: Delivers the ability to access, connect and resolve a customer’s data across Salesforce and other systems, using a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer. With a click-based user interface for app and data management, admins can easily establish trusted connections between data sources to prepare, match, reconcile and update the customer profile. The reconciled profile across apps enables employees to pull up relevant data at the time of need from any connected system, such as when a service agent may need to pull a list of past purchases from an order system to better assist in solving a problem.
Salesforce Identity for Customers: Removes friction from the login experience and enables a single, authenticated and secure relationship between a customer and all of a company’s websites, e-commerce stores, mobile apps and connected products. Instead of having separate logins and profiles that lead to disconnected experiences, customers now have one login across all of a company’s digital properties. Identity for Customers also elevates trust and compliance with a simple to use two-factor authentication. And it allows companies to obtain valuable customer insights with the ability to analyze engagement and usage with identity reporting and analytics.
Customer 360 Audiences: Builds unified customer profiles across known data such as email addresses and first party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs. It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn. Customer 360 Audiences goes beyond traditional customer data platform (CDP) capabilities and extends the power of CRM to connect customer interactions across various touchpoints — for example, a customer who was redirected from an email campaign onto the website through a service interaction — and make the profile data available in real-time to optimize the experience.
Privacy and Data Governance: Enables companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce. Companies can easily understand what types of data they have, what uses of data customers have approved and how best to interact with them. These capabilities can help customers address obligations from regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with respect to data governance and customer consent.
Introducing the Cloud Information Model
Salesforce Customer 360 Truth is powered by the Cloud Information Model (CIM), an open source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud applications. The publication of CIM is enabled by MuleSoft’s open source modeling technology, providing multiple file formats to make it easy to adopt CIM with varying applications. By easily integrating data in the cloud, developers can build new products that deliver connected and personalized customer experiences. CIM reduces the complexities of integrating data across cloud applications by providing standardized data interoperability guidelines to connect point-of-sale systems, digital marketing platforms, contact centers, CRM systems and more. Developers no longer need to spend months creating custom code. Instead, they can adopt and extend the CIM within days to create data lakes, generate analytics, train machine learning models, build a single view of the customer and more.
Unleash the Power of Customer 360 Truth with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Customer 360 Truth allows companies to connect siloed customer data sources to a single source of truth, across Salesforce apps or third-party data using MuleSoft. With MuleSoft Anypoint Platform™, organizations can easily build APIs that connect any application, data, or device to Customer 360 in an application network, creating a truly complete customer view.
At Dreamforce, MuleSoft also announced new innovations and learning modules, empowering anyone to become an Integration Trailblazer and create connected customer experiences.
Comments on the News
“Having a complete view of the customer is not a new idea, but it has been difficult to achieve. Companies have siloed data; disconnected apps; a complex, patchwork of sometimes incompatible services; and no way to connect it all,” said Patrick Stokes, EVP, Platform Shared Services, Salesforce. “Customer 360 Truth overcomes those challenges, creating a single source of truth that is the foundation for delivering smart, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint.”
“In order to truly succeed with delivering a great customer experience, you have to adopt an agile platform that fosters growth and supports constant innovation,” said Rick Fuson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Pacers Sports & Entertainment. “With the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, Pacers Sports & Entertainment has real-time visibility into all aspects of our business and can operate more efficiently across channels, increase per customer loyalty and drive innovation across the organization.”
“Connecting customer data and managing consent is more important than ever in light of changing customer expectations and increasing regulations,” said Alan Webber, Program Vice President for Digital Strategy and Customer Experience, IDC. “As a result, companies are prioritizing data unification in ways that will lead to more loyal and valuable customer relationships. Salesforce Customer 360 Truth will help companies break down data silos and deliver the experiences customers expect.”
Salesforce Customer 360
Customer 360 Truth is part of the Salesforce Customer 360, which includes industry-leading apps spanning sales, service, marketing and commerce, and across every customer touchpoint. The Customer 360 Platform is an underlying set of services and APIs including AI, blockchain, mobile, security, voice and other capabilities that allow companies to connect every customer, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation. Salesforce will power more than two trillion B2B and B2C transactions this year for more than 150,000 companies and millions of Trailblazers—those individuals and their organizations who are using Salesforce to drive innovation, grow their careers and transform their businesses.
“VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud,” says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen. “It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare.”
Sanjay Poonen, COO of VMWare, discusses the incredible growth of VMWare which is driven by their ability to connect companies to any and every cloud in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Software Is Defining Everything
We had a great quarter. You have to put the bigger picture in perspective. We’re in the golden age of software where software is defining everything. Software companies, in general, are doing well. What we have done as a company is focus on making the datacenter software-driven and we think there is a bright future there. We showed some examples of that in hyperconverged (HCI) and in software-defined networking (SDN).
We also showed some incredible momentum with our partnerships in the hybrid-cloud. Amazon is obviously first and preferred there. We announced a partnership with Azure. There is also the digital workspace which is all of the devices. We think our future is bright and we just have to keep executing. Our view is always the long-run.
In This Software Future We Are Not Tethered To One Company
I think there is a little bit of a misperception that we should nip in the bud (regarding correlating Dell’s earnings with VMWare). First off, VMWare’s business with Dell in these areas like hyperconverged, we’ve now surpassed companies like Nutanix who are number one in hyper-converged infrastructure, and in the digital workspace where we are partnering with Dell Laptops, those are going very well. We want Dell and VMWare to do well together. In the datacenter we work with Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo, etc. There is no one hardware player that is the majority of our business.
In cloud we work with AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, and IBM. You won’t find another company that has got as many hybrid-cloud partners. In the digital workspace, we work with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In this software future, we are not tethered to one company. We are optimized to Dell, we are not tethered to them. You need a software-based solution for any of these areas, the datacenter, the cloud, or the digital workspace during tough times and in good times.
It Is a Multi-Cloud World
You should think about applications like mobile homes. They’re going to move from the datacenter to the cloud on this freeway called VMWare. The mobile home could go to one cloud and may come back. VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud. We make the hardware datacenter look like Amazon. Now if you are an Amazon customer, and they have 30-35 percent market share, number one in the market for cloud, they are our preferred cloud partner, we can help customers. We have many customers who are adopting VMWare cloud in AWS.
For those customers who said we are not an Amazon shop, for example, we quoted Walmart in our earnings announcement, they are using Azure. They have an option now because we announced a partnership with Azure. There are some customers that are going to have some other clouds. It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare.
IBM is a great partner of VMWare. We love their services business. IBM Cloud has 2,000+ customers. We are going to partner really well with Ginni Rometty and the team. We compete with a small part of Red Hat’s business in containers. Over 80 percent of Red Hat’s business is Linux, a good part of their business which is OpenShift and JBoss, is not doing so well. The future of containers is a small part of the business. We can walk and chew gum. We can partner with IBM and compete with that small part of Red Hat and that’s our focus. We want a big tent at VMWare. We want to partner with as many people as possible and compete with as few people as possible.
Make Your Story Sesame Street Simple
First off, if you want to serve your customers well start by serving your employees. One of my professors at the Harvard Business School, Len Schlesinger, wrote an article and book on service profit chain. What he talked about is if you want to create shareholder value focus not just on customer satisfaction but satisfied employees. Hug your start. Take care of the best and brightest who come in there.
The second one is something that all of us can do which is make your story Sesame Street simple. All too often, I see product managers and account executives blabbering on with PowerPoints. Let’s tell the story just like you are telling the story to your mother or to your kids. Ironically, when you make things simple you’re going back to the basic principals of Steven Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People. It’s not that complicated. Have customer empathy.
It Is a Multi-Cloud World, Says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen
Microsoft has announced the commercial release of Desktop Analytics, a “cloud-connected service that integrates with System Center Configuration Manager.”
The software helps organizations “view into the endpoints, applications, and drivers” being managed. It also provides a way to “assess application and driver compatibility with the latest Windows feature updates and receive mitigation recommendations for known issues, as well as advanced insights for line of business apps.”
Desktop Analytics replaces Windows Analytics, which Microsoft has slated for end-of-life on January 31, 2020.
Microsoft says the commercial release of Desktop Analytics has the following new features and improvements:
“Since announcing the public preview of Desktop Analytics, we made a point to deliver new features on a regular basis. For example, in August we helped streamline the workflow by eliminating the need to manually evaluate applications (such as system components published by Microsoft) that are known to be compatible with new feature updates. Then, in September, we delivered on one of our most requested features: The ability for customers to migrate existing data from Windows Analytics Upgrade Readiness to Desktop Analytics during the onboarding process.
“In addition to these updates, the 1906 release of System Center Configuration Manager further integrated Desktop Analytics with phased deployments, which means you can automate your pilot and production deployments with the health insights from Desktop Analytics. Looking ahead, we’ll soon enable customers who have already onboarded to migrate their administrator data. And we’re constantly investing in longer-running service enhancements like performance and reliability improvements.”
Oracle is boosting its cloud efforts with an announcement that it is hiring some 2,000 new employees. While Amazon, Microsoft and, to some extent, Google have dominated the cloud market, Oracle sees ongoing opportunity to expand.
Oracle has been making moves to take on the leaders, including opening offices in Microsoft’s back yard. Even more surprising, earlier this year Oracle announced a cloud partnership with Microsoft, working to ensure their products work seamlessly across each other’s cloud platforms.
As Oracle continues its cloud expansion, the company is counting on the relative infancy of the market, along with the overall lack of penetration. In addition, Oracle is uniquely positioned to deliver the entire range of cloud service.
“Cloud is still in its early days with less than 20 percent penetration today, and enterprises are just beginning to use cloud for mission-critical workloads,” said Don Johnson, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Our aggressive hiring and growth plans are mapped to meet the needs of our customers, providing them reliability, high performance, and robust security as they continue to move to the cloud.”
Oracle currently operates 16 cloud regions globally, with 12 of those being added in the past year. The company plans to add an additional 20 regions by the end of 2020, no doubt with the help of the 2,000 additional hires. By focusing on adding more regions, Oracle stands to gain strong footholds in regional and niche markets that the Big Three haven’t wrapped up.
“Eleven countries or jurisdictions will have region pairs that facilitate enterprise-class, multi-region, disaster-recovery strategies to better support those customers who want to store their data in-country or in-region.
“Today, Oracle is the only company delivering a complete and integrated set of cloud services and building intelligence into every layer of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s growing talent base will ensure customers continue to benefit from best-in-class security, consistent high performance, simple predictable pricing, and the tools and expertise needed to bring enterprise workloads to cloud quickly and efficiently.
“In addition to rapid hiring, Oracle will make additional real estate investments to support the expanded Oracle Cloud Infrastructure workforce.”
At its Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft announced the release of Azure Arc, a tool designed to allow developers to deploy Azure programs to Amazon and Google clouds.
Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has taken a completely different approach to competitors. Rather than viewing other companies as the enemy and doing everything possible to keep users locked into the Windows ecosystem, the company has focused on making the best software possible and deploying it as widely as possible.
This approach has led to a renewed focus on Office for the Mac, industry-leading versions of the productivity suite for iOS and Android, not to mention the company reaching out to Linux developers for help in porting Edge. Now, as the cloud wars heat up, it appears Microsoft is taking that same all-embracing approach to competing cloud platforms. Azure Arc will not only help companies deploy their Azure programs, but also help them manage them regardless of where they are run from.
“Azure Arc enables Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure for unified management, governance and control across clouds, datacenters and edge. They look and feel just like Azure resources, and they provide unified auditing, compliance, and role-based access control across multiple environments and at scale.
“As a result, customers can modernize any infrastructure with cloud management and security protection. With cloud practices that work anywhere, Microsoft is delivering these resources, from cloud to datacenter to edge, and enabling cloud security anywhere.
“Millions of Azure resources are managed, governed, and secured daily by thousands of customers. With Azure Arc, customers can now take advantage of Azure’s robust cloud management experience for their own servers (Linux and Windows Server) and Kubernetes clusters by extending Azure management across environments. Customers can seamlessly inventory, organize, and govern their own resources at-scale through a consistent and unified experience through the Azure Portal.”
On the heels of news that Microsoft beat out Amazon for a lucrative defense contract, the Azure Arc announcement is further evidence the company is firing on all cylinders in its execution of Nadella’s strategy.
