IBM is Building A Smart Digital Business Platform on the Cloud

IBM invited a group of analysts to New York for an update on their cloud strategy and the progress building their Digital Business Platform(DBP). The good news is that the technologies are coming together fast on the cloud. The bad news is that it isn't finished to a level of holistic business support yet, but the progress is showing. Like the digital journey itself, which is evolving as organizations learn, deliver and adjust, IBM is evolving their cloud platform while making portions usable now. IBM is doing the same for the business value built on top of it's cloud platform. While not complete yet, IBM was able to show significant progress and end use in a significant number of areas. IBMs' technical difference is that its platform scales, its global, its hybrid and it supports fast development through composition, hybrid languages and rapid method management.  IBM's business difference is delivering vertical solutions that are cognitively enabled on top of a "world class cloud" either by themselves or through close partners. IBM jammed almost two days worth of content into one day so we all drank from the fire hose. See IBM's general in charge, Robert LeBlanc, below along with IBM's target architecture chart.

There were a number of case studies, some presented by clients, showing the technical and business benefits of a dynamic scaling cloud platform, which is worthy of note in itself. However what differentiates IBM besides the technical platform is the leverage of cognitive components or services, which I like to call "cogs". Partners were able to demonstrate the value of cognitive assists in several business situations that delivered business results. IBM intends to show it's cognitive capabilities as it's advantage through making "cogs" consumable in their Bluemix development environment and by funding partners that can deliver vertical and horizontal cognitive solutions for clients digital journeys.  See a growing inventory of cogs in the image below: 

Noteworthy:

I was delighted with some of the vision on video content, IoT and cloud data management, but I was disappointed about not hearing more on their graph data base and digital transformation assistance. I wasn't clear on IBM's block chain stance, but they had a small "demo like" presentation. I think it's early though. We also had to chose one breakout session from a list of six great sessions. I hope to catch up on some of the sessions I had to miss because time constraints. 

Net; Net:

IBM is flexing it's cloud muscle now while it is growing and adapting. I'm hoping that the new approaches do not leave some of the early adopters behind. IBM is also starting to show it's cognitive prowess and I expect this to accelerate. What seems to be missing is a marketing name that catches fire in the market like IBMs competitors have done. To me it's always better to deliver the running architecture before the marketing, so I'm not as critical here. Make no mistake, IBM is not done delivering, but I like the results so far.
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Blog Activity for 2Q 2016

It's been a quarter of growth for a number of digital topics along with the consistent top topics of IoT, Analytics, Process and Digital Transformation related topics. Process Applications now leaped in the top tier of interest along with the Digital Maturity Model (DMM) and the Digital Business Platform (DBP). These topics have accelerated interest in the blog to the tune of 20K per month now.  Let's see if this is temporary or not. Traffic dropped of the chart from both China and Sweden. Traffic jumped quite a bit for France, Slovakia and Ireland.

 I just announced a new book and collaborated with the WFMC on "Best Practices for Knowledge Workers"                  You can buy either on Amazon .

                                                            TOP TIER TOPICS

                          

                                                      Topics on the Rise 

                                    Active Countries Other Than the US

Is Digital Transformation Better With Digital Identity?

While I find the definition of a digital identity cold and the idea of being known by some kind of serial number abhorrent, I question how effective the new digital world will be without some kind of verifiable and secure identity. I'd like to explore some of the benefits of having a digital identity for everyone and everything will help the digital age and transformation to it by following digital identity evolution over time.

The Wiki Definition is as Follows:

A digital identity is information on an entity used by computer systems to represent an external agent. That agent may be a person, organisation, application, or device. ISO/IEC 24760-1 defines identity as `set of attributes related to an entity'.

Source: ForgeRock 

Enabling "The Outside in" Customer Experience:

Imagine if there were preferences of all your customers known and available to all organizations. Assuming that the customer could control the level of intimacy, organizations could actually know enough to delight an individual customer. This would be an additional level of usefulness beyond just customer journey analysis and could lead to behavior analysis to help customers of all types cope and lead to delight in many circumstances and moods. 

Sensing State Through Things: 

If all sensors, controllers, software and software agents would have a unique and standard identification, they could talk to each other and collaborate on decisions and work to support people organizations and things. As digital identity evolves things could dynamically collaborate and bid on work itself in an intelligent way guided by policies, rules and constraints. 

Sensing Context Through Relationships: 

As organizations, people and machines interact in patterned relationships, beneficial outcomes and relationships can emerge into better practices mined from real interactions over time. Patterns of success and possibility can tracked through emerging relationships and rules and constraints could merge for optimal performance over time. 

Security of  Identities:

One of the most crucial corner stones of a digital identity is air tight security. The identity and associations must be kept save and be unhackable. For people bio-metric authentication seems to be gathering steam, but it might require several methods to be foolproof. 

Secure Exchange within Relationships:

The banking industry along with government bodies are working towards free exchange through secure means. At the moment, Blockchain  looks real promising for very secure exchange that is almost unhackable by the nature of the number of computer cycles it takes within a short time frame. 

Net; Net:

As much as it bothers me, it seems that digital identity is eventual with all of it's blessing and potential for risk. I just hope they don't implant us with chips like the government has suggested. For digital to be truly successful we will be a secure and rich digital identity. 

Art for 2Q 2016

This quarter was mostly about experimentation, so I tried a bunch of new things. If you like any of it, let me know. I completed three paintings. One was for my friends that celebrated Passover 2016 and the other two were my first attempts with liquid acrylic paints. They are quite different for me in that my usual works are done in oil or water color. I also tried some 3D fractals as well as some of my typical fractals. I hope a few of these please your eyes :)  If not, maybe my art web sites might appeal.  "Purple Royalty"  placed in Art Takes Times Square 2016.

Web Presence:

http://www.james-sinur.com/  & 

http://www.jimsinur.com/  & 

http://www.jamessinur.com/ 

                                          Rouge Rain

                                       Midnight Wonder 

                                                       

                                         Star of David 

                                             Cyclone

                                          Molten Planet

Purple Royalty 

Previous Quarters Pieces:

1Q 2016 click here 

4Q 2015 click here

3Q 2015 click here

2Q 2015 click here  

Digital Transformation for Game Changers Here Now

It matters not if view yourself a game changer or not this condensed book, that can be read in a long plane ride, is filled with helpful strategic and tactical gems for those that want to incrementally get to Digital.There is great confusion over what digital means and how to get there. This book is meant to help those about to be or on a digital journey now.  

                                            For more detail click here

                                               Click here to order. 

No, it's not another Hype Cycle!
It's the new, new normal.

We are in the early stages of the digital age and it is becoming clear that no organization or individual is going to come out the same. This means that organizations and individuals can act in several ways.  One can resist and fight the digital era with all their might. One can go with the flow and select those things that are good in the digital era and reject those that don’t seem to fit at the moment. The other approach is to creatively embrace this new age and really take advantage of it. Smart organizations and people will try to educate themselves --NOW-- on the changing face of the digital trend that looks to be a long journey. 

Like any journey, knowing where you want to end up and calculating the best path there is a best practice. The digital journey has a twist on the notion of best practice. You can only plane one leg of the journey at a time. What you learn in the first and subsequent legs will determine where you go next and where you ultimately end up. Digital Transformation is a different from the “fail fast and fail often” and the “static plan and manage” approaches in that it combines aspects of both. There are planned targets and paths, but the effort exercises innovation through experimentation along the way.

There will be risk, innovation and experimentation, but the stakes here are huge. Organizations and individuals that do nothing will face a slow and painful death. The suggestion here is not to “go off the rails,” but intelligently embrace the digital era in phased approach that is aimed at learning and adjusting. Organizations will be building for change with technologies that are optimized on controlled change. Organizations that embrace digital will dominate in their respective areas of operation and will be ready to respond to many emerging trends, economic, geopolitical and industry scenarios. This book helps organizations and people understand and start many dialogs about digital transformation.

Don’t Stop Believing.

    For more detail click here 

What are People Saying About the Book?

“This book is an illustration of its own message. It is not self-contained. It reaches out into the digital realm through hyperlinks and QR codes to draw the larger universe into its scope. In the digital universe everything is (potentially) connected.”
--Vint Cerf, Co-Inventor of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

“Don’t question why you were able to source such a bargain; just start reading and tell your fellow-travelers on the digital journey to do the same. You have nothing to lose but the analog chains that have bound you to previous ways of doing business!”
--Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College; Digital Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; Senior Advisor, Deloitte Analytics; Co-Founder, International Institute for Analytics

“Without digital transformation, your organization will be dead — one year, five years, a decade. Dead. (Test: If you’re now competing on price, you’re the walking dead). Why? Almost too many reasons to enumerate. That’s why you need to read this book.”
--Dr. Richard Welke, Georgia State University; Dir, Center for Process Innovation

“Take the time to digest this ‘short’ work - if you want to be a game changer for your enterprise. It gives you a guide to constructively destroy your IT architecture and transform it into a digital, dynamic infrastructure for doing business in the 21st century. And it avoids the past experience of too many well intentioned IT Architects from being the equivalent of kamikaze pilots as they embraced a technology without a clear organizational mandate.”
--Paul Hessinger, Chairman Emeritus InRule Technology; Principal C-Level Coach, Mentor and Researcher, Vision UnlimITed

“Fingar and Sinur tackle the most pressing topic on any executive's mind today -- how to respond to digital disruption with a profitable, growth-oriented transformation strategy. Connecting the dots across the most important trends of the digital era, from automation to IoT, the authors present both practical scenarios and actual case studies applicable to any initiative.”
--Nathaniel Palmer, BPM.com; Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition

“The current buzz phrase ‘digital transformation’ captures a movement that has completely transformed several industries -- entertainment (especially music), news, books. etc. But that was just the beginning: we'll see similar tremendous transformations in manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and every other field over the next twenty years. Though most sources seem to credit technological changes (like the Internet of Things), it's the focus on customer delight and outcomes that will drive the changes, relying on pervasive digital infrastructure. This book is a concise way to see how.”
--Dr. Richard Soley, MIT PhD, and CEO, Object Management Group (OMG)

“We see a recent shift in thinking from do you have a Digital Strategy? to Is your strategy Digital? This book will give organizations an excellent insight into executing essential digital strategy.”
--Frits Bussemaker, CIONET, Europe, and Global Industry Council Director, IFIP

“This is a hot topic, smartly packaged in a short book, with all the extra connective tissue only hinted at in the top 2015-2016 tweets about digital transformation.”
--Dr. Jim Spohrer, Director, Cognitive Systems Institute

“Disruption is in danger of usurping innovation as the next hyped management buzzword. Which is why this book is so valuable to business leaders as they try to guide their companies into the future, without destroying the present, and forgetting valuable lessons from their past. Jim and Peter have managed to walk the fine line between vision and ideas and practical implementation of those ideas. It gets you inspired to take action, but doesn't leave you there. It helps you understand HOW to take action. And finally through powerful case studies it shows that it is possible to disrupt and not die.”
--Ian Gotts - Founder & CEO - Q9Elements.com

Click here to order. 

Pegaworld 2016: It's a Benefits Buffet

Pegasystems has been strategic in leveraging it's Digital Business Platform (DBP) in many agility rich applications that are built for change and digital transformation. It's been very apparent, at the conference, that the focus has been on customer success stories. The number and the quality of these case studies has been impressive. It's clear that Pega wants to get the word out about it's ability to help customers and prospects enjoy benefits quickly while transforming to digital over time. To prove that point Pega brought Cisco and a panel Financial Organizations to the stage to give the results and practical advice. The wave of benefits started with Gilles Leyrat of Cisco contrasting the new digital world with the old world and explaining Cisco's experience.to date.

Cisco was able to remove over 2 million hours of wait time reduce the time to resolution hours while delivering millions in savings, This was a win all the way around. Cisco first simplified and consolidated the existing processes and applications. Part of this step made rules more explicit for future tuning.  Then they automated incrementally to get benefits flowing leading to next best action inline with the processes that directed work to the right person at the right time. Then analytics were applied to super charge the benefits by showing customers their own information and looking for opportunities to fine tune rules and flows.

Then a panel of executives discussed their digital journeys and told of the impact on their organizations, people and their approach to digital change. Each referred their progress on a journey to digital maturity. Alan Trefler then got on stage indicating that Industry 4.0 was going to extend the digital journey even further than we might anticipate. Alan and all the panel mention competencies and skills needed for digital and Industry 4.0,  Alan then called Alan Marcus from the World Economic Forum to discuss skill changes coming with digital transformation.

Gerald Chertavian of Year Up came to stage and talked about how they train and place under privileged youth into the digital skills gaps at the entry level. This was a heart warming story of young people that were given a chance at middle level jobs that are greatly needed for every digital journey. American Express and J.P. Morgan are satisfied beneficiaries of these motivated and trained youth. I can identify as I grew up in the inner city and had to fight my way to an education all by myself. These kids just need a chance!

I went to a number of case studies brimming with benefits, but my favorite was British Gas where they mapped out customer needs and journeys. The benefits for BG were a chance to get in early and please customers while anticipating aging equipment through IoT monitoring. BG is now ready for more digital expansion and benefits. 

Net; Net:

If any of the Pega participants walked away with benefit hunger, it's their own fault because the benefits were served up fresh, fast and in abundance. These benefits came from both the applications and the digital business platform that Pega offers. The highlights if day one are here.

Pegaworld 2016: Hitting on All Cylinders

The growth of the crowd over last year is impressive at over 20%. It should surprise anyone as Pega has over 420 solid clients including their original two clients. Pega continues to expand and desires to be 800M by the end of the year. A company that keeps expanding it's marketing opportunities while improving the product each year to the tune of 150M on R&D, is sure to grow nicely. The conference started out with a bang literally as we were entertained by a drums surrounded DJ Ravidrums who pounded down the hits one after the other. Then the real performer came to the stage.

Alan Trefler pounded his drum on it's all about the Customer and it's all about the Model. Taking care of both of these key digital participants will future-proof your organization. He now believes that by leveraging Pega, 98% of an application / process can be managed in a model which is far superior to dealing with code. In fact he believes that a good portion of that model can be managed and changed by business professionals and has the case studies to back him. A stable future for adaptable digital behavior will be enabled by the Pega layer cake approach that supports distributed behavior, outcome / goal driven behavior, an easy to use UX and constraints / guardrails. Combined with the strong analytic capabilities and next best action in Pega, this will allow applications, processes and cases to gather insight and apply appropriate actions while transforming in an evolutionary manner.

 Two interesting case studies were presented to prove the point. One on the evolution of healthcare driven by the Pega / Phillips partnership and Allianz's ability to handle bi-modal speeds. Jeroen Tas, of Phillips, dramatically described the kind of future healthcare possible with a new digital approach that move s from reactionary to proactive care. Also he shared how home care and device extensions on a cell phone could change to real time testing and predictive interventions. Phillips believes that Pega will allow and enable this radical transformation to the vision he painted.

Dr Brigit Konig, from Allianz, explained how they dealt with high performance back end systems with predictive customer situations and the agility to adapt. They again are looking to Pega to take a slow and deliberate organization to the digital future.

Kerim Akgonal then talked through Pegas rational for buying OpenSpan and applying robotic automation to legacy systems initially by talking through address changes across multiple legacy systems. OpenSpan has performance mining for other opportunities. Kerim then went through Pegas marketing and sales applications in light of  and making light of several Pega internal examples. It was a hoot as usual from Kerim.

I attended a breakout session on IoT realities that has assembled a panel of key organizations with significant IoT experience moderated by Bruce Williams of Pega. Represented were GM, the Transportation Management Center of New South Wales (Sydney) and Cisco. OnStar / GM talked about the kind of finite data that can be used in new ways now that cars were now network hot spots including real time measurement of performance that might indicate a need to service. Sydney traffic management was discussed in detail to deal with emerging traffic issues leveraging sensors, traffic and situations. Cisco talked about the importance of instrumenting the shop floor in new ways. All agreed that IoT leverage was in it's infancy and that IoT would reach into unexpected parts of organizations and peoples lives. .

The last session I attended was a walk around the technical pavilion where there were booths for partners, industries, and product components and future applications of UX and the IoT. It was expansive and crowded.

Net; Net:

Pega has significant momentum and was giving their customers reasons to believe Pega was powering it's way into the digital world with significant applied horsepower

New Digital Maturity Model Now Available

Most digital maturity models are aimed at the technologies used. While this is important, technology alone doesn't buy an organization digital maturity. There a many other aspects to digital maturity that are related to how organizations focus their energies. There is a strong emphasis on building skills and capabilities in the beginning along with innovation through experimentation. As organizations mature they need to be better at change management as a fair amount of fluid change emerges out of the digital capabilities. As organizations reach the higher levels of maturity, they can focus innovation and change on shifting goals, patterns and business scenarios

Why a Maturity Model is Priceless?

Remember when you were a kid?  You measured your height next to a door frame in your house and your parents would measure you each year. Now you look back on those marks with fondness. A maturity model sets those marks for you to reach and implies progress towards becoming more digital. This maturity model helps both business and technical professionals measure their progress and give them sign posts. Knowing you are heading the right way is certainly priceless when you are on a long journey. It's like an overarching map of progress.

Where Can You Get More Detail?

You can scour much research and search on google, but this is much too labor intensive. I tried this approach and really came up with little, so Aragon and I created one we thought would help. I would suggest you follow this link to the research note we created for participants in the digital journey. Further more I would attend a free webinar on June 24th at 10:00 AM PT and take advantage of the free inquiry that goes along with the free webinar.

For a Webinar on Digital Disruption and Maturity Link Here 

The Role Of Modeling in Digital Transformation

Will modeling play a role in digital transformation? My answer would be "yes". Organizations will likely use a business or a technology model to guide the digital journey. Just like maps help on a hike or long journey. For a planning organization these models will play a role in both understanding the current state and the several phased target states for the digital transformation. For a reactionary organization, mining of real activities will likely yield a model to study for change and improvement. Most organizations will likely employ both models before execution and after execution. These are the kind of models I have seen and continue to expect to see in the future:

For a more detailed interview with BPM Tips on these models please follow this link

Often Leveraged Today:

Existing  & Target Business Models

Existing & Target Technical Models

Existing & Target Process/Case Models

Existing & Target Decision Models


Really Needed Tomorrow:

All of the models today plus

Customer Journey Maps

Collaboration Models

Goal Models

Constraint Models

Compound Math Models

Compound Context Models

Pattern / Scenario Models

Blog Series on Modeling Referenced in the Interview:

Should We Model? Link here 

Modeling for Money! Link Here

Modeling Controversy Link Here

Net; Net:

Modeling and BPM will play a large role in digital even though the way we think of and use processes will evolve over the coming years. For an audio of  the future of  BPM and digital please link here