R "Ray" Wang
R "Ray" Wang
Research Report: Inside Constellation's 2021 Enterprise Awards
A YEAR THAT HAS LED TO THE GREAT REFACTORING
Despite the chaotic pandemic environment, 2021 was an amazing year for enterprise tech IPO's, product launches, and new technologies. CXO's were given the budgets to refactor their business models, add additional talent, and invest towards a digital future. Amidst this backdrop, enterprises changed how they worked, what they sold, how they monetized, why they existed, and who they worked with. The underpinnings of what is known as the "Great Refactoring" began in 2021 and will fully emerge into 2022 and beyond..
The technology vendors named into this year's Enterprise Awards have show how they can partner with clients to be successful, show resiliency despite the harshest selling environments, and innovate despite the constraints placed on their businesses. It's with pleasure to announce the 2021 Constellation Enterprise Award winners.
The field of cognitive automation continues to grow. Auditoria.AI applies intelligent SmartBots to automate manual, error prone, and time-consuming finance processes for accounts payables and accounts receivables. Using AI, Auditoria works with ERP systems, accounting platforms, and other financial systems of record. Partnerships with Bill.com, Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Workday, and collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have put Auditoria on the map for back office cognitive automation. In addition, Auditoria was a winner of Constellation's 2021 The Pitch awards. [R Wang]
Horizon3.ai is one of the winners of Constellation's 2021 The Pitch awards. The startup provides Red Teaming services that simulate a cyber security attack. Their penetration testing platform, NodeZero, constantly assess an organization's attack surface. From harvested credentials, misconfigurations, dangerous product defaults, and exploitable vulnerabilities to compromise your systems and data, Horizion3.ai's use of knowledge graph analycis and adaptive attack algorithms work to identify vulnerabilites . . Our core innovation is the use of knowledge graph analytics combined with adaptive attack algorithms. From a fresh round of investment to growing awareness in the market place among CISO's, this Autonomous Security Platform is gaining mindshare among the security elite. [R Wang]
Mastering data is the foundation of digital transformation. Varada provides customers with a dynamic and adaptive big data indexing solution. The proliferation of data requires the ability to run any query including ad hoc, experimental analytics and vast discovery projects. Varada has emerged as a critical solution for organizations building digital proficiency and competing on decision velocity. As one of the 2021 The Pitch award winners for data to decisions, Varada is a stand out solution. [R Wang]
Traditional IT vendors have often failed and few have excelled in the cloud era. Oracle is one remarkable exception and with solid execution in 2021. This success spans the spectrum of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, Oracle even managed to change their cloud rankings at a reputable analyst firm. This type of improvement has not happened in over a decade. Across the major cloud vendors, Oracle has the most enterprise IT friendly cloud, and plans to match market leader AWS in 2022 in terms of locations and regions offered. Locations matter for cloud due to data residency and performance requirements. On the PaaS side Oracle has advanced its autonomous vision, which surprisingly remains un-answered but almost the entirety of the competition. Larry Ellison's vision of the "chip to click" stack materlalizes in no place better than Oracle Exadata and its various offerings. Interestingly, Oracle is gaining a second revenue stream for databases, with a number of smart, code based innovations around its mySQL offering with HeatWave. Finally Oracle has been in a strong position on the SaaS side for years, but has managed to improve breadth and depth of its enterprise suite offerings, once again. At the moment there is no more complete and functional rich enterprise automation suite than Oracle Fusion. Customers hope Oracle does not rest on in its laurels. With the largest planned acquisition in its history - Cerner, this would cements its offerings in the largest vertical of the US economy and guarantee future revenue streams while locking out competitors from this key vertical. [Holger Mueller]
CEO Bill McDermott and team continue to add great talent to the team, expand offerings, and make key AI acquisitions required for future growth. This has led to strong quarter to quarter revenue growth and a $115 billion market cap with admission to the Fortune 50 club. Acquisitions this year include tuck-ins with DotWalk, Intellibot, Lightstep, Gekkobrain, Mapwise, and Swarm64. Significant partnerships with 3Clogic, Celonis and Microsoft highlight a more alliance friendly approach. System integrators are clamoring to poach and hire Servicenow talent. [R Wang]
Accenture and CEO Julie Sweet pulled out all the stops to lead the market with significant revenue growth and strategic partnerships. The Q1 2022 numbers showed a $3.21 billion increase YoY from Q1 2021 or 27% increase. These numbers reflected both growth in outsourcing revenues and consulting revenues. The firm's 360° value approach paid off with 20% or more growth in all regions and service lines. Key cloud partnerships and strong hires led to a 58% increase in stock price for 2021. As clients continue to deploy digital transformation projects, Accenture has kept ahead with hiring of scarce skills and preparation for new business models in the Great Refactoring. [R Wang]
Wipro is in the midst of a major turnaround. CEO,Thierry Delaporte has made significant hires to the management team including a new CRO, a new CEO of European Operations, and head of business development. The company has not been shy about entering new markets with acquisitions. In fact, 2021 was a busy year for acquisitions including Capco, Ampion, Edgile, and Leanswift. The investment of $1 billion into cloud transformation with the Fullstride offering has been well received. Most imporantly in 2021, Constellation witnessed Wipro undergoing a massive cultural shift and making the right moves for the future. [R Wang]
With this acquisition, Oracle will breathe new life into Cerner. Customers hope Oracle puts Epic on alert for its abuse of market position and priciing and inject much needed competition in this market. [R Wang]
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The financials of the deal are almost certainly good for Okta, whose revenues in their last few years from their customer identity product has grown to 25% of total revenues from almost nothing. However, many have asked why would Okta pay $6.5 billion in stock for a company that basically provides some authentication APIs, esssentially not that much more than the sign-up forms with social networking support that you see on popular Web sites. Most likely Auth0's $200 million in annual recurring revenue had something to do with it. However, the reason this deal isn't a good one is because of Okta's poor reputation for being developer friendly. Auth0 has real credibilitiy in the tech industry, while Okta is much more oriented around enterprise IT and response by developers to this acquisition has been notably poor. It's likely going to leave a lot of existing customers unhappy and ready to defect to the next upcoming provider, while bolstering Okta's bottom line less than they hope. [Dion Hinchcliffe]
The Ford Motor Company and Google announced a six-year extensive business and technology partnership. Ford's VP of Strategy, David McClelland clarified that Ford chose Google for leadership in AI and ML, robustness of the Android operating system, strength of Google Assistant for voice technology, and mapping and navigation technology. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud noted that Google and Ford will build a co-creation digital transformation team focused on manufacturing, purchasing, and factory floor modernization. Other potential opportunities include new retail experiences, new ownership offers based on connected vehicle data, and other product development modernization efforts involving AI and data. Ford was clear that Google was the preferred cloud vendor and other partnerships with Amazon for Alexa and Apple for Car Play would remain as choices for customers. This partnership with Google benefits Ford by allowing our employees to harness the power of data in smarter and innovative ways. Customers will get better and smarter in-vehicle experiences. Given what's been publicly discussed by Google and Ford, this is the beginning of many such Data Driven Digital Network partnerships by Google in each strategic industry. One can expect to see more of these as industries collapsed around value chains and tech partnerships around data and AI improve the competitive landscape. While every cloud vendor will be a strategic partner, the real question is which industry leaders will build, partner, or be punished in a world of digital giants. [R Wang]
After the unfortunate and early passing of Mark Hurd, Saffra Catz was given the sole CEO role and has delivered. Amongst the few IT vendors being the trusted partners of CIOs and CTOs, Oracle is the strongest and most relevant provider of technology. The combination of Ellison and Catz forms one of the very few 20+year partnerships at the highest executive level and they understand each - blindly. The division of labor is clear - Ellison does technology and Catz the 'rest'. But for the technology to work, the rest needs to work as well, making sure that sales and marketing work, making sure consulting services and partners deliver and that support keeps customers in good shape. That all will growing the cloud business of Oracle, even recently climbing on the #3 stop according to a prominent analyst firm. The Cerner acquisition is Catz's boldest move, and if cleared and successful, will mark as the biggest move that Oracle has done in its history - so Catz has the company in its reins during the most transformative time in IT -having successfully evolved Oracle from 'still relevant' to 'relevant' and into growth mode.
Much hype has been made about the Metaverse. However, very few organizations have fully grasped the impact that the metaverse will have on experiences and engagement inside the enterprise. More than just gaming worlds or hardware devices, the metaverse economy brings new opportunities for enterprises to bring their physical presence and 3-D digital presences together in one unified offering to their stakeholders – customers, employees, partners, and suppliers.
Constellation predicts that advances in the metaverse economy will provide a critical element of the “Great Refactoring” ahead and a $15 trillion market by 2030. [R Wang]
As the story goes, Freshworks started after CEO Girish Mathrubootham struggled through a nightmarish service experience with a broken television. Originally founded in Chennai, India, now based in San Mateo, CA, Freshworks went public with a valuation of $12 billion making it the first Indian SaaS company to be listed on the NASDAQ. Freshworks focuses on the experience side of software, looking to deliver customer and employee experiences with an emphasis on sales and support, IT services management, and call center software on the cloud. Unlike some competitors that have sought to glamorize the allure of experiences, Freshworks has focused on a core belief that delivering experiences should be as simple as actually experiencing them. This has led to simplified pricing models and streamlined product offerings. What makes the Freshworks IPO especially interesting is the emergence of a new, more service-born and customer-focused CRM and engagement player to take on platforms like Salesforce. [Liz Miller / R Wang]
The rapidly growing category of digital adoption platforms (DAPs) -- tools that help companies and workers get more from the IT systems and applications they use -- had a major proof point in the IPO of WalkMe last June. The firm is a leading Israeli-based SaaS company whose stock value has held overall even in the volatile markets, making what is arguably the category leaders a notable winner. WalkMe's code-free platform uses specially tuned algorithms to provide visibility to an organization's Chief Information Officer (CIO) and business leaders so they can then use the platform to better optimize business performance, by improving user experience, productivity and efficiency for employees and customers. While DAPs are still often flying under the radar in parts of the IT industry, WalkMe's debut has solidifying the category in the financial markets while also showing the category has legs in helping organizations strategically achieve higher returns from their IT and talent investments.
Sprinklr is one of the top tech companies in the New York City metropolitan area and its IPO will fund future tuck-in acquisitions and complete their vision to compete head on with Salesforce.com. [R Wang]
Qualtrics has brought a lot of value to shareholders and investors and in its current iteration has added some top talent including a new COO and Chief Revenue Ops leaders, Abhi Ingle from AT&T. [R Wang]
[R Wang]
UKG was faced with the challenge to merge two strong brands, Kronos and Ultmate Software. Coming up with the new acronym UKG for Ultimate Kronos Group and combining it with the new smiley logo, was one of the most daring branding moves in tech. But it worked off, not only did it rally customers and employees to the joint company, but through smart sponsoring of events and athletes, the brand has seen more exposure with HCM decision makers and users than much larger competitors in the space. [Holger Mueller]
Unit4 hosted a US based customer advisory event in Boston, Massachusetts. The event brought together HCM, Finance, IT, and operations professionals. On their first day, CEO, Mike Ettling kicked off the event with an inspiring keynote, featuring Mark Gallagher and Steve Cadigan, looking at the post-COVID future. Customers got a sneak peak into the new People Experience Suite and ERPx, Unit 4 also announced their acquisition news and Industry Mesh announcement along with customer awards.
