The Hot Desk Pod Ep 29: IBM & Wimbledon, AWS Summit, Avaya’s CEO Change, Zoho Apptics

Disclaimer: This show is for information and entertainment purposes only. While we will discuss publicly traded companies on this show. The contents of this show should not be taken as investment advice.

Transcript:

Robert Kramer: Well, welcome to this week’s edition of Moor Insights & Strategy Hot Desk podcast. I guess we’re on episode 29. I’m Robert Kramer, joined by Melody Brue. We’re both VP and principal Analyst and Mel handles modern work in HCM and CX and a lot of other Xs and Os, and I handle ERP and enterprise data. So on the show we talk about all the tools and trends and trajectories and people and marketing technologies, enterprise apps, ERP, CRM, really glued it, holds it all together. We all know that is data and it’s also helped by AI obviously, but we’re going to be talking this week about a bunch of different things. Mel, you were at Wimbledon. I was at Amazon AWS Summit. We got a little bit to talk about with Avaya and then we’ve got to talk a little bit about Zoho and what’s coming up next.

But just as a quick disclaimer, this show is for information and entertainment purposes only. While we will discuss publicly traded companies on the show, its content should not be taken as an investment. So let’s get started. Wimbledon is one of those, we were talking before, is you get a chance to go to a Formula One or Super Bowl or World Series, the British Open or something special like that. Wimbledon I think is on that same page and we’ve been doing some things with IBM lately around sports technology and data. So you had the chance to actually be live on site at Wimbledon. From a personal and a business perspective, what did you think?

Melody Brue : It was fantastic. First of all, I’m wearing my Wimbledon hat. It has the Wimbledon logo there. Ralph Lauren is obviously a very big part of the… Always, with the Olympics with major sporting events, they always seem to find their way into all the cool merch. But let’s start from a personal perspective, it was so cool. I sort of expected it. I grew up playing tennis. I’ve always watched, I’ve always loved the game, but being there in person was so much more than I thought it would be. And I think that the advancements in the game, so we’ll talk about from a business perspective, the analytics and the data and the fan experiences, but just the advancements in the abilities of the game. I actually pointed out to Richard, who’s the analyst relations person there that when we were playing most tennis players were pretty slim, pretty not real super, super muscular. These players now are, they are so in shape, so I mean obviously you have to be in shape to play, but they’re very, I think bodybuilding is much bigger part of the sport than ever. I’m sure a lot of that comes from the data that they need to have a certain kind of muscular mass to be able to hit that hard. Some of the serves that I was seeing on center court and on number one court were going over a hundred miles an hour. I mean when you see that and the back and forth, it’s a different experience seeing it in person than on television. It’s just really incredible.

Also, all the things that you said were going to be amazing, the strawberries, the cups, the champagne, all the things. And of course I was lucky enough to be in the IBM suite where we had a view of all of the courts on one side and then we had tickets to go and watch matches on the number one court and center courts. I saw some really great matches, just had the full experience, it was really great. From a business perspective, also got to go into the broadcast center where everything is being broadcast from… You see all of the different views on the screen similar to what I got to do at the MLB center with Zoom a few months back. It’s just so cool to see the operations. When you see it all from afar, it’s like you assume there’s a lot that goes into it, but when you see it, the number of bays, the number of people who are there entering in the data, the amount of people and processes that go into operations for something that massive that’s being broadcast on a global stage, plus everything that they’re doing to feed into the Wimbledon app, which is obviously what IBM is behind, it was just really incredible beyond what you would expect to see. Really impressive.

Robert Kramer: Did you use the app at all while you were watching some of the matches? Did you run into anybody who said, “Hey, this app made me understand this a little bit better?”

Melody Brue : Yes.

Robert Kramer: I would think some of the matches might not be the top 20 that you would see.

Melody Brue : Yes.

Robert Kramer: So it could help from that perspective to follow, to understand. I think that that’s a new perspective to get that, what the app can do.

Melody Brue : It is. I mean, one, the app obviously is something that’s really great for people who aren’t able to attend, but while you’re there, it’s also very useful. One, you have your ticket on the app so you don’t have to fumble around with all of that. It gets you in and out of where the places you need to be, but also you can see what’s coming up next. If you hear cheers happening like three courts over, you can just check and see what’s going on over there. There’s something cool happening. You can kind of see like, “Okay, I’m going to go watch this match. I’m not really familiar with this player, I want to get a little bit of background.” And you have a whole rundown of where they’re from, what their age is, which by the way, these players are really young.

And you can then get up on with the Catch Me Up on the app of what has been happening since the match. So if you decide to switch, go to a different court, go watch something else, you can get caught up where they are, where they are in the game. I think it’s very useful. I also did speak to fans there who said it was very useful for them to get around. “Where do they want to go next? What do they want to do next?” Even finding things like concession stands and merchandise, which my hat, I got this, let me say this was a little gift, but it’s really lovely, this little jigger with a little tennis.

Robert Kramer: Lucky you. Oh my God, it’s cool.

Melody Brue: I did. And I didn’t tell you this before because it was a surprise, but I got your little baby Anna a little Wimbledon onesie.

Robert Kramer: Oh, that is so sweet of you. Thank you so much.

Melody Brue : With the strawberries on it.

Robert Kramer: Oh my God.

Melody Brue : That will be in the mail to her. It has the little Wimbledon emblem on it and everything. Yeah. So it was just really great and I did get that feedback from fans that they really love the app. Of course, anybody’s happy being at Wimbledon, but it’s overwhelming. There’s so much to see, so much to do. There’s crowds. The day that I was there, it was raining. The first weekend I guess it was all sunny and everybody was in their hats and sunglasses. But the day I was there it was raining, so there were some delays. It helps you figure out the delays and all of that. So I did get some really good feedback on the app. My personal couple little things of feedback is at a certain age, even with my glasses, I can’t see a lot of the small print. I would love to have the ability to kind of zoom in make it a little bigger, especially when there’s a little flag next to somebody’s name. I can’t tell what that flag is unless I click on it and see what it is because I’m halfway blind. So that’s just I think an accessibility thing though that IBM should probably take a look at. But it’s not as user-friendly to every single person. If you have kind of those… I shouldn’t call it that, it’s not an issue. It’s just a matter of life. Right. Unfortunately, I did get some feedback from a thirteen-year-old boy who was there and he said it was the best app in sports. Those were his words, and he just was so excited to be there. But said he had been using the app prior to getting tickets to Wimbledon and then…

Robert Kramer: It’s great. Just one thing, not to interrupt you, but we did a Game Time Tech, which is our sports technology podcast with Kevin Farrar who handles a lot of these engagements between Wimbledon and IBM, and he actually went through, and we should put this in the show notes, went through that link of how in depth and how far back they went to get that data. So I think that’s real neat.

Melody Brue : Yes.

Robert Kramer: We don’t have to cover it today, but-

Melody Brue : Yeah, from 1990. Yeah, it is linked in the show notes. So yeah, that was my week. And while I was there, sorry, I just don’t think it’s fair, but somebody’s got to do it, you were at the AWS Summit in New York.

Robert Kramer: So if my Wi-Fi is spotty, hold your hand up so I can stop and let it come back. There’s a storm going on here and God, it’s embarrassing when that happens. It was in New York and it was an analyst summit for one day and then customers the next day. They’re one of the many companies that is democratizing data and AI to give just a much better experience that this way that data and AI can be more used by all sorts of different people in the company and all types of companies, so it’s not exclusive to the technical.

But they went through the release. They’ve already had it, but I think they took it to a different level, different layers of their AI stack, which is powered by Amazon Q, which you’re familiar with is the top layer. Then they have the metal layer, which is the bedrock, and then they have the bottom layer, which is the infrastructure, which is things of their AI specific chips and their SageMaker. What they released was new apps. They released what’s called the AWS App Studio, which enables to create and deploy more enterprise apps where the Q apps is more for non-technical people. Then they release more fine-tuning models within Bedrock, which with Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku and they expanded data connections with things of the nature beyond their S3, which is Salesforce and a few other companies. What they also released, and Jason talked about this a lot, is these guardrails that help out with the hallucinations. And then they talked a lot about different things from a democratization standpoint of how better access and better costs, expanded governance.

But Jason and I spent some time, we went to Deloitte’s office and there’s a partnership with Deloitte and AWS to really have a kind of a… And by the way, it’s an accelerator program for generative AI, but it was 21 Jump Street. So we’re in downtown New York and you walk in, there’s a pool table, there’s a bar, there’s an open staircase, there’s couches, and I thought it was the coolest office. And when you have those offices, as everybody goes back to work, you want it to look kind of inspiring and it gives everybody a better homey look. But what they’re doing is they’re taking the technology from AWS, they’re taking the know-how and the influence on experience that Deloitte has, and they’re making these deployment fast-track development options with this accelerator program. So one of them that I really liked was that they showed us a healthcare one where they take unstructured data and structured data and they put it from a CFO perspective and healthcare perspective and what they’re going to be able to see, and that unstructured data is really important.

So you talked about, it’s really interesting, you talked about the players, their background, this is the same thing, but from a healthcare standpoint. Goes way back, it follows that patient all the way through and shows them everything that they’ve been doing their whole life. So the doctor, when he comes in, he has a dashboard of everything instead of what he just saw recently or she saw, I said CFO, but I meant more healthcare. They had a CFO dashboard that was more finance. And then they had what I really liked was a supply chain one. They can go and look at all the disruptions, take your ERP data, your SAS data, your SCM data, and put that to a different level where it’s object-oriented.

But as I conclude on my two cents on AWS, it still comes back down to the data strategies, comes back down to who owns that responsibility. And I did say that to the AWS folks and also had conversations with other ERP vendors at different conferences. They’re still working that out because they think wherever the data comes from has the responsibility, but the customer is still left in the middle. And so all these great things still come back down to that data component. And I think that’s going to be a big strategy for many of these companies as we go into next year. But it was a great trip. It was so hot there. Unbelievable. Jason and I walked maybe eight blocks to go to dinner, we’re sweating and you go home, you’re sweating. It’s just country’s just been hot. So I’m assuming the weather at Wimbledon was phenomenal. How was that?

Melody Brue : It was a little rainy while I was there, but when it cleared up, it was really nice. And I just want to clarify, when you say Jason, we’re talking about Jason Anderson-

Robert Kramer: Correct.

Melody Brue : … Who’s also an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy and he has been doing a podcast. He’s been on our podcast a couple of times, but he’s been doing kind of these one man monologue podcasts that are really great and we can link that because he had some really good things also to say about AWS Summit and kind of his opinions on that and kind of…

Robert Kramer: Yeah, really good point there. And Jason handles it a little bit more technical from a developer standpoint, which is a very good angle, and so we’d love to include that. But you have some news on Avaya and Zoho too.

Melody Brue : Yes. So I have to say I was a little bit surprised to hear this. Avaya has announced a leadership transition. So the current president and CEO Alan Masarek will be retiring at the end of the year. Patrick Dennis, who is the current board chair, will assume the role of CEO, and I think it’s an interim CEO role effective September 1st. So the company’s statement was that this is totally a transition based on their shared vision and it’s really like Avaya’s strategic direction for long-term growth. So when you hear about a CEO stepping down or any transition, which Alan’s been with the company I think under two years, you can always wonder, “Huh, what’s going on there?” But Alan did come out of retirement to take over at Avaya, and Avaya has been through a recapitalization since Masarek joined. He has done a phenomenal job with the turnaround at Avaya.

One, he’s a great leader and we always say, you can tell a whole lot about a company by the leadership team, and not only just Alan, but the team he put in place has really just done a great job with steering the ship, riding the ship. And that has been navigating a bankruptcy, that’s restructuring operations, refocusing the strategy. This has totally changed the company. I mean, now their increased profitability, stronger balance sheet, and I think that their investors are more confident than they’ve ever been. So I’ve been to recently both their analyst conference and then their Avaya Engage conference, which is their user conference. And there were so many things that they were showing at the conference that were showing the real commitment that they have to customer experience, which integrates a lot of employee experience, which of course I think is super, super important.

But they’ve also really shown this ecosystem driven growth that it’s not just because Avaya hasn’t always been, or at least in recent history, have been known for their innovation. And so now they’re getting to that, but they have a little bit of catching up to do. And so they’re not just doing that from their own hands. There’s acquisitions, there’s partnerships. They have strategic alliances with partners like Google. So they’re really doing a lot. And so for me, I just look at this and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, they’ve come so far with Alan at the helm that I think it’s just a major loss to have him go.”

At the same time over the past year and a half or so, I’ve gotten to know him well enough to know that he would not be leaving if he wasn’t completely confident in the ability of both Patrick Dennis and the rest of his team, ML Maco, who’s the chief revenue officer and chief experience officer, which I think is very interesting that you put revenue and experience together. Interesting. The engineering team, super strong, marketing team, super strong. So I think he has confidence in that team and this is an indication of that. But I will be sad to see him go, and I’m looking forward to getting to know Patrick Dennis and seeing where things go from there. But big news, I mean, that’s a little bit, I have to tell you, it’s a little bit of a shake-up.

Robert Kramer: It’s hard to keep the band together. I mean, it’s really hard.

Melody Brue : This team actually has worked together previously. And so that’s another thing where I think Alan just has a lot of confidence in this C-suite that he sort of patched together and that shows with this that he’s okay to say, “All right, he’s got a strong board, a strong C-suite, and a really great team, some new acquisitions that have really solidified both the team and came with some hires, like sort of an hire on the customer experience side, customer journey. So it shows to me that he feels confident in that so…

Robert Kramer: I think it sounds great. So Zoho has a new product, and maybe I’m new to see this, but in marketing we always deal with consumer behavior and that’s a huge component of marketing. Now they’re doing something similar with the application and the dynamics of the use of it and how it’s used. And then to take those analytics and then draw off that to improve it or to understand what parts are being used or not.

Melody Brue : Zoho. Yeah, Zoho introduced Zoho Apptics. I think we’ve talked about this before, that Zoho is such a kind of homegrown, organically grown company, and you almost have to kind of find the little nuggets of the innovation that they’re doing because, one, it’s so often, and two, they don’t do a ton of marketing. They don’t have to. They’ve just got this Zoholic, which is their user conference, the name of their user conference because they just have such this cult following. I was of, I would say, somewhat quietly introduced Zoho Apptics, but it caught my eye because I think it’s really interesting that they’re able to offer kind of insights into user behavior and application performance. So they’re tracking metrics like user engagement, session durations, crashes. So this really, I think, should make it easier for businesses to understand how applications are being used. One, I think that’s a really great thing to say like, “Well, this application isn’t really being used. Do we need it?”

Robert Kramer: Yeah, I agree.

Melody Brue : Or, “Is is something that can be combined?” I think developers are always building with the thought that, “This is the most needed thing and…”

Robert Kramer: Technology stacks have to be reduced for success and it has to happen and it’s part of the major problem that’s happening. So this is helping that direction, just like you’re saying.

Melody Brue : Yeah. So Apptics also has things like real-time monitoring and crash reporting, which you can get by subscribing to something else. But this is now built in for Zoho users. It is. There is a monthly charge, it’s quite, I don’t remember the exact price, but something like $13 a month. So it’s not a lot. But rather than having to have a separate app that monitors your app, this is part of your Zoho suite. But with that real-time monitoring and crash reporting, it allows businesses to address the problems that they need to address quickly. A lot of Zoho’s customers are kind of mid to medium-sized enterprise and some small businesses, and they actually have a new solution for solopreneurs, which we don’t have time to talk about today, but we’ll talk about coming up, but I think this is great. I think it’s a really valuable tool for companies that want to have a deeper understanding into their applications and to be able to improve the user experience across the board. So worth mentioning.

Robert Kramer: You can sunset modules as you go along because if modules aren’t being used, you sunset them and then you add some of those features that are being used in that module. If there’s a parchment to other ones. Exactly what you’re saying, it’s the evolution and it’s a component that’s helpful. So I agree.

Melody Brue : Yeah.

Robert Kramer: All right. So what’s coming up next for us? You go first.

Melody Brue: I think this is just the time of year I think everybody gets summer, we got a tiny little break from travel. But there’s a lot going on in the sports world, which we will have to steer everybody to the Game Time Tech podcast to talk about that because we will be talking about what’s going on at the MLB All-Star game.

Robert Kramer: Yeah.

Melody Brue : And also the Paris Olympics.

Robert Kramer: Yeah.

Melody Brue : I did make a quick stop on my way back from Wimbledon in Paris to check out what was happening there with all the pre-Olympic stuff. So you’re going to have to tune into Game Time Tech to talk about that. But over the next couple of weeks, other than all of the things that are happening in the sports world, I don’t have any big travel until we go to Oracle Cloud World, which is in the beginning of September. So nice time to be able to catch up on some research, some writing, and of course, I am always, in the summer, traveling for baseball tournaments. So sometimes you will see podcasts from a hotel, sometimes from a baseball field, but that’s part of life. And also why I love Game Time Tech so much because I live this stuff day in and day out. We’ll talk about T-Mobile and what they’re doing in Arlington for all of the upcoming big sporting events that are happening there, not just MLB. But I know from experience that connectivity on fields is a problem, one that T-Mobile is trying to address.

Robert Kramer: I have that going on right now, so I apologize getting my Wi-Fi in orders today. But same as you, we have some stuff going on with Game Time Tech and upcoming, potentially being at Snapdragon Stadium with Manchester United. We have Cloud World coming up, as you said, and then the summer’s a little bit slow because we’ve been busy all year, but we’ll be hitting it hard in the fall with that. Oracle, as you said, I have Salesforce, I have Infor, a bunch of other ones, Cisco and IBM again, and Microsoft and AWS. So we’re going to hit the gamut. But I do have a lot of research going on around manufacturing and ERP and supply chain, so look for some great articles coming out, my insights on what modern ERP is and how it affects those manufacturers and other industries.

Melody Brue : Yeah, I wouldn’t say that the summer is slow. I would just say it’s slow for travel.

Robert Kramer: Well said.

Melody Brue : Correct you on that because we are not-

Robert Kramer: Thank you.

Melody Brue : Not slow.

Robert Kramer: Chance to catch up.

Melody Brue : Yes, exactly. Well, this was great. Thank you to everybody who has joined. Please leave us some feedback, you know where to find us on Twitter. If you like what you saw, please hit the subscribe button. Make sure to tune in next time and make sure to tune in for the Game Time Tech podcast. We will be doing one later today with Anshel Sag, who is one of our very favorite special guests, especially when it comes… He’s a big sports fan, but also all the 5G, all the connectivity stuff, he’s our guy. And thanks for joining us and we will see you next time.

Robert Kramer: Thank you.

Melody Brue

Analyst in Residence | + posts

Mel Brue is vice president and principal analyst covering modern work and financial services. Mel has more than 25 years of real tech industry experience in marketing, business development, and communications across various disciplines, both in-house and at agencies, with companies ranging from start-ups to global brands. She has built a unique specialty working in technology and highly regulated spaces, such as mobile payments and finance, gaming, automotive, wine and spirits, and mobile content, ensuring initiatives address the needs of customers, employees, lobbyists and legislators, as well as shareholders.

Robert Kramer

VP & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy | + posts

Robert Kramer is vice president and principal analyst covering enterprise data, including data management, databases, data lakes, data observability, data analytics, and data protection. Robert has over 30 years of proven experience with startups, IT companies, global marketing, detailed strategies, business modeling, and planning, working with enterprise companies, GTM assets, management, and execution.

Patrick Moorhead

Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst | + posts

Patrick Moorhead is the founder, CEO, and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. His big-picture view of technology is grounded in more than 20 years as an executive leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing functions at NCR, AT&T, Compaq, and AMD. He has shared his expertise in areas from silicon to infrastructure to enterprise SaaS and everything in-between in thousands of national broadcast appearances (CNBC, Yahoo Finance), articles (Forbes, CIO), research-based analyses, and podcast episodes. Today, he has 100+ CXO-level advisory clients and is often ranked the #1 technology industry analyst by ARInsights.