We are live for episode 30 of the Hot Desk Podcast with Melody Brue and Robert Kramer for a rundown of what’s up this week in enterprise apps, collab, and data security.
Watch the full episode here:
Listen to the audio here:
1:20 Zoho Solo
4:33 AI-Powered Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant
9:04 SAP RISE Accelerates Transformation Processes with AI
12:43 RingCentral and Vodafone Expand Partnership to Offer Contact Center Solution
16:56 Google to Enhance Security with Wiz
Zoho Solo
AI-Powered Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant
SAP RISE Accelerates Transformation Processes with AI
https://news.sap.com/2024/07/ai-available-rise-with-sap-commercial-packages/
RingCentral and Vodafone Expand Partnership to Offer Contact Center Solution
Google to Enhance Security with Wiz
https://news.crunchbase.com/cybersecurity/google-cybersecurity-startup-wiz-venture-unicorn
Security concerns AT&T, Rite-Aid – reassessing cybersecurity priorities
https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/att-cyberattack-snowflake-environment/721235/
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: Okay. Here we go. We’re live today. Welcome to this week’s edition of Moor Insights & Strategy Hot Desk Podcast. We’re on episode 30 now, which is fantastic. I’m Robert Kramer. I’m joined with Melody Brue, my co-host, and we’re both VP and principal analysts, and I handle ERP and enterprise data. Mel handles modern work and HCM and CX and a few other things. So we’ve got a great show ahead of us, Mel. How are you doing today?
Melody Brue: Good. Yeah. We got a lot of exciting things to talk about in lots of different categories. We’re all over the place. We’ve got enterprise apps, we’ve got communications, we’ve got UCAS, we got data security. We’re all over.
Robert Kramer: We’re all over. So we’re going to talk about tools, trends, trajectories, people, marketing technologies, apps, ERP, CRM, the glue that holds it all together, data. But just a quick disclaimer, this show is for information and entertainment purposes. We will discuss publicly traded companies on the show, but its contents should not be taken as investment advice. So I got it right that time. And it’s an exciting week. It’s summer, but we’re here and we got some great stuff to talk about. Like you said, let’s kick it off with yourself and talk a little bit about Zoho.
Melody Brue: Yeah. Actually, I think we teased this last week because we talked about that Zoho had a couple of new things that were happening, that app analytics that we talked about last week. And so I mentioned Zoho Solo. And Zoho Solo is somewhat new, not brand new, but a new all-in-one toolkit for solopreneurs and small businesses. It’s really to simplify business management, so consolidating various functions like client communication, project management, expense tracking, invoicing, but it’s all within a single app. So rather than having multiple apps and going all around or using spreadsheets, which is what a lot of people do for these functions. Just to kind streamline workflows.
So a couple of years back, Zoho introduced some services for small businesses to get started like creating their LLCs. And so there was a little bit of a focus on this creating your business, help streamline that process. I mean, Zoho has historically concentrated on small and medium businesses, and since then I feel like they’ve had, and you can tell me what you think about this from being at Zoholics this year, but there’s been a little bit of a bigger emphasis on a bigger enterprise client, medium size enterprise client. So I think this is an interesting strategic move for them to go after the solopreneur and small business with this kind of single application that then can grow into more. So if these businesses don’t grow into more, they’ve got this application that kind of is an all-in-one solution for them, but if they do grow into more, then they’re already Zoho customers. So it could be really just a move to attract new users who may eventually grow into the platform.
Robert Kramer: That’s a good point. I think a lot of these solo entrepreneurs are using a lot of manual types of packages and gets a chance to put them all together in one. And then like you said, to grow within the Zoho community of applications because of the fact that Zoho, I believe they have 55 different types of applications to allow those users to grow as they grow together. So I think that’s a big thing. And then once their data is inside Zoho, they’re probably not going to leave. So it gives a chance to represent the small businesses, which is somewhat their bread and butter, and then what they’re trying to get to, which is more the medium size deals or companies to work with Zoho, which is what we saw in Zoholics.
Melody Brue: Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Kramer: Okay. Okay. So we also have some news from Oracle as well.
Melody Brue: Yes. Yeah. Well, we’ve talked about this a few times that Oracle is really concentrating big on healthcare. And they introduced a… Wait. I lost it. Wait. Okay. There it is. I was like I was trying to put it up onto the thing. They introduced the AI-powered clinical digital assistant in the US. So it’s designed for the doctor/patient interactions. I don’t know if you were in the sessions when we were at the Oracle Analyst event, but they talked a little bit about this and they talked about how in some of these clinical environments, the AI performed better in bedside manner when tested against new graduates from medical school. So this I think, you really don’t want to be dealing with AI as your doctor, but what this does is it integrates with the Oracle Health electronic records, the EHRs. So the assistant allows the providers to access all of the patient information. So the AI is doing all the work in the background generating notes for the purpose of follow-ups during the appointments and everything. So it reduces all of that administrative burden on the physician so that they’re able to actually have the communication with the patient.
So in one of the demos that I saw, they’re able to actually just dictate and do this. So they’re not sitting behind a computer while they’re interfacing with their patient. And the AI is capturing, the AI system is capturing everything. So I don’t know if you’ve been to a doctor recently where they’re on their computer like this and they’re asking you questions and you’re over here. And of course they have to and you want them to have that data and you don’t want them to forget or they’re scribbling it down and just notoriously bad handwriting. I don’t know why. I don’t know if they train them on bad handwriting, but whenever you get a prescription written out, you can never read it. But I read some of the data from, or sort of the anecdotal stuff from the doctor saying that this is great. It allows them to really concentrate on those patient interactions. So maybe this will allow the AI not to be better at bedside manner than the doctors. So I think this is just one of many of these types of AI assistants that we’ll see that will help for physicians to not let AI be better than them.
Robert Kramer: I think it’s whatever can make the medical field better and more efficient for the patient. So when you walk in and then the doctor’s on the computer the whole time and doesn’t even know why you’re there and it’s trying to, he or she’s trying to find out. What if AI gave that doctor a chance to have a full dashboard, full medical history and drugs or trials or matching your symptoms towards what the remedy is ahead of time. So when they walk in, the diagnosis is quicker and the time to heal is also there too. I think that for some reason the doctors seem unprepared and I’m hoping this can prepare them better. I don’t know. I’m sure that’s not the case across the globe, but sometimes it’s my feeling. What do you think?
Melody Brue: Well, I think some of that lack of preparation is just the time between appointments. They’re so back to back. Often. So I think things like this Oracle AI assistant will give doctors more time back to spend with patients because it’s like here’s a quick summary of why this person’s here. And then they’re also spending, I think it was like 30% less time taking notes after an appointment. So it frees up more time for actual patient care. So that is a big factor in this, which is giving time for the actual care. All right. Well, I think the next one is pretty much, well, I’m going to say all you, but I guess I may have an opinion on it, but SAP RISE. We are accelerating transformation process with AI. Go for it.
Robert Kramer: Yeah. Some new things have happened. So recently SAP announced that Jewel AI, the copilot is going to be embedded throughout their entire platform. Now they’re taking it and moving it towards the RISE program to move forward faster, more better processes with the features and the capabilities of the transformation. So they have or they’ve had 25,000 companies that they were looking to move on the RISE program. I think they had 6,000 that actually did this. So far they have quite a bit left, so they transformed this to implement AI to help with the process to enhance the experience to better decisions. The business processes are improved. The financial plannings improved. One of the supplier network to actually to put that together a little bit better with AI. Their hope is to get as many as that 25,000 as they can get. But as we’ve talked about, and we’ve actually written some articles on SAP. It’s going to be hard for some companies that are on-prem to actually go full in the cloud. And some of this is going to be what SAP’s job is what they’re doing here is to make it easier for them to transform. What’s your thoughts on that?
Melody Brue: So this is the combination of Jewel and Copilot, Microsoft Copilot?
Robert Kramer: Yeah. Yeah. And embedding the AI features within the processes of the migrations of RISE to go from on-prem to cloud. And so that process is quite daunting and in some cases I think some approaches for these on-prem clients, they want to get the modernization of the ERP because a lot of these features, specifically the AI features and the ML features and a whole host of other ones are not going to necessarily be available on-prem. So what they’re going to be transitioning to at some time is a two-tiered approach, but they’ll have some of the main modules on-prem and then some of the secondary modules in the cloud, and they’ll run a two-tiered system where they can actually utilize some of these advanced features. But some of those companies, it’s a daunting task as we were talking about, once you load an ERP with data to move it to another system, that’s not the easiest thing, depending what the size of your company is, but it’s an ROI and it’s a company decision. But that this new approach was just released and it should help with the transformations that they’re seeking to get.
Melody Brue: Awesome.
Robert Kramer: Okay. So it’s a little technical in some cases. It’s one of those things where SAP is not the only ERP vendor that has these things among them. Oracle has similar, Microsoft has the same ones. So these are just the nature of the beast of ERP and where things are starting to modernize. And I’ve written a lot of articles of why modernizing ERP is important and it’s one of those things where they’re going to feel that being on-prem is not going to suffice for taking advantage of these fantastic features that are available. Okay. So let’s move on from that to Ring Central.
Melody Brue: Yeah. So Ring Central and Vodafone have partnered for a long time. They have a partnership in several different countries, but they have teamed up, and this was just announced yesterday on to expand their global communications offering. And they’re adding on their contact center solution to the existing suite, which is powered by RingCentral RingCX with their AI technology. So any Vodafone customers can now access the RingCentral Suite, a one-stop shop for all their communication needs and add their contact center to the UCAS solution.
So I think that they’re operating now in 30 different markets. Well, 30 different markets by 2025. And so it’s a big deal because it’s a lot of different markets-
Robert Kramer: It was a lot.
Melody Brue: … really making the solution truly global, but also incorporates the RingCX, which is that’s a big add-on to their contact center solution. So that’s it.
Robert Kramer: Pretty cool.
Melody Brue: It’s a big one. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody’s looking at contact centers as a really big kind of proof point of AI. And RingSense has gotten awards at Enterprise Connect, which is really the big industry event. They were awarded best in show or whatever the big award is for their RingCX. So as everybody’s looking towards contact center solutions and AI being a place where it’s truly operationalized already because between chatbots and summarization and everything, somewhere where it’s actually being used. It’s not just this concept and it’s within the product, it’s not a thing that’s on the side. Where you see a lot of AI use right now, it’s on the side and you can use it to ask questions, you can use it to query information. But with RingCX and with many other contact center solutions, it’s embedded within the solution. So I think a lot of eyes are on contact center and UCAS, in general, for actual use of AI. So I think this is an interesting expansion of their partnership, but also just another proof point of RingCX and the usage.
Robert Kramer: Well, that’s important that you said that because at the ground up, it was built in. So then it has access to probably deeper into the data elements to get better answers. Right?
Melody Brue: Right.
Robert Kramer: Those chat boxes are more successful when it’s embedded, like you just said at the bottom where it has the best access and more than normal. So that’s a really interesting point.
Melody Brue: And so many of these contact center solutions are getting smarter and smarter. Cisco has a solution where it’s actually self-teaching. It’s learning as it’s going. And so as agents type in the solution and what the resolution and how the interaction was resolved, the AI is learning from those resolutions. And so then when the next customer calls in, it’s now embedded into the AI that solution. It doesn’t have to go and be reprogrammed and retrained in the model. So the contact center solutions I think are really fascinating.
Robert Kramer: And now even more so…
Melody Brue: Other people are probably like, “Is it really that fascinating?” I think it’s fascinating. All right.
Robert Kramer: I think so too. All right.
Melody Brue: Really big it’s been in the news. Is a huge kind of topic. Google is talking about an acquisition of WIZ..
Robert Kramer: There’s so much going on in the security field that I feel like it’s not talked about a lot. And Google is looking to make an acquisition. I want to just back up just a second.
There seems to be a lot of security breaches lately and not necessarily just in the last couple of years, but specifically even this year. So United Healthcare, this company called CDK, which I think is an OEM manufacturer, AT&T was just breached on Snowflake, which is a big cloud. Also, Ascension is another hospital group. Actually my college roommate is a doctor and he works at Ascension. He was telling me about it three months ago. And he is like, Yeah. I can’t even see my schedule. I can’t even do a script. Everything’s manual. We’re not even getting paid.” And I think it’s still not settled.
Melody Brue: So I think that being delayed because of this. Actually, it’s inexcusable. It’s horrible.
Robert Kramer: It’s a real thing that’s going on. So when Google looks at its space and specifically the ability to strengthen their cloud security, this company called Wiz, I think it’s an Israeli company, they’ve only been in business for less than five years, I believe. I’ll have to check it. But I think their current valuation is 12 billion, but their revenue by 2025 is substantial.
So I think what they’re looking for is Google is to get a little bit stronger, specifically against their competition, AWS and Azure. And this really heightens them. So Wiz has a agentless cloud security platform that is actually quickly identifies and prioritizes the security risks, but there’s so many companies that have had problems. So I think this is a good move if it can get past the issue with the SEC and able to buy the company because of the issues with that. But I can’t find, what’s the word I’m looking for? You can’t buy a company that you too closely-
Melody Brue: Oh, the antitrust?
Robert Kramer: Yeah. Thank you. Sorry everyone. So Mel and I are both lacking a little sleep lately so here we are trying to dig through this, but we hope that we’re bringing great information. But a lot of these, you don’t realize this, but these security breaches affect an enormous amount of people. I just talked about my friend who’s a doctor, but this AT&T breach, I think it hit like 73 million customers and Social Security numbers were breached. Rite Aid was also had a ransomware attack. This Ascension one I was talking about it, I think it’s been going on since May and about 140 hospitals, 19 states. Ticketmaster was also breached. I’m not sure we all feel like that’s a big deal because they take advantage of us with those.
Melody Brue: Right. Right.
Robert Kramer: Those cost I think-
Melody Brue: Yeah. It’s one thing to breach them, but then it’s actually their customer’s data that gets exposed.
Robert Kramer: Yes.
Melody Brue: Yeah. I see your point.
Robert Kramer: I think Wiz affected MGM. Go ahead. Sorry.
Melody Brue: You mentioned Wiz valuation, which it went from, I was trying to look it up and I can’t find it quickly, but they raised a billion dollars, I think it was in May. And so their valuation just skyrocketed. It’s insane. So this all came about just recently and Google was looking to acquire HubSpot and dropped that recently and then all of a sudden it was like drop HubSpot, acquire Wiz. Totally different business, but this is the new hot chick.
Robert Kramer: Well said. But there’s so many data protection issues and one of them is having old data, probably AT&T had at Snowflake. So they have long-term exposure. But another one I want to point out is all these supply chain security issues. You have all these different systems that you have and the security is probably not tight between them all. And so the importance of higher security is needed. All these different layers that you need as far as the network, the application and doing audits and the employee training I think might be a big one because I think the Rite Aid one, someone faked it as being an employee and they actually got the credentials and then it took them 12 hours to figure it out. So the people who are the hackers are going way out of their way because they know how to do it. They don’t do it overnight, they wait and they wait. It’s like someone’s going to rob your home until they know when to go in because they’ve stalked you and they understand the weakness points. So the vulnerability issues are immense. And I think that Google, long story short, but just pointing out all these other things, Google is trying to get ahead of the curve because they’re seeing what we’re seeing because I don’t think this is going away anytime soon.
Melody Brue: Yeah. It is interesting. I mean, when you look back a couple of months ago when Microsoft had a big breach, it was like an internal account that was a test account that just didn’t even have, it didn’t have on it. It was just kind of left sitting open and it had so much of the executive communications in it. I mean, it’s just insane. It’s just something like a really simple thing that was overlooked. And then I think I’ve told you about this before. I just find it’s almost comical about a breach that happened through somebody’s electric toothbrush because somebody had an app that programmed his or her electric toothbrush from home, but then got into the phone, which has the passwords to get into the company computer. I mean, think of all the different threat surfaces that we have now. You don’t think about your toothbrush. I mean, there’s all the different things. I was at the HP event at the end of last year and they talk about printer security and a lot of times you don’t think about that. You don’t think about the things you send to a printer and how that data needs to be secure. There’s so many-
Robert Kramer: Yeah. The easier it is to get to something like technology to use it. It’s probably easier to hack. And anytime we put these extra devices or software in our lives anywhere, business or personal, I think that the security has to be looked at. And we always say, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.” But I mean our stuff is being touted on the dark web and you have friends and people that have been exposed and I think it’s a major deal. And these hackers are getting paid. Meaning, the ransomwares are getting paid because they don’t have a choice. So I think it’s resiliency is the magic component now. How do you regroup quickly?
Melody Brue: Yeah. I mean, I think just basic hygiene identification stuff like Okta. Just use it. There’s just no reason why you shouldn’t have to authenticate who you are before you use anything. And if people are burdened by that, too bad, just do it.
Robert Kramer: That’s really well said because I think that’s really what has to happen. Change of passwords and companies have to get a multi-tiered approach to security and get the best software you can get because that still might not be enough.
Melody Brue: A hundred percent. Well, with that advice, we will end this. I guess maybe talk about, I would say what do I have coming up, but I would have to look at my calendar for that because… I mean, the beauty is there’s not a whole lot of travel right now. Summertime just ends up being that way with analyst events. So just a lot of writing and research and things like that. And do you have anything big you want to talk about?
Robert Kramer: No. I mean, I think it’s the same as you. It’s a chance for us to really do a lot of good research. So there’s a lot going on, like I mentioned with the modern ERP systems. So I have a bunch of articles coming out on that and so on the supply chain. And we have some technology stuff coming up with sports that we’re hopefully going to be involved in, which has to do with Qualcomm Stadium or Snapdragon Stadium with Qualcomm and Manchester United and more to come on that. But just as a recap, I know that I had some wind that you were at Wimbledon. Do you have any final thoughts on how great that was? Because we should always talk about how amazing of an opportunity that was for you just to tell the audience what you liked most about it.
Melody Brue: It was so great and I saw something that was so cool and we’ll talk about this on Game Time Tech and I’ll give a little teaser of Game Time Tech too. For tomorrow, we will have Will Townsend on tomorrow because we’re going to talk about how Cisco is powering some of the networking for the Paris Olympics. A little teaser on that. But for Wimbledon, so I was at Wimbledon and I got to go under and see all of the place where IBM enters all the data to power the Wimbledon app so that we get to see all the scores, the information about the players, everything in real time, plus all the historical data. I didn’t know at the time that one of the players who was actually playing at Wimbledon was a former IBM stats guy.
Robert Kramer: Oh my god.
Melody Brue: I found this out afterwards. And he won the doubles, the men’s doubles match.
Robert Kramer: Wow.
Melody Brue: This guy used to sit in that room entering data for IBM and then won Wimbledon. How cool is that?
Robert Kramer: Very cool. I mean, just to be able to play or even just to be on a court in some capacity. I mean, it’s one of the most amazing sports places ever. Obviously. He’s really good.
Melody Brue: Yeah. I just think that’s such a cool story. He must love the game so much to have gotten that job, sat in that room. I mean, it’s an amazing… If you could see the room, it’s like this just screens everywhere and people entering all of the data and you see all the play and it’s so exciting. It’s like just this center of energy. So he was in there for years, and then he was out there on the court while other people were in there entering his data. I just think that’s so cool. Anyway.
Robert Kramer: How did he do? Do you know?
Melody Brue: He won. He won the doubles.
Robert Kramer: They won the doubles. Men’s doubles.
Melody Brue: Yes.
Robert Kramer: Wow. That’s nice.
Melody Brue: Yes.
Robert Kramer: Okay.
Melody Brue: Well, very cool.
Robert Kramer: He’s probably pretty good. So good for him.
Melody Brue: I just thought that was so cool. Anyway.
Robert Kramer: Good story.
Melody Brue: We’ll end with that. Thank you everybody for joining us. If you like what you saw, please hit the subscribe button. Hit us up on Twitter if there’s anything you want to give us feedback on. If you wanted to talk about on an episode to come or anything else. We’d love to chat with you. And thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time.
Robert Kramer: Thank you.
