KuppingerCole Blog

Introducing Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) as a Comprehensive, Cloud-Native, and Cloud-First Approach to Data Management Data is the new gold, the new oil, or whatever. In the cloud, you only own the data, but not the applications, systems, or networks anymore. Data is essential for Digital Transformation. There is so much data that is sprawling that it is hard to keep control of it. And, within the SaaS and PaaS tenants, data is what belongs to the tenant. Many organizations fail in managing this data sprawl and implement appropriate Data Governance. Data Is Ubiquitous:...

Cloud, AI software, and voice recognition firm Nuance is Microsoft’s latest strategic acquisition aimed at putting the tech giant in a strong position to shape healthcare and workplace applications of the future. Microsoft has agreed to acquire Nuance for around $19bn and the deal is expected to close before the end of 2021. First Focus on Healthcare The acquisition has the potential to put Microsoft at the forefront of workplace innovation due to Nuance’s AI software expertise focusing on voice recognition, stemming from core algorithms developed in the early 1980s by...

The European Central Bank (ECB) is exploring a digital euro. Early October 2020, the ECB Governing Council released a whitepaper discussing its initial research on such a project. One of the ECB’s clearest and most repeated messages is that a digital euro will not replace cash, but complement it. A digital euro is meant to facilitate electronic payments, while cash would remain a valid form of payment and the primary form of value storage. The European Central Bank’s Exploration of a Digital Euro This exploratory paper comes as a direct result of a digitalized economy...

Microsoft announced on April 5, 2020 that its Azure AD Verifiable Credentials is now in public preview. This solution enables organizations to design and issue verifiable credentials to their users, be it enterprises issuing employment credentials to their employees, universities enrolling students or issuing diplomas, governments issuing passports, ID cards, and countless other uses. This is an exciting step to meaningfully give agency back to individuals to securely hold and exchange their identity data online and in the physical world. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are a...

I’ve been in IT long enough to remember when business applications were home-grown and written in COBOL. In the early stages of my career, I even gave computer classes on the standard algorithms for good COBOL programming, such as sorting and grouping. In the more than three decades since, I’ve seen SAP R/3 being discussed as the revolutionary approach for business applications, moving these from mainframes into client/server models. I’ve seen the emergence of the first SaaS applications, with some such as Salesforce or Ariba still being around. I’ve seen the...

OneTrust, provider of data privacy, security, and governance solutions has announced that it will acquire Convercent, an enterprise GRC solution with an ethics and compliance portal. Slotting itself as a strategic acquisition, the two companies will be aligning and merging their products to actualize trust for the enterprise. The deal is intended to be finalized in mid-April. Expanding the ways to build trust Building trust is a multifaceted task that encompasses the relationships an organization has with all stakeholders. OneTrust works with a trust framework where establishing...

I have been covering cybersecurity issues, first as a journalist then as an analyst, since 2006. In that 15 years I have heard the mantra that security is a boardroom issue hundreds of times. The subject has filled countless conference talks and media articles. It appears that the message is still not getting through if a speech by the new CEO of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) anything is to go by. In her first public speaking engagement in March this year, Lindy Cameron, said, you guessed it folks, security must be given more attention in the boardroom....

Data friction is arguably the biggest obstacle for every organization on its journey to achieve optimal business productivity. Even if you have not heard the term before, you’ve definitely faced its consequences in one form or another (most probably, even in multiple different forms). You need your product’s sales data for EMEA, but it’s not a top priority for your IT team? Your marketing team would love to derive better insights from your customer data, but your ERP system is not supported by their fancy cloud service? Your developers must wait several days to get an...

This week, SailPoint announced their intent to acquire ERP Maestro , a SaaS-based solution for monitoring SoD controls and manage access controls in business applications such as SAP. This announcement fits well into the SailPoint strategy of expanding their core offerings IdentityIQ and IdentityNow with additional SaaS services, such as AI-based identity analytics and, now, capabilities for in-depth management and control of access in business applications. Acquisition will help SailPoint in further expanding their offerings for business applications This acquisition also fits...

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platforms are attracting a lot of attention from many organizations, from enterprises to government agencies and even those on the upper end of Small-to-Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs). The reason for this is clear: the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve and get more complex in order to combat the corresponding rise in frequency and complexity of attacks. SOAR platforms can be the capstone application for Security Operations Centers (SOCs). Most organizations have a plethora of security tools already, such as Endpoint...