⬅️ Clean My Bookmarks 🧭 Out of Sequence Update ➡️

A.I. For You

September 10, 2023 by Jay Cuthrell newsletter ai gartner atlassian serviceNow workday salesforce isv

This week we take a look at the proliferation of M.L. and A.I. across the Enterprise knowledge worker stack.

This week’s musical inspiration in title and lyrics:

https://open.spotify.com/track/1mvZErZBp7WZT3HfGBykao?si=b155df34df3c4b61

Getting Informed

Over the years, analyst firms such as Gartner have continuously surveyed organizations on the use of A.I. in the Enterprise to understand what percentage have implemented some form of A.I. — and the data shows a clear progression. In fact, from 2015-2019 per Gartner, there was almost 300% growth.

Today, there is no denying independent software vendors (ISVs) with large incumbent install bases will look at A.I. as a way to maintain relevance and increased value year over year. Said another way, A.I. has become a spicy mix of FOMO and value stream mapping originated customer expectations for many product leaders in the ISV marketplace.

But first… it’s time for reading 📖, listening 🎧, and watching 📺 suggestions:

First, 📖 What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #358 in which Ed Sim details the A.I. hype, hubris, and humanity across the VC landscape chasing both Enterprise (B2B) and Consumer (B2C) dreams of ever higher valuations.
Second, 🎧 Updates to Infrastructure as Code in which Aaron Delp and Brian Gracely interview Joe Duffy on keeping the developer experience top of mind.
Third, 📺 Developer Experience & Productivity with Internal Developer Platforms in which Arun Batchu, Jim Mosher, Dan Morneau, and Jim Elliott of Gartner provide a perspective on the promise of developer experience tooling and internal developer platforms.

Forever’s gonna slow you down 🎶

What are some examples of A.I. appearing in the ISV marketplace?

Coming up with a list of the top Enterprise focused ISVs would vary by specific verticals or industries and are increasingly in the late stage SaaS curve of ISV maturity. However, for this newsletter, I’ve picked four (4) from the exhaustive list of 50 ISVs on the G2 “Best Software for Enterprise Business for 2023”.

Atlassian
ServiceNow
Workday
Salesforce

Why these ISVs? Each of these ISVs has cash to acquire other M.L. and A.I. related companies.

Now, let’s examine the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) thesis for M.L. and A.I. related companies for each ISV.

I think the end is mine to write 🎶

Atlassian: The Percept.AI acquisition in early 2022 took place before Atlassian Intelligence was announced earlier this year in 2023.

ServiceNow: The Parlo AI acquisition in mid 2018 was followed by Now Intelligence being announced in early 2020 and the Element AI acquisition in early 2021 took place before new AI capabilities was announced in late 2022 before ServiceNow LLMs and Now Assist for Virtual Agent were announced earlier this year in 2023.

Workday: Starting with the Identified acquisition and the Upshot acquisition in 2015 was followed by the Platfora acquisition in 2016 before the SkipFlag acquisition which was quickly followed by new Machine Learning functionality announced in 2018 that was followed by the Adaptive Insights acquisition in 2019 and most recently the announcement of a $250M expansion of Workday Ventures fund earlier this year in 2023.

Salesforce: Starting with the A.I. for Everyone aka Salesforce Einstein in 2016, the Datorama acquisition in 2018 was followed by the Slack acquisition in 2021 and most recently the announcement of new A.I. functionality for Slack just this past week in 2023.

So, what will be the next big thing in A.I. across the Enterprise knowledge worker stack?

Until then… Place your bets!