On this episode, Chris and I chat with Ian Story (Principal GPM for Syntex) and Alan Pelz-Sharpe (Founder of analyst firm, Deep Analysis) to go behind the scenes of this exciting new “Content AI” category and solution. You’ll hear more about what’s new for Syntex, insights into what’s most valuable for customers, and a breakdown of the direction and goals to help humans manage content at scale.
“Building on the massive market that they have, Microsoft comes along and adds — pretty much in one fell swoop — all the tools you actually need to automate document processes. That’s huge,” Pelz-Sharpe said. “Even things that seemed simple — time and expense claims forms, accounts payable, contract management — today you need to go out to multiple vendors to get that done. Microsoft’s basically saying, ‘Here’s all the tools, you can do that.’ That’s going to rock the market.”
In the last few years, Microsoft, Google, and others have steadily advanced AI technology with new systems that show the power of AI. However, they have largely failed to show business users how those tools can apply in their day-to-day jobs, Pelz-Sharpe said. “There’s a recognition now with the big cloud companies that if it doesn’t connect into those workflows that bring actual business value, then nobody’s going to use it,” he said.
“Automation Anywhere seems to be just on the same path as it was five or six years ago,” said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst and founder of Deep Analysis. “It’s the last of the RPA companies that are focused on RPA.” Unlike five or six years ago when it was more stable, the RPA market is shifting, Pelz-Sharpe said. Instead of focusing just on bots, vendors in the RPA market, including Automation Anywhere and UiPath, are targeting process management and discovery technology. Automation Anywhere would do well to focus more on process management than pure RPA going forward, he said.
OpenText was mum about the planned acquisition because the company is in a regulatory quiet period. While acquiring Micro Focus may look like a financial stretch on paper, the deal will pay for itself in just a few years through services renewals, according to Deep Analysis research. Cross-selling OpenText security, content management and ERP to Micro Focus customers will likely fuel growth. “They’ll get the money back in four years just by doing nothing, so financially, it’s a very sound investment,” said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis. “It brings a lot of products with it. There is a big job to go through and rationalize them. But the truth is, if you’ve got 300 products, you’ve probably got some stars in there. Micro Focus was totally managed for years, so OpenText should be able to bring some order to that chaos.”
The main problem with the AI Bill of Rights is it has no teeth, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of market analysis firm Deep Analysis. Pelz-Sharpe said that at best, government departments might over time adopt some of the blueprint’s recommendations and provide some transparency to their use of AI systems. But he said it’s a stretch to expect public tech companies to follow the blueprint voluntarily.
iRobot is a natural extension to Amazon’s existing home products, including Ring, Alexa and its general smart home ambitions, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of consulting firm Deep Analysis. Bringing in iRobot also adds a customer base of 30 million users, he said. “In theory, at least, it will make Amazon the most extensive and preferred option for smart home automation, taking it beyond Google,” Pelz-Sharpe said.
“The challenge is that few AI systems are designed to operate unethically, rather they can be trained or used to break ethical boundaries, oftentimes unknowingly,” Pelz-Sharpe said. “Until it’s doing something in operation it’s hard to know if it’s doing the right or wrong thing.”
“I believe IG should be sold as something that reduces your IT costs and increases efficiency………….”
Microsoft cooperating with competitors on Teams document-sharing is good for business, despite its own competitive interests with OneDrive and SharePoint secure file sharing tools, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis. The document cloud market is so enormous, companies such as Box and OpenText — which respectively work medium-to-large and the largest of companies — could “grow another billion dollars and not touch each other,” he added.