Archive for April, 2010

Thursday’s Disruptive Tech Showcase: SimplyBox 2.0 Simplifies Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration

Collaboration Remains Elusive Across Applications And Enterprises

Organizations seeking the benefits of collaboration and rapid knowledge sharing in Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) solutions face several key challenges in delivering a consistent enterprise solution:

  • Consistent tool across multiple applications and environments. Organizations want one tool to collaborate regardless of the application they are using.  Today, organizations often need a separate tool to collaborate for each suite of business applications, email system, and even browser.  The result – a plethora of tools that enable collaboration in silos of information that hinder Enterprise 2.0 benefits..
  • Intuitive and natural user experience. As a key element of next generation social enterprise apps, users expect pervasive and natural collaboration to occur in the context of applications.  Today’s systems often have inconsistent approaches to sharing information making it difficult to share both structured and unstructured information in the same system.  More importantly, organizations will need to move across multiple form factors such as mobile, iPads, kiosks, and other hand held devifes

SimplyBox Breaks Barriers In Collaboration

Campbell, CA, based SimplyBox started out in 2007 as a consumer play focused on organizing and sharing websites clippings in a visual manner for personal research and sharing. Over the past year, SimplyBox has successfully proven their core technology into the enterprise with partnerships at large enterprise apps vendors, leaving competitors such as Diigo, Sazell , and Safari’s Webclip to focus on the personal knowledge and research space.  SimplyBox succeeds in enterprise scenarios because:

  • Unstructured and structured content can be shared and categorized. Users grab and select the content they wish to share and place them into a “Box”.  Each box includes content about a topic and related conversations.  Users can share boxes about different topics with different groups.  SimplyBox can then notify and alert others about content being placed into the box.  The box serves as the medium to enable collaboration among internal and external teams.
  • Collaboration can occur anywhere. Whether its in a portal for a web app or enterprise system report, users collaborate regardless of what system they are in.  Content that’s been collected along the way by multiple users can be made available throughout different enterprise systems.  SimplyBox even co-exists with solutions such as Microsoft Sharepoint which serve more as file/content repositories.  This enables applications to gain tentacles across the enterprise apps landscape.  More importantly, no programming or IT involvement is required.

Figure 1. SimplyBox Enables Natural Collaboration Within Any Environment
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News Analysis: Salesforce.com and VMware Up The Ante In The Cloud Wars With VMforce

VMWare and Salesforce.com Battle For The Hearts And Minds Of Cloud-Oriented Java Developers

On April 27th, 2010, Salesforce.com, [NYSE: CRM] and VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) formed VMforce, a strategic alliance to create a deployment environment for Java based apps in the cloud.  The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering builds on Java, Spring, VMware vSphere, and Force.com.  Key themes in this announcement:

  • Growing the developer ecosystem. VMware and Salesforce.com realize that the key to growth will be their appeal to developers.  The VMforce offering courts 6 million enterprise Java developers and over 2 million using SpringSource’s Spring framework with an opportunity to build Cloud 2 applications.  VMware brings application management and orchestration tools via VMware vSphere.  Salesforce.com opens up its applications, Force.com database, Chatter collaboration, search, workflow, analytics and mobile platforms.

    Point of View (POV):
    By betting on Java and the Spring framework for this Cloud2 PaaS, both vendors gain immediate access to one of the largest developer communities in the world.  Salesforce.com developers no longer have to use the highly flexible, but very proprietary APEX code base to create Cloud2 apps.   Java developers can now reach the large base of Salesforce.com customers and use the Salesforce.com apps and Force.com.
  • Creating cloud efficiencies for Java development. VMforce brings global infrastructure, virtualization platform, orchestration and management technology, relational cloud database, development platform and collaboration services, application run time, development framework, and tooling to the cloud.  Organizations can build code in Java and integrate with apps in Salesforce.com without having to retrain existing resources.  Environments can scale as needed and take advantage of the massive economies of scale in the cloud.

    POV:
    As with all PaaS offerings, cost and time savings include not dealing with hardware procurement, pesky systems management software, configuration and tuning, and multiple dev, test, and production environment set up.  Developers can focus on business value not infrastructure.  What will they do with their free time not scaling up databases and app servers?

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News Analysis: Microsoft Licensing Update – April 2010

Welcome To The First Of A Series Of Posts On Microsoft Licensing Updates.

Given the vast array of Microsoft products and licensing categories, an organization may often feel overwhelmed by Microsoft’s policies.  While there may be some complexity, these series of posts are designed to provide up to date commentary and analysis on new programs as they become available.

Product And Program News

  • Price Increase For Office Professional Plus 2010. What is it?:  Microsoft increases Office Professional Plus 2010 by 5%.  Who’s impacted?: Customers with Professional Desktop and Professional Desktop with Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) pricing.  Suite pricing increases between 3 and 4%.  When’s it effective?: This program begins May 1st, 2010.

    Point Of View (POV): The recent price increase may be the result of revenue capture for new features in Communicator, Infopath, and Sharepoint Workspace.  The good news – Office Professional Plus 2010 includes the additional features of Office Enterprise 2007.  The current Office Professional Plus list price with the price increase is still lower than the list price of Office Enterprise 2007.  For those who paid less than list for Office Enterprise 2007, they should look at other VLP programs for bundling discounts to offset this price increase.

  • Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) Goes Global. What is it?: 17 new markets and 39 countries and regions gain BPOS.  BPOS includes E-mail and calendar, email coexistence and migration tools, document collaboration and workspaces, web conferencing, Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, and Microsoft Online Services Sign In Application. Who’s eligible?: All customers. When’s it effective?: This program starts April 14, 2010.

    POV: The new offering shows Microsoft’s commitment to pushing out its Cloud initiatives.  At Microsoft Convergence, Stephen Elop stated that more than 90% of R&D will be focused on cloud services.  Customers on BPOS-D gain Office Communications Online, giving them Voice capabilities in the cloud.

  • Academic Volume Licensing Programs Gain Electronic Software Distribution (ESD). What is it?: Customers can download software over the Internet. Who’s eligible?: Customers on Campus and School Agreement (CASA) with Faculty and Staff at Home rights or  Student Option; and Select License/Select Plus for Academic with Faculty and Staff Work at Home rights or Student Select and Student Select Plus.  When’s it effective?: North America and EMEA customers gain ESD now.  Latin America expected in May 2010.  APAC estimated date is Q1 FY11.

    POV: Eligible customers should take advantage of this program to avoid the headaches of managing physical software delivery.  Customers can also benefit from the tax free provisions of Internet distribution of software.

  • Microsoft GeoSynth Launch. What is it?: The off-line version of the PhotoSynth platform will be available in a subscription based pricing format for Specialty Server configuration based on users and a single-user desktop version. Who’s eligible?:  Customers on Volume Licensing programs for Campus and School Agreements, Enterprise Agreements, Open Value, Open Value Subscription, Select Agreements, and US Government. When’s it effective?: This program starts May 1, 2010.

    POV: The subscription pricing program makes sense for users testing out the off line product.  Longer term, institutional customers may want to seek other pricing options such as perpetual license, perpetual license with upgrade rights, and enterprise agreements.

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Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers – April 2010

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*

A very slow moving April as many change and moves were made in Q1.  So far the job prospects in tech remain excellent.

As always, thanks for your emails and alerts. If you’ve got a change or know of a promotion, keep dropping me a line! If you need a referral, and we’ve worked together in the past, don’t hesitate to reach out to me via Linked In.

Frank Auger is now Director, Customer Support at HubSpot.  Prior to this role, Frank was the President and CEO at Metallect and served as a VP of Product Management at Novell.

Marnie Breton has been promoted to Vice President, Marketing & Strategy at Forrester Research.  Marnie brings previous experiences as a  Vice President at ReGenerate, consultant at Yankee Group, and Sales/Marketing manager at AT&T Capital Corporation. She’s also previously worked a Forrester as a Marketing Director.

Marc Conway is now Change Manager – Global Reseller Programme at BP.  Marc serves many roles in global sales, marketing, and procurement programs.  Previous work at BP include experiences as a procurement specialist, software auditor, and senior software technology procurement specialist.

Andrew Cotton currently serves as an ICT Project Manager at New South Wales Department of Planning.  Previous roles build on his program management expertise and include serving as a Business Analyst and Test Manager at Just OnePlace, Senior Business Analyst / Project Manager at Westfield Group, and Architect at JF Davidson.

Abhishek Guru is in year 2 at the University of Sydney.  He’s currently a Research Associate for Professor William L. Martens.  Previous roles include Assistant Marketing Manager for Analyst Relations at HCL.

John Refford wa promoted from VP of Global Infrastructure to VP or Strategic Marketing Technology at Natixis in February 2010.  He brings previous experiences as an IT mnager at CentrePath and Systems Engineer Manager at both IXIS Asset Management and Thomson Financial

Bryan Vanderkruk is now Management Trainee at Maple Leaf Foods.

Your POV

Got a scoop or something to share? Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com and we’ll keep your anonymity.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

Friday’s Feature: Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010



Latest Release Provides Existing Customers Good Reasons To Upgrade

Redmond, WA based Microsoft Corporation announced its Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 (a.k.a. GP 11) product on April 20th, 2010.  Available May 1st 2010 in Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, the Middle East, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the announcement perfectly coincides with Convergence 2010 in Atlanta, GA.  The latest release delivers on five compelling themes:

  • Improvements in the role tailored user experience. Microsoft enhances and adds action panes, business portals, notifications and work flows by role to keep the experience relevant to how people work.  Unlike legacy ERP systems, the design mantra does not force fit a set of best practices on generic users. Point of view (POV):  Users get started right away with familiar Microsoft user experiences (i.e. Windows 7 and Office 2010).  The 33+ pre-defined roles (e.g April, Charlie, Connie, and Vince) will help users in all sizes of organizations improve productivity from the get-go.
  • Additional investment in analytics and insight. Tighter integration with SQL Server 2008 BI Tools allows users additional control on how they share information.  Pre-built KPI’s, SQL Server reporting (i.e. SSAS cubes), and Microsoft Office forms can be served up with role relevancy.  Reports can then be shared with other users via Sharepoint’s document library. POV: Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 makes it easy to access key information and insights without expensive configuration and customization.  With over 400 SQL Server reporting services, 200 Excel reports, 80 SRS reports, and pre-populated smart lists, users gain an integrated and embedded BI solution that should meet most requirements.  Refreshable Excel reports take advantage of Power Pivot to save users time and keep information up to date.  Drill back views provide a great way to get insights into GP 2010, Office Excel, and SQL Reporting Services (see Figure 1).
  • Deeper ERP and SCM product set features. Significant enhancements cut across financials, payroll, supply chain management (SCM), and service management.  Financials gain key features such as encumbrance management, project accounting, and lockbox capabilities.  Payroll includes needed updates such as overtime rate calculations and multiple W2 box mappings.  SCM enhancements include automated lot numbering, vendor portals, customer portals, multi-site MRP, and sales forecasting windows.  Service management features add preventative maintenance and labor-payroll integration. POV: This release sets the stage for expansion into the public sector and additional project based industries.  Encumbrance management provides key public sector requirements in fund accounting.  Project accounting enables services based business revenue recognition.  Preventative maintenance features add to service based requirements.
  • CRM Integration and choice of deployment options.  The new GP CRM adapter allows GP users native integration back to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  More importantly, customers can choose between hosted or on-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the option to migrate to either option over time. POV: Microsoft smartly offers both the on-premise and on-demand versions.  SMB customers still express a preference for on-premise over on-demand.   Customers can also choose to host with partners or directly with Microsoft. More…

Thursday’s Disruptive Tech Showcase: SnapLogic Tackles Cloud/SaaS Integration Challenges

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Demand For Complex Cloud/SaaS Based Integration Continues To Increase

Organizations face a deluge of data from more and more new sources, especially in the Cloud.  Existing integration solutions often require expensive custom coding that’s purpose built; but rigid and disposable.  A change in business objects or swap out of new solutions often require brand new investments in integration.  SnapLogic solves a key piece of the Cloud integration problem with modern, pluggable, and reusable pieces of code called Snaps.

Snaps represent an integration task or subtask frameworks of light weight services (a.k.a. SnAPI’s).   SnapFlows orchestrate Snaps to solve the end to end integration that maps back to end to end business process flows.  Through the DataFlow Platform’s open API’s, enterprises can connect a wide variety data sources including (see Figure 1):

  • Enterprise vendor API’s and ODBC
  • Web based REST and http
  • Cloud SOAP and WS*
  • Social Media RSS and atoms

Figure 1. SnapLogic DataFlow Server Provides A Data Integration Platform Through Open-Component APIs and RESTful ARchitecture.

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(Source: SnapLogic)

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News Analysis: Lawson Puts Its Full ERP Suite In The Cloud

Lawson External Cloud Services Represents A Big Step In On Demand ERP Options

On March 31, 2010, Lawson Software (Nasdaq: LWSN) announced the Lawson External Cloud Services offering.  The venerable St. Paul, Minnesota vendor plans to deliver the full ERP Suite including Lawson S3, Lawson M3, and Lawson Talent Management via Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure by May 2010.  Key highlights of the announcement include:

  • Full feature ERP offering. Lawson will include its full suite of products from both M3 (i.e. Intentia heritage), S3 (Lawson heritage), and new offerings which includes strategic HCM, Finance, enterprise performance management (EPM), supply chain management (SCM), corporate social responsibility, equipment and service & rental, and enterprise asset management.

    Point of view (POV): Lawson makes a significant investment in providing a new deployment option for its solutions.  Customers will lower IT costs, reduce time to deployment, and maintain ownership of the software using Amazon EC2 in the back end.  The result is a single instance approach to cloud delivery focused on IaaS (see Figure 1).  Virtualization provides the key factor in cost savings.

  • Focus on mid-size companies looking to reduce time to market. Lawson specifically calls out how mid-market organizations can gain scale with security, computing capacity, and lower cost infrastructure.  Organizations pay for only the infrastructure they need.

    POV: Mid-size organizations gain the benefits of large enterprise solutions without the costly overhead of installation and deployment.  Prospects and customers can expect the hosted software to include centralized admin, faster installations, single technology stack, scalability, and faster time to value.   Mid-size customers can free up funds to focus on process design and business transformation.  However, there’s no reason why a large enterprise wouldn’t want the same advantages. More…