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Monday’s Musings: Why Next Gen Apps Must Improve Existing Activity Streams

Published on August 30, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang
Upcoming Data Deluge Threatens The Effectiveness Of Activity Streams Activity streams, best popularized by consumer apps such as Facebook and Twitter, have emerged as the Web 2.0 visualization paradigm that addresses the massive flows of information users face (see Figure 1).  As a key element of the dynamic user experiences discussed in the 10 elements of social enterprise apps, activity streams epitomize how apps can deliver contextual and relevant information.  Unfortunately, what was seen as an elegant solution that brought people, data, applications, and information flow into a centralized real-time interface, now faces assault from the exponential growth in data and information sources.  In fact, most people can barely keep up with the information overload, let alone face the four forces of data deluge that will likely paralyze both collaboration and decision making (see Figure 2):
  1. Massive activity stream aggregation by enterprise apps. Every enterprise app seeking sexy social-ness plans one or more social networking feeds into their next release.  The mixing and mashing of personal and work related feeds will leave users confused about context and lower existing signal to noise ratios.  Yet, proliferation will continue as users seek to bring aggregated sources of information into one centralized feed.
  2. Explosive growth in the Internet of Things (IOT). Beyond just device to device communications, the web of objects, appliances, and living creatures through wired and wireless sensors, chips, and tags will drive most of the growth in the internet in the next 5 to 10 years.  With an estimated 100 billion net-enabled devices by 2020, these networks seek to discover activity patterns, predict outcomes, and monitor operational health.  The massive amounts of sensing data driven into systems will not only overwhelm users, but also handicap the performance of today's data warehouses, analytics platforms, and applications.
  3. Flood of user generated content (UGC). User generated content continues to grow.  Facebook has over 500 million users populating pages with rich social meta data.  There are over 300 million blogs.  Wikipedia has more than 15 million articles.  Content sources will propagate at geometric rates, especially as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries up their adoption.
  4. Proliferation of social meta data. Organizations seeking a marketing edge must digest, interpret, and asses large volumes of meta data from sources such as Facebook Open Graph.  Successful identification of social graphs require matching gargantuan volumes of meta data (e.g. likes, check-ins, groups, etc) through introspection across a vast array of objects.  Human centric and object centric events will inevitably coexist and engulf unified activity streams.
Figure 1.  Activity Streams Improve Collaboration And Deliver Dynamic User Experiences Figure 2. The Four Forces Of Data Deluge Filters Reduce The Signal To Noise Ratios And Drive Relevance Given the tall task of repairing the relevance of activity streams under the four forces of data deluge, users need better filtering tools from their existing solutions.  Today's rudimentary filters remind users of the simple search engines from the early 1990's.  Users must have filters with the sophistication to cut across the big data challenges.  Filters must span across mediums such as pages, books, notes, photos, videos, voice, and others.  Based on 23 user scenarios, the 5 major categories of filters should include:
  • People. Requests focus around people, their relationships, and formal and informal groupings.
  • Location. Physical location attributes include spatial coordinates, topology, environmental conditions, vertical position, and others.
  • Time and date. Time and date plays a key role in parsing out historical data, multiple chronological perspectives, and forecasting and simulation.
  • Events. Events serve as a mega filter by relating people, location, time and date, and purpose.
  • Topics. Topics represent a broader filter that represents a generic "other" category in filtering.
The Bottom Line: Users Need Greater Control Over Their Point Of View And Next Gen Apps Must Deliver Filters alone will not provide enough firepower to put users back in control.  Users must easily self-manage filters.  Self-learning patterns should be identified by the system.  Text analytics, natural language processing, and complex sentiment algorithms will play a role.  User driven advanced filters should at a minimum include:
  • Saved filters. Users save and share with other users their library of filters.
  • Trending. Users apply layers of filters to correlate complex multi-dimensional patterns.
  • Simulations. Users proactively test out scenario plans with existing data.
  • Predictions. Users apply pattern recognition and trending to test hypotheses.
Your POV. Buyers, do you need help understanding how activity streams can improve adoption and ROI.  Are you suffering from data deluge?   Sellers and vendors, want to test out your next generation product ideas?  You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can help:
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Evaluating SaaS/Cloud options
  • Assessing apps strategies (e.g. single instance, two-tier ERP, upgrade, custom dev, packaged deployments”
  • Designing end to end processes and systems
  • Comparing SaaS/Cloud integration strategies
  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration
  • Engaging in an SCRM strategy
  • Planning upgrades and migration
  • Performing vendor selection
Reprints Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org. Disclosure Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here. Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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News Analysis: Capgemini Immediate Delivers Cloud Services To Royal Mail Group

Published on August 15, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang
Capgemini Changes The Rules Of The Cloud Game On July 27, 2010, Capgemini announced a six-year cloud computing deal with Royal Mail Group (RMG).  The partnership brings the capabilities of Capgemini’s Infostructure Transformation Services (ITS) and Capgemini Immediate to RMG.  As the UK's second largest employer, RMG employs 188,000 people, handles over 80 million items per day, and delivers over 150,000 parcels per day via ParcelForce, its worldwide express parcel business.  Analysis of the deal reveals two key points:
  • Royal Mail Group chooses cloud computing for concrete business value. RMG sought a new eBusiness platform.  Through the RFP process, RMG determined that traditional on-premise software and hardware solutions on single stack technologies (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM) did not meet current and future business requirements.  Requirements included decreasing the time to market to deliver new solution offerings, delivering pay-as-you-go services to meet the needs of the organization's personal and small or medium business customers, and supporting RMG's innovative parcel delivery services to keep up with the UK's online shopping boom.  After careful analysis, RMG realized they would have to go best of breed. Point of View (POV): With over 3000 web pages and 100 applications, RMG felt the dual weight of transforming legacy applications and the need to free up resources for innovation.  As with many legacy systems, changes to their current eBusiness platform most likely took too long to implement and the integration challenges of managing a specialized and aging e-business environment became too cumbersome to manage.  RMG chose Capgemini Immediate because the solution delivered an ecosystem of solutions as one offering with Capgemini acting as both the services integrator and prime contractor.  RMG gained both the business value in best of breed solutions and the flexibility of the cloud computing model.
  • Capgemini Immediate mitigates the challenges of managing SaaS best of breed "hell". Capgemini's integrated best of breed cloud offering includes 18 initial SaaS and open source suppliers across the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) layers of cloud computing.  Key examples of core PaaS components delivered immediately to the customer include Drupal (Content Management), Apache Software Foundation (Common UI service), IBM Infosphere Datastage (ETL), Cordys (Business process orchestration), Attenda (Business activity management), and Talis (Semantic data management).  For example, the marketing and eBusiness SaaS offering includes Salesforce.com (Customer transactions), Demandware (eCommerce), Kognitio (Data Warehousing-as-a-Service), Ominiture (Web analytics), Eloqua (Online marketing) and Google (Search) see (Figure 1). POV: Leading companies who seek best of breed approaches often face challenges in integration and managing multiple vendor contracts.  The Capgemini Immediate offering reduces the risk of best of breed because clients sign one contract and Capgemini manages the delivery risk, SaaS and hybrid integration, and the management of partners.  In addition, the on-demand pricing and delivery model enables organizations to manage seasonal peaks such as holidays that may require excess capacity.  Best of breed solutions can link back to the RMG ecosystem with ease allowing for more choices among application solutions.
Figure 1. Capgemini Immediate Provides A Best Of Breed E-Business Platform In The Cloud
Source: Capgemini The Bottom Line For Buyers (Users) - Best of Breed Integrated SaaS/PaaS Offerings Deliver Innovation While Bypassing Legacy Apps Environments RMG did not choose cloud because it was the latest fad.  Instead, the Capgemini Immediate solution provided a collection of best of breed solutions that met RMG's key business requirements.  Should Capgemini succeed in delivering Scenario 7: Legacy Replacement in the 10 SaaS/Cloud Strategies For Legacy Apps Environments, RMG will gain (see Figure 2):
  • Flexibility and scalability. RMG can expand or contract services as demand levels change.enhanced flexibility and scalability, enabling specific services to expand or contract rapidly as levels of demand change
  • Capex reduction. RMG no longer has to procure extra hardware and applications every time the change platforms.  This reduces major capital outlay.
  • Improved integration. The Capgemini Immediate platform allows third party services to easily integrate back into the solution offering.
While Cloud/SaaS adoption has moved beyond the tipping point, organizations should not rush in without an adequate apps strategy.  Start by taking into consideration the following criteria in planning an overall apps strategy:
  • Expected business value and outcomes for a project
  • Business processes required to support business value and outcomes
  • Organizational design required to sustain change
  • Technology and solutions to support efforts
  • Deployment options such as on-premises, SaaS, BPO, and other services
Figure 2.  Capgemini Immediate Addresses Scenario 7:  Legacy Long Term Replacement The Bottom Line For Sellers (Vendors) - Expect More Solution Providers To Blur The Lines With Differentiated IP Solution providers and partners will  invest in value added solutions over commoditized infrastructure. The continued commoditization of technology results in richer and more relevant Cloud stacks. As a result, a handful of larger players will emerge to drive down the costs of computing while encouraging ecosystems to deliver value added solutions. Buyers can expect packaged apps, vertical apps, last mile solutions, and implementation partners, to invest in specialized and higher value intellectual property (IP).  Capgemini Immediate is an example where service providers build differentiated intellectual property (IP) using the Cloud. Service providers should go on the SaaS/Cloud offensive if they want to deliver rapid innovation to customers and break the cycle of dependence on packaged apps vendors. Service providers can take market share through SaaS by investing in white spaces in the solution road map with verticals and other pivot points that have not been well served. In addition, expect forms of SaaS BPO to emerge as clients seek best of breed SaaS and hybrid deployments. Your POV. Have you already made the transition? Ready to share your best practices?  Buyers, do you need help with your Cloud and SaaS strategy?  Looking to make the transition to Cloud and SaaS?  Let us put the expertise of over 1000 software contract negotiations to work for you.  Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy, overall apps strategy, and contract negotiations projects.  Here’s how we can help:
  • Designing a next gen apps strategy
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing
  • Assessing SaaS and cloud
  • Evaluating Cloud integration strategies
  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration
  • Planning upgrades and migration
  • Performing vendor selection
  • Renegotiating maintenance
Resources And Related Research: 20100810 A Software Insider's POV - R "Ray" Wang - "Tuesday’s Tip: 10 SaaS/Cloud Strategies For Legacy Apps Environments" 20100809 A Software Insider's POV - R "Ray" Wang - "Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Tech Budget (Part 2) – Cloud Computing" 20100621 A Software Insider's POV - R "Ray" Wang - "Research Report: How SaaS Adoption Trends Show New Shifts In Technology Purchasing Power" 20100322 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang -”Understanding The Many Flavors Of Cloud Computing/SaaS” 20091222 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010″ 20091208 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value” 20091012 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights – Software-as-a Service” 20090714 Sandhill.com – R “Ray” Wang – “Opinion: Moving to a SaaS Offensive” 20090602 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang ” Tuesday’s Tip: Now’s The Time To Consider SaaS Software Escrows” 20081028 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: SaaS Integration Advice” Reprints Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org. Disclosure Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  Capgemini is a project client with Altimeter and not a client of Insider Associates, LLC.  Capgemini is neither a retained client of Altimeter group nor a retained client of Insider Associates, LLC.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here. Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday’s Tip: 10 SaaS/Cloud Strategies For Legacy Apps Environments

Published on August 10, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang
Legacy Apps Customers Seek Practical Advice Organizations determining when and how to make the move to SaaS and Cloud face realistic challenges in gaining buy-in and realizing the apparent and hidden benefits of SaaS/Cloud.  In a recent survey of over 300 companies, 73 respondents who were wary of SaaS/Cloud were asked to list the top 3 reasons they did not plan to deploy a SaaS/Cloud solution in the next 12 months (see Figure 1).  The top 3 reasons related to legacy environments, org structure, and governance include:
  • Legacy apps CIO's. CIO's vested in protecting the existing investments may often proceed with caution for SaaS and Cloud solutions.  In some cases, sunk cost mentality takes hold and the goal of being 100% pure with a single vendor clouds the vision to meet needed business requirements.
  • Burden of legacy apps. Legacy apps maintenance and upkeep represents a key barrier to SaaS and Cloud adoption.  Organizations often remain complacent about maintenance and upgrades, preferring to avoid substantial changes and risk.   Becuase the money and resources to support legacy apps consume most of the budget, organizations have little funds for innovation and experimentation.  Eventually, business decision makers procure SaaS/Cloud solutions to by-pass IT.
  • No IT team buy in.  Many constrained IT teams have not taken the time to understand the requirements to support SaaS and Cloud apps in a hybrid mode.  SaaS requires organizations to revisit SOA strategies, integration requirements, and master data management.  Business leaders and decision makers often overlook these dependencies at the organization's long term expense.
Figure 1.  Legacy Issues Hamper SaaS/Cloud Adoption SaaS/Cloud Strategies Must Transcend The Burden Of Legacy Apps Over Time Next generation apps strategies must account for both a future of hybrid deployments and growing independence of legacy apps.  Ten of the most common go forward strategies include:
  1. Point solutions. Organizations often start by augmenting gaps in existing legacy apps functionality.  Common areas include expense management, strategic human capital management (HCM), sales force automation, project based solutions, collaboration, and email.
  2. SaaS best of breed suites. As organizations gain comfort with the ease of use of SaaS, expect organizations to increase their preference for suites.  Over time expect the best of breed "hell" scenarios to subside as SaaS vendors and integration providers rush to provide more end to end functionality or better SaaS to SaaS integration tools.
  3. Two-tier hub and spoke. Once organizations make the plunge to SaaS, the business will seek opportunities to bypass legacy apps in new environments.   Two-tier deployments will emerge as organizations rush to replace legacy apps for modernization efforts, geographic considerations, and organizations with different sets of business models.
  4. Legacy containment and surround. As with legacy apps over time, organizations will seek to contain investment and surround existing apps with new capabilities.   Expect core ERP apps in finance and HCM to be contained but not quickly replaced.  However, failed CRM, project based solutions, and other "extended ERP" systems in vendor suites will be replaced because many vendors have not innovated quickly enough.
  5. Hosted legacy and surround. Hosted legacy and surround will emerge as a critical trend that will cut infrastructure costs for data centers and hardware.  Virtualization will play a key role in reducing application management costs.  Once again, the surround strategy will take hold because business can not wait for innovation from many of the legacy apps vendors.
  6. Legacy mid-term replacement and third-party maintenance. Organizations can fund innovation with maintenance fee reductions by considering third party maintenance (3PM).  Typical deals halve the cost of maintenance while providing regulatory and tax updates.  Upgrades will not be provided but for organization's who plan to replace apps in the next 5 years, this option should be considered in all apps strategies.
  7. Legacy long term replacement. After usage of 10 to 15 years, most organizations begin their retirement and replacement strategies.  Given the increasing choices in SaaS and Cloud, expect organizations to make the move to migrate to a more flexible solution.
  8. PaaS extensions. As packaged apps move to the Cloud, custom development will also make the same transition.  PaaS will prove to be a key component in the Cloud strategy and major SaaS vendors will make the move to open up the tool kits to allow customers and partners to extend their solutions.
  9. Long term BPO. Expect commoditized business processes to shift to the BPO model. BPO - SaaS will become the norm as organizations shed lower level processes and focus on custom dev in PaaS and extending SaaS and Cloud suites.
  10. Private clouds.  Many organizations will move to private clouds for security reasons.  Private clouds will serve as both a development environment and the "back-up" generator for large commercial and public entities.
Figure 2.  Ten SaaS/Cloud Adoption Strategies Span Business Requirements And Legacy Adoption The Bottom Line For Buyers (Users) - Proceed With Cloud/SaaS Strategies Based On Business Requirements Not Hype While Cloud/SaaS adoption has moved beyond the tipping point, organizations should not rush in without an adequate apps strategy.  Start by taking into consideration the following criteria in planning an overall apps strategy:
  • Expected business value and outcomes for a project
  • Business processes required to support business value and outcomes
  • Organizational design required to sustain change
  • Technology and solutions to support efforts
  • Deployment options such as on-premises, SaaS, BPO, and other services
Your POV. Have you already made the transition? Ready to share your best practices?  Buyers, do you need help with your Cloud and SaaS strategy?  Looking to make the transition to Cloud and SaaS?  Let us put the expertise of over 1000 software contract negotiations to work for you.  Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy, overall apps strategy, and contract negotiations projects.  Here’s how we can help:
  • Designing a next gen apps strategy
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing
  • Assessing SaaS and cloud
  • Evaluating Cloud integration strategies
  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration
  • Planning upgrades and migration
  • Performing vendor selection
  • Renegotiating maintenance
Resources And Related Research: 20100621 A Software Insider's POV - R "Ray" Wang - "Research Report: How SaaS Adoption Trends Show New Shifts In Technology Purchasing Power" 20100322 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang -”Understanding The Many Flavors Of Cloud Computing/SaaS” 20091222 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010″ 20091208 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value” 20091012 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights – Software-as-a Service” 20090714 Sandhill.com – R “Ray” Wang – “Opinion: Moving to a SaaS Offensive” 20090602 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang ” Tuesday’s Tip: Now’s The Time To Consider SaaS Software Escrows” 20081028 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: SaaS Integration Advice” Reprints Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org. Disclosure Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here. Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Tech Budget (Part 2) – Cloud Computing

Published on August 9, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang
Welcome to a part 2 of a multi-part series on The Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model.  Part 2 describes how the cloud fits into the model.  Subsequent posts will apply the model to these leading vendors:
  • Overview
  • Cisco
  • Dell
  • HP
  • IBM
  • Microsoft
  • Oracle
  • Salesforce.com
  • SAP
The aggregation of these posts will result into a research report available for reprint rights.
Cloud Computing Represents The "New" Delivery Model For Internet Based IT Services Technology veterans often observe that new mega trends emerge every decade.  The market has evolved from mainframes (1970's); to mini computers (1980's); to client server (1990's); to internet based (2000's); and now to cloud computing (2010's).  Many of the cloud computing trends do take users back to the mainframe days of time sharing (i.e. multi-tenancy) and service bureaus (i.e cloud based BPO). What's changed since 1970?  Quite plenty -- users gain better usability, connectivity improves with the internet, storage continue to plummet, and performance increases in processing capability. Cloud delivery models share a stack approach similar to traditional delivery.  At the core, both deployment options share four types of properties (see Figure 1):
  1. Consumption – how users consume the apps and business processes
  2. Creation – what’s required to build apps and business processes
  3. Orchestration – how parts are integrated or pulled from an app server
  4. Infrastructure – where the core guts such as servers, storage, and networks reside
As the über category, Cloud Computing manifests in the four distinct layers of:
  • Business Services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – The traditional apps layer in the cloud includes software as a service apps, business services, and business processes on the server side.
  • Development-as-a-Service (DaaS) – Development tools take shape in the cloud as shared community tools, web based dev tools, and mashup based services.
  • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Middleware manifests in the cloud with app platforms, database, integration, and process orchestration.
  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – The physical world goes virtual with servers, networks, storage, and systems management in the cloud.
Figure 1. Traditional Delivery Compared To Cloud Delivery Cloud Computing Encourages Users And Vendors To Focus On Value Added Solutions Applying The Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model to Cloud Computing highlights where buyers, sellers, and partners can deliver value (see Figure 2).  As cloud computing adoption increases, users can expect that:
  • Solution providers and partners will invest in value added solutions over commoditized infrastructure. The continued commoditization of technology results in richer and more relevant Cloud stacks.  As a result, a handful of larger players will emerge to drive down the costs of computing while encouraging ecosystems to deliver value added solutions.  Buyers can expect packaged apps, vertical apps, last mile solutions, and implementation partners, to invest in specialized and higher value intellectual property (IP).
  • Customers will care more about service level agreements than the brand name of technology components. The cloud commoditizes the infrastructure components for both tools for creation and tools for distribution.  Users shift their priority for brand components in favor of outcomes based delivery.  Consequently, users will not care about the brand name of hardware, database, middleware, and even business intelligence systems in use.  Client success shifts to the monitoring of pre-agreed upon service level agreements (SLA's)
  • Integration will emerge as the key enabler and choke point. End users need an enterprise apps strategy for cloud computing that addresses the “I” word – Integration.  SOA principles must be enforced including support for canonical data models and business process haromonization.  Integration must focus on data mapping, business process orchestration, quality of service, and master data management.
Figure 2.  The Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model For The Cloud The Bottom Line For Buyers  - Use The Tech Ecosystem Model To Build Out Your Technology Roadmap And Procurement Strategy. The Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model can provide a key tool in mapping out the long term apps strategy.  Use the suggested five step approach to determine how cloud computing can support existing and future business requirements:
  1. Start by listing the vendors in each category. Jot down the names of every vendor you own into each category (see Figure 3.)
  2. Identify the key business processes supported. Place business processes at the high level and line them back to the vendors.
  3. Evaluate the application portfolio.  As consolidations occur, business strategy should align with applications strategy.  Applications strategy will then align with procurement strategy to optimize the Business Technology Value equation.
  4. Build out your solution ecosystem plan. In some cases, you will consolidate vendors. In others, you will acquire new solutions.  Sometimes, the last-mile will require custom development.  Take a balanced approach to the portfolio.  Keep in mind how you sunset legacy applications and solutions.
  5. Apply model to the contract strategy. This model applied to Seven Simple Steps To Successfully Negotiate Software Contracts will drive business value in technology projects.
Figure 3.  Sample Solution Providers Across The Four Layers Of Cloud Computing The Bottom Line For Sellers (Vendors) - Use The Tech Ecosystem Model To Plan Partnerships and M&A Strategies Use the Software Insider Tech Ecosystem Model  to determine when to partner, build, or acquire a capability. Determine which category to invest in Cloud Computing based on R&D budget and organization's size.  Evaluate each category by:
  1. Examining the current footprint. Fill in the model to see what you own (see Figure 3).
  2. Identifying adjacent profit pools. Look at potential install base up-sell, cross-sell, and attach rate opportunities.
  3. Determining potential profit margins and ROI. Look at average profit margins.  Identify and rank the top categories.
  4. Ranking opportunities by competitive threat. Determine which piece to commoditize next in the value added solutions.  Figure out which areas are high growth value added solutions to invest.
  5. Put together 3 year strategy. Face it, 3 years is too long but you need a time frame.  Identify acquisition prices and partnership criteria.
Your POV. Buyers, do you need help with your Cloud and SaaS strategy?  Ready to put the expertise of over 1000 software contract negotiations to work?  Give us a call!  Sellers and vendors, want to expedite your ability to effectively partner or test your M&A idea?  You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy, overall apps strategy, and contract negotiations projects.  Here’s how we can help:
  • Designing a next gen apps strategy
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing
  • Assessing SaaS and cloud
  • Evaluating Cloud integration strategies
  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration
  • Planning upgrades and migration
  • Performing vendor selection
  • Renegotiating maintenance
Resources And Related Research: 20100621 A Software Insider's POV - R "Ray" Wang - "Research Report: How SaaS Adoption Trends Show New Shifts In Technology Purchasing Power" 20100322 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang -”Understanding The Many Flavors Of Cloud Computing/SaaS” 20091222 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010″ 20091208 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value” 20091012 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang – “Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights – Software-as-a Service” 20090714 Sandhill.com – R “Ray” Wang – “Opinion: Moving to a SaaS Offensive” 20090602 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang ” Tuesday’s Tip: Now’s The Time To Consider SaaS Software Escrows” 20081028 A Software Insider’s POV – R “Ray” Wang “Tuesday’s Tip: SaaS Integration Advice” Next In The Series
  • Overview
  • Cisco
  • Dell
  • HP
  • IBM
  • Microsoft
  • Oracle
  • Salesforce.com
  • SAP
Reprints Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org. Disclosure Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here. Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Event Report: SAP Australian Users Group Summit 2010

Published on August 8, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang
 SAUG Summit Delivered Great Networking Opportunities And Information Exchange Over 550 attendees converged on Sydney August 3rd to 5th, 2010 for the annual SAP User Group Summit.  Members were treated to 28 session, 7 keynotes, and 4 SAP 101 educational sessions.  The smart design of the conference gave attendees ample opportunities to connect and share ideas between sessions.  Kudos to Kim Salter and team for a great event! In conversations with over 100 attendees, four trends emerged:
  • Excitement in putting Business Intelligence (BI) to work. A combination of pent up demand, SAP marketing of Business Objects, and early adopters of BW led to many interesting conversations about the future road map.  Users sought clarity on the future direction and for the most part received it around BEX support and future investments.  Many continued to wonder if SAP would clean up its master data management strategy and address the need for a stronger next generation BI platform.
  • Considerable interest in how the Cloud can be used with existing SAP investments. Several sessions on the cloud were given.  Jeff Word, President of SAP Product Strategy provided an SAP Session on Cloud Computing.  The 6th  keynote on "Ready for the Cloud and SaaS?" provided users with 10 strategies to use Cloud Computing with or without SAP.  With so much confusion on Cloud terminology, attendees wanted a reset on the definitions and categories of cloud computing.  In each conversation, cost savings and flexibility drove the interest to consider cloud options.  A good mix of both technology and business leaders instigated the conversations.  Considerable disappointment emerged when they found out Business by Design would not be available to Australia until late 2011.
  • Concern about negotiating leverage in SAP contracts. In both the CIO session and in passing conversations, the majority of attendees expressed a concern about waning leverage in contract negotiations for the acquisition of new licenses or dealing with maintenance fees.  A few attendees expressed frustration that the SAP Australia head office ignored them when their contracts were written by the corporate entities in countries abroad.  They felt that SAP should act with one face to the world.
  • Questions on when to upgrade. Many attendees expressed concern on when to upgrade.  A large number on 4.6 and 4.7 saw no need to make the shift yet despite a few key features in Enhancement Packages.  In fact, many of these users augmented the gaps with SaaS solutions today in expense management, CRM, business intelligence, and strategic HCM.
A photo collage of the event can be seen below (see Figure 1): Figure 1. SAUG Summit 2010 Flickr Feed Source:Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved. The Bottom Line For Users (Clients) – Get Active In The User Group To Gain Influence On SAP SAP users and their user groups have a unique opportunity to put in the right infrastructure to engage in productive partnership with SAP.   SAP management is now more willing than ever to hear customer feedback.  Customers seeking to innovate within their SAP investment should ask hard questions about what is in the SAP Labs portfolio.  User groups will play a key role in helping to prioritize future SAP product road map investments.  Users and their user groups should push for frameworks that monitor customer requests  and increase transparency in the prioritization process. Customers can not allow SAP to squander any more of the 10’s of billions in maintenance fee and license fees “invested” with SAP.  It's time to partner and user groups provide a great vehicle and catalyst to begin and continue the conversation. Your POV SAP users, are you feeling the same concerns in your region?  What are your other concerns that you wish to hear SAP address?  Add your comments to the discussion or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Please let us know if we can be of assistance in an advisory capacity.  Here’s how we can help:
  • Crafting a next gen apps strategy
  • Short listing and vendor selection
  • Contract negotiations support
  • Market evaluation
  • Implementation partner selection
  • Connecting with other partners
  • Sharing best practices
  • Designing a next gen apps strategy
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing
Related resources and links 20090803 A Software Insider's Point Of View - R "Ray" Wang "Monday's Musings: Users Now Expect More Advocacy From Their User Groups" 20100518 A Software Insider's Point Of View - R "Ray" Wang "Event Report: Sapphire 2010 Brings Customers Back To A Sense Of Normalcy" 20100512 A Software Insider's Point Of View – R “Ray” Wang – “News Analysis: SAP Bets On Innovation With $5.8B Sybase Acquisition” Reprints Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org. Disclosure Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  SAP is currently a  client of Altimeter Group but not a client of Insider Associates, LLC.  SAUG is a client of Insider Associates, LLC.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here. Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Buy Arimidex Online Cheap

Published on July 22, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Buy arimidex online cheap, with Jeremiah Owyang - Customer Strategy (@jowyang)  and R "Ray" Wang - Enterprise Strategy (@rwang0),  both founding partners at Altimeter Group. Cross-posted link here.

Community Platforms Evolve Into Social Business Category
Having tracked the social business category for some years now, Cytoxan online kaufen, and having watched the category grow, many players have expanded into other niches.  At first, the community platform space (e.g, order arimidex. InGage, Jive, Online capecitabine, KickApps, Lithium, Mzinga, etc.) was insular, comprare capecitabine, focused only on enterprise communities.  However, the space has evolved into Social CRM, Vermont VT Vt., Application Platforms, Social Media Management Systems, Brand Monitoring, corporate email systems and will eventually morph to focus on VRM and customer experience that’s native to the customer, Um iressa online.   This evolution may manifest into social, it may play out into mobile, and it may take even radical forms including in store displays advertising, buy arimidex online cheap.

The Situation - C Round Funding
Jive, who recently raised a $15mm in 2007 has capped off their war chest with a hefty $30mm ‘C round’ for a total of $57.5 million in total. Iressa for sale,  Why this large amount.  ‘D rounds’ are virtually non-existent out of Sand Hill road, and if they need investment they’ll have to get from a partner corporation.

SWOT Analysis


  • Strengths: Jive has been hailed as a leader in the social software category, iressa ordine on-line, (i.e. Forrester Wave Buy arimidex online cheap, and three Gartner Quadrants), and continues to show growth with large clients, claiming sales in the range of “$75,000-$150,000 per customer.  Some of those deals include ten - with average selling prices (ASP's) of $1 million, four of which closed in the last two quarters. While Jive is not yet cash-flow positive, Where to buy iressa, the company has 3,000 customers, 15 million users, and will end the year on a $100 million run-rate” (source).  Jive's recent acquisition of brand monitoring company FiltrBox demonstrates the pre-cursor of SCRM systems.  In addition, order cytoxan no rx, Jive has formed a variety of strategic partnerships including social business consultants Dachis Group.  The team recently hired a new CEO, Tony Zingale, Generic capecitabine, a seasoned leader of Mercury Interactive, where he clinched $1B revenues and led a $5B sale to HP.  Last but not least, the company shifted their headquarters from trendy Portland, Oregon to tech (and VC) centric Palo Alto, cheapest zometa in the world, CA.

  • Weaknesses: They’re undergoing a cultural shift from a hip Portland startup, to becoming a tried and true enterprise player. Ordering arimidex online cheap,  With a new CEO and with a new CMO (Kiker has moved on) to take the helm soon, Jive will have to undergo both an internal mindset change as they shift to battle enterprise players.   Also, as Jive takes on larger clients, Montana MT Mont., they risk alienating their small and medium size clients who can’t afford, or can’t scale with Jive’s new value proposition.

  • Opportunities: Expect this war chest to be used to bolster the sales and marketing team. Acheter iressa bon marché,  C-rounds often focus on getting the company ready for a “material” event.  Jive will most likely use this time to build out significant partner channels and business development with enterprise clients, buy arimidex online cheap.  Platform investments should support new partner models that support value added service growth.  Expect Jive to focus on bookings and immediate recurring revenue in order to maximize value for a ‘material’ event.  Significant acquisitions may come after a material event but not likely at this point in time.

  • Threats: Key threats come from larger vendors who may suddenly gain a “social” religion.   Jive must transform from dominating the small pond of community platforms to winning the large enterprise.  Corporate strategies must prepare the company for a new type of battle in the enterprise application market.  Should an Oracle or SAP decide to enter the market, iressa without prescription, it may make overtures for an acquisition.  Salesforce.com and RightNow are the biggest CRM threats as they have integrated with key social business constituents.  Chatter for Salesforce.com offers competitive features on an existing footprint of innovative customers.  Mainstay social business platform Microsoft Sharepoint can continue to win favor through having a large direct and channel sales force.  New threats may come from reemerging vendors such as Broadvision, Price of iressa, who bring a pedigree of  traditional eBusiness. While Jive is often compared with Lithium, the likely outcome - continued verticalization and increased friction with the larger enterprise software players.  CEO Tony Zingale often publicly denounces incumbents for having Social media “bolt on” features and Jive bloggers often throw bombs at the CRM vendors.  Expect incumbents to use their existing enterprise footprints, CIO relationships, and direct and channel sales teams to their advantage.


SWOT Summary



  • Jive hit a milestone moment, generic iressa, as this $30M dowry prepares them to move into a new category.  The result - funding provides an accelerant for rapid expansion as organic growth will not be enough to achieve a velocity that existing enterprise incumbents may already be able to leverage.

  • Jive must partner with more system integrators, enterprise class software vendors, Cytoxan discount, and integration providers to gain a solid foothold with enterprise buyers. Buy arimidex online cheap,  The money is clearly in the enterprise buyer market where existing ERP, CRM budgets can be gleaned.

  • Expect Jive to bolster recurring revenues, and stabilize growth, and prepare for an IPO in 2011 –an achievement we haven’t heard much about here in Silicon Valley for nearly 10 years.



The Bottom Line For Competitors - Don't Be Last To Play Catchup
Market and solution footprint consolidation will continue around the key components of social business.  Expect market laggards and legacy competitors to work out their build/buy decisions over the next 8 to 12 months.  Most legacy software vendors lack not only the R&D prowess, but also the DNA to successfully launch a social product, order zometa from canada.  Early consolidators will gain the best deals.  Laggards will be odd man out during the rapid consolidation in the next 18 to 24 months

The Bottom Line For Buyers - Invest In Jive But Keep Them Vested In Your Success
Jive will emerge as one of the winners in providing social business solutions.  The company has the potential to IPO and succeed as an independent provider, buy arimidex online cheap. Cytoxan online cheap,   Other competitors will emerge and play catchup over the next 24 months.  However, should an IPO event succeed, the funding will provide Jive with the war chest to go after adjacent competitors and build out its base, cheap gleevec online legally.  During the journey towards an IPO, customers and prospects must keep the management team focused on investing in successful deployments and outcomes, Purchase evista, ensuring they get rapid service and support despite focused on top line growth.

Your POV.

Are you a Jive customer?  How do you feel about the funding ?  Has Jive continued to give you excellent service?  Do you feel you have Jive's attention?  Are you in the market for social CRM solutions and have a question?  You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity or better yet, join the community.

Please let us know if you need help with your Social CRM efforts.  Here’s how we can help:


  • Assessing social CRM readiness

  • Developing your social CRM  strategy

  • Vendor selection

  • Implementation partner selection

  • Connecting with other pioneers

  • Sharing best practices


Related resources and links

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, Order gleevec from canada, please contact r@softwareinsider.org.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many SCRM vendors, we want you to trust us more.  Jive is currently a client of Altimeter Group but not that of Insider Associates, LLC.  For the disclosure policy please refer here.

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

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Published on July 5, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Social CRM Faces Initial Adoption Hurdles From Management Order zometa without prescription, In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the "Five Stages of Grief" in her book, On Death and Dying. These five stages can be summed up as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  When applied to disruptive technology adoption by organizations, the "Five Stages" framework provides clear insight in anticipating how likely an organization is ready to embrace change.  Recent conversations with line of business operations managers about Social CRM identify both lack of awareness and high levels of internal resistance towards adoption.  In a recent phone and in-person survey of 31 front office operations owners (i.e. sales executives, Buy capecitabine pill, support executives, and COO's) about their attitudes on Social CRM, 67.7% (i.e, ordering evista without prescription. 21/31) expressed denial, Zometa price, 16.1% (i.e. 5/31) felt anger, and 9.6% (i.e, cheap iressa online. 3/31) experienced bargaining, Rabatt kaufen iressa, 3.2% (i.e. 1/31)  encountered depression, and 3.2% (i.e, order zometa without prescription. 1/31) achieved acceptance (see Figure 1).

Figure 1, Alabama AL Ala.. Most Front Office Executives Live In Denial About SCRM


The Bottom Line For Buyers (Users) - The Kübler-Ross Model Provides Techniques To Expedite The Internal Acceptance Of SCRM

The five stages of SCRM adoption describes each phase, Cheap gleevec tablet, discusses the typical reactions, and addresses how to move forward.  Organizations can expect stakeholders to progress through the phases at their own pace.  Expect organizations to fall between a 10 month to 21 month range.  However, proponents can accelerate the process through both qualitative understanding and quantitative support.  Here are the five stages:


  1. Stage 1: Denial (Average duration 3 to 6 months).  Many executives will put up defenses and excuses when initially broached about the need for SCRM.  They may have a point should no quantitative data exist or may feel as strongly as my fellow Enterprise Advocate, bestill evista online, Dennis Howlett does about SCRM.  Typical responses include, Kjøp Discount arimidex, "Social CRM is just another XLA fad"; "None of our customers will ever use this stuff, just look at how much we invested in CRM"; "Is there really any return in these social things?"

    Approach:     Proponents should share adoption trends based on SCRM Use Case #F1 - Social Customer Insights.  If the analytical data provides the quantitative support on social media trends, then expect both a heightened awareness of the market realities and a rapid progression towards the second phase.   In many consumer and classic B2C industries, Koop korting casodex, the data will show that some significant population group is having a conversation in a social channel.  The next set of questions to answer, Order epogen no prescription, "Can they be influenced and will they buy?"  Now, if the data shows that customers, for example in classic B2B industries such as aircraft maintenance, Minnesota MN Minn., repair, Købe arimidex online, and overhaul (MRO), have barely adopted any social tools, then it will make sense to wait till social media adoption has hit a critical mass, köpa billiga iressa.


  2. Stage 2: Anger (Average duration 1 to 3 months).  As data flows in about where customers are having conversations about an organization's product, Rhode Island RI R.I., the individual recognizes that denial can not continue. Order zometa without prescription,   "Outside" conversations happening without the supervision of the firm will most likely enrage the management team.  Executives will often ask, "Can these customers really do this without us?"; "Why doesn't our existing efforts have the same effect?"; "Do we have to deal with another channel?"; "How come we have to waste all this time on SCRM"; "Who's fault is this?"

    Approach:     At this point, stakeholders will express their rage at anyone and anything they can.  Proponents should let the individuals vent their frustration.  From there, help the stakeholders visualize a time table and project plan to support the SCRM project.  Show them how to engage and influence the customer.  Let them know they no longer control the conversation.


  3. Stage 3: Bargaining (Average duration 3 to 6 months). Despite all logical arguments, stakeholders will begin to rationalize the situation.  Excuses to postpone taking action balance out the recognition of the urgency to adopt SCRM.  Quotes from the survey include, cheap casodex tablet, "None of our competitors are doing this, Acheter en ligne zometa, why should we?" "If we can hold out for a few more years, we'll be okay and the market will be stable";  "Can we just do one part and not the rest?"

    Approach:     Begin the discussion on what impact could occur due to inaction.  Highlight the elements of a successful approach and the dependencies.  Layout the holistic point of view.  Encourage outside advisors to provide an alternative but independent point of view.


  4. Stage 4: Depression (Average duration 2 to 3 months). Realization that a lack of financial and labor resources will hamper adoption, Køb discount epogen, forces depression upon front office executives.  Stakeholders express thoughts such as "We don't have the funding, Osta alennus casodex, this will never go through"; "Social CRM is inevitable, but no one is trained on this stuff"; "By the time we put up the current version, the world will be two generations ahead"

    Approach:     Walk through the timing of cost and benefits with an emphasis on ROI.  Apply good project management discipline to identify resource requirements and milestones.  Identify skill gaps among the team.  Highlight the road map and project plan again and show where phases could be accelerated.  Identify success factors from previous projects, buy casodex online.


  5. Stage 5: Acceptance (Average duration 1 to 3 months). Buy gleevec online legally, With the facts in hand, a plan in place, and change management in effect, Colorado CO Colo., stakeholders may have turned the corner.  A realization that customers in social media channels are here to stay.  This "social thing" is cultural not a fad.  The tenor in hallway conversations shifts from stages 1 and 2 to "It's going to be okay, Kjøpe cytoxan, we can make this work."; "I can't fight the social trend, we may as well prepare for it and win."; "Let's put some money behind this but continue to monitor and test"; "Get that team ready to go."

    Approach:     Don't celebrate yet!  Put the plan in place.  Apply continuous monitoring and testing.  Fail fast.  Put those learnings back into the next iteration.  Coordinate the ecosystem for success.



Your POV.

Having trouble convincing management its time for Social CRM?  Did your last CRM project fail miserably?  Are you in the market for social CRM solutions and have a question?  You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity or better yet, join the community, order zometa without prescription.

Please let us know if you need help with your Social CRM efforts.  Here’s how we can help:


  • Assessing social CRM readiness

  • Developing your social CRM  strategy

  • Vendor selection

  • Implementation partner selection

  • Connecting with other pioneers

  • Sharing best practices

  • Designing a next gen apps strategy

  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support

  • Demystifying software licensing


Resources And Related Research:

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here.

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

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Order Cheap Arimidex Online

Published on July 1, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Organizations Facing The Big Data Problem Must Solve The TCO Of Data Retention Order cheap arimidex online, The explosion in data volumes from terabytes to petabytes (i.e. 1 quadrillion bytes) drives many organizations to identify cost effective solutions for the retention and on demand retrieval of historical data.  More importantly, organizations must meet a plethora of changing business and compliance requirements.  RainStor's solution focuses in on the retention of read-only or inactive structured data.  The solution delivers the "Three R's" of fundamental data management capabilities for its customers by:


  • Reduction, bestill arimidex online. Effective storage requires secure but accessible data reduction that can encapsulate data without loss in content or structure.  RainStor can take structured data sources such as log files, Ordering epogen pill, database, and event data and compress to a 40:1 ratio into containers of discrete files.  This means up to a 97% savings in storage costs.  On top of the compression, RainStor de-duplicates data values and detects patterns so values only need to be stored once.  This means information is stored in a tree structure while still maintaining a full representation of the original records.  The result - in repetitive transactions such as call data logs and stock transactions, Nebraska NE Nebr., storage costs drop by geometric proportions (see Figure 1).

  • Retention. Evista online, Compliance rules create unnecessary complexity in managing retention and purge parameters.  Data in the RainStor solution follows existing policies and remains "as-is" or immutable.  The system preserves the original structure of the stored records.  Users gain control in managing compliance rules and can even store the data in an unstructured data solution such as EMC Centera.  The solution utilizes commodity storage systems and doesn't require specialized DBA skills.  Organizations can keep their SAN, NAS, DAS, evista online store, CAS, αγοράζουν online zometa, or even go with cloud storage options.

  • Retrieval. Existing systems remain challenged in preserving schema evolution and often lose context after upgrades from release to release.  In RainStor, the system stores schema and tables to be able to search back in a point in time.  By addressing schema evolution, Delaware DE Del., any changes to new fields, Cytoxan, tables, and columns are preserved and present the exact representation of the data regardless of query style.  As an extension repository, RainStor does not store in relational format and can instead point to a SQL statement.  Furthermore, ordering arimidex without prescription, organizations can retrieve data through SQL and BI tools such as ODBC/JDBC at RDBMS performance levels or better


Figure 1.  RainStor Applies Data De-duplication To Reduce Storage Costs

Source: RainStor

RainStor Delivers Its Solutions Via An OEM Partner Model

Gloucester, South Dakota SD, UK based RainStor has its US based offices in San Francisco, CA.  RainStor does not sell the solution directly to consumers.  The solution is now embedded in more than 75 deployments at Global 2000 brands through independent software vendors (ISV), systems integrators (SI), buy arimidex from canada, and managed service providers (MSP) such as Adaptive Mobile, Køb billige capecitabine, EMC, Group 2000, HP, comprar en línea evista, Informatica, Lowest price casodex, and On-Point Technology.  The solution powers key solutions such as:


  • Application and warehouse archiving. Partners use RainStor to manage the information life cycle by keeping more data for longer without bogging down transactional systems.

  • Application retirement, order cheap arimidex online. Legacy data can be stored in an alternative repository for legacy migration or SaaS deployments.

  • SaaS data escrows. SaaS vendors can guarantee data in an outage or in a potential end of business scenario.

  • Log and security event retention.  De-duplication technology reduces massive storage retention costs and improves retrieval performance.


Published Informatica Telco Case Study Shows A 211% ROI In Four Years

An Informatica telco customer encountering a massive operations downsizing faced the challenge of reducing costs while keeping data online and accessible.  Challenged with mainframe maintenance costs of $250, casodex pill,000 annually, Missouri MO Mo., the organization built a read-only archive from mainframe to RainStor at only 5% of the original size.  The telco achieved a $430,000 annual reduction with 20x admin savings going from 2 FTE's to 0.1 FTE's  (i.e. IT $250k, epogen ordine on-line, Staff $180k).  The result - payback in 16.1 months and $1.2M in savings over 4 years. Cheapest casodex in the world, The Bottom Line For Buyers (Users) - Seek Information Preservation Cost Savings To Fund Innovation

While RainStor does not directly sell its solutions to customers, this disruptive technology should be part of every cloud stack, historical storage system, Oregon OR Ore., and archiving solution.  The solution even supports inMemory systems by using memory address pointers in nodal storage to avoid row or column based storage.  Use cases such as smart grids and cold data storage can also provide significant savings.  Users should demand that their ISV's, Billiga evista apotek, SI's, and MSP's OEM RainStor.  Cost savings in equipment, software, αγοράσετε epogen έκπτωση, and labor provide a significant cost savings basis that will deliver the seed funding for much needed innovation projects.

Your POV Order cheap arimidex online, Do you face data retention challenges?  Have your costs gone through the roof for information management?  Have you tried RainStor?  As a prospect or customer, what limitations do you see?   Add your comments to the discussion or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Order capecitabine no prescription, Please let us know if you need help with your overall apps strategy. Here’s how we can help:


  • Planning an Information Management agenda

  • Assessing SaaS and cloud

  • Evaluating Cloud integration strategies

  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration

  • Planning upgrades and migration

  • Performing vendor selection

  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support


Related resources and links

RainStor4 Data Sheet

20100529 Merv's Market Strategies For IT Suppliers - Merv Adrian "RainStor Ramp Rolls On"

Submit Your Solution For Consideration
To submit your Thursday’s Disruptive Tech Showcase for consideration, check out the guidelines in the Policy section.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, Kansas KS Kans., we want you to trust us.  RainStor is currently not a retainer client of Altimeter Group and also not a client of Insider Associates, Purchase cytoxan online, LLC.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here.

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

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Buy Cheap Casodex Online

Published on June 28, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

BI Solutions Must Address The Information Management Matrix Buy cheap casodex online, A confluence of changing business requirements and on-going vendor consolidation leads many organizations to rethink their business intelligence (BI) strategies.  Many buyers face decisions to move beyond departmental solutions or to stay with an integrated apps based BI solution.  Meanwhile, some buyers must decide whether or not an integrated platform provides the right balance between business impact and cost of technology.  Additionally, most organizations seek support for new data types and new deployment options.  As BI continues to evolve from fragmented and historical reporting to pervasive, predictive, and real-time decision support, an organization's success increasingly depends on the support for a expanding information matrix of (see Figure 1):


  • New and traditional data types. A proliferation of data types from social, machine to machine, and mobile sources add new data types to traditional transactional data.  Examples include content, geo-spatial, hardware data points, location based, machine data, metrics, order capecitabine online, mobile, physical data points, process, RFID's, search, sentiment, streaming data, Gleevec discount, social, text, and web.

  • Visualization and reporting paradigms.  Users expect more than the traditional charts, gauges, and dials.  Web 2.0 innovations show how Rich Internet Applications (RIA) through tools such as AJAX, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight can create interactive BI experiences.  New and old paradigms include ad-hoc query builders, business performance management (BPM) systems, dashboards, production reports, Arkansas AR Ark., scorecards, and advanced visualizations.  New visualization types include matrix charts, network diagrams, bubble charts, tree maps, word trees, tag clouds, Cheapest arimidex price, phrase nets, and others.

  • Approaches and styles. Analytical techniques continue to improve as data volumes explode.  New and traditional approaches include advanced analytics, business activity monitoring (BAM), BI workspace, decision support systems, low latency BI, meta data generated BI apps, non-modeled exploration and in-memory analytics, scenario analysis, bestill epogen online, and OLAP.

  • Deployment options. With data coming from so many different sources, users are seeking new deployment options.  Common solutions in the BI portfolio include BI appliances, BI in the Cloud, BI specific DBMS, Mobile BI, open source BI, on-premises packaged BI apps, New Jersey NJ N.J., private BI clouds, and SaaS based BI.


Figure 1.  The Information Management Matrix Drives Next Gen BI


Explosion In Semi-Structured And Unstructured Data Challenges Existing Solutions

Along with new business requirements, the old world of structured data must make way for a plethora of new data types in unstructured data.  More importantly, solutions must support a growing number of industry vertical standards in semi-structured data.  Unfortunately, no single vendor can support all the data types that fit into the following three categories (see Figure 2):


  • Structured data. Structured data remains the most understood type of data.  Traditional sources comprise of data in transactional systems such as ERP, CRM, SCM and other database management systems.  Solutions conduct analysis via OLAP and traditional apps centric and database centric BI systems.

  • Semi-structured data. Common examples include flat files in record format, cheap gleevec online without prescription, RSS feeds, XML documents, and data in spreadsheets.  Industry-specific XML data standards and cross-enterprise data-exchange standards such as ACORD, EDI, HL7, NACHA, and SWIFT will continue to grow as BI goes vertical.  On the document print stream front, Mississippi MS Miss., new systems should support ASP, Met code, and PCL.

  • Unstructured data. Sources include natural-language text from e-mail, blogs, SMS, social networking sites, text fields, audio, video, discount capecitabine, and images.  Unstructured data represents up to 80% of today's data sources.  Enterprises are challenged in discovering and organizing unstructured data for the real-time delivery of information to the right user.


Figure 2.  Data Types Fall Into Three Main Categories


Next Gen BI Must Reflect Emerging And Evolving Business Requirements

As market hype increases and sellers (i.e. vendors) rush to meet new requirements, buyers (i.e. users) should focus on 10 emerging and evolving next gen requirements that span dynamic user experiences, business process focus, and community connectedness (see Figure 3):


  1. Support role based designs, buy cheap casodex online. Information enables actionable insight by role.  Dashboards, reports, alerts, notifications, Order capecitabine online, and filtered activity streams must deliver relevant information at the right time for the right person.  BI tailors to the needs of a role and should be self-service.

  2. Deliver consistent experience across channels and deployment options. Information enforces consistency across deployment models, devices, and data sources.  Users create, read, use, delete, and share information in a consistent user experience.  BI delivers information any and everywhere.

  3. Enable contextual, timely, purchase cytoxan, and relevant delivery of information. Information knows when to provide; what information to; which users; where it makes sense in a business process.  Users receive activity streams of information based on preferences.  BI understands relationship history and how to deliver to the right person at the right time with the right authority.

  4. Align with configurable and adaptive business processes. Information aligns with business processes.  Users easily modify processes to meet changing conditions.  BI provides user driven ad-hoc reporting and configuration.

  5. Facilitate outcome-focus and results-orientation. Information ties back to goals and instills accountability for results.  Users gain transparency and insight in data.  BI tracks key performance indicators (KPI's) and related actionable key performance drivers (KPD's) across an end to end process.

  6. Buy cheap casodex online, Foster proactive, predictive, & actionable insight. Information identifies patterns and trends including intent and forecast projections.  Users respond with speed and accuracy to requests and apply new techniques such as key performance predictors (KPPs).   BI anticipates requests and supports decision making.

  7. Empower all types of stakeholders. Information and results shared with internal and external stakeholders.  Users establish relationships and participate in communities and social networks.  Solution opens up the system to new types of users, collaborators, Köpa billiga gleevec, networks, and communities.  BI must be easy to use by everyone making decisions, not just business analyst gurus.  Solutions should also take into consideration accessible outputs for the visually impaired.

  8. Provide pervasive and natural collaboration. Information shared and socialized with key stakeholders.  Users collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to review results, modify plans, add understanding, and communicate changes.  Collaboration should support decision making.  BI embeds knowledge worker skills into existing work flows.

  9. Engage self-learning and self-awareness. Information supports decision support, presence, and learning.  Users build a history of interactions that drive preferences and identify patterns.  BI applies presence and location information to offer relevant actions and remembers patterns and behaviors.

  10. Permit security, scalability, and safety, buy cheap casodex online. Information supports role base security, data masking, buy zometa from canada, partitioning, archiving, disaster recovery, and other security requirements.  Users shielded from cumbersome security measures.  BI meets regulatory requirements and disaster recovery thresholds.


Figure 3.  Next Gen BI Requirements Touch On 10 Elements Of Social Enterprise Apps

Long Term BI Strategy Must Support A Multi-Disciplinary Integrated Approach

Organizations can expect BI solutions to be embedded in a growing number of business solutions.  With actionable insight a scarce resource, natural integration points with other information management and orthogonal disciplines will emerge:


  • Business process management. A strong linkage between BI and business process management will enable operational BI (OBI).  Organizations will transition from reactive to proactive process management.

  • Content management. Unstructured information tied back to BI will bring new dimensions to information management.  Organizations can expect improved informed decision making and richer context to analytical reports.

  • Data governance. South Carolina SC S.C., Formulation of an organizational strategy and data stewardship methodology must align with the BI strategy.  Organizations must model business rules and controls that span cross-functional teams to improve the success of data quality and BI deployments.

  • Master data management. Buy cheap casodex online, Master data management forms the foundation of successful BI engagements by acquiring, cleaning, distributing, organizing, and managing master data.  Organizations still lag in MDM deployments but must come up to speed to support enterprise BI requirements .

  • Social technologies.  BI's reach into social apps and the social metadata layer bodes well for an industry just starting to explore social technologies.  Organizations need to associate a Twitter handle or social networking account with a customer account.


The Bottom Line For Buyers – Compare And Contrast BI Strategies To Match Business Impact And Technology Value

As with all IT solutions, organizations must balance out the business impact with the cost of technology (see Figure 4).   Given the three major vendor approaches to BI, organizations must rethink which approach best suits their near and long term strategy (see Figure 5).


  • Application and business process centric. These solutions take an application or business process centered approach based on applications such as ERP and CRM.  Optimization for apps data and processes best suits organizations when more than a majority of their business information resides in a few data sources.  Sample vendors include Epicor, Lawson, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and SAP Business Objects

  • Pure play best of breeds. These solutions provide deep capabilities in a subset of data types, visualization and reporting paradigms, BI approaches and styles, Oregon OR Ore., and deployment deployment options.  Pure play best of breeds deal well with multiple data sources and support data heterogeneity.  These solutions often address the data integration (DI) issues head on.  Sample vendors include Actuate, BIRST, Information Builders, MicroStrategy, myDials, PivotLink, Proferi, Order epogen overnight delivery, and QlikTech.

  • Strategic BI platforms. These solutions seek to build a comprehensive approach to supporting data types, visualization and reporting paradigms, and BI approaches and styles.  Organizations should conduct a thorough analysis of platform maturity in order to assess degrees of integration, architectural consistency, and solution completeness.   However, not all strategic BI platforms are created equal as some are more apps centric versus apps independent.  For example (i.e. in order of most apps centric to most apps independent), the range includes Microsoft, Oracle, SAP Business Objects,  IBM, and SAS Institute.


In addition, there are a number of enabling technologies required for BI to be successful such as:

  • Data integration (DI) and data quality (DQ), buy cheap casodex online. DI and DQ solutions enable the access to, transformation of, iressa sale, integration with, and delivery of the best version of truth to business systems.  BI efforts require successful DI and DQ strategies.   Sample vendors include Capscan, DataFlux, Datanomic, Experian QAS, IBM, Mississippi MS Miss., Informatica, Inquera, Melissa Data, Omikron, Pitney Bowes, SAP BusinessObjects (FirstLogic), Satori, Talend, Trillium, where to buy cheap epogen, and Uniserv.

  • Data warehouses (DW). DW's primarily provide a place for consolidated data storage.  BI systems leverage DWs to retrieve, analyze, extract, transform, load, and manage data.  Sample vendors include Aster Data, Buy gleevec pill, Greenplum, HP Neoview, IBM, Microsoft (DATAllegr0), Netezza, Oracle, ParAccel, SAP Sybase IQ, Terradata, ordering gleevec overnight delivery, and Vertica.

  • Master data management (MDM). MDM helps organizations apply a technology solution to the acquisition, cleansing, distribution, organization, and management of master data to systems such as BI.  Sample vendors include DataFlux (A SaaS Company), IBM (including Initiate), Informatica (previously Siperian), Cheap generic casodex, Kalido, Oracle, and Talend.


Figure 4. Extent Of Business Impact And Cost Of Technology Delivery Drive Business Value

Figure 5.  Comparing Vendor BI Strategies: When and Why?


When evaluating next gen BI strategies, consider the following best practices in vendor selection:


  • Focus on enabling all types of users. Solutions should enable anyone from a front line employee to a power user to view reports, build ad-hoc reports, collaborate, and improve decision making.  Design for roles could eventually result in BI activity streams filtered by key information needs.  Change management should be budgeted for solution development, training, cheap cytoxan no rx, and ongoing education.

  • Support highly differentiated processes.  Take advantage of industry specific solutions that meet critical vertical requirements and reduce time to market.  Over time, expect BI to continue to specialize by verticals.  Certain industries will require different levels of information optimization.  For example an emergency dispatch, may prioritize optimization of certain data types over others or regulations may require a certain standard of delivery.

  • Stay flexible. Ensure the systems supports multi-channel heterogeneous data sources.  Do not stay dependent on ERP systems for primary sources of data.  Expect a rapidly changing business environment that rewards flexibility.

  • Avoid vendor lock-in to one set of technologies. Seek different approaches and styles depending on the business requirement.  Be open to best of breed solutions as needed.  Keep in mind, support of specialized scenarios or cross-enterprise requirements may result in the selection of best of breed.  Apps independent vendors will be more focused on supporting heterogeneity.

  • Expect to move beyond departmental. Organizations will want to replicate successful deployments in departments across the enterprise.  Choose technology approaches and styles that can scale across different business functions, data types, reporting paradigms, and deployment options.

  • Factor existing infrastructure. Consider when it makes sense to invest in or throw out existing systems.  Astute next gen enterprises find ways to simultaneously leverage existing investments and innovate.  Plan replacement projects in phases.

  • Apply selection tools Buy cheap casodex online, .  Save time and use independent vendor selection short list and check list tools to map business requirements such as organization and team structure, business and process maturity, technology strategy, and technology solution ecosystem.


Your POV

Does your existing BI strategy support these next gen requirements?  What next gen BI capabilities would you like to see your BI vendor deliver on in the next release?  Is your organization ready for a next gen BI strategy?  Does your BI strategy account for new social requirements?  Add your comments to the discussion or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity. Montana MT Mont., Please let us know if you need help with your next gen BI strategy, overall apps strategy, and contract negotiations projects.  Here’s how we can help:


  • Designing a next gen information management strategy

  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support

  • Demystifying software licensing

  • Assessing SaaS and cloud

  • Evaluating Cloud integration strategies

  • Assisting with legacy ERP migration

  • Planning upgrades and migration

  • Performing vendor selection

  • Renegotiating maintenance


Contributors

Research from this document came from conversations with 37 buyers (users) and the following sellers (vendors):
























Actuate IBM Cognos Informatica
Information Builders myDials Oracle
QlikTech Proferi SAP Business Objects
SAS Institute

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Altimeter Group.  To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us.  IBM and Oracle are currently retainer clients of Altimeter Group but not a client of Insider Associates, LLC.   Altimeter Group has conducted project work for Informatica, QlikTech, comprar en línea casodex, SAP Business Objects, and SAS Institute.  This report was independently produced.  For the full disclosure policy please refer here.

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

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