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The personal contents in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution to any contributor's, commentator's, or author's current, past, or future employers.

No NDA's have been broken. Sources may come from both publicly available information and private individual conversations.

Copyrighted © 2001- 2010

R "Ray" Wang and Insider Associates LLC.

All rights reserved.

March 2, 2010, 6:07 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 8 comments |

Tuesday’s Tip: When To Go With A Two-Tier ERP Strategy

Single Instance ERP Harder And Harder To Justify
The holy grail of an ERP implementation used to be the single instance deployment.  However, market forces, a move to adopt new disruptive technologies, slow pace of innovation from incumbent vendors, and high maintenance fees have changed many organization’s perspectives.  Add a slew of rapidly changing business requirements [...]

February 24, 2010, 9:18 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers - February 2010

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*
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.
Paul Alessi is now a Buyer [...]

February 24, 2010, 2:01 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 6 comments |

Quarterly Financial Tracker: Q4 CY 2009 SaaS Vendors Continue To Trump On Premises Vendors In YoY Growth

The Year Of SaaS Shows… And Yes, In This Economy.

The recession continued to take its toll on software sales with a slight impact to the SaaS vendors.  Growth rates have come down from the high 30’s to the low 20’s.  But with “flat” the new growth metric in this down economy, SaaS vendor results remain [...]

February 17, 2010, 11:51 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 3 comments |

News Analysis: Salesforce.com Announces Private Beta Of Chatter

Chatter Represents SFDC’s Unified Move Into Social

Announced at the 2009 Dreamforce conference, Chatter represents both a collaboration application and platform.  Software built on the Force.com platform will gain the collaboration capabilities.   Solutions in AppExchange will be able to use profiles, real time streams, and other API’s.   With a 100 customers testing out user experience, [...]

February 7, 2010, 1:25 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

News Analysis: SAP’s CEO Léo Apotheker Resigns

Apotheker’s Contract Not Renewed.  SAP Puts Snabe and McDermott In Co-Ceo Roles.

Rumors began circulating early this weekend that Léo Apotehker’s contract would not be renewed.  The highest level sources had confirmed this early in the morning and the afternoon press release provided confirmation of the details.  A few key facts:

SAP moves back to [...]

February 3, 2010, 5:57 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | One comment |

News Analysis: IBM Acquires MDM Leader Initiate Systems For Public Sector and Healthcare Prowess

IBM Adds A Leading Customer Data Integration/MDM Pioneer To Its Master Information Management Arsenal

With arguably 10 master information management acquisitions since 2003, IBM continues to push towards its goal of adaptive master data management (MDM) (see Figure 1).  The recent acquisition of Initiate Systems comes after the heals of Oracle’s purchase of SilverCreek Systems in [...]

February 1, 2010, 3:51 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 5 comments |

News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position

Informatica Enters The Battle For Master Data Management Dominance

As with any best of breed market, only a few will survive and even fewer will succeed.  Despite a leading offering, Siperian’s faced a rocky financial situation over the past 12 months.  Many suitors pursued Siperian but in the end Informatica’s $130M acquisition of Siperian took one [...]

January 27, 2010, 11:31 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 3 comments |

Event Report: Oracle-Sun Raises The Stake In the Stack Wars

Oracle Rolls Out A New “Red Stack”
With EU approval out of the way, Oracle finalizes the Sun deal and resumes its quest for the largest share of the IT wallet. Oracle’s 60+ acquisitions follow a concerted strategy and Sun adds key areas such as servers and storage. The stack now comprises Vertical Apps, [...]

January 18, 2010, 11:59 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 10 comments |

Monday’s Musings: Next Generation CIO’s Face 11 Skill Shifts In A Disruptive World

The Era Of CIO Dictatorships Ends With 2009

Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it.  The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and [...]

January 14, 2010, 8:24 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 3 comments |

News Analysis: SAP Revives Two-Tier Maintenance Options

Standard Support Returns After Much Deliberation

SAP announced today that they would be reintroducing their Standard Support offering. Customers now gain choice with a 2-tier maintenance offering. Here are the details between standard support and enterprise support.

* Standard Support Offering reintroduces at 18%. Customers seeking core bug fixes, support packages, risk mitigation, and related new functionality will have choice in staying on standard support. The program is designed for customers who seek to keep their systems up and running. Customers with CPI clauses in their contracts will want to take note - the first set of consumer price index (CPI) price increases will begin January 1st, 2012.
* Enterprise Support remains at 22%. SAP will continue to offer Enterprise Support at 22% for new customers and a ramp up for existing customers (see Figure 1). Enterprise support includes features such as best practices for IT operations, proactive monitoring and reporting, and transparency for business process performance. Customers who choose to go with Enterprise Support prior to March 15th, 2010 will be eligible for ramp up.
* Supplemental offerings still available. Other programs such as Max Attention, Safeguarding, and Product Support for Large Enterprises (PSLE) will continue to be available by choice and invitation.

December 22, 2009, 12:34 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 8 comments |

Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud and SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010

Keep In Mind Basic Rules Still Apply Regardless Of Deployment Option

The proliferation of SaaS solutions provides organizations with a myriad of sorely needed point and disruptive solutions.  Good news - business users can rapidly procure and deploy, while innovating with minimal budget and IT team constraints.  Bad news - users must depend more on their [...]

December 16, 2009, 7:00 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers November/December 2009

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*
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.
Eliot Axelrod became Senior Account Exec [...]

December 11, 2009, 11:04 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 6 comments |

Event Report: 2009 SAP Influencer Summit - SAP Must Put Strategy To Execution In Order To Prove Clarity Of Vision

(Photos by R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC.   Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved.)
Re-innovation Now At The Heart Of SAP’s Focus And Strategy
SAP has faced a rough two years.  From the continuing market pressure on new license revenue, false-start launch of Business By Design (ByD), management restructuring, and issues with [...]

December 8, 2009, 1:41 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 4 comments |

Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value

Begin Apps Strategy Projects With Bite-Sized Entry Points
Complexity often plagues today’s apps strategies.  With tight budgets, limited resources, and little time, organizations need to find bite-sized entry points. The need to meet ever changing complex business requirements requires a four-step, basic (A,B,C,D) approach:

Align your business requirements with the hierarchy of business needs. Every project [...]

November 30, 2009, 10:15 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

News Analysis: DSAG Project Team Members Resign Leadership of SUGEN KPI Working Group

DSAG project team and project leader departure could signal disagreement with methodology not SUGEN
SAP embarked on an ambitious program to prove value in its Enterprise Support fee hike last year.   As planned, SAP should announce the results for the first set of SUGEN KPI’s in early December.  However, two key SUGEN KPI project sponsors [...]

November 25, 2009, 11:47 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 4 comments |

Speaker Notes: Keynote - SAP UK & Ireland User Group Conference 2009

Building Innovation With And Around Your SAP Environment
Location: Manchester CentralAuditorium
Date:23/11/2009
Start Time: 16:25
End Time: 17:00
Speaker: R “Ray” Wang
Company: Partner with Altimeter Group
Keynote summary:

Pace of change continues to increase in market forces, work dynamics, business models, and pace of technology adoption.
Innovation is essential in this market.
There’s a tonne of innovation at SAP. Management and politics keep it [...]

November 18, 2009, 8:47 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 6 comments |

Quarterly Financial Tracker: Q3 CY 2009 SaaS Vendors Face Some Headwinds, On-Premise Still In The Tank

Purchasing in Q3 reflected both economic downturn and summer doldrums.  While on-premise vendors continued massive double digit declines in year-over-year new license revenue, SaaS vendors faced some pressures in keeping up with tremendous growth.  However, long term economic outlook still favor SaaS players and early indications on Q4 budget flush indicate that SaaS and Cloud [...]

November 2, 2009, 8:56 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 8 comments |

Best Practices: Lessons Learned In What SMB’s Want From Their ERP Provider

Competition Intensifies For The Small And Medium Organization’s Software Budget

Software vendors such as Oracle and SAP can no longer rely on their large enterprise customers for double digit year-over-year growth.  In fact, their customers have not only reached a saturation point in being able to consume new solutions, but have also faced demands to cut [...]

October 24, 2009, 5:32 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 8 comments |

Product Review: Epicor 9 Delivers Next Generation Apps Capabilities Today

Epicor Succeeds On Delivering A Converged Product Line
Epicor’s latest release, Epicor 9, provides a proof point that an acquisition intensive vendor can keep their promises to both acquire and deliver on innovation.  Under the themes of “Protect, Extend, and Converge”, the Irvine, CA based mid-market software provider committed to its customers to support prior releases, [...]

October 21, 2009, 4:48 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

Wednesday’s Whispers: People Whispers October 2009

PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*
Congratulations to all!  Good to see that the job scenarios continue to improve in software/tech as a number of individuals made organizational changes and promotions.  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 [...]

October 14, 2009, 6:27 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 7 comments |

News Analysis: Oracle Formally Announces Fusion Apps

Oracle’s Fusion Apps Addresses A Broad Set Of Horizontal Modules

Oracle’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Ellison announced the code completion of Fusion Apps in today’s late afternoon keynote.  Though Ellison did not give precise guidance on general availability (GA), he did hint that the product would be available, “sometime in 2010″.  The product currently [...]

October 12, 2009, 12:36 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 12 comments |

Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights - Software-as-a Service

Connect.  Collaborate.  Innovate.
Welcome to the first of many Altimeter Group research reports.  Before you dive deep into the Customer Bill of Rights: Software-as-a-Service report, we wanted to share with you a bit about the research process and how we work within the community.

Connect.  We strive to bring new people together and share our knowledge.  Knowledge [...]

October 12, 2009, 1:29 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | 2 comments |

Event Report: Oracle Open World Day 1- The Word On The Street Report

Day 1 Brings 40,000 Oracle Faithful Into San Francisco For Red Stack Indoctrination

(Source: R Wang & Software Insider POV, Copyright © 2009  All rights reserved.)
Interesting tidbits from Day 1 include:

Oracle tells SaaS providers they can use a new SaaS/Cloud computing model to purchase a limited number of Oracle products in a “pay as you [...]

October 9, 2009, 11:59 pm | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Leave a comment |

Friday’s Feature: D&B Purisma Launches First Step To Hosted MDM Solution

Complete Customer Addresses Today’s Market Conditions
On October 5th, D&B Purisma Solutions group announced its first hosted business data management app.  When generally available in November 2009, Complete Customer will deliver a customer database that will be self managed by organizations departments.  Organizations and their departments will take ownership of their data in a hosted offering.  [...]

October 8, 2009, 11:36 am | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | One comment |

Thursday’s Thanks: Customer Bill of Rights - Software-as-a Service

This post has been cross posted on the Enterprise Advocates blog
A New Way Of Creating Research - Collaborative Input And Review
Some time early next week, we (i.e. Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang and I) will be publishing a Customer Bill of Rights - Software-as-a-Service.  Through the generous input of 57 collaborators and organizations, this document [...]