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Boston Park Plaza Lobby Buy evista, nTag at SAP Summit Schwarz and Becher The Future Leadership of SAP?
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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), comprar gleevec de descuento, management restructuring, and issues with user groups and Enterprise Support, one could kindly say its been a brutal period.  Looking forward to a fresh start in 2010, senior executives and key personnel have been hard at work "re-innovating" SAP at both the product and marketing level.  As intended, Cheap gleevec overnight delivery, many of the 275 analysts, bloggers, customers, influencers, and media attendees of this year's SAP Influencer Summit left Boston with the perception that the company is in the midst of such transition. However, epogen en ligne afin, the clarity of that message and the perception of innovation depended on the topic at hand.

Five key themes drove most formal and informal conversations throughout the event:


  • SAP continues to be innovative. John Schwarz, SAP Executive Board Member, keynoted on stage that " We are not your grandmother's SAP" and addressed SAP's aspiration to become more customer focused and innovative.  Jim Hagemann Snabe, παραγγείλετε online zometa, Executive Board Member in charge of Business Technology and Solutions, touted the product vision.  Vishal Sikka, SAP's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) focused his conversation on Timeless Software and SAP's cloud orientation.  He emphasized the size of future data volumes and the case for why In-Memory applications would provide the access speed and key meta-data required to draw inference for usage in business intelligence and analytics.  Meanwhile, John Wookey, who leads SAP's OnDemand for Large Enterprise effort commented on the Cloud by stating, "SAP sees On-Demand as the next major change in computing models and we're very serious about on-demand, For cytoxan online. Innovation in on-demand (deployment options) is still largely in front of us."

    Point of view (POV): SAP's working hard to highlight its innovations.   With €1.6B spent a year in R&D, innovation exists in SAP Labs but management and tribal politics often keep good ideas from becoming productized.  Users will need to work closely with SAP to identify needs and requirements and help SAP prioritize what should go to market.  Cloud strategy remains hazy in specifics, buy evista. In-memory approach will benefit customers but will take time to develop across all products.  OnDemand for Large Enterprises could slow in-roads by pure-play SaaS vendors.




  • Business analytics and intelligence play a key role in the platform. Executive Vice-President and General Manager, Marge Breya spent much time talking about SAP's support for heterogeneous data sources.  As the BOBJ assets integrate into NetWeaver, her emphasis would be to deliver information across new platforms and use cases.  Project Kona for business intelligence (BI) OnDemand in mobility would play a key role in changing how users access SAP information.

    POV: Customers need better information in order to make key decisions.  BI plays a significant role in delivering such value to customers and the Business Objects acquisition provides the enabler.  However, SAP users still find data quality and data governance to be a key hole in the SAP information strategy.  SAP will need to address the different approaches in master data management (MDM) and help customers understand which set of tools should be applied in each customer scenario.




  • Future growth rests with success in small and medium enterprises.  With most of the large enterprise saturated with packaged apps such as ERP, Oklahoma OK Okla., SAP's future growth rests on its ability to move down market.  The SME team led by Hans-Peter Klaey shared progress on their 3-prong product strategy with Business One (B1), Business All in One (BAiO), and Business by Design (ByD).   B1 continues to gain traction in the small end of the market and SAP has published a product road map well past 2014.  The key issues remain the future of ByD and how SAP plans to scale growth.

    POV: With hopes of getting ByD to scale, Feature Pack 2.5 promises to bring in-memory analytics, multi-tenant support, mobile device enablement, iressa online kaufen, Microsoft Silverlight UI's, and a software development kit based on Microsoft Visual Studio.  Scaling remains a big issue but now becomes technically feasible.  Conversations with Rainer Zinow, Senior Vice President for SME Strategic Solution Management; Christoph Behrendt, Senior Vice President for Midsize Enterprises; Peter Lorenz, Illinois IL Ill., Senior Vice President, SME Solutions; Jeff Stiles, Senior Vice President for SME Marketing; and others, highlight the advanced progression in SAP's SME thinking.   Early indications show promise that they will eventually approach the market with the right scaling, go to market plan, comprare gleevec, and cost structure to succeed. Movement towards more Microsoft technologies will help attract B1 partners, especially many at Sage who may be disgruntled but technically competent and customer service oriented.


  • Sustainability is more than a trend.  Building on its Clear Standards acquisition, SAP continues to drive mind share in the field of sustainability tracking.  Key topics include the usual suspects of carbon emissions, Generic epogen, energy consumption, and compliance. The Business Objects Sustainability Performance Management offering showcased new areas such as product and workplace safety.  Its recent Sustainability Report highlights how SAP uses its own software to achieve its corporate objectives.  Sustainability shows growth as a board-level topic and issue of concern.

    POV: More than just buzzwords, SAP's making a considerable investment in sustainability.  By providing the right templates and KPI's for external reporting, SAP will transform social responsibility aspirations to reality for its interested customers.   Peter Graf, SAP's Chief Sustainability Officer, αγοράζουν φτηνά arimidex, has harnessed the do-good spirit of SAP's employees in building out SAP's offerings.  Expect sustainability to be a key area in repairing SAP's current image.  Conversations with customers indicate that sustainability may not be a primary reason to choose SAP today, but SAP's investment and commitment in this arena brings SAP into conversations with key business leaders and has led to deal flow.  However, long term success in sustainability will require good master data management (MDM) and SAP must rapidly address this issue or face the prospect of false promises.


  • Partners and ecosystems matter. The partner ecosystem team continues to evolve and innovate with new programs that not only attract new partners, but also improve partner readiness.  SAP currently works with 7000 go to market partners and the SAP Developer Network boasts 2.5M developers.  Efforts such as the SAP Mentor program, Cheap evista no prescription, SAP Partner Edge, SAP EcoHub, and SAP Community Network by Zia Yusuf and his successor, Singh Mecker, Senior Vice President of GEPG provide proof points of progress and success.

    POV:
    Buy evista, The EcoHub provides customers, partners, suppliers, and internal employees with a collaboration point for subject matter experts, trouble shooting, and fostering community.  SAP's partner ecosystem remains its strongest asset.  In order to capitalize on their success, SAP must make the necessary investment in revamping the technology platforms partners build on.  Should they fail in providing an easier platform, they will lose traction and adoption.  Partner-led innovation will move to easier platforms to work with and business models that sustain profitability.


SAP's Efforts In Strategy To Execution Rates A "B-" For Now

Applying a quick Vendor Scorecard grading system, here is a subjective evaluation of SAP's 2009 efforts to date*:


  • Leadership: "B-". Leo Apotheker and Bill McDermott failed to show up again at a key event.  While this was Q4 and a tough quarter, arimidex pharmacy, customer and influencer perceptions remain low on Leo given his decision to push Enterprise Support and the lack of clarity into his vision and approach to date.  To be fair, he has faced a tough hurdle in cleaning up mistakes from his predecessor, Henning Kagermann, and has had to streamline research and development as well as a sprawling bureaucracy.  The good news - their absence highlighted the emerging bench strength of talent within SAP.  This brought some confidence to many in attendance that SAP may have the right stuff to emerge. Order zometa pill, The bad news - rumors abound on when a successor (Co-CEO) would be announced as Leo's contract expires in June 2010.

  • Product strategy: "B+". Sustainability, integration of Business Objects componentry, Enhancement Packages (EhP), and In-Memory apps receive praise.  Meanwhile, adoption of ERP 6.0, Nevada NV Nev., remains slow.  SAP cites 50% of all product instances on to ERP 6.0.  However, actual customer counts may be less given the fact some customers have 25 to 50 instances of SAP.   Only 3500 customers have used Enhancement  Packages.  Customers remain confused on the value of Business Suite 7, upset with paying twice for BW and Business Objects, and disappointed with SAP's slow approach to SaaS and onDemand.  Successful relaunch of ByD in 2010 may help SAP gain traction.  Customers await delivery on OnDemand offerings for Large Enterprise but can not wait much longer.  InMemory Apps planned for 2014 must be delivered on-time to compete with Oracle's Fusion Apps.  Despite the lack of clarity, Acheter cytoxan, SAP still has the richest set of business functions and ability to handle the greatest set of complex scenarios.

  • Technology strategy: "C+". Middleware strategy remains murky at best.  SAP should revamp NetWeaver or junk it.  NetWeaver is to Blackberry as Salesforce.com's Force.com is to iPhone.  It's so much easier to build apps on Force.com and iPhone than it is for SAP's NetWeaver and RIM's Blackberry.  The decision to emphasize the NetWeaver ABAP stack over the NetWeaver Java stack will leave customers and partners confused despite how much more efficient it is to build on ABAP.  In addition, the lack of good business process orchestration at both run time and design time remains a critical hole for investment and gives vendors such as IBM and Cordys opportunities to sit on-top of SAP apps.  Mobile strategy at first seems less emphasized with the rare mention of native apps development on Blackberry and other platforms.  Nevertheless, SAP's decision to leave mobile platform integration of Blackberry and others at the NetWeaver Mobile layer may prove to be the most efficient and effective approach.  The move to in-Memory will help with future development, yet customers lack confidence in SAP's execution of the Timeless Software argument, despite its best intentions.  It appears that SAP will have 2 OnDemand strategies.  Lighter applications will be built on Java.  More complex applications to be built on the OnDemand stack.

  • Go to market strategy: "B+", cheap evista tablet. "Best Run Now" packages deserve credit for bringing business value from analytics into core business processes.  Slow adoption can be blamed on a sales teams who treated this as a new license sales opportunity instead of an entry point to showcase SAP value.  Customers could see the sales reps salivating with each interaction for a new sale.  Kudos go to SAP for finally admitting failure with ByD and working hard with customers and partners to revamp efforts.  SAP's marketing team remains the most innovative and effective.  Just wait till they get products that keep up with their marketing.

  • Innovation agenda: "B-", buy evista. SAP's making in-roads in the right areas.  Project Constellation, integration with Google Wave, and social networking investments highlight some movement towards disruptive technologies.  SAP must rapidly productize innovations from the SAP Imagineering team, worldwide SAP Labs, Alaska AK, SAP COIL, and its consulting partners.   SAP needs to tap into its ecosystem and bring out innovation.

  • Service and support: "C+". Customers continue to self-support and question SAP's value.  As more customers consider third party maintenance, SAP will have to fight harder to demonstrate value.  On the positive front, SAP's Value Academy shows promise in helping customers optimize their SAP investments.  Initial discussions with Chakib Bhoudary, SAP's Chief Value Officer, Kaufen gleevec, indicate the deep level of experience and data provided.  Customers will want to see how to access these services with minimal investment or redirected maintenance investment.

  • Customer satisfaction: "C+". Conversations with over 400 customers in 2009 highlight severe disappointment with their SAP relationship.  Sales reps compensated on net new license sales no longer invest in guiding customers through the SAP offerings.  Customers fail to adopt due to lack of knowledge.  They no longer trust their SAP sales reps nor do they have high confidence in the system integrators to guide them to the most cost effective solution.  SAP sales reps need to understand their products better.  Those customers who are able to make a trip to Walldorf (WDF), find solace that the old SAP still exists with passionate and dedicated engineers.  Customers appreciate the honesty in WDF about what can or can not be accomplished with SAP.  However, this is not a scalable model for SAP.  SAP will need to retrain and reincentivize its sales reps.  Applying social enterprise methods to the great SAP ecosystem may prove to be fruitful in scaling out more personalized approaches.

  • Execution to date: "C-". Order capecitabine from canada, Failures abound in execution in Enterprise Support, NetWeaver adoption, ByD roll-out, Duet usage, and Solution Manager capabilities.  SAP's current state is similar to Microsoft's prior to the launch of Bing and Windows 7.  SAP needs a success story soon to not only raise morale, but also gain customer confidence in its ability to deliver.  Jim Hagemann Snabe's efforts at streamlining and centralizing development provides at least a positive indicator.

  • Partner ecosystem: "A", acheter zometa bon marché. Buy evista, The team has built one of the best technology partner ecosystems in the market.  The emphasis on community outreach, influencer participation, and investment in a partner's success continues to be a differentiator.  SAP's ecosystem strategy should be credited with saving SAP during this round of crisis.  A move towards Microsoft technologies such as SharePoint and Silverlight will help in gaining developer traction and adoption.  Fix NetWeaver and the ecosystem will have a tool they can innovate from.

  • Overall reputation: "B". SAP carries significant brand presence in emerging markets and the SME space.  Many companies equate ownership of SAP as a sign of success in their markets.  Yet, existing customers have soured on the brand and continue to wonder when SAP will innovate in their requirements and not be distracted by other pursuits.  In general, SAP still carries considerable brand equity which will buy it time as it reinnovates.


* A=4.0, A-=3.7., Epogen without prescription, B+=3.3, B=3.0, B-=2.7, C+=2.3, C=2.0, C-=1.7, New Mexico NM N.Mex., D+=1.3, D=1.0, D-=0.7, F=0

The Bottom Line  - SAP's Turning The Corner

Credit must be given to SAP for charting a new course.  A shift in the management philosophy and product direction will take years to realize, Capecitabine online kaufen, however, its not too late for change.  SAP must remember its roots and become more German and less American.  The renewed focus must put customer requests and priorities ahead of SAP's bureaucracy.  The emphasis must focus on the relationship.  When that reemerges in how SAP works with customers, partners, influencers, and its own employees, SAP will be back in good graces.  In the meantime, ostaa halvalla cytoxan, it's  time to get to work and deliver.  Oracle's Fusions Apps are coming soon and competitors such as IBM, Microsoft, Epicor, IFS, and SalesForce.com will not relent.

Your POV.

If you get a chance, let us know:


  • Which SAP products do you use?

  • What do you think about the progress with SAP?

  • Are you considering alternatives to SAP?

  • Do you feel SAP is innovating fast, ok, or slow enough?

  • What do you think of SAP's new reinnovation strategy?


Feel free to post your comments here or send me an email at rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.
Other related links and good resources

SPECIAL: Video clips from the SAP Influencer Summit from SAP

20091211 ZDNet Software & Services Safari - Brian Sommer "SAP Business ByDesign Update: Multi-tenancy, In-Core Memory DB and More"

20091211 MichaelFauscette.com - Michael Fauscette "SAP Coming Out From the Clouds"

20091210 ZDNet Collaboration 2.0 - Oliver Marks "SAP: The clear path forward for the supertanker..."

20091209 ZDNet IT Project Failures - Michael Krigsman "Is on-premise ERP obsolete?"

20091209 ZDNet Social CRM: The Conversation - Paul Greenberg "SAP Business Influencers Summit: A Clear Path Forward?"

20091209 Spend Matters - Jason Busch "SAP Influencer Summit, Dispatch 1: On-Demand Differentiation and Vision"

20091209 Monkchips - James Governor " SAP: Out with the Old, Shrugging off the Tag"

20091209 Merv's Market Strategy For IT Suppliers - Merv Adrian "SAP Promises Acceleration on a "Clear Path" - Will it Be Enough?"

20091209 CIO Reinvented Blog - Prasanth Rai "Interesting Data/Statistics About SAP...(Influencer Summit)"

20091209 DealArchitect - Vinnie Mirchandani "SAP and The Boston Park Plaza"

20091209 Cloud Avenue - Zoli Erdos "Twitter in the Enterprise - Round 56745327"

20091208 ZDNet IT Project Failures - Michael Krigsman "SAP Influencer Summit: First Impressions"


Copyright © 2009 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

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News Analysis: Oracle Launches Fusion Middleware 11g

Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g launch starts countdown to 100 days of innovation until Oracle Open World In short, Oracle is putting forth a suite of middleware solutions that not only enable developers and software publishers to build their future solutions, but also deliver the middleware tools that will serve as the foundation for its go forward Oracle Fusion Applications.  There are a number of product updates in this Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g launch.  They include the Oracle Application Grid, Oracle SOA and Process Management, Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF 11g, Oracle Applied WebCenter, Oracle Identity and Access Management, and Fusion Middleware Enterprise Manager (Note: the version of Oracle Enterprise Manager to manage Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g is 10g R3, this is the version currently available. - added 7/6/2009) What's positive about this release is the number of customers who have already tested and proven that these solutions can work. In each one of the components, there are a list of customers who already use these solutions in their production environments.  Here are some high level product details:
  • Oracle Application Grid puts forth a foundation built on the Oracle WebLogic Suite (i.e. Oracle WebLogic Server 11g ) that adds GridLink for RAC, enterprise grid messaging, real operations automation, real operations insight, active cache, and enterprise manager. high availability - added 7/6/2009 POV: Oracle pulls together their integrated platform for application development in a high performance computing SOA world.  This will prove to be the Oracle internal foundation for hosting and other OnDemand capabilities.
  • Oracle SOA and Process management infrastructure brings together technologies such as Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle BPA Suite, Oracle BPM Suite, Oracle BAM, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle CEP, Oracle Service Bus, Oracle Enterprise Repository, Oracle Services Registry, and Oracle Web Services Manager. POV: These common infrastructure components provide a way to mediate, orchestrate, manage business events and processes that support external integration, process governance, customizations, and change.  These will prove critical in hybrid deployments that bring the Web 2.0 world to Enterprise 2.0
  • Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF 11g -the new team center and application development framework provides desktop integration to Microsoft Office and Java apps; new ADF Faces such as hierarchy viewers and carousels, SCA/SDO integration, and mobile development. POV: Hopefully, Oracle customers can benefit from a richer set of dev tools that can be used in custom development and for Fusion Apps.  This could provide the foundation for extending Oracle Fusion Applications or building apps on JDeveloper in a PaaS platform.
  • Oracle Applied WebCenter- solutions pulls together their Oracle WebCenter becomes the backbone collaboration infrastructure and Oracle Fusion Middleware architecture for collaboration in content management, business process management, and analytics. POV: Oracle customers get treated to a unified environment to deliver a consistent user experience for a Web 2.0 and more social enterprise experience.  The new release of Applied WebCenter may provide customers a unified UI strategy they have been looking for.
  • Oracle Identity and Access Management 11g includes enhanced features in areas such as identity management, provisioning and role management, web access management, Federation, entitlements management, fraud prevention, applications centric, and identity platform. POV: Oracle focuses on addressing reliable security, regulatory compliance, and help desk efficiencies for identity and access management.  Customers seek this level of single accountability and role based access as they keep adding SaaS and other deployment options.  With best of breed coming back in the form of SaaS, enterprises must move beyond single sign on (SSO).
  • Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Manager builds management and monitoring across the stack including apps, middleware, database, and Virtualized Host/ OS / Network POV:  Oracle showcases a more unified attempt at managing the entire Oracle stack and environment.  Will it replace your HP, BMC Remedy or IBM Tivoli tools? No. Not completely, but it's a good start.
The bottom line - Oracle raises the stakes in the stack wars with IBM and showcases its middleware foundation for Fusion Apps Announcements today by Charles Phillips and Thomas Kurian provide insight into the compendium of Oracle product investments in Middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware provides the critical "glue" to tie Oracle's acquisitions back into a cohesive IT strategy for not only its customers but also Oracle's "Red Stack".  The stack wars with IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle focus on gaining the greatest percentage of the IT budget.  Oracle's investments today and pending acquisition of Sun will change the landscape from a perceived apps rivalry with SAP to more a stack competition with Microsoft and a battle for the IBM "Blue Stack".  In fact, as Oracle continues to acquire and invest in the service based industries IBM dominates today, expect Oracle to make the case for a "Red Stack" and create "Purple" stacks in the years to come.  The eventual prize - converting IBM "Blue Stack" clients to the "Red Stack".  Don't expect IBM to stand still so let's see what the next move is in the continuing Stack Wars! Your POV What do you think about Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g?  Vaporware or real competition in the stack wars?  Will you be more compelled to bet on Oracle as part of your apps strategy?  Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com and we’ll keep your anonymity. Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Monday’s Musings: It’s The Relationship, Stupid! (Part 4) – Stop Under-investing In R&D

Economic Downturn Challenges Enterprise Software Executives To Uphold The Sanctity Of The Vendor - Customer Relationships Conventional wisdom would assume that in a challenging economy, strong relationships would be a key success factor to retaining business and mitigating loss of revenue.  Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case for many companies, including vendors in enterprise software.  Blame it on the economy, fear of depending on their people, or plain greed, but a good number of executives have taken an approach that attempts to preserve shareholder value at the expense of their vendor - stakeholder relationships (i.e.employee, customer, and partner).  Now in their defense, these muckety mucks face dire times and hard decisions need to be made.  However, they are not in a unique situation and risk jeopardizing brand value, trust, and market credibility for short term gain. Let's look at five common value destruction strategies:
Part 4: Under investing in R&D and then repackaging existing content as new innovation Back in the heady days of the 80's, custom dev teams faced challenges with primitive tool sets, constantly changing business priorities, and escalating costs of internal maintenance.  The cost to keep up with change seemed unsurmountable.  Consequently, packaged apps vendors offered businesses the promise of economies of scale so that the long term cost would be less.  Client would benefit from best practices in various industries.  In turn, the software vendor would provide the scale to take over bug fixes,  enhancements, new functionality, staffing, and future innovation. The promise of packaged apps appeared to solve the issues that custom development failed to address.  With Y2K in full force, everyone rushed to put their latest ERP system to beat the crunch.  Upon reflection, it may seem that we traded one set of cost for another.  Here are four customer examples as to what's been happening.
  • Forcing clients to re-pay for the same functionality " They delivered some supply chain planning capabilities in the old modules.  With each release and our input, the product improved.  One day they moved to an engine pricing.  When they launched XXX, they decided to come back and charge us for the new product.  We had access to 80% of the functionality already.   We had the old product for 10 years and should have been entitled to the new release after millions of euros in maintenance and our feedback.  This was the beginning of the downturn in our relationship.  Today they keep trying to sell us on their new suite and its just a repackaging of all their disparate products!"  EMEA Discrete Manufacturer,  CIO
  • Failing to deliver on promised roadmaps " We sat on these Vendor X Customer Boards (i.e. industry peer groups) where we worked out future capabilities with some competitors, system integrators, and other technology partners.  After 5 years of talk, we still have not seen 85% of the functionality requests we put into play.  Instead, the company has focused on the low end of the market segment and in other industries.  We spent all this time talking and now we have very little to show for it.  We've paid over 16M in maintenance in the past 5 years.   What happened to realizing the customer input into the product design process?  Its been an outrage!  We could have built everything on our own and maintained this for the same cost or less.  Yes, we could rebuild our ERP and be more successful and cost effective and just might as the tooling has significantly improved and PaaS platforms provide potential."  CPG,  Senior Director for Business Apps
  • Charging for technology uplifts. "After using Vendor X's Business Intelligence product for 7 years, we finally decided to upgrade to the next version.  We compared the upgrade and functionality wise, the new release had less capabilities than the old release.  They had built the product on a new technology platform.  While it could be more advantageous for us, we were shocked that they had the nerve to charge a replatform fee for us to use the new product.  They demanded additional money for the same functionality.  This is absurd!  We moved to Vendor Y a year later because they did not seem like they would be acquired and avoided this scenario. "  Global Financial Services,  VP Analytics and Business Intelligence
  • Responding at a snail's pace to innovative technologies. " I'm miffed that the large ERP vendors keep missing the boat on new technology.  Why can't they deliver a multi-tenant SaaS offering?  What's up with hosting and mega tenancy? We seek new cost effective deployment options and everything comes back more expensive each year.  We also can't understand what's so hard about improving usability.  Why don't they just take Adobe AIR and Flex and rebuild the screens?  We don't really care what's in the back end!  We just need something that is role based and carries the relevant data that are people need to make a decision.  After paying these guys over 100M in maintenance in 10 years, we could have built this faster, better, and cheaper.  How come they can't deliver better use of collaboration technologies?  At the rate we're going, we'll be using more SharePoint than Vendor X's portal"  Major Oil and Gas,  Director ERP Project
The bottom line - failure to deliver on promised functionality jeopardizes hard won trusted relationships Clients made strategic bets with key software vendors to go with packaged apps.  Many shared with them their best practices in the development and improvement of the vendor's product.  These were trusted relationships.  In the end, vendors achieved economies of scale but under invested their profits back into the product.  Clients had a good start with some basic apps.  But with an average of 80% of all maintenance and support fees going back to profit and not the product, the client vendor promises may be too broken. Initially, most clients took this in stride and gave the vendor some grace period in delivery of key functionality.   After a series of excuses, many vendors failed to deliver as they were distracted with satisfying investors or engaged in M&A.  In such cases, clients and vendor user groups should take action and engage in deeper conversations about what ratio of revenue goes back to R&D.  How quickly should enhancements be prioritized.  What ratio of R&D would the clients expect reinvested from license and maintenance fees? For those clients, its time to apply some leverage on those vendors badly behaving to be more forthright with their commitment on promised roadmaps and more responsive to client enhancement requests.  Clients should be more proactive!  Clients may need to be more public. Your POV Got a success story where your vendor has bucked the trend and delivered more than expected.  Got a POV on how they are keeping good relationships? Or got a great story on the bone-headed thing your vendor or your employer has done to destroy value in the relationship!  Send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com.  Posts are preferred!   Thanks and looking forward to your POV! Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.