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Posts Tagged ‘deployment options’

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):

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Lawson External Cloud Services Represents A Big Step In On Demand ERP Options
Order iressa no prescription, On March 31, 2010, Lawson Software (Nasdaq: LWSN) announced the Lawson External Cloud Services offering. The venerable St. Order epogen online cheap, Paul, Minnesota vendor plans to deliver the full ERP Suite including Lawson S3, Massachusetts MA Mass., Køb discount evista, Lawson M3, and Lawson Talent Management via Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure by May 2010. Key highlights of the announcement include:

Full feature ERP offering, ordering cytoxan without prescription. Indiana IN Ind., Lawson will include its full suite of products from both M3 (i.e. Intentia heritage), Arizona AZ Ariz., Alabama AL Ala., S3 (Lawson heritage), and new offerings which includes strategic HCM, ordering iressa online legally, Alaska AK, Finance, enterprise performance management (EPM), Arizona AZ Ariz., Köpa rabatterade iressa, supply chain management (SCM), corporate social responsibility, buy epogen online legally, Purchase gleevec online, equipment and service & rental, and enterprise asset management.

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

Focus on mid-size companies looking to reduce time to market, Alabama AL Ala.. Alaska AK, Lawson specifically calls out how mid-market organizations can gain scale with security, computing capacity, buy evista overnight delivery, Ordering arimidex online, and lower cost infrastructure. Organizations pay for only the infrastructure they need.

POV: Mid-size organizations gain the benefits of large enterprise solutions without the costly overhead of installation and deployment. Prospects and customers can expect the hosted software to include centralized admin, faster installations, Connecticut CT Conn., Order casodex online without prescription, single technology stack, scalability, acheter zometa bon marché, Online zometa, and faster time to value. Mid-size customers can free up funds to focus on process design and business transformation. However, there's no reason why a large enterprise wouldn't want the same advantages.

Introduction of Lawson Test Drive, evista farmacia a buon mercato. Lawson Test Drive gives customers the ability to try before buying Lawson products for up to 14 days. Customers can try out two of Lawson's latest products, S3 directed Smart Office and Lawson Enterprise Search.

POV: Lawson Smart Office and Lawson Enterprise Search take advantage of Enterprise 2.0 UI/UX prinicples and really change the user experience for customers. A 14 day trial may be too short for customers. Prospects should push for 30 to see how powerful and pervasive these solutions can impact user productivity.

Flexible pricing options, order iressa no prescription. φτηνές φαρμακείο zometa, Lawson offers customers the ability to start out with subscription pricing and convert to perpetual at the end of the subscription contract. Customers retain flexibility in choosing their deployment models.

POV: Choice and flexibility to the procurement process deliver the strongest argument for Lawson's External Cloud Services. Customers can start with annual subscription, rent to own, and then convert to a perpetual license with a traditional one-time payment.

Figure 1. Lawson's Cloud Offering Reduces Infrastructure Costs

The Bottom Line For Customers - Check Out The New Cloud Deployment Option But Don't Confuse This For SaaS

Given that a good majority of Lawson's customers already take a cautious view to SaaS and OnDemand, the Lawson External Cloud may be the safe bet for customers looking to try OnDemand because the are not:

Convinced that a multi-tenant one-size fits all True SaaS model works for them. Despite the success at so many companies, SaaS deployment options may scare clients who feel their business is unique and need to customize and determine their own upgrade timing. Though constraints in configuration are not completely true here, its a reality that some customers have unwarranted fears.

Ready to give up software ownership. While the cost structures provide upfront advantages in the first 5 years, costs will even out over a 10 year period. Some customers still prefer outright perpetual license rights over perpetual payments obligations. Subscription pricing with the right to own provides a key selling point.

Lawson's offering is clearly not SaaS, but nor is it a reincarnation of hosting. The offering takes full advantage of the virtualization services in Amazon EC2 and seems best suited for Lawson's existing customers. However, new prospects will most likely push hard for multi-tenancy and private clouds in the future. When will Lawson create private clouds? Will they finally go multi-tenant? Maybe we'll find out more at Lawson's CUE event from April 25 - 28 in San Antonio, TX.

Your POV

Are you a Lawson customer? What do you think? Will you go cloud? Would you prefer this to a True SaaS solution? Do you even care if its hosted or SaaS? See you at CUE 2010 from Monday the 26th to Wednesday the 28th.

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 you need help with your overall apps strategy. Here’s how we can help:

Assessing SaaS and cloud

Determining custom vs package

Assisting with legacy ERP migration

Evaluating middleware platforms

Planning upgrades and migration

Considering third party maintenance

Assisting with cost optimization

Performing vendor selection

Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support

Related resources and links

20100409 Intelligent Enterprise - Doug Henschen "Lawson Cloud Plan Taps Amazon EC2"

20100402 ChannelWeb - CRN - Andrew R. Hickey "Lawson Looks To Cloud To Woo ERP Customers"

20100331 ZDNet: Irregular Enterprise - Dennis Howlett "Lawson teams with Amazon for cloud ERP -ahem"

20100331 Enterprise System Spectator - Frank Scavo "Lawson cloud services: good start but no SaaS"

20100331 Deal Architect - Vinnie Mirchandani "Lawson: I'm OK, you're not ok"

20090425 A Software Insider's Point of View - R "Ray" Wang " Event Report: Lawson Cue09"

20090313 A Software Insider's Point of View - R "Ray" Wang "Friday's Feature: Snapshots in Enterprise 2.0 UI/UX - Lawson Smart Office

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Published on December 11, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

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(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), 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.

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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"

Buy Epogen Online Cheap

Published on October 14, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Oracle's Fusion Apps Addresses A Broad Set Of Horizontal Modules
Buy epogen online cheap, 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 undergoes extensive testing and will comprise of key modules including:

Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management

Oracle Fusion Enterprise Project Portfolio Management

Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, And Compliance

Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management

Oracle Fusion Financial Management

Oracle Fusion Procurement

Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management

Some key hallmarks of Oracle's Fusion Applications V 1. (see Figure 1) include:

Role based design

Extensive provision for proactive reporting and alerts

Web 2.0 like usability

SOA architecture for integration of legacy applications

Multiple deployment options including on-premise, lowest price casodex, Buy iressa online, hosting, and multi-tenant SaaS

The V1 product will not deliver out of the box capabilities to support:

Discrete Manufacturing

Process Manufacturing

Public Sector

Figure 1, buy gleevec from canada. Cheap generic cytoxan, Fusion Apps Move Towards A Social Enterprise/Social Business Apps User Experience

(Source: Oracle Corporation )

The Bottom Line - Oracle Takes A Two Prong Strategy And Seeks Domination Of The Apps Market

Oracle's continues to prove success in its business model. By acquiring the leading companies with significant recurring revenue streams, it can drive economies of scale to make above average R&D investments. The result - enough innovation in existing product lines to compel customers to pay maintenance and upgrade; and the time and resources to build a next generation product. Should Oracle successfully deliver on Fusion Apps to customers in 2010, Indiana IN Ind., Cheap casodex online without prescription, SAP will have to play catch up in mind share as many sources state that there are no plans for a new product until 2013/2014. Other vendors will have to leverage or partner for middleware and PaaS options in order to sustain key Web 2.0 innovations in the enterprise.

Your POV.

Is seeing believing, casodex online cheap. Where to buy cheap arimidex, As an Oracle customer will this compel you to stay on Apps Unlimited or make a move to Fusion Apps? If you aren't a customer, will you now consider Oracle in your short lists? Feel free to post your comments here or send me an email at rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org, comprar casodex barato. Buy cheap gleevec online,

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Event Report: Salesforce.com Pushes Social CRM Technology — But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone

Published on September 9, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

This post was co-written with Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Colleague at Altimeter Group

Above: Pictures from Salesforce’s event

Salesforce.com launches a new set of social apps that make CRM connected to the social web. So what does it mean? Salesforce.com's Twitter integration and application launch helps brands monitor what's being said. Yet despite the fanfare, the application lacks a pre-determined way to identify the profiles of Twitter profiles and primary keys within the CRM database. Secondly, the system doesn't provide a default setting to prioritize the influence (such as more followers) vs a profile with few followers -limiting the ability for brands to prioritize their support offerings. Salesforce.com's "Answers" product is a threat to community platforms that offer support-heavy features. Vendors like Lithium (although a SF partner) Jive, Telligent, Awareness, and Mzinga are impacted. Brands that have a strong Salesforce.com implementation will first look to their CRM vendor for social support offerings -reducing the pipeline for community platform new comers. The newly minted "Knowledge" product, which harvests the IP from customer service reps, and customers themselves is also a direct threat to wiki creators such as SocialText, Atlasian. Those vendors should quickly bolster their marketing efforts to demonstrate how they are differentiated. Client server based contact center products such as Amdocs, Cisco, and Genesys, will face increased competition as business users choose to move to platforms that deliver provide greater social aspects tied to user generated content. Despite Salesforce.com's technical announcement, this doesn't mean success for their customers. Technology is only 20% of any enterprise change, the other 80% is culture, process, roles, and strategy change -key requirements that Salesforce.com is not equipped to provide. As a result, don't expect customers that don't have the right program in place to take advantage of these technology offerings -instead expect vendors with a heavy professional service offering to empower a company to truly embrace customers in the social web. Overall, Salesforce.com is above and beyond other CRM vendors in terms of connecting to the social web. Yet despite their ability to connect with new channels, they lack a full solution to empower brands to make the cultural changes within their organizations. Expect other CRM vendors such as Oracle's Social CRM offerings and Microsoft Dynamics CRM to do a "me too" in coming months as others jump on the social CRM bandwagon. For the CIO: Ray's Take: The coming wave of social CRM initiatives and cloud based service solutions require CIO's to rethink about their overall apps strategies to support hybrid deployment options. Rapid proliferation of SaaS solutions inside the organization requires strong CIO leadership in coordinating data, business process, and meta data integration strategies. Moreover, now will be the time to begin master data management activities that will support social CRM initiatives and resolve profile identification and entity resolution issues. Take control now or lose control forever. For the CMO: Jeremiah's Take: Marketing has spread beyond awareness and lead generation -support IS marketing. Yet to be successful, your internal processes must quickly meld PR and support to provide a seamless experience to the customer. Be proactive, not reactive: Use brand monitoring technologies to head off issues before they volcano into PR disasters. Your POV Ready to put your service strategy to the test with Salesforce.com's Answers product or another social CRM tool? Where are you today in your efforts? Post your comment here or reach me direct at r at altimetergroup dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org. Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s Tip: Note To Self – Start Renegotiating Your Q4 Software Maintenance Contracts Now!

Published on September 1, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Labor Day (US Holiday) traditionally marks the end of summer BBQ's, the beginning of the fall conference season, and yes, the time to begin a review of your software maintenance contacts that expire end of year. As clients prepare for this seasonal ritual, a few trends in 2009 should set the stage for negotiations:

Continued weakness in the economy. Vendor revenues continue to decline as new license sales drop and vendors become more dependent on support and maintenance revenues. Customers looking to upgrade or commit to new apps can expect vendors to be more generous on the support and maintenance front.
Dated and inflexible architecture of legacy applications. Change in business models, workplace dynamics, and macro economic conditions apply new pressures to aging systems purchased pre-Y2K. Customers seek paths to upgrade but are limited by economic pressures.
Vendor awareness of customer discontent with existing support offerings. Customers now seek to understand what value vendors deliver in their support and maintenance agreements. Many vendors have proactively responded by improving service or making appropriate concessions.
Growing acceptance of third party maintenance (3PM) options. Vendors such as Rimini Street and Spinnaker have proven to the market that they can deliver 3PM to an array of ERP applications. Cutting maintenance fees by 50% or more can free up funds for innovation or pay for the next upgrade.

Align your apps strategy before negotiating contracts - do your homework Contract negotiations strategy should be planned in conjunction with an overall apps strategy. Begin the process 2 to 3 months in advance. Make sure the teams have the proper incentives in place. Take the following steps as you prepare for your maintenance renewals:

Assess current usage of maintenance and support
Begin apps strategy planning to determine product adoption road map
Conduct an internal license audit.
Determine extent of shelf ware.
Ensure that maintenance contracts are not bundled
Followup with your sales rep

The bottom line - follow the seven simple steps to successfully negotiating software contracts.

Ensure that the right team is in place
Identify the organization’s key business drivers
Determine the product adoption plan
Consider contract strategy implications of the software ownership life cycle
Align contract strategy with product adoption
Identify leverage points
Prioritize key contract objectives

Your POV Looking to hear your best practices with software maintenance contract renewals.

Is your maintenance contract up for renewal at the end of the year?
Do you need help putting a strategy in place?
Have you conducted an apps strategy assessment?
Would you like to break free from your vendor but don't know what options exist?

Tuesday’s Tip: Do Not Bundle Your Support and Maintenance Contracts!

Published on July 7, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

In the past 2 weeks, emails from 31 software insider readers highlight a growing and concerning trend with support and maintenance contracts. Vendors concerns about support and maintenance contract retentions has led to new initiatives to consolidate contracts. At first glance, this may appear to be proactive and beneficial to customers. In fact, common rationale provided by the vendor sales reps seem benevolent:

Reduce the time and headaches of managing multiple contracts
Update existing contract provisions
Identify areas of non-compliance.

Keep in mind sales reps have been trained to push these new programs. The bottom line - users should keep their guards up when vendor sales reps suggest bundling While the above rationale make sense, bundling often create an all or nothing situation. Basically, it eliminates your options to go with another vendor throughout the 5 phases of the software ownership life cycle (i.e. selection, implementation, utilization, maintenance, and retirement). Convenience of one contract will be offset by 3 scenarios why you should never bundle your support and maintenance contracts:

Lump sum payment. Moving to one support and maintenance contract often means that the annual fees will be paid all at once. If push comes to shove, customers can mitigate this by asking for partial payments or more regular payment plans.
Third party maintenance. Customers seeking to move off of their vendor delivered support and maintenance will find themselves unable to segment out specific products and solutions. Individual contracts by products preserve the option to cancel as needed. In very rare cases, customers have carved out the maintenance for significantly older releases
Replacement strategies. Leaving contracts separate allows for easy replacement of applications. This strategy makes most sense when customers have become a vendor's customers by acquisition. Leaving contracts separate enables the option to switch solutions, move to a SaaS option, or create more leverage in deals with the vendor.

Be aware of these new efforts to suggest consolidation of contracts. There are very few benefits. Should this be suggested to you, do not hesitate to reach out for advice on strategies to mitigate risk! Your POV. In the Enterprise Software Licensee Bill of Rights V2, new rights address this issue. But for now, have you experienced such vendor tactics? Did you manage to segment out your contracts? Do you need assistance with your apps strategy and contract negotiations strategy? Please post here or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com. Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s Tip: Drive Cost Savings By Optimizing Commoditized Business Processes

Published on June 16, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Enterprises continue to transform themselves from the functional fiefdoms of the past and move towards a business process orientation. As organizations begin that process of documenting business processes, they must differentiate among the 3 major types of business processes. In key flows such as order to cash, hire to retire, incident to resolution, procure to pay, etc, remember to categorize key processes into three buckets:

Mission critical business processes. Core to the identity and mission of the business, these processes represent trade secrets. No one in their right mind would let someone else manage mission critical processes. To be clear, email is not a mission critical process unless you have top secret content. For example, payroll is not a mission critical process. This is something that could be done by someone else without much market differentiation. However, revenue cycle management with complex risk algorithms would be a mission critical process that would not necessarily be outsourced.
Commoditized business processes. Often the "best practices" of the 1990's that vendors profess to bring to an engagement, these processes represent well-defined, common industry practices. Lack of unique intellectual property forces organizations to take the time to optimize these processes to achieve operational efficiencies. Payroll is an example of a commoditized process. Financial close is another one where there should not be too much variation among competitors.
Innovative business processes. Processes focused on solving a unique challenge or provide a competitive advantage fall in this category. In addition, processes that deliver a unique customer experience or provides differentiators in the market place represent innovative business processes. Often, these processes have not yet been defined as they will be created.

The bottom line - optimize commoditized processes to fund mission critical and innovative business processes If an organization can identify their commoditized business processes, they can generate cost savings through a variety of technology and business strategies. Top of mind technology strategies will follow the business process and include, shared services, data center consolidation, business process outsourcing, third party maintenance, and instance consolidation. With those savings in hand, enterprises can shift the two-thirds of their budget keeping the lights on to the one-third of their budget focused on new projects. After each project, this business process approach will shift the spending towards new projects and fund the innovation required to meet today's business challenges.

For more details, read the 9 part Forrester series on Long Term Apps Strategy starting with:

Why You Need A Long-Term Apps Strategy

Forrester's Long-Term Packaged Applications Strategy Framework

Does Your Apps Strategy Support Your Corporate Business Drivers?

Packaged Apps Strategies Take A Back Seat At Most Enterprises

The ROI Of Packaged Apps Instance Consolidation

Five Steps To Building A Recession Proof Packaged Apps Strategy

Shape Your Apps Strategy To Reflect New SaaS Licensing And Pricing Trends

Third Party Apps Maintenance Rebounds

Craft Your Negotiations Strategy To Reflect New Packaged Apps Licensing And Pricing Trends

Your POV. Have you thought through your core business processes or are you still functionally oriented? Can you identify the commoditized business process? Have you seen any cost savings based on business process transformation Please post here or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com. Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s Tip: Seven Signs Your Software Vendor Can’t Innovate Fast Enough

Published on June 8, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Collective support and maintenance, constant innovation, best practices, and improved ROI represent the key arguments that led enterprises to packaged applications such as ERP. Today, this promise appears to be broken as enterprises question the value received for their support and maintenance monies. In addition, on-premise upgrades require painful testing and down time to innovate via upgrades. Meanwhile, new SaaS entrants deliver innovation with try before you buy ease and subscription pricing that business users can embrace. The question remains - how do you know if your vendor innovates quickly enough? One approach - determine the total percentage of support and maintenance monies reinvested into the product? Identify what percentage of R&D investment and the amount of innovation vendors have delivered to date. Conversations with over 47 current and former enterprise software executives reveal seven tell tale signs a vendor has slowed down their innovation agenda. Enclosed is the checklist. See if your vendor meets any of these criteria. If they hit four or more, then your vendor's entering a period of decline:

Failing for years to deliver on promised functional enhancements. This represents a common problem among older ERP customers. If you poll the top 25 customers of an industry vertical for their list of functional enhancement requests, it would be common to see an 70% or higher overlap of requests that have not yet been delivered by the vendor over the past 5 years. Assume the average enterprise pays $4M a year in maintenance and support, that's $100M a year over the past 5 years. Half a billion dollars later, it's hard to believe the vendor could not deliver on a common list of requests. What's happened? The vendor may have invested in new markets like SMB or new verticals instead of your industry and vertical.
Repackaging existing products to sell back to you. It's true. This happens when the functionality in a product you own ends up in a "new" module. Suddenly, the sales reps are calling you trying to sell you a product you already own with 20% new capabilities. Isn't that the incremental enhancement you should have gotten with your maintenance dollars?
Acquiring complementary solutions to push into the install base. Call them "tuck-in", "edge", and "micro-vertical", vendors often make acquisitions when the product well runs dry. With no new product in pipe, vendors must find a way to raise their new license numbers and penetrate existing install bases. This happens a lot with vendors who only compensate their sales reps for new license sales.
Diverting customer attention with the latest fad. Instead of building out core new products, vendors may suddenly take an interest in a hot area like social media, green technologies, or political causes. Not there's anything wrong with this, but quick fixes may not solve core-underlying issues in product technology or roadmap. The lack of clarity and direction may often seem baffling especially when the basic needs have not yet been made and customers remain outraged.
Substituting professional services and custom development for new license sales. Declines in new license revenue have vendors looking at professional services to make up the difference. One trend - engage customers in custom development work which then gets booked as license revenue. However, this ends up diverting valuable product development resources that should be focused on existing enhancement requests.
Lacking the inclusion of key Enterprise 2.0 design principles in future road maps. Vendors with confusing usability and user experience strategies, lack of a support for new deployment options including true multi-tenant architecture, rigid business process composition tools, poorly designed middleware architectures, etc will pay the price. Expect customers to defect towards more modern solutions that bring the Web 2.0 world into the enterprise. If your vendor hasn't made the shift, your maintenance truly has been squandered.
Over-relying on partners for core capabilities. While solution centric partners play a key role in delivering the last mile solutions for customers and vendors, a heavy reliance on partners to deliver core capabilities highlights innovation issues at a vendor. Should a vendor increase reliance on partners to deliver solutions in a core business process or a capability that should be in the middleware, users should ask why the vendor can not deliver this capability. While many vendors OEM other solutions, to accelerate innovation, over reliance on partnerships and OEM's raises red flags.

The bottom line - users need to demand greater accountability for support and maintenance paid. Users must reclaim back the discussion on how their support and maintenance dollars will be reinvested or expect those monies to be repurposed to investor profits and share holder value. Take the following steps:

Start by building formal alliances among industry colleagues to discuss common standards and requirements
Identify commoditized processes that should be delivered in the software.
Work with user groups to take an active role in setting the product roadmap and customer agenda.
Engage vendors in back channels but do not be afraid of sharing with the media industry specific concerns when at an impasse.
Don't be surprised to find most vendors open to such discussions in improving the client-vendor relationship.
For those vendors who fail to seriously take user input, organize and campaign in public. You'll be surprised to find out what a publicly traded software vendor will do to defend share price.

Updated with Lists from Vinnie Mirchandani and Dennis Howlett. Add your seven and send me your link! 20090608 Deal Architect - Vinnie Mirchandani "More Signs Your Software Vendor Can't Innovate Fast Enough" 20090610 ZDNet Enterprise Irregulars - Dennis Howlett " Even More signs Your Software Vendor Can't Innovate Fast Enough"

Your POV. So let me ask you, what do you expect from your software vendor? Do you think they will innovate quickly enough? Will SaaS be the Best of Breed option of the 2010's? Please post here or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com. Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s Tip: Now’s The Time To Consider SaaS Software Escrows

Published on June 2, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

With 2009 rapidly becoming the "Year of SaaS" and the tipping point for Cloud Computing, it's hard not to notice the growing number of SaaS start ups (along with the legacy application vendors rushing to provide an "On-Demand", but not really multi-tenant deployment option). My snarky SaaS bigotry aside, we can expect hybrid deployment options to be here to stay. As with the early days of on-premise packaged apps, we have to ask the question, "What to do about the risk in working with fly-by-night SaaS vendors who might not be around in 2011?" In fact, this was an interesting part of the panel disucssion at the "Honeymoon and Divorce: Changing SaaS Providers" session at Interop with Jerry Smith (CTO of Symphony Services) , Michael Topalovich, (CTO of Delivered Innovation), and Rick Nucci (CTO of Boomi). SaaS escrows provide a key safety net for the SaaS users End users often demand software escrows in the on-premise world when they are concerned about vendor viability, takeover threats, and other related breaches to performance or service level agreements. Software escrows vendors serve as the trusted third party independent organization which holds a copy of the software code. This often includes user data, source code, documentation and any application executables. For SaaS escrows, expect a few unique distinctions such as:

More frequent intervals of version updates, almost similar to live data backups.
Hot backups that the end user can immediately and legally swap to the escrow version without business disruption
Requirements for SaaS vendors to provide detailed software configuration management and data management

The bottom line - SaaS code is rented so protect yourself With no access to the code or application when a SaaS vendor goes bankrupt or fails to meet performance requirements, now's the time to ask your SaaS provider if they provide a SaaS software escrow. This should be included in all criteria during SaaS vendor selection. Those who provide SaaS escrow deliver an additional benefit - peace of mind that data will be doubly backed up both by the vendor and the software escrow company.

Companies providing SaaS Escrow Services Here's a list of a few vendors in the market. They have not been rated or reference checked so caveat emptor. If you provide SaaS escrow services and weren't listed, feel free to add a comment to the post.

EscrowTech (Added 6/3/2009)

InnovaSafe

Iron Mountain

NCC Group

OpSource

For more about how to shape your apps strategy to include SaaS, read the Forrester Report found here. Your POV Have you worried about whether your SaaS vendor will be around in 2011? Did you successfully enter into a SaaS Escrow agreement? Considering a SaaS Escrow? 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.