Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

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Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business

Published on August 15, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Confusion Persists In The Social Business Market

As with any new disruptive technology, the social business solution landscape faces a dynamic, confusing, and converging market. As vendors seek to grab mind share and market share, customers and prospects remain confused as to what are the right business problems to address with social business. However, rampant confusion among users hampers efforts to solve business issues. Three key factors accelerate this level of confusion:

  1. Early adopter market. Constantly changing conditions force customers to alter original plans as executive sponsorship fluctuates from intense to pensive and back to intense in short cycles. Projects remain secretive for competitive advantage reasons. Consequently, prospects lack strong case studies to build off of despite peer groups, adoption networks. Prospects seek metrics that matter and relevant use cases.
  2. Consumerization of IT. With increased social media penetration, success in consumer grade products highlight the potential for enterprise adoption. However, most enterprise class products remain one to two generations behind in achieving similar capabilities. As business users gravitate towards simple, scalable, and sexy attributes; IT departments seek to rein in shadow IT efforts with safety, security, and sustainability requirements.
  3. Marketing mayhem. Fast paced markets always generate hype in marketing messages. Hence, legacy collaboration, community platform, CRM, unified communications, integration platform, and office productivity vendors seek to reposition themselves and address the emerging and trendy social business use cases customers seek.

Social Business Vendors Converge Towards Business Value Sweet Spot

The vendor landscape for social business market represents a diverse and broad collection of solutions.  Vendors approach the market from multiple heritage points, technologies, and markets.  Four key criteria cut across two axes (see Figure 1):

  1. External facing vs internal facing.  External facing includes customers, partners, and suppliers.  Internal facing include employees and trusted networks within the corporate firewall.
  2. Platforms and infrastructure vs purpose built solutions.  Platforms and infrastructure referred to core technology solutions.  Purpose built solutions address specific applications.

Figure 1. Social Business Vendors Converge Towards Business Value Sweet Spot (Working Draft)

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Bob Kelly, Microsoft

Published on July 7, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Social Business.  The interviews  provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  A full list of interviewees can be found here.

Bob Kelly – Corporate Vice President, Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketing, Microsoft


Biography

Kelly began his career with Microsoft in 1996 with the Windows NT Server 3.51 marketing team. He later transitioned to group manager of Windows NT Server and Windows 2000 Server marketing. Following the launch of Windows 2000 Server, Kelly helped to form the company’s U.S. subsidiary. He has held a series of marketing and product management roles, both in the field and corporate offices, such as general manager of Windows Server Product Management and general manager of infrastructure server marketing. Recently, Bob was named CVP for Windows Azure Marketing focusing on Microsoft’s cloud platform execution.

A Massachusetts native, Kelly earned his master’s degree and doctorate in English literature from the University of Dallas. In addition to enjoying spending time at home with his wife and four children, he’s active in local civic organizations.

The Interview

1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Cloud Computing is changing the world for your customers

Bob Kelly (BK): At the end of the day, enterprises (business, government, non-profits) want to reach more customers to grow their revenue or expand their influence. For many of these enterprises, IT has gotten in their way because of how computing is managed. Cloud allows management to focus on the things that differentiate them to unlock potential and focus on what they are good at; growing their business.

2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(BK): Cloud changes the fundamental economics of how an enterprise thinks about IT. Large capital expenditures (capex) are a burden. Cloud flips capex into an operational expense (opex), meaning enterprises only use the resources needed when they need them. This helps enterprises to focus on the things they care about. In the past, 70% of IT was spent on maintaining its capability and 30% was bringing real value. Cloud fundamentally flips this around by disrupting the cost structure and drives cost down. Cloud allows enterprises to differentiate on who they are instead of focusing on IT.

3. What is the next big thing in Cloud Computing?

(BK): Cloud will become core to everything we do in computing and will allow enterprises to go in directions that have not yet imagined. Just thinking about my own situation, the cloud creates the opportunity for me to expand my customer base and shift my focus from developers and IT operations to include end users. We move from an $80B software category to a $1T services category. That’s exciting!!!

Cloud is an easy ramp for start-ups. We can take a new idea for a business or service and act overnight. Cloud creates acceleration from insight to reality which results in a torrid pace of new innovations that get access to these capabilities. This creates a real transformation of how enterprises work, and how quickly ideas come to fruition.

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News Analysis: Microsoft Licensing Update – May/June 2011

Published on June 27, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Keeping Up With The Latest In Microsoft Licensing

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

Product And Program News

Below are the latest product and program news for the May/June 2011 time period:

  • Partner Addendum Available for License Mobility through Software Assurance. What is it?: Microsoft recently announced a new Software Assurance benefit, license mobility through Software Assurance. SPLA partners are invited to become authorized to offer License Mobility through Software Assurance and take advantage of the opportunities that license mobility can provide to their business. In addition to providing customers more flexibility on how they migrate to and utilize the cloud, the addendum enables customers with Software Assurance on many types of server-side licenses to reassign these licenses to multi-tenant servers at a hoster.  Who’s eligible?: All customers on Software Assurance. When’s it effective?: July 1st, 2011.

    Point of View (POV):     License mobility allows customers and partners to move licenses to the lowest cost computing platform while preserving choice to the consumer.  It also frees the Microsoft partner providing the shared environment from paying Microsoft SPLA licensing fees for those licenses.  Keep in mind products eligible for License Mobility within Server Farms in the Microsoft Product User Rights (PUR) guidelines include products such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. However, infrastructure products such as Windows Server would not be part of License Mobility.

Microsoft Promotions Update

Here are the following known promotions:

  • Changes to SPLA Subscriber Access Licenses for Software Assurance. What is it?: Microsoft will be offering new software access licenses (SALs) for Software Assurance (SA) offerings within the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program. In addition some SAL for SA prices are decreasing.  SALs for SA are available to be assigned to customers who have previously purchased these on-premises CALs and who continue to maintain Software Assurance on those CALs. With SALs for SA, these customers can migrate to the equivalent SPLA service at a discounted rate.  Who’s eligible?: Customers on CALs with Software Assurance (perpetual software licenses) for on-premises use.   When’s it effective?: Effective July 1, 2011.

    (POV):     The move to SALs provides customers with a transition from on-premises to partner led hosting.  Microsoft sees this as a potential opportunity to help customers move to lower cost of computing over time.  Customers who strongly believe in the perpetual license on-premises model will most likely not take up this offer.  However, most newer customers will see this as an opportunity to shift from capex to opex.

The Bottom Line For The Customer – New Promotions Show Shift To Cloud

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business And Cloud Computing

Published on May 29, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Executive Profile Series Delivers The Inside View On Disruptive Technologies

Starting this week, we’ll be kicking off an on-going series of interviews with the people behind the technologies in Cloud Computing and Social Business.  The interviews should provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective.  The transcript of the 30 minute Q&A’s will follow a common format:

Cloud Computing

  1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Cloud Computing is changing the world for your customers
  2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?
  3. What is the next big thing in Cloud Computing?
  4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?
  5. Where do you see technology convergence with Cloud?
  6. If you weren’t focused on Cloud Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?
  7. What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

Social Business

  1. Tell me in 2 minutes or less why Social Computing is changing the world for your customers
  2. What makes social computing disruptive?
  3. What is the next big thing in Social Business software?
  4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Social Computing?
  5. Where do you see technology convergence with Social?
  6. If you weren’t focused on Social Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?
  7. What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

Scheduled Interviews Include A Who’s Who List Of Industry Thought Leaders And Market Makers

Cloud Computing

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Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With Pesky Software Licensing Audits

Published on April 19, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Organizations Report Increase In Software Licensing Audits

Across the board, the largest complaints about software vendors and their business practices have come from increasingly aggressive software auditing practices.  Once thought to be a small possibility, the software vendors now wield this big stick to drive up sales and of course ensure compliance.  Given the 32 percentage gain since Q1 2008 in the percentage of respondents faced with a software audits, procurement managers, CIOs, and CEOs have paid attention (see Figure 1).   Even the recent Gartner report from star analyst Jane Disbrow et al. shows that 61% of their customers have been audited by at least one software vendor.

Figure 1.  Software Vendors Ramp Up Software Audits

Software Licensing Audits Masquerade As Sales Tactics In Disguise

Is this shocking?  Should customers be concerned?    Given the relatively strong compliance rates in the high 80′s, customers should be livid that vendors are willing to jeopardize a relationship to shake down for cash (see Figure 2.).  Here are some key reasons for the audit:

  • Check for compliance
  • Identify installed base competitors
  • Drive incremental license sales
  • Prospect for up-sell/cross-sell

After speaking with 13 major software vendors, most admitted that software audit served two purposes.  The first – keep customers in compliance.  The second – shaking the bushes for new deals during the recession.

Figure 2.  Most Organizations Were In Compliance Post Software Audit

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Event Report: The Sentiment At Microsoft Convergence 2011

Published on April 10, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Refresh Cycle Reflects Bullish Outlook By Partners and Customers

Microsoft Convergence kicked off over the weekend in Atlanta, GA at the Georgia World Congress Center.  With an anticipated increase in attendance, many new product announcements, and a technology refresh cycle in play, attendees seemed upbeat.  The event kicked off in true tradition including the must attend Randy and Andy (IBIS, Inc) welcome party.  Anticipated cloud announcements, new features, and industry extensions dominate discussions among partners.  Through a survey of over 60 customers, we found the following observations:

  • Customers expect to upgrade ERP and CRM in 12 to 18 months. Good news for Microsoft partners.  Most ERP and CRM customers plan to upgrade within the next 12 to 18 months (see Figure 2).  Many plan to upgrade ERP (18.0%) and CRM (13.1%) in the next 6 to 12 months.
  • Cloud adoption remains partly cloudy. While there are numerous benefits to cloud adoption for clients,  34.4% of ERP customers showed no interest.  Most CRM customers expected to make the shift to the cloud (see Figure 3).  As for the shift to office in the cloud, 18.0% planned to make the shift 24 months from now.
  • Attendees seek to leverage Microsoft investment. Informal conversations highlighted interest in mobile development, greater sharepoint adoption, and interest in Power Pivot.  Most customers felt Microsoft had turned the corner and began to innovate as of the Windows 7 launch.
  • Large customer prospects explore Two Tier ERP. In speaking with 13 divisions of large enterprises at the event, most attended to explore the option of adding Microsoft Dynamics ERP into their subsidiaries.  Eight of the ten companies ran SAP while three ran Oracle, and another two ran custom legacy systems.  Surveyed prospects believe that Two-tier ERP strategies will dominate future apps strategy.

Figure 1.  Flickr Feeds From Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2011

(Tag your images with #softwareinsider or #rwang0 to include into the feed)

Figure 2. Most Microsoft Dynamics Customers Plan To Upgrade ERP & CRM In 12 to 18 Months

(Right click image to expand)

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Vendor Event: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – The Power Of Productivity Vancouver, BC Launch

Published on April 9, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Title: The Power Of Productivity – Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Start Date: 2011-04-19  12:30 am PST
End Date: 2011-04-19   5:30 pm PST

Location:

Vancouver Convention Centre
West Building, 2nd Floor
1055 Canada Place
Vancouver, BC, V6C 0C3

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