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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Sudhakar “Rama” Ramakrishna, Polycom

Published on September 14, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

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

Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Unified Communications Solutions, and Chief Development Officer, Polycom

Biography

Ramakrishna joined Polycom in 2010 as senior vice president and general manager of unified communications solutions, and chief development officer. Ramakrishna was promoted to executive vice president in February 2011. He is responsible for defining and delivering best in class unified communication products and solutions and driving revenue growth and profitability.

Ramakrishna brings a wealth of strategy and execution experience to Polycom. Before Polycom, Ramakrishna was Corporate VP and GM for Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations at Motorola. Ramakrishna was instrumental in scaling the 4G (WiMAX and LTE) and Software business, and led large multi-function teams of more than 2300 employees, and businesses across the globe. Previously, Ramakrishna held senior management roles at Stoke Networks, 3Com, U.S. Robotics and other companies.

Ramakrishna has extensive experience working with enterprise and carrier/operator customers. His areas of technology focus include wireless, MoIP/IP telephony, data networking, security, and IP convergence-related technologies and services. Ramakrishna has significant experience in organization development, strategic planning and execution, incubating and scaling new businesses, and was involved in strategic partnerships with Huawei, Siemens, and several mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

Ramakrishna earned a Master’s of Science degree in Computer Science from Kansas State University. He received his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Ramakrishna holds and has filed several patents in the areas of IP telephony, soft switching and load balancing.

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

Sudhakar “Rama” Ramakrishna (SR): The cloud helps separates the core from the chore. Customers for whom IT is not their core business can save enormous time, energy, and resources by leveraging Cloud based infrastructure and solutions. With cloud computing becoming more and more accessible, it allows enterprises to divest themselves from the infrastructure build outs and focus on what they do best; i.e., their core business. By freeing up precious resources, customers can invest more effectively in their core business and drive improved business results and growth.

2.  What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(SR): The key disruptions come from two areas: 1) The superior economics and 2) The velocity of innovation and application deployment. The underpinnings of cloud computing are not new. However, this is now the right time to make it happen. Why? Bandwidth is faster, cheaper and more ubiquitous AND the security issues and barriers to adoption have been eliminated. Companies are leveraging “Cloud Platforms” to develop innovative applications in a variety of fields in a scalable, secure, and economic fashion.

Cloud based solutions are also accelerating the adoption of Unified Communications (UC). Our customers are eager to deploy UC in the cloud. Service providers can drive and monetize assets more effectively in the cloud.

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

(SR): Cloud will evolve to include more applications and create more effective ways for people to communicate, collaborate, and be productive – all while leveraging superior economies of scale. Cloud solutions can be deployed in a variety of configurations – Private, Public, and Hybrid. In addition to delivery models in the cloud, companies will evolve in how they adopt the cloud. We can expect better B2B and B2B communications where Cloud solutions are delivered to enable Unified Communications in a secure, scalable, interoperable, and cost effective manner. I also believe that Cloud computing platforms will foster a new breed of application developers that work across organization and geographic boundaries to greatly increase the speed of innovation and bring new services to market.

4.  What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?

(SR): As we address the needs of new segments such as SMB, we are enabling cloud through service provider partners. Our Polycom RealPresence Platform supports carrier-grade UC with the reliability, universal bridging, and massive scalability required for cloud-delivery. This platform delivers the industry’s only universal bridging software that supports up to 75,000 device registrations and 25,000 concurrent sessions. This platform will enable the roll-out of ‘video-as-a-service’ offerings to SMB and enterprise customers.

We are also focused on driving interoperability as service providers roll out video cloud services. In June, we announced with 14 major service providers – including Verizon, AT&T, Airtel, Telefonica, and BT – the Open Visual Communications Consortium, to bring together a diverse set of architectures and standards. We can then leverage these standards to improve integration and interoperability to avoid technology islands, and make video conferencing as easy as making a phone call, across all devices and networks. This will drive significant adoption and help us drive faster innovation. We are serving as the catalyst that brings all of these service providers together. How quickly we can accomplish this is a testament to the importance and impact of the cloud. Polycom and the OVCC organization expect to begin bringing open video exchange cloud services to market as early as mid-2012.

5.  Where do you see technology convergence with Cloud?

(SR): Ray, I see tremendous possibilities. The web and various versions of mobile technologies will be more ubiquitous. One of our recent innovations is to integrate our UC applications to a wide range of mobile devices. We are actively serving the need for users to Bring Their Own Devices (BYOD) to enterprise settings – CIOs are increasingly enabling applications on devices of their users’ choice, which drives improved user satisfaction, lowered costs and greater productivity! Via our device and cloud innovations, we are extending the boundaries of the enterprise and giving users more choices to communicate, collaborate, and be more productive regardless of their location! Our RealPresence Platform, which is Cloud ready, enables us to do so.

6.  If you weren’t focused on Cloud Computing what other disruptive technology would you have pursued?

(SR): Ray, if I were not working in the technology field, I’d be studying real time behavioral economics. In an increasingly converged world where there is almost no information asymmetry, I’ve been wondering how macro and micro economic theories change and how they impact human behavior. In this context, how might traditional economics change or be relevant? What do we need to learn and do to make effective decisions in this world?

7.  What’s your favorite science fiction gadget of all time?

(SR): Teleportation of course. Like others, I am a big Star Trek fan. I grew up watching and reading about StarTrek. It’s hard not to like any of the gadgets from the PADD (personal access display device) to the communicator. Just think of the impact – taking an idea and making it real, more importantly, taking an idea that is fictional and making it real!!

Your POV

What do you think? Got a question for Rama?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Additional interviews will be added and updated!  To be considered for the series, please reach out to Elaine (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, see the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Parker Harris, Salesforce.com

Published on August 29, 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.

Parker Harris, Co-Founder and Executive VP of Technology


Biography

Parker Harris founded salesforce.com along with Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez in the spring of 1999. As executive vice president, Harris oversees the development of all software for salesforce.com.

Prior to founding salesforce.com, Harris developed Web application and salesforce automation expertise at Left Coast Software, a private consulting company he co-founded, as well as at Metropolis software, an early pioneer in field sales force automation subsequently acquired by Clarify.

He graduated from Middlebury College with a bachelor’s degree in English literature.

The Interview

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

Parker Harris (PH): If you think back to classic customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) way back when, the software was designed for top down and nearer to the organizations you were selling to.  They’d have SFA and management software.  Executives would buy SFA to drive down process and gain some visibility.

Social computing is doing what agile methodology is doing to our process – it’s breaking down our visibility.  By flattening time and space,  social computing and business is unlocking credible potential within business.  For example, individuals and organizations that weren’t connected before are now connected together.   This changes how people work, makes people more productive, and changes the relationship of the org with the customer.

2. What makes social computing disruptive?

(PH): The technology ignores the hierarchy of the corporation.  Social ignores the classic relationship of the customer with corporation.  Customer is now buying directly from the corporation and going to them for help and support or being marketed to.  Instead it’s happening from a number of different angles.  People are being marketed to for games in their interactions with friends from FaceBook.  Those trying to get support for their iPhones don’t’ necessary trust their carriers so they ask their friends for help.

As a company, we see the consumerization of the world happen.  These disruptive technologies start in the consumer space.  Amazon was disruptive to eCommerce.  We looked at that model and said how can that happen to business.  Facebook has changed how people interact with each other.  In the busienss world, they are changing how they are working with each other and the customer.  This is quite disruptive.  Social challenges classical work structures and the hierarchies of management.  Social challenges the decision making structure and challenges the classic customer relationship chains and how they work.  We are in the middle of that revolution.  We are building technology to keep up with what’s happening in the world.  It’s transforming the way people are working.  We’re bringing the enterprise to the world.

3. What is the next big thing in Social Business?

(PH): The next big thing is starting with how a company connects its employees to each other.  The goal – make them more effective at their work.  There is both a portal approach and a community solution.  On the community level, you are connecting external people to your company.  Just as I see the firewalls in a company go away, the idea that there is some wall between your company and the rest of the world is slowly disappearing.  This will happen with the pervasiveness of social.

As you put it, individuals are becoming more important. Individuals will be working with colleagues both inside and outside of their company.  We bring different social bonds with each context of our engagement.  All of the hand offs today are coarse but in the future, this will feel like a fluid relationship.  It won’t feel like you are shifting gears between companies and shifting into the consumer place from where social is going. Talking to a friend about dinner, you already shift between these worlds.

What’s big?  Facebook is doing some of this already.  I talked to David Sacks on what Yammer is doing. They are supporting OpenGraph.  You’ll start to see this giant web and all the different players playing in it.  Eventually this will become an open world or open system.  As a result,  not any one company or system or technology will win.

Keep in mind, the Internet was born as an open standard and started from the military.  How do we get new things like this that are open where everyone adopts.  The big thing for me is openness and the connective tissue being created as walls are going down.  Walls to your house, company, school, and new groups are forming.  Why can’t I create a social group and bring you into that when I’m selling. If I had a lawyer involved and we were acquiring a company, why can’t we get them all involved and share things.  This fluid nature of groups is what excites me.

4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Social Business?

More…

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News Analysis: Bunchball Gamifies Salesforce.com And Delivers Simplified Applets

Published on August 24, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Two New Products Improve Entry Points for Gamification Adoption

Bunchball, a leading gamification vendor in the Silicon Valley, is best known for its Nitro gamification platform which organizations use to implement game mechanics across social networks, mobile applications, and websites.  Today the solution reaches more than 70 million unique users and creates 2.3 billion actions per month.  Companies such as Comcast, Hasbro, LiveOps, USA Network, and Warner Brothers use the Nitro solution to engage with customers, employees, and partners.

On August 24th, the company announced two new solutions:

  • Nitro for salesforce. Bunchball delivers a solution that works natively in Salesforce.com’s user interface (see Figure 1).  Users will see a new menu item labeled Nitro that provides key elements in gamification: points, badges, levels, leader boards, and real-time feedback mechanisms.  The solution ships at the end of Q3, 2011 and will be made available via AppExchange.

    Point of View (POV):     Motivation of the sales force represents a key area of opportunity to demonstrate the impact of gamification in the enterprise.  Using techniques that reinforce both monetary and non-monetary incentives, Bunchball can create systems that provide recognition, access, and impact in driving sales team performance.  Users can expect a direct impact to opportunity development, win rates, knowledge transfer, and internal collaboration.

Figure 1.  Nitro For salesforce.com Delivers Key Gamification Elements Such As Leader Boards

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Gaurav Dhillon, SnapLogic

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

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

Gaurav Dhillon, CEO and Chairman, SnapLogic


Biography

An early investor in SnapLogic, Gaurav joined as CEO in 2009 when he saw the tremendous potential for the company’s cloud and on-premise integration products, strategy, and unique business model. Gaurav has spearheaded the rapid growth of the company and manages its financing, products, strategic relationships, and operations.

As the former CEO of Informatica Corporation, (Nasdaq; INFA) a silicon valley company that he co-founded in 1992, Gaurav feels that there is more to be accomplished in connecting companies’ applications and data sources. He should know; as he was Informatica’s first employee, and CEO for more than 12 years, where he led Informatica from a startup idea to a leading software enterprise with customers and operations around the world. His tenure at Informatica included the initial company launch, its successful IPO, and expansion to Europe and Asia. He was the leading figure in developing alliances with major technology players, ultimately forging a broad acceptance of the vision he pioneered in the software industry. Prior to Informatica Gaurav held management and engineering positions at Sterling Software and Unisys Corp.

The Interview

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

Gaurav Dhillon (GD): Three main changes impacting our customers today are the increasing number of business applications and application providers on the market, new application delivery platforms, and growing sources of complex data. Companies today use a much wider selection of best-of-breed, highly specialized applications than ten or fifteen years ago, many of which are cloud-based. These solutions are not hosted or accessed on-site over a Local Area Network during normal business hours, as was most common with legacy applications from the 20th century.

In addition, vast quantities of valuable business data now reside outside enterprise applications – in cloud-based solutions, externally purchased data, government-supplied information, and even social media streams and mobile sources. The majority of this data is non-relational, and often comes from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that don’t provide access to underlying databases. All of these cloud-driven factors make integration a much more difficult task than it was just ten years ago, and drive demand for a modern connection architecture like SnapLogic’s.

2. What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(GD): Cloud computing is allowing companies to exploit the power and ease of the consumer Web to connect the Business Internet. By leveraging Web standards and private or public clouds, any organizations can be as responsive, accessible, and adaptable as the best consumer Internet services. In the age of the QR (Quick Response) code, information from sources like mobile devices and social media, as well as all kinds of new specialized applications, is growing faster in the cloud. In order to benefit from this, companies require data they can trust, at the exact moment it’s needed. With this, they can shift their business focus from the rear-view mirror to an over-the-horizon radar that looks ahead to accurately anticipate future customer needs before anyone else.

Many companies are fundamentally transforming their IT strategies to make this all possible. Rather than relying on cumbersome stacks of enterprise applications to run their business, IT leaders are employing a new kind of loose coupling to create what Amazon’s Werner Vogals coined a “collection of services” – built, borrowed, or bought – that meets their exact technology needs. This disruptive approach results in a directory meta-application, which links (like a browser calling up a Web page) to every individual application, cloud service, or Web site employees need. As a result, the whole is made greater than the sum of its parts, and businesses can achieve unprecedented speed to innovation and speed to insight.

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

(GD): Ray, this might not be the next big thing tomorrow, but in the not-too-distant future, I think a big opportunity for cloud computing will be to power the “Internet of Things” and all the fascinating possibilities that creates. Remember how quickly bar codes shifted from being used for basic inventory management to enabling never-before imagined analytics for manufacturers and retailers via data warehousing? That changed retailing forever, and a massive new market around analyzing bar codes was established, which is probably ten times the size of the original market for managing inventory.

We think we have Big Data today, but when we start putting sensors and RFID tags on the physical objects we use daily, and collect more and more data from our fitbits, appliances, cars, etc., we’ll have a humongous new after market for analyzing the streams of information that flow from those things. Only cloud computing will be able to handle this next phase of Big Data and help us benefit from it.

4. What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?

More…

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Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Cloud Computing – Zach Nelson, NetSuite

Published on July 22, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

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

Zach Nelson – President and CEO, NetSuite


Biography

Zach Nelson has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the high-tech industry, where he has held a variety of executive positions spanning marketing, sales, product development and business strategy with leading companies such as Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and McAfee/Network Associates. Nelson has been CEO of NetSuite since 2002. One of top 10 visionary CEOs in the Silicon Valley, Nelson led NetSuite’s successful IPO in 2007. Under his leadership, NetSuite has become the leading provider of cloud computing business management software suites in the world. Nelson holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from Stanford University

The Interview

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

Zach Nelson (ZN): The original idea behind Information Technology (IT) departments within corporations was to apply technology to gain competitive advantage. But the client/server application paradigm hijacked IT and forced those resources to spend most of their time and energy managing vendors’ products. Many studies show that a vast majority of IT resources and investments have historically been spent on maintaining legacy technology, and that does little to advance your own business. Cloud computing frees IT to make your own business better, instead of enriching the software companies. And it happens much, much more quickly, which is how Groupon was able to deploy the NetSuite financials/ERP suite in 26 international subsidiaries in just three months, instead of the years it would have taken them with conventional software.

2.     What makes cloud computing disruptive?

(ZN): The cloud – or more specifically web-native applications — eliminates all of the effort that used to be necessary to make technology work. Once you’ve done that, you can start accomplishing things which were impossible with client/server systems. The early conventional wisdom said that you couldn’t run complex processes in the cloud. I disagree. It is obvious from what NetSuite’s customers have accomplished that you can actually run more complex processes in the cloud than you could with on-premise software. And the fact that you can do so faster, better, and cheaper is tremendously disruptive.

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

(ZN): Obviously the mobile device trend will become more important for the cloud, and from our perspective that means making it easier for buying, selling, ordering and customer servicing to happen from a myriad of mobile devices. The ability to aggregate large amounts of data across multiple companies and industries will make it easier for companies to benchmark their performance versus their rivals’ as well.

4.     What are you doing that’s disruptive for Cloud Computing?

More…

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Research Summary: Market Overview – The Market For SAP Optimization Options

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

Forward And Commentary

This market overview provides a starting point to SAP customers seeking optimization solutions.  The document delivers actionable advice and insights into a proven collection of software solutions.  As part of the full series, best practices documents will follow with in- depth case studies and a critical product evaluation of this growing market of SAP optimization solutions. 

A. Introduction

With the average Global 2000 ERP deployment nearing 11.5 years in service, ERP customers face a significant challenge with updating their existing investments. Installed pre-Y2K, users have attempted to work around the best practices of the ‘90s while seeking innovation and application agility. Subsequently, SAP users face three main challenges:

  1. Higher cost of ownership that reduces overall ROI.
  2. An aging and brittle infrastructure that hampers innovation.
  3. Increasing complexity that hampers greater adoption.

B. Research Findings

As SAP customers choose their go- forward apps strategy, interviews from 100′s of clients show that four paths emerge (see Figure 1):
  1. Stay with status quo;
  2. Move to shiny new SAP.;
  3. Stabilize SAP and augment; and
  4. Modernize SAP and surround with best-of-breed.
Figure 1. The Four Paths Of SAP Optimization

 

Consequently, an $80.1 billion third-party SAP ecosystem has emerged to address nine key areas (details on each vendor in the official report):

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Event Report: Dell’s Annual Analyst Conference Highlights Enterprise Software Future

Published on May 5, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Annual Analyst Conference Highlights The New Dell Strategy

Dell held their annual analyst conference at The W Austin from May 3rd to May 4th, 2011.  The event featured multiple sessions including:

  • Services and Solutions For The Vitual Era
  • Data Center and Information Management – Trends & Business Issues – moderated by Brad Anderson Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions
  • A Side of Dell You May Not Know – moderated by Karen Quintos, Senior Vice President and CMO
  • CEO Perspective
  • Extending Dell’s Enterprise Solutions & Services – moderated by Michael Dell (@michaeldell)
  • Solutions Services Strategy Update

 

Figure 1. Flickr Feeds From Dell Annual Analyst Conference 2011

 

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

Big themes at the event focused around the consumerization of IT (CoIT).  Dell’s revamped strategy responds to big trends such as the adoption of social media, changing workplace norms, proliferation of devices, and consumption of IT by end users.  Key messages from a software point of view across the consumer, SMB, mid-sized, and large enterprise markets highlighted a:

  • Dedication to BRIC and emerging markets. BRIC markets sustained market share and grew revenue at 17% during the downturn.  In fact, Dell held a #1 market share in India and #3 in China and Brazil.

    Point of View (POV):     Emerging markets play well into the Dell mid-market heritage.  More importantly, developed markets have mostly tapped out.  Double digit growth will come to technology firms who master the international markets.
  • Investment in cloud computing. Initial strategies address the IT buyer, developers and end users. Dell intends to attack the related services market with remote infrastructure management outsourcing(RIMO), cloud services, and transformation consulting.  On the apps side, SaaS, cloud re-platforming, and cloud migration play big roles in future strategy.

    POV:     While discussions around cloud focus mostly on the infrastructure layers, private conversations paint a picture of investment in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and SaaS applications. Expect Dell to make more investments to bring solutions to market via the cloud.
  • Commitment to open solutions. Dell plans to ensure that all its acquired products and existing solutions maintain an open architecture.  Part of the strategy includes support for heterogeneous environments, virtual integration, and minimized technology lock-in.

    POV:     Dell claims that moving from proprietary to open systems, organizations can go from 300 servers per admin to 6000 severs per admin.  Storage savings shift from $2.20 per GB/month to $0.40 per GB/month. However, delivering open systems will require a lot of engineering investment among competitors not seeking to stay open.
  • Upsell into software. Strong channel and direct success in the hardware market opens up opportunities to sell systems management (Kace), cloud integration (Boomi), data management (Compellent and EqualLogic), and security software (Secureworks).

    POV:     Dell’s direct channels have proven that they can drop product into pipe and be successful.  For example, KACE grew revenues 400% since acquisition.   Long term, Dell must learn a software culture to be successful.  Not too many hardware vendors have made this transition.

More…

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