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Posts Tagged ‘solution centric ecosystems’

Monday’s Musings: A Year of Extremes Brings Us Back Full Circle to the Beginning of the Dot.Com Bust

Published on December 29, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

With a few days left in the year, it's hard to believe that 2008 is almost over. Just like our paltry .401K's and lowered gas prices, it's like we reverted to the Dot Com bust. Extreme contrasts in positions and tremendous change made 2008 both exciting, suspenseful, and frankly sobering like 2002. In fact, it wasn't just the pace of change, it was an intensity of change like no other. For example in the topical areas I cover:

Software vendor economics:

Identifying recurring revenue and market share acquisition targets to investing in co-investment partners and solution centric ecosystems

Believing that the tech industry could be more resistant in a downturn to the current bloodbath in Q4 and bleaker projections for 2009

Assuming that vendor consolidation earned the right to command price increases and maintenance hikes to retreating and rethinking policy in the face of customer rebellion and revolt

Ignoring vendor financing options to embracing credit as a survival tool

Driving new license growth to relying on maintenance and professional services revenues

Poo pooing multi-tenant SaaS and hybrid deployment and development methodologies to looking to invest in lower delivery cost core Cloud Computing skill sets

End user enterprise apps (ERP) strategy

Engaging in large vendor selection projects to reducing the number of vendor suppliers

Building the best SOA strategy to figuring out how to justify all the investment

Sole sourcing from one vendor to considering purpose built apps

Dismissing SaaS as as fad to embracing Cloud Computing as a cost savings tool

Adopting standard middleware platforms to exploring PaaS and hybrid deployment options and related integration options

Focusing on growth and strategy business drivers to reverting to operational efficiency and compliance business drivers

Crafting a long term apps strategy to recession proofing an apps strategy

Moving to all packaged apps to reviving custom development

Software Licensing, Pricing, and Contract Negotiations

Locking in new license pricing to reducing shelf ware

Negotiating on new license prices to zeroing in on the cost of maintenance

Focusing on future product road maps to avoiding the risk of a revenue led software audit

Planning for upgrades to contemplating third party maintenance

Worrying about vendor consolidation to considering vendor viability and the need for software escrows

Thinking about maintenance as an insurance policy to seeking value from maintenance contracts

Master Data Management - Customer Data Integration

Contemplating deployment of multiple data entity MDM to proving the value of one data entity with the ambition of multiple data entities

Applauding rapid implementation times of 1 year to expecting results in 6 to 8 months

Expanding data governance roles to focusing on specific stakeholder data processes

Turning to the incumbent ERP vendor for one throat to choke to considering all options

Ignoring BI strategy and focusing on enterprise architecture to incorporating BI into MDM projects

Order Management

Reducing inventory to improving transportation management costs and back again

Focusing on multi-channel selling to driving efficiencies in multi-channel fulfillment in a perfect order

Emphasizing partner channels to taking back ownership of distribution

Moving away from piecemeal solutions to purpose built order management hubs

Project Based Solutions

Considering PPM apps to seeking broader Project Based Solutions

Standardizing on project management methodology to reducing the barriers to adoption

Deploying only in one option to expecting various deployment options such as mobile, SaaS, and offline

The Bottom Line - Customers Still Have High Expectations For Enterprise 2.0 Apps Despite the bleak economic outlook, like in 2002, we can expect significant innovation to emerge as new business models meet technology innovations. Conversations with over 1000 end users this year highlight that customers still expect to see Enterprise 2.0 innovations in the next 3 to 5 years, despite any downturn. The top seven key Enterprise 2.0 innovations include:

Richer user experiences - role based scenarios across various usability paradigms
Business process orientation - support for end to end business processes
Configurable change - designing with flexible models and rules instead of customizations
Actionable insight - pulling all the key information to make a decision in the context of business process and user role
Collaboration - providing secure private interactions and open and innovative connection with stakeholders
Intelligent response - responding to contextual models and business events
Hybrid deployment - deploying all models from on-premise, hosted, instance virtualization, multi-tenant SaaS, and cloud based BPO.

Let's just hope these humble 2009 industry analyst predictions hold some water. Your POV. Do you believe we'll turn the corner like 2002? Are you experiencing different trends? You can post here or send me a private email to rwang0@gmail.com. Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Monday’s Musings: Can IT Services Firms Shift the Balance of Power To Create Choice for the Customer?

Published on December 8, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

Current Model Lopsided Towards the Large ISV's Rapid enterprise apps vendor consolidation over the past 5 years leave end user enterprises with fewer vendor choices and less competition. The impact to services firms is a continued and increased dependency on the fortune and "good will" of the software vendor by IT Services firms. However, ISV's now have the upper hand as IT services firms focus on becoming the "best" partners of the ISV's, not the other way around. Case in point: the investment IT services firms are making in training and staffing for upgrades, partner solution certifications, and in some cases co-development. This flow of activity and investment typically has been one way:

Requires investment expense by the IT services firm
Includes forfeiture of intellectual property rights
Provides no exclusive guarantees of go to market rights for any time period.

My question to the service vendors: does this have to be the way moving forward? IT Services Firms Must Respond or Face An Increasingly Dominant ISV's Rapid changes in business models, work force dynamics, geopolitical, and economic concerns, and technology advancements challenge IT Services firms to transform existing business models. As IT Services leaders respond, they must determine which strategies will reduce the dependency on large ISV vendors while advancing market mind share. IT services firms during this historical point in time have the opportunity to shift the balance of power in their favor. Seven critical strategies will include:

Earn the role as a strategic adviser. Win on thought leadership, innovation, and relevance.
Dominate a category. Focus on micro specialization pivot points such as industries, geos, market size, and roles.
Build and delivery vendor agnostic IP. Use the power of the cloud (i.e. SaaS, PaaS, and Cloud infrastructure) to deliver solutions without being dependent on any one ISV.
Lead your own solution centric ecosystem. Stop building someone else's ecosystem and focus on who your best partners are, not vice versa.
Deliver on the failed promises of enterprise apps. Earn trust and relevance by focusing on lowering ownership costs, increasing flexibility through better integration, and extending functionality without the legacy packaged apps overhead.
Win over customers with 3rd party maintenance. Like the stifling of software innovation in the 70's and 80's by hardware vendors requiring captive maintenance, software vendors today are stifling business process innovation with captive maintenance. Have customers pressure vendors into offering third party options.
Leverage social media to generate brand awareness. Build community and user generated content leveraging today's Web 2.0 tools.

The bottom line - IT services providers must win or end user customers will lose. Continued domination by an ever shrinking base of ISV's means that consumers will see reduced choice and market competition. As SaaS development and delivery costs lower the barrier of entry for new competitors, expect new vendors and choices to emerge. Should the IT services providers make the transformation, the system integrators will be able to deliver unique IP and provide business process/transformation in the cloud like the service bureaus of the 1990's. Your POV. Do you think services firms have the discipline and skill to make the transition? You can post here or send me a private email to rwang0@gmail.com. Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.

News Analysis: Oracle SaaS Platform Offering Adds Choice to Emerging PaaS Platform Wars

Published on September 23, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

Emerging SaaS platform wars akin to on-premise middleware wars With consolidation in the middleware market fairly under way, adoption of SaaS platforms (i.e. PaaS) by solution partners represents the next land grab in the enterprise software space. Current key players include industry leaders and specialists such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Magic Software (UniPaas). Today's announcement by Oracle indicates that:

R&D investment in the on-premise stack is very applicable to the cloud. As Oracle continues to strengthen it's "Red Stack" initiatives, it's looking at how to effectively win in multiple deployment options from hosted, single tenancy, multi-instance, and multi-tenancy. The platform offering currently includes Oracle database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle VM along with security and other high availability support. The existing partnership with Amazon WebServices show cases this commitment to work with other cloud providers.
Oracle seeks to become the PaaS vendor of choice. Oracle's foray into SaaS platforms and cloud computing gains momentum as 250 ISV's have chosen the Oracle SaaS platform for delivery and development. ISV's include Adaptive Planning, Ariba, Asknet Inc., Blackboard, Callidus Software, CashEdge, Click Commerce, Inc., Docupace Technologies, dthree inc., EnterConnect, eXpresso Corp., frevvo, InfoNow, Intacct Corp., MAXIMUS, Inc., OpSource, Perot Systems, Sabrix, SuccessFactors, Teranode Corp., Where 2 Get It, Wireless Matrix, Workstream Inc., Xactly Corp, Zogix. The list of ISV's is impressive given the size of the vendors, industries, and geographies.

The bottom line... SaaS platform wars will intensify as Oracle enters a parallell market where BEA, Microsoft VS.NET, and WebSphere traditionally played in the on-premise world. This move can be seen as Oracle's ambition to be the software deployment and development platform of choice for the cloud based computing world. In effect, Oracle now places itself in direct competition with SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Google for mindshare and technology partnerships. ISV's looking for a PaaS partner now gain another option. Your turn. What are your thoughts on Oracle in the Cloud Computing space? Do you see Oracle as an effective provider of solutions for your ISV? Do you believe you can partner with Oracle? Does Oracle provide you with the right tools? Look forward to hearing from you! Feel free to post your comments here or send me a private email at rwang0@gmail.com.

(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.) Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Food for Thought: In a World Of Partner Solutions Does the ISV or SI Partner Designation Matter?

Published on August 7, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

Old World Definition Of Software Partners Still Prevalent From a vendor's point of view, partners can play a critical role in expediting time to market, improving sales reach, or delivering a complimentary solution to a customer. There traditionally have been 5 defined categories:

ISV - Independent Software Vendors specialize in delivery software. They typically partner to complement a solution offering or create an integrated solution offering for a target market.
SI - System Integrators focus on bringing various technology components including software to ensure a complete solution. They bring a solution offering to life and may also provide additional business transformation services.
VAR - Value added resellers build on top of existing solutions and to resell the "value add" on top of an existing product. VARs partner by expanding a solution offering for a geography, market segment, industry, or role.
OEM -Original Equipment Manufacturers develop components for use by another company in their product. In this context, the vendor provides their solution as an OEM to be embedded by a partner.
Technology Partner - Technology partners supply solutions in other areas such as hardware, networking, tools, and related components.

Next Generation Partner Solutions Blur the Lines Recent discussions with over 150 customers and partners of software vendors and their partners at Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Lawson, SalesForce.com, and NetSuite highlight two trends:

ISV's continue to provide system integration via new services. The hunt for quarter to quarter growth has many of the ISV's bulking up their pro services offerings. While many of these vendors continue to build additional partnerships to expand their reach, there remains considerable investment in internal professional services teams and other value added consulting offerings. Some examples include additional "value added" support services or business value services offerings.
System integrators break ISV dependencies by delivering solutions via SaaS or PaaS. Previously, the large consulting firms have invested in solution platforms for custom delivery to clients such as a specific utility billing platform, tax collection system, or telecom call center solution. By moving to a one to many multi-tenant deployment option, system integrators break their dependency on a vendor and can now mitigate the cost of supporting clients should they choose a multi-tenant approach. This means they can deliver one to many support and get into the solutions game without worrying about excessive costs to support various client templates and deployment intricacies

The bottom line. In the world of partners and partner solutions, customers remain confused at all these designations. At the end of the day, they just want to know the solution is offered in a consistent fashion, certified, supported, and part of a socialized ecosystem. Your turn. You've heard my view. As I write this, I'm in the midst of my next report on solution centric ecosystems. Do you agree or disagree that these designation no longer have the same meaning? Is there value in having a uniform way of evaluating these new partner solutions sans the old world monikers? Would a maturity model help? Looking forward to your comments! (The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers. All NDA's have been honored.) Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved.