Bob Swedroe is President and CEO of Expandable Software. Expandable provides solutions for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other business functions, with three key twists.
First off, Expandable offers on-site or cloud-based implementations, depending on user preferences and business needs. Secondly, the company promises seamless integration with what Bob calls "best-of-market solutions." Third, the folks who actually get Expandable solutions up and running for customers are Expandable employees. This gives the company more direct influence over how these implementers do their jobs. This, in turn, lets Expandable offer some pretty impressive levels of support and service.
Bob's a big believer in cloud-based and software as a service (SaaS) solutions, but his perspective is refreshingly different from that of some of his industry peers. So I thought I'd ask him three pointed questions about the business software market. Please enjoy!
Q1: What is the single greatest challenge to success for software providers seeking to deliver modern business software solutions?
A1: The single greatest challenge is a level up from integration…I’d say flexibility in meeting business [requirements] while continuing to reduce the infrastructure worries. Businesses of all sizes want to focus on business rather than systems. This is driving force [behind] SaaS momentum.
Market trending is toward new business models of marketing and selling. We see this with our own business and with the [history of all] business software. We’ve come from point products to integrated business functions. ERP [solutions] by definition are single platforms that have integrated many business functions [originally performed by] point products. Now we are swinging back to point solutions as obviously there is a market for robust point solutions that bring a focused and higher level of complexity and flexibility to solve the issues at hand.
Software providers need to remain true to their core vision AND learn to integrate seamlessly (really seamlessly) with other applications such that the combined applications work together and [are] flexible enough to provide the best-of-breed solution. While the delivery method of the particular application is not important (i.e., on site or SaaS), the application must be able to integrate seamlessly and efficiently with other key applications residing in the cloud.
Again, companies don’t want to worry about the infrastructure. They just want it to work; and it will, because those that don't won't survive.
Q2: What is the single greatest challenge to success for enterprises seeking to deploy business-critical modern business software solutions?
A2: Probably the single biggest challenge is to be able to create a solid, dedicated, focused team [that] includes the company employees and the business solutions provider's employees. In addition, there needs to be complete executive-level support for the implementation to have a good chance of success – and the implementation of a review and monitoring process for the implementation.
Very often, unrealistic demands are set as employees are expected to do their normal job and also to "suck it up" and be on the deployment team. Execs need to be at least aware of the risks and consequences of taking employee’s [personal] bandwidth for granted.
One critical element that is so often overlooked is to find a software solution provider that is a true business partner. As a business partner they should be engaged and concerned about the success of your business. In essence, they become a valued extension of your internal team. The only way to know for sure how good a business partner is a software solution provider, is to perform a very thorough job of due diligence on the software provider. (Editorial Note: you can register to receive a free white paper from Expandable on checking vendor references at http://dortchon.it/gInN9J.)
Sage [an Expandable competitor] just recently created and appointed a Chief Customer Officer (CCO), but many ERP companies and business solutions companies sell, then “drop” their customers. To further add complexity to the issue, if the application is sold, delivered and implemented by a reseller, then the [purchasing] company not only has to perform proper due diligence on the software provider, but also on the reseller as well.
Salesforce.com realizes this as well and has a transfer after the sale to a Customer Success Manager that has primary focus on the customer success with the product. Expandable has a model where everyone [from the company] is/can be involved with the success of our customers.
Q3: What do you see as the next "great leap forward" for the modern business software solutions market - technological, organizational, perceptual or otherwise?
A3: The next "great leap forward" will be driven by the organizational/social changes that are coming as the "new generation" of employee comes through the ranks and the "Baby Boomers" leave. Essentially, the new ways versus old ways of how people work [and] socialize, and their comfort level with new technology will force this change – ubiquitous computing, networking, and real-time information access. The changes will happen. The question now is, how fast? The rate of change will be different for [different] applications and…functions (i.e., sales versus manufacturing.
For many modern software solutions, changes will happen faster than we think. The next generation of successful companies (and their employees) is driving this [change] hard and fast – and it will be adopted. Just 10 years ago there was a war of ATM [Asynchronous Transfer Mode] vs. IP [Internet Protocol]. The big companies drove the adoption [choice] and IP won.
Now the "war" is [between] the cloud or on-site [software deployment]. The younger generation and the now-popular new big companies on the block – Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, etc. are the new, exciting and upcoming. The old [guard] – Microsoft, IBM (although they are very resilient and probably will continue to be), Oracle, SAP,…etc. [will] be less of a "mover and shaker" and either move with the flow and adjust or move to the background…. This is happening in the marketplace. I believe this trend will increase as the big leap toward more cloud [computing swings us] back to centralized computing to some degree….
Bottom line: there will be ubiquitous business tools available anywhere, anytime for a world that is moving very fast toward a mobile and remote workforce. However, having said that, a key point to consider is [that] the importance of ubiquitous and mobile computing will be dependent on an employee’s role/function in the organization.
Dortch's Recommendations
The more mobile, social and collegial Web is not coming. It's here, and getting bigger, faster and more important to more businesses every day. In this brave new online world, business agility and success will be determined largely by a company's ability to adapt business processes and infrastructures as necessary to identify and meet customer needs most effectively.
Whether your company sells business software, uses business software or both, these trends are going to affect what's available to you and your business. Increasingly, where your applications are hosted will matter less, while the ability to deliver ready access to them where, when and as needed will matter more. And your chosen providers are going to have major if not primary impact on your company's ability to succeed with its chosen technological solutions.
If you haven't already, begin now to focus on due diligence, regarding both your chosen solutions and providers and with your organization's stated goals and plans. Make sure that all of the above are aligned closely and correctly with what your customers and prospects care about most, and with your company's core strengths. And if your solution providers can't provide the assistance and support your business needs to succeed, consider replacing them – based on careful due diligence, of course.
Showing posts with label applications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label applications. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Sinclair Schuller, CEO of Apprenda: the Dortch on SaaS 3-Q Interview
Greetings. I’m refining and revising an interview format I first borrowed/adapted from my friend and colleague Philippe Winthrop of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation. Today’s 3-Q Interview is with Sinclair Schuller, CEO of Apprenda. Apprenda sells software that helps other software companies to deliver SaaS/cloud-based solutions more easily, economically, efficiently and rapidly. Sinclair has some interesting things to say to companies seeking to deliver or to deploy SaaS/cloud-based solutions, as you’ll see right now!
Q1: What is the single greatest challenge to success for software providers seeking to deliver SaaS/on-demand solutions?
A1: Easily, it’s understanding the technical and operating transition that a product company must go through to become a successful and profitable service provider. Software companies that sell on-premises products are not accustomed to offering a service that costs money – they’re used to selling perpetual licenses that have no unit cost associated with the license. As SaaS providers, they’ll be paying for servers, bandwidth, staff, and a number of other things. How efficiently they deliver their software to leverage these costs will play into determining how profitable they are. For example, choosing to not have a multi-tenant architecture could have dire economic consequences on a unit cost level.
[Editorial Aside: there is a debate in the software industry about how relevant multi-tenancy – the ability to support multiple separate groups of users with a single copy of an application – is to cloud computing and SaaS. I recommend that you read a 2008 ZD Net blog post by SaaS/cloud veteran Phil Wainewright, “Why Multi-tenancy Matters.” I also recommend a February 2010 Information Week blog post, “Why Multitenancy Matters in the Cloud,” by Alok Misra, who works for a company that provides cloud-based applications and SaaS enablement services. Without getting to far into the weeds here, multi-tenancy is an important tool for every provider of SaaS/cloud-based solutions, but is not the only way to support multiple users cost-effectively, and may not always be the best way. Back to Sinclair.]
Operationally, [those software companies] need to consider a bevy of other issues: how will I provision customers to the SaaS offering? Will they self provision? Does it require manual labor? How will I track what customer owes what money based on usage? How will I roll out an update across dozens or even hundreds of servers with minimal downtime? All of these critical considerations play into the single greatest challenge: transitioning from a product company to a service company. We work with Microsoft .NET ISVs [independent software vendors] that struggle with these questions every day, so it’s given us amazing insight.
Q2: What is the single greatest challenge to success for enterprises seeking to deploy business-critical SaaS/on-demand solutions?
A2: Establishing trust. Enterprises have built significant confidence in their IT competence, and despite carrying the costs of direct responsibility, they lower their trust [concerns] since “it’s run in-house.” Enterprises need to understand that in reality (using subjective measure) deploying a SaaS offering is safer and more trustworthy in nearly all regards. After all, do these enterprises hide their money on-premises “under a mattress” or let a third-party provider – a bank – guard their most liquid assets?
Q3: What do you see as the next "great leap forward" for the SaaS/on-demand solutions market – technological, organizational, perceptual or otherwise?
A3: I think the great leap forward will be SaaS enablement. To date, most SaaS/cloud offerings have been built as “one-offs.” That is, each SaaS company re-invented the wheel by dealing with a huge amount of SaaS-specific architecture. Technologies like SaaSGrid will define the “gold standard” of architectures by defining advanced cloud middleware, allowing companies to leverage robust SaaS stacks. This will catalyze the development of new innovative SaaS solutions by drastically reducing the amount of engineering and money spent in building pure SaaS offerings. At the end of the day, it means that the end user will have many, many more SaaS applications to choose from because someone else has helped with the architectural heavy lifting.
Dortch’s Recommendations:
R1: If you are a business technology decision makers pursuing or considering SaaS/cloud-based solutions, find a partner – a reseller or integrator, preferably one with which you’ve worked before – who “gets” your business and how SaaS/cloud solutions are evolving. If you’re a small or mid-sized business, you just don’t have the resources to devote to figuring this SaaS/cloud stuff out without help. And even if your company has an IT department, it might be worth bringing in some outside perspective, and you’re going to have to buy your solutions from someplace. It might as well be someone who knows stuff, rather than someone who just sells stuff. And if you work for a reseller or integrator, make sure your company is asking the right questions and implementing the right knowledge, policies, practices and technologies that will enable it to become such a partner – or consider changing jobs.
(In this context, I highly recommend to users, resellers and integrators the “SaaS 2.0” blog by Dan Druker of Intacct, especially the recent entries on “SaaS & Cloud Computing and the Channel.” And for what is intended as a darkly humorous take on IT teams and SaaS/cloud solutions, check out my blog post, “The Cloud? You Ain't READY for the CLOUD! (Or ARE You??)”)
R2: Once you’ve identified one or more candidate partners, as Ronald Reagan so often admonished his Soviet Union counterparts back when there was a Soviet Union, “trust, but verify.” Ask questions about multi-tenancy, data center redundancy and other critical elements of the infrastructures that will be supporting the services upon which your company relies. And ask even harder and more specific questions about your prospective partners’ relevant business experience and expertise, and their track record in helping companies similar to yours succeed with SaaS/cloud-based solutions. Make sure to record the results of these Q&A sessions, for prospective partner comparisons and because they likely each contain information you can use, no matter which partner or partners you ultimately choose.
R3: When selecting SaaS/cloud-based solutions and partners alike, focus on those that are focused on combining proven and broadly supported underlying practices, processes and technologies. Integration of new solutions and processes with the resources your company already uses and understands is paramount to the success of any new solutions, SaaS/cloud-based or otherwise. And just like you likely don’t have time to become a SaaS/cloud expert and to run your business, few if any vendors or resellers can succeed by inventing and building everything from scratch. So keep an eye on companies such as Apprenda and solutions such as SaaSGrid, of which there will be more. And keep an even sharper eye on how widely supported such solutions become, and what underlying platforms are adopted by the providers of the applications and services critical to your business. (Almost forgot: the Focus.com community is an invaluable asset for relevant observations and discussions here!)
Q1: What is the single greatest challenge to success for software providers seeking to deliver SaaS/on-demand solutions?
A1: Easily, it’s understanding the technical and operating transition that a product company must go through to become a successful and profitable service provider. Software companies that sell on-premises products are not accustomed to offering a service that costs money – they’re used to selling perpetual licenses that have no unit cost associated with the license. As SaaS providers, they’ll be paying for servers, bandwidth, staff, and a number of other things. How efficiently they deliver their software to leverage these costs will play into determining how profitable they are. For example, choosing to not have a multi-tenant architecture could have dire economic consequences on a unit cost level.
[Editorial Aside: there is a debate in the software industry about how relevant multi-tenancy – the ability to support multiple separate groups of users with a single copy of an application – is to cloud computing and SaaS. I recommend that you read a 2008 ZD Net blog post by SaaS/cloud veteran Phil Wainewright, “Why Multi-tenancy Matters.” I also recommend a February 2010 Information Week blog post, “Why Multitenancy Matters in the Cloud,” by Alok Misra, who works for a company that provides cloud-based applications and SaaS enablement services. Without getting to far into the weeds here, multi-tenancy is an important tool for every provider of SaaS/cloud-based solutions, but is not the only way to support multiple users cost-effectively, and may not always be the best way. Back to Sinclair.]
Operationally, [those software companies] need to consider a bevy of other issues: how will I provision customers to the SaaS offering? Will they self provision? Does it require manual labor? How will I track what customer owes what money based on usage? How will I roll out an update across dozens or even hundreds of servers with minimal downtime? All of these critical considerations play into the single greatest challenge: transitioning from a product company to a service company. We work with Microsoft .NET ISVs [independent software vendors] that struggle with these questions every day, so it’s given us amazing insight.
Q2: What is the single greatest challenge to success for enterprises seeking to deploy business-critical SaaS/on-demand solutions?
A2: Establishing trust. Enterprises have built significant confidence in their IT competence, and despite carrying the costs of direct responsibility, they lower their trust [concerns] since “it’s run in-house.” Enterprises need to understand that in reality (using subjective measure) deploying a SaaS offering is safer and more trustworthy in nearly all regards. After all, do these enterprises hide their money on-premises “under a mattress” or let a third-party provider – a bank – guard their most liquid assets?
Q3: What do you see as the next "great leap forward" for the SaaS/on-demand solutions market – technological, organizational, perceptual or otherwise?
A3: I think the great leap forward will be SaaS enablement. To date, most SaaS/cloud offerings have been built as “one-offs.” That is, each SaaS company re-invented the wheel by dealing with a huge amount of SaaS-specific architecture. Technologies like SaaSGrid will define the “gold standard” of architectures by defining advanced cloud middleware, allowing companies to leverage robust SaaS stacks. This will catalyze the development of new innovative SaaS solutions by drastically reducing the amount of engineering and money spent in building pure SaaS offerings. At the end of the day, it means that the end user will have many, many more SaaS applications to choose from because someone else has helped with the architectural heavy lifting.
Dortch’s Recommendations:
R1: If you are a business technology decision makers pursuing or considering SaaS/cloud-based solutions, find a partner – a reseller or integrator, preferably one with which you’ve worked before – who “gets” your business and how SaaS/cloud solutions are evolving. If you’re a small or mid-sized business, you just don’t have the resources to devote to figuring this SaaS/cloud stuff out without help. And even if your company has an IT department, it might be worth bringing in some outside perspective, and you’re going to have to buy your solutions from someplace. It might as well be someone who knows stuff, rather than someone who just sells stuff. And if you work for a reseller or integrator, make sure your company is asking the right questions and implementing the right knowledge, policies, practices and technologies that will enable it to become such a partner – or consider changing jobs.
(In this context, I highly recommend to users, resellers and integrators the “SaaS 2.0” blog by Dan Druker of Intacct, especially the recent entries on “SaaS & Cloud Computing and the Channel.” And for what is intended as a darkly humorous take on IT teams and SaaS/cloud solutions, check out my blog post, “The Cloud? You Ain't READY for the CLOUD! (Or ARE You??)”)
R2: Once you’ve identified one or more candidate partners, as Ronald Reagan so often admonished his Soviet Union counterparts back when there was a Soviet Union, “trust, but verify.” Ask questions about multi-tenancy, data center redundancy and other critical elements of the infrastructures that will be supporting the services upon which your company relies. And ask even harder and more specific questions about your prospective partners’ relevant business experience and expertise, and their track record in helping companies similar to yours succeed with SaaS/cloud-based solutions. Make sure to record the results of these Q&A sessions, for prospective partner comparisons and because they likely each contain information you can use, no matter which partner or partners you ultimately choose.
R3: When selecting SaaS/cloud-based solutions and partners alike, focus on those that are focused on combining proven and broadly supported underlying practices, processes and technologies. Integration of new solutions and processes with the resources your company already uses and understands is paramount to the success of any new solutions, SaaS/cloud-based or otherwise. And just like you likely don’t have time to become a SaaS/cloud expert and to run your business, few if any vendors or resellers can succeed by inventing and building everything from scratch. So keep an eye on companies such as Apprenda and solutions such as SaaSGrid, of which there will be more. And keep an even sharper eye on how widely supported such solutions become, and what underlying platforms are adopted by the providers of the applications and services critical to your business. (Almost forgot: the Focus.com community is an invaluable asset for relevant observations and discussions here!)
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The Cloud? You Ain't READY for the CLOUD! (Or ARE You??)
Maybe you are and maybe you aren't. I mean, I have no way of knowing, really. But I've been hearing...things that are making me...nervous.
I mean, it's not like I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything. (I lean more toward Harry Shearer's thinking on conspiracies, which he has publicly deemed unlikely, given the difficulty of getting people to work together in simple, small teams.) But still, I've been hearing...things...
Things like that there are companies out there for which cloud-based solutions would make a lot of sense, if those companies had processes in place for accurate, fair and balanced evaluation and comparison of such solutions, with one another and with their premise-based alternatives. Or if those companies had IT solution acquisition policies and processes designed with only premise-based solutions in mind.
Now, it's not as if the business IT solutions vendors are making any of this easy. Microsoft representatives have said publicly and repeatedly that delivering purchase and support agreements that gracefully embrace premise- and cloud-based solutions is very much still a work in progress. And Microsoft isn't the only vendor that needs to address this problem rapidly and effectively.
But I can't help but think that IT people who really, really want every dollar of company money they spend to deliver business value would be pushing their companies to become more able to assess, acquire and deploy cloud-based solutions. Unless those IT people had...reasons to complicate or make impossible the assessment and adoption of cloud-based solutions at their companies.
What might those reasons be? Well, I'd hate to speculate. But I remember when minicomputers, PCs, client-server computing, the Internet and the Web were all poo-poohed by IT decision-makers who saw these new technologies as irrelevant to "real" business computing at best and threats to the comfortable status quo at worst. ("Why should I be forced to learn to manage new technologies or vendor relationships when I already understand the ones we have?" I'm just sayin'...)
So is it a conspiracy? Are IT people, individually or collectively, secretively taking arms against a sea of cloud-based threats, hoping by opposing them to end them? (That's generations of Shakespeare fans moaning in the background.) I sincerely doubt it...but I keep hearing these...things...
Anyway, enough of my semi-paranoid, only-partly-tongue-in-cheek ramblings. What do you think about all this? There's a discussion going on right now at Focus.com and another on LinkedIn in the IT Focus Expert Group. Or feel free to leave a comment here, or to drop me a line at medortch@dortchonit.com.
I mean, it's not like I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything. (I lean more toward Harry Shearer's thinking on conspiracies, which he has publicly deemed unlikely, given the difficulty of getting people to work together in simple, small teams.) But still, I've been hearing...things...
Things like that there are companies out there for which cloud-based solutions would make a lot of sense, if those companies had processes in place for accurate, fair and balanced evaluation and comparison of such solutions, with one another and with their premise-based alternatives. Or if those companies had IT solution acquisition policies and processes designed with only premise-based solutions in mind.
Now, it's not as if the business IT solutions vendors are making any of this easy. Microsoft representatives have said publicly and repeatedly that delivering purchase and support agreements that gracefully embrace premise- and cloud-based solutions is very much still a work in progress. And Microsoft isn't the only vendor that needs to address this problem rapidly and effectively.
But I can't help but think that IT people who really, really want every dollar of company money they spend to deliver business value would be pushing their companies to become more able to assess, acquire and deploy cloud-based solutions. Unless those IT people had...reasons to complicate or make impossible the assessment and adoption of cloud-based solutions at their companies.
What might those reasons be? Well, I'd hate to speculate. But I remember when minicomputers, PCs, client-server computing, the Internet and the Web were all poo-poohed by IT decision-makers who saw these new technologies as irrelevant to "real" business computing at best and threats to the comfortable status quo at worst. ("Why should I be forced to learn to manage new technologies or vendor relationships when I already understand the ones we have?" I'm just sayin'...)
So is it a conspiracy? Are IT people, individually or collectively, secretively taking arms against a sea of cloud-based threats, hoping by opposing them to end them? (That's generations of Shakespeare fans moaning in the background.) I sincerely doubt it...but I keep hearing these...things...
Anyway, enough of my semi-paranoid, only-partly-tongue-in-cheek ramblings. What do you think about all this? There's a discussion going on right now at Focus.com and another on LinkedIn in the IT Focus Expert Group. Or feel free to leave a comment here, or to drop me a line at medortch@dortchonit.com.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
EnterpriseWizard: A, If Not The, Future of Business Applications
Where business software is concerned, last year’s big question was, "Why can’t business applications be as easy to use as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?"
This year's question should be, "Why aren't business application development, alignment with key business processes and process optimization as easy as building Facebook pages or blogs and Web sites with Weebly or Google Sites?”
I know, it's overly long, but it's still a good question.
As I see it, two key obstacles stand in the way of legacy/traditional approaches to business applications and business process automation.
I believe that one of the first real-life examples of such an approach is being taken by Colin Earl and his merry little band at a software company called EnterpriseWizard. And that's all I'm going to tell you here, at least for now. You can read more about EnterpriseWizard and why I think what I do about the company in a Brief I wrote for Focus.com -- "Integrated Collaboration, Communication and Process Automation in the Cloud: EnterpriseWizard." Then, you should visit the EnterpriseWizard Web site, paying particular attention to the user success stories, which span a range of use cases and company sizes.
EnterpriseWizard isn't for every company's every software need. But I believe it is a bellwether for how many business applications are likely to be built and delivered in the future. And I mean the near-term future, as is starting...oh, pretty much now.
This year's question should be, "Why aren't business application development, alignment with key business processes and process optimization as easy as building Facebook pages or blogs and Web sites with Weebly or Google Sites?”
I know, it's overly long, but it's still a good question.
As I see it, two key obstacles stand in the way of legacy/traditional approaches to business applications and business process automation.
- Adaptation – legacy/traditional approaches are notoriously difficult, expensive, time-consuming or impossible to adapt to specific business processes, needs or goals.
- Adoption – in part because of their adaptation limitations, legacy/traditional approaches almost never achieve sufficient user adoption levels to drive high, consistent or sustained business value.
I believe that one of the first real-life examples of such an approach is being taken by Colin Earl and his merry little band at a software company called EnterpriseWizard. And that's all I'm going to tell you here, at least for now. You can read more about EnterpriseWizard and why I think what I do about the company in a Brief I wrote for Focus.com -- "Integrated Collaboration, Communication and Process Automation in the Cloud: EnterpriseWizard." Then, you should visit the EnterpriseWizard Web site, paying particular attention to the user success stories, which span a range of use cases and company sizes.
EnterpriseWizard isn't for every company's every software need. But I believe it is a bellwether for how many business applications are likely to be built and delivered in the future. And I mean the near-term future, as is starting...oh, pretty much now.
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