I know, I know. "Inventory management" and "the mobile, social cloud" seem about as related as chalk and cheese. But hear me out (or whatever the literal equivalent is for readers of my blog).
It turns out that how well you manage inventories of the things customers buy is often the prime determinant of how those customers perceive that business. It doesn't matter how appealing it is to do business with you if you don't have or can't find what I want in a timely fashion.
It also turns out that how well your business leverages information technology (IT) directly affects how well it manages inventory. And that if yours is like many if not most businesses, 60 to 80 percent of your IT budget is being spent just to keep what you've got working. Which doesn't leave much room for innovation. Or even improvement to critical business processes such as delivering what customers want in a timely fashion.
Meanwhile, your customers, partners, prospects, competitors and purchase influencers are all increasingly inhabitants of that mobile, social cloud. Which means your company has to be there too.
So what you and your company need is a way to free up more IT resources and to be able to channel more of these to the challenges of better infrastructure management.
Turns out cloud-based resources can help in both areas.
Cloud-based infrastructure management solutions and processes can help your company to automate and offload much of that stuff on which your company's spending most of its IT budget. This will free up dollars and human bandwidth to do other things.
And there are a growing range of premise-based, cloud-based and cloud-enabled inventory management solutions. You can find a great rundown of several of these in an article published by Inc. in May 2011. My favorite: Fishbowl Inventory. It integrates with Intuit's QuickBooks and offers options that can take a company from better inventory management to more and better sales, fulfillment and resource planning and management, as recently covered by eWeek.
Inventory management may sound boring, and often is boring when done manually or using traditional tools. But if you think about and act upon it as the business-critical performance metric it really is, and look to the cloud for help, inventory management could be the coolest challenge you take on in 2012 and beyond.
A Special Offer: If you're interested in Fishbowl Inventory, drop a line to vip@fishbowlinventory.com. I've negotiated a relationship with the company that guarantees that every one of my readers who uses that e-mail address will get priority treatment and help getting started with their free trial of the software. And if you promise to share your feedback with me for possible inclusion in future blog posts or research (anonymously if you prefer), you'll get undying gratitude from me -- AND a five-percent discount from Fishbowl if you purchase Fishbowl Inventory! A win for everybody!
Showing posts with label infrastructure management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infrastructure management. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Cloud-Enabled Infrastructure Management: A Two-Way Need
Is the technology infrastructure upon which your business relies ready for "the cloud(s)?"
As with every meaningful one-on-one relationship, cloud-enabled infrastructure management (or "CEIM," as in "things are not always as they…") is definitely a bidirectional exercise. (Or, if you must, a "two-phase commit.")
Why? Because you've not only got to manage cloud-based business resources alongside any premise-based resources -- the computers at your facilities that are running the applications your business needs -- critical to your business. You've also got to figure out whether and how best to add cloud-based management resources to your current infrastructure management portfolio.
Whew. A step back, upwards and outwards seems appropriate here.
Your business relies upon its technology infrastructure to survive, let alone to thrive competitively. This is increasingly true given the growth of "the mobile, social cloud." Even if your business does no business online (yet!), people are influencing how your business is perceived online, likely even as you read this. Which means you need an infrastructure that enables your business to know and respond to what's being said about it online, in addition to all the other things necessary to make your business work.
Also, neither your technology budget nor your technology staff is infinite, if you even have any of either. Which means you've got to focus on solutions that maximize benefits while minimizing cost and complexity. Which means you either are looking at cloud-based solutions or will be soon. Especially if you own or work for a small or mid-sized business or "SMB." Which means you've got to be able to manage them at least as well as you're managing your current business technology tools.
And no, the tools and processes you've been using to manage premise-based resources are not adequate by themselves to manage cloud-based services too. And yes, there's a growing range of cloud-based infrastructure management services you need to consider. Especially if you're using or considering cloud-based business computing services as adjuncts to or replacements for any premise-based resources.
How to begin? Focus on what infrastructure management is supposed to help your business to do. Run better.
From that perspective, here are four things every infrastructure management solution and process must do, wherever it happens to reside.
Collect all relevant data on use and performance. (Process point: be clear on what's really "relevant.")
Refine that data into actionable information.
Optimize that information based on business-specific goals and processes.
Promulgate that information across all affected constituencies, via reports they can all understand and use.
Then, lather, rinse and repeat. Think of it as a "CROP circle" for the infrastructure that enables and empowers your business. Only less mysterious and controversial than other similarly named items.
Your business' need for an effective CEIM strategy creates a great opportunity to ensure that all of your infrastructure management efforts meet your specific CROP requirements and goals. Take full advantage of that opportunity, and make sure that Sales, Marketing, Operations, IT and all other directly affected constituencies have a seat at the table.
A Request and An Offer: If you'll spend fewer than 10 minutes answering six questions about cloud-enabled infrastructure management and including at least an e-mail address, I'll send you a complementary summary of the results and my analysis and recommendations. You can find the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZKSRM9M -- please take it and tell everyone you know to do the same. Thanks!
As with every meaningful one-on-one relationship, cloud-enabled infrastructure management (or "CEIM," as in "things are not always as they…") is definitely a bidirectional exercise. (Or, if you must, a "two-phase commit.")
Why? Because you've not only got to manage cloud-based business resources alongside any premise-based resources -- the computers at your facilities that are running the applications your business needs -- critical to your business. You've also got to figure out whether and how best to add cloud-based management resources to your current infrastructure management portfolio.
Whew. A step back, upwards and outwards seems appropriate here.
Your business relies upon its technology infrastructure to survive, let alone to thrive competitively. This is increasingly true given the growth of "the mobile, social cloud." Even if your business does no business online (yet!), people are influencing how your business is perceived online, likely even as you read this. Which means you need an infrastructure that enables your business to know and respond to what's being said about it online, in addition to all the other things necessary to make your business work.
Also, neither your technology budget nor your technology staff is infinite, if you even have any of either. Which means you've got to focus on solutions that maximize benefits while minimizing cost and complexity. Which means you either are looking at cloud-based solutions or will be soon. Especially if you own or work for a small or mid-sized business or "SMB." Which means you've got to be able to manage them at least as well as you're managing your current business technology tools.
And no, the tools and processes you've been using to manage premise-based resources are not adequate by themselves to manage cloud-based services too. And yes, there's a growing range of cloud-based infrastructure management services you need to consider. Especially if you're using or considering cloud-based business computing services as adjuncts to or replacements for any premise-based resources.
How to begin? Focus on what infrastructure management is supposed to help your business to do. Run better.
From that perspective, here are four things every infrastructure management solution and process must do, wherever it happens to reside.
Collect all relevant data on use and performance. (Process point: be clear on what's really "relevant.")
Refine that data into actionable information.
Optimize that information based on business-specific goals and processes.
Promulgate that information across all affected constituencies, via reports they can all understand and use.
Then, lather, rinse and repeat. Think of it as a "CROP circle" for the infrastructure that enables and empowers your business. Only less mysterious and controversial than other similarly named items.
Your business' need for an effective CEIM strategy creates a great opportunity to ensure that all of your infrastructure management efforts meet your specific CROP requirements and goals. Take full advantage of that opportunity, and make sure that Sales, Marketing, Operations, IT and all other directly affected constituencies have a seat at the table.
A Request and An Offer: If you'll spend fewer than 10 minutes answering six questions about cloud-enabled infrastructure management and including at least an e-mail address, I'll send you a complementary summary of the results and my analysis and recommendations. You can find the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZKSRM9M -- please take it and tell everyone you know to do the same. Thanks!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Private Clouds: First, There Is a Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then There Is…
One of the great things about having savvy, articulate friends is that I can occasionally appear savvy and articulate (at least a little) merely by commenting on what those friends have to say. Who could resist? Not me, certainly…
My learned industry colleague and friend Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com recently opined that the idea of a private cloud – a cloud computing infrastructure owned and operated by and for a particular company – is a choice that doesn't really exist. If you own and operate the infrastructure, it ain't cloud computing in its most true sense, Peter said. (Of course I'm paraphrasing. You can read his exact words at http://dortchon.it/PrivateCloudQuestions.)
But another learned industry colleague and friend, Andi Mann of CA Technologies, has opined recently that the public cloud – THE cloud, according to Peter and many others, I'd wager – is not for everybody, and certainly not for every business or government agency. Andi makes many cogent and salient points, which could be taken in summary as an argument in favor of private clouds. (You can read Andi's exact words at http://bit.ly/fZS0dN.)
The thing is, I agree with Peter and with Andi. At least partly.
I think the core issue here is a need to, as they say in parliamentary procedures, "move to divide." There's the issue of IT service delivery, which is separate from IT service consumption.
If I own an IT infrastructure and I configure and manage that infrastructure in a converged, unified way, I can deliver services that can be consumed "by the drink" or per user/per month. So to my users, it looks a lot like cloud computing. Users get authorized and simply use the services they need, as they need them. But what I've built and am operating isn't THE cloud, and may or may not be a cloud. It's what some savvy vendors such as Egenera and more and more savvy analysts describe with terms such as "unified computing" and "converged infrastructure."
Make no mistake – converged infrastructures are incredibly valuable, especially if and when they help companies to manage IT more efficiently and economically. But there's nothing written in stone that says a converged infrastructure has to result in cloud-like on-demand service delivery or consumption. Convergence and unity can, at least metaphorically, stop inside the data center door and still help to reduce operational costs, improve operational responsiveness or both.
So, as Andi Mann argues, not every business can or should make the wholesale leap to public cloud solutions. However, as Peter Coffee said, it's not clear that such businesses need, want or even can build private clouds. So what do business decision makers really need and want?
What many need is a set of effective processes for evaluating and comparing current and candidate solutions. Those processes should be used to decide if, when and where it makes sense to adopt and integrate cloud-based services into incumbent environments. (Maybe we can call such adoptions and integrations "cloudbursts." Maybe not.) Those processes can and should also be used to decide if, when and where it makes sense to deliver on-demand utility-like IT services to users. Whether those services originate from premise-based, cloud-based, physical and/or virtual computing, storage or network platforms.
With such processes in place, business and technology decision makers can collaborate to evaluate, compare and select the best available service and resource management solutions. These, in turn, will help businesses to deliver consistently efficient and economical services to users, again wherever those services may reside. (This is why Network World recently opined that private clouds are "not for the faint of heart" in its comparison of five cloud management solutions, as you can read at http://dortchon.it/PvtCloudMgmt.)
If you're at a company that's serious about building a private cloud, you should look at the Network World comparison. You should also look at what analysts and users are saying about how Egenera, Cisco, HP, IBM and other vendors are approaching the growing need for converged, integrated management of physical, virtual, premise-based and cloud-based resources. I think this is the real goal of many if not most efforts focused on private clouds. I also think that "private cloud" is an unfortunate term that is likely more helpful to vendors trying to sell stuff than it is to business decision makers trying to run their businesses better. But I don't think the term or the debate over its definition and validity is going away any time soon…
My learned industry colleague and friend Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com recently opined that the idea of a private cloud – a cloud computing infrastructure owned and operated by and for a particular company – is a choice that doesn't really exist. If you own and operate the infrastructure, it ain't cloud computing in its most true sense, Peter said. (Of course I'm paraphrasing. You can read his exact words at http://dortchon.it/PrivateCloudQuestions.)
But another learned industry colleague and friend, Andi Mann of CA Technologies, has opined recently that the public cloud – THE cloud, according to Peter and many others, I'd wager – is not for everybody, and certainly not for every business or government agency. Andi makes many cogent and salient points, which could be taken in summary as an argument in favor of private clouds. (You can read Andi's exact words at http://bit.ly/fZS0dN.)
The thing is, I agree with Peter and with Andi. At least partly.
I think the core issue here is a need to, as they say in parliamentary procedures, "move to divide." There's the issue of IT service delivery, which is separate from IT service consumption.
If I own an IT infrastructure and I configure and manage that infrastructure in a converged, unified way, I can deliver services that can be consumed "by the drink" or per user/per month. So to my users, it looks a lot like cloud computing. Users get authorized and simply use the services they need, as they need them. But what I've built and am operating isn't THE cloud, and may or may not be a cloud. It's what some savvy vendors such as Egenera and more and more savvy analysts describe with terms such as "unified computing" and "converged infrastructure."
Make no mistake – converged infrastructures are incredibly valuable, especially if and when they help companies to manage IT more efficiently and economically. But there's nothing written in stone that says a converged infrastructure has to result in cloud-like on-demand service delivery or consumption. Convergence and unity can, at least metaphorically, stop inside the data center door and still help to reduce operational costs, improve operational responsiveness or both.
So, as Andi Mann argues, not every business can or should make the wholesale leap to public cloud solutions. However, as Peter Coffee said, it's not clear that such businesses need, want or even can build private clouds. So what do business decision makers really need and want?
What many need is a set of effective processes for evaluating and comparing current and candidate solutions. Those processes should be used to decide if, when and where it makes sense to adopt and integrate cloud-based services into incumbent environments. (Maybe we can call such adoptions and integrations "cloudbursts." Maybe not.) Those processes can and should also be used to decide if, when and where it makes sense to deliver on-demand utility-like IT services to users. Whether those services originate from premise-based, cloud-based, physical and/or virtual computing, storage or network platforms.
With such processes in place, business and technology decision makers can collaborate to evaluate, compare and select the best available service and resource management solutions. These, in turn, will help businesses to deliver consistently efficient and economical services to users, again wherever those services may reside. (This is why Network World recently opined that private clouds are "not for the faint of heart" in its comparison of five cloud management solutions, as you can read at http://dortchon.it/PvtCloudMgmt.)
If you're at a company that's serious about building a private cloud, you should look at the Network World comparison. You should also look at what analysts and users are saying about how Egenera, Cisco, HP, IBM and other vendors are approaching the growing need for converged, integrated management of physical, virtual, premise-based and cloud-based resources. I think this is the real goal of many if not most efforts focused on private clouds. I also think that "private cloud" is an unfortunate term that is likely more helpful to vendors trying to sell stuff than it is to business decision makers trying to run their businesses better. But I don't think the term or the debate over its definition and validity is going away any time soon…
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!)
Friday, February 26, 2010
Can CA acquire its way into cloud management market leadership?
Since mid-2009, CA (the former Computer Associates) has acquired data center automation assets and expertise from Cassatt, as well as the companies NetQoS (network performance management and service delivery management solutions) and Oblicore (IT service level management software). This week, CA announced plans to buy 3Tera, a pioneering provider of solutions for building and deploying cloud-based services.
CA is clearly positioning itself as a "one-stop shop" for solutions to manage both cloud-based and premise-based IT infrastructures. But CA faces a growing range of competitors, particularly where cloud-based infrastructure management is concerned. (See the Focus Brief "Infrastructure Management 'In the Cloud:' Why Now May Be the Time at Your Business" at http://bit.ly/HostedITManagement.) And CA has a long and decidedly uneven history of successfully integrating and leveraging acquired companies, their people and assets.
So can CA extend its leadership in premise-based IT management into the cloud successfully?
Well, I'm not convinced. And I'm not the only one asking. As Matthew McKenzie, Senior Editor at Enterprise Efficiency, a site you should check out and bookmark, wrote in his piece, "CA Builds a Solid Strategy on Cloud Acquisitions, "It's up to CA to put the pieces together and build a truly valuable software stack for its customers. I see that happening, and I also see CA offering a lot of long-term value for IT executives with private- or hybrid-cloud development plans. But this time around, one thing is clear: Milking these acquisitions like a bunch of sickly cash cows simply is not an option."
True and well said. Having followed CA since its inception, I am both cautiously hopeful and at least a little wary. But I have no real stake in what happens. If you do or your company does, however, I'd advise you to watch CA closely, especially for signs that top people from its acquisitions are leaving or have left. I also recommend that if you do business with CA, you demand a briefing about its cloud-related road map, under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) if need be. That will at least help you to set a baseline for comparing what CA says to what CA does. Close alignment between the two is good; non-alignment is a cause for concern -- as is a lack of useful, actionable information from the company.
Lots has happened and continues to happen at CA. Whether all this activity translates into actual change or progress is still an open question. Caveat emptor. And in the meantime, come on over to Focus.com to discuss, at http://bit.ly/CAandtheCloud. Thanks!
CA is clearly positioning itself as a "one-stop shop" for solutions to manage both cloud-based and premise-based IT infrastructures. But CA faces a growing range of competitors, particularly where cloud-based infrastructure management is concerned. (See the Focus Brief "Infrastructure Management 'In the Cloud:' Why Now May Be the Time at Your Business" at http://bit.ly/HostedITManagement.) And CA has a long and decidedly uneven history of successfully integrating and leveraging acquired companies, their people and assets.
So can CA extend its leadership in premise-based IT management into the cloud successfully?
Well, I'm not convinced. And I'm not the only one asking. As Matthew McKenzie, Senior Editor at Enterprise Efficiency, a site you should check out and bookmark, wrote in his piece, "CA Builds a Solid Strategy on Cloud Acquisitions, "It's up to CA to put the pieces together and build a truly valuable software stack for its customers. I see that happening, and I also see CA offering a lot of long-term value for IT executives with private- or hybrid-cloud development plans. But this time around, one thing is clear: Milking these acquisitions like a bunch of sickly cash cows simply is not an option."
True and well said. Having followed CA since its inception, I am both cautiously hopeful and at least a little wary. But I have no real stake in what happens. If you do or your company does, however, I'd advise you to watch CA closely, especially for signs that top people from its acquisitions are leaving or have left. I also recommend that if you do business with CA, you demand a briefing about its cloud-related road map, under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) if need be. That will at least help you to set a baseline for comparing what CA says to what CA does. Close alignment between the two is good; non-alignment is a cause for concern -- as is a lack of useful, actionable information from the company.
Lots has happened and continues to happen at CA. Whether all this activity translates into actual change or progress is still an open question. Caveat emptor. And in the meantime, come on over to Focus.com to discuss, at http://bit.ly/CAandtheCloud. Thanks!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
3Qs, 3As and 3Rs with Treb Ryan of OpSource
So I'm wondering, where best to get some interesting insights (beyond my own, of course!) on SaaS and cloud computing right now? And I figure it makes sense to ask someone who makes a living helping t
o enable commercial pursuit of those technologies.
(See, it's out-of-the-box thinking like that that's why we industry analysts and commentators garner the huge levels of respect and remuneration we enjoy. But I digress.)
So I came up with three basic, yet insightful questions, and ran them by my respected industry colleague Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. Treb's company provides solutions that enable “cloud operations for serious SaaS and Web businesses,” as it says at its Web site. OpSource has a strong partner ecosystem, a pragmatic business focus, and as you'll see below, a pretty sharp CEO.
Dortch: What is the single greatest challenge to success for software providers seeking to deliver SaaS/on-demand solutions?
Ryan: T
he single greatest challenge of success for a SaaS company is the cost of customer acquisition. Traditional sales models when applied to SaaS [are] very expensive [ways] to grow your business. SaaS companies should look at low-cost customer acquisition strategies, such as free on-line trials, “freemium” products or a robust channel base, to help lower the cost of customer acquisition.
Dortch: What is the single greatest challenge to success for enterprises seeking to deploy business-critical SaaS/on-demand solutions?
Ryan: For companies deploying mission-critical SaaS [or cloud-based on-demand solutions] it [is] usually integration with your existing SaaS and non-SaaS data – ensuring, for example, that you don't have a separate employee record for example in your Taleo [on-demand talent management solution] implementation than you do in you payroll system.
Dortch: What do you see as the next "great leap forward" for the SaaS/on-demand solutions market – technological, organizational, perceptual or otherwise?
Ryan: Ubiquitous APIs [application programming interfaces]. All SaaS data and interactions will be available as standardized API calls to any other cloud application. This will solve the integration question, open up new channels in the form of value-added solutions and really open the SaaS world [up] to whole new levels of innovative cloud applications based on multiple data sources and interfaces. Think of the unified contact [management features] on the new Palm Pre that brings in information from Facebook, LinkedIn, your personal [contacts] and [Microsoft] Exchange. Very cool.
First off, big thanks to Treb for the time and the interesting observations and insights. Now, my recommendations.
If you are or wish to become a successful SaaS or cloud-based solution provider, unless your solutions focus specifically on IT infrastructure management and optimization, try to stay the heck out of that business. Getting into it if you aren't there already is not only asking for trouble, it's almost guaranteed to make customer acquisition and other operational imperatives more expensive and difficult. It also flies in the face of the primary benefits of SaaS and the cloud.
If you are deploying or wish to deploy SaaS or cloud-based solutions, you should start with a clear, detailed plan of what specific business goal(s) or benefit(s) you're trying to achieve. That plan should include a detailed assessment of current relevant assets, including the information driving business decisions, actions and processes today. You may find that you need a foundation of accurate, consistent and timely information before you need any new SaaS or cloud-based solution. (See my SearchSAP.com column, “For MDM, start by getting to know your enterprise data” for more on this – it's importance extends way beyond SaaS and the cloud.)
Whether you are or want to be a SaaS/cloud-based solution provider, user or both, focus your attention on technologies, providers and partners that support open, well-documented APIs. Even if you never write a line of code, APIs represent a safety net of interoperability and integration that can smooth and increase the business value of your SaaS/cloud-based solution. It can also help keep you away from that nasty infrastructure stuff I mentioned earlier.
More from some of those I consider “the few with a clue” in upcoming outings. If you've got subjects or people to suggest, or questions or comments, do please let me know here and/or at medortch@dortchonit.com.
o enable commercial pursuit of those technologies.(See, it's out-of-the-box thinking like that that's why we industry analysts and commentators garner the huge levels of respect and remuneration we enjoy. But I digress.)
So I came up with three basic, yet insightful questions, and ran them by my respected industry colleague Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. Treb's company provides solutions that enable “cloud operations for serious SaaS and Web businesses,” as it says at its Web site. OpSource has a strong partner ecosystem, a pragmatic business focus, and as you'll see below, a pretty sharp CEO.
Dortch: What is the single greatest challenge to success for software providers seeking to deliver SaaS/on-demand solutions?
Ryan: T
he single greatest challenge of success for a SaaS company is the cost of customer acquisition. Traditional sales models when applied to SaaS [are] very expensive [ways] to grow your business. SaaS companies should look at low-cost customer acquisition strategies, such as free on-line trials, “freemium” products or a robust channel base, to help lower the cost of customer acquisition.Dortch: What is the single greatest challenge to success for enterprises seeking to deploy business-critical SaaS/on-demand solutions?
Ryan: For companies deploying mission-critical SaaS [or cloud-based on-demand solutions] it [is] usually integration with your existing SaaS and non-SaaS data – ensuring, for example, that you don't have a separate employee record for example in your Taleo [on-demand talent management solution] implementation than you do in you payroll system.
Dortch: What do you see as the next "great leap forward" for the SaaS/on-demand solutions market – technological, organizational, perceptual or otherwise?
Ryan: Ubiquitous APIs [application programming interfaces]. All SaaS data and interactions will be available as standardized API calls to any other cloud application. This will solve the integration question, open up new channels in the form of value-added solutions and really open the SaaS world [up] to whole new levels of innovative cloud applications based on multiple data sources and interfaces. Think of the unified contact [management features] on the new Palm Pre that brings in information from Facebook, LinkedIn, your personal [contacts] and [Microsoft] Exchange. Very cool.
First off, big thanks to Treb for the time and the interesting observations and insights. Now, my recommendations.
If you are or wish to become a successful SaaS or cloud-based solution provider, unless your solutions focus specifically on IT infrastructure management and optimization, try to stay the heck out of that business. Getting into it if you aren't there already is not only asking for trouble, it's almost guaranteed to make customer acquisition and other operational imperatives more expensive and difficult. It also flies in the face of the primary benefits of SaaS and the cloud.
If you are deploying or wish to deploy SaaS or cloud-based solutions, you should start with a clear, detailed plan of what specific business goal(s) or benefit(s) you're trying to achieve. That plan should include a detailed assessment of current relevant assets, including the information driving business decisions, actions and processes today. You may find that you need a foundation of accurate, consistent and timely information before you need any new SaaS or cloud-based solution. (See my SearchSAP.com column, “For MDM, start by getting to know your enterprise data” for more on this – it's importance extends way beyond SaaS and the cloud.)
Whether you are or want to be a SaaS/cloud-based solution provider, user or both, focus your attention on technologies, providers and partners that support open, well-documented APIs. Even if you never write a line of code, APIs represent a safety net of interoperability and integration that can smooth and increase the business value of your SaaS/cloud-based solution. It can also help keep you away from that nasty infrastructure stuff I mentioned earlier.
More from some of those I consider “the few with a clue” in upcoming outings. If you've got subjects or people to suggest, or questions or comments, do please let me know here and/or at medortch@dortchonit.com.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Service-now.com's Latest Release: New Features AND New Transparency!
Service-now.com, provider of SaaS-based IT service and infrastructure management solutions, will officially announce on Feb. 5 the Winter 2009 release of its software platform. It's the company's 15 software release in more than three years, and most users never even noticed, since they were at home for the weekend. Once they got back to their computers, though, they saw some pretty nifty new and enhanced features, such as:
Equally compelling, the privately held company is also planning to disclose at least some high-level financial results, including recurring annual revenues approaching $20 million, 235 enterprise customers and 2.1 million users in 30 countries, and 18 consecutive months of positive cash flow. If the company continues moving forward through the current economic unpleasantness, as many of us expect the larger SaaS market to do, it could position itself well for sustained growth. It could also become perceived as an increasingly safe bet for those companies considering or pursuing SaaS and interested in the financial health of current or candidate vendors. Which should be all of the companies considering or pursuing SaaS. As I may have mentioned once or twice previously.
Service-now.com understands that success with SaaS is about much more than SaaS technologies. It's easier to be open when the news is good, but I've got to believe earlier, consistent openness helped to lead to Service-now.com's good news. Along with effective, useful technologies, of course.
More soon. Stay tuned.
- The ability to open, update, and close service requests, incidents, problems, and changes from Apple iPhone, Google Android, and RIM Blackberry mobile devices, to replace those sticky notes that tend to follow IT infrastructure and service managers around;
- Powerful, role-based global search of people, policies, processes, tools, and other resources;
- Home page and dashboard layout and content management features that enable companies to leverage familiar “look and feel” features and to decide based on their unique requirements who sees what information in what forms;
- Graphical workflow features that ease and speed application creation and modification without extensive “plumbing” requirements; and
- Project management features that integrate with the software's change, release, and service level management features.
Equally compelling, the privately held company is also planning to disclose at least some high-level financial results, including recurring annual revenues approaching $20 million, 235 enterprise customers and 2.1 million users in 30 countries, and 18 consecutive months of positive cash flow. If the company continues moving forward through the current economic unpleasantness, as many of us expect the larger SaaS market to do, it could position itself well for sustained growth. It could also become perceived as an increasingly safe bet for those companies considering or pursuing SaaS and interested in the financial health of current or candidate vendors. Which should be all of the companies considering or pursuing SaaS. As I may have mentioned once or twice previously.
Service-now.com understands that success with SaaS is about much more than SaaS technologies. It's easier to be open when the news is good, but I've got to believe earlier, consistent openness helped to lead to Service-now.com's good news. Along with effective, useful technologies, of course.
More soon. Stay tuned.
Savvis' Savvy SaaS Moves
[UPDATED with financial information and recommendations below.]
In December 2008, Savvis announced that it had successfully completed its fifth consecutive SAS 70 Type II examination. As I've written here previously, SAS 70 compliance is a strong indicator that an infrastructure provider's own infrastructure is reliable and robust.
In January 2009, Savvis made what I think is one of the most interesting staff-related announcements by a SaaS-related vendor so far this year. The company hired Thomas Riley, former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Savvis International. Riley's charter is primarily to grow the company's international business, especially in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia/Pacific regions, Savvis said.
On Feb. 2, Larry Steele, Savvis' Vice President of SaaS, published a piece at ebizQ.net (where I blog about business intelligence, by the way), entitled “Do You Need a SaaS Hosting Provider?” “While many vendors understand what it means to host an application and provide it to customers via the Web, few fully recognize the transformational elements that are necessary to successfully implement their SaaS offering,” Steele writes.
I agree. This is why I'm advising every current or potential SaaS vendor to read Steele's piece, as well as the Andre Yee ebizQ piece I referred to in an earlier blog entry. I also strongly recommend that every current and potential SaaS user read these same pieces, and use them to craft questions and standards for current and prospective vendors. And those users and vendors should add Savvis to their short lists of SaaS infrastructure support providers with which it's worth having detailed conversations.
Meanwhile, Savvis, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, announced earlier today year-over-year revenue growth for the latest financial quarter and for the year as a whole. The company added that it achieved positive free cash flow for the first time during the fourth quarter of 2008. Savvis expects 2009 to be economically turbulent -- among other things, a major client, the American Stock Exchange, is being acquired, which could result in up to $27 million in lost annualized revenues for Savvis. But while the company is offering no guidance regarding anticipated 2009 financial results, the company is committed to continued growth and positive free cash flow, according to a spokesperson.
Well, let's hope so. Meanwhile, though, these results jibe with what I'm increasingly seeing as a general condition for SaaS vendors and users. The industry is experiencing the same downturn as the rest of the economy, but seems poised to weather the storm more robustly than perhaps many other market segments. This bodes well for SaaS users, especially those who do their homework and focus on vendors with strong commitments to both technological and financial robustness. As you may have read here previously. At the risk of repeating myself. Again.
In December 2008, Savvis announced that it had successfully completed its fifth consecutive SAS 70 Type II examination. As I've written here previously, SAS 70 compliance is a strong indicator that an infrastructure provider's own infrastructure is reliable and robust.
In January 2009, Savvis made what I think is one of the most interesting staff-related announcements by a SaaS-related vendor so far this year. The company hired Thomas Riley, former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Savvis International. Riley's charter is primarily to grow the company's international business, especially in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia/Pacific regions, Savvis said.
On Feb. 2, Larry Steele, Savvis' Vice President of SaaS, published a piece at ebizQ.net (where I blog about business intelligence, by the way), entitled “Do You Need a SaaS Hosting Provider?” “While many vendors understand what it means to host an application and provide it to customers via the Web, few fully recognize the transformational elements that are necessary to successfully implement their SaaS offering,” Steele writes.
I agree. This is why I'm advising every current or potential SaaS vendor to read Steele's piece, as well as the Andre Yee ebizQ piece I referred to in an earlier blog entry. I also strongly recommend that every current and potential SaaS user read these same pieces, and use them to craft questions and standards for current and prospective vendors. And those users and vendors should add Savvis to their short lists of SaaS infrastructure support providers with which it's worth having detailed conversations.
Meanwhile, Savvis, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, announced earlier today year-over-year revenue growth for the latest financial quarter and for the year as a whole. The company added that it achieved positive free cash flow for the first time during the fourth quarter of 2008. Savvis expects 2009 to be economically turbulent -- among other things, a major client, the American Stock Exchange, is being acquired, which could result in up to $27 million in lost annualized revenues for Savvis. But while the company is offering no guidance regarding anticipated 2009 financial results, the company is committed to continued growth and positive free cash flow, according to a spokesperson.
Well, let's hope so. Meanwhile, though, these results jibe with what I'm increasingly seeing as a general condition for SaaS vendors and users. The industry is experiencing the same downturn as the rest of the economy, but seems poised to weather the storm more robustly than perhaps many other market segments. This bodes well for SaaS users, especially those who do their homework and focus on vendors with strong commitments to both technological and financial robustness. As you may have read here previously. At the risk of repeating myself. Again.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Enabling the Inevitable: Selecting Strong SaaS Providers
At ebizQ, where I blog primarily about business intelligence, Andre Yee, senior vice-president for products at Eloqua, blogs about SaaS. He recently posted an entry I recommend to everyone -- "Is SaaS Enterprise-Ready? How to Assess Your SaaS Vendor." In this intelligent and helpful post, Yee recommends that potential SaaS users look at their candidate vendors from several key perspectives, to determine if those vendors have what it takes to support those users' business requirements. Specifically, Yee recommends getting all the information available about:
One is interoperability, with other SaaS solutions and with incumbent infrastructures and applications. The other is financial stability.
Of course, interoperability with what's in place seems obvious, but is frequently inadequately addressed by those seeking to implement new solutions, SaaS-based or otherwise. And where SaaS is concerned, interoperability with other SaaS solutions could become critical. If your company decides a particular SaaS solution needs replacing with another, that effort should not require a fleet of forklifts.
Further, if you're betting on a particular SaaS solution and vendor, that bet should be as safe and well-covered as possible. And no company can bet its own competitive agility on any vendor that may not be around long enough to sustain the promised advantages of SaaS.
But "interoperability" is a slippery slope, and many if not most SaaS vendors are privately held, making financial information difficult or impossible to obtain. As the computer in Douglas Adam's incredibly wonderful book "Life, the Universe, and Everything" said, "Hmm...tricky."
One incredibly useful step: find out who's actually providing and managing the SaaS vendor's infrastructure. See if they're working with proven providers and solutions, such as Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, Google, or Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services, or with specialists such as OpSource or Inforonics. And get as many details as you can about how deep those relationships are, and how stringent and enforceable the relevant service level agreements (SLAs) are as well.
Another is to look closely at every SaaS vendor's partner ecosystem. This not only tells you how broadly supported a vendor and its solutions are by other companies, but also offers clues as to options for an exit or transition strategy, should one become necessary.
Still another good step: make sure your company's own IT infrastructure (and yes, your company does have one, extensive or not) is sufficiently well-managed to be "SaaS-ready." I'm a big fan of Service-now.com for this, because they offer SaaS-based solutions for IT infrastructure management. But any approach you find that enables effective management without making it another full-time job for your company is better than no management at all, a situation I've seen all too often.
SaaS may be inevitable for a lot of businesses, but it's not going to be without challenges for many if not most of them. So, as should be done with every significant business decision, "trust, but verify."
- Reliability;
- Security;
- Scalability;
- Business Process Integration;
- Data Conversion Services; and
- the ability to pass a SAS 70 Audit. ("SAS 70," according to Wikipedia, "defines the professional standards used by a service auditor to assess the internal controls of a service organization and issue a service auditor’s report." Without getting into too many more details -- yes, it's very, very important.)
One is interoperability, with other SaaS solutions and with incumbent infrastructures and applications. The other is financial stability.
Of course, interoperability with what's in place seems obvious, but is frequently inadequately addressed by those seeking to implement new solutions, SaaS-based or otherwise. And where SaaS is concerned, interoperability with other SaaS solutions could become critical. If your company decides a particular SaaS solution needs replacing with another, that effort should not require a fleet of forklifts.
Further, if you're betting on a particular SaaS solution and vendor, that bet should be as safe and well-covered as possible. And no company can bet its own competitive agility on any vendor that may not be around long enough to sustain the promised advantages of SaaS.
But "interoperability" is a slippery slope, and many if not most SaaS vendors are privately held, making financial information difficult or impossible to obtain. As the computer in Douglas Adam's incredibly wonderful book "Life, the Universe, and Everything" said, "Hmm...tricky."
One incredibly useful step: find out who's actually providing and managing the SaaS vendor's infrastructure. See if they're working with proven providers and solutions, such as Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, Google, or Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services, or with specialists such as OpSource or Inforonics. And get as many details as you can about how deep those relationships are, and how stringent and enforceable the relevant service level agreements (SLAs) are as well.
Another is to look closely at every SaaS vendor's partner ecosystem. This not only tells you how broadly supported a vendor and its solutions are by other companies, but also offers clues as to options for an exit or transition strategy, should one become necessary.
Still another good step: make sure your company's own IT infrastructure (and yes, your company does have one, extensive or not) is sufficiently well-managed to be "SaaS-ready." I'm a big fan of Service-now.com for this, because they offer SaaS-based solutions for IT infrastructure management. But any approach you find that enables effective management without making it another full-time job for your company is better than no management at all, a situation I've seen all too often.
SaaS may be inevitable for a lot of businesses, but it's not going to be without challenges for many if not most of them. So, as should be done with every significant business decision, "trust, but verify."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)