Zoli's Blog » Enterprise Software

Co-CEO: a Good Concept? Or Desperate Measure?

Zoli Erdos — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:58:50 +0000

That was the fun part. After all, it’s Sunday. Now read the story here:

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

If it Swims Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck, then it Probably is a Duck. The Anti-SAP Duck.

Zoli Erdos — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:46:23 +0000

Two SAP-related conferences will run literally next door to each other in Boston next week. One, which I am attending is the SAP Influencer Summit where analysts and the media get to meet SAP execs – the other is what some of us quickly dubbed the Anti-SAP Conference.

The Sapience conference is focused on “Alternatives for leveraging your investment in SAP”. Fellow Enterprise Irregulars Vinnie Mirchandani and Ray Wang will both be presenting – no surprise there. Vinnie has long earned the nickname Vinnie Maintenance (well, when he’s not Vinnie Merchant) for his crusade against bloated integration and maintenance costs, which “can make up 70 to 90% of TCO in an SAP shop” and Ray also has a track record of taking the customer side. No wonder the two are now working together as Enterprise Advocates.

Are enterprise software fees outrageously high? Probably… see my old post on how SaaS subscription can be half of only the maintenance component of traditional software’s TCO. Do System Integrators, Consultants overcharge? Probably … although let’s be real, they charge whatever they can get away with, i.e. whatever the market allows. Hence alternatives are good – SaaS, nimble, less expensive third party providers and even strategic client-side consultants like Vinnie and Ray who can make a decent living on advising customers on how to reduce their ERP TCO. The market is all about competition and and market players have to take sides, no shame in that.

But then I don’t understand why Vinnie and Dennis Howlett are vehemently denying the anti-SAP nature of Sapience. I prefer to call it what it is – just take a look at the sponsor list:

It’s a who is who of SAP’s competitors – now let’s look at some of the Conference Speakers:

Craig Conway, PeopleSoft’s last CEO before getting swallowed by Oracle
Jan Baan, Founder of Baan, a “hot” SAP competitor in the 90’s
Paul Wahl who left SAP for Siebel, and took the creme of SAP’s leadership at the time with him

They share one thing in common: all former SAP competitors but also representative of the very same “fat” business model they will no doubt speak out against. They are joined by several former SAP Execs and current service providers.

Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite is a great competitor and one who does not miss a chance SAP’s fumbling with their own SMB SaaS offering, BYD offers him.

It’s hard to not see what the conference organizer, Helmuth Gumbel assembled here: the Anti-SAP All Star Band. Oh, and let’s not forget how Dennis Howlett had introduced Helmuth: SAP’s feet put to the fire.

How about the timing? If you believe it’s pure coincidence that Sapience coincides with the SAP Influencer Summit both in time and location, I have a bridge to sell you. It’s just as “accidental” as Netsuite’s SAP for the Rest of Us Party was during SAPPHIRE 2006, right across the Convention Center. Nothing wrong about guerilla marketing, but why be shy about it?

A conference designed to steal some thunder from SAP’s Summit, at the same time and place, sponsored and keynoted by SAP’s competitors, and it’s not “anti-SAP”? C’mon… you know the quacks and all. But don’t get me wrong: Sapience may very well be a healthy contribution to the SAP ecosystem – it just does not need any whitewashing.

You may also want to read the healthy debate that developed in the comments to Vinnie’s post.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Video Interview with SAP’s John Schwartz

Zoli Erdos — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:07:06 +0000

NBC’s Press: Here host Scott McGrew, TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy and Fortune’s Jon Fortt interview SAP Executive Board Member John Schwartz in this two-part video.

Schwartz came to SAP through their acquisition of Business Objects, and unlike many acquisitions where the “assimilated” CEO gets slowly marginalized, this one seems to have worked well. In fact John Schwartz is becoming somewhat of a front man, especially as his analytics become the growth engine SAP badly needed, with their traditional transactional system being somewhat stale.

Another interesting aspect is that while SAP now has a an On-Demand Tzar in ex-Oracle John Wookey, his team is still largely strategizing – while Schwartz’s Business Objects is a showcase of a formerly traditional software company turning to SaaS aggressively.

Btw, this is not the first time an “acquired” exec catapults fast in SAP: the previous guy arguably started lower and raised to stardom fast… but he is now at a Better Place (pun intended).

Anyway, enjoy the discussion.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Btw, these videos have been online for a week now, but on the first day the were practically unviewable: watch for 3-4 seconds, then wait for long buffering… again… again.

One Customer at a Time is a great principle – in Customer Care, not on-demand video.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Simplifying the Gartner Hype Cycle – 2.0 Style

Zoli Erdos — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:14:55 +0000

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Vinnie Mirchandani did a good job of un-hyping the Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies.

He points out some inconsistencies comparing this year’s chart to the 2007 version. He should know, he is a Gartner Alumnus himself. But I’ve been wondering if there was a way to further simplify it, i.e. make it digestible to average folks like yours truly .. and I’ve just found it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s the simplified, scobleized, oprahized, too-oh-ized version of the Gartner Hype Cycle:

Courtesy of Geek & Poke.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Multi-tenancy, the Holy Grail of SaaS. Do Customers Care?

Zoli Erdos — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:39:57 +0000

Two recent posts by Enterprise Social Software vendors Jive and Atlassian set up a huge debate amongst my fellow Enterprise Irregulars. Here’s the money-quote from Jive:

It’s not so long ago that it felt embarrassing to say the words "SaaS" and " single-tenant" in the same sentence. For years, it’s been an industry mantra that it’s simply impossible to have a scalable SaaS business without multi-tenancy.

Both Jive and Atlassian went single-tenant. That’s a red flag with many SaaS purists. But there’s more then just tenancy. What if customer data stays behind the firewall, while the application is still provided over the web? Is that still considered SaaS? Do customers really care about such issues, or do they look for innovation in features and services?

And a bonus: the #1 SaaS icon supposedly delivers on-premise, if the deal is big enough…

Zoho Office for Sharepoint: Use SaaS, Keep Data Behind the Firewall

Zoli Erdos — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:34:31 +0000

One of the major roadblocks to SaaS providers’ entry to the enterprise is IT and Business concerns about corporate security, thinking of the firewall as the last line of defense.

Microsoft SharePoint has a very strong position in the Enterprise as the incumbents behind-the-firewall collaboration server, and for years smart Collaboration and Social Software vendors with better functionality, like Atlassian, Socialtext, Jive Software, Newsgator have been "playing well", adopting their services to SharePoint.

Now Zoho joins, announcing Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, which combines the benefits of a collaborative SaaS Suite with the (perceived or real?) security if keeping data behind the firewall.

SAP Discusses SaaS Strategy

Zoli Erdos — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:47:56 +0000

John Wookey has a tough job. The former Oracle Exec, currently EVP @ SAP, the Enterprise Software leader is supposed to charter SAP’s foray into On-Demand – in a company whose bread-and-butter is clearly in installed applications and which still largely considers a threat to its traditional lucrative business.

He spent the first 6 months crafting the new strategy, which he first announced at the SIIA OnDemand Europe conference in Amsterdam.

Atlassian $timulus Package Supports Charity. Two Days Left To Get Your (Almost) Free Confluence or Jira Licence.

Zoli Erdos — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:53:53 +0000

This must be do-good-week. Amongst all the talk about Ashton Kutcher’s challenge to CNN, how the follow-on Oprah show pushed Twitter to never-seen height, little attention was paid to the small fact that this initiative generated over $1 Million donations to Malaria No More. Ashton started with his $100,000 check and was soon joined by Demi Moore, Ted Turner, Oprah and I don’t even know who else .. I lost count at $1M. Hype aside, this is a major contribution to a good cause.

This week we’re also seeing a for-profit company, Atlassian drive to raise $100,000K for the benefit of Room to Read, an organization that builds schools, libraries in rural communities in Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Zambia …etc. Doing good is in Atlassian’s DNA, likely coming from the co-Founder, who is a major Kiva Supporter. His company had set up the Atlassian Foundation which donates basically 1% of everything:

1% of company and employee time to Foundation projects
1% of company equity to the Foundation
1% of our products to non-profit groups

But wait! This isn’t a post about charity only. There’s a Deal in it for you!

The Atlassian $timulus package is a 5-day drive, during which you can get either Confluence, the excellent Enterprise Wiki, or Jira, the issue tracker – Atlassian’s first product that’s still an IT favourite for $5 for 5 users.

Now I hear you ask: is that $5 per person per month? That would by typical (actually low) pricing for most SaaS offerings. NO! It is:

A five-user licence (ie. $1 per person)
For a full year
For the full-featured entrerprise strenght products

My only regret is that it does not involve the hosted versions of these products. But if it’s the downloadable, installable version, what’s this per year licence? Most enterprise software is sold with a perpetual licence: you can use it forever. But then the vendor pushes the (almost) mandatory maintenance fees to the tune of 20-25%, and major new releases every 4-5 years.

Atlassian does not play such games, their philosophy is transparency and simplicity. Software should be easy to learn, easy to use and easy to buy. Hence the annual licence whish involves support. (Update: I misunderstood this part: the licence is a perpetual one, the additioal annual fees are for maintenance / support, and the are optional.) And for comparison, the minimum annual licence for both Confluence and Jira is $1,200.

So Atlassian is essentially giving away $1,200 licences for free – but it’s actually a lot more. This isn’t just your introductory price. Customers who purchase during the $timulus week (only two days left) are locked in to their $1 per user price for the lifetime of the product, and those fees will be donated as well. That goes way beyond giving up revenue – they can’t possibly provide support for $1 a year, so Atlassian is reaching into their pockets big time for years to come.

The initiative appears to be more wildly popular than they expected. The initial goal was to raise $25,000 for Room to Read, and they exceeded that target on the first day – hence the new objective of $100,000K.

Early this morning they were at 66% of the increased target:

Now, before someone thinks I am doing a paid commercial here: I am not receiving any form of compensation or incentive from Atlassian. I simply like what they are doing. A lot.

But I’m not naive. This isn’t just charity. It’s damned good marketing – in more ways then one. First, as you may suspect is Brand recognition.

The second is perhaps less obvious: Atlassian’s initial product, Jira took several years to take off – the second, Confluence had much faster growth. Part of their secret sauce has always been relying on a very loyal, very satisfied customer base, mostly IT-types who buy additional products from their trusted vendor.

So yes, Atlassian is seeding their market with thousands of free customers this week. Which is fine, I’ve said before: you don’t have to be purely altruistic to do good.

Update: The Atlassian $timulus Package is now listed in Consumerist’s Morning Deals, along with Blu-Ray Discs and Casio Cameras

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

Who Says the iPHone is Not for Business When SAP Runs on It?

Zoli Erdos — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:33:03 +0000

Well, SAP Executives, for starters .. just ask Vinnie Mirchandani or Larry Dignan. SAP Execs and key customers were quite dismissive of the iPhone as a business communication platform. But like I’ve said before discussing Oracle’s SaaS offering, it’s not what they say … it’s where they put their money.

Granted, the SAP – Sybase partnership just being announced at these very moments (webcast) isn’t all about the iPhone: it’s about making the SAP Business Suite 7 available on iPhone, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. Still, it’s nice to see they chose the “right phone” for the video. (hat tip: Jeff Nolan)

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

Business ByNetSuite Goes After SAP, While The Giant is Sleeping – Where is Business ByDesign?

Zoli Erdos — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:34:35 +0000

Ben recently reported on how NetSuite is going after Salesforce.com, by announcing their Renewforce program. Today NetSuite is going after bigger fish: the leader in Enterprise Software, SAP.

The aptly named Business ByNetsuite program guarantees at least 50% savings to current SAP R/3 customers relative to – watch this! – the annual maintenance fees they are now paying to SAP. Yes, it’s not a price-to-price comparison. With the perpetual licence model customers pay upfront, but are still forced to pay annual maintenance fees – with SaaS there is only a subscription fee, and now NetSuite proves it can be half of only the maintenance component of traditional software’s TCO.

Read on to find out how SAP’s own blunder around their excellent product, Business ByDesign opened the opportunity for Netsuite…