Punching Soup - Tag: featuredposts

Minimizing the Cost of SaaS Operations

Bob Warfield — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:59:42 -0700

SaaS software is much more dependent on being run by the numbers than conventional on-premises software because the expenses are front loaded and the costs are back loaded. SAP learned this the hard way with its Business By Design product, for example. If you run the numbers, there is a high degree of correlation between [...]

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The Long, Winding Road to Online Collaboration

Phil Wainewright — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:39:23 -0700

For the past two years, Adobe has been evolving a suite of online collaboration tools at its Acrobat.com website (the first services came online in June 2008). The latest iteration launches today with the release of Acrobat.com Workspaces. This new service lets users create virtual workspaces where they can share files and folders with others [...]

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Product Update: Workday 10

Naomi Bloom — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:15:25 -0700

You may well wonder why I’m writing about this when Workday’s newest release (yes, those releases are coming three times a year when PeopleSoft releases are coming every 3 years) has already been covered by several of the top enterprise software analysts, including Altimeter’s Ray Wang, InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen and Strativa’s Frank Scavo, and many more have full research [...]

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The Virtuous Cycle of PPC and SEO

Niel Robertson — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:53:33 -0700

Many companies ask the question “Should I do PPC or SEO first?” Our own Dan Tisser wrote a cogent argument for why PPC should be the last layer you build into your online marketing strategy. While I agree with him, I think PPC and SEO can be used together both at the beginning of the [...]

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Friday’s Feature: Workday Release 10 Moves Users One Step Closer To ERP Replacement

R "Ray" Wang — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:49:47 -0700

Workday Continues To Pioneer SaaS Success In The Enterprise Founded by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri in March 2005, Workday has grown the company to over 135 customers with 80+ companies in production, 17 enterprise payroll companies, and over 400 employees in 50 countries worldwide. Key industries include services, technology, financial [...]

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Microsoft: Back In The Mix. Developers, Developers, Developers Reprised

James Governor — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:07:24 -0700

When you attend a conference there is always a danger of going native, enjoying the Cool-Aid a little too much, so it pays to give it a couple of days before commenting. I wasn’t able to make Microsoft MIX this time around but I did follow it on the web. Unless I am much mistaken, [...]

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Salesforce.com Is Into SAP – Ask FinancialForce

Paul Greenberg — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:25:37 -0700

I ran across this rather interesting press release this morning from TMCNet saying: “FinancialForce.com Announces Out-of-the-Box SAP Integration for Sharing Financial Data.” All I have to say in this case is kudos to a. salesforce.com b. and especially FinancialForce.com. This is not an insignificant integration when it comes to the evolution of salesforce.com in particular. Thus, a [...]

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Freemiums for SaaS

Bob Warfield — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:41:48 -0700

Time for my first Learnings post about my Helpstream Experience. Freemiums are a fascinating subject. Whole books have been written about the concept of extracting value from something that’s free. The FOS (Free Open Source) movement is all about free, and we benefited tremendously from it at Helpstream. Not one single software license fee was paid [...]

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The Venture Singularity

Niel Robertson — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:57:08 -0700

At a somewhat recent dinner with Brad Feld (@bfeld) and some other great Boulder tech entrepreneurs we got into a discussion about Ray Kurzweil’s book on the Singularity. A heated debate ensued whether his theory about the convergence of technological computing capacity, and our ability to understand (and thus integrate computing into) the brain was [...]

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Tuesday’s Tip: Understanding The Many Flavors of Cloud Computing and SaaS

R "Ray" Wang — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:16:01 -0700

Confusion Continues With Cloud Computing And SaaS Definitions Coincidence or just brilliance must be in the air as two esteemed industry colleagues, Phil Wainewright and James Governor, have both decided to clarify definitions on SaaS and Cloud within a few days of each other. In fact, this couldn’t be more timely as [...]

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A LOADED Comment – The Impact of Culture and Technology on Each Other in the Realm of Social Business

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:39:39 -0700

Mitch Lieberman, a VP at SugarCRM is a living proof of concept - vendors can contribute serious thinking to the ongoing discussion around how to create and apply business strategies to customers.... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. T...

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When online communities go to work

Dion Hinchcliffe — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:19:55 -0700

While the debate continues on about whether consumer social networking is an effective model for how we should run our organizations in the future, one under-appreciated online phenomenon is quietly and steadily remaking the very notion of business itself. The world of online communities has evolved with social computing to become one of the most powerful new models for getting work done. Read my exploration of "When online communities go to work."

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Wiki Tuesday: Wikis at RBC

Sandy Kemsley — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:39:28 -0700

Yes, I know that today is not Tuesday, but this is about our previous Toronto Wiki Tuesday, a monthly meetup where we have a presentation on wikis, lift a few pints and hobnob with wiki specialists such as Martin Cleaver (who also organizes Wiki Tuesdays) and Mike Dover (co-author of Wikinomics). The presenter at this session [...]

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My Startup Track Record

Bob Warfield — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:43:02 -0700

Success. Success. Failure. Success. Failure. That’s it, that’s my story. It’s been my heartbeat. I’m a Serial Entrepreneur with a 60% track record, which is comforting, except that I’m coming off my latest failure at Helpstream. 60% is way in excess of what most any VC ever gets. It’s way better than anyone I know, in [...]

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Follow The Yellow Brick Road Part III: HRM Strategies, Outcomes And Design

Naomi Bloom — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:00:01 -0700

My apologies for the long detour from the Yellow Brick Road while I attended to heavy business travel, client deliverables, more shoulder rehab, and the final business details for closing on M/V SmartyPants. More on SmartyPants in a later next post, complete with pictures. For now, we’ve got a lot more work to do along [...]

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Joel Spolsky and Kathy Sierra are Close, But There is More to Blogging

Bob Warfield — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:48:30 -0700

Joel Spolsky has succeeded brilliantly with blogging as marketing medium, and he says he only learned why a year ago based on something Kathy Sierra said at the Business of Software Conference: To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. Tantalizingly [...]

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Palm must build great accessories to survive

Dennis Moore — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:21:00 -0700

Palm is in a tough situation. As reported widely, Palm’s operating results are beginning to cast doubt about the viability of the company. There is no easy solution for the company, but a series of tough measures and creative development efforts can turn things around. Palm makes a number of smart phones, notably the [...]

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Can corporate social responsibility affect your company’s bottom line?

Tom Raftery — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:43:52 -0700

Your company’s share price can be negatively affected if you fail to behave responsibly in your business practices. I have written here a couple of times about environmental risks companies could potentially face. This first time I wrote about this it was in reference to FaceBook’s decision to source the power for their new data center [...]

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Is SaaS the same as cloud?

Phil Wainewright — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:30:21 -0700

From the customer’s perspective, it’s all the same. If it’s provided over the Internet on a pay-for-usage basis, it’s a cloud service. Within the industry, we argue about definitions more than is good for us. Customers look in from the outside and see a much simpler array of choices. Why is this important? It matters to [...]

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Software Insider Index™ (SII): 2009 SII Top 35 Enterprise Business Apps Vendors™

R "Ray" Wang — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:27:09 -0700

2009 Results In Major Revenue Declines For On Premise And Officially The Year Of SaaS A review of last year’s financial performance should erase any doubts about the viability of SaaS as a deployment option and a business model. Traditional on-premise business apps vendors took the brunt of the beating earlier in the year but [...]

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On Open Data, Open Source, UK Libel Law and Evidence-based Sustainability

Tom Raftery — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:39:24 -0700

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” – John Maynard Keynes As is often the case, someone asks for a written answer to a question, but then fails to use the material. The great thing about blogs is that they make it very easy to make sure such content isn’t [...]

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Security risks of multi-tenancy

Phil Wainewright — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:16:10 -0700

To dispel some of the confusion about security and to help people evaluating whether to go multi-tenant, here is a quick overview of the main risks.

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Dissecting a health care IT failure

Michael Krigsman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:48:13 -0700

A new report by IT failures expert and author, Phil Simon, takes a deep analytical dive into a failure at a major hospital system. It is currently available for free download.

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Google: A One-Click Pony?

Niel Robertson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:38:58 -0700

While there are countless daily articles about impending threats to Google’s hegemony (many of which are partially fair), what most people overlook is that Google has an immense amount of options in which to continue to grow its core business. But “Google’s just a one-click pony,” you say. They make 90% of their revenue from search, [...]

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IBM, Red Hat adopt “VMware Pattern” for Cloud. Disruption Strategy Emerges

James Governor — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:16:35 -0700

IBM this week clarified its plans to handhold enterprises into the cloud, working with Red Hat to bypass VMware with the announcement of Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud. I have been talking for a while about what I call The VMware Pattern, in posts such as Amazon Web Services: an instance of [...]

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Yippee! At Least We’re Not the Worst!

Jason Wood — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:45:22 -0700

The markets are up. The media is happy. Economists are patting themselves on the back saying the "worst is over." And certainly in many respects it FEELS that way, doesn't it? And happily, as an investor, times are better than...

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Google’s Control Panel is its Killer App

Phil Wainewright — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:53:52 -0700

Google last week brought the spotlight back onto on-demand application marketplaces with its launch of the Google Apps Marketplace. Until the search and online advertising giant waded in, the territory had been a quiet backwater, dominated for the past few years by Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. It’s hard now to credit just how much excitement surrounded the [...]

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Salesforce Releases Force.com Visual Process Manager

Sandy Kemsley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:12:00 -0700

A couple of months back, there was a private discussion amongst the Enterprise Irregulars about who Salesforce.com was going to buy next, and there was a thought in the back of my mind that it might be a BPM vendor. Since that time, two BPM vendors have been acquired, but not by Salesforce: instead, they [...]

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Oracle’s On Demand Procurement Launch

Jason Busch — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:46:00 -0700

Earlier today, Oracle announced the formal launch of its On Demand suite of procurement products. These solutions, which Oracle labels as Oracle Procurement On Demand should be no surprise to Spend Matters readers (check our recent coverage here and...

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Enterprise 2.0: The Next Narrative

Susan Scrupski — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:30:25 -0700

Enterprise 2.0 was launched in the spring of 2006 as a result of Andrew McAfee’s case study interviews in 2005 on Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), an investment bank in London. The story unfolded after he and his team studied the work of J.P. Rangaswami, who was then Global CIO of the bank. It’s sometimes surprising to me [...]

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Vendors Who Get The Social Thing – Oh, And I’ve Ordered An iPad

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:37:17 -0700

Image credit: Inside Social I ordered an iPad last Friday right after Apple finished updating their site so that I could. Just to set the record straight, I’m not a fanboy though I have 2 iMacs, an iPhone and a Macbook Pro 13″ with a solid state drive. But, then again, I’m writing this post on [...]

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Humanising the Enterprise for Greater Efficiency and Effectiveness

Ross Mayfield — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:21:36 -0700

I'm in Austin where we just announced a partnership with the Dachis Group at their Social Business Summit. Lee Bryant is talking about how to build more efficient and effective organizations. What follows is an impressionistic transcript. I'm somewhat of...

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Reading is Writing: Illuminating The Digital Manuscript

James Governor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:58:55 -0700

Back in 2004 I wrote post called The Death of Consumer Electronics. Wishful thinking of course. My central, hopeful, argument is that we’re actually content creators, not consumers. What exactly do you consume when you take a digital photograph and post it on Flickr? Sure you can sit and watch a TV show or DVD, [...]

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Google Launches Apps Marketplace

Zoli Erdos — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:00:00 -0700

I’m at the Google Campfire One event where they’ve just announced the Google Apps Marketplace. The site is live now, feel free to browse. The speculation is now over, this is Google’s answer on whether they will enter the Business Applications market – they just did, with an entire ecosystem of Partners. The new Marketplace fills [...]

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Four pillars of the transition to SaaS

Phil Wainewright — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:51:18 -0700

One of the most interesting phenomena to arise when you bring as-a-service providers together is the instant sense of camaraderie and a shared outlook. Barriers come down and people start to discuss their challenges and experiences, relieved to discover that others are encountering similar questions. It’s especially noticeable at gatherings in Europe, where opportunities to [...]

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The IT failures blame game (part 1)

Michael Krigsman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:48:17 -0700

Few subjects are as controversial, emotionally charged, and fraught with misunderstanding as establishing blame for failed IT projects.

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Aggregating Some Random Pieces: The Social CRM Industry

Paul Greenberg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:35:10 -0700

I was going to do this long post about something but I decided instead to accumulate a few things in a shorter format and lay them out to you. They are both industry driven and highly personal. So here we...

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Economist Gets It Wrong: Dual-CEOs Can Work Well

Josh Greenbaum — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:13:25 -0700

Sometimes the Economist gets is right, sometimes it gets it wrong. Last week one of the last of the authoritative business magazines put its foot in its mouth with a lightweight and poorly considered column about the value of co-CEOs, with a specific reference to SAP’s recent appointment of Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe [...]

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Monday’s Musings: Decoupling Support From Maintenance – What Apps Vendors Can Learn From Microsoft Dynamics

R "Ray" Wang — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:30:24 -0700

Who Says Support Has To Be Bundled With Maintenance? About a decade back, vendors would offer support and maintenance as two separate line items on their contracts. Support would run about 5 to 10% the license fee and so would maintenance. Keep in mind, average support and maintenance fees were under 15% back then. Here’s a [...]

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Community Management: The Strategic New IT-Enabled Business Capability

Dion Hinchcliffe — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:01:02 -0700

There's been a lot of discussion in Enterprise 2.0 circles recently on the topic of something known as online community management. While precise definitions of this activity can be hard to pin down, most generally accept that it involves the...

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Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management

R "Ray" Wang — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:00:12 -0700

Analyzing The Demand For Use Cases In Social CRM Since joining Altimeter Group, I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with my colleague Jeremiah Owyang on Social CRM. On a daily basis, the requests for Social CRM strategies escalated from all parts of the organization. In fact, requests reflected all facets of CRM including the usual sales, marketing, [...]

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Webciety and Enterprise 2.0: A snapshot of today’s social computing conversations

Dion Hinchcliffe — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:55:38 -0700

Though smaller than in year's past, Germany's CeBIT trade show in Hanover this week remains one of the giants of the industry and is a must-attend event for much of Europe's technology leaders. For the last two years, I have been participating in Webciety, a show within a show that explores the emerging 21st century digital lifestyle. Here is a breakdown of how Europe is looking at Enterprise 2.0 adoption and how it affects us as well.

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RightNow’s New Customer Service Agreement Genuinely Important

Paul Greenberg — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:19:19 -0700

Once in awhile there is something that isn’t only important coming out of the vendor community but actually kind of refreshing. Given my right-brained proclivities, I didn’t think it would come from the world of contracts (that’s a Ray Wang specialty), but interestingly enough it does. RightNow released the details of its new Customer Service Agreement [...]

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Are Apple’s Competitors Stealing Its Patented Inventions?

Brad Feld — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:48:05 -0700

Image via Wikipedia The Apple patent suit against HTC really riled up my friend Sawyer. I wasn’t planning on posting another missive from him until next week, but I thought this was particularly timely given the public statement from Apple, including a specific quote from Steve Jobs about its competitors stealing their patented inventions. Sawyer explains [...]

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Wikipedia’s Decline and the 7 Types of Human Motivation

Niel Robertson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:15:45 -0700

There have been a lot of stories recently reporting on the slow decline of participation in Wikipedia. Most of the stories have come to the conclusion that people are just sort of not interested in helping anymore as there is an abundance of information available on all topics. The fun of building a global utility [...]

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SAP – The Message Back on Target

Paul Greenberg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:11 -0700

(Just a brief note. I’m writing this with a TERRIBLE cold and I don’t feel particularly sharp. In fact I feel about as sharp as a bar of soap – proof positive is this awful analogy). I’m not a Kremlin watcher when it comes to most large companies, though I do admit to an unhealthy curiosity [...]

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Tuesday’s Tip: When To Go With A Two-Tier ERP Strategy

R "Ray" Wang — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:38:28 -0700

Single Instance ERP Harder And Harder To Justify The holy grail of an ERP implementation used to be the single instance deployment. However, market forces, a move to adopt new disruptive technologies, slow pace of innovation from incumbent vendors, and high maintenance fees have changed many organization’s perspectives. Add a slew of rapidly changing business requirements [...]

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Elegant Organisations? Daily Simplicity? Fugetaboutit!

Sig Rinde — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:13:03 -0700

"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" Occam's razor keeps it simple - "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". Or in short form; simple is better. A basic philosophy of science - simple is better. Einstein could be a signatory...

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The Facebook imperative for enterprise software

Dion Hinchcliffe — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:57:11 -0700

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, the well-known CRM and cloud computing company (and now soon-to-be social software vendor) wrote a guest post on TechCrunch late last week making the case for “why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social.” What then does this mean for the future of IT and what impacts will social computing ultimately have on the enterprise.

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Making government more open and social

Dion Hinchcliffe — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:33:39 -0700

Can social tools and community-based approaches truly help our government function better and operate more efficiently? Will open access to government data create important new opportunities for citizens and increase transparency? As we'll see, these two questions are currently top-of-mind in many public sector policy discussions this year. The questions also herald underlying forces at work in the government landscape in many countries around the world, including the United states. Here are some of the initiatives that are taking place this year and what's happening with Government 2.0 as 2010 begins to heat up.

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