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February 6th, 2012
For the New Year Eval-Source has compiled a list of 12 technology trends and predictions that should play out this year. These predictions and trends are based on what we see with our customers, what are their concerns and what organizations will need to address as these predictions have started to permeate organizations already.
- ERP SaaS spending will increase – pointed solutions were bought because of the recession. Companies are starting to realize the implications of doing business globally. They also now understand that their existing system(s) must accommodate global factors, ease collaboration issues, reduce administration costs, simplify usage and force greater adoption within the company, manage social aspects of their business, manage content for dissemination and overall save money in doing so. Since companies have purchased point solutions they are now looking to unify all the systems. Organizations will try to unify all their applications in one place using the cloud. Also there are many new SaaS ERP applications with specific functionalities and industry specific solutions. Software evaluation will become more difficult as hybrid models and SaaS differentiation pricing models will complicate decisions.
- Rise of cloud providers – cloud vendors will become cloud brokers by providing application, hosting, infrastructure and platform all from one source. Many complementary vendors will partner with other providers and application vendors to provide an end-to end customer solution. Large software vendors such as SAP/LAWSON/ORACLE etc. will team up with IBM, TATA, CGI, ACCENTURE, SATYAM etc. The service based providers of business process outsourcing (BPO) not only resell but have started to realize if they team up with vendor to split the implementation management IT failures are becoming reduced. Many other tier two software resellers are becoming cloud brokers as they have started to build their practices by looking for Cloud Architects.
- Solution sprawl will complicate software evaluation. Once specialized vendors have started to include additional and complimentary functionality within their applications. As these apps become larger customers will have more choice of vendors which will drive monthly subscription prices down. Vendors will start to diversify their application portfolio to include much more functionality ie. SFDC picking up HR vendor leads to more competitive pricing for consumers. A possible problem that consumers will face with this approach is that organizations will have to pay closer attention to software evaluation as the additional features and functions will complicate an already difficult process and may lead to increased IT failure if the wrong solution is selected due to the extras that may not cover the original business objectives.
- Start-up buying frenzy. Larger vendors will purchase start-ups with actual sales. They will be purchased by larger companies to grow their portfolio. It is often easier for companies to buy an existing vendor with marketshare or customers to increase application portfolio sizes. This will cause applications to become more diverse and larger than before. This has become a trend in software development as in-house development has taken a back seat to just buying the vendor straight out. The solution sprawl this causes will also complicate software evaluation for organizations. Large industry players will start to acquire smaller and complementary solutions to grow their portfolio – similar to the Google/Hubspot acquisition.
- Integration between systems becoming easier and less time consuming. Once integration was a big part of the software selection and implementation process, this is no longer the case. Open API’s, SDK’s, EXCEL, CSV files, import tools provided by vendors have made implementation simpler. This also includes additional solutions that can be integrated with other point solutions are now significantly easier than before. See our integration as a service post to describe this. Many software vendors are now the external links that are providing integration, data aggregation and pushing of data into other systems. Integration as a Service http://tinyurl.com/62djwxn. These vendors have provided organizations with additional workflow capabilities which further simplifies integration.
- Consumerization of IT in enterprises will differentiate quality employees from one company to another. The younger workers in the workforce are demanding enterprises to adopt the technologies they grew up with. Whether it is gamification, bring your own devices (BYOD) to work and other technology perks will be determining factors for employees to select the companies they want to work for. Options such as work at home and other collaboration options will influence employees as to which companies they will work for. Organizations will have to become more creative as to how to recruit new employees and be able to keep them. Organizations are now starting to realize the cost of employee turnover with having the position open for a length of time, the HR component, the loss of customers due to decreased customer service that the vacant position serviced, ramp up time to bring the employee upto speed (training from other and senior employees), understanding the position requirements and get comfortable in the role are main reasons that organizations have started realize how turnover is hurting them.
- Mobile device management and security have to be addressed. Organizations that support multiple device and OS’ will have to become more diligent as to how security is handled from an enterprise point of view. Mobile device management will become disruptive to large organizations with large workforces to administer, control, inventory, upgrade etc. Also how is additional security managed for the additional devices and rogue devices that are added to the network without IT permission? See a post we did on What’s Next for Mobile Security http://tinyurl.com/ce46c88
- Data explosion and content management will disrupt IT organizations and architectural organizational strategies. The explosion of social media, the infrastructure that is required to support the social aspect and data created by newly created collaboration, both internally and externally will become an issue to manage. Organizations will have to look at new content management systems to unify the many disparate silos throughout the organization to unify data for use. This will include new applications for content management, whether it is a SaaS or on-premise model and how does this impact your internal application strategy ? Mobile devices out in the field will also cause further content management issues for organizations.
- Does your organization have social media policies in place as this is becoming a very hot-button legal issue. Organizations that have a social media strategy should have a code of conduct for usage. Many lawsuits have emerged on the issue of who owns the followers of a social media account the company or the individual acting on the company’s behalf. Codes of conduct, disciplines, dismissal behaviour should all be defined and users of these company accounts should be made aware of the implications of using social media on a company’s behalf. See our post for social media policy creation
- The rise of internal collaboration tools. – Not using email. A few large companies in Europe have said they are not going to use email. This is a great way of getting your article read which is just not the case. What they said is that email usage will decline due to more internal collaboration. Email still has many business uses especially for privacy within companies and external privacy issues. It has been my experience even with larger companies internal collaboration is still very difficult among team members and even worse across various departments throughout the organization. Collaboration vendors will have to focus on the message of how companies will be using internal collaboration tools to expedite requests and reduce traffic and duplicate content. Many tools of this nature already exist such as Chatter, IM, Lotus Notes collaboration. Organizations will deploy these types of systems to leverage data, answers and form a central repository.
- The rise mobile applications. Tablets and smartphones are playing an important part of the enterprise. Applications will become more distributed and organizations will have to pay attention to mobile device management, further application security measures and enterprise applications in general. These applications will become harder to monitor, controlling content and storage of such data will lead to an explosion of metadata within the enterprise.
- Organizations will increase adoption of infrastructure and platform (IaaS, PaaS) for their foray into cloud. These services will open new doors to companies to get into cloud and easily build SOA infrastructures without large outlays of cash. The new platforms will allow for greater business agility for companies to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. These will also provide the basis for organizations to foray into cloud further by adding additional SaaS and other services to the expandable cloud platform.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems. Eval-Source can assist organizations in any phase of their selection process.
Tags: administration costs, application vendors, behalf, business, choice, CMS, collaboration, collaboration issues, CRM, customer solution, development, enterprise software, ERP, evaluation, global factors, hybrid models, IaaS, implementation management, industry specific solutions, integration, issue, large software vendors, Mobile, Organizations, PaaS, point solutions, position, pricing models, SaaS, SCRM, security, social media, software, Software evaluation, software resellers, software selection, solution, technology, technology predictions, time, Trends, two software, vendors
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January 24th, 2012
In Canada where spectrum for frequencies have been deregulated means smaller mobile vendors have entered the marketplace changing the Canadian mobile telecom space.Enter Wind Mobile and Public Mobile.Both of these start-ups have spent millions and are clawing for new mobile subscribers.
The big three mobile telecoms are petitioning the CRTC to limit the spectrum sale to these new providers.It seems that this is just the big companies trying to squash any competition to a country where we pay one of the highest mobile fees in the world.The new smaller carriers have created a nice option for consumers here in Canada.These carriers have caused the big three to invoke their own lower cost companies for fear of losing subscribers.
As long as there is spectrum available shouldn’t it be to the highest bidder ? One of the major obstacles for Wind is the lack of Canadian ownership which has been mitigated for now but keeps popping up as an obstacle to block Wind for further market entry. Wind, Public Mobile and Mobilicity have individually spent millions outfitting their networks it would make sense if these three companies merged to combine their share of spectrum, resources for their network and combine subscribers.The combined subscribers can put a significant dent against the big three with larger customer base.Then the combined spectrum and bandwidth can propel the growth of each carrier even if a partnership was reached to bid for the spectrum with combined resources of the two.Canadian ownership may no longer be an issue if a new company is formed with North American ownership.
This may be a case where three smaller companies can combine their resources and possibly even merge to become a larger player within the Canadian telecom carrier market. With hopefully more powerful resources they can create another large carrier which will cause wireless pricing to drop again.Since their mobile strategies are both mainly local it may give them more leverage to spend towards a national network and possibly partner with carriers in the States for nationwide roaming.Combining resources can lead to larger hardware purchasing volumes which would also open up the possibilities of more phones for consumers as Wind has very limited handsets available. While Public Mobile has a few more handsets available I think it may be a good idea to team up and to offer a larger handset variety to consumers. Mobilicity has added a few new handsets as well with Android OS’s with blackberry type keyboards
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Eval‐Sourceis a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Ourconsulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting.Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems.
www.eval-source.comand Twitter @eval_source
Tags: canadian telecom, carrier, carrier market, carriers, cellphones, combined resources, CRTC, handsets, Merge, Mobile, mobile strategies, mobile subscribers, mobile telecom, mobile telecoms, mobile vendors, network, powerful resources, Public Mobile, Sense, software, space, spectrum, spectrum resources, squash, start ups, technology, telecom, telecom carrier, ups, Wind Mobile, wireless, would make sense
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January 18th, 2012
Now that Sales force has released Chatter the marketplace will have a new collaboration software for consumers to choose. This provides a platform for an iteration of a unified communication strategy.
Now that Salesforce.com has introduced their Force.com application development platform for enterprise software development allows integration much easier than before. Organizations now have a base technology platform to integrate and design their infrastructure around.
The recent acquisition of Radian 6 for social media marketing and analysis tools suggests that SFDC will morph into an eventual enterprise vendor with full ERP functionality. By adding Radian 6 to their marketing mix of Chatter and Jigsaw SFDC is quickly rounding into a full CRM with marketing automation and sale force automation functionality. It would seem the strategy is build out a robust CRM with full functionality and then attack other parts of the enterprise functionality. The Force platform allows other third party vendors to tap into the popularity of SFDC and quickly add their own functionality to the CRM based SFDC thereby extending usable enterprise software modules.
Microsoft has Outlook, Dynamics CRM and SharePoint that provides a decent content management system along with workflow. Louts Notes has the Domino Suite and since Netsuite has added Suiteflow to its offering all vendors in this space must take notice as to the new players in this field. Lotus Notes has included many new communication tools for unified communication strategies.
Chatter and Radian 6 provide the social media and analytics aspect for SFDC. Features such as full marketing automation, customer self-service, reporting, workflow management, cataloguing, customer service integration and knowledge management may be indications as to the types of vendors they are looking to acquire next. If extending to full CRM capabilities to the likes of SAP, Oracle (Siebel) Pivotal etc. then SFDC has some ways to go before they start acquiring other enterprise applications and may be a while before you see an ERP created by Salesforce. The logical course of action would be to fully create an enterprise level CRM with full capabilities of the bigger CRM functions and then move onto building other parts of the platform and application
With force starting as a CRM and adding social components it challenge will to find equally compatible solutions to round out their offering towards more of an ERP like solution. The ecosystem of partners for SFDC is vast and many vendors are racing to tweak the API’s for seamless integration to the Force platform to add additional functionality.
Addendum;
Salesforce has recently been on a buying spree for its cloud strategy. Thereby changing and will surely incorporate all their new purchases into the SFDC platform and then application. This is one aspect that SFDC is really good at executing. They have the ability to include their newly purchased apps into their application and thereby extend the Force.com platform. With some of their recent purchase it seems that SFDC has crossed the chasm into large enterprises rather than being thought of as an SMB application.
We have seen where a few of the Force.com partners have written a complete ERP on the Force platform with seamless integration to SFDC and chatter. It may be easier down the road for SFDC to buy one of these partners to compete with Netsuite as a full cloud ERP. This will compete with cloud ERP vendors for Services and possibly manufacturing if they acquire a vendor that offers an ERP which is already on the Force platform – easy integration.
Tags: application development platform, automation functionality, chatter, cloud, collaboration, com, content management system, crm capabilities, customer, customer self service, development, enterprise software, enterprise software development, ERP, erp functionality, Force, force platform, IaaS, integration, iteration, marketing automation, Netsuite, oracle siebel, Organizations, PaaS, SaaS, salesforce.com, sfdc, Social, software
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November 25th, 2011
With the release of Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) Google’s latest Android platform it seems that fragmentation of mobile devices may now be more widely spread. As mobile devices and new smartphones start to appear especially by the large manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Dell and others which all have several versions of smartphones all with different OS releases.
If one manufacturer has several different versions of an OS out as per Samsung or HTC depending on carrier and model of the phone, if you are a developer of Android applications which version do you target your development for ? Since most carriers are reluctant to upgrade the OS that originally came with phone are customers stuck with the current version of OS on their phone ? Case in point, my LG Optimus 2X was released as one of the first phones with a dual core processor and several impressive hardware features, however there are rumours that it may not be upgradeable to version 4.0 of Android unless hacked and rooted. Then, if LG does issue a newer version of OS (Such as the TMobile version) which may more than likely be compatible with the carrier I am currently with I may have a chance but it is not guaranteed to work. The issue of the carrier now becomes another obstacle for the consumer to overcome if they want to upgrade the OS on their phone.
The problem with this from a development standpoint if you have a mobile app is which version do you focus on ? If it is the latest version are older versions of the application susceptible to not being upgrade or ported to the latest release and what is the upgrade path for older applications on Android ? Newer technology in the enterprise space has allowed some older version of ERP systems to be upgraded without having to step through an upgrade path will the same be true for tablets and smartphones ?
Another clear problem is support, if a carrier is to have several hardware offerings each with its own version of OS, will supporting those devices not become too difficult, time consuming and costly due to increased support time to keep each device running ? A recent study identifies over 2 billion dollars over major mobile carriers in Android support. As there may be Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows 7 OS from one carrier and possibly several versions of each one. If that is the case, there is really no way to standardize support per se other than by unit and then it becomes a question of will the carrier offer fewer models for customers to choose from ? Will the carrier then offer the ability to upgrade each piece of hardware to the latest OS version and how can they coordinate with the smartphone and tablet suppliers that there hardware is capable of accepting the new OS, will the hardware supplier dictate which models are capable for an OS upgrade, will each upgrade of the OS for each hardware device be capable of the carrier technology such as NFC and LTE communications ? Several articles and now research studies indicate that market fragmentation of Android will cost marketshare dominance and lack of a standardized version may prove this to be the case. See a post we did on Why Android Fragmentation Will Affect The Tablet Marketsize. Link to article
It all comes down to money. If you release several mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) over a period of one year with several different OS versions it is in the best interest of the manufacturer not to offer the previous hardware to be upgradeable, because it forces the consumer to buy new hardware and consequently the latest and greatest OS version that goes on the new hardware.
Although Android is a good OS and the ecosystem is strong will the lack of carrier and hardware manufacturers dictate which device you can purchase as now they may not support older versions and offer fewer choices to the consumer ? As can be seen this article raises more questions than answers for a unification strategy on the Android OS from both hardware manufacturers and carriers, what will be their next steps ? It is in the customer’s best interest to start the movement to unify disparate Android OS’ so that all Android devices don’t become obsolete in 6 months.
Addendum:
Smartphone company HTC has already seen the implications of this and have publicly declared that there will be fewer handsets to be released this year. HTC has eyed the enterprise with newer offerings and are looking to take Android to the next level.
The success of Kindle Fire has put pressure on the iPad as Android tablets continue to gain marketshare. while it is not one particular hardware vendor the many different tablets that run android has started to make its enterprise move.
Android 2.3 and Honeycomb and now ICS will continue to pose a few minor problem for organizations to manage several different Android platforms but should not prove too major disruption. ICS will continue to permeate through the many tablet manufacturers causing confusion to consumers as to which tablet to buy.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems.
www.eval-source.com and Twitter @eval_source
Tags: Android, Blackberry, Case, case in point, consumer, Cream, current version, development, dual core processor, enterprise space, erp systems, Fragmentation, google, hardware, hardware features, impressive hardware, interest, iOS, issue, Mobile, mobile device management, mobile devices, model, Motorola, new smartphones, newer technology, older versions, Optimus, path, phone, phone case, RIM, software, standpoint, tablets, technology, time, version
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November 11th, 2011
With new security vulnerabilities being exposed everyday through the internet either through the cloud or mobile devices does the next big boom in software center towards mobile security, data security, identity theft management?
It would seem that daily new hacking attacks have taken place where valuable customer information is compromised or the ability to take down a site or in the case of Amazon entire company infrastructures and the consequent business disruption to the many businesses that run the Elastic compute cloud (EC2) platform is becoming an easy target for hackers.
The holes in security for mobile devices especially cell phones and tablets is especially easy to pickpocket your personal information from. Should this not be a priority when evaluating both enterprise software and even personal devices, how does it handle network and personal security. If a hacker wants in there is not much you can do to stop that however there are precautions that if taken would make it considerably more difficult to penetrate which may dissuade some.
Although it is upto the manufacturer to provide the necessities of a basic security foundation the consumer must also take responsibility in defining their mobile security strategy. This should be approached with the vigour as an IT enterprise strategy. This lack of security provides an opportunity for wireless carriers to partner with the security software and sell it as part of their monthly service. An opportunity for mobile security software vendors to step-up into the forefront to force adoption – smaller players here may even have more of an opportunity here to capture market share. Perhaps cell phone carriers will bundle a security app with their phone or even charge extra on your monthly bill should you opt for the extra protection.
The vulnerability of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and even laptops are proving to be a security nightmare for IT departments. With bring your own devices (BYOD) to work now tolerated by companies put highly sensitive company information in jeopardy where that may not have been such a big issue as it has now become. Will IT departments have to adopt and install new mobile device management (MDM) solutions just to keep upgrades and tracking of those devices not mention syncing and then most importantly security ?
Just recently, some companies are offering security for mobile devices specifically which has become a necessity now as online payment options become more common. If this security resides in the cloud where will the data be stored with the cell phone vendor in their data center, on the hardware itself or in the cloud of the security software ? How will the user be able to access and change the information, another set of user ids and passwords to remember. Wasn’t biometrics supposed to replace many of the tedious login procedures. Perhaps cell payments should look more closely at biometrics for fingerprints as the authorization of payments. Would you not sacrifice a couple of seconds to be more secure and have your identity protected ? With the state of technology now validation can be just as quick if designed properly. As far back as 15 years ago I was experimenting with biometrics for POS transactions with some success, but at the time it was still fairly expensive and middleware was needed to feed the main systems with much decoding which increased costs rapidly.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems. www.eval-source.com on Twitter @eval_source
Tags: Amazon, basic security, biometrics, business, business disruption, cell phone carriers, cellphone carriers, center, consumer, customer, disruption, easy target, enterprise strategy, entire company, Eval, hacker, hardware, identity, IT strategy, mdm, Mobile, mobile device management, mobile security, network, personal devices, phone, pickpocket, place, security, security data, security foundation, security identity, security nightmare, smartphones, software, software center, tablets, technology, theft, wireless carriers
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November 3rd, 2011
Coming from an IT background as a BA/PM mapping fields and integration between systems was always a big problem. Enter SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and now BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) have greatly simplified this task and integration while still a concern has been mitigated to a certain degree.
Older systems were difficult to integrate to, often inflexible and needed special coding to alter or extract, transform and load (ETL) info to have a seamless bidirectional flow to allow maximum usability and to leverage existing from several systems. Recently at DreamForce we previewed and analyzed many nexgen software vendors that take a different approach to integration.
Newer software vendors publically publish their application program interface specifications (API) a real departure from proprietary code and shrouding any enhancements to be done specifically by the vendor at ridiculous prices, the customer was held hostage there so to speak. In today’s environment software vendors understand there are natural compliments to their software and it makes sense to integrate to a complimentary system or add functionality to an existing system that customers may already have in place such as a popular CRM or other ERP’s etc. By making these API’s readily available smaller companies can now easily interface to existing and new systems by interfacing with other systems.
Many new vendors have taken a different approach to integration. Vendors have built platforms that are business process management layers that can not only aggregate data but can extract, load, interpret, apply rules, add workflows, allow single-source administration, escalation alerts, add additional steps and finally push that datastream and format to the next system. The business process platform facilitates the intermediary steps within the integration process. The added versatility that these softwares provide simplify IT and greatly expand the options for SMB. Often, SMB have many pointed solutions for every task and management of several systems becomes problematic.
These new business process platforms have many different options as most are offered as a service or through the SaaS option. These vendors often have connectors that are prebuilt to popular systems already. In these cases where prebuilt integrations and connectors are part of the package integration it becomes as easy as a drag and drop scenario without any heavy coding as previously required. Most of these services offer prebuilt connectors as options for extra cost. All things considered, is not easier to seamlessly integrate to a Salesforce CRM and adding a project management or marketing automation to compliment the CRM functionality you already have ? This approach drastically reduces development time and may show a decrease of overall project time, which will consequently lower costs.
Business process management that resides outside of your existing software is a unique way of integrating many disparate systems that simplifies once secretive coding by vendors. This approach may have stemmed from customers demanding more and the social enterprise now requires this as criteria when evaluating software. Whatever the reason, business process as a service is step for the better.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems.
Tags: added versatility, API, application program interface, BPM, business, business process management, cloud, dreamforce, enterprise software, ERP, Eval, IaaS, infrastructure, integration, integration vendors, interface specifications, intermediary steps, management layers, mapping, maximum usability, nexgen software, PaaS, SaaS, service, SOA, software, technology, time, workflows
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October 26th, 2011
The rapidly changing business environment has caused software evaluation to evolve. However, many of the same principles and processes are still staples of a proper software evaluation process. The same solid methodology that includes people, technology, processes and research still hold true.
Our research and clients indicate that software evaluation is changing. The components that were previously evaluated have somewhat changed due to cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and SOA and Web 2.0 technologies. These technologies have introduced new evaluation categories that have lead to more confusion around software evaluation. Companies are determining their own TCO and ROI which has shifted once traditional areas to different priorities within the software selection process.
Organizations are continuing to evaluate features and functions as before but as many companies have learned the hard way this is not the end all and be all to evaluating software. Companies are now considering new areas such as business agility, business process management, vertical expertise, integration/globalization and more of focus on the strategic technology fit.
Business Agility is the ability of the software to quickly adapt to changing business conditions and processes without much vendor engagement. Many new systems are incorporating richer user interfaces and easier configuration options to enable the customer to do most of the changes themselves. Since many systems are on par with respect to feature/functions self-configuration is heavily being considered within the evaluation process.
Business process management is now a unifying link that can reside inside or outside the software in which you are evaluating. The business process engines contained within the software often allows integration and unification of disparate systems. This often is the method that software vendors use to combine functionalities and collaborate their own different softwares. These new business process engines allow for decision making capabilities, offer BI/EPM visibilities, collaborations, to define workflows, dataflows, creation of approval triggers, allows changes to be tested without disruption to current process through data modelling and can facilitate sharing information upstream and downstream to suppliers and partners are main evaluation criteria with business process management now; a major shift from before.
Vertical expertise is now given a higher priority than before. Organizations now realize that software is pretty much equivalent in functionality and use the expertise of the vendor as a differentiation point to select the appropriate vendor. Software vendors that vertical specific solutions for a specific applications are now compared to as a true apples to apples comparison. Organizations sometimes mistakenly compare a vertical specific solution to the base application which is often more general in nature. The ability for the vendor to distinguish themselves within a vertical may prove beneficial to the evaluating organization to show the company that the vendor understands their business and consequently their support requirements.
SaaS and cloud system applications that include, SOA, IaaS and PaaS have thrown organizations for a loop as now they must evaluate this portion of the application more closely as to align the technology with their business strategy. Integration using the cloud, Web 2.0 technologies, web services, browser–based applications, cloud storage/backup/administration options are now more closely considered with a more significant weighting within the overall evaluation process. It is often these technologies mentioned above that define the globalization factors as well since more companies have subsidiaries, two –tier ERP strategies and must consider globalization, connectivity and time zone issues to continue to support its customers effectively. Again this has become a major shifting point in the software selection process along with the appropriate weighting when scoring the evaluation process.
As illustrated many factors have changed the software evaluation landscape such business agility, business process management, vertical expertise, integration/globalization and strategic technological fit have changed from previous software evaluation processes. These factors now are more heavily weighted and can dramatically influence the outcome of your software evaluation. This is approximately the 30% of differentiation that each vendor must illustrate to win the business.
Many pitfalls, best practices, lessons learned and practical unbiased software evaluation buying advice is offered in our free eBook – Enterprise Software Evaluation Toolkit – learn what to do and not to do http://tinyurl.com/3mmbmn4 which can be downloaded here.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems.
Tags: BPM, business agility, business process management, disparate systems, enterprise software, IaaS, integration, PaaS, proper software, SaaS, Software evaluation, software selection, strategic technology, technology processes, traditional areas, vertical expertise
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October 17th, 2011
The SMB enterprise software space using the cloud and SaaS solutions has become very confusing for organizations and is evolving quickly. Where to begin is often one of the harder questions to be answered once decided a software evaluation is required. The enterprise software market for cloud and SaaS options have exponentially grown over the last couple of years. Traditional on-premise vendors have gone cloud and new vendors are appearing daily with new SaaS options.
Organizations are faced with too many choices and information overload often leads to evaluation fatigue. Consequently, selecting inappropriate software and IT failure. Since software selection is not a process that organizations embark upon often usually every 5-7 years for their ERP systems there may not be any format or process to follow when evaluating software. It is recommended you ask help as the software market is rapidly changing with new applications, technologies and vendors. Recently, at the Dreamforce 11 conference as a technology consulting firm we were surprised as to how many niche applications were available and what was new in integration.
Many new vendors have emerged recently mostly within specific verticals. The large traditional players such as SAP, Oracle, Infor, MS etc. now all offer SaaS/cloud solutions. Then companies such as Plex, SFDC and Netsuite were designed to be sold as a SaaS or cloud solutions which causes more confusion as additional choice makes it harder differentiate between solutions. Certain softwares are developed on a platform such as Kenandy an ERP system that is developed on the Force.com platform to integrate with many other SFDC partner programs which can round out the ERP and extend its functionality quickly. However, should you pursue this scenario it is likely that there will be several vendors that comprise your IT application strategy which could cause IT Administration headaches and support nightmares if something does not work properly.
Organizations should understand whether they would like a SaaS/cloud option or go the traditional on-premise route. Once this decision is made then you can start to evaluate solutions. This decision is key due to internal IT strategy and how you run your organization. If you decide to go with a cloud or SaaS option be aware that ROI and TCO are caluculated differently due to pricing models, support, maintenance and data storage, information release upon contract termination, avialability to move to an on-premise from cloud are a few main areas that organizations should investigate carefully when assessing a cloud solution or SaaS application. If you decide to add cloud and SaaS to existing on-premise systems understand the architecture, integration and the strategic fit guarantees a match between existing hardware and software. One of the more difficult decisions would be whether to go for the best of breed point solution or the all in one suite which combiness multiple business functions. Now that integration between systems have been minimized as an issue SMB organizations should have no problem adding additional systems to complement their business functionality.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations to achieve success in their IT initiatives. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain, social media and technology strategy consulting. Our Tru‐Eval selection system allows organizations to avoid IT failure, receive greater ROI and provide accurate decision support for enterprise software. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and optimization of their technology systems. Eval‐Source provides the professional services that put your needs first and allow you to achieve success in your IT initiatives. We are the source for your technology solutions.
Tags: administration headaches, cloud, Consulting, enterprise, enterprise software market, niche applications, SaaS, support nightmares, technology, technology consulting firm
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October 3rd, 2011
There’s no denying that twitter is a social media platform that shares news, posts and twitpics that keeps the world upto date on what is going on. Twitter is used by organizations as part of their social media strategy along with Facebook, LinkedIn , Quora and other famous bookmarking sites. Now that twitter has bought Julpan it is quickly becoming a social platform rather than a social application.
May this acquisition lead to more purchasing of other social software to complement the social app now that social monitoring is part of their repertoire. Salesforce.com started as a SaaS CRM, created the Force.com platform, built out their business partner eco system, purchased Jigsaw and then Radian 6 making them a leader in the social enterprise. The combination of their combined acquisitions and partner ecosystem has created new products and services to form the social cloud.
If Twitter was to add an acquisition for internal collaboration application, add perhaps a CRM and or a project management software the possibility to create another social enterprise platform may challenge SFDC. As solutions get larger from adding complementary features and functions solution sprawl threatening the social enterprise leader SFDC are beginning to emerge.
The rampant addition of extra application functions that are being added to existing software such as the social component to CRM morphing to SCRM, Content management + social media + PLM, CRM + Project Management and billing and Collaboration have cropped up and are changing ideas of once traditional software categories. Software is quickly morphing into new categories that have been relatively unchanged for a long while. The new functionalities being added to traditional single purposed applications are quickly emerging with new functionality and changing the purpose of the original piece of software of where it may have first started.
As a consulting/analyst firm we see many different software functionalities and vendor demonstrations in which vendors show us their new functionality and add-ons. Another example of this was today we examined a vendor that has created a platform for call center management and other peripheral functions that complimented its base functionality. Some are definitely impressive and vendors that seem to add complementary functionality that extends the original base application seem to be more innovative and more widely accepted by consumers. Consumers find that the new functionality fits their business needs closer than traditional applications. It is these vendors that are excelling to meet customer needs. The platforms that are being created by these new apps are being offered as SaaS and cloud solutions that ease market entry.
Even SMB’s can compete with larger organizations by using these newly formed application platforms that are proving to be a great IaaS/PaaS alternative. These newly created applications are simplifying IT administration and ease implementation worries to a degree. Organizations must still be weary to identify their business process, categorize their priorities and follow the same due diligence when evaluating these new platform based applications as software is now complicated than ever and chances of IT failure become greater if the application you select covers many business requirements and it is not the right fit.
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations to achieve success in their IT initiatives. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain, social media and technology strategy consulting. Our Tru‐Eval selection system allows organizations to avoid IT failure, receive greater ROI and provide accurate decision support for enterprise software. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and optimization of their technology systems. Eval‐Source provides the professional services that put your needs first and allow you to achieve success in your IT initiatives. We are the source for your technology solutions.
Tags: application, complementary features, Consulting, enterprise leader, functionality, internal collaboration, platform, project management software, social application, technology
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September 28th, 2011
Apple has become the ultimate consumer electronics brand. Steve Jobs resigns as CEO but how will the Apple ship steer now? Apple’s marketing is phenomenal in the fact that it carves out a specific demand for their products only. When the iPod, and iPad both came out they were marketed and sold as Apple products within that niche. The market for MP3 players and Tablets weren’t much influenced, the demand was created for the iPad and iPod, not tablets and MP3 players.
With Jobs as the CEO for many years he has created a culture within Apple for their branding, marketing and IP. He has spent the time to create a trickle down culture with everyone on board to fulfill the company mission. Customer service, product innovation, and listening to customers has largely created Apple’s success. The entire company follows this mantra, thereby achieving their mission of being a dominant force in the technology game.
Upto now as the tablet market begins to evolve the iPad is still the leader within the segment. The recent flops of the HP tablets and blocking of sales of Samsung tablets in Europe due to IP and design patent wars the iPad will continue to have a two – three year market lead over all entrants in the space. The other tablets will play catchup to equal the quality of Apple products and to incorporate the features and experience gained by listening to customer feedback for newer versions. The time elapsed will have seen Apple grow their lead in this market as it will evolve and add features and functions that customers demand.
The growth of the company through strong consumerism and adoption even towards the enterprise has created an opportunity for Apple to tackle printers as mentioned by Tim Cook. Since more people have Apple computers it only stands to reason that a MAC printer is next. With the supplies market being as lucrative as it is it will now be easier to sell a MAC printer because more people have MAC’s. As long as Apple does a decent job in its first iteration of printers that should satisfy the demand for their printer line. The second generation of the MAC printers is where all the fun innovations will begin to happen.
As long as customer service stays as one of their core strengths customers have overlooked the battery problems in iPods and Macbooks and have remained loyal. Apple has remained relatively unscathed from product defects and other quality issues although they do exist. The same company culture was built at Zappo’s and because of their customer service policies they remain a top retailer. Create the right culture, stick to your core strengths and adapt to change is the winning formula that Apple uses. Mostly, successful companies all seem to follow this formula. Even when smaller companies start here the money usually follows proving there must be something to it.
Eval-Source is an Analyst/Consulting consulting firm that offers enterprise software evaluation, cloud computing consulting, business process optimization and technology planning for organizations. Our innovative professional services make your life easier whether it is to acquire enterprise software or provide you with fact – based information to match your business with IT. Eval-Source provides critical decision support to validate your technology investments using the Tru-Eval system. Follow our blog at www.eval-source.com/blog or on twitter @eval_source or our site http://www.eval-source.com
Tags: apple computers, mac printer, patent wars, tablet market, trickle down
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