THINK IT Services

Despite numerous market research forecasts predicting that small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) would be in the vanguard of adopting today’s rapidly expanding array of Cloud-based services, the truth is that most mid-sized businesses have been slow to join the migration to these ‘on-demand’ alternatives.

In too many cases, it has been hesitancy or even overt resistance among IT decision-makers within mid-sized businesses which has let to these organizations staying away from Cloud services.

THINKstrategies believes there are 5 reasons why it’s time for CIOs in mid-sized businesses to move to the Cloud,

1. It’s Safe: Too many IT decision-makers in mid-sized businesses continue to be afraid of the perceived security, reliability and performance risks associated with the Cloud. The fact is that the leading Cloud service providers have more stringent security precautions in place and far higher uptime records than most mid-sized businesses can boast. 
2. Your Corporate Executives Want a Change: Today’s escalating business challenges are driving a growing number of corporate executives to seek more nimble and cost-effective alternatives to the legacy, on-premise systems and software which they believe have become obstacles to success. 
3. Your End-Users Are Already Making The Move: The consumerization of IT is real and far more pervasive than many IT organizations realize. It became increasingly commonplace for corporate end-users to acquire their own smartphones, tablets and laptops as more businesses adopted “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies to appease their employees’ demands. In many cases, these policies unintentionally opened the door to broad-based, albeit clandestine adoption of Cloud-based applications as well. In the same way Salesforce.com won over salespeople without corporate authorization, others throughout mid-sized businesses are being enticed by free, ‘try and buy’, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors.
4. SaaS/Cloud Solutions Work and Deliver Benefits Fast: Over the past three years, THINKstrategies has issued nearly 100 awards to SaaS and other Cloud vendors who offer solutions which are delivering measurable business benefits to their customers.  In many cases, these benefits are gained quickly and at a fraction of the cost of previous legacy systems and software. As a result, the return on investment (ROI) in the Cloud is proving to be considerably greater and quicker than was ever possible in the on-premise environment.
5. You Can Be a Hero: Every CIO I’ve talked to who has moved to the Cloud has told me that it has changed their image within their organization. Instead of being perceived as a bottleneck or obstacle to success, CIOs who embrace the Cloud and help their corporate executives and end-users leverage these third-party resources are viewed as enablers and facilitators who are helping to improve employee productivity and operational efficiencies. And the most open-minded of these CIOs are even seen as catalysts for change and incubators of innovation who are helping their businesses gain a competitive advantage in the market.

CIOs have historically been the targets of executive edicts and end-user demands which have made it impossible to succeed. As a result, CIOs have had short tenures in many organizations. However, the life-expectancy of CIOs has been going up in recent years as a growing number of them are leveraging more cost-effective and user-friendly Cloud solutions to support their corporate executives’ business objectives and end-users’ day-to-day needs.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

The topic of building effective channel alliances in the Cloud continues to gain greater attention. This past week, I spoke at two events and attended a third in the Boston area in which Cloud channel strategies and solutions were a central theme.

The first event was a local gathering called, “Mondays in the Cloud”, organized by Sonian and hosted at the UMass-Boston Venture Development Center. The session was kicked off by Greg Arnette, Sonian’s Founder and CTO, who provided his perspective on the state of the Cloud marketplace. I followed Greg with a talk about the Cloud industry trends driving the demand for a stronger channel network to build on the initial success of Cloud services. My talk was followed by Erik Sebesta of cloudTP who talked about how Cloud integration services companies like his are becoming an important channel to market for Cloud vendors seeking to sell private Cloud solutions into enterprises. Brian Matsubara of Amazon Web Services (AWS) concluded the event with a description of AWS’s channel strategies, programs and success stories.

The next day, I presented and moderated a panel about the state of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud marketplace, and how established independent software vendors (ISVs) can capitalize on these trends at Progress Software’s “Revolution” customer and partner conference. The overall event attracted over 1,000 attendees, an illustration of Progress Software’s worldwide user and partner base. My breakout session, “Winning the Revolution at the Next Frontier—In the Cloud”, was followed by a panel discussion which I facilitated consisting of Grant Christensen, General Manager-Operations at Supercorp Technology Pty Ltd. based in Australia; Sten Petersson, CEO of Exicom based in Scandinavia; and Tim Diassi, Executive Vice President and General Manager, UnicornHR based in New Jersey. The companies not only operated in different continents, but also delivered very different solutions. Supercorp Technology supplies data services to insurance and financial service companies. Exicom offers an enterprise project management solution. And, UnicornHR provides SaaS-based payroll services. All three companies are experencing growing demand for their Cloud-based solutions and benefiting from their channel relationships with Progress Software.

Yesterday, I attended the ASCII Group’s Success Summit in the Boston area. While it wasn’t promoted as a Cloud event, nearly every speaker addressed the opportunities and challenges associated with the Cloud from a channel perspective. The event attracted over 100 local IT service companies and value-added resellers (VARs), as well as a couple dozen sponsors. It was an impressive gathering with a number of good speakers offering practical advice for channel companies moving to the Cloud.

All the talk about Cloud channel strategies and success stories reinforced the timeliness of the Cloud Channel Summit. You can hear more of my views regarding the forces bringing Cloud channels into focus in the podcast I recorded with Brett Martin and Mike Vizard of Channel Tech Network in Episode 52 of their Channel Happy Hour series.

I’ve had the privilege of publishing my point of view on Sandhill.com regarding two of the blockbuster announcements over the past week,

• Will Google’s Purchase of Motorola Be a Path to Greater Android Success or Pandora’s Box?
• HP’s Software Transformation Cloudy without Consumer Channel to Market

Yesterday’s NY Times included a good article discussing the new challenges facing Google as it enters the smartphone business, echoing my concerns with this terrific quote,

“When Google decides to evict a small Web publisher from its ad service, it sends a computer-generated form letter with the bad news. It says the Web site “poses a risk of generating invalid activity.” Why, the publisher might ask? You will never find out from Google. The only appeal is to fill out a Web form. Good luck. You can’t talk to an algorithm.”

There was also a seminal commentary by Marc Andreessen, a member of the HP board of directors, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal about how today’s Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (Saas) is transforming nearly every industry, as well as the way we live and work, as a justification for HP’s dramatic strategic move to become more software centric.

Both announcements have significant channel implications and make our Cloud Channel Summit on November 7 even more timely.

The recent flurry of major vendor announcements regarding their new Cloud Computing initiatives, latest acquisitions and offerings clearly shows that the “Cloud Rush” is in high gear.

Here’s a quick list of the announcements which have caught my attention over the past few weeks in chronological order since HP unveiled its Cloud ‘vision’ last month, and my views regarding their significance,

• Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire newScale, 03/29/11  – Cisco Systems has been pushing into the ‘new data center’ environment for a while with its Unified Computing solutions. It acquired newScale to improve its provisioning capabilities to make it a more viable Cloud vendor for enterprise customers and service provider partners.
• Salesforce.com to Acquire Radian6, 03/30/11  - Now that Salesforce.com has succeeded in popularizing its Chatter social networking capabilities, it wants to give its customers the necessary tools to monitor, manage and measure the effectiveness of these new features.
• Intuit, Salesforce.com Announce Strategic Alliance, 04/01/11  -  Despite its investment in FinancialForce.com and support of numerous integration tools vendors that link salesforce.com’s CRM solution with QuickBooks, salesforce.com is seeking to strengthen its position in the SMB/SME market by building a closer working relationship with Intuit which is also working with Microsoft. Intuit is also trying to reinforce its position within the SaaS/Cloud ecosystem.
• SugarCRM Acquires iExtensions, the Market-Leading CRM for Lotus Notes, 04/05/11  – SugarCRM’s growth is further proof of the growing acceptance of Open Source solutions in the market. Its acquisition of iExtensions strengthens its ties with Lotus Notes which is a pivotal part of IBM’s SaaS/Cloud efforts. And, its growing relationship with IBM illustrates how SugarCRM hopes will gain an even greater foothold in mainstream businesses. Don’t be surprised if this alliance evolves into an acquisition in the months to come.
• SITA Launches Dedicated Air Transport Industry (ATI) Cloud, 04/06/11  – I’ve been saying for the past year that the SaaS/Cloud market is entering a third stage in its evolution, moving from broadly focused horizontal business and IT management apps to a new generation of industry-specific SaaS/Cloud solutions. This new stage is a clear indication that the SaaS/Cloud movement is gaining acceptance across nearly every industry and is now viewed as an important mechanism for reengineering the fundamental business processes within various sectors. SITA has been supporting the operating needs of the airline industry since 1949, and is among the latest industry-specific providers to launch a strategic initiative aimed at Cloud Computing.
• IBM Joins Forces With Over 45 Organizations to Launch Cloud Standards Customer Council for Open Cloud Computing, 04/07/11  - IBM has been aggressively pursuing Cloud opportunities since the concept first gained attention. It made an initial effort to spearhead the Cloud standards process which caused a lot of controversy because many people were suscipious of IBM’s motives at the time. Today’s announcement will generate a more positive response because it is supported by an impressive cross-section of enterprise organizations and Cloud vendors. It also recognizes and endorses the existing Cloud inititives of various standards bodies, the most recent of which was announced by the IEEE on Monday. IBM also rolled out another wave of Cloud products and services today that further expands its portfolio of hardware, software and service offerings, and puts additional pressure on its competitors.
• Dell Invests $1 Billion in Technology Solutions and Services to Help Customers Drive Business Results Today and in the Future, 04/07/11  – Dell is not about to let IBM, HP or Oracle outpace its own Cloud initiatives. The company tried to demonstrate today the magnitude of its efforts to develop and deliver Cloud solutions and services aimed at enterprises and end-users. Dell can tell a good Cloud story because of its long history of delivering automated systems and offering Ecommerce services. It has also done a surprisingly good job leveraging its Perot Systems professional services and systems integration services to create vertical market solutions. Click here to read my initial vision of Dell’s Cloud capabilities two years ago.

These announcements and initiatives illustrate the significance of the Cloud Computing phenomenon. They also show the scalability of the market opportunities, extending from SMBs/SMEs to major industries. And, they demonstrate how the Cloud is fundamentally changing the competitive landscape and customer expectations.

THINKstrategies, Inc., the leading strategic consulting company focused on the business implications of the on-demand services market, announced today that FinancialForce.com has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

For more information about the rules for applying for a BoSS Award, go to www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/boss.html

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, see http://www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/ccbv.php.

THINKstrategies, Inc.  announced today that TrackVia has been named the latest winner of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s cloud computing solutions.

The CCBV Awards program was launched in 2010 to recognize Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers delivering tangible business benefits to specific user organizations. These benefits include lower costs, faster deployment times, greater profitability, etc.

TrackVia is a provider of an application development platform designed to make it easier for business users to build their own database-driven applications and avoid the backlogs which typically plague IT and traditional inhouse software development organizations.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which earned TrackVia THINKstrategies’ latest CCBV Award.

Click here to learn more about THINKstrategies’ CCBV Award program or to apply for an Award.

The CCBV Award program builds on the success of THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program which was initiated in 2009. Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards or to apply for an Award.

Salesforce.com unveiled a series of important enhancements to its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) service-desk management capabilities this week aimed at helping businesses more effectively track and respond to the escalating volume of data feeds from Facebook and Twitter.

The company’s Service Cloud 3.0 announcement coincided with its CloudForce 2011 event at the Javits Center in NYC, in the backyard of ‘Corporate America’, the financial services sector and the traditional media world to maximize its attention.

The new round of enhancements were primarily focused on enabling users of Salesforce.com’s service-desk management platform to better monitor Facebook and Twitter feeds, and track their response to comments, complaints and other service requests via these increasingly important social networks.

Salesforce.com made sure to brand each feature as a separate offer to ensure it gained as much attention as possible, including Salesforce.com for Facebook and Salesforce.com for Twitter.

The new monitoring capabilities are actually enabled by a third-party company, called Radian6, which is now selling its solution on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange as well. By coincidence, people I know at SAP also use Radian6 to track Facebook and Twitter data feeds. So, don’t be surprised to see Radian6 acquired quickly by one of the two companies if Google, Microsoft or another suitor doesn’t swoop in sooner.

Despite the fact that most of the enhancements unveiled by Salesforce.com this week won’t be available for another quarter or two, its announcement overshadowed SAP’s own attempt to assert itself in the SaaS and social networking arena by previewing a new portfolio of on-demand business applications at CeBit aimed at responding to Salesforce.com’s growing success and the overall acceptance of SaaS/Cloud-based alternatives to legacy, on-premise applications.

I had an opportunity to get a private briefing re: SAP’s new offerings before this past week’s announcement (as I did for Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 3.0 announcement) and was impressed with their functional and social networking capabilities, as well as the company’s intensifying efforts to deliver cost-effective SaaS solutions. However, it still has a long way to go to convince customers and the broader marketplace that it can succeed in the SaaS marketplace after numerous false-starts.

Meanwhile, Salesforce.com isn’t taking its foot off the gas pedal as it extends its lead as an innovator, and market/mindshare leader.

Disclosure: Salesforce.com and SAP are THINKstrategies clients.

The extraordinary success of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions has prompted nearly every major hardware and software vendor to offer their own IaaS, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions as well. This has put tremendous pressure on traditional hosting companies, communications service providers (CSPs), and Value-Added Resellers (VARs) to respond with their own offerings in this increasingly competitive marketplace.

This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a full-day analyst briefing and attend the kickoff session of Parallels’ 2011 Partner Summit. [Disclosure: Parallels paid my travel expenses to attend the event.] This year’s Summit built on the momentum of last year’s conference by unveiling numerous enhancements to its portfolio of Cloud enablement solutions, including:

• Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure
• Hosted PBX
• Microsoft System Center Hyper-V Cloud
• Microsoft Office 365 Syndication

Parallels also promised to make an increased investment in its Application Packaging Standardization (APS) Program to permit greater portability of Cloud services.

What I especially liked about this year’s event was the way Parallels’ management team attempted to alleviate some of the anxieties among its partners and potential customers about the increasingly competitive Cloud marketplace by emphasizing the tremendous opportunities in the SMB segment and identifying industry best practices that can win hosters, CSPs and VARs success.

While the Cloud Computing market is evolving quickly, mainstream adoption of Cloud services among small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) is still embryonic. Parallels is attempting to accelerate the growth of this segement of the market, and help hosting companies, CSPs and VARs capitalize on this tremendous market opportunity with its Cloud enablement products and channel support programs. It is also expanding its role as a Cloud “broker” by recruiting  more Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to participate in its service catalog.

The company also announced a leadership change with  Birger Steen assuming the CEO position and the company’s founder, Serguei Beloussov, retaining his positions of Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Architect. Steen brings extensive business experience and strong Microsoft relationships which the company hopes will help it grow from approximately $100 million in revenue to $1 billion over the next five years.

An acquisition by Microsoft might come before it reaches this milestone. The company’s concerted efforts to align itself with Microsoft include many of this year’s product enhancements; moving its headquarters to Renton, WA; and adding other former Microsoft executives to its leadership team such as John Zanni, Vice President of Marketing and Alliances, who was formerly GM of Microsoft’s Worldwide Software + Services Industry, Communications Sector business unit.

A clear measure of Parallels’ growing presence in the Cloud enablement business was the larger number of attendees and sponsors it was able to attract to this year’s Summit. The energy and enthusiasm at the event also demonstrated the strong allegiance which Parallels’ partners feel toward the company.

With few vendors able to offer a comparable portfolio of Cloud enablement tools to hosting companies, CSPs and VARs, Parallels has an opportunity to grow quickly as its partners attempt to keep pace with the tremendous growth of the Cloud Computing marketplace.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m neglecting this blog because I’ve been invited to publish my perspectives on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing movement in so many other online venues. Anyone who isn’t following my writings in these additional outlets may have missed my most recent views since the start of 2011. So, here’s a quick list for your reading pleasure,

E-Commerce Times: Pushing the Cloud From Madison Avenue to Main Street, 02/11/11

Datamation:Capitalizing on Cloud Computing: Not If, But When, 02/08/11 

E-Commerce Times: Clouds Go Vertical, 01/14/11 

You can also click here to find my most recent blogposts regarding the latest M&A activity, conference dynamics and end-user focus in the SaaS and Cloud arena on TechWeb’s Internet Evolution microsite.

THINKstrategies  announced today that myGengo has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Pureprofile is an online marketing services company which has seen an increase in monthly registrations from 8,000 to over 50,000, with 90% of these registrations coming from non-English speaking countries since launch the myGengo service in July, 2010. The myGengo translation service helped Pureprofile translate the text on its site and achieve the international penetration of its online marketing service. In the six months since launching its new site using myGengo in July 2010, Pureprofile has generated over 300,000 new registrations worldwide. Pureprofile’s new multi-lingual capabilities has also enabled the company to compete for international projects ten times the size that it previously pursued.
 

“We are very pleased to receive this industry recognition from THINKstrategies’ SaaS Showplace which is shared by so many other great companies,” said Ray Solnik, U.S. General Manager of myGengo. “myGengo is leading the way for the future of the language services industry.  The company makes human translation services available through a web standards application programming interface (API) and makes translation available ondemand at a very affordable cost due to the company’s crowdsourcing business model and technology platform.”

“Globalization has made it imperative for companies to localize their solutions to satisfy the multinational needs of their target customers,” stated Jeffrey M. Kaplan, the founder of the SaaS Showplace which now a part of the new Cloud Computing Showplace and Managing Director of THINKstrategies, the strategic consulting firm which conceived and administers the Showplace. “myGengo’s SaaS-based human translation services is cost-effectively addressing this escalating requirement.”

For more information about the rules for applying for a BoSS Award or to find a list of previous winners of the BoSS Awards, go to http://www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/boss.html.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, see http://www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/ccbv.php .