News & Views

March 29, 2010 from InformationWeek – “…In Oracle’s earnings call late last week, Ellison promised that the second half of 2010 will be a momentous one for not only Oracle but also the entire IT industry and its enterprise customers because that’s when Oracle will roll out its completely reengineered Fusion software lineup along with more integrated and optimized Oracle-Sun systems…

Fueling Ellison’s bold claims was his promise that Fusion will permanently close the gaps between its traditional on-premise technology and the high-growth opportunities in on-demand and cloud-based applications…”

180 View – Oracle is about to change the game with Fusion. But the skeptic in me says that the new product will be light on functionality compared to its siblings – Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards.

April 19, 2010 from WebCPA – “Not so long ago, NetSuite barely factored in to Microsoft’s ERP business, but a recent initiative by the mammoth technology concern has channel partners on both sides agreeing that Microsoft has become concerned about NetSuite’s rising status in the market.

In March, Microsoft announced that it would pay $850 to every U.S.-based NetSuite user that switched to one of its Dynamics ERP products, which include Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics AX and Dynamics SL. The new promotion is available until June 25…”

180 View – Seems like too little and too late by Microsoft to fight off NetSuite. 

March 31, 2010 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “…The overhead and expense, even with Lawson’s new offering on Amazon’s cloud, will be far above what SaaS providers experience. True multi-tenant SaaS providers, such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite, make changes once, and the entire customer base experiences them instantly. This is especially a benefit to users of HRM and financial management systems (two of Lawson’s horizontal sweet spots), where regulatory changes are not optional…”

 180 View – There are really 3 different delivery models for software:

1. On Premise (Software is installed and run on customer’s hardware)
2. On Demand or SaaS (Customer accesses a single instance of the software over the web that allows multiple customers to coexist by a multi-tenant architecture)
3. Hosted (Software is accessed on demand, but lacking a multi-tenant architecture and requires separate servers and installs for each customer)

The author of the article believes that SasS is the future and Lawson better adapt it or it will be eaten by competitors such as Workday and Intacct. I think that there is a place for all 3 models. Hosted makes more sense than SaaS for organizations that don’t want their system updated with everyone else.

April 21, 2010 from Datamation – “I’ve been talking about the benefits of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for so long it always amazes me when I have to go back to basics to help the uninitiated understand the fundamental benefits of today’s online, on-demand software solutions.  So, here’s my quick list of the top ten reasons why business and IT decision-makers should start taking advantage of today’s leading SaaS solutions…”

180 View – Although the author is clearly biased towards SaaS, he does make good points.

November 19, 2009 from Forrester – “Three of the largest technology vendors play prominently in this market – IBM, Oracle and SAP. These vendors have entered largely through acquisitions (i.e., Cognos, Hyperion, and BusinessObjects, respectively), but continue to evolve their offerings. Other large vendors in the market include SAS Institute, known primarily for its business analytics technology, and Infor, a large enterprise resource planning (ERP) software player. More specialized players in this Forrester Wave evaluation include vendors that focus on BPS exclusively – Clarity, Host Analytics, Longview Solutions (a subsidiary of Exact Software), and Tagetik. Board International focuses on both BI and BPS with its rapid development toolkit approach. There are also many other vendor playing in BPS space (not included in the Forrester Wave based on inclusion requirements) that offer specific components. These include planning and budgeting solutions (e.g., Adaptive Planning, Centage, Lawson Software, and PROPHIX Software…”

180 View – Forrester calls it Business Performance Solutions while most organizations call it Corporate Performance Management. In either case, it includes strategy management, budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting, consolidation and business intelligence. The article explains CPM and scores the vendors based on surveys, product demos and customer reference surveys. The article is a summary report but it is a good place to start in understanding CPM and some of the vendors.

April 20, 2010 from Forbes – “…Cognos was one of the leading makers of business intelligence software, and IBM paid $5 billion for it. IBM wrote another check last year for $1.2 billion to add SPSS, a predictive analytics and data mining company, to what was becoming a growing family of tools for organizing data into useful information. Ashe said IBM’s services arm is also working with 4,000 consultants, getting them to promote better analytics by IBM customers.

What is behind this growth in business analytics? Ashe says it reflects a demand from customers who, after spending years creating systems to record data and transactions, want to get more mileage out of that information. Businesses want information that is more timely and useful, particularly if it can feed directly into growth and profitability…”

180 View – Just about every organization struggles with getting useful information from its ERP system. Yes there are BI tools from some of the ERP vendors but IBM is ERP agnostic.

April 8, 2010 from Toolbox for IT – “During the last several years, the pressure of commoditization and the desire of the enterprise technology conglomerates to expand into new fast-growing growth markets have led to BI market consolidation. Following a series of blockbuster acquisitions in 2007 and 2008, procurement of both BI and enterprise application systems from the same vendor is an option for many organizations looking to deploy BI. Datamonitor surveyed 100 SAP customers to understand the implications of sole-sourcing. Read the survey findings and learn the trends and behaviors associated with sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors…”

180 View – You can tell that this article was written by IBM Cognos as it clearly shows the problems with sole-sourcing.

2010 from Info-Tech Research Group – “Business Intelligence (BI) is rapidly becoming one of the most overused terms in IT. More and more software vendors are claiming that their products have BI capabilities; a growing number of consulting firms offer BI optimization assessments. Part of the explanation for this trend is that BI as a concept involves both business processes and enabling technologies that can be implemented in a variety of ways with different levels of complexity. Enterprise decision makers need to fully understand what BI is before they can decide what to do about it…”

180 View – Good article if you’re confused about BI. The article does mention a number of BI vendors and says the following about Microsoft – “Microsoft has been making waves in the BI world with its BI product, which has evolved from its origins in Performance Point Server.” I must admit that I am confused about Microsoft’s BI strategy and looked around the net for some insight and found the following blog that might help – http://blogs.technet.com/andrew/archive/2010/04/12/microsoft-business-intelligence-without-sharepoint.aspx.

March 30, 2010 from InfoWorld – “When the economy is bad, businesses hold off on buying new enterprise apps and instead try to prolong the life of the ones they have. But there’s still the significant expense of vendors’ support contracts. Third-party support contracts may be the answer to reducing that cost.

 Software vendors don’t want to lose those support revenues, especially since they’re making less in new and upgrade sales. Some even have tried to raise their support income through schemes such as tiered support (a debacle at SAP) or all-or-nothing support (Oracle’s most recent approach to extracting more money from customers) — but doing so risks driving customers even faster to third-party offerings…

 Is third-party support right for you?

The answer depends mainly on two factors, says Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman: where the application is in its lifecycle and how important it is for you to stay current with software upgrades. “If [a user] has an installation that’s a couple releases back, customized, and difficult to upgrade, third-party support is a more viable option,” he says. “If it’s an expanding business or a new installation, third-party isn’t a good option because you’re off the enhancement pack…”

180 View – Even if you’re not interested in third party support, the article does provide advice on maintenance agreements.

March 31, 2010 from Big Fat Finance Blog – “Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) becomes a requirement for financial disclosure in 2011 in the U.S. and much of the world. In the process, many expect XBRL to bring about convergence of U.S. GAAP and IFRS. Additionally, some hope that it will finally get the CFO enthused about technology tools. “Finance is the last frontier of automation,” observed Jaideep Shah, Senior Product Manager, Fujitsu, and David Taylor, VP, Strategy & Global Business Development, Trintech, during a recent XBRL tools webinar…”

180 View – I think XBRL will be useful for accessing financial information that in the past was only available in pdf format and required rekeying. But to think that it will “automate finance” and “help speed the time to posting results for management” is misguided. It’s also misguided to think that it will allow for convergence of GAAP and IFRS. Finally it’s not true that finance is the last frontier of automation. In fact, finance was the first. I could go on with other problems in the article, but I don’t want to be harsh.

2010 from Info-Tech – “Calling a suite of IT project and asset management tools “IT governance software” raises the false promise of out-of-the-box IT/business alignment. Alignment cannot be purchased – it is earned through capable management processes. Focus on the processes first and then look to how these powerful tools can help…”

180 View – The same argument goes for any enterprise software. The article also identifies a number of IT Governance vendors.

April 12, 2010 from PCWorld – “Picture this: You’re at a café with your laptop and latte in hand, getting ready to review new sales leads and the quarterly financial projections. First you hop on the free Wi-Fi that the shop’s management provides. Then you connect your laptop to a projector so that the entire café can take a look, and finally you hand out some printed copies of your confidential product specifications to the other patrons so that they can follow along…”

180 View – Stay safe.