Tag Archives: saas

5
Mar

Perhaps accurate metrics on the extent of cloud adoption are not important

Posted by | Categories Cloud | Tagged , , , , , , ,

2-Color-Design-Hi-Res-100px-widthA lot has been made over the last few weeks about a skew between Microsoft’s announcements about sales of cloud SaaS and PaaS subscriptions to enterprise business and the extent to which these subscriptions are actually used. For any readers unfamiliar with the current chatter about Microsoft on this topic, an article titled Microsoft’s Cloud Successes Based on Sales Not Usage? may provide a quick introduction to this tract of opinion.

But what if the question of adoption really does not matter? What if the more important metric, at least at present, meaning March 2015, are the actual statistics of big businesses signing onto Office 365 and/or Azure? After all, to what extent are businesses using all of the components in the Google Apps for Business set? I would argue not much.

In fact it may simply be too soon to expect high levels of enterprise business adoption of cloud computing services. If nothing else stands in the way, simply consider the current noise about the insecurity of data communications via public cloud options. Surely most readers will attest to a deafening volume, with some new, prominent business or US government agency pushed into the limelight almost on a daily basis. Why would 28K people at Merck (simply to name one very large organization) drop their other computing options to embrace Office in the cloud given the potential risks?

But according to what most readers will likely take to be a combination of a testimonial, and a customer success story, Merck has, nevertheless, purchased Office 365 and is using it. The Office blog on March 5, 2015 featured an article titled A new foundation for connected business processes at a German pharmaceutical and chemical company. This article is attributed to Dr. Matthias Geselle, who is introduced as “a Vice President, member of the IT leadership team at Merck.” The content describes a collaboration solution, named “Connect 15”, which is built on Microsoft components. “Connect 15” replaced a combination of Lotus Notes, “IBM Sametime”, and WebEx.

The Office blog includes a number of these articles. Perhaps some of the more vocal naysayers in this public discussion would benefit from reading them. Every one of the articles is written by a representative of the customer, meaning the enterprise business opting to purchase Microsoft’s cloud services. It is hard to argue with this type of testimonial.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2015 All Rights Reserved

18
Feb

Microsoft and its partners continue efforts to take down obstacles to wider cloud adoption by enterprise business

Posted by | Categories Cloud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

2-Color-Design-Hi-Res-100px-widthRackspace, a leading provider of managed services to enterprise businesses, reported earnings on February 17, 2015. Some remarks from its CEO, Taylor Rhodes, point to what maybe a promising indicator of enterprise business moving towards increased use of cloud IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. Microsoft also previewed the coming release of an Active Directory tool, which should ease the difficulty of synchronizing on-premises AD and Azure cloud AD.

Rhodes’ remarks were quoted in an interview titled Rackspace CEO Rhodes: Price Cut Curve is Flattening Out. The interview was published on the Barrons web site and was conducted by Tiernan Ray.

The heartening indicators for anyone looking for signs of more movement by enterprise business communities of computing users towards cloud offers amounted to:

  • “The mainstream market has two problems: They have legacy apps that won’t go multi-tenant automatically; they want single-tenant versions along the way; and the second problem they have is this skills set gap. Cheap infrastructure is just pouring gas on the fire. There is a need for software and tools development. Companies are saying, I don’t have access to people who know how to run all those things”
  • and Ray’s summary of some other comments appears to have made during the interview: ” . . . the company [sees] more and more deals of $100,000 or more, some of it coming from competitors such as the telcos; rising organic revenue growth (it was 16.4% last quarter, excluding currency effects); and rising operating profit margin.”

The type of enterprise software Rhodes calls “legacy apps”, in my opinion includes the “customizations” of big server applications like SharePoint, which Microsoft has found so difficult for its customers to work with as they consider migrating some on-premises processes to the cloud. The recommended methods of dealing with palpable inconsistencies between what can be accomplished with these processes, on-premises, vs the same for cloud, whether via SharePoint Online/Office 365, or Azure IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, have been reduced from tightly woven “hybrid computing” to today’s “hybrid scenarios”, where almost wholly separate processes run locally and remotely, but in service to the same communities of users.

So Rhodes’ remarks about how Rackspace has captured some of this headache as tangible business and, even better, big ticket business (presumably with attractive margin) is a heartening note and, perhaps an indicator of better news to come.

The second breathe of fresh air on this challenge is to be found in a post to the RedmondMag website authored by Kurt Mackie. The post is titled Upcoming Perks of Azure Active Directory Connect Tool.

Anyone familiar with the kind of hybrid cloud computing requirements detailed by Microsoft SharePoint MVP Fabian Williams in a video tutorial set from VisualSP™ titled SharePoint 2013: Hybrid Cloud should understand the critical role Active Directory must play in any serious attempt to bolt a cloud component like Office 365 or some service, infrastructure or even platform running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. The tool is certainly promising. Should the results produce a reliable directory of users for on-premises and cloud computing venues, increased enterprise adoption of the cloud component should become more of a realistic expectation for stakeholders.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2015 All Rights Reserved

5
Feb

Investors buy up shares of prominent social media ISVs despite slowing user growth

Posted by | Categories Investors | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

2-Color-Design-Hi-Res-100px-widthPerhaps investors are changing their taste in prominent social media ISVs. Could the search for a telltale sign of promise have shifted from substantial growth in users to what may be a meaningful increase in revenue? From the after hours trading experience of LinkedIn and Twitter on February 5, 2015, it would appear to be the case.

Twitter and LinkedIn both reported solid revenue growth in the quarter ending December 31, 2014. But in the case of Twitter this plus was offset by anemic growth in the number of active users. Tiernan Ray wrote in Barrons: “[Twitter] said its monthly average users (MAUs) rose 20%, year over year, to 288 million from 284 million in the prior quarter. That was down from a rate of 23% growth in Q3. Of those MAUs, 80% were on mobile devices, about the same as the prior quarter.”

Hannah Kuchler of the Financial Times also remarked on management’s forward-looking guidance, “that was above the average analyst forecasts”.

Investors looked like they liked what they were hearing and reading. Twitter’s share price was up over 10% after hours.

LinkedIn shares were also up substantially, approximately 6% above the close. The quarterly earnings report included very similar highlights: substantial growth in revenue. But I found a different nugget: Maria Armental wrote in the Wall Street Journal:“The professional social network, which this month launched a localized version in simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese that has nearly doubled its Chinese member base to more than 8 million, said nearly 70% of total members come from outside the U.S.” Eight million users is certainly not a very big number for the country with the biggest population in the world. But LinkedIn is succeeding (as Apple is also succeeding, though in a much bigger way) in a market that continues to elude Microsoft and curiously enough Google (Android).

As a user I must attest to a much more promising experience from my efforts with Twitter than has been the case for how I have worked on my LinkedIn profile. I make a lot of use of Twitter’s Analytics. As my tweets have magnetized more impressions there has been, over time, a substantial increase in the page views of this blog. But perhaps the best result of all has been a growth in our following on Facebook. But I will write more on this point in a later post.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2015 All Rights Reserved

28
Jan

Competitors exhibit a strong desire for some of the recent success of Microsoft’s Office 365

Posted by | Categories Commodities | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

2-Color-Design-Hi-Res-100px-widthOn Wednesday, January 28, 2015, Amazon announced the launch of a new product: Amazon WorkMail. This new offer is targeted to enterprise businesses in need of email and calendar management offered on a subscription basis via a cloud service.

The announced features of Amazon WorkMail position the product as an alternative to Exchange, Microsoft’s backend for Outlook Web App (OWA), one of the core components of the Office 365 application suite. A lot of the editorial comment already published on this product makes additional mention of Google Apps for Business as a target. But Amazon WorkMail operates just fine with Microsoft Outlook as the client interface, something Google Apps for Business does not do.

With Amazon challenging Microsoft on the email and calendar front, and Facebook challenging Microsoft’s Yammer and, arguably, the rest of the collaboration features built into Office 365, it looks safe to say enterprise business consumers have increased their appetite for cloud SaaS productivity suites. Microsoft reported strong growth in the number of subscribers to Office 365 during its Q2 FY 2015 earnings conference call. Three big competitors are now on the playing field looking for some of the same action.

With consumers trending in this direction, the likelihood of competitors addressing product development from the perspective of “competition to be the best” certainly increases. As I have written on numerous occasions in this blog, Dr. Michael Porter argues this strategy is a mistake. I like Dr. Porter’s position. Readers interested in learning more about what he has to say on the topic may want to read a piece written by Joan Magretta back in 2011 for the Harvard Business Review titled Stop Competing to be the Best.

The cost of product development, together with a substantially narrower prospect horizon for multiple players marketing to, in theory, the same prospects (in actuality I would argue no two enterprise organizations are really the same, nor do they often exhibit the same needs), are two warning signs ISVs should take very seriously as they consider jumping into direct, brand to brand competition.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2015 All Rights Reserved

26
Dec

Accenture publishes a study pointing to an expanded IT systems decision-making role for CFOs at many enterprise businesses

Posted by | Categories Enterprise Business | Tagged , , , , , , ,

2-Color-Design-Hi-Res-100px-widthWith a publication date of December 29, 2014, Accenture released its annual High Performance Finance Study for 2014. The findings presented reinforce the notion of a changed decision-making hierarchy for IT systems and solutions within many enterprise businesses.

In my opinion, anyone with an interest in Microsoft should take a look at this report. The two core IT topics:

  • “complex legacy systems and environments”
  • and “[t]he rise of digital on the CFO agenda”

may provide two of the planks of a foundation beneath a joint effort between the two companies, apparently scheduled for 2015: Microsoft, Accenture partner on hybrid cloud offering.

The first of the IT topics presented in the report, “complex legacy systems and environments” make up the on-premises component of a typical hybrid cloud computing scenario. The second, “digital”, “which may include cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS), big data and/or analytics, mobility and social media” (quoted in entirety from an Annual report from Accenture. I have provided a link to the entire report, above), amounts to the other half of the hybrid computing solution.

As I wrote recently, Microsoft provided more of an indication of a shift in the route taken by examples of technology “innovation” as these improvements enter enterprise businesses (and their larger counterparts in the public and not-for-profit sectors) in a global roadshow intended to help these organizations hasten the rate at which they are adopting cloud, SaaS computing offers (with Office 365 as the leading offer from Microsoft in this space). For readers unfamiliar with this global event, the title of this event is “Microsoft Office 365 Summit”, which I attended in New York City in early October. Since the New York City event, Microsoft has held the same event in Sydney, Australia and even in Moscow, in Russia. The Keynote from the New York Show provided Microsoft with an opportunity to present the notion of enterprise IT organizations abdicating the “innovation” leadership role. The report from Accenture argues the Finance Organization has picked it up, although leadership apparently amounts to a lot more accomodation, and a lot less evangelizing new computing methods. Of course, given ubiquitous BYOD across most of these organizations, the changes make sense.

The task facing the CFO as new enterprise tech leader, if the Accenture report is credible (which I think is the case), is much more a matter of building the right container to house “innovation” than actually leading on it. The role is a good one for Finance, which, after all, has to pay the bills, anyways.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved

28
Oct

Let’s not underestimate the importance of hybrid cloud computing to Microsoft’s recent successful business quarter

Posted by | Categories mature tech business | Tagged , , , , ,

During Microsoft’s recent Q1 2015 earning conference call, Brent Thill of UBS asked a question at the start of the analyst Q&A. This question provided Satya Nadella with an opportunity to present something about the importance of hybrid cloud computing to Microsoft’s success for the quarter. When asked what makes Microsoft’s cloud experience different from its peers, Nadella answered:

“As it turns out the technology that we build for our cloud is what we incorporate in our server products, in fact our R&D expense is the same expense. And that’s made our server products very competitive. And so again those our traditional competitors we’re seeing significant share gains across the entire infrastructure line of our server products in particular. And we hope to architected our cloud very differently. We are the only hyper scale cloud provider that also thinks of our server product at the edge of our cloud.” (quoted from a transcript of Microsoft’s Q1 2015 earnings conference call as published on Seeking Alpha)

The reference to “server product at the edge of our cloud” introduces hybrid cloud computing — where on premises and cloud servers are architected into a coordinated, comprehensive computing solution — to this otherwise purely financial discussion of Microsoft’s business performance for the quarter.

Microsoft certainly is uniquely capable of demonstrating the veracity of Nadella’s point, at least with regard to its more obvious cloud competitors — Google and Amazon. Noticeably absent from the comparison was IBM, which, (along with other mature ISVs firmly established in the typical data center for a large enterprise business), is, truly, an example of the only competition Microsoft is likely to face for this application of client server computing. Neither Google, nor Amazon supports an installed base of on premises client server computing for their own IP, so they cannot compete with Microsoft in the hybrid cloud computing space.

Regardless of who else offers solutions capable of satisfying enterprise business consumer appetite for this type of computing method, the appetite is nevertheless real and strong. A lot of research is available on the topic from most of the most popular analysts, but for readers otherwise unfamiliar with market demand for this type of computing platform, take a look at this blog post published yesterday, by Richard Fichera, and Analyst at Forrester®.

In this writer’s opinion a lot of the momentum in Microsoft’s cloud earnings report can, and should, be attributed directly the role played by Microsoft’s installed base of hybrid cloud systems. We have first hand, absolutely current experience with SharePoint and how organizations are implementing Office 365, SharePoint Online, in conjunction with SharePoint on premises. These organizations represent, literally, thousands of users. Therefore, the financial impact of this customer base should not be underestimated.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved

21
Oct

SaaS offers running in the cloud, with full featured client side apps, hit some marketing head winds

Posted by | Categories Cloud | Tagged , , , , , , ,

As of mid October, 2014, two recent well publicized online security events — one related to Dropbox, the other to SnapChat and an app named SnapSaved — illustrate cloud hosts attempting to distance themselves from app developers providing the SaaS offer in the wake of a public online security event. If they succeed, app developers look likely to hit some marketing head winds.

The odds of this outcome went up when the ISV responsible for SnapSaved.com came forward and disclosed its intentional effort to compromise online security and privacy for consumers of its app. The details can be found in an article written by Mike Isaac, titled A Look Behind the SnapChat Photo Leak Claims, which was published on October 17, 2014. Consumers will not likely be reassured as the result of this admission of culpability.

Whether the intentions of the unnamed management team at SnapSaved.com were honorable, or not, has no material importance. But their admission to intentional malicious activity, together with their ability to execute on their objective with an app conforming to SnapChat’s specific requirements for interoperability is of critical importance. Leaving aside the question of how this admission will likely impact on individual consumers of the app, and of SnapChat, itself, let’s focus on likely reaction from larger organizations and the IT teams supporting them to this event. It’s likely larger organizations will take a harder look at their BYOD policies and procedures in the aftermath of these both of these events. Larger organizations do not want to work with lots of technology providers. So the tactics implemented by DropBox and SnapChat to distance themselves from culpability will not help either of these cloud offers to add further momentum to the pace at which consumers from enterprise business sign on and start using services. In fact the opposite is likely to be the case.

One glimmer of opportunity from these otherwise glum and business-depressing events amounts to whether or not EMM solutions like Microsoft InTune can be configured to manage just how consumers interact with an otherwise limitless list of apps, from an equally limitless list of ISVs, within the confines of specific corporate networks. If these EMM solutions can be set up to manage app consumption, independent of the cloud hosting the apps, themselves, perhaps enterprise IT organizations will have more of the stamina to brush off these events as anomalies likely to vanish in the future.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved

16
Oct

Pluses and minuses of the app model on cloud, SaaS computing

Posted by | Categories Cloud | Tagged , , , , , ,

Early versions of SaaS served from the Internet cloud looked a lot like time sharing applications. In other words, each and every web visitor looked like just another terminal on a remote server. The use of small form factor computing devices had not yet occurred, and the browser options for clients to consume services were all working in pretty much the same manner.

But with the advent of the app model, the client side of these solutions is a lot more complex, and, potentially, more difficult for organizations to manage. There are a few very important positives motivating cloud, SaaS ISVs to promote, and even require the use of apps:

  • Apps are a promising method of attracting the interest of developers. App stores exist for every prominent cloud SaaS offer. Developers sell their apps, and ISVs can charge a premium for clearing transactions through their app stores
  • As long as secure development procedures are followed, there is no limit on the range of new functionality developers can add to SaaS platforms. ISVs benefit from zero capital expense for the creation of new functionality. End customers benefit from a wider range of possible applications
  • By transitioning processes from the server to the community of clients consuming a SaaS solution, it can be argued processes are more secure. Server maintenance costs are also likely to be substantially reduced

But there are minuses anyone studying cloud, SaaS product marketing must, in this writer’s opinion, keep in mind. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how one looks at it) most of these minuses are specific to apps:

  • Transitioning potentially harmful processes off the server and over to client side apps shifts the security burden over to individual consumers, and groups of consumers. Since it is not likely to be possible to estimate just who will opt to consume SaaS and, therefore, purchase and implement apps, the task of ensuring a uniform quality of service (and basic data communications security) is very difficult to manage. Neither ISVs, nor enterprise organizations can claim complete responsibility for this job.
  • Opportunities for malicious activity geometrically increase as the number of SaaS consumers grows. There is no way ISVs can ensure the security of computing devices enabled with apps. So the potential for hacks should be assumed to be high. As of the time of the writing of this post, Dropbox, the latest SaaS to notify the public of a security breach, actually blamed app developers for the security hole used for the exploit
  • Enterprise businesses with a formal BYOD policies may see a dramatic increase in the need to support users. When apps are running on a set of dissimilar computing devices (Android, and/or Apple smart phones, tablets, etc) the need for expertise on multiple platforms arises. It can be costly for enterprise IT to provision the support required to ensure SaaS consumers can get the services they need

Given the factors just presented, we think it likely Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions like Windows Intune will become very popular across enterprise business customers.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved

15
Oct

ISVs debut cloud, SaaS solutions to satisfy consumer appetite for Analytics and Data

Posted by | Categories Business Intelligence and Analytics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

On Monday, October 13, 2014, Salesforce.com announced the debut of a new cloud, SaaS solution named “Wave”. Back on September 16, 2014, IBM announced “Watson Analytics”, once again, a cloud SaaS, but, this time, a freemium offer. So it’s safe to say Analytics for the masses has become a new competitive ground for big, mature ISVs to contend for more market share.

A couple of points are worth noting about the Salesforce.com press release:

  1. GE Capital is mentioned as already using Wave. Given GE’s own recent PR campaign around its own data and analytics effort, one must wonder why the business finance component of the company opted not to use the home grown solution ostensibly available to it
  2. Informatica is mentioned as an “ecosystem” partner for Wave and released its own press release, titled Informatica Cloud Powers Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, to Break Down Big Data Challenges and Deliver Insights

The Wave announcement follows, by less than a month, IBM’s announcement of a freemium offer for “Watson Analytics”, and Oracle’s “Analytics Cloud”. Both of these offers are delivered via a cloud, SaaS model. So it’s likely safe to say enterprise technology consumers have demonstrated a significant appetite for analytics. The decision by Salesforce.com, IBM, and Oracle to all deliver their solutions via a cloud, SaaS offer speaks to the new enterprise computing topology (a heterogeneous computing environment) and the need to look to browsers as the ideal thin clients for users to work with their data online.

An ample supply of structured and unstructured data is likely motivating these enterprise tech consumers to look for methods of producing the kind of dashboards and graphs each of these analytics offers is capable of producing. With data collection methods advancing, particularly for big data (unstructured data), this appetite doesn’t look to abate anytime soon.

ISVs with solutions already available, principally Microsoft with its suite of Power tools for Excel (PowerBI, PowerPivot, etc), may also be participating in this “feeding frenzy”. It will be interesting to see how each of the ISVs with offers for this market fare over the next few business quarters.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved

10
Oct

In 2014, is “responsive and accomodating” the new recommended posture for Enterprise IT?

Posted by | Categories Cloud | Tagged , , , ,

In the Keynote presentation for day one of Microsoft’s Office 365 Summit event in New York City, Michael Atalla, Microsoft’s “Office Guy”, described what he portrayed as a very new world of enterprise computing, where the pace at which innovation is introduced is managed by users, rather than the enterprise IT organizations tasked with supporting them. This relationship, and the posture it requires enterprise IT organizations to assume, contrasts, vividly, with how this relationship played out a mere 10 years ago, when, Atalla contends, all of the innovation emanated out from enterprise IT to users. The net effect on Enterprise IT organizations, Atalla contends, is to transform their activity into much more a process of accommodation as new devices appear on the consumer tech market, than has ever been the case in the past.

What enterprise IT is accommodating, Atalla explained, is innovation in the form of new devices and processes entering the enterprise as the result of formal BYOD policies, and personnel taking advantage of them. Boiled down to simple terms, this process amounts to the latest Smart Phone, tablet (or even PC) magnetizing interest from the community of computing users at the organization. People start to purchase these devices, which may result in unsupported processes showing up on enterprise IT’s radar. So it falls on enterprise IT to quickly regroup around this phenomenon to provide the support and structure required for personnel to safely consume the new processes across the internal network.

Atalla’s presentation took up at least a third of the Keynote for this event. Perhaps it would have been helpful for the audience attending this presentation to hear a bit about how a cloud SaaS like Office 365 can provide enterprise IT with a tool they can leverage to get ahead of users as this BYOD phenomenon continues to unfold.

With Office 365, or Google at Work, or any other similar competitive service, the actual processing of tasks, and “housing” the computing activity produced by them, takes place in, ostensibly, a much more “static” environment than one might otherwise expect to be the case. Regardless of the device, cloud SaaS solutions require a type of functionality referred to in the past as terminal processing. Or do they?

In 2014, there are important, and challenging, issues with client devices functioning as terminals talking to servers located in the public Internet, or cloud. The app model (which Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon have all embraced) requires a lot more intelligence on the consumer device end of the data conversation. Therefore, even Office 365 computing is not as simple as it may otherwise appear to be.

Regardless, Microsoft is subtly presenting a new message in its effort to hasten the pace at which larger organizations come to accept cloud, SaaS offers as legitimate opportunities to reduce costs and increase user benefits. Many of the attendees of this event likely came away from Atalla’s presentation with this notion about Office 365, as a method of smoothing out an otherwise uncomfortable relationship between IT and users at larger organizations.

Ira Michael Blonder

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2014 All Rights Reserved