Trends: Economic Stimulus Bill of 2008 May Mitigate Recessionary Effects in the SMB Software Market

On February 13th, 2008, President Bush signed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 (H.R. 5140) and in it were 2 provisions that directly impact SMB's:

• "Bonus deprecation". Enables companies with investments in tangible property, computer software, computer equipment, and even improvements to lease property to accelerate their depreciation from a normal 5 year scale to the first 50% being depreciated the first year. However, the asset must be put into use in 2008.
• "179 deduction increase". The level of these 179 deductions used to be limited to a $500,000 annual purchase of productive capital with a $125,000 deduction limit. they've raised this now to a $800,000 annual qualifying equipment purchase (not including buildings, but including capital equipment like computer equipment and software) of up to $250,000.

The bottom line
SMB's such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations will truly benefit from this opportunity to both invest and deduct in computer software and hardware. In fact, several large software companies have already sent out targeted SMB campaigns reminding businesses of these incentives. The trick is to have the software deployed by 2008, so businesses will want to make sure they start their implementations early Q4 (October 2008). Vendors who haven't targeted companies yet with this campaign should jump into the act soon!

(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved

News Analysis: Workday Wins Largest SaaS ERP Deal

Announced today, Workday's big win at Flextronics further bolsters the thesis that SaaS is more than just CRM and SMB. The 200,000 seat implementation for Flextronics and the 26,000 employee deal at Chiquita demystify the notion that SaaS ERP can not be successful.
Key points why 40 clients have considered WorkDay include:

• SaaS model - Quick deployment, no data center to manage, and subscription pricing drive the case for this deployment option.
  
• Web 2.0 level usability - User experiences are clean, elegant, and allow for a high degree of user configurability at the metadata level.
  
• Strong HCM focus - WorkDay expands where PeopleSoft left off. Signature features include pre-developed interfaces that link their HCM with a growing network of employee benefits providers and deep HCM expertise.
  

The bottom line
On the journey towards cloud computing, the interim steps will be hosting and SaaS. As virtualizaton improves, we may find ourselves strangely back full circle to fully distributed computing models like the main frames of yester-year.


(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved

News Analysis: Rimini Street Offers Third Party Maintenance for SAP

Adding to the company's support of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel third party, support, the move to support SAP comes at an optimum time for SAP users. Most users face SAP imposed deadlines for standard and extended maintenance support. To be specific, extended maintenance for R/3 4.6c users ends at the end of 2009. R/3 4.7 users face end of extended maintenance at for an additional 2% fee at the end of March 2010. Rimini street plans to deliver these services without offshoring.

The bottom line.
The SAP market sorely needs options for third party support. With customer specific maintenance contracts north of 22%, the market demands alternative support options. Should Rimini street support SAP customers to 2020 without required upgrades, provide application fixes for serious issues and tax and regulatory updates as needed, and support client customizations, interoperability, and performance at no additional fee, SAP customers will save up to half on maintenance fees. The end result - more money to invest in SAP upgrades and additional solutions.

(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved