Event Report: CDI-MDM Summit, SF, CA

I recently moderated a track with a colleague of mine (Rob Karel) at the CDI-MDM conference this March 26h and 27th at the San Francisco Marriott. Though master data management penetration in the enterprise still hovers in the high single digits, its obvious the energy, activity, and investment around MDM continues to grow. Some quick observations at the event:

• Hierarchy management and data governance remained the most sought after topics
• Vendors seemed to outnumber clients (We found this later not to be the case)
  
• Clients who were there remained at the technical level
• Projects were beginning to require a higher level of executive sponsorship
• Effective change management was beginning to become a critical success factor in all sizes of projects
• Customer projects (given the bias of the event) dominated discussions though other entity types such as products and location became ancillary requirements.
  

In general, this event was a great chance to catch up with others pursuing the development of MDM tools and solutions. And as always it was great to see my familiar faces from Siperian, Initiate, DataFlux, Purisma, IBM, Oracle, VisionWare and, i2 at the event.

(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

News Analysis: SAP in a Post-Shai era?

It's hard to believe that less than 7 years ago, SAP was seen as a stodgy, client-server based, and very stubborn German software company. That transformation from "borg-like" vendor to innovator wasn't easy, but at the helm of that transition was Shai Agassi. As one of the few non-German executive members, he harnessed the can-do attitude of Silicon Valley, brought the Israeli practicality, and tied the engineering talent of SAP closer to the pulse of innovation. And despite the skeptics, he shifted power away from Germany and Newtown Square to Palo Alto.

Looking back, Shai leaves an organization with quite a legacy. First and foremost the transformation from client-server to internet. Shai also drove the efforts to get mySAP CRM out the door and build out the mid-market. But even more importantly, the strong software ecosystem and partner network that Shai so evangelized leaves SAP with the foundation to innovate and build last mile solutions so needed in the micro-vertical market. SAP's success in building buzz and attracting ISV partners includes work with Microsoft on Duet that continues to differentiate SAP from its chief competitor, Oracle, in the applications space. Finally, the vision and swagger Shai brought to SAP will be the most memorable. Customers often left impressed by the possibilities they could see in their investment in SAP.

Yet, challenges abound for SAP in a post-Shai world with or without him. Microsoft shows continued success in the SMB side of the house with wins in hub and spoke SAP environments and subsidiaries of SAP enterprises looking to wean themselves from the high cost of ownership and upgrade to mySAP ERP 2005 Meanwhile heavy discounting by Oracle in the large enterprise space, put quite a squeeze on SAP in the near term for new business in the large enterprise space, as only Oracle can afford to bolster app sales with middleware and database revenues. SaaS entrants like SalesForce.com and NetSuite chip away at SAP's cost structure and usability while the entrance of Dave Duffield's WorkDay may complicate SAP's efforts to beat Oracle/PeopleSoft at HCM. As user experience becomes important, SAP has fallen behind in building products that showcase the best of Web 2.0 meets Enterprise 2.0.

So while Shai brought vision and innovation, much work needs to be done in a post-Shai world. The need to execute becomes greater as promises made to customers, partners, and employees must be kept. Investment for better tools in NetWeaver and MDM would help partners build more efficiently and allow for a stronger ecosystem foundation. Success in the mid-market and a strong SaaS offering would put competitors SalesForce.com, WorkDay, Oracle, and NetSuite on the defensive. Moreover, a move away from middleware infrastructure in general would expedite the transition from Oracle database to anything else and keep SAP from indirectly funding future Oracle acquisitions and Oracle's development of competitive products.

But without a visionary like Shai at hand, the top tier talent he brought into the valley will need a reason from management to remain. Execution of Shai's vision has always been the most challenging role to play and we will know in the next 3 to 5 years how SAP will fare in the market. Yet despite execution being the key to near term success, SAP will still need an articulate visionary at the helm or risk retreating on the visibility and panache Shai brought to the industry.


For additional information:
Official SAP Press Release
San Francisco Chronicle
SearchSAP.com
Managing Automation


(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

News Analysis: Tammi Reller's transition to Interim Head of MBS

The recent transition of Satya Nadella to the new Search and Ad Platform group came as quite the surprise to many outside of the Redmond community. Satya had recently taken over in September 2006 from long time Great Plains icon Doug Burgum. (Doug is retiring later this year.) Insiders say that Satya was chosen for Search and Ad mainly because of his ability to turnaround teams and deliver on results.

The transition to Tammi Reller makes sense, as Tammi has had many roles within Dynamics, most recently as Corporate Vice President of MBS marketing. Customers should expect little disruption in strategy as Tammi's an insider and has worked closely with Satya and Doug for quite some time. It's expected that Tammi's role as interim head of MBS should become permanent and many remain excited as she brings some marketing buzz and excitement to the teams.

After attending Microsoft's Convergence User conference in March, it's apparent that Microsoft continues to lead in the user experience department with the most resources and innovation dedicated to role based scenarios and user experience optimization. In addition, the Project Green strategy appears to be transforming from a converged product roadmap with a target date, to one where the 4 products have target dates for consumption of key middleware components such as SQL Server, SharePoint, BizTalk, SmartClient, etc. Maybe that was the original plan, but now it's becoming clear that this will be the approach for some time to come.

(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Event Report: Lawson CUE

After a horrendous time getting out of the Mumbai Airport where I missed my flight and had to fly to NY in order to get to California... I finally made my way to sunny San Diego for Lawson's CUE event on March 4th to March 7th. Though I missed the Sunday festivities, the week there was well worth it as Lawson continued to show progress in developing its product line, winning customers, and building tighter partnerships.

Some quick observations from the event:

• The general mood was upbeat among both clients and partners
  
• Lawson furthered their relationship on IBM's "Blue Stack" including the WebSphere ESB with current releases:
  
• For S3 customers, WAS, Tivoli Directory Server, and DB2 are also offered in Lawson S3 System Foundation 9
• For M3 customers, the new Lawson M3 System Foundation includes WAS as well as LSF runtime technology
• On the hosting front, Lawson Total Care Platinum tied the highest level maintenance and support program with full hosting and application management services with IBM as well as other partners.
• From a social, corporate responsibility angle, Lawson announced a Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative that packages pre-configured Lawson applications and Lawson Business Intelligence (LBI) to report against over 100 indicators that could support at company's corporate social responsibility initiatives.
• Recent high profile wins at a major global retailer bode well for Lawson's future global roll-out and functionality capabilities.

Overall, clients and partners once again found value in the event. And of course, EVP Dean Hager's presentations were as energetic, informative and entertaining.


(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Ecosystems: Systems integrators should transform to solutions providers

As I reflect on my current trip to India, I can't but help feel the deja vu of the Silicon Valley during the late 90's. Streams of business people come in and out of the lobby with ideas, deals, and lots of excitement. I'm typing away from the Hotel Leela in Bangalore where I just met with a client in the system integrator space. Like others, she also commented on the tremendous growth in just the past year. Among the construction cranes, cows in the street, motorized rickshaws, and the hustle and bustle of a country on the move, I have firmly experienced an outsider's perspective on India's growth.

With each trip, I notice new architectures and campuses being built or expanded for each of the SI's. India's info tech economy continues to grow and their system integrators now play a significant role in the global professional services business. As they continue to make progress and gain multi-billion in revenues, they remain on an aggressive move towards the next step in the value chain.

With that perspective in mind, opportunities exist for these highly skilled system integrators to make the transition from system integrator to solution provider. More importantly, those system integrators who have the development capabilties and understanding of various middleware platforms such as BEA WebLogic/AquaLogic, IBM WebSphere, Microsoft.Net, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and SAP NetWeaver have an opportunity to change the software environment in their next transformation. Just like Electronic Arts who builds software on Sony's Playstation, Microsoft's X-box, and Nintendo's Game Cube, imagine a world where an Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Cognizant, and HCL deliver their own Chinese HR talent acquisition solutions or eastern european process manufacturing solution on top of NetWeaver, Fusion, WebSphere, VS.NEt, or WebLogic.

Delivering last mile solutions regardless of middleware platform potentially transforms system integrators who are channels for the big vendors like SAP and Oracle into solutions providers who view SAP and Oracle as a strategic supplier. But to get there, these SI's will require internal transformation in their capabilities. Customers must view these firms as trusted advisors across the enterprise.

However, skills shortages still abound in advanced capabilities such as change management, master data management, business process reengineering, and overall IT strategy. But with some retooling, expect the most nimble and adaptive of these system integrators to make the transformation. Clients desperately seek resources to deliver process innovation while optimizing commoditized processes via BPO. The key success factor will be the capability to deliver modular last mile solutions by industry and geographies on top of agnostic middleware platforms or SaaS deployment options.

Once that transformation has been attained, IBM and Accenture will nervously have to look in their rear view mirrors as the competition charges forward. But for now, their positions remain safe.

(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

SaaS: SaaS takes off in Japan

Tokyo still remains one of my favorite destinations in APAC and on a visit with clients and media, it became quite apparent that SaaS was top of mind in the market. I wondered if I had came to Japan a week after Marc Benioff or if the market had been that enthusiastic to begin with. (I would later find out it was SalesForce.com's Japanese AppsExchange pre-announcements. )

In either case, the number one topic of interest from system integrators related to how one could build a SaaS business. Meanwhile customers sought more information on SaaS offerings and the media kept asking for details on the difference between SaaS, Hosting, ASP, and OnDemand. SalesForce.com and NetSuite had top billing in terms of mindshare, while WorkDay remained of major interest given the tie back to PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield.

SaaS continues to gain mind share, especially as customers remain frustrated with paying so much for maintenance, receiving very little in terms of value in upgrades, supporting legacy applications, and refusing enhancements and feature requests to the business side. More importantly, business leaders in large enterprises choose SaaS mainly because they can do an end run on the IT department, receive new functionality, and pay for it using operational expense instead of capital expense. That last bit is key because they don't need board approval for an operational expense. As more business leaders weigh-in on IT decisions, SaaS vendors see growing interest from enterprises instead of the SMB market as anticipated.

Related Forrester Research
Comparing The ROI Of SaaS Versus On-Premise Using Forrester's TEI™ Approach
The Financial Impact of Packaged Applications
The State of Enterprise Software Adoption


(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Blog Move!: Transition to Blogspot

I'm moving my blog to Blogspot. Stay tuned.




(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 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

SaaS: WorkDay is now Official!

Coming out of stealth mode
Built from the spin-out prior to the Oracle acquisition, Workday's officially came out of the closet. Dave Duffield, Aneel Bhsuri, and Stan Swete lead 65 employees from their Walnut Creek, CA base. Many of the key employees are former PeopleSoft alumns.

Workday's products take advantage of Rich Internet Application architecture and show some great capabilities of Web 2.0 meets Enterprise 2.0. Initially just HCM, other applications will be on the way. Dave's reputation and the SaaS option continue to draw the most buzz as the Workday booth brought the biggest crowds at this year's HR conference in Chicago, IL.

Products currently target the mid to upper mid-size company. I'd expect launch customers to double in the next few months as the organization begins the ramp up process.

(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 2006 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Project Based Solutions: Transition from manufacturing to service economy requires the right software

Project professionals remain challenged with business solutions that force fit production and manufacturing applications to meet the needs of knowledge based, information workers. Though today’s work often focuses around projects, most enterprise applications remain designed for a functional world leaving professionals in public sector, legal, accounting, IT consulting, business consulting, market research, advertising, architecture, engineering, and construction to custom build solutions or heavily modify packaged applications to support end-to-end project based processes.

As enterprises make the shift to a service based and project based world, project based solutions are the only applications category that enterprises can rely on to deliver on process automation, process improvement, and innovation for this new world of work. Expect more in this category and more from vendors such as: Agresso, Augeo, BST Global, CMiC, Deltek, Epicor, Lawson, Maconomy, Meridian Systems, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Primavera, Sage, SAP, Tenrox

(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 2006 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Analyst 101: One year later

What a year! What a ride. This job has been good. I've been insulated from all the politics which has really been a luxury. Being out West, you can really focus on the vendors and learn what's going on. Meanwhile, we've got great clients and some great projects ahead of us. Anyways, 16 docs, good inquiries, good consulting.

More importantly, many thanks to everyone who has helped. I'm glad I've got some really good mentors out there. John Ragsdale, Paul Hamerman, and Merv Adrian have been great in bouncing ideas and themes. I did miss the chance to learn from Erin Kinkin who's probably still the sharpest CRM analyst out there, but I get the feeling more people may leave as they find what the right balance of work/life is for them.

In the meantime, I've got a really big public sector vendor selection project ahead of me and some more ideas to put on paper. There's some concern I'll burn out, but I think it's hard to when you are having fun. Like any job, if they add some BS politics, then it'd be bad and bog you down from being productive. So far, none of that out west and on our teams. It's a god send compared to what my friends at other firms have been experiencing, but I suspect it's b/c my managers hide that from us.

Either way, this has been an awesome job. Next stop, building some more new and cool coverage areas.

(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 2006 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Analyst 101: Debut of Beyond Order to Cash

Business pressures to grow market share, improve margins, reduce time to market, and retain customers with existing enterprise application investments compel enterprises to re-examine their existing order management cycle (OMC) strategies. With multiple categories of vendors offering order management solutions, business complexity across supply and demand chains should be the strategic driver in determining the appropriate solution fit. Companies looking to implement OMC strategies immediately will not find a single vendor solution.


Check out my first Forrester research report
Beyond Order to Cash


(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 2005 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Analyst 101: One week later

It's heads down time as I've got to figure out how to get my order management research out the door. I'm already getting a ton of inquiries and getting on the phone with briefings. I'm glad some of the vendors remember me from previous positions. Having done the job from the other end, I hope I have the empathy to not drive the AR managers crazy.

This order management research is quite the thing as we move from a functional CRM, ERP, SCM view of the world to a process centric view of the world that includes Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Hire to Retire, and Campaign to Order. All fun stuff. Stayed tune to see what I publish


(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 2005 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Analyst 101: Day 3 - So much to live up to!

I haven't been to Forrester's Cambridge offices before, but it's quite the location, at least that's what the maps show me. It's smack in the middle of MIT and just a mile from Harvard. So far Orientation's been a blast. Virginia Crossa is quite the instructor and has a great way with motivating and challenging the class.

There's a few of us from the Santa Clara office as well, Jasmin Dave who's an ADM in sales, and Frank Chiang who totally missed the flight and is on Video Conference. In addition, there are 4 new analysts in the program, some have started already. We've got a government expert, Alan Webber coming in as a Consulting Analyst. He's got quite the background with many federal agencies. There's also a telecom analyst, Ellen Daley, who's has a ton of telecom experience with a great presence. On my team, I've got a colleague, Bill Band who's the neighbor of Chris Mines, the head of research. He's a former Accenture Partner and Coopers guy covering CRM. With such company, this should be quite the class.

So much is spinning in my head right now. You've got phone calls to take, docs to write, and consulting to worry about. I have no idea how I'm going to hit these goals at the moment, but it's well worth the try. This job looks like it'll have a steep ramp up!


(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 2005 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Analyst 101: From Vendor Side to the Dark Side?

My First Morning as a Forrester Analyst
So, I'm really excited here. It's my first day as a Forrester analyst and it's quite amazing. I'm up early since orientation is in a few hours. They've got me at this funky hotel called the Hotel Marlowe. It's next door to the Monitor offices and across from that god awful hotel the Royal Sonesta. The Kimpton Group always has some cutting edge designs including the leopard prints everywhere. The good news is I made it in just before the snow storm, but on the down side, it looks like a great New England winter storm is going to be with us for the week.

Well, after being on the other side for most of my career, now I'm going to be working with some of the best minds in enterprise apps. It's quite an honor to be at the same firm as John Ragsdale, Paul Hamerman, Erin Kinkin, Keith Giles, Andy Bartels, Elana Anderson, Merv Adrian, Navi Radjou, Laurie Orlov, Mike Gilpin, John Rymer, Randy Heffner, and Eric Schmitt. These analysts have always been the most genuine. My coverage area is Order Management, ERP, and I think a few other areas as we figure out the holes. Stay tuned as I make sense of what the job really entails!

At this point, I'm not sure what to say to these legends, now that I'm in the same firm, but I've got a lot to do and a lot to prove. There's quite a tradition to live up to here as industry analysts are the technology industry's equivalent to superstars in the entertainment industry.

Wish me luck and send me pointers!


(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 2005 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Software Licensing and Pricing: Focus Efforts on Maintenance First

Maintenance costs are the most expensive over the long term
Focus negotiations on total cost not just license costs. Many enterprises enter into software contracts focused on license cost. However, the key driver of costs is really maintenance. At 17 to 25% of the license cost, enterprises end up buying up to 2x the original cost of software in a 10 year period. Let's take a look at what this means:

Number of licenses: 1000
Average cost: $2000/named user
Maintenance %: 20%

10 year license cost: $2M (assuming upgrades are free)
10 year maintenance: $4M (assuming no maintenance fee increases in between)

As you can see, the focus on negotiations should be on the maintenance fee increases as well as the maintenance fee percentage.

Quick advice:
1. Focus on negotiating a lower maintenance percentage
2. Use net price not list price as the starting point
3. Cap maintenance fee increases for the life of the relationship to x% or CPI whichever is lower
4. Agree upfront on how upgrades and additional modules will be priced into maintenance contracts

(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 2005 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Insider View: PeopleSoft Gobbled Up by Oracle

Alas the end has come to the long journey we've faced here at PeopleSoft. Most of us had hoped that the company would survive independently, yet our board has made a different decision. Some of us found out at 3:00 am and boy was it a solemn commute to work this morning. Almost everyone is at work, the parking lot is full and everyone is starting to think about their future.

The camera crews have shown up in the parking lot. Many of us in AR and PR have got the job of telling them to go away and that we have no comments. There are tears in almost everyone's eyes. We'll get through this one and hopefully everyone will have a new start. We still have faith that Dave Duffield will take care of us, he always has, even in the worst of times.

(Editorial Note: The PSFT management team left each employee with a good buy out package and covered healthcare and benefits for some time. Dave even set up a fund to help PeoplePeople who could not find work after trying for 3 months!)



Related Links:
Infoworld
Internet News
CNET News
Business Week

(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 2004 by R Wang. All rights reserved

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