The Village View

Oootsourcing done right?

2009-05-07T10:28:00.003-04:00

Being a good Manhattanite, I'm a ZipCar member/customer. Just had to call customer service because I had an outstanding balance (hey, it's call "float" - learned this thanks to my fancy MBA).

Anyway, I just called the customer support line and a very friendly woman answered the phone and helped me quite quickly. Turns out she's in
North Sydney, Nova Scotia.... that's in Canada folks. It was really a great customer service experience. When's the last time you said that? Certainly, I don't feel that way about most calls that are answered by outsource/offshored call centers. Last time I had a call with my bank or credit card company...miserable; tech support....forget it. But none of those was in Canada.

Now, I don't know what they're paying her up there, but I imagine it's cheaper than the States and that's why they're doing it. And the experience was better than call centers in other offshore locales.

Canada, people, you heard it here first!

NYC Emergency alert text/email system seen lacking

2009-04-27T11:54:00.004-04:00

It appears that Air Force One was buzzing around lower Manhattan and northern NJ this morning as part of a photo op. Problem is, lots of folks in that part of the City hadn't heard about the exercise and got worried.

“People came pouring out of the buildings, the American Express Building, all the buildings in the financial district by the water,” said Edward Acker, a photographer who was at the building, 3 World Financial Center. “And even the construction guys over by 100 North End Avenue area, they all got out of their buildings. Nobody knew about it. Finally some guy showed up with a little megaphone to tell everyone it was a test, but the people were not happy. The people who were here 9/11 were not happy.”

Check out this video and listen to what the woman says.

New York City is piloting something called "Notify NYC" which is described as "a new service designed to enhance the delivery of emergency information to the public." Problem is that according to the Times, the "text messages and e-mail messages explaining the flyover were sent out at 10:38 a.m., after the exercise was already scheduled to end. "

EIU Global Outlook 2009 - what a downer

2009-03-04T11:44:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I attend the Economist Intelligence Unit event "Global Outlook 2009: What lies ahead for the global economy." Below are a few notes based on diligent typing by my colleague Jeff Winter. The comments by the speaker were interesting. However, combining yesterday's talk with the book I'm currently reading ("Contagion: The Financial Epidemic That is Sweeping the Global Economy... and How to Protect Yourself from It")is really bumming me out. Oh, and don't even ask me what I bought Citibank at. :(

Summary

Government action has been significant

Slump will bottom out in late 2009, with meaningful growth in 2010-11

There are opportunities

Cheap assets

Some industries will do well: Health, basic foods, education, infrastructure

How long will the recession last?

No guarantees, of course, but this quarter may be the bottom, next quarter a touch better, and modest recovery begins towards end of year (Bernanke agrees)

No meaningful recovery until 2010-11

FYI – EIU is suspicion of US predictions of 4% GDP growth in Obama's budget

Housing is key. When housing prices recover, so will the economy

US, UK Japan expected to decline 2.5 – 5% GDP in 2009

Very aggressive stimulus across the globe (US stimulus is 5.7% of GDP; China’s is approaching 15%!)

Interesting facts

Global recession - First time since 1930s that total global output contracts

Banks will take longer than rest of economy to recover (balance sheet adjustments take years to fix)

Housing pricing are falling at an accelerating rate for 21 months (i.e. each month, prices are falling at a faster rate the month before)

Consumer spending is 70% of US economy…recovery won’t happened until consumers return > savings rate has sky-rocketed, hindering recovery

Three crises, feeding on themselves

Financial crisis – leverage, bank write-downs, credit freeze

Developed world recession – withdrawal of credit, spending and investment decline

Emerging market crunch – significant drop, but emerging markets still growing (e.g. China @6% GDP)

- I asked a follow up question about outlook for Mexico/Brazil. Didn't get as much expansion on this subject as I would like. However, Mexico with it's severe dependency on the US is likely going to get hit harder than Brazil. He thought Brazil's financial sector was in relatively decent shape.

Two groups

Debtor nations – have to sell assets to pay down debt…prevents recovery (Uh, this is us, er US)

Creditor nations – have no export markets

China

Vulnerability potential…Note – this is NOT a prediction, but rather a risk

Slower growth > production slows > workers idled / layoffs > profits squeezed > bad loans increase (much borrowing from China) > banks struggle (similar to US?) > SOCIAL UNREST

Japan

Back in recession…GDP contracted 12% n Q4! 5.5% contraction predicted for 2009

Japan’s biggest issue is lack of export markets

Risk of deflation – Japan more like Germany than US

Emerging markets

Hurting, but better than off than developed nations

Three issues

Reduced exports

Less inward investment from rich nations (FDI)

More difficult for indebted nations to borrow

Europe

Full blown crisis

UK hit hardest

Industrial production and housing market

How are businesses reacting?

Strategic acquisitions (if you have money, assets are cheap)

Increased response to key accounts is by far #1 response in survey

Much more focus on risk – organizationally, more reports, investments

Off-shoring – China and India still most popular place

Help Charlie's sister find a job

2009-02-27T09:55:00.003-05:00

Charlie Wood is an Austin, TX-based entrepreneur and fellow Enterprise Irregular blogger. After his sister got laid off, he came up with an interesting experiment to help her out (inspired in part by his going back to school to get a degree in Economics).

...when I learned that my sister Martha had just been laid off from her tech writer/editor position at Freescale here in Austin, I saw her job search as an opportunity cost problem.She's already begun her search for a similar position here in town and will undoubtedly find something suitable. But there's an opportunity cost for the time she spends searching (and not earning).It occurred to me that she would come out ahead if she could pay to reduce that amount of time as long as her out-of-pocket cost was less than the opportunity cost of the time saved....

The first person to lead her to the job she winds up taking gets $500. Specifically, she's looking for a full-time technical writer or editor job in the Austin area. She's held similar roles at companies as diverse as ichat, HP, and Freescale, and is exceptionally smart and very professional.

Please email your job leads to martha.wood.jobs@gmail.com

Does Cloud Computing Mean More Risks to Privacy?

2009-02-24T14:43:00.002-05:00

Interesting NY Times article on privacy with regards to information/data you may store in the cloud. For me this would currently mean mostly Gmail and Facebook, but loads of folks are using Google Docs.

I generally regard my Gmail differently than my work emails (which I know don't belong to me and assume anything written there will someday come to light). According to this article, maybe I should change the way I feel about Gmail too:

a government investigator, or even a lawyer in a civil lawsuit, can get access to records by simply using a subpoena rather than a search warrant, which requires more scrutiny by a court.

The article refers to a World Privacy Forum report that states: “Don’t put anything in the cloud you wouldn’t want a competitor, your government or another government to see.”

"Don't put anything???" Wow and I was mainly just worried about those pictures of over exuberance in college and bad fashion choices in high school.

SAP Buys PasS Vendor Coghead's Intellectual Property

2009-02-23T10:39:00.002-05:00

No commentary, just a few facts from a news report (below) and then some other bloggers' takes (er, below that).

SAP AG has bought the rights to the intellectual property of Coghead Inc., a vendor of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) tools that is in the process of shutting down....Coghead is one of numerous vendors, both large and small, that have developed PaaS tools — cousins of software-as-a-service applications that can be used to create cloud-based apps. Coghead's PaaS offering provides a visual editing environment, workflow and integration tools and a database, along with an underlying computing infrastructure provided through Amazon.com Inc.'s Elastic Compute Cloud.

Coté was interviewed and cited in the Computerworld article:

Coghead's technology is a good fit for SAP, having been a popular PaaS option among the community of SAP developers, according to Michael Coté, an analyst at consulting firm RedMonk. In addition, SAP's venture capital arm invested in Coghead two years ago, a move that "sort of blessed" the PaaS vendor's technology for use by SAP developers," Coté said.

He noted that there also is a "thriving subculture" of SAP developers who are interested in using emerging technologies. One example, Coté said, is the Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment, a Twitter-like messaging service being developed by SAP community members.

SAP Acquires Coghead Assets - NY Times

Coghead customers left high and dry despite SAP acquisition - ComputerWeekly.com

Bloggers

The Future of Cloud Computing in Plain English

2009-02-19T13:10:00.003-05:00

After yesterday's post, some of you may think that I just sit around in my office throwing wooden shoes into the loom. However, today, I listened to a Goldman Sachs conference call titled, "The Future of Cloud Computing." My expectations are generally pretty low for these kinds of things, but I found both the structured part of the call and the Q&A to very informative. The guest speakers were Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio and Billy Marshall, Founder, rPath. When I say the call was good, I mean that Chris and Billy had quite interesting and informative things to say and I learned something. After the call I found Billy's blog, and on it this video "Cloud Computing in Plain English." While I wouldn't describe it as "pretend like your explaining it to your parents" level, it does give a pretty straightforward explanation of rPath's view on the terms "Cloud," "Virtualization," and "Saas." There's a bit on the difference between Cloud and Saas which you may or may not agree with. I'd encourage you to check it out.

Tweet this: Sage innovates without Web 2.0

2009-02-18T10:07:00.002-05:00

The supposed talking heads of enterprise software often complain that there's little "innovation" any more in the industry. I've never been sure what they mean by "innovation," but most recently it seems it must include an integration to the newest Web 2.0 app as a requisite. What I actually think is more useful, if not sexy or innovative, is when vendors put something out that improves the lives of a large number of users at a large number of their customers. (Man, I'm boring!). I think what Sage has done with it's CRM ACT! 11 is an example of this. (Caveat, I haven't used ACT since I was a sales guy years ago and am thus basing this on having read a few articles and imaging what this integration does). Critics (or cynics) may argue that integrating MS Outlook calendar and email functionality with a CRM system is not innovative, but I would argue that the impact of this integration on a daily user of both applications is significant. But what the hell do I know? I work at a traditional software company and I don't even Twitter!

Sage recently re-announced this integration at CeBIT in Germany this week, but I also found this article in English from last year.

[Sage][Outlook][ACT!]

SAP announces Business Suite 7

2009-02-05T16:50:00.002-05:00

There was a press conference here in the SAP New York office yesterday. Seems I was the only one who didn't wear a suit. Oops. (to be fair, I'm not on the Marketing email DL so I can plead ignorance). Anyway, SAP announced the release of the latest version of its flagship Business Suite solution, Business Suite 7. Here's a video of the event. Co-CEO Leo Apotheker speaks near the beginning, followed by SAP Board Member Jim Hagemann Snabe who lead the development of BS 7. Finally, there is a customer panel.

Here are a couple of press write ups:

Information Week - SAP Business Suite 7.0 Kills Usual Software Upgrade Process
Reuters - SAP launches biggest software upgrade in 3 years

Also, a few of the Enterprise Irregulars were here and/or blogged about it:
Larry Dignan - Is SAP really done with ’scary upgrades’ and ’sleepless night’ projects?

Dennis Howlet - SAP BusinessSuite 7: Twittery clouds?

Dennis also did some cool stuff with CoveritLive here

Vinnie Merchandani - It's a bird. It's a plane. It is BS7.

Also, in response to a question from Vinnie during the Q&A there were some interesting comments from Fortune 500 execs on the iPhone in the enterprise.

[SAP] [Business Suite] [BS7]

Remember where you were 23 years ago?

2009-01-28T10:36:00.002-05:00

I distinctly remember where I was 23 years ago today when I learned the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded on lift-off. Growing up in the town closet to the Kennedy Space Center, almost everyone had some sort of connection to NASA. Usually, we would have a "fire-drill" around launches so that all students could go outside and watch. However, by the time January 1986 rolled around, Space Shuttle launches were so common that we weren't released for the Challenger launch. I'll never forget the principal making the announcement over the PA.

President Reagan spoke later that day:

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and ’slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

New blog from New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn

2009-01-13T14:25:00.003-05:00

These are banner days for the New York City government when it comes to blogging. Yesterday, I posted about the city granting press credentials to bloggers (granted after they had filed a lawsuit) and today comes this from the NY Times:

...Ms. Gotbaum [Betsy Gotbaum, New York City’s public advocate] posted an item taking note of a new blog, the Red Room Blog, by the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. The blog takes its name from the ceremonial ground-floor room in the east wing of City Hall, where Ms. Quinn makes official announcements, often before the Council meets in its ornate chamber upstairs.

Read Ms. Gotbaum's views on blogging and government officials. Hopefully, it will come to pass.

[New York City][blogging]

New York City issues bloggers press badges

2009-01-12T14:16:00.003-05:00

SAP has long been a leader in engaging the blogging community (Jeff Nolan got things rolling and Mike Prosceno has been running with ball for the last several years). It's good to see that my fair city of New York has gotten into the act finally.

"Three bloggers who had sued New York City after the Police Department denied them press credentials because they work for online or nontraditional news outlets were issued credentials on Friday after the police relented..."

(I was originally going to title this post "NYPD catches up with SAP," but thought that perhaps that that might be misinterpreted).

[New York City]

SAP panel and Charlie Rose interview with Leo Apotheker & Andrew McAfee

2009-01-07T13:50:00.003-05:00

SAP did an event for the press here in the West Village (New York) office in November. Here's a synopsis, plus the link to the webcast replay:

On Friday, November 21, 2008, leading IT, business, and government experts joined SAP co-CEO Léo Apotheker in a panel discussion in New York, sharing research and insights into IT strategies and investments for lean economic times.

Moderated by AMR Chief Research Officer Bruce Richardson, the panel also included Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee and IT consumers, including the secretary of administration for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the CIO of Joerns Healthcare.

Webcast replay

Afterwards, Leo and Andrew appeared on Charlie Rose. A couple of bullet points of random items that I pulled out of the talk in somewhat chronological order:

Charlie asks Leo to explain what business software is
Andrew speaks to the benefit of integrated software across an enterprise
Leo talks to why a competitor can't beat SAP just by hiring away all its developers
Andres gives a basic definition/explanation of Cloud Computing (we couldn't leave this out, now could we?)
Leo on how business will change over the next 5 years
Charlie: "is everything going to be Open Source software?" Andrew: "No, but we don't exactly know where that boundary is."
Leo discusses SAP and Open Source software
Andrew talks about the coming ideas that he thinks will be important in IT
Charlie asks Leo what business SAP could be in in 10 years that they are not in now. Leo: "Maybe, we could even be in hardware, it depends.... probably not making them [computers] but shipping complete appliances..."

Charlie Rose replay

[SAP] [Charlie Rose]

Recent news articles on SAP

2009-01-05T10:07:00.003-05:00

First off, Happy New Year to my readers (both of you).

I've noticed that SAP has been in the news quite a bit lately. To save you exhausting Google searches, I've compiled a few here. No need to thank me, but click on my Google ads; I'm trying to beat the $5.53 I made in '08. I don't think 7 bucks is out of the question for '09.

The other transition

At the end of the month, Léo Apotheker will take over as SAP AG CEO. He's been co-CEO for the better part of 2008 along with Henning Kagermann, but now will become the sole CEO although Henning is staying on until the middle of this year. This article was particularly interesting to me because it gives a bit of personal biographical information on Leo. Everybody always talks about the fluency in 5 languages, but I was unaware of some of the rest of the details.

"Die Welt hat viel zu sehr auf Pump gelebt"

This is from an interview with SAP co-founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board Hasso Plattner and roughly translates as "The world lived too much on credit."

This is a great opportunity to practice your German.

SAP and FSC speed SMB apps
SAP and Fujitsu Siemens Computers next year will start to sell pre-packaged servers, designed as a fast-start application set pre-tested and pre-configured for midsize companies in the manufacturing, wholesale and services industries. The integrated bundle will include SAP’s All-in-One ERP system hosted on a Primergy RX300 S4 rack, along with a version of SAP MaxDB database running on the SUSE Enterprise Linux operating system from Novell.

BI Software integrates data from multiple sources (press release)
Business Objects announced the next version of BusinessObjects BI OnDemand software. BI OnDemand is a complete suite of BI capabilities, including a data warehouse, delivered on-demand. Two key innovations in BI OnDemand help customers create and manage data warehouses in the cloud more quickly and flexibly, making sure business users receive the most current reporting and analytics information. First, the new content creation and development capabilities help customers to ensure that data from both on-demand and "on-premise" applications is quickly available to business users. Second, the BI OnDemand accelerator for Salesforce CRM enables customers to build a data warehouse with massive amounts of Salesforce data and prepare it for reporting and analytics - reducing the implementation time from weeks to days.

[SAP] [Business Objects] [Fujitsu Siemens]

Florida, the Next Hotbed of Venture Capital?

2008-12-29T09:27:00.004-05:00

My mom is way ahead of the New York Times. For years, she has been sending me any piece (however small) of news about venture capital and Central Florida. Her motives are beyond purely making sure I'm up-to-date on the latest technology investment news; she's on a mission to get me to move back to my home state (for those of you interested I'm a native of Titusville. What you haven't heard of it???) Problem is, I'm a high tech guy (mostly software) and Florida is a hard sell career-wise. There is certainly some activity as well as groups/companies doing interesting things. I had the chance a few years ago to meet with the nice folks from the UCF Technology Incubator. Also, I met with a few folks from an Orlando VC firm when they were in New York.

Mom had actually sent me notice of the launch of the Florida Opportunity Fund a couple of weeks ago. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on venture capital and entrepreneurship in Florida. For selfish reasons, I hope the money helps to further develop local software companies. That way I could someday come home (and stop paying New York income taxes!)

The state of Florida wants to tap into the billions of venture capital dollars invested in young companies each year. It is seeking venture capital funds in which to invest money from the $29.5 million Florida Opportunity Fund, established by the state to funnel more venture capital to Florida start-ups.

The fund will look for regional and national venture capital funds that have done business in Florida and plan to invest in young Florida companies, particularly those developed at Florida universities and research institutions. Then, the fund will invest portions of its $29.5 million in those funds, with the goal of creating and growing Florida businesses.

By the way: how did I miss that BI vendor Pentaho was Orlando based? I spent the last year working in SAP's Business Objects unit so I should have known this. (I could get to their office in 45 minutes from my folks' house).

[Florida][Venture Capital][Florida Opportunity Fund][Pentaho]

Cloture this!

2008-12-18T14:37:00.003-05:00

Ok, so some may think that we Americans had a spirited debate about free trade during our recent election, but we ain't got nuthin' on the S. Koreans. Holy Cow, look at these pics (from the New York Times) of the opposition party guys crawling up the wall, literally. And I thought the House of Commons backbenchers on CSPAN were roudy.

The parliamentary battle over a contentious free trade deal in South Korea led to a confrontation on Thursday in which opposition lawmakers used a sledgehammer to knock down the doors of a blockaded room in which a committee was discussing the agreement.

Enlarge This Image

Kim Ju-seong/Yonhap, via Reuters

Members of the opposition party were sprayed with fire extinguishers from inside as they tried to enter a parliamentary committee room.

Television footage showed fire extinguishers being sprayed at the opposition lawmakers trying to get into the room . At least one person was shown bleeding from the face

Time to join a startup? - An academic exercise

2008-12-16T14:09:00.004-05:00

I know a few folks who have left large(r) firms to join (existing) startups recently. I posed the question of if this is really a good time to join a startup to my fellow Enterprise Irregulars because of the amount of both startup and large company experience in that group (Note: please don't read anything into this question, it's an academic question only on my part. I should repeat this in German just so there's no misunderstanding at HQ: Ich bin mit meinem Job sehr zufrieden, danke).

Folks have come down on both sides of the question. Bob Warfield, who has considerable startup experience, comes down on the "pro" side:

This is a great time to join or found a startup. Why? Because a bad recession is like a treadmill EKG for companies, and especially for small companies. It puts everything under so much stress that when you see a consistent source of good news, you know that company is strong. In good times, the rising tide lifts all ships. How do you know whether that sock puppet selling dog food on the Internet is really a good idea, or just the product of the Bubble? There are no sock puppet opportunities that do well in a bad economy.

Charlie Wood, who runs his own company AND is now a college student again, takes another view:

I would say that doing that [working for an existing start up] would be the worst of both worlds: you still have only one customer for your services, so your livelihood hangs by a thread. And since they're a startup, presumably they have less wherewithal to withstand the financial storm than does an established company. Worse yet, they may have VC's on their board telling them to "do the right thing for the company" and lay people off as a knee-jerk response to any bad news. And the news these days is mostly bad.

The follow-on points made by the group about what to look for in a start-up (if one were to ignore Charlie's advice) were the salient points that I had neglected to raise. The idea that came through loudest to me, and not surprising, is the question of funding. Now more than ever it's important to have funding to last you (probably a year or more) as well as to consider the source of that funding. The quality of the team came across to me as the next highest consideration (the funding then team order strikes me as perhaps reversed from more "normal" times). Other considerations raised were if the startup is, or is close, to being cashflow positive and how pasionate you are about the product/idea.

I have to admit that current times probably make me a bit more risk adverse then normal (maybe that's because I had a "going down in flames" startup experience during the Internet bubble). However, I'd be curious to hear from you if you have, or are considering joining a startup and understand what the thought process is. It's often interesting to see how different folks react to disruptive times differently.

Ingres Database Achieves Certified Integration With SAP NetWeaver Technology Platform

2008-12-10T16:53:00.002-05:00

By my count that means SAP NetWeaver supports the following databases:

Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, SAP MaxDB, and now Ingress DB.

Ingres Corporation ... today announced that Ingres Database 9.2, a leading open source database for business critical applications, is now certified for integration with the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform.

[SAP][Ingres][NetWeaver]

Baseshield

2008-12-04T14:54:00.004-05:00

Just heard about this company today. Must admit it's not a space I know well, but it does seem interesting. Here's how it gets described:

BaseShield, takes a new look at how to run applications on Windows by running them securely within a virtualization "sandbox". This "sandbox" means that BaseShield gives applications access to only the parts of the computer they need to operate. Text editors can only access text files. Image editors can only access images.

Again, not an area I know well, but it sounds a bit like what I do when I open a virtual machine with Citrix. Another analogy that comes to mind would be what Chrome does with a browser tab in that if one tab crashes the others don't. I may be way off.

Today Baseshield announced an app store of sorts (this was why I got the heads-up):

BaseShield's other main innovation is the creation of a true application marketplace that gives users one-stop access to all kinds of software, from word processors to games. Each app can be run with one click. While all of their apps are currently free, BaseShield will be releasing a payment system that will enable developers to charge for using their apps in exchange for a share of the revenue.

Seems similar to AppExchange in that 3rd parties can list their apps and folks can download (and hopefully buy) them. Some of the currently available apps are: Inkscape (open-source version of Adobe Illustrator),
AbiWord (word processor), Celestia ("like Google Earth for the universe"),
Frets On Fire (Guitar Hero clone), Mozilla Sunbird (calendar application), Audacity (audio editing software), PokerTH (poker game)

I wish Baseshield well with the app store; from the limited stories I've heard from those developing for AppExchange, the major benefit has been a marketing effect, not a ton of revenue.

[Baseshield]

SAP releases Sustainability report

2008-12-03T11:09:00.004-05:00

Steve Mann blogged about this first, so I'm really just copying him. As Steve mentioned, SAP is the No. 1 company in the software industry on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

If you want to tell SAP which issues of sustainability are of most importance to SAP's future success, you can complete a Sustainability Stakeholder Survey here.

Here's some more coverage from ZDnet and some related sustainability articles:

Green Marketing—First Steps and Footprints

IT Policy Can Spur Economic Growth, Industry Says

HP Unveils ‘Green IT Action Plan’

[SAP] [Sustainability]

Two signs Web 2.0 has gone mainstream

2008-05-16T17:14:00.002-04:00

I've meant to post about this for a while, but then again I've meant to just post at all for a while: In the last two weeks I've gotten notices about two fairly mainstream organizations that I am was affiliated with introducing their new Web 2.0 functionality.

I got this one about two weeks ago:

Introducing RSS and Social Bookmarking

New services make it easier to subscribe to and share Quarterly articles.

When you subscribe to our McKinsey Quarterly RSS feed, you receive personalized headlines with summaries and links to our articles on mckinseyquarterly.com. Once you create a feed, you will be provided with a custom URL to view your feed, as well as an easy way to add the feed to your own news reader, such as My Yahoo! or Google Reader.

Click here to create your personalized Quarterly feed.

Social Bookmarking is a way to share and discuss Quarterly articles with a larger community. The Share tool integrates Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Newsvine into our article and abstract pages.

Today, I got this from my b school:

Today, we are proud to launch the School’s new social networking application. It will bring our community closer together, changing the way we communicate and share ideas, information, and interests with each other. In addition to offering improved access to the School’s distinguished alumni network, the application will enable you to more fully explore and utilize the breadth and depth of knowledge, experience, and opportunities made available not only by your fellow alumni, but also by current faculty and students.

By integrating existing directory information with job postings, industry-standard technologies such as Picasa™, Flickr™, and YouTube™, Columbia Business School-specific articles and content, and other rich social networking features, your connection to the School and to the people who make it the extraordinary place that it is will be constantly enhanced.

We encourage you to stay connected. To get started, log into www.gsb.columbia.edu/alumni.

I see this as a sign that RSS, Social Networking and tagging is going mainstream. For some of you that read this blog (and I think there are 3 or 4 of you left) you're probably saying, "no sh&t Crofton," but I'd bet if you ask the majority of the folks on the street, and certainly the majority over 35, if they know what RSS, Social Networking, tagging etc are, they'd say no. Admittedly, Columbia and McKinsey are not great signs of what's happening on Main Street, but the fact that they're offering their alumni/readers these tools is a surely a sign of the mainstreaming of the these technologies.

I'm admittedly more intrigued about the CBS "social networking application" (really? that's the name? world class marketing dept and that's what we come up with?) then I am about tagging my favorite Quarterly articles. I'm wondering if folks will really upload their info to yet another social networking site. My sense is that given that's it's the business school and the focus is on the network, that this thing is going to be as exciting as LinkedIn. Not saying that LinkedIn isn't useful, but I don't really think of it as a social networking application as much as a good way of keeping track of were former colleagues and classmates now work. I'll likely upload my info at some point. right after I get writing my next post.

[McKinsey Quarterly][Columbia Business School][Social Networking][RSS][Columbia Social Networking]

New versions of SAP GRC solutions

2008-04-08T10:22:00.002-04:00

SAP announced new versions of several Governance, Risk & Compliance solutions at the recent GRC2008 conference. (the conference itself was very good by the way. I had the opportunity to co-present the Jumpstart day as well as an EPM/GRC presentation with our partner Protiviti). Hope that folks don't take this as blatant shilling, but these are the solutions that I spend my days (and nights/weekends) talking about. There's a link to the press release, but here are a couple of things that I personally think are cool:

SAP GRC Access Control 5.3

This is SAP's Segregation of Duties management solution. Originally part of the Virsa acquisition, SAP has released several versions and enhancements in the last couple of years. For those who think that SAP only focuses on SAP ERP customers, note that this version brings more provisioning functionality to Oracle, JDE and Peoplesoft customers.

SAP GRC Process Control 2.5

SAP's internal controls management solution, Process Control along with Access Control can be used to automate SOX compliance.
This solutions allows for testing and monitoring of both manual and automatic controls.

SAP GRC Risk Management

This solution is based on the tool that SAP uses internally in its own Enterprise Risk Management program.
This version has integration to SAP Strategy Management thus bringing together Enterprise Performance Management and GRC.

SAP GRC Global Trade Services 7.2

New integration between SAP GRC GTS and the SAP Environmental, Health, and Safety (EH&S)
Expanded certifications for country-specific processes

[SAP] [SAP GRC] [GRC] [Virsa] [Access Control] [Process Control]
[GTS] [Risk Management]

Please let me do business with you

2008-03-17T08:15:00.002-04:00

I'm writing this, my first post in exactly two months, from Amtrak's Acela Express train on route to Philadelphia (I'm actually heading to SAP's Newtown Square US HQ). I'm a big fan of the Acela and to a large degree of Amtrak. Fairly high level of service and especially so given its quasi-governmental status.

I'm not feeling so warm-and-fuzzy about Citibank given a recent experience. As background, I've been a Citibank customer for over 10 years and have two checking and one savings account with them. I've had personal loans and other accounts in the past. Admittedly, I have very modest sums deposited with them. However, recently I've been wanting to open a brokerage account. (I'd like to lose just enough money picking individual stocks to re-confirm my hypothesis that I should be just buying index funds).

But I digress. Point is, I call up Citibank to inquire about how to open a brokerage account, how much per trade, if there is an annual fee etc. Now I just didn't call because I like the sound of my own voice, but rather because I couldn't find this information on Citi's website. It seemed I had to have a "financial advisor" or somebody similar call me. Uh, it's a brokerage account to buy a few stocks, not a wealth management relationship. So I called. A nice gentlemen who sounded like he might actually be located in this country explained to me that the information I sought was not online. Furthermore, I couldn't open an account online or over the phone, but he'd be happy to send me the paperwork. When I asked if he could email it, he replied that the material was actually mailed, which I understand is some arcane form of communication that involves dead trees. He was nice enough, but unable to help me. At the same time, I had Fidelity's web page up. There was the information I needed online and a link to open an account. Oh, and there was no account fee and the commission was cheaper.

So, what's the deal? Does Citibank have inefficient processes? Are they not savvy enough to have the information on the website (weird as they have won awards for their online banking site)? Or, are they trying to get younger customers to self-select away from their brokerage accounts because they likely have less money under management? Whatever the answer, I know have a new brokerage account and it's not with Citi. However, this non-Citi account has just one long position. In a bit of irony, guess what the first "buy" I initiated today was? C

[Citibank]

Estonia's hi-tech "embassy"

2008-01-17T20:31:00.000-05:00

Worked from home today so I listened to NPR (does that make me a New York Liberal?) while answering emails. Two stories on Estonia and technology on today. The first one is about Estonia opening a technology Embassy in Silicon Valley. (more here).

The Enterprise Estonia Technology Embassy will open up new investment opportunities to the Silicon Valley/Bay Area region and bring in an infusion of new ideas and technology talent.

I have a good friend from Estonia and have visited there so this is of special interest to me. What is particularly interesting and found in the 2nd NPR story here is that Estonia doesn't suffer from a brain drain as do many other small countries. That was according to Skype manager Sten Tamkivi. Also, the country is incredibly wired and Internet savvy: 98 percent of banking transactions made electronically; 80 percent plus of income tax filings by individual citizens were filed electronically.

[Estonia]

Jeff Nolan's new role at NewsGator

2008-01-17T20:20:00.001-05:00

My old boss Jeff Nolan has an expanded role at NewsGator. He's going to be running their SaaS business.

NewsGator's SaaS business, which encompasses the company's syndication and data services offerings, today has more than 50 media and online publishing customers, including USA Today, Media General, Discovery Channel and CNN. Using NewsGator's Widget Framework, underlying content network and editorial tools, these customers are able to extend their content and brands while positively impacting important online metrics that enhance their economics.

His new employees are lucky as he's a great boss. "Low key" and "hands off" are the ways I would describe his management style. As long as you get your work done on time and it is of a high quality you've got no problems and nobody riding your back. Just watch out if you've got an MBA as you'll likely to be referred as an "MBA monkey." However, you'll probably learn more working for Jeff then you did during your MBA so it's a small price to pay.

[Jeff Nolan][NewsGator]

The other 53 % are liars

2007-12-18T11:53:00.000-05:00

In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. C'mon I don't know anyone who hasn't Googled themselves. I've got to admit, and maybe I'm just narcissistic, but I Google myself at least once a month. By doing so, I recently learned that there is some guy with my name who is in the movie business. He's even worked with Jet Li. How cool is that?

Links for 12/12/07

2007-12-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of links I found interesting

Oracle acquires Moniforce

Moniforce's software monitors network traffic to measure the performance and availability of Web applications from the perspective of the end user. Oracle said Moniforce's technology would be a valuable addition to the business software maker's Enterprise Manager software, which provides a more extensive view of application performance throughout the enterprise.
I'm guessing this gets branded as part of Fusion Middleware. Which according to the ad on the back of my newest Economist is the "Leader in Middleware." hmm, who knew?
Another in a long line of Oracle acquisitions

Larry Ellison Controls NetSuite's Destiny Despite IPO

Ellison remains the majority shareholder of NetSuite, with his share of the company expected to drop from 61% to about 55% following the IPO. A few of his family members will keep control of another 11% of the company after its IPO. Ellison, however, plans to transfer his shares to a "lockbox" limited liability company to eliminate his voting control over NetSuite directors, and also to "avoid potential future conflicts of interest that might otherwise arise," according to NetSuite's prospectus.....Still, Ellison controls NetSuite's destiny. According to the prospectus, he has control over "significant corporate transactions," including a sale or even liquidation of the company.

SAP, VMWare ink support pact

VMWare said Tuesday that SAP will support its software running on VMWare's ESX erver, in 64-bit Windows and Linux environments.
Vinnie has his take here. Surprisingly, he expresses some scepticism
Larry at ZDnet also weighs in

[SAP][Oracle][NetSuite][VMWare]

SAP unveils its first software for iPhone

2007-12-04T17:11:00.000-05:00

This is pretty cool. Not that I have an iPhone, I'm solidly a Blackberry guy.

SAP said on Tuesday that new software for sales-force automation that it is hailing as one of the most user-friendly products to date would be compatible with Apple's iPhone. SAP, a maker of business management software, will include the program as part of new sales-force automation software that it is launching this month.

[SAP][iPhone][CRM]

OpenWorld Fusion Apps update by someone who wasn't there

2007-11-15T16:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I wasn't actually at OpenWorld, but I've talked to some folks who were and I've done some (very little actually) reading about what happened/didn't happen there. What's easy about providing this "update" on Fusion Apps is that nothing is really changing, so it's kinda easy. (yes, I know that there were 3 Fusion Apps released. What about a comprehensive Fusion Apps suite as previously promised?) So, here are a couple of thoughts:

Fusion Apps has never been much more than a concept

I've never seen a clear product roadmap

Exists only in the marketing realm. Anybody else at the “Halfway to Fusion” event in San Fran City Hall in Jan 2006?

Fusion is looking to be more of a technology, than applications play. Less value for the line of business users than for IT.

Challenges involved in a completely rewritten, unified application seem to have been too much
The 08 version of Fusion App suite (if one is even released) will likely be separate applications forced glued together with Fusion Middleware

The departure of John Wookey and the ensuing reorg will have substantial negative impact for Oracle customers

Oracle will likely see organizational upheaval and may lose focus on applications for several months as things sort themselves out
New org structure emphasizes technology focus of Fusion. Applications now under leadership of Rozwat (server focus) and Kurian (middleware focus)

[Oracle][Fusion][Fusion Applications][OpenWorld]

SAP pairs GRC with Identity Management

2007-11-12T22:36:00.000-05:00

This is pretty cool as it allows for integration of GRC risk analysis (in this case, specifically Segregation of Duties risk) into the overall user provisioning process. SAP GRC Access Control has had the capability to provision directly to core ERP systems, but now with these web services APIs, customers can integrate the ERP provisioning and risk analysis, remediation and mitigation into their wider user provisioning process. (In fact, I was just talking about this in a customer meeting today).

SAP AG has announced the immediate availability of new GRC web services that enable the seamless integration of identity management software solutions with SAP GRC Access Control. Based on open standards and built on the SAP NetWeaver platform, these new web services open up the full capabilities of SAP GRC Access Control, allowing identity management software vendors to tightly integrate their respective solutions, providing customers with a single set of tools to manage user identities, enforce corporate security policies and ensure compliance with regulatory mandates.

[SAP][GRC][Identity Management][Access Control]

Oracle buys GRC firm LogicalApps - Part II

2007-10-16T09:37:00.000-04:00

I've been asked recently what I thought drove Oracle's acquisition of LogicalApps. I'd remind you that these are my personal thoughts only.

Essentially, Oracle was looking to fill weaknesses in its existing financial compliance functionality in E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft. EBS has limited functionality in this area, including poor Segregation of Duty automation (there is a Gartner report in which the solution was rated "caution") and incomplete internal controls management. The LogicalApps product set will increase Oracle EBS functionality in Preventative Business Controls and automated controls testing. Additionally, Oracle expands Segregation of Duties risk management for Oracle EBS and PSFT. This acquisition, however, will not bring additional compliance functionality to JDE customers. Also, given that LogicalApps was already an Oracle customer and runs on Fusion middleware, this was a, ehem, logical choice for Oracle.

My sense is that Oracle still has some integration work to do as they have various financial compliance solutions (and I'm not using GRC here, because I view financial compliance as only part of an overall GRC offering) on various app platforms. I'm going to be curious to see the roadmap for LogicalApps as well as other, existing Oracle GRC solutions.

One positive aspect of this acquisition might be that it reaffirms my decision to work in this small part of the software industry. Clearly, GRC is an area of interest to the major software vendors, and their customers.

[Oracle][LogicalApps][GRC]

Vinnie: Oracle Fusion Apps Delays

2007-10-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

Vinnie is saying he heard that Oracle may acknowledge that Fusion Apps will be delayed. In other news, I plan on acknowledging that the Earth rotates around the Sun.

I hear at Oracle OpenWorld next month it will be acknowledged that Fusion apps will be delayed through 2009 at the earliest. Not surprised - it was always a moonshot.

It seems like just yesterday (actually Jan 2006) when I was still wet behind the ears at SAP, that Jeff took us to the "Halfway to Fusion" event in the SF city hall. Of course, I really hate when my own predictions are wrong.

[Oracle] [Fusion]

Oracle buys GRC firm LogicalApps

2007-10-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

Interesting to me of course. Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this. I'm just starting to read about it. I've run into LogicalApps at one event, but haven't seen much of them otherwise.

Oracle today revealed plans to acquire LogicalApps, an Irvine, Calif.-based maker of automated governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software that gives users greater control over business processes.

[GRC][LogicalApps][Oracle]

PlanHQ Launch

2007-09-26T19:41:00.000-04:00

Heard from a couple of different folks who are out at DEMO in San Diego. (Myself? I was in Charlotte which is almost as nice). One of the companies that I was told to check out was PlanHQ (hardly a scoop on my part as they got a nice write up on TechCrunch). Looks like it's aimed at helping small and mid sized business write and develop their business plans (oh, and achieve, can't forget achieve). So a couple of thoughts were spawned from this news (and they're not real deep thoughts as this has been a long day)

Is the launch of a company to help entrepreneurs and small businessmen write biz plans an indicator (leading or trailing) of a bubble-like environment?
PlanHQ has an office in Wellington, NZ; how cool is that and are they hiring? I've got a buddy that used to live in Wellington and we went kayaking in the harbor. I didn't realize you could work for a software company and live in NZ. hmmm....

[PlanHQ] [DEMO]

SAP and Second Life

2007-08-27T08:13:00.000-04:00

SAP Developer Network Evangelist Craig Cmehil will be "talking" to Thomas Jung and Rich Heilman LIVE in Second Life at the SAP Community Office today at 5:30 EDT. Thomas is a NetWeaver Product Manager focusing on Custom Development tools. (NetWeaver is SAP's platform, see more here and here). Rich is a Software Engineer/Analyst for Yorktowne Cabinetry specializing in ABAP and Java (ABAP is SAP's development language, see here and here).

[SAP][SAP Developer Network][Second Life]

Michael Oxley On International Markets

2007-08-23T15:53:00.000-04:00

"Other countries have stepped up and understood how important it is to have these kinds of standards...." Oxley said.

I cover the Americas for the SAP GRC group, but that includes US subsidiaries of foreign companies. The last month or so has shown a real uptick in the number of conversations I've had with companies that need to comply with J-SOX. Makes sense as compliance will be required for fiscal years starting in April of 2008.

[SOX][J-SOX][GRC]

Salesforce.com adds another president to ranks, hires new CFO

2007-08-21T22:35:00.000-04:00

Wasn't it just last year that Steve Cakebread was considering leaving Salesforce.com? Now he's going to be president, or more accurately, one of four presidents. He is, however, giving up his CFO role.

What's interesting is that they are hiring a traditional software guy as their new CFO. I think it was Dennis who made the point in an email to the Enterprise Irregular group, about the irony that a company whose motto is "No Software" keeps hiring big enterprise software company execs. (I think he made the comment after Salesforce.com hired Rene Bonvanie, ex-SAP. see here and here). Obviously, as an employee of a big enterprise software company, I have no problem with it. My sense that it's another data point to suggest that Salesforce.com will continue to evolve to look more like a traditional software company. (Another if true, would be what I hear anecdotally, that they are hiring more Account Executives i.e., sales guys and that the mix of Sales and Marketing spend is moving in the Sales direction). Graham Smith has an impressive background. But make no mistake, it's an enterprise software background.

Graham Smith joined Advent in January 2003 and has assumed the role of Chief Financial Officer. From 2002 to 2003 he served as Chief Financial Officer of Vitria Technology, an enterprise application integration software company. From 1998 to 2002 Graham served as Chief Financial Officer of Nuance Communications, a voice recognition software company. From 1987 to 1998 he worked for Oracle Corporation in various senior finance roles, most recently as Vice President of Finance for worldwide operations. Graham holds a B.Sc. from Bristol University in England and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

I used to compete against Advent when I worked at Thomson Financial. And in fact, I know several ex Thomson folks that work there now.

[Salesforce.com][CRM][Graham Smith][Steve Cakebread]

SAP Communities just launched "Community TV"

2007-08-21T21:54:00.000-04:00

Craig sent this my way and blogged about it on the SAP Developer Network (I've referenced SDN in a couple of previous posts including this one). Registration is required for SDN, but it's free and a great source of SAP related info.

Anyway, Craig talks about how SDN has re-tooled SDN TV.

Kyte.tv, has just become our newest addition of useful tools for the community. We've had a chat with the folks over at Kyte and Daniel their CEO welcomed the idea of us having our two channels there.

kyte allows anybody to create their own interactive TV channel on their website, blog, social network or mobile phone

With kyte, you create your own live TV shows and broadcast them on your own interactive channel, on your website, blog, social network or mobile phone. You can share your kyte channel with your friends and collaborate with them so that they can also be a part of your shows, by adding their own content, by voting and by chatting live with other viewers. With kyte, you can share your experiences live with the world and be the star, director and producer of your own live TV channel, wherever you are and however you want.

[SAP][SDN][SAP Developer Network][kyte]

JFK: the new battleground in the software ad wars

2007-08-16T09:02:00.001-04:00

So after a week on the road and the transcontinental from San Fran, I get back to JFK last night around 10pm.

In the hallway/underpass back to the main terminal is Microsoft's new Office 2007 advertising campaign. As you can see from the picture, this thing takes up the whole wall. It starts when you come down the escalators and continues all the way to the up escalators; complete with monitors informing us that "It's a new day." Also, saw a demo pod closer to the gates. Evidently, they've rolled them out in Times Square and on 49th Street (Not that I would know, given that i'm never in NY any more).

So that's fine, Microsoft is a partner and I like Office (and didn't realize that Office 2007 would be launching soon). However, as I settled into my cab for the ride back to Manhattan, I drive under a big, lighted advert that spans the highway: "#1 in Business Applications - Oracle." Not the first time, I've seen Oracle ads, last year on the way to Vegas they had filled one whole terminal with Oracle SMB ads.

Airline delays

2007-08-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

Remember the old saying, "Lies, damned lies and statistics?" A bit of this is what I think ABC News uncovered with this story on Airline delays. The network had reported the delays like everyone else:

U.S. flight delays are at their highest level in at least 13 years, and analysts say fliers can expect more of the same for the rest of the summer.

The Department of Transportation on Monday said the industry's on-time performance in the first six months of the year was its worst since 1995, the earliest period for which the agency has comparable data. In June, nearly a third of domestic flights on major U.S. airlines were late.

That's bad enough; trust me, I'm on the road almost every week. But, they dug deeper and found out that the actual situation is much worse than the reported:

This summer is shaping up to be the worst ever for delays, but the dismal numbers don't tell the whole story, because they measure late planes, not late passengers.

For instance, if you arrive three hours late and miss a connection, it can take hours or days to re-book another flight because planes are flying nearly full this summer. But officially, the only delay that's reported is the initial, three-hour-late arrival.

The same rule applies if your plane is diverted to another city. It's counted solely as a diversion, and the subsequent delay goes unreported.

Recently, I was trying to get back from what was supposed to an overnight trip to San Francisco
(I was supposed to be there less than 24 hours). My red eye was canceled and I got on a flight the next day which was delayed about 4 hours. I landed at JFK at 10pm instead of 6:30am, but I guess according to American Airlines I would only have been 4 hours late. Lucky me.

This week I traveled to Boston, Chicago, Philly, back to New York (by train) and then on to Orlando. The only leg of that which was not late was the flight to Orlando. Even given the fact that flights to Florida from the Northeast must be the slowwwwweeessst boarding flights known to man we arrived 1o minutes early. On Tuesday, I'm flying back out to the West Coast. Wish me luck.

Summer Sales & North Carolina

2007-08-04T11:35:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons I took my job in the Office of the CFO (or more properly, the CFO Center of Excellence) at SAP was to learn how a leading enterprise application software maker goes to market (I also want to understand how large companies make the purchasing the decisions). Last week, I attend the Summer Sales Meeting in DC. A couple of thoughts I have coming out of the meeting:

Bill McDermott is inspirational. Now I know that you're not exactly shocked to hear me say this given that he signs my paychecks, but I gotta tell ya, every time I hear the guy speak I'm impressed. Usually you dread having to listen to any keynotes at large corporate events, but I enjoyed listening to his vision. Also, he's straightforward about his expectations: satisfied customers and making the numbers. Ok, I can wrap my arms around that.
An SAP Account Executive has an unbelievable number of resources to assist in the sales cycle. Depending on the product, he/she may have an overlay account executive, pre-sales, value engineering, solution principal, industry principal, product marketing. Customers (rightly) have high expectations, and an AE can draw on a lot of experts to help in the cycle.
The SAP ecosystem is extensive and knowledgeable. I talked to several partners at the meeting and then at a customer meeting later in the week. Some of the folks working at these firms have an unbelievable grasp of the SAP products down to a very granular level. Since I didn't come up through SAP consulting or implementation like my manager and some of my colleagues, I learn a lot from talking to these guys.

And now for something completely different: I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of the state of North Carolina. My best friend recently moved from outside of Raleigh to outside of Asheville. As I had a work meeting in Charlotte on Thursday, I drove up and spent the last two nights with him and his wife. We went into Asheville last night, had dinner and walked around. When I was a kid we had a cabin in the mountains outside of Burnsville, which is not to far from Asheville (btw, if you go up into the mountains in this area, it's chock full of Floridians escaping the summer heat). Anyway, I hadn't been there in 20 years. All I can say is: wow. Counterintuitively, Asheville is like a hippy town. There were folks banging drums and jumping around in a park downtown. We ate at the Tupelo Honey Cafe which I had read about in a NY Times article. I had an awesome mountain trout. Afterwards, we walked around checked out the Art Deco city hall and more traditional court house next door. They are working on a new park and some new buildings downtown as well (much to the dismay of some local Wiccans that were placing protection charms on a magnolia tree slated for removal). Long story short, if you get a chance to visit do.

[SAP][North Carolina][Asheville]

Larry's new yacht

2007-08-01T19:58:00.000-04:00

Yeah, i know, i don't blog in almost a month (just shy) and this is my big re-entry on the stage. Thanks to Scott, for the heads up on this one.

So, it seems that Larry Ellison is building a new yacht.

Why, you might ask, does Larry Ellison need another yacht?

Because Rising Sun is too big.

As Wealth Report readers might remember, Mr. Ellison has been complaining for years that the boat he built specifically to be the longest in the world — or at least to be longer than Paul Allen’s — turned out to be rather impractical. He can’t dock at most of the world’s marinas, since his boat exceeds size limits. When he pulls into shore, he has to tie up with oil takers and container ships at industrial ports. (Not very posh.) Or he has to anchor offshore and take tenders to the dock.

[Larry Ellison]

Ellison's NetSuite Headed for IPO

2007-07-02T13:37:00.000-04:00

Thought this was an interesting title for the BW article. Technically, it's true as Larry owns almost 2/3 of the company, but I wonder how many guys at NetSuite consider themselves working for Ellison. Still as the dear professor from my grandpa's alma mater points out:

"As long as Larry Ellison has a controlling stake, the company is going to do whatever Ellison wants, even if other investors don't like the strategy," says [Jay] Ritter, the University of Florida finance professor.

This IPO, of course, has been widely anticipated. Jason and Zoli both had good posts on the implications earlier. I anticipate a lot of stories in the mainstream media and tech pubs about SaaS being the Holy Grail. I'll reiterate my position that SaaS is an important delivery method, but there is a time/place and situation for both on premise and SaaS. If you're starting a small business and need a system that's easy to use and install (and cheap) to manage your customers, why not go with a hosted solution. But is this really the BEST answer if you're a Fortune 1000 customers and need a complete enterprise solution? Maybe for some LoB's, maybe not. Anyway, don't expect to see those arguments, as things will be "all Saas, all the time" I would imagine.

In the same vein, these sentences caught my attention:

....but NetSuite has struggled with the productivity of its sales staff, which hasn't offset its costs with bigger deals and faster closes as it has expanded, according to one venture capitalist with knowledge of the company. "They've hit the low-hanging fruit of the lower end of the small and medium-sized business market, and then it got harder and more expensive to reach more of the smaller guys, or go upmarket and hit the bigger guys," he says

I don't think this is endemic to NetSuite. My sense is that Salesforce.com has liklely encountered similar issues (although in SFdC's case overall Sales Marketing costs may not have moved much, I would bet that the mix of Marketing -declining- to Sales -increasing- has changed). At the end of the day, regardless of how you deliver your software, to sell large enterprise deals, you're going to need an Account Executive (and perhaps pre-sales, vertical specialists etc).

[NetSuite][Larry Ellison][SaaS][On Demand]

Enterprise 2.0 Conference - more thoughts

2007-06-24T22:11:00.000-04:00

Had a few more thoughts on the Enterprise 2.o Conference last week in Boston. I attended the Enterprise Mash-Ups session. As is my style, this is neither complete nor in any particular order

Ajay Gandhi (i think this was his name, but I don't see it on the program) made a seldom heard, but I thought very important point around using Web 2.0 technologies in your company: "You can't ignore your enterprise apps or your IT governance." It seems very popular in many Web 2.0 circles to think of enterprise application software and the IT org as soooo yesterday. However, most people still work in organizations that use enterprise apps and, while they may be able to circumvent IT in the short term, need to work with the CIO's office.
First mash up I saw in the Enterprise 2.0 Mash Ups session showed Google Maps. Uhhh! Please just one demo of a mash up that does NOT involve Google Maps.
Didn't see the value in the ShareMethods demo. There was an on-demand word processing tool, a presentation tool and a spreadsheet. All from separate vendors, but integrated. "All documents can be shared across all apps." Ok, I can do that now with Microsoft Office, or if I don't want to shell out the money with OpenOffice Why repeat something that already exists? And the fact that they're "on demand" is just not an interesting enough (or sustainable) differentiator to me. If anyone doesn't think that Microsoft will offer essentially the same capabilities, I'd would respectfully disagree.
Rod Smith of IBM talked about "how do I get to the data?" Fair enough and very important. However, I asked the question "what about process-orientated mash ups?" Most of us work in organizations with processes and use various products to complete tasks. I would have loved to have seen what someone is doing to mash-up a CRM tool with an SME accounting tool (Peachtree, QuickBooks). That may be a bad example, but I could imagine that process mash ups would be very useful. (When I mentioned this to Jeff a few days ago, he made the point to me that you don't realize how important data mash ups are until you really need one).

[enterprise2conf][Enterprise 2.0]

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

2007-06-20T07:14:00.001-04:00

Arrived yesterday morning to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. (After having just gotten back from Europe the day before-uuhh). The conference is at the Westin Waterfront, which is a gorgeous hotel. about 10 years ago or so I used to work right down the street at Thomson Financial. None of this stuff was here then. Flying out tonight to Toronto to address an ASUG meeting there. A couple of thoughts from yesterday:

David Weinberger, who gave one of the keynotes, made, at least, two points I found interesting around metadata

Best real word example of metadata and what finally crystalized the concept for me: library card catalog.
"No difference between data and metadata.....Everything is metadata" - "Metadata is what you know, data is what you're looking for."

David showed how something that is generally considered data, e.g., a line from a book -"Call me Ishmael" - can also be metadata. If that's the only line you remember, but you don't remember the book's title or author, you can search on that line.

Fellow Irregular Andrew McAfee made a request during his keynote for a central repository of Enterprise 2.0 success stories. He says he seems to cite the same examples over and over.
Ran into a former McKinsey colleague of mine on the plane down. Seems McKinsey has an initiative around technology and business that involves how Enterprise 2.o technologies will affect things. To me this is an indication that these technologies are now on the radar screens of C-level executives at the world's largest firms.
Attendance is good in terms of quantity and quality. Several Irregulars are here (thanks to Atlassian for picking up dinner last night!) and I've met a few new people, including Michael Krigsman with whom I had a good discussion over lunch. I'm looking forward to expanding my network today.
There's no accounting for taste. At dinner last night there was a very heated debate about best band of the 70's. In one corner was Andrew McAfee making a spirited case for Led Zeppelin; in the other was Jason Wood arguing (seriously) for Earth, Wind and Fire?!?!? Don't they know it's Lynard Skynard?

[Enterprise 2.0 Conference][Enterprise Irregulars]

New Blog Series: ABAP Trial Version for Newbies

2007-06-19T13:52:00.000-04:00

Have you been dying to learn more about SAP's programming language, ABAP? Of course, you have. The blog is on the SAP Developer Network, which requires (free) registration. SDN is a great source of SAP information. There are north of 900k registered users of whom, I've heard, 600k or so log in at least once a week.

The blog series will start with easy - but essential - topics such as starting and stopping the SAP NW [NetWeaver] ABAP Application server from the management console. They'll lead you to the development environment, where you can check out how easy and convenient it is to write applications in ABAP.

Here's series:

Part 1 ' Download and installation of the Trial Version '
Part 2 ' Starting and Stopping the Application Server '
Part 3 ' Why and How the Server Matters to You as a Developer: Server Architecture and Work Processes '
Part 4 ' Many Developers On One Central Server - How Does It Work '
Part 5 ' Navigation in the Application Server '
Part 6 ' A first Hello-World-Program '
Part 7 ' Creating a Program and a Package - An Introduction to the SAP Change and Transport System '
Part 8 ' Exporting development objects from SP8'
Part 9 ' Importing a transport into SP11 '
Part 10 ' A First Little Business Program '
Part 11 ' Getting More Familiar With the ABAP Dictionary '
Part 12 ' Debugging in ABAP '
Part 13 ' Get Your Program up to Speed '
Part 14 ' The Foundation of an Application - Creating the Database Tables '

SAP Strengthens Silicon Valley Presence

2007-06-11T23:18:00.000-04:00

Looks like SAP opened up a new facility in Palo Alto to showcase how the products run on and work with some partner hardware and software. Again, my sense is that Palo Alto remains an important location to the company (personal opinion). I'm going to be out there in a couple of weeks; may try to stop by and check the new lab out.

SAP brought out its top brass to show off the big iron inside its new Co-Innovation Lab here today. Executives from a number of tech companies, including HP, Intel, Cisco and NetApp joined SAP CEO Henning Kagerman and other top execs at the unveiling of the lab which includes computer products and systems donated by the above-mentioned companies

Sponsors of the lab will participate in joint projects with ISVs, systems integrators and other technology vendors. There are also plans to have them collaborate with SAP to develop "solution blueprints" designed to help customers create data center environments optimized to support enterprise SOA (define). Callidus Software, Novell, Questra and Wonderware are among the first ISVs signing on to initiate projects

[SAP][Co-Innovation Lab]

TechCrunch: Salesforce Is Acquisition Bait

2007-06-04T09:02:00.000-04:00

Not sure if I'd use TechCrunch as *the* source for enterprise software news (I would, of course, for new media/internet btw), but this one is probably correct. Additionally, it's an interesting post about the why a link up makes sense and the effects on Microsoft. I do NOT think, however, that an acquisition of Salesforce.com by Google is imminent. Benioff doesn't need the money and likely enjoys running the company (although it seems some folks think he's getting a bit bored. who knows)

Salesforce has scheduled a press conference tomorrow to announce a strategic partnership with a “leading Internet company based in the Bay Area.” CEO Marc Benioff and a “special guest” will make the announcement together.

The smart money is betting that the partner is Google....

Some of you may remember that one of my predictions for the year was a Google move into CRM. Not saying this is exactly that move, but it's certainly "directionally correct."

[Salesforce.com][Google][TechCrunch]

SAP appoints its first CTO

2007-05-30T08:54:00.000-04:00

Vishal Sikka, formerly senior vice president and chief software architect at SAP, will head the company's newly created Office of the CTO, responsible for ensuring a "clear and harmonized roadmap" for SAP's products, the company said. He will report to CEO Henning Kagermann...

I had the chance to meet Vishal last year and was impressed by the conversation. Additionally, from what I hear, he's well respected throughout SAP. He's based in Palo Alto which may go a ways in countering some of the chatter about how the power base is moving back to Germany after Shai's departure.

Here's a podcast that Jeff Nolan arranged last year with Vishal and a few comments Jeff had at the time:

I was at the table when John was talking with Vishal and it really was a fascinating conversation. Vishal is, as many of you no doubt already know, the Chief Software Architect for SAP and he is based here in Palo Alto (although I truly believe that after doing this for the last couple of years his citizenship may in fact be from Lufthansa). The thing I like about Vishal is that he is not a longtime SAP employee (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) and he is disarmingly candid and objective… when he speaks he is not just repeating talking points somebody else prepared, he is speaking from what he believes.

[SAP][Vishal Sikka]

Tools and tips for enterprise risk management

2007-05-24T00:29:00.000-04:00

Enterprise risk management is one of those buzzwords that has carved out more corporate mind share in recent years. Executives have always been focused on managing risk, but the process has been "from a reactive exposure-by-exposure standpoint or a silo approach," according to some new guidance from the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). But in today's climate, most enterprises would be better off with a "proactive, integrated, across-the organization perspective." A holistic view of risk makes a lot of sense, especially from a large branding perspective. In this view, Sarbanes-Oxley-related risk is one set of "risks that exists under a larger umbrella."

This is very interesting to read on another blog, as I spend my days, and evenings, preaching the holistic view of, not just risk, but GRC in general. Understand how the risk, regulation or policy you're trying to manage or monitor today fits in with your overall strategy and needs moving forward. Put policies, structures and systems in place that allow you to not only become compliant or identify risks, but stay compliant and monitor risks, both on an ongoing basis. Many of the folks I'm talking to have been working to do exactly what it says up above, move from a reactive mode to a proactive one. Hopefully, that's where the SAP GRC solutions I'm doing biz dev for help out.

This post probably especially caught my eye because I have a customer call tomorrow that I've been preparing for to speak about SAP's ERM solution. Speaking of that call, I better hit that sack as my flight to Chicago was 2 hours delayed and I've got to get up early.

[GRC][Risk Management]

Starship Enterprisey Radio - GRC explained

2007-05-23T23:44:00.000-04:00

Fellow Irregulars Thomas Otter and Craig Cmehil have a podcast series (who knew?)

In this episode, Prof. Otter gives his take of what GRC is and means to Craig, and the rest of us. Think he does a good job of putting it in laymen's terms.

[GRC][Thomas Otter][Craig Cmehil]

SAP acquires Wicom, MaXware

2007-05-15T08:10:00.000-04:00

Embarrassed to say I had my head down so much yesterday that someone outside of SAP had to tell me about these.

SAP said it bought Trondheim, Norway-based MaXware, which makes identify software and Espoo, Finland-based Wicom Communications, which makes Internet communication software.

More on Wicom

The primary aim of the acquisition is to integrate business systems, from customer focussed CRM to back office financials, with communications systems in order to streamline customer facing processes and enable employees across the enterprise to access the same knowledge and data. As Wicom points out, it is about making communications a core part of CRM and ERP, as it always should have been.

"It is about communication business processes and delivering those business processes no matter where or what channel," added Bob Stutz, senior vice president and general manager, SAP CRM strategy and product. "We see Wicom as the future of CRM."

And on MaXware

With MaXware's virtualization and user provisioning technologies, which are core to its identity management system, built as enterprise services according to SAP, they should be able to plug straight into NetWeaver.

[SAP][Wicom][MaXware]

SAP announces New Enterprise Risk Management Application

2007-05-15T07:52:00.000-04:00

So, this is actually one of the products that I will have responsibility for from a biz dev point of view. Have been seeing a lot of expressions of interest in Risk Management. The last few years many firms were giving most of their mindshare to compliance issues. Now many, especially in Europe, have begun to focus on risk management. (Indeed, SAP uses the application internally, as we do with other parts of the GRC solution set). I've seen analysts' reports estimating that Enterprise Risk Management spending is around $2B annually, and growing.

Continuing to expand its market-leading portfolio of solutions for governance, risk and compliance, SAP AG today introduced SAP(R) GRC Risk Management, a new business application that provides organizations with an integrated framework to automatically identify and proactively manage enterprise risk in the context of corporate strategy and business performance.

[SAP][GRC][Risk Management]

SAP builds out its Office of the CFO offering

2007-05-10T16:38:00.001-04:00

SAP announced the acquisition of OutlookSoft yesterday. On a high level, this builds out the offering aimed at the Office of the CFO (i.e., the finance organization; those folks that roll up to the CFO, e.g., Chief Risk Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Procurement officer etc). From a solution point of view, this fills in another piece of the Corporate Performance Management offering. In that vein, OutlookSoft completes the CPM picture for SAP: Pilot gives Strategy Mgt, Acorn gives Profitibality Mgt and OutlookSoft enchances SAP budgeting and planning capabilities (enhances because there are existing portions of the solution set, namely Business Intelligence Integrated Planning and Business Warehouse, that have planning functionality).

While some may see this as a defensive move on SAP's part given Oracle's recent Hyperion acquisition, I would disagree. I think it's strategic and very much in line with SAP's focus on selling a group of products to the CFO (instead of the CIO as historically done). It's a pretty compelling value prop if you're going to go into the office of the CFO and pitch him/her solutions for Segregation of Duties, Testing of internal controls, enterprise risk mgt, management of other compliance issues such as global trade and EH&S, to also offer a CPM solution. Especially if you can say, "hey,we'll offer everything from one vendor, under one contract on one platform."

[SAP][GRC][CPM][Performance Management][OutlookSoft][Pilot Software][Acorn][Hyperion]

GRC blogs

2007-05-08T23:04:00.000-04:00

So I said when I took my GRC gig that I was going to post more on GRC issues. Hasn't really happened; in fact, I've been posting less. ( Jason said recently, it's because I'm now working for a living). Anyway, feel like I'm finally able to bring my head a bit above water, so I want to start expanding my GRC blog reading. I've listed a few below that I will likely put in my feed reader. Please let me know which ones I'm missing.

FierceSarbox
Accounting Observer
Soxfirst Blog
Op Risk & Compliance
SOX Television
Audit Trail
Sarbox Survival Guide
CFO Blog

In addition, I'll of course continue to read Dennis' blog. Finally, as I blogged recently Amit Chatterjee, head of the SAP GRC business unit, recently launched a blog. (check out his recent musing on GRC and such here).

[GRC][Governance][Risk][Compliance]

SAP & Web 2.0 case study

2007-05-04T10:27:00.000-04:00

Saw a link to this case study on Steve's blog. It was written by Robin Fray Carey, whom I met at the Bloggers' Dinner at Sapphire last week, and draws heavily on comments by VP of SAP Developer Network, Mark Yolton.

This case study was written to demonstrate how a company can create a social networking platform that not only achieves its tactical goals of pushing company content to its target audience, but also broader, strategic purposes aligned with the company’s corporate profile and brand. The study will look at technologies used to develop the SDN and the BPX networks, the quality of the user experience, and metrics achieved, as well as issues related to maintaining and growing the network. Finally, the author speculates on how the success of the combined networks could lead to further revenue growth and enhancement of current corporate communications.

[Social Media][SAP][SDN][Mark Yolton][Robin Fray Carey]

Girls in Tech invite you to 'GIT' Going!

2007-05-03T17:58:00.000-04:00

Gotta admit, not much I like better than receiving an email with the above title first thing in the morning. Especially when it's from my friend Julia French (likely my favorite "girl in tech"). Even though I liked the title of the email I was a bit confused so I shot Julia an email and asked her what it was all about. I'll let her explain in her own words:

I along with Adriana Gascoigne and LaurieAnne Lassek created a much needed organization for women in technology. We are getting ready to hold our second event this month on Wednesday, May 16th at Harlot, 46 Minna Street, SF. We are asking for $10.00 at the door, goes toward venue and production costs.
GIT was born to further support girls in an industry that, traditionally, has been primarily, well, mostly full of guys. GIT believes that we'd all be better off by developing more resources, cultivating stronger relationships and celebrating our achievements more often.

From 7-7:45pm it's ladies only for networking, but they open the doors for us guys at 7:45 for a general gathering. (See, I "read the freaking agenda" Julia). It's in San Francisco, so have to see if I can swing a trip. Need to be out there anyway soon.

Julia's written about the dearth of women in tech before on her blog. Here's here posting on this event which I just saw before posting this.

[Julia French][GIT][Girls in Tech]

Oracle launches financial-services unit - HQ in NYC

2007-05-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

So, does this mean the subway is going to look like the Atlanta MARTA did last week?

Oracle on Tuesday announced that it has launched a global financial-services business unit, using its investment in banking-application company I-flex Solutions to consolidate its future and current acquisitions in the financial-services software industry.

[New York][Oracle]

New SAP blogger: Amit Chatterjee on GRC

2007-04-30T09:17:00.000-04:00

Amit Chatterjee, who founded SAP's GRC business unit and is one of the unit's driving forces, finally launched his blog today. His blog should be interesting certainly to those of you interested in understanding SAP's strategy on Governance, Risk and Compliance, but also those who want insight into the (personal) musings of one of SAP's senior execs. I'm glad he's gotten engaged in the conversation - we had a conversation around his blogging when I first joined the group a couple of months ago. Amit, like many of us (don't get me started on Blogger) hit a few hitches with the initial launch of his blog, but mentioned that speaking with the folks in the Sapphire Bloggers' Corner really reiterated the importance of this medium for him. So, go check out Amit's blog and give him some link love.

I was completely prepared to abandon this effort, but my company, SAP had a conference last week (SAPPHIRE in Atlanta), and I met some other bloggers, and realized that blogging was the equivalent of talk radio for software. I was impressed by the number of bloggers, and also the varient in quality and approach to make their noise (voice) heard. Much like the days of listening to political pundits or even that recent shock DJ that got fired, each blog will undoubtedly share their point of view. Being a man with several points of view, this medium seems a natural home for me.

But what is different than talk radio, is that listener, or in this case the reader, has significant power. the “wisdom” does not end with my blog, but is rather the beginning of the refinement or rejection of a germinating idea that the source blog put forth. Hence I am even more excited about getting my ideas out there so they can be torn apart and then rebuilt, I want to engage the blogosphere for their wisdom on what is going on, and yes, amazingly even advice on what to do better.

[SAP][GRC][Sarbanes-Oxley][SAP blogger][Amit Chatterjee]

SAP GRC and Office of the CFO podcasts: Overview

2007-04-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

As I've posted earlier, I switched roles at SAP and am now in a business development role in the Governance, Risk and Compliance business unit. We had a huge "village" or display area at Sapphire (although as mentioned, yours truly was at an outpost pod, demo-ing our Sarbanes-Oxley solutions). There was a lot of interest in our village and I think that we were one of the more popular areas of the show (even if we were at the end of the half-mile show floor).
Anyway, Thomas had this cool microphone attachment for his iPod Nano and was doing some podcasting. I set him up with two conversations with my boss, Denise Broady. Denise has been at SAP for 6 years (coming over with the TopTier acquisition) and leads the Office of the CFO Center of Excellence (which is a business development group with responsibilities for a set of solutions targeted at the CFO's organization: Access Control, Process Control, Enterprise Risk Management, Global Trade Solutions, Environmental Compliance, Employee Health & Safety and eSourcing, with likely more to come).

In these podcasts, she does a good job of explaining SAP's holistic GRC strategy and a bit about how we are going to market with these products. Break out the popcorn, it's good stuff.

Overview of SAP GRC

Overview of the Office of CFO and Corporate Performance Management

[SAP][Sarbanes-Oxley][SOX][GRC][Compliance][Risk Management][Denise Broady]

Abducted by aliens

2007-04-26T19:27:00.000-04:00

21 days, that's how long it's been since i've lasted post. 3 weeks is the longest I've gone by a long shot since I started this blog a year and a bit ago. Thanks to those of you who reached out and asked me "what the f**k?"
So, I have two main excuses: 1) mental exhaustion and 2) Sapphire. Regarding 1) the new GRC job is great, but is really keeping me busy and on the road. Been on the road at least a day and mostly more for the last 12 weeks; I was in 3 cities the week before last: Atlanta, Baltimore and Chicago. When I get back to the Courtyard by Marriott (of which i'm becoming an increasingly bigger fan) I do a couple hours worth of work and crash. 2) Sapphire - just leaving Atlanta now. Was at one of the pod's demoing the SAP GRC solution. We had a whole GRC Village (muliple demo pods) but I was out in the Life Sciences area for some reason.
Sapphire was great - 15,000 attendees. Really impressive. Lots of customers, partners and SAP-ers. Interestingly, SAP is so open that I counted 3 (tres!) of my GRC competitors. oh well.
Bloggers corner was in full effect. I managed to make it to the Bloggers' dinner. I saw Den, Jason W, Jason C., Dan F, Craig, Thomas Jerry et al. Also, got to meet a bunch of the SAP big wigs; which was pretty cool.
Got lot's more to say and i'll promise to post again soon. Now I gotta run and catch my flight so i can get out of Atlanta.

internet-enabled looting

2007-04-05T17:45:00.000-04:00

This is actually pretty unbelievable. Someone placed an ad on Craigslist and advertised the contents of a house.... for free. Problem is, the owner of the house didn't place the ad, or even know about it.

Laurie Raye, a landlord in Tacoma, Wash., now has firsthand experience at Web-engineered looting. She received a call a few days ago from a neighbor, telling her that a rental property she owned was being burglarized.

By the time Raye arrived, her front lawn was littered with unwanted personal items. Inside the house, the water heater, light fixtures, newly fitted vinyl windows and the kitchen sink had been pried loose and carted away.

I'm sure much will be made of the fact that the ad was placed on Craigslist and folks (read politicians trying to scare people) will push for more regulation. However, I basically agree with this take:

Internet usage advocates say that the use of Craigslist is not in any way an indictment of online advertising.

"A situation like this is ugly, but the fact that it is on the Internet is incidental," said Rebecca Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports Internet anonymity. "Craigslist is a great forum for a lot of people, and it's always unfortunate that there are a few bad apples."

Why Cognos Loves Oracle

2007-04-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

I still have serious doubts about the vitality of the 3rd party Business Intelligence vendors. I heard the Cognos CEO speak last year and just don't find the argument that a large number of customers want independent BI vendors to be that compelling. Having said that, you gotta give Cognos credit for what looks like a good quarter. Thought the point around how the Hyperion acquisition might help Cognos to be interesting:

Ironically, the Oracle-Hyperion deal might actually benefit Cognos. Hyperion customers are probably concerned that Oracle could rework Hyperion's product line to fit better with its own databases and business applications. That could mean higher costs for Hyperion customers, should they eventually need to migrate to Oracle's offerings, making Cognos's rival products seem more appealing.

The Oracle deal also validates BI's importance and establishes a valuation benchmark. Hyperion sold for 3.4 times sales, compared to the 3.1 times sales at which Cognos currently trades.

[Cognos][Oracle][Business Intelligence][BI]

Oracle's misleading math Part deux

2007-04-02T08:09:00.000-04:00

Jason Corsello points to two similar recent Oracle HR adverts with different sets of numbers:

Oracle’s recent advertisement in the March 12, 2007, copy of Workforce Magazine stating…

140 Countries
12,000 Customers
27 Million Workers

....the March 2007 copy of Talent Management Magazine which states…

135 Countries
12,500 Customers
30 Million Workers

Jason is a nice guy and gives Oracle the benefit of the doubt as "a big Oops." I'm less charitable given that I have seen not a few ads in which Oracle takes liberties with numbers to further a (often false) claim. My sense is that when you're making this sh*t up, you're bound to slip and be inconsistent. Although Oracle claims to be #1 in, I'll go with what Jason says:
"my recent industry data (as well as some other analyst firms) suggests Oracle is actually #2 in HR Applications behind SAP." He always did seem like a bright guy.

Dennis also picked up on Jason's post and is running a poll on whether Oracle "makes[s] is up as it goes along."

[Advertising][Oracle][HCM][Jason Corsello]

Shai Agassi to Leave SAP

2007-03-28T19:23:00.000-04:00

From the SAP Press Release:
SAP AG today announced that it will extend the responsibilities of its executive management team to reinforce the company’s growth strategy. These changes come with the announcement of the departure of Executive Board member Shai Agassi, who by mutual agreement with the company, will leave to more quickly commit himself to his personal agenda of environmental policy and alternative energy sources, and other issues. In making this announcement, SAP confirms its commitment to the company’s current product and platform strategy, and its dedication to the success of SAP customers and partners.

From fellow Irregular Josh Greenbaum:
Doug Merritt, currently an EVP at SAP in Palo Alto, will get the lion's share of global responsibility for product, and will take ownership of Duet, GRC, and some of the other successes that Agassi helped initiate. Jim Hagemann Snabe, will take over responsibility for the MySAP suite, and in general get a much-deserved higher profile in the company. Peter Graf will gain an elevated position in global marketing. I'll profile some of the other changes as they become known. Other power-hitters, like Leo Apotheker, Kraus Kreplin, Peter Zencke, and others are staying put or moving into more important roles...

From ex-SAP-er Jeff Nolan:
SAP is a complex culture and an even more complex organization, I suspect a lot of people will view this as Palo Alto vs. Walldorf, or the Return of Zencke, but the reality is far less dramatic. The bottom line is that life will go on, the depth of the bench will reveal itself...

From resident curmudgeon Vinne Merchandani:
Shai's biggest contributions to SAP - charisma, and talent recruitment, especially in Palo Alto
biggest liability - I thought was too much focus on SOA, NetWeaver, platform issues - not enough on applications which is after all SAP's core strength.

[SAP][Shai Agassi]

Desktop search: I switched to Microsoft

2007-03-27T06:15:00.000-04:00

I recently downloaded and installed Microsoft Windows Desktop Search. I had been using Copernic because Jeff Nolan sent me the executable directly after SAP's image refresh kept deleting Google Desktop search. Copernic had been working decently well, but many searches didn't turn up files that I knew (just knew) were on my desktop (and yes, my index was up to date). Also, I couldn't figure out how to run Boolean searches on it. And some of you may groan at this, but I like the Microsoft UI better than the Copernic one. One of the things I haven't really tested yet is the "CorpPortal" button which portends to search the SAP corporate portal. The search feature we currently have on our intranet does not leave me very happy, so if this tool does any better, I'll be even more pleased with my switch. I'll let you know.

(Written early in the morning at the Au Bon Pain at JFK American Airlines terminal)

[Windows Desktop Search][Copernic][Desktop Search]

The Economy - 2007 and Beyond

2007-03-20T15:03:00.000-04:00

I'm at the CFO Rising conference in my home region of Central Florida (we're about 30 miles south of downtown Orlando). David Wyss, Chief Economist at Standard & Poor's gave a talk today with the title of this blog post. Here's a few things that I took note of:

How hard a landing?

* 1/3 chance of a recession (same thing Greenspan is predicting
*US growth rate of 2.5% and inflation of 2.5%
* In the 70-80's this would have been considered a boomWhat could turn this into a hard landing?
* Oil prices
*Wyss thinks oil prices will stay around $60/barrel (S&P forecast)
*If it doesn't oil could become a major disruptive force
*Long run he's pessimistic about oil prices especially given China/India demands
* We know where oil is going (non-Japan Asia), just not sure where it's going to be coming from
*Oil price increase would have a smaller impact on US economy now than years ago
*The US has become more efficient in use of oil (per $1000 of GDP)
*Oil is smaller part of overall US energy use
*Federal Reserve
*He's "pretty sure" that the Fed is done raising rates
*However, inflation is still higher than the Fed would like
*By summer the Fed may begin to lower rates
*Expects rates to be down to 4.5% by summer of 2008
*Short term rate movements are having less of an effect on long term rates
*Foreign money is coming into US private bonds which has held bond yields down
*Quality spreads are getting tighter
*Spread between Investment grade & Treasurys - 130 bps
*2/3 of what is used to be
*Similar with Junk bonds
*Don't expect this to continue as it was largely based on low default rates which are expected to increase
*Spreads are expected to widen back out
*Financial Risk is greater
*More junk rated bonds today
* Fewer companies have high ratings
*6 AAA non-financial companies in the US
*Expensive to be AAA and not much reward (tightened spreads)
*Corporate debt has dropped
*Debt/net worth (lowest since '85)
*Cash flow / debt service (coverage ratio reached a record last year of 4)
*However, borrowing companies have a coverage ratio of 2.2
*US is lowest in debt to GDP
*US - 240%
*Japan - 350% (largely b/c of gov't debt)
*Europe - (largely because of bank loans)
*Most global GDP growth is coming from Asia
*69% on a PPP basis
*China, India and US accounted for 56% of global GDP growth
US budget deficit not worrying in the short term, but does worry Wyss in longer term
* Large number of retiring Baby Boomers
*Will require Social Security reform, but this not likely to happen until we hit the crisis point
*Trade deficit is bothering him
*Bigger than budget deficit and is "owed" to foreigners
*It's unsustainable, but this has been said for the last 35 years
*There are countries with a trillion $ surplus; someone has to have the deficit - that is largely the US
US trade deficit has come down recently, largely as the EU trade surplus has shrunk
*As the US and EU find themselves with deficits, this could cause trade-restrictive legislation to become more prevelant
US Employment is coming back
*Heart of recovery is US consumer
*Living beyond our means
*Negative savings rate
*Household debt has hit a record, but wealth has gone up
*Assets have gone up quicker than liabilities
Housing is making Wyss nervous
*Home ownership is up - in 1994 it was 64%, and now it's 69%
*Average home price / average income ratio hit record in 2006
*Most rise in average home price is due to people building/buying larger homes than in the past
*175 sq ft larger than 10 years ago
*Home prices have started to level off or drop
*All though not necessarily in markets where there was the largest increase
*Housing bubble was global b/c interest rates are now global -> cheap housing
*What will leveling/decling house prices do to economy?
*People were using houses as ATMs thru home equity loans - pulling cash out of homes
Stock market
*Return to normal volatility; expect volatility to remain higher than it has been the last few years

Spanning Sync v1.0 Now Available

2007-03-13T15:20:00.000-04:00

Charlie Wood's company, Spanning Partners, released the commercial version of Spanning Sync v1.0 today. I've blogged about Spanning Sync, which is a service that syncs Apple iCal with Google Calendar bidirectionally, before.

Comments about the product/service's functionality have been positive, but Charlie's getting hammered in the comments on the Spanning Sync blog on the pricing: $25 one-year subscription or $65 one-time. Despite that pushback, Charlie says that Spanning Sync "passed our first-day sales goal within 45 minutes of posting the announcement."

Looks like Charlie is going to stick to his guns, which I think is the right move. He obviously did an analysis of what his costs were going to be and came up with a price he thought was reasonable. My sense is that a lot of the folks complaining wouldn't be happy with $15/year either. They say they would, but I think a lot of them don't want to pay for something that they've gotten free before. Personally, if you're not willing to pay what it costs two people to go to the movies (w/o popcorn no less) for a piece of productivity software that you're going to use several times a week, then you don't deserve to use it. End of story.

(written at the bar in the Las Vegas airport, using the free wireless!)

[Spanning Sync]
[Charlie Wood][iCal]

Unexpected Salesforce Shutdown Hurts Partners

2007-03-11T21:00:00.000-04:00

I've blogged about unplanned Salesforce.com outtages before. Seems this time the outtage of the AppExchange (or Apex I believe, if we're following the new branding) was planned, but poorly communicated to the partners.
"That technology fails, we understand. The failure to communicate, we do not."

The end users of the products that run on the platform didn't call SFdC, but rather the ISVs that provide them with the end solution.
"Our customers think it's our fault; we looked like fools this week for suggesting they visit the AppExchange to access the product," the partner said

Likely just a bump in the road for SFdC, but it does show that in the multi-tenant SaaS model, a single mistake/miscommunication can affect many users across many customers. The sys admin or app support guy for an on premise solution just has to worry about pissing off users at one company. (of course, some of those users likely sign his paycheck, so.....)

(Posted from Email Station at the GRC2007 conference at The Venetian in Las Vegas)

Welcome Oracle to the Eclipse Board....we've been here all along

2007-03-06T21:28:00.000-05:00

Oracle announced today that it became a Board Member of the Eclipse Foundation. I think this is great news, especially for a company that runs so many ads about being "open." (Love that PL/SQL btw).
SAP, which is often on the receiving end of the "open" attack ads by Oracle, has been a Board Member since it was formed in 2004.
[SAP][Oracle][Eclipse Foundation][Open Source]

Demand for SAP talent up; shortage of SAP skills

2007-03-06T21:04:00.000-05:00

This is a bit of a double - edged sword: uptick in demand because SAP has been doing well, especially an "uptake" among smaller and mid-size companies, but that raises the problem of potentially slowing implementations because of not enough qualified talent. Good time to be someone with SAP knowledge as salaries are rising and companies are investing more in training their in-house SAP experts.
If this shortage turns out to be short term as the market reacts, then it's likely a sign of a healthy ecosystem and continued job security for folks with SAP knowledge. Damn, maybe I should have learned ABAP.
[SAP][SAP Jobs][ABAP]

Good fences make good neighbors

2007-03-03T18:15:00.000-05:00

Switzerland's army marched into neighboring Liechtenstein this week. But easy-going Liechtenstein seemed to take it in stride.
"It has happened before," Liechtenstein government spokeswoman Gerlinde Manz-Christ told ABC News. "Nobody really realized it."

silicon alley 2.0 - return of the buble?

2007-02-27T20:39:00.000-05:00

During the week my main source of general news is reading AM New York on the train in the morning. Today's cover story was " From Bust to Boom."

Pretty light article with few data points, but, of course, the requisite use of "2.0." Did think it was interesting that the main example given in the story is of a web design firm, but then they quote the head of the NY Software Industry Association. Seems a bit like two different things.

Although it's likely the article was inspired by a conference yesterday, when the free newspaper that I get handed before stepping onto the subway has a cover story about the tech sector being back, I'm inclined to be bearish.

[Silicon Alley][New York]

Closet I'll ever come to being a gamer

2007-02-27T08:14:00.000-05:00

I have very little interest in gaming. The last gaming "console" I used regularly was the Atari. But my colleague Craig Cmehil, who himself is always doing cool stuff with SAP (look Mom, it brews coffee!) pointed me to this.

Seems a couple of guys at an SAP customer rigged up the remote of a Wii to a Ruby on Rails app that was connected to SAP BW. Check out their filmed demo on the link above.

Now, you may say, why do I need this? Fair point, but what I think it shows a couple of interesting points:
- There is a community around SAP (SAP Developer Network) and they are doing innovative, non-traditional things (again you can argue about usefulness of this particular item, but it does speak to innovation). There are 700k registered members of SDN. And for those of you interested in the topic of accessing the code, keep in mind, SAP customers have access to SAP source code.
- This wouldn't have been possible without SAP's efforts around working with and supporting newer technologies such as scripting languages. SAP could still do much more to publicize how much work has been done around using and integrating new technologies. Currently, it seems its competitors are doing a better job of painting it as "closed" and themselves as "open." The reality is somewhat different.

[SAP][Wii][Ruby on Rails]

My New Job

2007-02-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

Over the next month I'll be transitioning from my current strategy role to a business development role in our Governance, Risk and Compliance group. For those of you with some understanding of SAP's structure, I'll be in the SAP Americas unit. The GRC group was formed after the acquisition last year of Virsa. Since then additional product areas have come under the GRC umbrella, including global trades services, environment, health & safety and emissions management. I'll have responsibility initially for two product areas: SAP GRC Access Control and SAP GRC Process Control.

Business development can mean many things. In this case, it means I'll work to maximize revenue for my product line by providing the sales force, marketing, partners et al with product and domain expertise, strategies and best practices. On a more day-to day-level that means things like: deal support, go-to-market strategy, field enablement (education of sales and pre-sales) and interfacing with the development organization. It will also mean a high level of contact with the sales organization and, something I'm really looking forward to, getting in front of customers. In fact, I had my first customer visit today.

What does this mean for my blog? Well hopefully nothing drastic. I would imagine that over the next month or so I'll be posting a bit less, as I will be doing two jobs simultaneously. Ongoing I would imagine that my blog will delve into the areas of Sarbanes-Oxley, compliance, and risk management more. In addition, I hope to have more insights into the sales process of a large enterprise software organizations and a better feel for how customers use SAP products. I hope that this will be of interest to you.

[Sarbanes-Oxley][SOX][SAP][GRC][compliance]

SAP Acquires Pilot Software

2007-02-25T21:34:00.000-05:00

SAP announced the acquisition of business performance management firm Pilot Software. James Governor of RedMonk does a pretty good write up. It's worth a read.

Flagship product PilotWorks competes with the likes of Cognos and Business Objects at the dashboard end of the analytics stack, where key performance indicators are at stake. The acquisition will help SAP to compete more effectively against these players, and their partners, notably IBM, and competitors, Microsoft and Oracle.

[SAP][Pilot Software][M&A]

Netsuite & eBay team up

2007-02-16T16:49:00.000-05:00

This ties into one of my 2007 predictions: Google moves into Enterprise Apps business. How? I posited that a Google On Demand CRM solution could be useful to heavy users of Google Base and might be a good avenue for Google to venture into the apps business. I don't know how many "power sellers" Google Base has, but I have to think eBay Power Sellers far outnumber them. Probably good news for NetSuite as they approach their likely IPO.

both companies have created programs and initiatives to promote and market this integrated solution to eBay’s high-volume sellers called "Power Sellers." This partnership marks the first and only on-demand solution to offer eBay auction management embedded as a sales channel along with powerful capabilities to manage all business operations such as inventory, warehouse management, accounting, direct sales, telesales, keyword marketing, e-mail marketing and site hosting.

The other interesting aspect of this deal is that the pricing is volume-based.
NetSuite will charge a fee based on the number of transactions-up to 100 transactions will cost $99, or .99 cents per transaction. - ComputerWorld

[NetSuite][eBay]

Come one, come all - Teqlo open beta

2007-02-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

I blogged recently about a demonstration I got of Teqlo (my old -as in former, not an age related comment - boss Jeff Nolan's company). Well Teqlo was going to do a private beta, but decided to open the flood gates to the public. So, if you're interested in building your own mashups or just understanding what the whole thing is about, open an account and play around. Jeff and Rod are looking for feedback and are more than willing to answer questions that may arise.

Jeff asked me to point out a a couple of things to keep in mind when beta-ing the product:

This is a preview of the technology, it doesn't go so far as to define a business
Much more will be released in the coming weeks
The core data routing technology is the "secret sauce" and what enables users to build things without knowing anything about programming
Teqlo needs widgets, if you are a widget developer they want to talk with you

[Teqlo][Jeff Nolan][Rod Boothby][mashup]

SAP CEO to stay through mid 2009

2007-02-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

There had been much speculation about Kagermann staying or going. Today SAP made it official.

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) announced that its supervisory board has voted in a meeting today to extend Henning Kagermann’s tenure as chief executive officer of SAP AG through May 31, 2009, the month of the company’s AGM in 2009. Kagermann has agreed to the extension.

[Henning Kagermann][SAP]

Craig Cmehil: series on SAP NetWeaver & Office 2.0

2007-02-14T16:17:00.000-05:00

Craig Cmehil (shh MAY hill - I checked with him b/c there are about 5 different pronunciations floating about SAP at any time) is starting a series on connecting SAP NetWeaver to Office 2.o applications. It should be noted that this is not an official SAP thing, this is Craig doing cool stuff on his own.
I'm glad he's putting it in a blog so I can read, and re-read it, because my NetWeaver technical knowledge ain't what is should be. Craig has shown/explained some stuff in the past and I got the general concept, but was too ashamed to expose my ignorance, so I nodded a lot.
The first in the series talks about how Craig is getting NetWeaver to place nice with Zoho. (some of the posting is on the SAP Developer Network which requires registration. But it's free and takes a couple of secs, so no big deal. Besides there are like 1.5 billion people on that network; ok but there really are 700k registered users. Heckuva community).
[Craig Cmehil][SAP][Office 2.0]

Free Condoms on the Subway? And Who Says New Yorkers Aren’t Friendly?

2007-02-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

This is from a NY Times blog. (At least they have blogs, because the Times definitely does not get it with all the subscriber-only content. I can't imagine that they are making more $$ on the subs then they lost on the ad revenue from fewer page views. But I digress...). It's a shame that they are having their promotion handing out "samples" today given the Nor'easter that is blowing through today.

The new condoms, which mimic the subway’s colorful labeling system, are designed to help in survey recall — and by extension, in data gathering after-the-fact. From The A.P.:

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden [said] that the distinctive wrapper will provide the opportunity to include questions about the condom on the city’s annual health survey.

[New York]

ALERT: Profane message stopped

2007-02-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

I got this when trying to send an email to a good friend of mine at her work email. The funny thing is, is that the profane word (sh*t) was in her original email to me (which got through) and therefore, was included when I hit reply. So, the bank's policy deems it unacceptable to receive profane words, but not send them. Pretty funny.

The IT department has automatically stopped an email sent by you to my.friend@her-company.com because it contained profanity. The use of profane language contravenes the company’s email Acceptable Usage Policy.

Teqlo demo

2007-02-12T14:20:00.000-05:00

Jeff Nolan, CEO of Teqlo, gave some of the Enterprise Irregulars a demo today. Teqlo is described as an AppExchange for the web or a Mashup platform. It's focused on business users who want more control over the applications and data they use. Think of "user" here as an Excel power user, or in terms of 3rd party SMB ISVs. In other words, this is not a product aimed at the IT department or the business application developer, but rather the person who will actually be using the end result.
In the demo, Jeff showed us how a user can use the Teqlo platform to construct applications that pull data from 3rd party services. Sure you can do eBay and Google Maps (the pre-requisities for any self respecting mash up company) but also from LinkedIn and partners xIgnite and @Road. For xIgnite, Teqlo has 3 widgets or Teqlets including one that will allow you to do a CUSIP look up.
Jason Corsello asked a question about if Jeff wanted to develop niche-y vertical apps or solutions. Jeff seemed open to the possibility, but reminded us during the demo that Teqlo is still a small company (10 employees) and that "we are on step 5 of 47 steps." While I thought Jason's question was interesting, I had been thinking of this from the point of view of integrating very horizontal services that many SMBs would be interested in. For example, the ability to pull information from an accounting system like Peachtree or QuickBooks and integrate it with information from an excel spreadsheet. (I think Dennis was thinking similiarly because he also asked about SMB apps).
All in all, a pretty impressive demo for what I think is going to be an impressive company. Beta accounts are coming soon and I'm on the list.
[Teqlo][Jeff Nolan][AppExchange][mashup][Enterprise Irregulars]

Oracle continues with merger prowl

2007-02-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

Why this qualifies as news is beyond me....

Oracle is not done with its acquisition spree, especially in niche IT segments across different industries, says company president Charles Phillips.
...Phillips said Oracle's acquisition strategy is still in its early days. "There are many areas in the industry where there are very complicated domain experts in different industries that are not part of a larger software company."

Of course, Oracle is going to continue acquiring (here's a list of acquisitions to date). In the Industry-focused event Oracle had a couple of weeks ago, Phillips showed by industry Oracle's product functionality and said basically wherever they didn't have functionality is where you could expect them to make acquisitions. So if you have a small software company that has functionality in one of the following areas, you might want to give Chuck a call.


Utilities	SCADA
	GIS
	Scheduling/Settlement
	Energy Trading & Risk Mgt

Fin Serv	Customer Channels -Cards
	Customer Channels - Kiosk
	Customer Channels - POS
	Customer Channels - ATM
	Customer Channels - Voice
	Customer Channels - Wireless
	Customer Channels - Smt/Billing
	Customer Channels - Teller
	Credit Analytics
	Fund Management
	Mortgage Operations
	POS/Debit & Credit Card Ops
	Trading/Investment Banking
	Electronic Payments
	Tax - Assessment

Comms	Revenue Assurance
	Fraud Management

Retail
	Space optimization
	Task Management

In addition to filling in industry functionality, Oracle needs to acquire application revenue to continue showing the (non-organic) growth rates that they've been touting. If memory and math serve me, Siebel should be mostly anniversarying this quarter (Oracle Q3 '07 ends Feb 28) and completely by next quarter. I'd reckon Oracle would be looking to pick up about a couple of hundred million in annual application revenue to avoid disappointing the market again. So who's in that area? Manhattan Associates, Ariba; I can think of a couple of others.

Last point is not about acquisitions, but rather what is said about Oracle's competition with Microsoft:

Phillips conceded that Oracle was worried about competition from Microsoft five years ago, but said the situation today has changed. "I think they've got a little defocused in areas that we are in," he said. "We're probably most thankful to Google which has distracted Microsoft."

"Microsoft is now more worried about search, Xboxes, games and other things," he added. "They don't come to the table in the enterprise space like they used to. I don't think they are really that relevant to large companies making enterprise decisions."

I would have imagined that Microsoft might beginning to compete well in the space that JD Edwards plays in. Also, as Dynamics CRM adds something like 50K users a quarter that the Siebel, and Siebel On Demand, folks might be getting a little nervous. And, Microsoft SQL Server "not relevant" in the database market? My sense is that both in capability and in messaging Microsoft applications and database have been moving up market and increasingly playing in Oracle's space. Not to mention if, or maybe when, Oracle gets around to acquiring Larry's On Demand SME play, Microsoft would have to figure into any competitive analysis. For Chuck's sake, I hope that's just messaging and that he's got several smart folks internally keeping an idea on Microsoft.
[Oracle][Charles Phillips][M&A]

Charity Super Bowl wiki

2007-02-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it's a wiki, it's football and it's for charity. Can you really get much better than that? I mean throw in some apple pie and run up the flag.
Charlie O'Donnell who organized the NextNY group started this wiki as a fun way to raise some money for charity. There are still some open spaces , so go ahead and sign up. I would particularly encourage you to sign up if you are not an American and understand absolutely nothing about football; I kid you not, you are exactly the kind of person who ends up winning things like this. Football experts like Jason Wood, who probably built a model before he picked his box, don't stand a chance against you.
In case you're wondering, I'm embracing my inner tree-hugger and am playing for The Nature Conservancy.

[Charlie O'Donnell][Super Bowl wiki][NextNY][Jason Wood]

SAP works to improve the Total Customer Experience

2007-02-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

One of my bosses at SAP, Steve Mann, is doing a lot of the work around improving the customer experience (both around buying and owning). If you're interested in this field, I'd recommend subscribing to his feed.

Today, he wrote about some recent "ethnographic" interviews his group has done. A couple of the feedback items stuck out:

Get to the point - give me the info I need right away and in a no-BS fashion

IMO, the current iterration of the SAP.com website trails both Oracle and Salesforce.com websites in terms of ease of use. SFdC's especially is really easy to use and to find information on. The SAP Developer Network website is a great example of a SAP website that is easy to navigate (not to mention the content is fantastic).

Overall, give us a buyer's view not a technologist views of the world

As all technology companies are wont to do, SAP falls into this trap at times (so do our competitors). It's fundamental that software firms remember that software is a tool, a means to an end. Especially as you move down market (to SMEs) the interest is more in can you solve my problem and less on exactly how you are going to.

I'm glad that SAP in investing resources and good people in addressing the customer experience. By the way, did you have to look up ethnographic? I did.

[Steve Mann][SAP]

Spanning Sync goes beta - overly positive response

2007-01-31T08:40:00.000-05:00

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Charlie Wood announced that Spanning Sync went public beta yesterday.... was promptly overwhelmed by interest (and traffic) and had to close the beta to new users. Being a PC guy, this whole thing is lost on me, but the Mac folks I know are celebrating the Second Coming.

Anyway, if you're an infrastructure vendor, there's an opportunity for you here

So tomorrow morning I'll be looking to beef up our infrastructure in a big way. I don't have time to comparison shop, so I'll be provisioning more hardware from our current provider, ServerBeach. But if another vendor wanted to be the hero in this story, there's a great opportunity. Sun has some kick-ass new servers they're looking to seed startups with, right? Or maybe a regional hosting provider could use some free publicity.

Either way, email me if you have an offer or a suggestion. I'm at charlie.wood@gmail.com and I'll be in the office tomorrow morning at 6:00am CST.

[Charlie Wood][Spanning Sync][iCal]

Enterprise Irregulars Site

2007-01-29T16:24:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed the "Enterprise Irregulars" logo on the righthand side. Rob Boothby of Teqlo explains:

Jeff Nolan helped found a group called the Enterprise Irregulars. First and foremost, it is an online discussion group. The list is invitation only. I was lucky enough to be invited to join a while ago. The back and forth is blunt, rough, funny, opinionated, and usually focused. The focus is enterprise technology and the next generation in software.

Jeff hired me at SAP and was my first boss here. He's now the CEO of Teqlo. He initiated and pushed the idea of blogger relations at SAP and invited bloggers to SAP's user conference. The Irregulars grew out of that. Lest you think SAP gets soft glove treatment, I'd have you know I fought off a 3 pronged attack (a professional one mind you) from Vinnie, Dennis and James about SAP and innovation this morning.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to check out the site www.enterpriseirregulars.com as there is a lot of good and original thought around the enterprise tech space there.

[Enterprise Irregulars][Teqlo][Jeff Nolan][Rod Boothby]

Restaurant Week

2007-01-29T14:39:00.000-05:00

So, it's week 2 of Restaurant, uhh, Week. I'm checking out Megu tonight; three-course prix-fixe dinners for $35.00. Looking forward to it. As you can see from the site, they've got the link to Open Table right there, so making reservations was a breeze.

[Megu][Restaurant Week]

German army recruits SAP

2007-01-26T15:28:00.000-05:00

I had a post last week on Public Sector software activity. Here's another one.

The Federal Armed Forces has agreed to license SAP software for more than 140,000 users...The contract calls for the deployment of the vertical SAP for Defense & Security software and the integration of the company's NetWeaver integration middleware...

[SAP][German Army][SAP for Defense]

Move Over Silicon Valley, Here Come European Start-Ups

2007-01-24T12:28:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in today's Times, but I'm dubious of the claim that "Silicon Valley’s dominance of Internet-style technology innovation is waning" and that Europe is a larger innovation hub. The article points out one of the cultural differences which I think is still significant, "failure is not viewed as a badge of honor, the way it is in Silicon Valley..." While badge of honor may be a bit much, there is certainly less stigma attached to business failure in the US versus on the Continent.
Ironic to note that one of the companies cited to further the theisis, NetVibes, "received a $15.5 million investment from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel Partners" and whose founder "received practical business schooling in Silicon Valley." I don't want to give the impression that I do not believe there is much innovation happening in Europe, and indeed outside of the US in general, but ringing the death knell of Silicon Vally is a bit premature.

One more thing: did you know this? I didn't.
Skype, for example, now says that it carries 4.4 percent of all worldwide long-distance calling.

[Digital Life Design][NetVibes][European Technology]

funny site of the day - ePodunk

2007-01-23T19:36:00.000-05:00

I was looking for some information on a small town (village) where I had done some conservation work with The Nature Conservancy a few years ago, Tolstoi, Manitoba. I laughed out loud when I saw the name of the site. Hilarious.

[Tolstoi Manitoba][The Nature Conservancy]

Go Hybrid (no not talking about the Prius)

2007-01-23T11:13:00.000-05:00

Dennis picked up on this article by Bob Warfield, CEO Callidus Software. Warfield lays out a great argument for why On Demand vs. on premise doesn't have to be a religious debate. Should vendors offer On Demand or on premise? Yes. Should customers go On Demand or on premise? Yes.

What is the right strategy? Go hybrid. That’s the conclusion many established software vendors are coming to. Offering both on-premise and on-demand solutions enables vendors to best meet the immediate and long-term business needs of their customers - and avoids the religious fervor that can sidetrack many sales efforts.

First time this really hit home was last year at the Office 2.o conference when I was listening to Microsoft's Technical Evengelist Don Campbell.
I believe he said something like "the user decides what's online and what's offline." Yes. There are some things I may not want outside the firewall.

Microsoft is pursuing this hybrid path with things such as Sharepoint Server and Excel Services

SAP is also pursuing a hybrid strategy. A great example is the CRM On Demand product. The On Demand version has real time integration with the on premise CRM product (mySAP CRM) as well as the ERP product. Also, if a division or subsidiary wants to start with the On Demand version and later go on premise, it shouldn't be too hard to do so given that the On Demand version is based on the architecture, data model, and user interface of the mySAP CRM application.

[SaaS][On Demand][Bob Warfield][Callidus Software][Hybrid][Don Campbell][Sharepoint Server][Excel Services][SAP CRM On Demand]

MingleNow: Here's to Beer!

2007-01-19T16:43:00.000-05:00

I like beer. Beer being one of the main reasons I now weigh 10+ pounds more than when I began at SAP a little over a year ago. That's why I was so pleased to see this news from Julia French at MingleNow (Julia, like me, has a German mother - we have beer in our genes)

Today MingleNow went public with a partnership with Anheuser-Busch as part of the beer industry's "Here's-to-Beer" marketing initiative. The partnership allows Anheuser-Busch to leverage the social media channel in keeping with the social aspect of beer itself.....It's the first partnership with a social network for Anheuser-Busch....Users photograph themselves "clinking" beer bottles or glasses together with friends, then upload the photos to galleries on MingleNow. (my emphasis)

So let me get this straight, I have to go drink beer with a friend or "friend" and take a picture? Yeah, I can do that. Twist my arm.

Julia made a few more insightful points, "The "Clink" program utilizes the online/offline nature of MingleNow to bring the real-life camaraderie of beer drinking to the Internet. MingleNow is putting the "social" back in social networking by connecting you online with the places you go offline and the people who go there, allowing users to connect with friends, plan parties and events in the real-world with tools in one centralized location on the Web."

On a more serious note, what I find interesting is that a main stream company and huge traditional advertiser is using a social media channel. My sense is that this will, in the eyes of other large, traditional firms, legitimize the medium. Especially given that social media use, I would imagine, correlates nicely with the market that Bud is reaching for.

[MingleNow][Anheuser-Busch][Julia French]

Focus on Public Sector

2007-01-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

I've seen more focus on government sector lately; or at least more press releases, marketing, and quotes).

Saw this article today, Salesforce.com Eyes Public Sector Growth, which in fact talks not only about SFdC's interest in Public Sector, but also RightNow's. And why not, as the article states it's "estimated the federal government's overall technology budget will increase at a 4.4 percent compounded annual growth rate over the next five fiscal years..." Add onto that state and local governments, universities and other non-profits (often considered under the public sector umbrella for tech companies) and you've got an interesting vertical. Although, SFdC's chief strategy officer comes out with the totally objective insight that SaaS "is really the trend for the future," my gut would tell me that SaaS is likely a harder sell than on premise, at least to the federal government. I'm admittedly ignorant in this area, but mightn't there be increased security and privacy regulations, limiting off-site hosting of data, than for private sector customers?

Also, I recall that Larry mentioned Oracle's interest in public sector during the last earnings call: "We see that[referring to telco billing] as a growing business even in areas like government and the government sector, as they go ahead and modernize their systems. We think some of those specific government verticals are going to grow faster than the ERP portion..." Forrester sees Oracle's recent SPL acquisition as a move to compete with SAP in, among others, the public sector.

What about the home team? SAP has also shown an interest in the public sector vertical. A few months ago, SAP collaborated on a white paper with the Center for Technology in Government to develop a framework to determine public ROI of IT programs. Mid last year, SearchSAP.com stated that SAP was experiencing a "boom" in public sector. Recently, SAP had a win in the sector; SAP for Utilities will replace a legacy system at Dallas Water Utilities. Another Texas city, Houston, is also implementing SAP. So plenty going on here too.

[Public Sector][Government][SAP][Oracle][Salesforce.com][SAP for Utilities]

Hey, we did it first - Bloggers credentialed as media by feds

2007-01-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

Seems folks involved with the Libby trial are taking a page out of SAP's blogger relations handbook. Another bit of validation on the role of bloggers in our society. Glad to see it.

For the first time in history, bloggers are credentialed media for district court cases. The Libby trial is one of the most blogged political stories, and now bloggers will see firsthand what is going on behind closed doors.

Interesting to see that a well-know mainstream journalist thought the idea a good one.
Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz believes the bloggers will add an extra dimension to the coverage... "There are some bad apples among the bloggers, but just as fabricators such as Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley aren't typical of newspaper reporters, we shouldn't allow a few reckless bloggers to darken the reputation of all the honest ones," Kurtz told ABC News.

[Social Media][Blogging]

Salesforce.com picks up a "few" seats at Dell; Microsoft ain't asleep either

2007-01-16T20:17:00.000-05:00

Dell Inc. bought Salesforce.com Inc. software for 15,000 of the computer maker's employees, the business software maker said on Tuesday.

First of all: it's NOT software - geez, haven't you seen the buttons? More seriously, this is great news for Salesforce.com -the deal had been rumored for quite a while. To understand the magnitude of this transaction consider this: this deal represents ~25% of the total number of net new subscribers SFdC sold last quarter. Unfortunately, I missed the Apex Seminar in New York last week, but did meet up with Jason Wood after the event for dinner.

However, lest you think that SFdC is the only game in town, Microsoft generated almost $500M in Dynamics license revenue in FY 06 (As Jason points out - most of the Dynamics license growth was attributed to CRM). Mid last year Microsoft claimed to have sold more than 50k Dynamics CRM users in one quarter. That's why today's news that Microsoft will begin previewing, to its partner community, the new multi-tenant version of its CRM, code named Titan (this name is original?) is exciting to me.
The new version introduces an advanced multitenant architecture, and uses a single code base to support on-premise deployments as well as software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments through hosting partners and through the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM service

A couple of other things on Salesforce.com:
- I've heard SFdC is offering, or will offer, a vertical solution for the financial services industry and that they have dedicated financial services vertical support in place.
- Just in time to get me in the mood for my Nature Conservancy Young Professionals Council meeting tomorrow:
the Salesforce.com Foundation, today announced Earthforce -- an initiative to create a carbon neutral salesforce.com in 2007. In taking important key steps in becoming a carbon neutral corporation, the Salesforce.com Foundation will work to neutralize the effect of salesforce.com's corporate greenhouse gas emissions from its major areas of carbon consumption -- its office locations, corporate travel and data centers. This will be done through the strategic purchase of carbon offsets with the help of Clean Air-Cool Planet, NativeEnergy and Conservation International.
- Apex code available for preview by developers:
The preview release of the Apex programming language will enable developers to learn the capabilities of the Apex language, write code and create applications, and provide feedback on Apex's design and capabilities. The developer preview release is currently scheduled to be followed later this year with a beta for salesforce.com customers.

[Salesforce.com][Dell][Microsoft][Dynamics][CRM][Apex][Jason Wood]

Larry's in the mood for Asian tonight

2007-01-12T15:27:00.000-05:00

Flamboyant billionaire Larry Ellison just can't let the Asian thing go. The Oracle boss hasn't been able to unload his imperial Japanese-style mansion -- it can be yours for $16 million

[Social Media]

Yahoo Inc. purchases Orlando's MyBlogLog

2007-01-11T16:29:00.000-05:00

This is pretty cool. The founders are from the next town over from where I grew up. Good to see some Florida tech companies having success. Also, as you can see I use MyBlogLog too.

Internet giant Yahoo Inc. has acquired a small Orlando company, MyBlogLog Inc., a 2-year-old business that provides bloggers with visitor counts for their Web sites and allows them to form communities of like-minded readers.

[Florida][MyBlogLog]

Back on the grid

2007-01-10T19:46:00.000-05:00

Well, my regular blog readers (thanks Mom & Dad) may have noticed I took a bit of a hiatus over the Christmas break. I'm actually not even back in the office yet, but at my folks' house in Florida. Heading back to NYC tomorrow.

I spent 10 days in Argentina, mostly in Buenos Aires, but also a few days in the wine area of Mendoza. If you're not familiar with Argentine wines, they are generally a good value wine. My favorite varietals are Malbec (red) and Torrentés (white). I took a half day tour to two wineries: Lagarde and Terra. Here's a few pics:

From Argentina 06 07

I also took a trip up into the Andes (or past the foothills, but before you get to the really big stuff). Went to the entrance of Aconcagua park. Aconcagua is, as I'm sure you're all aware, the tallest mountain in the Americas. 6900+ meters or over 21,000 feet. Most of the area out there is pretty arid and some of it reminds one of the desert Southwest in the US. More pics for your viewing pleasure:

From Argentina 06 07

I spent most of the time visiting a couple of friends in Buenos Aires. As much as I love New York, I think that Buenos Aires is my favorite city in the world. I say this having lived there during the beginning of a crisis. Currently, Argentina (and especially Buenos Aires) are booming - something like 8% GDP growth for the last 3 years (if my memory and Spanish reading skills are serving me correctly). There are apartment buildings going up everywhere - nice ones too. The kind I could never afford to live in in New York - the kind my investment banking friends don't even live in, well, ok, almost. Not a few of the apts are being bought by foreigners, including Americans.
The place is jammed with US and Brazilian tourists. The Brazilians have always been going there, but the number of Americans was new. When I lived there (98-01) there were few American tourists. The Americans you saw were mostly business people or the occasional fly fisher/hunter in the domestic airport heading south. Not any more, BA has become fashionable. And why not, it's a European-esque city where you can have a fantastic meal at literally a 1/3 of the price it would cost you in New York.

Here's a pic of me on New Years Eve at my friend's weekend house - we had a traditional Argentine asado:

From Argentina 06 07

My Argentine friends were pressing me to move back telling me how well I could live on my US$ salary. I can imagine; I lived well when I lived there and I earned a 1/3 or less of what I do now. (It also seems to have gotten safer than when I was there 3 years ago. My friends were comfortable with me taking taxis, something they discouraged 3 years ago.)

It got me thinking about this whole idea of "location arbitrage" that I read about in Life 2.0. Someone left this book lying around the office and I picked it up. The basic idea as I understood it of this type of arbitrage is to earn coastal US salaries while living in low cost areas. It talks a lot about folks who worked for years in the Valley or in New York, but then went back to Iowa or Minnesota and kept earning about the same amount, but bought huge houses etc and had much better commutes and more family time. Now, I'm greatly simplifing the premise, but it does make sense. SAP is a pretty virtual company and I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't move back to Florida (Orlando or even Miami) or to a lower cost tech hub (Austin - hang out with Charlie and Cote, or Raleigh). I even played around with one of those cost-of-living calculators and looked at some real estate sites. Needless to say, I could probably live "very well" in Raleigh or Orlando. I'm defining "very well" as in I could afford to buy a nice place, pay less tax, have more disposable income etc. However, as a single, still young-ish, guy, and for a lot of intangibles, I don't think I could get myself to leave New York (or maybe San Francisco) just yet. Anyway, it was an interesting thought process and I feel good about where I live (at least until I talk to my buddies in Florida who are paying less for their mortgage then I am for my much smaller apt). But, back to reality....

I'm going to start back on my regular posting schedule now and will go back to mostly software/tech topics - so if you want any more vacation photos, ping me and i'll send you a link.

Happy New Year!