Doing the DataBeat
For the past two years, Ben Kepes and I have helped the team at VentureBeat assemble the programme for their annual Cloud Computing event, CloudBeat. It looks as though we may end up doing something similar with them this year, as CloudBeat moves from Redwood City to downtown San Francisco, and from November to September. [...]
The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2013
It has been an extremely eventful year for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors since a group of us collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM Consulting and SuccessFactors and a lot of people continue to reach out to me trying to understand what lies ahead in the overall consulting market. My thoughts are we are in the early [...]
CxO Talk: Gartner says ‘provide and pray’ collaboration won’t work
On CxO Talk this week (episode five), co-host Vala Afshar and I talk with Mark P. McDonald, who is group vice president and a Fellow at research firm, Gartner. The conversation ranges from merely fascinating to fully electric, so I urge you to the watch the entire video. CxO Talk episode five is a powerhouse of information [...]
CxO Talk: Can a CIO and CMO be friends?
In episode four of CxO Talk, co-host Vala Afshar and I talk with Steve Mann, chief marketing officer (CMO) at LexisNexis, and Phil Komarny, chief information officer (CIO) at Seton Hill University. The discussion includes an insider’s look at the CIO and CMO roles, along with advice for technology vendors selling to senior executives. Steve [...]
The 48 Types of VP Sales. Make Deadly Sure You Hire the Right One.
Oy, the VP of Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate. I want to help. So this is the third in our series. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. So you expect the right things, and hire your rockstar at the right time to do the right [...]
The Evolution of the Networked Enterprise: New McKinsey Research
McKinsey just released some more research on the use of social and collaborative technologies within the enterprise. Not surprisingly they found that adoption levels are continuing to climb and are almost double what they were in 2009. The more important finding from the research they conducted was that organizations are moving beyond the experimentation phase with many [...]
Deploycon, PaaS & the pending data tier gravity fallout…
For a quick recap of last years Deploycon & related talks, check out my “Day #3 => DeployCon && Enterprise && Data Gravity” entry from last year. PaaS Systems aren’t always effectively distributed. Heroku has fallen over every time east-1 has gone down at AWS. Not that I’m saying they’ve done bad, just pointing that [...]
Thrive For Precision Not Accuracy
Jake Porway who was a data scientist at the New York Times R&D labs has a great perspective on why multi-disciplinary teams are important to avoid bias and bring in different perspective in data analysis. He discusses a story where data gathered by Über in Oakland suggested that prostitution arrests increased in Oakland on Wednesdays [...]
Day 1: Who Should Be CEO? A Checklist.
SaaStr has now passed 100+ posts, and we’ve somewhat gone on a journey from the early days of a SaaS company, through the growth phases, and as of our last post, up to the Unstoppable phase. We’re not quite done with that journey but if you’ll forgive me going back in time, I wanted to [...]
Enterprise startup lessons from Muhammad Ali
During conversation with Christian Gheorghe, CEO of startup analytics vendor Tidemark Systems, I raised the issue of competition with established vendors. Tidemark’s product includes a real-time display, called Storylines, which allows ordinary users to interact easily with deep business data; it’s the kind of thing destined to attract competition from the large vendors. Also read: Larry Dignan’s ZDNet article on [...]
How the Bell System Missed the Internet – Part 1 of 8
One of the more fascinating twists and turns in corporate history is how the Bell System missed developing the internet. What follows is the story of ACS in 8 parts (in 8 days). It could have owned the internet, except for NIH (Not Invented Here.) In the mid 1970s I worked at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel New [...]
The $64,000,000 Question: When Things Become Unstoppable
A little while back, a VC asked me what I thought of a prospective mid/late stage investment. I was/am reasonably familiar with this company as it is adjacent to EchoSign. My answer was, well, I’d probably pass — certainly at the valuation (12x+ ARR). I said the product was ooooold and the platform dated, the [...]
CxO Talk: Microsoft, salesforce.com, CRM, and the science of hugging
This week’s episode of CxO Talk, with my co-host Vala Afshar, features top CRM analyst, Paul Greenberg, as our guest. Paul is widely known as the “godfather of CRM” and is a contributor to ZDNet. Here are important topics from the discussion: On Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Microsoft held its annual Convergence conference in New Orleans [...]
Blueprint to Re-Cycle the much Hyped MagiK Kvadrant
Fellow Enterprise Irregular and HfS Research Founder Phil Fersht introduced their new Blueprint with an appropriate title: Step aside Magic Quadrant, hello Blueprint. I think such a milestone warrants a historical overview of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Hype Cycle, Magic Cycle, Magic Hype, Hyped Magik… or any other variation you prefer. And since it’s just a few [...]
When Big Companies Can Kill You. And When They Can’t.
I remember every day, every moment, of both my start-ups with hyper-lucidity. But a few moments especially stand out. Those times when BigCo calls you up to their fancy office, and tells you they are going to enter your space and kill you. It happened to me twice at EchoSign. I’m not going to share [...]
