FinancialForce 2012 Release–Delivering a Loosely Coupled Set of Solutions
Nicely timed to coincide with next week’s DreamForce conference comes the summer 2012 release from FinancialForce, the cloud accounting company that is both part owned by Salesforce, and built upon the force.com platform. While product announcements tend to be a little ho-hum, this one is interesting since it comes from
TechCrunch Wrote a Post, Oracle got Pissy. Sigh
So Alex Williams (a great guy, good friend and awesome cloud pundit) wrote a post a week or two ago entitled “Why The Open Cloud Wins And Oracle Loses When IT Gets Virtualized.” (subtle huh?) Oracle wasn’t overly happy at Alex’s comments and counter posted saying that “TechCrunch is Clueless about Oracle Cloud.” So… some [...]
Why Cloud ERP? Cutesy Video
The cutesy video above was created by SAP, the first part talking about the benefits of Cloud ERP, the integrated approach in general, and while the last minute turns into a SAP Business ByDesign pitch, it could very well be viewed as overall industry promotion, applicable to archrival NetSuite, and to some extent Workday, and [...]
Cloud ERP Starts to Break Out–NetSuite Reports Good Numbers
Last week NetSuite reported it’s Q2 revenue and earnings – high level numbers include: Subscription and support revenue was $61.0 million, a 27 percent increase on an annual basis Cash flows from operations were $15.2 million, up by 80 percent from Q2 2011 While the specific numbers themselves are of vague interest, and more so [...]
Seven Tips for Selecting a Cloud Implementation Services Provider
Here are seven ideas to help you choose a professional services company for your cloud implementation.
Microsoft Buys Yammer- A Two Minute Analysis
So Microsoft has confirmed the rumored acquisition of Yammer for $1.2B. Here’s my thoughts; Potentially this is a great opportunity for MSFT to create a fabric that spans their different enterprise products (Dynamics, Office, SharePoint) that’s a big big opportunity but I believe technology and platform hurdles will push that possibility well into the future [...]
Social – An Enterprise Overlay, or an Enterprise Fabric?
On a recent trip to San Francisco I spent talking with both salesforce and NetSuite people about their approach and general view of “social” as it relates to enterprise software. I call out these two vendors because while both are cloud-centric enterprise software companies, they have very different views on social. In fact, salesforce and [...]
SAP, SuccessFactors, Ariba and the Brave new World of Mobile, Social and Cloud
Recently I spent a day in Sydney attending an Analyst day that was held alongside Successfactor’s SuccessConnect user conference [disclosure – Successfactors covered my travel and accommodation to attend the briefing]. Other than a few email and twitter conversations, it was the first deep conversation I’d had with folks from
The Rise of Two Tier ERP and Larry Ellison’s NetSuite Intentions
A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco for a few days for NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference [Disclosure: NetSuite funded my travel and accommodation to attend]. One of the announcements at SuiteWorld was that of CTO Evan Goldberg who talked about “Multi Book Accounting”, as my colleague Phil Wainewright explains; [multi book accounting is] for [...]
SAP Assembles Cloud Powerhouse with Ariba, SuccesFactors Acquisitions
Emphasis on “assemble”, as opposed to develop. For years SAP and Oracle fought a religious war of acquire/assemble vs develop in-house. SAP’s view was (even under the current Co-CEOs) that you can only get to a coherent, seamlessly integrated suite by development. Apparently they have changed religion, borrowing a chapter or two from Larry Ellison’s [...]
SuiteCommerce and the Value of End To End
At the NetSuite SuiteWorld event recently the company announced SuiteCommerce an end-to-end solution that ties back end ERP functionality with customer facing e-commerce solutions that are optimized across any endpoint – desktop, mobile, tablet etc. It’s a compelling proposition and one which continues the theme of tying together similar services to provide a complete solution for [...]
NetSuite Welcomes SAP as Customer, even while SAP Swaps it for ByD
NetSuite is no stranger to aggressive marketing, and SAP has clearly been their #1 target for a while starting from pranks like the SAP for the Rest of Us Party during SAPPHIRE 2006 to staging a shootout at the anti-SAP Conference or releasing edgy videos a’la Mac vs Windows and even launching a Business ByNetsuite [...]
Zuora Partners With a Host of Mid Market Financial Vendors
In my extensive writing around the subscription billing space, I have often noted that it is a very polarized sector of our industry with a handful of well funded companies providing services for large organizations – Zuora, Vindicia and Aria fit in this space. These companies are maneuvering for position
More SaaS Integration from MuleSoft
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past few months talking with businesses trying to wrangle the integration of different applications. Despite lots of APIs, the cloud, mobile devices, the democratization of IT and many other current themes, application integration is still hard, painful and requires a far higher level of technical nous [...]
SuiteWorld-Looking Back, Looking Forwards
Next week sees me winging my way, albeit briefly, to San Francisco to take part in the annual NetSuite user conference, SuiteWorld. It will be the third time I’ve been to the event, and it’s always a great chance to catch up with colleagues, talk with NetSuite customers and partners,
