
My Thoughts on SuccessFactors Employee Central
I recently had the opportunity to spend a week in Las Vegas attending the HR Technology Conference and SuccessFactors SuccessConnect and during that time had lots of in-depth discussions with analysts, customers and fellow consultants. One of the SAP/SuccessFactors products I got asked the most about was Employee Central, which is the SuccessFactors Core HRMS offering. Here are […]

PDX Cloud – A Question Posed.
I attended the PDX Cloud meeting to present, but more to ask a question. Here’s how I posed that question (slide deck at the bottom of this blog entry). I frame the scenario of the distributed development world of cloud computing, dive into the vertical world of enterprise dev and then throw down the big […]

Cloud Computing for CFOs: The next $10 Billion Industry
Customer-centricity is the new black. The trend is evident across every industry, and there are no shortage of examples demonstrating how service-oriented businesses like Zappos and Rackspace that form lasting relationships with customers are outperforming competitors — including several incumbents and industry heavyweights— that miscalculated customers’ willingness (desire?) to choose an alternative provider. One critical […]

Enterprise PaaS Is About Making Money, Not Saving It
I’ve written before about how the ‘deploy and scale’ demo of PaaS is really just a superficial illustration of its potential. It functionally buckets PaaS with automation tools like Chef or Puppet which probably does both a disservice. One of the key benefits of running enterprise PaaS at scale is incredible insight it gives you […]

Make smart business decisions like a picky consumer
As a consumer, you have choices for everything right at your fingertips. You decide it’s a “healthy” day so you substitute a salad for the fries. Or at Starbucks, when a plain latte just won’t cut it, you order a grande, double pump caramel, soy latte. In the consumer world, you don’t have to sacrifice […]

Who are you, Cloud Broker?
Cloud brokers were recognized and described by Gartner analysts as the `Intermediary services that support fast cloud adoption`. From their customers’ perspectives cloud brokers are the system integrators (SI) or the `cloud enablers` that support fast adoption and maintenance of cloud technologies. For example, the independent software vendor (ISV) can benefit greatly from a cloud […]

HR Technology Conference and Special Discount Code
The 16th Annual HR Technology Conference will be in Las Vegas, at the Mandalay Bay, from October 7th to October 9th and it is regularly considered the premier event for HR professionals, HR Technologists, consultants and customers. There are 43 in-depth sessions, great keynote speakers, over 250 vendors, networking events and 20 live one-hour demos by most of […]

Truth about the SAP HCM Customer Connection Program
In February of 2012, SAP announced that it was replacing the defunct Development Request (DRQ) process, which had long been ineffective, with a new ASUG support Customer Connection Program. The programs goal was to allow customers to submit smaller improvements, and assuming they got the minimum support of five other customers, that SAP would review, […]

You Can’t Automate Your Way to the Cloud
When racing to execute a ‘cloud’ strategy, it can be very tempting for IT organizations to try and automate their way to the cloud. A key benefit of the cloud is operational efficiency. We know that humans are error prone and costly, which makes automation such an enticing solution. Add to this the fact that […]

Unpicking the multi-cloud at GigaOM Structure
Image © Mission Bay Conference Center Last month, RightScale’s State of the Cloud report got me thinking about the rise of multi-cloud solutions. Next month, I’ll be moderating a Mapping Session at GigaOM’s Structure event to work out how, where, when, why and if this trend is going to prove significant. Hybrid clouds, in which one […]

Using Bosh to Bootstrap Cloud Foundry via Stark & Wayne Consulting
I finally sat down and really started to take a stab at Cloud Foundry Bosh. Here’s the quick lowdown on installing the necessary bits and getting an initial environment built. Big thanks out to Dr Nic @drnic, Luke Bakken & Brain McClain @brianmmcclain for initial pointers to where the good content is. With their guidance […]

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 […]

Who is to blame when a SAP Payroll Project Fails
There have been several high profile SAP Payroll failures over the past few years in the United States at places such as the State of California, National Grid, Kentucky Government, City of Portland, LA School District, City of San Diego, California Judicial Council, Marin County and an epic train wreck happening down under at Queensland […]

Three Cloud Visionaries in 2012
2012 is over and blogosphere is buzz with post-mortem and predictions. I thought I will jump in and write about three people in the cloud computing space who inspired me with the work they are doing. Let me make it clear that there are many others who had an impact in the space but these […]

CIO strategy: Be relevant or die
Cloud, social, and mobile computing have transformed the technology landscape. Here are tips to help you remain relevant in these changing times.