Future of SAP and SuccessFactors Consulting 2016 – SAP HCM (Part 1)
It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015. This year we will be splitting the report into a three-part series with Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Core HR, […]
Workday: Linking technology design and user experience
Workday is among the most high-profile examples of a new breed of enterprise software, based completely in the cloud. Started by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, who led PeopleSoft prior to the acquisition by Oracle, Workday is now a public company. As part of the CxOTalk series of conversations with innovators, we spoke with Workday’s Chief Technology Officer, Stan […]
Space Invasion @ Dreamforce
Last year I made a bit of fun of Oracle, picking on the symbolism in their closed, walled conference setup vs. the open festival-like environment at Salesforce.com’s competing event. Here’s a little pictorial reminder: Dreamforce did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick. Fun. Contrast that to Oracle’s […]
Avoid expensive roadblocks with rapid enterprise software implementations
Long and expensive enterprise software deployments are no longer an acceptable option for most organizations. In response to difficult economic conditions, shrinking IT budgets, and users who expect instant results from technology, the enterprise software industry has shifted toward smaller, more focused implementations. It is time to stop the roadblocks caused by long implementations! Image […]
The Rise of the Cloud Stack
Something changed this week in the enterprise software world. In an industry known for ruthless competition, a number of players – Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and NetSuite – introduced partnerships that portend a very different future. In very un-Larry Ellison-like fashion, something akin to harmony was proposed, “when customers choose cloud applications, they expect rapid low-cost […]
Enterprise software and the curse of vendor sameness
Enterprise software vendors talk in pithy, some would say pseudo-sophisticated, language designed to impress prospects, customers, and influencers in the market. Almost all enterprise vendors use terms like the following as symbols to convey broader meaning, despite offering little or no content to the reader: Time to value Continuous innovation Accelerated solutions Big data Mobile first Increase […]
Massive Java Update available you should apply it
And you should do this update; Oracle has finally gotten around to pushing a massive 50 vulnerability fixing update to Java. The bad part is that most of us have decoupled Java from our browsers, and I am wondering if this is too little too late. With Mozilla (Firefox) dropping Java support from its browser […]
BATNA, And Oracle’s $811m Purchase of Eloqua
It may seem strange to see Oracle acquire Eloqua for $811m just a few months after their IPO. But it’s not strange at all. I am 95% sure talks at some level were going on for quite some time, long before the IPO. And 80% sure, a soft offer of less than $500m or […]
A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more)
Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it […]
Why Competition Is So Bitter in SaaS: Oligopolies and Dominant Strategy Equilibriums
Perhaps the oddest thing about the Apple-Google “go thermonuclear” strategy to SaaS guys is that it is so odd at all. Competition-to-the-almost-death seems the norm in SaaS. Just look at Larry Ellison or Marc Benioff. You can see the blood lust in their eyes, in every speech, in a way you never really saw/see in […]
The Workday IPO and ‘F You Money
The other day, a VC asked me about a founder he was thinking of investing in. He asked me if this founder had, quote, ‘F You Money. {I learned how this was spelled when a Businessweek article this week used the term, btw}. I wasn’t really sure if he meant this as a negative, but […]
Questions To Ponder: Services World And Integrated Stacks
I have decided to start a new series called “Questions To Ponder” which I will push out on some Fridays. The idea is to take a controversial topic and ask a few relevant questions so that CloudAve readers can ponder about it on their weekend. The first in this series is about the role of […]
What really is Open Source Software and what’s this community nonsense they ask…
Open Source Software (OSS), Why Some Fail At It OSS has won the war. It has been over for years now. Microsoft has ceded, Oracle, VMware and many others have stepped up and attempted to embrace the open source community. Sometimes they’ve been successful, sometimes they haven’t. They’re slowly changing their models to play well […]
Adam & Krishan Got Me Motivated Today… to toss the trash conversations
I was speaking with Krishan Subramanian (@krishnan) and Adam Seligman (@adamse) today. I love talking to these guys. They’re both smart, intelligent and upbeat guys. They see the positive things we’re all working toward and accomplishing in the technology space, specifically around PaaS, Cloud Computing and around the cultural implications of stronger technology communities, involvement …
CAMP: Will It Be Relevant?
Last week at CloudOpen 2012, a group of vendors in the platforms space announced a new set of specifications to help simplify management of applications in the public and private clouds. Called CAMP, these specifications are submitted to OASIS to develop it as an industry standard. The initial reaction from the industry and some cloud […]
