Rethinking IT Transformation for the Cloud
As cloud computing matures and success models emerge, enterprises are now getting serious about using cloud to drive IT transformation. JP Morgan Chase, Toyota, GE and other leading organizations are moving beyond incremental costs savings and are using cloud and next generation platforms to drive innovation, growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately many CIOs and their […]
SaaS Marketing | Accelerating Customer Acquisition
Tweet Me! SaaS marketing professionals know that customer acquisition is the name of the game. What they generally don’t know is that sustainable SaaS growth requires accelerating customer acquisition. In the long run, acquiring more customers is not enough. Your SaaS marketing strategy must aim to acquire more customers, faster. Otherwise, churn wins and you […]
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 […]
An Initial Sales Rep Comp Plan to Lower Your Stress Level, Increase Cash, and Make Everyone a Lot of Money
I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. In my first start-up, yes I sold to the enterprise. I sold $6m our first year (man, that sounds good looking back on it). But I did all the sales myself, and […]
Why "Enterprise SaaS" may soon be a misnomer
One of the most exciting developments to hit the enterprise software world in decades was the rise of SaaS. Companies like Salesforce.com blazed a trail that built enormous amounts of wealth and improved the lives of end-users. Prior to SaaS, most enterprise software was sold based on perpetual licenses, to CIOs and IT departments, with […]
Enterprise May Be Sexy, But….
On the very same day Salesforce.com acquires Exact Target in their largest ever transaction valued at $2.5B, TechMeme’s top news is crazy gamers dropped by even crazier gamers…
Enterprise startups against the big guys: CxO Talk 7
On CxO Talk, episode 7, co-host Vala Afshar (absent this week due to travel) and I welcome venture capitalist Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos is senior managing director at Trident Capital, where he invests in late stage and growth companies, with a focus on enterprise applications. Here is the entire video conversation: The conversation starts with the venture […]
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 […]
One of the Biggest Mistakes Enterprise Startups Make
The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. “We want low-touch or zero-touch businesses” was the mantra. I believe it’s flawed. While I have some sympathy with […]
VMware vs. Amazon … ROUND TWO … FIGHT! — VMW Conceding Impotence?
Two and a half years ago I wrote about the inevitable throwdown between VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS), but recently VMware’s senior leadership appeared to outright admit defeat. The message to VMware’s partners was simple: “We want to own corporate workload,” said Pat Gelsinger, VMware’s CEO. “We all lose if they end up in […]
Big Data | Thinking Outside the Firewall
A few months back, Gartner placed big data at the peak of its hype cycle for cloud computing, meaning most big data products are solutions looking for a problem. I always find this bad entrepreneurial habit to be one of the most frustrating of our industry. Having recently joined Meltwater as head of marketing and […]
Engine Yard Differentiates through Control and Choice
I kind of feel sorry for Engine Yard sometime – once seen as one of the two best-known Platform as a Service offerings (alongside Heroku), the acquisition of Heroku by Salesforce kind of reduced Engine Yard’s visibility. The subsequent release of Cloud Foundry, and the significant uptake it has had in the marketplace have further […]
Chartio Supporting Salesforce–Pretty for the Enterprise
Two themes I often talk about are specific functionality from specialist vendors and delivering enterprise solutions in new and friendly ways. A good example of this I came across recently was from small company Chartio. Chartio, a Y Combinator company, touts itself as the best interface for data. Essentially it allows organizations to take data […]
Bridging the Chasm Between IT and the Business
People go to great lengths to explain how cloud computing is democratizing IT and enabling the end-users of technology to make some decisions themselves about what they use, how they use it and how quickly they can get set up. A plethora of enterprise vendors have got their start in
Acquisition News – Cloud Sherpas Broadens the Franchise and Moves Into ITSM
I’ve been covering Cloud Sherpas since its inception – I’m particularly interested in this new breed of services brokerage that is proving successful despite deriving its revenue from a small sliver of a very small annual charge – this in comparison to the traditional on-premise world where companies enjoyed massive consulting fees for implementation project […]
