Four keys to Business Intelligence success

Our (so far) modest BI undertakings at Westminster have very much been joint efforts between IT and everyone else. I’ve helped to define the overall project while individual departments have partnered with an IT person to implement what they need. I have personally handled some of the dashboard development as well, but again, this is in partnership with others. As the CIO, I do have a very good understanding of what key performance indicators are considered by our president to be critical information, and I’ve worked with the departments responsible for the work that generates those metrics to make sure that the information we’re pulling is accurate and current. Before we put a new metric onto an “official” dashboard, we vet that data carefully. Nothing is worse than making decisions based on bad data!

Here are four keys to success that I feel must be in place for BI to succeed:

* The organization needs to make BI a well-known and resourced priority.
* While the CIO has (and probably should have) primary responsibility for these kinds of efforts, the CIO is far from alone in determining overall initiative success. An understanding by all involved that BI is not an “IT project” but is, instead, a “business project” is essential.
* Business unit leaders must be willing to work with the CIO to make sure their areas are well-represented and those leaders - or someone in their area - must have the expertise necessary to understand their data and extrapolate appropriate metrics.
* The organization must be willing to appropriately react based on the information gleaned from the BI system. If, for example, data begins to clearly point to a drying up of the market, the organization needs to be willing to not stick its head in the sand. If this is the reaction, why use BI at all?

Pay as You Go: SaaS Business Intelligence and Data Management

It seems you can’t pick up an IT magazine, read a technical or business blog or attend a business intelligence (BI) conference without hearing about software as a service (SaaS) and the new model of software delivery. SaaS was used initially by small to medium businesses, but it is now being adopted more and more by large multinational corporations. Today we have a plethora of examples of SaaS companies serving all sizes of businesses. Each has focused on helping their subscribers transform the way they do business, changing the way they bought or sold items, and giving them alternatives to standard in-house IT environments.

We define SaaS as:
“A software delivery model where a vendor hosts, operates and manages a software service for use by its clients on a paid subscription basis. SaaS can be used to support operational, BI and collaborative processing for use over the Internet or, in some cases, an extranet.”

This article is an excerpt from our research paper on SaaS business intelligence entitled “Pay as You Go: SaaS Business Intelligence and Data Management.” This research was sponsored by five vendors who provide SaaS BI and data management solutions. Following are short synopses of the case studies. Longer, more detailed versions can be found in the full report that will be available later this month on the BeyeNETWORK's research site, BeyeRESEARCH.

eSupply Systems (Solution provided by Blink Logic)
In today’s economy, more and more people are renting their homes rather than buying them, and turnover can be high. When an apartment becomes available, property management companies must respond quickly and cost-effectively to make the rental property suitable for the next tenant. In addition, these companies must clean the hallways, gardens, pools and other general areas on an ongoing basis. Indeed MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) activities comprise a multibillion dollar industry.

Unfortunately, this process can be fraught with miscalculated charges for supplies and services. Additionally, it is often difficult to appropriately allocate the costs of the maintenance for a particular apartment if more than one is being prepared for re-rental. Helping these companies determine whether a property’s maintenance is being performed appropriately is the mission of eSupply Systems.

eSupply Systems provides web-based maintenance supply chain support through a cost-effective ecommerce platform using a SaaS-based BI offering from Blink Logic to give property managers actionable information on their maintenance activities. The analytical system provides large residential management companies the ability to:

* Analyze their overall spending

* Compare property-to-property expenses to better understand where efficiencies could be made

* Find out who was spending too much or too little

* Determine trends of spending by particular geographic areas

* Estimate what the costs should be for a prospective property

eSupply Systems has certainly seen great value in their SaaS-based MRO offering and specifically the analytics and reporting provided by Blink Logic’s BI solution. Not only did it take minimal effort and time, but also the easy and accessible nature of the web-based application is very appealing to their less technologically savvy property management customers.

Red Roof Inns (Solution provided by Host Analytics)
In 1973, Red Roof opened its first inn in the company’s headquarters of Columbus, Ohio. Over the years, the company has grown significantly to 345 hotels in 39 states serving millions of guests each year. Throughout its growth, the management team has remained focused on ensuring the company’s leadership position in its market. That focus has accelerated in the current economic downturn.

In September 2007, Red Roof began the process of separating from its former parent organization, Accor North America. A budgeting application was needed by each business unit in the company; but, unfortunately, one was not included in the transfer of technology. This did not stop the need for budgets to be developed for 2009. This meant that the corporate office had to come up with its own from scratch and in a very short amount of time – without IT help! It fell to the finance department to create the budgeting application in only a matter of a few months. They turned toHost Analytics and its SaaS corporate performance management (CPM) solution.

Data is loaded monthly into the CPM system from an Oracle financial system, the company’s budgets and forecasts are then updated, and the results sent back to the Oracle system. Significant validation and restructuring of the original parent company data was required, and the support and help from Host Analytics was invaluable.

There were several advantages that contributed to the success of the solution:

* Business users found the MS Excel-like interface easy to use and quick to learn

* Host Analytics’ CPM solution comes with prebuilt solution templates

* Red Roof employees can also create their own specialized templates

* The ability to quickly estimate every expense and revenue for every property

* Host Analytics resources met every deadline and made customizations quickly at no additional costs

Red Roof’s financial department has managed to implement a sophisticated budgeting solution quickly and efficiently by choosing the Host Analytics SaaS offering. Ease of use, flexibility, no maintenance or upgrade activities, Excel-like capabilities via a web-based interface and a customer-focused vendor are just a few of the characteristics that made for a successful project and happy customer.

Segmetrix (Solution provided by Kognitio)
Segmetrix is a business consultancy that turns complex data into true intelligence through their product, Match2Lists. The company provides an integrated analytical, data management and planning solution that gives its customers (large corporations in the business-to-business [B2B] space) a real competitive advantage. Its solutions capture large volumes of customer and financial data, available from both internal and external sources, and transforms it through sophisticated algorithms into execution-ready information. Segmetrix clients then use this information to improve their B2B sales, marketing and financial operations.

Segmetrix’ strategists and technical personnel also perform their own analytics on the data to improve the financial results and marketing behaviors of their clients. They help customers apply and utilize business intelligence in their business context rather than simply implementing the BI environment for the clients and leaving. Segmetrix’ expertise in best practices and data-driven execution helps clients to develop, implement and monitor integrated sales and marketing strategies.

Segmetrix turned to Kognitio to provide an integrated analytical, data management and planning data warehouse as a service (DaaS) infrastructure using WX2 RDBMS to store integrated, easily accessible data. The data is trickle fed into the data warehouse in mini-batches, thus providing low latency data for analyses. Now their clients receive the data, visual analytics, insights, and strategic and execution plans. These clients can determine:

* How well they are performing within the context of their markets

* Potential opportunities available to them

* Where and when they need to spend resources for marketing and sales activities

* Companies they should acquire

* Customers they should up-sell and with what products

* Marketing campaigns that are working and sales structures that have missed their targets

* Compensation plans that have worked

Segmetrix has learned that by using Kognitio’s DaaS solution it is free to focus on its true core competency: providing sophisticated analytics, insights and guidance to its B2B clients. Having a predictable environment that is easy to use, is cost-effective, returns results rapidly and is simple to scale up or down means it has a significant competitive advantage over other consultancies offering similar solutions through more traditional means.

Distribution Market Advantage (Solution provided by PivotLink)
How do hospitals, schools, and large restaurant and hotel chains get food service items to their individual facilities in a timely manner? Usually it is done through a sophisticated network of distributors like Distribution Market Advantage, Inc. (DMA). DMA is a national food service distribution company that delivers supply chain solutions for well-known multiunit restaurant and institutional customers. The company is a cooperative whose owners consist of several regional distributors. DMA needed a system to streamline the process of getting products from the manufacturers to its distributor facilities and, ultimately, to its customers’ locations.

DMA’s technology platform, e-Advantage provides food service operators with industry-leading order entry, data analytics, inventory visibility and price verification tools. The company needed to add a BI capability to the e-Advantage system to improve reporting to its clients. They had significant supply chain management expertise, but limited knowledge of business intelligence so they selected PivotLink’s SaaS BI system to complement their data warehouse (built by another SaaS vendor). PivotLink provided a pure-web based solution (with no plug-ins or downloaded controls) that could be branded with DMA’s own logos

Now, DMA’s clients can access data from the low-level transaction detail to high-level aggregates. The application supplies reports that are universally utilized by everyone, but each customer also has the ability to develop their own customized reports. Through the solution, they can:

* Change fields to fit their vocabulary

* Create aggregated reports

* Add new parameters

* Create specific customer folders to house these customized reports

PivotLink satisfies the more technical users as well by offering complex features that allow them to perform complicated analytics. Within PivotLink, DMA sets up customized reports to be automatically delivered via email in a variety of output formats specifically for users who might be intimidated by the application.

Like any business with low margins, the ability to control costs is critical. DMA has managed this by giving its distributors and customers invaluable insight into overall supply chain management. The tangible and intangible benefits from these insights have been significant and have increased everyone’s satisfaction with DMA.

RapidAdvance (Solution provided by SAP BusinessObjects)
In today’s economic crunch, staying in business means you must have access to money; but with credit getting tighter, many companies are finding the availability of cash scarce. Where can they get money to buy new inventory, invest in new equipment, bolster them for a seasonal trend, pay off a short-term debt, deal with emergency funding or any of myriad other cash needs?

Enter RapidAdvance. The company provides business capital in the form of an unsecured cash advance for any business need, allowing its customers to expand their businesses. The company operates as a specialty finance business for small to mid-sized businesses that use credit cards in their business. Their customers simply pay the cash advance back through a percentage of their future credit card sales.

Due to the nature of their cash advance requirements, RapidAdvance must understand its customers in a timely manner to determine which companies are suitable for these advances. Unfortunately they had silos of information, data quality concerns and limited analytical information through the usage of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and manual reporting. RapidAdvance needed to create a scalable and automated reporting solution in seven weeks but with limited IT resources. To do this, they chose SAP BusinessObjects crystalreports.com SaaS solution that was used in conjunction with RapidAdvance’s existing Salesforce.com SaaS deployment.

The implementation team (only three people) was able to immediately recreate dozens of the manually maintained reports in the crystalreports.com application without the assistance of additional staff or IT support. Everything was pushed to the web for access; and once a report was created, it was automated and distributed to the appropriate employees.

The team has expanded upon this beginning with substantially more reports, an enhanced layer of security, the addition of more internal and external users, the creation of more complex analyses and all of the company’s deal pricing models. RapidAdvance now has close to 1,000 reports used both internally or externally. All reports are automatically delivered via the web to employees, partners, etc. And these are still being produced and maintained by the original small team.

RapidAdvance has leveraged these reports to improve its overall business by:

* Reporting on deal and underwriting statuses to its external partners

* Providing commission reporting

* Analyzing portfolios

* Generating internal management reports for in-house usage

* Generating account status and risk levels

* Creating virtual due diligence reports for investors to review on site

RapidAdvance has implemented a sophisticated reporting and analytical environment for its executives, employees and partners. The short implementation time, cost-effective nature of SaaS solutions, flexibility in the creation of reports and analytics, and crystalreports.com’s ability to expand as the company does were decisive to the overall success of this solution. With crystalreports.com in place, RapidAdvance can now focus on running a profitable and growing business.
Summary
The case studies gave us great insight into the need for and benefits from SaaS implementations in the business intelligence area. We discovered two predominant uses for SaaS: business-specific BI applications focusing at present on customer-facing solutions and larger scale data warehousing and BI projects.

We also gathered fascinating information from a survey we ran. From it, we found that nearly 60% of the respondents were either already using or planning to use SaaS BI and data management solutions. They cited the low cost of the solutions and their faster implementation times as the top two reasons for choosing these solutions. Almost as popular was the business focus, not IT focus, of these solutions and their easy maintenance. Our survey uncovered concerns about SaaS implementations as well with the need to understand the SaaS approach, integration with existing IT systems and security concerns leading the way.

Finally, from our case studies as well as from the SaaS vendors themselves, we discovered significant information regarding the relationship and level of involvement between the two parties. It is important for SaaS customers to remain involved with the future of the SaaS company in terms of giving direction to the technological road map, providing input into trouble areas, and demonstrating new ways for using the application’s features and functions. In return, the vendors should supply their customers with input into the technological directions of the company as well – that is to their benefit as much as it is to their customers.

Tips For Collaborating with SharePoint

Great collaboration. It means eliminating boundaries of time, place and technology so that people can work together effortlessly.

Today's business environment demands that people are able to communicate and share information effectively in any situation. That means eliminating the typical constraints of location and technology so employees can remain productive in or out of the office.

Microsoft SharePoint is an intelligent enterprise portal that provides a central place to access, manage, share and interact with relevant information, documents, applications and people. It enables faster, more informed decision making, more effective sharing across teams, and more streamlined business processes.

# Create a clear roadmap -- While your initial implementation may not have every single functionality and document you want, you still want to create a portal that has an intuitive structure that allows for future flexibility. A managed SharePoint site can be a very useful tool, but allowing all users to have control over content structure can be tricky. Maintaining a solid structure is an important success factor.

# Promote managerial direction/spearheading/adoption -- Come out of the gate with some sort of game plan establishing that this portal is THE virtual environment.

# Be flexible -- Gather input from stakeholders often and communicate with your team in whatever way works. Discussions and phone calls can be very important. Stay connected at a human level.

# Reward collaboration -- Simple acknowledgment goes a long way. You don't want to lose that personal touch with your team. Creating a sense of common purpose binds people together and inspires stakeholders to internalize collaborative efforts.

# Don't assume that your employees will take time to learn it/Do train employees -- You need to take the initiative to train your employees. When training employees, keep it non-technical. An IT person may not be the best person to head up administration.

# Recognize that it takes time to build relationships and cohesiveness -- Successful collaboration requires a high level of trust that members value the common purpose, commitment to assigned tasks, positive communication skills and have a mechanism for making decisions.

# Cultivate an atmosphere for healthy exchange of ideas and confrontation that is non-threatening and unemotional -- It is important to recognize that the process of collaboration and the efficacy of leaders will not only impact the outcome but will also influence participant satisfaction and willingness to collaborate in the future.

# Brand your portal -- Branding shows that the company is behind the solution. Employees will respect it more, use it more and contribute to it more. Especially during the launch of the portal, branding can significantly contribute to employee adoption.

Collaboration starts around a single document -- but really, it comes down to overall business intelligence. This is where clients and management lose their minds with excitement. Combining document management with extensive reports and charts are where they can truly realize the effect that the solution is having on the company. They can see people taking collaboration to an entirely different level.

By Paul West / Intranet Journal

Smart and cheap: Business intelligence on a budget

You don't need new tools to gain insight into your business -- here are eight ways to make the most of what you've got.

That adage from the Great Depression is making a comeback these days among corporations that are digging deep to maintain profitability using business tools they already have in-house.

One of those companies is Creativity Inc., which found itself two years ago facing a serious threat to its business model.

The company, which designs, markets and distributes crafting products to specialty retailers, was being undercut by overseas manufacturers as retailers began to buy direct. The trend preceded the current economic downturn, but has hit with renewed vigor as the recession has deepened.

"We've been adjusting to a changing landscape," says Jim Mulholland, vice president of IT, and that includes fundamentally changing its product strategy.

To find more profitable, less commodity-driven products, and to cut operating costs, Creativity turned to its existing stable of Cognos business intelligence software. "We made no new purchases at all. We are taking advantage of different parts of the Cognos system, like Event Studio," the Web-based events-management module, Mulholland says.

As the economic downturn puts a strain on revenues -- some of its clients have seen revenue drops of 50% or more, according to Gartner Inc. -- management is leaning on business intelligence (BI) tools like never before.

Nick Millman, senior director for information management services at Accenture, agrees. "The tougher times that some of our clients face have accelerated [a trend toward] getting back to BI and how business can be improved." Executives are using them to find operational savings and to refocus their product lines and strategies, he says.

As business strategies change, business models need to reflect that, says Bill Hostmann, analyst at Gartner. "Deciders need the right information models so they can be effective."

But IT organizations aren't rushing to buy new business intelligence software or build new data warehouses. Instead, they're digging deeper and doing more with existing tools from IBM Cognos, SAS, SAP Business Objects or Microsoft Business Intelligence and other BI vendors. "Organizations are trying to utilize their existing business intelligence tools without going out and buying more hardware and software," Millman says.

Follow these eight tips, say Millman and others who have been down this road, and you too can squeeze more out of your existing tools while giving your business an extra boost.

Consolidate your tools

"Usually people have more tools than they need, and that can be distracting," says Anthony Abbatista, vice president of technology solutions at Allstate Insurance Co. and a former business intelligence consultant. Organizations end up with "different pockets of people doing similar analysis with different tools," and that leads to needless confusion, he says. His recommendation: Consolidate, and be aggressive about it. "Get to the minimum number of tools you need to get the job done."

Over the past few years, Abbatista has overseen the consolidation of 13 data warehouses down to just two and has pushed the organization from a centralized business intelligence analysis and reporting function to a self-service model based on the deployment of customizable dashboards.

Settling on a standardized set of tools was the first step toward empowering business managers and analysts. After a review, Abbatista says the company "killed off" two thirds of the tools in use at the insurer, including redundant products and the "falling stars," yesterday's hot tools that are no longer considered leading edge.

Those efforts paid off before a single new report was created. The business saved on software support and licensing costs, and the simplified tools portfolio made user training on the tools easier.

Standardizing on a single set of tools also facilitated model reuse between different groups. Before, for example, the sales and finance groups had profitability models created in different tools. "If they got different results, you'd spend time trying to rationalize why that was," Abbatista says. Now the process is much more straightforward -- and different business groups can feel confident they're comparing apples to apples.

Let business take the driver's seat

As the downturn continues to reset goals and business strategies, it's more important than ever for companies to make sure that BI technology is being applied to solve the right problems. IT organizations still fall into the trap of putting their technology out front, rather than creating models that respond to changing business needs, says Accenture's Millman.

Work with the business first before developing new information models, he advises. "Start with a clear vision of how information will generate value for the organization," he says. "Think about what business interventions you hope to derive from BI tools. Understand where the business benefit is going to come from, then configure the tools and processes."

At Allstate, two areas of focus are managing loss expense ratios and measuring the effectiveness of the call center. "We've taken experts in the tools and methods and put them together with the business people to find these high-value targets," says Abbatista.

The temptation in larger organizations is to try to do too many things with BI, he observes. Having fewer tools helps with that problem, and management also needs to prioritize what is most important.

"These times have been good because they've brought focus on measuring fewer things well," says Abbatista. At the highest level of the business, Allstate's management is watching 10 or 12 different metrics, he says. While business intelligence tools used by the business units use a wider range of metrics, all of those are designed to support those upstream metrics that management is watching.

New markets call for new data models

Right now, says Gartner's Hostmann, "there's a big strategy change in many organizations from high-value product offerings to low-cost offerings." But businesses that can't compete in the low-cost market must figure out a way to move up the value chain -- and they're using BI tools to get there.

Which is what Creativity Inc. did. To combat the commoditization trend in its core markets, it used the IBM Cognos 8 BI suite to identify and develop high-value products that couldn't be easily commoditized by its low-cost competitors.

It started by purchasing transactional data from retailers in the toy, fashion and apparel segments, adding that data to its existing data warehouse, and analyzing current buying trends. Creativity also uses Smart Software's SmartForecast forecasting software against the data as well.

All that analysis has lead to more "design-oriented, fashion-oriented" products, such as a line of paper dolls based on the popular Project Runway television show.

The strategy appears to be working. Creativity's fashion-based and other unique designs have become the dominant portion of its business -- more than 50% -- and contribute an even greater proportion of its margins, Mulholland reports.

Cost-cutting efforts need to be driven by the business side as well -- another area where creative use of existing BI tools can come into play. "It's important to understand who the more profitable customer segments are, how profitable your products and services are and areas to target for cost savings," Millman says.

Centralize business intelligence

To help find the right areas of focus, Creativity's Mulholland started an analytical center for excellence, a group that includes representatives from different parts of the business, from sales to operations. "You're trying to elevate the IQ of everybody in your company in terms of knowing the key business metrics and measuring them accurately and in a timely way across all areas of the business," he says.

Moving towards that goal, Creativity developed common tool sets and profitability models for its sales and finance groups. Reports are pushed to the desktops and viewed in dashboard applications. From there, Mulholland says, users "can go in and do further analysis."

IBM has been promoting such centers among its Cognos customers as a way to create a standardized set of models across the enterprise using existing business intelligence tools. A common set of BI dashboards developed for one department, for example, can be extended for use with others. In this way, new groups don't have to reinvent the wheel and can get up and running more quickly.

BI tools also are underutilized by role. Business stakeholders may view BI as more of an IT-driven reporting and analysis tool rather than as a business tool. Or the tools may be valued by IT and only one or two other groups, such as finance. As an antidote, "what we've seen is some companies that are looking across business processes and setting up competency centers that start to foster collaboration and dialog across business units," says Anne Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS.

Put more data in your warehouse

When it comes to data warehouses, the current downturn is a great time for organizations to review what they're tracking and to add more data from business operations into the hopper to find additional savings. Just be very selective about what you add, experts advise.

Milley suggests looking at adding data from call centers, Web logs or other sources. The question companies have to ask in these times, she says, is, "What do I have that I can get [into the data warehouse] at a relatively low cost?"

As sales slowed at Creativity during the downturn, Mulholland and the center for excellence team changed its focus from keeping up with growth to cost cutting. One of those projects involved providing a feedback loop between its back-end ERP system and the CubiScan system it uses for shipping.

CubiScan is a laser-based scanning and weight-measurement system used to ensure that goods are properly packaged to meet customer specifications. (If they're not, the fees can be "considerable," Mulholland says.) While the ERP system issued package instructions with the orders, the standalone CubiScan system wasn't returning data on whether shipments were actually packaged properly -- and many were not. "There was no feedback loop," Mulholland says.

The IT team used the Cognos ETL tool (extraction, transformation and load) to bring the CubiScan data into its data warehouse and then built exception reports for shipments where the margins and tolerances for package dimensions hadn't been met. Mulholland expects the project, currently in deployment, to pay for itself in three to five months.

Make better use of data you already have

In some cases, doing "more with less" may simply be a matter of taking data that users already have and presenting it to them in a more useful way. At the Wisconsin Department of Revenue's Business Intelligence Services Bureau, director Janna Baganz says her organization found a way to present multi-year view of tax data on a single screen. "That proved to be a time-saver," she says.

Her group also worked to combine data from the state's income processing and audit systems, taking the need for exception report analysis out of the user's hands. Now when certain business rules kick out a tax return from the processing system, the staff no longer spends 20 minutes running a manual report on another system and then reviewing it to resolve the issue.

Instead, the integrated systems automatically resolve the problem and process the claim in about two minutes without staff involvement. Since July of 2008, the department has saved approximately 1,750 hours of staff time, says Pat Lashore, administrator for the department's technology services division, and taxpayers who are due a refund now receive it more quickly.

In a similar vein, Allstate has had success pushing report-creation and customization capabilities out to end users through the deployment of dashboards. Previously, the company had a centralized report-writing function within IT, and "it took a lot longer to get answers into the hands of business people," Abbatista says. Now, his team creates dashboards, walks users through the basics of using the tool, and lets them do the rest.

One goal of Allstate's is to build models very quickly with the tools they already have to prove or disprove whether a given hypothesis is any good, he says. If it is, the model will be incorporated in a dashboard and disseminated to staff.

Allstate has institutionalized dashboards to monitor its speed in closing claims and the time to resolve those claims. It wants to drive those numbers down to the point where its performance in these areas becomes a competitive advantage. The self-service environment provided by the dashboards allows managers to monitor their department's performance. They also can add or subtract factors or combine data in different ways to achieve those goals.

Back in the IT department, the self-service BI tools helped Abbatista's team get out of the report-building business and clear out a long backlog of report requests. Through the self-service initiative and a data-warehouse consolidation, he's reduced headcount by two thirds while expanding access to self-service BI tools to 25,000 users within the organization.

Keep your models clean

Make sure you have a clear and consistent data model before you bring new data into your data warehouse or bring in data from another part of the business, and then ensure the new data conforms to your model.

Too often, says Millman, information from different sources or sections of the business gets added to the data warehouse without enough attention to how the existing data is modeled. The result: "It's hard to make sense out of business reports or queries that go across more than one section." For example, financial and customer service data might be modeled in entirely different ways. Accenture, he says, spends a lot of time helping its clients re-architect the way their data is stored.

For Abbatista, re-architecting data also meant rationalizing it for different business uses as new data sources were added. For example, at Allstate, different definitions of the "policy effective date" had to be reconciled before data from different departments could be combined into a single data warehouse for analysis.

IT may also need to allay fears about data quality. If managers don't trust the quality of the underlying data, that can derail their interest in business intelligence projects before they even get started. Mistrust "is like a silent cancer in organizations," says Milley. "Companies are at the mercy of their data quality." Users may suspect that the data is old, or that too many records may be missing data in a given field, such as birth date, she says.

"A common complaint is that the quality of the data isn't good enough," even when it is, agrees Millman. To drive up use of existing BI tools, he recommends producing data-quality dashboards that show just how timely the data is. "It's about crystallizing how good the data quality is and making that visible to the business."

Help users understand the data, not just the tools

Scaling up the number of users who have access to BI tools won't help unless people know how to use them. But that's not the biggest issue when it comes to educating the user. "The trend has been for the front end to get simpler and more intuitive," Millman says. And certainly dashboards have helped in that regard.

"What's often missing is the explanation of where the data comes from and how you can use it to derive some insight," Millman says. For example, the data generated by Creativity's CubiScan system was foreign to business people in the back office. "We have to explain what the data points are and what the data points mean," Mulholland says.

Abbatista focuses on building that knowledge one user at a time. "We build out initial capabilities with front-line managers and people in the trenches. They then become the consultant to people around them."

"It's really [about] teaching people to mine for value," Abbatista sums up. In that respect, he says, "I don't think we'll ever be done with our BI efforts."

Source:Computerworld

SAP's McDermott On Mobility, SaaS & Business Intelligence

When I sat down with Bill McDermott, president of SAP (NYSE: SAP)'s Global Field Operations, all I wanted to talk about was whether software-as-a-service is upending traditional self-hosted software. So it almost went by me when he mentioned that SAP would soon have some Business Intelligence news. We also discussed mobile apps, plus Bill had some tough words for competitor Oracle. Click on to access the video and podcast.

On Mobility

McDermott is a big advocate for mobile apps.

"We think mobility is huge," he says. "If you look at the business user today, they are mobile. I'm mobile, and every other business user I know travels a lot, and prefers to have their applications on their hip, as opposed to being tethered on a line and having to lock in at a hotel. So the more we can move SAP business applications to mobile devices, the more successful they'll be."

I explored that with the SAP folks back in March, when they linked up with Sybase in a deal to make it easier for SAP apps to run on mobile devices, including the iPhone, Windows Mobile Devices, and Blackberry. (SAP also has a separate partnership with Blackberry maker RIM.) You can listen to that podcast; see Sybase, SAP Talk Smartphone Apps.

McDermott says more such partnerships may be in the offing, as SAP looks to expand the range of apps and mobile platforms available for customers.

On SaaS

Let's just admit that Software-as-a-Service, as popularized by the links of Salesforce.com, isn't something that was welcomed with open arms by long-time enterprise software players. It up-ended their business model, and prodded them to expand their pallet of offerings. Interestingly, though, where we are now is that the polarity between SaaS providers on the one hand and traditional "we license it, you host it" players on the other may end up being replaced by a model where the survivors are mixed-modality vendors. (Well, Salesforce.com will still probably stake out that left SaaS wing.)

SAP is clearly evolving toward a "Burger King" approach to the question of self-host software of SaaS. Namely, as McDermott says, customers can "have it their way."

Moving forward he sees the two approaches coexisting in a way that's not necessarily in conflict. "I think both models are viable" McDermott says. "There are mission-critical, end-to-end business processes that large companies run to keep their company going. They have large transaction rates and they require visibility on an end-to-end basis and very tight integration. Those processes will continue to be run on-premise. There will also be loosely coupled applications that don't need to be tightly coupled to the core process in the enterprise. Those will be easily provisioned in an on-demand model."

He continues: "Ultimately, the best of both worlds is to have full integration in the enterprise where you have to have it for risk management, compliance, and execution, and still be able to integrate the on-demand model into the enterprise. That's the hybrid model that SAP sees. That's the model we think gives the customer the most value."

On Oracle

Fireworks flew in our interview when McDermott offered up some tough words for competitor Oracle: "I think theirs is much more of a paper strategy," he said. "Our strategy is much more innovation, ecosystem, and customer-centric. I think that's where we divide the two."

McDermott drew a pointed comparision. "Others -- now that you mention Oracle -- have chosen to impart themselves on what I would call a twentieth century company strategy," he said. "Because innovation has been difficult for them, they've chosen to acquire as many companies as they can, to create a business model out of it. When they ran out of software companies to buy, they've now moved into the realm of hardware in the Sun acquisition. So I think theirs is much more of a paper strategy, to satisfy the capital markets."



On Multitenancy

A discussion about multitenancy is something only a true SaaS geek could love. Nevertheless, it's an important issue that's of huge concern to users. Dumbing it down as best as I can, the issue is as follows: In serving multiple customers who've all bought access to the same app, in the simplest case a SaaS vendor would have to run a new instance of the app for each of those customers. However, at some point (an early point) the hosting hardware would grind to a halt under the strain.

A quick way around this problem is out-of-the-box virtualization, which can vastly reduce the number of instances you have to get going. However, this doesn't address security issues.

So what SaaS vendors have to do is re-architecture their apps to support true multitenant operation. This means that they can run many instances on a single box, thus reducing server costs (not a big deal) and IT management/support expenses (a bigger deal). The key deal in this "rearchitecturization" for multitenancy is to get the partitioning right so that each customer's data is sandboxed in their own virtual instance, over which they and only they have control. Whew!

OK, so the deal is that getting all this stuff right takes time. In SAP's case, that's played out in some previous push-back to the rollout date of its Business ByDesign offering. In our chat, McDermott addressed the issue:

"What we want to do is make sure the features of the product as well as the performance of the product is up to SAP's standards," he said. "We think SAP Business ByDesign is a killer applicaton that can move major markets. So what we're doing is getting the provisioning of that service to the customer at a margin rate that can satisfy SAP shareholders. We'll get that product to market when it's ready. We'd rather be a little bit behind in delivery, and perfectly right when it hits the customer."

On Business Intelligence

We got to the BI news almost as an afterthought, when I asked McDermott a closing question I hoped would elicit a non-SAP related answer. I asked him what he personally gets excited about, and he used it to segue into a soliloquy on the wonders of BI.

Here's what he said: "We are introducing a technology to the market soon that we're calling Explorer. It's the combination of Business Warehouse Accelerator, where we can get data, process that data -- millions of records at sub-second speed -- and provide that to the user in a highly pleasing manner. And it gives you the chance to make real-time decisions, based on the things that you really care about in your enterprise."

What I know previously about SAP's BI efforts are that its software revolves around the SAP NetWeaver BI platform. On a second front, SAP acquired Business Objects in 2007 and has integrated the latter's software into SAP proper under the umbrella of SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio.

As to what McDermott mentioned, Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA) is a product which already exists. It's officially called SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse Accelerator, and it’s a plug-in which (I think I'm simplifying it correctly here) boosts the performance of NetWeaver Business Warehouse so that you can use it as a real-time product. (I.e., you install NetWeaver BW and then also install the out-of-box accelerator on, say, your Xeon-based server, and, presto, you can support real-time queries.)

However, it's likely that Bill was talking about a new product launch, combining SAP Business Objects BI software with BWA in-memory analysis capabilities. In which case, stay tuned (the news should be out this week). (BTW, if you want to get the scoop from BI experts, go read my buddy Doug Henschen and the other great writers over at our sister site Intelligent Enterprise.)

Enhancing CRM with Content as a Service

By Phil Wainewright

PW: Well Rand, of course, we've been having these conversations for more than ten years, since back to the dark old days of SaaS — when it was called ASP, and no one really believed that you could run software and applications in the cloud.

RS: That's right. Well certainly, all of our heads were sort of in the cloud, all the early guys' heads were in the clouds back then. And now, it's kind of funny that we're calling it cloud. As you know, we started talking when [my then company] brought out the first web analytics application, KeyLime Software, that was eventually sold to Yahoo and we were an ASP. We've come a long way since then.

At that point, we were serving a multitenant software product to users, and they could literally flip the switch on. A lot has changed, obviously, the success of Salesforce, Successfactors, Omniture, WebSideStory and others that I've been involved in, in the, quote, ASP or software-as-a-service business for ten years.

So what I wanted to talk about today a little bit was content-as-a-service. A lot of people are talking about platform-as-a-service. I wanted to give some more explanation about what content-as-a-service is.

Yeah, because one of the things I think that is very interesting about InsideView is the way that it is not just a software application, but it's also taking content as well, and delivering content-as-a-service in a way that is timely and relevant for the salesperson. When they need to work out which is the best customer for them to call next, or what should they say when they call the customer, InsideView really pulls information off the web and off social media that people can use, doesn't it?

That's right. What's happening today, unfortunately for the newspapers' sake, is content has become absolutely commoditized. And the content 1.0 vendors — companies like OneSource and Hoover's — who use people to create the editorial, they're going the way of dinosaurs. Facebook, LinkedIn, Zoom Information, InsideView, Jigsaw, we're all able to utilize content-as-a-service to get the rich set of content out there, and to present it to sales and marketing people when they need it — that is at the time of the sale so that they can increase conversion; where they need it, mashed up right into a CRM application; and to provide that relevance in this explosion of content to that end user — that sales and marketing end user — at the right time.

So how does this work? Can you give me a real-life example of how a salesperson might use this?

Yeah. We are involved with a new set of companies. They're really Sales 2.0 companies. And Sales 2.0 companies are bringing more of a science to what was previously sales as more of an art. And let me give you an example. We talked about this explosion of content. And the explosion of content really yields wrong information, a loss of time and a lack of relevance. So if a sales guy wanted to try to reach me, let's say, as a marketing person, one could go to the web and do a basic Google search on me and you will find that I am at five or six different companies.

And so what is the salesperson to do? So what InsideView does is, we use our entity triangulation and our natural language processing to produce a smart record. That smart record takes a look at all of the content that's out there — much of it wrong — takes a look at all that content out there and provides relevance to that content, so that that sales guy knows how to reach me and when I changed from, let's say, one company to another.

Right. Okay. So really what you're doing is — there's still a lot of algorithms and software technology involved there — but you're applying it to the content and then delivering — or filtering the content, really — to deliver useful information to the salesperson.

That's right. If you think back 15 or 20 years, Michael Bloomberg created the Bloomberg terminal. So as the Bloomberg terminals are to traders, SalesView, our application, really is to sales and marketing professionals — where we are aggregating relevant information, putting it in front of those traders — or sales and marketing people and — where those people can get the conversion that they need.

And of course, it's a mash-up isn't it? What you've done is you've taken the software but you're also taking these information and content feeds and mashing up all of that information and intelligence to deliver a result. So that's very much a Web 2.0 concept that you've applied in the product — or the service, rather, I should say — that you're bringing to market.

Yeah, that's right. The term mashup is another one of those terms that people throw around. We have actually two ways that we're mashed up. We bring all of this rich set of content, this information, directly to the users and we're mashed-up in the first way directly in a CRM application. We currently are supporting six CRM applications — we announced NetSuite last week — and they include Salesforce, Sugar, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics and Landslide. So we're mashed-up both physically in the page, right in the middle of that CRM page. But we're also mashed-up in terms of data, so that our data is completely synchronized with the data that you have in your CRM application.

I mean that's great, actually — and that's the thing about SaaS, that we've got to with this SaaS revolution now — that the old way of doing this would be, the software vendor delivers the software package. And it's like a toolkit, where the customer has to engineer all these links into all these information services that they sign up to individually — and then integrated into the other applications they are using on premise — and maybe a year or two later, and coachloads of consultants later, they actually have something that might deliver something like the result they originally envisioned. Whereas here you are, you bring it in and it's already integrated, it already has the stuff there and people can just get on and do the job.

That's right. So we're able to further yield relevance to the content out there — and we're actually looking at the content or the content vendors as almost content cartridges, where we can plug in these content cartridges to our bus that can easily delete and add new content cartridges. And through our APIs, we're also looking — because we have the ability to mash up, because we're a content-as-a-service cloud application — we're looking to push this aggregated content out to other applications, and embed this application in other, let's say, marketing applications or vertical applications — legal applications, financial applications, health applications — where we just show up in those applications as well.

Source:ebizQ.net

Customer Feedback Drives New Release of Quadrant's IntelliChief

by Alex Woodie

Quadrant Software last week unveiled a new release of its flagship IntelliChief document management and workflow product at the COMMON conference in Reno, Nevada. IntelliChief 2.5 brings a smattering of relatively minor enhancements, such as automatic document matching and performance metrics, which demonstrate that customers are using the product and giving Quadrant feedback on how to make it better.

There are two main paths that product development can take. The first springs from the mind of a single creative individual who is eager to push the latest technologies into his product. This type of development often looks very advanced on paper, but it can also lead to customers asking themselves "How am I going to use this?" and "Do I really need that?"

The second type of development path is marked primarily by customer feedback to the developers. After customers have been using a product for a while, they will say to their vendor, "This is great, but what I really need is this" or "My users could really benefit from that." Sometimes, the features resulting from this development path lack the tech appeal that looks so good in press releases, but which is of dubious value to the majority of customers.

The version 2.5 release of IntelliChief appears to have been driven primarily by this second development paradigm. There aren't a lot of whiz-bang new features that jump out as super incredibly awesome. But taken as a whole, the enhancements show how System i shops are using this Windows-based product, which is only four years old, but which appears to be maturing rapidly, thanks in large part to customer feedback.

One of these customer-driven features is the matching of workflow documents. When a document enters the product's workflow system, with version 2.5, IntelliChief will automatically check to see if there are other documents waiting for a match before they're processed. For example, when an invoice is received, a clerk will typically be required to match that invoice with receiving document, to avoid making payments on products that haven't yet been received.

With IntelliChief 2.5, that matching process will be conducted automatically upon receipt of the invoice, eliminating the need for the clerk to manually match the documents, and also decreasing the possibility that the whole payment process is hung up due to a simple error or oversight. The system can automatically match documents by several variables, including customer number, order number, or vendor number.

IntelliChief 2.5 also gets new performance metrics. With this release, the product gives users the capability to track how various documents are being used within the business, which can give a good indication of how business is going.

Examples of how this feature could be used include: Showing a manager how many invoices have been sent out for voucher versus how many are still waiting for approval; showing a manager how many orders have been fulfilled and how long it took to process them; and showing a manager which accounts payable group is being more productive.

One wouldn't normally expect to find this type of business intelligence (BI) or business performance management (BPM) feature within a content management system like IntelliChief. But when you consider that most businesses are heavily dependent upon paperwork, then you realize that this is actually a very practical way to monitor business activity.

The performance metric functionality is built into IntelliChief's SQL Server database, which means that users won't have to go through the time and expense of building their own BI system or reporting mechanisms to do this. It gives users the capability to write their own reports, or output data into other reporting systems, such as SAP's CrystalReports, according to Quadrant.

Another example of customer-driven enhancements is the new capability to edit forms in IntelliChief's WebForms module, which was introduced last year. In the first release of WebForms, once a comment had been entered, such as for a purchase request or a petty cash request, it was sent to the IntelliChief archive, where it could not be modified. With version 2.5, WebForm entries can be edited and modified before being sent to a manger, thereby increasing the chance that that 50-inch plasma TV gets approved for the break room (or whatever your request may be).

A new notification capability in IntelliChief 2.5 should improve the flow of work in a business. With this release, users can now view notifications of alerts for things such as pending document approvals directly from their main IntelliChief screen, instead of viewing alerts only within their IntelliChief inbox. Users can also see detailed information about the documents from their main screen, and click on a hyperlink to be taken directly to the document.

IntelliChief also received enhancements in the way it handles multiple documents, for viewing and e-mail attachment purposes. When it comes to viewing, users can now view multiple documents on their screens simultaneously, thereby making it easier to verify or match documents. Similarly, IntelliChief supports the capability to group multiple related documents into a single e-mail attachment, instead of requiring a recipient to deal with multiple document attachments. IntelliChief typically saves documents in the PDF format.

This release also brings support for the latest Microsoft server technology, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. It also gains the capability to capture print output from 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

IntelliChief is composed of six core modules, including ScanChief, PortalChief, WorkflowChief, ViewChief, StorageChief, and Quadrant's Formtastic software, and also works with Quadrant's i5/OS output management software. Pricing for the suite starts at around $50,000. For more information, visit intellichief.quadrantsoftware.com.

Companies turn to in-house training to supplement employees business degrees with job-specific skills

Canadians attend college or university not only to learn about a certain subject, but also to prepare for the workforce. So why are companies developing in-house training programs for their employees? And why are employees eagerly taking them?

Because as valuable as post-secondary education is, it can never be geared entirely to training individuals for a specific job within a particular organization.

So companies, such as Cognos, Wunderman, Bank of Montreal and Ceridian, have created in-house training programs, which are generally a blend of online and classroom training lasting anywhere from two hours to two days, to ensure employees have the skills to excel in their jobs.

Some courses address technical proficiency. Of course, individuals come to their jobs with a foundation, but sometimes the core skill set needs to be further developed. At Wunderman University, for example, the co-creative director of the advertising agency teaches an "evaluating great creative course," to what the company calls "apprentice-level" employees ( junior copywriters and designers) and more senior "journeyman level" ones as a refresher.

In other cases, employees need to learn a technical skill to carry out a job task, a PowerPoint presentation, for example. That's why Ceridian, a payroll and human resources management services company, has basic desktop user courses online, such as "creating animations in PowerPoint" or "pivet tables in Excel."

While some technical skills, such as the desktop programs, can be learned through standard licensed courses, others require customized classes. "We have a payroll [software] program that our customers use called InSync that employees can't learn elsewhere," says Heather Turnbull-Smith, director of national learning and development at Ceridian.

The customized classes are taught by senior and executive-level staff, who draw examples from the day-to-day business. "In 'how to write a creative brief,' our vice-president of creative direction showed us an example of a brief written for the client Wyeth, and I was able to apply the learning to the client I work with, Microsoft," says Leann Kirwan, account supervisor at Wunderman.

Companies also provide personal skills training because working with others doesn't come naturally to everyone and isn't formally taught in school. Ms. Kirwan found the "communicating for results" course at Wunderman University especially helpful because it taught her how to work with different personalities in the office. "They didn't actually teach these skills in any of my advertising courses at Georgian College," she says. Similarly, Cognos, an Ottawa-based business intelligence and performance management solutions company, offers employees courses on "how to deal with and resolve conflict," and "adapting to change."

And when employees take in-house training together, it improves their ability to function as a team. Frank Ouyang, manager of technical solutions for localization services at Cognos, says, "the opportunity to interact with coworkers during in-house training has benefits beyond networking. I often find we are building and sharing business context with participants [who] work in different functions."

But it's the in-house management training that employers and employees feel is most beneficial. "We were observing that as people were required to take on supervisory roles, most had little prior experience," says John Wright, executive vice-president at advertising agency Wunderman, and "dean" of Toronto's Wunderman University.

Even employees with an advanced degree, such as Mr. Ouyang, who holds a Master's in computer science from Computing Technology Institute, China Academy in Beijing, was keen to take almost 30 in-house management courses including "reaching group agreement" and "leading successful meetings," so he could operate as an effective manager.

"The training courses are about soft skills, which were missing from my university course," Mr. Ouyang says.

Employees could take management training as part of an MBA program or through an external professional development organization, but Jerilyn Pattle, team manager, small business solutions at Ceridian in Winnipeg, argues in-house training is more applicable because it's tailored to her company and industry.

"In our 'manager essentials' course, we're all doing the same job from across the country and so it's easier to think of examples of how we're going to apply the learning."

However, don't assume inhouse training will be a fast-track to the executive suite. First of all, the opportunity to take career development courses is of secondary importance.

"We don't want managers to send employees to courses all over the place; the No. 1 priority is to get employees the skills they need to do their job well," says Ms. Turnbull-Smith.

Also, not all the employees interviewed say that in-house training advanced their careers. Myra Cridland was a senior manager, head office, retail bank division at Bank of Montreal, when she took a specialized three-year BMO-Dalhousie MBA at the $50-million Institute for Learning. Now the vice-president and chief administrative officer of private client group at BMO, she says, "without it [the training], I wouldn't be where I am today."

However, her training experience was unconventional in that it was actually an MBA degree.

Whereas Ceridian's Ms. Pattle, who has had three promotions in six years, says the Business of Administration diploma, the human resources diploma, and the certificate in management, all of which she took at Red River College in Winnipeg, played a more instrumental role in her promotions.

Wunderman's Ms. Kirwan, who was recently promoted, also reports "the courses didn't affect my review." It was her performance on the job that was the biggest factor.

Also when moving companies, the credibility of an employee's in-house training in the eyes of another employer is often tied to the reputation of the company the employee worked for, says Jeremy Miller, partner at LEAPJob, a Toronto-based recruiting company that specializes in sales professionals.

"If it's unbranded training, as a recruiter, you've got to figure out how good the level of knowledge is."

Source:thestarphoenix.com

SAP shores up SAP NetWeaver BW with Teradata

NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) will run on Teradata databases, a move that analysts say is great news for SAP NetWeaver BW customers.

The move shores up SAP NetWeaver BW's deficiencies, which include a reputation for slow query responses, limited data volume scalability, and limited visibility into non-SAP data, according to Philip Russom, senior manager of research at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI).

"The new SAP-Teradata combination has great potential for curing these weaknesses," Russom said in an email response. "Thanks to the SAP-Teradata combination, I feel we'll see even more BW implementations in the future."

The Teradata option will appeal to customers that have Teradata already and were forced until now to run SAP NetWeaver BW on a different platform, according to Boris Evelson, principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. NetWeaver BW is currently supported only on Oracle, IBM and Microsoft SQL databases. It will also appeal to SAP customers growing through mergers and acquisitions that will need to accommodate larger sets of data, according to Evelson.

But don't expect SAP customers who are running NetWeaver BW on SQL Server to rush to move to Teradata, he said. Teradata is still a very expensive proposition compared with SQL Server.

Before this partnership, if a company ran SAP and Teradata, the data was stored as relational data in Teradata, according to Mark Whitehorn of PenguinSoft Consulting Ltd. A copy -- called a shadow copy -- was extracted and held in SAP. It was then restructured, and SAP analytics ran against that restructured shadow copy, Whitehorn said in an email response.

In the new model, Teradata is the data warehouse layer, above that is SAP NetWeaver BW and NetWeaver BW Accelerator, and above that, the front-end analytical tools, according to Whitehorn. The data is held in Teradata as before, but no shadow copy is produced. So there is only one data warehouse, which is held as relational data in Teradata.

The move enhances the back end of SAP's business intelligence portfolio. While SAP's acquisition of Business Objects gave it a great front end, the back end was still lacking, Evelson said. The data warehouse in SAP NetWeaver BW is more of a departmental data mart, he said -- it never scaled to hundreds of terabytes, it didn't have lots of the infrastructure an enterprise-class data warehouse should have, and it was never very stable.

"If you look at the SAP business intelligence portfolio, it is very heavy on the front end as opposed to the back end," Evelson said. "Now, basing BW on top of Teradata, that's great."

Teradata provides better storage and scalability in the 25 terabyte area, according to Tim Lang, vice president of product management for SAP BusinessObjects.

The new partnership also enhances support for Teradata, Lang said. SAP customers can call their SAP support line if they have issues with Teradata.

"There's a much stronger connection on the support side as well," he said. "There's a lot of advantages we bring together in a joint solution, particularly when talking about very large datasets."

Russom thinks the SAP-Teradata partnership will spur larger SAP BW implementations because of the scalability assured via Teradata. Likewise, improvements to query performance and broader access to enterprise data made possible by this combination will lead to more SAP ERP users adopting "operational business intelligence" and other time-sensitive, data-driven business practices, he said.

The partnership also heightens the speculation that SAP is interested in acquiring Teradata -- a rumor that surfaced earlier this year, according to Madan Sheina, principal analyst with London-based Ovum Research.

The acquisition would be a wise move on SAP's part, Evelson believes. As consolidation in the industry continues to lead the news of the day (e.g., Oracle's recent Sun acquisition ), partnering with companies will become increasingly difficult.

"I think [buying Teradata] would make a lot of sense," Evelson said. "The major piece SAP is missing is really an enterprise-class data warehouse."

But Sheina said that the Teradata-SAP partnership also underscores something that is becoming a competitive advantage for SAP -- its continued emphasis on platform neutrality.

"SAP is perhaps unique among the big four BI plays in that it is agnostic about which database platform to do data warehousing on," Sheina said in an email response. "Such an option also gives SAP an opportunity to earn revenue for itself rather than [its] biggest applications [and BI] rival."

Let the IT Land Grab Begin

With Oracle ready to annex Sun Microsystems, there may finally exist a true, full and global counterweight to IBM's hegemony. Who else loses? Microsoft, SAP and Cisco -- and maybe even Amazon. If HP plays along and aligns with Sun and Oracle, together they could create a full-service IT powerhouse.

The reported acquisition of Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) More about Sun Microsystems by Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) More about Oracle makes a ton more sense than IBM's (NYSE: IBM) More about IBM earlier failed bid. This new compact, if it succeeds, will bring as good an end to an independent Sun as the pioneering (yet long flagging) IT vendor could have hoped for at this sorry stage in its history.

However, there are much larger implications in Oracle's latest super-grab than Sun's demise and assimilation. Among them is the fact that IBM now -- for the first time, really -- has a true, full and global counterweight to its role and influence. Oracle plus Sun aligned with HP (NYSE: HPQ) More about Hewlett-Packard (which I fully expect) meets and begins to beat IBM at all the important full-service IT games.

This is truly healthy for IT and the global IT marketplace. IBM's earlier purported bid for Sun always smelled bad to me. It was, it turned out, mostly a red herring. Perhaps Oracle needed the IBM roller coaster ride to focus its intentions. Nonetheless, the outcome is optimal. It bodes well for cloud computing too, as Oracle just about overnight becomes a cloud force to reckon with. I always thought Larry Ellison was just biding time on this one. The recession has hastened the timetable.
Hello, Losers

Other than IBM's unassailed hegemony, the other losers in this are Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) More about Microsoft (actually possibly creeping to irrelevancy faster than anyone could have imagined three years ago), SAP (NYSE: SAP) More about SAP AG and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) More about Cisco Systems. Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) More about Amazon.com may also be getting more competition soon on the Platform as a Service front. Using Sun's cloud investments, implementations and plans, Ellison can also quickly forge together his own counterweight to Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) More about Salesforce.com. No need to buy it now (for a while).

Open source in general, too, may take a hit, as I don't expect Unbreakable Linux to remain Oracle's point on the operating system arrow. Solaris will be the prime Oracle OS for performance, meaning Oracle's channel pipeline to Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) More about Red Hat will shrink. MySQL will be a means and not an end for Oracle, which would, of course, prefer an Oracle 11g cloud.

Suffice to say that whatever momentum Sun had behind open source More about open source everywhere will be muted to open source sometimes as a ramp to other Oracle stuff, or to grow the community and keep developers happy.

Like IBM, Oracle will have little interest or need for open source middleware or service-oriented architecture (SOA) components. Further, given Oracle's early and deep interest in Eclipse and OSGi, the Java More about Java tools will stay free and open (with a lot of Oracle wizards embedded across the database and other middleware). The tussle for influence between Oracle and IBM in Eclipse and the Java Community Process (JCP) will be great fun to watch in coming years. Again, this is healthy. (Good thing Sun opened this up, eh?)

No other company has shown an ability to merge and integrate at the massive scale and complexity that Oracle has. Its acquisition spree that began five years ago is unprecedented in its scope and level of success. We have no reason to suspect that the way it handles Sun will be any different.
As for the Winners

Winners on the deal include Java itself in the fullest and broadest sense. Oracle and IBM are the premier Java vendors, and the might of IBM (and its customers and developers) in the market will force Oracle to keep Java open and vibrant, while Oracle's penchant for control and commercial success will keep Java safe and singular. I expect the old BEA (Nasdaq: BEAS) More about BEA Systems WebLogic implementations now at Oracle to gather some minor bundles from Sun's software portfolio, but Sun's enterprise software stack (for all intents and purposes) is history. I can't see Glass Fish or Net Beans going anywhere but bye-bye. Same with the Sun SOA stuff.

Most interesting will be the way that Oracle matches the Sun assets against HP's burgeoning partnership with Oracle. Will HP perhaps buy Sun's hardware, storage and integrated circuits intellectual property outright after the Oracle acquisition is final? I'd bet on it.

The Exadata announcement last fall is a good example of what to expect. Business intelligence is the killer enterprise application of the day (era), and Oracle and HP aim to win. Coupling Oracle BI and business applications is something special ... better potentially than what IBM and SAP can do. Should we expect from this Oracle-Sun merger some more love or more between IBM and SAP. Oh, yeah!

We should expect to see a major go-to-market push by HP and Oracle, with all kinds of appliances and solutions portfolios. Both Oracle's and HP's love of virtualization allow all kinds of neat packaging. Expect some of the industry's premier on-premises cloud solutions ASAP.

Indeed, we now have a land grab race for the modernized data center/private cloud between Oracle/Sun/HP and IBM. What's more, HP with all the old DEC stuff, plus Sun's Unix, may keep Unix alive and well while keeping IBM at bay with its everything mainframe lust.

On the blue sky front, consider if Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) More about Apple and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google get closer to the Oracle-Sun-HP trifecta? Wow. Cloud city.

Larry Ellison correctly predicted a few years ago that only a few IT companies would remain. Maybe we should just remove the "IT" and keep it at only a few companies will remain -- and Oracle will be one of them.

Talk about pure irony. It was when Oracle turned its back on Sun four years ago with the Unbreakable Linux and Java process business (Eclipse over NetBeans, OSGi support, etc.) that Sun's nosedive deepened. In a sense, you could say that Oracle pushed Sun off a cliff in slow motion, only to catch the pieces at fire sale prices.

Microsoft sales fall 6 percent from a year ago

As analysts predicted it might, Microsoft on Thursday reported the company's first ever year-over-year sales decline for the quarter ended March 31.

The software maker said fiscal third-quarter sales totaled $13.65 billion, down 6 percent compared with $14.45 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Its per-share earnings were 33 cents per share, although that included severance and investment impairment charges that reduced earnings by 6 cents per share.

Analysts had been projecting sales of $14.15 billion and per-share earnings of 39 cents, down from 47 cents a year ago, according to Reuters Estimates.

Microsoft had said in January that the crystal ball for the company was cloudy and at the time announced its first companywide layoffs, with plans to chop 5,000 jobs over an 18-month period.

"While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organization's ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in a statement.

The company noted that software sales to large businesses were stable during the quarter, but that weakness in server and PC sales hit its Windows, server and Office units.

Whereas Intel and EMC have been somewhat optimistic that things may have reached bottom last quarter, Microsoft's comments were less hopeful.

"We expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter," Liddell said.

The company didn't have much to say on several closely watched topics. The company did not give a specific sales or earnings outlook for the coming quarter, instead only noting what it expects as far as its operating expenses.

As for Windows 7, Microsoft just noted that it "remains on track for a fiscal year 2010 launch." That's even less specific than its usual comment, which is that it should ship within three years from general availability of Windows Vista, meaning by January. The software maker has been pushing to have Windows 7 out in time to be on PCs by this year's holiday season, with recent indications that the company is still aiming for that goal.

Shares closed Thursday at $18.92, up 14 cents. In after-hours trading, investors sent Microsoft shares higher. The stock was trading recently at $19.85, up 93 cents, or nearly 5 percent.

The PowerPoint slides that Microsoft put out to accompany its earnings report offered a few more nuggets. The company saw its online advertising revenue decline 16 percent, causing that unit to fall below what analysts were expecting.

PC unit sales were down 7 percent to 9 percent during the quarter, but the industry's revenue dropped more than that as Netbooks continued to make up a larger slice of sales--a trend that hurts both the PC makers and Microsoft. Microsoft sold 1.7 million Xbox 360s during the quarter, up 30 percent from a year ago and helping push that unit back into the red.

Here's a look at how each of Microsoft's individual units did during the quarter, in terms of both revenue and operating income.

Source:Cnet News

Voracious Oracle Gobbles Up Sun

Oracle's corporate org chart is starting to look like one of those maps of the Roman Empire or of Alexander the Great's conquests or something. It already covers great swaths of the technology industry, and it just keeps spreading in every direction.

Consider for a second this paragraph, courtesy of Bloomberg:

"Oracle is entering new markets as it seeks to reach $50 billion in revenue by 2012. The purchase is Oracle's third-largest after its $10.3 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc. in 2005 and the $8.5 billion purchase of BEA Systems Inc. last year. Oracle has spent almost $34.5 billion on purchases since 2005 to buy 52 companies, making it the most acquisitive software company in the world."

"The purchase" mentioned in that paragraph, of course, is Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems, revealed yesterday. Oracle, once mostly a database vendor, is all over the enterprise technology map now, so to speak. Enterprise applications (ERP and CRM), business intelligence, storage, database technologies, severs -- you name it, and Oracle's probably trying to sell it to corporate customers, or will be soon enough.

Yes, the Sun purchase would make Oracle a hardware company by delivering to Larry Ellison's empire Sun's server lines, which are already home to lots of Oracle databases in enterprises worldwide. (Intriguingly, there is some speculation that Oracle didn't want the hardware business and won't keep it. The talk is that Oracle just wanted Sun's software business but had to take the hardware as part of the deal. For now, though, Oracle appears to be soaking in the entirety of Sun's operations, and Ellison is talking about keeping everything for himself.)

The acquisition announcement had jaws dropping all over the industry. Steve Ballmer said he was "very surprised" and needed to think about the whole thing, a rare moment in which the Microsoft CEO seems to have been caught off guard. Some analysts expressed shock, while others took an approach that might be described, if we want to be cliché (and we do), as "cautiously optimistic."

For Microsoft partners, it's hard to say exactly how an Oracle-Sun marriage will play out. HP and IBM will more likely be concerned by the massive shift in the competitive landscape at the outset of the deal than will Redmond.

But a stronger Oracle with a more diverse product offering (to say the least) could speed the spread of Linux-based servers in the enterprise, given that Oracle as a company is kind of a Linux fan and definitely not so much a fan of Microsoft. Of course, buying Sun would make Oracle a major factor in the Unix operating system game. Everything considered, an Oracle-Sun combo probably doesn't offer many positives for Microsoft partners, unless the two companies stumble over each other in the integration process.

Which, if history is any indicator, they probably won't. Ellison and his troops have been amazingly adept at swallowing companies and making them productive parts of the Oracle empire. Despite an economic downturn and loads of purchases in recent years, Oracle has just kept rolling along earnings-wise, beating the Street again with its latest quarterly report.

Oracle-Sun is another mega-deal that signals that the age of city-states is long over in the technology industry, and the age of empires has well set in. The thing about empires is that they usually end up collapsing under their own weight (right, Wall Street?). Thus far, Oracle has avoided that fate. It probably will with the Sun buyout, too. The question now is: Where will Larry Ellison go next?

Source:rcpmag.com

CBM News: Microsoft Updating, SAP and Sybase Almost Marry, Buzzword Innovation

Good day, good morn and a good eve to one and all, and when's the last time we had two months in a row with a Friday the 13th, huh? To the astrology charts, everyone, and stay off the roads today. Yes, this is Radio CBM 98.6, all Coleman Hawkins all the time, your nose for Nooz.

EGain Communications has introduced a new offering called Solution-as-a-Service (SLaaS), which company officials believe is "a breakthrough" in the delivery of software and related service buzzwords.

"You have guys selling 'solutions' and 'SaaS,' but eGain is the first to market the blended buzzword 'SLaaS,' said a jubilant staffer drenched in champagne at eGain headquarters.

First in line is eGain SelfService, SLaaS Edition. Available immediately in the US and Canada, it gives organizations a "risk-free way" to rapidly deploy the industry’s newest comprehensive Web self-service buzzword.

From the high-tech powerhouse of Dumfries, Virginia, EtherSpeak Communications has announced the availability of the first published customer success stories for its SureTrunk service offering. You will, of course, know of SureTrunk as a native SIP trunking product for the ShoreTel community.

The product was certified by ShoreTel last summer as a Technology Partner Program. There do seem to be more and more folks getting native SIP trunking instead of products requiring additional capital expense, or PRI/BRI or analog circuits.

Clients profiled in the new case studies include Magna International, Canada's largest auto parts maker and Great American Group, which managed Circuit City's going-out-of-business sale.

EtherSpeak officials hastened to add that many – many – of their clients do not, in fact, go out of business.

For those of you keeping score at home, in the past week alone the FBI arrested two men working for and with the office of President Obama's Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra and Obama's choice for "urban policy czar," Bronx Borough President Aldolfo Carrion, was found to have accepted $3,627.50 worth of free work on his house from an architect up for a government contract.

Also H. Rodgin Cohen, the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration, Undersecretary for International Affairs candidate Caroline Atkinson had to withdraw after a "tax problem" and the putative chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Chas Freeman, withdrew after ethical issues over his business contacts to China and Saudi Arabia.

President Barack Obama immediately authorized an emergency $22 billion bailout for people who've "made honest mistakes" on their taxes, and announced that Bernie Madoff is his nominee for his administration's Ethics Czar "pending a full and rigorous vetting procedure during prison visiting hours."

Microsoft is saying its CRM online service will get such new features as "usability enhancements designed to improve sales, or smooth the use of new technology such as cloud integration," according to industry observer David Neal, who says additions and improvements in the new Service Update include "a financially backed 99.9 per cent uptime service level agreement and new Internet lead capture tools."

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, said the company remains focused on delivering the best value in the industry and "beating the crap out of that guy who wears those tacky Hawaiian shirts, Marc Someone."

In sports The Netherlands are the talk of the baseball world, having upset the mighty Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. "Dutch" players Sidney Ponson, Randall Simon and Gene Kingsale, among others, were reportedly able to place the Netherlands on a world map after being spotted Belgium, Germany and the North Sea.

Jive Software has announced the launch of its enterprise-class Social Business Software application suite, Jive SBS 3.0, a suite of social business applications aimed at Global 2000 enterprises.

It lets teams from inside and outside of the enterprise "connect, communicate and collaborate" with four application centers – Employee Engagement, Marketing & Sales, Customer Support and Innovation.

"Social Business Software is the new way to get work done," said Dave Hersh, CEO, Jive Software, saying the product lets companies "bridge together departments, partners and customers in a single community" for "a singular conversation among its key constituents."

Hersh conceded that if he'd had "a couple more G&Ts" he would have named the product Jive Talkin'.

And finally, SAP and Sybase have announced a domestic partnership to make SAP Business Suite software available on an iPhone, BlackBerry and "any other mobile device."

Called "Office on the Go," the service will be available by the second half of 2009, and full mobile CRM functionality will be available by 2010. Mobile applications for the rest of the SAP Business Suite, including ERP, SCM, SEM and PLM, will follow.

It's not an exclusive partnership, as Sybase is free to date other partners. Sheryl Kingstone, director at the Boston-based technology research firm Yankee Group, who holds the distinction of being the most ubiquitously-quoted CRM analyst alive, said "I would have been more excited if SAP bought Sybase. They'd have much more control to truly embed it into NetWeaver."

SAP and Sybase officials said irreconcilable issues arising from dowry negotiations were to blame for the lack of a fully-consummated marriage.

That's the show for today, we're off to make sure we're wearing clean underwear the next time we fly.

B.L. Kashyap Partners with All-e Technologies to ramp up IT Support Systems

New Delhi, March 9' 09: B.L. Kashyap, one of India’s most respected construction and infra- structure development company’s engaged All-e Technologies (Alletec)- a leader in providing Enterprise Business Solutions, as their technology partners to implement Microsoft (MS) Dynamics NAV (ERP solution from Microsoft) across their offices & project sites. The solution is based on the Alletec vertical solution for Infrastructure companies – NaviConstruct and has been designed to address the needs of companies in ‘Projects’ business. The new ERP solution has been introduced with a view to enable B.L. Kashyap, process information of varying criticality, easily and effectively and facilitates seamless integration of all processes within the company.

Prior to having Alletec on board, B.L. Kashyap had been facing business challenges in terms of generating Financial MIS, getting online Inventory position across the projects, optimum utilization of fixed assets and its online tracking etc. Moreover, legacy system was technically not scalable enough to meet the growing size of the organization.

Eventually, driven by the need to have flexibility towards incorporating business specific features, B.L. Kashyap decided to replace the current IT system. Therefore, a core team was formed which analyzed a number of options to boost up the IT infrastructure and manage information/data intelligently. After a detailed survey of market offerings and an in-depth analysis, the company selected MS Dynamics NAV as the solution that seemed to best meet their business objectives and 'Alletec' as their technology partners.

Mr. Prashant Tyagi – Director (Projects), B.L. Kashyap said, “Our key objective was to standardize technology platforms, business processes and implement a single point of information. MS Dynamics NAV and Alletec has helped us achieve this objective quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively”. He further added, “The expertise and track record of Alletec in successful MS Dynamics implementations, within India and internationally gave us the confidence that Alletec was indeed the most reliable partner for ensuring success on such a vital project”.

The implementation process was completed within a short timeframe of 4 months making B.L. Kashyap more competitive with improved data flow & management and with accurate and timely MIS (Management Information System). The new IT support system has helped the company achieve their key objective of enabling top managers with accurate information, onsite inventory and purchase, contracts, stock transfers and comparison with budgets. Standardization of the technology platform has reduced the IT administrative costs and led to efficient planning & project management.

“We are happy that B.L. Kashyap has successfully implemented ERP solution on Microsoft Dynamics Nav to meet their growing business needs. This implementation is yet another refection of Microsoft Dynamics delivering industry specific ERP solutions successfully for its esteemed clients along with its partners – this time for construction vertical with partner All-e Technologies.” said Mr. Sushant Dwivedy, Director - Microsoft Dynamics

This has been a significant project both in size and complexity besides enhancing operational efficiencies on day to day activities, the system provided significant advantages to B.L. Kashyap as it strengthened critical business areas such as Real-Estate Management including Sales & Leasing, Contract billing and Vendor & Customer management apart from providing an efficient interface for report generation of real time data.

“Alletec is focused on providing Enterprise Solutions and IT Services with the motto of ‘Helping Clients Exceed’. MS Dynamics acts as the enabler for us to achieve this objective. The adaptability to the needs of the customer and the ease of use provided by these world class ERP, CRM and SCM solutions helps us bring the best value to our customers at the least TCO”, said Dr. Ajay Mian, Managing Director, Alletec.

“Having experienced several ERP solutions available in the market today, we are convinced that we would not have succeeded as much with a different product offering. Microsoft’s commitment to its customers and partners plays a significant role in this success”, he added.

About All e Technologies

All e Technologies is a leading provider of software solutions and services that help build systems for extended enterprises. From streamlining, automating and web enabling core business processes to strategizing and implementing a customer centric approach to business, we provide solutions and services that help our customers mature as extended enterprises. These enterprises require ERP, Supply Chain Management and CRM systems to manage their day to day operations, business intelligence systems for decision support and internet and mobile solutions to provide 'anytime - anywhere' access to customers, employees, suppliers and stake holders.

Microsoft Dynamics™ is a line of financial, customer relationship and supply chain management solutions that help businesses work more effectively. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialized services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software-any time, any place and on any device. Microsoft has been in India since 1990 and employs over 4000 people across its offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.

Elop Describes Business Plans at Morgan Stanley Event

Financial analysts attending the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference on Tuesday questioned Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, on Microsoft's various business plans. Elop oversees Microsoft's Business Solutions and Unified Communications Groups, which include such products as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics.

The Business Division has been particularly profitable for Microsoft, bringing in $4.9 billion in revenue in Microsoft's second fiscal quarter, which ended on Dec. 31.

The questions were less specific about Elop's division, focusing more generally on Microsoft's cost-cutting plans, how it will monetize its online services and the threat to margins posed by low-cost netbooks.

Elop rejected a pure cost-cutting focus, saying that in tough economic times, if a company can concentrate on a few tough bets, it can come out stronger. The idea echoes recent speeches by Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, who has been floating the analogy of RCA, which invested in television technology research during the Great Depression, emerging later as a leader in that field.

Elop did point to some product consolidation that's happening in Microsoft's Online Services Division. Microsoft is considering combining its Windows Live and Office Live products after reviewing customer needs, he said.

Another focus that Microsoft has reconsidered is business intelligence, where Microsoft has tried to "democratize" the segment via SharePoint and Excel. Microsoft pulled back its Performance Point Server as a separate product and consolidated its features with SharePoint. That decision represents a retrenchment from Microsoft's vertical competition with companies such as Cognos and Business Objects, Elop explained.

On the question of profits, Elop pointed to positive opportunities with Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and unified communications. Microsoft faces competition from Cisco Systems on unified communications, but Microsoft will tout the overall interoperability of its products as a major competitive advantage, Elop explained. Unified communications is a technology disruptor in the communications field, but it's still in the early stages, he said.

Another profitable area for Microsoft has been the enterprise agreement renewal rate. Elop described enterprise licensing as a "bright spot" for the company through its second fiscal quarter.

Elop acknowledged some complexities with Microsoft's software plus services strategy. For instance, he estimated that it costs about $18 per user per month for a typical company to provide e-mail to its employees. Microsoft makes about $3 off that cost in licensing fees. With Microsoft's hosted offering, the price drops to $10 per user per month. The savings from the service comes from mid-sized companies not having to hire staff to maintain an in-house application, he explained. The revenue reduction with the online service is not a problem because Microsoft sees the provision of hosted services as an opportunity to upsell customized solutions to businesses.

Elop said that Microsoft Office 14, when it appears, will represent an "embrace" of Microsoft's software plus services strategy. Office 14 is the newest version of Microsoft's productivity suite, with general release expected sometime in 2010. He added that Wave 14 will provide a very specific opportunity for use with netbooks, enabling monetization of SKUs.

Microsoft took some risks with Office 2007 because it changed the user interface, Elop said. That change was "a good bet to make" because people can now find features in Office more readily, he added.

Microsoft's approach to threats to Office from Web-based apps is to create a rich client and make it work well with both online and mobile versions. He said that people generally use online apps maybe two or three times a month for things like document sharing.

Finally, on the netbooks question, Elop noted that Microsoft's operating system now has an 80 percent attachment rate on netbooks. Previously, the low-cost, low-tech mini-laptops had predominately used Linux OSes. Elop didn't really answer the question of profits, as netbooks typically sell for just a few hundred dollars. He said that the current forecast for netbook purchases was that they will account for less than 10 percent of sales.

Source:entmag.com