Software strategies and more…

Just reading how Google’s employees are being switched to Google OS and those that aren’t are choosing between Apple or Linux. The article goes beyond just the trials and tribulations between Google and Microsoft and adds additional food for thought with regards to whether Steveb and team can right the listing Microsoft Titanic.

To see the writing on the wall, one only has to look as far as the turmoil currently happening within the Windows Consumer division, a restart with Windows Mobile that leaves Windows Mobile 6.x users (including nearly every MS employee) out in the cold with a dead product, long-time partners jumping ship for new tablet and tablet-like O/S platforms, and its own inability to launch a competitive product in a space it was once the pioneer, not to mention a music player and store that never was…. What is left Live and XBOX? Both which have had and are being challenged by other services that are often seen as easier and more in tune with the needs of their users. It my opinion that without a tangible connection to what people want to do with computing (consume information about their business, their activities, their customers and their friends) tools that Microsoft continues to decrease its own relevance in the modern computing space.

Of course an argument is that Microsoft is tied tightly into business technology and is it’s platform of choice because they offer everything from the data centre to the desktop, but if we look at changes that are now starting to reshape the enterprise (and by this I mean all businesses that transact with customers large and small) market we see the client/server world coming to a end in the not-to-distant future.

Start by looking at the combined Software as a Service offerings and the Platform as a Service offerings that are enabling both traditional and up-start business to manage their financials, customers, inventory as well as computing and processing power you soon can conclude the tools that Microsoft offers for managing, deploying and developing are quickly becoming yesterday’s news. In fact, I would further argue given IBM, Oracle and SAP’s focus on developing in-memory databases, web-based, mobile and business intelligence solutions that these will have an near term immediate impact on sales of Microsoft’s SQL database as instances of this product will be replaced by solutions that can run complex transaction and data mining queries in-memory and report in real-time rather than via traditional I/O coding. If you combine this with the cloud becoming a repository for web-platform tools like AppExchange for the business and Apple’s Appstore or Google’s Apps for business for consumers and businesses alike and you see how on-premise is quickly becoming a model of the past.

It seems that the market also continues to question the relevance of Microsoft in the future. During the past decade there have only been two periods when the stock showed life, those being the end of the dot.com boom cycle and when Microsoft was expected to buy into the search wars by acquiring Yahoo! but failed. The stock market seems to question Microsoft’s future plans since the company is no longer rewarded with a premium multiple that innovative leaders such as Apple receive.

Yes, I know Microsoft has launched its Cloud strategy and has promising applications from Office 2010, SharePoint, Azure, and CRM – but many of these are still tied to heavy enterprise investments in Microsoft’s traditional tools and platform solutions. So for hybrid environments (Software+Services) this may forestall rapid migration, but it doesn’t mean that Microsoft is truly “all-in” in my opinion.

My final thoughts are these:

1. Microsoft has lost its way at the worst time in the consumer space, its customer and its partners are looking to Microsoft’s competitors for innovation and sellable solutions. Dell and HP are the first off the boat, so how will Microsoft shore up the army of independent and small developers that may soon follow. This space is critical because it connects the data, information and systems to the jobs people are doing in and away from the office. Innovation begins with the consumer these days not with corporate IT, even SAP gets this.

2. Ballmer has bet on a long term strategy over short term gains. I agree that technology investments are not something you should tie to quarterly results, but looking at the quarters and yearly figures above. Seems it’s time to put up or shut up about this.

3. The ‘elephants’ Windows, Information Worker Group, and AppPlat are massive parts of the companies ~$60B in revenues. These massive businesses have the company committed to a course that makes innovation hard and political. While there are forces at work (Azure, Office On-line, CRM) that may effect a change of course – it will take significant management and ethos re-direction to make this work. I am not confident Microsoft has the hutspa  to make the bold and risky choices needed for this to happen. As such Microsoft may loose the enterprise market just as it is loosing the consumer market.

* Full disclosure, I worked at Microsoft and had an amazing experience while there, opinions in this blog are based on my person view of the company given the challenges they face in the market and the publicly available sites I have referenced in this blog. I do not hold shares in Microsoft.

Today I attended Jive Software’s Get Social tour stop in Toronto and left impressed not only with the company’s software and strategy, but with the quality of attendance at the event. The event featured a hour and a bit of keynotes including a look at how Canada’s RIM has used Jive’s SBS to deploy mybackberry.com. What impressed me the most was the level of interest and activity from Canada’s largest companies. In the breakout I attended there was representation from 4 of the 6 largest banks, well known national law firms, ad agencies and professional services companies.

Personally, my interest in attending came from discovering significant interest in the integration of social software tools within business processes. In fact I have touched on this in several blogs already (here, here and here) and have found myself spending an increasing amount of time fielding questions from financial professionals on the topic of how their investments in tools like SAP or Microsoft Dynamics along with SharePoint can be further leveraged to move people from communal watering holes of information (ala SharePoint, Stellent (now part of Oracle), OpenText, etc.) to proactive, automated community distribution networks. All the while business execs these social services/tools to be part of existing business processes and applications from ERP to CRM to BI – and not to have to rip and replace investments they’ve already made.

To address this need Jive has developed its Social Business Software platform. This platform is based on a addressing a need to leverage existing technology investments – both on-premise and software as a service – made by organizations and intertwine social tools which are quickly maturing from the consumer technology world (Facebook, twitter, DIGG, etc.) into the business arena.

The Jive SBS solution should be very interesting to companies who’ve found themselves sinking in email, departmental collaboration websites, individual shared drives with unique folder structures, client-based office productivity tools, or aging client server business applications with little web extensibility. Their idea is to offer software solutions to organizations seeking to bring current consumer focused social features into the context of a secure, robust business processes and integrate these into the existing information and presentation layers used by their employees. Think ‘facebook’ that allows individual users to create ‘friends’ of co-workers, partners, suppliers and also applications – ERP, data repositories, content management systems, etc.

An interesting quote from the Jive Software presenter was that one of their goals is “…to enable the solutions from being ‘place-centric’ (e.g. a data or content repository) to ‘you-centric’.” The promise of this approach is to enable content relevance to the job you and/or your employees are doing – further amplifying the time to value that the business or community can benefit from. This can be achieved by using technology to enable systems to constantly seek information based on your criteria and deliver internal and external content in a timely fashion to the end-user.

I’ll be writing more on this topic, but for now my advice (based on what I have seen so far) for organizations  looking at social technology solutions that can fit into existing business processes is to:

• Plan – Look at (audit) how your employees are communicating in the office versus outside the office. Determine how this may or may not fit into different aspects of your business process and technologies.
• Promote – Promote activities which promote collaboration that benefits the organization, team and individual. Begin to recognize good ideas from individuals and identify who might be a super user by department and even age group (e.g. don’t have a 20 something trying to sell social tools to a 50 something CEO)
• Execute – Pick a part of the business that demand business process rigor, but also has an affinity for new technologies. Obtain the buy-in and support from the executive in charge and pilot a solution that brings together social technologies with financial, customer and partner data. Observe its usage, recognize individual contribution and learn from the effects this has on average and advanced users.
• Deliver – Realize this is a game changer. IT must be involved, but the business user will in some cases control the success of the project based on how they adopt and use the technology in conjunction with their specific needs. Don’t bury the data in a common format you make them adhere to – rather encourage them to rank and promote what they find valuable. Deliver an experience rather than a product.
• Hand over control – The hive of users will self organize around value and efficiencies. This is seen in nature and technology and is paramount to successful social software. In your planning you should have covered the governance and controls needed that are required by your business and ensured these are documented for your users. Now let them drive the interest and improvements of the software going forward.

The last part (IMHO) is the innovation aspect that is key to socializing your business.

Salesforce.com continues to ramp up its cloud offering and bolster its position as a leading business applications provider for companies of all sizes. All indications show that later this month there is a big announcement coming from SFDC and VMware about their joint product launch that combines SFDC’s could applications with VMware virtualization technologies. You can see the mock up landing page created here .

Now I am going out on a limb here, but I expect a lot to be made of this partnership as SalesForce.com and VMware bring two big trends together to offer scalable applications and infrastructure environments for their customers – perhaps being one of the first to link Software as a Service (SaaS) with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This positions them very well against Microsoft and IBM and in some cases ahead of Oracle in terms of dynamic customer offerings. A successful partnership may also continue the trend away from maintenance agreements that many large software vendors rely on for earning reports and re-invest back into development.

What else may this mean?

Well given the growth of virtualization (take and assessment here)  in corporate data centres and an increase in the usage of  web-based software to meet employee and business needs – these two technologies have a natural fit. By combining the ability to support growing server needs to an ability to dynamically apportion computing, application and processing resources needed for spikes in business demand (say a large payroll run to the opening of a new store and IT needs for adding people, processes and applications based on projected not real commerce) companies may flock in droves to an offering like this with pretty clear ROI and limited risk.

Build on top of this the growing application platform that SFDC brings with AppExchange and ChatterExchange and real-time application deployment, messaging and even management of both physical and web-based resources becomes readily available to businesses big and small.

Granted this is all speculation – but I’ll definitely be updating this blog in few weeks when the cat is out of the bag.

I recently read a blog entitled “Why we cannot get CRM (and SCRM) right” that triggered several thoughts; not as much on CRM but with regards to a challenge I used to face when ‘us’ marketeers wanted to try something drastically new. The more I thought I realized the problem (that I’ll try to illustrate below) is often the result of a company attempting to adopt a technology without having clearly understood the challenges that their users might face when using this technology, its limitations, and/or the process/guidelines that already existing in their environment.

In the following, I’ll share a bit about my experiences trying new things, having access to technology that can (and in some cases cannot) help me, but most importantly finding out (often in midstream) that there are junctures in making the idea become reality that conflict directly with existing business operation procedures.

Before striking out on my own, and during two years of emerging ’social’ trends, great ideas would emerge on how to use social channels to reach our clients, partners and prospects. We’d engage in lively discussions with our ad co.s, PR teams (internal and external) and others across the organization. We’d mock up how we could be truly creative and daring and use both our co.s technology and emerging ’social’ web-tools (Facebook, Twitter, Live.com, etc.) to raise awareness, start discussions and (hopefully) engage the community and have some fun while doing so.

Then when we went to turn ideas to actions we found ourselves caught in a quagmire of many of the business operations procedures. Part of the business like legal, privacy, finance, etc that had to be consulted would have lists of objection that would be counter to our business plans. Here is a hypothetical project example.

One of the first we’d run into was our legal dept., and they’d raise concerns about who’d have access to the data, what contributors across the business, partner community and customer (and prospects) might share with regards to personal, business or product information. Whether this was good, bad, risky, etc. Who owned this (the concept of community ownership doesn’t sit well with LCA folks). And of course could we (the co.) be sued b/c of any, some or all of these. Did any notice, competition, brand usage comply with the companies rules and regulations… the list went on and the quagmire of being daring became a real tough uphill battle.

Heck here is what a tweet (with feedback from LCA) would have looked like:

#nopurchaseneccessary #viewsarenotthatofXXXXXXXXX #plsreadprivacystmt http://ow.ly/1vabA – that is 88 of 140 characters used for compliance & regs — we have not even begun to tweet a simple message and action…

Further there are privacy and financial regulations about who we could use for these types of campaigns – even if we could get through LCA the more creative upstarts (for social media marketing) where typically not on the “approved vendor list”. Not that a large multinational 1980s advertising company couldn’t come up with something new and innovative, after all they did get billg to ‘wiggle his butt’, but the time and costs involved often created their own challenges.

Then there is the technology component. A well executed marketing campaign must have measurable results. Thus even if you got all the ducks in a row you still had to often figure out how to get the information, contacts, leads that you gathered and nurtured into the companies systems. Data pull, old CRM systems and processes, individual spreadsheets all would do their best to thwart these efforts. Then how do you disseminate the data to your partners and sales teams…

In the end, too many ideas were lost to the roadblocks I’ve mentioned above.

This brings me back to the post I mentioned at the title of the article and to quote the blog I mentioned, “The bottom line is that CRM is about companies engaging in relationships with customers.” However, I would like to add that relationships are very complicated these days with many moving parts. Whereas, start-ups and small companies, like mine, can be more flexible here – larger companies can but have many hurdles they must overcome in order to do so. There are good reasons for this, but complying with these may result in large companies continuing to seem more and more stodgy, slow and boring. None of these terms is often used in corp branding – wonder why?

I’d therefore like to offer my experiences (hopefully this post wasn’t too much of a rant) so that midsize and large companies who are looking to update their CRM solutions will think abut involving more of their business in the selection of CRM tools, but most importantly in the pre-implementation discussion about what they are trying to do when it comes to customer engagement for the long term. How do trends and new technology impact this and how does the business work together to overcome from the beginning rather then midstream.

Further, consider how you’d like to deliver your message given the changing marketing and sales channels. e.g. what conversation(s) do you want to start and by whom. Use input from legal, privacy, and the data analysis teams on how they can support the marketing, sales and customer service efforts and then develop  plans of what CRM means to the business rather than investing in a good tool, but limited in the ways you may be able to use it.

SAP’s non-renewing of Leo Apotheker’s contract and subsequent replacement with the appointed of Bill McDermott, head of field organization; and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development has raised many questions about SAP, it’s future and impact this might have on customers.

While I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, I do feel this is a positive move for the company, its shareholders and the market in general. Why?

Well as for Mr. Apotheker, he was a great contributor to SAP’s growth for over fifteen years and was key to developing the company into its leadership as a world-class enterprise business applications provider.  It’s most recent focus on sustainability was overshadowed by the controversy of raising maintenance fees and the delays in SAP’s Business By Design SaaS ERP offering. Nonetheless my experiences hearing Leo articulate strategy and his focus on growth never led me to doubt that SAP would continue to grow with him at the helm. I wish him well.

Nonetheless, the markets have changed. The global recession hit everyone hard, but especially the global manufacturing and supply chain sectors. Also known as SAP’s bread and butter. While I have seen SAP successfully win share from Oracle (and others) in finance and energy sectors, they have only begun to grow in the midmarket and lag in areas of collaboration tools and partnerships.

Enter the two rising stars. Since the departure of Shai Agassi in 2007, Bill McDermott and Jim Snabe have both been on everyone’s radar as the heir apparent. Both of these two gentlemen have incredible talents in growing the business (McDermott) and with the new technology trends of the current decade (Snabe).

Given SAP’s focus on competing with Oracle, Infor, Microsoft, and others, having a person like McDermott at the helm promises a very competition and customer savvy change that SAP may very well need – at least in the eyes of many of its customers and stakeholders – in order to remain independent and continue to attract new business. Combine this with Snabe’s technology savvy skills that are crucial to leading SAP’s charge into both hosted line of business offerings for large and midsized organizations – and you may very well have a company ready (once again) to engage its competition with teeth barred.

In my opinion, the real question is the role Hasso Plattner will play in grooming, developing and allowing these two leaders to co-exist and grow the organization.

It’s my opinion to get SAP re-engaged in the eyes of the market that these two leaders must show a unified front, play to one another’s strengths, and manage the corporate culture change that will ensue. Ensuring that top talent continues to grow at SAP all the while being more aggressive in seeking innovation from outside rather than defaulting to home grown whenever possible will be key. SAP must boost its education efforts which have lagged and work to attract more engineers to its platform and promote further integration with industry and role-based technologies.

If I were a customer of SAP, I would not worry about the investments you’ve made. Rather I would look forward to a re-invigorated competitor with two very capable helmsmen. (After all this has worked for Oracle for quite some time.) SAP will be out to prove its business value its software brings, bring new hosted solutions to mid and large organizations so that deployment becomes more timely and effective in helping get the job done, and work more collectively with other market leads in adjacent sectors (collaboration, CRM, unified communications, etc) to give business assurance that interoperability and standards will make it easier for them to deploy and grow.