deal architect

Burning Question: What will be Killer Enterprise Mobile Applications in 24 months?

RIM's Director of Alliances, Tyler Lessard presented at WES 2008 last week what he called "The Latest, the Greatest, the Coolest Applications for BlackBerry Smartphone.". This interview summarizes what he presented. RIM has TV commercials like this one and exciting new consumer products partners like Unify4Life which could make the device the ultimate remote control - not just for managing home stereos and theaters but also in future home security, power management and more.

Of course, still boring compared to what Michael Mace describes in the Nokia ecosystem

"It features, swear to God, a guy who created a self-hypnosis application for the N95, someone who created a bad breath detector, a man in the Witness Protection Program who created a location-aware app to track the hit men chasing him, a ditzy woman who uses the phone to track fertilizer schedules for her plants..."

But as I walked the Solutions Expo at WES 2008 I was struck at how few business applications there were. Let me clarify. Few categories of applications. Plenty of Sales Force automation applications (SAP, Sage, salesforce.com among others were present), Location/Mapping applications (Garmin, Google, TeleNav and several others), traditional applications which help manage email (Blackberry's traditional killer app for business). Oh, there were some POS extensions, some scanners, some voice recognition applications, but overall relatively sparse.

So, my question for readers - as Google and Apple and Nokia expand the ecosystem for mobile apps, what will the enterprise (as against consumer) mobile apps look like in 24 months? Will accountants have journal entry capability so they can work even when they are at a baseball game? Will fields like healthcare and logistics continue to pioneer with vertical apps? And will corporate users care?

Burning Question: Is SAP walking a mile in customer shoes?

So, at Sapphire SAP presented reasons for delay around its BBD SaaS offering. Most explanations centered around SAP "learning and optimizing what our customers have been doing" with hosting, applying SAP fixes, Basis support, upgrades, user support - various aspects of application management.And SAP automating many of these expensive, manual tasks. 

Privately, some SAP employees have told me the BBD journey has been a revelation how much its SI and outsourcing partners charge its clients, and now SAP is driven not just to improve economics for future SaaS customers but also for existing on-premise customers.

To which I go - Yeah! Why has it taken so long?

Then the other part of me goes - in bits and pieces SAP has offered services like this for years. Its consulting, systems integration, help desk and outsourcing groups know the effort and economics around SAP implementations and support and those in its large services ecosystem.

What do readers think? Has SAP embraced a new religion or is it just spin to explain away BBD delays?

Burning Question: What will enterprise software look like in 2017?

Forrester lays out 3 scenarios for CIOs:

Scenario 1 forecasts increased consolidation, diminished innovation, and high prices.

In Scenario 2 a new, large vendor enters to challenge IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP; stimulate innovation; and keep price increases at bay.

In Scenario 3 it forecasts the upheaval of today's largest vendors, rapid innovation, and steep price declines.

What do Deal Architect readers think?

BTW - Forrester inspired this question - so no wimpy Gartner probabilities allowed -)

Burning Question: What do YOU do with unlimited phone time?

So, as mobile companies rush to offer unlimited call plans, I wanted to ask my readers what creative and zany things they have done or seen others do when they are invited to a buffet by the Duke of Decibels...

My 3 stories:

a) Back when we had airphones in planes, GTE (now Verizon) ran a $ 20 promotion - one rate per call, no time limit. Usually it cost around $ 4 a minute. This fellow spoke non-stop for 3 hours. He switched between English and his native tongue (I think Nigerian). He screamed into the phone, then would sing in to it. All of us around laughed, cringed with his cadence...all the way.

b) In the UK when they had a similar unlimited mobile minutes promotion a few years ago, a man told me he used his and his wife's cell phones as a baby monitor - all night and every time the baby had a nap.

c) I heard about a gentleman who on the road calls his wife on Skype and they keep the call on all night long (Skype to Skype calls are free). It's comforting to both, apparently.

Readers, other stories?

Burning Question - How does software M&A help buyers, not just investors

Between CA and IBM and Oracle and HP and Microsoft and Infor and Sage we now have a database of over 200 software industry acquisitions over the last 15 years.

I hear from my investor friends all the time how healthy M&A is for the software industry.

What I would love to see is academic or Gartner or other research which shows how buyers have benefited from volume discounts as contracts get consolidated, from lowered SG&A, product rationalization, from better product integration, from streamlined customer service...the promises that industry M&A makes to a CIO.

Love reader input..on studies which show tangible payback, not just promises...

Burning Question: Reaching the Enterprise Technology Masses

This continues a series of burning questions I pose to my readers to hopefully spark some debate in the comments.

So I see this fascinating insight via Britton Manasco

"Gideon (Gartner) noted that there are 50 million enterprise IT users worldwide. However, only a fraction of them -- 20 thousand -- have advisory seats with the Stamford, CT-based research firm that bears his name."

The way Gartner knows to scale is expanding its sales channel. Not cheap - cost it 42% of revenues in sales and marketing last year.

In the meantime, CNet which focuses on tech readers is under pressure from its investors. Their advertising model is not growing as fast - even though many of the ZDNet blogs are to me required reading for most tech folks and have impressive page counts.

Vast market with no clear leader? Or a mirage - since the vast majority of those 50 million tech readers have little budget and don't really matter?

What do you think?

Burning Question: Would you pay for my content?

Jaron Lanier at NY Times writes a thought provoking column titled "Pay me for my content". He goes "There’s an almost religious belief in the Valley that charging for content is bad. The only business plan in sight is ever more advertising."

My readers get free content through this blog and my other innovation focused blog New Florence, New Renaissance. No advertising either.

This is the third year for the blogs. Every year-end I re-evaluate where I should take them. The article above is timely as I start that process in December.

So here are some burning question for my readers: Would you pay for a subscription for a premium section on my blogs? How much is fair? (BTW - Zero is an acceptable answer).

If I moved to a sponsored model how would that affect your perception of the blog's independence?

And finally a question for my vendor readers - how much do you hate my guts and would be willing to pay me to shut this blog down? -)

Please send me an email or comment below and I will reach back out to you for a conversation. It will be great to put a face and voice behind so many IP addresses which access my blogs on a regular basis.

Thanks - appreciate your feedback on where to take the blogs next.

Burning question: What do you seek in an industry conference?

Jason Corsello talks about a session at a conference he really enjoyed. I would have also enjoyed it because it had end users - buyer participants - on the panel. Nothing like real life experiences. Little marketing spin.

On the other hand, Duncan Chapelle reports Gartner Symposium in Orlando saw several empty seats (I think it peaked around 10K attendees one year, so 6K this year would show empty in many of the larger rooms at the massive Dolphin-Swan complex). Even more telling - only 150 exhibitors down from 340 in 2001. Correlation - fewer buyers at the event attract less vendors. Kind of a spiral. Of course, the event agenda book is still so thick, it is overwhelming which sessions you want to attend. And puny compared to Oracle OpenWorld which is supposed to attract 40,000 and the agenda is chock ful of technical sessions, industry leader presentations, entertainment.

My favorite sessions at events I go to follow this order:

a) Buyer panels, particularly CIOs discussing innovation projects
b) Startup cameos where promising startup CEOs present their company and product for 10-15 minutes
c) A panel with conflicting interests - so buyers, investor, vendor reps on a panel. Hey, dueling words get exchanged every day in real life, so why not be transparent in a conference  panel?
d) Interview with a large technology company executive - but a frank one, not just a respectful, softball one
e) A market overview perspective from a VC, a McKinsey, an analyst firm, or a market leading blogger -  but only 1-2 in a conference. One of the reasons I would suggest Gartner Symposium has peaked is it is 90% analyst pitches.
f) Perspective from a large company vendor executive which is not about their company. Their life, their industry perspective, their politics,
g) Presentations by systems integrators and outsourcers. Generally, they present too much on methods and standards, not enough on client case studies.

I know many readers go to conferences for technical sessions. Others go for the vendor booths and demos. Some go for the networking opportunity. Others go to hang out with colleagues and friends they have not seen in a while. Still others for the entertainment. Some for the catered food -)

Reader, what are your tricks and traps as you decide which events you go to - and then how do you optimize your few days at the event?

Burning question: Have you seen a grown man cry?

This continues a series of burning questions I pose to my readers to hopefully spark some debate in the comments. This time...the topic is truly burning - what is the hottest meal you have ever eaten?

I put a little too much Wasabi sauce yesterday to mask not great store bought sushi my wife brought. And it singed my sinuses so bad I had to jump off the table in search of a Kleenex. Scared everyone around and I thought it was 911 time. Instead, I just cried for a few minutes. Wasabi is supposed to be an antidote to poisoned food. Darn thing kills everything!

Then I saw this post courtesy of Mike Krigsman and cried some more - and this post became burningly obvious -)

Readers, please chime in and vote your own favorite, spicy, tear-jerking meals.

I am providing a list of my Scoville scale busting meals - unfortunately I cannot remember all the restaurant names.

a) Dipping sauce at a dive in Houston, with menus only in Spanish. I thought it was guacamole. It was pure jalapeno. Probably a habanero tossed in.
b) Penang curry at an Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam
c) TomYum soup at a Thai restaurant in New York
d) Vindaloo at an Indian restaurant in London
e) a night at the Wall of Fire at the cajun Heaven on Seven in Chicago.
f) a simple salad of mostly chopped onions and green peppers with some garam masala at a restaurant in India. What looked routine, and I must have distracted and kept eating it, ended up scalding my mouth for a couple of days.

So cry on. Plenty of Kleenexes available here -)

Burning Question: Is SAP becoming more agile or is it thrashing?

This continues a series of burning questions I pose to my readers to hopefully spark some debate in the comments.

3 weeks ago, SAP took the SaaS path with BusinessByDesign. Last week at TechEd, it was celebrating the growing customer acceptance of its SOA (after years of investment). Now it acquires BusinessObjects.

Each of these is a "life event" requiring billions in dollars in investments. All of them have been announced in less than a month. Hence my title question...has SAP become more agile in the last year or is it just thrashing around for any growth strategy?

Your thoughts?