deal architect

SINAFA

Bob Evans at Information Week contributes an SLA – a six-letter acronym

“SaaS is not a fad anymore”

Expect to hear that often next couple of years.  Of course, my blog readers have been already been hearing it for a few years …

The 1001st point of influence

Ray Wang has kept a few of us apprised of his plans since he announced he was leaving Forrester. It is public today he is banding with other Forrester alum Charlene Li, Deborah Schultz and Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter.

Their moves continue the fragmentation in technology influence - the thousand points of influence I wrote about here. And a growing opportunity for boutique firms like Altimeter and mine to work with new partners. I started my own boutique firm 5 years ago in line with the "network" thinking John Hagel describes in this video. Lots of specialists loosely connected to bring value.  We have accordingly gone to market with several other boutique firms. I am also proud to have been a founding member of the Enterprise Irregulars group of bloggers - many of who have their own boutique firms.

The last five years have also opened my eyes to the influence peers have on technology decisions today. As I have written before "In the 70s buyers turned to IBM for advice. In the 80s Andersen. In the 90s Gartner. Today, they turn to each other."

So, we look forward to working with Altimter and Ray with the humility of knowing our small role in that network of influencers. Congratulations and a hearty welcome from a network node!

More New Florence

On the innovation blog

Bank Deposit by Mobile Phone

Smart Showers

Sony’s Party-Shot

USB 3.0

Smart Material d3o

Corporations to allow sex at work

Not - but meant to relate to Forrester's contention that social networking tools will go enterprise because all your employees are using them. While consumerization of technology is having a significant impact on corporate IT (see my post Den is mightier than the Board), the reality is lots of stuff we do in our personal lives does not end up - and some thankfully so - in our corporate lives. 

In the end social tools still have to show business value, or they will not get widely adapted. As I have written before social and E 2.0 tools have to evolve from "feel good" to "good feel"

SAP SaaS for all of us

NetSuite is running a webinar today titled 'SAP for the rest of us" - Bruce Richardson of AMR is part of it.

End of summer. This is when the "hibernating bear" - as Hasso Plattner called SAP's SaaS Business By Design product at Sapphire earlier this year - was supposed to come out. But while they announced Feature Pack 2.0 recently, they are still keeping the rollout very selective.  InformationWeek: "(SAP) is testing the software-as-a-service suite with 90 customers, and SAP hopes -- but can't guarantee -- that it can accelerate the rollout next year"

NetSuite might as well change the webinar title to say it is delivering the missing-in-action-for-years-now SAP SaaS product for all of us. 

The messy world of SAM

So, a new backup computer has its 60 day free Norton Internet Security expire. I try to renew and the site has no way to accept my existing account credentials. I have a left over license for Norton Antivirus but it will not let me install that without uninstalling the other Norton program first. Going through that process I am curious how the renewal price would have compared to market and I can find a price 75% lower than the Symantec site…

Just a small microcosm of the mess most companies have with software asset management. Vendors accuse companies of non-compliance and threaten audits all the time but the reality is there are too many versions, too many license measurement units, too many opportunistic prices.

The glib solution usually is “let’s sign an enterprise agreement”. Not only are most of them priced at too high an assumption of usage capacity, few vendors can resist tacking in exceptions and coming back for more periodically. Kind of the advertised “all-you-can-eat” buffet where the drinks, premium foods priced separately add up to more than the base price. 

Telco double-dipping

 In the recent AT&T filing with the FCC a sentence caught my attention

“In particular, both parties required assurances that the revenues from the AT&T voice plans available to iPhone customers would not be reduced by enabling VoIP calling functionality on the iPhone.”

I said wait a minute – what about data plan revenue? I mean you could not make a VoIP call without a data plan (which is $ 30 or higher a month on an iPhone in addition to a voice plan).

No mention of that anywhere.

But why is that surprising in an industry which loves to double-dip?

• Mobile voice plans meter both the caller and the receiver - outside the US many plans do not
• Ditto with text messages – with eyes on charging the source application in addition to monthly plans consumers pay for
• Verizon charges you a base fee for a land-line – but if you don’t make any long-distance calls they bill you a “shortfall” charge. No kidding.
• As this consumer comments – pay twice for one Verizon FiOS ONT
• 3G not available where you are even though we sold you a national plan? Sign up for our additional wi-fi hotspot plan (for iPhone AT&T includes the hotspot in the data plan)
• You want to use your PDA as a modem? Sure, that will be extra even though you will now download less onto your PDA – and you have an unlimited data plan
• AT&T allows you to rollover minutes on your mobile plan, Nice feature their acquisition of Cingular continued. But if you reduce your monthly minutes to take advantage of that backlog of rollover minutes, you lose a big chunk of that inventory of minutes. How naive of you to believe you had “earned” those minutes
• Hotspot plans -  you sign up with a big carrier like T-Mobile and find they have patchy coverage even in German speaking Europe. Pay them a plan fee, and pay hotels and other carriers as you go along. Let everyone enjoy the double-dip party,
• Not just the telcos – governments have learned to pile on. Take a look at the fees and taxes in your bill each month.

Airlines and banks get lots of bad press for nickel and diming customers with fees. I would say they are amateurs compared to telcos. 

Packaged Software, an accident of history

Hope my friend Phil Wainewright does not mind my ripping off the title of his new post.

But to me the big accident that happened was someone decreed one group of vendors should develop software, and another group should implement and maintain that software.

It’s changing.

Appirio briefed me yesterday about the Professional Services Enterprise vertical product they have developed on the force.com platform. So I asked them – are you becoming more of a software company, less of a systems integrator? Their response, oblivious to the difference -  “we are a cloud solutions provider”

A few hours apart, Vana Consulting informed me they had released human resource, talent management, and collaboration solution for small to mid size businesses built on the Zoho’s platform. Oh and on the side Vana also delivers services arounf Success Factors, PeopleSoft and Oracle HR products,

I bloggedon Sunday about Zyme breaking free from the traditional linear services model based on chargeable hours.

Last month I ran a guest column from the CEO of Corefino where she described how she is blending software and services in her next-gen BPO.

Four companies too young to remember the accident…

Un-hyping the Gartner Hype Cycle

Every summer, usually around July, Gartner issues its Hype Cycle for emerging technologies. It’s Jackie Fenn’s signature product each year and she is one smart analyst.

And it sets off a flurry of press releases from fans and detractors of the categories they catalog. So this year, I have heard from plenty – Cloud computing is overhyped. So is Green IT (both are at the “hump” of inflated expectations in 2009).

Guys, don’t take the hype cycle literally.  Neither clouds nor green showed up in the 2007 Hype Cycle below. Not on the radar at all. In reverse, Fixed Mobile Convergence and Mobile TV which were at the hump in 2007 are nowhere in the 2009 graph.

What does this mean? 

a) Category names morph as they mature. Many converge into others.

b) Never before has there been so much simultaneous innovation in so many tech categories. I mean I can easily average 500 innovation posts a year on New Florence. One Gartner graph with 50 or so categories is not going to cover them all.

c) Gartner is  inconsistent at the category level – e.g.“Web 2.o” at the same level as  “Bluetooth in automotive”- some are products, some are concepts, some are markets with many products 

d) They real strength of Gartner is summarization of their conversations with hundreds of buyers and vendor clients. That allows for good short term confirmation, but not always long-term or even mid-term forecasting.

So take the hype cycle as one snapshot of innovation in the market. And with a grain of un-hype.

Customer Advocacy and Abdication

Good friend and fellow blogger Paul Greenberg has been regaling the audience at the CRMe09 conference in New York this morning. He is previewing the next version of his CRM book – this time focused on Social CRM.

“Take a negative experience and turn it to a positive - you get an advocate”

But what to do with someone already an advocate who has an issue? Like Paul’s issues with United Airlines even though he is one of their better customers.

Let’s talk about companies I am an advocate of. I have been more than generous to Southwest on this blog (type Southwest in the search box and there are over 100 hits). But I report a bad experience with their new Wi-Fly and post a link on their blog - and no one reaches out to ask me for more details. Or offer a refund. I escalate another issue with 2 supervisors and ask for a call back. No call back. I email someone who has helped in the past about the incident. She ignores my email. Finally I sent a letter to the CEO. That got action, but in the 2 months that ensued, I moved my and my wife’s travel away from them.

And I am already an advocate…

Same thing with WalMart. Over 100 hits on this blog. Most positive. Then I write about a concern that Walmart may be losing its edge and Twitter about it. Silence.

Again I am already an advocate…

Now let’s talk about companies I am not an advocate of. I am tough on AT&T and Verizon and T-mobile on this blog – I am a customer of all three. Not once has one of them reached out and said – how can we turn you more positive? I deal with their people in a business setting quite often, and I ask them how the negative press affects their perception in enterprise transactions. Most will say “ our consumer groups run by different rules”. They should be back at corporate screaming at those consumer folks. No, that’s someone else’s problem.

My concern with Social CRM is we will build better antennae and pick up even more customer signals. But unless we have passionate (and empowered) employees who can follow up and do something about it, we will gradually turn off our advocates. And go back to traditional CRM – hope our marketing and PR dollars drown out the non-advocates.