The new benchmarks

I am helping review for a client competing proposals from several consortia of software vendors and systems integrators/outsourcing firms. The range of on-premise versus SaaS, onshore versus offshore talent, opex, capex, EBITDA calculations of license, hosting, maintenance, implementation etc. is mind-boggling. It shows the convergence of so many trends in the enterprise world.

As if that was not enough, I see this Good Technology report which shows rapidly growing iPhone and Android presence in the enterprise. Next week’s SuperBowl will accelerate a trend we saw last year – every major brand is looking at social marketing and integrating that with traditional media. No longer can enterprise vendors pretend that Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon are just “consumer tech”, not major factors in the enterprise and that they should not be benchmarked against them.

In this new world, I thought this WSJ article about SAP focusing on Oracle was well – so 90s. If that is all SAP is focused on, it’s already in big trouble. Because the CIOs I deal with are working with a much broader portfolio of vendors than ever before, and every $1 for SAP has to be benchmarked against cloud storage, iPads, digital marketing and so much more.

It’s not SuperBowl time in the technology league – it is the start of the season, and it is a league with parity where last year’s weak teams have stronger draft picks. Time to broaden our competitive horizons.