As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
One of our major research focus areas is Applications Modernization and Migrations. As I wrote here “After 25 years of cloud applications, it is shocking how many customers are stuck with client/server and even mainframe applications”
So, it was nice to host Jean De Villiers, Chief Customer Officer at Unit4 and have him present on their Succes4U offering which is “a subscription wrapper that provides you with a single access point to the Unit4 Service Portfolio, with expert guidance to enable maximum value realization from your Unit4 investment.”
He says “we looked at all of our red projects over the years, and identified common trends in what drove the projects red?” in developing this offering.
Too many migrations just sell cloud architectures and new features and functions. They don’t focus enough on the change management when your IT is now longer managing the infrastructure, when upgrades are more frequent and many other changes when you move to the cloud. And most don’t focus on business outcomes from the migrations.
22% of Unit4 customers had migrated to the cloud offering by the end of 2023. Since Success4U was announced in Nov 2023, they have had conversations with 87% of the remaining customer base, and 175 are actively migrating.
We talk about why customers resist change, whether they attempt greenfield projects when they do migrate, if Unit4 and partners are automating pieces of the migration, the business outcomes Unit4 helps them achieve as part of the migration and plenty more. As he says they are “revolutionizing the way we take our customers to the cloud and also the way we onboard new customers to our platform”
Very nicely done in about half a hour.
