CollaborHaitian: How CIC Uses Social Business to Crowd Source Medical Care in Haiti

Posted on April 26, 2013 by lauriemccabe

Logo-For-ThumbnailWhen small business owners and entrepreneurs think of IBM, they often mistakenly assume that IBM’s sophisticated solutions are only affordable by large corporations. And IBM sometimes lags the competition in garnering SMB mind share. But some of its offerings are actually a great fit for small and medium business (SMBs). A perfect case in point is IBM’s Smart Cloud for Social Business, which provides an online, integrated collaboration solution for file sharing, communities, web meetings, mail and calendars.

I recently had a detailed conversation with Marie Kenerson, Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer at Colleagues In Care (CIC) to learn how Smart Cloud for Social Business helps CIC achieve the effective collaboration that is vital to the organization’s mission.

Sometimes It Takes More than a Village

CIC is a nonprofit dedicated to building a medical knowledge database and volunteer network to help address the healthcare needs of Haiti. Even before the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, medical needs clearly outstripped available resources. Dr. Lisbet Hanson, a Virginia Beach OB/GYN, was in Haiti providing ultrasound training for OB/GYN practitioners when the quake struck. Just a few miles from the epicenter in Port-Au-Prince, the hospital she had taught at collapsed and all of the nurses there were killed.

People in Haiti needed help, and as we all recall, there was a worldwide outpouring of aid, including that from healthcare experts around the globe that wanted to volunteer. But, connecting the dots between far-flung doctors, nurse and other professionals to create and establish sustainable practices in Haiti posed a difficult collaboration challenge. Each expert has unique areas of knowledge to contribute in areas such as treatment options, clinical pathways, and best practices, but the real value comes from putting these puzzle pieces together in a way that can be shared and replicated.

Without a system to manage and collaborate on care, even the most knowledgeable people with the best intentions were unable to realize the outcomes that they had wanted to achieve. The experts would come in, and the destitute population became dependent on them. Then the experts would leave, and take their knowledge with them. A new group would come in, and the cycle would start again. There was no way to share or build upon best practices to improve care.

Crowd Sourcing Care

This was the impetus for CIC. Upon her return to Virginia following the earthquake, Dr. Hanson and her cardiologist husband, Dr. John Kenerson, decided that there had to be a better way. Hanson and Kenerson established CIC to create a more collaborative, replicable way to catalyze the global network of healthcare volunteers that wanted to assist Haitians. Their goal was and reamains to establish a navigable social network to bring expertise into Haiti–and provide the professional development that those staying in Haiti so desperately need. To help enable this, CIC applied for and received an IBM Trailblazer grant for IBM SmartCloud for Social Business (then called LotusLive) to help facilitate collaboratiotn.

CIC SchematicSizedforBlog2Using the SmartCloud solution since early 2011, CIC has built its “Social Collaboration Cloud Solution,” which is a collaborative learning system dedicated to transforming healthcare delivery in Haiti by fostering “CollaborHaitian.”  CIC is building a medical knowledge and volunteer service database and Best Possible Practice models (PPBMs) that practitioners in Haiti and other resource-constrained areas can use. CIC’s approach is fundamentally different from the traditional approaches to international development efforts because it relies on mutual collaborative learning in solidarity with Haitian colleagues.

Today, the program enables over 200 registered users to source, co-edit and share best practices information so that they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. CIC fosters collaboration between the different communities of providers integral to this type of environment, including:

  • ·Micro volunteers, who share specialized expertise to provide care such as screening for cervical cancer without equipment, or to build a clinic.
  • ·Peer networks of practitioners, who are focused on specific areas, such as pediatrics or hypertension. Some are physical volunteers, who train Haitian healthcare providers to embed evidence-based quality standards into the practices and curriculum in Haiti, and others contribute online.
  • ·Macro volunteers, who create and nurture mentoring relationships between practitioners on the ground in Haiti and vetted mentors.

With SmartCloud file sharing, a peer network of Haitian and international physicians can co-create training for how to take blood pressure without cuffs, a micro volunteer can translate it into Creole and French, and then share it with the peer network–all via SmartCloud. CIC is committed to making all programs openly accessible though the governmental ministers of health to anyone interested in customizing or replicating these BPP’s anywhere, thus reducing waste, redundancy of efforts, etc.

CIC also uses the meetings capability to conduct meetings between practitioners in Haiti and remote volunteers, and activities management to ensure ideas are documented, negotiated commitments to future tasks are managed and completed. Example templates for scheduling and managing travel and training program logistics make project management visible to all. Recently, CIC has also begun using IBM Docs to create and collaborate on documents.

As important, SmartCloud has been easy enough for SmartCloud users, predominantly a culturally diverse group of very busy volunteers who donate time and expertise in incremental chunks, to learn and use on a sporadic basis.

Perspective

SMB Group research studies indicate that teamwork and collaboration–or lack of it–effect an organizations’ financial performance as well as employee (or in this, case, volunteer) satisfaction. Organizations that are more collaborative have a decided edge over less teamwork-oriented counterparts.

This is not surprising. Whether you’re the CEO or a doctor, an accountant or a volunteer, you need to share and manage information, ideas, resources and connections to get the job done. Cloud-based, integrated collaboration tools such as SmartCloud for Social Business help organizations share knowledge, streamline processes, and keep everyone in the loop to gain that edge. This is more important than ever, as digital information continues to grow at an exponential rate.

CIC may face more urgent challenges than most private-sector small and medium businesses (SMBs) or even other non-profits when it comes to harnessing, applying and replicating knowledge-based practices and communities. But SMBs, as well as other non-profits, have just as much to gain by adopting a more integrated, collaborative approach to meet their challenges and gain their own unique edge.

This blog was sponsored by IBM to help educate small and medium businesses (SMBs) about how collaboration tools and social technologies can help their businesses.

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Will Actian Connect, Analyze and Act on the SMB Market Opportunity?

Posted on April 19, 2013 by lauriemccabe

After marking my calendar to attend Pervasive’s 2013 Integration World, I had to wonder whether or not Actian’s pending acquisition of Pervasive would be a done deal–or not–by April 14, when the conference was due to kick off.

After all, I figured that if things were still up in the air, I’d probably leave with more questions than answers. Although it seemed pretty clear to me that the combined entity would be able to bring a lot more to the table in the large enterprise big data space, it wasn’t clear to me what it would mean for the merged company’s future in the SMB market.

Evidently, the events team wasn’t sure about whether or not the acquisition would be a done deal in time for the event either, as they had two sets of signage and materials printed up and ready to go for either eventuality.

Fortunately, the acquisition became final on April 11, three days in advance of the event, and the events team got to use the Actian version. And although it’s too soon to expect a roadmap from the freshly combined entity, the event did give me a chance to think about what may be on tap.

 Actian Connects with Pervasive

actian pervasive imagesFirst, the background. Privately held Actian Corp closed the deal to acquire Pervasive, which had prior to this been publicly traded on NASDAQ, on April 11 for $161.7 million. Under the agreement, Pervasive becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Actian. In total, the merged company employs about 510 people.

Each company has been around a long time and has deep roots in the database world. Actian got its start from a predecessor company named Ingres in the late 1980s, which went through two acquisitions and a divestiture to then emerge as the new Ingres Corporation, best known for Ingres Database, an SQL relational database management system, available in community (open-source) and enterprise versions. On a quest to evolve into a big data company, the company acquired VectorWise, an analytical database in 2010. In 2011, the company rebranded itself as Actian and in 2012, it bought object-store database vendor Versant.

Likewise, Pervasive began as a database company in 1982, with its Btrieve offering. After a few acquisitions, spinouts and name changes, the company became Pervasive Software in 1997, when Btrieve evolved into Pervasive PSQL. In 2003, Pervasive entered the integration business when it purchased Data Junction (now Pervasive Data Integrator). Today, many SMB-oriented ISVs use Pervasive data integration solutions in their offerings. Data Integrator technologies are also at the core of Galaxy Marketplace, which Pervasive launched in 2011 (see Pervasive Puts Its Galaxy Integration Community Into Orbit). In addition, Pervasive jumped into the big data arena, most notably with DataRush, a predictive data analytics engine, in 2006.

In both companies, legacy database products still account for a big chunk of revenues, and have funded expansion to develop and/or acquire the big data solutions that they are targeting to fuel future growth. As noted by Steve Shine, Actian CEO in the press release announcing the deal, that target is to deliver big data solutions for enterprises of all sizes:  “Every moment, people, businesses and machines generate explosive volumes and varieties of data leveraging their existing networks and, more increasingly, the cloud. Companies that embrace this data as their most strategic asset will thrive, while those that don’t lose their competitive advantage.”

Giving companies the ability to “Connect, Analyze and Act” is Actian’s corporate mantra. Pervasive gives Actian the strong integration capabilities that it needed to fill out the connect piece of its big data story. Meanwhile, DataRush’s high-powered BI and analytics solutions should significantly beef up analytics and processing capabilities.

Where SMBs Have Fit Into the Story to Date

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) have been vital to Pervasive. The company has relied primarily on indirect channel partners to reach SMBs. ISVs in particular have been integral to its success. It has partnered with vendors such as Intuit, Salesforce, UserVoice and others who sell through embedded integrations and connectors built with Pervasive Data Integrator and with ISVs, such as GlobalShop, EBP, and Abacus, that build their solutions on Pervasive SQL database. A good strategy, as SMBs don’t often have the bandwidth, expertise or resources to tend to the integration plumbing necessary to connect financials, marketing, CRM and other solutions.

Screen shot 2013-04-19 at 2.41.23 PMIn 2011, Pervasive also introduced Galaxy Integration Marketplace, a portal where users can find integration guidance and buy pre-built integration solutions in Amazon-like fashion. On the flip side, the portal gives integration developers a window into what integrations people are looking for, as well as a lot of very handy tools–including a storefront–to provision and manage products, subscriptions, payment processing, etc.

Currently, Galaxy has about 100 integration apps, from Freshbooks to Salesforce, which is priced at $25 per month, to integrations that are priced at $5000 or $6000 per year.

Pervasive is also working on a new capability, code-named Maestro, that will have a simple mapping interface so providers can map custom fields on top of pre-built connectors. Again, the Galaxy approach makes it easy for under-resourced SMBs to tackle the complicated integration problem.

On the other hand, Pervasive’s big data offerings, such as DataRush, have pretty much been a large enterprise play, and Actian’s primary focus and customer base has resided with large enterprises to date.

Where Will SMBs Fit in the Future?

Will Actian continue to maintain a strong focus on SMBs? In conversations at Integration World, as well as in the press release, Shine indicated that Actian intends to cover the spectrum from large to small: “Actian’s innovations make it easy for organisations large and small to connect, analyse and act on their fast-changing and fast-growing diverse data assets throughout the entire data lifecycle.”

Furthermore, Pervasive has an established and successful model of working with ISVs to embed and sell through its solutions–a solid approach to reach and serve SMBs, who need  integration solutions that they can quickly deploy and from which they can get value. The Galaxy Marketplace complements this approach by adding the value of community insight and new ways to source and purchase integration solutions.

However, Actian will face many challenges as it tries to span from large enterprises to small–especially in increasingly crowded and hyped integration, analytics and big data markets. And, as more SMBs become aware of and educated about what big data is and why they need to have a strategy for it, how will Actian push through the noise and surface to get into consideration in that arena?

Easier said than done–both on engineering and marketing fronts, especially as large customers tend to have a lot more pull than small ones, and the fragmented nature of the market makes SMBs much harder to reach and serve.

Actian will need to make a bold statement. It must double down on engaging SMB-focused developers, SIs and other sell-through partners both within, as well as beyond its current integration ecosystem. If Actian could, for instance, apply low-friction approaches such as Galaxy into other areas, such as analytics, it could prove a powerful play for helping SMBs not only connect, but to also analyze and act on their data once its integrated.

I’ll be watching to see if Actian chooses to make some significant moves in SMB directions as well as in the large enterprise space. Will SMBs be treated as a strategic market focus, or as business as usual? Actian’s decisions will signal whether it intends to pursue a broader play in the SMB market–or not.

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Sage Streamlining Takes a Major Turn With the Sale of ACT! and SalesLogix

Posted on February 19, 2013 by lauriemccabe

sage imagesLast week, The Sage Group announced that it is selling its Sage Act! contact manager and SalesLogix CRM to Swiftpage. Swiftpage is a U.S. based digital marketing software vendor and has been a Sage partner supplying Sage E-Marketing as a connected service for three-plus years. The move is part of Sage’s strategy to streamline its business software portfolio and focus on its core application areas, accounting, ERP and payroll. Sage is also selling Sage Nonprofit Solutions to Accel-KKR, a private equity firm.

In addition, Sage is unloading four solutions sold in Europe. Combined, these sales amount to about $145 million, and result in a loss to Sage. Accel-KKR and Sage provided Swiftpage with significant capital to help finance Swiftpage’s SalesLogix and ACT! purchases. Sage will retain 16.1% ownership in this deal.

The sale affects about 1,000 of Sage’s 13,000 employees, with about 250 people from Sage ACT! and SalesLogix moving to Swiftpage. In my conversation with Himanshu Palsule, Sage’s North American support group is working with Swiftpage to put an escalation process in place for customers.

Sage isn’t exiting the CRM market, however. It is retaining Sage CRM (which it acquired as part of its purchase of ACCPAC several years ago) as its core CRM product.

Following Through On a Strategy to Streamline

Sage’s announcement doesn’t come as a big surprise. At Sage Summit 2012 last August, Sage North America management revealed its strategy to concentrate development on what Sage termed core solutions areas–namely financials, ERP, and payroll, as discussed in my post, Sage Turns a New Leaf: Top Takeaways from Sage Summit 2012.

At the event, Sage North America CEO Pascal Houillon set forth Sage’s strategy to move from a heavily decentralized product management and marketing approach to one that is more centralized and focused—and to put the company on a stronger growth trajectory. By streamlining its offerings, Sage intends to provide customers and partners with a more integrated experience and more flexibility to take advantage of new cloud-based connected services.

Shedding CRM Solutions That Weren’t Keeping Pace with Market Trends

Over the years, Sage has been very acquisitive. But many of its acquisitions haven’t really paid off. This has been particularly true for Sage ACT! and SalesLogix, both of which Sage acquired in 2001 when it bought Interact Commerce. Sage bought these products when desktop and client-server computing were at their peak–but about to wane. Since then, of course, the likes of Salesforce.com, Zoho CRM, Nimble and many other CRM cloud offerings have come to the forefront. Meanwhile, Sage has struggled to make the cloud transition with its CRM products. In addition, Sage hasn’t been able to keep pace with developing the new social capabilities that customers want in CRM solutions. These limitations have made it difficult to sell these products to new customers.

While Sage did develop integrations for ACT! and SalesLogix with its financials solutions, its attempts to cross-sell CRM to its installed base of financials and ERP customers met with limited success. The partner channel and end-user decision-makers for CRM and financials solutions are very different, and Sage was unable to develop an effective method to bridge the gap. As a result, there is very little customer overlap between the two.

With ACT! and SalesLogix off the plate, Sage intends to increase its focus on its core financials and ERP products, including Sage 50 (formerly Peachtree), Sage 1oo ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90 & 200), Sage 300 ERP (formerly ACCPAC), and Sage ERP X3, and provide a richer set of connected services for these solutions.

Moving Forward

For a very long time, Sage has looked to acquisitions as a way to fuel growth, acquiring scores of business software products over the years. Sage has had a hard time rationalizing its strategy, sparking much criticism for having a cluttered portfolio, too many products and not enough focus.

Now, Sage is taking a 180-degree turn to sell off surplus solutions, freeing up development and marketing resources to create cleaner, more integrated solutions and messaging. While it’s too early to tell if this new strategy will result in the growth Sage is looking for, the move does give the company more bandwidth to concentrate on its core financial solutions, and give its remaining Sage CRM product the types of cloud, social  and mobile capabilities that it needs to be competitive. In addition, Sage no longer has to contend with the politics of competing product lines and partner channels.

While the move may be a bit emotionally jarring for current ACT!  and SalesLogix customers, they shouldn’t experience too much change in the short term. Over time, they may in fact see an upside, if Swiftpage, which has a strong focus in the digital marketing space,  can infuse the former Sage solutions with the updated cloud, social and mobile capabilities that they will need to attract new customers.

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Dell Cloud Client Manager–A Wyse Move For Mobile Management

Posted on November 20, 2012 by lauriemccabe

Earlier this year, Dell acquired Wyse, arguably the pioneer in thin-client computing. Together, Dell and Wyse have wasted little time in putting Wyse expertise to work to launch Dell Wyse Cloud Client Manager (CCM), which is designed to help companies address the increasingly vexing problem of managing mobile devices and applications.

Dell is delivering CCM as a cloud-based, self-service offering that gives businesses a centralized mobile management platform from which they can:

  • Manage thin client and mobile devices. Supported devices include Apple iOS, Android, and Dell Wyse thin clients, whether they’re using 3G, 4G or wi-fi networks.
  • Provide users with secure remote access to content on servers, laptops and desktops. Using Wyse Pocket Cloud technology, mobile users to remotely and securely access and manage content stored on home or office computers.
  • Set rules and policies to automate provisioning. CCM enables IT to create rules and permissions to streamline provisioning, and ensure that appropriate policies are applied to devices and users.
  • Real-time monitoring, analytics and reporting. The solution provides real-time feedback on users’ mobile activities, and the ability to send alerts in case of user non-compliance.

Since CCM is a cloud service, you don’t need to install any additional hardware or software, and can be up and running with CCM in less than an hour. As critical, CCM works regardless of your company’s mobile procurement and provisioning policy. Whether your business provides and manages all employee mobile devices, supports a BYOD program, has an employee self-service model, or some combination of these, CCM enables you to centrally manage how employees access corporate data and apps from their mobile devices, and create containers to separate corporate and personal apps.

The price is right for cash-strapped SMBs: Dell offers a free Starter Tier for smaller companies, which has all CCM capabilities except for group-based management. The Pro Tier comes with granular group management capabilities, and pricing starts at $5.50 per month for one user and up to three devices.

Mobile Management is a Top SMB Challenge

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that the growth trajectory for mobile solutions is soaring. So it’s not surprising that SMBs are going mobile: SMB Group’s 2012 SMB Mobile Solution shows that 83% of small businesses (1-99 employees) and 76% of medium businesses (100-999 employees) already use mobile solutions in their businesses.

Much of this growth has been driven by consumer demand for new and better devices and apps. As we use mobile more in our personal lives, our expectations for applying mobile solutions in our business lives also rises. But this rapid escalation of mobile use combined with a dizzying proliferation of devices and apps has led to a management dilemma.

As they go mobile, SMBs are taking different approaches in terms of how they provide mobile devices to their employees (Figure 1).

Figure 1: How SMBs Provide Mobile Devices to Employees

Source: 2012 Small and Medium Business Mobile Solutions, SMB Group

The velocity of mobile adoption and the convergence of mobile device use for personal and business needs has led to a rash of security and management issues for IT, who must manage a mushrooming and increasingly hybrid mobile environment which extends beyond devices to apps and services (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Top SMB Security-Related Challenges In Using Mobile Solutions

Source: 2012 Small and Medium Business Mobile Solutions, SMB Group

The result is that many SMBs have yet to address the mobile management challenge (Figure 3).

Figure 3: SMB Use of/Plans for Mobile Management Solutions

Source: 2012 Small and Medium Business Mobile Solutions, SMB Group

Dell’s Answer to Managing the Bright and Shiny Mobile Challenge

The mobile management challenge will only intensify, especially given the industry’s proclivity to churn out bright and shiny new devices and apps–and users’ desire to get their hands on them. Dell CCM gives companies a secure, affordable and accessible way to manage through this inevitable churn, regardless of mobile policies, virtualization technologies or device choices.  CCM offers both device and app management, and supports Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and other virtualization environments.

CCM also offers management tools to automate and streamline management and offload routine chores. IT can create role-based rules and permissions for users or user groups, which allow or prohibit the use of specific apps. Once a user’s permissions are set up, the user can register devices on their won via the self-service portal. New devices automatically inherit the appropriate policies, configurations, and apps of the user. Employees also can use the portal to reset system passwords, and, if a device goes missing, lock or wipe corporate data. The platform delivers analytics and reporting, including audit trails to help IT monitor user compliance.

CCM provides added through virtual desktop capabilities in Wyse PocketCloud Remote Desktop (a new web-based version is in beta now), which lets users securely access and manage content stored on home or office computers from their mobile devices.

Perspective

CCM doesn’t have everything in it yet, and it competes with many other MDM and mobile management platforms, including other DIY services and fully managed services. But Dell’s approach is solid, and it has removed pricing as a barrier to entry for budget-conscious SMBs with its free version.

Over time, Dell intends to evolve CCM into a one-stop shop for device-agnostic, all-inclusive management of whatever combination of mobile and traditional devices companies choose to use. If it stays true to putting flexibility, ease of use and affordability at the top of the priority list, CCM will provide a very good answer for the mobile management challenges that SMBs face.

Furthermore, CCM represents another step forward for Dell’s vision to transform from a product-centric to a solutions centric company. Although achieving the vision is still a work in progress, Dell’s Wsye acquisition (as with Boomi) demonstrates Dell’s ability to assemble the right building blocks and expand its footprint in cloud computing and remote services.

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Got Apps? GetApp Introduces CloudWork to Integrate Them

Posted on November 12, 2012 by lauriemccabe

Last week, I spoke with Christophe Primault, CEO of GetApp, about GetApp’s new CloudWork platform, which provides a growing catalog of pre-built connectors to integrate cloud-based business and social media apps. Listen to the podcast or read the summary below.      

 

Laurie: Good morning, Christophe. Could you start by describing what GetApp is and what it does?

Christophe: Okay. GetApp helps small businesses be successful with cloud business applications. We started a couple of years ago by building a marketplace where small businesses can discover business applications that are suited for their needs.

Laurie:  Great. I know you got started around 2010, a couple of years ago. About how many apps are available in the app marketplace now?

Christophe: Today we have close to 5000 different applications available, and they are split in about 300 different business categories.

Laurie:  Now, I know that GetApp is a little different type of marketplace than say Google Apps marketplace or Salesforce AppExchange. Can you just describe a little bit about what makes it different?

Christophe: Sure. So what we are trying to do is be independent and inclusive and let small businesses see everything that is available in the market. We are not tied to any particular vendor or systems. We access apps that are integrated with Google Apps or Salesforce or any application, but by coming to GetApp you will be able to see all the applications in each category that can be of interest to you.

Laurie: Okay. So kind of like the Switzerland of small business app marketplaces?

Christophe: Yes. Exactly. It’s like a Swiss Army knife for small businesses looking for business applications.

Laurie: And about how many visitors do you have coming to GetApp these days?

Christophe: This has been ramping up month after month, and today we have close to 150,000 visitors coming to the marketplace every month. Overall 95% of these are small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Laurie: Great. And how do you define an SMB? What size company?

Christophe: We are mostly targeting the low-end of SMBs. It’s companies with between 0 to 100 employees, but we do have also larger companies that are coming to GetApp to find applications for their own departments.

Laurie: I understand that you have a new offering from GetApp called CloudWork. Can you tell us what it is?

Christophe: Absolutely. CloudWork is a new solution that we launched one month ago, and it is a continuation of GetApp. While GetApp is the first step for small businesses looking for business applications to discover what they need, CloudWork really comes in when you start using more than one application in your organization. Let’s say you are using four or five, and you have developed silos of data in each of your applications and you realize that these apps don’t talk to each other. You want to integrate these applications together to increase productivity, so this is what CloudWork is doing. It’s an easy to use platform and you don’t need any technical knowledge to get apps to talk to each other.

Laurie:  Okay. Yes, I think most of us that are small businesses, we can relate to that. We start by using one application to fit a certain need, and then as we need another we add another. Before you know it we have a few different cloud apps, but they don’t necessarily talk to each other. So we’re trying to manually coordinate what’s going on. What was the genesis for deciding that you needed to do this?

Christophe: Yes, that clearly came from our users. We found applications on GetApp or anywhere else, and now we run integral applications, but they don’t talk to each other so we developed processes attached that are repetitive, that are not bringing a lot of value to the organization that could be automated. So, we decided, maybe this is something interesting to do. And then we asked ourselves, as an SMB using over 20 different cloud apps, is it a problem we have?  How could we address this problem and how much value will it bring to us? We realized that we could save a lot of time and be much more productive in doing more value-added tasks in the organization if we had the ability to automate many of the internal processes and tasks. This is how we decided to build the CloudWork platform to do that.

Laurie: So, how would it work for me? Can you walk me through it? Once I go on the CloudWork site, what would I need to do? How much work would it take on my part?

Christophe: I am going to take a very precise use case to tell you how you can use CloudWork. For example, cloud-based CRM is one of the most common applications for an SMB. So, assuming you are using let’s say Zoho CRM, you will come to CloudWork, you will sign up for an account and you will authorize CloudWork to talk to Zoho. You will do that with just a couple of clicks, and then we will show you a list of applications that can integrate with Zoho with the objective of capturing your client’s profile in Zoho all the customers, all the interactions your company had with your customer.

So let’s take an example. You start with Zoho CRM and then you decide that any e-mail that comes in via Gmail to your organization should be logged under your customer profile on Zoho CRM. So you integrate Zoho with Gmail. If you want to see which invoices and payment status of invoices, then you will integrate with Freshbooks. If you want to see when your client has received an e-mail campaign then you will integrate Zoho with MailChimp. If you want to have all your data in Zoho to be backed up on an online storage platform, then you will integrate with Dropbox, and so on.

So, in this specific case,  in just a few clicks you are adding different applications and building a unified view of all your company’s interactions, which of the apps you are using in your company under your customer profile in Zoho. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to set up. No code is needed. You don’t need to have any particular knowledge, and with just a few clicks you can set up your account and then the tasks run in the background.

Laurie: So, at the end of the day you’re saving a lot of time because you don’t have to be manually trying to connect these things. And you’re gaining productivity and cutting down on manual kinds of errors so your information is more accurate.

Christophe: Yes, you’ve covered what are the main objectives of CloudWork. Increasing productivity of your sales people or your customer support people, avoiding making errors when you’re cutting, pasting, or exporting files from one application to another, making sure also that you always back up data outside each of the applications that you’re using. So productivity, saving time, more security are the main benefits of CloudWork.

Laurie: If someone wants to try CloudWork, how can they try it? Is there a free trial?

Christophe: Yes, absolutely. It’s very easy. You go wwwcloudwork.com. You get started. There is a free trial. In fact, the product is currently free for all to use. There will always be a free version of the product. Most companies they will be able to use CloudWork for free. For very heavy users that will be automating a lot of tasks during the month it will be a paid version, but today it is free. We integrate with 15 very popular applications, and we are adding new different applications every week.

Laurie:  So with GetApp, you addressed that discovery challenge, how do I find applications that I might need to run my business. I know people will also find there is a lot of guidance in terms of reviews, and evaluations, and discussions that small businesses can look at to get information about the apps as well as just getting the apps. So, you’ve addressed that discovery, with CloudWork you’re addressing a lot of the integration issues, what’s next? What’s the longer term vision for GetApp and CloudWork?

Christophe: You’re absolutely right. We are not going to stop there. Our plan is to be what we call a cloud operation center for small businesses. Really the idea is you start with GetApp where you discover applications. You also get a lot of education material on how to get started with cloud applications, what are the pros and cons, which ones you should keep for your business, and then as you start to be a heavier user of applications you will have integration needs. This is one of the first services we offer in CloudWork, but in the future you will be able to access different applications with a single password as an example, or you will be able to have a better view of who is using which kind of application in your organization. So, basically we are going to add additional services to CloudWork so it becomes a single place in your organization where you can manage all your cloud services.

Laurie: That sounds fantastic. For small businesses, if you have not been to the GetApp.com site, I would advise you to check it out because there are a lot of great applications and advice on there. Thank you so much for your time today, Christophe, and for talking to me and sharing this information with us.

Christophe: Thanks a lot Laurie. It’s been a pleasure talking to you and sharing with your listeners the benefits they can get out of GetApp and CloudWork. Thanks a lot.

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MSP Cloud Challenges in the Midmarket–and How IBM Helps Meet Them

Posted on November 1, 2012 by lauriemccabe

In my recent post, A View From the MSP Trenches: Cloud Opportunities in the Midmarket, I examined how MSPs see the midmarket opportunity shaping up, and why they are partnering with IBM to capitalize on these opportunities. I discussed how MSPs are taking advantage of cloud-based technology solutions and IBM’s offerings to help their midmarket companies offload infrastructure management, deploy the leading-edge solutions, and achieve the performance, availability and security required for mission-critical applications.

I also wanted to learn more about the challenges that MSPs face, and how they work with IBM to surmount these hurdles. This post focuses on that side of my conversation with the same three MSPs, who I’ll reintroduce here:

  • Oxford Networks characterizes itself as “a 112 year-old start-up,” which began as a phone company and has since reinvented itself a couple of times over to become a high-end carrier’s carrier transport network. Oxford recently acquired an MSP and a data center, and is building on this to offer a spectrum of IT and telecom services to SMBs.
  • Perimeter E-Security delivers highly secure infrastructure protection and compliance solutions via its security-as-a-software platform, including: firewall management and monitoring, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection and prevention, hosted email, hosted collaboration, email security, message archiving and mobile device management. Perimeter offers its services in the cloud, and on customer premises.  About two-thirds of its customers are small and midsize businesses (SMBs).
  • Velocity Technology Solutions provides virtual private cloud managed application and hosting services for its customers’ ERP solutions. It also hosts and manages connected applications, such as analytics and workforce automation; and complementary technical solutions, such as imaging. Velocity offers remote managed services for customers’ on premises applications, including a full replication service for disaster recovery.  Velocity’s customers range from businesses with about $50M in annual revenues to the Fortune 500.

MSPs must keep pace with a rapidly changing technology landscape and provide consistent, high performance cloud services. After all, that’s precisely why their customers are outsourcing infrastructure and application management to them in the first place. In their view, IBM provides them with the proven solutions and expertise that they need to deliver superior quality of service. As Tom Bruno, President & CEO, Velocity Technology Solutions, noted, “IBM has the most stable infrastructure. We can tap into the strength and girth of IBM to get the peace of mind that we need to deliver high-availability service.”

Some of the specific areas in which MSPs find strong value in the IBM partnership include:

  • Resources to scale and grow. By standardizing on IBM hardware and middleware, they are able to efficiently create and manage a high-availability environment. For instance, Velocity Technology Solutions works closely with IBM to identify and standardize the server, storage, and middleware stack to support “just about any application the customer wants,” according to Bruno.  “One of the biggest challenges is that ERP is advancing so fast–with a rush of analytics, mobile apps, collaboration and process flow. Customers want to upgrade, and with IBM, we can get these upgrades down to a science, and offer customers freedom of choice.” Or, as Craig Gunderson, President & CEO of Oxford Networks told me, “When we acquired the data center, it wasn’t up to snuff. IBM technologists helped us to reconfigure it and build for the future.”
  • Speed and agility. The bar to stay ahead of the technology curve is rising quickly, and MSPs must move at warp speed to stay ahead of it. While MSPs are often small or midmarket companies themselves, their IBM partnerships help give them the agility they need to take advantage of leading-edge technologies. “The IBM SmartCloud, DataFlex, V Systems and other IBM solutions are core to our PaaS and IaaS offerings. This means we can make more capabilities available more quickly to customers,” notes Gunderson.  MSPs need a stable but flexible technology foundation, says Perimeter E-Security’s Andrew Jacquith. “We add a terabyte of data per day to our cloud email and archiving platforms. IBM helps provide a secure, scalable cloud fabric to support our growth.”
  • End-to-end services. MSPs don’t want to or can’t provide everything a customer may need across the entire technology spectrum. But they are taking advantage of IBM’s ecosystem to broaden their service portfolios and give their customers a one-stop shopping experience. At Oxford Networks, for example, “Customers are asking us to be more of a business solutions provider. This wasn’t our core competency, but we can provide end-to-end solutions via IBM SaaS partners’ says Gunderson. “Partnering with other partners in the IBM ecosystem gives us the ability to meet the converging needs of our customers.”

In late September, IBM launched new global initiatives for MSPs, which provide additional resources to help them meet core technology challenges, including:

  • Access to four new Global Centers of Excellence (in addition to 40 existing IBM Innovation Centers). These centers provide MSPs with hands-on technical skills in technologies such asIBM SmartCloud, PureSystems, storage, security and collaboration.
  • A new virtual briefing center for MSPs to share ideas and knowledge about industry trends, customer requirements and best practices with their peers and with IBM experts.
  • PureSystems, which provides a new, integrated, by-design platform to tune hardware and software resources for data intensive workloads, and gain more flexibility to configure applications for either an on-premise or hosted environment.
  • More options for IBM SmartCloud, giving MSPs the choice to either integrate SmartCloud as an IBM-backed solution, or provide SmartCloud under their own brand.

Profitable business growth is another key challenge for all companies, and MSPs are no exception. The MSPs I spoke with believe that IBM sets itself apart with the quality of business planning and marketing support that it provides. “IBM partners with us to help us plan and capture more midmarket business,” states E-Perimeter’s Jacquith.  “The level of partnering is very deep.”

In the case of Oxford Networks, IBM and its advertising firm, Ogilivy and Mather, helped Oxford to determine which markets to focus on and how to grow intelligently. IBM also brings in Avnet personnel to help Oxford educate customers and prospects.  “IBM is very hands-on. We have never seen another company provide this level of support,” says Gunderson.

IBM new global initiatives for MSPs also offer more marketing and operational support. These included dedicated marketing and sales support, and a new program to help MSPs build a complete marketing plan. Other assistance includes a four-part education seminar to help MSPs use social media to grow their businesses, and IBM analytic capabilities to identify new customers and drive more repeat business.

IBM Global Financing (IGF) is stepping in with flexible, affordable financing options to help MSPs acquire the solutions and services they need to grow. Plans include 12-month, 0% loans for IBM Systems, Storage and Software. MSPs that select PureSystems platforms can also defer their first payment for 90 days.

All told, IBM’s focus on MSPs adds up to a tremendous value not only for MSPs, but for their customers. Instead of just throwing resources at them, IBM has put together an integrated program to address their technology and business challenges. In addition, IBM’s dedicated marketing and sales support provides MSPs with real people who get to know them and understand their individual goals and challenges. With this coordinated and personalized approach, IBM can to get the right resources to MSPs when and how they need it. In turn, these MSPs will be able acquire the skills and resources they need to help their midmarket customers achieve their goals.

This is the fourth of a five-part blog series by SMB Group that examines the evolution of midmarket business technology solutions and IBM’s Managed Service Provider Channel programs. In the next post, I’ll discuss upcoming IBM’s MSP program announcements slated for November.

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NYEXPO Panel: Using Technology to Drive Innovation & GROW Your Business

Posted on October 19, 2012 by lauriemccabe

Thanks to all of you who came to our panel yesterday at NYEXPO,  Using Technology to Drive Innovation & GROW Your Business, moderated by Ramon Ray, Regional Development Manager, NY/NJ Infusionsoft and Editor of Smallbiztechonlogy.com, with panelists Shashi Bellamkonda, Sr. Director, Social Media, Web.com and Adjunct Marketing Professor at Georgetown University, and yours truly.

What a great event–I hope you got as much out of it as I did. Several of you asked for copies of the presentation, so I’m posting it here. For anyone who didn’t attend, our panel discussed the ground-breaking technologies–cloud, mobile and social–that are changing how small businesses operate, market and sell. I shared some market research and perspectives, Shashi provided social media guidance, and Grant gave us a great demo of the latest tools and gadgets that you may want to check out.

Enjoy and please let me know if you have any questions!

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A View From the MSP Trenches: Cloud Opportunities in the Midmarket

Posted on October 10, 2012 by lauriemccabe

As discussed in my blog, IBM’s Managed Service Provider Initiatives for Midmarket: An Interview with Mike McClurg, IBM views MSPs as an increasingly critical channel for delivering cloud-based technology solutions to midmarket companies. Just a few days after I posted this interview, IBM announced that it would further strengthen its initiatives to help MSPs meet the growing midmarket demand for cloud services.

Now, all research (including SMB Group studies) points to a rise in midmarket adoption of cloud solutions. But, what do MSPs see as the key midmarket hotspots, how are they turning these into opportunities for their businesses, and how is IBM helping them? To help answer these questions, I spoke with three very different IBM MSP partners to find out their views on the cloud opportunity:

  • Oxford Networks characterizes itself as “a 112 year-old start-up,” which began as a phone company and has since reinvented itself a couple of times over to become a high-end carrier’s carrier transport network. Oxford recently acquired an MSP and is building on this to offer a spectrum of IT and telecom services SMBs.
  • Perimeter E-Security delivers highly secure infrastructure protection and compliance solutions via its security-as-a-software platform, including: firewall management and monitoring, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection and prevention, hosted email, hosted collaboration, email security, message archiving and mobile device management. Perimeter offers its on demand in the cloud, and on customer premises.  About two-thirds of its customers are small and midsize businesses (SMBs).
  • Velocity Technology Solutions provides virtual private cloud managed application and hosting services for its customers’ ERP solutions. It also hosts and manages connected applications, such as analytics and workforce automation; and complementary technical solutions, such as imaging. In addition, Velocity offers remote managed services for customers’ on premises applications, including a full replication service for disaster recovery.  Velocity’s customers range from businesses with about $50M in annual revenues to the Fortune 500.

Despite different technology and market footprints, these MSPs share a similar view of the compelling opportunities to provide cloud services in the midmarket. They are zeroing in to meet  customers’ requirements in several key areas:

1. Offloadinfrastructure management. More midmarket companies want to outsource management of the “IT plumbing” that their businesses require—from infrastructure and telecom to middleware and applications. Demand for IaaS services is spiking as customers seek to move resources from IT to other, more strategic areas of the business. Often, the need for application upgrades trigger a move to an MSP. “Businesses have been there, done that and have little appetite to go through the headaches again”, according to Tom Bruno, President & CEO, Velocity Technology Solutions, “Our opportunity is to take software and turn it into a utility or dial tone for our customers.”But, says Bruno, “the most important thing we can have is our customers’ trust—trust translates into availability. Partnering with IBM gives us the peace of mind that we can deliver.”

Many companies aren’t ready to put all of their applications into the cloud, but still want to offload management. Offering remote managed services for customers’ on-premises applications gives MSPs with another healthy revenue opportunity in the near term.  And, as Bruno puts it, remote managed services also provide these customers with “an on ramp to the cloud.” Bruno envisions that IBM PureSystems will give Velocity even more flexibility to tailor offerings for either an on-premise or private cloud environment.

2. Implement the leading edge technology solutions necessary to grow their businesses. Midmarket businesses increasingly recognize that they need leading edge IT solutions to be competitive. But in most cases, they lack the IT skills and expertise to keep up with these technology changes. According to Craig Gunderson, President & CEO of Oxford Networks, “Our customers know that technology is moving very fast and disrupting the status quo. Moving to the cloud and outsourcing is often the only way that they can maintain a competitive position.” By providing customers with a fully managed data center, PaaS and IaaS solutions, Oxford can “give them far more capabilities than they could have on their own, with fewer limits, and at a lower cost.”

Mobile is a prime example of an area in which SMBs need to innovate, but struggle to keep pace. Perimeter recently rolled out a new mobile security offering that provides best practice guidance and services to help SMBs comply with privacy statutes in world in which “bring your own device” is becoming the norm.

Oxford’s Gunderson and Andrew Jaquith, Chief Technology Officer, Perimeter E-Security, both view new access to IBM’s four new Global Centers of Excellence as key to helping them keep up swiftly evolving market demands. By leveraging IBM’s technical and best practice expertise, they can develop the scalable and reliable new solutions that their clients will require.

3. Provide stronger security, availability and performance levels. Companies know that an IT outage or security breach can seriously compromised or even destroy their businesses. Jaquith asserts that as industries become more regulated, they are increasingly held to higher security standards, similar to what banks have become accustomed to. As a result, “Demand is rising for end-to-end security solutions for messaging—including mailboxes, archiving, encryption, control and reporting, content filtering and more. But the technology needed for this is getting very complicated.”

Jaquith sees IBM as “a technology leader that gets the cloud, and a partner to help us achieve our goal to provide instant-on, scalable and elastic cloud services.” IBM storage and security solutions underpin Perimeter’s current offerings. With IBM’s new MSP initiatives, Jaquith sees opportunities to develop new services built on IBM SmartCloud, which provides enterprise-class cloud computing technologies and services for securely building and using private, public and hybrid clouds.

 The demand for higher availability solutions is also rising. Velocity’s Bruno notes that “Midmarket businesses may have 5 to 20 applications in the back office alone. They want providers to get the formula down for higher availability.” Velocity does this by providing standardized virtualization solutions and a single source of support across applications—from break/fix to functional, “how do I do this” support.

One of the common threads I heard was that midmarket companies are looking for comprehensive services. Although they may want to tap into discrete services in an incremental way, they want them to integrate with each other in a Lego-like fashion. Since few MSPs can provide everything, those I spoke with emphasized the importance of being part of a strong ecosystem. For example, at Oxford Networks, the focus is IaaS and PaaS services. But Gunderson and team work with IBM and its ecosystem partners to also provide SaaS solutions to customers when they are a good fit. Meanwhile, as Velocity’s Bruno explained, “Everything is advancing so fast in the ERP world. There’s a rush of analytics, industry apps, mobile apps, collaboration requirements and more. This creates more complexity in the infrastructure.  We can tap into IBM and its expertise to provide new services more efficiently.”

Clearly, the rapid rate and pace of change in technology—and what it means for business—creates an enormous opportunity. MSPs can leverage economies of scale and skill to provide better-performing and more cost-effective IT solutions than midmarket companies can attain relying only on internal IT resources.

But capitalizing on this opportunity also presents challenges for MSPs, who need to keep ahead of the technology learning curve, improve their marketing skills and programs, and identify and enter new markets. In my next post in this series, I’ll discuss these challenges, and how these three MSPs work with IBM’s MSP program to help address them.

This is the third of a five-part blog series by SMB Group that examines the evolution of midmarket business technology solutions and IBM’s Managed Service Provider Channel programs. In the next post, I’ll look at what MSPs see as their top challenges, and the role IBM plays in helping them to meet them.

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Salesforce’s SMB Story: Great Vision, But a Complicated Plot Line

Posted on October 1, 2012 by lauriemccabe

“Why can’t business software be as easy to use as buying a book on Amazon?” At the Dreamforce 2012 SMB keynote, Hilary Koplow-McAdams, President of Salesforce.com’s Commercial Division, told the crowd that this was the question that Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, originally set out to answer when he founded the company. When you think about it, this question was particularly prescient in 1999, when Salesforce was in start-up mode and conversations about the “consumerization of IT” were scarce. This perspective also provided a welcome breath of fresh air for small businesses, which were Salesforce’s chief target market at the time, and were in dire need of technology vendors that could keep things simple. Fast forward to 2012 Dreamforce. As I discussed in my first post about the event, Drinking From the Dreamforce Fire Hose: Part 1, The Big Picture, Benioff showcased several large enterprise customers, a slew of new directions and offerings, and a compelling case for enterprises to buy into its version of the social enterprise. Salesforce.com has grown up and evolved into a multi-faceted company with a rich portfolio of technologies and solutions that extend well beyond its CRM roots. But with this kind of growth comes complexity. Even if Salesforce can make products Amazon-easy, can it tell the story so that SMBs “get it?” In addition, as combinations of products and pricing options multiply, will SMBs be able to wade through, figure out their best options, and be able to afford them?

“A” for a Compelling Vision for SMBs

Which leads to this, my second post. How and how clearly is Salesforce making its case to SMBs? For starters, this year’s event featured the first SMB track ever at Dreamforce–certainly a big step in the right direction. In the SMB keynote, Koplow-McAdams discussed how the cloud model helps democratize and level the playing field for smaller companies, and reaffirmed the company’s commitment to them. According to Koplow-McAdams, SMBs are also racking up good returns on their investment: Salesforce studies show that their SMB customers have boosted win rates by 25+%, increased sales productivity by 34% and increased revenues by 30%. While it’s not surprising that Salesforce has been transformative for the SMB customers that shared this stage with Hilary Koplow-McAdams, their stories were as interesting–and maybe a little more fun–as the large enterprise customers featured in Benioff’s keynote. They discussed how, despite limited IT staffs and budgets, they’ve used Salesforce to grow their businesses. For instance:

  • PlayerLayer, which sells performance athletic apparel, had customer data in Excel, and “had all the customer data, but no way to look at it.” It wanted a solution to help “interrogate” the data so that the company could expand into new countries without a big ad budget. Salesforce and Chatter have helped PlayerLayer gain a better understanding of its customers, collaborate on products more efficiently, and “compete with giants in industry.”
  • Yelp, the now well-known search and review site for local businesses, has grown from 2 employees in 1994 to over 1,000 employees today. When Yelp hired its first full-time sales rep for its original San Francisco site, it deployed Salesforce. Geoff Donaker, Yelp COO described how as Yelp branched out into new markets, it was “easy to expand with Salesforce.” Now in 18 countries and 90 cities, Yelp has 800 Salesforce users.
  • Square, the mobile payments vendor, has grown to process $8 billion in payments/year, and 400 employees over the past few years. According to Sarah Friar, Square, CFO, “selling is a team sport” at Square, which uses Salesforce Sales Cloud, Chatter, and Desk.com for support. Square shared a demo of how Desk.com automatically brings tweets, Facebook posts, email and phone conversations into Desk.com to help it provide more responsive customer service.
  • Leviev Diamonds, with 25 employees and 5 showrooms around the globe, was founded in 2006. An offshoot of a successful wholesale diamond business, Leviev wanted to start a retail channel to market very high quality diamonds. As the company CEO, said, “the most important part of the business is schmoozing, which you call CRM.” Leviev decided to use Salesforce because it did what they needed it to do and fit the budget. No Leviev has its entire inventory in Salesforce, and when potential clients open mobile alerts, they are redirected to Salesforce for more information. According to Leviev, “I love Salesforce. It changed everything for us.”
  • Carlo’s Bakery, made famous by the TLC reality show Cake Boss, featuring owner Buddy Valastro, served up the final story. Once Cake Boss started airing, “all hell broke loose.” The problem was, although the bakery starting getting millions of hits a day on their website, it wasn’t able to turn them into sales because Carlo’s Bakery was still a pencil and paper business and according to Valastro, “a lot of people have to interact to make a cake.” In about 8 weeks, the bakery switched from pencil and paper to Salesforce and Radian6 to convert more of its millions of Facebook fans and Twitter followers into customers, and get better visibility into its sales funnel. Carlo’s Bakery can take orders on iPads and mobile phones, and the orders come together in one system, which enables everyone to collaborate. The bakery now does $20 million worth of sales from its Hoboken store, has increased productivity by 60%, and improved customer experience.

Collectively, Salesforce and its customers did a great job of summing up how cloud offerings–and Salesforce in particular–can give SMBs a faster, more user-friendly, and streamlined way to run their businesses. In some cases, these customers moved directly from Excel or from pencil and paper to Salesforce, illuminating both the ease and value of having real-time information access, anywhere from any device. So I’ll give Salesforce an “A” for telling the story.

“C” for an SMB Friendly Social Enterprise Plot Line

But, I’m experiencing some cognitive dissonance when I look at the plot line. Sure, Benioff’s big picture social enterprise vision is compelling for businesses of any size. But as I asked in my 2011 post, Is Salesforce.com Outgrowing SMBs?, can the average small or medium business put the piece parts together? Thankfully, the company does seem to have put a simple naming convention in place (and renamed several acquisitions accordingly), but I’ve lost count of how many solutions Salesforce provides…along with what’s included in what. For instance, Salesforce Touch is included as part of Force.com. But do most SMBs even buy Force.com? And if they don’t, can third-party development partners somehow pass relevant Salesforce Touch capabilities through? Likewise, the question of how much it will cost for SMBs to become a social enterprise ala the Salesforce model is also cloudy. Fortunately, Chatter is included in all Sales Cloud editions. But how many small businesses can jump from Group Edition ($15/user/month) to Professional ($65/user/month) to get some fairly basic marketing functionality such as email marketing, campaigns and analytics snapshots. And what about Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which starts at $5,000 per month? When it comes to software (on premise or in the cloud!) SMBs don’t want mystery. They want solution clarity, and transparent, predictable pricing. At the upper end of SMB, companies may have enough staff, expertise and time to sort through and figure this out–or the budget to hire a consultant to do it for them. But, many smaller businesses won’t have these resources. So I need to give Salesforce a “C“ when it comes to making it easy for SMBs to identify, assess, configure and price the best mix of Salesforce solutions to turn the social enterprise vision into reality. And, while Salesforce will likely rely on its partners to help SMBs navigate these areas, it seems difficult to see how partners can profitably provide the services SMBs need to evaluate, select and deploy the right formula of Salesforce solutions. How will Salesforce.com grow and remain true to its small business roots? Most software vendors have found it very difficult to succeed in both large enterprise and small business worlds. Can Salesforce succeed where others have failed? I’ll be looking forward to Dreamforce 2013 to see if the details are as clear as the vision by then.

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Drinking From the Dreamforce Fire Hose: Part 1, The Big Picture

Posted on September 25, 2012 by lauriemccabe

Dreamforce, like Salesforce.com’s ambitions, just keeps getting bigger. This year’s event in San Francisco claimed 90,000 registered attendees and 250 media, analysts and bloggers. The pageantry surrounding the event—from MC Hammer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and from Tony Robbins to Colin Powell—is also on the rise, seemingly in direct proportion to Salesforce’s enterprise ambitions. Anyway, with so much erupting from Mt. Salesforce, I need to write a two-part blog post. This first post covers the Salesforce.com’s vision and announcements, and my perspective on them. The second post, which will be up in a few days, will cover how Salesforce’s ever-expanding ambitions translate and apply to small and medium businesses (SMBs).

The Big Picture

CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote featured the success stories from marquee customers, including Activision, Burberry, Coca Cola, Commonwealth Bank, GE, Virgin Atlantic and Rossignol. Through these customer vignettes, announcements, demos and, interestingly, IBM’s 2012 CMO Study, Salesforce made its case for enterprises to buy into its version of the social enterprise. While Salesforce isn’t the first vendor to come up with any of the ideas put forward, Benioff and team continue to aggressively extend the Salesforce footprint along cloud, social, and platform themes, and its push beyond CRM into other functional areas. A drink from the fire hose includes a slew of new directions and offerings. A few are available now, but most are slated for general availability later in 2012 or in 2013. They include:

  • Added social selling capabilities. Salesforce Touch and Data.com Social Keyadd new social and mobile oomph for sales people. Salesforce Touch puts Salesforce on any mobile device, giving reps anytime, anywhere mobile capabilities. Salesforce Data.com Social Key integrates data from social networks with company data to provide companies with a more comprehensive view of their customers.
  • Social marketing. Salesforce Marketing Cloud brings social listening, content, engagement, advertising, workflow, automation and measurement into one place through the combined technologies of (recent acquisitions) Buddy Media and Radian6.
  • Platform Push. Salesforce announced Salesforce Identity, touting it as the “Facebook for the Enterprise.” It will provide a single, social, trusted identity service to manage multiple apps and includes single sign-on across apps; social identity to enable Chatter to push information from multiple apps to a user in one feed; and centralized identity and access management to make it easier for administrators to provision and manage users across applications.
  • Work.com: Rypple is now Work.com, and Salesforce is positioning it as a social performance platform to manage performance reviews and provide recognition, rewards and feedback to employees.

As important, in just a few years, Salesforce AppExchange has grown to become a mature ecosystem for developers. Over 350 partners attended Dreamforce 2012, and Force.com development partners such as FinancialForce, BMC Remedyforce and Xactly Express are enjoying a great growth ramp on Salesforce’s coattails. In the analyst Q&A, Benioff explained that Salesforce is trying hard to move from geek speak to talk and walk like the new breed of IT customer, the CMO. In both the keynote and the Q&A, he reiterated that IT spending will increasingly shift from IT to CMOs. He also underscored that Facebook has become the most popular app on the planet because it is so intuitive, and his belief that all business apps will eventually need a Facebook-like activity stream because that is the interface users know and will demand.

Perspective

Really, what could play better into Salesforce’s hands as it tries to expand its enterprise footprint against stalwart ERP vendors? Larger enterprises have pretty much taken care of business in the back office. And smaller companies top priorities most often center on revenue growth and customer acquisition. With a CMO-centric view of the world, Benioff & co. can position Salesforce as chief mentor and leader in the next wave of IT innovation—in the front office, collaboration and user interface arenas. For example, I think that Benioff is spot on with his statement that all business apps will need a Facebook-style feed interface to take the friction out of using them and facilitate user adoption. Meanwhile, compelling customer success stories and strong partner growth underscore that Salesforce is ready to take its game to the next level. Unlike some of its competitors, Salesforce also has social in its DNA from the top down, which should prove to be an enormous advantage. However, rivals are not going to yield turf easily. In fact, it’s ironic that, in addition to helping to fuel Benioff’s agenda with its CMO research, IBM already walking much of the Salesforce talk. IBM coined the “social business” term before Benioff coined “social enterprise,” and many of the solutions that are in the works at Salesforce bear a close resemblance to IBM solutions such as IBM Connections, Smarter Commerce and SmartCloud—all of which are available now. Meanwhile, many of Salesforce’s newly announced offerings won’t be ready for several months or more–and are somewhat lightweight compared to comparable offerings from the competition. But sometimes, lightweight is better. Some apps are so clogged with feature bloat that they actually hinder getting work done instead of enabling it. And, I’ve said many times, Benioff is a marketing genius. He has an uncanny knack for winning by articulating a new value proposition better than anyone else in the industry. While he may need to play catch up in terms of getting his solutions to market, it’s likely that his messages will be the first to come through loud and clear in many corporate boardrooms.

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