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CIO's Guide to On-Demand

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Sequoia Capital Meeting: Our take on the economy and on-demand adoption

Chris Barbin


There's a lot of talk today about a meeting held earlier this week at Sequoia Capital, Appirio's lead backer, with the CEOs of their portfolio companies. The headlines grab your attention: Sequoia has emergency meeting, Sequoia sounds the alarm, Sequoia says to cut expenses now. The meeting was held in confidence, but we thought we'd share our perspective on the condition of the economy, what it means for Appirio, and, most importantly, what it means for customers considering the adoption of on-demand.

Macro-economic conditions are critical for every business to consider. This is the time for the leader of any organization to take a somber look at their spending plans and chart a prudent path given the uncertainty in the economy. That's our approach at Appirio, and we recommend that all of our clients do the same.

What does this mean for the adoption of on-demand? While nothing is certain, we remain optimistic that very bad news for the traditional enterprise IT industry will be very good news for cloud computing, companies like Appirio, and customers who are adopting on-demand solutions.

Let's take a closer look at how the economic conditions are impacting one of the stalwarts of traditional enterprise software-- SAP. SAP announced this week that they experienced a "very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity" last month. The announcement led to a 12% decline in SAP's stock price. Here's how they explained the shortfall in revenue, and why we think things are different in on-demand:
  • SAP customers faced difficulty financing upfront license fees. On-demand customers, on the other hand, pay for their solution as they use it. They don’t need to finance a big up-front investment in a monolithic solution with an uncertain business benefit.
  • SAP customers balked at difficult-to-justify maintenance fees. On-demand customers, on the other hand, know what they are paying for — they see continual enhancements to their solutions without expensive upgrades or patches.
  • SAP only learned of this in the final days of the quarter. On-demand customers, on the other hand, don’t need to engage in the edge-of-the-cliff negotiations with their technology vendors at the end of the quarter. These vendors know that they will only keep their customers for as long as they are able to create value, and need to be working every day to keep their customers happy.
It's striking that the very things that make current economic conditions so difficult for traditional enterprise technology vendors will drive customers towards adopting on-demand. Does that mean that spending in on-demand technology is counter-cyclical? It’s too early to say. But we have compared cloud computing to the Toyota Prius — an automobile that gets more popular as economic conditions worsen and gas gets more expensive.

Let's take an example: One of our customers built a business case comparing Microsoft to Google Apps for communication and collaboration. When they added up what they were spending on hardware, software, and people for on-premise software, storage, and backup, the total came to almost $700 per year for each of their 10,000 users. Switching to Google Apps saved this company $12M a year. Clinging to Microsoft Exchange is an expensive luxury, one that's going to be increasingly hard for CIOs to justify.

The average company spends 4-6% of revenue on IT-- for a customer at $1B in revenue, that is $40M - 60M in annual IT expense. Organizations that 'cloud-source' their IT infrastructure to on-demand providers can reduce this to 2-3%... a 50% reduction. This model provides cash critical in a down economy, and also provides executives flexibility and innovation that on-premise vendors cannot.

Despite these benefits, today SaaS represents only $10 billion of the $100 billion spent on enterprise software and $1 trillion spent on enterprise technology. It's easy to imagine dramatic declines in these traditional markets while SaaS and PaaS continue their rapid pace of growth. We've always believed that it was just a matter of time before SaaS moved from 10% of the market to 70%...CIO concerns over TCO amidst economic uncertainty could certainly catalyze this shift.

So in the midst of all the headlines, here's our message to you, our partners and customers:

Appirio is committed to helping our customers weather this storm. You’ll hear us talking more about the cost savings possible by moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud, and the rapid ROI possible from our custom application development. Creating real business value for our customers using on-demand technology remains our first priority.

Appirio is committed (as are our investors) to continued investment in our mission to accelerate the adoption of on-demand in the enterprise. We believe that this is a great time to develop new products, launch new service offerings, and enter new markets-- stay tuned to hear more.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Cloud Computing: Hummer or Prius?

Ryan Nichols

Last week we noticed a similarity in news headlines from two very different industries - automobiles and software.

In the auto industry, U.S. gas prices remain near all-time highs, and car buyers are nervous about economic conditions. The result is a dramatic shift among buyers to emerging technologies. The market for large SUVs is hurting, while the market for smaller, lighter cars and especially electric hybrids is booming. Domestic automakers are scrambling to retool their existing SUV factories to smaller vehicles, and Toyota is poised to overtake GM as the leading global car maker.

In the technology industry, we face a similar situation. CIOs are certainly nervous about economic times. And the costs of operating traditional, on-premise enterprise software is rising. Buyers are reeling from the recent Oracle and SAP price increases (does this move remind anyone else of OPEC?).

So why is Goldman Sachs telling us that CIOs plan almost no investment in cloud computing in 2009? Isn’t this the equivalent of reacting to a gas price increase by postponing your purchase of a Prius, and driving your Hummer for awhile longer?

Goldman based its findings on a set of survey results which the blogosphere has dissected over the past few days. The common theme is that CIOs don’t get it. Billy Marshall of rPath argues on Sandhill.com that CIOs are often the last to know about investments in new technologies. James Staten at Forrester has a similar take, saying CIOs aren’t the target for cloud computing anyway. Todd Ogasawara at O'Reilly claims CIOs simply don’t understand the value proposition of cloud computing.

While the shortsightedness of some CIOs is a contributing factor, we think that the thought leaders in cloud computing shoulder some of the blame. We all get so excited about the potential of cloud computing that it sometimes sounds futuristic, as if it were like some spaceship that will provide commuter service to the moon, instead of like a reliable Prius, perfect for your daily commute. The name “cloud computing” itself, with its fanciful tones, contributes to this "unreal" perception.

The reality is simple. "Cloud computing" is just a big name for business solutions and IT services that are delivered over the Internet, providing more flexibility and scalability at a dramatically lower cost. This is a proven technology with a clear ROI, especially when deployed with a pragmatic eye towards business impact. In the last 15 years consumer technologies have experienced unparalleled advancements all at a diminishing costs. In the same period, enterprise software (e.g. SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft) have failed to deliver innovation and relied on their own lack of flexibility - i.e. high switching costs - to actually increase the cost for ever diminishing returns.

Appirio's customers include CIOs who understand that uncertain economic conditions, and on-premise software price increases, make 2009 a year to increase investment in cloud computing. We hope and predict that many more will follow suit.

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