Thursday, July 23, 2009
Yesterday's announcement of NetSuite's acquisition of QuickArrow was more significant than the $20M price tag would indicate, for anyone who follows cloud computing but especially for existing customers of QuickArrow and OpenAir, the other point SaaS app for Professional Services Automation (PSA) that NetSuite scooped up last year.
But what about the existing customers of QuickArrow or OpenAir? They need to consider whether they should expect any better behavior from NetSuite than they've come to expect from their on-premise counterparts.... especially since NetSuite is partially owned by none other than Larry Ellison. NetSuite now has 3 different SaaS platforms to support professional service firms, with significant overlaps in functionality and fundamental differences in design. The question is whether we should expect NetSuite to take the low road and become an Oracle-like consolidator of SaaS applications, or whether NetSuite will invest what's required to become a cloud platform for small business.
- NetSuite does an Oracle-style roll-up: If this acquisition is mostly about acquiring customers and squeezing more dollars out of them over time, then NetSuite will be following the tried and true footsteps of Oracle. Expect little rationalization of this confusing portfolio. Instead, existing customers of QuickArrow and OpenAir should expect increasing pressure every quarter to pay more for the products they need and buy "bundled" products they don't need, and receive less and less innovation from their solution as the R&D teams of the acquired companies experience "synergy." A great deal for NetSuite, not so great for the customers of OpenAir and QuickArrow.
- NetSuite assembles a SaaS platform for the small business: NetSuite also has the option to take the best-of-breed functionality from each of their existing solutions and build it into a new solution built on the same platform as NetSuite financials. This path will require more investment from NetSuite, but certainly has a more positive outcome for small services businesses that don't have an existing financial solution other than QuickBooks and are ready to make this sort of switch. Naturally, it will take NetSuite a while to get to this end state, and customers who want to take advantage of this functionality will have to perform a migration of their current, end-of-life PSA solution. But this approach will give NetSuite a compelling offering for small services firms just getting started building out their technology infrastructure.
Labels: cloud, CloudComputing, Force.com, netsuite, openair, oracle, quickarrow
Thursday, December 18, 2008
"Cloud of Clouds" - the first in a series on our 2009 predictions.
2008 Recap
In 2008, we saw the early seeds of a "cloud of clouds" emerging. It started in April with Salesforce and Google announcing integration between Google Apps and Salesforce to bridge the gap between Google's productivity applications and Salesforce. Later in the year, at Dreamforce, Salesforce expanded the idea of a "cloud of clouds" by announcing integrations with Facebook (for social graph information) and with Amazon (for raw computing infrastructure). Salesforce ended the year with a bang, by announcing Force.com for Google App Engine. In a period of 12 months, Salesforce laid the seeds of a "cloud of clouds" bringing together the strengths of multiple, complementary, on-demand platforms to create a "virtual platform" for the industry.
2009 prediction
The "cloud of clouds" expands around connected platforms. We'll see increasing investment from Microsoft, IBM, and other traditional software players in new but siloed cloud platforms. At the same time, proponents of a more open approach like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Salesforce will push more and deeper “cloud connections” like they did this year - creating a more heated debate between the value of siloed versus federated platforms.
What this means for customers
Customers will face a choice in 2009 about where to focus their investment in cloud computing. Companies like Microsoft and IBM are building cloud offerings that recreate the old software paradigm using new infrastructure (both offerings warrant a prediction of their own, coming soon). This will offer customers some incremental cost-savings and slightly more flexibility, but does not enable anything fundamentally new.
What is unique about the "cloud of clouds" is the ability to connect realms of software that have never been connected in the past, e.g., business applications, collaboration applications and social applications. This enables increases in both efficiency (through improved productivity) and effectiveness (through insight and new connections between information). A few examples:
- Allow communication and collaboration in the context of business information: On-demand solutions offer the potential to finally bridge the gap between the tools that businesses need to run and the tools that people use to get things done. Imagine an account team communicating and collaborating in the context of their live customer data. That's the power of bringing together Salesforce and Google.
- Bring social graph information into sales and recruiting: Imagine a sales person seeing how they are connected to a prospect before they send out a critical email. This would result in a far superior interaction and most likely a higher close rate. Imagine an employee using Facebook to identify the best candidates for their company's open job positions. These employee referrals are likely to be of a significantly higher quality than typical applicants. That's the power of bringing together Salesforce and Facebook.
What do you think?
Which of our predictions do you agree or disagree with? Please let us know by voting in our poll or commenting below.
Labels: 2009-Predictions, cloud, Cloud Computing, cloud of clouds, remove, Salesforce for Google Apps, Software as a Service
Monday, November 03, 2008
Salesforce and Facebook: Connecting the Cloud
We loved today's virtual bear hug between Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com and Sheryl Sandburg of Facebook at Dreamforce. It reminded us of the embrace between Marc and Eric Schmidt of Google back in April, for a couple of reasons:
- Another cloud to connect: There are 110 million active users of Facebook... many of these people also find time to work in between their wall postings. Facebook is an open, on-demand application platform, much like Force.com.
- Further consumerization of enterprise IT: Consumers have become accustomed to using the incredible power of social networks to connect with old friends and family in their personal life. Now, with Salesforce and Facebook together, these same people can use the power of this same social network to get their job done.
- Not just demos: People have talked about bringing the social network to the enterprise every day since "Enterprise 2.0" hit the radar. But today's announcement went further-- we saw real business scenarios with the potential to create enormous value for the enterprise. We are thrilled to be part of all this-- we built the recruiting scenario shown by Marc and Sheryl on stage. This is a preview of an application we think every HR head needs to consider.
Labels: cloud, Dreamforce, facebook, keynote, salesforce
