Emphasis on  “assemble”, as opposed to develop.  For years SAP and Oracle fought a religious war of acquire/assemble vs develop in-house.  SAP’s view was (even under the current Co-CEOs) that you can only get to a coherent, seamlessly integrated suite by development.  Apparently they have changed religion, borrowing a chapter or two from Larry Ellison’s playbook.

After ill-fated attempts at conquering the market vith in-house developed Business ByDesign, SAP got a huge shot of Cloud DNA by acquiring SuccessFactors, whose CEO Lars Dalgaard has become SAP’s  On-Demand Czar.  The ink has hardly dried on this deal, when today SAP announced the acquisition of Ariba, the procurement / sourcing leader.  So now SAP has Procurement, HRMS, and Finance – the latter coming from ByD. After speculation before/during the recent SAPPHIRENOW conference today we saw confirmation that SAP intends to carve Financials out of ByD and make it the Finnacial cornerstone of their On-Demand portfolio.

What a change in a few months!  From pathetic half-hearted attempts SAP now has major drive into Cloud, one that aims to be competitive with Workday, Salesforce, NetSuite amongst others.  Enterprise Software in the Cloud has just become a lot more exciting. Watch this space.

Oh, and before I forget: watch Spendmattters, where I am sure fellow Enterprise Irregulars and procurement guru Jason Busch will soon open the floodgate of his expert analysis.  Jason is the God of all spend matters (pun intended) and he has proposed this deal to SAP three years ago.  For additional coverage also keep an eye on the EI thread as it unfolds.

And here’s a house of Lego blocks (well, sort of ..)

Explanation here.

NetSuite History, Wayne's World style

NetSuite is no stranger to aggressive marketing,  and SAP has clearly been their #1 target for a while starting from pranks like the SAP for the Rest of Us Party during SAPPHIRE 2006 to staging a shootout at the anti-SAP Conference or releasing edgy videos a’la Mac vs Windows and even launching a Business ByNetsuite program – an obvious play on SAP’s Business ByDesign offering, which at some point I called the best SaaS Business Suite customers can’t get their hands on (more on this soon).

Well, today is no exception, at the opening keynote of SuiteWorld, NetSuite’s 3,500-person conference CEO Zach Nelson announced their biggest ever win, a three-letter giant .. drumroll.. no, not IBM, but SAP themselves.  Yes, the audience was shocked to learn that SAP renewed a $1M license with NetSuite.  The shock turned into laughter when they found out it was via their recent acquisition, SuccessFactors.

Ironically former SuccesFactors CEO and SAP’s freshly minted Cloud-SaaS-On-Demand-You-Name-It Czar Lars Dalgaard was on stage at the very same moment at another conference, SAP’s 5 times bigger SAPPHIRENOW, explaining the Enterprise Software giants Cloud Strategy.   And oh, boy, was  is there a lot to explain…    ByD, the SaaS product that was supposed to change the world has seen a succession of technical, marketing, business fiascos, and is still largely MIA.

In the meantime SAP has promoted their other SMB offering, even “cloudifying”  Business One, and when it now looks like they finally got Cloud Religion, the core of their Cloud Strategy will clearly be SuccessFactors – both the existing platform and Customer base.   All this brought into question the very existence of Business ByDesign (SAP Execs reluctantly admit they had come c lose to killing it), which still faces uncertainty.  All I can say is, it’s a pity when the fate of good software lies in internal corporate politics…

But back to NetSuite: is SAP a true customer?  I very much doubt it, although technically I am sure they are.  It could have been routine purchasing action (extension of existing contract), there may have been implementation / change management considerations ( you don’t disrupt business by chucking the system that runs your operations), it is clear that NetSuite has been their past and only short-lived present, until they can cut over to SAP ByD.   Or they may already have, responding to questions @LarsLuv announced they moved finances from NetSuite to ByD in a matter of weeks.   That is almost immaterial – although kudos to Zach Nelson who played it up nicely:-)

What really matters is the fate of ByD and whether  / how it will stand up against NetSuite on a very important market segment: subsidiaries of major corporations, i.e. of SAP’s traditional customer base.   The Two-tier ERP Strategy has been gaining popularity, and until now the key beneficiary has been NetSuite,  taking bites out of SAP’s pie.   Now we’re hearing (if the tweet-stream is any indication) the same term coming into fashion in SAP-parlance.   Will SAP Business ByDesign finally make it?   Or will SAP continue ceding market opportunities to NetSuite?

Update:  According to Phil Wainwright’s sources,  ”SuccessFactors is no longer using its NetSuite instance“.  Phil and I agree that’s not what really matters though.

Warning: mindless weekend post

Boxes come in all sizes. Some small, others large, some start small but grow large.   I’ve been tracking one since they were very-very small:

As they grew, the moved to bigger and bigger boxes offices, like this one, where even toilets had flat screens:

And finally they are in the latest, multi-level luxury building that houses the 400 or so box employees.  No quick pix here, here’s the complete video courtesy of TechCrunch:

Well, in the first version of this post we had the actual video embedded here, but it did not play, giving only the above error.  WTF TechCrunch?   I know, you need pageviews, but why provide an embed code in the first place if you’re going to disable viewing anyway?  Sorry, dear readers, you’ll have to click through to actually see the video.

That said, it’s a pretty  good recruiting video, if you ask me. Who would not want to work here?  Oh, and the company is likely going public within a year or so…

But wait, that would break my promise of this being a lightweight weekend post… so I will have to revisit the bigger story behind Box’s phenomenal growth – one day when I am actually in the mood to do real work:-)

I’ve been planning to come back from my “blogging hiatus” (code for writers’ block) with a more substantial piece.  After all, my drafts folder is full of half-baked, abandoned posts. But hey, no better incentive to write then frustration!

Have you ever seen this error?

Yes, I’ve just finished composing email, hit SEND, and thought I was done.  No way, Jose.  Google Apps mail had trouble sending it (so far not a capital crime), and is now holding me hostage.  The “unsent” mail is nowhere to be found – not in Drafts or any other place. I’m supposed to stay logged in, keep this tab open forever – or lose my work.

Thank you, Google.  (Not really)  GFAIL. GFAIL. GFAIL. 

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Brian Sommer is doing  a webinar this Wednesday on The Top 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Cloud Accounting Systems (But Should!). in cooperation with FinancialForce.

Brian will cover a number of buying considerations and trends that are being reflected in new buyer perspectives for financial accounting software.

The software market is undergoing one of its periodic (and significant) changes. The underlying technology is different. The economics are different. The implementations are different and what IT people will do is changing.

All these changes trigger a number of changes in how software is purchased, evaluated and more.

To that end, Brian did something he only does when software markets move materially. He created a new methodology or buyers guide. This one is for the cloud accounting software space.

Due to a  special arrangement with FinancialForce webinar  attendees will receive a complimentary copy of this new 50-page Cloud Accounting Evaluation Guide, which contains an 8-step methodology for selecting new financial accounting software. It also contains sections on due diligence, cloud risk factors, how the sales process for cloud software differs from on-premise software and more.  If you want a copy of this for free, sign-up for the webinar.

This infographic by Intel is making the rounds.  Staggering numbers, indeed.

(Disclosure: Intel is a CloudAve Sponsor)

Live stream by Ustream

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, I am not sure, but this is what happens when I don’t have time to write:-)  If you are in Enterprise Software, you know what’s coming at you … resistance is futile.

Now, for the real news on Oracle’s acquisition of Taleo, I refer you to fellow Enterprise Irregular Larry Dignan’s piece @ ZDNet.

Related articles

• Oracle buys Taleo for $1.9 billion; SaaS consolidation ramps (zdnet.com)
• Oracle to Buy Taleo for $1.9 Billion (dealbook.nytimes.com)
• Oracle Agrees To Buy Taleo for $46/Share; $1.9 Billion (forbes.com)
• Oracle buying Taleo for $1.9 billion in direct hit at SAP (infoworld.com)
• Oracle to pay $1.9B for personnel software co. (sfgate.com)

Links to CRM Idol data:

Contestant page and Judges review.

Get Satisfaction

Contestant page and Judges Review.

Stone Cobra

Links to CRM Idol data:

Contestant page and Judges Review.

EMEA

(in alphabetical order)

BPMonline

Links to CRM Idol data:

Contestant page and Judges Review.

Workbooks.com

Links to CRM Idol data:

Contestant page and Judges Review.

Zestia (Capsule CRM)

Links to CRM Idol data:

Contestant page and Judges Review.

Vote Here!!

billFLO is dead.  Most of you probably never heard of this startup – I admit I did not follow them, just met the Founder at a few conferences, liked him as “nice guy”.   Ben covered them here, in fact he even became an Advisor for a while, his last post reporting the sale of the company.   And today Dennis Howlett reports thew new owners will shut the service down.

<rant>

What happens when a Cloud App dies?  You take your data and move on.  Or. Not.  Says billFLO:

Yes, you can download your bills and expense reports in pdf format as usual.

Ouch. Double Ouch.  Yes, I understand, using PDF was the cornerstone of the billFLO service, while it lived.  But now it’s dead.  As someone who lived through days of nightmare discovering a year’s data was gone from my Mint account ( this should be a separate story itself) and having to comb through dozens of PDFs to be able to file my Tax Return, I must say: PDF is not data.  It’s dumb print.   I’m really sorry for billFLO’s failure as a business, but dumping PDFs on their users is yet another failure. Too bad.

</rant>

Chinese Wall.  Separation of State and Church.  You know the drill.  No mingling of author content and Sponsor posts.  (Hint: that’s what the scrolling side widget is for.)

Except when they are too funny to miss.  Like Workday, with their Flash Mob Lunch during the HR Tech Conference.

Enjoy.

The best thing that may have happened to Salesforce.com at Oracle Open World is getting CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote cancelled.   Oracle and Larry Ellison are now officially the Bad Guys (opinions are split on whether Larry is the Emperor, Darth Vader or God), @Benioff is the oppressed Folk Hero, Salesforce.com got thei $1M keynote fee back, and the live stream will likely get 10x the viewers it would otherwise have.  Seriously, if Salesforce.com was not a successful software company, you’d have to hire them to do your Marketing / PR.

Yes, the Cloud Must Go On, @benioff will speak at at nearby restaurant – don’t try to get there, it’s a small place, rather watch it here live, starting at 10:30am:

Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream

Note the date: two weeks ago.

More:  HP’s Monkey Business

Image credit: Charlsie's Online Gallery

Bloomberg reports the HP Board is considering replacing CEO Leo Apotheker after less then a year tenure…   poor Leo,  after this and his previous gig as SAP CEO where he lasted 10 months, he might as well specialize on 10-month “turnaround” gigs.

But it would be naive to think Leo could have initiated changes of this magnitude without the Board.  Perhaps the Board should be fired as a whole.  Oh,  well, I think the above image says it all.

Breaking news:  HP to merge with Cirque du Soleil.

More breaking news:  The Cirque du Soleil deal is far from certain, the San Diego Zoo is joining the bid.

Even more breaking news:  To eliminate the thriving second market on eBay of TouchPads, HP is emabarking on a major Business Process Reeengineering Project ( hello 90′s): cut out manufacturing, selling subsidized $99 Touchpads – just send everyone a $100 check.   Apply here.

 +1:   Now it’s a done deal.  I hear the HP Board accepts applications for the post-Meg period.

Related articles

• HP Board Mulls Firing New CEO (techcrunch.com)
• HP Board Meets After Palm Turmoil — So What’s the Next Shoe to Drop? (allthingsd.com)
• HP board may oust Apotheker for Whitman (tech.fortune.cnn.com)

Google Apps is used by more than 40 million people and signs up 5,000 new businesses every day according to numbers recently cited by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

But what do all those millions of people actually use Google Apps for, and how heavily do they use it?

At Spanning we have a unique view into the data, so we decided to run some numbers and find out.

You can do a lot with Google Apps. It includes email, calendaring, web-based productivity apps for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It allows you to upload and share documents of any type. And it’s either cheap or free, depending on which edition you choose.

Spanning Backup for Google Apps backs up Google Apps data for thousands of businesses and thousands more individuals, which affords us a unique perspective on how people actually use Google Apps. And when we looked into it, we were surprised at some of what we found.

Dropbox for the Enterprise?

The thing that jumped out at us first was that Google Docs is just as much a replacement for Dropbox as it is for Microsoft Office. Just over half (53.2%) of the documents stored by users in our sample were plain old files: PDF’s, songs, movies, photos, Microsoft Office files, etc. The rest (46.8%) were “native”, i.e., created by the web-based Google Apps spreadsheet, presentation and word processing apps.

Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise given Google’s emphasis on sharing and collaboration in addition to productivity, but when the press writes about Google Docs or when people in the industry talk about it, it’s often positioned as an alternative to Microsoft Office. The numbers tell a dramatically different story.

Google Docs is, in fact, an easy, cheap and secure way to share files—of any type—publicly or privately. And as it turns out, the “non-native” files people store most frequently are PDF’s, images, and Microsoft Office documents. People are storing business documents.

Bottom line: in addition to its web productivity apps, Google Docs is a lot like Dropbox for businesses.

Super Ultra Mega Power Users

The second pattern that emerged from the data had to do with the sheer amount of critical business data people store in Google Apps. Keep in mind that Google Apps is more than just Docs; it also includes Calendars and Contacts. When we looked at the usage patterns for those apps we again uncovered some interesting trends.

We knew that some heavy users had run into the limits of what Google allows. For instance, venture capitalist Brad Feld “bitched loudly” (his words) that he had more contacts than Google’s limit of 10,000—and Google quickly raised that limit to 25,000. (Full disclosure: Brad is a partner at Foundry Group, an investor in Spanning.) But we were surprised to learn that only 0.7% of the users in our sample have taken advantage of that new higher limit. The rest still have fewer than 10,000 contacts, and the average user has far fewer: 230.

Similarly, some power users store a tremendous amount of data in Google Calendar. One user had 528,767 events spread across hundreds of calendars (thanks to Google’s simple but powerful calendar sharing capabilities). But the average user had 533 events.

The data for documents and collections of documents tell a similar story. A handful of power users had over 25,000 documents and more than 10,000 document collections (folders). But the average user had just 43 documents and 10 collections.

Bottom line: Google Apps scales to meet the needs of normal people and ultra power users alike, all at the same low (or in some cases free) price point. However, the assumption that heavy usage is the norm has been debunked. The average user barely even scratches the surface of the storage capabilities available to them.

Google Apps is growing fast but will soon be battling credible threats from Microsoft Office 365 and Apple’s iCloud, among others. We’ll continue to study the trends in the data we see. Stay tuned for more reports from the front.

(This guest post by Charlie Wood, Founder and CEO of Spanning Cloud Apps originally appeared @the Spanning Blog)

Some things just can’t die. Like the zillionth incarnation of what was formerly known as CrunchPad…. then after a messy divorce from TechCrunch became the Joo-Joo (sold a few dozen units), and now it’s back as the Grid 10.   I have a funny history with this device.

I was a major advocate of the orginal CrunchPad concept, for a number of reasons:

• revolutionary idea conceived at the pre-iPad age
• great situatiational device
• priced right: sub $300.

Now, how can you expect the same from a no-name company with less known financial background and a lawsuit to deal with?  The specs could be marvelous, but you have to ask yourself:  who you will trust for service: Apple or JooJoo?  And that’s why buying a JooJoo is a huge leap of faith.

Related articles

• Fusion Garage already dropping Grid 10 price to $299 (electronista.com)
• Fusion Garage Grid 10 tablets get $200 price cut (slashgear.com)
• Fusion Garage Grid 10 tablet price drops to $299 (down from $399) (liliputing.com)
• Someone Really Needs to Make a Good $100 Tablet (gizmodo.com)
• RIM’s PlayBook price cuts: Still not enough thanks to HP’s TouchPad (zdnet.com)

<rant>

We’ve often discussed SaaS Suites, ERP, specific vendors like SAP and Netsuite, so seeing this tweet by SAP a good month ago of course piqued my curiosity:

@SAPByDesign

RT @VendorShootout: Business #ByDesign: The Most Complete,Adaptable OnDemand Business Solution http://spr.ly/6019RH4S #erp <-reg 2 download

Wow. It looks like SAP’s SaaS offering, Business ByDesign won some competition, let’s check it out.

The White Paper download process is rather convoluted, involves several emails, links to the wrong WP etc – hey, what is this, Fort Knox?  Still intrigued, I click around.  Here’s more detail about the “shootout”:

A fine roster of vendors, but just as notable are the missing ones – for example NetSuite.  SAP’s Business ByDesign has quite a few competitors, including their own other SMB products, but when it comes to SaaS ERP, #1 for now is NetSuite.  You simply can’t have a shootout without your major competitor.  Now, before anyone calls me biased, anti-SAP, or pro-NetSuite, let me just say I called the other side, too, when I saw they were full of … it:

If it Swims Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck, then it Probably is a Duck. The Anti-SAP Duck.

Oh, well, in the meantime the gates of Fort Knox opened, after downloading some other crap report I did not want I finally got the right link to download the SAP ByD report:

“The SAP® Business  ByDesign™ solution is the world’s most complete and
adaptable on-demand business offering, designed specifically for midsize
companies that want to grow profitably. SAP Business  ByDesign helps you
streamline and optimize “…. yada yada yada.   Too much marketing-speak for an analyst report, but keep on reading, perhaps we’ll get to the meat.

“SAP Business  ByDesign is the world’s most complete and adaptable
on-demand business solution. It’s everything you’d expect from SAP –
at a midmarket price….  delivering an unprecedented customer experience… Unmatched flexibility… Superior customer experience… ” yada yada yawn.:-)

Oh, boy.  Naively I was thinking I’d be seeing some sort of analysis, biased as it may be – but this is pure marketing.   In fact, on second reading there is nothing wrong with it – if I take it for what it is: a marketing brochure.  Published by SAP, quite the right material when downloaded from SAP’s site.  Just not a report, certainly not analysis, and does not belong to a site that claims to help buyers with their software selection process.  

Help buyers by presenting them with preselected options – of the vendors who pony up. Yes, the ERP Shootout is Pay for Play.  Which is all right, after all.  There is nothing wrong with organizing a showcase for vendors why buy their stay presence.  It’s the positioning I dislike.  Buyer side it ain’t, selection it ain’t.. shootout it ain’t.

Don’t get me wrong, SAP’s Business ByDesign is actually a good product, after repeated false starts it is now getting real traction – they don’t need this type of promotion.

As for me, I’ll probably have to revise the title I used before:

Sometimes it swims like a duck, quaks like a duck, yet it’s still not a duck.

</rant>