Results

Polls and Surveys: Negotiating Software Contracts With Oracle or SAP Part 1.

Polls and Surveys: Negotiating Software Contracts With Oracle or SAP Part 1.

We’re working on a report looking at “How Third Party Maintenance Plays A Role In SAP and Oracle Contract Negotiations”. If you are an Oracle or SAP customer, please take our survey.  We’ll add you to the final report list when you complete the survey and provide a little information about yourself.  Here’s the survey:

Your POV.

Let us know your experiences with SAP or Oracle contract negotiations  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Let Us Help You.

Need help with your software contract or working out the rationale for used software or third party maintenance?  Put the power of experience with over 1500 software contract negotiations to work.  Contact us throughout the vendor selection or negotiation process.  We can help with a quick contract review or even the complete vendor selection.  We provide fix-fee and gain sharing arrangements.

Related Constellation Research

Wang, R. “Best Practices – Three Simple Software Maintenance Strategies That Can Save You Millions” Constellation Research, Inc. March 7, 2012

Wang, R. “Best Practices: Why Every CIO Should Consider Third-Party Maintenance.” Constellation Research, Inc. August 7, 2012.

Wang, R. “Market Overview: The Market For SAP Optimization Options.” Constellation Research, Inc. May 11, 2011.

Wang, R. “Best Practices: The Case for Two-Tier ERP Deployments.” Constellation Research, Inc. February 28, 2011.

Related Resources And Links

20090612, Channel Partner, “Used software – SAP suffers defeat”

20090612 Channel Partner, “UsedSoft obtains a provisional order against Microsoft”

20080602 Federal Judge Approves eBay Auction of Copyrighted Autodesk AutoCAD Design Software”

20120318 Research Summary: Best Practices – Three Simple Software Maintenance Strategies That Can Save You Millions

20100419 Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With Pesky Software Licensing Audits

20090714 Research Summary: An Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill of Rights, V2

20101214 Tuesday’s Tip: Dealing With Vendor Offers To Cancel Shelfware And Replace With New Licenses

20100308 Monday’s Musings: Decoupling Support From Maintenance – What Apps Vendors Can Learn From Microsoft Dynamics

20100222 Monday’s Musings: Why Users Should Preserve Their Third Party Maintenance Rights

20100104 News Analysis: SAP Revives Two-Tier Maintenance Options

20090210 Tuesday’s Tip: Software Licensing and Pricing – Do Not Give Away Your Third Party Maintenance And Access Rights

20090709 Tuesday’s Tip: Do Not Bundle Your Support and Maintenance Contracts!

20091222 Tuesday’s Tip: 10 Cloud And SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010

20091208 Tuesday’s Tip: 2010 Apps Strategies Should Start With Business Value

20091102 Best Practices: Lessons Learned In What SMB’s Want From Their ERP Provider

20091006 Tuesday’s Tip: Why Free Software Ain’t Really Free

20090504 News Analysis: Oracle Waives Fees On Extended Support Offerings

20080909 Trends: What Customers Want From Maintenance And Support

20080215 Software Licensing and Pricing: Stop the Anti-Competitive Maintenance Fee Madness

20090405 Monday’s Musings: Total Account Value, True Cost of Ownership, And Software Vendor Business Models

20090324 Tuesday’s Tips: Five Simple Steps To Reduce Your Software Maintenance Costs

20090223 Monday’s Musings: Five Programs Some Vendors Have Implemented To Help Clients In An Economic Recession

20091012 Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights – Software-as-a Service

20090910 Tuesday’s Tip: Note To Self – Start Renegotiating Your Q4 Software Maintenance Contracts Now!

20090721 Tuesday’s Tip: 3 Approaches To Return Shelfware

20090127 Tuesday’s Tip: Software Licensing and Pricing – Now’s The Time To Remove “Gag Rule” Clauses In Your Software Contracts

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2013 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

 

Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Experience Officer

Laptops are a misnomer; mobility is changing what and how we do it, at work, at home and in between

Laptops are a misnomer; mobility is changing what and how we do it, at work, at home and in between

Have you ever thought about the term ‘laptop’?  It was invented to differentiate a portable class of PC from desktops.  But, how many people use their ‘laptops’ on their laps?  This has a practical productivity significance that many underestimate, and it may be one of the unsung reasons why tablets are so attractive…

Think about how you use a laptop.  For most people a laptop PC is a device that is semi-mobile.  Yes, you can move it around and you can take it traveling.  But where do you use it?  Almost certainly ypu place it on a desk or a table.  Ask yourself where you put your laptop when in a hotel, in a meeting, in your office – and even on a plane (if there is enough room): it is on a desk or table of some sort.

This has a consequence.  To use your laptop you must make a physical effort to move to that desk or table before you can start working (and without even considering whether it needs to boot up or not).  If you are at home and want to check email or find out some information, you go through (consciously or subconsciously) an evaluation of whether it is worth the effort of getting up and moving from your arm chair or the kitchen or wherever.  Broadly the same applies everywhere else (except perhaps the office).  Before you begin to use your laptop you weigh the cost of commiting to a physical action.  In practice this ‘overhead’ to move is an impediment (how many times can you remember thinking ‘ah, it is not worth it’?).

Contrast this with a tablet (or even a smartphone).  These produce an experience very different from the misnamed laptop.  To start, a tablet its simply more physically accessible: it may be with or beside you wherever you are (and even on the plane).  You can keep the tablet with you in a way that you do not (for most people) with a laptop (never mind a desktop).

Tablets that connect enable you to do what you want, whenever you want.  That can be any or all of email, personal browsing, corporate browsing, information access, decision taking, reading, entertainment, etc.  Indeed, one of the attractions is that you can switch at will between any or all of these.  About the only activity you cannot do is document creation (writing, presentation manipulation, large spreadsheet alteration, etc — where a larger screen plus a mouse are desirable, though these are arguably requirements of Office or similar software and not the device).

In fact, even the need for a laptop for document creation is questionable — and may be related more to age and training than anything else.  Personal experience shows that the young can do pretty much anything on a tablet and also the elderly, especially those  who never had mastered mice,  keyboards and operating systems.  Try watching a 2 year old and/or an 80 year old and you will see how fast their take up is.

There are some who argue that tablets and smartphones will be the next ‘crackberries’, that they will invade and consume personal time.  In fact the reverse seems more likely.  You can be watching a movie and move to reading an urgent email, doing the research to reply to it and then return to your movie — all from where you are.  This introduces a flexibility to ‘turn on and to turn off’ that was never true of the misnamed laptop (too often, once you had made the effort to go to your laptop, you stayed).

Watch yourself.  Watch your partner, your children and your elderly relatives. Mobility is changing what and how we do it, at work, at home and in between.

 

PS  I am particularly interested in the success of the ill and the elderly and tablet use: if you have any stories or evidence (for or against), I would very much like to hear more.  Send me an email at [email protected]

New C-Suite Tech Optimization

Upcoming Technologies Set To Change The Way We Interact With Our Surroundings

Upcoming Technologies Set To Change The Way We Interact With Our Surroundings

I can't wait for these technologies to be part of our daily lives.  Which do you want the most?

Tactus Technology, transparent physical buttons that rise up from a touchscreen surface



Leap Motion, control your computer in three dimensions using just your hand and finger movements  



Google Project Glass, augmented reality glasses



Samsung Youm, flexible screens for phones, tablets, etc.



Under Armour, dynamic clothing that can be a flexible display (just ahead to 40 seconds)

Future of Work

Waving Goodbye to Posterous

Waving Goodbye to Posterous

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Bye Bye PosterousI have long been a fan of Posterous. It was a platform that was ridiculously easy to use – and was a great introduction to social media for those who were (or remain) cautious of technology and online publishing.

But when Twitter acquired Posterous in 2012, it was only a matter of time before it was made redundant. And now we know that Posterous will be turned off on April 30, 2013. Making the announcement on the official Posterous blog, founder, Sachin Agarwal, thanked the users and supporters of Posterous and explained how to backup and download your site:

  1. Go to http://posterous.com/#backup.
  2. Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking “Request Backup” next to your Space name.
  3. When your backup is ready, you’ll receive an email.
  4. Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.

I’ve started the process of moving the various Posterous sites that I have created. I will probably move them to a WordPress site of some kind – when I have the time … but I do so a little sadly.

Posterous’ ease-of-use was a phenomenal wake-up call to the rest of the web world. It will be a shame to see it disappear. Let’s hope the Posterous focus on simplicity impacts the Twitter product roadmap. After all, we don’t need more features, we need a better experience in our use of technology. And for my money, simplicity it the key.

 

 

Marketing Transformation

Repeat After Me - There Is No One Perfect Tool

Repeat After Me - There Is No One Perfect Tool

I'm tired of people talking about how social software solves everything and call for the end of email.

Let me make my opinion perfectly clear: No one tool is perfect for all scenarios and no tool is effective without the right use-cases and process for using it.

Phones have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Email has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Forums/Communities have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Blogs have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Wikis have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
News Feeds/Activity Streams/Status Updates (social networks) have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
Instant Messaging/Chat has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Web Conferencing/Hangouts have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.
File sharing has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Social Bookmarking/Pinboarding has a purpose. It is good for some things, bad for others.
Location based check-ins have a purpose. They are good for some things, bad for others.

The list goes on.

Choose the right tool for the job.


 

Future of Work

Lead The Enterprise Revolution: 5 SharePoint Trends You’ll Want to Follow in 2013

Lead The Enterprise Revolution: 5 SharePoint Trends You’ll Want to Follow in 2013

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In the past few years, it has been evident that a revolution is brewing in the enterprise. Whether you like it or not, this revolution is happening in your enterprise as proven by these four telltale signs:In the past few years, it has been evident that a revolution is brewing in the enterprise. Whether you like it or not, this revolution is happening in your enterprise as proven by these four telltale signs:
 
Consumerization of IT, aka BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Movement
It’s so easy and convenient for business people to bring their own devices or even procure web-based tools that meet their business needs. Gone are the days of businesses fully relying and waiting on IT to provide them with a relevant solution.
Lightning Speed of Business
Our global economy and the exponential growth of technology have expedited business transactions worldwide. Sales cycles are shorter, immediate access to a global market is the norm, and the competitive barrier to entry has been lowered. Who would have imagined a viral video watched by 1.2 billion people worldwide in less than six months can generate $8M USD in ad revenue? Is your enterprise adequately equipped to adapt to this new reality?
Doing More with Less
The global economic crisis in the past few years has forced organizations to cut their expenditures and be more prudent in their investments. We are expected to do more with less. Thanks to technology platforms, such as SharePoint, doing more with less can certainly be achieved. However, unless business needs are strategically aligned with your SharePoint investment, it’s nothing but a glorified network share. Sound familiar?
Grassroots Social Collaboration
Gone are the days where you’ll pick up the phone or send an email to a subject matter expert asking for help. With the proliferation of consumer social tools, information workers are used to collaborating with their peers anytime, anywhere, with any device. How are we supporting this mode of collaboration in the enterprise?
Fortunately, with SharePoint 2013 and related technologies, you can guide your business through this major paradigm shift and help address these needs. The question is: what should your enterprise focus on in 2013?
 

Read the rest of the article at Digital WPC


What’s in Your Startup DNA

What’s in Your Startup DNA

There’s plenty of hype around startups – and around the founders of those startups. We buy books (books, really? Yes!) written by startup entrepreneurs, attend talks, download podcasts and go to  conferences. Sometimes it can feel like meeting a rockstar rather than a business person.

But for every startup, there are countless others, often behind the scenes, who have helped drive those startup successes and the failures that they are built on.

This great presentation by Yevgeniy Brikman is the view from the front row. It talks about the nitty gritty of startups. It’s not the big ideas or the grand plans. It’s the stuff that makes the business tick. And it makes you think … what’s in your startup DNA – and how deep does that go.

 
 

Cornerstone for Salesforce: Optimizing CRM Investment

Cornerstone for Salesforce: Optimizing CRM Investment

Since 2009, a small, independently operated but wholly owned subsidiary of Cornerstone OnDemand has been developing and delivering cloud-based LMS capabilities built natively on the Force.com platform (Salesforce.com’s platform for building enterprise applications).  Operating under the name “CyberU”, the solution went live on the AppExchange in October 2010, and now claims more than 70 clients including Marketo, LinkedIn, Virgin America, Box, and Salesforce.com which itself uses CyberU to deliver and track training for all internal and external users (the “extended enterprise”) globally.

Today, Cornerstone OnDemand announced the availability of “Cornerstone for Salesforce”, effectively rebranding CyberU and reinforcing its commitment to bringing learning and training directly into the business applications used by employees, partners and customers every day.

Cornerstone for Salesforce – a different focus

Where Cornerstone OnDemand has been focusing on enriching the capabilities and value proposition its talent suite (spanning the Recruiting Cloud, Learning Cloud, Performance Cloud and Extended Enterprise Cloud), the Cornerstone for Salesforce solution focuses on enriching the daily interactions taking place within the Salesforce applications with embedded training and development.

Bringing business intelligence, social and transactional support into enterprise business applications (like CRM, Financials, Manufacturing and others) reflects the trend toward more “purposeful applications”; a focus on “getting work done” more intuitively and effectively. The capabilities of Cornerstone for Salesforce reflect common learning management requirements, but the design intent is to have the LMS enable training and learning at the point where it is needed – i.e., while supporting a customer or while managing a sales opportunity – instead of having the LMS be “place you need to go for learning’’.

The Cornerstone for Salesforce capabilities include:

  • eLearning, including instructor-led and virtual learning support;
  • Certification and compliance for sales teams, employees, partners and customers;
  • Individual and team development planning;
  • Just-in-time training (training recommendations triggered from actions within the Salesforce application, such as changes in opportunity status, or when a new product is assigned to a sales or services team member);
  • Individual and manager dashboard reporting and analytics;
  • Social learning via integration with Salesforce Chatter;
  • Embedded performance development and training through integration with Salesforce Work.com;
  • A unified user experience and common reporting and analytics engine across the Salesforce platform; and
  • Immediate integration with thousands of Salesforce AppExchange partners including hundreds offering support for eCommerce, surveys, assessments, and quizzes.

cornerstone for salesforce
In addition to the capabilities mentioned above, consider also the extensibility of the Cornerstone platform. Unlike the packaged service offerings of yesterday’s legacy software (where custom development is repurposed to other clients through a pre-packaged consulting engagements), SaaS providers like Cornerstone can develop custom code for clients – or provide the development platform for clients’ own use – and enable other clients to access these innovations through a downloadable library of solution extensions. SaaS by its nature accelerates the pace of innovation; an extensible platform amplifies that acceleration even more.  Not every SaaS vendor takes this approach today, but Cornerstone has been supporting this for years. Cornerstone for Salesforce  empowers its partners and customers with an extensible LMS platform.

My POV

The launch of Cornerstone for Salesforce  is an important move for Cornerstone as more and more organizations look to the AppExchange and natively developed Force.com applications to extend their Salesforce.com investment.

Today Cornerstone supports three distinct platform offerings:  Cornerstone OnDemand, Cornerstone for Salesforce, and CSB (formerly Sonar6).  Rather than being distractions, I expect each offering will inform the other with best practices and lessons learned.  (We’ve seen this already, as the innovative “helicopter review” from the CSB solution is making its way into the Cornerstone Performance Cloud; and the domain expertise from the Cornerstone Learning cloud heavily influenced initial Cornerstone for Salesforce capabilities).

The Cornerstone OnDemand suite and CSB solution will continue to be important options for buyers in the HCM marketplace.  For Salesforce.com customers, a new option has emerged.

Cornerstone for Salesforce is a market-tested solution, with large clients (such as Salesforce.com) relying upon it today for learning and training across their extended enterprise.  Cornerstone for Salesforce should be on the shortlist of any Salesforce customer seeking intuitive, contextual learning and development support for its employees, partners and customers.


Filed under: Cloud, Cornerstone OnDemand, HCM, Learning and Development, Mobile/Social, SaaS HCM, Salesforce.com, Talent Management Tagged: Apps Strategy, Cloud, constellation research, Cornerstone OnDemand, CSB, CSOD, future of work, HCM, HR Tech, LMS, Mobile, Next Generation apps, SaaS, salesforce.com, Social, Social Enterprise, Social Learning, Software as a service, Talent Management, yvette cameron

 

Future of Work

News Analysis: Adobe Behances The Creative Class With $150M Community Acquisition

News Analysis: Adobe Behances The Creative Class With $150M Community Acquisition

Behance Empowers The Creative Cloud To Make Ideas Happen

On December 20th, 2012, Silicon Valley based Adobe Systems announced the acquisition of Behance, a digital portfolio and community site for creative professionals.  Constellation sources estimate the purchase price north of $150M.  Founded in 2006, the SoHo, New York based company raised 6.5M in May 2012 from Union Square Ventures prior to the acquisition.  The acquisition expands two key areas for the Adobe Customer Experience set of offerings:

  • 1. Empowers the creative class through connetivity. CEO and Founder of Behance, Scott Belsky noted that, “The creative industry has always been plagued with inefficiency and disorganization. But when we come together, we can use connectivity and transparency to our advantage. The prospect of using Adobe’s reach to connect the entire creative community is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to empower the creative world.”

    Point of View (POV): Behance is LinkedIn meets Pinterest for the creative class.  Since 2006, this people to people (P2P) driven creative community showcases and celebrates over 3 million projects and 30 million images.  A host of curated galleries, smartly designed iPhone apps, online store, and rich developer API power the community platform.  Among the design community, Behance is the dominant independent resource to showcase past projects.
  • 2. Expands creative and design market leadership.  Adobe provides the creative tools for design through Creative Suite.  Behance focuses on discovery, inspiration, and collaboration.  Scott Belsky stated “If the tools we use to create are connected with how we showcase and discover creative work, we can help usher in a new era of idea exchange and collaborative creation.  It’s about time our tools integrated with the way we discover, inspire and collaborate. For too long, the creative world has struggled with a disconnected creative process. Creation should be inherently collaborative – and must evolve more frequently than typical software upgrade cycles.”

    (POV): At this point in time, Creative Cloud has not enabled public sharing between clients and teams.  Yet, Behance changes this approach and supports public sharing.  Users will expect Adobe to integrate Behance with Adobe’s Creative Cloud starting with easier content sharing from Creative Cloud and Adobe apps.  If Adobe successfully integrates the two products, customers will win as the synergies should lead to the empowerment and enablement of creative meritocracy.

The Bottom Line: Adobe Ups The Ante In The Battle For Customer Experience

Adobe, IBM, and Oracle are in a three way horse race to dominate the customer experience management space.  Today Behance acquisition widens Adobe’s lead in the creative tools and communities space.  As Adobe expands in the marketing and design side of customer experience equation, IBM and Oracle focus on the process automation, analytics, and traditional execution areas of marketing and commerce.  Fortunately for the vendors and unfortunately for most customers, one can not purchase a complete suite from within one vendor.  Hence, customers will be working with a patchwork of solutions in order to deliver end to end customer experience and digital marketing transformation for the foreseeable future.  Early adopters and fast followers will pave the way while cautious adopters will wait or vendors to acquire and integrate the suite.

Your POV.

How are you showcasing your creative portfolio?   Where do you look for design inspiration? Do you have an idea what tools are more effective than others?  Will you still stay with Behance post Adobe?  Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your business strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

  • Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
  • Considering a crowdsourcing and prediction markets strategy
  • Developing your social business/digital marketing  strategy
  • Designing a data to decisions strategy
  • Create a new vision of the future of work
  • Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
  • Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy

Related Research:

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2013 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Leadership Chief Experience Officer

Video: Maximize #Project2013 with #Office365 for Project Management Success #pmot #sharepoint

Video: Maximize #Project2013 with #Office365 for Project Management Success #pmot #sharepoint

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I had the great opportunity to present a webcast on February 7, 2013 on how to maximize Microsoft Project 2013 with Office 365 for Project Management Success.I had the great opportunity to present a webcast on February 7, 2013 on how to maximize Microsoft Project 2013 with Office 365 for Project Management Success.
Here’s the recording of the presentation:
Additionally, here are related resources:
- The New Way To Work Together with SharePoint 2013: ? http://bit.ly/112Geai
Let me know what you think of the presentation!