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Salesforce1 is Not a Platform: The Inclusion Theory

Salesforce1 is Not a Platform: The Inclusion Theory

If Salesforce1 is not a platform then what is it? The Inclusion Theory may provide the key. Inclusion is one of the seminal theories in geology. An inclusion happens when any older material is enclosed inside a newer rock or mineral. The Inclusion Theory in computing holds that Salesforce1 along with products from Amazon Web Services and aMind Solutions (among other companies) enable developers to create a new class of applications by including different mass market devices and enterprise systems together within their structure.

Download "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" snapshot

The significance of this approach is that it treats devices, not as dumb terminals at the top of a software stack, but as hand held computers that also happen to make phone calls. This opens the door for an entirely class of applications to be developed in the cloud that would be impossible to develop in either traditional client server or mainframe environments.

Figure 1: Geological Principal of Inclusion

Inclusion in geology

Source: Idaho Museum of Natural History

Conceptually the theory holds that inclusions take place when APIs and other device-specific code are enclosed inside a newer layer of software, such as Salesforce1. This “inclusion” layer manages tasks such as access, security, and identity. Using the inclusion layer, enterprise systems can be consistently, reliably and cost effectively accessed from devices designed for the mass market. As an unexpected benefit, the inclusion layer also opens the door to a new way of integrating systems together above database or server level. The inclusion layer is also subject to the network effect and becomes more valuable as more devices and enterprise systems are included.

Figure 2: The Inclusion Theory

Slide2

Source: Constellation Research

In addition to Salesforce1, Constellation research has identified at least two other products that are examples of the inclusion layer approach at work and provide clues how Salesforce1 is likely to develop.  They include:

  • Amazon Web Services AppStream
  • aMind Mobile and Web Framework

Constellation Research has published a report the "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" by Constellation Principal Analyst and Vice President, J. Bruce Daley. A complimentary report snapshot is available. 

Download "Inclusion Layer Products Enter the Market" snapshot

 

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Salesforce Chatter: The Collaborative Foundation of Salesforce1

Salesforce Chatter: The Collaborative Foundation of Salesforce1

Today Constellation Research published my latest report, Salesforce Chatter and the Salesforce1 Platform from Dreamforce 2013 and Beyond

Executive Summary: Over the last three years, Salesforce.com has evolved its overall marketing message from “Social Enterprise” to “Become a Customer Company” and then to “The Internet of Customers”. Constellation supports the increased emphasis on customers and the reduced focus specifically on “social”. This change in messaging mirrors the shift Salesforce.com is making with its collaboration platform Chatter. The company is improving it from being a stand-alone enterprise social network to being a core element of its line-of-business applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing and Customer Service. This report takes a look at Salesforce Chatter and highlights five strengths and five weaknesses in the service.

This report provides useful decision criteria for organizations investigating Salesforce Chatter, competitive intelligence for collaboration vendors who compete against Salesforce.com, and areas of opportunity for business partners looking for ideas of what do build around the Salesforce.com platform.

Download the Quark Snapshot

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Image:Salesforce Chatter: The Collaborative Foundation of Salesforce1



 

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SAP Gets Serious about Open Source, Courts Developers

SAP Gets Serious about Open Source, Courts Developers

(and it's about time!)

With SAP being a global company it has regional editions of the Sapphire and TechEd events. For anyone following the company it's always a key question if the follow up events to the traditionally leading North American event, are pure repeats - or if there are more or less fine tuned changes. 

For this year's edition of the TechEd developer conference it was more or less same same between Las Vegas and Amsterdam - but the event in Bangalore was an event by itself. There is a lot to digest from this TechEd - that just started today - December 11th - and will go until December 13th.
 

 

The big picture

So let's start with what I thought was the most interesting and important part to see if it had changed from TechED in Las Vegas and Amsterdam - and the good news is - it has not changed, the picture is still very much the same:

 

 

 

Wedged between HANA the database, running on the HANA cloud platform are a number of different applications - to which Fiori is the front end. And while this is easy to draw and compelling to explain - it has massive repercussions for SAP customers, SAP partners and SAP itself. More to come in a separate post, hopefully soon. 

 


Takeaways from the press release

So let's dissect and comment on the key pieces of the press release:
 

Simplified Development Experience 
To address the fast and agile nature of today’s market, SAP has launched a regional test drive of a new open development environment for SAP HANA. SAP River intends to provide a real-time development environment for rapidly building complete native applications powered by SAP HANA and enable increased developer productivity through a simpler development process, easily maintainable source code and a clear separation of intent and yet an optimized native execution on SAP HANA. 

MyPOV

This was certainly the big news - SAP (once again) creates its own development environment and language with SAP River. For those watching SAP long enough, developer productivity was the key reason ABAP was created in the first place and kept in place (ironically it was Shai Aggassi at an event in Bangalore saying that ABAP would be around for a long time, because its so productive) till today. 
We will have to see much more of River if that really merits the case - my general view (for now) is - the world (and developers) do not need another development language and environment.

OpenUI5, Open Source Variant of the SAPUI5, for the Developer Community 
SAP is contributing key portions of its SAPUI5 framework as open source code on the GitHub site under an Apache Version 2.0 license. As part of the effort, SAP has developed different themes, framework features and control libraries to help provide a consistent end-to-end experience and foster reuse and efficiency, for example, via responsive layouts. - See more at: http://www.news-sap.com/sap-increases-focus-on-developer-experience-and-makes-key-open-source-contributions/#sthash.zdnNPNQ4.2Y7JqRMY.dpuf


MyPOV

This was widely popular by the audience and in social media. And in general it's positive when large tech vendors contribute to open source and put muscle and investment behind it. But usually they take a lot from open source and then contribute to the project with some fraction of investment. OpenStack is a prominent example for that. But in SAP's case with SAPUI5 - now OpenUI5 - SAP is the only contributor - and the question is, who will collaborate and invest into it and into which areas. If there was someone, SAP should have had them  on stage and in this press release. 
Another potential red flag are the details on what SAP will keep and not contribute - something that wasn't communicated as I wrote this (yet).

New Service Broker for Cloud Foundry to Connect to SAP HANA
 SAP announced the code contribution and availability of a Cloud Foundry service broker for SAP HANA. Developed in close association with Pivotal and now available as open source on GitHub, the service broker will allow any Cloud Foundry application to connect to and leverage the in-memory capabilities of SAP HANA. - 


MyPOV

Long awaited and now it's there - and good move for HANA - the database. With the new River SAP is competing with Cloud Foundry as a platform for developers to build next generation applications on. I am sure SAP and Pivotal will separate that by the type of applications you can build with each platform - but the partnership with Pivotal becomes now more of a database partnership than anything else. 

New Node.js Connector for SAP HANA 
 In November 2013 SAP contributed SAP HANA database client via GitHub site that enables developers to efficiently connect Node.js applications to SAP HANA. - See more at: http://www.news-sap.com/sap-increases-focus-on-developer-experience-and-makes-key-open-source-contributions/#sthash.zdnNPNQ4.2Y7JqRMY.dpuf


My POV

This goes along the same lines as the previous paragraph on CloudFoundry - only here SAP does really good to open source in the sense that a tech giant contributes (and maintains presumably) an open source framework's usage (in this case the popular node.js framework) as part of a much larger open source project. Of course with the interest of more node.js projects uptaking HANA as the database - but that is a very legitimate motivation for SAP. Well done.

New Beta Version for SAP PowerBuilder 
A new closed beta version of the SAP PowerBuilder application development tool is intended to support new operating systems, databases and open standards and is planned for limited availability on December 15, 2013. SAP is committed to innovation without disruption and with the new beta release, beta customers can use their current investment in applications, knowledge and skills while they take advantage of new SAP innovations. 


MyPOV

With the Sybase acquisition SAP also acquired one aging, but prominent application development platform, the leader of RAD race of the 90ies, PowerBuilder. It's good to see that SAP keeps investing into the product - as there are still a lot of clients out there running applications on PowerBuilder. If I understood Reh correctly, PowerBuilder will be able to generate SAP River RDL code and thus become a code and (hopefully for SAP) a developer hands contributor. If that will work out - we will see - but it's good to see, that SAP leverages all developer assets and  mind share it has to its disposal to get River off to a running start.

Easy Access to SAP Technology 
A unified developer license covering all major platforms and technologies significantly simplifies the developer experience and makes it easy to get access to key SAP technologies. 


MyPOV

Always good to simplify licensing for developers - the details will have to be hashed out. But given that it looks like Schmerder created and updated it - I am pretty confident it's the best that SAP was able to do at this point. Others will dissect and find the issues.


Other key takeaways

As we talk about rivers and the event was in India - not surprisingly there an Indian River inspiring a new codename - the Ganges. And SAP Ganges is the latest attempt of SAP modelling the commerce happening between its customers. Remember SAP tried in the dot com boom era with SAP markets - and wasn't that successful - but with the Ariba and hybris assets in house, it's well worth it to give it another try. It looked like Mondkar annunced it's development roadmap for Ariba till Sapphire in June 2014 - let's see what we hear and see between now and then. SAP Mentor Dick Hirsch has written a great first take here

And then Fiori is making progress, progress it needs to make as it was recently (TechEd in Las Vegas) declared as the one and only SAP UI going forward. For that it needs to gain capabilities way beyond it's self service user interface origins - and the demos of the sales forecast and manufacturing planning are encouraging - but there is a lot more that needs to happen for a professional user's user interface, powerful enough to be the user interface from 9 to 5 plus overtime.


MyPOV

It's good to see SAP courting developers, but so is everyone else. If I put my developer hat on and compare the TechED messages with the ones I heard at Google I/O, Microsoft Build, VMWorld, Oracle's JavaOne, AWS re:invent and Salesforce's Dreamforce in the last 6 months - then SAP and River have their work cut out. All these vendors court the enterprise developers and have larger developer ecosystems than what SAP has ever had control over. Valiant to scramble Powerbuilder folks and kudos for supporting it - but that will not give SAP critical mass. 

If SAP e.g. had announced support for the super popular docker both to build on and to deploy on HANA - I am pretty sure it would have garnered (even) more attention and ultimately - more apps running on HAN,A. 

But then SAP is the largest business application vendor and certainly can try to attract developer masses into its proprietary architecture - that's the control ultimately all enterprise giants want to have. But Salesforce.com struggles and ultimately little success with Apex show that the proprietary path SAP seems to be taking with River is a very challenging path to success. But never say never. I have lots of respect for Klein and team.   

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Andres Botero Joins Steelwedge Software

Andres Botero Joins Steelwedge Software

Botero photo

Andres Botero, who worked at Siebel Systems as Group Manager of Worldwide Operations, has joined Steelwedge Software as Chief Marketing Officer. Founded in 2000, Steelwedge improves sales and operations planning by adding automated collaboration and analytics to the process. In his new role Botero will be responsible for will be responsible for strategy, positioning, product marketing and marketing operations.

Steelwedge products build consensus among sales, marketing, finance, and the supply chain about future product demand so that companies can better understand why it fluctuates, balance capacity with sales, connect sales and operations with financial planning, and measure performance. The company claims to have more cloud sales and operations planning deployments than all of its competitors combined. Some Steelwedge customers include Applied Materials, Canon, Hospira, Emerson, NVIDIA, Sara Lee, Sony and Syngenta.

Before joining Steelwedge, Botero was Global Lead for Supply Chain Management Marketing at SAP.

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Purposeful Collaboration - Implementing Social Into Business Processes

Purposeful Collaboration - Implementing Social Into Business Processes

Create an effective social strategy that helps your organization move from 'simple sharing' to Purposeful Collaboration. Enterprise Collaboration Software: From Simple Sharing to Purposeful Collaboration

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Are Contact Centers Becoming Obsolete?

Are Contact Centers Becoming Obsolete?

1

The Omni Channel Contact Center refers to the delivery of a fully connected customer experience across all communication channels, which include the telephone, email, Web, IVR, chat, social media, texting and mobile applications. While this is the goal for customer service, most customer support organizations still struggle to support an integrated multi-channel customer experience that does not fully connect the customer across all communication channels. Customers’ preference for non-voice channels is evident by the recent Dimension Data’s 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report @Dimension Data 2009-2013. This report found that the phone was the channel of last resort when all else fails. However, the number of telephone customer support agents continues to grow because brands do not offer satisfactory support over self-service channels, which makes customers place a call by default.

The high growth channels of choice for consumers are smartphone applications, social media, such as Twitter or Facebook or interactive Web dialog. Frequently, brands provide support for these channels in their marketing departments and support is isolated or only partially integrated into the contact center operations. This may result in inconsistent service delivery, as customer applications and content management systems are not shared fully among support groups.  When a customer cannot easily engage with a brand over preferred newer channels, they resort to the most expensive channel, live telephone support.

Moving customers to an integrated omni-channel experience requires updating legacy technology and integrating customer facing applications to support the newer channels. Cloud solutions often enable change to occur more quickly and allow brands to retain existing infrastructure, while adding new support capabilities. Creating intuitive web self-service and social media experience encourages more customers to use these channels exclusively. To transition customer to fully engage with a brand using web self-service CSRs need to encourage customers to go to the web site and walk them through the transaction. While this may be more time consuming initially, it will reduce talk time and shift customer’s behavior. Contact centers that consider the telephone as their primary channel are out of sync with what their customers want from a brand. Innovative brands already know this and the majority of other brands need to quickly catch up.

Resources


"Online Communities Offer Amazing Customer Care" by Elizabeth Herrell

All research by Elizabeth Herrell

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Purposeful Collaboration - How To Make "Social" Work

Purposeful Collaboration - How To Make "Social" Work

The following is the 18min talk I gave at Constellation Connected Enterprise on how to move social from being a stand-alone service for sharing, to integrating social features into the business tools that your company relies on the run your business.



Editor's note: this continues Constellation's continued release of the 2013 Connected Enterprise recordings. We will continue to publish one recording each day. 

Resources:  Enterprise Collaboration Software: From Simple Sharing to Purposeful Collaboration - Research report authored by Alan Lepofksy

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News Analysis: Acumatica Raises $10M In Series C Funding, Aims For 1B In Revenue By 2023

News Analysis: Acumatica Raises $10M In Series C Funding, Aims For 1B In Revenue By 2023

New Funding Round Fuels Road Map And Geographic Expansion

On November 18th, privately held Acumatica announced Series C funding from Runa Capital and Almaz Capital.  The  Kirkland, WA based Acumatica, has been quietly providing its partners a customizable, cloud-based ERP and CRM development platform for the SMB market.  Acumatica’s previous rounds were funded by Visma (a KKR company) and Almaz Capital (backed by Cisco).  The announcement is significant because Acumatica intends to:

  • Expand its partner base into new markets. Acumatica currently has offices in Washington DC, Singapore, and Moscow.  Through affiliates, resellers, and partners,  Acumatica is present in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Nordics, The Netherlands, Africa, Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.  Sales come exclusively from partners.  Thus, the company intends to recruit more partners for high growth markets such as Asia and Latin America.  European expansion will focus on a replacement ERP market of aging systems

    Point of View (POV): Early success with Acumatica has come from the ease of use and functional footprint that accelerates a partner’s ability to take a solution to market.  However, future growth will require the leadership team to increase its investment in brand awareness and partner enablement.  Expect key hires in partner sales, support, and R&D.  Given the limited number of qualified partners in the market, Acumatica will have to convince partners from competitors to switch.  Early indications show this market traction.  In fact, since August 2013, Acumatica has added 50 partners, bringing the total to 270.
  • Invest into new product offerings. The current offering supports a choice of deployment options including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud. Key functionality includes a financial management, project accounting, distribution management, customer management, and development tools for partners.  The core partner offering is Acumatica Studio, an ISV and OEM development platform.  The platform allows for visual, functional, and database customizations.  Partners can also utilize dashboards, integrated reporting engines, and report designers to create customized dashboards for customers.  An early set of content management tools include a business wiki, file management, and website management capabilities.

    (POV): From attending the 2013 partner summit, customers can expect greater investment in the mobile platform including native support for various platforms.  Other areas include expanded Office 365 integration, portal improvements, advanced workflow for ERP and CRM, and early HCM functionality such as payroll and workforce management.  Success will also require Acumatica to orchestrate how verticals and micro-verticals enter the marketplace.

The Bottom Line: SMB Customers Have A New Option To Consider For ERP And CRM

Founded in 2007, Acumatica has grown from the grass roots by delivering a solid product.  Today constant innovation of the core platform and careful curation of specialized partners in industries and geographies for last mile delivery has been one pillar of success.  The future requires strong funding to continue growth into new markets, product innovation, and brand awareness.

Continual funding is one proof point that Acumatica is building a solid foundation for growth and demonstrating not only partner traction, but also market success.  While both Almaz Capital and Runa Capital are specialized in helping entrepreneurs and start ups succeed, the next milestone that matters will come from the number of customers live on Acumatica.  Given the constant need for more specialized solutions in the SMB space, this task may not be too daunting in the quest for 1B in revenue by 2023.

However, the real benefit of this funding is market choice.  Acumatica’s success is good for customers and prospects.  The market now has a viable option in a rapidly consolidating SMB and enterprise software market.

Your POV:

 

Are you looking at ERP and CRM replacement? Do you need specialized requirements for your industry?  How are you doing this today? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with vendor selection efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

  • Vendor selection
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  • Connecting with other pioneers
  • Sharing best practices
  • Designing a next gen apps strategy
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

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Salesforce1 - What You Need to Know Now webinar recording

Salesforce1 - What You Need to Know Now webinar recording

Today we presented the webinar, "Salesforce1 - What You Need to Know Now". Please find the webinar recording below. The deck for this webinar is also available for download here. Additional resources below.

With so much hype swirling around Salesforce1, it's difficult to filter out the noise and get the information you really need to make the best decisions in regards to this development. Constellation Research, the original disruptive technology analysis firm, tamed the buzz and cut through the hype to deliver the critical information you need to know about Salesforce1.

Highlights:

  • Implications - customer experience, apps, collaboration, Internet of Things
  • Is Salesforce1 a platform? - Analysts debate
  • Salesforce Chatter
  • The "Inclusion Layer" - new technologies enable effective MDM, a reason to not categorize Salesforce1 as a platform?
  • Recommendations - how to take advantage of Salesforce1

Download the deck

Speakers:

  • Elizabeth Herrell
  • Holger Mueller
  • Alan Lepofsky
  • J. Bruce Daley
  • R "Ray" Wang
  • Joseph A. di Paolantonio

Resources:

Bruce Daley
Holger Mueller
Elizabeth Herrell
R “Ray” Wang
Joseph A. di Paolantonio
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Salesforce1: What You Need to Know Now

Salesforce1: What You Need to Know Now

Webinar recording. Constellation cuts through the hype and delivers the critical information you need to know about Salesforce1. Download the deck.

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