It’s Simple To Get Started Developing On Salesforce

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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I've often said one the main factors that influences the success of a platform is the business partner ecosystem that develops applications for it.  Partners don't want to struggle with complex setups and complicated development tools. With all the hype around Salesforce.com these days, including the new Salesforce1 platform (essentially the evolution, or next generation of the Force.com platform) I decided to see for myself what it was like to get started. What I discovered is that it only take a minute to be up and running and developing your first application. That's pretty amazing. Is that possible with other enterprise platforms such as IBM or Microsoft?
 

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Miss Dreamforce? Constellation has you covered. [Event reports]

If you weren't able to attend Salesforce's Dreamforce you don't have to miss out!

Constellation has compiled a collection of event reports from our analysts in attendance. In these posts you'll get a unique, disruption-focused analysis of Dreamforce you won't get anywhere else.

Enjoy!

"Takeaways from Dreamforce: How Do You Explain Saleforce1?" by Bruce Daley

"Salesforce 1 Touch Service Enables Products Not People to Report Problems" by Elizabeth Herrell

"Dreamforce 2013 Platform Takeaways - All about the mobile platform - or more?" by Holger Mueller

"Platform ecosystems are hard: Salesforce grows it - FinancialForce shrinks it" by Holger Mueller

"The Internet of Customers - Are You Ready?" by Alan Lepofsky

"Salesforce Dreamforce Day 1" by Alan Lepofsky

"News Analysis: Salesforce 1 Signals Support For Digital Business at #DF13" by R "Ray" Wang
 

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Good Vibe The Informatica of Things

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Test

Joseph is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  Covering all things related to Data Management and Analytics, he focuses on making better decisions through using new sources of data, innovative ways of interweaving the volumetric flow of data of increasing compexity, and disruptive techniques for drawing inferences and making predictions from that data. Sensor networks Mobile devices Machine-to-machine interchanges Machine-to-human interactiions Sensor Analytics Internet of Things Sustainability Self-quantification Since 1978, Joseph has been involved with renewable energy research, developing advanced statistical methods for complex system analysis, and creating analytical techniques and management methodologies for solving business,…...

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Vibe Data Stream [Vibe] and Virtual Data Machine [VDM] combine at the center of Informatica’s Internet of Things strategy. Primarily for Machine-to-Machine [M2M] data, and by connecting through Power Center, ultimately leading to Machine-to-Human [M2H] Data. The goal is to have VDMs residing in mobile devices, sensor packages, or as part of sensor networks. At this point, VDMs require more processing power than available in most components. Thus, Vibe and VDM are primarily suited today to data, network operations, and communication centers.

However, Informatica is seeing a broad range of use cases involving both large machines and sensor networks, from many different sectors including

• telcos,
• oil and gas,
• financial services,
• government,
• data center operations, and
• building services.

The Proof is Out There

One Proof of Concept [PoC] currently underway is with a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning [HVAC] company. In the PoC, the HVAC company is looking at streaming data from all of their installations. Using Informatica products, they are bringing this data into their data center for both streaming and batch analytics. There are actually three use cases being examined in this PoC:

• Improving customer service
• Internal analytics on generic patterns of use for improved design, reliability and maintainability
• Predictive maintenance from the provider rather than from the building management team

Other field trials look at Vibe and VDM capabilities in regard to Pub/Sub models working with Informatica Ultra Messaging, as well as persisting data in all forms of data stores from traditional Enterprise Data Warehouses [EDW] to Hadoop [HDFS] and NoSQL databases such as Cassandra. These field trials involve solving the ongoing problems of the different areas mentioned above.

• In a financial services case, both application log data and financial information exchange [FIX] log data are being used to pull in log data real time for market, order flow and trade data.
• For online retail, Vibe is used to track web-site visitor paths through the site using log data.
• Data center operational efficiency optimization for green IT, sustainability or improving the bottom line through log data from switches, servers, applications and call centers.
• For one governmental agency, Informatica Vibe and VDM are maintaining the Service Level Agreement [SLA] in real time, for 800 separate field organizations over more than a million devices, using industry-standard Security Content Automation Protocols [SCAP] data formats.

 

Perhaps the most involved trials begin done to date with Informatica Vibe and VDM, are within the Telecommunications space. As one might expect, the explosion of data and customer expectations, as cellular goes from 2G to 3G to 4G/LTE requires real-time management of ever increasing amounts of data. But also the wireline/fiber and cable use cases are exploding as the traditional market places of voice, entertainment and connectivity intertwine.

Out to the Edge

Informatica is aggressively working with partners, such as chip, sensor and package manufacturers, to understand how to optimally implement Vibe, whether that is through streaming collection capability of Vibe on the device itself or as part of the larger infrastructure at some point in the collection tier to implement the needed streaming collection. Currently, collecting sensor data can hit performance limits using the sensor or communication base protocols. Thus, for example in the oil and gas industry, Informatica is working with both vertical-specific sensor manufactures and large organizations in the industry, to determine how Vibe can supplement or even replace the collection tier.

SAE Fit

What Informatica brings to evolving sensor analytics ecosystems [SAE] is not only their specific technologies of Vibe and VDM, but combining these with a complete package for supporting streaming analytics, operational intelligence, complex event processing [CEP], batch analytics, predictives, reporting, data marts and EDW, through their existing technology families such as Ultra Messaging, Power Center, Master Data Management, Data Quality, and more, both through traditional and Cloud deployments. This results in bringing mature market features to the SAE in the form of

• Guaranteed delivery
• Automated zero latency fail-over
• Centralized GUI administration
• No intermediary staging of data at source, broker, or target
• Fail-over does not require shared file systems

References

This blog post is based upon both the Informatica Press release referenced below, briefings at last year's Informatica Analyst Days and a private briefing from the Informatica team. This allowed us to gather more information and get answers to our questions. Also referenced are other of our blog posts on IoT and Big Data, for context.

1. Informatica Press Release from Strata + Hadoop World
2. What does IoT All Mean
3. The IoT and Change
4. Big Data: It’s Not the Size, It’s How You Use It
5. New Hope from Big Data

 

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Can You Explain Salesforce1 By What It is Not?

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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At this year’s Dreamforce, Salesforce.com Chairman Marc Benioff announced a new and potentially disruptive technology from a podium set in the center of the Moscone South convention center. His audience consisted of such notables’ as actor Sean Penn, model and philanthropist Petra Nemcova and the prime minister of Haiti Laurent Lamothe as well as fifteen thousand customers, partners, and employees as well as another 100,000 watching remotely.

Despite the fact the announcement was the most important of the fall enterprise 2013 software season, the news mostly fell on deaf ears. Not because Benioff & Company are not good at positioning software. No one in the business is better. But how do you get any large crowd excited about plumbing? Although Prime Minister Lamothe, Mr. Penn, and Miss Nemcova may be forgiven for not grasping the announcement’s full significance the news mostly escaped the 134,892 people in attendance that did not want to think about platform issues. Which is exactly the point.

“Honestly, it’s the best engineering we have ever done” said Marc Benioff in his keynote speech.

As is often the case with disruptive technology a new offering is very difficult to explain because it requires a new way of thinking. That left many of the audience trying to understand Salesforce1 in ways it is not. Even by the lose standards of the definition it is not a platform. It is not a strategy. It is not a mobile interface. It is not a combination of existing products. And it is not the only product of its kind. Can you explain Salesforce1 by explaining what it is not?

The Salesforce1 represents an enormous engineering effort since it required the entire Salesforce.com platform to be redesigned and rewritten. As a result some customers are using Salesforce1 today without even knowing it. Here is what is it not:

• Platform  - Although Salesforce1 could technically be called a “platform”, doing so does not do service to the definition of platforms nor does it encourage a better understanding of the features of Salesforce1 compared with other Salesforce.com platforms.  Part of the problem is the loose definition of the word.  In the real world, a platform is a raised level surface on which people can stand or objects can be placed. A better analogy is to call Salesforce1 an arch rather than a platform.  Salesforce1 protects the enterprise systems below it from rapid changes taking place among mobile and other mass market devices in the cloud. New application are not really built on Salesforce1, they are built on the device software stacks above it. Since arches typically are used to support the weight of a wall, platform, or bridge above it the analogy rings more true.
• Strategy – Salesforce1 is not a strategy since it includes code and has been partly released.
• Mobile interface - Although mobility that is an important part, fixed devices, such as desktop computers can use the Salesforce1 inclusion layer, and Salesforce has worked for three years to replatformed itself so SF1 is more than just an interface. 
• Combination of existing Salesforce products – Elements of past Salesforce products make their appearance in Salesforce1, but it is new technology, and some products such as Yammer were re-architected to accommodate it so it is not just a mash up of old products.

So what exactly is Salesforce1? Join us at the Constellation Webinar Cutting Through the Hype of Salesforce1 and find out exactly what Salesforce1 really is.

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Takeaways from Dreamforce: How Do You Explain Saleforce1?

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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At this year’s Dreamworld Saleforce.com Chairman Marc Benioff announced a new and potentially disruptive technology from a podium set in the center of the Moscone South convention center. His audience consisted of such notables’ as actor Sean Penn, model and philanthropist Petra Nemcova and the prime minister of Haiti Laurent Lamothe as well as fifteen thousand customers, partners, and employees as well as another 100,000 watching remotely.

Despite the fact the announcement was the most important of the fall enterprise 2013 software season, the news mostly fell on deaf ears. Not because Benioff & Company are not good at positioning software. No one in the business is better. But how do you get any large crowd excited about plumbing? Although Prime Minister Lamothe, Mr. Penn, and Miss Nemcova may be forgiven for not grasping the announcement’s full significance the news mostly escaped the 134,892 people in attendance that did not want to think about platform issues. Which is exactly the point.

As is often the case with disruptive technology a new offering is very difficult to explain because it requires a new way of thinking. That left many of the audience trying to understand Salesforce1 in ways it is not. Even by the lose standards of the definition it is not a platform. It is not a strategy. It is not a mobile interface. It is not a combination of exiting products. And it is not the only product of its kind.

“Honestly, it’s the best engineering we have ever done” said Marc Benioff in his keynote speech.

The Salesforce1 represents an enormous engineering effort since it required the entire Salesforce.com platform to be redesigned and rewritten. As a result some customers are using Salesforce1 today without even knowing it. Here is what is it not:

• Platform  - Even by the lose standards of the definition it is not a platform because it does not store data permanently. Salesforce1 does not have data base under neither it nor can it be mined for data. In the real world a platform is a raised level surface on which people can stand or objects placed. Saleforce1 is more like a roof than floor but one that lets smoke go out and cable television come in.
• Strategy – Salesforce1 is not a strategy since it includes code and has been partly released.
• Mobile interface - Although mobility that is an important part, fixed devices, such as desktop computers can use the Salesforce1 inclusion layer, and Salesforce has worked for three years to replatformed itself so SF1 is more than just an interface. Combination of existing Salesforce products – Elements of past Salesforce products make their appearance in Salesforce1, but it is new technology, and some products such as Yammer were re-architected to accommodate it so it is not just a mash up of old products.
• Combination of existing Salesforce products – Elements of past Salesforce products make their appearance in Salesforce1, but it is new technology, and some products such as Yammer were re-architected to accommodate it so it is not just a mash up of old products.

So what exactly is Salesforce1? Stay tuned here.

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News Analysis: Acqusition Of Fiberlink Fills Key Gap In IBM's One-Stop Mobile First Strategy

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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IBM Acquires Fiberlink (MaaS 360) For Mobile Management And Security

On November 13th, Blue Bell, PA based Fiberlink Communications signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Armonk, NY based IBM for an undisclosed sum.  FiberLink has over 3500 clients in key verticals such as financial, retail, public sector, education, and healthcare.  IBM expects to close the acquisition at year’s end.  The deal is significant to customers because:

• IBM is committed to deliver one stop mobility via acquisitions and organic growth. IBM has made eight acquisitions in the last 18 months (see Figure 1).  In 2012, IBM acquired Emptoris, Worklight, and Tealeaf CX Mobile. Urban Code, The Now Factory, Xtify, Trusteer, and Fiberlink formed the 2013 acquisition list.  Along the way in 2012, IBM launched three mobile offerings: IBM Endpoint Manager for mobile devices, IBM Connections Mobile, and IBM Security Access Manager for Cloud and Mobile.  In 2013, IBM made the IBM Mobile First announcement along with the IBM Message Sight solution.
  
  Point of View (POV): Mobile is the key onramp to digital business.  The average individual is no further than three feet from their devices and always on 14 to 15 hours a day.  Unfortunately, today’s mobile offerings often are piecemeal and incomplete.  IBM has made a strategic bet to provide the end to end mobile first life cycle.  IBM sees four key entry points for mobile: build, engage, transform, and optimize.  Worklight and Urban code addresses build.  IBM Connections Mobile, Tealeaf CX Mobile, and IBM Xtify enable human interaction for engage while IBM MessageSight enables machine to machine (M2M) communications.  Meanwhile, the Now Factory provides big data insights to support the transform entry point.  Emptoris Rivermine Telecom expense management, IBM Endpoint Manager, IBM Security Access Manager, Trusteer end point security, and IBM Urban Code release automation are part of the optimize entry point.

• Mobile management is a critical function for successful BYOD and IBM’s Mobile First strategy. MaaS 360 provides a cloud based and on-premises mobility management platform.  The solution is policy based to support a wide range of BYOD security and privacy requirements.  MaaS 360 supports mobile device management (MDM), mobile content management, and mobile applicant management including containerization.
  
  (POV): The acquisition of MaaS 360 allows IBM to cover three key approaches to mobile management and security: secure transactions, containers, and mobile device management.  MDM enables organizations to secure the device through bio-metrics, enrollment, configuration, monitoring, provisioning, and wiping.  If successful, customers will find that MaaS 360 can decrease the time and cost of supporting BYOD and simplify the overall approach to MDM.

• Customers and prospects can purchase from a trusted supplier. Over 100 vendors provide enterprise mobile management (EMM).  The mobility management space is crowded.  Most offerings come from poorly capitalized startups or vendors with limited distribution networks.
  
  (POV): Customer and prospects fear startups going belly up.  While MobileIron and Airwatch have pulled ahead from the pack, customers can expect rapid consolidation in the market.  Citrix’s acquisition of Zenprise foreshadowed the EMM market consolidation.   Buyers can expect larger vendors such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, Symantec, VMWare and others to make acquisitions to complete their mobility footprints.  

Figure 1. IBM’s Mobile First Strategy Mixes Acquisitions With Organic Solution Development

Source: IBM

The Bottom Line: Consolidation Is Good For Customers and Prospects

Mobility remains the wild west of applications development and consumerization of technology.  As the stakes get higher, organizations seek integrated mobility suites.   The shift to digital business requires cost effective and scalable mobility.  As mass consolidation of mobile vendors continues, buyers will gain scale and stability from integrated mobility suites. Buyers expect to write once, deploy anywhere.  Organizations expect security to be pervasive yet simple to support multiple end points.  Consolidation will once again deliver the scale required for enterprises to quickly innovate and standardize on key platforms.  

Download free research

Constellation Index: Mobile ROI by R "Ray" Wang

Demystifying Social Business: Optimizing the Campaign to Lead Process (Marketing) by R "Ray" Wang

 

Your POV.

Are you looking at a mobile strategy? Do you see the link between mobility and digital business?  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 your mobility and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing mobile readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

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• Tuesday’s Tip: Understand The Five Generation Of Digital Workers and Customers
• Monday’s Musings: The Chief Digital Officer In The Age Of Digital Business
• Slide Share: The CMO vs CIO – Pathways To Collaboration
• Event Report: Metaio’s #InsideAR Conference Hails The Future Of An Always On, Always Augmented Reality
• News Analysis: Avangate Acquired By Francisco Partners For Matrix Commerce Capabilities
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• Research Summary And Speaker Notes: The Identity Manifesto – Why Identity Is At The Heart of Digital Business
• News Analysis: Kana Express 13 Addresses Omni-Channel Customer Service for Mid-Market
• News Analysis: Zuora Raises $50M Series E Round, Rides #MatrixCommerce Wave
• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Monday’s Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

Reprints

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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.
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Roundup of Cloud Computing Forecasts Update, 2013

1

Time-to-market, more flexible support for business strategies by IT, and faster response time to competitive conditions are combining to accelerate cloud computing adoption today.

Of the enterprises I’ve spoken with over the last several months including several Fortune 500 corporations to small businesses just beginning to evaluate cloud-based CRM and manufacturing systems, one message resonates from all of them: they need enterprise applications that keep pace with how fast they want to move on new business strategies. The latest round of cloud computing forecasts reflect the urgency enterprises have of making IT a foundation for strategic business growth.

The following is a summary of the latest cloud computing forecasts and market estimates:

• Gartner predicts that the bulk of new IT spending by 2016 will be for cloud computing platforms and applications with nearly half of large enterprises having cloud deployments by the end of 2017. Source: Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016.

• The worldwide cloud-based security services market will be worth $2.1B in 2013, rising to $3.1B in 2015, according to Gartner. Source: Gartner Says Cloud-Based Security Services Market to Reach $2.1 Billion in 2013.

• McKinsey & Company’s report Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy projects that the total economic impact of cloud technology could be $1.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion annually in 2025. Of this total, $1.2 trillion to $5.5 trillion could be in the form of surplus from use of cloud-enabled Internet services, while $500 billion to $700 billion could come through productivity improvements for enterprise IT.  The following graphic from the study summarizes the results.  Source in PDF form: Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.

• IDC predicts public IT cloud services will reach $47.4B in 2013 and is expected to be more than $107B in 2017. Over the 2013–2017 forecast period, public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5%, five times that of the IT industry as a whole. The growing focus on cloud services as a business innovation platform will help to drive spending on public IT cloud services to new levels throughout the forecast period. By 2017, IDC expects public IT cloud services will drive 17% of IT product spending and nearly half of all growth across five technology categories: applications, system infrastructure software, platform as a service (PaaS), servers, and basic storage. Software as a service (SaaS) will remain the largest public IT cloud services category throughout the forecast, capturing 59.7% of revenues in 2017. The fastest growing categories will be PaaS and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), with CAGRs of 29.7% and 27.2%, respectively.  Source: IDC Forecasts Worldwide Public IT Cloud Services Spending to Reach Nearly $108 Billion by 2017 as Focus Shifts from Savings to Innovation.

• Informatica’s presentation titled Enable Rapid Innovation with Informatica  and MicroStrategy for Hybrid IT by Darren Cunningham, Informatica Cloud  and Roger Nolan, Informatica Data Integration and Data Quality contains a useful series of cloud market overviews supported by 451 Research Gartner, Forrester and IDC data.  A summary of the statistics section is shown below:

• KPMG’s latest study of cloud adoption, The cloud takes shape Global cloud survey: the implementation challenge shows 70% of respondent organizations believe that cloud computing is delivering operating efficiencies and cost savings today. The report also predicts cloud-enabled services adoption by functional area, and is shown below. Source: The cloud takes shape Global cloud survey: the implementation challenge.

• Gartner predicts that in the next five years enterprises will spend $921B on public cloud services, attaining a CAGR of 17% in the forecast period.  Darryl Carlton, Research Director, APAC with Gartner recently presented Cloud Computing 2014: Cloud Computing 2014: ready for real business?  His presentation is full of insightful analysis and market forecasts from Gartner, with specific focus on Asia-Pacific.

• Visiongain predicts the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) submarket is valued at $1.9B in 2013 growing to $3.7B in 2018, attaining a 14.3% CAGR for the period 2013-2018.  The following figure shows the firm’s forecast.  Source: Visiongain on Slideshare.

• Gartner predicts that in the next five years enterprises will spend $921B on public cloud services, attaining a CAGR of 17% in the forecast period.  Darryl Carlton, Research Director, APAC with Gartner recently presented Cloud Computing 2014: Cloud Computing 2014: ready for real business?  His presentation is full of insightful analysis and market forecasts from Gartner, with specific focus on Asia-Pacific.

• Visiongain predicts the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) submarket is valued at $1.9B in 2013 growing to $3.7B in 2018, attaining a 14.3% CAGR for the period 2013-2018.  The following figure shows the firm’s forecast.  Source: Visiongain on Slideshare.

• IDC predicts the global cloud services market is $9.6B in 2013, attaining a five year 24.8% CAGR through 2018.  A free downloadable copy of IDCs latest MarketScape for Worldwide Cloud Professional Services report as available at the link here. Source: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Professional Services 2013 Vendor Analysis.

• Boston Consulting Group writes that SaaS is a $15B market, growing at three times that rate of traditional software.  BCG estimates that SaaS is 12% of global spending on IT applications.  BCG interviewed 80 CIOs and found they were willing to consider SaaS solutions for 35% to 60% of their application spending.  BCG also evaluated how the economics of cloud software adoption vary for on-premises versus SaaS customers.  The following two charts from the completed study. Source: (Free, opt-in required) Profiting from the Cloud: How to Master Software as a Service

• According to Forrester the Asia-Pacific cloud computing market will grow from $6.9B in 2013 to $31.9B in 2020.  The following graphic illustrates the forecasted growth for Asia pacific and the SaaS Market Forecast across Asia-Pacific.  Source: Progress Software, Progress Exchange 2013. Asia Pacific: Entering the Market and Growing Your Business presentation.

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News Analysis: Sitecore Acquires Commerce Server In Quest Towards Customer Experience Management

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Commerce Server Finds Its Logical Home

On Wednesday November 20th, 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark based Sitecore acquired Ottawa, Canada based commerceserver.net for an undisclosed price.  Originally known as the Microsoft Siteserver and Commerce Server 2000, the product was orphaned by Microsoft,  then Ascentium, the key development partner were given the rights to further develop and market the product.  Adding to the lore, Ascentium changed their name to SMITH in the Fall of 2012 and the product group was rebranded to commerceserver.net.

Sitecore's acquisition continues a consolidation trend in the Matrix Commerce market where vendors are aggregating technologies to support a buyer centric approach to customer experience.  Constellation believes customers should pay attention because Sitecore:

• Signals seriousness to deliver on end to end customer experience. Sitecore's portfolio includes its core web content management offerings and an emerging set of digital marketing assets.  Commerce Server adds key B2C functionality for hard goods, digital goods, and web based services; B2B capabilities in trading communities and e-procurement; complex B2X scenarios; and personalized portals.
  
  Point of View (POV): Addition of commerceserver.net fills one key hole in Sitecore's customer experience management portfolio.  Customers and prospects can expect additional acquisitions from the new management team.   In fact, the company has brought in heavy hitters such as a new CRO and CMO over the past 12 months.  Constellation believes that Sitecore is serious in completing key holes in the end to end customer experience story and moving up the stack to support a range of small to large enterprise customers.  In fact, Commerce Sever 10 scales up to support 220,000o orders/day on a 12 hour peak, 60 million user profiles, 10 million item catalogs, 100,000 catalogs and virtual catalogs, and hosting support for 100 active, 1000 provisioned.  Constellation believes the acquistion places Sitecore in the direct battle with Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and SAP for customer experience and commerce.

• Ensures Commerce Server a friendly and natural home. Commerce Server brings its core Microsoft heritage.  Dependencies include Microsoft SQL Server, .NET,  Commerce Server Staging (CSS), and Component Object Model.  Commerce Server also plays well with other Microsoft server stack components including Biz Talk Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.  Sitecore's software is built on a Microsoft.NET platform.  Deployable in Microsoft Azure, the core CMS can use Oracle or Microsoft for the database and content can be stored in either .NET or XML objects.
  
  (POV): Customers should find relief that the Commerce Server assets return back to a product centric company.  While SMITH (formerly known as Ascentium), a digital experience agency, served as a reasonable owner and even delivered the latest version 10 release, software cultures and services business models often clash.  Why? The research and development investment required to take products to market work against the resource utilization and project focus required for successful services.  Constellation will measure integration success by how well the team builds and accelerates the original major release plans (see Figure 1).

• Gains critical ecosystem assets. Commerce Server brings 3000 customers and 25 partners around the world.  Partners range from 17 enterprise providers, hosting providers, training, ISV, and consultants. Key industries for Commerce Server include retail, manufacturing, and e-government.  Sitecore brings over 3000 customers, 1000 certified business partners in 50 countries, 8,000 certified developers, and 17,000 active members in the developer ecosystem.
  
  (POV): Prior to the acquisition, Commerce Server product holes included content management, search, analytics, campaign management, and other key customer experience management capabilities.  Sitecore fills many of these product gaps and adds a larger ecosystem.  Customers can expect significant cross-training among the partners as they integrate the Commerce Server assets into their portfolios.

Figure 1. The Pre SiteCore Acquisition Commerce Server Road Map

Source: commerceserver.net

The Bottom Line: Commerce Remains The Missing Link In Most Customer Experience Management Road Maps

For decades, marketing, sales, service, and commerce served as the anchors in CRM.  Unfortunately, commerce deployments were heavily silo ed and unable to integrate back to the overall customer experience.  Order orchestration, pricing and catalog synchronization, content management, analytic, and other key requirements often failed to work in harmony.

As brands and organizers enter the digital business era,  a plethora of channels, demand signals, supply chains, payment technologies, frictionless enablers, and big data compound the complexity of orchestration and management. Consequently, success in customer experience will require leaders to take a buyer centric approach in what Constellation terms Matrix Commerce.  Those that plan for matrix commerce will be prepared for the digital disruption ahead.  Those that fail to include Matrix Commerce in the overall customer experience management plan will fail to grow revenues and monetize their customer experience investments.

Your POV.

Are you looking at new matrix commerce options? Have you used Sitecore?  Are you using Commerce Server? Do you see the synergy in this acquisition?  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 your Matrix Commerce and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing matrix commerce readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Designing a next gen apps strategy
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

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Dreamforce 2013 Platform Takeaways - All about the mobile platform - or more?

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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So the 2013 edition of Dreamforce is over and it's time to look at the key takeaways from this 5 day mega event. Needless to say that everything Dreamforce is BIG - attendees numbers, space used, concerts held, bands playing, prizes (1 M$!) etc - which makes Dreamforce the dream event for any CMO. I am sure any marketing professional not working at Salesforce would wish they could spend similar on their customer event. And Salesforce is under pressure to keep outdoing itself - as the hype is a substantial ingredient with Dreamforce.

 

But let's cut through the hype and let's look what ultimately matters, the technology behind the announcements.

Despite A Litany Of Annual Trendy Themes, Customer and Developers Still Matter Most

At the end of the day, Salesforce remains a CRM company.  However, it's good to see, that salesforce remains focused on customers. Customer orientation has been important at Dreamforce. 

Two years ago it was all about consumers  and their journey towards social and why companies needed to respond by turning themselves into social enterprises. Salesforce was there to help them  (e.g. listening to customers with the Radian6 acquisition). 

Last year the message was around becoming a customer company - and in order to become that, Salesforce needed to get stronger on marketing segmentation and automation and acquired Exact Target. 

Now it's all about enabling the combination of social, marketing and connected devices, that Salesforce labelled as the internet of customers. But for that you need a new platform, and there we have this years key announcement with Salesforce1.

Equally present was Salesforce's heavy courting of developers. Every keynote and briefing at Dreamforce began by mentioning the importance of the developer and how Salesforce wants to become a (even more) developer friendly vendor. We understand Salesforce fully here, but wonder if the average Dreamforce atttendee cares to worry about how happy its developers are.  However, most Salesforce customers don't have developers on their payroll. 

More importantly, Salesforce cares about administrators and the simplification of their daily life by maintaining and configuring Salesforce products. Consequently, this is how Salesforce has architected Salesforce1 (more below) - system administrators are going to be key for Salesforce1's success. 

Giving the Salesforce administrator the room to administer and enable the mobile platform is a key move - and equally a nice career addition. 

 

Salesforce1 demystified

If you take the Dreamforce hype away - Salesforce1 is basically the delivery of the product formerly known as Touch, in a certainly revamped and improved form. Under the common mobile first banner, Salesforce is now delivering a unified user experience on iOS and Android devices. Customers no longer need to switch between your e.g. classic salesforce mobile app and the mobile Chatter app. And had you deployed Touch - no more switching to these apps on mobile devices, too. 

So certainly a welcome and good move by Salesforce. And definitively a  major feat on the engineering side to bring all these platforms together and being able to extend bothforce.com and Heroku built apps on the Salesforce1 supported devices. 

And Salesforce equally deserves credit to make Salesforce1 a platform - where 3rd party content and applications can run on. Certainly the right path to success if you want to own the mobile user experience and make that more user friendly. Being able to deploy the Salesforce1 mobile applications consistently and declaratively is a pretty unique feature. 

And could it be more than that? Let's look what it could be... 

 

Salesforce1's big potential

To make its apps better consumable for mobile - Salesforce had to make its APIs more granular. Salesforce claims a tenfold increase in number of APIs.   And with that Salesforce1 apps become more nimble and more powerful to deploy. And it becomes easier for ISVs to add their own APIs and build highly differentiated mobile apps. 

If Salesforce takes all this and makes it the backbone for its next generation applications - those that run in the desktop browsers - then we would see a significant opportunity here. Salesforce would be able to re-invent not only the mobile experience - but provide a platform for highly consumable and compose-able business applications - across different delivery channels. 

For that Salesforce will have to strengthen its application server capabilities - or a similar function of those. And whatever that platform will be - Salesforce1 - it will have to be a good integration platform for 3rd party content. The good news here is, that Salesforce has done a lot here already - to both allow ISVs and customers to access 3rd party content in the backend.

 

Advice for Salesforce customers

This is good news for Salesforce customers - mobile users get more modern application to work with. The backend gets better at getting 3rd party data accessed and exposed on the mobile side, certainly a good capability. But analyse how much of your CRM processes can be run on a mobile platform, if there are gaps, press Salesforce on completing those soon. And evaluate alternative platforms for your Internet of Things plans - before you commit to Salesforce for them. Your CRM application vendor is a natural proxy for them - but so is your ERP vendor. 

 

Advice for Salesforce partners

This is also good news for Salesforce partners - it will be easier to build more powerful mobile apps. Look at the gaps in the Salesforce automation portfolio both from a horizontal and vertical perspective to chart your product plans. For services partners we see the mobile business shrinking, as Salesforce smartly has put more productivity in the admin console. With the declarative capabilities of Salesforce1, the market of re-building mobile apps out of a need created by the technical disconnect of the browser and the mobile platform will keep shrinking.

 

Advice for Salesforce competitors

The days are over when competitors could poke at Salesforce about pitching a social enterprise - as long as you used two separate apps on the mobile device. Salesforce raised the stakes with Salesforce1 with its ability to push functionality including customizations consistently to mobile platforms, which will become quickly a table stake. Focus on the more pedestrian browser UI of Salesforce instead. And if the Salesforce pitch on the internet of customers will show signs of success - then you better have a strategy on how to embrace the Internet of Things soon, too.

 

Advice for Salesforce

A good move by Salesforce, that deserves credit for a much improved mobile experience coupled with a solid platform approach with a good eye on developing the vital ecosystem for platform success. Salesforce1 will have to grow quickly to become the overall Salesforce platform - for delivery across all user interaction channels. And it will have to beef up on the integration side quickly, to really become a contender in the Internet of Things arena. Another missing key ingredient for overall success are BigData and (true) Analytics capabilities. Topics for next year and Dreamforce 2014?

 

MyPOV

Another Dreamforce with a lot of superlatives, a great conference for the Salesforce ecosystem. Great presentations, great speakers and a lot of pressure for Salesforce to top that next year - once again. I am certain Salesforce will succeed with that. 

How it will succeed on the Salesforce1 side will be something we will keenly watch - for now its a much improved mobile experience and platform - that has the potential to become much more - benefiting customers, partners and Salesforce. The next 12 months will tell... 

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Salesforce 1 Touch Service Enables Products Not People to Report Problems

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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1

At its DREAMFORCE 2013 event Salesforce introduced Salesforce 1 Service Cloud, which is powered by the Salesforce 1 Platform.  The Salesforce 1 platform provides open API’s for developers or ISVs to incorporate service notification into products and applications.  With this cloud based offering, problem notification is embedded into the application itself and connects products directly to service support.  Service becomes proactive and provides the customer with an entirely new experience of being notified when a product needs service.  When the product notifies the service organization it needs repair, customers avoid having to make a service call or wait for a device to break, thus enabling them to enjoy uninterrupted use of a product.

The 1 Touch Service Cloud is specifically designed for mobile devices and provides service personnel full access to the product status and customer’s information from a smartphone.  It speeds response times, as information is transferred immediately to any smart device from the service cloud.  This functionality sets a new bar for service organizations and provides greater agility with its capability to connect to any device at any time. 

Another important part of the 1 Touch Service announcements is its community application that helps support teams solve more difficult questions.  It enables a field technician to access the shared intelligence of a larger community quickly, which improves product knowledge and accuracy.   With this feature, a field technician can tap into the community and even send a photo from a smartphone to better describe the issue and the larger community can assist in resolving the issue swiftly.

When companies struggle with the need to differentiate their support service and to manage costs, the Salesforce 1 Service Cloud offers an innovative way to do both.  Customers enjoy the security of knowing that their product has the ability to send out a notification when service is needed and brands reduce costs by more efficient use of service technicians who know in advance of the type of repair that is needed.   At the DREAMFORCE 13 convention several customers including Philips, HP and Black and Decker spoke of their “amazing” experience in using the 1 Touch Service Cloud and its ability to transform customer support.

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Next-Generation Customer Experience salesforce Chief Customer Officer