Software Business
Executive Report

April 14, 2008

Finding the Real Value of SOA - By Payton Byrd,  System Architect, Topcoder

We’ve come to use the term Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as both a noun and an adjective, but I really believe that it’s only one of those. Why is that, and why should you care? If you want to get the most from your SOA deployments, I'll tell you!

Many people face confusion about what Software as a Service (SaaS) is, and how it differs from Service Oriented Architecture; and it’s a justifiable state as the pundits of the industry often use the terms interchangeably. Software as a Service is a business model, not a technology. You can think of Google's online spreadsheet system as the classic example of SaaS. A SOA is descriptive of a technical configuration of a traditional n-Tier system that happens to use some standardized interfaces to clearly delineate the boundaries of the differing tiers.

When most people think of SOA the first thing that pops into their mind is Web Services, because that's the most popular mechanism for exposing public services. However, the presence of a service, even one implemented as a Web Service, does not infer the presence of SOA, it simply infers that someone has put a public contract on a server somewhere that accepts input and outputs data. A standard web page does the same thing, right? Would you call a single web page a SOA? I thought not.

We’ve been exposing services for a long time with technologies such as CORBA, COM, DCOM, CGI, Named Pipes, Raw Sockets, and the list goes on and on. Occasionally, we've even exposed a service in one of these technologies that was backed by a true n-Tier architecture; sometimes employing the radical idea that one service could call another service on a different segment of the server farm. Normally these services were built in a proprietary and/or tightly coupled fashion to the technology underlying them. This wasn't so much a Service Oriented Architecture as a Distributed Technology Oriented Architecture.

To me, what makes an architecture truly service oriented is the presence of discrete encapsulation of functionality into concise systems that are implemented in a matter that doesn’t care about either the technology used to expose the functionality, nor the method of delivery of the messages of the functionality. Although CORBA and DCOM both touted this as their main advantage over the other (a dubious claim at best), the first truly technology agnostic way of defining services and consuming them came when the world discovered the combination of HTTP(S), SOAP, and WSDL. It's the combination of these technologies that has freed us from the confinement of proprietary architectures and allows us to build truly service-oriented systems that is only worried about the functional requirements and leaves the technical requirements up to the keepers of the framework. When I call your service, I don't care how you're hosting your service, and you don't care how I'm consuming it; only the messages matter.

Using an architecture that is truly technology agnostic, you can then begin to go about the virtuous task of decomposing an application into its composite parts without worrying about whether or not you're asking too much of the technology, or limiting your functionality because some remote client may not speak big-Endian. Today we have several good frameworks such as WCF to provide a level of freedom that we've never had before; and this is starting to lead to some good software. Not just good software, but reusable software.
The promise of Object Oriented Programming has always been the promise of code re-use. It's a very noble concept, and when viewed within the scope of a single environment it's actually easy to deliver on that promise. The unfortunate thing is that OOP is often tightly coupled to the underlying technology. C++ doesn't speak Java which doesn't speak Visual Basic (well, outside of .Net that is). Once we started writing services in DCOM and CORBA and such we immediately had to abandon the concepts of inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism. These services were nothing more than a facade, and they could never be anything more outside the scope of a tightly coupled environment since none of these technologies played well with each other, just like different programming languages don't play well with each other.

Service Orientation changes that. Within SOA systems you truly think of a single service as a single encapsulated set of functionality. Unlike the days of proprietary distributed object brokers, modern frameworks using open standards allow architects to truly reuse their services by both inheriting services through nested calls and by providing polymorphic implementations of the same contracts. Today we have mainframes that retrieve data from *nix servers which retrieve data from Windows server which then retrieve data from a SAN. This level of standardized cross-platform communication enables you to not only say "what if I can also incorporate the data over there", but to make it happen. "Over there" simply needs to provide the access to authorized callers using the standardized protocols and envelopes such as SOAP over HTTPS, and now the barriers that have long prevented truly reusable software are gone for good.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that prior to SOAP over HTTPS, SOA systems never existed. That's simply not the case. The Internet itself is an implementation of a giant SOA system that is ever changing, ever growing, but the fundamentals stay the same for decades and longer. But entities such as the Internet are quite rare, and even less have the wide-ranging scope to be as truly servicing to all interested parties as the Internet. When I think of creating a new SOA system, I'm really thinking about creating a smaller version of the Internet, and when you take such a macroscopic view of the task at hand, you begin to think in the types of patterns that mirror the successful designs of the Internet.

Let's look at some fundamental aspects of the Internet by first defining what is the Internet? Is it the World Wide Web? No, the web is simply an aspect of a larger set of equally important services. Is it the DNS servers that act as the traffic cops of the Internet? No, the traffic cops are unnecessary if the traffic has neither origin nor destination. What makes the Internet useful is the combination of the encapsulated systems that share data over their very public, very static interfaces. What you have in the Internet is a big bag of loosely coupled components that happen to be organized in a way as to be useful an unlimited number of clients. Any one part of the Internet would fail without those other components, but (and here's the kicker) it's impossible to predict what component is coming around the corner to deprecate or encourage the use of an existing component of the Internet. The World Wide Web deprecated Gopher, while encouraging the use of Email. Could the makers of SMTP predict that HTTP would cause a boon to email traffic by providing a polymorphic implementation of Email that placed an HTTP layer between the end user and the underlying SMTP protocol? Absolutely not, but the rise of Yahoo, Google and Hotmail made it so. Could the makers of HTTP know that their technology would become a major driver of SMTP traffic? I doubt it very much. But we cannot deny that a truly beneficial symbiotic relationship has been formed between these to technologies. What we've created is a classic n-Tier architecture with commonly accepted protocols, encapsulated functionality, and polymorphic usage patterns across individual implementations.

So what does all this mean to enterprise software developers? I've just written half a thesis on the virtues of the Internet without driving home the point of the title, right? Wrong. My opening statement claims that SOA is either a noun or an adjective, and now I'll clarify that position. SOA is an adjective that describes a type of software architecture that leads to genuinely useful applications that are not tightly coupled to the services implementing a specific entity domain. As time goes by, the usage patterns and requirements of the applications change, and thus the entity domains change as well.

Tightly coupled systems are resistant to such changes and wind up sticking out like an albatross on a company’s annual maintenance budget – for their constant status in the “needs to be replaced” column, year after year. The business knows it needs to be replaced, but it's mortally afraid to do so because much of the system that is not domain specific must be thrown out with the domain specific portions. In our guts we know that's a wasteful situation and the minders of the balance sheet hate waste, so the replacement projects don't get funded (or the funding is yanked in July to meet a new mission critical need) and the application remains in service, causing more and more heartache to live with, and shows up again on next years budget.

One big thing we can take from the model of the Service-Oriented Internet is that the useful parts stay in place while the deprecated parts slink off to obscurity; and nobody cares. The world of the Internet can be refactored to embrace the ever changing world that the Internet serves. Why should business applications be any different? Would the Internet have succeeded if it was clearly defined as an application that delivers highly-specialized messages through tightly coupled components that cannot exist without each other? Of course not! Then why would you design an application that doesn't decompose business rules from storage and presentation? Why would you bother to break up business rules from storage and implementation without truly separating them such that any of the three tiers can be completely replaced?

Software architecture should not be about a bureaucracy that is constantly expanding to meet the needs of the constantly expanding bureaucracy! Software architecture should be about providing a solution to a real need and being able to change or replace the components of that solution to adapt to changing requirements without expanding the bureaucracy. Components of a bureaucracy never go away, they just receive parallel components that compete for resources, just like in bad software architectures.

To bring value to software owners you need to account for the fact that things change and that you shouldn't have to discard entire systems when the changes become too drastic. Service Oriented Architecture always results in the creation of decoupled components that work independently to provide encapsulated functionality than can be upgraded or replaced when necessary, not when financially convenient.

Payton Byrd has over a decade of professional experience as a System Architect, currently employed by TopCoder®, Inc. (www.topcoder.com) the world’s largest competitive software development community with over 140,000 developers representing more than 200 countries. Byrd has been programming since the age of 12 when he was given a VIC-20. His expertise spans every level of programming (from 8-bit to 64-bit), directing his problem solving skills to apply the best techniques in solving software development projects for clients including many of the world’s largest brands.

Expand the Pie with a Set of Non Monetary Trade-ups - By Ron Hubsher, Managing Director, Sales Optimization Group

Expand the pie and create more value with a set of non monetary trade-ups that deliver more value to your buyer and more value to you.

Software companies have the opportunity to increase the value you deliver to your buyer and at the same time create more value for yourself as well. You can do this while still maintaining a price premium by creating a set of non monetary trade-ups.

Create more value for your buyer.

You have the opportunity to increase the value delivered to your client with items that have little or no cost to you and deliver great value to your buyer. For example if the product or service you sell requires training you might expand the pie buy offering “to have 5 extra people attend training at no cost”. The value of that training might be worth $2000 per person. So you have created value and expanded the pie by $10,000 (5 people x $2,000 per person). The cost of those 5 extra people at training might be a few sandwiches and some extra manuals – the cost would even be less if you are doing web based training – practically zero. The value to your buyer is $10,000 and greater. The buyer will now have 5 extra people trained that know how to use your products and services, your client will now likely get more benefit and value from your offering by having more people correctly trained to utilize your solution.  Additionally, you have added more value and helped lower the risk of the purchase. In business to business complex sales and sales of high dollar products and services, the buyer chooses the best vendor based on risk, not price. Now the buyer will not have to worry about what happens when trained people leave the organization as there will be 5 extra people capable of instant filling those roles. You will have created great value to the buyer.
Some “gives” you may want to consider may include

• Extending Payment terms
• Placing in priority implementation queue
• Providing extra training for people
• Providing Onsite training
• Provisioning Extra users
• Providing Extra licenses
• Loaning of add-on tools or modules
• Offering priority support
• Leads or introductions
• Creating a Press Release or other marketing assets
• Having key personnel or uniquely qualified personnel assigned to work with the buyer

Never give without getting.

Never give without getting is a fundamental of negotiation and sales. When you offer to give something you should get something in return.  You will want to create a list of “gets”-- things that you want in return. So if for example if you are giving “5 extra people at sales training” what do you want to get in return?
Some “gets” you may want are:

• Payment upfront or accelerated payment terms
• Longer term Commitment
• More users
• Guarantee of future business
• Case studies
• Metric
• To serve as a references or speak at a conference
• Referrals to other parts of the organization
• Referrals to third parties
• Press Release
• Maintenance paid in advance

This are just some suggested “gets”, please feel free to customize and tailor these “gets” to create your own list.

Hidden benefits

Some “gives” not only benefit the buyer, they can benefit the seller as well. If you are giving “5 extra people at training” won’t that benefit the seller as well? If more people are trained on your product, won’t that increase the value of your offering? Will it help your company’s products and services become part of the buyer’s corporate fabric? When it comes time to renew or replace your products will you be in a stronger position to get the repeat business and insulate yourself from competitors?  If they need ancillary products or add on, are they more likely to buy from you? Absolutely. And if a trained user leaves the buyer’s organization are they likely to recommend your products and services to new a new employer? “Extra people at training” is a great “give” for many businesses. It is a give that also serves as “Get” as well – after all, the buyer is investing additional resources in learning your product.

Ranking Gives

To expand the pie for both parties, create a list of potential “gives”. Identify those “gives” that have high value to your buyer. Next look at the list and identify those that have low cost to you.  You can now see which ones add great value to your clients with minimal or no cost to you. This now become great “gives” to offer in return for “gets” to grow the pie and increase the value of the deal for you buyer. Also make note of “gives” that create hidden value for you – like in the example above.  If a “give” adds high value to the buyer, is low or zero cost to you, and creates hidden value for you, this is a give you will definitely want to offer as a first choice.

Ranking Gets

This is just like the exercise above to expand the pie, create a list of potential “gets”. Identify those “gets” that have high value to you. Next look at the list and identify those that have low cost to your buyer.  You can now see which ones add great value to you with minimal cost to your buyer. This now become great “gets” to ask for in return for “gives”.

Create a list of trade ups that will expand the pie:

Based on your ranking you can create a list of “gives” and “gets” that will grow the pie and expand the value of the relationship to new heights.
Here is an example of a trade-up chain from one of our clients which is a software company.

Note all the “gives” above have very little extra cost and can delivery great value to the buyer
Over time you can create a standard trade up chain that becomes a corporate standard and that will enable reps to consistently satisfy buyers, win deals, and reduce the sales cycle. It will also reduce the amount of management time need to close sales opportunities.  You can also bundled together the “gives” and “gets”. So you may offer one “give” for multiple “gets”. For example you may offer to give “5 additional people attend training” if your buyer will commit to two extra years on the contract and serve as a reference for 5 future prospects.

Quick Note

You don’t have to wait till the end of the sales cycle to expand the pie. You can start proposing these trade –ups earlier on in the sales cycle and help distance yourself from the competition.

Action items and Check list before you go into negotiation for immutable law #5

Before you go into negotiation ask yourself if you have accomplished the following

• Create a list of non monetary “gives”
• Identify those  “gives” that are high value to the buyer and low cost to you
• Identify those “gives” that actually create value to you as well.
• Create a list of “gets”
• Identify those “gets” that are high value to you and low cost to the buyer
• Identify those “gets” that actually create value to the buyer
• Based on the two lists, create a set of non monetary trade-ups that will expand the pie
• Over time look to develop a standardized set or bundles of trade-ups

Mr. Hubsher is a 20-year sales, negotiation and CRM industry veteran and thought-leader who has helped hundreds of companies successfully improve their sales and negotiation strategies and tactics. A former Management Consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Mr. Hubsher has worked with and helped provide thought leadership for Fortune 500 companies on their sales, sales management, marketing, CRM and business strategies.

This article was excerpted from his forthcoming book, Closing Time: The Seven Immutable Laws of Sales Negotiation. Contact Ron at www.salesog.com or rhubsher@salesog.com

Salesforce.com and Google Introduce Salesforce for Google Apps

The combination of the Google Apps suite of productivity applications and the Salesforce suite of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications enables businesses to effectively communicate and collaborate without any hardware or software to download, install or maintain. Salesforce for Google Apps also leverages the Force.com Platform and Google's open APIs, opening up even more development opportunities for developers and partners.

Salesforce for Google Apps is a combination of essential applications for business productivity (email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging) and CRM (sales, marketing, service and support, partners) that enables an entirely new way for business professionals to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web. Salesforce for Google Apps offers a complete way for businesses to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing hardware or software infrastructure.
Salesforce for Google Apps includes:

• Salesforce and Gmail - Businesses can now easily send, receive and store email communication, keeping a complete record of customer interactions for better sales execution and improved customer satisfaction.
• Salesforce and Google Docs - Create, manage, and share online Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Presentations within your sales organization, marketing group, or support team for instant collaboration.
• Salesforce and Google Talk - Instantly communicate with colleagues or customers from Salesforce and optionally attach Google Talk conversations to customer or prospect records stored in Salesforce.
• Salesforce and Google Calendar - Expose sales tasks and marketing campaigns from Salesforce on Google Calendar. Built by Appirio, this application is one example of a new category of partner extensions to Salesforce for Google Apps.

"Salesforce.com and Google have changed the game again. This is, hands down, the best example of the consumerization of the enterprise. This is revolutionizing the way people work," said Sheryl Kingstone of the Yankee Group.

Salesforce.com and Google's alliance has created the world's largest cloud computing platform for building and running applications. The Force.com Platform-as-a-Service encompasses a complete feature set for the creation of business applications and Google's open APIs enable integration and extension of the applications in Google Apps. The integration of the two creates many new opportunities for developers and partners to build and run business applications that help customers run their entire business smarter in the cloud. Today, applications like sales quote generation and business forecasting are now easy to build and test, and can be deployed by customers with just a few clicks via the AppExchange.

Appirio and Astadia are the first companies to take advantage of these new development opportunities made possible through the Google and salesforce.com partnership. Each company has developed several applications that enhance Salesforce for Google Apps, and all of these applications are available today in a newly created AppExchange category, Google Apps, at
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__c=a0130000006 P6IoAAK-5.

Salesforce for Google Apps is available today to all salesforce.com customers at no additional charge.
Salesforce.com also will be offering Salesforce for Google Apps Supported, a package that includes integrated telephone end user support, unified billing and provisioning, enhanced platform APIs, additional third party applications, and advanced Google Apps functionality, all for $10 per user, per month. This package is currently scheduled to be available in Summer 2008.

Contact www.salesforce.com/googleapps

Aria Systems and Rackspace Team to Provide On-Demand Billing for SaaS Industry

Aria Systems , a provider of on-demand transaction and customer management solutions, has announced that Rackspace , a leading global provider of hosted IT services, will be referring the Aria Systems subscription billing platform to its SaaS customers that require subscription billing services. In addition, Aria Systems will refer customers to Rackspace's SaaS hosting services under an agreement with Rackspace.
The relationship links two experienced SaaS vendors and reinforces Aria Systems' emerging position as standard for SaaS-based transaction management. To-date, Aria Systems has managed more than one million accounts with its customer care and self service tools, billed customers in 236 countries with its advanced localization features, configured and maintained 8.2 million plans and services, and automatically rated more than one billion usage units. Companies powered by and partnering with Aria include Flagship Studios, DigitalBridge, ZoomInfo, OpSource, Serena, Xythos, Marketo, Auran Games and TransFirst.

"Rackspace, like its customers and others across the industry, realizes that billing is more than simply issuing invoices and processing payments," said Edward Sullivan, founder and CEO, Aria Systems. "They see that doing business in an on-demand world is changing. They see products being reformulated into subscription-based services and expectations of real-time interaction between providers and their customers growing rapidly. And when they look at their operations, they see an untapped opportunity to drive more value from each customer interaction."

Aria Systems' approach to billing encompasses the full lifecycle of a company's recurring relationship with its customers. Its billing engine leverages the benefits of SaaS - no infrastructure to manage, no software to install, faster time-to-value and simple subscription pricing - all of which enable Rackspace's hosting customers to optimize their own SaaS delivery.

"An application is just an application until the right business tools and processes are in place to generate revenue," said Scott White, director of channel sales, Rackspace. "We believe that Aria Systems gives our customers one of the easiest, most cost-effective and powerful tools to turn applications into revenue-generating businesses."

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services, integrating the industry's best technologies and delivering them as services.

Contact www.ariasystems.com
Contact www.rackspace.com

IBM and Oracle Partner to Serve Midsize Businesses

Oracle and IBM have entered an expanded relationship to serve midsize businesses. IBM will develop, sell and implement Oracle-based enterprise application solutions developed specifically for midsize clients.
This expanded relationship will significantly extend the market reach for Oracle, and will allow IBM and its Business Partner channel to deliver industry-specific, end-to-end solutions based on Oracle Applications and IBM hardware and services. Building on the Oracle Accelerate strategy and the IBM Express Advantage program, IBM will deliver industry solutions that are packaged, priced and delivered specifically for midsized businesses.

Both Oracle and IBM work to create opportunities and deliver solutions to customers of all sizes. This announcement reflects the value of combining the industry-leading capabilities of IBM Global Business Services as resellers for Oracle Accelerate solutions with the relationships, skills and presence of local IBM Business Partners.

"This agreement represents an important milestone in IBM's continuing commitment to deliver targeted industry solutions to our valued midsize clients," said Brian Mitchell, Global and Americas Oracle Leader, IBM Global Business Services. "We look forward to teaming with Oracle to bring innovative business solutions to this important joint client base."

Focusing initially in the U.S. and Canada, the alliance expands the extensive relationship and a long history with Oracle's JD Edwards Enterprise One and the Oracle(r) E-Business Suite, under which IBM and its Global Business Services division has built an industry leading Oracle portfolio. Through Oracle Accelerate, these applications are being tailored specifically for midsize companies, and will be integrated with IBM's hardware, software and services.

Contact www.oracle.com
Contact www.ibrm.com

Jamcracker Integration Toolkit Enables ISVs

Jamcracker has released the Jamcracker Integration Toolkit (JIT), which makes it quick and easy for Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors of all sizes to make their applications available within the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN). JIT is an XML-based do-it-yourself service integration framework that greatly simplifies the effort required for publishing SaaS solutions to the JSDN Global Services Catalog. Several vendors have already used JIT to publish their applications on the JSDN, including Averiware, Brainshark, LongJump, RHUB, Topia Technology, and XOffice International.

“As business acceptance of SaaS accelerates, software vendors of all sizes are seeking easier and quicker methods to start reselling their SaaS offerings to respond to rising customer demand,” said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies, an independent consulting firm, and the Founder of the SaaS Showplace, an online directory of SaaS solutions and best practices. “The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network is emerging as one of the industry’s leading SaaS aggregation and distribution hubs for both software vendors and service providers because of its rapid on-boarding capabilities.”

SaaS ISVs who are part of the JSDN have the ability to leverage Jamcracker’s ecommerce WebStores, billing, provisioning, customer support, helpdesk, and administrative services. WebStores allow ISVs to resell their services directly, as well as through Jamcracker’s global service-delivery channel partners including Telcos, Value Added Resellers (VARs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Web Hosting providers that rely on the JSDN to offer SaaS products.

To provide on-demand as well as traditional software partners with a fast on-ramp for selling SaaS versions of their applications, Jamcracker created JIT. This XML based integration framework makes it easy for vendors to make their products JSDN-ready without in-depth knowledge of the Jamcracker Platform and its associated provisioning and billing mechanisms. All that is required to use JIT is a working knowledge of XML. Jamcracker provides ISVs with developer support as well as certification and acceptance-testing of the their JSDN adapter.

“Until now, Jamcracker would develop adapters on behalf of our ISV partners. However, demand for specialized and vertical software applications from service providers, resellers, and their end-user customers has necessitated the creation of an open integration framework to allow self-service solution publishing,” said Steve Crawford, vice president of marketing for Jamcracker. “The Jamcracker Integration Toolkit allows software vendors to get their applications into our delivery network quickly and easily, so service-delivery partners can create custom solution bundles for their customers. Meanwhile, it enables us to grow our ecosystem of services at a compounded rate.”

Contact www.jamcracker.com

IT Leaders Should Prepare for the Third Wave of Innovation to Drive Growth

IT leaders can stimulate economic growth by changing fundamental things they do in their business and their personal lives, according to Gartner, Inc. IT leaders must turn the fear of a recession into an opportunity to leverage what they have and to innovate in order to grow their business.

During the opening keynote at Gartner Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo last week, Gartner analysts explained that in some ways it was the drive to innovate by financial institutions that led to the current economic conditions. When more lenders and investors wanted their share of the massive housing boom, these financial firms were innovating new mortgage related products to drive revenue growth.

“The worst consequences of this recession can be reversed, and the road to business growth can be rediscovered by countering innovation with innovation,” said Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner Fellow at Gartner. “If you wait for the official declaration that this recession has ended before you plan for growth, you will have lost months or even a year of opportunity to return to business growth. While some of your staff are cutting costs, simultaneously have others on your staff start preparing for the return to business growth, and do that now.”

Innovation

Mr. McGee said companies need “IT innovation of the third kind.” The first kind of IT innovation occurs when IT practitioners improve technical solutions to meet IT needs that were identified and initiated by IT people. This can be done through infrastructure modernization with faster Internet speeds, cheaper storage, or improved flexibility through virtualization.

The second kind of IT innovation occurs when IT practitioners design innovative IT solutions to meet business needs that were identified and initiated by business people. This can achieved with more CRM channels, smarter business intelligence analytic tools, or better mobile devices.

“The third kind of IT innovation takes place when IT practitioners design innovative IT solutions to meet business needs that were identified and initiated by IT people,” Mr. McGee said. “While innovation itself is the first imperative, focusing the value of IT to your organization over the coming years will require attention to five more imperatives.”

The six imperatives for innovation of the third kind include: Innovate, Globalize, Connect, Socialize, Advance, and Industrialize.

Globalization

“Emerging countries” such as China and India are having a dramatic impact on the economy. Vendors from the emerging countries are the ones many companies will look to for the next generation of innovation that will drive their enterprises forward.

“Your organizations must learn to trade and compete with these rapidly transforming, highly organized enterprises that can often leverage low-cost, highly skilled labor sources,” said Partha Iyengar, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “At the same time the fast growing middle classes and newly affluent working classes in these economies present great revenue growth opportunities.”

Gartner analysts provided some examples of the impact emerging countries will have on innovation. Some of these examples included: The U.S. graduates approximately 100,000 engineers each year, while China graduates more than half a million English-speaking engineers; 80 percent of the world’s workforce already is in emerging countries instead of developed countries.

“As the population over the emerging countries grows, it is changing the global supply landscape for the most important resource for the future: qualified people,” Mr. Iyengar said. “Historically ‘closed’ countries are now increasingly loosening their boarders and looking for a new breed of highly skilled immigrants that will bring in much needed expertise, and in many ways transform their societies.”

Connect
Businesses are not concerned about bandwidth, mobile, or other computing issues. “The value to the business comes in how that connectivity is exploited,” said Anthony Bradley, managing vice president at Gartner. “The telecom sector has a vested interest in pushing connectivity, but business is interested in employing that connectivity for real business gain.”

Many people are losing productivity in the hidden form of electronic pollution with non-stop automated interruptions. “The connectivity is not improving the capability and output of key staff members,” Mr. Bradley said. “The destiny of telecom providers must be to transcend connectivity and deliver ‘invisible mobility’ for real business value.”

The network is starting to become intelligent. Mobile devices know where people are, as well as when they have their next meeting, and how to read them. A CRM system and the Internet might shed some light as to a client’s satisfaction level.

“Data collection technologies and user generated content are leading to an explosion of contextual information,” Mr. Bradley said. “We must begin leveraging connectivity, leveraging this ‘invisible mobility’ to build new types of business systems around context driven architecture, situational awareness, and globally scalable ‘sense and respond’ systems.”

Socialize

“We have reached a point where technology is delivering power to the people, not just the enterprise,” Mr. Bradley said. “This revolution is the socialization of IT.”

Never before has IT enabled thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people to create simultaneously and collaboratively. The creation of business content has undergone a significant evolution to arrive at socialization. Many companies are leveraging social networks in connecting employees globally to enhance internal collaboration.

“Mass collaboration requires a new mindset,” Mr. Bradley said. “It is your organization’s competency in tapping into the power of communities that will determine its future greatness.”
CRM is morphing into customer involvement mobilization with emerging social applications such as idea exchanges, prediction markets, crowd-sourcing models, community-driven self-service, and customer-driven product design.

Industrialize

During the industrial revolution the ability to deliver a wide range of goods and services at a reduced price made them available to everyone. “It was only a matter of time before shared IT services gained significant penetration to foster dramatic shifts in the IT industry,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow. “Combine this with the impact of socialization and collaborative computing models and the door opens for clean-slate competitors to enter every market. The industrialization of IT is upon us.”
Because of industrialized IT, everything and anything will become a service. It is called cloud computing. Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enable capabilities are provided “as a service” to multiple customers using Internet technologies.

“Cloud” will be a grand buzzword unifier in IT for the next 12 months. Utility computing, grid computing, software as a service, and many other scalable remote computing models will get linked to cloud computing.
Mr. Plummer said cloud computing is actually the wrong buzz phrase. He said people should be talking about cloud business instead. “Technology vendors will deliver cloud infrastructure, but those details must be linked for us all, or ‘the cloud’ will just be nothing more than a buzz-word,” Mr. Plummer said. “We can’t spend all of our time arguing about how to implement the cloud and almost no time talking about whether our business can fit the cloud model.”

IT organizations will need to determine what their strategy about the cloud that will allow them to help their business innovate into new models of revenue-generation.

Advance

Advancing the capability of the IT department means taking some calculated risks. The business needs IT departments to advance two capabilities.

The first opportunity is in strategic information management. “Gartner’s annual business executive survey with Forbes magazine showed that chief executives’ biggest expectation of IT is not productivity. It’s developing the capability to use information as a competitive weapon,” said Mary Mesaglio, research director for Gartner Executive Programs. “It’s not enough to own the information. You need to use it to get competitive advantage.”

The second opportunity is what Gartner calls operational technology. Integrating IT’s administrative systems with the operational technology in their enterprise is a green field of opportunity for IT.

“The new truth is that you (IT leaders) have to innovate and decide how to bring IT to bear on big new business problems that need systematic solutions,” Ms. Mesaglio said. “Sure the major vendors will provide you with a toolset from piece parts using service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM), and software as a service (SaaS), but you need to provide the solution. The clock is ticking for those who still believe excellence in technology management alone will work.”

Contact www.gartner.com

On-Demand CRM Market Becomes New SaaS Battleground

Analysts at Tier1 Research (T1R) find in a new report that since software as a service (SaaS) can be a cost-effective delivery method for software functionality, it is rapidly gaining acceptance. Nowhere has this adoption been more evident than in customer relationship management (CRM) – a front-end customer-facing platform consisting of sales automation, marketing automation and customer service. While the on-premise enterprise CRM market has reached relative maturity and is expected to experience annualized growth of 6.2% through 2010, the on-demand CRM market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 41.0% through 2010.

These findings are contained in a report released today by New York-based T1R, an independent research firm that analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments affecting public and private companies within the hosting, IT, communications and Internet sectors. The On-Demand CRM Marketplace report provides analysis and perspective on key technology trends and developments in the SaaS market.
"The global growth story for the on-demand CRM market is clearly an exciting one," said Wesley Kennedy, Senior Analyst at T1R and author of the report. "And while the rising tide will lift all boats, it is evident that some boats will rise higher than others. Those companies that are levered to the fastest-growing sections of the market will clearly be the greatest beneficiaries."

T1R analysts find that growth from European enterprises will be driven by the demand for point software applications as opposed to applications that can be integrated or are already integrated with other applications. Meanwhile, unlike the U.S. and Europe, many larger enterprises in Asia have not yet adopted a CRM platform (on-premise or on-demand). The on-demand value proposition will be much more compelling for larger organizations in Asia. As a result, T1R analysts expect larger enterprises to lead the charge in terms of on-demand adoption, with smaller companies following suit 12-18 months later.

"The market has become so competitive and the established vendors have such a head start across all enterprise sizes and geographic locations that a new entrant to the on-demand CRM world would not be able to survive," said Kennedy.

This 37-page report, titled 'On-Demand CRM Marketplace,' analyzes where growth for the on-demand CRM market is coming from and which vendors are best positioned to capitalize on that growth. It also looks at the growth prospects for respective on-demand CRM vendors and examines whether the on-demand CRM opportunity for each vendor is appropriately valued.

Contact www.t1r.com

Achieving Enterprise Software “Success”
A study of buyer and seller perspectives on the drivers of enterprise software success - 2008

An ever-broader landscape of enterprise software solutions means buyers must work harder than ever to be sure their solution decisions support their business goals. At the same time, CIOs face ever tighter IT budgets.

Respondents agree that the no. 1 driver of value realization is ensuring effective usage of software in the enterprise. The survey found that improved adoption lowers costs, improves customer satisfaction and drives revenue growth. As CIOs struggle with the responsibility to ensure enterprise software success, they expect software companies to help them improve usage levels and share the burden of success realization.

Click Here to Download

April 16-17 -- CEO Bootcamp, Atlanta, Ga. Contact www.clevelbootcamp.com

April 16 -- Connecting Sales & Project Delivery Webcast, 2 pm EST/11 am PST. Contact www.tenrox.com

April 21 -- Software M&A: Postioning for Exit at Maximum Value Webcast, 1 pm EST/10 am PST. Contact www.softrax.com

April 22-25 – Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, Calif. Contact http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008

April 27-29 -- QlikTech Global Partners Summit, Miami, Fla. Contact www.qlikcommunity.com/998

May 18-20 -- SIIA NetGain, San Francisco, Calif. Contact www.siia.net/netgain

World Financial Symposiums
May 15, 2008
Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel

(WFS) is an international organization dedicated to educating technology leaders. It organizes and promotes forums for CEOs, CFOs, corporate investors and other deal participants for the software and IT industries, with the intent to educate and encourage deal flow among industry participants.

This is the sixth year WFS is producing these events for leaders of technology and software companies in the U.S. and Europe. The upcoming Boston event is featuring a new program – a special afternoon M&A event, where the best authorities on M&A Strategies for Software and Internet Companies will speak and network. The conference will be held on May 15, 2008 at the Renaissance Boston WaterfrontHotel in Boston, from noon to 5 pm, followed by cocktails. You won’t want to miss this outstanding afternoon event.

To register, please visit www.worldfinancialsymposiums.com

June 25-26
Ecosystems Summit

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