Keynote
Winning Strategies for the Increasingly Competitive Software Industry
Being competitive is becoming increasingly challenging in today’s software industry. Today, software companies are faced with continuous market disruption, more complex customer demands, and dramatic changes to their core businesses, resulting in the need for fundamental changes to their traditional business and operating models. This panel will discuss how software companies are responding to fundamental shifts in the industry. From the perspectives of panelists in executive positions in sales/marketing, operations and human resources at leading software companies, this panel will discuss new pricing & licensing, talent, operational and other requirements to support new business models; the biggest hurdles and competitive challenges; and how to find success around these challenges. Attendees will benefit by understanding the short- and long-term actions software companies are taking to improve the way their business models address the change to software as a service.
Moderated by John Ciacchella, Principal • Deloitte Consulting LLP
Translation Management Systems Benefits During Localization
Translation Management Systems (TMS) are becoming the norm in managing large localization projects. If your company is involved in simultaneous releases of your product into multiple languages and is challenged during the localization period, you need to take a closer look at TMS. This presentation will walk you through the different steps of preparing and starting a localization project using TMS. From the creation of the localization tool kit and defining language requirements, to establishing a comprehensive localization project plan and establishing communication requirements. This presentation will give examples and elaborate how TMS can be used to facilitate all these steps and enhance the localization project experience.
Nabil Freij, President • GlobalVision International, Inc.
Predictive Selling: Integrating the Art of Selling with Behavioral Science to Drive Greater Sales Performance
In today’s highly competitive environment, software companies are challenged more than ever to gain greater productivity from their sales organization. Yet according to leading experts, selling is the one function that has not been the subject of analysis and process. Though recent studies show that leveraging the repeatable behaviors of top performers will improve all sales’ performance and yield significant returns, a startling minority of companies have yet to embrace the process change. Furthermore, executive management more often does not know why their top performers are effective, yet millions of dollars are spent on training programs trying to improve selling skills without knowing precisely what skills their sales team lack. This session will present market trends and challenges executives must overcome to effectively improve sales performance and reduce the sales “churn” and the methodologies and technologies needed to successfully implement the predictive selling model and how sales organizations like Oracle, WebEx, Siemens ad Right Now Technologies have achieved this. Learn how to use prospect’s behavioral attributes to more accurately predict buyer tendencies so that all sales team members can shift into perfect alignment with their buyers.
Stephen D’Angelo, CEO • Spring Lake Technologies
Redefining Software DRM: New Tools for Software Sales and Marketing Managers Drive Sales and Reduce Costs
Discover how an advanced software Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution that aligns with a software product’s lifecycle can influence your organizational processes, drive future sales and reduce operational costs. Role-based tools place the nexus of power in the hands of the sales and marketing managers, enabling on-the-fly decisions and customized initiatives that look beyond preventing software piracy and illegal use to become business-enabling solutions; providing a competitive edge, increasing sales and accelerating growth. John Gunn examines your new role in software licensing and how an effective software DRM solution can address new organizational needs and challenges.
John Gunn, Vice President, Global Marketing • Aladdin Knowledge Systems
Development’s Dilemia: Achieving the Elusive Balance Between Releasing New Products and Supporting Current Ones
Learn the challenges that development teams face in trying to achieve balance between getting new products and upgrades out the door on time (with requisite quality and functionality) while supporting current customers and bug fix requests. Discover how many ISVs have been able to reclaim the approximately 30 percent of development bandwidth that is typically diverted from coding work and spent on the manual, iterative process of resolving software problems throughout the product lifecycle.
Ran Gishri, Director of Worldwide Marketing • BMC Software
Relationship Marketing 2.0: The Client Acquisition Model for Greater Sales Productivity and Healthier Pipelines
In today's highly competitive environment, the struggle for software companies to profitably attract and retain customers has never been greater. Innovative software companies require far more effective sales and marketing strategies, practices and cost models to reach and develop relationships with buyers. Software executives can no longer afford to have valuable sales resources dealing with unqualified “hand-raisers”. What’s needed are client acquisition strategies that capture, qualify, filter and nurture those suspects not ready to buy so sales can focus on the most qualified opportunities. The new model, termed Relationship Marketing, employs integrated sales and marketing technologies to streamline the entire client acquisition process and build bigger and healthier pipelines that close more deals. This session will present the market trends and challenges solution providers must overcome to effectively penetrate existing and new markets and meet revenue goals. Learn the methodologies, resources, lead management processes and automated tools needed to evolve toward this new model and examine case studies of software companies that are using the Relationship Marketing model to dramatically increase qualified leads and conversion rates.
Henry Bruce, President • The Rock Annand Group
Private Equity for Streamlined Cash Flow and Long Term Growth
Every company goes through a business cycle. Startups are fast growing and invest heavily in growth. A mature company facing slowing revenue has to approach things from a different angle and manage for profitability. When a company is maturing, the public market may not be the best place to be. Pressure from investors to post flowing growth often force company leaders to make poor decisions such as investing more in sales and marketing, launching misguided products or making distracting acquisitions. While all of these things may please investors for the short term, they ultimately take the focus off of cash flow which will create a more complex problem long term. Alex Slusky will discuss the current landscape of the software industry and illustrate the benefit of private equity for mature companies who need a solution for long term success. Exit solutions discussed will include buyouts, spinouts and take privates. Discover what makes a successful candidate for private equity, what it means for corporate culture of the company involved, in a positive way.
Alex Slusky, Founder and Managing Partner • Vector Capital
Overcoming the Organizational Barriers to Transforming Your Software Business into an On-Demand Company
Changing customer needs, escalating competitive challenges and intensifying economic pressures are forcing established software companies to fundamentally re-think their business models. Moving from a traditional on-premise product to an on-demand services business entails more than just overcoming a specific set of technical requirements. The biggest obstacles to successfully achieving this migration process are a series of internal operational and organizational issues. This session will examine how established software companies are overcoming these barriers and identify the critical steps to success.
Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director • THINKstrategies, Inc.
Feature Presentation - Venture Capitalist Panel
Running for the Exit: What Investors Want to See in Exit Planning
Given all recent activity in the IPO Markets/Financial Markets, exit planning can be a gamble. This panel will examine the challenges and issues related to exit strategies, share inside information on what VCs look for in exit strategies and what exit strategies have worked well for some of their clients.
Moderated by Mark Jensen, Partner and National Director, Venture Capital Services • Deloitte & Touche LLP
Venture Capitalist Panel – SaaS Steps Up to the Plate
Software as a Service (SaaS) makes up a large component of the software world and continues to gain industry momentum. SaaS businesses are growing at phenomenal rates and changing how professionals think, work and act. Goldman Sachs recently claimed that investments in SaaS businesses ranked as one of the top-three trends in overall VC technology investing from 2004 to 2006. Over the past few years, SaaS has taken center stage as demonstrated by the increasing number of investments, exciting new start ups, and the success of new IPOs in the marketplace. However, the industry is still very much in its infancy, and opportunities within it remain endless. Despite impressive growth, SaaS still represents less than 25 to 40% of the total software market. This offers plenty of room for fresh talent, and the talent keeps coming: rookie businesses are stepping up to the plate, putting longtime players on the defensive. This panel will discuss the SaaS market: where it is today and where it’s headed. VCs experienced in launching successful SaaS startups will lend the audience their experience and know-how and explain their visions of what lies ahead for SaaS technology.
Gordon Ritter, General Partner • Emergence Capital Partners
Don Rainey, General Partner • Grotech Ventures
Tae Hea Nahm, General Partner • Storm Ventures
Software Marketing in Troubled Times
Two colliding trends in the software industry will create a financial train wreck in the next few years. With IT budgets shrinking and the complexity of market trends/demands for growing, many software firms will get crushed and vanish. Smart software companies are refocusing their products, delivery, and messaging to their customer’s “business disciplines.” Identifying and matching customer business disciplines, and matching your value proposition to those disciplines will draw the narrowed attention of newly frugal IT buyers. Building a matrix around customer business disciplines and core product values leads to precise promotions that gain traction in each segment where you market your wares. In this presentation, Guy Smith of Silicon Strategies Marketing will cover the economic pull-back in the industry, the growing demand for diversified software delivery models, and the core business disciplines that drive buyer motivations.
Guy Smith, Chief Consultant • Silicon Strategies Marketing
Application Security for Open Source – The New Frontier
With tight deadlines and minimal budgets, today’s developers rely on open source software ( OSS) components to provide critical functionality in application development. Such applications, particularly web-based and externally facing apps, represent a significant opportunity for risk. Many organizations have baseline procedures in place to track OSS use but these practices miss anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent of OSS inside mission critical app Of that amount, a large percentage is outdated and contains significant vulnerabilities. This session will focus on best business practices for identifying and eliminating undocumented code and ensuring the ongoing integrity and security of application development.
Theresa Bui Friday, Vice President and Co-Founder • Palamida
New Staffing Models for Leveraging Management Results
Learn formulas for retooling your software company’s management talent resources based on proven models used by information technology giants such as Cisco and Wells Fargo. Discover the leading-edge outlook necessary to increase innovation, productivity and ROI through tighter project-based management while preparing your company to capitalize on current and future workforce trends.
Alex Dodd, CEO and President • M Squared Consulting
Software/Virtual Appliances: They’re Not Just for Enterprise IT
Virtualization and software appliances are not just for enterprise IT. This session for small and mid-sized companies provides insight into a radically simplified way to build, maintain and deploy software appliances. Learn how and why software appliances are built and gain an understanding of the benefits to ISVs and IT departments. Virtualization technology experts will showcase the technology and tools that are available for IT departments with limited resources. The session's goal is to provide participants with an understanding of the tremendous flexibility, security, and cost-saving benefits of software appliances while giving them a practical and cost effective plan for implementation.
Billy Marshall, Founder and CEO • rPath
SaaS + OSS: The Business Model of the Future for Enterprise Software
The two most powerful forces shaping enterprise software today are software as a service (SaaS) and open source software ( OSS). Previously separate, they are now converging into a powerful “SaaS + OSS” model destined to become the dominant business model for enterprise software. Using case studies, the session will review how vendors can use this model to scale rapidly, use capital efficiently and acquire customers for a low marginal cost. The presentation will also address how the model delivers unprecedented value to end-customers through lower total cost of ownership, higher quality, faster deployments, improved support, enhanced collaboration and greater transparency.
Bill Soward, CEO • Adaptive Planning
SaaS Evolves Again: Enter Vertical Business Networks
Discover the tremendous opportunity for the small ISV as the IT industry's priority shifts toward vertical market expertise over mere development know-how. As a result, in the next several years, vertical business networks will continue to form and mature, starting as informal relationships among vertical specialists and moving toward formalized hubs and exchanges. In a new era in which large business service providers will bundle small ISVs' offerings together to address customers' needs rather than try to build their own, for the first time, the dominant approach will be that the bigger companies act as channels for the smaller ISVs. With this paradigm shift in mind, this presentation will detail the best strategies for small ISVs in terms of partnership models, customer ownership and infrastructure technologies to employ to address this next phase for the business technology market.
Colleen Smith, Vice President, Software as a Service • Progress Software Corp.
Customer Self-Service: Electronic Software Distribution - The Competitive Edge
This presentation highlights how establishing a customer self-service center can help boost your company’s competitive edge through better customer support and reduced product delivery and support costs. It starts out defining the base functionality that a customer self-service center should have and how the customer can be empowered to act when and how they feel it necessary while having their needs better serviced. The flip side is the company downloading support costs, streamlining distribution and reducing service calls. Standardization and process automation help to reduce manual intervention making more efficient use of your resources while providing more service to your customer. This allows your company to react in real time using structured processes to respond to adhoc customer support. The presentation outlines the goals and discusses how a phased approach can provide tactical wins while addressing strategic goals such as increased sales, marketing and business intelligence and internal productivity gains and reduced time-to-market.
TJ Caveney, Vice President, Sales and Marketing • OMS Safe Harbor
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