Business Making Progress

Economic Analysis of the Cloud: Check the Fine Print – Your Results May Vary

I recently came across an interesting post on GigaOM: Which is less expensive: Amazon or self-hosted? by Charlie Oppenheimer. The point of the article is to walk through an example that supports his claim that “if you have a significant amount of load that is well known and predictable then you may be able to save some money by bringing a portion or all of that inside,” or in other words, self-host. Amazon is MORE expensive. While the majority of his analysis was pretty good, there were a few gaps that - in my opinion - need to be addressed.

1. How often is this type of decision ever ONLY about cost? Rarely. There is a lot of strategy work and planning that should go into the Cloud vs. self-host decision. If you were an ISV start-up seeking funding, how many VCs would fund your business plan if it contained a large budget for buying hosting infrastructure hardware? My guess is zero. Deployment strategies can and should vary. Fortunately, there are ways to manage your deployment within a Cloud environment that can give you more flexibility. Leveraging reserve instances instead of running entirely on-demand could dramatically reduce your run-time capacity requirements without sacrificing the ability to keep up with fluctuating demand. Plus, it will ultimately lower the overall cost of deployment, too. A true win-win.


2. If you ARE focusing on cost, then you need to consider whether or not it is more effective for your business to work with Capital Expense (CAPEX) or Operating Expense (OPEX). More often, I hear from our partners and customers that OPEX is the way to go because it is much more predictable and stable from a budgeting and forecasting perspective. The finance department will thank you for it.


3. Labor costs CANNOT be excluded from the analysis or the conversation. There is just too much variation between the resource demands of a self-hosted environment vs. a Cloud-based environment in terms of time, money, and personnel needed to scope, implement, manage, and maintain the system. A big part of why we built Progress Arcade was to address the need to simplify application deployment in the Cloud for our partners and customers. Excluding labor costs from your analysis is like refusing to set aside money to pay your taxes each year. In either case, your revenue model will be distorted and incomplete. You can’t see the complete picture.

Bottom line: do your homework and make an informed decision based upon YOUR unique set of requirements. Don’t let someone else “calculate” your success.

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Straight From the Source: How One of Our ISV Partners Uses SaaS to Improve Business

Almost all businesses—large or small—have a need for a comprehensive human resources (HR) program to serve their most valued resources, employees. Leading integrated benefits, payroll and human resources solutions provider Unicorn HRO provides solutions to manage HR processes with greater speed, scope and depth.

In the ’80s, Unicorn’s on-premise solution addressed approximately half the target market needs, and they knew they wanted to offer more.  Today, Unicorn leverages the Progress OpenEdge SaaS application development platform to help their customers, from mega-corporations like McDonalds to lesser-known SMBs (small-medium businesses), do business with greater efficiency.

I asked Tim Diassi, EVP and GM for Unicorn HRO to share the top reasons they use SaaS and this is what he told me:

• Ability to deliver services via the Web -- Unicorn releases new software upgrades twice a year with updated federal, state and local tax rates. SaaS helps Unicorn keep everything up-to-date so that customers can quickly and easily take advantage of the newest software version to stay compliant.
• Reduced time-to-market – The scalability and flexibility of a SaaS application development platform accelerates the speed with which Unicorn distributes software upgrades. In fact, Unicorn migrated 50 clients over a single weekend, without a hitch.
• Business continuity and disaster processing – Just because your network goes down, doesn’t mean your business can stop running. Unicorn’s service teams have kept customers’ applications up and running during all kinds of crises, including Hurricane Katrina.
• Increased ROI – Thanks to the cloud, Unicorn has experienced double-digit growth for the past 5 years without adding any significant cost of capital investment for the development of new services.

The Progress–Unicorn partnership shows the true power of SaaS. We’re excited to continue to work with such an innovative company as they plan further leverage SaaS for increased efficiency and business process integration.

Thanks and as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Greetings 2012 – Say Hello to OpenEdge 11

As was mentioned in mid-December, the latest update to our OpenEdge platform is now shipping, and I am pleased to say that it is enabling hundreds of our customers and ISV partners to securely develop and deploy applications across any platform, any mobile device, and any Cloud.

One of the highlights of OpenEdge 11.0 is our patent-pending Multi-tenant Tables, in which data is physically (not virtually) separated in the database - providing greater security and control for Cloud deployments. Multi-tenancy is a critical component and key differentiator for our customers and partners, along with our multi-Cloud deployment options, business process-enabled development, and support for mobile devices.

Feedback has been very positive and many customers are migrating to OpenEdge 11.0 sooner than expected to take advantage of the increased security in the Cloud, greater deployment flexibility, reduced costs, and faster time to market. Let me share some of that feedback with you now.

Security and Flexibility through Multi-Tenancy

Jeffrey Brown, Senior Development Project Manager at Infor notes, “Progress provides us with the technology to power our Infor10 Distribution Business, a distribution application specifically designed to help distributors with complex business models run an efficient, end-to-end operation. We are interested in the new multi-tenancy capabilities in the OpenEdge platform that could provide us with the flexibility to add an additional level of security and separation of data at the database level that is unique in the industry.”

Reducing Cost While Speeding Time to Deployment

Another Progress partner, a global medical software and services provider, used OpenEdge to develop an order management system for internal call centers. Multi-tenant Tables in OpenEdge 11 provide a viable solution for compliance with data security regulations customary to the healthcare industry. Moreover, it facilitates the roll-out of their order management system to all companies they acquire moving forward, which will be deployed in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, and with better security measures.

Efficiency and Moving Down Market with SaaS

Over in Germany, EDV-Software-Service AG (ESS), a provider of ERP software and services for the mid-size housing and real estate market, is leveraging OpenEdge 11 Multi-tenant tables to move to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to gain efficiency and expand into new markets. Their CIO Michael Förster explained, “Progress Software understands the needs of medium-sized businesses and helps us provide value to our customers and accelerate our time-time-market with new solutions. We took part in the OpenEdge Early Adopter Program and Multi-tenancy Workshop, and in only five days were given the tools and expertise needed to get our new release ready for launch in early 2012.”

I look forward to hearing more about how our customers and partners are taking advantage of OpenEdge 11.0. For more information on OpenEdge 11.0, please review the “What’s New in OpenEdge 11.0” feature highlight.

Here’s to a great start to 2012!

Thanks and as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

5 Signs You Need a Business Process-Enabled Application

As I have mentioned many times before in various forums, next generation business applications need to be able to quickly adapt to business changes. The old, traditional way of hard-coding workflows is just not acceptable anymore. There is a need to drive continuous change and process improvement even within pre-existing business applications.

But how can you tell whether or not your application is in need of an update? Here are five signs that you need a business process-enabled application:

1. You have more menu items then puzzle pieces.
   While using an application, users want to seamlessly get through their work with as few detours as possible. Unfortunately some applications make customers feel like they are putting together a puzzle – lots of pieces and no guidance as to where to begin. A business process-enabled application can guide users through the application with a customizable wizard-like interface, creating a much friendlier and better user experience.
2. Your workflows are set in stone.
   Hard-coding workflows into your application may have worked in the past, but today’s dynamic applications shouldn’t force users to follow a path that might not be correct and/or efficient. Today’s customers demand more flexibility and continuous process improvement, and business process-enabled applications allow you to tailor processes as needed.
3. Your customers are NOT all created equal.
   Ford used to say you can have your Model T in any color you like, as long as it’s black. Unfortunately, the same goes for many applications these days. A company will tell its customers or users that they can use the application to get the job done as long as they do X then Y then Z. That specific process might not make sense for each customer or user. They want to be able customize the workflow to work best for them, and by providing business process-enabled apps, you can provide the right solution for each specific need all with a single application.
4. Your IT team makes your business decisions.
   Business decisions should address customer and market demands, not what works best for the IT department. Yet many applications are updated based on what the IT department thinks is best. By adding business process management (BPM) capabilities to your existing application, you can drive better decisions that are acceptable to the business folks, all while adjusting quickly and easily to market changes.
5. Your application picture is worth a thousand lines of code.
   Many companies will collaborate with their customers or users to determine what processes and workflows should be included in an application and then capture them in some form (e.g. paper, whiteboard, graphical diagramming tool like Microsoft® Visio®). Next, they hand over the results to the developers and tell them to “build the application.” Ultimately, this means the work is done twice as the developers try to figure out how to code what they see. Business process-enabled applications let you quickly capture the process or workflow graphically and simply “plug it in” to the business logic of the application and you are off and running. Think Visio on steroids. That graphical “picture” is now worth much more than the 1000s of “words” or lines of code. It means you only do the work once and also gain better visibility into how the application functions without requiring a master’s degree in computer science. Plus, the business folks can stay engaged.

In summary, if any of these points resonate with you, maybe it's time to think about business process-enabling YOUR business application.

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

It’s nice to be first…

First makes you a thought leader. First means you are ahead of the curve. First tells everyone else “follow me…”

On September 20, 2011, Progress announced the general availability of Progress® Arcade™ - a portal environment for simplifying the deployment of SaaS applications in the Cloud. The Arcade platform is Cloud agnostic to prevent vendor lock-in, thanks to a partnership with RightScale. It’s so simple to use, it only takes a handful of mouse clicks to go from zero to the Cloud. You can move your application and data back and forth from the Cloud if you require without restriction. Initially, Amazon is the Cloud vendor for Arcade, with others following soon.

Now, read this:

On October 6, 2011 at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference, CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Public Cloud, which I happened to learn about from a blog post on TechCrunch. According to Ellison, the Oracle Public Cloud is a platform for the deployment of Oracle applications in the Cloud. It avoids vendor lock-in through Cloud interoperability. It allows the application and data to move back and forth from the Cloud if needed. And, it can “play nice” with Amazon.

Sound familiar? It sure does.

Progress Software was first to market with Arcade. Oracle was first as well – first to follow!

Again, it’s nice to be first…

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

The Role of Technology in Making Business Decisions

The following is a guest blog by Chris Webber, Senior Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit.  He conducted a research study on the role of technology in making business decisions and presented his findings during a session at Progress Revolution Boston 2011.

By: Chris Webber, Senior Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit

History shows that organisations struggle to cope with change. According to Dutch thinker Arie de Geus, that's the main reason why the average life span of a Fortune 500 company is less than 50 years. De Geus's classic study of corporate change is now nearly 15 years old, and it would be startling indeed if corporate life expectancy had increased at all in that time.

 

After all, the pace of change businesses are encountering appears to have picked up significantly in the years since de Geus's research was published. New technologies, more competition, the growth of emerging economies and an explosion in the amount of information being generated are all contributing to an increasingly complex economic system. In a new survey, which has been sponsored by Progress Software, the Economist Intelligence Unit has been analysing the impact of this increase in complexity on corporate decision making.

Unsurprisingly, three quarters of the 490 businesses surveyed think that the pace of change in their operating environment has picked up over the past five years. Added to this, nearly 80% think it's important to respond quickly to the changes that are taking place around them. Again, that's no big surprise given that failure to respond quickly to change implies missing out on growth opportunities or undermining existing sources of competitiveness.

What does seem counter intuitive, however, is that only about a fifth (22%) of those surveyed think their organisation's managed to increase the speed at which it makes decisions over the past five years. In fact, many more say the exact opposite is true, with nearly half (48%) saying the amount of time taken to make key decisions has increased.  

Of course, this raises the intriguing question of why businesses are taking longer to make decisions. Reflecting on that puzzle over the past month, one of the key points I've kept returning to is that more information and analysis doesn't necessarily mean less uncertainty for businesses. On the contrary, increasing complexity and interdependence in our economic system could easily mean that businesses are facing more uncertainty than ever before, and that might well explain why executives are taking longer to make decisions than they would like.

This is an important point. With all the data and analytical tools at our disposal in a modern economy there's a temptation to think that we're capable of fully understanding the complexities of the present and that we have a clearer picture of what the future holds.

To some extent those two points might be true. For instance, there are plenty of examples of administrative functions that have been demystified and systematised over the past couple of decades with impressive results for performance.

Judging by our survey results, however, the majority of executives are still plagued by uncertainty and are struggling to make decisions as quickly as they would like. Technology has clearly come a long way and is improving rapidly, but levels of complexity and uncertainty seem to be increasing even more quickly. Technology providers will need to up their game if they really want to help their customers through this set of challenges

SMB Business Outlook: “Cloudy”

Welcome back! Now that summer is over (sigh), it’s time to once again focus on work. I am sure you are busy reviewing your end-of-year strategies and tactics. Some of you might even be peering into 2012 and wondering what you can do to make an impact—maybe grow revenue through new customer acquisitions, make your business more efficient, improve customer relationships, etc. Hopefully, the Cloud is on your short list – and if it’s not, it SHOULD be. And here’s why…

We recently surveyed our Application Partners and ISVs and discovered the following:

• 90% are investigating Cloud computing
• 88% have given “a lot” or “some” thought on hosting in the Cloud
• 60% will begin work on testing the Cloud
• 50% will make some form of Cloud purchase in 2011

If you aren’t among this group, then you are at risk of falling behind and losing business to the competition. The Cloud is everywhere – even non-technical folks will be using the Cloud in some way, shape, or form in the very near future. Not sure about that prediction? Have you seen the recent commercials and ads from Microsoft® and Apple®? They make “going to the Cloud” seem easy and, dare I say, fun? I can imagine you yelling at the screen now, “Sure, storage in the Cloud is easy, but configuring and deploying business applications in the Cloud is HARD!” This is where Progress® Arcade™ comes into play, and you can reference my Welcome to the Cloud blog post for more information on this topic.

For those of you that are still hesitant about the Cloud, let me give you some additional food for thought. I was recently interviewed by InformationWeek for the article, Cloud Contracts: 5 Questions SMBs Should Ask. The article talks about five key topics you should discuss with your potential Cloud vendor(s). While there are obviously more things to consider, this article should help you address many of your greatest concerns prior to “signing on the dotted line.”

Thanks and, as always, please let me know what you think.

PS: I hope to see you at Progress Revolution, September 19-22, 2011 in Boston.

Welcome To The Cloud

Greetings! I decided to kick-off my inaugural blog post talking about a hot topic these days - the Cloud. It seems like everywhere you turn, someone or some company is promoting the “whys” of going to the Cloud. But I noticed there are very few actually focused on the “hows”of getting into the Cloud. As far as I am concerned, if you can’t get there efficiently and effectively, you will never experience those advantages in the first place!

Recently, CRN interviewed my colleague Mike Ormerod and me for an article, Marrying the Cloud? 7 Items to Include in a 'Cloud Prenup'. The article talks about the critical things to think about when developing your Cloud strategy. I realize that not everyone has the ability to invest extensive amounts of time researching the Cloud. Therefore, an underlying point that I tried to make was this: if I can help you become better informed, moving to the Cloud can be simple, straight-forward, and easy.

Beyond just information, another way that I can help make moving to the Cloud simple, straight-forward, and easy is with a new solution called Progress Arcade™. Arcade is a portal environment designed to facilitate moving OpenEdge applications to the Cloud.

Arcade provides free community resources to help you:

• Share – network and discuss all things SaaS and Cloud with others just like you
• Try - take a test-drive of other Progress applications and solutions with just a few clicks
• Browse - visit our virtual marketplace of complementary products & services

Then, when you are ready you can take advantage of premium resources to help you:

• Stage - configure and prepare your application for the Cloud quickly and easily
• Demo - offer prospects the ability to demonstrate your products in the Cloud
• Deploy - deploy your production application in the Cloud with just a few simple clicks

If you would like to learn more, I suggest you check out the Progress Arcade website for more information, visit Progress Arcade to have a look at the community and premium resources, or drop me a line and let me know what you think: mcicciari@progress.com.