The most popular SaaS solutions

November 15, 2012

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SaaS Adoption Accelerates, Goes Global in the Enterprise

November 2, 2012

In working with manufacturers and financial services firms over the last year, one point is becoming very clear: SaaS is gaining trust as a solid alternative for global deployments across the enterprise. And this trend has been accelerating in the last six months. One case in point is a 4,000 seat SaaS CRM deployment going live in Australia, Europe, and the U.S. by December of this year.

What’s noteworthy about this shift is that just eighteen months ago an Australian-based manufacturer was only considering SaaS for on-premises enhancement of their CRM system. What changed? The European and U.S. distribution and sales offices were on nearly 40 different CRM, quoting, proposal and pricing systems. It was nearly impossible to track global opportunities.

Meanwhile business was booming in Australia and there were up-sell and cross-sell opportunities being missed in the U.S. and European-based headquarters of their prospects. The manufacturer chose to move to a global SaaS CRM solution quickly. Uniting all three divisions with a global sales strategy forced the consolidation of 40 different quoting, pricing and CRM systems in the U.S. alone. What they lost in complexity they are looking to pick up in global customer sales.

Measuring Where SaaS Is Cannibalizing On-Premise Enterprise Applications

Gartner’s Market Trends: SaaS’s Varied Levels of Cannibalization to On-Premises Applications published: 29 October 2012 breaks out the percent of SaaS revenue for ten different enterprise application categories. The greener the color the greater the adoption. As was seen with the Australian manufacturer, CRM continues dominate this trend of SaaS cannibalizing on-premise enterprise applications.

Additional take-aways from this report include the following:

  • Perceived lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) continues to be the dominant reason enterprises are considering SaaS adoption, with 50% of respondents in 2012 mentioning this as the primary factor in their decision.
  • CRM is leading all other enterprise application areas in net new deployments according to the Gartner study, with the majority of on-premise replacements being in North America and Europe.
  • Gartner projects that by 2016 more than 50% of CRM software revenue will be delivered by SaaS. As of 2011, 35% of CRM software was delivered on the SaaS platform. Gartner expects to see SaaS-based CRM grow at three time the rate of on-premise applications.
  • 95% of Web analytics functions are delivered via the SaaS model whereas only 40% of sales use cloud today according to the findings of this study.
  • The highest adoption rates of SaaS-based applications include sales, customer service, social CRM and marketing automation.
  • SaaS-based ERP will continued to be a small percentage of the total market, attaining 10% cannibalization by 2012. Forrester has consistently said this is 13%, growing to 16% by 2015.
  • Office suites and digital content creation (DCC) will attain compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of 40.7% and a 32.2% respectively from 2011 through 2016. Gartner is making the assumption consumers and small businesses will continue be the major forces for Web-based office suites through 2013.
  • The four reasons why companies don’t choose SaaS include uncertainty if it is the right deployment option (36%), satisfaction with existing on-premise applications (30%), no further requirements (33%) and locked into their current solution with expensive contractual requirements (14%).

Bottom Line: Enterprises and their need to compete with greater accuracy and speed are driving the cannibalization of on-premise applications faster than many anticipated; enterprise software vendors need to step up and get in front of this if they are going to retain their greatest sources of revenue.

Source: Market Trends: SaaS’s Varied Levels of Cannibalization to On-Premises Applications Published: 29 October 2012 written by Chad Eschinger, Joanne M. Correia, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chris Pang, Dan Sommer, Hai Hong Swinehart and Laurie F. Wurster

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80% of Your Data is Unstructured

May 4, 2012

Eighty percent of an organization’s data is unstructured (Gartner 2010). Documents are being created constantly by virtually all members of an organization with access to a laptop or workstation, and saved on file servers and SharePoint servers, where they remain for long periods of time—often indefinitely. Unstructured data represents an enormous amount of organizational data inventory.

Unstructured Data Growth Is Exponential

Not surprisingly, with so many individuals creating and storing files, the volume of unstructured data is growing at a phenomenal rate. Gartner estimates that in 5 years, unstructured data will grow by 650% – this roughly equates to 50% year over year growth.

A Greater Portion of it Needs to be Managed and Protected

As the data grows so does the scope of what it contains, and the potential ramifications associated with its loss, exposure, and misuse. As risks increase, they are naturally followed closely by new regulatory requirements, archive policies, intellectual property requirements, and personal confidentiality laws mandating additional protections. In The Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready?, John Gantz and David Reinsel write, “The number of things to be managed is growing twice as fast as the total number of gigabytes […] By 2020, almost 50% of the information in the Digital Universe will require a level of IT-based security beyond a baseline level of virus protection and physical protection. That’s up from about 30% this year. And while the portion of that part of the Digital Universe that needs the highest level of security is small – in gigabytes and total files – that portion will grow by a factor of 100.”

Data protection is necessary to safeguard an organization’s customers, employees, business partners, and investors. It is fundamental in securing intellectual property and competitive edge, and for maintaining the organizational trust that allows it to properly function. Every organization has at least a modicum of customer information, employee information, product design documents, HR documents, legal documents, blue prints, images, audio and video files that relate to the business and its customers — most organizations have a formidable amount. This data must be protected and managed.

For more information on Varonis and C24 please visit www.c24.co.uk

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C24 start 2012 like they ended 2011…………January 2012

February 7, 2012

C24 have started 2012 by re-signing one of their leading hosted managed service clients for another 3 years and also by winning a major UK wide wireless installation and management deal. The wireless solution is to be installed in 121 locations across the UK over the next ¼, using Cisco wireless technology. Paul Hemming MD C24 said “I am extremely pleased with the start to 2012, re-signing the hosted managed service client for another 3 years and the winning of a UK wide wireless solution are both indicative of our approach to business”. This approach has seen C24 add sizeable pieces of hosting and managed service clients; a number with worldwide footprints, over the last two years.

“The wireless project is a significant piece of work and highlights the strength in-depth of resource we have at C24, the team are looking forward to a successful deployment. Everyone at C24 are very passionate about what we do, as a team we have a determination to drive the business forward to even greater success.” commented Hemming

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Trend in Cloud Computing Adoption – 2012

February 1, 2012

What can we expect from cloud computing in 2012? Where will cloud computing be one year from now?

  1. Basic premise of (1) economy of scale, (2) pay what you use and (3) better utilization through sharing will remain intact – though some reports challenging the extent of cost saving will emerge.
  2. Amazon will extend its lead over others with the most comprehensive offering on IaaS – competitors will try to carve out their own niche.
  3. Google will not make much headway in the enterprise segment – perpetual beta does not gel with enterprise.
  4. Microsoft will do just enough on office suite to keep competition at bay – but not too much to cannibalize its core office business.
  5. Same will happen with major ERP vendors – they will make just enough noise but stop short on cannibalizing their core business.
  6. Every vendor will look for a pie in the private & hybrid cloud – but the actual adoption will be very low the talk will shift to governance being the key.
  7. Critical concerns (both real and perceived) like (1) security, (2) privacy, (3) SLA and (4) compliance also remain – like credit card usage on net objections will slowly go away – but tipping point will not be 2012.

Neither cost saving nor flexibility is the primary driver for cloud adoption

There is clear indication that mobility has become the prime reason for cloud adoption.

Here are the results of two surveys:

  1. IBM: 51% of respondents stated that adopting cloud technology is part of their mobile strategy.
  2. CSC: 33% adopted cloud primarily for accessing information from any device as against only 17% who adopted for cost saving.

The implication is that cloud computing is becoming an enabler for mobility and mobility is the big thing. Cloud computing becomes a means to an end.

What will the implication be?

  • Budget will get allocated for mobility and not for cloud computing though people will use cloud to achieve mobility.
  • Mobility solutions will include a cloud component rather than a cloud solution with mobility component.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft

Amazon continuous to lead in the IaaS with more offering and more availability zones – it is also trying to get into PaaS.

Microsoft still continues to do just enough on office suites to keep competition at bay – it is fighting a battle of survival in the mobile and tablet space.

Google has still not made much headway into the enterprise – in spite of changing direction in many ways.

  • It has a new CEO.
  • It has closed down Google Labs.
  • It has a reasonable successful launch of social media platform.
  • It discontinued Google App Engine for Business.
  • It has modified its search algorithm to incorporate social data.

On the whole, as far as cloud computing is concerned, there is hardly any change.

What about Big Data?

Most analysts have proclaimed that “Big Data” is the next big thing. Big data without cloud computing is difficult to imagine.

  • Is Big Data part of cloud or is it part of analytics?
  • Is it to be treated as a separate category?
  • Or, is it a solution in search of a problem?

It is obvious that application of big data is limited to few specific set of problems. The key point we need to remember is that big data will not be of any use unless you are ready to ask the right question – but that is a separate topic.

Finally…

For everything to go into cloud and for us to access it from any device from anywhere we need wireless bandwidth. Do we have enough of it?

Look at some of these stats (picked up from this article):

  • In 2011 October, number of wireless devices in the U.S. exceeded the number of people.
  • By 2014, voice traffic will comprise only 2 percent of the total wireless traffic in the United States.
  • Smartphones consume 24 times more data than old-school cell phones, and tablets consume 120 times more data than smartphones.
  • Mobile networks in North America were running at 80 percent of capacity.
  • With advancements in connected cars, smart grids, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, and domestic installations such as at-home health monitoring systems, wireless demands will only increase

Thanks to Udayan Banerjee

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E-Discovery in Cloud Computing – Are We Ready? No.

July 21, 2011

When we talk to lawyers or their clients about their readiness for e-discovery in the cloud, we get (most of the time) a deer in the headlights reaction. Most of our clients are small to mid-sized, so it may be there is more readiness amongst large corporations and law firms.

I was interested to see a tweet from our friend Rob Robinson this morning, citing an unscientific survey done by Clearwell Systems in conjunction with Enterprise Strategy Group on this subject. Our own conclusions are equally unscientific, but they parallel what Clearwell and ESG found. Some of the highlights:

•Only 25% thought themselves ready for e-discovery in the cloud
•30% reported cloud applications in-scope for e-disovery in 2010
•60% anticipated the discovery of cloud-based applications in 2011
•27% considered social media in-scope for e-discovery in 2010
•59% considered social media in-scope for 2011
You can read more about the survey here.

It has been our observation that while businesses rush to put data in the cloud, they give very little thought to getting it back out. At a minimum, you would think that they would carefully consider the terms and conditions of their contracts with cloud providers. Our experience has been that they know the term of the contract and the price, but little else – and they almost never consider the need to get the data back. Cloud providers tend not to make it easy to get your own data – and sometimes there is a price tag attached.

Please see full article link below. Thank you

To view full article visit: http://ridethelightning.senseient.com/2011/06/e-discovery-in-cloud-computing-are-we-ready-no.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sensei+%28Ride+The+Lightning%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

 

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