Software Potpourri for $500, Alex | AMR Research
Software potpourri could be a future category on Jeopardy, “America’s favorite quiz show.” If you’ve never seen the TV show, a contestant picks a one of 30 blocks on a six column by five row grid. Game show host Alex Trebek reads the answer. If the contestant gets it right, he/she collects the points for the correct response: “American History for $100, Alex.” If not, the other two competitors can respond. For example, the answer might be: “Team that won the World Series in 2004.” Of course, the correct response would be “Who are the Boston Red Sox?”
In addition to the television program, there is a home version, an online game on the website, and even a version for your cell phone. While we don’t have the space to replicate the whole six columns of categories and five rows of answers, here is a chance to play FTM Jeopardy.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
FTD.de - Kommentare - Leitartikel - SAP - Mit den Kleinen wachsen
FTD.de - Kommentare - Leitartikel - SAP - Mit den Kleinen wachsen
Der Softwarekonzern SAP ist auf dem richtigen Weg: Das vorgestellte neue Produkt für den Mittelstand eröffnet dem weltweit führenden Anbieter von Unternehmenssoftware neue Wachstumsperspektiven. Diese Perspektiven sind nötig, denn im Geschäft mit Großkunden ist der Spielraum ausgereizt.
Der Softwarekonzern SAP ist auf dem richtigen Weg: Das vorgestellte neue Produkt für den Mittelstand eröffnet dem weltweit führenden Anbieter von Unternehmenssoftware neue Wachstumsperspektiven. Diese Perspektiven sind nötig, denn im Geschäft mit Großkunden ist der Spielraum ausgereizt.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
FT.com / Technology - Control of the supply chain turns critical
FT.com / Technology - Control of the supply chain turns critical
Control of the supply chain turns critical
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: September 19 2007 00:54 | Last updated: September 19 2007 00:54
An efficient supply chain is a prize worth striving for. According to Accenture, the consultancy firm, “supply chain leadership” can increase a company’s market capitalisation by between 7 and 26 per cent above the industry average.
But for a business, even competing for that prize demands a significant investment in resources. In sectors such as consumer goods and retailing, established companies have already achieved the easiest supply chain efficiencies.
“Things that are likely to move the dial have to make a significant difference, rather than be technology experiments,” says Stephen Proud, a partner in Accenture’s supply chain practice.
None the less, an efficient supply chain is a must for a widening range of businesses. Fashion, hi-tech and grocery retailers grasped early on the importance of ensuring the right stock reached the right store at the right time.
No one wants a warehouse full of summer dresses in October, or indeed shelves of last season’s mobile phones in the run-up to Christmas. But the supply chain is now moving up the agenda in slower-moving sectors such as heavy manufacturing.
Effective supply chain management is the only way to make efficient use of global sourcing strategies and especially, the huge manufacturing capacity of China and the Pacific Rim.
Although globalisation has reduced production costs in a wide range of sectors, the trend to source components or even finished goods from China and elsewhere has made the supply chain manager’s task far harder.
“Our internal systems handle more than 700 suppliers,” says Christian Verstraete, worldwide supply chain expert at Hewlett-Packard. “We have to be able to ex-change messages not just with them, but with their suppliers.”
Supply chain managers in many sectors are looking for greater visibility of what is happening in their supply chains and faster access to more accurate data.
This means that if there is an unexpected event, be it storms affecting shipping or a production shortfall, companies can divert stocks or bring in alternative suppliers.
“Companies are not just asking suppliers why there is a problem with an order,” says Sanjiv Sidu, president of supply chain management software vendor i2. “They are asking: ‘When did you first know, and why did you surprise me?’”
In sectors such as retail, supply chain problems lead to “stock outs” or empty shelves, which send customers elsewhere. In heavy or complex manufacturing, supply chain problems can lead to cancelled orders running into billions of dollars, or severe penalties for late delivery.
As manufacturers move away from vertically integrated production, the supply chain suddenly becomes critical.
“In aerospace and defence, we are 10 years behind the hi-tech or even automotive sectors and how we improve the performance of our supply chain is quite a challenge,” explains Bill Black, chief quality officer at aerospace manufacturer EADS.
“The cost of running our supply chain logistics is minor, set against the $100m cost of an aircraft. But the cost of failure is enormous.”
About 80 per cent of the cost of an aircraft is accounted for by suppliers and partners,” says Black, making EADS “architects of complex products”.
“I need to know if an event can affect our master schedule and that means that I need to know what is happening, not just with my tier one, but with tier four, five or six suppliers.”
The increasing demands of customers, as well as the drive to cut supply costs, are causing manufacturing companies in particular to renew their investment in supply chain technologies.
But efficient supply chain technology can also open up business opportunities.
For Kautex-Unipart, an automotive component manufacturer based in Coventry, in the UK, supplying BMW’s Mini production line with fuel tanks came with an onerous condition attached. The company had to achieve 100 per cent delivery accuracy, matched to BMW’s JIS 5000 manufacturing process.
Kautex-Unipart is BMW’s sole tank supplier for the Mini plant at Cowley, in Oxfordshire. It has to supply 250,000 tanks each year, in exactly the order specified by BMW, for each of the 13 tanks used on the Mini car.
The tanks even have to be stored the right way round in the shipping containers. If they are not, BMW’s production robots cannot fit them.
The company used a photographic identification system, Visidot, from Israeli vendor Image ID to ensure that tanks can only leave Coventry if the order exactly matches BMW’s requirements.
“Getting supply wrong is the cardinal sin in the automotive industry,” says Jan Parylo, IT manager at Kautex-Unipart. “But the BMW contract has also brought us benefits. We used to have 24 to 48 hours’ visibility of orders. Now BMW can give us six days. As a result, we have more flexibility in our manufacturing and supply processes.”
Visidot is one of a number of new technologies that are helping businesses improve supply chain visibility and the speed at which they collect supply chain data. Others include radio frequency identity (RFID) tags as well as three-dimensional and even colour bar codes.
“In the past, for manufacturers [supply chain] visibility stopped at the batch or lot level,” says Krish Mantripragada, head of RFID and Auto-ID solutions at enterprise software vendor, SAP. “But recalls and quality issues are putting a lot of pressure on companies to make their data more granular, and to be able to track single items.”
The response to RFID, however, differs from industry to industry. Mr Mantripragada says that interest is greatest in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace and defence “where complete traceability and product integrity are the priorities”.
In other industries, some companies are looking to use RFID to make their supply chains more efficient, but they are finding the costs to be higher than expected. The costs of RFID tags may be heading downwards, but there is far more to a supply chain project than the tags alone.
RFID, for example, produces a unique serial number for each product, while conventional tracking systems may be designed just to record a product’s stock code, and assume that each product with the same code is identical.
“It is partly an infrastructure problem, with the need to deploy sensors. But the second problem is serialised data management,” says Mr Mantripragada. “Many production processes batch supplies, so business processes need to adapt to handle serialisation.”
Business processes that are already designed around items with individual serial numbers often lend themselves best to technologies such as RFID; for others, bar codes or similar scanning technologies might be good enough for some time to come.
“We are certainly not wedded to RFID as a technology. If the project is about better serialisation and that could be done as well with coloured dots, that would not be an issue. And there are environments where radio frequency technologies are not applicable,” says Mr Proud at Accenture.
For businesses considering their supply chains, the most important step is to look at the business process and how it could be improved, and then pick the technology that fits best.
Nick Costides, portfolio manager for UPS Supply Chain Solutions, based in Atlanta, says: “As an express delivery company, barcodes meet our needs. But in the long term, there are opportunities. For example, if every item in a warehouse had an RFID tag, it would make taking physical inventories much easier.”
Companies also need to consider how access to item-level data, or indeed more up-to-date status information from the supply chain will support decision making.
“Distribution centre operators clearly have different needs from C-level executives,” says Mr Costides. “We give them the information they want to see, so they are not overwhelmed.”
Fortunately, modern enterprise IT systems have the capacity to handle the increased data coming in from systems such as RFID. But technologists caution against relying on a single change to improve supply chain performance.
“There is not one killer application but rather a series of incremental steps before we see the ground shift,” says SAP’s Mr Mantripragada. “Some customers have seen significant returns on investment from better data accuracy and visibility, but no two customer scenarios are the same.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Control of the supply chain turns critical
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: September 19 2007 00:54 | Last updated: September 19 2007 00:54
An efficient supply chain is a prize worth striving for. According to Accenture, the consultancy firm, “supply chain leadership” can increase a company’s market capitalisation by between 7 and 26 per cent above the industry average.
But for a business, even competing for that prize demands a significant investment in resources. In sectors such as consumer goods and retailing, established companies have already achieved the easiest supply chain efficiencies.
“Things that are likely to move the dial have to make a significant difference, rather than be technology experiments,” says Stephen Proud, a partner in Accenture’s supply chain practice.
None the less, an efficient supply chain is a must for a widening range of businesses. Fashion, hi-tech and grocery retailers grasped early on the importance of ensuring the right stock reached the right store at the right time.
No one wants a warehouse full of summer dresses in October, or indeed shelves of last season’s mobile phones in the run-up to Christmas. But the supply chain is now moving up the agenda in slower-moving sectors such as heavy manufacturing.
Effective supply chain management is the only way to make efficient use of global sourcing strategies and especially, the huge manufacturing capacity of China and the Pacific Rim.
Although globalisation has reduced production costs in a wide range of sectors, the trend to source components or even finished goods from China and elsewhere has made the supply chain manager’s task far harder.
“Our internal systems handle more than 700 suppliers,” says Christian Verstraete, worldwide supply chain expert at Hewlett-Packard. “We have to be able to ex-change messages not just with them, but with their suppliers.”
Supply chain managers in many sectors are looking for greater visibility of what is happening in their supply chains and faster access to more accurate data.
This means that if there is an unexpected event, be it storms affecting shipping or a production shortfall, companies can divert stocks or bring in alternative suppliers.
“Companies are not just asking suppliers why there is a problem with an order,” says Sanjiv Sidu, president of supply chain management software vendor i2. “They are asking: ‘When did you first know, and why did you surprise me?’”
In sectors such as retail, supply chain problems lead to “stock outs” or empty shelves, which send customers elsewhere. In heavy or complex manufacturing, supply chain problems can lead to cancelled orders running into billions of dollars, or severe penalties for late delivery.
As manufacturers move away from vertically integrated production, the supply chain suddenly becomes critical.
“In aerospace and defence, we are 10 years behind the hi-tech or even automotive sectors and how we improve the performance of our supply chain is quite a challenge,” explains Bill Black, chief quality officer at aerospace manufacturer EADS.
“The cost of running our supply chain logistics is minor, set against the $100m cost of an aircraft. But the cost of failure is enormous.”
About 80 per cent of the cost of an aircraft is accounted for by suppliers and partners,” says Black, making EADS “architects of complex products”.
“I need to know if an event can affect our master schedule and that means that I need to know what is happening, not just with my tier one, but with tier four, five or six suppliers.”
The increasing demands of customers, as well as the drive to cut supply costs, are causing manufacturing companies in particular to renew their investment in supply chain technologies.
But efficient supply chain technology can also open up business opportunities.
For Kautex-Unipart, an automotive component manufacturer based in Coventry, in the UK, supplying BMW’s Mini production line with fuel tanks came with an onerous condition attached. The company had to achieve 100 per cent delivery accuracy, matched to BMW’s JIS 5000 manufacturing process.
Kautex-Unipart is BMW’s sole tank supplier for the Mini plant at Cowley, in Oxfordshire. It has to supply 250,000 tanks each year, in exactly the order specified by BMW, for each of the 13 tanks used on the Mini car.
The tanks even have to be stored the right way round in the shipping containers. If they are not, BMW’s production robots cannot fit them.
The company used a photographic identification system, Visidot, from Israeli vendor Image ID to ensure that tanks can only leave Coventry if the order exactly matches BMW’s requirements.
“Getting supply wrong is the cardinal sin in the automotive industry,” says Jan Parylo, IT manager at Kautex-Unipart. “But the BMW contract has also brought us benefits. We used to have 24 to 48 hours’ visibility of orders. Now BMW can give us six days. As a result, we have more flexibility in our manufacturing and supply processes.”
Visidot is one of a number of new technologies that are helping businesses improve supply chain visibility and the speed at which they collect supply chain data. Others include radio frequency identity (RFID) tags as well as three-dimensional and even colour bar codes.
“In the past, for manufacturers [supply chain] visibility stopped at the batch or lot level,” says Krish Mantripragada, head of RFID and Auto-ID solutions at enterprise software vendor, SAP. “But recalls and quality issues are putting a lot of pressure on companies to make their data more granular, and to be able to track single items.”
The response to RFID, however, differs from industry to industry. Mr Mantripragada says that interest is greatest in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace and defence “where complete traceability and product integrity are the priorities”.
In other industries, some companies are looking to use RFID to make their supply chains more efficient, but they are finding the costs to be higher than expected. The costs of RFID tags may be heading downwards, but there is far more to a supply chain project than the tags alone.
RFID, for example, produces a unique serial number for each product, while conventional tracking systems may be designed just to record a product’s stock code, and assume that each product with the same code is identical.
“It is partly an infrastructure problem, with the need to deploy sensors. But the second problem is serialised data management,” says Mr Mantripragada. “Many production processes batch supplies, so business processes need to adapt to handle serialisation.”
Business processes that are already designed around items with individual serial numbers often lend themselves best to technologies such as RFID; for others, bar codes or similar scanning technologies might be good enough for some time to come.
“We are certainly not wedded to RFID as a technology. If the project is about better serialisation and that could be done as well with coloured dots, that would not be an issue. And there are environments where radio frequency technologies are not applicable,” says Mr Proud at Accenture.
For businesses considering their supply chains, the most important step is to look at the business process and how it could be improved, and then pick the technology that fits best.
Nick Costides, portfolio manager for UPS Supply Chain Solutions, based in Atlanta, says: “As an express delivery company, barcodes meet our needs. But in the long term, there are opportunities. For example, if every item in a warehouse had an RFID tag, it would make taking physical inventories much easier.”
Companies also need to consider how access to item-level data, or indeed more up-to-date status information from the supply chain will support decision making.
“Distribution centre operators clearly have different needs from C-level executives,” says Mr Costides. “We give them the information they want to see, so they are not overwhelmed.”
Fortunately, modern enterprise IT systems have the capacity to handle the increased data coming in from systems such as RFID. But technologists caution against relying on a single change to improve supply chain performance.
“There is not one killer application but rather a series of incremental steps before we see the ground shift,” says SAP’s Mr Mantripragada. “Some customers have seen significant returns on investment from better data accuracy and visibility, but no two customer scenarios are the same.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Some Northern Exposure on Software Innovation | AMR Research
Some Northern Exposure on Software Innovation | AMR Research
We recently spent a couple of days in Toronto to meet with a leading Canadian venture firm and three software companies. While it had been years since my last trip to Canada, the combination of beautiful late summer weather and the buzz around the start of the International Film Festival made Toronto the ideal September destination.
The trip was proposed by Derek Smyth, a partner at EdgeStone Capital Partners, whom we first met when he was COO at Ironside Technologies, one of the e-commerce pioneers. Ironside was acquired by SSA Global Technologies in June 2003. While at Ironside, Mr. Smyth helped grow the company from zero to C$50M (Canadian dollars) in four years.
While many U.S. venture firms shy away from enterprise software startups, EdgeStone focuses almost exclusively on this sector. In fact, the firm’s preferred role is to be the lead investor in early stage companies by taking a healthy equity position in exchange for cash and expertise.
Best early bets: SlipStream, Taleo, and Workbrain
The EdgeStone Capital Venture Fund I raised C$104M in 2000, which as been invested in 15 companies. Key investments included Workbrain, Taleo, and SlipStream Data. Workbrain and Taleo went on to have successful initial public offerings, while SlipStream was acquired by Research in Motion (RIM) (Blackberry owners) in July 2006. To date, that fund has returned 1.6 times in invested capital to investors, ranking it near the top of all North American tech venture firms in the post-bubble period.
Four years later, EdgeStone raised C$108M for Fund II. I was struck by two differences between the portfolios of the two funds: the newer fund broadened EdgeStone’s portfolio outside of enterprise software and beyond Canada, too. To date, Fund II has been invested in eight companies. There is capital available for one or two additional investments.
The Fund II portfolio includes Solace Systems, pVelocity, Shoplogix, CiRBA, RedMere Technology, Varicent Software, MusicIP, and RapidMind. On our trip, we met with pVelocity and Shoplogix (see below). The others seem intriguing, too. Solace is in the XML routing market. CiRBA, with its virtualization software, would love to be the next VMware. RedMere is an Irish fabless semiconductor company that serves the consumer electronics and multimedia markets. Varicent provides incentive management software. MusicIP is a digital-music platform, which helps listeners discover similar types of artists that map to their favorite music. RapidMind provides development tools for multicore platforms.
Steady deal flow, fewer VCs, tighter pockets
EdgeStone has begun raising money for Fund III. The goal is to build a C$150M fund. The Canadian VC market has changed dramatically since Fund I. In 2001, there were 55 early stage Canadian VCs; now there are 12. More than C$4B was raised in 2001 compared to C$1.5B in 2006. Despite the contraction, deal flow has remained relatively constant over the same period. EdgeStone looks at 150 to 160 deals a year, before settling on the two or three best.
One advantage of investing north of the border is the R&D tax credits that the Canadian government provides for early-stage companies. This can result in a 45% lower net cash cost compared to their U.S. counterparts. In some provinces like Quebec, the net cash cost delta is even greater. On the flip side, the primary challenge for firms like EdgeStone is finding experienced CEOs to run the startups. As a result, Canada has a greater percentage of first-time CEOs.
EdgeStone is well-positioned to take advantage of gyrations in the tech market. Its parent company is GMP Capital Trust, one of Canada’s leading investment banks with a strong technology investment practice. In addition to its venture group, EdgeStone has a buyout/later stage equity team. That side of the firm has raised nearly C$1.35B for its three funds. These have gotten progressively larger. Fund I raised C$179M in March 2000. Fund II took in C$361M in October 2003. Fund III generated C$800M in summer 2006.
Meet the portfolio companies
Our journey took us to two companies in EdgeStone’s portfolio, three if you count the Shoplogix customer we also met with, and one company not in its portfolio, but with which Mr. Smyth is highly enamored. For each of their stories, click the following links:
“pVelocity: Software Plumber for Profit Leakage”
“Shoplogix: A Single Version of ‘Machine Truth’”
“Panorama: Silicon Valley Meets Toronto”.
SupplyScape Adds New CEO to Team and $10M in Financing
We also recently met with Mark O’Connell on his sixth day as CEO of SupplyScape, the fast-growing provider of software and services for the life sciences industry. If the name is familiar, Mr. O’Connell was the former CEO of MatrixOne, a leading product lifecycle management (PLM) software company. At MatrixOne, he led the company through several milestones: a successful IPO in March 2000; achieving the status as the largest independent provider of PLM software ($145M in revenue); and the successful sale of the company to Dassault Systemes for $408M last year. Mr. O’Connell joins SupplyScape as president and CEO.
On the same day, SupplyScape also announced it raised $10M in Series C financing from its existing investors: IDG Ventures Boston, North Bridge Venture Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Bethesda Partners, and Pfizer Strategic Investments Group.
SupplyScape is an interesting company to watch. The 70-person company has emerged as the software leader in the nascent e-pedigree market. E-pedigree is designed to secure the distribution channel for pharmaceuticals as finished goods move from the manufacturer to the dispensing point (such as pharmacy or hospital) and guard against counterfeit products and diversion. To date, the company has 63 customers, including many of the best-known pharmaceutical manufacturers and top retailers and pharmacies.
Coming next week: salesforce’s Dreamforce and SAP’s A1S launch
By the time you read this, we will be at salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco. This event has traditionally provided a sneak preview of the future of software. From there, we head to Manhattan for the official launch of SAP’s new business offering, code-named A1S, for the small and midsize market.
As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas. Is EdgeStone smart to focus on the enterprise software market? If you were a gambler and could only pick one, would you bet your retirement fund or kids’ college fund on pVelocity, Shoplogix, or Panorama? Will Benioff surprise the world at next week’s Dreamforce? Is A1S truly designed exclusively for the SMB market or will this ultimately become the R/3 replacement product? Let me know—brichardson@amrresearch.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright by AMR Research, Inc.
AMR Research® is a registered trademark of AMR Research, Inc.
We recently spent a couple of days in Toronto to meet with a leading Canadian venture firm and three software companies. While it had been years since my last trip to Canada, the combination of beautiful late summer weather and the buzz around the start of the International Film Festival made Toronto the ideal September destination.
The trip was proposed by Derek Smyth, a partner at EdgeStone Capital Partners, whom we first met when he was COO at Ironside Technologies, one of the e-commerce pioneers. Ironside was acquired by SSA Global Technologies in June 2003. While at Ironside, Mr. Smyth helped grow the company from zero to C$50M (Canadian dollars) in four years.
While many U.S. venture firms shy away from enterprise software startups, EdgeStone focuses almost exclusively on this sector. In fact, the firm’s preferred role is to be the lead investor in early stage companies by taking a healthy equity position in exchange for cash and expertise.
Best early bets: SlipStream, Taleo, and Workbrain
The EdgeStone Capital Venture Fund I raised C$104M in 2000, which as been invested in 15 companies. Key investments included Workbrain, Taleo, and SlipStream Data. Workbrain and Taleo went on to have successful initial public offerings, while SlipStream was acquired by Research in Motion (RIM) (Blackberry owners) in July 2006. To date, that fund has returned 1.6 times in invested capital to investors, ranking it near the top of all North American tech venture firms in the post-bubble period.
Four years later, EdgeStone raised C$108M for Fund II. I was struck by two differences between the portfolios of the two funds: the newer fund broadened EdgeStone’s portfolio outside of enterprise software and beyond Canada, too. To date, Fund II has been invested in eight companies. There is capital available for one or two additional investments.
The Fund II portfolio includes Solace Systems, pVelocity, Shoplogix, CiRBA, RedMere Technology, Varicent Software, MusicIP, and RapidMind. On our trip, we met with pVelocity and Shoplogix (see below). The others seem intriguing, too. Solace is in the XML routing market. CiRBA, with its virtualization software, would love to be the next VMware. RedMere is an Irish fabless semiconductor company that serves the consumer electronics and multimedia markets. Varicent provides incentive management software. MusicIP is a digital-music platform, which helps listeners discover similar types of artists that map to their favorite music. RapidMind provides development tools for multicore platforms.
Steady deal flow, fewer VCs, tighter pockets
EdgeStone has begun raising money for Fund III. The goal is to build a C$150M fund. The Canadian VC market has changed dramatically since Fund I. In 2001, there were 55 early stage Canadian VCs; now there are 12. More than C$4B was raised in 2001 compared to C$1.5B in 2006. Despite the contraction, deal flow has remained relatively constant over the same period. EdgeStone looks at 150 to 160 deals a year, before settling on the two or three best.
One advantage of investing north of the border is the R&D tax credits that the Canadian government provides for early-stage companies. This can result in a 45% lower net cash cost compared to their U.S. counterparts. In some provinces like Quebec, the net cash cost delta is even greater. On the flip side, the primary challenge for firms like EdgeStone is finding experienced CEOs to run the startups. As a result, Canada has a greater percentage of first-time CEOs.
EdgeStone is well-positioned to take advantage of gyrations in the tech market. Its parent company is GMP Capital Trust, one of Canada’s leading investment banks with a strong technology investment practice. In addition to its venture group, EdgeStone has a buyout/later stage equity team. That side of the firm has raised nearly C$1.35B for its three funds. These have gotten progressively larger. Fund I raised C$179M in March 2000. Fund II took in C$361M in October 2003. Fund III generated C$800M in summer 2006.
Meet the portfolio companies
Our journey took us to two companies in EdgeStone’s portfolio, three if you count the Shoplogix customer we also met with, and one company not in its portfolio, but with which Mr. Smyth is highly enamored. For each of their stories, click the following links:
“pVelocity: Software Plumber for Profit Leakage”
“Shoplogix: A Single Version of ‘Machine Truth’”
“Panorama: Silicon Valley Meets Toronto”.
SupplyScape Adds New CEO to Team and $10M in Financing
We also recently met with Mark O’Connell on his sixth day as CEO of SupplyScape, the fast-growing provider of software and services for the life sciences industry. If the name is familiar, Mr. O’Connell was the former CEO of MatrixOne, a leading product lifecycle management (PLM) software company. At MatrixOne, he led the company through several milestones: a successful IPO in March 2000; achieving the status as the largest independent provider of PLM software ($145M in revenue); and the successful sale of the company to Dassault Systemes for $408M last year. Mr. O’Connell joins SupplyScape as president and CEO.
On the same day, SupplyScape also announced it raised $10M in Series C financing from its existing investors: IDG Ventures Boston, North Bridge Venture Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Bethesda Partners, and Pfizer Strategic Investments Group.
SupplyScape is an interesting company to watch. The 70-person company has emerged as the software leader in the nascent e-pedigree market. E-pedigree is designed to secure the distribution channel for pharmaceuticals as finished goods move from the manufacturer to the dispensing point (such as pharmacy or hospital) and guard against counterfeit products and diversion. To date, the company has 63 customers, including many of the best-known pharmaceutical manufacturers and top retailers and pharmacies.
Coming next week: salesforce’s Dreamforce and SAP’s A1S launch
By the time you read this, we will be at salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco. This event has traditionally provided a sneak preview of the future of software. From there, we head to Manhattan for the official launch of SAP’s new business offering, code-named A1S, for the small and midsize market.
As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas. Is EdgeStone smart to focus on the enterprise software market? If you were a gambler and could only pick one, would you bet your retirement fund or kids’ college fund on pVelocity, Shoplogix, or Panorama? Will Benioff surprise the world at next week’s Dreamforce? Is A1S truly designed exclusively for the SMB market or will this ultimately become the R/3 replacement product? Let me know—brichardson@amrresearch.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright by AMR Research, Inc.
AMR Research® is a registered trademark of AMR Research, Inc.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Bridgestream Buy Positions Oracle as a Top IAM Suite Vendor
Bridgestream Buy Positions Oracle as a Top IAM Suite Vendor
A complete identity and access management solution must include a role mining and role life cycle management capability. By acquiring the role management vendor Bridgestream, Oracle moves to the head of the IAM suite vendors.
Oracle's acquisition of Bridgestream, a Gartner 2005 "Cool Vendor," is the first attempt by a large user-provisioning vendor to enter the broader IAM market, which Gartner defines as including user provisioning, role management for enterprises (RME), identity auditing and resource administration. Three smaller user-provisioning vendors — Beta Systems, Courion and Voelker Informatik — already have their own RME capability. Other large software vendors — such as BMC, CA, IBM, Novell and Sun — have partnered with RME vendors (including Bridgestream) for some time.
A complete identity and access management solution must include a role mining and role life cycle management capability. By acquiring the role management vendor Bridgestream, Oracle moves to the head of the IAM suite vendors.
Oracle's acquisition of Bridgestream, a Gartner 2005 "Cool Vendor," is the first attempt by a large user-provisioning vendor to enter the broader IAM market, which Gartner defines as including user provisioning, role management for enterprises (RME), identity auditing and resource administration. Three smaller user-provisioning vendors — Beta Systems, Courion and Voelker Informatik — already have their own RME capability. Other large software vendors — such as BMC, CA, IBM, Novell and Sun — have partnered with RME vendors (including Bridgestream) for some time.
Friday, September 07, 2007
MCA Solutions: Weekdays With Morris… and SAP | AMR Research
MCA Solutions: Weekdays With Morris… and SAP | AMR Research
Over the last few months, we have had a series of meetings with executives from MCA Solutions, one of the pioneers in the service parts optimization space. We have also had the chance to interview four customers, including several that were among the first in their industry to use MCA, and another that qualifies as the most recent to go live.
Google “MCA” and the search engine returns lots of listing for various art museums, a club for Ford Mustang fans, the Music Corporation of America, the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and a company offering “superior clay roofing tile.”
Over the last few months, we have had a series of meetings with executives from MCA Solutions, one of the pioneers in the service parts optimization space. We have also had the chance to interview four customers, including several that were among the first in their industry to use MCA, and another that qualifies as the most recent to go live.
Google “MCA” and the search engine returns lots of listing for various art museums, a club for Ford Mustang fans, the Music Corporation of America, the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and a company offering “superior clay roofing tile.”
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Workday Releases Beta Of Its On-Demand Financial Applications -- Workday -- InformationWeek
Workday Releases Beta Of Its On-Demand Financial Applications -- Workday -- InformationWeek
The startup, launched by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, faces growing competition in the market for subscription-based ERP software.
The startup, launched by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, faces growing competition in the market for subscription-based ERP software.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Monday, August 06, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
The View from Oracle OpenWorld in Shanghai (AMR)
The View from Oracle OpenWorld in Shanghai
by Bruce Richardson - Chief Research Officer
It was 4:10 a.m. on Sunday when the alarm clock went off. By 5:00 a.m. I was at Logan Airport, only to find that the 6:30 a.m. flight to Chicago was delayed for an hour. Even at that early hour, Logan was pure bedlam.
We managed to make up some of that delay on the flight to O’Hare. Despite my initial concerns, we had ample time to make the connecting flight to Shanghai. We left at 10:30 a.m. central time and arrived the following afternoon just after 2:00 p.m. Despite losing a day in the air, we never encountered night. We followed the sun as the flight took us over Wisconsin, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alaska, the International Date Line, the edge of Russia, and northern Asia.
As we approached the airport, I was struck by how the water and the sky were the same color, a burnt reddish brown. I had been warned by a colleague about the increased pollution in Shanghai, but had not expected this. Fortunately, that color palette was confined to the airport. Shanghai, though, was in the midst of the worst heat wave in over 60 years. During the time I’ve been here, the daytime temperature has hovered around 100 degrees (38 degrees centigrade). Right now, it’s 100 degrees, with 42% humidity and a dew point reading of 77%. According to weather.com, it “feels like 113.” Nice.
While there was a bus to the conference, I preferred the six-minute walk from the Shangri-La Hotel to the Shanghai International Convention Centre. As you might surmise, this was always a bad idea. I’d arrive for a meeting looking like I had just lost a water balloon fight. Even at midnight, the city was too warm and muggy.
Outside of the initial flight delay and the hazy, hot weather, the only other disappointment was the discovery that the new Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone was hardly the global tool I was promised. Despite numerous calls to my IT department and Verizon, I could not send or receive e-mails or use the browser. The phone and text messaging worked great, but that’s not really the point of the BlackBerry. The BlackBerry issue seemed to be confined to Verizon and this particular model. Ironically, the phone had turned itself back on after I had put it away—it must have touched something inside my briefcase while flashing the “press any key to abort” message while I was turning it off. When I got to Shanghai, I had received a dozen e-mails while traversing North American airspace, but nothing after that. Maddening.
China’s economy hotter than weather: +11.9% for 2Q07, +11.5% for first half
The Shangri-La sits high over the Huangpu River. The other side of the river features a diverse mix of older European-style buildings from the first few decades of the twentieth century and new Manhattan-like skyscrapers. One Oracle executive told me that the area where my hotel sits was a rice paddy only 10 or 15 years ago. It seems hard to believe until you consider the rapid rise of China’s economy. A few weeks ago the Chinese government reported that the economy grew 11.9% in the second quarter and 11.5% for the first half of the year.
Like the architecture, the China of today is a mix of the old and the new. While the business pages of the Shanghai Daily were trumpeting the $15B invested in computer equipment and telecommunications manufacturing in the first half of this year, the front page focused on the continuing attempts to rescue 69 miners trapped in a flooded coal pit. As the paper pointed out, the Chinese coal industry is the world’s most dangerous, leading to an average of 13 deaths per day. As I write this, every few minutes a barge loaded with coal floats by on the Huangpu.
Oracle in China: 1,500+ employees, 800+ partners
I had not been to China since February 2004. Ironically, my host for that trip was Agile Software, now part of the extended Oracle family. As I said last week, I came here to get a better understanding of the Chinese software market, not to hear any new product announcements. Outside of a detailed presentation on the recently announced 11g database, Oracle made no product announcements. The primary news was the announcement of plans to open a new Oracle Asia Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Shanghai. This will be the third in China. Oracle opened the first development center in Shenzhen in June 2002 and the second in Beijing in October 2003.
Oracle OpenWorld Asia Pacific 2007 drew an estimated 8,000 attendees to Shanghai this week. This was twice the attendance of the previous event held here three years ago. About 87% of the attendees were drawn from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Most were partners or employees. Oracle has more than 1,500 employees spread across 13 branch offices in China—there were eight offices a year ago. These resources are backed by more than 800 partners. The vast majority are local firms. These partners are very important to the region as the channel accounts for more than 90% of Oracle’s revenue here.
Unlike the U.S. market, it is harder to discern between independent software vendors (ISVs), resellers, and integrators in China. Often partners play multiple roles. Some also embed Oracle software into devices and other products. To draw ISVs to Oracle database and middleware products, Oracle has opened two partner solution centers that are co-located with the existing OARDCs in Beijing and Shenzhen. To date, more than 150 ISVs have been through the centers to port their applications to Oracle technologies and/or integrate with Oracle applications.
Ironically, the ISV partners include UFIDA Software and Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited. Both are fierce Oracle competitors in the ERP market for small and midsize businesses. Kingdee has been rumored to be an Oracle acquisition target.
7,000+ database customers, 700+ apps customers
One executive estimated that OpenWorld drew more than 3,600 customers and prospects. This figure may be a little low as many business partners paid for their customers and prospects to attend. Nonetheless, this would represent a sizeable number of Oracle’s 7,000 customers in China. Nearly all use its database.
It seems that the large banking, telecommunications, utilities, and energy firms use Oracle’s E-Business Suite, while smaller industrial manufacturers and energy producers and small and large engineering and construction companies deploy Oracle’s J.D. Edwards software. There are some installations of Siebel and PeopleSoft though Oracle executives said that these companies had very little presence here until after Oracle acquired them. To emphasize the point, one executive said Siebel had 16 employees here before Oracle purchased the firm.
Oracle has high hopes for Hyperion sales in China. While its classic customer has been the CIO, the bet is that Hyperion will help open up the door to the CFO’s office. Demand is building here for business intelligence and performance management software.
While walking around the convention center, I was struck by the relative youth of the attendees. Oracle’s major U.S. events tend to attract people in the 35 to 55 range. Here, most attendees appeared to be under 35. One Oracle executive confirmed that buyers tend to be younger here, even in the public sector. I viewed this as a positive indicator for the future of technology spending and deployment.
The real question: how big is the Chinese market?
Given that China has a population of more than 1.3 billion, 7,000 customers seems like a modest achievement, particularly since Oracle has had a presence here since 1989. This prompts the question, how big could Oracle China become? No one I met seemed to have a handle on the size of the potential market, especially the number of small and midsize businesses.
While SAP is acknowledged as the primary threat, custom software appears to be the real competition in the largest accounts. It’s only been in the last five years that the government has encouraged enterprises to use packaged software and offered them incentives.
As you might guess, Oracle declined to break out its revenue for China. Executives would only say that China is the “sixth biggest market” for Oracle and the third largest in Asia, presumably after Japan and India. This could change quickly—China is poised to overtake Germany this year to become the third largest economy after the United States and Japan.
The only real color Oracle provided was on the overall market for Oracle Asia Pacific. The company said that the 29 countries comprising Asia Pacific accounted for $2.499B in FY07 revenues. This was up 24% over the previous year. In the recent concluded fiscal year, Asia Pacific accounted for 14% of Oracle total revenues and 19% of new license sales. Overall, the region represents 35,000 customers out of the total 275,000 customer base.
Reaching new customers through schools and OTN
According to the Shanghai Daily (July 31), Oracle has contributed more than $200M to China’s educational system since 2002. Five years ago, it started the investment with Oracle University which provided online training and certification to 600 participants. Over time it’s expanded down to primary and secondary schools via Think.com (www.think.com) which is a global online community for learning. The focus also includes college interns, new graduates, and post-graduate learning.
During a reception, we spoke with Derek Williams, executive vice president and chairman of Oracle Asia Pacific about his college recruiting plans. So far this year, he’s added 200 new college graduates in 12 cities and has plans for 100 more. He boasted that most have at least two degrees and are tri-lingual—in addition to Chinese and English, they also speak Japanese or Korean.
The overall hiring market is tight with demand exceeding supply. Mr. Williams estimates that they get 10,000 resumes in China for every 100 people they hire. Retention of younger people continues to be a challenge though turnover has yet to approach the levels of India—which has been in the high teens for many firms. The challenge is managing the lofty ambitions of today’s graduates.
While Oracle’s commitment to education has helped build the brand, it also benefits from the growing presence of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). There are 245,000 members in China, up from 150,000 two years ago. China’s OTN membership is the second largest base in Asia, trailing only India.
Is Pakistan the next China? Who’s the next i-flex?
During one of the receptions I asked one Oracle Asia Pacific executive his views on which Asian country will become the next big market. The next day I asked two more executives the same question. I was stunned that all three instantly responded with the same answer—Pakistan. All three added Indonesia as another market to watch. Apparently some of the Indian IT boom has carried over the border to Pakistan. Rather than pursuing a business or engineering degree, enterprising students are choosing IT for a career.
I also asked the last two executives what they see as the Chinese equivalent of i-flex solutions, the India-based financial services software firm that is majority owned by Oracle. Based on their responses, you may want to keep an eye on Taiji Computer Corp. in the utilities market and Neusoft Group in telco, insurance, energy, and other sectors. Another company to watch is Digital China, a large IT services firm. While unknown outside of its core market, Digital China has emerged as one of Oracle’s top five global partners.
Add Shanghai to your list of must-see cities
On my 2004 trip, I also visited Suzhou, renowned for its Confucian gardens. This time I stayed within a five mile radius of Pudong, Shanghai. Nonetheless, if you haven’t been to Shanghai, add it to your list of must-see cities because of how well the city appears to embrace and manage change. It’s especially impressive when you consider that Shanghai spans 2,239 square miles, or nearly 100 times the island of Manhattan (23.7 square miles). I wouldn’t visit during the summer months, though.
If you come, watch out for the drivers. In some countries, pedestrians have the right of way. Here they are viewed as potential speed bumps. On the walk over this morning, a truck and two taxis attempted to turn me into a hood ornament. It was as though they were practicing their human dodge ball moves.
Next week: Back in the USA
By the time you get this, I will have spent 17 or 18 hours flying home. That’s assuming the air gods are good to me in Shanghai and Chicago. It’s that last leg that is the wild card.
In the meantime, I welcome your feedback and ideas—brichardson@amrresearch.com. What do you think will happen in the Chinese market? Will the large software and services firms become major global players or will they be content serving the enormous domestic market? Will Pakistan be the next important global tech market? Should Human Dodge Ball be an exhibition sport at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?
by Bruce Richardson - Chief Research Officer
It was 4:10 a.m. on Sunday when the alarm clock went off. By 5:00 a.m. I was at Logan Airport, only to find that the 6:30 a.m. flight to Chicago was delayed for an hour. Even at that early hour, Logan was pure bedlam.
We managed to make up some of that delay on the flight to O’Hare. Despite my initial concerns, we had ample time to make the connecting flight to Shanghai. We left at 10:30 a.m. central time and arrived the following afternoon just after 2:00 p.m. Despite losing a day in the air, we never encountered night. We followed the sun as the flight took us over Wisconsin, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alaska, the International Date Line, the edge of Russia, and northern Asia.
As we approached the airport, I was struck by how the water and the sky were the same color, a burnt reddish brown. I had been warned by a colleague about the increased pollution in Shanghai, but had not expected this. Fortunately, that color palette was confined to the airport. Shanghai, though, was in the midst of the worst heat wave in over 60 years. During the time I’ve been here, the daytime temperature has hovered around 100 degrees (38 degrees centigrade). Right now, it’s 100 degrees, with 42% humidity and a dew point reading of 77%. According to weather.com, it “feels like 113.” Nice.
While there was a bus to the conference, I preferred the six-minute walk from the Shangri-La Hotel to the Shanghai International Convention Centre. As you might surmise, this was always a bad idea. I’d arrive for a meeting looking like I had just lost a water balloon fight. Even at midnight, the city was too warm and muggy.
Outside of the initial flight delay and the hazy, hot weather, the only other disappointment was the discovery that the new Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone was hardly the global tool I was promised. Despite numerous calls to my IT department and Verizon, I could not send or receive e-mails or use the browser. The phone and text messaging worked great, but that’s not really the point of the BlackBerry. The BlackBerry issue seemed to be confined to Verizon and this particular model. Ironically, the phone had turned itself back on after I had put it away—it must have touched something inside my briefcase while flashing the “press any key to abort” message while I was turning it off. When I got to Shanghai, I had received a dozen e-mails while traversing North American airspace, but nothing after that. Maddening.
China’s economy hotter than weather: +11.9% for 2Q07, +11.5% for first half
The Shangri-La sits high over the Huangpu River. The other side of the river features a diverse mix of older European-style buildings from the first few decades of the twentieth century and new Manhattan-like skyscrapers. One Oracle executive told me that the area where my hotel sits was a rice paddy only 10 or 15 years ago. It seems hard to believe until you consider the rapid rise of China’s economy. A few weeks ago the Chinese government reported that the economy grew 11.9% in the second quarter and 11.5% for the first half of the year.
Like the architecture, the China of today is a mix of the old and the new. While the business pages of the Shanghai Daily were trumpeting the $15B invested in computer equipment and telecommunications manufacturing in the first half of this year, the front page focused on the continuing attempts to rescue 69 miners trapped in a flooded coal pit. As the paper pointed out, the Chinese coal industry is the world’s most dangerous, leading to an average of 13 deaths per day. As I write this, every few minutes a barge loaded with coal floats by on the Huangpu.
Oracle in China: 1,500+ employees, 800+ partners
I had not been to China since February 2004. Ironically, my host for that trip was Agile Software, now part of the extended Oracle family. As I said last week, I came here to get a better understanding of the Chinese software market, not to hear any new product announcements. Outside of a detailed presentation on the recently announced 11g database, Oracle made no product announcements. The primary news was the announcement of plans to open a new Oracle Asia Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Shanghai. This will be the third in China. Oracle opened the first development center in Shenzhen in June 2002 and the second in Beijing in October 2003.
Oracle OpenWorld Asia Pacific 2007 drew an estimated 8,000 attendees to Shanghai this week. This was twice the attendance of the previous event held here three years ago. About 87% of the attendees were drawn from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Most were partners or employees. Oracle has more than 1,500 employees spread across 13 branch offices in China—there were eight offices a year ago. These resources are backed by more than 800 partners. The vast majority are local firms. These partners are very important to the region as the channel accounts for more than 90% of Oracle’s revenue here.
Unlike the U.S. market, it is harder to discern between independent software vendors (ISVs), resellers, and integrators in China. Often partners play multiple roles. Some also embed Oracle software into devices and other products. To draw ISVs to Oracle database and middleware products, Oracle has opened two partner solution centers that are co-located with the existing OARDCs in Beijing and Shenzhen. To date, more than 150 ISVs have been through the centers to port their applications to Oracle technologies and/or integrate with Oracle applications.
Ironically, the ISV partners include UFIDA Software and Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited. Both are fierce Oracle competitors in the ERP market for small and midsize businesses. Kingdee has been rumored to be an Oracle acquisition target.
7,000+ database customers, 700+ apps customers
One executive estimated that OpenWorld drew more than 3,600 customers and prospects. This figure may be a little low as many business partners paid for their customers and prospects to attend. Nonetheless, this would represent a sizeable number of Oracle’s 7,000 customers in China. Nearly all use its database.
It seems that the large banking, telecommunications, utilities, and energy firms use Oracle’s E-Business Suite, while smaller industrial manufacturers and energy producers and small and large engineering and construction companies deploy Oracle’s J.D. Edwards software. There are some installations of Siebel and PeopleSoft though Oracle executives said that these companies had very little presence here until after Oracle acquired them. To emphasize the point, one executive said Siebel had 16 employees here before Oracle purchased the firm.
Oracle has high hopes for Hyperion sales in China. While its classic customer has been the CIO, the bet is that Hyperion will help open up the door to the CFO’s office. Demand is building here for business intelligence and performance management software.
While walking around the convention center, I was struck by the relative youth of the attendees. Oracle’s major U.S. events tend to attract people in the 35 to 55 range. Here, most attendees appeared to be under 35. One Oracle executive confirmed that buyers tend to be younger here, even in the public sector. I viewed this as a positive indicator for the future of technology spending and deployment.
The real question: how big is the Chinese market?
Given that China has a population of more than 1.3 billion, 7,000 customers seems like a modest achievement, particularly since Oracle has had a presence here since 1989. This prompts the question, how big could Oracle China become? No one I met seemed to have a handle on the size of the potential market, especially the number of small and midsize businesses.
While SAP is acknowledged as the primary threat, custom software appears to be the real competition in the largest accounts. It’s only been in the last five years that the government has encouraged enterprises to use packaged software and offered them incentives.
As you might guess, Oracle declined to break out its revenue for China. Executives would only say that China is the “sixth biggest market” for Oracle and the third largest in Asia, presumably after Japan and India. This could change quickly—China is poised to overtake Germany this year to become the third largest economy after the United States and Japan.
The only real color Oracle provided was on the overall market for Oracle Asia Pacific. The company said that the 29 countries comprising Asia Pacific accounted for $2.499B in FY07 revenues. This was up 24% over the previous year. In the recent concluded fiscal year, Asia Pacific accounted for 14% of Oracle total revenues and 19% of new license sales. Overall, the region represents 35,000 customers out of the total 275,000 customer base.
Reaching new customers through schools and OTN
According to the Shanghai Daily (July 31), Oracle has contributed more than $200M to China’s educational system since 2002. Five years ago, it started the investment with Oracle University which provided online training and certification to 600 participants. Over time it’s expanded down to primary and secondary schools via Think.com (www.think.com) which is a global online community for learning. The focus also includes college interns, new graduates, and post-graduate learning.
During a reception, we spoke with Derek Williams, executive vice president and chairman of Oracle Asia Pacific about his college recruiting plans. So far this year, he’s added 200 new college graduates in 12 cities and has plans for 100 more. He boasted that most have at least two degrees and are tri-lingual—in addition to Chinese and English, they also speak Japanese or Korean.
The overall hiring market is tight with demand exceeding supply. Mr. Williams estimates that they get 10,000 resumes in China for every 100 people they hire. Retention of younger people continues to be a challenge though turnover has yet to approach the levels of India—which has been in the high teens for many firms. The challenge is managing the lofty ambitions of today’s graduates.
While Oracle’s commitment to education has helped build the brand, it also benefits from the growing presence of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). There are 245,000 members in China, up from 150,000 two years ago. China’s OTN membership is the second largest base in Asia, trailing only India.
Is Pakistan the next China? Who’s the next i-flex?
During one of the receptions I asked one Oracle Asia Pacific executive his views on which Asian country will become the next big market. The next day I asked two more executives the same question. I was stunned that all three instantly responded with the same answer—Pakistan. All three added Indonesia as another market to watch. Apparently some of the Indian IT boom has carried over the border to Pakistan. Rather than pursuing a business or engineering degree, enterprising students are choosing IT for a career.
I also asked the last two executives what they see as the Chinese equivalent of i-flex solutions, the India-based financial services software firm that is majority owned by Oracle. Based on their responses, you may want to keep an eye on Taiji Computer Corp. in the utilities market and Neusoft Group in telco, insurance, energy, and other sectors. Another company to watch is Digital China, a large IT services firm. While unknown outside of its core market, Digital China has emerged as one of Oracle’s top five global partners.
Add Shanghai to your list of must-see cities
On my 2004 trip, I also visited Suzhou, renowned for its Confucian gardens. This time I stayed within a five mile radius of Pudong, Shanghai. Nonetheless, if you haven’t been to Shanghai, add it to your list of must-see cities because of how well the city appears to embrace and manage change. It’s especially impressive when you consider that Shanghai spans 2,239 square miles, or nearly 100 times the island of Manhattan (23.7 square miles). I wouldn’t visit during the summer months, though.
If you come, watch out for the drivers. In some countries, pedestrians have the right of way. Here they are viewed as potential speed bumps. On the walk over this morning, a truck and two taxis attempted to turn me into a hood ornament. It was as though they were practicing their human dodge ball moves.
Next week: Back in the USA
By the time you get this, I will have spent 17 or 18 hours flying home. That’s assuming the air gods are good to me in Shanghai and Chicago. It’s that last leg that is the wild card.
In the meantime, I welcome your feedback and ideas—brichardson@amrresearch.com. What do you think will happen in the Chinese market? Will the large software and services firms become major global players or will they be content serving the enormous domestic market? Will Pakistan be the next important global tech market? Should Human Dodge Ball be an exhibition sport at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
FT.com / Technology - E-procurement: From chaos comes the ‘eBay for business’
FT.com / Technology - E-procurement: From chaos comes the ‘eBay for business’
E-procurement: From chaos comes the ‘eBay for business’
By Andrew Baxter
Published: July 11 2007 12:23 | Last updated: July 11 2007 12:23
The rapid pace of development in consumer technology has made some enterprise IT look clunky. This is certainly the case with corporate e-procurement – the purchasing of workplace goods and services online.
At home, online shoppers buy quickly and easily from a range of websites, all of which have invested heavily in making their sites as simple and intuitive as possible. The corporate world has largely missed out. But now there is growing recognition that enhanced user-friendliness could be the key to increasing the usage of e-procurement systems and extracting more benefits from them.
“If you ask any of the e-procurement vendors today for a demonstration you can guarantee it’s going to look like an eBay shopping experience,” says Sharon Crawford, principal analyst at Quocirca. “There are going to be shopping baskets and clicks and so on – everybody has built that into their software to make it easier for any end-user to participate in purchasing.”
Because the process increasingly resembles an online consumer purchase, organisations can devolve the buying process much more effectively to end users who are not purchasing professionals. It could also mean companies can keep a closer eye on who is buying what.
One of the companies in the vanguard of this new approach to e-procurement is UK-based ProcServe, which has developed a commercial e-procurement system of the same name and also led a consortium that is delivering a programme called Zanzibar for the UK public sector.
The interface for Zanzibar, launched last year, was modelled on consumer sites such as lastminute.com and eBay, says Veera Johnson, ProcServe’s chief executive. “We tried to relate it back to what experience I would want if I was a public sector employee, so the debate was about usability and not about procurement language,” she says.
This challenges long-held assumptions about e-procurement – for example, that it requires huge amounts of training because of its complexity. “The user interface is absolutely crucial for getting people to use the system based on their own experiences,” says Ms Johnson. “Training and driving the adoption of the system become easier.”
If properly implemented, corporate e-procurement should be like “eBay for business”, says Lyn Duncan, business development director at @UK PLC, a company that works with businesses to enable them to trade online quickly with their customers. Once purchasing professionals have sorted out issues such as contracts with suppliers, and who is allowed to buy what from whom, the clicking and buying for the rest of the organisation should be simple, she says.
“There are lots of people with enterprise solutions who want to make this stuff complex, because it is expensive,” says Ms Duncan. In contrast, the @UK system uses the same interface for public sector e-procurement as it does for consumer purchases. “You can set up favourites – it works just like a Tesco [online] shopping list.”
One target market for ProcServe, a PA Consulting Group company, is schools, which need a simple e-procurement system that can be used by bursars, teachers and secretaries rather than e-marketplace professionals. By last month, 600 UK schools were using the system, and a national roll-out is planned this summer.
Another cherished assumption with e-procurement is that, to increase efficiency and control, it makes sense for organisations to restrict the number of users. But once a system becomes as simple as a home shopping website, more employees will try to use it if they can.
The UK Department of Work and Pensions, one of the earliest Zanzibar customers, will probably have 30,000 users on the system once it has reached the next stage of its implementation, says Ms Johnson. That sounds a recipe for chaos, but all the purchases are made via a central collaborative contract and the entire process is electronic, from sending the purchase order to receiving the invoice, so the number and size of orders becomes largely irrelevant, even to suppliers.
As systems such as this devolve buying throughout an organisation, however, there is a need to prevent the free-for-all that the modern, intuitive home shopping website represents. This explains why corporate attitudes to user-friendliness have often been ambivalent.
Brett Mauser, director of global procurement at NCR, recalls a comment from the company’s chief purchasing officer several years ago when the US retail systems, ATM and IT services company was considering a web-based e-procurement system: “Why would we want to make it easier for people to spend money faster? What we want is for the right people to buy the right things at the right price.”
Without wishing to make web-based procurement deliberately cumbersome, says Mr Mauser, companies need a balance between user-friendliness and control. “We’re not an L.L.Bean or a Lands’ End, which have been given awards for their usability. It’s very easy to shop and buy stuff from them – they want it that way so people spend more.”
The big fear for organisations has been that employees would use the web for “maverick spending” on items that do not conform to their standards or – as often occurs with online travel – deals that look like a bargain but result in the company losing out on a discount for multiple or bulk purchases.
“One of the challenges is that there are always nice things that people will try to find a way to buy, or suppliers will find a way to users,” says Mr Mauser.
NCR, along with many other large companies, directs its buyers of indirect materials, such as office supplies, to various approved suppliers’ websites. The supplier will host an NCR page with special prices, and everyone from the company pays the same price. The supplier will then send a summary bill electronically.
Many organisations, however, want employees to go to one online source – what Ms Crawford calls a “central backbone” – which handles all the relationships with suppliers and from which purchasers can draw down what they need. This is the approach taken by ProcServe.
As employees from across the buying organisation gain access to the catalogues that have been loaded on to the system, and make purchases, their managers achieve visibility, at a very detailed level, of what is being bought by whom.
The St Mary’s National Health Service Trust in London is one of a group of hospitals introducing the Zanzibar system and Andrew Holden, the trust’s finance director, is impressed by the greater level of control over maverick purchases that the system will give.
“In the past, a catalogue might arrive on your desk and you are a doctor in orthopaedics, and you say: ‘I like that, I’ll buy one of them,’ but now you won’t see it,” says Mr Holden. “The ability to make sure people stick to buying what you want them to is much greater.”
The hope is that a user-friendly interface will encourage more employees to go through the right channels when they buy items online at work, reducing organisations’ worries about indiscriminate web-based purchasing and ensuring that companies make the most of the deals they have made with suppliers.
“Because e-procurement systems have improved, people are less likely to do their own thing, they can browse catalogues and see pictures, and that has reduced maverick spending,” says Ms Crawford at Quocirca. “This is one place where, because of the importance of purchasing and the control of it, it is recognised that the user experience at work needs to be as good as it is at home.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
E-procurement: From chaos comes the ‘eBay for business’
By Andrew Baxter
Published: July 11 2007 12:23 | Last updated: July 11 2007 12:23
The rapid pace of development in consumer technology has made some enterprise IT look clunky. This is certainly the case with corporate e-procurement – the purchasing of workplace goods and services online.
At home, online shoppers buy quickly and easily from a range of websites, all of which have invested heavily in making their sites as simple and intuitive as possible. The corporate world has largely missed out. But now there is growing recognition that enhanced user-friendliness could be the key to increasing the usage of e-procurement systems and extracting more benefits from them.
“If you ask any of the e-procurement vendors today for a demonstration you can guarantee it’s going to look like an eBay shopping experience,” says Sharon Crawford, principal analyst at Quocirca. “There are going to be shopping baskets and clicks and so on – everybody has built that into their software to make it easier for any end-user to participate in purchasing.”
Because the process increasingly resembles an online consumer purchase, organisations can devolve the buying process much more effectively to end users who are not purchasing professionals. It could also mean companies can keep a closer eye on who is buying what.
One of the companies in the vanguard of this new approach to e-procurement is UK-based ProcServe, which has developed a commercial e-procurement system of the same name and also led a consortium that is delivering a programme called Zanzibar for the UK public sector.
The interface for Zanzibar, launched last year, was modelled on consumer sites such as lastminute.com and eBay, says Veera Johnson, ProcServe’s chief executive. “We tried to relate it back to what experience I would want if I was a public sector employee, so the debate was about usability and not about procurement language,” she says.
This challenges long-held assumptions about e-procurement – for example, that it requires huge amounts of training because of its complexity. “The user interface is absolutely crucial for getting people to use the system based on their own experiences,” says Ms Johnson. “Training and driving the adoption of the system become easier.”
If properly implemented, corporate e-procurement should be like “eBay for business”, says Lyn Duncan, business development director at @UK PLC, a company that works with businesses to enable them to trade online quickly with their customers. Once purchasing professionals have sorted out issues such as contracts with suppliers, and who is allowed to buy what from whom, the clicking and buying for the rest of the organisation should be simple, she says.
“There are lots of people with enterprise solutions who want to make this stuff complex, because it is expensive,” says Ms Duncan. In contrast, the @UK system uses the same interface for public sector e-procurement as it does for consumer purchases. “You can set up favourites – it works just like a Tesco [online] shopping list.”
One target market for ProcServe, a PA Consulting Group company, is schools, which need a simple e-procurement system that can be used by bursars, teachers and secretaries rather than e-marketplace professionals. By last month, 600 UK schools were using the system, and a national roll-out is planned this summer.
Another cherished assumption with e-procurement is that, to increase efficiency and control, it makes sense for organisations to restrict the number of users. But once a system becomes as simple as a home shopping website, more employees will try to use it if they can.
The UK Department of Work and Pensions, one of the earliest Zanzibar customers, will probably have 30,000 users on the system once it has reached the next stage of its implementation, says Ms Johnson. That sounds a recipe for chaos, but all the purchases are made via a central collaborative contract and the entire process is electronic, from sending the purchase order to receiving the invoice, so the number and size of orders becomes largely irrelevant, even to suppliers.
As systems such as this devolve buying throughout an organisation, however, there is a need to prevent the free-for-all that the modern, intuitive home shopping website represents. This explains why corporate attitudes to user-friendliness have often been ambivalent.
Brett Mauser, director of global procurement at NCR, recalls a comment from the company’s chief purchasing officer several years ago when the US retail systems, ATM and IT services company was considering a web-based e-procurement system: “Why would we want to make it easier for people to spend money faster? What we want is for the right people to buy the right things at the right price.”
Without wishing to make web-based procurement deliberately cumbersome, says Mr Mauser, companies need a balance between user-friendliness and control. “We’re not an L.L.Bean or a Lands’ End, which have been given awards for their usability. It’s very easy to shop and buy stuff from them – they want it that way so people spend more.”
The big fear for organisations has been that employees would use the web for “maverick spending” on items that do not conform to their standards or – as often occurs with online travel – deals that look like a bargain but result in the company losing out on a discount for multiple or bulk purchases.
“One of the challenges is that there are always nice things that people will try to find a way to buy, or suppliers will find a way to users,” says Mr Mauser.
NCR, along with many other large companies, directs its buyers of indirect materials, such as office supplies, to various approved suppliers’ websites. The supplier will host an NCR page with special prices, and everyone from the company pays the same price. The supplier will then send a summary bill electronically.
Many organisations, however, want employees to go to one online source – what Ms Crawford calls a “central backbone” – which handles all the relationships with suppliers and from which purchasers can draw down what they need. This is the approach taken by ProcServe.
As employees from across the buying organisation gain access to the catalogues that have been loaded on to the system, and make purchases, their managers achieve visibility, at a very detailed level, of what is being bought by whom.
The St Mary’s National Health Service Trust in London is one of a group of hospitals introducing the Zanzibar system and Andrew Holden, the trust’s finance director, is impressed by the greater level of control over maverick purchases that the system will give.
“In the past, a catalogue might arrive on your desk and you are a doctor in orthopaedics, and you say: ‘I like that, I’ll buy one of them,’ but now you won’t see it,” says Mr Holden. “The ability to make sure people stick to buying what you want them to is much greater.”
The hope is that a user-friendly interface will encourage more employees to go through the right channels when they buy items online at work, reducing organisations’ worries about indiscriminate web-based purchasing and ensuring that companies make the most of the deals they have made with suppliers.
“Because e-procurement systems have improved, people are less likely to do their own thing, they can browse catalogues and see pictures, and that has reduced maverick spending,” says Ms Crawford at Quocirca. “This is one place where, because of the importance of purchasing and the control of it, it is recognised that the user experience at work needs to be as good as it is at home.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
FT.com / Technology - What’s new: SMEs offered business intelligence from Oracle
FT.com / Technology - What’s new: SMEs offered business intelligence from Oracle
What’s new: SMEs offered business intelligence from Oracle
By Geoff Nairn
Published: July 11 2007 09:43 | Last updated: July 11 2007 09:43
Oracle is bringing business intelligence to the masses with Oracle BI Standard Edition One aimed at SMEs and departmental users.
Oracle did the same with its flagship database to produce a cut-down version called Oracle 10g Standard Edition One, which this lies at the heart of the new BI offering and includes tools for creating dashboards, ad hoc reporting and publishing. The BI SE One software costs $1,000 for each user, minimum five, maximum 50.
Asset management
Infor, the fast-growing US enterprise software vendor, has unveiled Infor EAM Enterprise Edition, a new version of its enterprise asset management (EAM) solution.
The product aims to help businesses in the fleet management, manufacturing, facilities and life sciences industries track their capital assets.
Future releases will include more industries. The product was previously known as Infor Datastream and stems from Infor’s 2006 acquisition of Datastream, an EAM specialist.
Searching the abstract
Xerox says its new search technology, FactSpotter, goes beyond the limitations of traditional keyword-based searches.
FactSpotter looks not only for keywords in a query but also the context of the document containing those words. It can also handle abstract concepts.
Xerox plans to target FactSpotter at the legal and regulatory compliance market and possibly other vertical applications, but there are no plans to compete with the likes of Google in consumer search.
Power saver
Hewlett-Packard offers green storage with a trio of mid-range disc arrays named EVA4100, 6100 and 8100, which improve power efficiency by up to 45 per cent over their predecessors.
HP claims a big data centre with a monthly storage electricity bill of $3,000 could save as much as $18,000 a year in power and cooling costs.
Social integration
IBM’s Lotus software hopes for a new lease of life thanks to social networking technologies such as wikis and blogs.
IBM claims Lotus Connections will make it easier for businesses to integrate social networking into their existing IT infrastructures and commonly used applications.
Lotus is best known for Notes, once the leading business e-mail application before Microsoft’s Exchange took the top slot. Lotus Connections costs $110 per user.
Google and Linux
Google has finally released a version of its popular Google Desktop search application for the Linux operating system. The free program is already offered for Windows and Mac OS X users and now there is a Linux version, although in a typical Google move, it is currently only a beta version. The software was developed by Google’s Beijing engineering team. As well as two Chinese languages, it comes in English and eight other tongues.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
What’s new: SMEs offered business intelligence from Oracle
By Geoff Nairn
Published: July 11 2007 09:43 | Last updated: July 11 2007 09:43
Oracle is bringing business intelligence to the masses with Oracle BI Standard Edition One aimed at SMEs and departmental users.
Oracle did the same with its flagship database to produce a cut-down version called Oracle 10g Standard Edition One, which this lies at the heart of the new BI offering and includes tools for creating dashboards, ad hoc reporting and publishing. The BI SE One software costs $1,000 for each user, minimum five, maximum 50.
Asset management
Infor, the fast-growing US enterprise software vendor, has unveiled Infor EAM Enterprise Edition, a new version of its enterprise asset management (EAM) solution.
The product aims to help businesses in the fleet management, manufacturing, facilities and life sciences industries track their capital assets.
Future releases will include more industries. The product was previously known as Infor Datastream and stems from Infor’s 2006 acquisition of Datastream, an EAM specialist.
Searching the abstract
Xerox says its new search technology, FactSpotter, goes beyond the limitations of traditional keyword-based searches.
FactSpotter looks not only for keywords in a query but also the context of the document containing those words. It can also handle abstract concepts.
Xerox plans to target FactSpotter at the legal and regulatory compliance market and possibly other vertical applications, but there are no plans to compete with the likes of Google in consumer search.
Power saver
Hewlett-Packard offers green storage with a trio of mid-range disc arrays named EVA4100, 6100 and 8100, which improve power efficiency by up to 45 per cent over their predecessors.
HP claims a big data centre with a monthly storage electricity bill of $3,000 could save as much as $18,000 a year in power and cooling costs.
Social integration
IBM’s Lotus software hopes for a new lease of life thanks to social networking technologies such as wikis and blogs.
IBM claims Lotus Connections will make it easier for businesses to integrate social networking into their existing IT infrastructures and commonly used applications.
Lotus is best known for Notes, once the leading business e-mail application before Microsoft’s Exchange took the top slot. Lotus Connections costs $110 per user.
Google and Linux
Google has finally released a version of its popular Google Desktop search application for the Linux operating system. The free program is already offered for Windows and Mac OS X users and now there is a Linux version, although in a typical Google move, it is currently only a beta version. The software was developed by Google’s Beijing engineering team. As well as two Chinese languages, it comes in English and eight other tongues.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - Imageschlacht der Software-Giganten
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - Imageschlacht der Software-Giganten
SAP startet im Rechtsstreit mit Oracle um die amerikanische Tochter Tomorrow Now die groߥ PR-Offensive. Es geht um Schadensbegrenzung.
SAP startet im Rechtsstreit mit Oracle um die amerikanische Tochter Tomorrow Now die groߥ PR-Offensive. Es geht um Schadensbegrenzung.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Look Behind the Numbers at Oracle's Earnings
Look Behind the Numbers at Oracle's Earnings
Oracle's earnings call for 4Q07 posted impressive gains in all segments. But clients must understand what the numbers mean for market momentum in their respective areas as they consider Oracle's solutions.
Oracle's earnings call for 4Q07 posted impressive gains in all segments. But clients must understand what the numbers mean for market momentum in their respective areas as they consider Oracle's solutions.
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