The Three Pillars of Software Maintenance And Support Policies

After more than 350 conservations with customers about the maintenance and support issue in the past 4 months, it’s becoming quite clear users expect from their software vendors.   While those issues can be broken into tens of categories, three themes have emerged that include:

• Choice. Customers want to choose between tiered plans.  The best plans allow customers to select the option best for them.  Choice means the availaiblity of a basic plan or the full range of services expected in a comprehensive “insurance policy”.
• Value. Users expect plans to show ROI or meet service level agreements (SLA’s).  These SLA’s should reflect outcomes not just process.  If a user contacts a help desk 5 times a year and pays $500,000 in maintenance, at $100,000 a call, they better be getting platinum response levels of 1 hour or less and a resolution in 24 to 48 hours.
• Predictability. Maintenance and support remain one of the biggest budget items in the ownership of packaged apps.  Changes in price, policies, or service levels should be communicated with at least 4 quarters notice.  The best vendors provide guidelines that give customers predictability 2 to 3 years in advance.

The bottom line- can vendors deliver on such promises?

Let’s see which vendors can deliver on all 3 pillars.  Recent financial analyst reports from investment houses (i.e. Merrill Lynch’s Kash Rangan w.r.t. Oracle and Merrill Lynch’s Raimo Lenschow w.r.t SAP) indicate a sharpening downward trend in revenue estimates, not only for Q4 2008, but also for FY 2009 and FY 2010.  Software vendors under pressure to make margins will be forced to choose whether they are willing to take short term pain in stock valuations for long term gain in improving the vendor-client commitment or make their numbers by disenfranchising customers during a time of crisis by violating any one of the three tenants of maintenance pricing.   Because many software vendors have blown through their Q1 2009 pipe in Q4 2008, new deals are scarce and maintenance revenues are the easiest targets for “guaranteed” revenue and price increases.

Your POV.

Are you being hammered in your existing maintenance arrangements? Do you feel locked in or do you feel your vendor is willing to work with you on deals?  Feel free to share with me your experience.  You can post here or send me a private email to rwang@forrester.com.

Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved. Reposted from http://blog.softwareinsider.org

Event Report: Dreamforce 2008 - Love is In the Clouds

Over 9,000 attendees made it to the annual San Francisco pilgrimage to hear the high priest of SaaS kickoff the event. This year’s theme focused on the future of Cloud Computing, a focus on success, and how much Salesforce loves its customers. Key product, technology, and partnership announcements from the November 3 to 5 event include:

• Force.com expands usage to new product and services. Force.com sites allows customers to publish Force.com data and apps to any site, basically supporting customer built web apps. SFDC will take care of domain, URL, RSS management, etc when customers run their Web apps on Force.com. Other expansions include Force.com for Amazon and Force.com for Facebook. On the Amazon front, SFDC also will support applications being built using Amazon web services, in effect creating a mega cloud. Facebook support allows developers to tap into the Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. 

  POV: Movement to expand the platform into new B2C facing markets give SFDC credibility in new social media markets as well as taking the Cloud wars to the consumer. Consider this a continuation in the battle for domiance of IDE’s in the cloud.

• CODA showcases its financial package on APEX for the North American market. While Coda2Go was launched at Dreamforce Europe in London last May, attendees at Dreamforce 2008 in SanFrancisco had a chance to see first hand how the 30 year old vendor had completed its rewrite. With enterprise financials built on this new platform, Salesforce.com customers now have more choice in financial solutions within the ecosystem.
  POV: Like many mid-market vendors, CODA had the opportunity to bet on the next platform and chose a SaaS approach over an on-premise middleware platform. Most mid-market vendors bet on a Microsoft VS.NET “Rainbow” Stack, IBM Websphere, or Progress Software. These middleware platforms allow companies to spend 10 to 15% of budget on tools and technology instead of a staggering 33% that many would spend if they built their own middleware. CODA’s decision is market leading for the industry and is reflective of its groundbreaking historical bets on HP3000 in the 70’s, VAX (DEC) in the 80’s, and AS/400’s (IBM) in the 90’s.
• Glovia, a Fujitsu Company, builds order management on Force.com. Customers seeking lead to billing solutions in order management can now turn to the Glovia solution for order management, inventory, fulfillment, and billing. Glovia takes the order from Salesforce.com and brings it into the order maangement system giving it visiblity from prospect to invoice. Enterprises can also check status via the web or on a mobile device via Salesforce mobile.
  POV: Salesforce.com’s ecosystem strategy allows other vendors to build key back office end to end processes. As more companies add to the ecosystem, SalesForce will continue to gain market relevance against enterprise vendors struggling to move to a true multi-tenant onDemand delivery model.

   

 

The bottom line - SaaS platforms continue to morph into cloud computing

Recent decisions by CODA, Glovia, and a host of software vendors show that the transition from on-premise middleware platforms to cloud-based platforms has begun. Application development and delivery professionals seeking new delivery models can benefit from these new platforms. Force.com is gaining momentum and given its history will emerge as one of the top 3 platforms for both customers and software vendors. The real question out there - what will vendor lock-in look like in the world of cloud computing? Will it be like the mainframe lock-ins 40 years prior?

Your POV.

Are you considering a SaaS deployment? Will you move to the cloud? Are you a software vendor looking at ditching your on-premise middleware platform? Feel free to share with me your thoughts. You can post here or send me a private email to rwang@forrester.com.

Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved. Reposted from http://blog.softwareinsider.org

Cloud Or No Cloud You Still Have To Write Code

I am experiencing Cloud fatigue already. If I hear anyone even come close to uttering the word "Cloud 2.0", I might be found hiding in the Forrester fitness room in a fetal position. I am a fan of Cloud computing and my colleague James Staten has a great report on cloud in the enterprise. I think that cloud computing such Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google AppEngine, and others are legitimate and have a great future in infrastructure. What I am not a fan of is the buzzword grab going on by many technology companies saying they work in the cloud, have a cloud strategy, or have a new cloud offering à la SOA, Web 2.0, and whatever is next. Vendor X can work in the cloud. Well, no kidding. You just spin up your platform in the cloud and run your app on it. Of course, that doesn't mean you can take advantage of some of the value-added services in the cloud right off the bat but there is still value in having an infrastructure on-demand. The buzzword grab vendors are the source of my fatigue.

What Do Application Developers Need To Know About Cloud?

On one level, the cloud is just another deployment option. One day when you are happily writing code in front of your NetBeans, Eclipse, or VisualStudio IDE there will be a button that says "Deploy". You will click the button and then see a list of deployment platforms such as: local, enterprise server, cloud provider. Just pick cloud. A wait dialog box will come up for a a few seconds. Then you are done. That should be the application developer's view of the cloud. The details are abstracted away. Easy breezy.

Now, many of the clouds also offer services such Amazon's SimpleDB. You'll be able to code to those using APIs just as always. If you are in Java you'll bring in the package to NetBeans and voilà you can start instantiating services and use them.

Cloud Vendors Will Seduce You With Services To Lock You In

Be careful when choosing value-added services offered in the cloud. Despite what the cloud vendors say about utility computing, they would love to make it harder for you to leave them. Remember how J2EE was designed to allow you to deploy to any server. Or, SQL was embraced as a database standard. What happened? Both app server and database vendors seduced you with features that made it difficult to leave them. Some of these features add value and are worth the lockin. Just know what you are getting into.

Cloud Security Is Still A Concern

The popular thing to say about Cloud security is to snicker and then to say that it is probably more secure than your data center or no different than outsourcing your infrastrcuture to a hosting firm. That kind of dismissiveness is unwise. Security is always a concern on any deployment platform - PC, Blackberry, corporate server, hosted server, mainframe, or Florida voting machine. Be concerned about the Cloud as you would any deployment platform, but don't be afraid.

Infrastructure professionals and perhaps CFO trying to save a few bucks should be concerned with the Cloud. But, cloud or no cloud, application developers still have to write code.

What do you think?

Spotlight: C++ is still cool

Sometimes enterprise IT development shops that are doing development in Java, C#, VB.NET forget that it all began with C++. Invented in 1981 by Bjarne Stroustrup, C++ was arguably the first popular object-oriented language even though languages like Smalltalk proceeded it. Java was first released by Sun in 1995, fourteen years after C++ was invented.

C++ is alive and kicking as I was reminded by the 300 C++ programmers at the Qt Software Developer Days Conference last week in Redwood City where I gave a keynote on the Future of Application Development. Qt Software, formally named Trolltech before being acquired by Nokia late last year, develops an impressive cross-platform application framework used primarily by C++ programmers. Using Qt, programmers can develop applications and user interfaces once, and deploy them across many desktop and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code. Qt supports well-known platforms such as Windows, MacOS, Linux, Windows CE, and others.

Why use C++ and Qt?

With all of the other choices in languages and frameworks such as .NET managed code and Java, you may be asking why C++ and Qt? Here is what the overwelmingly loyal developers told me:

• Qt provides an elegant, intuitive approach to a user interface framework. I asked all the developers I could and the unanimous answer is that Qt is designed the way they would design a framework. It is intuitive to use and has great documentation.
• If it has to be as fast as possible, it has to be in C++. C++ is very fast because it is still compiled and linked the old fashioned way. Unlike Java and .NET and scripting languages there is nothing in between. C++ converts to machine code. So for user interface applications that have lots of visualations and graphics speed is paramount.
• Qt is cross-platform. Applications developed in Qt are cross platform. They will run just as well on Windows as on the Mac. Skype is a great example of a cross-platform application developed using Qt.
• Embedded applications usually have less memory and power. The efficiency of C++ and Qt on embedded or mobile platforms is an advantage because many of these devices need every ounce of performance they can get out of smaller embedded processors.

C++ and Qt is a good choice if your application needs to be cross-platform and high-performance.

Some cool applications using C++ and Qt

• High End Systems developers entertainment lighting for shows and concerts. High End Systems develops the lighting systems used by large shows such as the 2008 Summer Olympics and U2 rock concerts. Their lighting consoles need to support very custom user interfaces and need to support software updates that will still perform on older equipment.
• Dash Express is an internet connected real-time traffic routing device. Dash Express is a GPS device that is also internet connect while you are driving. It reports traffic in real-time and can provide real-time routing. The Dash had to develop a simple user interface and cram all of that on a small device that mounts on the dashboard of a car.

So when you are developing web applications in Java or C#, pause every now and again to remember their roots. And, if you want to do some cool work on embedded devices consider picking up C++; there are plenty of jobs available.