Oracle MightNow FightNow with RightNow

So Oracle have bought RightNow. Ahh, RightNow. Memories. See my proud certificate to become RightNow certified. Not many people can say that. The RightNow approach to wooing partners to implement their product was far removed from Salesforce.com, possibly explaining why it is seen as more of a niche product with not much of a partner ecosystem.

My experience in 2008 was one of being an extension to their in house Professional Services at the Euro HQ in Maidenhead. The training I was given by the PS guys there was second to none, and it was clear there was a passion not only for the product, but for 'best practice' in implementation. To this day I have never received better training in a product.

From a technical point of view, having come from a Siebel background, the thing that struck me was the speed of configuration (and of course 'no hardware'). In a similar way to Salesforce, UI and data model changes were very fast to implement. There were also very powerful routing, escalation and knowledge base elements too. The best way I can describe it is a set of service contact centre building blocks, with rafts of 'configuration settings' to turn functionality on and off. This, as opposed to the 'prettified database tables but not much else' approach of some apps. What this resulted in was incredible value, incredibly fast. The whole application, including web knowledge base could be set up in as little as a week or two. Longer timelines would apply for integration/migration etc as usual, but that takes the same amount of time regardless of SaaS/On-Premise/Cloud/whatever.

When compared to Salesforce, Oracle CRM OnDemand or Siebel, the Service functionality RightNow had back THEN was superior to what those platforms have in this area NOW. It frustrates me when certain products are hell-bent on bells-and-whistles before they have got the basics right. Get the internals of routing/knowledgebase/escalation/workload management etc right FIRST, then dabble with Twitter and Facebook. Or you could just do nothing. Ever. As per Siebel.

In 3 years since I last saw RightNow it will only have improved, so it is no surprise that Oracle have come in for them. Oracle CRM OnDemand is woeful in the Contact Centre area, Gartner do not even see it as a player. Salesforce charge separately for their Knowledgebase (crazy) and are somewhere over there in Social Fairyland (though they acquired Assistly which looks good), and I would need to ask my Grandad about Siebel.

What does confuse me though is what the next step for Oracle is. I would expect it to be an extension of their Fusion applications, but are they going to skin/integrate it as such or leave it as-is?  Kate Leggett has just done a great blog post on this topic, including an important point about the culture of the two companies. Oracle is a lumbering behemoth of a company, RightNow has been known as agile, friendly, well quite modern really. Cool. When I was there they had free cans of pop in the fridge. For instance.

What I can conclude, is that this is the first time Oracle have managed to position themselves with a superior offering to Salesforce in the SaaS space. You want an SFA solution? Go to Salesforce. You want an extendable enterprise platform? Go to Salesforce. You want a best practice, pre-built Customer Service Solution? Now at last you can consider going to Oracle.

iPhone 4S, Knight Rider, and refusal of Siri to talk dirty.

Regardless of the murmurings of disappointment regarding the iPhone 4S release, I was always going to get one to replace my 3GS, just makes sense. In fact the tide is turning now and everyone is saying, along with IOS5, that in fact, all is fine, all is still great with Apple. 

So, after wading through a few reviews, I swallowed my pride and the day after release joined a queue of equally keen people on Oxford Street outside the O2 shop. This really did look quite sad, and indeed I was trying to pretend that I was 'just looking in the window', but it didn't fly. Even random passers by were asking me 'what is the queue for'? I was tempted to say that David Beckham was doing a book signing in there or something, but I just told them straight: 'We are all spending our Saturday queuing for a mobile phone'. Actually, the queue was not that long, which kind of made it worse as we looked like the dregs who could not manage to get it on the actual release day. Anyway, I stood firm, I didn't care. After all, I was only hours away from being able to talk 'with' my phone so how cool would I be by the end of the day!

Anyway, after a reasonable 20 mins of queuing I was led inside the shop by a very professional O2 person, and inside to my surprise was a further waiting room of 6 more people. It was like being in a doctors with an L-Shaped couch and some iPhone accessories on a table for you to muse over buying. You know, cases for £12.99, well worth paying for what equates to a bit of rubber. 

Anyway, I finally got my call and sat down opposite a sales guy who said 'what would you like'? I thought about trying to be funny and surprising him, but I gave the stock answer "4S, black, 16gb". "And that bit of rubber over there I suppose". Then after a bit of chat about my favourite football team I got the phone. Brilliant. Back home for setup........

Setup was super easy, restored from my 3GS. I was already familiar with the main IOS5 functions and quirks having installed it on the 3GS. Basically to get everything to work amounts to ensuring you do the following things :

-iCloud Backup - both on your phone AND on iTunes when you connect your phone, then synch in iTunes and all subsequent backups will be via iCloud.

-Work out what gets backed up to iCloud - Settings, contacts, apps, SOME photos (last 1000 in the 'Photo Stream' thing), Apps and Songs can be re-downloaded on demand, but not movies, or podcasts....takes a bit of working out.

-Siri - off by default on the phone so needs switching on, more about that in a bit

-Contacts - looked like they were deleted on my phone but switching iCloud option for them off then on sorted that

-Auto iTunes store downloads - off by default, needed turning on in the settings

-Podcasts had disappeared - this whole change does not have much respect for podcasts - still need to manually synch

Anyway - most improvements of the 4S and IOS5 are quite incremental, but the most interesting is of course Siri. I have a huge grumble about the fact that we still need to use keyboards, it is such as legacy tool and not very well suited to mobile devices. So I think this is the first step towards a big progression away. Will take some time, but I would expect keyboards to be gone in about 10-15 years.

On the night of purchase I did the standard thing of asking it random questions. There is loads of that on the web now, I just tried 'Can you talk dirty to me' and it responded 'I can't, I'm as clean as the driven snow'. Nice.

I then tried a few more useful things (generally it supports requests related to 'standard' Apple apps):

-Text Messages: 'Text Michelle Procter, Hello Michelle I am texting this from Siri'. Effective and probably faster for short texts, propensity for errors increases if you try longer ones

-Emails: No-go for me, need to have email addresses in my address book. I use gmail so they are all stored there so not much use

-Creating appointments / reminders: Works well. You can also say 'what appointments do I have this afternoon' etc and it will list them.

-Facts: Good for facts: "Who is the president of the United States", or "what is ten divided by three".

-Music: Probably faster using Siri to play individual songs that you know the name of: "Play Better Than Today by Kylie" worked perfectly
-Directions / local information / traffic - Siri admits to you that this only works in the US (via Yelp integration). Hopefully they will sort this out in the UK soon, am sure they will.

-Anything it doesn't know: It defaults to a web search generally. Some things like asking it to 'Tweet' it acknowledges it cannot 'Tweet' but I would expect that at some point.

It is a good start. And ok if you are by yourself. Kind of. But what about if you are in public? I wonder how long it will take before this is acceptable in public without looking like an idiot. I tried it walking down the street in Shadwell, and although you can kind of mask it by holding your phone to your ear to pretend it is a call, the way you speak to Siri is certainly not like you would talk to a human. It's very stop-start and 'clipped'. I tried 'Create reminder for 2pm: Put the rubbish out' and 'Change reminder for 2pm' etc while walking past and opposite people in the street. You just get funny looks. 

I think the only person to help with this is David Hasselhoff based on his experience in Knight Rider! I have 'met' him before (bottom pic) and am sure he will remember me from that 2006 book signing (his book, not mine). So I have tweeted him:

The Tweet:

@DavidHasselhoff I have just got my iPhone 4S and it is voice controlled. Any tips for making talking to a computer publicly acceptable?

I am sure any tips The Hoff has for this will be much appreciated by 4S owners and will update this blog post should I get a reply, which of course must only be seconds away :-)

Bootleg Salesforce? Trojan Horse? Investigating the CRM App at the heart of Salesforce's China Investment in 800apps.com

Looks like Bootleg Salesforce, but
probably 'heavy respect'

China is interesting. Certainly when I was over there, some of the things I was being offered at markets such as the 'iPhone4' were suspect to say the least. Completely serious sell, but on close inspection it looked like something from Toys-R-Us.

A few days ago I read an interesting story about Salesforce.com investing in a Chinese CRM company called 800apps. After looking further into this, I found something particularly interesting about the CRM app they have developed. At first glance I thought it was salesforce.com itself looking at the distant screenshots. Then I got a trial, and the iPhone4 incident popped back into my head...

I am particularly interested in this because I have been trying to follow the Chinese Cloud Computing market to see how it stacks up in relation to the West.  Stories of 20kmx20km datacentres being constructed, billions of money pouring into it, it seems they are getting together one hell of a capability. This interview with Reuven Cohen of Enomaly gives as good an insight as I have seen.

Anyway, I have done some digging around over the past few months to see if salesforce.com have any traction there. The general impression that I got was that there are companies who do great salesforce.com work over there like Meginfo in Beijing. I had the pleasure of chatting with their director, Aaron Lau when I was over there: a dev at Meginfo goes through 8 months worth of training! But companies like this are more likely to service overseas companies, the US etc - I don't think companies that originate in China buy much into procuring a SaaS solution from somewhere like the US.

Ok, now back to 800apps. Like I said, I looked at the screenshots on the website and it looked like Salesforce.com. However reading some background information on the website, it gave the impression it is a different product:

 "Launched World first Chinese PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) on-line application software development platform 800APP Native. Just one month after Salesforce.com's launch of a similar product."


Right, so it's not Salesforce then. But I was curious so I signed up for the 'free version' so I could have a click around. After a healthy bit of missing around with Chinese forms and Google Translate, I finally completed the basic details to get an account, and got an email with my login details. Like Salesforce, there is a login link on the 800apps website which takes me to a login screen:

Once logged in, the home screen is quite familiar:

It looks very much like an older version of Salesforce. The thing that made me certain that there is no co-incidence in similarity was when I went to create a new record:

Its just too similar. The way a mandatory field is highlighted, the convention for Lookups, even the positioning of the 'Save' buttons. But it is NOT Salesforce. I had a quick check of the setup area, and although extremely similar, proves it is not the Force.com platform as I know it:

Can't create custom objects. 'Supply and Demand' standard object? 'Set Indexes' button? Not Salesforce, but not far off! 


So what IS this? Does it include any Salesforce code, or is it just heavily influenced by the platform? And interestingly, why have Salesforce chosen to invest in this company? If there is no existing link between 800apps and Salesforce, it seems that rather than Salesforce getting annoyed, they have chosen to invest. After all, Salesforce themselves tend to take heavy influence from Facebook etc, so they can probably empathise here. It may be a very clever way for Salesforce to get a footing in China in a kind of Trojan Horse way, and maybe one day the 800apps customers will receive an 'upgrade' to what is actually the latest version of the 'real' Salesforce.com? 

Cloud Computing, Agile...and Dating Women

How does dating women relate to whats happening with Cloud Computing and Agile? Only through loose analogies that pop up in my head so read on....

I am very keen to make sure that this current move to Cloud models and more Agile methodologies at enterprise level does not make people ditch best practice that WORKS, or common sense in favor of 'Fad Thinking'. Everything is moving at such a pace that it is an easy trap, and the barrier to entry is so low that people of more variable skill/experience levels than in the traditional enterprise picture are getting on board.

At the moment I am probably working in one of the most forward thinking environments I have experienced, but there is a big challenge to get the right balance between old and new world. For instance, a complete Cloud model does not negate the need for support or IT skills (especially in terms of design), just as Agile does not negate the need for documentation (um, especially in terms of design). As boring as it sounds, the answer often lies in the middle ground.

This kind of got me thinking about when I first started dating my girlfriend (I may be going into risky territory here, but lets plough ahead regardless). We 'found' each other in London via an iphone app / website called 'Lovestruck.com'. (Hopefully this route is credible in the modern day :-)) This abstracted away the chatting up that can of course go so badly wrong though too much alcohol, or simply lack of attempt due to priority banter and/or antics on a given night out. Or is that just me? It is at least a great entry point to a first date. Anyway, just as Cloud development abstracts away nuts and bolts through a few clicks, Lovestruck allowed me to set up a first date as easily as setting up an Amazon AMI. (Of course, this mental analogy introduces a risk of subconsciously picking the 'most attractive AMI' next time I am setting up an instance for my project, must watch for that.)

ANYWAY....The point I am trying to get to is that although the process of provision was easier, um, not provision, I mean setting up the first date.....the downstream 'best practice' is the same. I made an awful error on the first few dates of not walking my girlfriend home, she reminds me of that quite often these days, though never said anything at the time. She thought at the end of each date "Why does this stupid guy not walk me home??". This is a schoolboy error. Basics. I see the same disregard for best practice in the Cloud/Agile world to a certain extent. Vendors will claim that developing in the cloud is 'easy', anyone can do it etc. It is certainly easier to get started, as per my online dating experience (I am not saying my girlfriend is easy though....I need to squash this analogy dont I?), but in the Enterprise Cloud world the ongoing best practice is the same - good design, good prep, good/experienced people, the RIGHT level of documentation/testing etc will lead to a successful project. The technology is just a bit easier to work with now, so it means we can focus less on the traditional problems we had there.

My concern is that people are sometimes too 'Cloud' or too 'Agile', and therefore blinkered to what actually worked well in the old world, or reluctant break the 'rules' sometimes through common sense (ie, I may just throw my laptop at the next person who says "THAT'S not Agile"). So, I say lets take a level headed and common-sense approach in the new world, and pick the bits of progress that are applicable to the situation in hand (which will as always vary by client, requirements, timelines etc), but don't forget traditional best practice. Certainly if I was going to do some more dating, I would now definitely walk the girl home, so all credit to my current girlfriend for pointing that out. But, um, of course that is 'by the by' because I am happy with my current girlfriend. Hole dug.



**Disclaimer - I have had this post vetted by my girlfriend, I am not THAT stupid**

The IaaS Challenge: Amazon EC2 - A Layman's Experience

The left hand side of my cloud compass has been craving attention. I admit that I have been pretty ignorant of IaaS because I think the future leans more towards the more abstracted cloud technologies long-term for end-users. But, at the moment, I admit, in the majority of circumstances we still have to bother with hardware, servers, and all that hassle, and my ideal of it all being abstracted away is years off. Now I know that many people in the infrastructure world have been using services like EC2 for a while, I am not claiming to break any new ground here. The purpose of this post is to see if a layman like myself, someone with very little technical infrastructure knowledge or experience, can register for Amazon Web Services and set up an enterprise grade Windows 2008 Server with SQL Server 2008 installed. That's it. Now this is all motivated by the hassle I have had in the past getting through the process for provisioning hardware and software - forms, teams, people, licensing, procurement, logistics, installation team, configuration team etc etc. Wouldn't it be great to press a button to magically produce the hardware/software that I need? And how long would it take?

Timer at the ready...lets see if Amazon can meet my expectations, here's what I did:

• 8pm: Registered for Amazon Web Services. I just used my regular Amazon Id that I use for shopping (!) and ran through some basic screens to register, including entering my card information for billing.  AWS bill for what you use, so no initial payment, no fee for hardware, software, anything.

This gave me access to my Amazon Web Services Account screen.  Here I can view usage reports, billing information etc. But no time for that. I am against the clock, need to create my server!

•  8.05pm: Quick quick! Must create server. I see a link 'AWS Management Console', ah, that looks a likely candidate so I click on that.

Interesting, lots of options. Based on my knowledge 'EC2' is what I am after to create my server. I click on the tab, but I get a message saying that area is still provisioning, but should just take a few minutes. Doh. Well, I may as well see what the other tabs are, all included with my account:


Elastic Beanstalk: Great name. Basically you can deploy Java apps here and Amazon will sort out the hardware somehow.
S3: For storage. I create a 'bucket' in here just for fun. Ah, can upload files up to 5 Terabytes each. I feel the power I am wielding is pretty significant.
EC2: Now, I know a bit about this. Create virtual servers in the cloud. Can create them based on templates, so the one I am gunning for is some kind of beast of a server with Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 pre-installed. But still waiting for this area to be provisioned.
VPC: Virtual Private Cloud: Allows Amazon infrastructure to be a logical extension of a company internal infrastructure - ie extend their firewalls to the Amazon infrastructure etc.

Oh, you can read about the rest at http://aws.amazon.com/......back to the story...

• 8.56pm: I get an email saying EC2 is ready, so I dive in, click on the tab and find an appropriate server template (AMI in Amazon speak), this one looks like what I want:

So I click 'select', run through a wizard and launch my instance, within seconds it is ready. I get a remote desktop shortcut to download to easily access my instance and a password. I double click on the shortcut. I am in.

• 9.10pm: Whoah, I have accessed my server. The spec looks good, I am sure someone with a bit more infrastructure know-how could interpret better, but 64 bit, 7.5gb, 2.25 ghz Xeon processor sounds reasonable anyway:

• 9.20pm: And now I have accessed SQL Server, created my table, and started creating some columns (granted, not the most thrilling of climaxes, but stay with me). Experiment complete!

So, I have provisioned an enterprise grade server, ready to use, with SQL Server 2008 installed, in under 1.5hrs. And I have no expertise in this area really. Am I impressed with AWS? You bet. Of course there are all kinds of questions over cost and issues for actual use in anger which I am not in a position to answer. But an area worth exploring to take away the can of worms that is infrastructure provisioning? Definitely. 'Click click click' and our servers are ready...get me there please.

**Update 14/03/2011: At approximately 11.30pm on the night of 13/03/2011, my experiment AWS account became self-aware and charged me through the nose (or I may not quite have understood the pricing model).....laymen be aware.

Salesforce.com Service Cloud 3 - WINNER? Tiger Blood?

Charlie Sheen has recently redefined the concept of 'Winner'. At least he is taking a radical and different approach to being a WINNER, which is entertaining, if not entirely sustainable.
In a similar way, salesforce.com love to be a winner, and have some innovative (maybe not as innovative as Sheen) ways of going about it. Service Cloud 3 has just been announced by salesforce.com in their latest attempt to steamroll the service call center market. With my experience of RightNow Technologies, I got a pretty good grasp of a best practice service call centre solution. RightNow is great at the service call centre stuff. Salesforce has been lagging behind for a number of years, but recently they have invested heavily in catching up. Have they bolstered their offering enough to eclipse RightNow? My verdict is that they have maybe concentrated too much on the bells and whistles and not quite enough on some core concepts. But at the same time, love the long-term path they forging. So, without further ado, 'The Good', 'The Bad' and 'The Ugly'.

The Good

• Social: Well, this is where it's at isnt it? Facebook is king, and so at last they have developed a link into that channel via 'Salesforce for Facebook'. They already have 'Salesforce for Twitter' which I am mighty impressed with having implemented it recently, and now they have covered the Facebook channel this is complete as far as my view of social is concerned. Why would you bother looking at any other 'social' platforms? Actually Twitter has a way to go to become mainstream (domain of nerds, analysts and celeb stalkers really at the moment), but is fast getting there (cheers Sheen). Facebook IS mainstream. So well done salesforce for filling the Facebook gap. Radion 6 integration looks promising also.
• Cost: All credit to salesforce for providing the Twitter and Facebook add-ons for free
• Chat: Again, a big gap filled here by what they are calling 'Salesforce Live Agent'. Salesforce bought Activa last year, and it seems by all accounts that they have a pre-built solution here that will sort out the Chat space.

The Bad

• Matching to an existing customer: Social is all well and good, but you grab these tweets, or facebook posts, and how do you match them to a customer within your existing database to maintain the 'single view'? Unsure about how the this will be achieved through Facebook, but with Twitter, you need the Twitter ID. And if I am a company, with my database of customer, I have very few, if any, Twitter IDs against them. To get there, will require a gradual, and likely MANUAL build up of Twitter IDs within the current customer database. Painful, gradual, manual, but inevitable.
• The basics: This annoys me release after release. Salesforce love the bells and whistles, but they fall short on the basics. For instance, Cases can come in and be assigned to a queue, but there is no round robin or ondemand pull from the queues to the agents. The only option is to have the agents cherry pick (call centre managers hate that). You can talk about grabbing appexchange 'black boxes' to address this all you want, but having standard config flexibility in these areas in a similar way to RightNow would solve a lot of headache. RightNow supports so many common customer requirements which can be configured with the flick of a few switches. The response 'write APEX' is not good enough from a salesforce.com point of view.
• Cost: The Knowledge module adds on additional cost to the base service platform. Knowledge is a fundamental part of a successful service call centre, and an effective way of deflecting calls and making the customer self sufficient. The cost of Salesforce Knowledge is prohibitive when you compare to RightNow where that is not only included, but is the central pillar of the app. Deflecting calls via their public facing knowledge module is such a powerful and measurable sell, I cannot understand why salesforce do not just bundle it in their standard Service Cloud license.
• Support: Salesforce for Twitter is not officially supported by salesforce. Got a problem? Legally, you are on your own. I suspect Salesforce for Facebook will follow a similar model - "It's free, so off you go, bye."

The Ugly

• Agent Console: Salesforce have introduced the brand spanking new agent console with a focus on multitasking (a bit slow to be honest), but they have left the old one, which is more 'single task' focused behind. Single Task or Multi-Task? It depends on the call centre, but both are common. Being currently involved in an implementation with a 'single task' agent focus, using the old console with ugly old UI is frustrating.

So, that is my high level verdict on Service Cloud 3. Overall, full marks for innovation effort to Salesforce as always, it is coming together. I am now going to tweet Charlie to see if he thinks if Service Cloud 3 is a "bitchin rock star from Mars". Only then will it get the proper stamp of approval.

SaaS - Disruption does not warrant Craziness

So, I have started to use the Cloud Compass on the left to give immediate context to these posts, more about that here.

Anyway, this post is about SaaS craziness. SaaS is firmly in the technology mainstream now in various guises, and there is no argument it has been disruptive. From Facebook to Google Apps to Salesforce.com, this kind of easy access to constantly maturing applications has resulted in a burst of popularity in accessing powerful applications online, superseding the hassle of locally hosting them. I doubt Facebook would be as popular if it came on a CD.

I agree with Google that all apps will eventually move to the Cloud, but while we are in this transition period I am seeing a bit of craziness from end-users and system integrators as they get to grips with the SaaS model. I will give 3 examples:

• Google Apps 
• Background: There are a few companies moving to Google Apps and certainly the technology is now hitting the point where it is mature enough for enterprise use. Certainly the 'single version to share' concept for docs, spreadsheets, diagrams etc is a step change from emailing attachments around.
• The craziness: I have seen companies go live with this, and get into an awful muddle. Links to drawings and documents flying around, completely unmanaged. People creating google sites with links all over the place when they should just be creating a single document. Chaos. It's like any kind of document management best practice is hurled out the window because 'we are now collaborative'. "Poppycock". As my Gran would probably say. 
• The way forward: Now, I think Google docs, spreadsheets, drawings and sites are now great tools, but I am in no doubt that 'best practice' in how to use and properly manage them is something companies will be crying out for as this area grows. My opinion is to 'begin with the end in mind'. If you need to create a point in time document which is going to be referenced by others at that point, the 'doc' tool is the way. If you are wanting to build up a knowledge-base or project management repository over time with no defined end, use the 'site' tool. The 'spreadsheet' tool is great for capturing and maintaining table based data such as 'Action Logs' etc, and the 'drawing' tool is not bad for collaborative diagrams but still a bit to go on that one. Maintaining links to all of this in a google site in a similar organized way you used to in file directories - yes yes yes. Again, evolve but don't leave best practice behind.
• Salesforce.com
• Background: This is bursting in popularity and is a great SaaS CRM app which is evolving at a rapid rate. Certainly leading in it's field and an easily accessible solution for companies of all sizes, or even departments within companies that have turned their back on the IT dept.
• The Craziness: There is a misconception that because it is easy to set up, it requires less management than a traditional CRM app. Certainly in the case of departmental deployments outside of the IT side of the business. The business feel 'empowered', they have their own CRM app and can manage it how they wish, no more shackles of IT! Even IT may just think they can be left to get on with it because it is 'SaaS'. But this means that the best practice of Change Management, Release Management, Design etc, which IT tend to be skilled in, is not present. So the nice SaaS app, quick to change, 'agile' even :-), turns into a hulking great Frankenstein of a thing because it is not managed correctly. Oh, and the instance that has been set up in the 'other' department gets itself in the same mess. And the one over in Germany which they set up etc etc. It effectively becomes the 'multiple excel sheet problem' all over again. And somewhere down the line there will be a transformation project to consolidate the instances I guess. Really needs to be a strategic company move rather than departmental tactical.
• The way forward: IT need to be involved, but not to the same extent as they traditionally have been. 'Seeding' an IT resource into the business is a good idea to provide the processes for Release Management, best practice design etc, and having them work with whatever system integrator may be in the picture. Certainly these instances need to be managed as part of the wider company portfolio and the business and IT need to work in the middle ground. And the vendor needs to recommend this, not just salesforce.com, but any SaaS vendor. Alternatively a tier 1 or tier 2 system integrator could perform this function.
• The 'SaaS Consultant' or 'SaaS Team' within a System Integrator
• Background: Most of the big system integrators are now forming 'SaaS' teams to deliver 'SaaS' solutions. These tend to cover the most popular SaaS products and just concentrate on these. Many of the big boys in this area have been aggressively recruiting SaaS Consultants in line with the growth of the SaaS solutions.
• The Craziness: The thing about this, is that there have never been 'On-Premise Solution' teams, or adverts for an 'On-Premise Consultant'. SaaS is just a software model, albeit the forward-thinking one. My guess is that internal politics stop the less lucrative SaaS solutions (ie faster to implement, less resource needed) being part of the 'CRM' or 'Supply Chain' technology offerings in many instances, where sales guys want to concentrate on the big bucks (Oracle, SAP etc). Therefore the forward thinkers within the company need to branch out and have their own 'SaaS' identity. Just a guess. However, I would think that as this crazy scenario becomes unsustainable when SaaS is the default option, the SaaS solutions will replace the traditional solutions in the context of big SI offerings. And so the cash cow dies...
• The way forward: An SI should combine SaaS and non-SaaS offerings under each functional area, be it CRM, or HR or whatever. Then, based on requirements, the appropriate solution is chosen for the customer. There are areas where SaaS is strong (CRM), and areas where on-premise is strong (ERP). But what you would not want is for a sale to be bias towards a certain technology because the technology options matching a certain functional area are silo-ed in different teams within the SI. ie if the 'CRM Team' of an SI engages with a client for a sale, you would not want the technology options to be based on a subset of those available within the domain because some are covered by the 'CRM Team' and some by the 'SaaS (!!?) Team'. All CRM options should be covered under a CRM team, simple.

So, just 3 areas where I have seen strange things connected with the 'SaaS' disruption. Regarding the google apps and salesforce.com ones I am working on the best models based on what I believe to be effective in my experience. It's all about balance and adapting best practice, but not leaving it eating dust in the rush to SaaS.

Cloud Orientation - The Cloud Compass

My initial intention for this blog was for it to be about something else and have some diagram at the top, which would then appear in all posts, to orient the reader into which area of 'Cloud' I was talking about. I think the major problem with the term 'Cloud' is that it is an umbrella term for several different levels of technology abstraction, and this leads to confusion. So when I was putting together this little diagram I got a bit bogged down in it, and have decided that before I proceed with more posts, I would explain it rather than sticking it at the top without any context. I call the diagram the 'Cloud Compass'. Its not even a compass, but it is at least round, and I just like alliteration. And I am only talking about Public Cloud here, I don't think Private Cloud will fly long term, agree completely with this and this from Phil Wainewright. So here it is:

The Clouds over Cricklewood 'Cloud Compass' ('CCCC', catchy)

So this is the 'picture' of the cloud that I have in my head. Now, my intention for each blog post is to shove this up at the top without the arrows, and just colour the parts of cloud that I am NOT talking about grey. Revolutionary! Not really, but it should give the reader orientation. So, anyway, here is the explanation before I do that. I think the key to cloud value is abstraction to progress to the point where technology becomes easier, faster, clearer etc to implement. I think over time hardware will become less and less relevant for end-user companies to the point where IaaS will pretty much be exclusively be used by ISVs. Anyway, a bit of explanation of the segments:

• IaaS Level 1 Abstraction - Virtual Infrastructure (eg Amazon EC2 Running Linux): This refers to just replicating hardware. Which is pretty much what Amazon EC2 does. 
• IaaS Level 2 Abstration - Hmm, I felt IaaS had to be split because companies are introducing a layer on top of hardware which abstracts it, but not to the degree that it is PaaS. I feel Database.com fits there. Discuss.
• PaaS Level 1 Abstration - If you look at something like VMForce vs Force.com, there is certainly a difference in the skills you need to get going with each one. VMForce provides a Java coding framework, but not the kind of point and click environment that you get with Force.com. Of course you can code on Force.com, but given the extent of build you can do without coding, I feel the split is valid.
• PaaS Level 2 Abstraction - Something like Force.com where you have a balance of 'point and click' environment complimented with code.
• SaaS - The end-user application, with some high-level configuration able to be done by end-user Admins (ie add Products, change profile permissions etc). Something like SuccessFactors, WorkDay or Salesforce.com Service Cloud. (yes there is an overlap with PaaS there but never mind)

As you go from top to bottom here, there should be an increase in speed of delivery and stability, but possibly some 'give' in flexibility. I would suggest that when companies are looking for their 'sweet-spot' here in line with their requirements, they start from bottom to top.

So, just as a preview my next post will not be about 'Cloud' because that is too general a term of course. It will be about (the blue wedges):

There....nothing revolutionary, but will help me give context to my posts.

So why do I rave 'Cloud'? My cloud journey...

The point of this post, is to just quickly rattle through the journey I have been through, which has resulted in me being a big proponent of the cloud model. It is a bit technology focused, and CRM focused, and specifically SaaS/PaaS focussed. I make no apologies for any of those, its just the path my career has gone, but gives a me a good 'real-life' basis for this blog.

But I do apologise for the picture on the left. Was the first one that came up when I searched for 'journey'. You may like it, which is fine, but just make sure you don't like it too much.

So, to cut a long story short, my journey to 'cloud' was CRM-led, in various consultant roles and went a bit like this over about 11 years: MS Access (surely everyone started here).....Siebel (clever stuff at the time)......More Siebel.......RightNow Technologies (wow, bundles of value delivered super-quick)........Oracle CRM OnDemand (hmmm, abstracted Siebel but not very flexible).........Salesforce.com (now we are seeing something really clever here).

Of course, I mention nothing above about the success of the deployments, business benefit delivered etc. What I want to focus on here are my thoughts about this journey from a technology point of view, leading to a justification of why, purely based on my experiences, I think the cloud model is the way forward technology-wise. So:

MS Access: A useful data manipulation utility but not a CRM platform......next!......

Siebel: I have spent more time delivering Siebel than anything else. From 2000 to now it has both improved functionality-wise and become more bloated as the years have passed. You take Siebel out of the box now and look at the data model, it is enormous, and any one customer will usually need only need a fraction of it to support their business. I will get on to salesforce.com, but I prefer their approach of providing a minimal data model with the ability to add to it, or remove from it, really quickly according to client requirements. (not getting into the Siebel vs salesforce.com debate quite yet though).

The main beef I have with Siebel though is that more modern platforms (cloud based) have superseded it in terms of level of abstraction. Siebel does not require coders as such, but it is pretty damn complex and time consuming to configure. Also the number of moving parts (gateway server, siebel server etc) and hardware setup, give propensity for instability. Customization impacts performance to too great a degree also. So, in my search for the 'next best thing' I completed a few projects using....

RightNow Technologies: My first real foray into the world of cloud computing in 2008 (well, SaaS), and this, though not without its limitations, really impressed me with it's value. Its probably even better now. Siebel call center projects tended to last around 6 mths to infinity. This could be deployed in as little as 3 days, including web self-service and internal agent consoles. Generally the time-lines were greater than 3 days (up to maybe 3 mths) to meet specific client requirements, but the thing that hit me here was the amount of functionality 'out of the box'.

RightNow included a great web based customer facing knowledgebase, ability for customers to directly raise incidents from the web, or email them into the central app, wonderful threading of communications. Also many 'switches' to switch on or off rich pre-built automation made it very fast to deliver (bigger building blocks than Siebel). The level of abstraction was beyond what I had seen with Siebel also, configuration of the app was incredibly rapid, and realtime, and pretty much everything WORKED FIRST TIME. And no servers required - it was a little strange as it required a small local install to power the UI, a bit like an iPhone app - but all this value with no hardware, I could see the potential. I decided to look at what Oracle were doing in this space in 2009....

Oracle CRM OnDemand: 100% web-based, built on the Siebel data model, but abstracting away the more cumbersome configuration and in turn reducing flexibility, there was an idea banded about that customers would purchase this as a starter then transition into paying bucket-loads for the full Siebel offering. Or maybe have a 'hybrid' landscape with Siebel AND Oracle CRM OnDemand. And integrate them somehow. Hmmm, unsure whether much of that has significantly come to fruition. But in its own right Oracle CRM OnDemand seemed like a decent SaaS SFA application, though could not hold a candle to RightNow in terms of Service and Marketing. The big sell was the Analytical capability which I admit I did not have enough time to delve into, but by all accounts, for SaaS CRM analytics, it was ahead of everything else. Anyway, after tinkering a little bit with this and hitting restrictions in terms of data-model extensions and losing faith with their incredibly minor upgrades, my head was turned by......

Salesforce.com: In parallel with the above, I decided to tinker with the 100% web-based salesforce.com (through a charity project), and subsequently have completed many enterprise CRM projects using salesforce.com as the tech platform. I was aware of several deployments for large customers, so I was very interested in what this offered. The part that interested me most of all was the claim to be a 'platform', thus suggesting flexibility/extendability. Siebel is pretty much a 'platform' with the ability to extend the data model and having its own proprietary coding language (eScript) when you run out of 'point and click' config options. RightNow and Oracle CRM OnDemand less so, you would need to involve the vendor to extend the RightNow data model (not so anymore to be fair). OCOD did not have any documented ways of extending the data model beyond the packaged extra objects or and did not have an equivalent to APEX/VisualForce. I quickly came to realise that salesforce.com was pretty much the obvious SaaS equivalent of the Siebel platform. You can extend the app with lots of 'point and click' options, you can add automation code (APEX), and custom UI components (VisualForce), it has some great standard functionality (report builder, approval etc), all in a very standardized and consistent environment.

But its a bit more than that. It has the advantage of simply being developed from the ground up more recently than Siebel, and this is reflected both in the speed/stability of development and end-user experience. Also, it benefits from more frequent and significant upgrades than Siebel (multi-tenancy being key to this - if it aint multi-tenant, it aint proper cloud). But could salesforce.com handle a Siebel-scale application? The real test came earlier in 2010 when I led a team to complete a complex enterprise Siebel->salesforce.com transition project. The salesforce.com platform stood up incredibly well. In terms of multiple environments, integration, stability and performance, pretty much flawless (and users like it). I don't want to sing salesforce.com praises too much, there are still gaps they need to address to match Siebel in certain areas where there is too much reliance on coding (it is crying out for an equivalent of Siebel workflow), but the upsides have far outweighed the downsides. And they are on a proper innovation mission which their cloud model allows them to execute at a decent pace.


So, my journey to the cloud is pretty much to do with the fact that salesforce.com superseded Siebel as the modern day CRM platform of choice for projects I worked on, and I have since intentionally taken on more salesforce.com related engagement management due to the fact I favor it. No-way will I go back to the hassle of non-cloud apps. I cant justify charging a client for my team spending time fiddling with layers that have been successfully abstracted away in the cloud world.

Looking forward to 2011 I see cloud taking an even greater hold, and being the default for CRM. I like Ray Wang's recent prediction post and Phil Wainewright's 6 big trend to watch in 2011. Salesforce.com seems to have Paul Greenberg's backing also as the one to watch in 2011 so all is boding well there.  I just want Cloud Computing to continue to abstract away the nuts and bolts and let us continue to shift focus from technology issues to providing decent business benefit and less project headache.