Tjeerd Edelman

Dec. 29,2022 | Software, SaaS, Splunk

Splunk fiscal year end is coming up this January 31st and as a result, many deals are set to renew or are aggressively pursued by the sales teams to close as net new business. Splunk is a clever play of words, it is derived from the word “spelunking which means exploring the information of caves. It was developed by Rob Das and Eric Swan in 2003 as a search engine for the log files that are stored in the infrastructure of a system. The main goal of the founders was to market this developing technology in bulk so that it can be deployed in almost all kinds of use cases possible. Splunk went public on April 19th, 2012, with a $17 strike price ...

Dave Young

Dec. 28,2022 | Software, VMware

Big changes are in store for current and soon to be VMware customers. And wherever we see big changes with our major suppliers, the fallout typically lands in two categories for their respective customers. 1) Those who see it coming and plan accordingly, and 2) those that take no action and let things happen to them. That latter category will end up paying a premium for years to come over their peers for the exact same products and services. With all the current happenings at VMware, now is the perfect time to analyze your current and or projected spend and plan accordingly so you can take advantage of this change, rather than become a ...

Scott Braden

Dec. 28,2022 | Software, Anaplan

Introduction Anaplan connects people, data, and plans in real-time in its cloud environment to help customers democratize decision-making across all lines of business and business activities, from strategic to operational levels. Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) As a step beyond traditional business intelligence, Anaplan offers a cloud-based subscription for its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software — enabling planning, modeling, and collaboration services to power better business decisions and drive better enterprise performance. Anaplan offers a simple interface to its Smart Business Platform, combining connection, ...

Scott Braden

Dec. 28,2022 | Negotiation, Fiscal Year End, Okta

Your Virtual Bouncer, Now Larger and Stronger and (Soon) Profitable But how secure is Okta, really? From 2021 to 2022 Okta grew from $835 million to $1.3 billion in top line revenue, a 55.63% increase, indicating strong market acceptance. However, the company is still losing money, and losses accelerated by 218.55% in 2022 to -$848M. If you need security from the occasional undesirable intruder in your enterprise and need to convey strength in the way you control access to the information you hold most dear by restricting access to unwelcomed guests and bouncing them from your cloud, you may very well need to learn more about Okta. However, ...

Fred Teekens

Dec. 28,2022 | Software, Coupa

Coupa’s rise in the SaaS Business Spend Management sector has been impressive since its founding in 2006. Since its stock traded at an all-time high in 2021 at over $350/share, it’s been a rocky road for the company. In a market with greater competition and an economy putting inflationary pressure on companies, Coupa has found both its market cap and stock price plummeting since that high water mark. Since the very start of 2022, Coupa has been targeted as a potential acquisition, and as of this week – that’s what happened with Private Equity firm Thoma Bravo has agreed to an $8B takeover. With Thoma Bravo, trying to acquire, they may be in ...

Michael Welsh

Dec. 28,2022 | SaaS, Cloud, CRM, Salesforce

Salesforce has led the market for years. We have pointed to Salesforce as the culprit who broke the early promise of software as a service as (SaaS). SaaS was supposed to be elastic with demand allowing costs to go both up and down. Historically, we know that Salesforce is supportive of increases in their customers' cost but it has been punitive to reductions. With Salesforce’s fiscal year-end coming at the end of January 2023, now is a great time to re-evaluate your deployment and at the very least benchmark to see how your spend compares to the market. But first, more on Salesforce themselves…. Things 'they are a changin' in ...

Andrea Alterman

Dec. 28,2022 | HCM, Workday

Workday has become ‘the rock’ of the HCM market and has been for some time. Like so many others, Workday started out as the small innovator and market disruptor and has become the standard by which HCM software is measured. They deservedly earned this moniker as they continued (for the most part) their spirit of rapid innovation coupled with operating stability that their customers could rely on. IF Workday said they were going to deliver, they usually did. You might say they have gained in certain circles the same moniker that IBM once held (but no longer) in their heyday which was ‘No one ever got fired for hiring IBM’. But we have to ask ...

Michael Welsh

Dec. 28,2022 | Software, SaaS, Snowflake

These days the whole world sometimes feels like a Snowflake… and by that we mean that growth is slowing, and stocks are generally down as reality sets in. Snowflake, the company, is still growing but nowhere near the breakneck speed of the good (?) old days. Macroeconomic factors may be contributing to that, but we believe that, like our clients, the market for Snowflake has figured out that deployments need to be actively managed so that the negotiated costs are not exceeded. Early Snowflake customers learned the hard way that their first agreement would ultimately set the floor for what they would spend, eventually understanding that their ...

Austin Zolman

Nov. 30,2022 | Negotiation, Savings Cloud, Announcements, Vendor Management

With recent announcements from Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Coinbase, Twitter, and Meta (among others) indicating that there would be cuts to staffing in the coming weeks and months, it’s clear that the recession is in full force. As outlined in my previous blog, we discouraged organizations from making drastic changes to the muscle (the workforce) and bone (the facilities) of their organizations. Yet, many of the big-tech powerhouses (like the ones mentioned above) have been announcing job cuts to curb recessionary pressures. Cutting costs and managing value through downturns can be a far tougher challenge for SME’s than their large ...

Michael Welsh

Nov. 29,2022 | Insider, Oracle, Cloud

As we are well into calendar Q4, several tech companies have announced layoffs and cutbacks as they prepare to weather inflation and the impending recession storm. Despite all the great news coming out of Oracle from their Q1 2023 report (announced September 12, 2022), they have been laying off employees throughout the course of 2022 on the heels of their Cerner acquisition in their quest to cut $1B in cost in the name of synergy. Somewhat surprising to us; however, is that they are also laying off from their OCI group (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure). Given their claims of robust cloud growth that they talk about to Wall Street in their Q1 ...