Undeniably, there is a cultural shift going on – and despite lingering security concerns and fears of supplier lock-in, our clients (like many others) are moving to the cloud with increasing confidence that the cost savings, operating efficiencies, and improved services levels are quite worth the perceived increase in risk of additional supplier accountability for security and data issues. In the last couple weeks, as I have participated in two conferences, numerous clients have asked me about Oracle’s cloud strategy. It’s no doubt that Larry Ellison, who famously denounced the cloud in 2005, is not necessarily the first one you think about ...
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Of course they do. Software companies design complexity into their licensing terms, and the result is that customers are unable to ever be sure they are completely in compliance with the license terms. This problem is endemic to the industry and is well known by every observer of the sector. As the soft economic cycle continues, the IT media is full of stories warning of software companies increasing audits. The connection is obvious - if revenues decline due to slow customer purchases, then the software companies can simply turn to their enforcement arms in order to make up the revenue shortfall. A rational observer can only conclude that ...
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Last July, NET(net) analyzed the consolidating Talent Management Systems market following SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors in December 2011 and Oracle’s acquisition of Taleo in January of 2012. Since then, our prediction of further market consolidation continues to materialize. The most recent update is as a result of IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa for $1.3 billion in August, which appears to position IBM to compete more directly against Oracle / Taleo and SAP / SuccessFactors. Kenexa has been struggling to make money since 2007. Last year, they generated revenue of $283 million (a 44% increase year over year), but still managed to post a ...
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In one case with our client, we were working with their business consultant, and the software supplier they recommended for an enterprise applications deal. The software supplier recommended a value added reseller (VAR), and the client also needed a systems integrator. It was also decided to host and manage the application, and two providers were needed for this. Due to incomplete software in the core offering, the client also needed to buy some third party applications, and also hired a development company to write needed custom software. Further, the client needed to purchase additional networking equipment, processing equipment, and ...
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This month, NET(net), the market leading IT Investment Optimization firm, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. This is a meaningful milestone considering only 2 out of 100 companies make it to 10 years. It all started with a simple but brilliant business model crafted by NET(net)’s Founder and CEO, Steven Zolman. Steve’s mission for NET(net) was and is to be the premier source of IT supplier market intelligence to help our global clients optimize their IT investments, agreements, and relationships with key technology suppliers. Reflecting on the last 10 years, it has been an amazing run advocating for our client’s needs and creating ...
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Has Ballmer’s regime sneakily turned Microsoft from the starry-eyed tech dreamers that Gates left, into flinty-eyed bloodsuckers now? As the stock brokerage commercials say, past performance is no guarantee of the future... but what else do we have to go on? So let's review some Microsoft history: After establishing market dominance with DOS (a story that itself is full of questionable business tactics), Microsoft quickly realized the value of bundling products together in order to claim market share and crowd out competitors. Microsoft introduced Office in 1990, the same year that the US Federal Trade Commission began an investigation into ...
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Competition is good for the consumer and in enterprise networking, it almost always leads to better deals for our clients. However, there continues to be a love affair with Cisco gear, both on the edge and the core that makes the job of introducing a legitimate competitive threat difficult. Cisco has great gear in most cases, particularly in the core, but at what price? Cisco is consistently more expensive apples to apples, with legitimate lower cost options from Brocade (including legacy Foundry), Juniper and Huawei, as the most notable examples, with comparable functionality that meets most enterprises’ need. Sure, there might be some ...
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Outsourcing has changed over the past few years and three things NET(net) is seeing in the market are: 1) A significant increase in the levels of client dissatisfaction with their outsourcing agreements 2) A focus on smaller, more manageable, strategic, multi-sourcing agreements with more specialized suppliers 3) Because of these and other factors, we have seen a tripling of the volume of outsourcing deals while overall outsourcing spend has not significantly increased. So, what does all this mean to you? It means that outsourcing has become more complex and more focused at the same time. Companies are moving away from large, monolithic ...
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Clients are constantly asking NET(net) about the cloud. They largely think it offers some benefits in terms of lower cost, quicker deployments, and higher subscription based elasticity. In a recent client survey, just over 80% of clients believed that these were the top 3 benefits of ‘moving to the cloud’. Clients also consistently express concerns about the cloud as well, and like the advantages, it comes down largely to three reasons. In this same survey, clients suggested that they were mostly concerned with security, virtualization, and wrongful data exposure. What’s really interesting, is that while the concerns are largely all good ...
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Much has changed since our first detailed analysis of the talent management markets back in 2008. The software oligopoly of SAP and Oracle have significantly changed their views from their previous position that HR software was best served up as part of a monolithic software suite that was on premise in their customer’s data centers to now offering cloud solutions through SuccessFactors and Taleo by acquisitions, respectively. Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison is sort of infamous for his outright dismissal of the cloud, only to later capitulate on his earlier provocative statements and launch Oracle high into the cloud with both arms up as most ...
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