Steven Zolman

Dec. 5,2018 | Mainframe, Cognitive Transformation, IBM, Cloud

We are still waiting for the great IBM turnaround led by Ginny Rometty since her installment as CEO in 2012. IBM has pinned its turnaround on Watson AI, Blockchain and now “Hybrid Cloud” with the RedHat acquisition. IBM’s “turnaround” has resulted in 22 out of 25 quarters of declining earnings. To be fair, it’s the last three quarters that have shown growth, not driven by its strategic imperatives but rather has been provided by (drum roll please) – mainframe. Yes, the good old mainframe, with upgrades and increased storage needs driving strong revenue in Q2 and Q3. How the mighty have fallen, or better said, continue to fall as we have been ...

Steven Zolman

Sep. 27,2018 | Procurement, Audit, Supplier Management, Negotiation, CFO, Cloud

‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...

Scott Braden

Aug. 29,2018 | news, Software, Office365, SaaS, Microsoft, Cloud

You may recall from our alert in July, Microsoft has substantial changes to their pricing due to take effect October 1, 2018. This pricing will cascade globally from Redmond product managers. As a result, we anticipate an incredibly busy September as customers try to understand what the impact will be and how best to optimize their agreements. The actual pricing is due to be available to resellers on September 1, 2018 and will likely become widely available soon after. In addition to the changes we previously communicated (see below), here are a few of the latest updates that have come to our attention: “Level A” is going away. Any Microsoft ...

Andrea Alterman

Aug. 29,2018 | Software, Procurement, Market Alerts, Negotiation, Cloud, HCM, Workday

Its been a long time since HCM solutions were primarily used for ‘counting noses’. Companies large and small understand the strategic value in their workforce and are aggressively using HCM solutions to support their investment, and HCM providers know it. Between emerging technology, disruptive companies, mergers and acquisitions, changing licensing models, cloud migrations, and much more, to say today’s HCM software market is under rapid change would be a massive understatement. Unfortunately, none of us really have the luxury of ignoring these changes lest we be left in the wake of overpaying for a non-compliant, underperforming, and ...

Scott Braden

Jul. 30,2018 | news, Software, Microsoft, Cloud

True to their usual schedule, Microsoft has announced some substantial changes to their pricing policies, along with some price increases to Office and Windows licenses / subscriptions, to be effective October 2018. There are some significant changes hidden in Microsoft’s bland language – most notably “Removing the programmatic volume discounts (Level A and Open Level C) in Enterprise Agreement (EA)/EA Subscription, MPSA, Select/ Select Plus, and Open programs (Open, Open Value, Open Value Subscription)” - which will in effect cause substantial price increases for the majority of small and medium businesses with fewer than 2,400 PCs/users. ...

Tjeerd Edelman

Jun. 28,2018 | Software, SaaS, Cloud

Recently I asked myself this question: when did the words ‘cloud computing’ become the common expression to simply explain a network of remote servers? According to Technology Review, it can be traced back twenty two years ago to 1996. Inside the offices of Compaq Computer a small group of technology executives were plotting the future of the Internet business and calling it “cloud computing.” Not only would all business software move to the Web, but what they termed “cloud computing-enabled applications” would become common. In 2018, cloud computing has become a ubiquitous piece of jargon that many find annoying, but also hard to avoid. And ...