Is Enterprise Software Dead? (Part 2)
Posted by Bryon in Future Thoughts, Random Thoughts, Thoughts On SaaS on July 26, 2010
10 days ago I posted a somewhat provocative post questioning whether enterprise software was dead. Based on the results of the Gartner Executive Program 2010 CIO Survey, Enterprise Software experienced a dramatic decline in the list of top priorities of CIOs who where included in the survey. After a fairly steady #2 in the list the past four years, Enterprise software plummeted all the way off the top ten, to land at the eleventh most pressing priority for CIO. While the survey results are interesting, being the inquisitive individual that I am I want to understand what this means.
Is Enterprise Software dead?
In response to the specific question of whether Enterprise Software is dead, I would argue that the answer is a resounding NO. Enterprise software is the lifeblood of many organizations, controlling the flow of money and product between an organization and their customers and/or employees. A modern enterprise could not function without the ability to execute these types of transactions. It gets to the heart of commerce and commerce is what sustains nearly all organization (excluding government and/or mission-driven organizations).
While Enterprise Software isn’t necessarily dead, what is happening is a dramatic shift in how these types of applications are delivered to customers. As highlighted in the newer entries in the top ten of the list of CIO priorities in the Gartner survey, the top three are virtualization, cloud computing, and Web 2.0. In each of these three new top priorities, one can extrapolate that Enterprise Software is interwoven (web 2.0 is a bit of a stretch, but not much). As organizations look to deliver greater return on investment in their technology assets and CIOs look to deliver efficiencies, both server virtualization and cloud computing have substantial impacts on Enterprise Software.
Virtualization – Without going into too much technology speak, virtualization technologies permit organizations to harness the processing power of multiple smaller, more efficient (and less expensive), and typically standardized servers into a single “virtual” server. Rather than having to purchase a larger server which at times may only run at 20% of capacity, reflecting 80% inefficiency, virtualized servers allow you to dynamically balance server utilization based on need and harness extra processing power when needed and lend it elsewhere when it isn’t needed. In short, it helps to fill in the peaks and valleys in server utilization, resulting in fewer servers in the data center and greater utilization of the servers that do exist. The financial impact of this for larger organizations can be quite substantial.
Cloud Computing – Cloud Computing is one of the most over-hyped and widely misunderstood terms. Without oversimplifying it, cloud computing is less about a specific technology and more about the mechanism by which a software solution is architected and delivered. Cloud Computing is often a term used interchangeably with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), referring to solutions which are offered to an enterprise on a subscription basis and accessed via a browser. What makes Cloud Computing really interesting is the fact that multiple companies run on a single installation of software and are all “segmented” in such a way that they will never bump into one another. I like to think of this as an apartment building where everyone has a private door. You all share the same infrastructure, walls, etc, yet can live without ever seeing a neighbor. Just as building apartments is cheaper than building stand alone houses of similar sizes due to economies of scale and the costs of common elements such as the lobby, roof, parking lot, etc are distributed across a larger number of individual owners.
As you can probably imagine, both of these technology solutions/approaches can easily adapt for the purposes of Enterprise Software. By running across virtualized servers an enterprise application can be run more efficiently, helping to drive towards a more standardized technology infrastructure and a more efficient use of hardware. Cloud computing can be used to help reduce the overall costs associated with running enterprise solutions within an organization, but with some limitations.
While the overall prioritization of Enterprise Software has declined in the latest CIO survey, Enterprise applications are far from dead – they’re just evolving.
Is Enterprise Software Dead?
Posted by Bryon in Future Thoughts, Random Thoughts on July 16, 2010
Big software, like ERP solutions from vendors like SAP and Oracle are what most large business use to run their operations. From supply chain logistics controlling how much product to order, from which supplier, at what price to human resources management solutions which help organizations keep track of their inventory of talent and produce payroll – it’s all part of what is called Enterprise Applications. Since the death of the mainframe, Enterprise Applications have been the lifeblood of many IT organizations and one of the largest initiatives on the mind of a typical CIO.
How do we know that what the top priorities of a CIO are? To help answer this questions, analysts from Gartner publish the results of their annual Executive Program CIO Survey which queries over 1,500 CIOs on their top priorities for the year. In the 2010 survey there was a remarkable absence from the top 10 priorities – Enterprise Applications
Gartner Executive Program CIO Survey, January 2010
After ranking as the second most pressing priority for CIOs, Enterprise Applications suddenly fell out of the top 10 slots. Equally interesting is that Cloud Computing has quickly shot up from #16 in 2009 and not ranked before then to #2 on the list.
While there are a number of questions that this study raises, the specific ones to consider for this post are:
- Is the sudden and dramatic shift in Cloud Computing an anomaly or an indication of something more substantial?
- How does Business Intelligence go from #1 to #5 behind several relatively new topics?
- Is the substantial decline of Enterprise Software’s ranking related to the sudden increase in focus on Cloud Computing?
- Is Enterprise Software Dead?
I have my own perspective on this one and will share it in a future post. Meanwhile, I would welcome your thoughts on this topic. Please join in the conversation by posting your comments.
Positions, Talent, and Oracle Fusion HCM – an OHUG Wrap-up
Posted by Bryon in Conference Thoughts, Random Thoughts, Thoughts On SaaS on June 29, 2010
As much as I would have liked to have posted this entry earlier, I’ve been trying to catch up after three quick days in Vegas for the Oracle HCM Users Group conference at the Mirage Hotel. This was the second year in a row that I’ve had an opportunity to attend OHUG and continue to be impressed with what I learn and who I meet at the event. I’m happy to report that I returned back to Chicago without any scandal, situation, or anything else that if it happened in Vegas I wouldn’t be able to talk about – oh, and I escaped with my wallet fully intact (actually up a few bucks but nothing worth bragging about).
First and foremost I wanted to share a quick update on Fusion Talent Management On-Demand which was demonstrated again this year. Oracle VP of Fusion HCM Strategy, Gretchen Alarcon, and Clive Swan Group VP of Application Development demonstrated several features of Fusion Talent Management which have not been demonstrated at the last three major Oracle events where Fusion was shown. This year Gretchen and Clive demonstrated some very impressive features of the yet-to-be-released product which rival many of the leading best-of-breed vendors including a highly dynamic 9-box tool for talent review and calibration which permitted you to not only graph your talent pool on a grid of performance and potential (or two other dimensions), but layer on top data points such as risk of loss impact of loss for each individual. Moreover, there is a feature to perform aggregation of talent on the grid by business unit, manager, location, etc in order to review trends and other talent data at a macro-level. I can honestly say that I can think of a million and one different ways of analyzing talent data using this tool.
In addition to the dynamic 9-box, Oracle demonstrated their network-at-work tool, a corporate version of a facebook-like social network tool but with a very business focus. Rather than trying to out-facebook Facebook, Oracle has chosen to take full advantage of the rich data that is housed within its own applications and layer on analytics to deliver a rich user experience to help employees create collaborate groups, find individuals who are similar to them for networking opportunities, search for people in roles that they aspire to reach at some point in the future, etc. While much of this has been done by other vendors, the breadth and depth of the data housed in Oracle’s applications provide the opportunity to hone in on greater connections than one might find with some best-of-breed applications.
While the functional demonstration of Fusion Talent Management was very well received, what I think is the most brilliant move by Oracle is that Fusion Talent Management can be deployed in a stand-alone environment, layered on top of a client’s existing PeopleSoft HCM or Oracle EBusiness Suite solution, not requiring a full-suite upgrade to deploy Fusion. While in the past Fusion had been positioned as a future path for PeopleSoft and EBS customers (and still can be), Oracle has changed their positioning such that Fusion and the current PS/EBS applications can co-exist, much to the relief of many IT departments who feared an upgrade would be necessary to deliver the richer user experience that their internal customers. Rather than Oracle defending its own territory against attack from best-of-breed vendors, My making the Fusion suite more modularized they’ve gone on the offensive and are preparing to deliver something that can not only match the best-of-breed on a features and functions perspective, but can do so without requiring HR to do battle with their IT organizations to venture outside of the Oracle product footprint. Well done Oracle!
As was so aptly highlighted by industry analyst Naomi Bloom of Bloom & Wallace in response to my live tweeting of the event, there remains a number of outstanding questions regarding how Fusion would actually work for existing customers. Naomi and I agree on a many things related to HRM data and the use of Position Management for talent management purposes is one of them. Without getting into too much detail, Position Management is both a set of functionality in PeopleSoft that is largely misunderstood and a business concept that historically has been rooted in budgetary processes more than anything else. Many PeopleSoft customers shied away from deploying position management because the concept was viewed as being too structured for their dynamic business or their implementation partner didn’t understand the functionality either and steered their customers away from using position management. Regardless of the reason, Position Management offers most PeopleSoft customers something that they are lacking – data quality and flexibility on role definition without approaching a 1:1 ratio of job codes to active employees.
At OHUG I had the opportunity to co-present with PeopleSoft customer CDW on how we’ve managed to harness the capabilities of position management in a way which has dramatically improved their ability to effectively leverage their automated talent management tools, and cut inaccurate data in PeopleSoft by half. We had a great audience and some great discussions on the various creative ways that position management can help not only provide budgetary controls but the seemingly vast ways in which it can enhance your talent management initiatives far beyond the norm.
Overall OHUG was a great event. It was proof positive that not only is the Oracle/PeopleSoft customer community is still very much alive and thriving but that Oracle still has a few tricks up their sleeve when it comes to HR Technology.
The Principal of Least Interest & Interactive Recruiting
Posted by Bryon in Future Thoughts, Random Thoughts, Thoughts About People on June 22, 2010
For years recruiters have been looking for the best way to reach those who are not actively looking for a job – passive candidates. For some reason that I don’t always agree with, the passive candidate is perceived to be more valuable than those who are actively seeking a job. There is a sociological theory called The Principal of Least Interest and what it means which I can see very much applying to why passive candidates are so attractive to recruiters. The principal of least interest is explained as such:
The individual who is least interested in a relationship has the greatest power
Its simple psychology that explains why we want what it is that we cannot have. If I want my 3 year old son to eat carrots, I just have to eat them and tell him that he cannot have any. In seconds he’ll be demanding that I share some with him and he’ll be eating carrots like they were made of pure sugar. Without directly comparing recruiting to my situation with my toddler, it does highlight an important aspect of reasons why recruiters covet passive candidates – because they’re not available.
There are plenty of well documented methods of connecting with passive candidates which include branding, social networking, and countless “old-school” methods of networking, etc. In an effort to cut through the clutter that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn present, my former employer Advertising Giant Leo Burnett has cooked up a great innovative way to reach their target candidates in a way that only an ad agency can – David On Demand. 
The Advertising Festival in Cannes France has quickly become a great recruitment vehicle for an organization that looks to hire only the best, brightest, and most creative professionals in the industry.
David on Demand is an interactive tool much like Ad Agency CrispinPorter+Bogusky’s Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King a few years back except instead of a pre-recorded, limited number of responses to users requests, David On Demand is a way for people to send messages via twitter to David Perez, a creative recruiter at Leo Burnett, telling him what to do while he’s out and about in Cannes. And to make sure he does what is requested, he’s installed a live-streaming webcam to his glasses, allowing users to see exactly what he’s doing 24/7.
This started as a creative way to attend an exclusive industry event in a location known for its nightlife as much as the events that the town hosts and has morphed into something much larger. I’m not sure if anyone realized ahead of time, but David has stumbled upon recruiting gold. How is this gold you ask?
As of this morning David already has 1381 fans of the David on Demand Facebook page, 3,628 followers of the David on Demand twitter account, and messages to David’s twitter account are pouring in nearly every minute of the day. Each interaction is with someone leaves a trail – a name, a twitter account, an email address, and more important than anything else a very unique impression of what makes Leo Burnett an amazing employer. This isn’t a professionally crafted culture video, a welcome statement from the CEO (usually crafted by a marketing or PR professional), or a slick brochure. It’s simply David out having fun, meeting people, and representing his agency in a highly visible way.
To bring it all full circle, Leo Burnett and David have discovered how to cut through the clutter and reach out to the highly coveted passive candidates in a way that few can ever hope to. In doing so, they have helped to shift the power of the discussion from the highly coveted candidate to the employer, by putting Leo Burnett in a position of having the least interest and thus the power in the conversations that take place from this point forward.
Shameless Self Promotion – I’ll be at Oracle HCM Users Group
Posted by Bryon in Conference Thoughts, Random Thoughts on June 9, 2010
Just a quick note to my readers to invite you to find me if you’ll be at the Oracle HCM Users Group in Las Vegas next week. I along with two incredibly talented individuals from CDW will be presenting on how to use PeopleSoft’s position management functionality to help better enable talent management processes.
Our session is scheduled Wednesday, June 13th at 10:30 am. If you’re planning on being in Las Vegas next week, please be sure to stop by and introduce yourself. I hope to see you there
How HR Technology is Like the New iPhone
Posted by Bryon in Random Thoughts on June 8, 2010
Editor’s note – This post is targeted largely to my readers in the United States, but might be applicable elsewhere based on the quality of the mobile carrier in your country that supports the Apple iPhone
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few days, you probably heard that Apple announced their fourth generation of the iPhone yesterday at the company’s annual world wide developers conference (WWDC). While news of a new iPhone was largely expected at the event since Apple has introduced each new iPhone at the WWDC the last several years. Additionally, due to a prototype phone being lost/stolen and pictures published on the internet, this year’s announcement held less surprise than in years past. What was the highlight of the event was not the phone and the great features, but rather during Steve Job’s unveiling Apple’s exclusive service provider in the US AT&T experienced a service hiccup which impacted the demonstration of the device a bit.
While service issues have plagued AT&T due largely to the overwhelming success of the iPhone and the substantial data demands, the same service issues will prevent new iPhone users from being to take full advantage of the advanced features of their new phone. I was a iPhone user for the past year and recently decided to abandon the iPhone, not because I wasn’t happy with the phone, but rather I was unable to reliably use the phone for its primary purpose – as a phone due to the ongoing service issues with AT&T. While making the switch I had to change networks, try a new smart phone and adapt to what was viewed as an inferior smartphone platform (Android).
The switch wasn’t without some drawbacks – I had to leave the simple, elegant user experience of the iPhone for a slightly more clunky Android user interface. I also lost the ability to surf the web, receive email, tweet, etc at the same time as being on a telephone call, and tight integration with iTunes for my music and videos. On the flip side I gained two things which were extremely important to me – multitasking (iPhone just got it yesterday) and highly reliable telephone service.
In short, the most compelling reason for me to abandon my iPhone was to be able to use my phone for its primary intended purpose, making phone calls.
As HR professionals we are constantly bombarded by email campaigns, vendor phone calls, booths & sponsorships at conferences and advertisements in journals we read for slick new software which promise to make performance appraisals more efficient/effective, assessing candidates more accurately, digital delivery of just-in-time learning all wrapped up with amazingly insightful analytics and reporting. Many companies are lured into buying these products only to find out later down the road that the features for which the product was selected are the ones which cannot be implemented due the current technology environment. Whether it is due to lack of available IT resources to support integration to a new product, security restrictions on how systems integrate with your corporate email system, or simple lack of well structured, meaningful employee data, companies have encountered them all and more.
When this happens, HR is left with a sexy piece of software that cannot deliver the functionality that drove the initial purchase decision. This is not all that dissimilar to the countless iPhone users who have either abandoned their slick phones or who have chosen to live with suboptimal performance. And Apple who introduced a product that exceeds the ability of their exclusive carrier’s infrastructure to utilize many of the advanced features that differentiate the device, your software vendor has done the same thing.
I’ve said this in earlier posts, but its not the software’s fault that you can’t take advantage of the full feature-set of the products you’ve purchased – just like its not Apple’s fault that your iPhone cannot live up to the hype of the features packed into the product.
Followers of The HR Technologist
Random Flair
Other People’s Thoughts