‘Cloud Computing’ Category

Ketan Khandkar, Principal, Navatar Group, will be demonstrating a very exciting and important application, built on Force.com, at the next meeting of the Salesforce.com NJ User Group on Wednesday, December 2nd. The application was built using Force.com Sites and Customer Portal for the Department of Defense and Council On Accreditation Child Care Initiative.

Please join us to meet other Salesforce.com customers in the great State of New Jersey, network, to learn more about this important initiative as well as share your tips and best practices! Hope to see you there!

Date/Time:   Wednesday, December 2, 2009 •  5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Location:      Princeton Overlook – Regus Business Center • 100 Overlook Center, 2nd Floor • Princeton   Location Information

RSVP: njusergroup@gmail.com by Wednesday, November 25, 2009.

Agenda:       

5:30 p.m. – Networking & Refreshments
6:15 p.m. – Introductions & Announcements
6:30 p.m. – Application Demo – Ketan Khandkar, Navatar Group

7:00 p.m. – New Salesforce.com Community Site Preview

Hope to see you there!

In the wake of news reports that Venture Capital fund raising had its lowest quarter since ‘03, you might be surprised that very sophisticated buy-side firms such as Hedge Funds, Venture Capital firms and Private Equity firms often rely on the must rudimentary, home made fund raising methods (see article: Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years.) For example, many firms are still tracking their efforts in Excel or via notes in Outlook. It’s a very manual, time consuming and arduous way to track and manage their efforts.

Ironically, this is happening at a time when it has never been easier for a Venture firm to switch to better systems with almost no effort. The same browser they use to search for news and research can also be used for the industry’s most sophisticated CRM. No hardware needed other than the laptops they are now using and access to the Internet.

Whether they use our service built on the force.com platform or on top of salesforce.com or some of the other services out there, you have to wonder why, during this time of great stress they are still trying to make do with Excel and Outlook. If it is cost that is holding them back, you really have to wonder. We have priced our service at about the price of a couple of cups of coffee a day on Wall Street. On top of that, our Marketing Department is launching a “buy one get one free” promotion.

If you are in one of these financial firms and suffering from the funding drought – maybe it’s time to think about improving your pumping equipment?

At least 5 people asked me that question in the last 2 weeks.  These people are customers, competitors as well as our partners. Everyone has been surprised at our success in the Financial market with our Force.com based services (or products, as some would call them) to manage operations for Capital Markets and Asset Management firms. But then, they figured it makes sense since Navatar is offering the lowest cost option to those who have no money to spend these days.

Is it true then, that our Financial Services solutions for Force.com are popular because they’re low cost? Of course. Navatar’s solutions to manage CRM, Operations and Portfolio for these firms are probably the most cost effective alternatives. They deliver on the Cloud Computing promise – to lower costs and enable scalability as financial firms navigate the turbulent waters of today and prepare for the future. You can read about how Transparent Value, a Guggenheim Partners Company is achieving this, in the article, Asset Management Firm Moving Apps to the Cloud, written by Penny Crosman at Wall Street & Technology.

However, there is another important aspect to all of this.  Around 60% of our financial customers bought from us since someone (another firm) recommended us.  You would think the recommender probably said, “Yes, indeed, the cost is low and the product has all the features we need.”  In reality, our recommenders endorse us for much more than that - they are happy to recommend us for the combination of product features and the service they receive from folks well versed in Financial Services. They like the idea of a one-stop-shop they can turn to, for anything related to running their operations efficiently. And it’s all baked into the cost of the service.

The service aspect really is the crux of the Cloud Computing model.   A cloud service provider is a company that delivers cloud services as part of its business model. The public “Cloud” will be an abstract place through which service providers will deliver things like storage as a service, software as a service, or maybe even sushi as a service in Indiana one day.  But the common link between all those things is, and ever shall be, the delivery of “service”.  That quote is from an article Delivering Cloud Services: ISVs – Change or Die or both! written by Daryl Plummer at Gartner.

So, let’s ask the question again. Is it really the cost?  My answer is that the big differentiator is the value that the Cloud Computing model enables us to provide.  It makes us successful and it is exactly that value which will help our Financial Services customers take advantage of the new upcoming opportunities in this downturn.

Mary Hayes Weier of InformationWeek poses some great questions about Oracle’s desired switch (according to a recent announcement) to subscription-based pricing, in her article Oracle Mulls Shift To Subscription-Based Pricing.  “How is Oracle going to do subscription-based pricing, and is that going to require Oracle to invest heavily in a multi-tenant architecture,” Mary asks.

Let’s tackle the first part of the question. It is, indeed, a huge shift, moving to a subscription based pricing model.  Oracle probably has a twofold objective – to protect the current customer base (probably a bit easier because these customers have already spent millions on software/consultants and are seemingly ‘locked’ in) as well as acquire new midmarket customers that haven’t yet had a taste of Oracle’s software.  Can Oracle potentially repackage what customers would have paid into annual license and ongoing maintenance fees into a monthly subscription fee spread over the life of the contract, and protect current revenues as well as get new customers?

I don’t think so. When it comes to midmarket, vendors more grounded in the SaaS world (or the multi-tenancy experts) will surely come with lower priced options and Oracle will have a tough time competing.  The answer would have to be lower revenue per customer. Which means that just to produce the same revenue numbers, Oracle will need to acquire more customers. More customers implies more salespeople, more infrastructure, more support, more (you fill in the blanks).  In summary, that means incurring higher costs but getting the same revenue.  Safra Catz will not like that.

Which brings me to the second part of Mary’s question – will Oracle need to invest heavily in a multi-tenant architecture to solve this? Absolutely. Multi-tenancy will be necessary to deliver cloud services and shift to subscription-based pricing, while protecting the bottom line at the same time. Yes, building and delivering that kind of architecture isn’t Oracle’s forte. But their industry and financial stature gives them so many interesting choices that it shouldn’t be that hard for them either. They could go and buy a company (and a platform) tomorrow. They could sell more database licenses to salesforce.com and then use Force.com as the platform to build and deliver multi-tenant versions of Oracle apps (Peter Coffee points out in his blog entry What the Cloud Entails how increasingly complex multi-tenant apps are being built in a faster timeframe on Force.com). Or they could hire the best cloud talent and build the multi-tenancy infrastructure themselves.

Did I miss any other options that Safra has? I’d love to hear your comments. Oh, and of course, here’s a  (free) whitepaper (from yours truly) that may have a useful point or two about the pitfalls and benefits of the subscription-based pricing world:

Whitepaper: The Dos and Don’ts of the transition to Cloud Computing

Jim Sinur from Gartner poses some very good questions about IT’s role in the Cloud world, in his blog entry The Secret is Out: The Business is Building Processes and Applications. The question is: Will IT continue to play an important role within their organization, when the business now has the option of getting their apps developed on platforms such as Force.com, without IT involvement?

Jim also poses more great questions, such as:

“As the business relies more heavily on these new infrastructures, will they be able to hold up to high scale? Will the business folks really want to take on the tasks to maintain these processes and applications? Who is going to build the integration components to glue these new processes apps together? Will the business folks build and IT be stuck with the results? How does one make sure there is not rampant duplication of processes and applications?”

Another good blog post Force.com – CiO’s dream or nightmare? by Ian Gotts (who heads Nimbus Partners) also outlines some important implications for a CIO, in the new cloud world order.

I do agree with Jim and Ian about the change that’s looming. CIOs need to do some serious thinking and figure out how they’d add value. It seems to me that there’s clearly an anchor role that needs to be played so that all of this comes together within an organization. Take the example of large banks such as Citi or JPMorgan Chase. Retail banking and investment banking are two disparate business functions within each bank and neither function really cares what the other is implementing technologically. But someone would have to figure out how to get these two functions (and others) within a bank to play together so the bank can benefit from a coherent cloud strategy. I also think that that someone would most logically be the CIO (although large Cloud Service Providers may compete for that role in future – outsourcers want that role but they’re unlikely candidates in my view).

Ian provides some very good pointers for the CIO. Another great post when it comes to pointers, is from Thomas Bittman (also, from Gartner) titled If You Build a Private Cloud, Will Anyone Come.  “We’ve got to get our IT people to stop thinking about products and technologies and even architectures first, and instead to focus on understanding their service requirements first,” says Thomas.  I completely agree. Thomas advocates making ROI decisions based on SLAs and costs for each service, before getting mired in architectures.

I think this is a big paradigm shift for a CIO.  But then, aren’t CIOs smart people? If I can figure this out, so can they.  What may be harder for a CIO, though, is to change their IT organization to become more service-focused and less obsessed with ownership. If a CIO can pull off that change, he/she will be in the drivers seat.  Otherwise they will open opportunities for others.

A couple of weeks ago we launched the first Online Event Registration product on Force.com Sites (view demo). After launching some pioneering Financial Service products for Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Mutual Funds, M&A and Capital Markets on the Force.com platform, this is yet another “first” from Navatar Group on Force.com sites. We were flooded with inquiries in the very first week. Everyone was very intrigued and interested, but also confused. I thought it would be worthwhile compiling some common questions that prospects have been asking.

Does the world really need another Online Event Registration system? Yes, the world needs an Online Event Registration system that is integrated with your salesforce CRM. Let me ask you this. Wouldn’t you want to track attendance in events, conferences, webinars or trainings, in your salesforce system? It would help you understand your customers and prospects for upselling, cross-selling or better service. Navatar’s Online Event Registration system built on Force.com Sites is completely integrated with salesforce.

Aren’t there other existing Event Registration systems that are already integrated with Salesforce? Sure, there are. The key difference is that Navatar’s Online Event Registration system runs on Salesforce.com’s cloud. In other words, it is completely native and is hosted on the Salesforce.com servers. You do not need any other hardware, software or integration solution. It is all done for you.

So how can the event registration system help me? Try to answer the questions listed below. If you find yourself answering yes to some of them, this system may be for you.

1      Publishing events: Do you want to, without IT’s involvement and with a few clicks, publish an event on your website, open it for registrations and then remove it after the event is over?

2      Event Marketing: Do you want to prepare a list of participants based on last year’s events attendees?  Do you want to further filter this list to filter out email opt-outs? Do you want to drive email marketing campaigns to send out mass email invitations?

3      Multiple Sessions: Do you want to manage multi-session conferences? Do you want to allow participants to register for multiple sessions within an event?

4      Multiple Discount Types: Do you want to allow for various kinds of discounts based on the number of registrants, type of registrant, and type of registration- full/partial?

5      Multiple Payment Types: Do you want to give the registrant multiple payment options to choose from? Do you want to provide online credit card processing?

6      Registration Confirmation: Do you want to automatically send out acknowledgement mails confirming event registration?

7      Event Attendance: Do you want to track attendance and no-shows for the event?

8      Private Events: Do you want a mechanism to facilitate online registrations for a private event that won’t be posted on your website?

9      Event Analytics: Do you want to run analytics to gauge an event’s success? Do you want to generate a list of confirmed attendees to prepare a seating chart? Do you want to know how many different types of meals to order for an event? Do you want to know the names of registrants for each session of your event?

If you want to learn more about the product, you can view an online demo.

For further inquiries, you can reach our sales team at sales@navatargroup.com or 212 461 2140.  You can also write to me directly at skumar@navatargroup.com.

I recently reviewed a book titled “Thinking of …. offering a Cloud Solution? Ask the Smart Questions.”  Great book, if you are looking to build a Cloud product on one of the platforms such as Force.com or Azure.

We find that an ISV usually realizes that moving to the Cloud isn’t optional, before they come to Navatar Group for help. The ISV doesn’t realize, however, that simply Cloud-enabling their On-Premise software won’t translate into a profitable business model. We recommend this book as a ‘must-read’ for every ISV so you can make an informed choice between selling a ‘product’ and providing a ‘service’, based on your customer needs and your ability to change. Answering the Smart Questions will provide a basis for a realistic cost benefit analysis as well as help you understand what will resonate with your customers and where you will need advice or partnerships.

You can buy the book at Amazon. The link is:

Thinking of … Offering a Cloud Solution? Ask the Smart Questions.

Join salesforce.com and Navatar Group for the Force.com Tech Talk webinar, Architecting Commercial Applications on August 4th at 10AM PDT.   This webinar will help you answer several critical questions, such as:

• Benefits of a native app
• Pure platform or extending SFDC
• salesforce editions that your product will support
• Force.com features that you will be using
• How to create a rapid prototype
• Benefits of Visualforce vs. Standard Page Layouts
• When to write Apex Triggers
• Reporting/analytics requirements
• Benefits of Sites and Customer Portal
• Incorporating Security Best Practices
• Maintaining your product
• Supporting your product

Learn from top Force.com experts Sati Hillyer, Force.com Evangelist, salesforce.com and Ketan Khandkar, Principal, Navatar Group.  Also read the new article Architecting a Commercial App as well as Ten Common Mistakes Architects make when building a Force.com App.

View recorded webinar now.

Most of us living in India weren’t surprised when our population crossed a billion. Most Indians also didn’t pay attention when salesforce.com became the first Cloud Computing company to cross the $1B mark. Now some analysts suggest that the Cloud Computing market in India is expected to cross $1B soon. This is noteworthy given that companies in India are still very skeptical about the cloud model. “I don’t want to put my data on the web or some server outside my office or some unknown datacenter” is a line we often hear from prospects evaluating salesforce.com.

So, I guess, things are expected to change soon. I have been working at the grassroots level, selling to companies’ hand-in-hand with the salesforce.com Account Executives (if you weren’t aware, Navatar Group works closely with salesforce.com in India also). My own experience is that there’s still a lot of evangelizing that needs to be done to raise the level of general awareness and reduce the fears. I would imagine that the Cloud providers are already at work, getting the message out.

The next important issue that I think needs to be addressed is accessibility. Although the internet is penetrating deeper and India is only next to China on the mobile user count, infrastructure is still a major bottleneck in India. Because of that, we find that prospects here give very serious consideration to an offline version of any cloud service. I still don’t see a lot of infrastructure providers paying attention to the opportunity that the cloud may offer, particularly in the SMB sector. We got a real taste of this after we sold our Capital Markets salesforce product to R. K. Stockholdings, a leading broker-dealer in North India with over 40 branches in small and mid-sized towns.

The other big issue so far has been affordability. It is true that the Cloud model offers a less capital-intensive alternative for businesses. But Indians are always looking for better deals. Due to an abundance of technical talent in this country, businesses are not scared to assemble software on their own since they still see that as a cheaper option. Cloud providers have been offering some discounts. But, they need better pricing models based on demographics and usage patterns.

The good news is that VCs are beginning to take notice. Rajeev Kumar, VP Sales at Navatar was recently invited to present to top Indian VCs in Mumbai around the Cloud opportunity for ISVs. We just attended Salesforce.com’s first partner event in Bangalore. We are finalizing a cloud contract with a large Indian bank and have several others in the pipeline. I know it’s just the beginning but I’m very optimistic about the change.

Amit Chaudhary

The phrase “outsourced solution” never really set hearts racing. But, the “Cloud” is different.

That’s why when a top thought leader started pushing the term and said that he is using it in a forthcoming book – the legacy, internal data center defenders knew they faced a real threat.

So, they (and the people who sell to them) created that relatively new, buzz mash-up “Private Cloud.”

Ugh. Kind of reminds you of word constructs like “enhanced interrogation” or “secret UBS account.”

The real “Cloud” suggests a “shared model” (usually called “multi-tenant” but we don’t like that term either). “Shared” is better because it conveys that costs are shared and that there’s a solid TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) story. And, that is what makes the “Cloud” a good thing.

The bottom line, “Private Cloud” is an embarrassing term created by defenders of the old order.

Allan Siegert